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“Can anybody hear me?
Can anybody see me?
Does anyone really understand?

We’re looking for some action!
We need something to happen!
No more wasted nights and days!
We’re looking for some action!”

- Fireflight — Action

(I know, another non-Relient K tie-in… I can’t listen to Relient K all the time!)

Short post tonight, just had something burning in my head…

In case you hadn’t noticed (head under a rock, generally oblivious, completely self-absorbed, or in a coma), there’s an election coming up. Ok, so it’s a midterm election, so nothing important or anything (kidding…) But here’s the thing: I get all fired up about it, get pissed off about what I perceive to be complete lies, FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt), or just good old fashioned ignorance, and generally get agitated in a manner that is completely opposite my usual personality. Sure, the coffee doesn’t help, but suffice it to say that politics is something I feel passionately about.

So why is it that I so rarely get this passionate about more important things (face it, politics is not the end-all and be-all of life), like, oh, I dunno, my faith?

I guess, as usual, I have a long ways to go.

“Honesty is a hard attribute to find
When we all want to seem like we’ve got it all figured out
Well let me be the first to say I don’t have a clue
I don’t have all the answers
Ain’t gonna pretend like I do
Just trying, to find my way
Trying, to find my way the best that I know how”
- Lifehouse — Trying
(Dude, it’s not a Relient K tie-in… but it’s still a music tie-in, and so it goes…)

Blast… I lost my train of thought… that’s the problem with hearing a song on the drive home, thinking about the words, thinking it would be a good blog post… and then not sitting down to write it for a good 30 minutes. Blast.

Basically, it was this. Why is it that we (maybe it’s just me, but I doubt it) only admit that we don’t have it all together, that we don’t know all the answers, that we’re more likely to make a mess of things than anything else, when the going gets tough? Why does it take getting kicked around to admit, “ok, yeah… completely blew that one…”?

And I’m not saying that things are going badly or anything like that, so no freaking out. I’m just saying, why is it that usually we only admit that we aren’t as self sufficient as we’d like to think when things are bad?

I have the shred of a couple different thoughts on the subject, but nothing coherent. Maybe later, after I’ve had some time to think about it.

Or maybe it’s just me. But I doubt it.

“Our concentration it contains a deadly flaw
Our conversations change from words to blah, blah, blah
We took prescription drugs, but look how much good that did
Well I think I had a point, but I just got distracted…”
- Relient K — Maintain Conciousness

Yes, there probably is a Relient K song that’s relevant to any blog post, at least in my head. Works for me.

So yeah… once again, it’s been weeks since my last post. So I suck at this. Whatever. More importantly, I should probably follow up on a couple things from that post. Actually, the Relient K songs in both posts are applicable here. Trust me.

So yeah, my latest attempt at actually, you know, exercising regularly worked out about as well as all my previous attempts. As usual, it’s a question of motivation. Nothing can change the fact that I just hate running. The best I’ve ever done was when I was swimming every night for a couple weeks there. That actually worked pretty well. The problem is that the pool at my complex closes at 10pm, and doesn’t open until 8am. Since I’m not a morning person, that’s kind of a problem. A lot of nights I don’t even start thinking about exercising until well after 10 (usually after I quit playing whatever game I was playing or watching whatever TV show I was watching). Basically, I’m a lazy-ass slacker.

Whatever.

My experiment with going for a week without any tech distractions went about as well as the exercise thing did. Actually, I only made it a few days. I posted that post Monday night (well, Tuesday morning technically), and by Friday night the experiment was completely shot. See, there were a couple of problems. One, I knew that on Saturday that I was going to be driving about 6 hours total, and there was no way I was doing that without my iPod. That didn’t exactly give me any incentive to keep the experiment going. Two, I made the mistake of ordering a couple new toys, one of which was delivered on Friday.

The other thing about the experiment that kind of threw things off was that I did it on a week where i was fairly busy. Tuesday and Wednesday night I was out with friends, Friday I was supposed to be but plans fell through, and I was out pretty much all weekend. So there wasn’t much time that I was wasting on video games when I could have been doing something else. But I did kind of learn a couple things from the whole process:

1) I can’t really un-plug while I’m at home. To some extent, I am dependent on it. If I’m home (ie not out of town on vacation, etc), people expect to be able to reach me via email, IM, web forum, etc. That’s not really a bad thing. Better than being completely isolated.

2) Considering how much of that week I was out with friends and not glued to my computer, I guess I can safely say that things are pretty balanced. If I were choosing video games over hanging out with friends, ok, that’d be a problem. As it is? Eh. Could I stand to play fewer hours of video games? Sure. Is it the end of the world? Hardly.

Of course, with that said, my xbox 360 was delivered on Saturday, and on Monday I picked up Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for it, and I’ve been playing it every spare moment. I’m totally hooked. I should have know this would happen. I’m one of these people that gets totally engrossed in stories. If I pick up a good book, I will read non-stop until I get through it. When Jeremy got me to play Chrono Trigger (emulated many many years after it actually came out for SNES), I spent hours playing through it, and that was with the walkthrough (I was really more interested in the story than anything else).

KotOR was very similar. Once I got started, the story sucked me in, and the game play was excellent as well. It’s a great game, especially if you like RPGs. It’s actually an original xbox title, and I have to say I’m not terribly impressed with the back compatibility that Microsoft implemented on the 360. The game was (mostly) playable, but it suffered from sound glitches and stuttering during the cut-scenes. It also had some lag issues, especially in combat (which is the last time you want lag). I actually almost got stuck at one point because the compatibility software would freeze every time I got to a particular spot. Needless to say, I was not happy until I finally got around the bug (and I’m still not sure what exactly fixed it).

But, I beat it tonight, so life can go back to normal. I guess I should clean my apartment. Like I said, I’ve been playing it every spare moment. I should probably wait a couple weeks before I replay it (last time I played it as a light-side character, next time I’ll play as a dark-side character). And I should definitely wait a while until I buy KotOR 2.

Oh, and I want to be a Jedi. Just leave my lightsaber on the table, thanks.