Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life. The whole aim and the end of human experience.

"Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life. The whole aim and the end of human experience." I thought being in college meant we are going to figure out what we want to do with the rest of our lives. I'm not 100% sure what I want to be, but I'm pretty positive it has nothing to do with what I'm learning in Cultural and Social Foundations. I really don't care about that BCE stuff and reading about all of these myths. They're obviously not true, so why don't we focus on our history and learn about the twentieth century because I think it's pretty whack we know more about ancient Egypt than World War I. But even learning about that; isn't all of it high school material? Shouldn't we be doing something that could influence our career path? I don't know what's happening to me. I used to be a very optimistic and outgoing person, but college changed me. I still think I can be that person, but when I look back at all these prompts, I only see myself complaining. That's not who I am. I look for the better things, not the worse. So, right now, I'm not living up to this quote.

Brandon J.

"Yes we can or no we can not?"

I can't even bitch about this quote because for once my rant has something to do with this. I wrote a pretty long LiveJournal entry about this, how you think you're able to get past something and then realize you're not really past it.

And I'm not even a depressing person like that. I mean of course I get morbidly sad every once in a while and I mean like really really morbidly sad but I've actually been pretty happy lately. Like I mean shits been weird as ever, if not weirder, but I just brushed it off...Or was I bottling it up?

Yes we can...can we really? Can we keep on trying to be our best and to impress everyone and to be a good person and friend and child and student and on and on and on? And to be happy and not overwhelmed while doing it? Can we run around smiling, getting As, maintaining perfect relationships with everyone, no f**k that, maintaining perfect everything, all the time? Can we? Or can we not? Can anyone? I want to know.

And this isn't some angsty teenage shit either. I really want to know if it's possible. Because it seems a lot of people have it down. Or are they pretending? Can we not? Really....can we or can we not?

Does it come with age? That's doubtful, if anything most grown ups seem more miserable than kids my age. So maybe I don't even want to know if we can, because what if no we can not? What then?

-MShapiro

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss event; small minds discuss other people."

Corny MySpace quote, I refuse to answer you. Why? Because I'm tired, and did my essay this morning and had a f**ked up weekend and can't figure out how to manage my time.

Here we go, I'm just gonna indent and slant my way through this page. The sloppier and the loopier my letters are, the more space I have to leave between words, which is great because this sentence is already three lines long.

Got my graduation present yesterday....?

I really don't know what to say.....

I'm freaked the f**k out in general. I freaked out this weekend and then I was freaking out about freaking out. I'm freaked out about my midterm tomorrow and Thursday and Monday. I'm freaked out that I can't manage my time anymore and that I'm always tired and never home. And that my brother is almost six...which is weird. And that in less than a month I'll be 18, which is even weirder.

So no. I don't care about your mind, small minds, big minds, average minds or any other minds. I know mine is going crazy for no reason so I rather sit here and whine about that, then have to pretend to have some deep insight about a quote I don't even like.

-MShapiro

"Beauty is in the eyes of the advertisers"

That's so stupid...Honestly half of these quotes just make me angry, like what compels you to say that? For real. Anyway, beauty is not in the "eyes of the advertisers." Can we all just stop blaming shit on others? "Oh I'm fat because of McDonalds;" "I'm jobless because everyone buys from China..."

Shut up. Stop eating. Stop shopping at Walmart. Advertisements give people what they want. If everyone wanted to see size 6 women (which, by the way, they used to want to see) then we'd see ads full of actual women, not pin thin 16 year olds.

And honestly advertisers have tried the "plus size model" campaigns. You know why they didn't stick? BECAUSE NO ONE WANTED TO SEE IT. Because it's all cute to be anorexic and it isn't at all cute to eat at McDonalds.

And yes, yes, yes, I have mentioned Micky Ds quite a few times.

Now we have one minute. I'm still angry at this quote but I'm running out of things to say. Maybe it's because I'm not so angry anymore? I'm gonna keep on indenting so it looks like I'm writing like a "real" writer would.

Yeah.

This is BS!

Everyone loves skinny girls.

Well maybe not men...but you know.

Ok...now "time's up."

-MShapiro

To put yourself in a group is to tyrannize one self

Individualism is lost in a group. Is like being lump into a box of cereal. Not having the choice to think different. Act different. Be different. No single choice or ideas are allowed. Losing the freedom to be you. Not able to act your own self. Is like being in box of constrain. You become one more in the group instead of being part of the group. The notion that you have to be in a group and sacrifice your individuality for the sake of your own good is the bull shit mentality mantra. They naysayers feed us this crap everyday. Whenever we try to have our individual opinions on an issue they want makes like the aliens coming from outer space. Like what the hell you’re talking about. They want take away our individual thinking. Remove any trace of creative thinking. Until we’re all transform into bubblehead figures.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

There is a critical period of time during early development known as "the Language Acquisition Phase" as postulated by the cognitive scientist, Noam Chomsky. This is the time when a child is best able to learn his or her first language. Babies and toddlers cannot remember anything prior to this period because without language there cannot be thought and there cannot be memory. Language plays a vital role in each of our lives. An example of a failure to acquire language can be seen in the movie "Mockingbird Don't Sing." The protagonist, a pre-teen girl named Genie experiences extreme social isolation as she spends her entire life strapped to a chair in the basement of her parents' house. She was never taught how to speak or function in society as she was hidden away from the world. In Genie's case, language was something she never had at all and her life was completely different because of it. On a side note, I think I may have gone a different way with this than the prompt was hoping for. I do think just between languages themselves people's worlds' are limited. There are many beautiful and poetic expressions that simply cannot be said in the same way from language to language. Additionally those who speak different languages are limited already because they are unable to communicate with each other fully and cannot fully submerge themselves in each other's worlds.
- M. Ashraf

Beauty is in the eye of the advertiser.

We are living in a world dominated by pop-culture and constantly changing fads which tell us what is in and cause the uninformed to be made fun of when they're still involved in it when its out. The media is to blame for most if not all fashion trends and they achieve this 21st-century mind control by instilling images of what they believe is "beautiful" into the heads of the impressionable youth. I try not to buy into what the media tries to sell me, but ultimately my efforts are futile. I always end up sucked into whatever money-making "get-cool" scheme they come up with. For example, I swore that I would never buy a pack of silly bands, yet over the past few months I've acquired quite a few. (Many of which I'm donning right now.) Advertisement has more control over the human mind than anyone would be comfortable admitting - because to admit that you're falling for these schemes is to admit that you're suceptible to brain-washing. And we as humans would never feel comfortable letting others control how we feel. Yet it happens.
- M. Ashraf