So I've been lurking on livejournal for a little bit and I decided to start up a new journal. Stuff that I don't necessarily want my friends to see, but things I don't mind perfect strangers to know about me. Makes perfect sense to me. =)

A little introduction: I'm almost graduated from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelors in Music Performance. I play the tuba! Well... I used to. It's been about 6 months since I have. I'm sure that'll come up in a later entry when I'm feeling crappy about my college career. I'm currently taking some CAD courses at the community college that I'm seriously loving. Hopefully I'll be able to find a job doing something like that... But anyway, I work part time and go to school full time.

I like reading philosophy, especially Alan Watts and Taoism. I was raised Christian but sorta felt it was bogus when I was in High School. Then in college, I stopped going to church and said screw it. Up until this past Christmas when I refused to go, my family kind of forced me to attend church on Easter and Christmas, at the least. But I'm very proud of myself for standing up and saying, no thanks, I won't be goinng to church this year.

So I guess that's all I feel like writing for now. Here are a couple of my favorite philosophy quotes that I have on my computer.

Human, All Too Human -- Friedrich Nietzsche

#72. Hope

Pandora brought the box of ills and opened it. It was the gift of the gods to men, outwardly a beautiful and seductive gift, and called the Casket of Happiness. Out of it flew all the evils, living winged creatures, thence they now circulate and do men injury day and night. One single evil had not yet escaped from the box, and by the will of Zeus Pandora closed the lid and it remained within. Now for ever man has the casket of happiness in his house and thinks he holds a great treasure; it is at his disposal, he stretches out his hand for it whenever he desires; for he does not know the box which Pandora brought was the casket of evil, and he believes the ill which remains within to be the greatest blessing,--it is hope. Zeus did not wish man, however much he might be tormented by the other evils, to fling away his life, but to go on letting himself be tormented again and again. Therefore he gives man hope, -- in reality it is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.

#586. The Hour-Hand of Life

Life consists of rare single moments of the greatest importance, and of countless intervals during which, at best, the phantoms of those moments hover around us. Love, the Spring, every fine melody, the mountains, the moon, the sea -- all speak but once fully to the heart, if, indeed, they ever do quite attain to speech. For many people have not those moments at all, and are themselves intervals and pauses in the symphony of life.