Addicted to Water

ideas ideas

2011-06-07T10:00:00.000-04:00

I apologize for how shitty the new layout may look.

Uh.

Yeah.

It's clean and makes the words stand out more.

So it's morning and I haven't slept all night, trying to make it through this day though. I want to get my sleep schedule back in order, because for like the past month I've been going to bed at like 3-6 am and waking up at 1-5 pm and it is a terrible terrible habit. Like, I waste the whole day. If it were winter, I would be literally sleeping through the entirety of daylight, which I'm sure is not healthy. So I'll try to get that straight.

Because, man, I want to use my days. Not in a oh these days are numbered and few, must use life to its full potential, because that's a lot of crap. I don't think it's terrible to sleep all day; it certainly feels great. Up to a point, of course, after which it seems like your bones are about to shatter. No, no all I mean is that I have stuff that needs to be done, like within the next month or so, and sleeping all day isn't getting any of that done. Important stuff too, like rereading all the Harry Potter books in time for LeakyCon and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 movie release. Which, that should be self-explanatory.

I'm trying to stay awake. I personally think I can do it, because I've always invested in a philosophy of spirit overcomes the body, which is stupid (though interestingly really related to Christian thought, I've discovered, albeit in less of a GOD IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR EARTHLY LIVES and more like my mind is greater than the physical obstacles that stand in its path) and probably not good for either spirit or flesh.

Anyway, I was thinking about something last night, and then I remembered that earlier in the shower I had thought about the novel title I had thought was pretty cool a few days/weeks ago, inspired by a short story called "Life of the Body" by Tobias Wolff (which I should probably read).

The Spirit of the Flesh.

Starting not to like it already. Too overly biblical images, will probably be mistook for a Christian non-fiction book about achieving your true inner light or whatever it is that is God, which is not what the book will be about, pretty sure. Not sure what it will be about, but I wrote a couple hundred words of random stuff, as well as some notes about what it could be about. Also "flesh" isn't as nice a word as I'd previously thought. I mean for all anyone knows it could be a book about some weird guy getting a spiritual understanding about his penis or something. Which it is definitely not about.

It's weird how people write books! How ideas and words from these human beings are transformed over time into these amazing and often cathartic stories we read so eagerly and empathetically.

Apologies for potential unbearableness in reading this given that I am writing it very tired and on no sleep (well! I mean I've gotten sleep in my life, but--). Better to write poop-colored crap than nothing at all.

poetic representation of a dream i had

2011-06-03T02:52:00.000-04:00

&06/01/11&

from new jersey
by train or bus
to philadelphia
or thereabouts

stormy weather
maybe a band's playing
it's cold
how'd i get here?

sleek gray amtrak towards pittsburgh
10 minutes, that fast!
drive me to safety
where the hell is this?

*

this station's real crowded
i'm consumed by the space
everyone's huddled together
but i'm stuck out in the rain alone

man did i mention it's midnight
the trees shade the train tracks
i wander around between
the lobby and platforms

idle idle idle
should have planned ahead
several paths to walk
none of them viable

*

let me stay in new york
or new england, hah
even this dark forest
not waiting for a train

hey, you—
are you guys leaving?
will you need that blanket
cause cement's awful cold

2:40 am i'm tired
no restless
they're back to their families
but it's deserted here

*

pick myself off the ground
hours later, post-sleep
stretch my sore limbs
squint at the sun

try not to cry
when the sounds hit my skull
wait for the fever to pass
ground shaking

0500's coming
mighty and virile
hope it takes me someplace good
i'm tired of waiting

If people died and were resurrected periodically at the rate this blog is reborn the world would be filled with zombies of zombies of zombies of z...

2011-06-02T22:53:00.000-04:00

Hi.

It's me.

I'm going to write stuff again maybe.

I dislike being lazy and inert.

But goddamn it is so tempting.

Here is a thing that I've observed.

Metaphor isn't always an improvement.

Nor necessarily a sign of quality.

It's just a metaphor.

Sorry, I've been reading some books.

I got an introductory anthology to semiotics* from Goodwill!

Haha this isn't a substantive post or anything.

Just an update to show commitment that I'll do this thing.

More news: later.

* A weird study of "signs" somewhere between linguistics, philosophy, sociology, a bunch of stuff. Crazy stuff.

Numbers and Words: Double Major in English & Philosophy with a Minor in Pure Mathematics, Or, Really Milking Your Undergrad's 50K per annum's Worth

2011-03-16T18:45:00.002-04:00

English:

[Major Authors] The Ancient World + Late Antiquity and the Medieval World
[Seminar in Literature] Tragedy and the Tragic
[EN322] British Literature I
[EN323] British Literature II
[American Lit. before 1900] 19th Century American Novel
[Literature before 1800] Something
[Concepts and Methods of Literary Study] Literary Criticism I
Literary Criticism II
Modern American Novel
Contemporary American Literature
Independent Work
Independent Work

Philosophy:

[PH300] History of Ancient Philosophy
[PH310] History of Modern Philosophy
[PH160 or PH360] Intro to Logic
[PH350] History of Ethics
[PH403-439] 19th Century Philosophy
[PH400-level] Epistemology
[PH200+] Metaphysics
[PH200+] Mathematical Logic
[Other] Foundations of Mathematics

Mathematics:

~~Calculus I~~
~~Calculus II~~

[MA225 or MA230] Multivariate Calculus
[MA226 or MA231] Differential Equations
[MA242 or MA442] Linear Algebra
[MA400+] Mathematical Logic
[MA400+] Foundations of Mathematics

Also:

Linguae:

~~Latin I~~
~~Latin II~~

Ancient Greek I
Ancient Greek II
Ancient Greek Prose: Plato and Paul
Ancient Greek Poetry: Homeric Epic

Knowledge

2011-02-08T22:59:00.002-05:00

Manar said...

HAHAHAHA.
You know Arka, you could totally have your own online comic strip.

Don't give me ideas!

Okay so.

Here are the things I want to learn/know/understand:

all the math ever
quantum physics on a mathematical basis
how biology/the body works[1]
literary theory
all the religions
English, Latin, Ancient Greek, French, Dutch and/or Swedish and/or Spanish [Russian too if I want to literally kill myself!]
all philosophy
how language works
something about art
psychology
~~religion~~
really basically every topic covered by Very Short Introductions.

Really, money and grades and all aside, I wish I could stay in school forever and just learn about everything.

Haha whoops forgot about this [thanks Manar]:

yeah this is just so Lindsay will stop being horrified at my lack of knowledge about the structure of life

my life every week

2011-02-04T16:55:00.003-05:00

This happened like five seconds ago.

2011-02-02T21:50:00.001-05:00

So I'm sitting in my room, chilling, listening to The Mountain Goats and looking at t**** and stuff, and so suddenly, I hear something vaguely through my thick dorm room walls. Coming from behind me, who am sitting facing my computer which is at the wall... fuck it I'll draw it.

Okay see so I was hearing this particular set of guitar notes being played in a fashion I am familiar. And it went on for a while, as in maybe five more seconds. And I knew what it was.

I burst out of my door into the hallway, and slid into the room adjacent mine, on the left at least. My neighbor Ethan was there sitting with his guitar, strumming his guitar in that familiar pattern, stopping to look up at the apparition at the door.

"Is that... is that a Bright Eyes song you're playing??" I asked, anxiously.

"Yeah, it is!" he said. "I didn't know you liked Bright Eyes..."

"Oh, I do," I replied.

"Dude, 'Something Vague' is my favorite Bright Eyes song!"

"No! Me too!"

"Really, it's your favorite?" he inquired

"Yes—well, maybe also 'Bowl of Oranges.'"

"Get out, no way. You like The Mountain Goats too, right?"

"Yes."

"How many songs, or albums, of theirs do you have?"

"Uh... at least over 500...."

"Sweet! We need to share this stuff. Like, soon."

[...]

Etc.

Music is nice. I need to get a guitar soon (and also not suck).

Feb. 1

2011-02-01T23:33:00.001-05:00

Lysh said:

So I don't know why my google reader isn't working for this blog and then it suddenly fed me like 20 blogs. ANYWAYS, I love your blog! It's a very good blog. I just spent a good portion of my blizzard-hibernating night reading it. You write interesting things, so keep going!

So I decided that since I like comments a lot but I can never really find a good way of replying to them on damn blogger (in this way t*m**r is superior), I'll just reply to ones I have replies to somewhere sometime[1] in a post, like thus:

Yeah I do enjoy writing this when I do, especially when I write all obnoxiously and wittily. But yes, I'm glad you like it :) There's not much point in writing in an open medium if it doesn't please anyone. I shall earnestly keep going!

Anyway, so semester II of college is going pretty well. I'm stuck indoors a lot due to weather/laziness, but that's okay.

English is off to a bumpy start owning to my professor being late all the time because of the harsh weather, but the readings are really interesting, since man I love literary theory. I've not been terribly diligent with it, though, but I've tried. Hey, I wrote my papers decently, and that's what matters, right?[2]
Ancient World II is pretty okay, the works we're reading aren't as dynamic as the Odyssey or Republic, but they are sufficiently intriguing. We're spending a month on Eastern stuff, which is surprisingly up-to-date for a classics class.
Fuck, I love calculus. Math is so fun; I just love sitting here and working through problem sets and knowing I'm getting them right because I'm so awesome[3]. We finally started doing real calc II stuff (integration by parts) which is neat. My professor is amazing, too. He compared working out integrals to finding a lost kid at a train station ("and you, since you know your kid pretty well, you know that he's probably going to be at station #4, because, as you know, he enjoys doing drugs at station #4. So, correspondingly, you can skip right to u-sub." [4]).
Second-semester Latin is not bad. It's really just starting off learning a language and learning the forms that's really frustrating. Now that I have most of the conjugations and declensions and syntactical stuff down, I am pretty confident with most basic Latin. I can even translate fairly quickly. And now we're just doing little nitpicky stuff like participles and gerunds and indirect statements that are fairly simple.

It's been snowing pretty generously today, and the snow is pretty, I'll admit, and I am kind of hoping for a snow day tomorrow.

Missed you, blog.

I think I am correct maybe in saying that the different between a while and awhile, some time and sometime, is that the former is a noun/object, the latter more adjective.
That is not what matters.
...and Asian....
This is paraphrased, but only slightly since most of these words were things he'd said.

this blogging is going terribly :(

2011-01-27T01:24:00.002-05:00

1:23 am jan 27 2011

This counts for January 24th, okay?

2011-01-25T01:17:00.000-05:00

I need to read Harry Potter more. I had lent my RA my copy of DH and got it back today, and holding it in my hand made me realize how kind of detached I've become from the Potter canon. Which I used to be able to recall significant parts of from memory.

Agh my laptop is kind of working now but it's not very reliable in that it could stop any second.

I wonder if sometimes what people call coded and hidden messages are really just messages expressed the only way the speaker can possibly express it without causing much self-pain.

Update

2011-01-23T20:04:00.000-05:00

I'm in the library. at? I don't know.

Laptop still broken.

iPod still at the bottom of the elevator shaft.

Running on hope that the former will be recovered by the end of this week; the latter, probably never.

I read "The Overcoat" by Gogol, and "The Yellow Wall-paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

All my classes are great so far. Crap I have a calculus quiz tomorrow morning.

Exciting things.

Tweetlike blogging

2011-01-19T23:17:00.000-05:00

Second day of class.

@Mountain_goats twitter is nice. Gonna see them April fools day.

My Latin professor is Hungarian, hot, and hilarious.

I spent my free time at work today learning the Greek alphabet.

These days are tiring.

I wish aristotle weren't such an asshole.

First day of class

2011-01-18T23:35:00.000-05:00

I am pleased with classes. Can't really type much like this from mu iPod and it Magritte hard to write anything yttefay. Ugh shatter

From iPod

2011-01-16T19:23:00.000-05:00

I have plans for yesterday's posts so don't worry. Anyway my dumb laptop spaghetti Jesus is dead again and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed for a second coming.

A Lesson in Author's Intent and Meaning

2011-01-14T12:41:00.000-05:00

Well yeah so I started to write that blog post I promised yesterday and I realized it was too emotionally taxing and way too personal for a like personal medium but I'm free to maybe disguisedly and secretively and shelteredly talk about it abstractly and in a way that still involves little emotional effort on my part later perhaps one-to-one or something.

Instead I'm just going to talk about nothing. These entries will probably be way more amusing and coherent and like good once I get back to dorm life and stop sleeping half the day away. Maybe. They'll have more of a raison d'être, as it were.

Oh man, it's so very transparently obvious when I try so blatantly and unsubtly to make a point of not making a point of something that's not even really a scary big thing but I'm so horribly uncomfortable and awkward about and then I get in the mood where I read lots of silly postmodern books that kind of skirt around the truth and kind of make fun of these real things and it's all very juvenile sorry.

Also very self-centered and like not even interesting or like anything yeah okay just an afterthought.

What am I doing, pt. 1

2011-01-13T13:27:00.001-05:00

Going to paste a thing from another place that I don't have to cite b/c I'm plagiarizing myself lol but I can't find the post at the moment so I will edit this post-midnight IT COUNTS.

Edit: here is the actual thing:

I haven’t taken a proper English class since May. I’m in a “humanities” class right now, which is basically a survey of historical times through literature and other arts. It’s okay, but it’s just not cutting it. What I like about next semester is that it’s an ENGLISH class taught by an ENGLISH professors with mostly/only ENGLISH majors. What that means is that I get to really experience the fullness of my love for literature. Which can be a scary thing. Either I’ll love it, do amazingly, and get pumped for getting my degree in English, or I’ll hate it, do poorly and be not as smart as everyone else, and want to switch majors, it seems. I’m really hoping it’s the former but it’s up in the air. I’ve never really studied literature that in-depth at a hardcore college-level writing class, since AP only goes so far.

The point of all this is that I feel like I’ve been really really really displeased/worried about the person I’ve been becoming/being for the past couple of, I guess months. I dunno. I’ve been fairly social; things have been going well in most aspects of my life; I’m experiencing the wonder of living in a city. What’s wrong?

But somehow, in the end these abstract, powerful, true negatives seem to outweigh the positives by sheer force of reasoning and verity, and it’s confusing.

I’ve narrowed it down to two distinct possibilities, neither of which is that comforting:

I could be right, and the world could just be crappy and I could be crappy (or ridiculously sane and intelligent among a sea of delusion), and there’s nothing I can do about it but kind of live through it like a shadow.
Or I could be totally wrong (fortunately much more likely) and things are good and whole in the world on a large scale and I could be just stupid to not see the beauty of the bowl of oranges and worrying needlessly over nothing.

What does this have to do with English?

Well since literature is something I’m passionate about, and something that incidentally deals strongly with people and virtue and life and stuff, I’m kind of hoping that getting through the class will help me decide which end of the spectrum suits me.

I haven’t been regularly reading leisurely since probably august, and then only for a few weeks. I’m ashamed of this; I need to read a lot more.

It’s not just because reading is essential to my studies and I need to keep in-touch with my literary analysis and criticism abilities, but more that I need books sometimes, intrinsically. Literature is, well, for a large and probably sad part, how I understand life. Like, I am bad with pop culture, and less so but still significantly poor with “good” music. People tell me, often much to my surprise and secret/unspoken-but-resonant disappointment/sadness, that I’m bad with “people” and just social interaction in general, I guess. I’m also, slightly relatedly, confused or perplexed when it comes to cultural things that seem to be true for everyone but me, and things that seem to be just culturally mandated and expected of me. So literature, the stories and philosophies and depictions of varied times and people and ideas, is how I make up for this. It is what I excel in without limit, and honestly, it’s not that hard to gain wisdom and knowledge and perception etc. from literature. But I can do it, it is something I like doing, and I can use that to have my own set of values and beliefs and ideas and skills and stuff, aside from what I or anyone can gather from their own thoughts and reasoning, and it feels good, so good, like nothing I can describe, the pleasure in reading and what comes with it. I can deal with people because I know what people are mostly made of; I can identify with and accept and even enjoy cultures/cultural things because I know what the extent and significance and meaning etc. of a culture and group of people and ~things~ can be; I can even have my own list of things I accept and reject and think and stuff, like a subculture whose sole member is me.

I hope that makes sense, because what it means is that — oh god as I think it in my head I can hear a mocking voice yelling cliche and exaggerated — without books I am nothing, lost, confused, hopeless, dark. I don’t think there’s any more to say. I just hope EN220 will fire me up with love and passion and all that is good in the world, and mend me in a way I can’t do myself but have to rely on something else, like books, for.

Anyway, it’s not so much a big deal that one-by-one my taut strings are snapping, as much as it is that I don’t know why or how or what any of anything means, and would like to solve that.

I hope this is not too dumb or abstract or insane or in-need-of-serious-and-immediate-professional-help or whatever bullet you can throw at it.

So yes. I feel that it was if not well enough written at least long enough to be worth featuring here until I continue this "thought" tomorrow.

Homeless!

2011-01-12T13:21:00.000-05:00

I'm not sick anymore yay! Although I am kind of homesick...ish.

Is it possible to feel homesick without having a home? I kind of liken it to getting stuck in the middle of like a hurricane or a whirlpool or black hole and you know spinning around and knowing you're spinning around something but you can't really grasp it as a physical thing.

That's a poor analogy. It's like you're looking for a sense but it's not anywhere. Forget the where your heart crap. I'm just kind of frustrated at not having a place where I can have my stuff and eat nice food and take comfortable showers, with possibly the additional luxury of being able to feel totally safe and at ease and warm enough to call the place "home."

Instead, I get to move between on-campus dormitories for four years, and spend thanksgiving breaks, four spring breaks, four month-long winter breaks, and three several-months-long summer breaks not knowing where to go or whom to stay with or what to do. Which, I can assure you, is not fun.

Also not fun: having pretty much no idea what to answer when people ask where you're from. I think I'm going to start saying I'm literally homeless, moving from cardboard box to cardboard box, dancing for money, while not at school. Just to see people's reactions. And honestly, on some level I do kinda wish I were homeless because a) that would be kind of cool and fun apart from the being a bum part, and b) at least then I would have some fucking concrete idea about my place of residence.

And don't get me started on "address" on official documents etc.

For those unaware, after my dad died and I finished high school, my mom, for reasons to this day completely a mystery to me, moved to her parents' (well, mother's, technically, now) house in India. While I would spend four years at college. Because apparently that's what's best. Anyway point is I have no place to easily stay at while not at school. Yay.

I guess I shouldn't complain. I mean think about all the starving people in Africa. And the people who really don't have homes. And the people who've been forced into organ-harvesting colonies on the moon. Compared to them I probably have it pretty well off. And maybe I could rent an apartment with some sketchy dudes in some town where the rent isn't insanely fucking high where I could microwave myself hundreds of cups of instant noodles and hundreds of pb&j sandwiches and stuff.

But I mean jeez I'm only eighteen and I can't do stuff like that I can barely do my own laundry how am I expected to deal with all of this why can't my mommy just get a job and get a home that I can go to accessibly :(

Must be brief

2011-01-11T11:02:00.000-05:00

I am tired.

Possibly sick.

It is fairly cold for Indian weather.

I saw my old math teacher today. It was nice.

I leave on Saturday!

I haven't read very much at all. Must amend.

I will try to make my first meal back in America at the combination Pizza Hut & Taco Bell, if it's not too cold.

I'm going to watch 500 days of summer, not necessasrily because I think it will be a good movie, but mostly because Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel are extremely hot.

I am tired, did you know?

What does Wikipedia think it means for one to "be"?

2011-01-10T12:54:00.001-05:00

Ever look at someone's Wikipedia page or something where it says "So and So (born XXXX) is the lead singer of _____, author of A Popular Book, and is engaged to Sexy Hot Actress." and think man is that all a person who is famous enough to be on Wikipedia is, in terms of like existential being and all??? Like when asked "Who are you? what is the thing that literally defines your being and existence???" they'd be all "oh yeah I'm an actor who was in that movie yup that is me," which, it seems to totally bypass the fact that they're human beings who are worth so much more than the sum of their worthy accomplishments. It seems very troubling, like it encourages you to think of famous people as Famous People who just do their Big Roles and nothing more.

Perhaps it's just this relatively more general idea of misimagining people/not thinking of people as complex beings, but that aside, I think it's this problem that websites like Wikipedia and Sparknotes and the like inadvertently feed: that they and the internet and information/knowledge in general can try to tell you how to think and what to think about stuff. As if they suddenly decide it's an okay idea to assert the view that people are objectively merely the sum of their acts and accomplishments, and that books have clear and obvious themes and meanings and that you can decide what's important in history and what's not worth telling people....

And it's all very stupid and biased. Perhaps it's simple and easy, but it's just kind of primitive and not a sustainable way of thinking and informing, sorry it needs work. And no I'm not adopting some kind of paranoid skeptic conspiracy about big websites trying to manipulate people's thoughts or something silly like that. It's just that people's thoughts and opinions and stuff tend to get somewhat affected in the process anyway, through poor presentation and all. Sparknotes, for example, invites you to accept their summaries and analyses as accurate and objective information that will help you, when in fact in the process of summarizing and analyzing it is actually telling you hey this is what I think is important. Which does not at all help you get the point of whatever you're using Sparknotes for, especially when you're using it as a primary source (which is dumb anyway). But this is how people tend to act by default with this massive plethora of information to soak in.

Maybe all we can do for now is just be critical in absorbing "objective'" information and just try to get a wide variety of credible information the old fashioned way, and kind of take websites like Wikipedia and Sparknotes with a grain of salt, because they're not that bad.

Didn't proofread this all that well, so I hope it kind of makes sense and that I'm not insane. Sidenote: Today is Alaska Young Memorial Day, so let's try not to misimagine manic pixie dream girls as merely their Wikipedia accomplishments but remember in the entirety of their complex and suffering beings.

Blogging in fourteen minutes (in the long run this isn't that interesting at all, unironically)

2011-01-09T13:29:00.000-05:00

Haha whoops I was watching a movie and totally lost track of time and now look it's 11:47 and I have limited time to write a blog post of some merit oh dear.

I was going to write about the Many Faces of Buses and it was going to be exciting but it requires illustrations that I cannot do in twelve minutes.

Okay so I was going to try to make my posts more essay-like and coherent and sensible etc. but obviously that's not going to happen since time is the worst enemy of any kind of sense. Although lately academic stress has conceived a new spirit of rapid forced succinct writing that well hasn't really done much harm I suppose. Still, I only got a 10/12 on my SAT essay, how disappointing. Ironically, though, the easyashell math section was my lowest, albeit by only like twenty points off a considerable magnitude anyway.

I really do hate well not hate but dislike these kind of forced meta self-aware little posts as they really do have no real worth as blog posts that are important... But I guess you kind of need that sometimes (I will try to reduce that though [hey look parentheses and brackets]) and even some of my favorite albums have undeniable low boring points in them that while sometimes annoying on the whole make the thing itself a coherent kinda thing right?

So yeah six minutes not bad I probably could have done better I always do underestimate myself (well not always actually rarely in some situations, in which you can barely restrain my massive and impressive ego and self-importance and blah blah I'm great). But here, you get this somewhat uninteresting and somewhat genuine and somewhat desperately snarky and very rushed impression of me which in the end isn't that all that really matters about your opinion of someone (at least whom you care about). What's "real"?

Two minutes (slightly less actually to be honest [oh look shoot it's one better hit post and hope my internet doesn't die])

Towers of Evil and Doom and Such!

2011-01-08T13:18:00.000-05:00

Ever think about how used sometimes you are to a television being there that you take it as a given that it's there with it's reflective off-state or light-filled on-state, and then when it's not there, you look, and it's like, where did my reflection go???

I don't really want to make this into a stream-of-consciousness random thoughts thing. I hope it can be more organized than that. Not that genuine raw thoughts aren't important, but there's a time and place and method most important.

I hope you know that most of the weird syntactical things such as randomly in a counter-intuitive pattern words placing is just either me being obnoxious or just forsaking normalcy or correctness for what comes to mind first and just happens to sound better that way as these things tend to do. It's funny the sounds our minds make. Sorry for any confusions if such confusions have or will arise.

Okay. Topic. Go.

I am for some reason particularly taken to the busy downtown-ness of cities. Where the grime and rush and car horns really shove themselves in your face. I like how the exhaust of cars and disturbed dust from the ground mix into a disgusting cloud of do-not-want-in-your-respiratory-system. Where the buildings block any hope of seeing the more than a sliver of the sky. Buses transporting frantic and hurried businessmen to their busy work ahead of them. Buildings that either look like they are more important than anything your own petty life could amount to, and those that you're glad your life hasn't stooped to the level of having to work at.

Not that I don't like the non-crazy parts of cities or people-dwelling places in general. It's just that I like the somewhat comforting knowledge that those groups of Big Important Buildings with Very Important People are there. I like the parts of cities with actual trees or visible sky or crossable roads. They're nice, more peaceful, kinda cool as in relaxed and all.

One of my biggest irrational, I don't know what to call it, dread? is of really tall buildings, as in like just two or three, that are just huge and menacing, and everything around it though is if not barren extremely uninteresting and normal and not-tall. like, to illustrate the insanity:

Like, it's just, terrifying. It fills you -- me -- with dread and horror, and I can hardly trace it to any kind of normal reasonable premise except that possibly it could be that these ominous towers of terror being in the middle of nowhere must imply that they house some kind of terrible evil or awful unpleasantness, and that to be near such atrocities would immediately endanger my life irreparably.

Scary shit, man.

Gastronomical Clock

2011-01-07T12:01:00.000-05:00

Starting to think my life or at least individual days revolve around eating. I am no lover of food or really quality food. If it's not terrible, I can probably eat it, unless it's like vegetables, but even for those I am breeding a tolerance. And it's not like I am just enamored with eating lots of great beautiful food either.

True, I like looking at food. Pretty food is pleasing to my eyes, especially when it looks good. But food itself is like, okay, it's a thing I need to ingest on a regular basis to survive and feed the hungry cells that make this body that is supposedly me. Not really too romanticized w/ the idea of actually eating; in fact, sometimes it's just disappointing when I eat something that looks good and it's bad (or it's oatmeal-raisin cookies instead of choc. chip).

But lately, perhaps due to the less-than-abundant sources of nourishing food (Indian food makes me poop sad poops so I avoid it a lot), I've started to notice how much I've taken food for granted. I mean, not that the food here is awful, it's pretty okay, but there are these long periods of time between already oddly-timed meals (see most Indian people eat what to the Western world is "late" as in at least 9 PM but my family's often had dinner at 11, occasionally even past midnight, thought that's the exception...) and even though I wake up pretty late, it always seems a long time till I eat. Like, I'll wake up, and then my mom'll make toast because we don't have a toaster and they're this complicated method of toasting the bread that is beyond me who can only make ramen and use toasters or waffle irons. And that takes a while, and then I eat and then I get hungry and wait for lunch. Then I eat lunch, which quality-wise is pretty okay, and filling for a while. Dinner seems to take forever though, but even after I eat dinner, owing to my habit of staying up later, I get hungry then too.

And during these bouts of hunger I really just wander around the house or read or do some of the things I can do on my laptop with tortoise-speed internet, contemplating my hunger.

It's just everything seems a) so little and b) not that appetizing, and it kind of disappoints me because if I can't depend on my expectation of satisfying my hunger with a delicious dinner or something, then what can I depend on? I mean the thought of having to eat like instant noodles or something and then wait hours only to eat some bland shrimp curry thing at the end of the day, it's not one to really keep me going.

I might just be a spoiled kid used to living in a pretty well-off country (by the way, none of this really has to do with like not-poor people's unavailability of commodities, I mean, you can get stuff pretty easily, it's just that mostly I'm lazy and need stuff given to me or something) but I realize that I'm just so used to having a given amount of fairly good meals a day, with accessibility to pretty good snacks in between. And these are things I count on, depend on, as a sign of regularity and almost ritual in my day. It's this constant, that I just expect always to be there.

Anyway, only a week until I get back to pretty good dorm food (oh and airplane food, esp. going to/from India, the worst).

(untitled is sometimes not a witty way of symbolizing the contents of something but can just be a placeholder when you can't think of an adequate title)

2011-01-06T13:29:00.002-05:00

All the things I want to talk about are too long/hard[1] to really write in a tired state with thirty minutes to midnight.

It's hard to think of things that are both interesting and about which you can be brief.

Of course, ask my high school teachers, I am somewhat notorious for being brief--I prefer the terms concise or succinct. I could say what I needed to say in a couple of lines or paragraphs and they couldn't really take points off because I said everything they wanted.

I wish this internet weren't so poor. It's a petty thing, really, I could be reading the ton of things I should be reading, or practicing calculus, or exploring the city. But I like some[2] things on the internet, and would like to be able to get them at a good speed.

How do you describe doing stuff on the internet? "Looking at the internet"? "Surfing the web"? "Browsing the internet"? "Interacting with the internet"? "Getting pixels and occasionally sound transferred to me from across the world"?

Four minutes shy of being late at the moment.

I like the space between the edges of the spine and the title on the cover not dust jacket of my hardcover Infinite Jest. I also like the way the letters look, it's all very nice.

that's what she said.
a lot of[3]
even that's an understatement.

Pizza

2011-01-05T13:02:00.000-05:00

I keep pushing off writing about butts but I promise it's coming.

I think I'm going to write a collection of poems about romanticizing pizza.

Sounds fun.

I like pizza.

Maybe I like the idea of pizza more than the thing itself.

But pizza itself is still pretty good.

Never seen or heard of it in the U.S. but apparently at Domino's they have this thing called cheese burst (also double cheese burst) which is like the stuffed crust pizza except there is basically a layer (or two) of melted cheese inside the pizza. It's so good yet so awful. I want to eat it because it's mouth-orgasmic, but at the same time it's so overly cheesy and greasy and disgusting that the taste of all that cheese just overwhelms me, which feeling I think it's safe to say I don't need a metaphor to describe. The first layer is I think white cheese, but the second is this insanely rich sweet thing that is kind of outside of the limits of what pizza should taste like. Good thing I avoided it today.

I've never really had bad pizza, except the stuff in high school, which isn't real pizza, nor are the "pizzas" sold in tiny food joints in India. So no, anything that a respectable individual would agree upon to be pizza is usually pretty good.

The best part of a pizza is inarguably the sauce. You can have a nice crust, great; good cheese tastes nice; toppings are lovely -- but without good rich thick sauce, pizza is nothing.

If someone gave me a big jar just of pizza sauce I would be happy forever.

What does it show about your life when eating pizza is the most significant event of the day?

That is all I have to say.

Rituals

2011-01-04T11:15:00.000-05:00

I've always been stubborn about calling myself sick. Physically, as in malady/illness/horrendous virus. Probably because my mom would always overreact and keep me from school for a week and force ten different types of medicine down my throat and make me eat the most bland soups and foods.

It's the dust and fumes headed at me from every direction constantly though. That plus the intense food leaves a mess inside.

Maybe it was a sign of weakness. That admitting I'm sick implies some sort of physical deficit that leaves me in a susceptible and powerless state beyond the control of my undoubtedly otherwise formidable mental capacities.

After the long and tiring ceremony ritual thing they made us eat these things--Manar's right, some things just escape easy translation, I guess they're like holy food? Purportedly.

Besides, it's an utterly contemptible idea to catch cold in temperatures several Fahrenheit integer multiples more than that which is truly bitter.

The priest made me recite/repeat these lines for like three hours. It felt like, you know those games, I know for a fact this was in the first Harry Potter game, where--probably more common and easy in Wii or DS games--where you try and trace your pointer around a shape to a close enough precision in order to go on--iPhone too, I guess. So I was repeating his words in I don't even know what language, probably Sanskrit or something crazy, and barely maintaining the inflections and syllables of the original speech, 30% at most, and I felt like I was tracing my wand around the spell for Incendio and sometimes getting it close to the actual shape but other times deviating completely off the screen.

But my taste buds become zombies when I'm sick.

I don't get why they all have such elaborate plans for dead people. Especially a year and then some after. If I died I would certainly hope that that would be enough time to get to heaven or hell or infinite unconsciousness.

Afterwards when we were eating the things, which was basically normal Indian food, I couldn't really taste the POWER OF GOD in it, I realized something embarrassing. I can't eat rice, or most things really, with my hands. I tried gathering the rice pieces in my hand and stuffing it in my mouth, but my thumb kept getting in the way, so I tried just holding it w/o thumb but then it kept spilling everywhere, unbound. I could even do it when I was three years old. All those years of "Western" stuff and forks and spoons really spoiled me. Chopsticks, even.

I could practically hear my dad laughing at my incompetence and utter failure at being Indian and saying I deserved it, which, frankly, I kind of did.

Communication

2011-01-03T11:20:00.001-05:00

In spite of all my and something's and whatever's and you know's, I think I'm usually pretty good at words. Sure I can speak condescendingly or sarcastically or obnoxiously verbosely, but it's only to intentionally cloud my intent when I feel like being a dick. Otherwise, in English at least, I'm normally able to express myself enough for the other party to get what I mean.

In India though, where everyone speaks like five hundred different languages[1], it's a bit harder. I mean, for one thing, I can't really express myself to the fullest capacity of language in anything other than English, because it's so innately unnatural for me to assemble words and thoughts and responses and such when I can only really think in English[2]. Which in turn leads to this inability to express myself period to people in India in non-English. And it's not like I can't understand people, because I can comprehend fast Bengali pretty well, even get the gist of rapid Hindi sometimes. But, you know, I grew up speaking English, having pretty solely friends who spoke English, being taught in schools in English, my whole life, so it's a bit hard to grasp another language with such precision and instinct. It's the kind of thing that requires intense study and immersion, neither of which I was too intent on, and I found Bengali to be too boring and annoying of a language to be worth the time anyway[3]. Point is, I can't really ask a rickshaw driver how his day's been, it's just left, right, avoid that bus!, another right.

My mom, however, has been studied at English-medium schools, lived in America for, like, 15-16 years, and lived about 18 years with a stubbornly American son. And yet she has this deal where she sometimes just can't get a point across to someone and it's visibly frustrating. The thing is she knows what she means but the method by which she conveys this ends up roundabout or foggy, and then she gets mad at the receiving end for misunderstanding.

I mean these aren't really anyone's faults. It's kind of a fault in language itself, in how the ways people think and the ways people communicate don't agree all the time. And it's not just not being able to tell a funny joke well or something, it's this whole business of miscommunication and misunderstanding which is really annoying and painful and harmful for all sorts of relationships. You can't even just decide, Hmm, I'll just contemplate for about five minutes how to phrase this to utter perfection before I voice my opinion, can you?

It's sad that kids get disinterested in language skills and grammar and stuff. The petty little rules and structures that organize how we basically think. How people disregard the importance of grammar at all, as if they were born fully capable of turning these babbles and whines into proper understandable speech. Not like you can even make language really exciting without being patronizing, either. It's the same charts and patterns and diagramming you memorize to oblivion, and hope gets ingrained into your system. So much easier with new languages, somehow. Like you weren't paying attention while your own language got chiseled into your brain, and now you notice, Ooh, conjugations and declensions and tenses and voices? Where the hell did these all come from?

Jeez, this language business is pretty messy.

Whoops forgot to note footnotes:

Actual (Wikipedia) count: 1576 or 1652.
I've caught myself counting or telling the time in French. I hated French.
My school didn't really care either. Five years and all I could do was slowly read at like 3 wpm. It's especially hard reading in a different script, that too one where letters hang off of freaking bars on the top of the line. And it took forever to write, too.

Expectations

2011-01-02T11:38:00.002-05:00

[Aside: I've never been a fan of overly dramatic and weirdly construed and obscure titles for stuff, anything. In particular I absolutely detest third-person titles of vlogs, i.e. "X does Y," where Y is probably referring to an action or something done by the vlogger in question, X--this gets old and repetitive ever so quickly. But who am I to judge, maybe people actually like it. But for me, I like to stick to plain, to-the-point titles wherever possible, maybe being a bit creatively witty occasionally when needed.]

In no greatly particular order, this year [bold denotes importance] I want to:

Go to LeakyCon 2011
Read fifty books, or complete "works" of a respectable length
Spend a good chunk of time actively being social
Tutor/volunteer at 826 Boston
Write a novel
Write several short stories[1]
Learn stuff
Keep at least a respectable A- avg.[2]
Volunteer more!
Find a place to stay during the summer
Find places to stay during spring and fall breaks...
Get okay-good at guitar playing
Beat qwop
See The Mountain Goats and other good bands several times...
Gain absolute political and economic control over a small Pacific country
Other stuff....................

Yeah. Okay it may not be much or interesting... but William the Conqueror didn't decide to invade England now did he? Well he probably did. But most things don't call for this early a prediction. Perhaps in three hundred sixty-three days I can compare how awesome[4] my year turned out to be.

Short post, but I'm tired, and also I feel a compulsion to write/post these things between when y'all (most of you being in America[3]) are in a woken up state to read things, and when it's tomorrow here, which means like evening-midnight. So I'll probably spend more time contemplating/writing in advance.

Or something.

I have this idea for a series of short stories called That Are Not People which ideas I'm really fascinated in, and I want to get on that right away.
Not to boast well kind of to boast but mostly in remark: this shouldn't be hard considering I'm probably guaranteed two A's, one likely A in English, but godknowswhat in Latin. And no, grade point averages don't mean a great deal to me, except in evaluating my work and effort, and most importantly, lording it over equally pretentious minds.
Ah, such are the woes of democracy and majority rule.
I can't stop myself from hearing in my head the word awesome in Johη Darηielle's voice.[5]
Yes, [3] & [4] are in counter-intuitive positions. You can see my thinking order. Can't you wait until I run out of clever little tricks and literary stuff so I'm just writing plain understandable and clear entries?

Resurrection pt. 8

2011-01-01T11:17:00.000-05:00

Seems like every couple of months I make a feeble half-assed attempt at reviving this blog to its former (if ever) glory. It's busy with college and all, I'll admit, but that's no excuse. So I'll try once more, no promises. Call it my choice of pretentious New Year's Resolution.

But so anyway. I thought about writing about key events in 2010, but that's kind of hard and stressful so I'll just ramble and talk about stuff I guess.

Spending regular time trying to document your own life or form some kind of structured outlet for thoughts and opinions and stuff is a dangerous and uncomfortable thing sometimes. For one thing, it's this whole, what is a memory and how do we get (and here comes the English/potentially philosophy major in me speaking) meaning out of them?

Which for me, if you were interested, leans towards the experience angle of the memory, which I try to adhere to because, as a frequent Thinker and Over-Analyzer, I sometimes get caught up trying to, like, think about how to preserve the memory of something as actual thing is happening (in Pre-Memory state, if you will). Which is bad. Because that's not "living life" so much as being a part in this history in your head, this fiction you are consciously constructing in your--ok, my attempt to make my life meaningful (whatever the hell that is[1]). It seems much more fulfilling and even meaningful to just live things and then maybe retrospectively glance at a perhaps less clear but pretty awesome (well or sad or apathetic or whatever strong mood the memory calls for...) time. So it's like this for me: live and then think about how I lived. I'm not going to pretend I even follow this most of the time.

Are memories even private? Literally, sure, I guess, because to take the solipsistic stance here, no one can ever know what it's like to be someone else[2]. So any of our thoughts and memories and anything manifested by our individual consciousnesses are inherently private, and for anyone else to try to make them their own, or even just to appreciate them, seems to kind of damage or distill the purity of the original memory. And that has an effect on your own interpretation of the memory. Like, half of the things I did when I was a kid, I can barely tell now if it was what I actually did or thought, or if it's just how my parents took it to be or even how their own corrupted memories perceive them now; I can barely remember anything purely on my own[3]. So it's always a risk to share memories with other people, in a sense, especially things dear and innocent and pure to you that you don't want other people ruining. But on the other hand, that's a really sheltered and isolated life, where you keep everything to yourself, keep your histories and memories and identity hidden from other people. A tempting option at times, but hardly one meant for a good social friend-filled happy life, or even whatever it is you want. I mean, it might be the ever-persistent socialist in me speaking, but like many things, memories should be free, as in you should be comfortable sharing most of them, you know, the ones that may not be the most intimate, but that when necessary you can show people who you really are, if that makes sense. Besides, everything that happens to you isn't exclusively yours anyway. Things that happen to you with other people--it's like a shared memory, like covalent bonding in compounds. Hell, most of the stuff that happens to you that's remotely exciting is probably because of other people. So at least share with them and reminisce or remind or whatever. Point is: memories, though perhaps originally private, should be something you do share.

While I want to spend time writing here and informing and all that, I do want to keep some things out of here. Certainly not out of respect for "readers"[4] or the medium of blogging itself. It's just that, blogging, despite the interactivity of commenting and the Great Conversations and all, is kind of objective and distant, and if I wanted to talk about that kind of stuff, I'd either keep a diary/journal or talk to my friends personally.

So I guess then for the most part this blog will kind of be me trying to "briefly" assess, discuss, remember, rant, whatever it be, and you know, not obsess over or prioritize hugely, but think enough of to be worth spending time and sharing. Fun.

Tomorrow (probably): To do list for 2011

Also, comments are nice :)

Isn't it a curious thing that we human beings have this concept of meaning? Like, when did we decide that there is some sort of necessity for a grand existential meaning and purpose for existence? I guess archaically it's in the formation of language, which itself is deriving meaning for noises and scratches, which I think is an incredible accomplishment for human consciousness and society. More modern times probably called for biological and philosophical discussions. There's probably a whole field of philosophy or linguistics devoted to this "meaning from meaning": the semantics of semantics???
See: Green, John, Paper Towns, Dutton: 2008.
However, I also blame this on the era of camcorders and cameras fucking everywhere.
I say this fully aware that most of you are like a couple of my friends, right.

some dream last night

2010-07-15T01:34:00.000-04:00

we were in like new york or somewhere me and some people it was probably my friends who were in boston actually we might have been in boston but it was a city with good public transport and a river as big cities tend to have both anyway and we went on a bus/train to some building and went upstairs and then I later went downstairs outside and around the city via bus/train and it was kind of weird and I think I got lost and ended up in some random woods in new jersey but then some people told me how to get back and I guess I got back all right or something there were other stuff in the dream but I don't remember.

-500 indie points

2010-06-04T19:33:00.004-04:00

~xpost~

I’ve had my current wallet for, like, the past six years or so. From around 6th grade. One of my best friends had given it to me because he got two for free on a plane or something. Mine was blue and his was red. It has this grey line pattern on it, like speech bubbles, kind of. The seams, or whatever, are all very worn, and for the coin pouch thing I tried to stitch it together but I ended up never really using it and just stuffed the coins into the bill pocket, which I occasionally had to shake up a bit because the coins would get in the folds and it wouldn’t fold. The place where you can keep a card under a clear plastic thing has been imprinted with three years wroth of unattractive school ID photos. I’ve kept a bunch of stuff in the other pockets and crevices, like my school season pass for games and stuff that I’ve literally never used, but I won it from some library raffle thing. Or my “Blaine’s Arcanine” holographic Pokémon card. Or some really old Simpsons card things. Or my Subway ticket from Boston. A lot of them got ruined when my jeans went in the wash once with the wallet inside. My iPod suffered injuries as well. I’ve always liked that the wallet was velcro, because it was always kind of childish; the whole wallet’s kind of childish. I liked how it would make that obnoxious noise of “hold on I’m getting money out.” I also really liked the aesthetics of it, and I rarely like aesthetics. I’ve started to keep receipts in it. You can see the strands of white thread from my attempts at fixing it; I did some stitching patterns once in a grade when such things weren’t gay. But the aesthetics, it’s blue and from some kind of fiber or something and like I mentioned the gray lines and designs. And the outline is this cool little white-black lines thing. The inside is black and so are the velcro parts. I really like it. And it even fits with my Hogwarts house, Ravenclaw!

Anyway, I probably won’t use it anymore soon, and instead use this boring grown-ups’ leather wallet we have which is probably infinitely less appealing and interesting and doesn’t have any kind of story behind it and the “Genuine Leather” text imprinted on the inside almost looks like it’s in Papyrus, which sucks, I guess, I don’t really know.

on adulthood

2010-05-17T00:27:00.000-04:00

Call me boring.

The past few days, weeks, months, even the last couple of years, have been kind of rough. Sure, people probably have it worse, with less support. But you know, it just felt bad, for me. That's not the point, though.

Being a teenager is a shaky experience. Your world gets torn apart, broken down, nothing makes sense anymore. Your parents' wisdom becomes less and less reliable, you start to get scared as hell for no reason at all, the things you've invested your faith and love and time and emotion in turn out to be kind of shitty and fruitless, pointless, worthless. You start to feel everything you thought meaningful actually become a lie, fake, phony. It's awful.

It doesn't end at adolescence, either; so many adults I know are/have been so fucked up, broken, scared, awful. It's not very pleasant.

Our society, which, you know, encompasses individual people interacting with one another and it's all very large and messy and productive -- our society likes to reinforce these ideas of individualism and the self, that you are the most important person in your life, that your happiness and pleasure is the sole need to be met for you, I guess. I don't really know, it's just what I think. And I think it's kind of dumb. What's the point of living your whole life only for it to be just for you. Sure you get these massively destructive impulses and emotions that you experience, but you can't share that, you can't suffer or enjoy as a group, even when in a social thing. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Why?

I'm a socialist mostly for this reason: I think any purpose in life, any chance at meaning, is other people. You don't really care about money, things, even art or science or knowledge. It's people. You live for them, for the ability to go through your experiences with others, share your thoughts and fears and boring crap. At least I do, maybe I'm just weird like that.

I hate it when people, intentionally or not, make other people feel bad. It completely undermines everything good about them or anything, and it's just bad. It's a low and shitty thing to do, especially when you know that the other person will feel bad, and still give them crap. What's the point?

Or living for yourself, in the moment, losing sense of the tangible world and getting lost in books and movies and tv shows and religion. Sure, these things are wonderful in their own ways, but by themselves they're just isolating and not very healthy. They might offer some lonesome introspection and analysis, but generally it's all a waste if you do it all by yourself. You need other people.

I really want to live for other people. I love the being that is me, its individuality and strength and personal issues and experiences, etc., but I like other people a lot more than I like myself. Not in a bad, self-deprecating way, either. I just feel like caring for other people, letting them feel capable of being entirely themselves and not having to feel bad or uncomfortable talking about things unfunny and so serious you'd think no one would care about because it's such a self-absorbed and boring thing. And I like it when other people are there for me like that. Maybe that's a naïve way of living, that's terribly self-destructive, and really demeaning for the self or ego or whatever. But it feels okay.

I want to be a high school English teacher because I want to be able to help kids who go through crap find a beauty in it all, that kind of amazing integrity that the sum of the parts of a book make, or the incredible way we can express ourselves to other people, and make other people care, and how language and stories so much possible. I want kids who have all meaning in their life torn apart to find meaning, to assert to others that what they do is important, that their opinions are real and their persons complex. I never really had that while I was in school, except what I did for myself, and self-realization or whatever crap be damned, it's nice to have a Mr. Antolini to validate everything like that. It helps.

In a way, not to be self-consciously boastful or anything, but I do feel more mature. Not just today, but the past few days, I've felt like I could really get a decent look at my life and what it's all about and etc. "within a frame / like a painting on a wall." I think I could do a lot of mature, grown up things that would be too much for me just a few months ago. I think I'm capable of a lot, and I can do stuff, for myself, for others. I like the boring, static image of adulthood sometimes: old people who do nothing and have no "fun" and just have peaceful and quiet lives. Which is obviously a lie in many ways, but it's nice to have things figured out and live with that kind of understanding, and I wish more people could live or think like that, and not get so angry or sad.

I like being conscious, analytical, pretentiously intellectual, and all. I like experiences, but I feel like the experiences in life are a waste if you don't realize that they are experiences that have some kind of meaning, whether general or specific to your life, who you are. I think everyone could use that.

I need to learn how to be more concise and coherent. Didn't read this through very thoroughly so it probably makes even less sense. But yeah.

About a year ago I couldn't sleep at night and posted a blog post about resolution, and finding it, and I feel like things are finally starting to come together for once, maybe. Hopefully.

"My house will be for all people who have nowhere to go
My supply of shining crystals a shield against the snow
There's more like me where I come from, so mark our shapes
Go down to the netherworld, plant grapes."

The Mountain Goats
"1 Samuel 15:23"
The Life of the World to Come

on childhood

2010-05-14T16:11:00.000-04:00

This is going to be in complete contradiction with what I have planned for blogging on Sunday but--

I want to go crazy.
I want to have complete and utter freedom.
I want to not care about anything, not worry about anyone.
I want to be able to throw myself wholly in something, invest all of my time and energy, not matter what.
I want to feel fantastic, be happy, live awesomely.
I want to immerse myself in people and drown out my whining inner voice.
I want to be horrible and mean and detached, cynical and callous.

I wish I could not give a fuck and do everything and get what I want because everything will be good and nice.

May

2010-05-02T22:42:00.000-04:00

May 3rd: Awards ceremony & NHS crap
May 5th: Literary analysis paper on Huck Finn due
May 6th: AP Literature & Composition test
May 8th, maybe 9th: Prom and etc. with Katy
May 10th: AP Biology test (lol)
May 10th: Senior Project presentation
May 10th, 11th: Summative tests
May 13th: Finals
May 14th: Graduation
May 16th: My birthday
May the rest: Sleep sleep sleep read sleep sleep sleep read sleep sleep sleep read

an actual dream

2010-04-19T21:23:00.000-04:00

   We were driving as fast as we could. We were out of the bookstore, and way the hell out now.

   A while before we got there, there was a block in the highway, and we had to take a detour. We had to be fast.

   We drove off of the road, onto the fucking dirt into the fucking airport. No one was looking. No one was paying attention.

   We stopped by the gates and the piles of baggage.

     "Grab one of those big carts of boxes," I said.

   She grabbed it and we walked up the stairs into the gate, into the terminal, nonchalant, safe. Well, both wearing everyday clothes as opposed to the inconspicuous airport uniforms that would guarantee us security, but no one gave a damn by this point. I kept looking back, looking at the guard at the gate entrance, for any signs of suspicion. There were none.

   Only when we'd reached the escalators was there any evidence of disturbance.

   About time, this was almost too easy.

   Ready to give up, accepting the inevitable, ubiquitous doom, always waiting for me, this time in the form of airport security, I tried one last attempt, one last breath. I ditched the trolley with the boxes that were our only guise, grabbed her hand, and we ran up the escalators, through mild crowd.

   I could hear the walkie-talkie-instructions loosely, barely, indistinctly, but only heard vague depictions of "blue jacket" and "red shirt," etc. Well, damn, that's not the end of the world, that can be escaped, fixed, remedied, made good!

   We were past the top escalator step and free.

---

Then I woke up, a little sweaty, and excited.

vlogs, and the perception of personal narration!

2010-04-04T01:53:00.000-04:00

honestly I'm not doing it.

PREFACE: This is not organized. If you were seeking something more pleasing and readable, consider this one, which I will bet is far better!

I'll save B(V)EDA for august or whatever because this april sucks so incredibly horribly but I don't care -- the point is, I've been thinking about it. There are people doing either -- maybe even both! -- right now, and one thing I've never understood is why people are so unsure of their ability to commit to the month-long project. Even after BEDA '09, it was like, what? -- can't you just pour out your mind, your incessant and raw and not-always-appealing thoughts onto a empty blog post? Vloggers have it better, just talk to a camera, mumble, reveal, disgust, with your horrible, selfish, unorganized, self-conscious thoughts. Isn't that what blogs are, anyway -- accounts of your life?

So why the problem?

I think part of it is the need to have an aesthetically pleasing, artistic work made out of every individual entry -- for example, why did I break the paragraphs up there? It's because I felt it was necessary to the effect of the blog post (which is still pretty crappy -- oh! there's that self-deprecating self-consciousness again! drats) and how you kind of want it to seem organized and well-worded for the suspicious reader.

We like to ingest art, information, stories, in ways that we are used to, ways that work well, ways that aren't as afraid of being called "unprofessional" or "disorderly" or "rude" or "stupid" or "lame!!!1" or -- and this is the big one -- BORING.

Everything is so boring.
I don't want to read this.
What's the point?
Your life sucks, I don't give a shit.
Why do you exist?
Who let you get a blog?
Your opinions are irrelevant.
I'm bored.
This is getting boring.

Why?

I guess the thing is that people are in general really impatient. As a result, they tend to expect something, and when things go off-plan, they use their primary instincts -- which is usually yelling and whining. I can understand.

This is the point where I lose all readership -- at least serious ones.

I think the problem is that people don't think complexly about things they encounter. One of the things in ~literary criticism~ is the different theories and crap by which you read a book and consider its meaning: historically, biographically, culturally, linguistically, whatever. You think about what the meaning of a certain work is.

People won't do that these days. For good reason, too:
a) there's not enough time,
b) there's too much! and,
c) I'm lazy.

But I try to do it. I think. I don't know, I tend to think too highly of myself anyway... but I usually try to look at people's different thoughts and interests and all that stuff. There are a lot of people in the world.

THE POINT?

I don't know. But I've come up with quite a lot of stuff just looking in my own mind, a sliver of my stream of consciousness. I don't see why it would be difficult to do something like this every day for a mere month, be it five minutes a day or five hours. What's the problem?

I look forward to the array of comments about how the author must consider the reader and how reading is entertainment and how blogging consists of more than just your life -- oh you self-centered bastard! why can't you consider other people, you filthy hypocrite!!

I'm sure there will be many such responses.

FLATULENCE

2010-03-31T19:22:00.001-04:00

Like a fire in my insides,
The gas bubbles down,
As beans produce sulfides,
In awkwardness I drown.
I can smell my lunch Taco Bell,
Refried beans so fresh,
As my butt groans and creaks and yells:
A fart that is sniffed from Marrakesh.

~ Arka Pain
March 12th, 2010

I am incredibly bored,

2010-03-15T07:57:00.001-04:00

not specifically right now, but IN GENERAL, because I'm like, "I could be doing SUCH cooler things right now! Why am I wasting all my time so shittily?" and I know the ~now~ is okay, and I should be MORE than satisfied with what I have, because Spaghetti knows I am, but I feel like there's so much missing, so much that is being replaced with smelly old shit that I don't care for, and you have to admit, smelly shit far overcomes the nice smell of flowers and whatever crap is Nice, OR, worse, you get that bad-as-hell mix between aesthetic¹ and unpleasant smells, which is just gross, which is where I am, now, in that gross in between² of GOOD and BAD things, where you just feel awful and bad and lonely and gloomy and sometimes happy and excited and great but can never ignore the smell of the pee of a two-year-old in the vents, I mean, once that pee is in the vent, goddamn, it's going to circulate around the whole house and you just want to leave!

1: I think "aesthetic" can be used to describe non-visual pleasantness, but not sure
2: oh god I hate in betweens. purgatory would fucking suck.

ppa: Interestingly enough, this seems to be the effect, the converse, the flipside of the "goddamn I am immortal and unstoppable and awesome" posts. It's like, you're on unlimited momentum until you hit a wall that you can't even get past, and then once you stop you're inert again.

Hey ideas:

2010-03-11T18:30:00.000-05:00

What are you doing? You can't get hurt.
Why do people care so much about you.
You are just ideas.
You're not even people.

I googled my name and found this.

2010-03-09T16:59:00.001-05:00

Among the 21 leaves offered to Lord Ganesha during Patra Pooja/leaves offering ritual, Arka/Yekka leaf is one of them. Pooja to Lord Hanuman is incomplete without the offering of a garland made with Arka flowers or Arka leaves. Hindus worship the plant and the leaves are used while having a bath on Rathasapthami/festival of Sun god. In the ancient scripts of Ayurveda, Arka is mentioned as a healing herb. There are two varieties of this plant, the plant with the white flowers is said to be more sacred and its botanical name is Calotropis Procera and the other with lilac colored flowers is called as Calotropis Gigantean.

Arka means “ray of light” in Sanskrit and the Arka plant is native to India and grows in dry wastelands. It grows to a height of 3-5 meters. Its branches are thick and ash colored. When the plant is cut or broken, a milky sap oozes out of it, hence the name Giant Milkweed. Another common name of the plant “Crown Flower” is justified by the fact that the flowers are clustered into a bunch and each of these beautiful flowers has five petals with a structure in the middle resembling a crown. The mature leaves are large, greenish gray, 8 – 12 cm long and 5 – 7 cm broad. The fruits of these trees are greenish gray, puffed up, 10 – 12 cm long. The fruits contain numerous seeds with tufts of silky hair at one end to help it fly.

Many medicinal benefits have been derived from different parts of the Arka tree. It is used externally as well internally. An Ayurvedic practitioner will be able to guide in prescribing the right treatment for the ailment.
The Arka is known to have cured skin diseases, digestion problem, abdominal pain, tumors, joint pains, wounds, toothaches etc. The latex of this plant is known to have controlled hair fall and lessen edema. The flowers and the skin of its roots are used to cure asthma and cough.

(via http://www.itslife.in/2009/01/arka)

post-publication: I had no idea about any of this, except the ray of light part and vaguely knew it was a herb. Also, lol at the "pain"-curing abilities.

soundtrack of my life-ish

2010-03-02T23:50:00.003-05:00

based on this meme except more intentional than random and also for an English project. also I changed a lot of stuff and it's hardly the same in parts but whatever I should credit them.

Opening Credits:
"Butterfly"
A Japanese dude! (Digimon)

Waking Up:
"I Am a Wizard"
Harry and the Potters

First Day At School:
"Bookworm"
Roonil Wazlib

I'm hungry:
"Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell"
Das Racist

Rebellion:

"Holland, 2008"

the dæmons

Falling In Love:
"Maybe Tomorrow" [live]
The Remus Lupins & The Hermione Crookshanks Experience

Fight:
"No Children"
The Mountain Goats

Breaking Up (ish):
"Woke Up New"
The Mountain Goats

Life:
"For Things That Haven't Come Yet"
Nana Grizol

Mental Breakdown:
"This Year"

The Mountain Goats

Flashbacks:
"The Bravest Man I Ever Knew"
Ministry of Magic

Getting Back Together:
"Alpha Rats Nest"
The Mountain Goats

Birth of Child:
"Genesis 30:3"
The Mountain Goats

Final Battle:
"The Lightning Struck Tower"
Ministry of Magic

Death Scene:
"Matthew 25:21"

The Mountain Goats

Funeral Song:
"Phoenix Song"
Harry and the Potters

End Credits:
"Thank You Mario! But Our Princess Is In Another Castle!"

The Mountain Goats & Kaki King

poems about anger

2010-02-27T18:31:00.001-05:00

"Punch What You say"

by Kienan Lynch

You make the beast and then I let it out.
I punch what you say.
You think I'm your punching bag.
I think you're that ignorant gremlin
hanging on my ear. And I blow you away.
I'm stuck in your web.
And you wrap me in your meanness.
I don't listen and break
free.
Now you're not real to me.

Holy crap. Kids are awesome. I was volunteering at the library today, well, only today, and I had to organize the books in the children's section. A lot of the books were pretty boring, but I found Where the Wild Things Are, a book about J.K. Rowling, and, amongst others, a book of poems about anger written by little kids, called Poems About Anger by American Children.

The editor, I believe, was an elementary school teacher who had someone come in and get the kids get excited about writing poetry???? I think that is a premise. But it's basically a collection of these kids' work, and she talked about how she got the kids to express their ideas and let them use structures like simile and metaphor and rhyme, but also let them freely interpret these in creative ways. It's incredible. I doubt I could construct such metaphors and flow language so well.

I don't remember ever being such a cool eight year old.

since I'm probably going to hell anyway

2010-02-20T02:58:00.000-05:00

I might as well just rip these wounds off bloodily and fast while I can instead of struggling with shit I don't have to put up with. I'm really bored with this and I want to make it hell for everyone else because it's nice and reassuring to know that other people are weaker and more screwed than you are and to bring that out if you know what I mean because face it it's fun to be horrible and not think about it oh god it must be relieving I could never really do it and probably won't but this thought of pure chaos and horribleness gives me immeasurable pleasure and I love it.

this is probably what I sound like a lot at school every day.

Accident-prone is not even a thing I am...

2010-02-17T23:44:00.002-05:00

So about two years ago, right, I was a sophomore, first semester at my new high school, and I was in an introductory Web design class. One of the things we had to do the first day was compose a list of twenty-five adjectives that described us (fancy that! adjectives that describe!)

Here is what appears to be that list:

Crazy
Psychopath
Confused
Disturbed
Nice
Awesome
Thin
Teenager
Alive
Mysterious
Accident-prone
Reading
Lazy
Bored
Not paying attention
Ignorant
Dazed
Sleepy
Weird
Abnormal
Odd
Alright

A few things.

I obviously ran out of words at 22, so I don't even know what I did.

The following are all blatant lies or exaggerations: psychopath, mysterious, accident-prone, dazed? Ignorant could be argued for, at the time. Awesome......... not so much.

And thin? Come on, was I so scarce in vocabulary that I had to use a dumb physical characteristic? When I had things like Not paying attention. I'm really surprised that I didn't mention being "single." I was a weird 15-year-old.

Teenager. Captain Obvious.

If I were to do this again, like today, the results would probably be somewhat different. I think I'm more confident and directional, if that's a thing. But I know more of who I am, like that I'm a Ravenclaw, a nerd, a literature geek, smart, funny (debatable), and all. And even the things that I'm more scared and lost about, even with those I'm more aware and resolved with my life and whatever crap. You get it. Also I'm fairly happy — why do I never note being happy!

But there's a glimpse into what I thought of myself.

post-publication blah blah whatever: I've also gotten fatter. Not enough to be fat, maybe, but enough to not be thin, I think. Especially 'round the belly....................

awful expectations; or, the general future

2010-02-12T20:13:00.000-05:00

how long do I have to wait to get out of this awful labyrinth? I can see the end over there, around the corner, but I cannot judge its distance. I guess my perception's been a bit skewed by the indiscernible present, so I just have to wait out this awful fog so that things clear up and I can see the end. maybe I can see the end, and it's like I just have to wait until I get to it, but I don't know how long I have to wait, and I'm scared, and to be honest I don't even know what's on the other side of the labyrinth, because this whole metaphor is, in the end, some kind of desperate hope that there is indeed a light at the end, and not a more awful and wicked maze, and then I'll just be waiting again, and my whole life will be waiting to get out of the goddamn labyrinths, and eventually I'll die and be like, "fuck this, not another labyrinth" — posthumously, of course, it's not like I'd be pissed enough at the labyrinth to die. I'm a little better than that.

nights on twitter

2010-02-11T02:27:00.002-05:00

11:45 PM: About to go to sleep... better think of a good tweet.
11:55 PM: Hey here's a witty idea for a perfect tweet.
12:05 AM: Someone tweeted something funny... gotta @reply.
12:15 AM: Should probably offset it with another witty thing....
12:45 AM: Or I could just say something abstract and absurd and hope people like it.
01:22 AM: God, my internet* dialogues are infinitely more interesting than others'........

*oh god, I just typed** "internet" when I meant to say "internal"
**I had typed "tweeted" instead of typed
***it's late.

yes...?

2010-01-31T22:11:00.001-05:00

mom: so, uh, tell me, do you have a...
me: what?
mom: a girlfriend?
me: wha--um, what if I do?
mom: really?
me: okay, so I have a girlfriend, so what?
mom: ooh!
me: ok I'm going...--
mom: wait, who is it?
me: what do you mean? what does it matter???
mom: is it that girl you went to homecoming with?
me: yes.
mom: really? is it the same girl you met that other time?
me: yes...
mom: katy "huffpuff"?
me: *sigh* yes.
mom: ooooh.
me: ok! I get it.
mom: how long...
me: what? we've known each other for like six, seven months.
mom: REALLY?
me: yeah...
mom: and how long have you been...
me: since sunday.
mom: that's the... what date is that?
me: what does that matter???
mom: well, you know, you need to be careful with girls.
me: what? what the hell are you talking about???
mom: you know, you think they like you and everything, but then they like some one else and--
me: are you serious?
mom: oh, you know, especially when you're in college and all. it's rough.
me: ...
mom: I mean, girls--it is a girl, right?
me: what?
mom [serious]: it's a girl; you're not....
me: what? what if it WERE that way? would you approve? would you disown me?
mom: you just wait, until you're older and have children...
me: if it WAS a boy, I wouldn't have any children! Ha!
mom: ...
me [mentally]: owned.

I had another part of the conversation that was really funny and all, but I forgot what it was fml.

intarnishable

2010-01-25T19:49:00.001-05:00

weird. I had an unusually good day. I was gonna write a blog about it and everything, but this dumb blog pretty much explains how I felt today. I mean, except the arkapaino part. I don't even like arkapaino. he's just a ruiner.

but it was funny, like I'd had some kind of felix felicis, and everything was okay. like, in English we talked about LITERARY THEORY and POSTMODERNISM which are like my favorite things ever. And when I was arguing in the hall about freedom of speech and being dumb oppressive majorities, I was like, hahaha you can't beat me now, I'm right, I'm indestructible, your arguments shatter in front of me. Do you know that feeling? I get it sometimes, and it kind of runs through me, and all goes well. Like in French, I was badass and funny and good at paper-mâché and it was great, and I got flour-y dough all over my jeans! Things started to look bad in accounting when I forgot to do my homework and had to turn it in late for a possible 70% score only - oh no! And then I remembered that my grades don't matter anymore, and my high school record was intarnishable, and I am slowly working my way out of a mini-labyrinth of sorts, and it's neat.

I am young and I am good and it's a good day you know!!!

post-publication addendum: I realize I'd never really used "good day" or anything synonymous. I guess I only blog about miserable depressing ungood things??? But yeah, when good things happen, I guess now I can talk about them. I like good things.

this whole nerd thing

2010-01-23T01:16:00.001-05:00

yes I'm a nerd, different from normal stuff
sometimes I think the only thing that is common among all self-declared nerds is social ostracization and a hatred of something popular, usually sports.
sure my way of life is probably better in the long run some how [sic]
but we're all human, and all equally doomed
why is there such a dichotomy between nerds/decepticons
it's like other people who interfere with our celebrated way of life are inferior
which is crap, come on, they are as allowed to do their thing why can't we coexist?
nerdfighters are smart, surely they can come up with something

define nerd.

post-publication addendum: I don't remember posting this; it was a draft but I guess I queued it or something. This isn't tumblr!!! Oh well I guess it holds true. But I didn't mean to post this yet; I was gonna expand!!!

I own more books to read than I have read!

2010-01-21T18:14:00.001-05:00

2010

read:

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers
The Bermudez Triangle, by Maureen Johnson

own:

Geektastic (2009)
How to Read Literature Like a Professor, by Thomas C. Foster (bought a while ago; should read before AP tests...)
Repotting Harry Potter, by James W. Thomas, PhD (2009 - must finish before sending off GoF)
Boy Meets Boy, by David Levithan
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Hacking Harvard, by Robin Wasserman
You Shall Know Our Velocity, by Dave Eggers
What Is The What, by Dave Eggers
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey

post-publication addendum: I should have listed these in the order they appear. Well.

JOHN GREEN IS GOING TO BE A DAD IN A BIT!!!!!

2010-01-19T21:11:00.000-05:00

:')

cool relatives

2010-01-17T16:15:00.000-05:00

I usually don't really talk about stuff that actually happens (I'm more of a theory guy, incidentally, not to mention fiction, or rather, fictitious constructs of real events, especially when I'm talking to people IRL who won't know the difference, and I am just a collection of amusing lies), but I guess since opportunities arise, I might as well take advantage of this.

As none of you will remember, back in April (last year) I mentioned my aunt and uncle coming over to visit us, and they were here this weekend, briefly. They being one of my few (cool) relatives, it was kind of fun.

My aunt works at some fancy Oxford scientific journal, as senior editor, or something, and my uncle's a writer. Well, fancy that, I want to be an editor and a writer!

They were cool to talk to, and during the standard prospective-college-student-talk, they were both happy with my decision to major in English—my decision to "break the Indian-math-science mold." Then we talked about colleges, like Chicago, Columbia, etc. and I talked about how I liked the big cities with awesome publishing companies and opportunities and nerdy student lifestyles, and how they were just perfect for what I wanted, and as an afterthought about how both New York and Chicago had chapters of 826 Valencia, at which my uncle exclaimed—

"Dave Eggers!"

And we talked for a while about Mr. Eggers, and I mentioned that I was reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which a friend had been pestering me to read for months, and we talked about the beauty of literature, and the gross misinterpretation of books like AHWOSG and The Catcher in the Rye, and how some of the greatest books are so profound and ironic, and we talked about the daunting task that is Infinite Jest, and David Foster Wallace, and his Kenyon commencement address, and John Green, and Young Adult literature...

Right so he asked to see some of this John Green's books, so I went upstairs and got Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns, to prove that "Young Adult" doesn't mean bad, low-quality, commercial garbage. And he was pretty impressed. He could discern from a quick skim that there was something deeper-than-surface to the books. This pleased me. I showed him one of John's smart/funny videos (i.e. all of them), and he was further impressed. John, you're welcome for your added readership.

But yeah, it's reassuring that not everyone in my family is crazy-in-a-bad-way and boring. That not everyone thinks I'm doomed to a life of financial instability and petulance. That old people aren't all close-minded and conservative. That people believe in my ability to get by all right in life.

Oh, and I watched Good Will Hunting that (last) night.

My uncle Kenny has two books published, and will assuredly come to me in ten years to edit/publish his future works, because I'm going to be such a fucking successful book editor, y'all just send your manuscripts to me right now.

His bibliography:
Trapped Doors
Defending Infinity

His books seem to be of promising literary merit, and even though he says they're of a more "adult" nature, why the hell should that stop me from reading them?

(Using grey for parenthetical non-essential ironic text is a great thing; reminds me to try to utilize it in some of my real writing.)

LOST

2010-01-16T00:42:00.001-05:00

I'm excited.

I guess I never posted the finished list of 2009

2010-01-15T00:22:00.000-05:00

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Let it Snow, by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume 1, by M.T. Anderson
Harry Potter & Imagination, by Travis Prinzi
Looking for Alaska, by John Green
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
The Great Gatsby*, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1984*, by George Orwell
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Peeps, Scott Westerfeld
Are We There Yet? by David Levithan
The Last Days, by Scott Westerfeld
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks*, by E. Lockhart
The Catcher in the Rye*, by J.D. Salinger
Suite Scarlett, by Maureen Johnson
Summer of ‘42, by Herman Raucher
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Scarlett Fever, by Maureen Johnson
How Harry Cast His Spell, by John Granger
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
Looking for Alaska, by John Green (second read)
Paper Towns, by John Green (second read)
Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
The Catcher in the Rye (second read)
Iliad, by Homer
Othello, by William Shakespear
Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
Let It Snow (second read)
~~Repotting Harry Potter~~~~, by Dr. James Watson~~ (must finish)

Organization

2010-01-13T19:11:00.000-05:00

As yesterday's post makes abundantly clear, I am forgetting/struggling with some of this blogging. Like, when I have a story or opinion, it's wonderful and I can write quite a bit on it. Or something I want to just talk about, or something interesting in my life, or just random profound syntax.

But I don't have much structure, in case I run out of things to talk about. Well, I have like thirty un-posted drafts (most of which are just body-less titles) but meh.

So here's a basic thing for me to look to for some organization. And I guess it'll make the blog seem less random. Oh and usually I will actually talk more about these than just the topic, like my opinions and other boring stuff no one cares about.

Monday — school/life/complaining
Tuesday — quotes/lyrics
Wednesday — some philosophical/political/religious/social/something ideas
Thursday — books
Friday — video/music
Saturday — something about me (I'll regret and probably under-use this...)
Sunday — lists/to do/tomorrow

Lots of leniency; I mean, I probably will still randomly blog a lot, but this is a sort of set of guidelines, if you will.

Red Green has pooped INSIDE my Nintendo.

2010-01-13T00:56:00.000-05:00

I don’t mean that he pooped next to the Nintendo, or that he pooped on top of the Nintendo, he pooped inside the game slot of the Nintendo. There was poop in there: Red Green poop. Because he knew I loved it! And so he sidled up to it, and he turned his bottom around, and angled it so that he could, like, projectile poop inside the Nintendo.

uh...

2010-01-11T18:51:00.002-05:00

right I didn't blog yesterday. slipped my mind, I guess, while I was doing stuff.

not like I have to blog every day...

but just so we're clear, I posted twice once on, like, January 2nd. so if I were to blog every day all year, we'd be cool, right. and you won't notice that this isn't actually the 11th. right?

it's not honest, but that's the real world, deal with it!

~arka, January 12th, 2010 @ 5:51 PM

also, fucking hell, of all the days I didn't post it was a day that was a palindrome!!!

(would have been a good college essay)

2010-01-10T19:53:00.004-05:00

It's no surprise, especially given my background, that my choices in life have been viewed somewhat skeptically.

You know that stereotype about Indian parents, and how they all want their kids to be doctors or engineers? It's pretty accurate. My parents have always kind of hinted that I'd be an engineer or, for my dad, a computer person. I'm not going to lie; I'm pretty good at math and science. I've gotten a 3 in AP Physics in 10th grade, and a 4 in Chemistry and a 5 in Calculus AB in 11th grade. Compared to the little 4 in English Language, it's pretty clear that I'm headed off to do something big, with equally big monetary rewards.

It's just something that's assumed. I've assumed it for most of my directionless life. It's like, "Okay, I don't know what I want to do, but this seems cool, so why not?" Innocent, little, clueless 11—14-year-old-me.

And then I began to detest it.

See, there's this point—around 14 to 16, sometimes younger, often later—when some kids start to develop this fascinating yet repulsive thing called a mind of one's own. And then, in a kind of falling-into-place way but not, I came to see how freaking awesome English/the humanities/that kind of stuff are. It just came upon me, suddenly, as I read and learned more about analyzing literature and thinking a lot about society and people and life and philosophy—and here is the perfect college major, the perfect line of study, the perfect kind of career that will satisfy me for the rest of my life.

Goddamn does that feel good.

You know what else gives me immense pleasure? As a college-bound high school senior, the expected conversation with adults follows this model:

Where do you want to go to college?
The University of Chicago, hopefully.

What are you gonna study, kiddo?
English.

Oh.
Yep.

So, teaching, huh?
No... not right now, at least.

Uh, what then?
Not really sure. I think I'll start out with a bit of editing and book reviewing, see where it goes.

English has a pretty bad job outlook, compared to science.
I know. The publishing industry is collapsing as we speak, and so many people are losing jobs. It's exciting.

What about engineering? medicine? law?
Hmm... not really interested.

You're great at science and math though! Are you sure you don't want to try some of those out?
I love science, and I'm amazing at math! Have you seen my AP scores? Damn am I good.

So—so why just throw that all away for something you could do better than? I know it's something you like—reading, like art or writing or music—but you need something practical, you know? You need to sustain yourself, and eventually, your family. You have so much talent; why make it harder on yourself?
I don't think you know how an education works, sir.

Look, I know you're young and think that money doesn't matter; that you can just do something fun and get by. That you love English, and you'll have such a good time, and jobs and money come second.

Do you know how much money an English major will make out of college? Do you? No, I want a real solid number. 30k, 40 at the most? Hmm, well do you know how much a science major can make out of college? Come on, try. It'll be at least twice as much. And medicine—you know how much doctors make? HA! A hundred thousand would be the most miserable, least capable, bottom-of-the-line. And neurosurgeons and beyond—we're talking millions.

I know money might not seem like a big deal now, but you're going to have to make money! And there won't always be jobs. English majors—I'm sure they work hard and all, but people just prefer a science major, even if the English major seems more capable. And you go through four years of college, with all these hopes and dreams, only to find that you're being outdone by people who are lesser—beneath you. You can do better than that.

But surely you have something to say about this; you've been rather quiet.
I don't really care.

Didn't you hear what I just s—
Yeah, and if anything, it makes me even more excited to study English!

...
Talk to you later!

plans

2010-01-09T15:32:00.000-05:00

17
the present. whatever. get by.

18—22
college. English language and literature. fun times in hopefully big, alive cities.

(somewhere in early twenties, possibly
graduate school or something, not planning that deeply.)

done with school—30-ish
book reviews, maybe some editing and stuff.

30-ish—40
hopefully full-time book editing or something equally satisfying.

crazy old man times
teach, or something equally crazy and contributive.

later, though I will do it several times throughout the rest, and until the end
write books.

On the integrity, or something, of life

2010-01-08T20:30:00.000-05:00

I don't know, I guess my life hasn't been the most ordinary or stable heretofore or in my immediate future, something I'd never really consciously accepted but always kept somewhere in the back of my mind, knowing that something was off and maybe this isn't the way other people do it and what am I to do? Be it the Big Problems or the Little, Insignificant-But-Stressing Things, I've always inadvertently dealt with this weird stuff.

And does it matter?

Like, I know that I, with my foreign-born, accented, awkward, confusing, disoriented, overbearing, partially-deceased parents; and my constantly in-motion lifestyle traversing the world which is ours and accessible, going from Texas to New Jersey to New Jersey to New Jersey to India to Missouri to god-knows-where, in the perpetual state of temporariness, with no prolonged attachment to any single area because it's never going to last or something, and it never lasts long enough to get good and comfortable; and my constant state of financial and future-related and me-related insecurities because I have no idea what is in store for me and if it's going well it sure as hell can't last long, right, something will fall beautifully and tragically out of place, yeah? Et cetera.

But my future's mine, isn't it? It's right here in the palm of my hands, raw and moldable, and I'm a smart, young, excited, open-minded, fairly interesting, somewhat likable kid, so I can do whatever, surely. Watch me get a bad-ass B.A. in English and make money and have adventures and struggle with life and eventually actually have a solid grasp on my life and make others' crappy lives better..

Because I'm seventeen, and the future is terrifying and confusing. Regardless of whatever I like to complain about, I'll get by all right; we'll all get by all right. Calm the fuck down.

I'm on page 104 of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers.

a rare classroom anecdote; hold on to it while you can,

2010-01-07T00:53:00.042-05:00

While I will probably never boast about the academic prowess of my French class, I can't say I don't laugh in there. Some of the things people do in there are just plain stupid or brilliant... mostly stupid.

Today, as usual, we didn't really do much. We learned maybe a few new words, and did a bit of bookwork, and then nothing. So these kids in the back, right, had taken some balloons, like the ones that clowns use to make the dogs and stuff, whatever they're called, from the teacher's desk.

Why he had them, I don't know.

So one guy tried blowing into them but nothing happened; it didn't inflate at all. Then this kid takes one of a the balloons, does something with his hands and mouth and manages to get it blown up, in small segments, so that it resembled a really long, air-filled sausage. He tied it up a few times so that it looked like a sword, handle and everything.

The first kid takes the sword and just starts brandishing it at the air in front of the class, and when the teacher attempts to take it from him, he waves it like a terribly unsubtle ninja. Then my French teacher snatches it from him, and pops the blade section of the balloon, and it falls to the ground.

Well, the kid picks it up, and this is basically what the remainder looks like:

The class bursts out laughing.

"You guys' minds are in the gutter!" he exclaims, smiling. He takes the balloon, pops the "balls," then the phallus, and leaves the defeated, wrinkled remains on the floor.

"Of all the things that have happened in this class," said Nathan, the penis-balloon-waving guy who, with some of his friends, has a reputation for vandalizing others' schoolwork by doodling male genitalia, "you gotta admit, that was definitely the funniest."

Who even cares if we learn close to nothing?

yeah I guess I'll talk about school

2010-01-06T00:50:00.001-05:00

When I had originally started blogging, one of my first posts was about my classes. Wow, slightly-younger-but-that's-no-excuse-since-I-know-a-lot-of-people-who-were-way-cooler-than-you-at-that-age Arka, wow. Yeah, I had quite a different perception of what's interesting, relevant, or what I even care to talk about now.

But I don't know what else is hip and going on in my life now. I mean, college applications are like done-ish. I am doing okay in most respects. I'm maintaining my social (cool). I'm happy with my friends and crap. No real bouts of deep philosophical inquiry (though I haven't pressed it...). So whatever, school-y post, go:

Not much has really changed in terms of courses, except two minor-ish things: instead of sociology, I've moved onto psychology; and instead of 3D Art I have introduction to literature.

[Psychology is pretty neat, I guess; it seems slightly harder and less common sense than its first semester alternative. It's all behavior and the human mind, ooh! I actually plan on maybe taking a few psych courses in college, because I find it and sociological stuff really interesting and practical. I know my teacher isn't the best, and my textbook is pretty outdated and kind of not objective—or at least it doesn't leave much room for criticism and deviant opinions—but still, hopefully I'll like it.

I know Intro to Lit sounds kind of redundant since I'm in the infinitely more challenging AP Literature (whose homework I am presently abandoning in favor of you, the reader who is so special and dear to me that he or she would feel terrible now to be reading this without leaving a comment... terrible) but I don't really regret it. Hell, for one thing the focus of most of our analysis/perspective is different in both classes. My teacher's AP Lit curriculum is centered around the hero; while Intro is about the villain. Now, I know how significant the villain, or bad guy, or douchebag good guy, or any kind of less-than-ideal dynamic character is, and I would love to go into it, even if it is basic stuff. Either way, the readings will be different, I'll do different analyses, and there's just no harm in taking too many English classes. God, I regret not having taken creative writing or journalism.]

Socially, meh. I really haven't talked to anyone much outside of classes since I've had to finalize recommendations and schedule late tests, so I really don't know. Social life and irl friends have never really been that high of a priority in my life, and I really want to kind of change that, now. I mean, it's terrible, and I'm terrible, and it's completely unjustified. I'm still thinking about that HP Alliance thing, and who knows what else. It's a bit late, but I do want to be involved-ish in my school and community.

I don't want to be one of these lameass annoying teenagers who are all, "Oh, high school is so boring, this town sucks, these people are crappy, I want to move on and get the hell out!" Because while those are true for me, I think I am smart enough to be better than that. I'm a freaking nerd; I should love school regardless!

~yawning while kissing~

2010-01-05T00:49:00.001-05:00

(as submitted to the University of Chicago in my application. don't steal, y'all. also, UChicago, I love you guys, and this post is just something I wanted to share with the world)

The exact origins of the question still elude me. I recall being deep in some late night conversation with my friends when, at some point, I had been provoked to ask them whether it was possible to yawn while making out. While initially confused, they better understood as I explained my train of thought:

Someone yawns.
Yawning is purportedly contagious.
Can you yawn while engaged in something else with your mouth—?
For example, kissing.

They didn't entirely get what the big deal was, although they did humor my inquiry; after all, it's hardly the most popular direction of thought in society or academia. Our research was considerably less scientific, too, since while we'd all yawned before, none of us had much kissing experience. With history and the arts disappointingly silent, we had no choice but to study the matter ourselves: the realistic possibility and the social and character reflections. Of course, it ended up mostly being me engaging conversation with my friends.

One of my initial questions was whether it was physically possible—whether the human biological functions dictating yawning could coexist with those of a snogging session. Of course, my anatomy-nerd friend Lindsay proceeded to explain how the medulla oblongata forgets to tell the lungs to breathe, or something, so they have to intake air because the body needs oxygen. Kissing involves a lot of "exchange of breath," we reasoned, so the lack of oxygen could possibly stimulate a yawn. There was more discrepancy as to whether or not one can yawn while kissing without sucking the other into their mouth.

And then what? If a person were to actually yawn while engaged in the romantic act of kissing, what would the repercussions be? Yawns are socially unacceptable enough as it is; they're signs of boredom, sleepiness, the human soul escaping the body, etc. A participant's reaction to a yawn-while-kissing situation would reflect a lot about the people involved. Outcomes could range from disgust, shock, or offense to interest or amusement, though hopefully not arousal. It would probably be a good sign for the relationship if the yawnee can forgive the yawner. It would show maturity, as well as a deeper understanding of both the phenomenon and one another. They could have a nice cup of tea afterwards, discussing what had just happened. That being said, it would be optimistic to the point of foolishness to disregard the potential for complete and utter relationship collapse.

Once I'd briefly gone through these points, my friends began to see that I was yet again making a philosophical rant out of something that really didn't really have any point. We liked talking about the most random and unimportant things, just because they were good exercise for our minds. Also, they're fun.

The next day at school I brought the topic up to one of my other friends. She said she didn't care, and didn't want to argue about it because it would just annoy her.

possibly the two broad categories of things that make me like life

2010-01-03T22:09:00.003-05:00

The possiblitity* that:

everything will work out in the end and everyone will be happy and all that hard work and adversity will prove worth it in the end.
nothing will ever work out and the indecisive future will kick all our asses and we'll be miserable and watch everything fall to shit and all that we work for be in vain and we'll be lonely and overall quite fucked.

They both give me hope.

*Edit at 5 am the next morning having never gone to sleep: WOW. I hadspelled "possibility" way off!

In Defense of Lauren

2010-01-02T17:20:00.002-05:00

Okay so look, my hair looks like crap right now, and I just finished rereading Let It Snow (by the way, this year the book counts for the year you started it) and really wanted to get this out. Katy, I'll start reading AHWOSG as soon as I finish, but I always need a nice transition between books anyway, so here.

So a lot of people love Let It Snow because face it—it's a cute little holiday romance book of short-stories-but-they're-all-really-kind-of-connected-in-that-weird-way, not to mention it's written by three amazing YA authors. I know a lot of people who really love John Green and Maureen Johnson, but I've never really heard much about Lauren Myracle, although I've seen some of her books at boosktores.

I'll just say I think Lauren's story, "The Patron Saint of Pigs," is the best of the three. It's not that I am not absolutely in love with John's nerdy, two-kids-like-each-other-oh-look-now-they're-kissing story, or Maureen's Flobie-filled one. I just really like Lauren's story because for me it kind of stands out beyond the story itself.

John's and Maureen's stories were kind of—and I don't want to say this, because I know they're both great authors from their other works—character and plot driven. ish. I mean, I understand they have inherent and intentional meaning and understanding of the stories, but I think their main strong points are that you like the characters, and you are interested as to how their outcomes will fare. Which isn't a bad thing—hell, it's what makes a lot for great stories. And no, I'm not saying they're empty or bad or anything, and I could be wayyyy off; it's just that Lauren's story stands out more.

I know a lot of people say they didn't like her story so much, and I can see why, a bit. I mean, the first time I read it I was kind of annoyed with the self-absorbed, mopey, crying protagonist Addie. I don't really like her, but now I really like how she's changed. I just like the blatant hints at her changing, and re-evaluating herself. You can tell she tries, and you sympathize with her, and hope she doesn't screw up big time. Because that's something universal, feeling like all of the world's problems are crashing down on you, and you want to just freak out. Which is fine. But then you also have to think about your friends who need teacup-sized pigs, or your enemies who are actually not bad people, and how your life doesn't completely suck balls either. I like how everyone kind of realizes this around her, but it takes until she snaps into place to really kind of see it. Sure, maybe at times it seems a little too good, and things fall into place too well or something, but I like the cute little resolution at the end where all the stories tie in and you can see how great everything is.

Anyway, I look forward to reading more of Lauren's work in the future.

And if you haven't, read Let It Snow, y'all!

get my act together, yo

2010-01-02T13:14:00.001-05:00

Don't hold me to it, but I might end up just blogging every day de facto anyway. We'll see.

I know I posted about resolution-ish things, but here are some things I need to get on immediately... well, like in January/February:

finish college applications. Still got Columbia, Kenyon, and Boston University. holy crap that was a lot of stress. hopefully I'll get accepted in enough good places
apply for jobs. I need money. I haven't exactly made my future cheap. Infinitus will be hell to pay for, if I can even go. All of the colleges I've applied at are out-of-state or private. I need a laptop, and a new iPod. Goddamn you consumerist capitalism. Also, it doesn't help that we've got like zero income at the moment.
read the following books, I guess: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Boy Meets Boy, and finish freaking Repotting Harry Potter. ideally I'd fit another book in there, but no pressure.
learn to drive. self-explanatory. can't miss any more hot dates.

Okay, less self-interesting blogs in future, I swear. Maybe I'll post something about capitalism or butts or something??? Yeah? Sounds good.

seriously though. can't let 2010 go to waste.

2010-01-01T03:30:00.000-05:00

I'd call it something funny and cool instead of "resolutions," but that's just dumb and pretentious for trying to sound funny and cool because you are insecure with the old and boring stuff that you once were.

SO, resolutions:

be myself and care a little less about being cool and in "the know" and it's okay to sometimes feel left out
don't be myself completely though! try out new things, new ideas, new stuff!
also re-immerse myself in old things I've tried but never committed seriously too; youtube, writing, THIS BLOG, etc. be organized and schedules, but also spontaneous
talk to my friends more, one-on-one, personally, often, even for no reason
give my IRL life more credit; I mean, it's 5 months, might as well make the most out of it
do productive shit: start an HPA thing at school? get a job, go to college, write regularly OR ELSE, and just be a good person beyond just being a good person
to be open, I guess?

I don't know what else. Just STAY COOL, ARKA.

DON'T FREAK OUT.

The Reader and the guy reading

2009-12-31T22:38:00.000-05:00

I never really thought about The Reader as a separate entity before, but as I read books more closely, I've started to notice that there's something people tend to do when reading.

They become the characters. Which, I suppose, is kind of okay. Like, I love relating to characters, and putting myself in them, because it's nice to feel the experience of a book that way. It makes the meaning and all much clearer and personal, you know?

I guess what I'm trying to say is don't put the characters in you. Well, not exactly. I guess you could compare character and book situations to yourself, and see how they apply to you. But I don't think that's the point of an author's writing of a book. I don't think the author's primary goal is to, like, tell you that this is your life, that this is something like you. Because it's not. Not every story or character or setting or anything is applicable to everyone. I guess there are times when you notice similarities, but in general, I try to--not distance--like, read it on a personal level sometimes, but also on a more this-is-the-story-and-I-know-it's-a-story level.

I don't know a specific situation to depict this, but I think it kind of makes sense. Either way, there's something to get from looking at who we are as a reader, which I don't really blow off as useless pretentious literary crap anymore.

Hey notice how I didn't talk about the New Year or resolutions or the impending loneliness or the future or anything, but instead, on New Year's Eve, talking about reading a book. What a nerd, lol.

College Expectations from a seventeen-year-old

2009-12-29T00:29:00.005-05:00

Here are some things I expect college will do to revolutionize my life (because after all, it's where I live and what's around me that affects how content I am, not my own personal peace of mind, of course):

Better food - sorry, I just had dinner, and it left something to be desired; I think I'll heat up some pizza later, probably.
Better education - forgive me for putting education below food—usually I'm not an advocate for prioritizing food, since personally I don't care for it except that it fills the physical emptiness in me, which I suppose I should be kind of grateful for, since it's a hell of a lot easier to fill than the emotional and mental emptiness that I'm left to contemplate; nevertheless, I do expect the quality of education to be vastly superior to that of my pathetic high school, since I'll either be at liberty to choose whatever the hell I want to learn about, or otherwise compelled to study things that will, in a somewhat pretentious but true way, broaden my mind to new perspectives about things I'd otherwise not care to know about either way, it's better than my education heretofore; this much we have established.

Freedom!!!!!! - man, I am all over the place with my priorities today; here I am talking about food and education when it's clear that the number one thing I want from college is freedom, that great value so prided and protected by our great, prideful, overprotective country—yes, I do want to get the hell out of here, which incidentally leads me to my next point:
I do want to get the hell out of here - pretty self-explanatory; if you've ever lived in a small town or something of the likes, like a crappy part of the country, or just a bad school, or even being around those annoying kids who do nothing but remind you of how much you want to get out of here (it's like a big, meta circle)—but you know that if you do get out, everything will be solved, because, well... [see INTRODUCTION TO THIS LIST] because I think in college I'll have a better—
social life - yeah, no hiding it, my social life isn't the best as it is right now at school, etc. I mean I suppose part of it is my fault, but really, I like to blame it on the ineptitude of my peers—to think that it is really they who are lacking in intellect or open-mindedness or interest, or excessing in pretentiousness or snobbishness—and I feel like this will change, and is not something universal in every slice of human population. (to be fair, this one's kind of justified, because assuming I get into somewhere good, the quality of discourse and social activity will probably be more to my suiting.)
I will do stuff and not just complain about it.

Red Green

2009-12-28T02:56:00.004-05:00

[edited from this by Esther]

I know; I’m excited about my baby too; I really am… really, really, excited… can’t wait, can’t wait…

Red Green was the dog that we had when we were little. Hank probably—Hank was probably five when we got him, and so I was like seven or eight, and Red Green—we got him for Christmas, that’s why he was called Red Green, and he was kinda red ‘cause he was a miniature dachshund; but red green, you know, Christmas. And we'd already had a snake, um, a garter snake called Blue Green, and, uh, it just seemed like the next logical decision. And Red Green was this little miniature dachshund; he weighed like seven-and-a-half pounds, and he was, like, the worst dog in the world. And I love—I can love a bad dog: Willy [turns to Willy] barks a lot, and he runs away, and he’s very skittish, and pissy, and everything. But Red Green was, like, an aggressively, horrible dog.

Like, I remember one time, Hank and my parents went to England, and for some reason I didn’t go; I was working at Steak 'n Shake, and I think, like, I needed to, like, finish my summer at Steak 'n Shake to have spending money for college, or something. So I was probably 18—I think it was my freshman year of college. And, um, my mom and dad and Hank went to England, and, um, for, like, three or four days. And I was stuck in Orlando, working at Steak 'n Shake—working the graveyard shift at Steak 'n Shake, um—Kayley, last night, worked the graveyard shift of "Project for Awesome," as did many of you. And, so, um, me and Red Green were alone together in the house. And Red Green—if I did not get up at five thirty in the morning, um, uh, on my off days, and walk Red Green, he would jump into the—up onto the bed; he would wake me up by pawing at my face; then he would jump back down onto the carpet of my bedroom, and he would stare at me. And he would pee. And then, on the days that weren’t my off days, when I had to work from midnight to eight am, uh, which is the time when dogs are usually asleep, and able to, like, hold their, uh, bladders, I would come home to, like, not, like, one accident, but, like, seventy-two separate accidents, uh, scattered about the house. And it wasn’t that Red Green was incontinent; he knew that it pissed us off when he peed, and so he peed, because he liked to make us mad.

So—that’s not the story, though; the story is this:

When I was about twelve years old, I had an 8-bit Nintendo—one of the original Nintendos. You—you know what I’m talking about? You probably don’t. You’re like, “Oh, original Nintendo, you mean the, uh, you mean the Wii.” No—before there was a Wii there was a Super Nintendo, and before there was that, there was the original Nintendo, which was just, like, a grey box, and it had this little door and it flipped open, and then you put the game cartridge inside—you probably do know because of James the Nintendo Nerd—and then you would—or Angry Video Game Nerd—and then you would put—you’d put the video game cartridge in, and then you’d press down, and then you’d close that, um, that little flap at the top, and then you’d hit power, and you’d play the game.

Okay. So, um, sometimes—because I’m more of a winger than a planner, as I just learned taking that baby test—I would, uh, play my game, and then I would take it out—megariffix32: just like me! That’s not an old Nerdfighter. I would say that that is a, uh, early, early, still a young—what is—what is—if you’re not middle-aged, I guess you’re early-aged—so yeah, the early-aged Nerdfighter. All right so, I would—I would take my game out at the end of my playing Blades of Glory or whatever; I would take my game out, and sometimes I would leave the little, grey flap open, right? And then I’d put my game away, and I would go to bed, because I played from, you know, six o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock at night, uh, breaking briefly for lunch. You have to understand that, like, when video games—[laughs] like, when the Nintendo first arrived in homes, uh, everyone in the world was, like, I don’t want to ever do anything other than this, um—it was so much cooler, and more exciting, than anything that had ever happened to any of us. So anyway, uh, I left the little flap open. Red Green….

My brother was at summer camp—Hank was at summer camp. My parents are not really practical jokers; they’re funny people, but they’re not practical jokers. And the house was locked. And I loved my Nintendo more than I loved anything—and than I loved anything in the whole world, at that point. Like, maybe more than I loved my—my family. I loved my Nintendo, and I would never do anything to harm it.

I go to bed one night with the flap up; I wake up the next morning, you know, the very first thing that I do, before I brush my teeth, is I run into the living room, and I grab Blades of Glory, or Double Dribble, or whatever it was, and I would pull it out of its black Nintendo case, and I’d go to put it, and RED GREEN HAS POOPED INSIDE MY NINTENDO. I don’t mean that he pooped next to the Nintendo, or that he pooped on top of the Nintendo, he pooped inside the game slot of the Nintendo. There was poop in there: Red Green poop. Because he knew I loved it! And so he sidled up to it, and he turned his bottom around, and angled it so that he could, like, projectile poop inside the Nintendo.

Now, the other possibilities—what are the other possibilities, right? The other possibilities are—somebody says, “Red Green ftl.” Do you mean, “Red Green French The Llama”? Sorry, that’s a joke that’s from, like, two days ago; I’ve been on for a while…. The other possibilities are that my parents put the Red Green poop inside the Nintendo, which they have consistently denied, and they have also, convincingly, said, “Why would we put poop inside your Nintendo? We knew you loved it and it shut you up—and distracted you… from bothering us.” My brother was at summer camp; there’s no way he could have done it—he would’ve, God knows… crazy bastard. But, um, the only person... who could’ve done it is me—and I would never do it; I loved my Nintendo! The doors were locked. Either someone broke into my house, stole nothing, took Red Green’s poop in the house—which God knows there was plenty of—and put it inside the Nintendo. Or, Red Green actually, literally, pooped inside my Nintendo.

This is a true story… this is a true story… That is the kind of dog that Red Green was. Um, the other—Red Green was such a bad dog… I can’t get over how bad of a dog he was. How bad was he? Red Green was such a bad dog… that um…

a highly incomplete reading list for 2010

2009-12-25T23:55:00.007-05:00

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers

started in 2009:

Repotting Harry Potter

Geektastic

How to Read Literature Like a Professor

some leftovers from 2009's epic fail also idk random "literary" novels:

The Color Purple
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by Lynne Truss
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume 2, by M.T. Anderson
Feed, by M.T. Anderson
Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James Loewen
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junat Díaz
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

The Picture of Dorian Gray
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

(lots of dfw stuff maybe?)
Everything And Nothing, A Compact History of Infinity, by David Foster Wallace

gonna tackle in AP Lit anyway:
The Stranger, by Albert Camus
1984
Brave New World
The Great Gatsby

everything by:

John Green

Maureen Johnson

Scott Westerfeld

David Levithan

some new guys:

Breakfast Of Champions

A Confederacy Of Dunces

Deadeye Dick

Love Is A Dog From Hell

Everything is Illuminated

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

How I Live

The Book Thief

Bill Bryson?

Spaceman Blues

Liberation

So You Want To Write
A Separate Peace
A Portrait of the Artist a Young Man
A Suitable Boy
The Color Purple
The Overcoat

some books on the topics of:

literary theory

critical theory

postmodernism

editing and proofreading

publishing

education

religion

^lotsa very short introductions

other stuff:

Langston Hughes

Raymond Carver

fun:

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Extraordinary Chickens

This is Why You're Fat

Sunny Side Down: Tales of Mere Existence

LOLcat Bible

Cyanide & Happiness

just standard:

MLA Handbook, and Manual of Style

Youtube: an insider's guide to climbing the charts

oh, and of course, probably during the summer or something,

Harry Potter:

Sorcerer's Stone

Chamber of Secrets

Prisoner of Azkaban

Goblet of Fire

Order of the Phoenix

Half-Blood Prince

Deathly Hallows

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Quidditch through the Ages

Tales of Beedle the Bard

---

feel free to leave suggestions, obnoxious and sincere, in the comments or, like, something

There's like not much I can do about some things

2009-12-12T02:47:00.003-05:00

I mean...

I tell myself that, you know, people are okay at school and not utterly horrible maybe, but I know that this isn't what I want.

I tell myself that my parents aren't complete morons whom I do not want in charge of my life because I'm nearly an adult and I'm tired of them messing everything up, but I know they are.

I tell myself I have direction in life and that things are fitting in all right and that I'm not as completely screwed over as I think, but I know I probably am.

I tell myself that there's no way that so many people can, well, kind of genuinely like me for who I am and my interests and habits and personality and choices, because really, who would? Surely it's all a joke like the rest of my life, and surely I'm just as insignificant and crappy as I've always thought, because come on,

but then I know that they do.

I know once you read this you're going to go, "oh crap he's talking about me fml!" or else just make assumptions about what you think. lol

2009-11-13T23:20:00.001-05:00

Some people:

hey I like you.
god I hate you sometimes but I'm too lazy and a terrible person to do anything about this.
I'm glad you're there for me, and our relationship is so cool and odd. rawr.
I wish we talked more; we should be closer... sorry. my fault.
I disagree with you a lot, but that doesn't diminish how much I care about you.
I feel like we're almost siblings sometimes, you're so awesome, ily.
Sometimes you annoy me but you're still really cool, I'm just jealous lol.
I am terrible at sending notecards, sorry! I joke, but we need to talk more
You're always funny and awesome and I feel like we're so similar in our boringness :D
I miss the old times when we'd be the coolest people ever, but now we're so different :\ I hope we can be like that again, in the future.

*Bonus: You wrote Harry Potter and changed my goddamn life more than anything else.

yeah... by the way, some of these people ARE irl people so be forewarned!

I really do hate seeing these from people I know because - no matter how unlikely - I always hope I'm one of them and they're just destructive pathways to societal chaos.

haha some of these are so obvious. and some of them are more ambiguous, who knows!

how do you deal with it?

2009-11-11T23:22:00.002-05:00

too young to drink it off

too old to roll on the floor wailing

so I write a blog post about it.

this is adolescence.

NaNoWriMo

2009-10-31T20:33:00.001-04:00

Hey so National Novel Writing Month starts in a few hours; I should be currently reafing the epicness of Homer's Iliad, but I clearly have my priorities in need of sorting.

Since you're such lovely people, I'll try and give you some kind of idea about what my story's about.

Some time in the future, the world is much depleted of resources, and people have largely harnessed solar energy in various forms. So the government has pretty much, well, turned humans into autotrophs -- that is, they can photosynthesize food. Of course, this is only a part of society; the rest are still heterotrophic and dependant on the natural world to provide for them. Oh and I guess the involvement of other nations might have something to do with it. And this dude, right, he obviously finds flaw in the system, challenges authority, you know the deal.

I don't know if it will necessarily follow the principles of a dystopia, but I guess it will be more character-focused as well as stuff about nature, the essence of humanity, the dependence of society, blah blah blah whatever.

Hopefully it will be interesting and compelling and of worth to a degree.

On geeks

2009-10-12T16:54:00.004-04:00

"We like to think that just because we're geeks, that means we can't be assholes. But we can be."

"Quiz Bowl Antichrist" by David Levithan, from Geektastic

it's national coming out day

2009-10-11T14:54:00.004-04:00

I have a million other things to be doing right now, and I have a bunch of other blog posts I should probably be working on, but right now I just want to talk about this.

So it's National Coming out Day/Week, right? And yet we still live in a world where people have to struggle to come to terms with society accepting their life styles or perspectives, since society is pretty bitchy right now. An alarming number of people are willing to heavily judge and condemn people for being gay. Okay society. It's one thing to think murderers are crazy, or that rapists deserve hell, or even, I guess, that atheists like myself are terrible people who will be eternally damned (cool, I know!).

But because they can seriously love different - or even MORE - people than you? Because they have the ability to romantically like people in a way that you find disgusting and ungodly? Because they can fall in love? And because they can like people?

What the hell, society?

The following is a slightly tweaked blog post I did a few days before the election last year, and was largely motivated by Proposition 8:

I don’t live in California, but I think it applies to the whole country when I make this claim: homosexual marriage is equal to conventional marriage. I mean that is pretty obvious. There are other things to think about in homosexuality, and marriage really isn't what I think the main problem—although it does represent it.

Still, the foundation of gay marriage is not inferior to "straight" marriage, and can easily be healthier, even. I cannot see any reasonable argument for why gay marriage doesn’t deserve the same civil rights as any other.

Let's look at where this all comes from, for a bit. Originally, god’s intention or not, humans (and most other species, save a few asexual ones) were to procreate by mating with a fellow human of the opposite sex; thus advanced the human population. And now let us continue on in that manner, as was obviously naturally intended. Now imagine how horrible it would be—if we humans endeavored to make life go in a manner unorthodox and deviated from nature’s original intentions! Just imagine such a sacrilegeous society: People communicating with text and images rather than grunts and movements; men and women wearing clothes—synthetic at that!—to cover their bodies, rather than strolling around in the freezing winters, with their genitals breezed by the cool air; glasses; mining; electricity—oh electricity; Large Hadron Colliders; all of these evils roaming about undeterred by nature’s powerful hand. Does it not sicken you to think about such a cruel world?

(Regarding the last few lines: there is an amazing facebook group called "Gay Marriage Killed the Dinosaurs" that beautifully satirizes so many people's views about gay marriage and homosexuality, revealing how stupid and ignorant people can be. God I love satire.)

In case your head is unusually light and fluffy today, I should add that the above (non-parenthetical) paragraph shows how humans don’t really see eye-to-eye with nature a lot; some delusional religious—or just plain pathetically misguided—people might actually agree with the aforementioned paragraph, to which right now I can only sigh. So look at our unnatural tendencies to defy the conventions of the world, and look at the many—undoubtably millions—of couples happy with each other as they are, socially acceptable or not. Why would you taking away their happiness? Does it please you to merely take away rights of human beings—the pursuit of happiness, which Thomas Jefferson declared an inalienable right. Wouldn't the ultimate goal of human beings be to live a life of happiness such that they doen’t die immersed in regret? I mean, do little things like this really detract from the amazingness of human nature to such a degree that it should be kicked out of societal acceptance?

I guess this would be a bit too abstract, so I will let Lauren Fairweather finish explaining it—and my general attitude toward sexual "preference"—in better words than I ever could:

Oh and President Obama wants to end "Don't ask, don't tell" :)

reasons why I love AP Literature

2009-09-25T19:52:00.002-04:00

But you have every right to ask, "Why literature?" That's a good question, because in our world there are so many ways of gaining experience and insight into our lives and the lives of others that focusing on one resource based on the spoken and written word may seem narrow and old-fashioned. We're willing to grant that, and we'll go even further: in a sense, it is also elitist, and turning to literature as a source of experience will set you apart from the majority of people. Thus, literature provides not only vicarious experience and opportunities to relate to others' lives, but it also permits you to join a special group of scholars, instructors, critics, and other students who share in the wealth of enjoyment and intellectual challenge that it has to offer.
- Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense

My English book is pretty epic. I mean, the book - a mere textbook - has such an attitude. It's like, "Okay, here is literature. It's about life and being human and how much it sucks and what it means. Now go read all these dark and depressing and creepy stories and become great at critical analysis. Bye." Even talking about the basic elements of literature, it manages to explain things really well and still let you know how cool and serious and incredible the experience of literature - and of being human - can be.

Also, I have to admit, having gone to my high school for the past few years and seen how the education in the state/country's been kind of crap, I was really pleased with my class/teacher. The old AP Lit teacher had gone to take a position at some university, so it's a bit of a risk with a teacher who's doing AP for the first time, but I can tell that it's rewarding for both her and us. She might be kind of crazy eccentric, but really, is that not the mark of someone who is truly in-tune with literature? But yes, AP Lit, from what I've heard, is one of the few AP classes at school that's actually really demanding in terms of work, on top of being difficult in itself. And as much as it might pain my classmates, I rather enjoy the work-load.

It's English, which I can say is now officially my favorite subject at the moment; it's freaking reading, which I've loved forever; and it's finding meaning in things, which is pretty much one of my favorite things ever. However long the homework may be, it is just so worthwhile. It's stuff that is actually useful in life, and is serious and deep and funny and intellectual and awesome, and just fun to do. It feels less like homework and more like something I'm actually choosing to do.

And I actually like how the people in my class are kind of interested and seem to like it, a bit. At least enough to participate and attempt to grasp at the meanings of stories. I like that.

So yeah, even though I'm still kind of terrified that I will just do really badly at AP Lit (the class, and the test), I enjoy it a lot for everything it offers, and if nothing else, this class will get me through school this year :)

Sociology Journal

2009-09-24T17:53:00.002-04:00

9/24/09

7:54:32 AM

Sociology

Explain what you think the following phrase means:

“No man is an island.”

I think it means that no man is an island. Not one man ever is an island. Man ~~cand be a~~ have [sic] been ~~and~~ an island, and man can become an island, but at the present moment, not one man in existence is an island. There exist many islands in the universe, and many men, but of these men none are an island. Some men may think that they are islands, but they are mistaken. This is due to the fact that, try as people may, no man is an island. It is sufficiently logical, when contemplated. Islands are masses of land that rise above sea level to the degree that they will be land on their own. Men, on the other hand, are biological organisms that inhabit the earth in search of life and nourishment and meaning — clearly Not very ~~comm~~ much in common with the island. Statistically, the chances of a man, who eats and lives and lives, being an island, which is just land and parts of the earth surrounded by water, are so low that the concept is almost ridiculous. This is what I take to be the meaning of the phrase, “No man is an island.” *

…Or it could mean that people are never alone and isolated, and are always surrounded by people, and society

* However, a woman may be an island.

many things into one big somewhat ironic mess.

2009-09-04T00:22:00.007-04:00

I want to make awesome and be awkward and clumsy and inefficient and dependent and independent and do stuff and live and be amazingly boring and mediocre and I want to have faith in capitalism and I want to like socialism and I want to believe in a greater meaning and I want to not have to deal with any meaning and I want to care about everything and I want to not have to give a damn at all and I want to be whole but god knows I love broken people and I want everyone to read this and I want no one to read this and I want this to be coherent but I would be lying if I said I didn't just make some of it up as I went along and I could crap out tons of more but I don't feel like it and this is extremely not good I'll stop let's hope there's no sequel to this god that would kill both of us.

I think most of this is true. It's okay, I'm kind of scared too. And I haven't even started rereading Catcher in the Rye.

Ravenclaws Have More Fun

2009-08-26T23:50:00.002-04:00

High School can be a real social pain sometimes. I mean, that's one of its wonderfully advertised features on the box, and it's really not important at all in any sized run, but it's still there. Even when you're a senior and all that good stuff, somehow the school environment creates these situations where you're kind of screwed, and that's when you say, "fuck it, I can do it," you know? So I like to savor the moments when society is in your favor, and today (well, the past few days, it seems) has been quite that for the most part.

It starts with lunch in the lovely, crowded cafeteria. Well, that's a lie, it starts with me wearing this awesome Ravenclaw t-shirt. It said, "Ravenclaws Have More Fun." I suppose it really starts three months ago when my super awesome friend sent me the shirt for my birthday. And so on.

I found the table with the friends in the corner next to the microwave by the wall outside the gym. And I sat down, because it's much more awkward standing up, and as much as I love awkwardness, I kind of wanted to keep the crazy away and pent-up for later times. Like five seconds later, when a girl at the table where I was sitting looked at my shirt and said:

"Hufflepuffs are particularly good finders."

Those words made my day/week/month/summer-except-various-parts-that-were-uncounterably-epic. I mean, let us look at this again. In my decepticonian school, in some town of barely over 9000 people, in the state of freaking Missouri, in the midwest, where few nerdfighters live (except, like, John...), I found a person who knows and loves and has seen undoubtedly countless times Starkidpotter's A Very Potter Musical. I hope you can believe that, because it still amazes me.

Oh, yeah, maybe the first thing I said was "Oh my god I love you," except in all caps and in one breath. But whatever, I assumed it wasn't too über-creepy in the nanoseconds of reaction time.

And what could possibly follow but a wave of quotes, favorite moments, favorite characters, favorite actors, favorite details and songs and Dumbledore and oh man so much! It was quite incredible! She'd only seen the edited, censored down version, too, so I got to explain how if a snake bit Snape Dumbledore would suck the poison from him, even if the snake were to bite him in the wiener. Good stuff. I also managed to let her know how awesome Little White Lie is, which she hasn't yet had the opportunity to watch.

Anyway, eventually I just sat there poking my pitiable excuse of a taco, in awe of what had just happened. They discussed Firefly a bit, and eventually

So yeah, this girl I've only talked to a bit outside of classes is apparently totally awesome. Blatant lesson here: Brag about your nerdiness in every way possible, be it verbal, or with secret code, or just awesome t-shirts; you have nothing to lose, and get to meet awesome people!

Things I need to do this summer

2009-07-02T00:37:00.003-04:00

Read a couple dozen books.
Watch all those movies I've been meaning to see.
Catch up on those TV shows (Scrubs!)
Catch up on my French.
Remember that book I've been meaning to plan?
Damn college applications.
I should get a job too.
Oh, and maybe work on that SAT thing.
Decide on this iPod.
or maybe I'll get an iPhone?
and decide on all these outrageously expensive things lying in my future.
agh I need to decide on more college stuff.
Do that secret project.
... and a butt-load of other stuff, like how I have to -
DO SOMETHING WITH MY LIFE. >.<

hpmusical

2009-06-30T05:27:00.001-04:00

#hpmusical.

Hi.

In which Abby and I are awkward

2009-06-26T21:46:00.000-04:00

(Continued from here)

Or,

AN EXCUSE TO MAKE A LENGTHY BLOG POST

Backing up a bit, let's go to the morning of June 20th, 2009.

So after a long car ride to Springfield (well, it was only about an hour, and it probably only seemed long because my dad was singing loudly, despite my efforts to drown it out with the new ALL CAPS CD), I was dropped off at the mall, alone. I had no idea where the Borders where we were to meet was, but I decided that if I walked long enough, I would either end up finding it, or have to walk all the way back to find out that it was just around the corner from the entrance. Either way, I had to walk a lot, hopelessly.

Eventually I found the "Borders Express," and it was then that I realized that I was at a mall bookstore, with a book in my hands. I mean, I knew it was mine, already, and it did have proof on its cover that it's an advanced copy, and I could probably show them that they didn't even sell the book for another few months, but I was still afraid that they would accost me, screaming accusations of thievery and MURDER! (I don't know, it could happen.) Guiltily, I walked through the bookshelves, avoiding eye contact with the salespeople, Scarlett Fever discretely hidden in my right hand.

I didn't really expect to find her when I walked in, and I did realize that a bookstore with rows of high shelves, however small it may be, was a pretty crappy place to find someone. It's be like trying to find someone you've never met before in a maze, with the two of you walking around hopelessly, barely missing each other a few times, and maybe eventually bumping into one another. But I do like bookstores, and I chose to sit outside with my book on the poofy seat thingy, reading and watching people pass by.

One of the good things about meeting in a mall in Springfield, Missouri, is that it's really easy to find someone if they are older than 5 and do not have grandchildren, or aren't accompanying such people. Nothing against Springfield's malls, but most of the people there were literally either old people, or people with kids in strollers. Like, everyone. So, finding Abby wouldn't really be a problem. Unless, I mean, unless she actually turned out to be a 45-year-old creepy stalker pedophile. But then I'd be screwed anyway⁰.

So as I sat there, occasionally looking around to see if anyone looking remotely close to Abby was approaching, I realized how badly this ordeal was organized. I mean, Borders? In a mall? In Springfield? Ah well, it was organized enough to get by. At least there was somewhere to sit. Eventually, I realized I should probably make some conscious effort to try to find her. I tried calling, but she was blissfully unaware. (If only she had an iPhone! Then she'd probably carry that thing around everywhere.)

I looked into Borders, and over the top of some books saw her and another woman approaching. And being the nervous pile of sweat and anxiety and social awkwardness that I was, the horrible reality of it all came crashing down on me: this was someone I met through a mixture of youtube and Maureen Johnson and blogging, and I was meeting her, in "real life," and we were going to do stuff! (Not in that way. Jeez.)

Anyway, so all of a sudden, I was facing Abby, and people I assumed to be her mother and brother.

Barring an initial awkward moment, it really wasn't that bad. I was introduced to her mother, who was probably a little relieved to find out that I wasn't a 45-year-old rapist, while she and her brother whispered in the background. Exchanging a few more details about what we were going to do (what were we going to do, anyway?), they eventually left, and we were alone with no immediate plans whatsoever. Awkward moment number one.

I really didn't know what to do, so for a bit we just drooled over Scarlett Fever, which, did I mention I had won? Eventually we left the comfort of the outside-Borders-sitting-place and roamed the mall, which was freaking huge. Well, at least to get from one end to the other. Springfield's Battlefield Mall isn't that interesting, but there are some things that we noticed, like, again, the ridiculous amount of elderly people and babies. Also, there were a disturbingly large number of tornado-hiding-hallway things, where people (get this) were supposed to run off to in the event of a tornado. Because that was reassuring.

There were a lot of mall directories - maps of the mall floor plan that detailed most important parts of the mall. They were quite interesting: they had rooms that were apparently somewhere out in space; more mysterious tornado shelters; locations of more directories; and of course, "You are HERE." Oh, they also had locations of Coca Cola-somethings, most of which were blatantly lying (there was at least one vending machine, though). So we spent a good part of an hour, if not just half, walking around exploring the mall, and spending minutes at a time in front of these fascinating directories, and looking for something, well, interesting to do - besides talk.

After a while we found a nice place with these pillars surrounded by cushion-y seating. As we walked there, I warned, "Let's sit down before some old guy gets there first - just watch." And sure enough, as we got there, an old man was walking across and sat down. We sat on the opposite side.

Abby took out her Macbook, and after I inquired why there was a link on her iGoogle entitled "porn" (don't worry, it was just an xkcd feed, not that there's anything wrong with it), and got the awkward out, we did the only sensible thing to do at 11 AM on a Saturday morning (5-ish PM in England) and went on Skype to talk to our British friends.

An excerpt:

[6/20/2009 10:56:35 AM] Abby: btw, arka says HI
[6/20/2009 10:58:28 AM] DAVID: You met halfway?
[6/20/2009 11:00:07 AM] Abby: SPRINGFIELD
[6/20/2009 11:00:08 AM] Abby: in a mall
[6/20/2009 11:00:23 AM] Abby: we iz going to vlog
[6/20/2009 11:00:27 AM] Abby: on a boat

[6/20/2009 11:03:26 AM] DAVID: Has Arka raped you yet?
[6/20/2009 11:03:50 AM] Abby: yes
[6/20/2009 11:04:15 AM] Abby: it was fun (that was a JOKE.)
[6/20/2009 11:04:30 AM] DAVID: lol
[6/20/2009 11:05:35 AM] Abby: arka says "really? lol? that's what you say?"
[6/20/2009 11:06:00 AM] DAVID: lol
[6/20/2009 11:06:23 AM] Abby: lololololololololololololololololololololololol

[6/20/2009 11:06:39 AM] Ellie: HAVE YOU SANG FOR EDWARD CULLEN YET?
[6/20/2009 11:06:44 AM] Abby: no, we're doing that on video, just for you
[6/20/2009 11:07:05 AM] Abby: and EDWARD
[6/20/2009 11:07:13 AM] Ellie: YAY. GO EDWARD. you should buy CAKE.
[6/20/2009 11:07:31 AM] Ellie: not that you NEED an excuse to buy cake.
[6/20/2009 11:07:35 AM] Abby: he does owe me ice cream
[6/20/2009 11:07:38 AM] Abby: he lost a bet
[6/20/2009 11:07:46 AM] Abby: does ice cream work?
[6/20/2009 11:07:47 AM] Ellie: yes
[6/20/2009 11:08:44 AM] Abby: we're going to go find someplace to vlog and get ICE CREAM
[6/20/2009 11:08:47 AM] Abby: ON A BOAT
[6/20/2009 11:09:01 AM] Ellie: AND IF YOU'RE NOT ACTUALLY ON A BOAT
[6/20/2009 11:09:03 AM] Ellie: I WILL BE UPSET.
[6/20/2009 11:09:08 AM] Abby: SORRY

Of course, eventually, we were bored with the actual mall. (It had alright stores and crap, but it wasn't really easy to just sit down somewhere.) So despite the 90° F (around 32.222...° C, or 305.222...K, for you people that don't express everyday weather and temperature in the vile and primitive Fahrenheit unit) weather, we decided to walk outside, under the delusional assumption that there would be some place nearby to walk to.

Walking along the sidewalk that outlines the mall could only take so long, right? Eventually there would be some kind of civilized establishment to take shelter in? But we walked anyway, suspiciously, outside the mall, in the heat, around the parking, for no apparent reason, desperate for some place to go. If anyone asked, we could easily give them a "We're going to candy mountain, Charlieeeee!" and run off.

Then this old guy came and asked, "Are you Abby and Arka?" and started to run at us with a shotgun! So I pulled out my katana and prepared to attack, but he was already running for his life.*

The outside of the mall was surprising desolate, so it was a relief to see interesting places across the road. After crossing the road, legally, we found a Panera Bread. And guess what, Panera Breads have free wifi! (Of course, everywhere in America has free wifi, Joe!) And they have ridiculously expensive food, including vegetarian items, so why not?

So we got something to eat, and sat down in a little corner while I was admonished for my turkey-boob sandwich (she's a vegetarian). So we ate, and I realized that I lost the little ktliterary business card on the back of which a handwritten "Enjoy!" was written by Maureen's literary agent, while Abby showed me her "sexy"*** iPod wallpaper. We ate and talked for a bit, while a little(-ish) girl sitting nearby looked over at us like we were dating. A fun lunch.

After hesitating about throwing away the chips I hadn't eaten (Abby still has them, to this day, to my knowledge. Creepy!), we went outside again (the woes of having freaking black hair) to vlog. In case you didn't hear already, Abby is a vlogger. Like remember that time I tried to vlog? Yeah, like that, except better, and actually interesting.****

So we stepped outside and sat under a window of Panera, as Abby got the ol' Macbook out and laid it out on the road. (There were many instances when a car would pass by and we would pause for a moment, worried for the poor Apple piece of c - no, this isn't the place to rant about Apple. Besides, a computer is a computer, no matter what brand. Even if it is one of two evils.) And then the video started to record. And we talked for ten minutes. For those of you who commented, it really wasn't as awkward while we were doing it, but it looked way more awkward on youtube.*****

So we did that, and then wandered off to the nearby Petland for a while. That was fun. Awkward, maybe, a bit, considering it's me and a girl, going to a shop for PETS, and all. Just kidding, it wasn't awkward when we were there, just a bit in restrospect.******

We saw these adorable ferrets (OMG Draco Malfoy!), one of which Abby held (it smelled funny - I call poop!), and these fat little bunnies. There were also lolcats, playing with each other's tails and being goofy in that way that makes you want to take a picture and post it to icanhazcheezburger.

The fish display there was pretty cool, I have to admit, even though the poor fish barely had a cubic foot to swim around in. The highlight of the store, if not the day itself, was one single tank:
NINJA STAR SNAIL.

Yeah, there is a snail called "ninja star." How freaking badass a name is that? I couldn't really make them out at first, but they have these shells that are kind of like those ninja stars (hence the name), and they're awesome.

I am going to name my first-born "Ninja Star Snail." It's going to happen.

So after we walked around a bit more, discussing the ethics of middle-aged ladies dressing up and displaying their pets for show (which, to be honest, isn't worse than what some parents do to their kids), until her mom and brother returned to take us to go find ICE CREAM! Remember, that bet, in the last blog, where I lost (for now), and had to buy her an ice cream? Yeah, I'm a man of my word. Without my words I'm nothing!!!

In fact, on the way there, I realized that if I were to win an iPhone sometime in the future, Abby would have to buy me an ice cream. Then, not only would I have proven my point, but I'd have an iPhone! No, I seriously don't expect to win an iPhone, by the way. It's just fun to joke at, especially since the jokes result in the chance for an iPhone.

Anyway, we got to Cold Stone's, and I felt in the mood for an ice cream too, so I got a crazy cotton candy-flavored one, while Abby got whatever. Damn expensive places.

And we talked for a bit with her family about books and all that fun stuff people talk about.

Around 1:40-ish PM they dropped me off back at the mall (phew, no more walking!), and I awkwardly bid them good-bye, and watched them drive off.

And that, dear readers, is what happens when BEDA buddies meet in real life.*******

It was fun. It really wasn't that awkward. I think.
__________
⁰ Pun?
* Well, read the next endnote once you're finished reading the whole post.**
** That entire paragraph was a blatant lie. I mean, I needed to have done something cool by the end of the day.
*** Well, 93% sexy. It was a Facebook quiz... long story.
**** Did I mention you should SUBSCRIBE to her? She makes videos that are funny and good, unlike this poor lad to whom you should ALSO subscribe.
***** THAT'S TOTALLY WHAT SHE SAID!!!
****** Whoa he totally broke the fourth wall! It's like when Holden talked about his year-ago self in Catcher in the Rye!
******* Also, a surprisingly lot to talk about without including actual conversations we had... I feel like that talent could be useful. You know, for that novel I'm working on?

Internet Friends IRL!

2009-06-21T19:11:00.005-04:00

Funny story.

About two months, a little more, ago, I chanced upon this thing on my Twitter by a certain youtuber named Nerimon. He mentioned this "BEDA" thing, that Maureen Johnson was doing. I had no idea what it was, but upon closer inspection of Maureen's twitter, I realized it was "Blog Every Day April," a month long project for blogging every day (as the name promises). Well, it had a catchy acronym, and I was intrigued, so I thought, Why the hell not? I joined the Ning and started to, well, blog every day in April.

And it went terribly.

I talked mostly about my day, or something random - trivial things for annoyingly short blog posts, mostly. And I missed a few days near the end, even though I managed some semi-respectable looking posts. I could barely catch up with other people's blogs. It was a terrible mess.

But it was fun. And I doubt it would have been nearly as fun had Maureen not set up this thing halfway through the project, called "BEDA Buddies." See, I was doing a terrible (aren't you just growing to love that word?) job keeping up with the acual community of BEDA, as I'd mentioned before. So I figured it would be nice to have some other people to actually talk to and stuff during BEDA. I never really went on the ning chat much, and I didn't really know any other people in BEDA, besides the random blogs I read, inconsistently. So I did go and post in the forum to see if anything would happen. And many organized pages of notes by Maureen later, I found myself with three other people, supposedly haphazardly picked according to age or something, who were to be my BEDA buddies.

Now, I had been using Skype for a while already. My use of it really never surpassed talking to more than 3 or 4 people for extended periods of time (i.e. apart from that night at the Bryn Mawr Yule Ball blogtv room). So I began talking to two of my new BEDA buddies (the other really never showed up much), and before long I was thrust into this epic, huge Skype chat with 15-20 people, probably.

As much as the two months of incredible Skype calls and chats could fill so many blogs just by talking about them, they aren't really that relevant to this particular post. Maybe whenever I go to Leaky Con 2011, when I assume I will meet all of them, and several people from other circles of online friends. (As in, if I know you, and you've heard of Harry Potter, you sure as hell better be there. Not a request.)

But yeah, one of my BEDA buddies was this vlogging sixteen-year-old girl from Indiana named Abby. And, well, among the others, I got to know her fairly well through the BEDA-resultant skype community. I mean, between the awkward silences, bad innuendo-quotes, "That's what she said!"s, and other random fun crap, you kind of have to end up knowing the person somewhat. And maybe staying up ridiculously late (or early, if you wake up around that time in the morning) on skype helped.

I learned that Abby was going to be in Missouri (poor thing) this month, a few hours away from where I lived in Missouri (poor thing). Did I mention we were "mad stalkerz" online? I mean, sure, we failed at actual information, but stalkers nonetheless. Right? Well, brain triskadeca-plets, at least. But anyway, we were fairly certain neither of us were murderers or rapists (well, no one cares if I get raped :( !), and it was too good an opportunity to miss, so what did any risk matter, anyway? Anyway, we decided to meet at a city conveniently equidistant from both us, the wonderful Springfield, Missouri.

And so we began planning for this epic moment in Skype history, when Abby and Arka would POSSIBLY meet in real life, for maybe a FEW hours, or something. And even though there were a lot of issues regarding parents and driving and things to do and all that, we managed to work out a decent plan to at least GET there, together, and do SOME things - including a vlog, and ONE of us buying the other ice cream, because of a bet*. Everything else would just fall into place that nice way that life works. And it might be a LITTLE awkward.

My parents were suspiciously okay with the idea of me meeting someone I only knew online who could potentially rape me (nobody cares about me getting raped!). I mean, admittedly, since school I've been mostly been reading, sleeping, or online, except for occasionally going out for stuff, so they were probably desperate for me to have some kind of social life. (Hmpf! What you get for moving to Missouri.) But they consented, which made this suddenly become a hundred time more real.

Also, it might be worth mentioning that the night before we were to meet, I had received the copy of Scarlett Fever (by Maureen Johnson - coincidentally, the creator of BEDA itself!) that I WON**, something that Abby and others had promised to find a way to steal.

And so, I found myself, one Saturday morning, waiting outside a Borders bookstore in a mall in Springfield, reading Scarlett Fever....

To be continued... (more out of my laziness of writing too much at once than actual blog-plot-drama development. But I guess it works. *sigh* And to think I want to be a writer some day.)

__________

*The bet was that, and I quote, "If you end up winning an iphone I will buy you ice cream. Deal?" That is, if I did win an iPhone, I would be bought ice cream; however, in the unlikely chance that I did not win an iPhone, she would have had to buy me an ice cream.

(source: 1, 2, 3)

**HERE is the contest, and HERE is the comic strip by which I won the 2nd copy of Scarlett Fever ever!

Resolution. At 5 AM.

2009-06-18T04:45:00.004-04:00

It is approximately 4 AM, yes, and I am blogging for the first time in, what, over a year? Probably needs some explanation, first.

I entered the world of blogging about a year ago, here, on blogger, being a n00b. As in, I posted maybe three times and gave up/moved to Wordpress. I published a fair amount of blogs on there, including a failed attempt at podcasting, but for the most part it felt really difficult posting there. It didn't feel like me, or my blog; it was just me saying random stuff or promoting something or pretending like something's important. I could just continue with that, but I wanted to start anew, and what better way than to go to something old?

On to the story (or lack thereof).

At around 11:20 PM, no one was online, my parents were kicking me off the desktop, and I resignedly went back to my room to "go to bed." Of course, as with many, for me that meant opening a book and being absorbed in its content. So, I continued my read of John Granger's How Harry Cast His Spell, for which another blog post is due in the near future. I lay in bed, struggling to read about the Christian symbolism in Harry Potter, my mind at unease, unable to concentrate on the pages. I moved about, trying to read in bed, in my chair, on the floor, eventually finishing a single chapter in two, whole hours. Not that the chapter in question was of questionable quality, though I did take issue with some of its claims, even at 1 AM, but I just felt off-balance tonight.

After taking down some notes on the chapter on a Post-It, I cracked open the door, which has acquired a tendency to jam, and went to brush my teeth. I returned, expecting to fall asleep immediately, and waited. You know, for something I've done almost every day of my over-17 long years of existence, falling asleep is pretty damn hard. I mean, what are you supposed to do? Close your eyes and hope it works? Like how having an online presence is putting yourself out there and hoping people appreciate it. I've often thought about just videotaping myself for a night, seeing what the hell I do. Because the beautiful irony of sleeping is that by accomplishing this impressive feat, you are not able to find out how you did it. It's quite annoying, particularly at 2 AM.

I restlessly dealt with this paradox, trying to lie still or pretend to feel exhausted or pretend like I was ALREADY ASLEEP. None worked. I was confused and desperate to leave the world of the active, and just bloody fall asleep. I wondered, what had gone wrong. It didn't take me long to recount my day, one that was fairly normal for a lazy summer type, until the end. I was aware that the end of my day was me being alone online, frustrated at my parents, and confused at a book. Not a good way to end a day.

What was missing? Resolution.

All these events had occured throughout the day, meaningful and effectual, and it had all built up to get something out of all of it, but in the end it was just a bunch of scattered events. They had no integrity, nothing bound them together; they were leaves without a tree.

(And speaking of bad metaphors, I happened to come up with a few in the dark hours of trying to fall asleep, some of which I may have to reflect back on later in the day. As they say, "the deep metaphors of your life SPEWED out EVERY ORIFICE." [source])

So, as I came to this shocking conclusion, or lack thereof, I realized I had to do something about it. It was 3 AM and I sure as hell didn't think it would be right to call anyone, so I did the next best thing - and really, more obvious thing - I retrieved the computer. Laptop. Thing.

To my shock, a few people were actually online at the ridiculously late hour. As I put-together words of conversation, I put together words of blogging. Which is really conversation with myself and readers that don't exist yet. But I had to get this idea out there.

And there's my resolution; my conclusion; my dénouement. I had gotten something out of the nothingness and togetherness of the day. I got something out of my day, something of worth to me. And I realized that every day is like a story, like how this blog post is like a story. Some would argue that it's the other way around - that stories imitate life. But isn't it really all the same?

And that was my first post for this blog (that you know of...). I hope the time of day it was written during didn't perspire into the writing itself, but it's what I felt, and what I needed to get out there, if only for myself.

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