paganzer

paganzer

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(no subject)	[Dec. 4th, 2006\|07:00 pm]
Matthew Pagano If I could have anything at all in the world, it would be an obscenely large amount of money. I couldn’t decide if this response would be the most common or the most avoided as people tried to aim for broader, noble sounding desires like “love” and “happiness” and such. Most people’s counterpoint to my (or anyone else) saying they’d take money over anything else is that you “can’t buy happiness.” It is true, strictly speaking, and it is also true that many people who, say, win the lottery for example, end up dying in drunk driving accidents and suicides soon afterwards, so it isn’t silly to say that not everyone, or not most should have huge sums of money. As a man of more meager means than ideals, however, I like to think that having bottomless pockets would open doors I can never really have on my own, in my current circumstances. Why money? A great mind once pointed out that “money will take you where you want to go, but never remove you as the driver” and I hold that to be very true. Money, unearned (which in my case it would be, I can’t do anything work billions of dollars at the moment) is a neutral tool, like a hammer or a tire-iron it can be used to good or evil, the power is (or at least appears to be) in the hands of the operator. It is, however, the greatest tool of all in a free society, since it can be translated into literally anything, from a garden to political influence, to a yacht with which to sail. But, getting back to why money is not a bad idea for my selection, I can reasonably imagine a lot of sound, joyous things I could do to make my life better with it that don’t ingesting an unhealthy amount of chemicals. I’d imagine a number of conservative homes in various locales like the Florida Keys and Tahiti in which I’d catch up on a lot of overdue personal reading, watching the world from far away with only disinterested, academic interest while I soaked up unspeakably gorgeous surroundings. I’d donate some to various political institutes and parties I’d like to see with a stronger leg to stand on and see how they take shape and I’d fund young students and perhaps found a university with my name plastered everywhere. After a time I’d probably devolve into spending my money on the most passing and disgustingly opulent displays of gaudy wealth, as many rocketed above their class status often do. The beauty of having a Bill Gates-esque level of wealth though is that it is a blank slate, it allows for absolute freedom afforded only to the super-rich and can be an enabler to do great amounts of good, but more importantly could provide sources of joy and amusement for myself before dying, hopefully far, far into the future as I’d be getting the absolute best medical coverage possible. I could run for political office, or continue life as a loner. I could drink it all in or let it all pass by, the choice would be mine, and it would be that choice, that absolute superiority over my own life that would really be the thing beyond price, but ironically enabled only by money itself. Looking at life as I do, money is the greatest thing I could ask for; I have less need as I grow older for other people, and those that I will need will be attracted by my great wealth. My greatest needs (that I can envision)- those of a huge amount of free time, pleasant surroundings, and ample reading materials are those that can be best fulfilled with money, and as such I feel that picking it is the most prudent choice. Matthew Pagano To describe my social interaction, I chose 5 words from the text in class on November 2nd. My selections were the verb “analyze, coordinates, criticizes, retreats, and withdraws.” Of the words listed I felt that they best represented the actions I tend to cycle through when I meet new people. As the words show, my responses vary a fair bit and really which they are depends on what kind of people they are, the surroundings, and a whole host of different variables that complicate things. This of course reminds me why I find general questionnaires like this one to be very inaccurate, in the right circumstances anyone would react in these ways (or perhaps it’s more of a commentary on the lack of free will?). I was, however, surprised to see my selections being rated as having “low sociability” for 4 of my 5 choices since I wouldn’t really use those words (or anything approaching them) in any self-description I might write. At first I wondered if this was some epochal self-discovery about that I owed our trusty text, but upon further inspection I couldn’t help but conclude that it was just far, far too small a sample of words to make any real kind of objective determination from. To me, for example, “analyzes” is understood as something that implies conversing with others and coming to learn more about them, and hence having more to analyze. For the writers of the text though, I’d venture that “analyzes” would mean to withdraw and passively watch others and ”analyze” from that. The texts naming me as equally high and low on the scale of dominance doesn’t strike me as incorrect though. In short, my only real conclusion can be that the test is rather faulty; it seems that the idea is to have the person taking it accidentally pick telling words about themselves, so perhaps the fault really lies with my selection. That, or I’m in deep, deep denial.
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Dance Party	[Sep. 14th, 2005\|04:07 pm]
You can't spell F-U-N without U-N-F. In other news, the managing editor of our school newspaper, The Spinnaker, hung himself in his office the other day.
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I Have About 10 Bucks on Me

[Sep. 12th, 2005|12:54 am]

[	mood	\|	uncomfortable	]
[	music	\|	The Appleseed Cast- Marigold & Patchwork	]

I'm starting to wonder how many people I'll have to sift through before I find people like me here, or if possibly I never will. Out of 15,000 at a second-rate institution like this, it's certainly very probable that there isn't a single rational woman who isn't a whore or a few straight thinking guys who are really worth spending a great portion of my time with. I've been feeling very alone lately in a number of ways and despite all the time I've spent trying to reconcile myself with it an increasing spectre of.....uneasiness I suppose has been encroaching into my thoughts, my general outlook and sense of life. The best I can see it's the realization in the back of my mind that with every day that goes by Atlantis is sinking into the depths of the sea, which is to say, that my friends that I miss, possibly my last chance to be happy in the short and intermediate term through the rest of my teens and into my twenties are slowly dissolving. I can't say how long it is until we don't talk even on a weekly basis anymore and I'm trying not to think about it.

Despite my best attempts, I have yet to find one truly sound person here, somebody I can talk really freely with. I've found people that know a suprising amount about literature and such, and it's nice talking to them but....I know they won't and can't be close friends, by virtue of their basic personalities. I haven't totally given up yet, but according to the general direction of my feelings here I have no real reason to be optimistic. Transferring at the end of the year sounds good right about now.

My Criticisms of UNF thus far:

-There's this general sense in the air; and believe me, I realize that by the vagueness of this statement that no one can really take fault for this, but there's this general sense of almost comically exaggerated cynicism among most people here. The best thing I can liken it to is what you see in movies and read in books about the way people felt in the Soviet Union, that things were crappy and would never really get any better and frankly, this is college, things are supposed to be crazy and fun.

-This complaint does have a culprit- the school administration. From the top down to the average student there just doesn't seem to be much drive. Case in point- our "radio" station doesn't have a transmitter, thus making it an "internet" radio station. All you need to make an internet radio station is a mic and a $300 computer, and Osprey Radio had never had more than 40 some odd listeners at one time. It's fucking pathetic, from my dorm I can listen to Flagler college radio but we don't have one.

-The god-damn parking. To anyone who hasn't been here before I really can't describe it, but the figure going around in the halls was something to the order of 7 parking passes sold for every one physical spot on campus. In the paper(which also blows, by the way), the administration has denied there being a problem at all, chalking things up to people complaining for no reason.

Oh well, I'm trying not to be too cynical, but I don't remember having these bouts of depression at night before I came here.

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