Ramblings of a Rambler

kebert11 asked: This is why when people ask my what religion I am, I tell them Christ follower because that way they have no way to judge me right away based on actions they see of other people or from history. Like when someone says they are a Christian and they break the law and act unlike Christ would. I'm in it for the relationship, not the religion. I know this is not a question, but I still felt like speaking my mind.

I’m glad you replied, regardless of it being a question or not. It’s true, there is a distinctly biased idea of what a “Christian” is. The word has been so abused to mean “good person” OR “conservative republican”, or truly anything other than “follower of Christ”, that I think it’s useless to even bother saying Christian anymore. 

Oh no, everyone run and hide from a potentially awkward blog post! Quick, the “close” button is on the top-right corner of your screen. Those who are against Christianity, grab your guns and pitchforks and torches! Okay, now that we’re all prepared for this religiously-fueled blog, let’s do this:

I hate Christians. (woah, wait…what? did he just…uhh. Okay, i’m moving my mouse to the “X” now).
Before you leave, let me explain.

“I Am A Christian. I Hate Christians”. 0.o does not compute, right? Well, it totally shouldn’t. Let’s talk about the similar words of that statement:
I: Well, that one’s pretty easy—me, the writer of this blog. You get 5 extra credit points if you got that one right.

Christian: Uhhh, here’s where it gets tricky. Let’s hop on over to the dictionary, shall we?

I’ve had a lot on my mind as of late…and by “as of late”, I mean my entire life. In a more specific scale, i’ve had a lot on my mind in the past week or so. In order to streamline my thoughts into categories that you may browse, depending on your actual interest into certain facets of my life, i’ve made a handy-dandy table of contents. Use it if you’d like to skip the boring stuff about my school life, which will be coming up first.

1. School and whatnot.

You see, today I started my fourth semester as a college student at Washington State University, and my second at the Vancouver campus. Today was an odd phenomena, as I have a really odd schedule this semester. My classes have been mainly rooted in the Business Administration major, with the random “other” classes squeezed in to fulfill miscellaneous requirements for graduation. This semester, however, I have two Business courses, one English course, a Political Science course, and a History of Urban Geography course—a bit more of a diverse work load for me. I’m a bit intrigued by it all and i’m interested to see how the varying academia will sit with me. I hope and pray that it does so well. 
Being that this is my fourth semester, and that I only have 3 years of college (thank you God, for Running Start), I’m nearing the end of my college career. I’m also literally JUST past the middle of my college career. Given that after high school I really had the realization that time is ABNORMALLY short when you’re given a 4-year plan that keeps you busy, I’m not sure if I have a healthy outlook on the true amount of time left in this academic community, or if I’m just really stoked to get out as soon as possible. Probably both, to be entirely honest.

2.  Internships and Work.

Again related to the amount of time I have left as well as the elapsed time of my college career, it’s come to my attention that I have roughly 1.5 years until I am done with my higher education plans, which means it’s time that I go and get a freakin’ job. Fortunately, God’s put this neat opportunity in front of me that could be a fantastic start—an internship at LaserTech, a laser measurement device company. It’s not set in stone at the moment, but the fact is that we’re working to make it happen. It’s really exciting for me, because my entire school career; my reason for going to college in the first place is simply to get better opportunities at a job that will allow me to support a family while also allowing me to pursue my hobbies. This is a huge step in the right direction, and I’m praying that it works out.

3. FriendlyFireTV, Youtube, and Gaming

Where do I even begin with this one? I’ve always been a gamer. I always will be a gamer—it’s a part of who I am. I love to play games, I love to talk about games, and I love to learn about them; development to release, games are intriguing to me. 
  The whole “youtube thing”, as I call it, was a total mystery to me until I somehow (I can’t recall) heard about a gamer from my town, Camas, Washington, that was making a living from posting Youtube content. I was taken back, because to be entirely honest, I didn’t realize Youtube partnership was a legitimate means of making a living. That, to me, opened a huge window in my mind. After following Brennon O’Neill, or “GoldGlove” for awhile, I realized that not only was it incredible that you could make money from releasing content, but that it opened huge doors into the gaming community, and looked like an incredibly fun and rewarding thing to do. So, for awhile I dabbled in daydreaming about doing commentaries and things like that while doing “research” (watching Youtube videos, basically) about what sort of things this Youtube gaming community was all about (and truly, it is a community—a formidably strong one at that). 
I don’t know why this is in a new paragraph, but I felt the need to split it up to look more appealing to readers. Anyways, Now that David Bowers (Endersey) and I have started up our channel, it’s become a huge deal in my life. Releasing weekly DattMennisIRL videos is way fun, and I feel like there’s always way more to talk about than I can actually put into a 10-ish minute video…perhaps i’ll start using this blog as a means of elaborating on my DattMennis IRL videos. we’ll see. Regardless, we’ve reached a point of having about 75 videos out…unfortunately, we only have around 36 people who have “liked” us on facebook, and about 17 subscribers. To be entirely honest, it’s disheartening. Not because I feel like our content “deserves” more views or anything, or because I want to be making bank off this, but because it sucks that the content we’re making is reaching such a small audience. 
That’s where you come in. FFTV only has a normal reach of about 30-60 people. our videos are only seen by the people who like our facebook or are subscribed to us, which is not nearly as many as I’d hoped for at this point. Again, i’m not trying to bitch about a lack of success or money or anything, it’s just that it would be nice if FFTV was reaching more of the wonderful gaming community we’ve come to love. So, if you want to help us out, that would be wildly appreciated. I don’t care if you’re a huge Youtube star or someone who might know 1 gamer besides me—please tell them about FriendlyFireTV. It’s come to a point where in my heart and mind, it’s more than just a hobby I want to do with a few people watching—I want to go somewhere with this, and reach a large audience, and continue to do this for several years to come. 

I’m not going to beg you to do it, but it would mean a lot to me if you would share our youtube videos, our facebook profile, our twitter, whatever you want. If you’ve never even heard of FFTV or have no freaking clue what it’s all about, follow the link and have a look for yourself:

http://youtube.com/friendlyfiretvgaming 

 Anyways, i’ll surely be posting more on this blog later, but I didn’t want to unload an essay on this particular post, so be on the lookout for more content regarding me and my life, FFTV, and all sorts of things.

Hello, my name is Matthew Richard Dennis, and I ask the pressing questions such as:

“how was your day?”

“what’d you do today?”

“how are you?”

I’ve always felt that honesty is the best policy, all cliches aside. In every facet of life, lying has just turned around to bite me in the ass. I feel like I was one of the first of my peers to really embrace that old saying…not to sound like a pretentious hipster, and certainly not to come across as knowing more than anyone around me. I just feel like in general, I have a better understanding of how stupid it is to lie about things.

…Scratch that—everyone knows that lying is generally a bad idea, save for extreme cases (and I mean extreme, like “oh crap if I tell the truth here, they’re going to blow up Alderaan” [also: note that lying, in Princess Leia’s case, totally didn’t work]). What i’m getting at is when people hold back the truth. That beautifully deceptive middle-ground of not telling the truth, but cryptically skirting around the question and moving past it, or just blatantly ignoring the topic in it’s entirety. 

Maybe it’s not making sense—or i’m being cryptic about it (and also hypocritical, as per my previous paragraph [of course, it is a blog…I think i’m supposed to be cryptic, right? oh well, it’s not really my thing. ] {also, i’m starting to think that all of these paranthetical sub-arguments, I may or may not be insane. See also: Deadpool})

Anyways…where was I? Oh, right; honesty. So let’s say something’s wrong? It happens. 11 times out of 10, it’s really nice to have someone there for you, that will sit down and talk and care, and at least try to understand. Right? Right. Okay, so when someone asks what’s wrong and you say “nothing”, with the presupposition that they’re not going to understand or they’ll just say something very default like “oh, that sucks”, it’s a total pain in the ass for people who are actually going to care, and at least make a damned attempt to understand your life problems.

There are probably a thousand reasons for the “nothing” response; a combination of media influences, past experiences with people who are generally uncaring and don’t tend to do anything past the “that sucks” response I mentioned earlier, or a general lack of trust in other people. I can understand all of these…in most cases.

When you have a close relationship with another individual, especially for an extended period of time, you should probably not have trust issues, and be open with that person—wait…no, you should definitely be open with said person and just talk about your dang problems with them. If they care, they will be there to hear it out, try to comfort you/understand, and move on past it with you. When person 1 (furthermore referred to as person A) won’t talk to person 2 (furthermore referred to as person B) about something that’s bugging them, it creates a rift between persons A and B. I’m rambling. Let me get to the point:

If you have something you’re struggling with, and someone offers to be there for you, take the freaking opportunity. And don’t hold back. Honesty IS the best policy.

—Matt

P.s. i’m sorry if you read this and were dismally bored (as you likely were if you actually read this). 

So, I haven’t really done any tumblr-ing (i’m still not sure if that’s the correct term. Maybe i’ll stick to “blogging”, despite it making me feel like I should be wearing glasses with no lenses, a scarf, and drinking some fluffy coffee drink in a coffee shop other than Starbucks [Starbucks is so mainstream, gosh]) for a good while now. Mainly because i’ve been incredibly busy with school and whatnot. Hey, I’m still busy with school and whatnot, but I figure this could be a good thing to start doing. 

I’m not really sure what to talk about though, without feeling like i’m writing a daily report. I feel like I would have much more to contribute to this blog if I had a nice camera, to take cool pictures, like this one: 

That’s a really quality picture, and I found it on a real estate website, not a professional photographer’s galleries—there’s not even a watermark to denote it as someone’s. The day that I can take pictures like this and NOT feel the need to give myself credit for it, i’ll be happy. 

On another note, I think Greece is potentially my favorite place in the world that I haven’t been to yet. It’s definitely on the top of an imaginary list of places i’d like to go in my lifetime. Also featured: New Zealand, Italy, and Narnia.