This little blog began when a freshman looked at his summer and said, "Wait a second, what's a narcissist like me supposed to do for the next ninety days?"
And he kept it up for two months, and then he gave up. And his little blog has languished since.
Now however, he's back, and he's talking in third person, and he thinks that writing random things for no one in particular in his corner of the Internet might just sound like fun.
So, without further ado, welcome, to Internet Junk. 2.0.
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
-Ferris Bueller's Day Off
This will be a short one tonight, seeing as I don't have much time. You might also notice the change in format again. I'm back on my Mac, mostly because it's 72 degrees with 0% humidity in my basement compared to the 85 and 95% in my room. Slightly because I messed something up on that first run-through with my computer and I had to do it again. So... the laptop is once again in a state of Limbo.
However I think I might have come out of it a little bit. I feel a bit better now. Maybe summer was just getting off to a slow start and it just started to pick up. Or maybe there still is something nasty waiting around the corner, but I just don't care about it anymore. Maybe it's just that I had a few heavy decisions weighing on my mind yesterday, and I've made up my mind on them.
Honestly, it could just be the fact that I watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off and it's getting in my head. Definitely in my Top Ten. Maybe Top Five... I'll have to think about that one. It's just a funny movie. And I don't usually go for older comedies, even if they're only from 1986. There's just something about it that I just... like. Bravado maybe. I really don't know. And the soundtrack is pretty good too.
SONG OF THE DAY: WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG
Sorry for the short post today, I promise I'll make it a little big longer tomorrow. Maybe the air conditioner will be back on again and I won't have to withdraw to the basement for fear of heat stroke. Adios.
School is out for another year. I took my last two finals today, which should mean a few days of seemingly endless relaxation before the truth sets in that summer doesn’t last forever. But I feel weird today. It doesn’t feel like summer to me at all, not yet. It doesn’t even feel close to summer, or at least what summer used to feel like. I used to get an adrenaline rush around this time of year, knowing that I had three months to waste in whatever way I wanted.
But this year… something’s off. Something just feels wrong somehow. I don’t know what it is; the finals went fine. I finished with an A in Spanish and aced the Physics final. English and Health were pretty easy, and that AP test passed more than three weeks ago. I’m good with everything else too, nothing wrong with family or friends. I have an idea of the story I want to write over the summer, and I honestly feel like I have the time and ability to finish it this time.
Still though, something feels funny. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but it seems like there’s a nasty surprise right around the corner that I’m about to run into at full force. Do you know that feeling when you walk into a dark room and instinctively want to check behind the door for a murderer? No? Well, imagine it. That’s exactly what I feel like right now.
SONG OF THE DAY: KOTOV SYNDROME
Or maybe I’m just spending a few days in Limbo, that place between heaven and hell. Maybe I just can’t believe that another school year is over. I never was good with change.
But that still doesn’t explain why, three days ago, I felt so right. I couldn’t wait for this afternoon, when I could finally relax again. And now I feel like I want to look over my shoulder every other second because my instincts are screaming that there’s something unexpected waiting around the corner.
Adios. I’ll see you all tomorrow. Maybe by then this little bout of paranoia will finally be over.
There is an old myth about a special kind of swan that, during its lifetime, never makes a single sound. But, just before the moment of its death, this mute swan sings a beautiful song. Of course, the myth is a load of crap. The mute swan does make a sound during its lifetime. It hisses. And it does not sing before it dies.
But we still call it a Swan Song, that one act of valor or magnificence before the end. Swan Song, Last Stand, Final Moments, all idiomic names for the same thing. That final act, just before the end, when someone shows that they’re not completely done with this life.
We all seem to be obsessed with it.
So, what is it about this final moment that fascinates us? It’s everywhere; in every TV show and movie, in every book and play, there’s always a final stand where someone stands up and charges head-on into the enemy’s mouth, usually delivering some of them to their ends as well. But why is it everywhere?
Is it the idea of standing up for what we believe in? Is that it? Is it the idea that, no matter what the enemy does, that they can never steal our souls? Is that swan song a way of showing them that they haven’t won, and that they never will?
Is it the idea of taking up arms against a sea of troubles, the adrenaline rush of blasting full-on into enemy lines while knowing that there’s no chance at all that we’ll win? Is it that inherently human desire to go out with more than a whimper, to be remembered?
Perhaps sometimes it is a selfless act of honor, when someone knows that their end is set in stone, but the finales of those around them are not. Think about the passengers of Flight 93, almost eleven years ago. Was that a swan song? I think it was.
Or maybe it’s the idea of redemption. The idea that, no matter what awful things we’ve done in our lives, we can make up for them in that one moment of valor. Redemption. The word itself feels good to say. It’s something I think everyone yearns for in their own way, no matter how few or how many sins they’ve committed in their lifetime. Who cares if there’s a god, an afterlife, a heaven or hell? We just want that final moment to be ours, and to feel good about ourselves inside it.
SONG OF THE DAY: IN THE END
I think I picked this song today because, if you just take the surface value it’s wrong. It does matter what we do In the End. Perhaps that’s what matters most of all. And I think, if you listen to it as many times as I do, this song might just start to say that.
I hope I’ve given you something to think about tonight. Thanks for reading my one hundredth post. It’s been fun, and I hope you’re still here when I hit two hundred. Goodnight.
I swear, sooner or later I am going to run out of names for posts. This is my 99th post. Sure, it's taken me a little over a year to get here... but I got here. And tomorrow night I'll be back on my actual computer to make my centennial post, somewhere I honestly never thought I'd get. And I have to think of an awesome name for it, so I guess you could say that I'm now on the clock.
Why will I be back on my actual computer you ask? Those recovery disks came in the mail much more quickly than the website said, so it's currently fixing itself as I type. I want to get an iota of sleep tonight, so I probably won't stay up to nurse it completely back to health. But I'll be home early tomorrow, one of the only benefits of finals week, so I'll have plenty of time to reintroduce myself to my usual internet portal.
Oh yeah... did I mention finals tomorrow? Fun stuff. Spanish and then Physics, back to back with a fifteen minute buffer zone in between. Two hours each of total mindfuckery. Although I enjoy the mindfuckery of Physics, it's the fun kind of mindfuckery. And I actually have a chance to do well on it. However the Spanish version can be compared to being forced to drink molten lava above an active volcano. We took the speaking part today... yeah... a 92 isn't the greatest grade when everyone else gets a 100. But then again most of it is verb tenses... ALL of the 10... 12... 14... however many verb tenses Spanish has. We seem to be discovering a new one every week.
But then I'm done with Spanish after tomorrow. Done. Forever. Unless they force me to take it in college. Or maybe in college I'll take Beginning French. I hear they only have 6 verb tenses.
SONG OF THE DAY: THAT'S WHAT YOU GET
Different choice of song today. No Rise Against, or Linkin Park. Just a really good song I found the other day while trawling Youtube. And sorry for the short post today, but I figured you (my one or two readers) deserves a break after my last two uber-long posts. Though... just a warning... Post #100 is going to be a little bit longer than most.
Adios, mis amigos. Solo está dos días de el año escolar.
I have one day of classes left. One day left of sophomore year. I can't believe it's over; I honestly can't believe it. Normally I feel good when summer comes. I love summer; I love endless days of relaxation and sleep when I actually have time to write good stuff. And I'm ready for it; I'm not sure how much more school I could take before mental exhaustion sets in. But still, I really enjoyed this year. It was better than last year, better than pretty much every other year of my entire life. The only one that gives it any competition is 8th grade... but that's a long backstory I don't have time to get into.
So, maybe this is kind of a homage to sophomore year. From the last day of finals, that glorious moment when the bell rang and Spanish 2 let out for the last time... that was the beginning. Last summer is my favorite, no question about it, for a lot of really personal reasons that I'm not going to plaster all over the Internet... even if no one is going to read it.
Then school started... but it didn't slow down. I was in my element in Gov, which finally gave me an idea of what I want to do in the future. For the first time I was one of the best in a math class, and I honestly still miss Geometry, as crazy as that sounds. That class was just inherently fun for me. I discovered that I could actually draw stuff, even if it was limited to a computer. And I managed to get pretty good grades while doing it too.
Then, second semester came, and for a while it felt like the year was going downhill. But two more awesome teachers pulled it back up and made Physics and English highlights of a day that really needed them. I met some awesome people on the Choir Trip and felt awesome for a while, but I also got a few (deserved) kicks in the ego that brought me back down to size. And in the last week a bunch of things have changed. I'll have more responsibilities next year, which I'm half-looking forward too and half-just taking a deep breath. I've finished the classes with a bang, and I hope I can follow that up on the finals that are coming up in less than 48 hours.
What am I trying to say? Nothing really. I'm paying homage to an amazing year in my own way, by immortalizing it on the Internet for one or two people to read. Of course there are things that I didn't say, things that I wouldn't say anywhere outside the confines of my mind... but all in all I think this is a fitting tribute to an incredible year.
And as for junior year, I have great expectations. You have a lot to live up to. So get at it.
SONG OF THE DAY: BURN IT DOWN
This is a new song from their new album coming out this summer, late June to be more exact. There are only a few bands whose albums I get legitimately exited for (not Ok Go, sorry Anthony), and Linkin Park is one of them. But I'll let you judge for yourself.
Order from Chaos is an interesting idea if you really think about it. It's the idea that, among every infinitesimal blade of grass on this Earth, there is something working to keep everything together, to make sure the right people meet the right people, to give everyone the best chance at success. Or maybe the stars only align for a few people once or twice in their lives, but when they do they never forget the order that emerged from the world's complete and utter chaos. Stars have aligned for me more than once, in little periods of time I've heard called watershed moments. One small event triggers another, each one appearing small in its own right. But then, some time later, you look back and realize that that one small event created order from chaos and transformed your life.
In physics, I believe that they call that Chaos Theory. In regular day people-speak, it's called the Butterfly Effect.
Am I saying that I believe that a butterfly flapping its wings in South America could cause a typhoon in Japan? In simple terms... yes. It's almost infinitely unlikely that such a thing would happen, but if everything comes into place that butterfly could be (unintentionally) responsible for a natural disaster.
Here, let's try and example. A certain friend of mine hears a song while watching WWE, and thinks that I might like it. I would never watch WWE, so if I hadn't been friends with this person for years, and if we hadn't had a tradition of exchanging songs, this would never have happened in the first place. But he sends me the song, and I listen a couple of times. At first I don't really like it, but it starts to grow on me. Before long I've downloaded it and I'm looping it with a couple other songs while I write a really awesome story I had thought up at around that same time. Over the course of a summer it becomes my favorite song of all time, and the soundtrack for a story that wouldn't be nearly as alive in my mind without the song to fuel it.
Then, in the fall, my Computer Art teacher decides to be absent for a day and a substitute fills in, one who lets us listen to music while we're working. (The fact that I was even in Computer Art is another, albeit shorter, string of Butterfly Effect circumstances). I happened to bring my headphones that day, because I'd found a new song the night before that I'd wanted to listen to on the bus. I plug them into the computer and go to Yahoo Radio, not Pandora, not Playlist, not any of the other million music streaming sites. On Yahoo Radio I hear another song from the same band that does the first song, and I happen to like it enough to write down its name. I go home and listen to it again, and I download it.
A little while later I decide to check out some more songs by the band. I listen to the rest of this album, and then decide to download it. I listen to it all the way through, and then focus on a couple songs. Over a few more months I learned a lot of lessons from that music, and the band grew on me enough that I decided to download another of their albums. And then another. Then another. And with each new song I learn something new; each new song helps shape me in a new way. I'm a better person because of music, and, crazy as it sounds, that band's music has helped me discover new things.
Finally, during the Choir Trip back in April, I meet an awesome girl and come home, which in itself is another string of Butterfly Effect circumstances. But because of this, I decide to download the two Rise Against (for that is the band's name) albums that I didn't have at that point. They're both the earliest albums, rough and raw-sounding, but I found some awesome songs on them that continued to help shape me. I sit here now, at the end of sophomore year, writing an entire post that stems from a five-second decision a friend of mine made last summer to send me a song, and about all of the circumstances that stemmed from that.
If that's not Order from Chaos, I don't know what is.
SONG OF THE DAY: SATELLITE
That's the song. Satellite by Rise Against. The lyrics are forever ingrained into my head.
"Because we won't back down, we won't run and hide. Because these are the things that we can't deny. I'm passing over you like a satellite, so catch me if I fall."
Powerful stuff, even though Anthony might disagree. What can I say. Thanks for sending this song to me buddy. Adios.
I won't say that having no computer is nice... but it lets you slow down a bit. I read about a hundred and fifty pages into the Stephen King book that came out last November called 11/22/63, primarily because I had nothing to distract me. So far it's shaping up to be really good. Stephen King likes to put places, events, and characters into multiple books, which kind of connects everything he's ever written. This book has some really strong connections to IT, which just so happens to be my favorite book of all time. I won't say it's nice to read about the town from IT again; that place is decidedly not nice. But it is weirdly nostalgic to meet a few old favorite characters and see a small yet new part of their storyline.
Other than that I finally got my desk fixed today, and for some reason my room is not longer suffocatingly humid and hot. I doubt cleaning it up had anything to do with that, but it might have helped the atmosphere in there just a little bit. The place is definitely a bit more spacious without the stacks of old papers and books lying everywhere...
And oh yeah, only five more days of school left until the long, warm expanse known as Summer. Summer is shaping up to be pretty damn nice this year, seeing as it's one or two weeks longer than usual. Although I will be a bit busier than usual, with a possible internship with a state representative and my usual volunteer work for Science in the Summer. But at least I'll get to write. A lot. And maybe I can finally finish a story longer than sixty-eight pages.
SONG OF THE DAY: ALIVE AND WELL
I'm not sure what exactly it is about this song that makes me like it. It's manic-paced, and the singer (whose name happens to be Tim), sings the entire thing on that delicate borderline between screaming and singing... something that I have grown to like. It also happens to be the first song of their first album... so that makes it kind of cool. To have a band's career start out with a song called "Alive and Well," well, it seems cliche but I still like it.
You'll learn I can be a sucker for cliche. Goodbye for another night. I should be getting my real computer fixed in... eight days and counting.
Wonderful, wonderful news. My computer is currently in a state of limbo. Which means there are a bunch of somewhat... essential... files missing because I messed something up. Best case scenario: it's back online in about a week, probably by June 12th. I will be posting every night though, same as always. I'll just have to find a random computer that I can use. I know there are probably about ten 20-year-old Macs lying in a closet somewhere... maybe I can use one of them.
So, what happened today? I got to spring cleaning a bit late, seeing as I had nothing to do after my computer departed for the afterlife. I managed to recycle more paper than can probably fit on a boat the size of Madagascar, all old school work I don't need anymore. I think all of the dust gave me a headache though, which right now is making sure I pay attention. Nevermind. No one really wants to hear about me sifting through old Geometry projects, and I don't really want to talk about it.
SONG OF THE DAY: PAPER WINGS
Oh look, the format is all messed up again and it's messing with my OCD. Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful wonderful wonderful. Goodnight empty Internet. I will not see you in the morning.
Since I only have about fifteen minutes to get this post up and running tonight (ah, just like the good old days of last summer), I’ll start with the least boring part of my day. In Physics, our teacher decided to roll out this big metal ball that’s actually a generator and shock himself several times with miniature lightning-bolts.
As I’m sure you could guess, it was extremely entertaining.
But that’s not all. After enough ooh-ing and aah-ing, he invited us up to stand in a line and create a nice big human circuit. I got shocked twice. Some people volunteered to get shocked a third time. I said no. I don’t enjoy feeling all of my muscles stop for a half-second. It’s not pleasant. Although I’m sure there are some people who are into that kind of thing.
Then, following the massive Van Der Graaf generator (legitimately what it’s called), we held the first half of mock trial in Government. I, being the idiot that I am, decided that I would ad-lib an opening statement. It did not go well. Fortunately for me though, the prosecutor wasn’t extremely… eloquent with words either. So we started off on the same foot. Still, the interviews, or interrogations as I like to think of them as, were a bit more fun. No verdict until Monday though. My only question is whether I should wear a tie again…
Afterschool, I went down to the library with my awesome girlfriend to eat ice cream sundaes and talk about books. Yeah, you read that right too. I know I’m weird. It’s one of my best qualities.
SONG OF THE DAY: GREAT AWAKENING
Honestly, Anthony, this is just to annoy you because I know how much you hate songs with even a little screaming. This one is about half-and-half, but I still really like it. I don’t expect many other people to though.
Four minutes to midnight! Close, but you haven’t beaten me yet! Adios, mis amigos. Hasta luega!
