pour me a heavy dose of atmosphere

i SAW OWL CITY IN CONCERT, the same venue as the one i saw amber pacific at. IT WAS AWESOME. adam sang and played some electric guitar (two different ones!). there was also a celloist, violinist, drummer, and a female vocalist who also played keyboard and synth. it was AWESOME. oh wait i said that already, lols. they didn't stick around afterwards, unfortunately. i didn't get any merch this time, because the wristband was $10, t-shirts were expensive ($20), and the poster wasn't interesting enough on its own (meaning without autographs).

i'm planning to go see ANBERLIN in concert sunday, october 25th. allentown, pa. 1hr20min drive, daaang. BUT IT WILL BE AWESOME. ANBERLIN = AWESOME.

---

what IS integrity?
what does it mean?
what is it comprised of?

some questions..

is it okay to do something illegal if no one sees?
what if everyone else is doing it, too?
are some laws not as important as other ones?

these days, i think it's tremendously hard to have good integrity.

it's hard in the sense that a lot of things push us to cheat or cut corners or bend the rules, perhaps to get ahead, to make things easier, or because it's an easy source of enjoyment.
it's also hard in the sense that even if we put a ton of effort into trying to maintain our integrity, there are so many little subjective things that an outsider could pick at if trying to pinpoint cracks and faults.

some thoughts..

one thing that comes to mind for me is music piracy. yeah, it's illegal, but it's also widely prevalent. you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who adheres strictly to not downloading music.

now this isn't some self-righteous post about how i purchase [almost] all my music and everyone else downloads everything illegally and i'm so right and i hate piracy and blalhbalhhlab, it's just meant to get your mind crankin'.

even though i like to purchase music and support the artists, i'm conflicted a lot of the time, too.

as one (okay, probably more) of my friends said, "BUY music? that's such a waste of money, since it's so easy to get it from anywhere!" and it's true! why buy music?

i think one of the reasons that people don't feel bad, or as bad, about breaking the law, is when it relates to something that isn't monitored. you know, download a few songs, or a few thousand, no one's gonna know or catch you.

or, they feel like it's okay because it's not something physical. "it's not like i'm stealing the CD from the store!"

or, better yet, it's okay because everyone else is doing it, too, or they're more illegal! "i'm only downloading a few songs that i like since the rest of the songs on the CD are crappy, and other people download so much more than me! i'm GOOD compared to them."

or, some people say, if it's a big corporation, or someone wealthy, it's not as bad to steal from them. "it's okay, kanye's mad ballin', he doesn't need my money and it won't affect him at all if i don't buy his music."

or, that the law is unfair and a rip-off. "CDs are way too expensive, they overcharge for them! $10 for a movie ticket? get real!"

here's a thought: who ever even officially said that music should be cheap, let alone free? is it easy or cheap to write and produce and publish amazing music?

owning music that we can listen to whenever we want is not some right that we have, and i think we've grown to feel like it is.

just because a flatscreen plasma HDTV is expensive and is awesome and you want it, is it okay to steal it?

but this makes the situation most real for me.. even though i've never worked on a movie, or wrote any kind of great music, i know i can't even imagine how much work it takes to put it all together.

put yourself in their shoes.
if you wrote an original song.. if you designed a beautiful piece of art..

would you want someone to steal that from you?

[randoms]
-i will never use 0.7mm lead. i don't know why. i just grew up with 0.5mm and stuck with it. but that's only for lead pencils. as for pens, i will practically never use blue ink. i dunno why i just don't like it. my preferred is black, and i don't have any other colors.
-now that i live in a suite with five other doods, i re-discovered one of my shower hobbies. re-directing water from the showerhead to wash away random strands of hair stuck on the wall, the shower curtain, or anywhere on the bathtub. it's so addicting! and fun! maybe that's my slightly-OCD side of me talking.
-ever since i was younger, one of my dreams was to be trapped in shoprite. with a few friends, of course. i would wanna see how long we would be able to survive, only living off of what we could find in the store. we could last for months! more! YEARS?! hooohoo awesome, i'm laughing just thinking about it. if you steal that idea for a reality show after reading the post above, you have no heart.

i'll keep throwing rocks at your window

in the past few years or so, i've come to realize that i have difficulty with moral/ethical (i'm just going to use these as synonymous, so read with that in mind but correct me if need be) everyday decisions.

the difficulty lies not only in the picking of what i believe to be right, but, equally important, in the discernment of what is right and what is not.

and so, through the comments of some of my peers, i've come to think that my standards for and acceptance of various things are kinda different from the typical person's, but that's really subjective and not so important.

i hope that my questions will make you rethink why you feel the way you do about your standards of morals and ethics, and blur the lines between what you stick to and what you might want to consider. i like thinking.

is it okay to..

borrow a music cd from a friend?

rip the tracks off of a music cd from a friend and keep them?

send mp3s to a friend that i ripped off of a music cd that i own?

how much can i sell someone a pristine condition textbook for?

does it matter if i've owned it for a day, or a month, or a year?

what if it's brand new and still sealed in the shrink wrap?

how about a used textbook?

is there a limit to how much i can sell it for?

what if it's brand new and still sealed in the shrink wrap?

would it still be worth the same as a newly purchased textbook, since they are both in the pristine condition of "literally plucked off the bookstore shelf"?

is it okay to..

borrow cd's?

borrow dvd's?

borrow eric's psp, play through his games, and return it all to him later?

borrow a textbook for a semester?

(does the "fairness" play any role in all of this? the borrower is clearly having the advantage with being able to experience all of the material, but with no price to pay.)

ebay:

is it okay to rip tracks off a cd, and sell the cd as like new (the only thing causing it not to be brand new is the lack of a shrink wrap)?

is it okay to play through a video game, and sell the game?

how about..

spending time in bookstores reading books, but not buying them?

what if i bought the book, read it, kept it in super condition, and returned it?

is it okay to listen to recordings of sermons? (if the speaker is paid to speak somewhere, wouldn't the recordings of what he says be worth something as well?)

if a cashier accidentally gave me a coupon back that was supposed to be relinquished at time of use, is it alright to use it again?

is it okay to walk on a crosswalk with the intention of getting hit by a car, and getting mad moneys in the following lawsuit or whatever?

what if i don't have the "intention" to get hit by a car, but instead don't look both ways as i walk across the crosswalk?

what if i close my eyes walking across the crosswalk?

is it okay to hit the brakes if a car is tailgating me in such a way so that they cause an accident that is entirely their fault, thus getting me some money?

how about buying clothes, wearing them with the tags still on, and returning them?

what if i go into gamestop, buy a used game, play some of it, and return it for a full refund?

what if i play through the whole game?

does it matter whether my original intent was to purchase the game forever, or just to try it out, knowing there was a risk-free full refund?

recently, i got a free trial issue of playstation magazine. inside that playstation magazine, there was another offer for "free issue of playstation magazine"! i sent that in, and two months later, i got another playstation magazine! going with this..

since i can keep sending in the "free issue" request, is it okay to?

is it okay to use different mailboxes to prevent them finding out (if they even check)?

what if i get various friends of mine to be the ones that literally physically send in the "free issue" offers, and then have them give the magazines to me?

(note that theoretically, this would actually result in a free bi-monthly (though PSmagazine is monthly) "subscription". and if i staggered the "free issue" offers, and had two going at the same time, i could have a free annual subscription that wouldn't end as long as they kept including the "free issue" offers! yeah, i thought it out already.)

is it alright for me to eat leftover food off restaurant tables of people who already left?

what if the food was in the garbage?

what if the food was in the garbage outside the restaurant?

what if nobody was looking?

surely, you've split the price of some bottomless nachos at a restaurant with some friends.

that's okay, right?

what about sharing and splitting the price of refill-able soft drinks?

does the same apply to sharing and splitting the price of a refill-able jumbo tub of popcorn?

what if everyone brought their own container to pour the popcorn in, which would enable each person to have their own container from which to eat popcorn, all the while being constantly refilled by the official tub of popcorn, so that each person would pay just a fraction of the cost of the official tub of popcorn?

i would really like to know what you guys think about some of these things, so i can get a better idea of the kinds of standards that other people have. i know you guys have thoughts in your mind as you considered these questions, so please do share, as little to and much as you want. i'm really interested in hearing about it. :D

comments would be very helpful to me, and much appreciated.

[rRr]

-i went to chinese school for seven years, but i don't know how to read or write chinese. i can understand and speak mandarin. i can only understand taiwanese, i can't speak it. i also took italian for five years from middle school through high school, but i don't know how to speak any of it. oh well.

-i've never broken any bone in my body, or even fractured anything. no stitches either. the worst that's happened to me was a snowboarding fall in which i popped some blood vessels in my right eye and i had to get an MRI. other than that, a few rolled ankles and jammed fingers. luls.

-i had a knack for taking stuff from chemistry class in school. while i despise chemistry (and love physics!), i will admit that chemistry has probably the coolest stuff, like erlenmeyer flasks (i have a cute 125 mL one), the wooden ball-and-stick molecule structures (i have NH4), and thermometers (i have two .. broken ones)!

--MINI RANDOM FACT!-- the tap water in my house gets as hot as 160 F and as cold as 36 F. nifty, huh.