Last post of ever

I am retiring the blog. As many of my friends have said, there is no point to this. If people have any interest in me, they'll talk to me. This is stupid. I have to give all of this up.

I just can't do this anymore.

I can't wait for January

It was awfully rainy today.

Why did I feel like a hero, smiling and biking through the rain while everyone else was huddled under umbrellas waiting for their rides? It was actually really entertaining. They were either thinking...woah...he's cool or...woah...he's absolutely crazy. I don't mind either one.

And apparently, I almost got run over today while biking to school. Maybe the positive effects which biking has on our environment do not surpass the dangers of getting hit. Maybe I should just chill and not worry too much about global warming and rising gas prices and all of that stuff. If I don't risk my life now, I'll be risking my future. I think I'll risk it.

Not that biking is that much of a danger.

Wow, I really need to chill right now. I am worrying about way too many things. I feel like I could explode. I feel like I could punch through my wall right now, but no, that's not a good idea. Maybe I should run more. Maybe running made me numb to everything around me. Whatever it is, I want to be numb again. I at least don't want to think about how I feel.

Why is it that the more I try to focus on college essays, the more I realize that what I am writing really is not me. I just got an English paper back from my teacher. I am very frustrated with the grade that he gave me, but what frustrates me even more is what he told me to do. He said to rewrite is, yes, that is the good part. But he said “you might want to take a look at some of my edits.” I mean, not to get him wrong, but he edited more than half of the words in my paper. Literally, he reworded things in a way that I would never say them, he added weird metaphors which I would never use, he added facts that aren’t true but make a better storyline. He changed what I said. This isn’t a college essay, but I’ve seen the same in the essays that I’ve asked my teachers to read over. They change my voice. They change things that aren’t necessarily wrong, but they change them to make them “sound better”. Sure they sound better to them. But that is their voice, not mine.

Now, how am I supposed to say that the rewrite that I will turn in tomorrow is mine?

I might just write the name of my English teacher in the upper-right corner.

and again

Minneapolis, MN
taken from the bridge next to the bridge that collapsed

So yeah.

I can't think of what to write here. So I chose quotations relatively randomly from this web site thingy..

The happiest person is he who thinks the most interesting thoughts. -William Lyon Phelps

All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. -John F. Kennedy

Do not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness. -James Thurber

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. -Leopold Stokowski

...so..yeah. That's my daily dose of thinking. And...I am such a loser for reading quotes in my spare time.

wicked happy

So, yes. NNHS xc lost today. It's funny how cross country is. You have good days and bad days. You can go from one minute slower than your best time to one minute faster than your best time back to one minute slower than your best time in three consecutive races. A lot of it is about luck. What we eat that day, how cold it is, how much we are motivated. It's all luck, really.

But, yeah. At least Seb did well.

Hmm. What should I talk about now? I really have nothing entertaining to say.

Maybe I should talk about how much I want to do stuff with my friends but like have no time to do so. But I actually really do. I am busy during the week, but I don't know the last time I've done something actually entertaining on a Friday night.

But, yeah. Who wants to read my Colby essay? Oh yes.

Writing prompt:
Discuss this quotation

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
-Marie Curie

"When I was in third grade, I realized that life is very fragile. My parents sat both me and my sister down on the couch, and they told us that the life of my 16 year old cousin was cut short by a thick stump on the side of a slippery road. I didn’t know how to deal with it. My life was no longer a thing to take for granted. My life could end just like that, without any warning.

I wasn’t sure how to deal with this truth in third grade. After a few weeks, I began eating less. Within a month or two, I had lost over 10 pounds. My parents couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, so they ran many, many tests for several months, each coming out as negative. Finally, by the time my doctor recommended I see a therapist, my ribs were visible through my back.

My trip to the therapist was not only to help with my weight problem. After my cousin’s death, I had become more and more attached to my parents, never wanting to be separated from them. It seems that fear had taken over my life, fear of losing the ones I love, fear of losing my own life, fear that something unexpected would happen which would separate me from my parents forever.

After a few months with the therapist, things seemed to be improving. Instead of acting on my fears, I understood them. I understood that what happened to my cousin was not normal. I understood that what happened to my cousin will most likely not happen to me any time soon. Now I understand that worrying about these futile things, the one in a million chances, is not worth it.

I no longer fear death such as that of my cousin. I do not fear what could happen, but rather accept that it could happen and live my life not worrying. We must understand that life is too short to worry about it ending. In a way, life is like going skydiving. We all are going to hit the ground sometime. It is just a matter of how much we enjoy the ride. "

Uhm, good job if you read all that.

Peace.

SSA8MyBsaWZl

"Somewhere at the edge of the bell curve is the girl for me"

So, yeah. Somewhere at the edge of the bell curve. They'll have to find me. Cause where I am now is where I want to be. The status quo is amazing. Although it is not necessarily the best thing.

I think I am getting over this terrible teenager stage.

I am so amazingly happy with everything right now.

So there was this kid. This kid on the Cross Country team (and, I know, I'll stop obsessing over xc in a few weeks, don't worry). He was biking down about a block from my house. Or maybe more. But really close. And so, I kinda knew him. But last Saturday, I noticed police tape and a kinda heap of metal on the road. It was the bike the police were apparently trying to piece together. So then on Monday, I heard about this whole thing. This whole thing and who it involved.

You see, I could see myself doing exactly what that kid did. Biking across the street. Not looking. And bam. In the hospital with almost every bone in his face broken. But he was wearing a helmet. So he's not dead, luckily.

So the team sends him a card, I send him something saying to get well soon. You know, all light-hearted and stuff. Like sending a card to the president. You don't expect anything to come of it or it to have any importance.

Then I hear from my coach who visited him in the hospital. He's not looking too good. He's not looking good at all. He's currently in a medically-induced coma, but the doctors aren't really sure whether he'll actually come out of that coma once they take him off the medications. He hasn't responded since the accident (although the doctors think they might have felt him squeeze his finger when they were seeing if he was conscious).

But this could have been me. This could have easily been me. I bike every day. And I usually bike without a helmet. Without a helmet. I would be dead right now. That easily. Without warning.

One slight mistake can bring the ultimate consequence.

...at least I understand something about black holes

Ok, so change of topic.

Science.

I was thinking today and wondering how moons and other objects are able to stay adrift in space with just enough acceleration to keep from getting sucked towards a planet, but not enough acceleration to escape its gravitational pull. Then I thought, wouldn't it be cool if the earth could act as a huge magnifier, pulling light ever so slightly towards it, therefore creating a point where this light would meet back up and like be slightly stronger than normal light.

Ok, so I probably lost you there. So then I thought about black holes. Light is both a wave and a particle, and a black hole, to my understanding, is basically a really, reallly compressed planet, sucking in light that comes at it. Now what if this light is able to act as a satellite? If light traveled at just the correct angle across just the right distance from a black hole with just the right mass, the light would therefore be caught in the black hole's field of gravity, spinning around and around the black hole just as Saturn's rings spin around Saturn.


Alright. Now what?

Hmm.

"You dream it as you tell it, hoping others might dream along with you"
Tim O'Brien

Senior year will never happen again

(and I'm not sure if that's a good thing)

So I'm not so sure if this is good or what that I'm posting again.

College essays are reasonably terrible. The fact that I have to write for something is really annoying me. I mean, with school and everything, I am used to forceful writing. But forceful semi-creative writing...not so much. I've written so many things, deviating ever so slightly from the truth that I don't even know who I am any more.

Who am I? Only you (the general you) can answer that.

So, yeah. What to say, what to say.

"In the beginning of sixth grade, my English class was told to fill out a sheet, along with a picture of myself, to be hung up out in the hallway. Everybody quickly filled out theirs, but I, being careful to fill out the description of me correctly, took more time to fill it out. Finally, when I was done, I went out alone to hang up my sheet in the hallway.

The next day, I looked over my classmates’ sheets. One section of the sheet asked us to fill in the blank in the statement “I am ___”. Everyone else wrote his/her names, but I wrote “happy person”. When all my new classmates and possible friends came into school that sunny day, they looked over all the other sheets, and chuckled at mine. They chuckled at my lack of knowledge. They chuckled at my mistake, although I revealed more about myself in that one blank than a name could.

Later that day, my happiness was tested. Towards the end of the day, there was an announcement telling us to proceed to our homerooms. When I saw my homeroom teacher nearly crying, I knew there was something wrong. But I stayed happy. Even when they announced that two planes had hit the world trade centers and pentagon and that thousands of people had died, I was still smiling. I did so not to make light of the situation, but rather to comfort my classmates. In the midst of sadness and fear, I wanted to be happy so that my classmates could follow my lead and realize that sadness is pointless."

Be happy. That's all we really have.

So, yeah. Summer's ending. And with it the relaxation and happiness that it brings. It seems that no matter how bored I am, it is even hard to sit down and focus on my college applications. Not that they're super-exciting.

So, yeah. One more week of relative relaxation. Then school takes over my life. Why do we even spend 1/4 of our lives learning how to live a better life? I guess school is necessary for other reasons, too.

So, yes. I have so much more left to say. But I will refrain from telling it to people I don't know.

k,peace out. It'll probably be a long, long time before I post here again.

The Rich

Ok, so communism sucks. We all know that. But what we really need is a balance between communism and what we have now. We can't have this social divide in our country. Some have so much money they will never need to work again while others have so little money working double shifts on three different jobs won't pay the bills. So, basically..we need to get the money in our economy out of the hands of the rich. Taxes do this, but even they aren't enough. We need to get money out of the hands of the rich and into the hands of the poor.

But really the only problem that we will have to face sometime is overpopulation. With less people, there will be more of everything. There will be more to survive on.

Just a thought I had late at night.

100'th post

but yeah. The movie "Once" seems amazing too. I don't know. I really have nothing else to talk about.

hmmm....the protocols of zion. HMMM. Absolutely terrible. Well, the movie is good. So apparently, there are people out there who believe that on 9/11, when the world trade centers fell, 4000 jews didn't show up to their work at the WTC. Wow. Could people be more obsessive. People try to find a reason for everything, a cover-up for everything, even if it does not exist. I know over 3,000 people died. I know people are frustrated and want someone who they can personally take revenge on. I know many people are grown up with the idea that "jews are bad" cemented into their brain. But there is really no one group of people to blame for 9/11.

Speaking of embarassing...look at this race. The world-class runners were on track to getting very, very good times, but the officials lost track of the number of laps! A tragedy only a runner can truly understand.





And don't forget

to wear sunscreen

Peace

Some pictures

Mexico Trip




I'll post more on this later.

p.s.
I am amazingly happy.
oh yeah, and you can see, I changed the maps on the right hand side. Now they show the current lightning strikes and radar in the United States.

so many things

ok, so just got back from Mexico, which was amazingly sweet. I saw pretty much everything. Starting with Merida, I had a good mexican city experience, then to Chichen Itza to get the historical background of Mexico, (along with exploring a rainforest), then to Playa del Carmen and Cozumel to view the marine life of the Gulf of Mexico. Overall, it was quite sweet.

Only two weeks into summer. It is amazing so far.

Yeah. Basically.

and, oh, the iphone. Absolutely amazing. Except for the price. But, still...maybe in a year I'll buy one. I'm a loser and watched the whole 20-minute guided tour of the iphone from apple, but there are other shorter reviews on youtube and such. But all of these videos can't do the iphone justice. I actually accidentally ended up going to an AT&T store and actually tried it out, and it is better than any of the videos portrayed it to be.

so, yeah. I actually am sorta splitting this post up oddly, seeing that I am like writing it in pieces over like 4 days...but it was nice in Mexico. The Mexicans saw us as one thing and only one thing. TOURISTS. So, basically, we stood out a bit. Everywhere we went, people were hassling us to go into their stores. For every cab ride, if we didn't ask the price up front, cab drivers would double and even triple the fares if we asked what the price was once we stopped. The last day, we got charged 10 dollars to travel about a mile and a half by cab. It was pretty bad. I would have liked to do a service trip to Mexico with my church or something so that I could be viewed as someone who is solely there to help. Oh well.

But, in a way, being a tourist wasn't the worst thing. What I hate (and this is really random) is when people stereotype me by my looks. Well..not even looks...for some people, if they see a teenage guy on the street, they will cross the road. When I was walking home from fireworks tonight, I was just like walking behind this mother and her kid, along with a million other people, and the mother kept on blatantly turning her head and staring at me. Then she crossed the road. I mean COME ON...I'm not the type to mug people. Why are people so afraid of me?

Soooo....the songs I am loving right now...Breathe in (Frou Frou), Hey There Delilah, and Snow (Hey Oh). Oh yes. Frou Frou makes such good music videos, too.



excuse meee too busyyy writing your tragedyyyy

heheee...time for a Garden State quote
"Even though the past makes you numb to life, make a spontaneous decision to live your life now in the present...because you only get one chance at this thing...everyday attempt to do something that will make up for all this mess."

haha, I used to think quotes like this actually had some significance to me. Except I used to try to apply it to the littlest issues in my life. My life isn't a mess. And I have to stop thinking that quotes like these should have any importance to me.

OH well. Hmmm...running out of things to sayy...launched my rocket today...and lost it in the trees...lol, couldn't have guessed that one. It was pretty sweet, though. OOO and I got my ACT scores back and did wicked well. I am going to college after all!

so, yeah. Summer is sweet. Life is sweet. Everything is sweet.

Peace

something

Just thought I'd share that. I found it, along with some other cool pictures here. Puts things in perspective.

p.s.

http://www.mountwashingtonroadrace.com/

I am going to do this next year.

Tired.

So.

Officially one more final. Then done. Ahh..that will be amazing.

So, then what? Mexico on Thursday? Yup. Then Maine. Then smuggling fireworks with my sister. Or we might just legally set them off in New Hampshire. Then looking forward to long summer runs and late summer nights and bug spray and sunscreen and all those other things that don't remind you of a specific thing but of a feeling. A feeling of freedom, and relaxation and warmth and, most of all, happiness.

Summer, in all its glory, is coming. No time to think of what your grades are or where you're going to college. Just summer.

uhm, another post?

xkcd.com

Sooo..yah. Nothing much.

Basically, the Newton North Volleyball team rocks. Uhm, they don't seem very good, but for some reason they just keep on winning and they actually got to the state finals and are playing on Saturday. It will be amazing.

But, yeah. Another sweet song; Trust Me by the Fray.

Other than that....exactly 13 days left of school. But like half of those don't count cause they're finals. I am so excited for the summer.

Really don't have anything else to sayy. So I guess I won't say anything.

Life in jail.

seriously, what is it? Why do we keep on throwing people in jail?

I guess we need someone to blame. Just finished reading an article about two pilots who accidentally clipped a 737 on their landing. Their plane made an emergency landing and landed safely, but the 737 crashed, killing the 154 people on board. So, yes, this is terrible. 154 people shouldn't have died that day. But still, we shouldn't be putting all the blame the ones who actually caused the accident. It was an accident; It was their fault, but throwing them in jail isn't fixing anything. It is like throwing 2 innocent people into jail. Yes, they made mistakes, but don't we all? These people could have been any of us. We all make mistakes; we all are capable of creating such a disaster, but are usually lucky.

As a lady who I met from prison a few years ago said, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's all it takes to get a life in prison.

Getting over the habit

K, so nothing really much is goin on now.

Well...actually...volleyball is going on...which is sweet. Or it is at least sweet to watch. So basically...we went against Brookline the other day and it was like a crazy, crazy game. Five matches make up a game and all of the matches are to 25 except for the fifth one (so the winner is basically who wins three games first). Uhm, so yeah...with Brookline we like lost the first one by like two points, won the second one, lost the third one...till the fifth one...then we like just managed to win. Uhm, but yeah...the more exciting game was tonight where we lost the first two matches, but managed to save it and like win three in a row against a really good team.

But, yeah. Nothing else really. Took the (practice) MCAS today. Didn't really try and instead of answering the last open response question, I did an essay on why I thought American History shouldn't be on the MCAS. Whatevs. We're not even getting our scores back.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I'm sooo happy now about soo many things! Uhm, why did I feel sad and frustrated a second ago? Ugh. I hate being a teenager.