Problems that Require Superheroes pt. 2

Continuing the run of superheroes for the real world beginning with Traffic Man and Mr. Bookmark, I present two more heroes that find glory in the common man, instead of those selfish asshole "crime-fighters".

Matcho Sox - You've never been more excited for anything than you are for your date right now. She should be here any minute, you would have done anything to get a minute with this girl, and she's going out to dinner with you! You know that first impression are everything here, everything must go perfectly. With that said, you're dressed in a nice dress shirt under a fine black blazer, grey dress pants and some fancy Swiss shoes. You look fantastic. That is, until you sit down and your pants hike up at your knees, and you see it... Your socks. On your left foot is a black dress sock, pulled up to knee's length. On your right, however, is an ankle length sock, whiter than snow, adorned with a Nike logo. You're almost in tears. You know Cassandra will never love you now. WHAPPOWIE! Matcho Sox comes flying in through the window, with a black dress sock in hand. He covertly places the sock under your chair before flying back out through the window he shattered earlier. Cassandra loves your outfit, especially the socks. You get married, and have kids, if you're into that.

Dr. Pollen - You've never had a better day. The sun is shining bright, the trees are swimming in the breeze, you won the grand jackpot lottery and it's just the right temperature out! Nothing could ruin this day, until... Spring allergies, bitch. Your eyes get itchy, your nose gets stuffed. Your contacts keep wiggling in your eye and you're nasal passage is unbelievably irritated. Suddenly, you're contemplating suicide. BAZZZAAP! In comes Dr. Pollen, mad genius. In his crazy man science labs, he has devised a way to fight pollen out of the air with a super trained army of anti-pollen which he engineered himself. He releases them in the air, and pollen everywhere full beneath his feet. Not today, spring allergies.

Problems that Require Superheroes pt. 1

We all know the "big-name" superheroes. Spiderman, Batman, Iron Man and The Hulk are always busy catching their names in the flashing lights. Saving the world, again! Preventing a nuclear Armageddon, again! These are guys who are so caught up in their supremacy over the average population that all they can worry about are the supposed "big issues". But what everyman, what Average Joe, is going to be affected by this sort of thing? The end of the world?! What about real people problems? For this, I propose a new band of superheroes, concerned with the plight of the average man.

 Traffic Man - Oh god, the traffic is atrocious. You're going to be late for work, AGAIN. You'll probably get fired, lose your job, get divorced by your wife, lose custody of your kids and end up on a street corner. And yet as you sit there in your car, coming to terms with your demise, there is nothing you can do about it. UNTIL... Traffic Man swoops down to the rescue. Traffic Man can fly, and is also equipped with super strength and God-like coordination. With this ability, he can actually pick up cars caught in abysmal traffic, and toss them to their destination with the perfect trajectory. If the passenger survives the flight, he will find he saved unspeakable amounts of time! Thanks, Traffic Man!

Mr. Bookmark - You're getting really into this book, now. You've flown through the last 100 pages, and you can't wait to keep going... but right now, you have to go to your Grandma's to bake cookies. You really don't want to lose your spot, but there's not a bookmark in sight. With no possible solution presenting itself, you begin to fold back the page that you're on to preserve your position... POW. Mr. Bookmark slides out from under your bed! Equipped with a full arsenal of fun and vibrant bookmarks, you'll never have to compromise the makeup of your precious books ever again!

One More Before I Succumb to Sleep

After I complete this entry, I will be at twenty-six blogs. This will be the fifteenth I've written tonight. I am not going to make it to 2 AM like I

-----

I did fall asleep last night before making it to 2 AM. That was what I had written, my laptop was still in my lap. What did I learn yesterday? Among the more obvious things, I learned that I've been tackling my AP Lang blog all the wrong way. Each blog entry I wrote in term one and term two was an intricate craftwork by me, built around a novel idea, full of clever word play and built with a complex essay structure. I was proud of these blogs, but I never even made it close to thirty entries, which is how many we're supposed to end each term with. Now I'm learning to play the game. At least, starting to.

There were few people that put the hours and work into their blog that I did, yet I never made it close to my required term totals. People would slap together the most half-hearted entries about the most ridiculous things, often just resorting to movie reviews and the like, and they would easily attain an "A" while doing one fifth of the work and effort I put forth. Now, my approach this year was no one's fault but my own, but there's also an issue with this grading scale. There needs to be some sort of balancing "quality" evaluation to create in addition to the thirty blog quota; because this is going to be the first term I actually reach said quota, and I promise I learned a lot more about writing skills my first two terms.

With that being said, the fact that I entered yesterday with around ten blogs published is absolutely inexcusable. I'm not trying to discount the fact, actually, I spent most of the night loathing it in blog form. It's impossible to justify my approach to this class, or academics in general, but as an expert shifter of blame, I will note that changes should be made to this grading scale in the future. 

just an update

turns out i actually started at 9:12 PM. tick. tock. tick. tock.

i wrote a short story in 7th grade that broke intermittently with that line.

tick. tock. tick. tock.

it was about a man who was going crazy. he suffered from chronomentrophobia. that meant he had a horribly serious fear of clocks. he was sitting in a waiting room to talk to his therapist, but there was a grandfather clock in the room. he shot it with a revolver. then he woke up in an insane asylum, except in the corner of the room there was a grandfather clock.

tick. tock. tick. tock.

that was the only piece of fiction i ever finished writing, beginning to end. i read it out loud for my class's writers workshop. it was the best thing there. they gave me a standing ovation. i thought i was going to be a millionaire prodigy writer at that particular moment. i'm failing AP Lang right now.

tick. tock. tick. tock.

the damned internet machine

I took a break. That was nice, I needed a break. Twelve blog entries, I've written tonight. My hand and wrist and brain hurt. I spent my brain break breaking my brain with some brainless breaking news and a whole breakfast of brain stimulation information presented to my brain at breakneck speeds. I don't know why I just did that. I'm really tired. I might compromise with myself and go to bed at 1:30 AM instead of 2:00 AM, because I've clearly ceased to be productive and my posts are hardly about things anymore (case in point, where is this going?) but that's hard to do because I wrote about this goal with such passion a couple of hours ago.

But yes, I spent this break on the interwebs. I spend a lot of time on the internet. An unhealthy amount of time, actually. It just seems like the internet was tailor made for me. Here is a machine that can do several things for me: help me socialize, help me watch television, help me find and listen to music, help me absorb needless amounts of useless information, help me look at nakey girls. I love all of those things. And it's all here in one place! Maybe if I talk to the TV during a special on Africa airing on the History Channel I can accomplish largely the same things, but that's an outlier.

Facebook. Always on the Facebooks. Chattin' up honnnies. Talkin' up mah broskis. Lookin' at pictures. Postin' neat music. I have a gnarly time on Facebook. I am on Facebook much more than I should be, and I really do anything when I am on it despite this.

Helps me watch TV. Hulu. I love Hulu. Hulu has changed my life to the extent that network television has essentially become arbitrary. I have no use for it when I can watch my favorite shows whenever conveniet to me, sans commercial break.

Music. I need my fantastic internet computer technology machine device in order to download all of the great illegally obtained music I own. I also need it to effectively create playlists and the like. And post songs I want to share with the world on the aforementioned facebookz.

Useless information? Wikipedia. Yahoo! News. Random google searches. Football. Lots of football. To some extent, I think I'm an information addict; but the information must interest me. If it does, there is no reason to assume I will not slip into nothingness over my football internet message boards for hours at a time. I do that. I do that a lot.

Porn? Yup. It's 12:42 PM. AM? 12:43 AM. That never seems right.

Writing Fiction pt. 2

One problem that my writing presents, however, is that I don't know how good it really is. I have a good vocabulary, I have a decent handle of writing mechanics. But there is something in good fiction writing that is not fully describable, not graspable through definite terms and measurements. A kind of breezy, natural flow that creates a distinct voice and tells an easily understandable story that is both interesting and engaging. Here's a sample paragraph from a fiction piece I wrote:

Of course, he could shut one eye, and still have another perfectly good one left to observe himself. He batted his right eye, testing his musings, and noted ruefully that he looked like an idiot. The skin around his face wrinkled and curled undesirably around the eye he was testing each time he attempted this. It was not a handsome spectacle; he hoped quietly that the other might look slightly more flattering. He supposed that by carefully examination of the remaining eye, he could gather some mental data on that particular appearance, work some abstract thought and ascertain within a reasonable doubt what the two actions would look like in combination. But reasonable doubt was for white criminals and unfaithful spouses, of which he was neither. So he threw his bottle up by the neck and drained it a bit more.

It sounds so damn heavy and disgusting and I largely hate it. The words just don't flow. Everything sounds choppy and weighted down by my heavy-handed word choice. It's funny because I absolutely have no interest in writing essay or non-fiction, but I've found that my concentrated efforts in that particular genre are a hundred thousand million times more entertaining and readable.

The ideas are there, but I wonder about the execution. I'd like to get into some sort of summer creative writing workshop program before I start attending a real college, KIRKWOOD RITE?!, and see how much of this can be ironed out. I've never been taught how to write fiction so there is hopefully promise to be had in the prospect that I can get all learned up and clean up my writing some more.

But more than that, the problem is I still don't finish anything! Anything! I have at least 6 unfinished short fiction stories, and I have a dozen more ideas for stories that I have yet to begin. The first of these stories dates back like two years, and I wait so long with these things that my writing style ends up changing enough between work dates that I end up scrapping the story entirely and chalking it up to conflicting perspectives. With the same author. Okay then.

Clearly, it also ties back into work ethic. It's simply not there, even in the things I love. I'm just not a finisher. A little less than two hours of blogging to be done. I might take a break, I think that's fair. Hopefully I can at least finish this. Maybe high school, too.

Writing Fiction pt.1

Writing fiction is something that I want to do with my life so badly. Of course, as I know quite clearly, I will probably not do ANYTHING with my life if I don't stop fuckin' up, yo. But let me put aside the negativity for a while and seriously discuss one of the greatest passions in the world.

I strive to do something creative. I don't know how good at I am, but I feel like I have to do something creative with myself, because that's the only thing, the only ability that differentiates me from the hundred thousand million others just like me. I'm sure I'll be just fine at business, but god damnit there are a hundred thousand million men who could do exactly what I'd do in the business would and they'd never have to lift a creative pinky. And neither would I, I guess. But it's hard for me to let that part of me go.

When I was little, I was so unburdened by the realities of the world. That's not to say that every kid isn't very imaginative, but I was like bursting at the seams. I would play fantasy games every day, at recess, in the park, at home. I would invent my own narratives for my toys, like, full-fledged story lines. My best friend in pre-school was really, really big on videogames. So I invented a fake video game for him to play with toys; I was the game master. I would direct and regulate his every movement, spontaneously create a spanning, unique tale for him to transverse. It was called Tarantula Challenge. I don't know why. There were no spiders in the "game". But I played that game with him for over a year, every time he'd come over. Apparently he would talk to his mom about it at dinner with some frequency.

I got carried away with that little anecdote, but I'd hope it helps me illustrate my point. That creativity has perhaps been repressed with age, and whittled down a bit by logic, reality and maturation, but it is despite that still at large within me. The stories I have to tell are perhaps less fantastical than they were at that age, probably less unique, too. But I still have so many stories to tell. And even when I don't, I want to be telling stories anyway.

Cooling Down

I'm cooling down now. Emotionally, I guess. I was really down on myself, earlier, which was nice because I was writing much faster. It was nice to be upset with myself for once, I won't lie. A breath of fresh, self-deprecating air. But what did I say? I said it at least a hundred thousand million times in my preceding blog posts. None of this will mean anything, because it never does!

But I'm going to keep writing until 2 AM anyway, because that's what I said I was going to do. I'm considering it a symbolic gesture to myself. I just got up and got a drink, and then turned on my phone. Then checked Twitter and Facebook. A symbolic gesture is often an empty one. I closed Twitter and Facebook just now though, I'm keeping the soda and cellular device.

Cooling down insinuates that I was at one point a state that required cooling down from. A state of undesirable intensity or something. That's how people use the phrase "cooling down". After you overreact to something, make a big scene or yell or whatever, it's always "hey man you gotta cool down". If someone is clearly too upset to discuss anything rationally, everyone tells you to "let them cool down for a minute". Once you cool down, once you're cool, everything is back to the way it should be.

But I think more literally cooling down is just the return to usual state of affairs. Not necessarily the best. Just the usual. Because for me, I think I'm probably a better person when I'm fired up like I was two hours ago. If I could capture that kind of tenacity and apply it regularly I'd probably be a 4.0 GPA student. I maintained it for an hour though, which is probably the best I've done for a while. For me, cooling down is just returning to the melancholy complacency the prevails so much of my life. I am not cooling down. I am cold.

Cigarettes and Facebook Killed Johnny's Social Skills! - or - How Human Nature at a Young Age Is Consistently Confused For Rebellion

Damn those kids! When will they ever learn?!

Eventually. Those kids will learn eventually. We all do. It seems every generation, every generation is saying the generation before them was worse than the last generation, or the generation that they were a part of. Generation. Every old man sitting on their creaky rocking chair was likely once in a potentially parallel situation as the child they are now berating with their elderly person mean-ness and 1930’s jargon, and no one seems to be able to recognize that.

But really, it's one of those inconceivably unexplainable phenomena of life. Now, mind, not unexplainable in the sense that there is no valid explanation for this; because there most definitely is, as I am currently detailing. No, instead, I mean unexplainable in the sense that no matter how many people figure it out, write a blog post about it, tie a string around their finger for sixty years, no matter what… the prejudice claims victory over logic, leaving its cold dead corpse in that waste bin where their real teeth and libido went.

It’s nothing against senior folks, blog-posting soccer moms or the newspaper columnists whose job is to make little old ladies feel alarmed enough with the goings-on of society to allow a disgustedly furrowed eyebrow, but not enough that they suffer a heart attack and die. Just like us rabble-rousing teenagers, their behavior is only a product of human nature. I don’t know what it is: a bitterly concealed jealousy of our youth, a maturely heightened sensitivity to all things awesome, a desperately needed way to channel all of the aggression built up when they stopped playing reruns of Mayberry R.F.D… who knows? All I know is that, though young people may know a bunch of old people they like, and old people may know a bunch of youngins deserving of a hair tussle, buried in our DNA is a burning hatred for each other.

It’s anything they can pick at. Those kids sure are spendin’ a bunch-a time on that there “facebooks”! I am finishing this now because I wrote this a long time ago and never finished it but I've hit 300 words and now is about passing class and throwing away my stupid pride.

Self Awareness pt. 2

Some are just kind of strange. This also sounds bad, and I still don't care. There are some people that you simply cannot figure out. These are the people who are perhaps not socially gifted, the awkward ones, the creepy ones. These guys are the ones you people-watch at the Rennasciance Fair, or make fun of on Facebook. They aren't even positively stupid, as much as they are just missing something that makes a whole. They act strangely and yet they seem to be unable to understand the ways they don't fit into society's norm. In fact, they don't even know that they DON'T fit into society's norm. For someone like me, it's impossible to imagine that. It may be delusions of grandeur or it may actually be a total lack of self-consciousness and possessing the ability to be totally at ease with yourself. Either way, I bet they have better grades than me.

It may be chemical imbalance. This one is scary for me, because this can strike at anytime. I know I'm not stupid, and though I am certainly strange, I still know how to conform to the confines of the world when it fits me. I'm safe from these things. But you're never home free. Depression, schizophrenia. These things happen to people. I have a cousin who I have been fairly close to. He was a great guy. Popular, smart, athletic. Lives in Florida, every time I'd see him I'd think he was sort of a douche but I love him, obviously. Knew himself like a book. He developed schizophrenia, though. It's been like half a year now. He will never be the same. Here was a guy who knew the world so well, knew how to play the game, knew where he stood, knew himself... All that was gone. He was posting beyond bizarre things on his Facebook. That was all I saw of it, as it happened, since I'm halfway across the country. But reading those things were enough, they made me cry a hell of a lot. First, because I didn't want this to be happening to my cousin. It's horrible. But next, because this could happen to me. Could happen to anyone. It seems like the only thing I have in the world sometimes is the ability to get lost in my own mind, think about myself, think about the world logically. I don't know what I'd be able to do if I lost that.

But that's the thing. I wouldn't do anything, because I wouldn't know. I would have no idea I had ceased to be normal, because I would lose my perspective. And that's scary as hell. Way scarier than anything else I can imagine.

Self-Awareness pt. 1

One thing that a lot of people take for granted is their mental health. Not like, their sanity, but their general state of mind. I'm not one of those people. I thank the world whenever I get the chance that I am able to know myself so intimately. But there's lots of people who don't. That reads multiple ways, I just realized, but both of them are right. There are lots of people who don't know themselves as intimately as I do, and there are lots of people who do, but just take it for granted.

As I launched this tirade of... Let me start again, thought of a cuter sentence. As I embarked on this journey fueled entirely on self-loathing about an hour ago, I began it by talking about all of the things that are wrong with me. I detailed how, though I was seemingly powerless in taking any action towards these flaws, I at least knew them with all possible degree of intimacy. A lot of people simply don't have this luxury; or burden, perhaps.

It comes in many ways. Plenty of people aren't able to look at themselves through an unbiased eye. In fact, I'd suppose no one can look at themselves without a hint of bias, but the extent of this obviously varies a great deal. Some people are flat out delusional. This happens for a smorgasbord of reasons.

Some are just stupid. It sounds bad, I don't care. Some people are just not intelligent enough to look at themselves in the black and white. They are either not capable of the critical thinking skills necessary to create a great understanding of yourself, or are simply not interested in them. These people, incidentally, are some of the happier people I've met. So it goes.

I Can't Snap

There I am, cast aside, tears rolling silently down my cheeks as I make a futile attempt to clog my ears with my furiously gnarled fists, doing anything to stop the flow of that damn noise. It sounds like someone is clicking their tongue, if I let my psyche distort enough. This is comforting sometimes, and there have been instances where I almost feel so comforted by the prospect that I almost start joining in, start clicking my tongue with my peers; just another one of the guys, doing one of those cool things we can all do.

Bullshit.

I can lie to myself all I want, but it always comes crashing down eventually. They aren't clapping. They aren't clicking their tongue. They aren't carrying a tape recorder and external amplifier on which they recorded the sounds of lots of people snapping. They're snapping.

I don't know how the hell they do it. I've watched it a hundred thousand million times, and the mystery is never any closer to being solved. I mirror their motions, I study their technique... I follow their each intricate twitch, I bring my fingers together, I push off just as gracefully as they do.

Two distinct noises ricochet off each other in the air.

Snap.


Fftt.


That second sound is perhaps less universally recognized than the one preceding it. That is for good reason. That second sound belonged to the hand of someone who can't snap. That sound was the embarrassing tone induced by feeble, uncoordinated fingers sliding off each other and releasing no sound but the one created by the friction of their oily fingertips. That second sound belongs to me.

 I can't snap along to the music. I can't follow an extra good idea or point with a little extra oomph through a snap of my fingers. I can't emulate acapella numbers from West Side Story with all my friends. These are things I will never experience. This is the life of a boy who cannot snap.

Now I Begin a (Brief) Inspired Tear of Productivity pt. 5

And what brought upon this (brief) inspired tear of productivity? I had nothing else to do, kind of. That's being a little hard on myself. I was going to go to a bonfire tonight, and my dad told me to ask my mom if I could. He seemed upset. I asked my mom if my dad was upset. She said no. I asked my mom again if my dad was upset. She said yes. I asked why, she said it wasn't her place to tell. I asked if it was about me, she said yes. I immediately thought it was about drugs or drinking or something, and then I got freaked out. Because that's what I was worried about, not my dad being upset, just more potential consequences. But I guess it was that my dad had talked about me maybe going to Kirkwood. That stung me. First, it stung me in the usual selfish way. But then it stung me because I do love my dad so much. And he has gone through this so long with me, and I have given him no hope for change. He loves me so much and I'm killing him.

I've already fucked this trimester up just like I've fucked up the last ten. But with one actual day of school left, I thought now was as poor a time as any to try and get my shit in gear. At least for now, possibly a brief silver sparkle of romantic something. It's 10:57. In one minute, it'll have been one hour since I started blogging. That is when I usually stop. One hour of anything productive, really. The Xbox is right over there. This time, I'm just going to hang tight, just to show myself I can. Just to show myself I have the slightest bit of self-control. I will blog for three more hours. I am going to hate it and it is going to suck but maybe it can be a symbolic turning point and if it isn't at least I'll pass AP Lang now.

To be clear, I currently have, I think maybe 15 of 30 blog posts necessary to complete the term. So, it's not like I won't have anything to do for the next three hours. I've started texting people the last ten minutes or so, I'm already slowing down. I'm turning off my phone now. I was planning on typing that and not actually doing it, just because it made for good writing. But then I wrote it and I decided if I wanted this to mean anything at all I'd have to actually do it. So I turned off my phone. I'll close Facebook too. I can't write about how bad I am all night, because that's just bad form. Plus, I'm going to run out of things to say. Ready, set, go.

Now I Begin a (Brief) Inspired Tear of Productivity pt. 4

So now I will attempt to salvage my blog by working the hardest tonight that I have worked in a while. Just because I'm promising that myself now. I promise myself lots of things, actually, but hopefully by publishing this one on the internet, by having it etched in stone, to a degree, I will feel more obliged to actually follow through. It's 10:39 PM as I write this word, it was 9:58 PM when I started. Usually, after one hour of work that I find unpleasant I excuse myself such undesirable activity and go roll around in my own shit. That would be about... eighteen minutes from now. But I am telling myself right now that I am not going to stop writing until I've written for four hours.

I'm going to hate it. But this could be a breakthrough. Breakthrough. Breakdown, this might look a lot like a mental breakdown, reading this blog entries. I certainly sound very frustrated, lots of swearing and questioning of my life's worthiness. More than anything, I'm very tired. I'm tired and kind of upset and yet strangely still just melancholy. I feel like I'm doing a very good thing right now yet I can't shake the feeling of melancholy that chases me everywhere I go. That's a bummer. I want to feel good about doing this; about being productive. Maybe that would be an incentive to change my ways, if I felt like working towards my future meant shit at all. People always say, "oh, but you feel so good after you get finished", in regards to homework. I don't get that good feeling. On the rare occasion that I do in fact complete an assignment at home, I will just kind of go "okay" and then go back to being unproductive.

This sounds so stupidly pompous and self-absorbed; that these are the problems that consume my life. To someone that has been given less in life than me, and that has had to work for everything they have, I would have no doubt you probably want to punch me in the face after reading this. I would tell you that "it's okay, because I want to punch myself in the face, too" and that would make a nice piece of poignant writing and would perhaps at least elicit the slightest amount of pity from said hypothetical reader, but no. That's not true. I don't want to punch myself in the face, I love my face. I love me. Right now, the only thing I really want to do is play Madden or something, something that would make me happy. I don't want to punch myself in the face at all.

Now I Begin a (Brief) Inspired Tear of Productivity pt. 3

I'll probably get into Iowa State by the skin of my teeth, ACT scores let me in even though I'm seriously not in the top half of my class. I'll go there for a semester, maybe two or three. I'll drop out, go to Kirkwood, big university like that just wasn't for me. I'll be a dead beat. I will have a very mediocre life. A wasted life. Maybe. I wonder sometimes if I might find solace in the little things that distract me so effectively today. Perhaps I can still lead a happy life, since I manage to do so now even while sucking so bad. These are thoughts I have often now, how I might cope with my terrible future. Because it used to be intermingled with fantasies in my head about how I'd naturally get my act together as the going got tough, as it became necessary that I do so. Slowly though, those phased out as reality set in. I stopped thinking those things because if anything at least I'm a realist.

So what will I do? What am I going to do? I don't know. Right now, I am going to blog all night. I am going to blog until I pass this damn class, because at least at this very moment I'm filled with enough loathing and self pity to get myself to do something. Perhaps that's the key to my success. Inordinate amounts of depression. Something has to do it, clearly. It probably is Adderall, maybe. I'm scared to change the person that I've been my entire life, though. I cherish myself more than I cherish my success, unfortunately. I think I've realized that there are enough people that I effect and that care about me that maybe I have to make sacrifices because people sure make a lot for me. I'm rambling, but I'm sad. Because I read all of this I'm writing and it's nothing I haven't said to myself a hundred thousand millions times.

My parents surely don't deserve this. I guess I do deserve this, but it sure feels unfair to me. So many people don't have to try to do their work, their mind more easily lends itself to such behavior. No one likes school, or homework, obviously, but at least they don't have to hate themselves to be productive.

Now I Begin a (Brief) Inspired Tear of Productivity pt. 2

And I joke about it, a lot. I tell everyone, "oh haha yep, well my grades are so awful right now". And I laugh. I yuck it up over my shitty life decisions. Literally just because I don't know what else to do about them. My parents have tried everything with me and I just am unable to discipline myself. And I'm scared because I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do in college, because I am a guy that should be getting a college education and I just know that if I can't apply myself in high school then I'm going to be in serious trouble once I get out of the house, into the real world where I have to work for myself, literally and figuratively.

But I DO NOT know what else to do. As driven by nature my intelligence is, is it just that I'm lazy just as horribly? Because I'm running out of explanations. I literally am at a loss. I failed a class last term. I'm at the 99th percentile in aptitude in my class. My grade point average is below a 3.0. Literally my ONLY motivation to succeed is to not upset my parents who I do love so freaking much. But even them, that's not enough. Because I'm selfish!

I know the intelligence/work ethic thing is stupid because intelligence is something you are given and work ethic is supposedly something you decide for yourself. But I'm just a guy lost in a world of fantastic things that I'm unable to appropriately prioritize. I'm not depressed, in fact, far from it, I am so literally almost always happy. I enjoy life so much. I find so many different passions in the world, so many things I appreciate to their utmost that I'm unable to set them aside for the things that I've been taught that matter. I have NEVER been stressed over school work; I literally do not know the feeling. People tell me they're stressed over school and I just CANNOT relate. And yet my grades are proportionately and literally worlds worse than any of these people. It's so very fucked up.

So send me to military school. Put me on Aderall and kill the person that I am, because he's not worth anything but pretty ideas and jerking off his own ego. I'm writing this blog entry right now, and even as I write it, I know for a fact NOTHING is going to change. There is no epiphany. I'm going to REMAIN a fuck up. I'm such a smart guy, and I feel like I have so much to give to the world and I just can't because I am a lazy asshole.

Now I Begin A (Brief) Inspired Tear of Productivity pt. 1

I am a very self-indulgent guy. Though I think my awareness in this aspect manages to isolate me from total ego-maniacal lunacy, it also manages to isolate me from other important social skills (read; self-discipline, motivation, work ethic, etc.). However, I think, eventually I just have to grow up. I am getting progressively more bumfucked by my terrible grades each term of school I've gone through. I'm not a stupid guy; hell, I'm a very smart guy. But I don't know what to do. The first step in fixing a problem is acceptance, right?

I've accepted that I'm a total piece of shit academically for four years now. It's not going anywhere. I've wrote dumbass blog posts like this, got yelled at by rightfully distraught parents, got yelled at by myself, I've told a hundred thousand million people everything I do wrong, I've broke it down on charts and maps and I've schemed out all of the things I'm doing so horribly wrong in life. But I can't get myself to do ANYTHING about it.

Because I'm lazy. Jesus, am I lazy. I don't do hardly anything that doesn't best serve pleasing me at that very moment. I will sit in bed for an hour, thinking to myself, "Please do your homework. Please do it. You are going to fuck up your future so bad." and then I go to bed. I don't know what the hell there is to do.

I just think it's beyond strange how work-ethic and intelligence work. I need some fucking Adderall, or something. I've been told a million times that people would kill to have my intelligence and that I'm pissing it away because I'm a lazy fuck. Has it ever occurred to anyone that I would kill to have their work ethic? Obviously it's a nature vs nurture thing to an extent, but my parents have done a damn fine job raising me and I've consistently let them down.

So it Goes pt. 2

Listen: Vonnegut placed the utmost value on the power of an idea. In his novel Breakfast of Champions, the main character, Kilgore Trout leaves the world with the epitaph “We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.”Kilgore Trout, who appears in nearly all of Vonnegut's books, is essentially a surrogate character for Vonnegut to inject his own views. And this does not make itself anymore apparent than it does in that quote. Vonnegut trail-blazed the literary world at his time, he blew up the distinction between “science fiction” and “real literature” and showed how interesting, radical and bizarre ideas could be written skillfully and create an engrossing tale. And yet, they took these creative ideas and intertwined them with realities of humanity, creating perplexing tales that spoke not only of unknown worlds but combined them with human emotions that were real, human problems that were all too common, managing to surmise the issues of our society more accurately in these made-up worlds than anyone could ever dare to do in a book bound to the confines of possibility.

Vonnegut had a grasp of human neurosis that was impossibly spot-on. In each his characters, be it Eliot Rosewater from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Billy Pilgrim of Slaughterhouse 5, or the aforementioned Kilgore Trout, who appeared in countless novels, Kurt brings to the table a new slice of humanity. The caricatures he drew in his protagonists, upon closer inspection, were all people we knew. And perhaps beyond that, they were all parts of our own being, flaws and insecurities we found in the world, and further, somewhere in ourselves. Because of this, Vonnegut knew how to make us feel more than any author could, relying not on melodramatic deaths and romantic relationships, but instead evoking a much less feigned, much more human kind of emotion. We could relate to and recognize the things in Vonnegut's writing.

Eventually, Vonnegut began a gradual retirement from fiction writing, publishing his last novel in 2001. However, his interest in humanity never ceased to grow. He was named the honorary president of the AHA (American Humanist Association), where he served until his death in 2007. He spoke of this prestigious role with the sentiment “I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead”. He passed away in 2007 after suffering severe head trauma, and left the world different than he found it. So it goes.

So It Goes pt. 1

 "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

In his writing, Kurt Vonnegut dissected life. He took the intricacies of man, all of our idiosyncrasies, foibles, longings and desires and built stories around them. If he wasn't such a fine story teller, there would be no better job for a man like Vonnegut than a philosopher, because his simultaneously grounded yet absurd takes on human life and modern society were miles more accurate than any statistical analysis could ever be. Kurt Vonnegut was a best-selling author, yes, one of the best of his time, but more impressive than the stories he told were the ideals that tied them together.

With that being said, Vonnegut would have abhorred an opening like this, because to simply open with a quote and life synopsis is utterly average and dares nothing of the paper it is being written on. If the writing of Vonnegut is to teach you anything, it would be that much more meaningful things can be accomplished by going about them in an unusual way. So.

Moving On

I am, and have been for most of my self-aware lifespan, of the opinion that human connections are the foundation of our happiness and fulfillment. I suppose it's also likely that this does not apply to everyone, that all every person expects different things from life and that as a consequence, this entry may be not be totally relatable to everyone that reads it. But, for me, it's with total confidence that I can say there is nothing as sacred, moving or powerful as human connection.

I guess that's also called being social. There's just something incomparable to sharing thoughts with a fellow human being. Making someone laugh, disclosing a personal secret, gossiping about some bitchez you hate, telling a story, debating a hot topic. For someone like me, there is no relationship nor no activity so mentally stimulating.

Over the span of my young life, I've actively sought out, built up and lived in the friendships and relationships I've accumulated. They start for different reasons: common interests, physical attractions, self-serving alterior motives... sometimes intangible qualities. They all take different courses, will all meet different ends. Some relationships are comfortably casual & inconsequential; maybe you know each other through mutual friends and exchange rare quips on matters that concern the both of you. These come and go without notice, the people you mildly enjoy while they're there, but certainly won't miss when they're gone. Some relationships are spontaneous and exciting; like a brilliant firework show. A chance of a spark goes off between two relative strangers and for a brief time, an electricity of foreignness and unknown adventure envelope the two. Eventually, the peope learn everything there is to learn about the other and a relationship predecated on the luster of fun and mystery fades anticlimatically (not always mutually). Some relationships are beautiful. People who click on a psychological, intellectual & physical level; who share the same passions, maybe. Who make each other happy, usually. Who share a connection so perfect that it teeters on addiction. Always.

Of course, with this last example, I was alluding to romance. Though my tone of deep seated apathy and careful self presentation of an eternal cynic may oftentimes obscure this, I am a romantic.

Some New Invention Ideas

It seems our world has grown utterly complacent. It's disgusting really, how little progress we've made over the last few decades. We used to be constantly innovating the world, tearing apart the very fabrics of our community and reshaping them with daring, maverick hands of the reckless and inspired revolutionary. You think I'm wrong? You say that studies show capability for scientific advancement has actually consistently increased at an exponential rate throughout the last couple of decades? Shut the hell up, you.

Me though... me, I got ideas. I got ideas so big, they have to take pictures of them from space, lay the photo out on the ground and view it from a building-top to even begin to understand a discernable portion of them. I have ideas so brilliant, you could harness them for their pure potential energetic content and power an entire city for a dozen years. I have ideas so good that they're totally great, man. Here are some of them:

The DOUBLE Gun - Everyone likes guns, right? They shoot people, and kill them sometimes. Good guys use them, bad guys use them, guys who have no moral allegiance also use them. Guns make the world go 'round. But what if I said I knew how to make guns better? What if instead of a regular old gun, you had a DOUBLE gun!? That's right! In this one gun, you have a gun as great as TWO guns! Count 'em! Two guns, in one gun. I'll leave the semantics up to the scientists.

Thing Maker - Man, I sure hate it when I really want something, but I don't have it. Don't you? Everyone's had that moment where they totally could use a spare key to get into their care, but don't have one around. Everyone has that moment where it starts raining, and they really need a jacket, but tough shit, motherfucker, no jackets for you. Everyone has that moment where they've been blackmailed by a well-concealed underground vigilante organization with a dedicated vendetta against your entire blood line, and they tell you that if you can't retrieve a strand of Thomas Jefferson's hair that you'll be assasinated, but, oh, you left that at home! The Thing Maker aims to solve that problem! You simply whisper sweetly what thing you want maked into its ear, and it poops it out its big robotic technology anus.

The Chair Pants - You like chairs. You like pants. Yet you can never seem to use both of them at the same time! Well, that was before the chair pants! These pants have flexible, jointed chair legs embedded into the fabric of your pants, and can fold out from strategically located positions on both your rumpus cheeks and the inner-elbow-y equivalent of your leg. Where it bends. You simply squat, fold 'em out, sit wherever you are, and once you're totally rested, you just fold 'em back up and keep on walkin', brotha!

Forks vs. Spoons

It's a debate as long lived as AIDS, or World War II. It's a paradox as unsolvable as the temperature of the sun, or how to calculate the radius of a circle. It's a crisis as unsolvable as cars, or dogs. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am of course referring to forks and spoons.

Many curmudgeons belittle the argument, shout ignorantly loud nothings like "YOU CAN REALLY JUST USE BOTH OF THEM!" or "THERE'S HONESTLY JUST NO REASON TO FEEL THAT YOU HAVE TO MAKE A CHOICE BETWEEN THE TWO OF THEM WHEN THEY'RE BOTH READILY AVAILABLE TO YOU, SERIOUSLY DUDE, YOU'RE BEING SORT OF WEIRD ABOUT THIS". But we stand tall in the face of our detractors, and take pride in our respective stances in the tense, rigidly divided sides of utensil favoritism. Personally, I am staunch in my advocacy of spoons, but I will try to provide an objective analysis encompassing both sides of this debate for your reading pleasure.

Spoons, or as us Sponokes like to call them, Spoonfarts, are their own entity separate completely from Forktits, despite what the efforts of fancy restaurant napkins may lead you to believe. Spoons are splendidly useful in many ways, including aiding in the drinking of soup, the eating of ice cream, the seamless stirring of drinks which require stirring and the ability to be used a rough measurement tool. It is probably no leap of faith to say that without spoons mankind would have likely crumbled by now.

Forks, or as the Forkanes like to call them, Forktits, are also strong in many of their own regards; though their viability in the presence of spoons is sometimes called into question. Forks are great for killing innocent children through puncture wounds, accidentally leaving in a dish you put in the microwave that leads to a minor explosion, being enlarged and wielded by the Devil in hell, and other worthwhile activity.

Really, it is totally up to you. I hope with the information I've provided, you're able to make your own educated choice between spoons or forks. Go choke on a cyanide pill.

Stubbing Your Toe

It starts out innocently enough. You're walking along, minding your own business, doing your best to stay out of everyone's way and avoid being a menace to society however possible when JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE FUCK HOLY SHIT THAT HURT LIKE HELL. That's right bitch. You stubbed your toe.

There is nothing comparable to stubbing your toe. Nothing. Someone walked up to me once and was totally like "Hey bro... so my parents just got killed in a freak rhino accident" and I was all like "Dude, shut up. And don't be insensitive to rhinos, I'm sure he was just strangely proportioned". Now, usually I'm not a rude person, but sometimes people can just be so inconsiderate and self-centered I just can't think of any other way to be! I just stubbed my goddamned toe! That toe is going to hurt for like, at least 10 minutes, and I didn't even deserve it! I was just walking around, minding my own business!

So with that explained, you can see why I lost it when that god awful child (not to mention a druggie; he was pale as hell and had some bag of fluid on wheels wired into his arm. you have to hand it to those heroine addicts, they really know how to innovate) came up to me trying to tell me about HIS problems. He said, "Hello sir, what are you doing in my hospital room? I was watching that". I swear to god, those exact words! Like he owned the place! Hello, earth to dumbass, you don't OWN a hospital anymore than I do! If anything, I pay taxes, so you can get the HELL out of MY hospital room, you selfish prick. If I want to watch "Bra Busters 4: Revenge of the Tits" that is no one's affair but my own.

At this point, the staff clearly sympathized with the horrible pain me and my big toe were going through, because I was then approached by staff, I assume to be taken to some sort of more intensive treatment for my horrible affliction, away from all the crack addict children, however it kind of just stopped hurting at that point so I decided I'd just leave and get something to eat (those tic tacs sitting next to the kid just weren't very filling at all).

However, those were some of the most horrifying minutes of my life, and I would do anything to forget the trauma I experienced. Now that's a good closing paragraph.

Funny Sounds I Like to Make With My Mouth

I am a man of many talents. I find myself doing lots of things to kill the dead hours (then again how can you kill the dead hours!? am i right!? am i right?! come on, i am SO right!). Horseback riding, harp playing and wine tasting (i never swallow i promise) occupy the most of my time, a we all know, but even with that, I am not sure they are my favorite thing to do. In fact, it occurred to me last night while I was playing my personal favorite adaptation of 3rd Sonata while senjoying a fine glass of white Portuguese Meritage upon my trusty steed Corky that perhaps I had lost track of my true passion in life: making funny sounds with my mouth.

Making funny sounds with your mouth is quite the art form. Some people frown upon the practice (many prominent mouth noise makers are highly frowned upon in today's society, unfortunately), but this mainly comes from a dedicated practice of ignorance. People don't realize the true joy gained from making funny noises with your mouth, don't realize the skill one must possess to master the ability and don't realize the power it possesses.

Starting off with the basics, the fart noise. The fart noise is hilarious. Basically, you take your lips and clasp them together and blow air really hard and it goes "phghghghgbbbbbpt" and it totally sounds like a fart, dude. Like, you can blow a little air out of the side of your mouth and it sounds like a little baby fart, like "toot". Except not really, farts don't sound like toot, that's how they put them in comic books for some reason. I'd say baby farts sound more like "..pweet". Man, farts are so hilarious.

Next off is a classic, the babble. This one really allows you to take an artistic license and really shape your own unique skill, and for that reason it is my personal favorite. Sometimes you go like "eaaaaw", or you could totally go "baaaaaaa-rup" or "kffffp" and you can do that all with your mouth and it's still hilarious.

Those are all the types. Go home asshole.

Critical Analysis - Right Sock

The right sock. Oh, the right sock. Oh, oh, oh, the right sock. It is not the left sock, and it is most certainly not the right shoe. More certain than all, it is definitely not a political candidate or a computer processor. Instead, it is simply the right sock. Yet it could be argue that perhaps, the right sock is more powerful, more important, more significant than any of these things. In fact, it is possibly without debate that the right sock is the finest invention in American history. It is indisputable the right sock is in fact the greatest innovation of man, or any other possible extraterrestrial species, to ever be conceived in the history of the massive span of the universe.

Let me begin with an anecdote. Once upon a time, there was a man who found himself in quite the predicament. He found himself caught in a tragic dillema, at the hands of an insatiable, unstable mugger on the streets of New York City. The mugger tells him that he is either to surrender his money, or witness the cold-blooded murder of his entire extended family, whom the mugger had forcibly assembled in a van down the street. Perhaps this seems an easy decision, until it is revealed that the man has on his person the cash sum of $840,000, and that all of his family members have amassed exactly this amount in gambling debt, and were to be killed later that evening by loan sharks if these debts were not paid. It seems at this point, it is inevitable that this man's family will perish. In a grasp of desperation, he attempts to pull off his shoe to show the robber his right sock, which as we all know, posseses intangible charms capable of dissuading any aggressor. Unfortunately, as he begins to remove his shoe, the robber is threatened by his sudden movement and shoots him in the chest, killing him instantly. However, the police hear the gunshot, and the criminal is apprehended. The $840,000 dollars is returned to the family, who pay off their gambling debt and go on to all become the Presidents of the United States.

Indeed, the right sock symbolizes nobility. Selflessness. Generosity. Love. Compassion. Alongside these things, it could even be said to represent firecrackers. Bubble baths. Steamships. Greek math equations. The anecdote I recited prior is just that, an anecdote. That never actually occurred, and that man was never shot by a cruel mugger. Instead, that story brings out the true meaning of the right sock, a truly underappreciated corner stone of international society.

Critical Analysis - Laminated Sheet of Paper

Oh sheet of laminated paper. People look at you and think “Oh, it’s just a sheet of laminated paper”. How wrong they are. I know. I know you better than anyone else, sheet of laminated paper. I know you intimately; the things you represent the ideals you symbolize, the strength and power you evoke.

The sheet of laminated paper is a forgotten relic of the modern world. It is cast aside routinely for its brethren; if you need to write something, you take out a sheet of regular paper. If you need to create a lasting message, preserved and protected from the outside world, you encase it in a powerful, sturdy, hand welded steel frame. In the sheet of laminated paper lies a forgotten hero, an abandoned malcontent, a figure whom’s narrative is trapped within the confines of its own walls.

People use the sheet of laminated paper like a cheap whore. Sure, you like to print your dirty little ink all over its slutty little paper, and for a while there, you and the paper really feel alive. Sure, the paper knows that there is nothing real between the two of you, but even then it dreams of the future. The things it could do. Maybe people will cut it out and make a funny hat. Maybe it’ll become a form letter, and it’ll be able to feel the cozy signature of a man who has never even read it before being shipped around the world. But that’s all they are, dreams. Dreams that will never be fulfilled, because just as it has begun to feel alive, it is taken to the flames of hell. The laminating press. A cruel joke played on the paper by a cruel world. As it is forced into the machine, reality sets upon it.

For this sheet of laminated paper, the future will not hold joy, innovation, usefulness or thrills. As it’s encased in cheap plastic, nearly scalded to death by the burning press, the physical pain is hardly even felt in the presence of a much stronger pain. The pain of knowing the rest of its life will be spent hung up on a wall. Stupid sheet of laminated paper.

Critical Analysis - Beanbag Chairs

Often, late at night, when left alone with my thoughts.. my mind wanders to the same place. I don’t know exactly why it is, or what brings me there, but it’s seemingly without fail. I cannot keep the beanbag chair off my mind. It’s invaded my conscious like a sick virus; yet one that I invite the presence of. One I adore, even as it kills me. It’s like an addiction, almost, these beanbag chairs. How I long to be a beanbag chair, if only for one second! Just to be for one second a graceful and majestic beanbag chair, I would surely give up all of the spoils in the world; shave twenty years off my lifespan, slice off twenty centimeters of my manhood, slash the heads off of twenty good men, give up the word ‘twenty’ for the rest of my life, stop making commas into my overworked slave bitch, declare an end to the abuse of parallel structure as means of inflating my word count.

The beanbag chair. By this point I’d usually awaken by now. Most likely staring at the lucky bastard. That stupid beanbag chair thought it was such hot shit, being all comfortable and vibrantly colored and adaptive to weight shifts. Who was I kidding? That beanbag chair WAS hot shit. The hottest shit around. Each day, I bet it soaks in its own disgusting glory, silently churning in its own white pellet-y innards; clearly taunting me through an unspoken word.

                “Fuck you, you’re not a beanbag chair”

Words. Unspoken words. That’s what the beanbag chair would say to me. There is no way to retaliate to the beanbag chair. The initial thought is that perhaps you could humiliate it by sitting on it. However, upon this approach the only one humiliated is yourself, for being foolish enough to hate a seat so damn comfortable. So next, you naturally jump on it. Only, as you leap fervently, you realize that each vicious landing has barely connected with the chair, which seems to be dodging your blows with strategic shifts.

There is no outsmarting the beanbag chair. There is no outliving the bean bag chair. There is no more words in this blog entry.

but nothing revolves around me.

I like to think that I'm a pretty mature guy. Emotionally, at least, I think I'm more in touch with myself than most could confidently say. I seem to have an innate grasp of why I do the things I do, why other people do the things they do... I guess I like to think I'm very emotionally mature. I know my flaws intimately. I know the things wrong with my life, I know the things I do right, I know what I want and I know what I'll never have. I know when I'm being unreasonable and I know why I'm being unreasonable,  I know I'm overreacting and know simply that I will continue to overreact, I do something great and I do something shitty, and I know exactly why I did those things too.

I break my own actions down like an incredibly useless piece of technology that someone turned the knob up on way too far; analyzing every single thought I think, action I perform, gesture I witness... I think a lot of myself, obviously; me and my mind and my ability to understand things. I think I have a really good grasp of that stuff, a sense of totally grounded, untainted realism combined with
I Sometimes, though, I overestimate that. I look at the disheveled mess of everyone else's thoughts, neuroses and complications and think to myself with a disgusting self-satisfaction, at least I'll never be that way.

Running

Let me begin by saying I have no problem with sports. In fact, I'm quite the fan of organized athletics! I've sank more hours into fantasy football leagues and NFL mock drafts than any self-respecting person should be able to admit to. (what's that say about my self-respect, am i right? oh man). But one sport has always struck me as more than strange. What the hell kind of sport is running?

On one side of the argument, you have those who argue that running, be it track or cross country, is the ultimate sport. Their reasoning is that it is the most pure of abilities, running without having to worry yourself with balls, rules or decisions. Apparently this is what makes it superior. To that, I reason that they would also like to eat an unlevened loaf of bread for every meal, every damn day of their life while all of the cool kids eat pizza, steaks, salads and fried chicken (because, you know, some people like salads).

To those who find themselves impassionately entertained and engaged by competitively running a predetermined distance, may I also recommend the fascinating worlds of competitive paint drying, ass-wiping and wall staring. Who can stare the hardest!? Damn that ass is clean!

Going back to the stupid analogies, running as its own entity seems almost like buying a copy of Call of Duty without owning an Xbox, and just going home and playing with the disk. Running shouldn't stand alone, it's already involved in like every sport known to man! If we're doing that, why don't we offer contemporary pencil technique as a mandatory core class? God knows we write so damn much throughout the day in every other class, we might as well give it its own little hour!

Plus, I'm slow. That has nothing to do with this though. Did you read my analogies?! I'm not slighted in any way by the fact that I've gotten beat by a lineman in a windsprint. Nope. Stupid running.

Some Grown-Ass Thoughts on Life (parts 1-4)

For me, it's difficult to fathom why people don't see the world the way I do. It's not a superiority thing, I by no means guarantee that my philosophy is inherently correct or more right than anyone else's, it's more that, in my my mind, I am only capable of a mindset entailing that the world is driven by logic; and there is no logical way around that philosophy. It's the opposite of a Pandora's box. It's a question that answers itself. Why do things happen? Because that's how the laws of the universe operate.

It's not the most beautiful, inspiring or romantic of philosophies. It quickly etches off concepts like faith, religion, fate, miracles and love, and leaves in their absence a jumbled cabinet full of scattered slips of reason and random tidbits of neurosis. I suppose most would look at my viewpoints and surmise that I am bitter, a narcissist and eternal cynic. But that's not the case, at all. I love life, I love it to death. Though I may not be able to feel some of the traceless zeal and divine calling that others may, I take a more calculated appreciation of things. Again, it's not because I'm some asshole who wants to be counter-culture and denounce religion from atop my godless throne. This is just how I think.

As technology advances, we know more. Knowledge is beautiful and knowledge is awesome. Information is like food. Knowing why things are the way they are is fascinating & thrilling. Long ago, there naturally was far less knowledge. Intelligence was the same, for the most part, general capacity has remained stagnant. But with time comes progress, and as human kind invented language, both verbal and written, we were able to accumulate ideas, pass down successes and failures between generations and grow not only within our lifetime but within the span of time itself. Man is a self-serving species at its instinctual core, we want more than anything to help ourselves survive & pleasure as much as humanly possible within the confines of our mortality. With our complex minds, motivations outside of these develop and we create relationships, work to improve our society, work to make change, but if you track these massive branches of neurology back to their root, they all originate with the desire to be, to live and to satisfy oneself. It's been the nature of every living being before us, will continue to be the nature of every being after us and is not a process that somehow exclusively avoids us a race.

This is at the core of my problems with our race; with humanity. We are not divine. We are magnificent, we are impossibly capable, we are likely the most advanced beings to ever grace the universe... but beneath all of that we are still just another group of organisms held down by the weight of the logic, reason and the laws of nature. I won't delve too far into my thoughts on religion because I'd rather not be lumped into the ever growing group of atheists who get off on the smell of their own farts and demand a condescending battle of minds with anyone who opposes them. However, I will say, how selfish is the idea of heaven? That all beings, despite being scientifically evidenced to have the exact same essential basis of existence as us, who live and breath our same air and walk on our same earth, who show aptitude in certain domains of favor unparalleled even in us magnificent homo-sapiens, (no matter how hard we try, we still cannot find a way to fly with the precision and beauty of a bird, and a cheetah would kick the SHIT out of Usain Bolt in a 100m dash) are destined to eventually cease living, and then enjoy a mediocre after-life consisting mainly of decay and an extended bout of a total lack of conciousness. Simply because our brains are the most developed, us humans are suddenly the sole proprietors of the unspeakable pleasures and paradise of heaven. Basically, go to hell critters. Oh wait, you can't!


Apparently, the intangible quality that sets us apart from everything else, ever, is our soul. The soul is what separates man from beast, and is what secures us atop our pedestal as the exemplary species subject to otherworldly judgement and in some cases, an invitation to life's ever exclusive after party. Now, I use the word intangible very purposefully, because the soul is literally not a tangible concept. That feels awful to say, and I actually do feel like a shit-faced curmudgeon for saying that, but it's painfully true. I think the soul is perhaps fine as an intangible concept, because these is some beautiful symbolism and meaning in the idea of a soul, but as a concrete thing, it's just not there. I adore the idea behind the soul, and its a very powerful and concise way to express the deep emotional capability of man, and our innate uniqueness that only seemingly we are capable of; but it's ridiculous to use what is essentially a metaphor totally dreamed up by man as the penultimate justification for our unquestioned superiority. What I find most interesting about the idea of the "soul", however, is the way it largely eludes my black-and-white philosophy. As I will soon elaborate, throughout history, almost all of the "spiritual" ideas established by "scientists", philosophers and other great minds were essentially total shots in the dark, only to be much later defaced and pooped upon by the cruel motherfucker that is discovery, science and logic.

However, the soul is interesting because it is different in that respect. As long as we've had people, we've been killing each other and tearing each other apart. The human anatomy was ripe for man's first ventures into science because test subjects were readily available, all around us. It did not take long to reach a general consensus that the pumpy thing in your chest made you alive and that mushy thing in your head made you thunk. Countless bodies were decimated, killed,  mutilated and other mean words, and never once did anyone witness a little ghostly translucent silhouette of the former slink out from the corpse and ascend towards the skies. Never once did someone dig through a body and find a little empty concave marked "Soul". Yet even today, Newsweek found that 71% of Americans believe that they have a soul. Though it technically detracts from my point, this is basically a stream of consciousness and I found that facet of the concept fascinating.

Right. Back to the cynicism. Long ago, we didn't know anything, and we did not yet have the capability to find out anything. Unfortunately, the human mind is burdened with the dual-edged blade that is sentience, free-will, total awareness and curiosity. We, again by our nature, want to know why things ARE. It is impossible for a brilliant mind to simply sit back and accept that we don't know why the sky is blue, why the sun rises and sets, where we came from, why we exist. These questions, like all questions, are explainable through logic. That being said, real answers are a precious commodity that most often times can not be gained in one lifetime, but instead must be built upon as a community, through collaboration and indirect teamwork. Answers are still accumulating today, and will continue to accumulate throughout time until we know damned near everything, I truly believe that. However, there had to be a jumping off point, and once, we all knew nothing. But we can't accept that, and unable to attain the sweet satisfaction of knowing, we apply the Splenda equivalent of answers... philosophical bullshit. Religion, self-centered blasphemy, plainly ridiculous guesses. Treating the ripping, indiagnosable anguish of a total lack of knowledge by taking a shitload of metaphorical painkillers. The pain may have subsided, but you haven't really treated anything; you've learned nothing. People love opiates, however, and this became the most popular way to tackle the burning issues of the world.

....

i will continue this later but i need to do myself a favor and not write any more 1400 word blog entries when i only need 300 words.

One Act Play: Pillowman - A Partial Success Story of Love, Lust, Drama and Triumph (part twoozie of all of dem)

yo brudda dis is part two of a two part blog so if you aint done read da firs part i suggest you finna scroll yo pretty self down a couple entries and edumacate yoself

On the bus ride home, we got to read all three of our ballots. Or really, I got to suck each ballot bone dry with my ffervently scanning eyes, only sparing morsels of information to my starving cast mates when my obsessive compulsive-esque critique hunt had been satisfactorily quenched. Myself being the only actor in both of the scenes of our one-act play, I naturally received the most criticisms, all of which I drilled into my brain. However many criticisms we may have gotten however, we had exponentially more effusive praises. The entire ensemble was showered with compliments, and one woman who was apparently very taken with our piece recommended that we simply "do not grow tired of the piece on your way to All-State!", which is sort of a huge freaking compliment to receive at districts.

With all this said, there were still many changes to make. Our next rehearsal, Mr. Hayes did not pander in niceties. He immediately set us to watching film of our performance, which is a slightly disheartening process. Many things which feel totally natural while performing end up looking very awkward on tape, and a lot of line delivery and intonation sound completely different when recorded than they do in your head when you're saying them. As uncomfortable a process it may be, however, it's also a very helpful one, and I as well as the rest of my cast took very thorough notes on the documentation.

With two weeks until state, we were steadily improving. We were working out the kinks and further developing our characters, and all in all I felt we were creating a very strong show. All that watched it seemed to be very receptive, and I couldn't help but feel optimistic. Rehearsals stacked up and suddenly it was the eve of state competition. That night, we had by far our best practice thus far, prompting Mr. Hayes', whom usually curbs his enthusiasm to proclaim that he could not wait for all the tweaks we'd make coming into all-state. OH NO HE DIDN'T.

Oh, no he didn't. I will to this day never figure out what went wrong that day. We were all incredibly excited in the minutes preceding, we were beyond focused, and absolutely everything seemed to be in place. But we just came out flat. The energy was bleh, the timing was off, and the show was mediocre by our standards. Up until that point, we had never timed under thirty four minutes and thirty seconds, a close cut to the thirty five minute time limit that we rode like badasses. But that performance, Mr. Hayes came up to us after that show and said with a shred of unconcealable sadness that at least we made good time, clocking in at thirty one minutes and forty seconds. Though it was masqueraded as a good thing by our director, this of course was an awful thing meaning that we somehow had cut three minutes off our usual runtime without skipping any lines; pointing to a rushed show and broken timing.

 I was furious. This was my first chance to make all-state on my own merit, hands absent the clenching of any coattails; and we had blown it. I sat in a corner and sulked for an hour or so, being coaxed by encouraging peers that our show hadn't been any worse than usual. My anger was settled a bit and I began to truly believe that it had all been in my head. The score sheets were posted a couple hours later, and then I really lost it. One of our judges had given us a 2, the inferior ranking, almost certainly blowing any chance we'd have at All-State. I made quite a spectacle of myself at that moment, punching the paper bearing such unfortunate news before yelling out a blood curdling scream and drop kicking by bag way across the room. Seriously, it must have traveled a hundred feet. 

I eventually gathered my self, but I'd continue to be horribly upset about that one for weeks, expressing my disappointment to anyone who would listen at any given opportunity. When we received our judges ballots, my fate was all but sealed. In order to make All-State, at least two of your judges must give you a nomination; that meaning that only a small portion of the acts that receive "1" rankings from all judges will advance. All three ballots had been fairly scathing and were largely absent any of the warm fuzzies I had grown accustomed to, and I had essentially lost hope. I was now pretty okay with the fact that I would not be advancing.

When All-State nominations were posted, I scrolled down quickly to find if my improv team had been given a performing nomination (we did), but something caught my eye. It couldn't have been... But it was. Mother freaking Pillowman, from John F. Kennedy Highschool. I screamed, danced, then cried.

I Like Football. It Is Neat.

Myself being the astute intellectual that I am, find myself in a range of complicating situations as a result of my affinity towards organized sports, which many deem decidedly non-intellectual. Okay, that never happens, but exploring that muddled grey area in society between the "jocks" and the "nerds" certainly makes for some fascinating literature, does it not? It sure does! Great idea, me! We'll go out for pancakes later as a reward!

For the most part, I find myself mainly dabbling in the culture of the cerebral douchebag; that being blogging, television of the "not Two and a Half Men" variety, cinema, literature and the occasional odd poetry slam. But there is one deep passion I hold that separates me from my horn-rimmed glasses wearing bretheren, I fuggin' love football.

Most of the friends in whom I share a lot of common interests with seem unable to comprehend my obsession with the sport. Sports, at their core, are pretty stupid. What the appeal is in a bunch of men running and hurting each other to score made-up points, I am not particularly sure, but it has had me by the cuff for most of my life. In terms of athleticism, I would consider myself average, perhaps a bit above average. At best. What I'm trying to say is, my immense talent on the field in the sport of football is probably not playing a big role in my penchant for the game.

Instead, I think that football is given a bad wrap. Though it is a sport carried out by some of the most bumbling of physical freaks and mental dumbasses, looking down from the press boxes, football is really the world's most complex game of chess. I think what really fascinates me about the sport is the strategy, the match-ups, the scheming. There is both a serious science and art that comes with analyzing, drafting and developing college level talent, assembling a playbook that best suits your squad's strengths and weaknesses, and calling the plays that best take advantage of your opponent. Sure, it may be a game of brutes at the surface, but I feel if you give any self-proclaimed nerd an Xbox controller hooked up to a copy of Madden '12 hacked to replace all of the football-centric polygons with dragons and knights, they would totally be like woah this is super gnarly man. Definitely.

Whatever the Opposite of Retrospect Is

I did a blog entry last term on thinking in retrospect. For those not familiar with the term, allow me to hack away at my word count with a detailed explanation. Retrospect, which is essentially "retroactive" "speculation", which would literally come out to something around the lines of thinking about the past. Thinking in retrospect is when you sit there and worry about all of the things you could have done differently in life, in specific situations, in life paths, in vital decisions; any of that, despite the fact that it's essentially pointless to do so given that there's nothing you can do about it at that point. In retrospect, I probably should have written more blog entries in the first half of the term, but there's nothing I can do about it now, so I'll just power-shit out random thoughts like this one.

Now that I've comprehensively defined retrospect, let me tell you about a different idea. Instead of wishful thinking towards your past, I find myself constantly guilty of quite the opposite. I've dubbed it anterospect, which utilizes the root word for the future that I just googled the heck out of. Anterospect, in my life, being that I spend copious amounts of time thinking about all of the fantastic things I'm going to do one day. I'm finally going to apply myself to my studies. Finally going to go on that week long roadtrip. Finally going to finish that novella I've written 5 pages of.

I don't ever get around to it. It's so easy to look at the things you hate right now, and think quite decisively that you want them to be different. It's comforting to look at the future, a beautiful, long, untarnished white slate that you can paint your wildest fantasies on. Or in my case, my reasonable expectations. But I don't get around to it, ever, because I'm a lazy turd. The moral of this story is to never expect things from yourself because you will only be disappointing one more person in your life; yourself. Read that one to your kids, bitches.

I Have an Untapped Well of Creativity in My Soul and I Forgot Where I Left It - or - Why I Feel Modern Education Underutilizes Children's Creative Potential

I hate to begin blog posts, conversations, letters, death threats.. anything, with something to the effect of "when I was young..", because I'm fully aware that I am still very much so a young person and that at the age of 17 nostalgia in practice is arbitrary. However, though I aspire to live at least 3 or 4 more times my current age, I don't feel I'm speaking under any sort of delusion when I venture to say that this portion of my life may very well be the most important one. As much as I've grown weary of hearing shit about the awkward years of adolescence and their immeasurable bearing on my life as a whole, I think I'm starting to recognize the validity to such statements. These years, along with possibly more importantly, your first couple of years away from home off in college or in the workforce, literally shape us as human beings. Well, not literally shape us. But they literally shape us. They're important.

Yet it seems like in today's society, so much of these years is entirely spent preparing for adulthood. With good reason, obviously; it's very important that we know how to operate in the real world at that we set ourselves up for the best success. But you look at classes, school systems, these days.. every student is dropped into an assembly line where they are essentially prodded to either "Have a Good Life" (i.e., take an assload of AP Classes and essentially spend four years prepping a college resume) or "Work at McDonalds" (i.e., anyone who doesn't stack their schedule in order to hold in best possible academic standing). So much attention is placed on AP Classes, which has an exponentially growing presence in high schools around America, that kids literally just can't be afforded to take a liberal arts course.

As absolutely fantastic it is, and understood I'm definitely not arguing otherwise, that students are given so many chances to get a leg up on their futures, it's stunting the growth of students just as much as it's "maturing" them. This is a crucial mistake to inflict upon people in a stage in their life that, as I've already elaborated, is incredibly important to them; as well as who they become. When I was a child, all the way up until middle school, I was bursting with creativity.

(this is going to run the risk of sounding reaaallly conceited, but it's not as if my writing style didn't make me sound pretentious already, right?)

I drew every day; I was damn good at it, I'm just going to be honest. I'd make drawings for everyone in my classes and people would huddle around my doodles. Not only that, but as my mother is an artist for a living, she helped me hone my craft, and I grew to unconditionally love it. I also loved the hell out of film. Lots of kids at my age put together little YouTube videos, usually "stunt videos" or something to that effect, and in that regard I was among many. But I would write scripts, set up multiple camera angles, splice audio, montage clips and seriously make movies! This passion consumed most of my middle school tenure and recording and editing these videos were some of the happiest times of my life, without a doubt. For most of my years leading up to high school, however, the one thing I really thought I'd be doing with my life was writing. Creative writing. I freaking loved it. I wrote stories all the time, for funzies. This was a passion and it was also skill, a legitimate talent. Some will probably liken my dream to that pretty good white high school basketball player saying he was going to play in the NBA, but I seriously believe to this day that it was something I could have done with my life. Was.

(youtube jacked my audio, used to have Better Days by Citizen King in the back... twas cool; from 7th grade)

When I was young, I felt brilliant. I felt utilized, I felt like I knew my talent and I knew what I wanted to do with it. I was a very happy round peg. Then I got to high school, and they whittled off my edges until I fit the square hole. Sure, I make a fine square peg, I'm not an idiot. But everyone has a talent, a calling in life, and instead of building a hole for the triangles, the trapezoids, the circles and the stars, we are, during the fucking most important stage in our lives, told that either we'll have to shed some weight and fit the square hole, everyone's ideal blueprint to everyone's perfect life, or that we'll get thrown in the trash bin and we'll have to overcome the odds to climb out. What the hell do you think any smart kid is going to do? No one wants to be a fuck up. Here's a conversation I run through every month or so.

Person: What are you going to do in life?

Me: Go to business school.

Person: You don't want to write?

Me: No.

Person: Anyone can do business! Don't you want to do something different? Don't you want to love what you do?

Me: No. For every Steven Speilberg there are a thousand broke kids wandering Hollywood. For every Van Gogh there are a thousand deadbeat artists. For every New York Bestseller, there are a thousand starving poets. I think business will do me just fine.

Person: Smart kid! I bet your parents are real proud of you.

What in god's name is that? I believe everything I just wrote there. That's not me reciting lines, I've grown to understand the logic of the world. The world has battered us down to the point where not believing in myself is the intelligent thing to do. There are risk-takers in the world, and they are the stupid ones. Unless they make it, then they are the genius ones. A lot is made by ornery underachievers of the fact that men like Steve Jobs were drop outs. Most of this is just said by lazy-asses looking for some slack, but there is serious intrigue to the idea. Some of the most successful people in the world, some of society's most brilliant innovators, took a risk, took faith in themselves and made a difference.

Who knows, Jobs (rest in peace) may have made a damn fine accountant. He was smart enough, maybe he'd have managed a law firm all his life, made $200k+ a year. Bet his parents would have been real proud of him. But he took a huge shit on society's blue print and said

"I am something special and I will make a difference in this world whether it be by the book or by my own means". And he changed the freaking world.

I'm not saying I'm Richard Branson, Michael Dell or Steve Jobs. I will never be as smart, cutting, determined or talented as those guys. But if I feel like I'm being oppressed by modern education, then I'd assume I'm not the only one. Furthermore, I'd assume that there are far more that are being beleaguered by the incessant chanting of the well-intentioned parents, friends, faculty... And though some like Jobs took the leap of fatih, who knows who else we're holding back? That guy with the nice house in the middle-class neighborhood might be more than content with his life, but maybe that guy could have been the next one that changed the world. But he, but all of us, have been given the mindset that our peak is greatness. People settle for mediocrity because we've been told it's unrealistic, risky, reckless.. to shoot for exceptional.

Mediocrity. That was the word I was looking for. Today, I feel mediocre. I don't get to draw anymore. I haven't touched a video camera in years. I wanted to take a drawing class, but I dropped it to make room in my schedule for classes colleges would give two spits about. I was signed up for a creative writing class, but I had to drop it because I was so swamped with AP coursework. Our education system has the best possible intentions for us, but by guiding everyone how to work for greatness, we've closed the door for the unprecedented.

When I was young... I was going to be something. I was going to do what I loved and I was going to harness my talent in the best possible way, and I was going to be something. I never even gave it a second thought. Why wouldn't I?

Today, I already know what I'm going to do. I'm going to eventually get my business degree, and I'm going to do my best to secure a high-level, consistent income. I'll probably be very happy with my life. It kills me how okay I am with that.

One Act Play: Pillowman - A Partial Success Story of Love, Lust, Drama and Triumph (part uno of deaux)

Since being unintentionally cast in Kennedy's speech program my freshman year (an experience I was initially not very pleased with), my passion for theater and drama has grown immensely. My first year at this lovely high school, my best friend Andrew Hanzelka dragged me to watch a practice for a group mime he had been enrolled in by the even more lovely Danny Yuska, strictly to spectate. However, when I got there it became apparent after some time that Andrew's fellow mime-r was not going to show up for practice that evening. I stepped in, just for one practice, to keep the natural flow of things... We made performing all-state that year, an incredibly distinct honor that I did not recognize the magnitude of at the time. The next year, I was cast as the supporting role in an ensemble acting, again with my friend Andrew, and again we made all-state. My first taste of spoken acting since being the lead in my 5th grade play was incredibly sweet, but I couldn't help but be unsatisfied with my role. I wanted to be a damn lead more than anything.

i get roughed up a lot.

This year, I got my opportunity. I was cast as the lead, Katurian Katurian, in a one-act adaptation of Martin McDonagh's Pillowman. I was absolutely ecstatic; upon reading the script I was euphoric. It was an absolutely fantastic piece and I already felt I knew exactly how I was going to play the character. And sooner than later, things got underway. Practices began, slowly at first, and we didn't have our lines memorized until the week before districts, but it began to come together beautifully. Sophomore Matt Larson, who played my mentally challenged brother incredibly tactfully and movingly, and I developed fantastic chemistry. Juniors Luke Gibbs and Jonah Heskje were phenomenal in their roles as detectives in the play's first scene. All I had to do was put it together myself.

It wasn't immediately easy. It was clear to my director, Mr. Hayes, who was so freaking great at what he did, that I was in my first lead role; though with new theater regime this year I had done my very best to avoid letting him discover this. I had to learn to speak more concisely, slow down my delivery, and really get myself comfortable. It didn't happen overnight, hell, it didn't happen for a while. I'm not even sure if Mr. Hayes thought we could put it together that night before districts, which is usually an incredibly shallow hurdle for most Kennedy speech events on the way to state. I wouldn't have been, we had been inconsistent at best, consistently mediocre at best. But it did come together, and at districts, in how often seems to be the case, we delivered our best performance to date. We received straight 1 ratings from the judges, not really an altogether impressive feat for districts, but encouraging none-the-less. We still had work to do.

TO BE CONTINUED, GOT-DAYUM.

Parks and Recreation

Until now, I've done a damn fine job of keeping my blogs free of any specific media debaucheries that I so desperately wanted to indulge in, instead pushing myself to find interest in the broader aspects of life (that being toilets, vulgarity, music and poop, namely). However, there is one current product of network television that can not possibly justify not having an entry on my blog any longer. Ladies and gentlemen, Parks and Recreation.

I'm not a huge fan of most of what's on TV these days. Big Bang Theory is drivel to me, How I Met Your Mother is kind of funny but fails to keep me watching, The Office turned into a caricature of itself and Community got cancelled. The one show that I consistently find myself engaged in, unable to miss another episode of, is Parks and Rec. The show gets so many things right that are totally missing from modern television, and I absolutely adore tuning in every week.

ron fuggin swanson

The thing that really separates Parks and Recreation from other shows is the character development. It's phenomenal. No, you don't think that'd be important in a comedy (or at least no writers do anymore) but when you watch the show often enough, it pays freaking massive comic dividends. The writing on the show is so strong and focused that absolutely every character on the show has notable depth, different eccentricities, certain qualities that make you love them that make you legitimately care about each one of them. Perhaps in a dyslexic interpretation of the Always Sunny in Philadelphia model, every single character is horrifyingly likable. Not only does this make the show more engaging, but it makes it a lot funnier to the acquainted viewer. There is no bigger payoff than developing Ron Swanson as a no-nonsense Tea Party badass only to reveal he loves riddles; when he giggled in support of this notion during this year's Valentines Day episode I absolutely lost it.

Perhaps similarly to this blog entry, esoteric content sometimes struggles to hit the mark for everyone. I've had trouble watching this show with people with very similar senses of humor to mine, but whom had largely been unexposed to Parks and Rec in the past very much for this reason. But to that I say, fine! It gets by in the ratings because once you start watching it, you don't stop, and if it's not broke don't fix it. Please. 30 Rock already delivers your 30 minute high-quality punchline avalanche, let me have my beautiful town of Pawnee to follow like a slightly more time-budgeted middle-aged unemployed lady and her soaps.