Before I start, an open letter to the idiot teenagers/college students making a ruckus at the pool:
Dear idiot teenagers/college students making a ruckus at the pool:
After a few months of living in this apartment that overlooks the pool, I've more or less gotten used to idiot seven-year-olds (and their self-entitled asshole parents) running around and screaming as if they're being murdered. Some people may call it cute.
You know what's not cute? You.
You are not being cute or funny or young or free or wonderful or youthful as your blast your shitty pop music as your scream bad jokes and thinly-veiled insults at each other. Let me tell it to you straight: Your music sucks. If you're the type to blast your sucky music at a deafening level so the entire neighborhood can hear it, your music sucks. It sucks even more because you're the inconsiderate assholes who listen to it. Stop it. I don't care if it's Friday night and you don't have a test on Monday and you haven't seen your friends in a whole week. Be civil.
The laughter of children is (to many) wonderful and the epitome of youth. Your drunken, shrill screams are that of a banshee and I don't want to spend *my* Friday night glaring daggers at you idiots while you have your wild, idiotic fun while disturbing the public. So stop it. No one wants to see your scantily-clad, orange bodies, no one wants to hear your hilarious "inside jokes" and no one cares if you only live once. Your stupid choices won't kill you fast enough.
Why not go to one of your idiot rich friend's houses where they have their own pool and you won't bother the dozens of innocent apartment dwellers who were so unfortunate to be occupying the apartments surrounding the pool while you asholes party? If you have to, do it during the day time when all the grown-ups are working. Did you think no one would be bothered? Did you think people magically get rested on their commute back home? Stop it. No one cares why you're there or what you're trying to do. We care that you're being noisy in a blatant, inconsiderate act of complete and utter selfishness and declaring your dumb notion of some inherently deserved freedom. You can go celebrate your drunken, misinformed idea of freedom somewhere else.
Again, your music sucks. Stop it. I don't want to hear "Somebody I Used to Know" or any of the other shitty pop radio hits you tasteless idiots adore. I don't even know you people, and your dumb behavior is making me hate you. I honestly hate you, idiot teenagers/college students making a ruckus at the pool.
You guys can go fuck yourselves.
Sincerely,
A concerned citizen who would like some QUIET after a stressful day
____________________________________
God, young people suck (said the teenager).
________________
So, I operated a car for the first time in my life.
It was only for a couple hours, and half of it was spent circling a parking lot and the other half was spent circling a residential area, but I drove a car and that's all that matters.
I was really nervous for it, because I've been in 4 car accidents and cars scare me to death, but it wasn't as bad as I expected. Once I started to get the hang of it, I probably had a really dumb, half-scared, half-excited expression. Oh, face, why can't you just stay normal?
29 June 2012
27 June 2012
The Summer of Indigestion and Exams (also: Cars are f*cking terrifying)
I tried to write this post a few days ago at about 2 in the morning when I was insomniatic(not sure if that's a real word) and slightly delirious (fairly sure that's a word). After a few minutes I realized that would've been stupid and I stopped.
Anyway, I'm about a month into my summer, and most of it was spent either in or in preparations for exams. A lot of the month was also spent having indigestion. It's probably because I've been staying up late and then sleeping in late and then stuffing my face the entire time I'm awake, but I don't have any plans to stop that any time soon.
At least, I wouldn't if I didn't start driving school a few days ago.
For the past few days I've been sitting in a room that starts off swelteringly hot and gradually turns ball-freezing-ly cold staring at a lady explaining traffic laws, trying not to fall asleep as I stare at the drivers' handbook in front of me.
I'm not the type to label all my days so I can remember them later (which, if Sex and the City can be believed, is what 35-year-old single women do) but this summer is rapidly turning into the Summer of Exams and Indigestion. What with the SAT Subject Tests (done) , ACT (done), the various tests I'll have to get to get my license (not done), and the near-constant indigestion, which has actually become more manageable, but only because I've had to wake up at a reasonable time because of driving school.
Speaking of which, I got my instructional license today, meaning I am now allowed to operate a wheeled vehicle as long as there's an adult with a driver's license and a year's driving experience conscious and in the passenger's seat. My mother tried to convince me that the test for it was going to be insanely difficult, but it wasn't. What was insanely difficult, though, was not going crazy during the 3-hour wait at the DPS office in order to get my instructional license. I swear, Hell consists of one of those offices, and they always close just before they can get to you. We left with about 45 minutes til closing, and there were still dozens of people waiting.
I'm not actually terribly excited to learn how to drive. I don't actually want all the independence and freedom or whatever a license is supposed to give me. Cars are frikking scary, man.
While we were going to the DPS office, only vaguely aware of the hellish wait that awaited us, two cars in front of us nearly hit each other. One swerved slightly but was able to keep going without a problem but the other one, holy shit, the driver lost control and his car swerved and spun around and there was screeching and tire marks and smoke from the friction between the wheels and the road--
It was really scary.
I don't want to drive.
Anyway, I'm about a month into my summer, and most of it was spent either in or in preparations for exams. A lot of the month was also spent having indigestion. It's probably because I've been staying up late and then sleeping in late and then stuffing my face the entire time I'm awake, but I don't have any plans to stop that any time soon.
At least, I wouldn't if I didn't start driving school a few days ago.
For the past few days I've been sitting in a room that starts off swelteringly hot and gradually turns ball-freezing-ly cold staring at a lady explaining traffic laws, trying not to fall asleep as I stare at the drivers' handbook in front of me.
I'm not the type to label all my days so I can remember them later (which, if Sex and the City can be believed, is what 35-year-old single women do) but this summer is rapidly turning into the Summer of Exams and Indigestion. What with the SAT Subject Tests (done) , ACT (done), the various tests I'll have to get to get my license (not done), and the near-constant indigestion, which has actually become more manageable, but only because I've had to wake up at a reasonable time because of driving school.
Speaking of which, I got my instructional license today, meaning I am now allowed to operate a wheeled vehicle as long as there's an adult with a driver's license and a year's driving experience conscious and in the passenger's seat. My mother tried to convince me that the test for it was going to be insanely difficult, but it wasn't. What was insanely difficult, though, was not going crazy during the 3-hour wait at the DPS office in order to get my instructional license. I swear, Hell consists of one of those offices, and they always close just before they can get to you. We left with about 45 minutes til closing, and there were still dozens of people waiting.
I'm not actually terribly excited to learn how to drive. I don't actually want all the independence and freedom or whatever a license is supposed to give me. Cars are frikking scary, man.
While we were going to the DPS office, only vaguely aware of the hellish wait that awaited us, two cars in front of us nearly hit each other. One swerved slightly but was able to keep going without a problem but the other one, holy shit, the driver lost control and his car swerved and spun around and there was screeching and tire marks and smoke from the friction between the wheels and the road--
It was really scary.
I don't want to drive.
27 May 2012
Harder to Die
Before I start, I'd like to say that I feel like I went through a slightly manic phase yesterday. I'm not going to panic and think I have manic/depressive disorder, because I'm probably perfectly fine. It was a bit worrying, though, because I feel as if I went crazy last night. Perhaps I did.
During the past few weeks of school, I'd spent a lot of time folding chains of paper cranes. I made a few hundred of them, and for some reason, last night, I went and attached all the little chains to make a big chain and hung it up in a corner of my room. When I woke up this morning, the chain had broken in the middle and it struck me how dumb it looked to be hanging there. When my father had first come in and saw it, he laughed at me. So he took it down.
And then I dug through that box I described yesterday and watched that video montage from my elementary school graduation. Why the hell would I need to watch that again? Jeez.
And, finally, a few hours after that, I decided to go through my old sketchbooks and stuff and redraw every single piece I was proud of to see how much I've improved. I mean, people do this all the time, but what in Deep Thought's name (no one's gonna get that reference, you nerd) was I thinking, wanting to redraw every single one?
Obviously, it only took til halfway through the second one that I began hating myself and had to stop. At that point it was 5 in the morning, and I was forced to wake up at 8, and I saw the patheticness of the paper cranes and so today hasn't had the greatest start.
__________________
I only had a small thing to say today. For my final, I had to do a presentation for one of my classes. The topic was euthanasia, and I had to discuss its morality from three angles. At the end, my teacher commented that it was getting harder to die. Which, it really is. People live to be over 100 nowadays. Not 50 years ago, it was about 60.
Anyway, I was thinking that with further advances in medical science, people might be able to live for 500, 600, maybe even thousands of years. The whole point of reproduction is to keep the species from dying off, and we're always going to need new people to produce and consume things for our society to function. You've seen how the body begins to fail when one turns 60, or even earlier.
What I'm driving at is, at some point, in the distant future, people would be able to live for, maybe, thousands of years. They're probably going to spend a couple centuries unable to function well. At some point, someone, possibly the government, is going to have to decide on cutoff point. People need to die. It's necessary, again, for our society to function. So there will likely be a time when there is a limit to how long people are allowed to live.
But considering the general attitude toward death, that it's a very, very, very, very bad thing that must be avoided as long as possible, and the fact that people in power probably won't want to die, and they're going to be the ones the government listens to, there might actually be protests where the central argument is the right to die. You get all these activists all up in arms about the sanctity of life, so at some point the right to die has got to become equally prevalent in the world.
It's always interesting to try to think of where the world will go from here.
If you think I'm a wackjob for thinking that humans would ever be able to live that long, think I'm a wackjob for thinking the "right to die" is a thing (it totally is), or if you have any crazy ideas about the future (or if you think I'm a wackjob, period), then go ahead and comment! Because it gets lonely over here on the internet.
During the past few weeks of school, I'd spent a lot of time folding chains of paper cranes. I made a few hundred of them, and for some reason, last night, I went and attached all the little chains to make a big chain and hung it up in a corner of my room. When I woke up this morning, the chain had broken in the middle and it struck me how dumb it looked to be hanging there. When my father had first come in and saw it, he laughed at me. So he took it down.
And then I dug through that box I described yesterday and watched that video montage from my elementary school graduation. Why the hell would I need to watch that again? Jeez.
And, finally, a few hours after that, I decided to go through my old sketchbooks and stuff and redraw every single piece I was proud of to see how much I've improved. I mean, people do this all the time, but what in Deep Thought's name (no one's gonna get that reference, you nerd) was I thinking, wanting to redraw every single one?
Obviously, it only took til halfway through the second one that I began hating myself and had to stop. At that point it was 5 in the morning, and I was forced to wake up at 8, and I saw the patheticness of the paper cranes and so today hasn't had the greatest start.
__________________
I only had a small thing to say today. For my final, I had to do a presentation for one of my classes. The topic was euthanasia, and I had to discuss its morality from three angles. At the end, my teacher commented that it was getting harder to die. Which, it really is. People live to be over 100 nowadays. Not 50 years ago, it was about 60.
Anyway, I was thinking that with further advances in medical science, people might be able to live for 500, 600, maybe even thousands of years. The whole point of reproduction is to keep the species from dying off, and we're always going to need new people to produce and consume things for our society to function. You've seen how the body begins to fail when one turns 60, or even earlier.
What I'm driving at is, at some point, in the distant future, people would be able to live for, maybe, thousands of years. They're probably going to spend a couple centuries unable to function well. At some point, someone, possibly the government, is going to have to decide on cutoff point. People need to die. It's necessary, again, for our society to function. So there will likely be a time when there is a limit to how long people are allowed to live.
But considering the general attitude toward death, that it's a very, very, very, very bad thing that must be avoided as long as possible, and the fact that people in power probably won't want to die, and they're going to be the ones the government listens to, there might actually be protests where the central argument is the right to die. You get all these activists all up in arms about the sanctity of life, so at some point the right to die has got to become equally prevalent in the world.
It's always interesting to try to think of where the world will go from here.
If you think I'm a wackjob for thinking that humans would ever be able to live that long, think I'm a wackjob for thinking the "right to die" is a thing (it totally is), or if you have any crazy ideas about the future (or if you think I'm a wackjob, period), then go ahead and comment! Because it gets lonely over here on the internet.
Inevitable
So, it seems that I've neglected this blog for so long that the format change has come and gone and it just took me a few minutes to find the "new post" button.
I am very sorry that I away for so long. How long has it been? Months? I'm terribly sorry.
This is my last weekend before the end of junior and then, of course, the start of my senior year. I'm growing up and this is quite scary. I'm almost an adult, did you know that? I am very close to being two semesters away from graduating high school and then going off to college.
My, god, nothing in the past 11 year (13 if you count pre-K and kindergarten) has taught me how to handle this.
So, I have this box where I keep little treasured things like drawings and writings and little knick knacks I wouldn't want to forget. I taped on a sheet of paper that says "Thanks for the memories" even though I don't listen to Fall Out Boy anymore. It's a little thing for nostalgia. Every now and then, I'll look through the little momentos of my life since 6th grade. Some of the things in there are weird, too. Like the first ramune bottle I ever drank. The good-bye card given to my 8th grade GT Research class by a teacher I adored. This little booklet I made that I called my "Book of Friends" (after the manga) that contains little messages and into from my friends in 8th grade. I'm ashamed to admit, there are a couple of names I don't remember. I'm also ashamed to admit that I didn't let a couple people write in it that I now wish I did, because, even if I didn't like them very much, I wish there was some little momento of them so they won't be forgotten.
Because they will be forgotten, eventually.
In my little box of memories, I keep this DVD that was handed out at my elementary school graduation ceremony. It contains a montage of photos of 6th grade students that year, set to a rock song about how hard it is it say good-bye and Unwritten by that one lady whose name I can't remember. Basically, it was to tell us good-bye, but don't you fret, because you're future's yours. Standard stuff, that.
I watched it just now. I don't even know why.
There were 2 6th grade classes that year, so I wasn't familiar with about half the kids in it. I couldn't remember the names of a lot of people in my class, though. It took me a while to recognize the ones I did know. When you're a child, you don't realize that your face is that of a child, because you have no grown-up experiences to compare, and you're always around other children, so the people your age look normal and anyone older looks way old and anyone younger looks way young.
I also realized that, just as I've forgotten most of the people in the photos, most of the people in them have forgotten me, as well. They've probably forgotten each other. But maybe not; maybe they're all at the same high school, or still see each other on weekends. My point is, we're not on each other's minds.
I will be forgotten, and people will forget me. Someday, 10 years from now, I'll look through a high school year book I've inexplicably kept, and I won't remember half the people in my year. They won't remember me, either.
It's a little sad how human relations fall apart like that. There are people I've known since I moved to Texas whom I don't talk to anymore. It feels like a really sudden change.
I've never had the chance to make life-long friends, because I've never stayed at a place long enough to make a friend for more than a few years. Even when I stay for more than a few years, friends never last.
But, I might have better luck this time. I have the internet, and an understanding of how to use it. Maybe I won't have to lose friends 10 years from now. Maybe, ten years from now, I'll still have my blog and even you guys, my followers, will be following it still.
And, so it is about 3:00 am and for once I ended a blog post with a bit of optimism.
EDIT: I just learned that rock song was by Nickleback. Oh, god, oh, god.
I am very sorry that I away for so long. How long has it been? Months? I'm terribly sorry.
This is my last weekend before the end of junior and then, of course, the start of my senior year. I'm growing up and this is quite scary. I'm almost an adult, did you know that? I am very close to being two semesters away from graduating high school and then going off to college.
My, god, nothing in the past 11 year (13 if you count pre-K and kindergarten) has taught me how to handle this.
So, I have this box where I keep little treasured things like drawings and writings and little knick knacks I wouldn't want to forget. I taped on a sheet of paper that says "Thanks for the memories" even though I don't listen to Fall Out Boy anymore. It's a little thing for nostalgia. Every now and then, I'll look through the little momentos of my life since 6th grade. Some of the things in there are weird, too. Like the first ramune bottle I ever drank. The good-bye card given to my 8th grade GT Research class by a teacher I adored. This little booklet I made that I called my "Book of Friends" (after the manga) that contains little messages and into from my friends in 8th grade. I'm ashamed to admit, there are a couple of names I don't remember. I'm also ashamed to admit that I didn't let a couple people write in it that I now wish I did, because, even if I didn't like them very much, I wish there was some little momento of them so they won't be forgotten.
Because they will be forgotten, eventually.
In my little box of memories, I keep this DVD that was handed out at my elementary school graduation ceremony. It contains a montage of photos of 6th grade students that year, set to a rock song about how hard it is it say good-bye and Unwritten by that one lady whose name I can't remember. Basically, it was to tell us good-bye, but don't you fret, because you're future's yours. Standard stuff, that.
I watched it just now. I don't even know why.
There were 2 6th grade classes that year, so I wasn't familiar with about half the kids in it. I couldn't remember the names of a lot of people in my class, though. It took me a while to recognize the ones I did know. When you're a child, you don't realize that your face is that of a child, because you have no grown-up experiences to compare, and you're always around other children, so the people your age look normal and anyone older looks way old and anyone younger looks way young.
I also realized that, just as I've forgotten most of the people in the photos, most of the people in them have forgotten me, as well. They've probably forgotten each other. But maybe not; maybe they're all at the same high school, or still see each other on weekends. My point is, we're not on each other's minds.
I will be forgotten, and people will forget me. Someday, 10 years from now, I'll look through a high school year book I've inexplicably kept, and I won't remember half the people in my year. They won't remember me, either.
It's a little sad how human relations fall apart like that. There are people I've known since I moved to Texas whom I don't talk to anymore. It feels like a really sudden change.
I've never had the chance to make life-long friends, because I've never stayed at a place long enough to make a friend for more than a few years. Even when I stay for more than a few years, friends never last.
But, I might have better luck this time. I have the internet, and an understanding of how to use it. Maybe I won't have to lose friends 10 years from now. Maybe, ten years from now, I'll still have my blog and even you guys, my followers, will be following it still.
And, so it is about 3:00 am and for once I ended a blog post with a bit of optimism.
EDIT: I just learned that rock song was by Nickleback. Oh, god, oh, god.
29 April 2012
and the pursuit of Happiness...
So, uh, it's occurred to me that I do indeed have a blog, and that I do indeed have people who read it regularly (plus ou moins) and that I ought to write another post. So here I am, after several weeks of lack of motivation, laziness, writer's block, and a couple weeks of all those plus utter bewilderment at the new format of the blog page... dashboard... layout thing.
Anyway, here I am, slinking back after months of no word.
Actually, the main reason really has been writer's block, and instead of mashing keyboards and pouring out brain goo, I decided to wait until I actually had something to write about. And I do.
So, a couple of weeks ago, I was visiting my father's coworker's house out in the suburbs. They're a very Korean and very suburbsy family in a very suburbsy area. They have two small children, one of whom was at a baseball game or something. So, I only had to deal with one of their children. Unfortunately, it was the younger one, this extremely unnerving three-year-old girl.
Now, I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before, but I really, really hate children. This is probably awful to hear from a teenager, and you're probably all going to tell me that I'll change my mind when I have some. Three things. No one can say that I will have children, even if I have children I'll probably end up only liking my own, and I do not have any children at this moment in time so please shut up about that, and that's really not a great argument anyway.
I've come to realize one of the reasons I hate children is that they're so undeservingly happy. That, and they're a bit creepy. At least, this particular little girl, who actually looked about four or five, who kept staring at me with this blank expression as if she'd seen my murder the day before and was going to do absolutely nothing to stop it.
But, anyway, let's focus on the happiness. Children are happy. I'm not talking about the children in middle school, or even late elementary school who're starting to learn that life absolutely and truly sucks. I'm talking about children before they reach double digits, small children whose entire worlds are Mommy, classroom and candy. Those children are happy. They whine the most, but they forget what they whine about the fastest.
These kids have done nothing to be happy. They whine, they poop, get sick, get other people sick, sleep and do it all over again the next day. They put minimal effort into life, and it's okay because they're children and Mommy will do everything for them. And yet, you have mature, young, middle-aged and elderly, adult men and women working their butts off in some office building somewhere, trying to make the money to put their kids through college, pay off credit card debt, pay mortgages, and maybe take that trip to Hawaii before they die and they're miserable. Even if they get that trip to Hawaii, they have to come back and be miserable again.
And then it hit me, just recently. Maybe happiness isn't actually something we have to work for. A lot of people say that the key to happiness is to accept your lot in life. Take what you got, cut your losses, give up while you're ahead. And children do that. They're perfectly happy where they are. Their worlds are tiny and they're happy with tiny worlds. You don't need a bunch of stuff to fill up that tiny room. So they're happy.
Of course, this doesn't make me like children any more.
Anyway, those are just some thoughts I had.
It really hurts me to click "publish" because then this'll be the first thing people see when they come to this blog...
Anyway, here I am, slinking back after months of no word.
Actually, the main reason really has been writer's block, and instead of mashing keyboards and pouring out brain goo, I decided to wait until I actually had something to write about. And I do.
So, a couple of weeks ago, I was visiting my father's coworker's house out in the suburbs. They're a very Korean and very suburbsy family in a very suburbsy area. They have two small children, one of whom was at a baseball game or something. So, I only had to deal with one of their children. Unfortunately, it was the younger one, this extremely unnerving three-year-old girl.
Now, I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before, but I really, really hate children. This is probably awful to hear from a teenager, and you're probably all going to tell me that I'll change my mind when I have some. Three things. No one can say that I will have children, even if I have children I'll probably end up only liking my own, and I do not have any children at this moment in time so please shut up about that, and that's really not a great argument anyway.
I've come to realize one of the reasons I hate children is that they're so undeservingly happy. That, and they're a bit creepy. At least, this particular little girl, who actually looked about four or five, who kept staring at me with this blank expression as if she'd seen my murder the day before and was going to do absolutely nothing to stop it.
But, anyway, let's focus on the happiness. Children are happy. I'm not talking about the children in middle school, or even late elementary school who're starting to learn that life absolutely and truly sucks. I'm talking about children before they reach double digits, small children whose entire worlds are Mommy, classroom and candy. Those children are happy. They whine the most, but they forget what they whine about the fastest.
These kids have done nothing to be happy. They whine, they poop, get sick, get other people sick, sleep and do it all over again the next day. They put minimal effort into life, and it's okay because they're children and Mommy will do everything for them. And yet, you have mature, young, middle-aged and elderly, adult men and women working their butts off in some office building somewhere, trying to make the money to put their kids through college, pay off credit card debt, pay mortgages, and maybe take that trip to Hawaii before they die and they're miserable. Even if they get that trip to Hawaii, they have to come back and be miserable again.
And then it hit me, just recently. Maybe happiness isn't actually something we have to work for. A lot of people say that the key to happiness is to accept your lot in life. Take what you got, cut your losses, give up while you're ahead. And children do that. They're perfectly happy where they are. Their worlds are tiny and they're happy with tiny worlds. You don't need a bunch of stuff to fill up that tiny room. So they're happy.
Of course, this doesn't make me like children any more.
Anyway, those are just some thoughts I had.
It really hurts me to click "publish" because then this'll be the first thing people see when they come to this blog...
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