Holy Religious Herpes, Batman!

My views on religion have changed drastically over the years, as have my personal and political philosophies. Since I hit puberty, I've gone through several 'phases' where I chose to obsess about something or other to do with religion, such as ghosts, the possibility of life after death and the existence of God. I was brought up as a staunchant atheist by my parents, but I've had the exceptionally good fortune of both my parents turning to me at an early age and saying to me "You believe what you want to believe". Nevertheless, I have always had quite an unorthodox religious environment. While it's less prominent now (but still active), my father has a personal religion that takes inspiration from various occult practices, and incorporates the concept of Egyptian lore into his personal beliefs. While I myself don't really understand his beliefs completely, I'll never forget his main 'speech' to me when ever we discuss religion in general:

I personally believe that we all 'tap into' the cosmic force by exercising our various beliefs and rituals.

Those aren't his exact words, but it's about the gist of it. Pretty profound stuff for a 38 year old ex-teacher from Hull.
My mother on the other hand, who was brought up in a radical socialist background, is a strict atheist. Nevertheless, she finds Christianity to be an interesting religion, and enjoys reading the Holy Bible. As you can imagine, she and my father clash quite often concerning religious views. They discuss it frequently and are always in disaccord with each-other. Then again, such is life.

This unique environment has helped ensure that I have not converted to an organized religion, and indeed am still unsure about how the world works. I have therefore built up a personal philosophy. Please note that this is subject to change in accordance to personal experience. I may become a Scientologist yet.
Anyways, I guess you could call me Agnostic. I truly don't know whether or not there is a higher power, or whether we're all just here for a ride. I don't know if there's life after death, but I believe in a few principles that I try to shape my life and morals around. I wouldn't really call it a religion or anything like that, but some of it does fall into spirituality, I guess.

The Gospel According To James

1. Music is the key to better understanding the world around us. Music is perhaps the ultimate art medium; it is able to provoke and express emotion in such a pure way. Music can make us happy, sad, angry, humored... Therefore it is beneficial for the soul and your mind to build up an eclectic taste in music. This permits oneself to better understand certain cultures and also helps to better balance oneself psychologically.
2. Anything you do that deliberately hurts somebody either physically or emotionally will come back to bite you on the ass. This ranges from talking about someone behind their back, to getting in a fight with somebody. "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice"? Well, yes it would. It would indeed. So try to be nice to people, else it might come back to you in ways you can't even imagine.
3. All humans are created equal, it is simply their own personal actions and society that creates inequality. The physical aspects of a person do not matter, it is their mind you should be interested in. I also believe that people such as terrorists, rapists, murderers and the like are not "born evil" or born with some psychological defect that gives them a predisposition to violence and pain. I believe it is through fault of their own or through the fault of society that they become who they are today. This is not an excuse for their behavior, by the way.
4. We are all hypocrites. We can try to live according to our principles, but somewhere across the line we will all fail our personal philosophy, whether it's intentional or not. The same applies to criticizing someone over trivial matters.
5. Nobody knows what happens after we die; the only way to experience that is by dying. Of course, this isn't advocating suicide, on the contrary. This is further explained in my next point
6. We (as in each individual) are only here once. Life is a unique experience for each person, and we should all try to live a long a fruitful life where we develop a sense of understanding and compassion towards our fellow man.

So there you have it, in a nutshell. Of course, I don't expect people to agree with me or advocate my point of view. Figure it out for yourself.

Live Long & Prosper
James

My Current State of Mind and Body

I've just gotten off a two week break from school. This break was much needed, as school is starting to piss me off incredibly. While those of you who read this may not be concerned, I'm going to tell you why, mainly so I can vent. Please be aware that this is the first time I have been completely, brutally honest in a blog. I'm not kidding, I'm not joking around.

First of all, anyone who really gets to know me, and anyone who puts up with my rants on a regular basis knows that the two things I hate more than anything else in the world are authority and routine. To me, they represent everything that is wrong with modern society and conflict greatly with my personal philosophy. To elaborate slightly, I believe that we're only here once in the world, and we shouldn't have to spend three quarters of our life working and being submissive. Unfortunately for me, the focal points of school are...you guessed it, authority and routine. While it may seem stereotypically teenage of me to say that I don't enjoy school, well, I just don't. At least not on every level. Of course, I do realize that school plays a fundamental part in building a child's social skills and cultural depth (which is probably why those home-school kids are so wacked out). Nevertheless, a lot about school really irks me, and I feel horribly pigeon-holed by it. I have a strict routine based on a two-week schedule, where hours vary (little, mind you) depending on which week we are on. The average day for me is structured as such:

7AM-7:37AM
I wake up, I eat breakfast and drink a pint of tea (yes, a pint). I have a quick wash and brush my teeth, I watch the news and leave my house.

7:37AM-7:47AM
I walk to school. I listen to music. This is a must-do, as I tend to be incredibly testy if I don't get my ten minutes of pulsating sound.

7:47AM-12PM (11AM depending on the day)
I take my lessons.

12PM-2/3/4PM
I stay in my room and listen to music, I eat lunch.

2/3/4PM-4/5/6PM
My afternoon lessons.

6PM/11PM
I eat, stay in my room and listen to music.

My route to and from school very rarely varies, as does my routine. Yes, I admit it, my life is boring. I am a very, very boring person. This particularly annoys me, as I don't really feel that I have accomplished anything in my life. What have I done that will make a difference? I don't go out of my way to help people or to change their lives for the better.

Another thing that annoys me... and I mean really annoys me is my History teacher. She has to be the most pretentious cow I've ever had the misfortune of meeting. My anger mainly stems from her teaching methods and pedagogy. She considers herself to be an all-knowing wise-woman. This is perhaps because she has written a book on the history of my school. She claims to know it all and frequently bates us with snide little comments and remarks that we do not work enough and we will all fail our final exams. Way to go with the encouragement. While I do enjoy history/geography lessons, she puts a damper on it. And it makes me very, very angry.

I tend to view the world through extremely cynical eyes these days. It's been god-knows how long since I have had a significant other. This is partly due to a self-imposed celibacy I have exerced upon myself, though this is mostly to combat my extreme shyness and awkwardness around the fairer sex. I would say that these past two years have been the only years I have had female friends, and it has taken some time to feel at ease with them. My self-imposed celibacy is also brought on by embarrassment towards myself and my living environment. I am not hesitant to admit that my home is somewhat chaotic, and far from the tidiest of places. I therefore feel it would be better to stay out of the game until I have a house of my own and such. This is somewhat hard at times. People have suspected I was gay, which is untrue. Though I can see why they would assume such a thing, as in modern society, the absence of a significant other of the opposite sex (who nowadays seem to be as interchangeable as cheap hood-ornaments) apparently signifies homosexuality. Go figure.

I try to forget these problems by interchanging them with my social life. My social life (now the most active it has ever been) consists of going out to the pub and getting exceptionally drunk. The drunk me is radically different from the sober me; I am more confident, I speak my mind more and I feel better. People may point out that this is a sign of alcoholism, but to be fair; who doesn't like being drunk? Nevertheless, for many of the people I frequent with, except my close friends, I hold a great amount of disdain. This disdain is somewhat critical, as I seem to analyse and poke each little fault in someone's personality or mannerisms and build up a list of reasons they annoy me. Horribly neurotic, isn't it? Oh, just to stop the incessant interrogations, I don't (and probably never will) have anything negative to say about my extremely close friends such as Liam, Toby, Lauriane, Sy, Emma (my aunt, technically), John (my uncle). A worthy mention also goes out to El Sid and Cruz, who, while I may only know through Myspace and/or MSN, and are not "close friends" in the strict sense of the word, never fail to make me chuckle. These people I hold close to me. You guys fucking rule. Done with the sob fest, now.

Anyway, I feel that my current state of mind is having a somewhat negative effect on my physiology. First of all, I feel that I am becoming somewhat addicted to caffeine. Sounds strange, I know. I drink a good seven pints of tea a day now. Partly because I'm bored, partly because I constantly feel lethargic. While I'm no doctor, this may be associated with the tightness I sometimes find in my chest, and the shortness of breath I have. Maybe not, I'm not sure. The point is, I can't be bothered to detox and find out. I have adopted a laisse-faire/Que sera, sera approach to the life now, meaning I take what comes to me. This is mostly to combat the crushing sense of regularity that a routine brings to my life. I don't have any detrimental effects to my health, though. This means I'm alright for the time being.
During these past two weeks, I have been waking up around two PM and going to sleep at four AM (Film4's fault). This sudden change in sleeping times leaves me disoriented and tired. Lauriane asked me all of Tuesday morning what was wrong, even tried to cheer me up, bless her. But I don't know, I feel some form of depression may be on the horizon. I feel as if something is going to happen soon. We shall see.

If it was any other person, they would leave a terribly neurotic comment at the end of a blog such as this; something along the lines of "If you read this, you're a REAL friend!!?!!11!". I'm not going to do that. I'll simply say, "If you read this, the incessant ramblings of a soon-to-be 18 year old interests you. Get out and live a little, why the hell are you reading this?". I'll also congratulate you on your patience. It takes a lot to read all of this crap.

Anyway, now I'm going off to listen to the only band that can cheer me up: Jamiroquai. That's right, Canned Heat is the best upper song ever fucking written. Don't let anyone tell you different.

Peace out.