How to be a good person and be yourself

Sometimes I wish there was an instruction manual on "How to be a good person". We grow up influenced by things like the Disney movies, pop songs, children's fiction and all this other stuff telling us how we should behave, what's moral, what's good and what's not. I suppose our parents (or I guess those who are fortunate enough to still have them around) are also meant to raise us to we understand the values of kindness, generosity, compassion, courage... even empathy and forgiveness. 

But. Now that we've grown up we question ourselves a lot. Or I do anyway. Maybe it's an indication of the failure of my up bringing. I can't say my parents are bad parents though, of course not. Maybe, like Shakespeare said, "good wombs can born bad sons". We're not our parents, so perhaps there is such thing as someone who's born as a bad person? I don't really believe that, surely if you raise a murder's son to be a kind priest, he will undoubtedly become a kind priest?

According to yin and yan there is a bit of good and bad in all of us. But sometimes I feel like I am  actually such a terrible person in so many ways. I'm not religious in any way, I don't think I can ever believe. But when I decided to look up the Seven Deadly Sins I felt almost every single on applied to me, and to be honest a lot of kids born in the new millennium. We're spoiled to indulge in excess, become over-confident and lazy to do work, become extremely horny hormone-driven teenagers, often rage a lot as teenagers too, and most of us desire things like money and status (whether that be popularity and the latest iphone or a long term goal of being a billionaire).

So are these bad things to want? Because I sure as hell am pretty much guilty of all 7. Does that make me an awful person? My biggest faults as a person, I've concluded, are:
1. Vanity
2. Profanity LOL JK fortunately. It just rhymed too nicely.
2. Gluttony/ over indulging in excess
3. Categorising people before I really know them
4. Fear or inability to show how much I care to those I'm close to
5. Over confidence in my own abilities
6. Being a know-it-all and being unable to shut up about something I know about
7. Being defensive about anything (even if I don't side with it)
8. Inability to not start an argument when I disagree..
9. Inability to shake off this sense of superiority sometimes
10. And at the same time, being unable to shake of a sense of insecurity and worry about how other people see me. And feeling like I want to run off and hide under my duvet in bed when someone says something that I find hurtful.

Wow I really hope no one reads this blog.....

I just feel like such a horrible person sometimes. Selfish. Yeah oops I guess I forgot about that trait as well. I try, but maybe you can't change who you are. Honestly it's a matter of opinion and perspective isn't it? Pride can be considered a powerful trait. Greed for power and money can be translated forcibly into really, really big ambition. And ambition is good. Vanity is necessary among a lot of professions and places these days, like modelling say, or being a celebrity. Working in the fashion industry.

We're also taught to be ourselves. Not be affected by others. But what if being yourself means having bad traits? Being proud, vain, greedy? What's right and what's wrong? Can anything turly even influence who we are? Can we really decide what sort of person to be?? 

Why are humans so complex. Why can't be just be like rabbits and screw all the time...

LOL.

LOL @ Meyer

I was just wiki-ing Twilight (since I hadn't done it before) and I found this AMAZING quote regarding the reception of Breaking Dawn. Apparently a reviewer from Washington Post didn't think too highly of it and said:

"Meyer has put a stake through the heart of her own beloved creation," and "Breaking Dawn has a childbirth sequence that may promote lifelong abstinence in sensitive types."

LOL.That sums up BD perfectly. It really did bring the legacy of Twilight down by several (hundred) notches and the fact that Bella gave birth is actually not as bad as Jacob imprinting on the baby of his once love-interest. I think I raged for several days when I read that. Wow I sound like such a no-life Twihard. I promise I'm not (anymore).

She goes on to describe how "Twilight is really all about unrequited female erotic yearning" and how Edward acts more like an obsessive fatherly figure to Bella rather than a 17-year-old boyfriend, how Bella is also frail, weak, hurt, needing to be carried/rescued and pretty much resembles a helpless child.

"It gets worse: Breaking Dawn has a childbirth sequence that may promote lifelong abstinence in sensitive types. And it becomes downright surreal when the lovelorn lycanthrope Jacob gets romantically imprinted on Bella's newborn daughter, Renesmee, a blood-slurping newborn nicknamed Nessie (for the Loch Ness monster). This imprinting is a werewolf thing: Jacob's 14-year-old friend earlier imprinted on a toddler, with the implication that she will eventually become his mate.

Reader, I hurled."

And for some reason the fire and passion of Edward and Bella's love has kinda died out on me. Whenever I think of them together now it's like they're brother and sister or something. Ouch. I mean, ew. This is gonna be painful sitting through Breaking Dawn next year, esp. in that scene when they start having sex in the ocean under the moonlight. Yeah I hope they keep that in the film. It's gonna be so awkward for all the little 12-year-old tweens in the cinema who should really be watching Bieber making out with another 12-year-old.

Read the full review here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/07/AR2008080702528.html

Time to stop and get more vamp action. Ooooh yeah.

Vampire obsession; YOU CAN'T ESCAPE IT

That's right, YOU CAN'T ESCAPE IT. Vampires are everywhere. Ever since I read the last book of Twilight and felt like ripping it in half and throwing it across the room at its utter nonsense and ridiculousness and bad writing and crazy 14-year-old girl fanfiction style, I've stopped raving about Twilight like plenty of other teenage girls are (unfortunately) still raving about. I honestly don't see how anyone can honestly think that Breaking Dawn was honestly a good book. Seriously wtf S. Meyer, you kinda ruined your own masterpiece :'[

Since the whole Twilight craze though, vampires have been emerging through every crevice of media, targeting at the raving, lunatic, insecure and horny mob of teenage/tweenage girls who are now thirsty (LOL no pun intended) for more.

And see, even though I like to say I escaped the onslaught of Twilight fever and becoming a no-brainer Twihard, (mainly cos they started comparing Twilight to Harry Potter. WHAO WHAT. You do not ever compare such a mediocre teenage romance series to the likes of the legendary, life-changingness and moralistic adventures of Harry Potter. HP taught a whole new generation adventure, courage and how to stand up to evil wizards. Twilight taught a mob of fangirls/ insecure housewives how to never settle for a guy until he stalks her at night and commits suicide for her.) even though I escaped Twilight I'm finding it hard to escape all the other sexy vampires jumping out at me (not literally ofc).

I've just finished marathoning the first season of The Vampire Diaries and it's SO FREAKING GOOD. The drama, the romance, the hot, hot guys and the supernatural spooky stuff is just so addictive. It was really bad acting at first and the human heroine Elena started off annoyingly even more annoying than Bella in her ignorance and infuriatingly-trying-to-do-good-all-the-time trait, but Elena proved to have much more courage and depth than Bella, as did her relationship with (hot) 145 year old vamp BF, Stefan Salvatore. Plus, the thriller/gore side of The Vampire Diaries makes the horror-movie side of me satiated.

What's interesting though is that The Vampire Diaries was a book series written and published in 1992 (?!). That's a good 13 years before Twilight was published, so why is Twilight so popular yet The VD only gained extreme popularity after Twilight?

Another vamp trap I couldn't resist falling into is The Vampire Academy series. The concept is really different from T and VD, which are both human girl in small, secluded American town falls in love with hot vampire and then meets werewolves, almost dies etc. etc. The Vampire Academy brings in a whole, elaborate invention of different vampires, 'good' ones, 'evil' ones and half blooded vampire-human hybrids. The Academy itself has this crazy (well not so crazy) social/ backstabbing/ popularity system among the young vampires/half vampires training for battle against the evil vampires (yeah I'm simplifying things a bit...). Overall it reminds me of a fusion of Twilight and Gossip girl. I like. (Although I can't say the writing is better than S.Meyer's, at least the main heroine has got a hell of a lot of spunk and witty sarcasm. The same is hard to say about Bella who just really irks me now...)

Has anyone noticed how when one book or movie makes it big time and becomes the latest obsession for millions worldwide, there follows a period of time after this obsession in which you see so many other books/movies popping up that are kinda just copying it?

For example, after Chinese Cinderella I started to see all these books written by American Chinese telling their tragic/touching/extremely deprived childhood etc. After Alex Rider I started to see all these spy/James Bond 007 style books pop up. And after Twilight you get like a billion vampires popping out.

What if vampires existed but they were actually evil? Worse, what if they were ugly? Wow what would all the fans do then? But hey, I know I'd be a bit disappointed too, the idea of a hot vampire watching me sleep every night, hell yeah turns me on.

LOL.

WHAT IF THEY WEREN'T HOT?