Some Philosophation

Here is an English theme I wrote that I believe is quite clever. So philosophize my shit.

Painting People; Capturing Souls

In many cultures there is the belief that having your picture taken or your portrait drawn or painted captures your soul. The thought of this makes my mind wonder to various questions.
What happens if you paint someone that doesn’t exist? Do you create a new soul? That’s a strange idea. It is said that only God can do things like that. It would seem to me that it would make God angry if you started doing his job. That brings up a more difficult question. If there are over six billion souls on this Earth right now, and there are more people alive right now then there have ever been before, where do all these souls come from? And where do they go after we die? It is said that souls never die. They live on eternally after the body has been a long time decomposed. That’s a lot of souls. Where do they put them all? Heaven, Hell, and Nirvana must have quite a bit of room to house all of them. Maybe we’re all reincarnated from pre-owned souls. Maybe it’s like a lottery system and if you get stuck with a crappy soul, you’re just screwed. That makes me wonder, when did God decide to stop making them? When did He decide there were enough. But, to be perfectly cliché-tastic, I digress.
What happens if you sit down and paint a random picture of a person and it happens to look like someone you’ve never met? Would you accidentally capture their soul? You jerk. Give them back their soul. They probably don’t want it any more after it’s been in your greasy oil painting. Same thing with all those poor folks in the background of your family pictures at Six Flags. Steal your family’s souls all you want but keep your dirty mitts off those others. Jeeze, you’re so insensitive, wielding your soul capturing device all willy-nilly like that.
Rembrandt Van Rijn, Winslow Homer, Paul Gauguin, and Marcel Duchamp all liked capturing souls. All of their paintings that are the subjects of this writing focus on people. They all have drastically different painting styles, use completely different colors and pigments, and paint people in completely different situations, but the focus is the same; people.
One last question, if I take a picture of myself, would I capture my own soul?

I Submit For Your Approval...

I'm only posting this because I have some innate, indomitable urge to brag.

(11:16:55) Sean: Matt, I don't know if you've ever done this before, but suggest you give it a try at least once in your life time, but I played strip poker with five women last night.
(11:17:15) Matt: WOW!!!!
(11:17:18) Matt: sounds like fun
(11:17:23) Matt: did you win?
(11:18:00) Sean: That really depends on your definition of winning, but yeah, I'd say so.
(11:18:07) Matt: lol
(11:18:47) Sean: I saw boobs. I think that means I win.
(11:19:02) Matt: I agree

Some Stuff

I just finished with my first 10pm to 7am shift. I'm not yet sure how I feel about it yet. I can tell you that my hands and feet hurt. Fifty some odd televisions are heavy. More about that at the end of the week.

Now for something fun. This is a theme I wrote for English recently. The prompt was over inconveniences and necessities. I thought it was clever. I'll let you be the judge(s). It's only 400 words.

Dependence Day, the Fourth of Always
Where’s my cup of coffee? I have to have my coffee, or I can’t function. Where’s my Morning show on the radio. I need to hear the morning show. Ah man, my alarm clock didn’t wake me up today, or, my alarm clock didn’t go off and I was late to work or school.
When you really think about Americans’ dependences on material things, doesn’t it make you a little bit sick to your stomach? It does me. These are things that people in most other countries could never take for granted.
Starving people in small African countries probably wouldn’t even know how or why we worship coffee so. If they even get the chance to drink it, they would probably think something along the lines of, “what is this bitter crap? Why would you do this to perfectly good water?” I would tend to agree.
The only thing that comes close to a morning radio show for any of these people is some arrogant and hateful dictator harshly giving them tips on how exactly they should live, lest they trip and fall into a dark, dingy jail cell for all of eternity. He doesn’t spell out that last part specifically, but we all know it happens. We’ve had one of those mornings when we show up at the local slum-labor factory for another hard day’s work, one of those twenty-seven hour shifts for a nickel, and Kunta Kinte is just “missing”. No one knows for sure where he went. They most likely wouldn’t mind at all if that was gone from their lives.
You’re so damn lucky that you have that little machine there to buzz, squawk, and holler at you to wake-up at 8:15 in the AM. Think about it, if you were out in the jungle on an over night game hunt or something, you better figure out a way to get your lazy ass up before sunrise or the tigers will fucking eat you. How would you like that? At first you would be dreaming and thinking your dog was up on the bed licking your face and you’d be all smiling and laughing until you felt that big cat rip your face clean off. You wouldn’t be laughing after that. You’d be all like, “where the hell did my face go?” Then you’d wish you had your alarm clock and a new face.
I’m not so pretentious to say that I don’t rely on things of this sort or enjoy their luxury. I’m just saying that I hope to whatever deity there may be that it wouldn’t kill me to remove one or more of them from my daily routine. Such amenities should only be supplements to life, not key components.

My Face Went All Red...

Today, I was referred to as, "sexy," by a female. That's right, a real one.

Take that bitches.

Interesting Occurance

(00:38:05) xander: I figured out how to get a girl to tell you she likes you
(00:38:15) xander: Tell her you're gay
(00:38:37) bookmunkie: Oh, fuck
(00:38:42) bookmunkie: This has got to be a good story
(00:40:28) xander: Ok, so, at the end of work tonight, I was walking to back to the timeclocks and stuff with an associate of mine
(00:42:20) xander: When we got to the lockers, her phone was ringing. She said it was her asshole x-boyfriend, Mike. And because I'm either retarded or really clever, I said, "that's funny, my x-boyfriend's name is Mike."
(00:42:51) bookmunkie: heh
(00:43:04) xander: She turned to me with an interesting look on her face and said, "Oh shit, don't tell me you're gay"
(00:43:17) xander: I shook my head no
(00:44:02) xander: She said, "Oh good, I wouldn't have wasted all this time hitting on you"
(00:44:17) bookmunkie: Sweet
(00:44:26) bookmunkie: That is the best story you've ever told me
(00:44:30) bookmunkie: What happened next?
(00:44:45) xander: I'm such a loser. I don't even know when people people are hitting on me
(00:44:54) bookmunkie: I think that's just a guy thing
(00:45:10) bookmunkie: I never know, and Mom'll be like, "She was totally flirting with you"
(00:45:27) xander: we walked out the front doors, with me turning all red and stuff and me trying to explain that I had no idea she liked me
(00:45:31) xander: lol
(00:46:24) xander: if someone says they like me, my first responce is, what's wrong with you?
(00:47:36) bookmunkie: So, did you get her number?
(00:48:00) xander: No, I was in to much shock