Liquid

On Ivy Day I was sitting in a greasy Chinese diner just a few hours before my plane would depart to Arizona, and as I suspected, I’d been rejected. Or, to be more concise, I’d been rejected by Columbia, and waitlisted by UChicago and Cornell, although the latter two you could basically call polite rejections. Maybe there was a small glimmer of hope within me, because it sort of stung when I read the letters. The hope that the world’s leading scholars considered me enough of an intellectual to attend their institution was dashed. I was just another kid, interchangeable with the millions of other kids around the world.

Starting off this way sort of sounds bratty. Boo-hoo, I didn’t get into a Top 20 school, now I’m going to cry about it like all those other snotty “going to an Ivy means everything to me” brats. So, I’d like to clarify that this event wasn’t really earth-shattering or anything. After all, I’d already figured that I would be rejected. I suppose it was more of a light wake-up call. I’m not sure if I feel sad about it, or happy about going to Ohio State, or whatever. More than anything, I just feel bored, bored with my life currently and what the future has in store.

Shipping myself off to a prestigious out-of-state school would have been a wild turning point in my life. These kinds of turning points are rare, but they can drastically alter someone forever. For example, if my parents had chosen to move to the UK or France or something instead of Ohio, I’d be someone completely different; a different language, different cultural ideals, a different lifestyle, etc. Going to Cornell or UChicago would have been one of those turning points. But now I’m going to Ohio State. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s expected. It’s normal, and was what I was probably always going to do. It will just be more high school, more of the same. Try as I might, I can’t escape the confines of my own small existence.

While I’ve been in Arizona, I’ve been thinking a lot. And after all that thinking, all I can feel now is boredom and resignation, and a loss of meaning in my life. I wasted my vacation in Vietnam, shut myself in my room all day writing college essays, because that was the goal I devoted myself to, a higher step that I could reach out and grasp for. Now, it’s over. So I’m not sure what exactly I’m doing.

People like to pretend that they’re doing something important. They say that they’re working on a new business venture, or that they plan to travel the world some day, or that they’re going to learn a new language, or invent a revolutionary product, or master an instrument, or become a professional artist. But these are just empty words designed to make someone feel important and distract from the meaninglessness of their meager existences. No steps are taken to actually achieve these things, or if there are, they’re half-assed nothings to give off the illusion of effort and progress. I say that I’m trying to get into a top-tier school, or publish a novel, or release music, or film a movie, but they’re all lies to make my life feel less shallow. In truth, when the time comes, I do nothing at all, and just continue spouting things that will never be true. And if I were to release a book or a song, what would change? In my delusional mind I would garner a mass of adoring fans, people who respect me and my work. But that’s just a pipe dream. In reality, nothing would change. Nobody would take a second glance at my work, and the few that do will say “that’s neat,” and move on with their lives.

As I sit here in Arizona and observe my family and their friends and the things they do in their daily lives I feel more sure of my assessment of everything. Call me cynical, but I already see the sluggishness of our parents, the stagnant air that envelops everything they do, the atmosphere that slowly clings on to my generation. Hopes and dreams already shattered, we go to college and get a job somewhere of little importance. We pass that same stagnant stench onto our offspring, and then we die, having done nothing notable at all. I see this future for everyone in the family. Maybe I shouldn’t be bothered by it. I don’t think anyone else cares much. But it bothers me all the same, and fills me with a perpetual lack of fulfillment in anything I do. I sit here in Arizona and watch TV, and I feel a vague sense of disgust with myself because the most exciting thing in my life right now is finishing a TV series I’ve already watched, but having nothing else going on I’ve designated it as one of my few goals in life. And so I sit there, stagnant, like everything else, and time goes on.

When I was in Vietnam, I was nearly hit by a car. Had the man not swerved out of the way, I might have died that day. But after it happened, I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t start breathing faster, my heartrate stayed the same. In some twisted, narcissistic way, I couldn’t believe that I would be hurt, or be killed. Or rather, I couldn’t believe that I could break the chains of my monotonous day-to-day. That I would lose my life in a motor accident, that would certainly change my life. And that’s why it’s impossible for me the grasp that idea. Because the constant, unchanging life I live is impossible to escape.

If I step out into the road, the man will swerve, and nothing will change. Or he will hit me, and I’ll spend a while in the hospital before returning to my dull existence, sitting on a couch in Arizona, and nothing will change. I can apply to a prestigious school, but they will reject me, and nothing will change. I can publish a book, but nobody will read it, and nothing will change. I can write a song, but nobody will listen, and nothing will change. No matter what I do, the facts of life remain constant.

I’ve long considered music to be the greatest form of art due to its unparalleled ability to evoke emotion in those who consume it. Literature or film is often highly dependent on the preconceptions of the viewer, and thus its messages can be muddied, the artist’s intent becoming blurred during the journey to the audience’s mind. Other forms of art have difficulty impart any meaning to the viewer; I would imagine I’m not in the minority when I say that dance does nothing for me. I find the act itself impressive, but am not left with much else for it. Music alone is the form of art that speaks to everyone, no matter who they are, as it has been around for thousands of years. Some people don’t read books, some people don’t enjoy art galleries, some people may not even watch movies. But everyone listens to music in some form or another, and it elicits the strongest emotional response out of every other medium.

That being said, I’ve come to reconsider my assessment of music as the greatest art form. Kind of. I’ve shifted my position to a different medium, which although similar to music, is a different thing altogether. I now believe that musicals are the greatest form of art.

If your first response to that is to roll your eyes and call me a theater kid, then I suggest you reflect on that stance and hear out what I have to say. Hopefully, by the end of this blog, you’ll be willing to engage with more musicals yourself.

A lot of people say that they dislike musicals, but I’ve found that oftentimes these people haven’t even really watched a musical before. They immediately write it off as boring, maybe because they find the idea of singing a story to be stupid or something. On the contrary, however, singing a story might just be the best way to tell it. Musicals have all the benefits of music that I’ve listed above, while at the same time also holding the power of storytelling like books and films do. If you like music, and you like stories, there isn’t any reason why you shouldn’t like musicals. I strongly suspect that the general public’s distaste for musicals has something to do with today’s culture of insincerity, or that people are generally unwilling to experience new things. Whatever it may be, I do encourage you to watch some musicals and genuinely engage with it.

Now, you may wonder what inspired me to shift my perspectives on the greatest art form. There have been a few factors, but it’s mainly due to one particular musical. Over the past year or so I’ve watched a few musicals like Chicago and Legally Blonde, both of which I enjoyed thoroughly, and do recommend you check out.

The one that stands out to me most, however, is Les Misérables. I genuinely believe it to be a masterpiece, and unlike pretentious video essayists on Youtube, that is not a term I use lightly. Even my favorite films and movies I struggle to earnestly call masterpieces. But Les Misérables is probably the most powerful and impactful piece of media I have ever seen in my life. The story itself is taken from Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name, which is already great by itself, but turn it into a musical, and suddenly there is a whole new layer of emotion added to it.

As the greatest pieces of art do, the story of Les Misérables is one that connects with everyone, presenting the human condition in all its shame and glory. Based off the title, you can probably guess that all the people in the story are very miserable; however, the point of the story is not to be depressing, but to rather show the perseverance of man through his suffering. Set during the French Revolution, it follows several different characters as they fight for their beliefs against a society that won’t le

t them: an ex-convict seeking redemption while society perpetually brands him a criminal, a group of young students willing to risk their lives in rebellion for their cause, most of the characters being destitute yet still hoping for a brighter future.

While we likely can’t claim to have been in any of the people’s shoes, it’s hard not to emotionally connect with them on a personal level. I am not personally an ex-convict, yet I empathize with Jean Valjean as he struggles to do what he knows is right, even when he only ends up being punished for doing so. I have not participated in a bloody revolution, yet I am inspired by the strength of the youth’s resolve to stand up against the government, to fight for their beliefs, to die knowing that they are fighting for the future of those after them. The story mainly revolves around Jean Valjean’s redemption arc, but Les Misérables is still able to weave together several plotlines that show every shade of the human condition.

If this story sounds the least bit engaging to you, then I urge you go see Les Misérables, be it Victor Hugo’s novel, the 2012 musical film adaptation, or my preferred version, the musical stage adaptation. The novel is of course a fine way to experience it, but as I’ve said, musicals bring a whole new layer to the story.

I think this is best represented in the video I’m linking below. When I first heard this song, I almost cried, though I was in school at the time so I didn’t. Regardless, it sent shivers down my spine, and is one of the most powerful scenes in anything ever. For context, the singer, Fantine, is a young girl who fell in love with a man one summer and had his child. However, the man immediately abandoned her. To care for her daughter, Fantine pays a pair of corrupt innkeepers to take care of the child while Fantine works in a factory in the city and sends money back to them. But then, she is fired after the other workers find out she had a child out of wedlock, and as a result is forced onto the streets, selling her hair and teeth to get by. The corrupt innkeeps lie to Fantine about her daughter and make up false reasons for why the ransom payments need to increase, forcing Fantine to go into prostitution to meet their demands. In the end, she is left used and broken. This song is a culmination of her grief at likely never being able to see her daughter again, of having all her dreams crushed by the reality of life, and of the pit of misery she has found herself in, which is probably why they called it Les Misérables. Again, I cannot say I have ever been in her situation. But I still relate. After all, we have all felt such intense grief before, of having all of our hope stolen for us with no way out in sight. In a book or movie, whether or not you empathize with Fantine is up to how much empathy you have in general. But in musical form, you’re forced to care, and the expression of grief through song is one of the most emotionally powerful things I’ve seen in a long time.

In other words, if there’s one musical you end up watching, let it be Les Misérables.

I think everyone has an obligation to vote, and I wouldn’t be against mandatory voting like they do in Australia. I also think that if the US had mandatory voting laws, then a convicted felon would not have won the 2024 presidential election. Or at the very least, I would like believe so, because I hate to think that the majority of Americans would actually vote for the orange man. It has to be voter apathy.

But the truth is, I’ve already become deeply let down by what I’d thought was the average intelligence of the American voting population. No, I typically don’t like to call sides of either aisle stupid because that breeds close-mindedness and radicalism, but I really can’t help but feel that way after this election cycle. I don’t think every single person that voted for Trump is a moron. Just a lot of them.

After Biden was booted as the Democratic nominee, I figured the election was in the bag for the Democrats, because after all, who could vote for Trump after all that’s happened? Particularly regarding his stances towards the January 6th insurrection, the stolen election conspiracy, and the fact that he is literally a criminal. And then, there is his embarrassing conduct during the presidential debates; I’m sure you’ve all heard Trump’s infamous line about the Haitians in Springfield.

Imagine my shock when I learned that he won. How? Why? I genuinely just don’t understand. Not that I’m a big Harris fan or anything, but her slate is pretty clean compared to Trump’s. This is the guy we’re choosing to lead and represent our country. Okay.

In 2016 Trump’s big selling point of his campaign was his (failed) border wall with Mexico. This election he is again targeting immigrants with his much publicized mass deportation plan, sending millions out of the country. Somehow, MAGA has successfully goaded half of this country into believing that immigration is America’s biggest problem right now. Pew Research Center reports that 82% of Trump supporters consider immigration very important to their vote, the second highest concern behind the economy. This is above health care (55%), climate change (11% but not surprising considering Trump is a climate change denier), racial inequality (18%), and violent crime (76%).

This baffles the mind. Trump has made immigration and immigrants into this boogey man evil, that the immigrants are sneaking into America and destroying in from within, and we need to kick them all out and make America great again. You could say that Trump’s entire campaign was centered around this McCarthy-like crusade against America’s enemies. And yet, is immigration really the biggest problem America is facing right now? School shootings are a common occurrence now because conservatives would rather cling to their fun gun range toys than prevent the slaughter of innocent children, and because the NRA sees each new shooting as just a hit to their public image rather than a reason to reflect on their idiotic gun control stance. America’s terrible healthcare system has been spotlighted with the recent Mangione incident, where people are dying or going into extreme debt for the mere crime of being ill and not wealthy in America, where the pharmaceutical countries charge exorbitant prices for life-preserving necessities. No other developed nation struggles with this. Just these two I feel are already more important than immigration, but not according to Trump fanatics. I don’t mean to say that immigration isn’t an important issue, but these people have been riled up into a vitriolic fervor against immigrants, and this is just sad.

The thing is, I’m not even against deporting illegal immigrants. What I am against is focusing our efforts on herding out millions of migrants, spending hundreds of millions to do so. Targeting those with a criminal record first is good and an action I agree with, but what does attempting to deport every single illegal immigrant solve? For those that are just living their lives here, paying taxes, and contributing to the workforce, this is just a detriment. Does deporting the man working a humble janitorial job and living a lowkey life make America great again? Are we saving America from a great evil? This whole project feels like another Mexico border wall situation, just another excuse to waste money.

Asides from the immigration policy, Trump has done and said a number of idiotic things. There’s the attempt to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which strikes me as some sad “America number one” nonsense. There’s the pardoning of the January 6th rioters, which really annoys me because these people are a threat to democracy, rioting over some crazy conspiracy, and yet they’re allowed to walk free for their crimes, with Trump fanatics claiming that they were “political prisoners,” even though they literally broke the law. Not that the law matters much to a felon.

What pisses me off most of all though is Trump’s comments about acquiring Canada, the Panama Canal, and Greenland as American territory, in particular his comment about not ruling out military force. I already think using financial means to buy out these countries is stupid, but that Trump is willing to attack our allies and lay down American lives just to fulfill his egotistical whims is infuriating. I’m sure he’d never send his son to battle, but of course this war mongering maniac wouldn’t give a damn about sending thousands of fresh-faced nineteen year olds to die in a foreign country. Not to defend their homeland or to nobly stop some evil Hitler-like entity from destroying the world. But so Trump can further his imperialist agenda. This is actually mind-numbingly stupid. And yet I still see Trump fans supporting him in this. I just genuinely can’t understand these people.

Thomas Jefferson said that “the government you elect is the government you deserve.” Although I believe Trump is shaping up to be the worst president in American history, perhaps this is just a part of the progression of democracy; the American public needs to see what happens when they don’t take the election seriously and put a madman in office. But as it stands currently, I am disappointed in America.

I considered writing a blog about the Vietnam trip and even started quite a few paragraphs, but I decided to delete it because it was all very dull and anyhow, you guys were there too so there’s no point in me describing it again.

I’m also choosing not to write it because I feel very bitter about the whole thing. While I was in Vietnam, I was deeply thinking about how my Vietnam blog would turn out, because I had a lot to say. Most of it wasn’t about Vietnam though. It would have been my negative thoughts toward the rest of my family, and how with every passing year, the word “family” comes to mean very little, if anything at all.

I go by a philosophy of honesty and sincerity. I don’t want to dress up my opinions to make them more palatable or easier to swallow. If I feel some way, that’s how I’ll say it, and filtering my words will only dilute the quality of my voice and result in a worse piece of writing. But, I understand that a 2000 word long blog that’s just completely hateful isn’t a fun read for everyone. So, instead of watering down my feelings towards the trip and making a disingenuous piece, I just won’t write it at all.

Instead, I’ll write about how the college application process has been. That’s made up the majority of my trip anyhow, so in a sense this still is a Vietnam vacation post. Also, I think it’s good to make the issue more comprehensible for the adults, who from my short discussions with them about the subject, are hopelessly out of touch with how the modern-day college application works. As for the kids, I suppose this might make them concerned for their future. Or maybe they won’t care.

Anyway.

To sum up the experience, it’s pretty depressing.

Prefacing this, I’ll say that getting into college is not hard. If you truly desire a higher-level education, you can achieve it (provided you have some cash). What I’m discussing is mainly the experience of trying to get into an upper-tier university, which is just a sad and miserable thing to do. And yet, like moths to a flame, hundreds of thousands of other idiot high school seniors like me are drawn to the allure of an “elite education,” and a “prestigious university.” Who even are you if you don’t go to a Top 20 University? Don’t you know that these top schools are the only place worth getting in to?

It’s sort of a status thing among us seniors. Get into the Ivy League and everyone will think you’re a genius. You’ll be the hero of your local high school, you’ll be validated everywhere you go, smugly mentioning to everyone you meet that you happen to attend a little school on the East Coast known as Harvard.

Everybody wants to mean something, to feel like they’re special. Getting into a top university is how us insecure high schoolers go about trying to tangibly manifest that desire. To prove that we’re worth something more than everyone else.

But for most, it isn’t to be. With exclusiveness and prestige comes selectivity.

I recall my dad saying that I probably had a 50/50 chance to get into Cornell, and I think that really exemplifies how out of touch the older generation is now with the college application process. Back in the day, the selectivity was still there, but relatively more lax. Now, however, the competition is vicious.

All of these Top 20 schools have an acceptance rate lower than 10%. And if you think that you  probably fall in the top 10% of the country and therefore could get in, think again. The application pool isn’t filled with your average 2.0 GPA slackers; it’s flooded with the best students from the entire nation all applying to the same schools, and still only 10% or fewer actually get in. You’ll have to be in the top 1% of students to have even a chance, because there’s no guarantees. Kids are out here in fifty different clubs, volunteering for the Red Cross, professionally playing piano, founding their own business, speaking six languages and having perfect SAT scores, yet they’re still getting rejected. That might sound unbelievable, but that’s really how it is.

The competition is so fierce that kids in middle school are already thinking about their application, planning how they’ll spend their four-years at high school making themselves seem like a good fit for their dream school. This isn’t a rare case; this is probably at least half of the applicant pool who have been planning out their Ivy League journey since they were fourteen, joining so many clubs and founding so many organizations that it’s impossible to compete.

So, no. I do not have a “50/50” chance of getting into Cornell. I’d be lucky to have even a 5% chance. When I look online, I see people posting things like how they cured cancer yet still got rejected, or I see people applying to the same schools as me sharing what their resumes looks like, resumes that are far more impressive than mine.

It’s all just so frustrating. I’m fortunate enough to be pretty secure in my abilities, and so I don’t feel inadequate when I compare myself to people who are smarter and more talented. I more so just feel upset that I didn’t do more during my time in high school to make myself stand out. But a lot of kids have mental breakdowns over this, feeling so insignificant and constantly comparing themselves to these super geniuses, even if they’re actually pretty intelligent by most standards. It’s just the Ivy League standard that seems to matter, and this ties back into the feelings of wanting prestige and honor.

The top schools want driven students who have been locked in on their talents and interests since day one, but that’s completely ridiculous. How can you fault a fourteen-year-old kid for not joining any clubs freshman year, for not knowing what it is he wants to do? Hell, people in their late twenties are still trying to figure themselves out. It’s just an impossible standard for anyone who hasn’t been drooling over a Top 20 since they were born or wasn’t born into a rich family. And don’t get me started on legacy admissions, kids who just get in based on their last name. The Supreme Court took down Affirmative Action, and now legacy admissions should be the next to go.

For the past month, I have been slaving over my college essays, writing, revising, and then deleting because it’s all crap and terrible. In all honesty, for a Top 20 school, my academics are meh, my extracurriculars are bad, and my letters of recommendation aren’t very good. With that in mind, I knew I had to write a god-tier essay to even have a tiny fraction of a chance of getting in. This idea of absolute perfection was always hanging over me as I wrote, knowing that one sentence could possibly change whether or not I get into Columbia or Cornell, and that’s why it took me forever. Constantly second-guessing myself, wondering how the admissions officers will see me if I write this, or if it might be better to scrap the idea and write about something else instead.

In the end, I decided to just turn the essays in. I was stressing out too much over them. I don’t think they’re bad. They’re okay. But in a sea of 66,000 other applicants, most of them having a far more stellar record, okay is not okay. Okay is terrible.

How can you condense someone’s life into a single resume anyway? How can you judge someone like that? I’m only seventeen, yes, but I consider myself to be an entire character, someone whose seventeen years of existence can’t be truly expressed in some college application. Colleges strip your life down to your academics and if you’ll make their institutions look good. They say otherwise, but that’s really what it is.

All of this being said, you might wonder why I went through the pain of applying to Top 20 schools. Yes, there’s the “prestige” and “elite education” like I mentioned at the start, me foolishly fantasizing about having the Ivy League distinction, but that’s only a part of it.

The other part is that it will be free for me to go, unlike Ohio State or something.

But the other, bigger part is this strange feeling of escape.

Sometimes I feel as if nothing I do really matters. My life is on rails. I do my schoolwork well, but not exceptionally well. I have a creative mind and express it artistically, but not in an astonishing way. I attend class and have As, and that is good enough for Ohio State. My life is headed there. I think that I can pretty much tell how my life will go on from this point. I’ll go to Ohio State, study for four years, get some normal job, live a normal life, and then die having done nothing notable. That’s how everyone expects my life to play out, and I don’t disagree. There’s no special expectations placed upon me.

But getting into a Top 20, leaving the state to live on my own, working under a renowned institution to truly make a difference, that’s what I’m reaching for. I’d be getting out from this average, nothing life and be out there, at the center of academic pursuit, actually doing something meaningful.

Now, I know that’s a little stupid. Great people go to their state universities all the time and do great things. Whether I go to Ohio State or move to New York to attend Columbia, my life won’t be drastically different, even if the Ivy League will try to sell me on the idea that it will be.

Regardless, however, I can’t shake this feeling of sameness if I have to go to Ohio State. I’ll probably have fun there, and soon enough I’ll forget about my Top 20 dreams. But then I’d be continuing down the set rail of life, none of my decisions having mattered much, never stepping outside the contained scope of my own existence.

In truth, I’m not getting in. Reviewing all of my submitted materials, I can say that’s not just an opinion, it’s a fact. I made a terrible video profile for UChicago and wrote some boring and unremarkable essays. I didn’t spend my time in high school making a difference. Objectively speaking, my resume is unimpressive. I’m not a genius. I’m not good enough. I’m just another name amidst tens of thousands of others. I toiled away for hours on end, all for nothing, nothing but to chase this sliver of hope that didn’t even really exist.

So there you have it. The college application experience. It’s all so depressing.

For whatever reason, the Olympic’s website lists it as just “breaking,” which I find a little odd, but nonetheless, it’s a sport that entirely deserves to be there. If you’re not in the loop, the 2024 Paris Olympics have just introduced breakdancing as a discipline, and for many it’s been the target of much complaining, as many don’t believe it to be worthy of being held at the Olympics. Although I’m not an athlete, nor am I an avid sports fan, I find their complaints to be completely ridiculous. So, I’d like to run through some of the common attacks against Olympic breakdancing and refute them.

One of the most frequent grumblings I have read is “Oh, so x can’t be a sport, but breakdancing can?” and insert x with pickleball or something. To me, this just reads as butthurt people boohooing because their preferred sport didn’t make it in. Advocate for your sport all you want, but there is no need to tear down other disciplines to do it.

People have also claimed that it takes little to no athleticism, and thus it cannot be a sport. I’m not sure how you can watch people spin on their head and perform incredible feats of flexibility and then claim that there is hardly any athleticism involved at all. All you have to do is watch a single match of breakdancing to find this assertion incorrect. And despite being such a laughably flawed sentiment, it’s a startling common one. I find this line of reasoning to be objectively wrong, and I struggle to see how anyone could genuinely believe it without being completely blinded by hate for breakdancing. Anyhow, I’d argue there are several Olympic sports that require less athleticism than breakdancing, such as shooting or equestrian.

There’s also a complaint about the subjectivity of scoring; how exactly does one deem one breakdancing performance stronger than another? It’s a fair critique, but remember that this is nothing new to the Olympics. Sports like artistic gymnastics, artistic swimming, and the recently introduced skateboarding are all based on points given by a judge. And when people bring this point up, they often seem to not realize that the judges are rating based off given criteria, and not however they happen to feel that particular afternoon. However, I understand that introducing the objectivity of certain criteria does not remove the subjectivity altogether. Still, I don’t find it compelling enough to strike off trying to judge breakdancing completely (and then by that reasoning remove gymnastics and artistic swimming from the Olympics). Dance competitions exist, and no, it is not “100% subjective.”

Some people also appear to be outright offended by the idea of breakdancing itself. “Breakdancing? In my Olympics? They’ll just add anything nowadays!” This is likely a result of breakdancing birth in the underground hip-hop scene, and so it’s not “respectable” like the other Olympic sports. And I’d just like to ask, what exactly is so classy about throwing a ball really far or shooting a ball into a basket that makes it more worthy of the Olympics than breakdancing? It all just reeks of ignorance, as people who have no exposure to the sport attack it because they don’t know much about it, and because it’s always existed in their mind as that thing that people do on a piece of cardboard in a back alley somewhere.

The last thing I’d like to address surprisingly comes from breakdancing fans themselves. It goes like this: by adding breakdancing to the Olympics, you are stripping it of its underground roots, selling out, and killing all of its soul. This is similar to what some skateboarders complained about when Olympic skateboarding was introduced in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. I find both arguments stupid. Something becoming a sport does not remove it “soul.” Athletes are not lifeless machines that just perform with no energy. They love their sport and compete with passion, probably more than the people complaining about there being no “soul.” And this complaint was voiced even before the first round of breakdancing even took place, so it’s silly to say this before even seeing any performances. It’s not preserving culture, it’s just gatekeeping.

Unfortunately, breakdancing is already confirmed not to be present at the 2028 Olympic games, so the chance for breakdancing to flourish under a new global audience has already been taken away before it could even start. One of the sports that has taken up the void left behind is squash, and I think I speak for most people when I say that I find breakdancing much more interesting than squash. Anyway, I don’t think people need to watch or even like breakdancing. I personally would have rather had baseball take its spot in this year’s Olympics. However, I do think people should recognize that it’s standing as an Olympic sport is perfectly reasonable, and that there’s no need to discredit it just because they don’t personally enjoy it.

Sometime in January I signed up to be a poll worker for the Ohio primary election because I thought it might be interesting. It was program for students to become more involved in the election, which they named something corny like Protecting Democracy (I just checked and it is called Future of Democracy). They ended up kicking me out of class so I could go to this silly training thing where they made me sign fifty different forms and then listen to a guy talk about how to scan people’s IDs, which I didn’t really listen to and there was so much information that I didn’t really bother remembering it. They also handed me a 70-page long handbook and a troubleshooting guide, and then they made me take a test on all the knowledge I’d just learned.

I ended up not opening the book until about two days before the election because I wasn’t going to remember the whole thing anyway, so I’d just skim over the important parts. And I didn’t even look at the troubleshooting guide. I figured if the scanner broke, I’d let someone else handle it. A lot of the book was mainly focused on the set-up and pack-up procedure, in which you have to document the serial numbers on tamper seals and replace those seals and it’s all very boring. I didn’t want to do any of that so I just let my coworkers do it, who were mostly all elderly ladies, save for the manager and another student worker.

On the day before the election I had to show up and set things up. Mostly I just stood around until somebody told me to go lift things or carry things or assemble things or hang up signs. I didn’t really do anything so I went home not having accomplished much, which was fine by me because everyone was getting paid the same anyway so I didn’t feel the need be a boy scout about it and be constantly asking if they needed me for anything.

On election day I had to show up at 5:30 in the morning, which is pretty ludicrous considering the set-up from the day before had me going home at around eight, so I would have had to have gone straight to bed to get a decent amount of sleep. I don’t remember what time I fell asleep but I can’t imagine it would have been far from midnight, and I was pretty irate when I dragged myself out of bed at 4:30 on Tuesday morning while the rest of my school had a day off. Once I was there they made me do some miscellaneous tasks, like making the other student worker and me put out handicapped parking signs in the parking lot. I should mention that it was freezing and snowing out there.

At six the doors opened and I was surprised to see there were already people even though it was freezing and still dark out. They’d assigned me to work the pollbooks unfortunately, so I was tasked with the crappy customer service job. Pretty much what it entailed was me asking for some form of ID, verifying their information, making them sign something, handing them their ballot, and guiding them through the process of using a tablet screen because most of the voters were elderly and were confused. It was all very boring. I liked the people who didn’t try to talk to me, because sometimes some real extraverts would walk in and try to talk joke with me or something and I’d have to pretend to smile and laugh, which sounded probably like “Oh… ha ha.” Not very convincing. There was even one guy who referred to me by my name because it was written on my nametag and that made me feel a level of corniness that shouldn’t be subjected to minors. The most depressing thing was that I was working from six in the morning until around eight at night. The hours should be criminal.

I’d brought a book and a water bottle and a little container of peanuts. They didn’t serve any food and though I had a one hour lunch break, I had no car and so I ended up not taking a break the whole time. I also ended up not even touching the water or peanuts because strangely enough I never felt hungry or thirsty or even tired the whole time. I did finish the book, and after I did I felt extremely bored.

I should reiterate how cold it was. Every single time someone opened the door and walked in a cold gust of wind would fill the room and sting my skin, and the signs taped on the walls would go flying and someone would have to tape them back up again.

There was a rule that didn’t allow campaigners to be within 100 feet of the entrance, so a little bit away by the parking lot there were these guys holding signs. They were out there for hours and one has to admire their tenacity to stand up for their beliefs, although not once did I ever get a good look at their sign or learn what they were trying to support or oppose. At one point one of the campaigners walked in with a sign and my manager told him he can’t bring the sign in here and the campaigner got all offended and was like “FINE. IF YOU DON”T WANT MY SIGN IN HERE I WILL PUT IT AWAY AND COME BACK. I WAS JUST COMING IN HERE TO ASK A QUESTION MAN. YOU COULD HAVE JUST TOLD ME THAT. YOU DIDN”T NEED TO YELL. FINE.” Then he walked outside and didn’t come back in and I watched him freeze out in the parking lot with his sign for a few hours.

Another weird guy came in at one point. The other student worker with me was Muslim and was wearing a hijab, and this guy came in was like, “What’s with the hood?” or something like that. Then she explained that it’s a hijab and he acted all surprised as if he’d never heard of that even though I’m sure he knew it was a hijab, in a sort of passive aggressive way. Then she had to explain Islam to this guy and this guy just had this lifeless smile and asked her if she knew who Jesus was. And he says, “You should do some research on that. Look it up,” as if she was so ignorant she’d never heard of Jesus before. Then after we handed him his ballot he tried to shake her hand and she explained to him that she couldn’t due to her religion. The fact the he only tried to shake her hand makes me think that he already knew that she couldn’t. Or maybe he was genuinely just a crazy Christian who’d never heard of any other religion before.

Anyhow. My older coworkers wanted me to switch jobs every few hours so I had experience doing all of them. The other two positions I had to cover was handing out the ballots and sitting at the ballot scanner, which were somehow even more boring than scanning IDs. The first one, all you had to do is hand out the correct party ballot. The second one just involves sitting at the ballot scanner, collecting ballot stubs, and explaining to voters how to use the thing even though there are instructions on the screen. I disliked sitting at the ballot scanner the most because I hated repeating the same instructions over and over to every person who came up with their ballots.

At 7:30 the polls closed and we had to clean up, which mostly involved me carrying things and lifting things and taking down signs and disassembling stuff just as before. None if it was very interesting.

They keep sending me to Florida. I hate Florida. It’s too hot there and the people there are the nastiest, most degenerate citizens of America. And I’m not just saying that. The people there are actually just filthy and impolite. Why do I keep having to go to Florida. I hate Florida. The worst part is that I have to miss school just so I can go to redneck Florida, where every town looks like a third-world country, and every city is filled with vapid tourists. I know I am 16 years old and I do not have a job. Nonetheless, I still like to think that I have my own things going on. Why is my schedule being disrupted so I can go to hellhole Florida of all places. I am in my junior year. I perpetually have tests and quizzes. There has not been one week this entire year except for the first where I did not have at least two tests. My cruel, cruel pre-calc teacher gives too much homework every single day and the homework will be going over what she discussed in class which I will not be there for. I hate make-up work. I hate spending time outside of school doing work I could have just gotten done in school. I hate not even knowing what the work is because I was not in class. And for what? So I can dick around in Cape Coral for no real reason. It’s all so goddamn stupid. Every time I’m off school they send me to Florida. I missed one day of school this week for a field trip, just one, and when I got back, I learned I had to watch an hour-long video and fill out a corresponding worksheet that everyone did in class. On top of that, I wasn’t able to finish my English essay in class so now I have to spend my break finishing that. All that crap just for not being present one day. I’ve decided I’m just not going to do the video worksheet because it’s stupid and I don’t want to do it. In conclusion, Florida sucks. And now I have to go write an essay.

I thought of sick new band name, Soundhole, but of course some deranged band nobody has ever heard of already took it. I’m thinking of taking it anyways though.

The lead guitarist was being super mopey and depressed the other day, so I finally bit the bullet and asked him if he wanted to cover a song other than Basket Case, and he said yes. Which was annoying because I had been practicing that for a while, and to just pull the plug like that irked me.

Anyhow, we switched over to Eight Days a Week by the Beatles, which I already had experience playing. It’s a pretty simple song that repeats itself throughout most of it, but when it came time to rehearse, we were a mess. I played alright for the most part but would occasionally forget the lyrics. There are parts of the song where John and Paul sing in unison which I wanted to recreate, but somehow both the lead guitarist and the bassist are impossibly bad singers. We sounded awful singing as one.

Our bassist somehow keeps losing track of where he is and can’t figure out how to rejoin so he just gets lost at the bridge and stays silent for the remainder of the song. He’s playing bass on a keyboard too, which should be especially easy. I can’t imagine his performance on an actual bass guitar. Those bass strings are thick, and he was boohooing over just the soft nylon guitar strings.

Our lead guitarist isn’t very clean. There’s not much else to say about his playing except that. It sounds very messy.

Anyways, our lead guitarist suggested we make a Christmas song, which I thought might be a good experience, and perhaps we could even release a festive EP in time for the holiday season. So I got to work on the songwriting, but it turns out songwriting is very hard. I have a very baseline understanding of music theory, which I figured would be enough, but apparently I need to further my studies because I could not figure out anything past the intro. My idea was to start with a traditional, slow, choirlike Christmas carol akin to Silent Night, before introducing a poppy electric guitar riff and transitioning into a faster, more upbeat Christmas song.

I set it in the key of A major. I don’t know how you’re supposed to choose the key, or why you would pick one major key as opposed to all the others, but A major seemed pretty Christmas-y, so I went with that. I decided the intro should be a piano or organ, since those instruments also felt very festive and fitting. I figured I’d start with chords and go onto the melody based off of those chords. I’m not sure which is supposed to come first, but I just figured it would be easier to build the melody off of the chords instead of the other way round. I settled on a simple I IV V I chord progression because I thought that sounded very churchlike. I layered a melody on top of that, and then I got stuck. I couldn’t figure out the transition or anything after that or if what I had written in the first place was even good.

Here is the intro:

Then I got distracted trying to write a midwest emo intro riff, which I actually think ended up sounding pretty good despite not sounding very midwest emo. I even figured out how to use Garageband so I could layer the lead guitar over the rhythm guitar. After that I tried to write the verse and got stuck again.

I don’t know if it’s my phone’s mic or if Garageband is just genuinely awful, but I couldn’t get the sound quality to sound right. And I didn’t know how to share a Garageband file so I just screen recorded this. But here is the intro I wrote:

I spent hours listening to pop-rock that I like and they made writing catchy melodies seem so easy. I tried to produce something that was similar but I only ended up copying them one for one.

I guess what I am trying to say is that music is hard.

 

I suggested Homebound as our band name, but of course my friend who looks like Jeffery Dahmer didn’t like it because he doesn’t really ever like any of my suggestions. And Homebound is already the name of a movie and some super obscure band anyhow. We spitball some other names but didn’t really get anything worthwhile.

I asked my goober Asian friend what he thought, but he wouldn’t take it seriously and kept saying dumb crap like “whale fart Hitler poop” as his suggestion. I asked him to take it seriously, but he wouldn’t, because everyone in high school constantly feels the need to be the funniest person in the room, and sincerity is nonexistent. He’s like talking to a Marvel character.

What we have figured out is that we’re going to cover Basket Case by Green Day first. I’ll be rhythm, Dahmer’ll play lead, and the goober will be a keyboard bassist since we don’t actually have a bass.

There’s a multitude of problems, one obviously being that we don’t have a drummer.

The second is that Dahmer doesn’t have an electric guitar, only a classical. He keeps texting me, sending me pictures of guitars and saying, “I really like the skronk on this guitar, the tremolo is very nice and has a good 9.5 inch radius neck.” And then the next day he’ll say, “Well actually, I saw someone say that that bazoinka reflex on the guitar isn’t wound tight enough, so I’ll get a different one.” And then he just never makes up his mind. He’s so obsessively caught up with the tiny, pointless details.

Dahmer was supposed to be our vocalist, actually. He hyped up his voice for a week, and he even made us miss the release of the FNAF movie just to hear it. And when the time finally came, he started pathetically making excuses about how he doesn’t want us to suffer from his Yoko Ono voice. So then he made me be the lead vocalist, which I thought was dumb because I can’t really sing, and I know he’ll get on my case about my voice all the time because he’s so particular about everything. I listened to a recording of Dahmer singing because he refused to give us a live performance, and while it wasn’t Yoko Ono tier, it wasn’t too great. And the goober is even worse at singing, so that’s a third problem. We don’t really have a good singer.

Fourth, the goober is not good at music whatsoever. He was never in band or in orchestra. And even though he is Asian, he could not play piano. His music taste is pure pop, any other form of music like hip-hop or even rock is just too out there for him. Most concerning is that he can’t tell what instruments are making up a song, even when I’m pointing them out to him. I tried to see if he could recognize the upstrums of the rhythm guitar in Say It Ain’t So, and he could not, even after five minutes of pointing it out. He didn’t know what a bass, rhythm guitar, or lead guitar did or sounded like. I’m not sure how he can be a keyboard bassist if he plays piano poorly and can’t even hear the bassline in a song.

Anyhow.

I’m surprised Dahmer let me pick a Green Day song as our first choice, because he doesn’t really like Green Day and is into more obscure, experimental stuff. A lot of the stuff he wanted to cover seemed a little ambitious for a couple of wannabe musicians. It’s a good thing Green Day songs are stupid simple. The thing is, there’s no lead guitar part in Basket Case, so we’re currently trying to write our own addition to the song so Dahmer has something to do and isn’t just standing there. If only he would just sing, then he could be the vocalist while I play guitar and the goober plays “bass.”

But I suppose none of this matters because at the end of the day we don’t have a drummer.

I was thinking recently that I really needed some new friends. That’s not to say that my current friend group is bad, but I’d like to expand my horizons.  My current circle of friends is currently composed of a pothead, this goober Asian kid who has the worst opinions on the planet, and this guy who looks like Jeffery Dahmer. Then I have a few half-friends that I don’t really see outside of school.

Anyhow, the three I have now are decent enough, but none of them I would consider ideal, and it’s why I don’t really have a best friend, not that I’m into the habit of ranking friends. The pothead is alright enough, and I can comfortably talk to him. On an intellectual level, I can sometimes speak my mind to him, although I feel he only really gets half of it. Also, he has a lot more friends than I do, so we’re not particularly close. He’s more outgoing and crass than I am, so we don’t fit very well together.

The dumb Asian kid really annoys me because he never has anything to say yet speaks a hell of a lot anyway. He’s socially awkward, deeply insecure, afraid of girls, and his form of comedy is playing a meme on his phone loudly, like a middle schooler. It is a sad thing to see. I watch him squirm whenever he has a girl as his lab partner, and I want to knock him upside the head and tell him to stop being so awkward.

Sometimes, when I can get him to stop acting like a band kid, I talk to him on an intellectual level, but I don’t think he ever really understands what I’m saying. I’ll go on a three-minute rant about marijuana legalization and abortion rights and why I didn’t like a certain teacher and his feeble mind could only conjure up a four-word sentence that does not add to the conversation.

Dahmer, I think, is the only one that ever understands what I’m saying, so I do like him better than the other two. However, he has autism, though not to the point where he’s dysfunctional. You probably wouldn’t be able to tell after a conversation with him, and it’s only after months of being around the guy did I suspect he was on the spectrum. He’s normal most of the time, but sometimes he has his autistic freakouts which are pretty difficult to deal with. He’ll get upset over something dumb like us talking too loud and then do that hand-shaking thing, like they’re wet and he’s trying to dry them. When he has these freakouts, I get pretty annoyed and the only reason I don’t tell him to piss off is because that might make his freakout worse.

But when he’s normal, he actually gets what I’m saying, even if we have a lot of disagreements. We tried to make a movie last year, but whenever I suggested something he’d go like, “Um… no.” And then he’d suggest something I didn’t like and I’d say it was stupid and we argue about our creative visions and nothing would be done.

For example, he said he wanted the movie to start with an alarm going off and a person waking up. I told him that was cliched and overdone to death but he wouldn’t listen. Then I suggested my idea, which would start the movie in the middle of a conversation the protagonist was having, and he shoots it down. For whatever reason he was really insistent on the alarm clock thing. We never agreed on anything because we both believe in our artistic superiority. I think he’s a crap storyteller while he probably thinks he’s going to make a movie akin to the Godfather, which is totally asinine considering we’re just three teenagers with a camera.

There were actually three of us there making the movie, me, Dahmer, and the Asian kid, so you’d think the Asian kid would just vote on one and we’d have majority rule. But an emptyheaded kid like that has no opinions, especially on cinematography and storytelling, so he just sat there the whole time during our arguments. And when we’d ask for his suggestions he would have none.

So what I’ve been trying to do is find a likeminded intellectual such as yours truly. The issue is that I’ve been finding most of the kids in my school to be pretty emptyheaded, at least on the surface level. I expected this from the regular kids, but it’s the AP kids as well. That’s not to say that my classmates are dimwitted morons, just that a lot of them don’t ever think of things bigger than themselves, and the ones who do have something going on upstairs aren’t really going to advertise them as such. And it’s not feasible to make friends with every classmate and figure out which ones have ever had a thought outside of schoolwork.

A lot of people in high school are just too afraid to ever be real. Everything they say has to have some layer of sarcasm and irony, everything has to be a joke, and they can’t ever be genuine. That’s fine enough, but whenever I want to talk about something that means something to me, whether it be things I like, dislike, and what I think about everything, it irks me when they just try to brush it off by retreating into their fortress of sarcasm. You can’t even talk about how you like a certain book without people turning it into a joke. I’d like to hear about things that mean something to other people, but everyone is too insecure to ever be truthful about their passions and hobbies and deep hatreds.

This whole post has been a little nonsensical. And it’s stupid to expect anyone to open up to you. It’s a process that takes months or years even. I’m not going to try to explain what I mean because you either understand it or you don’t.