Music Holier-than-Thou-ism

Hi Readers,

First, an update. I'm sick =( boo. Unfortunately last Sunday night I began to cough a lot, and this entire week has been in the cesspools for me. Good thing that the sickness looks like it is subsiding. The only thing that remains is the periodic coughing to clear the phlegm. Eww. Anyways, one thing that I thought I would start writing about is music. Since I've had a lot of music background, I wonder why I didn't start writing about it earlier.

One of the funniest cultural phenomenons that transcend cultures is that of music. It is prevalent over most of the world, though the style and characteristics of the music varies from place to place (obviously). Why did I say "funny"? Because no matter where you travel in the world, people everywhere have strong opinions of music and music styles. And when I say strong, I mean judgmentally-strong.

A generational gap seems to be the most common factor that defines music groupies. Grandparents often like operas and classical music that would induce z's amongst most everybody else in the family. Parents tend to like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, or Europop style old-ish rock songs, but hate the new pop songs. Teenagers tend to gravitate towards pop songs like Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber (ick), and Ke$ha and the likes. The funny part is that each older generation will say, "What the hell happened to good music? We had it so much better back then."

Each group will always defend their turf when they feel intruded upon. Go to an LGBT party and declare that you hate Lady Gaga - it's an open invitation to be banned from the next party. Ask a music hippie what their favorite bands are, and 99% of the time you'll be treated to a list of obscure indy bands, and while you nod and say "cool", you're pretty sure 99.9% of the world has not heard of them. Want to piss off country music folks? Tell them their music is always about them driving their tractors or their wives leaving or their dogs dying. Want to piss off other music folks? Tell them that country music is better than their music. It is like trolling in real life, but you troll at your own discretion.

Part of this is of course related to the associations of the music genre. Many people feel that their music collection is an extension of their personality. In my opinion, what a person likes to listen to is a pretty definitive guide to their lifestyle and their beliefs. For example, if someone likes dance-y music like Rihanna or Kesha, then I'd peg partying and clubbing as one of their hobbies. Indy fans tend to come across as kinda pretentious and rebellious at the same time, since they almost always reject mainstream music for "better" stuff that's not well-known. Classical music people claim that all other kinds of music are lame and less sophisticated.

In a sense, all of these observations are kinda correct. I personally like alternative rock better than all other types of music, and I tend to identify myself better with those that listen to the same type of music. I think it's a matter of personality. In general, people who like Radiohead or Coldplay or other alternative rock music are more chill and relaxed, while those who like Katy Perry or Rihanna tend to crave social interactions like bars or dancing or partying. I'm sure people have noticed this about other people, and even use it as a judge of the other person's personality before even getting to know them. For example, looking back now - I'd say my initial judgments on my first roommate was pretty accurate, based upon his posters of Incubus and Rage Against the Machine.

Ultimately, I think the big arguments that always come up during music bickering extends out to a bickering of what type of personality is better. It's not about whether the music is better or worse, but rather about which personality is better or worse. And when the issue at hand touches your own personality...well, it's expected that people would claw each other's eyes out over it.

Just a bored and not-intellectual observation for this week. Till the next post!

-FCDH

The Excitement of Snowboarding

Hi Readers,

After coming back from my recent snowboarding trip to Chestnut Mountain with some friends, I thought I would write a blog post about snowboarding. I snowboarded for the first time in grade 10, and since then I have really fallen in love with it, much more so than skiing. I have my own board and all the equipment, which are currently a thousand miles away in Vancouver (grr). I really miss the mountains in Vancouver - I never thought about how convenient it was to live by so many ski hills until it was all gone, to be able to have a choice of three different ski resorts to go to within an hour's drive from my house. Now I have to drive at least 4 hours to reach a ski resort that is much less in caliber than the ones I had. Such is life.

I'll start off by saying that snowboarding is hard. Period. I haven't yet met a single person who has gotten through their first day of snowboarding without lots of bruises, sore knees, and butts. It may not seem like it, but there is a very big difference between having your body face the direction that you are traveling (ski) and having your body perpendicular to the direction your are traveling (snowboard). It makes for a lot of face plants at first, especially when learning to turn. There are two ways to orient a snowboard so that it is parallel to the slope (for gliding). The regular style means left-foot forward (so left side of body is facing downhill), and it is called regular because most people fall under this category. The goofy style is for right-foot forward, and is less common. To determine whether a person is regular or goofy, the first time they snowboard, an instructor will often shove them without any warning, and take note of which foot they step out with first. It will become their leading foot.

Unlike skiers, snowboarders do have an easier time with stopping. To stop, all a snowboarder has to do is to put the board perpendicular to the slope and push down hard on the edge, so that it pushes the snow downhill. Since there are two possible ways of putting a snowboard perpendicular to the slope, the terminology of toe-side and heel-side edges refers to the side of the snowboard that the pressure is being put on. Heel-side is the more natural way, where a snowboarder faces toward the bottom of a hill and puts pressure on their heels, while toe-side is where the snowboarder faces uphill and puts pressure on their toes to stop.

Snowboarders generally start learning with zigzags down the hill while alternating between regular and goofy style, as well as how to stop toe side and heel side. After this is done, they begin to learn how to turn. A turn is basically a move to go from toe-side to heel-side or vice versa, and when done properly, it looks like tracing a semicircle down the slope. The notion of "turning" is the key focus of snowboarders and is basically the precursor to carving. Skiers can carve by transferring their weight between the right skis and left skis between turns, and snowboarders can carve by transferring their weight between toe-side to heel-side. Snowboarders can carve simply by joining turns together to form an S-shape maneuver, and eventually by making the S-shape narrower.

It's during turns that snowboarders are most likely to fall on their butts. In the beginning, switching from toe-side to heel-side is fraught with dangers of falling, especially to knees and butts. I'm usually a regular style snowboarder, but I've been trying to learn carving goofy-style, and I've been falling as much as a beginner has. Regular and goofy style really are not transferable between each other, so I've come to love the pain that accompanies my attempts at goofy-style.

Despite its intricacies, I feel like snowboarding is really not that hard to learn. The first day is the worst. I remember the first day I learned snowboarding. Despite being tired as hell that night, I could not fall asleep because my knees and butt hurt so much. In my opinion, snowboarding is most easily learned when several consecutive days are spent learning snowboarding. That way no progress is lost and you can progress quickly to carving. Once carving is mastered, snowboarding becomes so much more fun than skiing. Plus it has the "cool" factor.

I'm pretty sure that I will not stick around in Illinois for graduate school. Wherever I may end up, I want to make snowboarding a part of my life there for the next 5 years. There's just something about it that makes it so much fun. Perhaps it's the thrill of flying down the hill on the edge of your control, while constantly pushing the boundaries of that control. Knowing that the control may disappear the next second and you might crash and generate a huge puff of snow, but living for the present all the same. It's how I want to live my life.

-FCDH

On Dreams and Sleep

Hi Readers,

I love to sleep, because it energizes me for the next day, because my bed feels good, and most importantly - because I am tired. But the daily nocturnal experience that most everyone encounters is not colonized or civilized. Instead, it is a swath of wilderness, filled with what is hidden in the deepest recesses of our mind. I am sure that everyone has had their own forays into the hinterlands of their minds (and for those who haven't, I truly feel sorry for them), and I am just trying to share some of my own experiences with the various weird experiences of sleeping and dreaming.

One unusual skill that I developed and recently lost touch of is the ability to know exactly the moment I am falling asleep. It sounds weird, right? Everyone has seen the land of conscious reality and dream reality separately, but the transition of "falling asleep" is another matter altogether. I don't know how common it is, but I am offering tips to readers about how to experience it.

You can start by lying on your bed, and rehearsing a scene that you know extremely well through your mind. For me, it is a scene that I saw at the Roman amphitheaters in the ruins of Ostia Antica, outside of Rome in Italy. The scene has to be familiar for two reasons. The first reason is that you need to be falling asleep at the same time, so you should not be thinking too hard. A familiar scene is perfect. The second reason is the following. As you fall asleep, you will inevitably cross what I call the "crazy" boundary. This is the boundary where crazy things (the things that, when you wake up from a dream, you said "how in the world did I think this was possible/normal in my dream?!?) begin happening. As you cross the boundary, the scene in your mind will become usurped by the "crazy" you hiding in the recesses of your brain.

However, in my personal experience, this boundary does not always correspond with the boundary of lucid awareness. So what will happen is, you will start seeing weird things happen in the scene in your head. (I'm walking up the stairs of the amphitheatre, and then I turn around and begin going on facebook in the computer lab in Engineering Hall, and then I notice that I have to shift gears to go to a higher speed in the car - etc). With a little training, you'll learn to recognize the "crazy" line, such that you'll be able to say, "Things don't make sense. Oh my god! I'm about to fall asleep!" before actually falling asleep.

And then there are dreams. Dreaming is such a quaint yet sublime experience. It is where creativity dictates reality. It's where you can live out your fantasies and horrors as if they were real. Most importantly, it allows your to escape from reality, into a world that you cannot experience anytime you are conscious.

My personal experience with dreams has been spotted. Back in elementary school, I had a period of a month when I would have the same nightmare night after night. I still remember the nightmare. I would be hiking with my family, and I would be in the lead of the hiking group which was hiking on a trail next to a drop-off cliff. Everytime I would turn to check on my family, one of the family members would jump off the cliffs to their death. Another nightmare that I remember from elementary school was that my mom and I were in a train when it crashed, and then a tornado came and sucked her away from me. I remember waking up from that nightmare in tears.

On the other end of the spectrum comes the awesome dreams . I love the dreams where I have superpowers, such as flying or telekinesis, because it is literally like acting out a dream in real life. Except it seems so real in the dream. You think about flying - and you fly. You want the door to open - and it opens. My first superpower dream was in elementary school - I could snap my fingers and make anything happen. I made it rain when my dad was trying to mow the lawn. And then I laughed so hard (in my dream) that I couldn't snap my fingers anymore and lost my superpower. Good times. =)

Along with the awesome dreams, but in a more taboo direction, are - what else? - sexual dreams. I definitely have lots of dreams about it (probably too many) involving the most random people that I would not think about in real life. It was almost never the people that I thought were hot, or had a crush on, or anything like that. I still remember my first 2 dreams. The first was about a guy in my class, the second was about a girl in my class. These both happened during middle school, which I guess was still a time when I might have still been attracted to both sexes (another blog post about this later). But it was the only time I ever dreamed about a girl sexually. Sexual dreams are the weirdest dreams ever. Sometimes I didn't even really know the person well, or at all. Sometimes I made the move, sometimes they did. Sometimes the person turned into a non-person. Sometimes weird, sometimes awkward, but always unpredictable.

I have read up on "lucid dreaming", where your consciousness is able to control the dream, so you can try things in your dream that you would never try in real life. Unfortunately it only happened to me a couple of times...but I think it would be awesome to actually master how to do it. But I have been able to influence what I dream about a couple of times. Sometimes I find that I dream about the last thing that I am thinking about when I fall asleep, so I'll be able to control that aspect of my dream.

Regardless of the control I have over it, dreaming is just so cool in general. I'd like to think that dreams are an outlet for the side of yourself that you are not able to let out in everyday life. If true, that would mean that, in order to take your understanding of yourself to the next level, you would look toward your dreams.

But for now, I am looking forward to another night's rest.

-FCDH

Running in Circles

Hi Readers,

I've been very busy, so I haven't been posting many new posts. I am hoping to post a myriad of posts tonight covering everything I wanted to post on in the past 2 weeks. Hopefully it will give me time to sleep and wake up in time to go ice skating and/or rock climbing tomorrow.

One of my life goals has always been to advance myself athletically. In high school, I kind of stayed away from sports of all kinds (except swimming), and I was definitely not good at anything. Therefore, I adopted the goal during my college years as a measure to develop some athletics that I could enjoy and be good at as I head into the future. A more specific goal was to run a full marathon - a goal that was unimaginable and laughable for me in high school, but a goal that now is looking more realistic.

For those of you that don't know, I ran the half marathon (13.1 miles) last year in May. I started training for it last winter, and successfully did the half marathon at around a 9 min mile. Before that training, I could only run around 3 miles non-stop before I had to stop to catch my breath. My training and improvement in running and rock climbing really helped advance my self confidence. It's a source of pride for me, and it has helped me lose weight that I carried into college from high school.

For the marathon (26.2 miles), I started training a few days after finals ended and winter break started. I tried to find some running buddies on Craigslist at first - which didn't work out. I decided to screw finding running buddies, and instead run by myself. So after New Year's Day, I began running every single day that CRCE was open. I improved quickly - my mileage increased quickly from 3 miles to 11 miles, with my best runs being two consecutive days with a 9.5 mile run at 7:30 mins per mile, and an 11 mile run at 8:16 mins per mile. I am putting up both a mileage and a pace that the me a year ago could only have dreamed about.

My daily schedule has fallen into a predictable schedule. I wake up in the morning and go to work at the study abroad office. After work is finished, I nap for an hour, and then go to CRCE and run around in circles on the indoor 1/8 mile track.

I don't feel bored when I run. I constantly feel energized. At the beginning of the run, I randomly hum 6 notes, and then my minimalist mind will take it, loop it, and expand it into a symphony worthy of zoning out to. It is almost like techno - except sometimes the 6 note sequence forms themselves to the tune of "Silent Night", or other Christmas songs that were stuck in my head. It's not the most glamorous way to run, but it's definitely the cheapest. Although it doesn't make much difference to me personally, I feel proud of myself when I see other people with their iPods or other mp3 players strapped to their arms, because I know that I didn't have to spend any money on it.

I keep an active inventory of the runners on the track as I am running, and I can constantly see - nobody is putting up the mileage I am. Some runners may pass me, but they stop a lap or two afterward and go working out. For all runners that are doing distance running, I tend to run faster than them all. I am wary about the fact that I may be getting too over-confidence and will need a reality check soon on just how much more I have to improve, but as of right now - I am constantly on cloud nine when I run. It gives me satisfaction, that I am able to do this only a year after taking up running seriously.

It really shows the power of human will. It gives me hope about accomplishing things that I set my mind to. And finally, I have an athletic skill in which I may rank as "above-average". The next challenge will be to keep up the running and the mileage as classes start. I am looking forward to it.

-FCDH

Merry Christmas 2010

Hi Readers,

Merry Christmas!! This winter, I have been having the best winter break out of all the winter breaks I've spent on campus. Apart from the day when I spent 7+ hours to clean up the apartment, I have been spending every single day with friends. Whether it was dinner parties or ice skating, I've been having so much fun! I did not expect to be so busy this winter, especially since last winter break was sooooooo boring.

Christmas Eve:

Ate an amazing Christmas eve dinner at JS's house. I was on route to try to get some Christmas shopping done (was a fail because I forgot all the stores closed early) when JS was alerted to my presence in CU by my facebook update. Oooo on a tangent - I fixed my broken water heater by myself (that was the facebook update). So proud! Anyways, JS and her dad picked me up, and we went to her house. Had an amazing dinner! Turkey + ham + other goodies. Then JS and I watched "How to Train your Dragon" - twice, with the commentaries turned on the second time. Then we successfully got a BAG OF CRAP from WOOT.COM!! SOOOO excited! I've never seen what was inside these bags, but we'll see. Capped off the night with an amazing load of leftovers. I love JS's family so much!

Christmas Day:

On Christmas day, KK invited me over to her house for gift exchange and dinner (again, since I was here last year too!). In the gift exchange, I gave KK's aunt an organizer, bird-watching binoculars, Taiwanese tea, and a pack of postcards from Tibet. In return, I got a bag of coffee (again!) and 2 mugs (again!). I was pleasantly surprised when I got essentially the same gift, despite choosing a random gift out of a pile. I had fun playing with all the dogs that were in the house. Love dogs! Dinner was amazing, and after dinner we ate some more desserts, before putting in a movie ("I Love You Man") and watching SNL afterward. It was such a great day.

I spent today shopping for gifts for my family. Got my mom a purse, my sister a hat, and my dad a mug that says "I Love You Dad" (or something similar to that). I'll have to find out how to ship it to Taiwan when I can.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to start running again. I've been slipping in my training, and I really really need to start! Marathon's in just 5 months, and I can still only run 8 out of the 26 miles. MUST TRAIN!! I found a running buddy on Craigslist - we'll see how that works out. Maybe a blog post on that later.

Anyways, so excited about the rest of winter break! Have a great break everyone!

-FCDH

On Sarah Palin's Success

Hi Readers,

I want to dedicate this blog post to Sarah Palin. I hate her guts and think that there should be a new level in hell created to house her, her oversized ego, and the hate that spews from her mouth. But despite all that, I have to give it to her - Palin is one shrewd and successful politician. From an absolutely objective viewpoint, without considering the message that she spreads or the initiatives she supports, Palin's rise from a relative political nobody to the national stage has been quite astonishing. Few politicians have been able to achieve what Palin has achieved, but here is a short non-comprehensive list of some of those who have: Hitler, Stalin, and Putin. Three figures that are hated in politics, but three of the most brilliant political geniuses that ever existed. In this blog post, I want to draw historical parallels between Palin and these political stalwarts.

Comparison with Putin

Vladimir Putin was plucked out of obscurity when he was appointed as Prime Minister by Boris Yeltsin, in a surprise move that caught Yeltsin's opponents by surprise and led to Putin's victory in the Presidential elections that were held after Yeltsin resigned as President. As the President, Putin mobilized the people with perceived injustices against Russia's oligarchies and the Communist bureaucrats that remained after the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the Chechnyan terrorists, Putin united the country against these rebels and crushed them. He re-ignited Russian national pride, and united the country behind his leadership.

Palin was plucked out of obscurity from her house in Wasilla by John McCain, and quickly ascended to stardom. Similarly, Like Putin, Palin quickly jumped on the opportunities that were offered to her, and quickly gained a base of support. She transformed from a nobody to a household name within months, held her ground against Joe Biden during the one debate they had (though this is debatable), and quickly developed a political strategy aimed at "small-town USA" and "non-elitists". This quickly polarized the Democrat and Republican bases, and initiated a drift towards political extremism which is still ongoing today.

The parallel would have continued had the McCain-Palin ticket won during the elections. Instead, Obama-Biden won, and Palin and McCain were relegated back to their posts of governor and senator. However, this wasn't the end of Palin.

Comparison with Hitler

Hitler rose to power through pure luck and democratic processes. After his appointment as Chancellor, he slowly began taking the elements of democracy away, one at a time. Nobody noticed, or perhaps nobody wanted to speak up, and Hitler managed to transform a democracy into a dictatorship within 5 years. One crucial element in Hitler's success was his use of propaganda. Goebbels, who was the Nazi's propaganda minister, was able to use propaganda to create fear, use the fear to manipulate citizens's thoughts and objections, with which Hitler could justify the removal of even more democracy. In a few short years, Germany had transformed into an anti-Semitic and populist country.

Palin, like Hitler, came to prominence through luck. But instead of fading away into the abyss, she somehow managed to mobilize BOTH the conservative and liberal medias to her cause. Without the usual political training of keeping quiet, Palin's big mouth drew much of the liberal media's firepower. Conservative media, outgunned by the resources available to liberal media, took it on themselves to advance Palin as much as possible. They don't actually care about Palin, but she is just a tool to distract the liberal media's fire away from the real issues. It worked wonders - liberal media nowadays blindly follow and shoot at Palin's comments, regardless of whether it was uttered from the Alaskan wilderness or a Republican fundraising dinner.

Therefore, Palin is really a tool, being used by both the parties involved. Conservative media has nothing to talk about - so they talk about Palin. Liberal media is so eager to refute these claims and comments that they throw the real issues out the window - continuations of the BP oil spill, Republican senator's efforts to block health benefits for 9/11 responders, or comments that are made by Republicans who were actually voted into office and can actually make decisions for the country. It is a scarily effective strategy. Palin's populist messages, and the liberal media's attempts to discredit her, have cemented populism in the minds of the conservative masses. The constant conservative bombardment of "right-wing radical extremist socialist etc etc" has also created fear in these conservative masses. Populism + fear + Republican politicians = ?

The American political landscape is looking more and more similar to that of Nazi Germany during the pre-war era. The main difference is that the liberal pushback to the conservative message has polarized the population, in order to keep a balance. Therefore, instead of a dictatorship moving more and more toward a radical position, we have alternating governments which flip-flop between extreme right wing and extreme left wing policies. An oscillation that seems to be increasingly in amplitude, if not for the successes in the lame-duck session in this past week.

Comparison with Stalin

Stalin's political genius mainly comes from his ability to eliminate his rivals. At Lenin's death, everybody expected Trotsky (the intellectual) to be the successor. Through shrewd accusations and political maneuvering, Stalin (the populist) managed to create a cult of personality around Lenin (Leninism) and himself (Stalinism). Using this populism, Stalin was able to use the power of masses to "cleanse" the political playing field, through his Great Purges. Until he was the last person left standing.

In November 2008, not many people thought that Palin actually stands a chance at being the 2012 Republican candidate. Sure, there were talks about it...but nobody took them seriously. Serious contenders were Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich, etc. But again, she used mass media to her advantage, to create a cult of personality around herself. I really don't want to call it a cult of personality, but that is really what it is - she even has her own reality show, in addition to being a regular on conservative news networks.

Today, she is considered a serious contender for the Republican 2012 presidential candidate. She drew Huckabee's support base away from him, and is more popular amongst Republicans than Romney (who's a Mormon) or Gingrich (who has remarried several times). In my opinion, there is a strong chance that she will win the Republican nomination.

Conclusion

But that's where my (faint) praise for Palin ends. If she clinches the Republican nomination, I don't believe she can win, unless the Democrats were to field someone ridiculously under-qualified. The biggest difference between Palin and Hitler/Stalin/Putin is that Palin's successes have all come from essential half of the country - the half that she has warped around herself in a populist strategy. The other half has been repulsed away from her, and with an approval rate at 30%, it doesn't say much for Palin's chances when subjected to an actual popular vote.

If Palin were to take a leaf from the books of the political geniuses of the old, she would either want to mobilize the masses against her Democratic opponents, which is close to impossible barring a Watergate-style occurrence, or she would need to unite the masses against an external threat (Hitler with Jews, Stalin with the anti-Leninists, Putin with the Chechnyans). Palin may have succeeded thus far as a tool of the Republican Party, but whether she can use this advantage to her own benefit in 2012 will ultimately determine her success and place in the history books as one of the shrewdest and luckiest politicians ever.

-FCDH

Fed Up with Parents

Hi Readers,

I feel like I need to post some conflicts I've been having with my family on here, so I can get it off my chest.

My relationship with my parents have slipped back into the fog. This summer, after the numerous conversations I had with my parents regarding my homosexuality, I was satisfied that they finally understood me, and more importantly - that they finally respected me. Not because I was gay, but because I finally became an adult, in that I was courageous enough to tell them that I cannot conform to their conservative ideals and live a lie. I thought I had finally gotten through to them, and maybe I did for a little bit, but I guess they would rather live a lie than to face the truth.

On a recent phone call, my parents asked me if I was too busy to make enough time for a girlfriend. At first, I thought it was a joke...but when the punchline didn't come, my heart sank like a stone and my head fell into my hands. I really thought that this summer was the turning point, but instead, the vision I had of my family since April had come tumbling down. I wanted to just punch something and scream. Scream that I was never going to get a girlfriend, that I was so tired of having the same arguments, that I wish I were normal so I would live up to their expectations, or that maybe if I committed suicide then they would accept the fact that I was gay. But I swallowed it all and said in a monotone voice, that I was too busy with schoolwork, and that academics was more important than girls. It sprang so easily to my lips, a lie I had perfected throughout my life. I could feel myself dying as I said it, a phrase I thought I had never needed to use again in my life.

I wonder if they could hear the death in my voice.

My parents gave birth to me and raised me for 18 years, and they provided every material necessity I have ever needed. I love them for everything they've given me, for not throwing me out onto the streets to become an orphan, and for putting in their time, their money, and their life to raise me. I know I have an eternal debt to repay to them, and I am gladly paying it.

But how could they do this to me?? I have been nothing but the best son during the all those years they raised me. I worked my butt off to make sure I fulfilled all of their expectations. I excelled in everything I did, not for myself, but so they would know their efforts were not wasted. I asked for so little in return, always trying to save money so my parents could start living their own lives when I became independent. I didn't ask for games, or clothes, or movies, or whatever else other kids asked for. I gave them everything I had in me, in the form of time and effort. But when it came to actually asking them for love and acceptance, something that the real me never got, they turned their backs.

They don't understand me at all. They don't respect me for who I am. They would rather willfully keep themselves blind than to accept me for who I am. It's getting harder and harder to see them as family. The gap between us is widening yet again, and I don't think I have the energy or willpower to close the gap any longer.

Whoever said that things get better was lying. Nothing gets better. Things just get left behind.

On the issue of my sexuality, I am leaving my parents behind me. They can choose to join me or watch me disappear into the distance. I just don't care anymore.

-FCDH