Liquid

What I don’t like is European people in the Youtube comment sections spouting some smug smugworth copy and paste comment about how horrible the United States is and how it’s a goddamn utopia over in Finland or something. You know, you could be on a news article about a Fourth of July firework show, someone in the comments would say something like “God bless America!” and then James Hackett from England will go on a page-long rant about school shootings and healthcare.

There is a strong animosity towards the United States, not just from Europeans, but from young Americans and the rest of the world also. I suppose you could say it is a sort of counterculture, stick it the man sort of thing since the US has been the strongest world for a few decades now. But as you know I am a free-thinking contrarian, and so I would like to start my own counter-counterculture revolution. I think that this all started as a genuine criticism of America, and then spiraled into a bandwagon where the correct and rebellious way to think about things is to dogpile on America and start drooling over some Nordic country like Denmark. As if Denmark is some kind of heaven on Earth.

In class today some “free” thinker said that our grading system sucks and that we should adopt the UK grading system, where a 70%-100% earns you an A and 39% and below means you fail. Now, why is this system better? I don’t know, they never said. All they said was that it is better, and then acted as if the explanation was self-explanatory.

Here is unstated reason why they probably thought it was better: because the American school education is the worst thing ever, and Europe is literally paradise and does literally everything better.

That is something a lot of people like to say. “The American school system sucks.” Ask them why it sucks, and there is either no answer, or they talk about Finland. It’s always some Nordic country. And it’s always the people who don’t try in school who say this too. I don’t know what you expect to get out of a system you don’t put anything in to. When kids say that the American school system is bad, they just mean that they want to have an easier curriculum, or three days off a week, or only six hours at school.

To make it clear, I am not a US shill. I think the country has its problems. I think the country is too car-centric and you can’t walk to places like you can in Europe, for example.

But the way people make it out to be some sort of dysfunctional hellscape is absolutely ridiculous. I once saw some smug European say that America is a third-world country wearing a Gucci belt, and the amount of people I found agreeing is actually unsettling. It is one thing to say that the US is the worst out of the first-world nations, it is an entirely other thing to attempt to suggest that the US is comparable to a third-world nation. The amount of ignorance and blind rage you’d have to have in order to form this stupid of an opinion is actually impressive. It’s shocking how one can have so much hatred for a country across the ocean that does not play any role in their day-to-day lives.

Anyhow, enough about smug European people.

Sleepy Joe just handed out $9 billion to ease student loans. I saw this on the community post of this liberal news source on Youtube. I consider myself more right-leaning but I still use this news source because right-wing news is so cringe and I feel embarrassed to be using. Left-wing news is also cringe and makes me embarrassed, but I know nobody is going to get on my case if I use it unlike a right-wing news source.

I think it’s a nice gesture, what good ol’ Joe is doing for the country, but it does not remove the underlying cause of student loan debt, and millions more students will be racking up debt over the coming years, so this just feels like using a toothpick to break down a stone wall.

But you know, if Biden wants to pay off my loans in a few years, I’m not going to say no.

A lot of boomers are complaining that their tax dollars should not be used to pay for someone else’s degree. I think that’s fair, but there’s something nice about a society that supports one another. And it’s not as if Brandon is blowing the money on crack or something.

Basically, I don’t really care. Because I don’t pay taxes.

In AP Gov the teacher asked us what we think are issues in America. And this conservative girl went on an unhinged rant about Lia Thomas and how transgender people are ruining women’s sports. And there were some people looking at her like she just murdered someone. I personally did agree that biological men should not compete in women’s sports, but I do think the girl could have tried a little harder not to sound so unhinged about it. Even though I agreed I sort of winced and felt second-hand embarrassment as she started speaking.

Then I thought about it some more and I guess I shouldn’t feel so embarrassed about it. I don’t think certain topics should become taboo or that you should not be allowed to question things. Gender identity is a very large topic today and I had to do a whole unit on it in French class. And I admire the girl for speaking so brazenly about the subject.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I hate liberals.

Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day wears his guitar strap super low based off what I’ve seen from his music videos. In the Basket Case music video he wears it so low that it’s just dangling below his waist and he sort of has to slouch over just to strum properly. It sounds sort of silly but actually looks insanely cool.

So I’ve been fiddling around with my guitar strap to try to get it as low as possible.  When I was first figuring it out the guys online said I should set the guitar strap tight enough so that the guitar rests at the same height as it would when I’m sitting down and playing. And this made sense because I’d be already used to playing at that height. I had to set up the strap so that it was pretty much fully tightened and I had to wiggle my way into it.

Unfortunately, what I was not told is that setting up the strap this way makes you look like a total nerd. It looks really goofy, like a person wearing his pants way too high. I’d never noticed before, but all the guitarists wear their guitar straps pretty low. After observing myself in a mirror and wondering why I looked so uncool despite having a guitar strapped around me, I concluded that I should lower the strap and get the Billie Joe Armstrong strap level, because it looks really cool.

The problem with this is that it’s really hard to play. With my strap at its loosest my right hand can’t even reach the strings, which sucks because I look really cool when the guitar is that low. Adjusting it to the point where my right hand can sort of reach the strings if I hunch over, it still looks really cool and I can somewhat play. However, it hurts my left hand to play like that. If you want to know how it feels, stand with your arm limp and face your palms forward. Then mess around with your fingers and move your arm like you’re going up a fretboard and you’ll start feeling some carpal tunnel pain. I’m thinking either Billie Joe has practiced playing in this ungodly position just so he can look cool. Either that or he has freakishly long arms.

What I’m currently trying to do is find the right balance between looking cool and playing comfortably.

Homecoming was pretty bad. I showed up all by myself and strutted in with zero swagger. A lot of faces I didn’t recognize, the music was too loud, I stood around awkwardly with nothing to do. I didn’t want to look at my phone too much because that would be uncool, so I walked from the gym to the hallway, waited, walked back, so on and so forth. I felt dumb and probably looked dumb too. And there was a rage brewing inside me and my anger towards that snake was renewed.

After about ten minutes of shame, I found some of my classmates. I was not particularly close with them, but I still pathetically asked if I could tag around them for the rest of the night, and they allowed me to. So it was them walking around and me awkwardly following them, not really a part of the group. I made some small talk and joked around with them throughout the night, but I always felt like an outsider, except for one kid who knew me from last year and thus was a lot friendlier.

For most of the night we all walked from place to place, occasionally
“dancing,” or we just stood around and shouted at each other just to be heard. It was very thrilling. At one point we waited in line to get our photo taken, which took a very long time. And a lot of girls had their shoes off for some reason. My legs hurt from standing so much. And my ears were numb. Some party it was, just a mosh pit in the center of the gym, and groups of people standing around it talking to each other, and further away from the center of the circle were the people who were alone or too cool to do anything. I prowled the premises for vulnerable young women, which I did find, but they looked depressed and I did not want to be creepy. The girls who were not depressed were in groups and were good dancers and I knew then that it was a lost cause.

I was moping in the gymnasium, hovering the small group of people I knew when a girl came up to me. Then she asked if I had Snapchat. I said I didn’t, then she said that her friend would like to know my number. I said okay. Then she went back to her friend and showed me her number and I realized I did not know how to add a number without texting someone and the girl watched as I traversed my phone’s menus like an old man and she was probably going to report my ineptitude to her friend. And so the only thing I could think to do was just text the number, but I did not know what to write.

I texted, “Hi.” And I am ashamed and I am embarrassed.

But I didn’t feel ashamed immediately because after the girl left a sense of euphoria filled my soul and the guys around me started hyping me up and I sent a smug text message to that snake.

Then reality dawned on me and I realized how stupid I sounded. I mean, “Hi.” Really? And the girl probably reported to her friend how awkward I was being.

And the girl didn’t even approach me the whole night, so I got to the point where I assumed I had been pranked. She never responded to the hi either. This sucks. I hope she never responds because I don’t want to deal with it. How shameful my behavior today was, but I can only use this moment to grow and learn. I walked around for another hour or so and a pit began to grow in my stomach and I felt terrible and so exhausted. As I waited for my grandmother to pick me up, I listened to a No Buses album and that made me feel like the main character for a bit, and that this depressing scene was being displayed to a sympathetic audience. Two people were sitting under a streetlight as my grandmother drove me home. It was ten and few cars were out. I want to forget tonight, I hope that girl will forget my awkwardness, I hope her friend never texts me, I hope her friend forgets me too. It is better to not worry and only deal with it when the problem punches me in the face. I have school on Monday, and everything sucks.

I’m going to homecoming by myself. What I’m hoping will happen is that there will be some poor girl there also by her lonesome, and that is when I will strike. Or I am hoping that there will be a group of sympathetic senior girls that will take me in out of pity. Or maybe I will just hang out with the teachers.

I think I would feel comfortable dancing if there were a lot of people. If it’s just a handful, I’d feel pretty embarrassed. The strategy I’m employing is to try to ignore everyone and dance so confidently that the girls will notice. I also prepared a dance playlist on my phone in case the music sucks, which it probably will. I guess that would look pretty dumb, because I’d be dancing to a different beat than the song actually playing. But who cares.

I’m mainly going because I already bought a ticket, and also to stick it to my snake rat bastard “friend.” And I will make fun of him for being a basement-dwelling Osu playing weeaboo that never goes outside for any social events due to his poor self-esteem. And maybe I will even get a picture of myself with a girl and send him it and call him a turbovirgin. At first I thought I would make him feel bad for making me go alone, but I realized he’s not emotionally mature enough to feel that he was even in the wrong at all. In fact, I was telling my friends in the group chat that I would have to go alone after what he did, and he texted “glhf.” He must think he is very funny, and he must really think he did nothing wrong at all. The next time I see him, I will sock him the face, and he’ll be prying teeth out the back of his throat.

Even if I do not have any fun, I will take a lot of pictures of myself smiling and dancing and make him feel jealous. That is my intention with going today.

Anyhow. I went bowling with my friend and the rat bastard yesterday. I mainly went so I could continue cussing out that little turd, but my friend was there and I didn’t want to sour the mood. So I just told him off a bit, without the swearing or yelling. And this little worm kept on making excuses. He finally did apologize, but his apology started with, “Like, I’m sorry, but…” And that’s when I knew he had no intention of making a sincere apology, and that he was so stupid that he was doing the craziest mental gymnastics ever to justify himself.

It came to a point where even my friend, who was always impartial to the many spats I had with the incel Osu nerd, called him out for his lack of accountability, to which he continued saying dumb crap he probably didn’t even believe himself, and playing dumb whenever his previous statements were brought up.

So I spent the rest of the day sulking, and I kept conversation with the rat bastard to a minimum. Mostly, I just talked to my friend, who is far more agreeable and reasonable.

Here is another cringe thing that happened. As we were walking around town, my friend started talking about his girlfriend back in middle school who had cheated on him. And he mentioned that prior to them getting together, she had already done the deed with a sixteen-year-old back when she was twelve. I was initially very shocked and disgusted. Then I understood that usually when something like that happens, it’s a sign of childhood trauma. Maybe a creepy family member, or maybe some older teenagers did sometime messed up to her. So you really have to feel bad for the girl.

But what does the little snake take away from this sad story? He says “wow,” and calls the girl a “used rag.”

Maybe he was just making a terrible joke.  If that is the case, it annoys me, but whatever.

But here is what is more likely. This kid is a braindead incel. He is ignorant and does not understand that twelve year olds are not doing these things because they have no morals or standards, but because they are being exploited by people older than them.

Honestly, that makes me really mad. I didn’t say anything much then, it was just my friend muttering “What the hell?” and me going “Hey, you can’t talk about women like that.” It didn’t really sink in how messed up his statement was until I got home and started reflecting over the day’s events. I guess when someone says something so awful, you can’t really believe they would say that, and so it doesn’t really register.

I’m planning to get on his case about this on Monday. I would text him but I know this pussy would be too afraid to reply, or say something like, “I was just joking.”

Anyhow. I hope homecoming will be fun.

I am pissed. I am so pissed off right now. I will not write any swear words because this is a family friendly website but I wish I could. About an hour ago I was cussing out my friend in the school hallway very loudly. Here is why.

Two of my friends had said that they might go to homecoming. It turns out today that they can’t. But that’s okay, I still have another friend who is going.

Just kidding, he is a liar. I asked him on Wednesday if he filled out the Homecoming form which you need to buy a ticket, to which he said he did. Then comes Friday and he says that he did not buy a ticket, which annoys me a little bit that he is waiting for last minute. I tell him to buy one at lunch. In eighth period he comes and says they are not selling tickets anymore. I am a little stunned by this and I spend the period staring stupefied at nothing and figuring to myself. And so I tell him to seek out the history teacher to ask for a ticket after school, because she is the one in charge of all this stuff.

So after the pep rally, I follow him to the history classroom. There is a small line of girls who were also waiting last minute for a ticket. And there is a limited amount of tickets left, but it is fine because we got there before most people, so all my friend has to do is turn in his Homecoming form and claim his ticket.

But no. Because this rat bastard lied to me. He didn’t fill out the form. He never even picked one up. So he has to leave the line and fill out the form and then the tickets are sold out and I am pissed. Because now I am going to go by myself, and the one person who had assured me that he was going lied to my goddamn face, and had the audacity to try to gaslight me into thinking he had never promised any such thing.

This is the last straw. I guess maybe this insult sounds minor to you, but I’m so mad. You don’t know this kid like I do, and he’s always been doing things that minorly tick me off. He chucks a ball at my genitals and refuses to say sorry, even though it’s a known fact amongst men that any injury to that area is dishonorable and very frowned down upon. I text him a question and he doesn’t answer until the next day, and says the next day that he “fell asleep” and tries to brush it off when I call him out on his behavior. And you know what? This stuff might make it seem like he’s a punk rebel kid who doesn’t play by anyone’s rules. But no, he’s a little insecure Genshin Impact weeaboo that is afraid of social confrontation and taking accountability for being a poor friend.

Again, it probably seems like nothing to you. I’d go elaborate but I have to be somewhere in a few minutes, namely the bowling alley, so I can continue cussing out my friend there. I was swearing pretty loudly in the halls and I hope none of my teachers heard. What pisses me off is that he didn’t even say, “Sorry I lied.” No, he just tries to brush me off and downplay everything, because he is not the one who has to show up to homecoming by himself. Like I said before, it’s not just this, it’s a series of things that get me pissed off.

So I’m going by myself. I feel like Napoleon, after his country turned back on him, after all of Europe has exiled him. He’s literally me.

I am a contrarian so I reject what is cool and trendy and one of those things is homecoming. I would like to say that I am writing off homecoming because it will be filled with normie socialites and I will be sticking the finger to the man but I am attending this year. This is because my dad wants me to wear my suit a few more times because of the sunk cost fallacy, and he wants me to go to prom too probably. So I will have to be pretending that I am going to homecoming ironically because I’m just that much of a rebel.

I did not ask a girl to go with me because I am afraid of women and because the other guys are going all out with posters and showing up to their house like its promposal. I can assure you that there is no girl at my school that is worth that effort. Anyhow, if I did get a date I’d inevitably have to slink away into the crowd when they ask me to dance because I do not know how to dance. And then maybe she’d laugh at me with her friends.

I’m not quite sure what they want us to be doing at homecoming anyway. I think you are supposed to dance, but the school banned break dancing and moshpits, which I thought were the whole point. So I imagine they want us to be slow dancing or doing something dumb as hell like the twist. Moshpitting I could definitely participate in, but I don’t really want to be looking like a goober when they force us to actually dance. What will probably happen is that I will be standing in the corner looking like an outcast rather than a really cool and mysterious rebel boy with an attitude. And I will be drinking a lot of punch.

The dress code said to be semi-formal. I don’t know what that means but it makes me worry that my suit will be overkill and people will be asking what the hell I’m wearing a full on suit for and it will really kill the rebel persona I am building if it seems like I’m trying too hard for homecoming. In today’s age seeming like you are trying means you suck and are uncool. I guess nobody else will be dancing either because they are too insecure. So everyone will be standing in the corner, drinking punch.

I tried to practice dancing in my room so I could show up at homecoming and break it down and totally shock everyone. But I feel kind of stupid even dancing when no one is around, so I gave up. It’s just moving with the beat anyway. I can figure it out when I get there, and I am hoping everyone else is as inexperienced. I’ve never attended any of those silly winter formals they held in middle school. I never attended any dances in eighth grade because it was Covid year and I was a borderline lunatic sociopath, I didn’t attend in ninth grade because I had no friends, and I didn’t attend in tenth grade because I didn’t. My high school career is really something. Eighth grade sucked.

After much pestering, I manipulated one of my socially reclusive friends to attend with me. This is partly because if I have to suffer, all of my friends should too. It is also because the only other person I had to go with at that point was my bisexual friend who looks like Jeffery Dahmer. And I didn’t think anything of it but one of my other friends said that if I went alone with him then he’d try to hit on me. That perturbed me enough to start bothering my other friends to go, so he would hit on them instead. So it will be me and three other people probably. What we will probably spend our time doing is daring each other to ask a girl to dance and calling each other pussies for not doing it even though none of us have the balls to. Except for one of my friends, who has a girlfriend, so he’s immune to that talk. It makes me wonder if he will ditch us for his girlfriend when the dance starts, in which case us three miserable bachelors will jeer at him while being secretly jealous.

What I want to do is to show up on stage at homecoming and start shredding the guitar and playing some sick moshpit-starting song. I told my friend that we should start a punk-rock band, and this moron said that punk-rock sucks because it’s just being loud and screaming. He has not heard a punk-rock song in his life, but he was acting like he knew all about it, which pissed me off (. And this guy had the audacity to say he listens to Beethoven. Like hell he does. Anyone who says they enjoy classical music regularly is a liar and they only want to seem culture. People who say they listen to classical music just don’t listen to music. I hold grudges, and I will not allow that friend into my punk-rock band, which will have a really sick indie name like One-Eyed Raven and we will be cooler and superior to everyone else in the school.

Anyhow. Homecoming sucks. If you enjoy it, you are a phony, and fake as hell.

When I saw the first trailer for Oppenheimer I thought it was about a man in a suit killing zombies or something in a fiery post-apocalyptic hellscape. Unfortunately, it is about Robert Oppenheimer, father of the nuclear bomb. I also recall hearing that Christopher Nolan was going to drop a real nuke for the movie, but that was sadly just a joke. People were really losing their minds over the fact that the movie uses mostly practical effects. I think that’s not so crazy though because it’s a movie about a real person that spends most of his time thinking. I’m not sure why that would call for any crazy CGI except for the nuke part.

I haven’t seen most of Nolan’s movies, but I do think this movie is most similar to Dunkirk, which is also based on a real event and keeps a nonstop pace. For a movie about all this boring science stuff, it goes very fast and never lingers on a single scene for more than a few minutes. In a way, it’s like watching a collage of memories from Oppenheimer’s life. I guess it would be pretty boring if it did slow down since the topic isn’t exactly action-packed, but I’d still like a chance for the viewer to breathe every once in a while. Even Dunkirk had its rare moments of calm where the viewer can fully digest everything that was happening. However, Oppenheimer is still three hours long despite its rapid-fire pacing, so I imagine any slowed down sections would increase the movie’s length to an unwatchable amount.

Oppenheimer does assume that the viewer already has at least a vague idea of the atomic bomb and everything that happened in the mid twentieth century. Of course, some things are just common knowledge, like World War 2 and the anti-communist sentiment in the United States, so the film doesn’t even bother spelling these things out. But there are things I think could have been elaborated on a bit more. For example, I knew there was a civil war in Spain, though couldn’t remember over what, and I was especially unsure of how the war in Spain tied into Oppenheimer potentially being a communist. Another thing I wasn’t aware of was Strauss’ confirmation hearing over his nomination as Secretary of Commerce, and so I ended up mistaking those scenes as part of Oppenheimer’s trial until near the end. But it’s entirely possible that the film straight up said “This is Strauss’ confirmation hearing,” and I just missed it, so I won’t say too much on that. On the flip side, the movie’s biggest plot twist is spoiled if you know too much about history. So, there’s that.

Regardless, it’s a pretty good movie. Nolan does a good job of putting the audience in Oppenheimer’s shoes, giving insight into how a genius understands the world through a completely different lens than everyone else. The awe and horror of the nuke is captured through these silent close up shots, one of the few times the movie is ever quiet. Then it blasts your eardrums as the explosion gets to the amazed spectators, as if the astonishment is fading away and the harsh reality sets in that humanity as just harnessed the power of a god. For a biographical film, it is very interesting. I give it a 2/10.

I saw the Barbie movie with my droogs the other day. Naturally, I had assumed the movie was a PG family fun adventure, so I was pretty shocked when all these jokes about genitalia happened. Turns out, the movie is rated PG-13. It’s not that I wasn’t expecting any adult humor, but I figured it would be more subtle so the kids wouldn’t know. But Barbie straight up says “penis” and “vagina” in the movie. I was pretty shocked when I heard that. For the most part I found the movie pretty dang funny, especially the scenes with Ken in them. It’s like Marvel humor, but actually funny. There are jokes that I think are too on the nose, like the part where all the Kens are saying that they’ll “beach” each other off, but for the most part, the jokes land. As a comedy movie, I highly recommend it.

As for the plot. The plot sure is something. Basically, after Barbie slowly gains humanlike symptoms, she has to leave Barbieland for the real world to find her owner, cheer her up, and become a normal toy again. So, Barbie and Ken head to LA where Barbie is immediately sexually harassed by every man in the city and Ken becomes enamored with the patriarchal society of LA, which is vastly different from the matriarchal Barbieland he is used to. Yes, this is real, this is in fact the Barbie movie. Hijinks ensue, Ken goes back to Barbieland to establish the patriarchy there. Meanwhile, Barbie finds her owner, a secretary at the Mattel, as well as her annoying as hell bratty teen daughter. There’s this really dumb scene where Barbie tries to talk to the little brat and the teen calls Barbie a fascist and an enemy of feminism. Yes, this is real, this is in fact, still the Barbie movie I am discussing. Anyhow, Barbie and her two new pals head back to Barbieland. Except, it has been turned into Kenland, because Ken has turned all of the Barbies into brainwashed slaves and now Kens rule the whole town. This makes Barbie very depressed and she falls into a catatonic state. Then, Barbie’s owner and the annoying little brat are leaving Barbieland when Michael Cera pops up into the back of their car because he wants to flee Barbieland as well, HOWEVER, the Kens are building a wall to stop them from leaving, HOWEVER, the Kens don’t know how to build sideways and can only build their wall straight up, HOWEVER, the Kens stop building the wall to stop the trio from leaving, HOWEVER, MICHAEL CERA KNOWS MARTIAL ARTS AND BEATS THE CRAP OUT OF THE KENS SINGLEHANDEDLY AND THIS INSPIRES BARBIE’S OWNER AND HER LITTLE TURD TO HEAD BACK TO BARBIELAND AND STOP THE PATRIARCHY. YES, THIS IS REAL, THIS IS IN FACT THE BARBIE MOVIE PRESENTED TO YOU BY MATTEL.

Anyway. Barbie’s owner meets up with the resistance group of discontinued Barbies who are trying to find a way to rebel against the Kens. Then, Barbie’s owner goes on an unhinged rant about society’s expectations of women and how she feels oppressed, and it turns out that this can cure brainwashed Barbies. So Barbie is shaken out of her coma and the resistance group starts kidnapping all of the other Barbies to cure them of their brainwashing, which basically is just them shoving them in a van and subjecting them to feminist propaganda. They have to be fast however, because an election is coming up where all the Kens are going to vote to change the constitution to officially turn Barbieland into a patriarchal society. The resistance group’s solution to this is to of course, take away the Kens’ ability to vote. So all the Barbies are cured, they nudge the Kens into waging a civil war against each other, and while the Kens are distracted the Barbies vote to not be a patriarchy. Thus, the Kens become the second-class citizens once more, Barbieland is restored, Barbie becomes a human, all is well. It sure is something. I liked the part where all the Kens were dancing.

Honestly, I thought the ending was going to be the Barbies and Kens learning that not one gender should have power over the other, but it just ends with the Barbies regaining total control of the government. They do sort of imply that things might eventually change, but they don’t show anything actually changing. It’s feels very off-kilter and hypocritical to the movie’s central theme to have it end in such a way. But I’m not going to go on a Ben Shapiro rant about it because I’m not unhinged. So that’s really all I have to say.

School is starting up again soon which sucks because I really hate school. I also have to take AP Psychology because I didn’t have enough room to fit Debate and Creative Writing into my schedule, so it was either Psych or something dumb like Ceramics or Art. I’m taking four AP classes this year which is pretty daunting, because I got burnt out from taking just AP World last year. And AP Physics is supposed to be the hardest exam, so that’s not very comforting. To my surprise, there seems to be a whole culture of AP students who have their own online community dedicating to studying the AP material and ranking the AP exams by difficulty. I’m not a nerd so I don’t really want to join up with those sorts, but I’ve been checking out their up on their difficulty tier list, and the results are not looking good. And according to a lot of people, junior year is the toughest year grades-wise. So I’ll have to deal with four AP exams as well as the SAT or ACT or whatever it is I’m supposed to be taking. School sucks balls. I’d rather be working the fields as an uneducated son of a farmer back in the 1800s. Send me to the coal mines or something.

AP exams are hell. If they were purely multiple choice and a few short response questions, I wouldn’t really care. But timed essays. I really hate timed essays. I remember my hand being sore as hell, the clock was ticking and every second spent thinking of what to write was time not well spent. I’m the kind of guy who likes to think thoroughly about what I’m writing before I actually put pen to paper, not just diving straight in with no idea. But this isn’t encouraged in the AP exam because they give you hardly any time to write anything at all, so I spent the first few minutes thinking by the final minute I was on fire trying to cram stuff down. You have an hour to read several documents and write an essay about them. I was making a lot of stuff up in my essay, I will say that much. There was a question about how Chinese culture had affected Asian societies other than Korea, and there was probably something about Confucianism or something, but I blanked and just said that the architecture in Japan’s capital was very reminiscent of Chinese architecture. I knew it was flimsy, but time was running out and I couldn’t think of anything else. Now that I’ve searched it up, this is sort of correct, but I wasn’t really specific on how Japan and China had similar architecture. One thing the AP scorers really like is when you’re specific, because it makes it look like you know a lot. My best work revolved around France because I take French, and I was really hamming it up and quoting stuff in French instead of English because that probably made it look more professional. “Liberte, egalite, et fraternite, which translates into Liberty, equality, and brotherhood,” I wrote, which must have really impressed the scorers.

Aside from the a few panic attacks, I did pretty well on the exam. Funny thing is, if I take it again now, I would definitely fail. I can’t recall anything I did last year. Just looking at the released AP questions now has me scratching my head, making me wonder how I even answered these questions in May. I am fully convinced that school only tests memorization, and does not actually teach anything.

In seventh grade I had to write a personal essay on what my room looked like. I couldn’t really say much except “This is where I sleep and change my clothes.” You know, all of my classmates had wild stuff in their room, beanbags, whole desks to study on, Lego X-Wings displayed on shelves, a giant bed, some even had a TV. And I don’t have crap, save for a drawer with half of the compartments nonfunctional. I’ve been thinking about it, how could I ever invite a girl into my room? “Make yourself comfortable,” I’d say, and gesture towards the sports themed walls and the toy cars glued to my bed and the Snoopy bedsheets and the illustrations of footballs on my blanket.

If I had it my way, I would have a whole desk and bookshelf in my room, maybe a beanbag too. You know, bookshelves with stuff like The Grapes of Wrath on it scream “I’m an intellectual,” which is definitely the vibe I’d like to give off. Funny story, I actually have two copies of The Grapes of Wrath. Well, not very funny, and not really a story either, so never mind. Anyhow, I’d display all of my video game cases and books the same way people display their sports trophies or their Lego sculptures. It’d really showcase my very quirky and intellectual persona. Maybe I’d even hang a Green Day poster up or something to make it seem like I actually care that much about music. “What band is that?” my visitors would ask, and I’d respond pompously, “Why, my unlearned friend, that is the much renowned pop punk band, Green Day. Yes, my taste is much more exquisite than yours.” And then I’d whip out my American Idiot record and start blasting it on a gramophone. And then I’d go, “Say, have you fellas ever heard of Weezer?” And then we’d start imitating the lick from Buddy Holly.

My fingertips are tough and raisinlike from playing the guitar. And I didn’t even know this, but turns out that I’d been playing a classical guitar at Cape Coral, not an acoustic guitar. I didn’t even know that there was such thing as a classical guitar. Here in Ohio, there’s also only a classical, no acoustic. Still, I can’t really hear the difference between classical and acoustic. So really the only difference is that using a pick on a classical kind of sucks, and now I just use my hand. And barre chords are a lot easier on classical, which makes me wonder how bad my barre chords are going to be when I play an acoustic after being used to classical. Still, it feels sort of a waste to get an acoustic when the classical is so similar. Still, I’ve been thinking about asking my mom for an electric for Christmas, purely because electric is cool as hell. I don’t know how much mileage I’d get out of an electric, if I’d prefer it to the more natural sound of the classical, or if I could even figure out all the technical stuff I’d have to do with it. And I still don’t know if playing guitar is something I’m dedicated to, or just a passing hobby I picked up so I can play Green Day songs. But electric guitar makes me look cool. I’d have it set up in the corner of my room and people would say, “Wow, you play guitar? Can you play the Weezer lick?” You know, it wouldn’t be like those pansy acoustic strumming country rednecks playing outside in the college campus singing Country Roads all the damn time.

I guess the main drawback of an electric compared to acoustic is that it doesn’t really sound great as a solo performance; I’d need a whole band to sound nice. And then I’d have to learn a bunch of music theory, which I don’t want to do. Also, I find musicians to be annoying. Those dang band kids, they act like a bunch of lunatics. I hate band kids.

I got a new phone, the iPhone 14. Up until then I’d been using the ancient 6S+, a hand-me-down from my mom. There isn’t much difference between the old phone and the new one, except one does not have a home button and has better camera quality. I was actually looking forward to the better camera since the 6S+ has an eighteenth-century quality to it. This is coming from a person who doesn’t even usually notice if a video is in 480p. The camera on the 6S+ is doo doo. The iPhone14 is noticeably better, but not exactly the seven years of technological advancement I had expected; it’s no replacement for any decent camera. And maybe I’m just old and can’t get with the times, but the removal of the home button was always odd to me. Apparently it was to make room for more screen. I guess that makes sense, but I usually prefer tactile feedback over tapping a glass screen. More unforgivable however is the removal of the headphone jack, presumably done to sell more of their dumb as hell Airpods, which are essentially ugly marshmallows that cost a hundred dollars, and anyone who buys them is an Apple apologist, a braindead shill, and also probably bought the $999 Apple Pro Stand.

Anyhow. I’ll have to dig around for some Bluetooth ear buds then. Some features of the iPhone 14 that I didn’t mention include Face ID. It’s decently useful. I was going to list some more features but I honestly can’t think of any. As an upgrade to an eight year old phone, it really falls flat. People like to clown on Apple for releasing the same phone every year. These people are mostly Samsung bootlickers, and their opinions are typically irrelevant. However, there is some truth to this sentiment. I do wish we would have the next big selling feature already, the way the jump from button phones to touch screen was. In other words, Steve Jobs, up your game!!!

I also have a new number. I notified only a few people that I was changing numbers. Some of my classmates I didn’t really feel like telling because we’re not that close and it’d be weird if I told them just for them to not really care. We don’t talk much anyway. I keep getting texts and calls from random people and they all think my name is Hector, and Hector if you are reading this you need to pay your bills NOW. In other words, Hector needs to get his act together and start paying his taxes, because I am sick of getting random calls so early in the morning!!!

I got logged out of Spotify when I switched phones. I couldn’t remember my password since I made the account six years ago when I first got my phone, so I decided to just make a new one. That means I’ve lost all of my old playlists, although I don’t really care about them at all. They all consist of Maroon 5 and One Republic, so nothing much is being lost. I’ve been on the fence on whether or not I should buy Spotify Premium.  Sometimes I think it’s worth it so I don’t have to hear “Want a break from the ads?” being blasted into my eardrums every minute. But of course, why pay for what is free? Most of the time I just use Youtube to listen to music because I can actually pick a song and listen to it, and if an ad shows up, it’s usually a five-second skippable one. The only time I ever use Spotify is if I want my phone to be off when I listen, which isn’t very often. And sometimes, Spotify doesn’t even have the music I want to listen to.

Some people treat music like it’s some sort of competition to see who has the most varied and unique taste. I guess it’s sort of the way how some people think they’re superior for reading old, obscure literature. Both are pretty snobby, but the thing with books is that it actually takes effort and thought to read through the whole thing. That at least provides grounds for the claim of cultural superiority. You have to put in the effort pretending to understand the book at all. For music, all you have to do is press play. This guy was showing me his playlist once. There were a lot of artists, maybe they were mainstream or maybe they were underground, I’m not sure since I don’t know many artists in general. And the whole time he was looking at me expecting me to piss my pants in excitement over how cool his playlist was, and how cool he was for listening to them. As for me, I listen to Weezer.