Switching Sites

So, I'm now getting around to making the transition between this blogger site and my new, personal, improved, sweet site. It's still in it's making stages, but here's the URL:

http://www.vainendeavors.com/

I feel so complete with my own site with it's own domain.

The Quest

And now I shall endeavor to write poetry. What is a blogger good for if he can't write good poetry? Here's a tip when you read something like this of mine: don't get offended.

The Quest


Once upon a time,
Sam tried to write a poem.
He tried to make it rhyme,
But for some lines he couldn't make it rhyme or fit in the right amount of syllables,

So he thought me might despair,
and went into the tub,
was going to pull his hair,
until he saw some grub.

food always made him happy,
unless it stank of cheese,
for when it did Grace Sappy,
would squeal like nobody's business.

But this grub smelt of thyme,
and so Grace did not squeal,
and so it made Sam happy,
to his taste it did appeal.

but Sam was still depressed,
for he was not a poet,
So he began a quest,
to make himself a poet.

He first drove down to Texas,
and knocked on Joey's door,
Joey blarghed out "TOST!"
which blew Sam to the floor.

He then explained to Jo,
His need for poet skillz,
"JESIKA" Jo gorghled,
in a pitch like way too shrillz

Twas then that Samuel knew,
despite his pretty purse,
consulting with that oddball,
would only make him worse.

So then Sam said, "farewell"
while wishing for a noodle.
"BERTIE IZ LYK FAT" Jo said,
Then chased his neighbor's poodle.

So Sam sat down and pondered,
"Who'll teach me this crucial art?"
And so he opened up a map,
And looked upon the chart.

He spotted Caleb Lagan's house,
put the map back in the trunk,
he started off but realized,
He'd just be called a punk.

Then out came the map again,
a frown curled down his lip.
"I know!" said he, "I'll go to Bre!"
And he began the trip.

The hike took twenty months to walk,
a time of pain untold,
but when he had arrived there,
though covered round with mold,

He knew the trek would find it's worth,
and with confidence in his stride,
He knocked upon that fated door,
a voice within replied:

"Please go away, I'm busy."
"But Please!" Sam yelped in fear.
"I'm watching American Idol,
It's the last show of the year."

"I implore you!" Samuel pleaded,
"You need to help me rhyme!"
"Sorry bubs," Breanne replied,
"Better luck next time."

And so out came that map once more,
Sam sat beside a tree.
Upon the map was placed a dot,
the homestead of Grace B.

So there he went to seek her aid,
not knowing what to expect.
he assembled at Grace B's front door,
standing up, unchecked;

Ah wait, an answer, the door swings open,
and Sam is admitted in!
He'd never gotten quite this far,
and so began to grin.

He explained to Grace just why he'd come,
She nodded her approval,
She then began to meditate,
and Sam feared his removal.

But then she opened up her mouth,
and then began to speak:
"You've got to make your poem sparkly,
For when it's thus, it's sleek."

Finally, Sam knew the secret!
Oh how his face did shine!
And so he added "sparkly"
In the midst of every line.

Our tale comes to a sparkly end,
and what a sparkly end!
and thus Sam's works were sparkly,
and everyone thought he was a poet master. sparkly.


Sample of Sam's sparkly poetry:

Sparkle sparkle little star,
how I wonder how you sparkle,
up above the sparkle to see,
Sparkles two and sparkles three,
Sparkle sparkle little star,
how I wonder how you sparkle.

Sibling Relationships: Winning Respect

I don't know about you, but one of the biggest problems in my life has been getting along with my siblings. It's as if we were born with the instinct to annoy our siblings, and to be annoyed by them. So, why is it so hard to get along with them? Often our thought is, conscious or not, "It's not my fault. My siblings are just jerks." Maybe your siblings are jerks. It really doesn't matter. From that chapter which everyone, their brother, and their brother's brother(which happens to be the original man's brother... unless he's their brother's brother in law) knows about and quotes from but seems to not understand at all, we read, "[love] does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek it's own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,"(1 Corinthians 13) Your siblings' jerkiness does not even come remotely close to being justification for strife between you and them.


Here's a fact that I've found very tough to swallow: In the vast majority of cases, if you are acting in a manner worthy of respect, you will eventually receive respect.

Respect isn't simply that you can simply expect from someone; you have to earn it. Do you see what this means? It means that if you're not receiving respect, you're almost certainly not worthy of it. No matter how much of a jerk your sibling is, you have the power to make a good relationship with him or her. And having a good relationship with your siblings is crucial. Accuse me if you will for not being married while I say this, but if you you're not right with your family, you're probably not ready to get married.

"But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes." ~1 John 2:11 Yes, I know that John isn't referring to physical brothers. That doesn't change anything. Christians tend to be pretty good at loving friends and other 'brothers' outside of our family, but when it comes to family members... we don't do such a great job.

Me and my older brother, Caleb, used to have a pretty typical relationship a couple years ago. We would fight, we would bite, we would slight with all our might. We weren't sticking tacks in each other's beds and locking each other in refrigerators... But we'd often yell at each other and get provoked over the silliest little things. Now, as far as brother relationships go, ours could be labeled as angelic. I don't know that either of us have yelled at or insulted the other for over a year. Did this just come about by chance? The likelihood of that would be about as slim as that of the random mutations happening necessary for the eye to evolve(the number would fill three five hundred page volumes just to write all the zeros in it. fact). So, what did happen? Caleb won my respect. When I made fun of him, he'd simply smile and go on with whatever he was doing. When I goofed off while I was supposed to be helping him do the dishes, he'd complete the work by himself without a word. When I took his cookie, he'd grin and bear it. The more he began to act like this, the more ridiculous I felt when he did nothing about the many times I wronged him. Now, a couple years later, he has won my complete respect. You see, when one acts in a manner worthy of respect, there really is not much one can do besides respect that person. Winning respect is everything in a relationship; if you can win the respect of a sibling, you practically already have the ideal relationship between you and them.

So, what does acting worthy of respect look like?

Giving up your rights. Even if you were entitled to the last piece of peach cobbler, don't get mad at your brother if he eats it. Even if it was your sister who was supposed to clean the bathroom, that doesn't mean that you have to yell at her for not doing it; if it needs to be done before the nintendo goes on(or for girls... before the... barbies come out..? Before you go to the mall?), why not do it yourself? I think giving up your rights is about the most crucial thing you can do in order to win respect.

Being slow to anger. Being slow to anger is something that gets better with practice and time. This is something I've worked on and improved, and so I speak from experience. When your sibling wrongs you, let it go. Even if you are fuming inside, don't act on it. With time, you will become number and number to reactionary anger. Eventually you'll get to the point where when someone wrongs you, you'll think, "Oh." Or at least so I suspect. :P I can't say that I've reached that point yet.


Well, these are some of the things I've learned in my journey to make it right with my siblings. And let me tell you. It's not easy. It is NOT easy. It takes, effort, prayer, time, divine help, and everything you got in ya. So remember, if you are acting in a manner worthy of respect, you will eventually receive respect. Go win your siblings' respect. Good luck.

Clearing Up Confusion

Grace (B.) brought up a most excellent point in the comments of my initial post(Vain Endeavors). I basically made a mini-post to address the issue and posted it as a comment. So yeah, I just thought I'd officially proclaim it to all as I wouldn't want anyone to miss it.

Some Quotes To Meditate On

Since I don't have enough time at the moment to continue the existence of God series, I thought I'd share some quick practical quotes for you all to meditate on:


"Mice are a lot like apricots; If you squeeze them hard enough, they burst."

"If you think about it, besides the fact that they don't consume meat, vegetarians really aren't all that different from non-vegetarians... I mean, think about it..."

"Blind man: Say, George, just what color is a a blue jay?"

"The secret to successful dieting is eating a bar of chocolate before each meal. That way, you won't eat as much come meal time!"


~Edit~ This is a clear witness to the oddity of my sense of humor.

The Existence of God (part 1)

Being the sort of person I am, I often come across people who ask me, "Why do you believe in a God? What basis do you have for your beliefs?" This is a most excellent question, and I shall proceed to undertake an explanation as to why I personally believe in the existence of God. So if you are one of those people who wonders just why I believe in some distant, fairy-like, sky being, such will be the post for you.

I derive most of what I am about to say from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, and take zero credit for it. I would write down a direct quote, but unfortunately that would be a bit long, so I am sticking with summarizing the important points. Forgive me if you've read this material before; this post is geared more towards my non-Christian friends who have most likely not read Mere Christianity.

Moral law

Man has the desire to do what he sees as 'right'. What man sees as 'right' is many times devastating to the person who would perform that 'right' action. For example, say you are walking along the bank of a river, and out in the middle of the river, you see something splashing. After a couple seconds, you realize that there's a child drowning in the river. No one will deny that in this instance he would have an impulse to go help that child. This is the moral law of right and wrong at work.

Now, the most common explanation of this 'moral law' is the idea that this is simply our 'herd' instinct at work; our instinct of wanting to keep alive organisms of our kind. Yes, we do have such a 'herd' instinct. However, what I refer to as the moral law is separate from this instinct. The moral law is unique; it prompts us to act a certain way whether we want to or not. This is unlike the instincts to eat or sleep, or the instinct of motherly love, which all simply give us a desire to act a certain way.

So, going back to the example of the drowning child, you will probably have two impulses. One to help the child due to you herd instinct, and one to run away from the spot due to your instinct of self-preservation. However, on top of these two impulses, you will find a third thing that tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help and to suppress the impulse to run away. This is the moral law.

How can we know that this third thing is not one of the two initial instincts at work? The thing that judges between the two impulses cannot be one of those impulses itself. Look at it this way. If the only factors in doing an action for a man were the two conflicting instincts, the man would necessarily always end up doing that which gave a stronger impulse. However, looking back on the drowning example, you will almost definitely *want* to stay safe much more than you *want* to help the drowning child, yet you still feel a strong prompting to save the child's life in spite of the great risk for your own life involved, and will often end up doing just that. This shows that there is some factor beyond the initial two impulses.

Ok. Maybe 'moral law' isn't our herd instinct at work. Perhaps it is merely a standard of behavior placed into our heads and taught to us by our parents and teachers. Well, this makes the faulty assumption that since something is taught to us by humans, it is a human invention. Looking at the multiplication table, one will find that if a child grew up on a desert island, he will by no means know it; he will need to be educated in order to know it. It certainly does not follow that the logistics of the multiplication table are a human invention.

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To keep me from writing too much in one post and so that I can get back to school, I shall break this topic into several posts and continue another day.

Samuel Hayashida 101

If you don't know me very well/at all, reading this would be a great way to learn some good, basic Sam knowledge.


Here are some basic facts that you will probably know(or at least should) if you've known me for any decent amount of time:


~I am Christian
~I have been homeschooled all my life
~I used to be a hard-core gymnast
~I live in Suffield Connecticut
~I live with three brothers(Micah, Josh, and Caleb) and one sister(Emily)
~I am eccentric(everyone says this, but I mean it for real)
~I am a terrible procrastinator


Here are some things about me that you might or might not know if you've known me for a decent amount of time:

~I attend a Baptist Church(though I don't exactly agree with a lot of Baptist doctrine)
~I own a German/Australian sheperd named "Jenny"
~I play competitive ultimate
~Back in the day, I won the gymnastics Massachusetts State Championship(in all-around), and placed second in the New England Championship(though still to this day it bothers me that I didn't place first; I should have, but I screwed up the meet) for level 6.
~I love the outdoors
~I do not hate math
~I was born in California, and lived there for 6 years
~I am not a huge fan of reading fiction
~I've never actually met the majority of my friends
~Of all types of humor, I prefer the really downright corny, cheesy stuff

Here are some things that you probably don't know about me unless you are a Lagan or a stalker:

~I make my habbitat in an uninsulated, unheated grain silo
~Growing up, my favorite color was pink
~When it comes to formal apparel, I go old-school and wear a suit, trench coat, old-fashioned fedora, gloves, bow tie, and pocket watch
~I am a direct descendant of Patrick Henry
~Growing up, I was obsessed with rocks(and to this day have a handsome rock collection)
~I've never preferred a hamburger over a hotdog or vise versa, but hold them to be of equal value
~On previous occasions I've sprayed random strangers with sun screen spray
~I'm infamous for my lack of common sense
~My favorite joke is as follows(seriously): Why didn't the kid watch the pirate movie? 'Cuz it was rated PG-13!

Here are some things about myself that even I don't know, and, in fact, aren't true:

~I lost seventy pounds two summers ago
~I once had a pet snake named Dean who devoured a can of green spray paint
~I was addicted to asparagus when young, and had to go to an asparagus clinic to break my addiction
~I am often mistaken for Nick Jonas on the streets


And there you have it; basic knowledge about me.