beautiful or ugly?

Some german scientists did research on what the perfect face features of a man and women are. 90 people were used on a scale of 1 to 7...

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The best part about sleeping is having a dream. Be it an intimate fantasy or a bone-chilling nightmare, I absolutely love dreaming and remembering them the next day. Sometimes it's surprising how vividly I can recall a dream. I still remember the nasty appearance of a witch I used to have nightmares about right before coming to this country. I remember the exact sequence of events that lead to that nightmare every night when I was scared.

I came across this really cool website about lucid dreaming which explains in detail what it really is, how to practice is, the advantages and disadvantages of it. I found out that I've been a lucid dreamer for a long time, I just didn't know about it. I even found out that those of us who are aware that we are dreaming also have the ability to control our dreams. You just have to look for some cues and realize that you are in complete control...and then you can do anything you want. You can bend the rules of nature and start flying or go somewhere u've always wanted to go or do anything!

So a couple of nights ago I decided to give it a try when I was about to have a nightmare. The reason I say "about to" is because I was able to stop it from happening after recognizing some cues that I always have before having a nightmare. After realizing this was just a dream, I decided to take control of it and do something crazy. So I decided that I wanted to fly out of my room...and slowly I found myself floating off of my bed! My body started rising up and I headed for an opening in my ceiling. I finally reached out to get out of the room and I stuck my head out the opening to find a beautiful view of the sun shining over bright green hills. Just as I was about to get out of the room, my flying power started to weaken slowly and I landed up back in my bed. I got up remembering everything, and I couldn't believe that I was actually able to control it somewhat. This stuff apparently takes a lot of practice...so I think I did OK for my first time.

On the other hand, my dream from last night was more entertaining. I was on a coal train that was being hijacked by a bunch of dacoits (no idea where that came from...I think it's from thinking about the opening scenes of SHOLAY) And then out of nowhere...Batman came to the rescue!! His presence itself scared the dacoits away and the train was safe. But there was a bridge coming up ahead real fast and it was broken!! Right when I thought that we were gonna die, the train passed safely over the bridge. Soon after that, Superman flew in our compartment and I thanked him for saving us. Then, after a moment of awkward silence, I realized that Batman and Superman did not know each other. So I was kind enough to introduce them to each other. I told Superman about Batman's latest movie and then I told Batman about how Superman is going to have his new movie coming out next summer too! I think Batman got a little jealous after hearing that but that's ok cause I'm really excited! Speaking of excitement, today I opened up my computer case and stared at the inside for like 20 minutes imagining about how cool it will look once all the parts are in! Hopefully I'll have everything by the end of this week!!!

Anyways, it's time to go to bed and have some more dreams. Who knows, maybe I'll hang out with Spider-Man this time after I tell the Hulk to calm down. Or maybe, I'll end up in a phone booth on High St. and a cute girl will stop by again to say hi. I'll keep everyone posted...peace out!

My exams are finally over and I'm officially done with summer school! I'm also done with my job if I choose to be...but I need the extra cash for my sweet-ass computer that I'm building. I haven't been so excited in a long time. I have almost all the parts and I'll start building it pretty soon!! It's gonna cost me a lot (~ $1500 including a nice lcd monitor) and some people think I'm crazy for spending so much for a computer. But it's something I've always wanted to do and now that I have finally made that much money I can spend generously.

Today I got up at around 4 pm after coming back from the Janmashtami celebration at the temple late last night. It's weird how you can feel peaceful at a temple even when you're agnostic. Maybe it was just cause I hadn't been there in a long time. I was feeling extrememly sleepy last night (since I had stayed up all night writing a stupid history paper the night before!) but I decided to go because I had never seen the janmashtami celebration they have every year. It was pretty interesting, they had live music which was cool, and there were a few middle-aged men and women dancing in the middle while everyone is waiting for midnight to celebrate Lord Krishna's birth. I was thinking how funny it would be to see someone who was not used to being in an Indian temple on a night like this. They'd probably look at it as cult meeting with people dancing in a trance.

It feels so good to be home during the summer. No worrying about getting up on time or where to go to eat. You can do anything you want, whenever you want and not feel bad about anything...a very rare luxury get these days. Too bad this summer is already close to an end. The leaves on some trees has already started to change. I gotta make the most of the three weeks of break (that means watch all those movies on my HD!)

Well it's time to go to bed and get ready for another lazy sunday. I might watch a movie and go to Best Buy to look at some DVDs and speakers. Maybe even go outside for some badminton or go ride my bike.

Some notes on the side:

1. Listen to Kanye West's new CD
2. RPAC opens on monday!!!

Mood: Relaxed
Music: The Doors - Summer's Almost Gone

Check this out this is really cool! They made a whole short film using a digital still camera!

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Me and Adip were studying at our new favorite place on High St. called Buckeye Donuts after eating their delicious gyros. I can't believe that I never went there to eat in the last two years. But now I'm pretty much a regular and try to go there at least twice a week. I really like the atmosphere in there. You can just come in and sit at the window doing whatever you want while hundreds of strangers walk by on High St. So if you happen to walk by while I'm there then don't forget to wave at me! The other reason I like going there is because of the other weird people (like me) that come there. I love being there when two strangers are engaged in a conversation about some of the most intriguing and sometimes even strange topics. The other night when me and Adip were sitting there, this one guy was explaining differential equations to someone else while a bunch of other guys were having a discussion about morality behind being in your underwear at a party. Later, one of the guys who works night shifts there was telling me about the difference between SATA and SATAII hard drives. We also talked a little bit about photography and image editing software. Apparently that guy is really into digital photography and has even studied it. I started wondering what the hell was he doing working at a donut shop. After sitting in there for a couple of hours around such interesting people, I started to have some thought-provoking ideas too. Right at that time, Adip questioned the concept of sleeping. We were both laughing at the fact that all human beings need sleep and everyday at some point a person just lies down with his eyes closed for a few hours and does absolutely nothing! Well...if you don't count breathing and dreaming that is. Similarly, I started thinking about the idea of listening to music. If you think about it, music is just a bunch of different sounds put together in some order. And for some reason, this makes it very appealing to us. Then I realized that we human beings are just naturally attracted to order and symmetry. If you look at our history, all we've tried to do is make some sense out of things around us and try to constantly manipulate our world until it becomes coherent and systematic. Why are we so obsessed with the idea of order? Why does the chaotic state of our nature bother us so much?

Adip pointed out that this is also how we differentiate between the beautiful and the ugly. For example, people with symmetrical faces and bodies and an overall clean appearance are considered to be beautiful over those with not-so-symmetric faces. We've all seen it on magazine covers. Women with straight hair, refined eyebrows, perfectly straight teeth, and a smooth skin texture with no shadows on their face whatsoever because of the ugly diffused lighting. The worst part is that most teens and college students don't even realize that by following this standard template of 'beautiful' they're all ending up looking like each other. And I'm not just talking about people in America either, this is true for all the other modernized countries out there too. Everytime I go to any Indian event on campus where everyone is dressed up, I always find it difficult to distinguish between people that I don't know. Even when I went to Long Street the other night, all the girls looked the same to me on the dance floor.

After having this conversation, I realized a lot of things about myself that I didn't precisely know before. I learned that I, for some reason, am one of the few people who understands and appreciates the beauty that lies in things (as well as in people) in their natural state. I guess now I understand why I'm always the first one to make some comment when someone gets a haircut or gets new glasses or new contacts or adds some kind of unnatural feature to themselves. It bothers me when I notice that a part of a song is synthesized when real instruments would work just fine. This also explains a lot about my lifelong fascination with nature and the chaos that exists within it.

Here's an appropriate quote form a movie called Kinsey that I watched just a couple of days ago. Excellent movie...everyone should see it once at least!

"The problem is that most people want to be the same. They find it easier to simply ignore this fundamental aspect of the human condition. They're so eager to be a part of the group, that they'll betray their own nature to get there."