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Oct 14 2009

Hallways

Hallways are the worst. They are just the most awkward place to be ever. I hate when you’re walking down the hall and there’s someone coming the other way who you just sort of know and you’re not sure whether you should say hi or nod or something. I also hate when you’re not paying attention and someone you know says hi and you don’t see them until they’ve gone past in the other direction and you worry that they might think you ignored them or something. That’s just the worst. What’s also the worst is the people who seem to think that the hallway is their own private make out spot. This is the absolute worst if you’re the only other person in the hallway with them. I also hate people who just stand in the middle of the hall and clog it up, or try to walk three abreast and bump into people going the other way. I also hate that you can’t walk three abreast because when you’re walking with three people one person either has to walk out front or behind and gets excluded from the conversation. That’s often me. You know something’s really the worst when it has multiple worst aspects, hallways suck.


Oct 13 2009

The Proposal

This is another of my creative writing assignments. I personally feel that it’s a pretty good one, but I’m not necessarily the best judge. Also, I just today noticed that I titled this the same as a movie that recently came out, I would like to clarify that this has nothing to do with that movie.

The Proposal
“Think I should do it?”
“Yes, that is an excellent idea.”
“Really?”
“No, it’s a terrible idea. But it’ll be hilarious to watch, so go.”
“You need to come with me.”
“No way.”
“Come on, I need a wing man.”
“Okay, let me detail what is going to happen if you go through with this. You march over there, right? You get here attention, maybe pull something like a, ‘Hey what was the homework for that class we have together?’. Then you go for it, you ask her. You say something like, ‘Wanna hang sometime?’, or if you’re a man, men make decisions, you say ‘Let’s go see that movie this Friday’. Am I right so far?”
“Yes, but I’m a man, you’re just a sexist.”
“Everyone’s sexist, women just as much as men. But that’s beside the point. At this point the bomb as been dropped, and the situation is about to explode in your face in one way or another with varying degrees of unpleasantness. Your heart is in her hands, and she’ll either hand it back politely, then turn around and wipe her hands on her napkin, or she’ll punt it across the cafeteria. In the first option she’ll respond with awkwardness, maybe almost as much as will already have been provided by you. This means she at least feels sorry for you and doesn’t want to just shut you down cold. She may go with the, ‘I’m busy… for like a while,’ or just a, ‘No thanks,’ maybe even pretend she’s seeing someone else, which based on your stalker-esque studying of her we both know is not true. Now the second option, god forbid. I know you have this odd faith that she’s really a good person but she’s sitting with all her friends over there and to save face she may have to with an emphatic, ‘No way!’ or something along the lines of , ‘Just who the hell do you think you are?’ In any case, the whole think will be a veritable nuclear blast of awkwardness and embarrassment and I for one will not be caught anywhere near ground zero.”
“What makes you think she won’t say yes?”
“I think the chances are very very low.”
“It could happen. Yes, according to quantum mechanics any number of things could happen, but will they? No. But this is not fiction where one can expect such things, and if you don’t like the outcome you can’t put the book down or turn off the TV.”
“So should you not turn the page to begin with?”
“It’s not a very good metaphor. Actually, I take that back. It’s a great metaphor, you’re just misinterpreting it.”
“No, you’re misinterpreting it?”
“How can I misinterpret my own metaphor? I made it up.”
“Never mind. You’re my friend, you’re supposed to support me in these things.”
“Okay, go ahead. Do it. I’ll be waiting on the next page, laughing.”
“Alright. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it!”
And he stood up and left. He walked at an even pace across the cafeteria, trying to look cool casual but coming off mostly awkward.
Damien watched his friend walk off with unease. The thing was, Mitch actually had a chance of a good outcome here. She might say yes, it was unlikely, but stranger things have happened. If that happened, it still probably wouldn’t go anywhere, but again, stranger things. And if that happened, his closest companion would have a girlfriend, and he didn’t think he could stand that. Just one big constant reminder that he was a failure, and the chance that he wouldn’t see his friend as much. On the other hand, if she said no, Damien would have to be all consolatory. Make some remarks about “Who needs women?” or, “Well it’s her loss”. There was also the fact that he just didn’t want to see his friend get hurt.
Mitch had reached her table now. He said something, and she responded in a light, cheerful way, probably meaning he’d just asked about homework or something. Then it happened. He asked her. Damien could feel the awkwardness from half-way across the cafeteria, it hit like a wave. He was surprised the people near them hadn’t all been incinerated or something. Not even a cockroach could withstand the awkward radiation emanating from this situation. Her face changed, her smile sort of dropped a little. She regained her composure though and said something back, though from what Damien could tell it was with sort of an uneasy manner. At least she hadn’t gone for option two. Mitch appeared to sort of stammer something along the lines of, “That’s fine, see you around,” and started to walk back.
When Damien thought about it though, at least Mitch had had the courage to go over there and do that. Damien knew he would never have the guts. The fear of what was on the next page kept him from the potential joy it might hold.
Mitch sat down next to him.
“She said no.”
“That sucks.”
“You were right, I shouldn’t have done it.”
“No, I was wrong. You did the right thing, and maybe someday I’ll be lucky enough to be able to do it as well.”
Mitch sighed.
“And anyways. Who needs women?”

The Proposal

“Think I should do it?”

“Yes, that is an excellent idea.”

“Really?”

“No, it’s a terrible idea. But it’ll be hilarious to watch, so go.”

“You need to come with me.”

“No way.”

“Come on, I need a wing man.”

“Okay, let me detail what is going to happen if you go through with this. You march over there, right? You get her attention, maybe pull something like a, ‘Hey what was the homework for that class we have together?’ Then you go for it, you ask her. You say something like, ‘Wanna hang sometime?’, or if you’re a man, men make decisions, you say ‘Let’s go see that movie this Friday’. Am I right so far?”

“Yes, but I’m a man, you’re just a sexist.”

“Everyone’s sexist, women just as much as men. But that’s beside the point. At this point the bomb has been dropped, and the situation is about to explode in your face in one way or another with varying degrees of unpleasantness. Your heart is in her hands, and she’ll either hand it back politely, then turn around and wipe her hands on her napkin, or she’ll punt it across the cafeteria. In the first option she’ll respond with awkwardness, maybe almost as much as will already have been provided by you. This means she at least feels sorry for you and doesn’t want to just shut you down cold. She may go with the, ‘I’m busy… for like a while,’ or just a, ‘No thanks,’ maybe even pretend she’s seeing someone else, which based on your stalker-esque studying of her we both know is not true. Now the second option, god forbid. I know you have this odd faith that she’s really a good person but she’s sitting with all her friends over there and to save face she may have to go with an emphatic, ‘No way!’ or something along the lines of , ‘Just who the hell do you think you are?’ In any case, the whole thing will be a veritable nuclear blast of awkwardness and embarrassment and I for one will not be caught anywhere near ground zero.”

“What makes you think she won’t say yes?”

“I think the chances are very very low.”

“It could happen.”

“Yes, according to quantum mechanics any number of things could happen, but will they? No. This is not fiction where one can expect such things, and if you don’t like the outcome you can’t put the book down or turn off the TV.”

“So should you not turn the page to begin with?”

“It’s not a very good metaphor. Actually, I take that back. It’s a great metaphor, you’re just misinterpreting it.”

“No, you’re misinterpreting it.”

“How can I misinterpret my own metaphor? I made it up.”

“Never mind. You’re my friend, you’re supposed to support me in these things.”

“Okay, go ahead. Do it. I’ll be waiting on the next page, laughing.”

“Alright. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it!”

And he stood up and left. He walked at an even pace across the cafeteria, trying to look cool and casual but coming off mostly awkward.

Damien watched his friend walk off with unease. The thing was, Mitch actually had a chance of a good outcome here. She might say yes, it was unlikely, but stranger things have happened. If that happened, it still probably wouldn’t go anywhere, but again, stranger things. And if that happened, his closest companion would have a girlfriend, and he didn’t think he could stand that. Just one big constant reminder that he was a failure, and the chance that he wouldn’t see his friend as much. On the other hand, if she said no, Damien would have to be all consolatory. Make some remarks about “Who needs women?” or, “Well it’s her loss”. There was also the fact that he just didn’t want to see his friend get hurt.

Mitch had reached her table now. He said something, and she responded in a light, cheerful way, probably meaning he’d just asked about homework or something. Then it happened. He asked her. Damien could feel the awkwardness from half-way across the cafeteria, it hit like a wave. He was surprised the people near them hadn’t all been incinerated or something. Not even a cockroach could withstand the awkward radiation emanating from this situation. Her face changed, her smile sort of dropped a little. She regained her composure though and said something back, though from what Damien could tell it was with sort of an uneasy manner. At least she hadn’t gone for option two. Mitch appeared to sort of stammer something along the lines of, “That’s fine, see you around,” and started to walk back.

When Damien thought about it though, at least Mitch had the courage to go over there and do that. Damien knew he would never have the guts. The fear of what was on the next page kept him from the potential joy it might hold.

Mitch sat down next to him.

“She said no.”

“That sucks.”

“You were right, I shouldn’t have done it.”

“No, I was wrong. You did the right thing, and maybe someday I’ll be lucky enough to be able to do it as well.”

Mitch sighed.

“And anyways, who needs women?”


Sep 17 2009

Creativity

I’m taking  a creative writing course this semester and I’ll probably end up posting most of what I write here. Our first assignment was to take an adjective and write a 2-3 page story based on it, this is what I came up with:

Creativity

John drove his car along the road on his way to work, a menial office job to pay the bills while he worked on his true calling, his writing. He had the music loud, it helped him to think, which was what he was doing now. It was moments like these, when his body was involved in some mindless task, that his mind was able to wander and drag back the best of his ideas. He noticed as he drove that an abnormal number of cars were jumping out into the street in front of him from driveways, their drivers looking annoyed when he did not willingly yield to their intrusion. He occasionally had to hit the brakes hard, which annoyed him because it interrupted his thought process. He was working on a new character, but was stuck on a name. A name is so important to who a character is, it has to fit them just right, like a glove, and is by far the most bothersome part of their invention. Throwing together character traits is easy, but finding the right name to pull them all together like no other could is a veritable chore. He ran through the alphabet in his mind, going through the “M”’s. Mark, Max, Mike, Muncus… none fit. He was distracted again by yet another car pulling out suddenly in front of him. The driver gave him the middle finger, a sentiment which John happily returned.

John turned his thoughts to earlier that morning, eating breakfast with his girlfriend, Christi, who had moved in earlier that month, just a couple weeks ago. The move had been more about convenience than anything else really, that and the financial benefit of shared rent. It was going well, he’d thought, and had several times now contemplated asking her to marry him. That was after all generally considered to be the natural next step one took after moving in with someone. This morning had changed that. She’s looked up from the newspaper, started at him across her cornflakes, and flatly said, “Maybe it’s time you started thinking about a career in something.”
“What do you mean a career in something? I have a job.”
“A job is very different than a career. Do you really plan to spend the rest of your life filing papers? You have an education, go out and use it.”
“Of course I don’t plan to spend the rest of my life filing. Have you forgotten about my writing? Did we meet yesterday?”
“Yes, your writing,” she said with an air of exasperation.
“What? Don’t you think I’m any good? Should I just give up and pursue a ‘career’?”
“The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”
“If you had any faith that I was going to get anywhere with writing you wouldn’t feel the need to pressure me into getting a fail-safe career.”
“Faith and sensible life choices are two entirely separate things.”

After that he hadn’t said anything. This was it for them and he knew it. No way would he ask someone who didn’t believe in him to marry him, and if there wasn’t the possibility of marriage, there wasn’t much of a point in continuing the relationship. He had thought it over through and through, occasionally he came to the conclusion that he might just be being petty, you couldn’t just decide to break off a serious relationship over one little argument. Hell it hadn’t even been an argument really, more a discussion. But it had also been much worse than any fight could have been. She didn’t have faith in him, that had been made plain and simple, and he could not live with that.
As he drove along the road he thought about this, and was suddenly inspired. This was great material, he could write about this. It would be heartfelt, meaningful, a wondrous piece. It could be just what he needed to jump-start his writing career. He wondered at how life could provide such great inspiration, how one such morning could provide the material necessary for a masterpiece. How wonderful life –

At this moment in time two things happened simultaneously. John noticed that his right turn signal was on, which he had not caught before because of the loud music. As he reached to turn it off, a car waiting to turn from a driveway pulled in front of him, this one too close to avoid, and he crashed into it. The front of his car crumpled, glass shattered, and the airbag exploded into his face. It was an experience that would have been worth writing about, had he survived.

This has I think one of my favorite lines that I’ve written so far: “Faith and sensible life choices are two entirely separate things.”


Sep 13 2009

The Beatles: Rock Band

So you take two great things, The Beatles and Rock Band, and you put them together. You should get something great right? I mean where can you go wrong? Actually there’s probably a whole bunch of ways you could go wrong but thankfully we don’t have to contemplate them because this game doesn’t go wrong. The Beatles: Rock Band is the perfect union of two totally awesome things, it’s everything I expected and more. What I expected was Rock Band with Beatles songs, and this definitely has that, but there’s much more, it’s an experience. I sat down with this game on Saturday and played through the whole thing from start to finish, and even though it only took a couple hours (you only have to play each song once) the way that they arrange the songs in order with detailed recreation of their performances and recording sessions I felt like I too had been a part of their decade long career. They clearly worked very hard on the graphics for game and one thing they’ve done is made the note run a little transparent so even when you’re playing and focusing on your part you can still see what’s going on in the song’s cinematic which are either recreations of their live performances or imaginative “dreamscapes”. There is much more detail in the character animations so it really looks like they’re all playing their instruments. But these really are all just things that fill out around the edges, the essence of this game is the music, and the question on everybody’s minds is “Are The Beatles’ songs any good to play in Rock Band?” The answer: an emphatic yes. Now, as a (Rock Band) drummer, I have to admit that the drum parts for this game are not very challenging as far as not failing goes. The only song I failed the entire time was “Money Can’t Buy Me Love”. The rest generally have easy to keep beats but what I love are the fills. When I first heard that for this game they were going to be taking out the option to make up your own fills at certain points I was a little annoyed, but I since have found out why: because Ringo’s are so perfect anything you tried to play would just make a mess of things. I can’t really speak to any of the other instruments as I almost never touch them but a friend of mine told me he thought they’d much improved the way the game reads vocals (which probably means that it just doesn’t), and guitar seems to be pretty much the same as it’s always been. There aren’t many extremely hard to play finger blistering songs (except Helter Skelter of course) but I’ve never really enjoyed those as much as playing along to songs that I like regardless of the difficulty, and these are all songs that I like. I can’t really think of much they could have improved on except maybe some of the song choices (no Hey Jude!?) but that of course is being addressed by DLC.

Final Score: 99.5/100, with the .5 being taken off for the songs that weren’t in the game but should have been.


Aug 24 2009

The Show That Stole My Life

A few days ago I made a very very bad mistake. I watched the pilot episode of Lost. The first four seasons of Lost were added to Hulu a couple weeks ago and I originally stayed away from them because I am not normally a fan of TV shows that aren’t comedy. However it consistently hovered in about the #4 spot on the Popular Shows list and one day finding myself with nothing else that interested me in the slightest I watched the pilot episode part one. This was a very bad mistake. It was a mistake because then I had to watch part two, then the third episode, then the fourth, then the fifth, and so on. Now, not five days from when I started, I’m about 2/3 of the way through season 2, close to 30 hours of TV, and I can’t stop. I think one of the things that makes Lost great is its large cast. An episode generally focuses on a subset of the main characters, so you don’t get bored with them because they’re not featured in every episode. The other thing that they do very well is the mythology/supernatural element. It works solely because of their isolation. Many shows, for instance, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, try to mix a supernatural element with everyday society. Buffy does it better than most but even then I still often find myself jarred from a plot line by the thought that people would probably notice what’s going on. With the cast of Lost stranded on an undiscovered island there are no people around to notice. The other reason the supernatural element works is because it’s surrounded with mystery. If any explanations were to be provided it might become a little bit harder to believe but because neither you nor any of the islanders knows what’s going on there’s the possibility of a logical explanation to all of it. It’s something they’ll have to be careful with when wrapping up the show at the end of season six. The thing that keeps me coming back is the way they very slowly reveal little bits of the mystery. It does an excellent job of making me want, or rather need, to know what’s going on, and dangling it out in front of me like a carrot in front of a donkey. There are however a couple things that annoy me about Lost. In every episode they choose a character to do flashbacks to their previous life which of course some how relate to what’s happening on the island and are placed as if they’re memories triggered by an event. I’ve gotten pretty good at predicting them, the most common lead in is a character being asked something after which they stand there with a stupid expression on their face for a few seconds before it cuts away to the memory. The character background stories are normally pretty predictable, and I’m never anywhere near as interested in what happened to them before as what’s happening to them now so when they place one of these flashbacks in the middle of a pivotal moment I get a little annoyed. Sometimes it feels like Lost could function perfectly well as a 22 minute show of just them on the island instead of a 44 minute show with flashbacks and constant “previously on Lost” reminders which can sneak up on you in the middle of an episode and feel placed there just to take up time. The other thing that gets to me a little is that there’s supposed to be 40 other people on the island with them but you almost never see any of them, not even in the background. It’s obvious that in a situation like this people would get together every now and then as one group to make decisions, but I’ve never seen more than 20 people in a shot. The main main character Jack tends to make all the big decisions and then it seems like the verdicts are just supposed to be spread around by word of mouth. The creators of Lost seem to realize this too and occasionally poke fun at it by having all the main characters never be able to remember any of the extras’ names, specifically one guy named Steve who everyone calls Scott who was an extra that died way at the beginning. The only other thing that annoys me is that the picture Hulu put on the Lost main page features all of the main characters standing together. It does not however feature ALL of the main characters, only the ones still alive, presumably at the end of season five, a point I have not yet reached. So I recommend not looking too closely at that if you go to Hulu to watch and don’t want to know of such things. At this point it would appear that I’ve written more bad than good about Lost but I don’t feel that the bad in any way outweighs the good, I just have more fun and find it easier to complain about things than to praise them. On the whole Lost is pretty awesome, if it wasn’t I wouldn’t be unable to stop watching.


Aug 24 2009

The Delivery, Part One

So as promised here is my weekly update, and I think you’re in for a treat. This is part one of my story The Delivery, and I do plan to follow up with a part two, possibly a part three, and I plan to not take a long time about them either because I’m excited about this one. This story has it all: humor, action, suspense, possibly romance. Don’t hold me to any of that though because I’m actually not to sure where I’m going with this. All I know is that it’s going to be awesome.

The Delivery

The night was pitch black, the kind of darkness you find only in tar pitch, and Dick Cheney’s soul. There was no moon, and had it been in the sky it would have made little difference as a thick layer of clouds hung in the air, blocking out what would otherwise have been a spectacularly starry night. It was the kind of night where it felt like if you were to turn your back the darkness might reach out and swallow you, thus Damien stood with his back to the wall under the light next to the garage door, watching the road at the end of the driveway. Damien was a man in his early thirties, with long brown hair and an unshaven face. He was dressed in jeans and a plain white T-shirt, which did little to ward off the surrounding darkness, and looked dingy under the dim yellow light bulb above him, which isn’t to say that it wasn’t dingy in the first place. The house he leaned against was a small bungalow, a similar color to that of his T-shirt under the light, and just as dingy. Damien stood tapping his foot in the pavement and lightly slapping his hands against his thighs, keeping the rhythm to a song, or at least a fracture of one, that was stuck in his head. The tension was getting to him. He stopped tapping when a pair of headlights appeared down the road, but the car drove past and he resumed his nervous habit.

Despite the darkness it was hot, and humid. The warm heavy air surrounded Damien in the same way the darkness did, yet the darkness at least had the decency to hover outside the boundary of light provided by the dim yellow bulb. The moisture on his skin was more from precipitation than from sweat. Damien thought back to the summers of his childhood when every year his mother would take him to Arizona for six weeks to visit her family. The desert heat was of a higher degree, but was of the kind that beat on your back rather than clinging to your skin as was the tendency with this eastern humidity. And it went away at night. Damien had only his mother growing up, had never known his true father, as by the time he was born his mother had taken up with someone else who didn’t last long either. So it had been just him and his mother, living in a trailer park which pretty much made up the entire town of Slacksville, South Dakota. Looking back through the years Damien came to the conclusion that life had not been kind to him. But that was okay, because now he had a chance to return the favor.

He stopped tapping once again as another pair of headlights appeared at the end of the road. He watched intently as the car made its way down the road towards him, looking for any sign of it slowing down as it neared the driveway. He was disappointed when as it neared it did not appear to slow, but then at the last moment it suddenly braked and made the sharp turn into the driveway. The tires screeched a little on the pavement, and Damien flinched, the last thing they needed right now was the attention of the neighbors. The headlights now faced him and he had to squint as the driver had not yet bothered to lower the high intensity beams. The car stopped just in front of him, and with the lights still facing him Damien was unable to see who or what was in the car. The driver killed the engine and switched off the headlights. For Damien, whose eyes had begun to adjust to the glare, it was if all the light in the world had gone out, leaving him enclosed in a cloak of darkness.

Smart people may already be able to figure out my main character’s true identity, figuratively that is.


Aug 16 2009

Drought

The title of this post is ironic because the weather around here this summer has been anything but dry. A side note: I really hate coming up with titles. Sometimes I’ll have a great idea for something to write about, open up a new post page and then stare at the title box for a half hour trying to think of something by which point I forget all the clever witty lines that I had prepared for the post and am left with nothing but a general idea which is pretty much square one. Anyway, this post is meant to address the lack of posts in recent months. I want to say that I’ve been busy, but I haven’t, I’ve really just been lazy. As I predicted back in January with my post “Winter” and as I commented on in the post before the one before this one this summer has not been the greatest and as I also said before it’s hard to write when you’re feeling depressed. A big part of the problem is the AP summer work I have this year. Every time I think about updating I think about AP work and how I really should be working on that instead, but then because I really don’t want to do my AP summer work I go back to watching whatever on Hulu. The other day I even resorted to watching Family Guy. Again a side note so I may briefly explain my problem with Family Guy: I admit, I do find many of the pop culture references funny, but they’re hardly ever connected to the plot of an episode, and the character development is shameful. On The Simpsons, the spiritual predecessor to Family Guy, I care about the characters. Homer, although often dumb, is a believable and likable character, as are the rest of Simpson family, and as a result I care about what happens to them in an episode. However on Family Guy the characters are unrealistic and generally unpleasant people and I would not the least bit care if an episode plot involved them all being run over by a truck. But again I digress. I’m going to try to get myself back onto an at least one post per week schedule. I also have some good story ideas that I’ve been delaying getting to work on, so I’ll try to get on with those.


Jul 26 2009

A Short Review of Something Short (But Sweet)

So by this point you’ve probably gathered that as far as modern music goes I’m into the alternative/indie genre, except I really hate having to tack on that “indie” because the bands I like pretty much all have deals with major record labels. Of course, an exemplary example of this genre is Death Cab for Cutie. DCFC is about as well known a band as you can afford to be while remaining a part of the indie/underground scene and while their music isn’t always as interesting or wonderfully pretentious as The Decemberists’ they have a good sound and there is always room for them on my iPod (which to most people doesn’t mean much but keep in mind I have a 1GB shuffle). About a week ago I purchased their relatively new EP The Open Door and have since decided I really like it. EPs are my favorite form factor for music releases because singles always leave you wanting more and albums always end up filled with the not so great tracks that you find yourself skipping over when they come up. The EPs that I’ve come across so far generally have about 5 songs, all of them good, and in this case available for $4 in the Amazon mp3 store. I’m actually really bad at writing about music other than saying I like it and don’t see how anybody else can not like it so I guess the best thing to do is just to put this video here of the first song on the EP, “Little Bribes”. The only thing I really have to complain about is that the video is pretty unimaginative but I didn’t pay for that so I don’t really care.

For more awesome music you should also check out The Crickets


Jul 7 2009

Summer sucks

Well, summer this year has been pretty much as I expected it to be, crappy. The first week was great, I was off on vacation without a care in the world. Then I came home. I have not as yet managed to find a job, and as a result my parents have decided to make life at home as miserable as possible, presumably to motivate me to go out and get a job. Even if I were to get a job I would still have to deal with the whole college thing, summer work for my AP literature class, and various other heavy thoughts that combine to create this heavy feeling in my gut which could just be due to the fact that I’m out of shape and overweight ujyh7n77777777777777777777777777777777n (head on keyboard). Admittedly, some of those heavy thoughts might be cured with money from a job, but I very much doubt that minimum wage is going to clear them up very quickly, so in the end getting a job would do very little to reduce the miserableness of it all. I feel overqualified for all these potential positions anyway, I bet I could destroy a company as well as any CEO out there (at least I think that’s their job, I mean that seems to be what they all do these days). In any case having a job would almost certainly be better than looking for one which just sucks. My mom never misses an opportunity to tell me that the jobs aren’t going to come to me, a sentiment I don’t fully understand. I like having things handed to me, therefore things should be handed to me, is there a flaw in that logic that I’m missing?

But I digress, I do have something I want to write about. The other day I saw this. If being stupid was a crime, everyone involved here would be put to death. Let me start with the girl herself, Megan Meier. Now, in any situation killing yourself is a pretty stupid and dickish thing to do, but killing yourself because someone on the internet you don’t know told you that the world would be better off without you? No one on the internet should ever be taken seriously, especially people on MySpace, and if you don’t know that then someone should cut your cable line, for your sake and ours. First, why the hell would you friend someone you don’t know? It’s the first thing every kid gets told not to do, why would you do it? Second, MySpace!? Myspace is for pedophiles and bitchy 13 year old drama queens who somehow have the very wrong idea that anyone anywhere wants to know anything about them, which I guess is actually a category this girl probably fits into. Third, this whole thing started because this girl was spreading rumors about the other one, that is so after school special, if you’re going to be mean to someone you could at least try to be original about it. Fourth, I can not in any way comprehend how you could care the slightest little bit what this person you don’t know has to say about you. If some person were to come up to me on the street and say “You know, I think the world would really be a better place without you” (I happen to know I make it at least 150% better), I would not immediately run home and kill myself. However, she did end up dead, and for that I guess some sympathy and respect are owed to her, even if just because the social convention is that you’re supposed to respect the dead, which is a totally stupid social convention, sometimes the dead people were assholes. The person I actually have the most sympathy for here is the other girl, Sarah Drew. Despite the fact that she is probably an even bitchier 13 year old drama queen she has a pretty awful mom to deal with and is stuck with the burden of what is sure now to be a pretty messed up rest of her life. However, I said most sympathy, which is a relative term, I really have very little sypmathy for any of them. This girl is still stupid for being so upset about whatever rumors he other girl was spreading that she felt the need to tell her mother and then involve herself in a revenge plot that resulted in the other’s death. The obvious worst person in this whole situation is the mom. What we have here is a serious case of helicopter mom, where the mom hovers over their child, like a helicopter, and it never results in good things. I mean, how old does this woman think she is? Parents are supposed to be the responsible ones who say, “If someone at school is bothering you, tell a teacher” or go with their kid to the school’s administration to resolve it. What on earth would make you think that you should instead make this other girl feel just as bad as she made your daughter feel? You are not thirteen and this is not an episode of Gossip Girl. I don’t even understand how a woman so obviously despicable could end up with a daughter in the first place.

I think quite possibly the whole problem stems from the first word of that news article’s title, Missouri. Bible belt states are the worst.


Jun 6 2009

An Update!

Wow, it’s been almost a month. I’ve been getting steadily worse about this and I’ll try to correct that in the future. The end of this school year has been a little hectic and every time I think about updating I think of something else I should be doing instead, then when I finish that I’m tired (as in, more tired than I normally am anyways), and I go to bed. The added complications of being sick, having my grandmother stay at the house for two weeks, and totaling the family minivan did not help much.

So anyway, I had a few thoughts I wanted to share quickly. Today is June 6th, the 65th anniversary of D-Day. Know how Google puts up the specially designed logos for special days like holidays and such, guess what Google’s celebrating today?

25 years too many!

25 years too many!

That’s right, 25 years ago today Tetris was released, and I guess in Google’s opinion that trumps what is just about the most famous battle in the history of the world. In their defense, dead bodies on a beach twisted to spell out Google would probably not have gone down too well. Probably the best thing to do would be to have left it alone completely, because instead of just saying we really don’t care that today’s the 65th anniversary of D-Day this says we think this stupid annoying game with colored blocks is more important. I guess you could say that it’s the single largest and ongoing genocide against digital colored blocks the world has ever seen. But the fact of the matter is, Tetris is stupid, I wouldn’t play it if it were the only video game left on earth. It has no point and maneuvering those stupid little blocks around is annoying as hell.

On another note, a while ago I got Rockband and I wrote an entry about it. One of the things that I discussed in the entry was whether or not it actually teaches you how to play the drums. I have since then spent a considerable amount of time playing the drums in Rockband and yesterday got a chance to try my hand at a friend’s drum kit. The result: I did okay. I’m not going to say I was really good or knew anything about what I was doing but I could play some beats that sounded pretty okay as well as invent some while  playing along with music. I definitely could not have done it at all without having played Rockband. So, definitive conclusion: yes, Rockband will help you to play the drums. It won’t make you an expert, but you should be able to sit down and play simple stuff  pretty decently.