This Makes No Sense

I'm going to get all As next semester. I am not going to tell my mom about any of my work. I am going to say "fuck you" to her and do all of my homework, study like fuck, ignore friends, ignore boyfriend (if I have one lol--I guess I won't be asking him out myself, too much work). I have shit to do.

No crying. No screaming. No talking. If she pisses me off I will leave. Or put in headphones. If I am punished, that's what happens.

I am going to be damned if I prove her right. Fuck her. I am going to stay at New Trier, do amazingly, be a top-notch violinist, feed the cat and do her litter box. I will win. I will succeed.

I looked through a few journals from when I was younger today. They made me laugh. Is that how this current journal is going to look to future me? I hope so. I take myself seriously now, but if it makes me laugh when I'm twenty or thirty, that's totally cool.

A gem:

"Oh, by the way, my two goals are: Ultimate power... and true love."

You go, little me. If I were to simplify things, those are probably still my two goals. Both impossible. :D

I spent most of the day doing summer reading. I finished Mississippi, and got about forty pages into Heir to the Glimmering World. What a pretentious title. It's also from 2004. I thought it was older.

After I finished reading, I did nothing, and it was awesome. I'm not sure whether I want to rewrite a terrible story I found from third grade (about a girl named Isabel who could speak to cats and a witch named Kathleen) or do more of my Sableye solo run of Emerald. Or watch more Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt! I'm indecisive. I'd like to do all three, but it's already ten, so I don't think I have time if I want to get back into a school schedule.

Humans should strive for achievement, but not compete with one another.

The fact of the matter is, we all start out on VERY unequal footing. Our life choices affect us immensely, even when we're young and don't know what we're doing. That six-year-old who dislikes reading? Yeah, he potentially messed up the optimal outcome of his adult life. And we can't blame him. That's just what happened.

Not to mention environment, and of course predisposition from birth.

I'm good at writing. I work at it like fuck, I analyze books, movies, TV shows, and comics in minute detail, and I spend time on it, but that doesn't mean that my advantage over the other writers my age is fair. Something, whether it's something in my brain or a life experience, gave me this capacity, this drive. And because I have no clone (who lived the same life), other people and I aren't on equal footing.

This goes for EVERYTHING. Sports, acting, science... nothing is fair.

So when something is accomplished, yes, it's a great thing. The person worked hard on their achievement and should be commended. But you CAN'T compare ANYTHING anyone does with the accomplishments of others, because it isn't fair. There is no way it CAN be fair. And that's okay, really, but we need to stop praising people for WINNING competitions.

Not necessarily stop having them, because beating other people is a good driving force, but we need to understand that if someone wins, that's because of the incredibly different lives and brains of the competitors.

Actually, maybe we can never tell people this, or at least never come to accept it in our culture. If we did, would we lose our motivation? Would people even believe this? Would it matter? The whole "making decisions, then coming up with evidence to support the ready-made decision" thing comes to mind. There's no way possible to convince the world that everything we know is a lie.

Heck, I'm the most competitive person I know. And the fact that I AM that way is already a disadvantage to everyone I compete against -- but I digress.

Anyway, I'm a hypocrite proposing a nonsense view of the world. Is this similar to nihilism? I should go look that up.

In summary, everything we know is a lie, there is no such thing as fair -- or even CLOSE to fair -- competition, and we will never be able to fully alter our zeitgeists. :)

I've been reading a lot of House of Leaves lately. I'm not entirely sold on the quality of the book yet, but many parts of it have got me thinking. I especially enjoyed the part discussing the various mythological, psychological, and connotational meanings of "echo".

The part that got me thinking the most, interestingly enough, didn't actually affect me until I played Animal Crossing this afternoon. (I started a new game of Animal Crossing on this Sunday, for whatever reason. It's a fun game. It relaxes me.)

In the book, Navidson walks into the new, dark hallway of his house, and finds infinite branches off of that first hallway, never finding an end to the maze, never advancing or noticing any significant changes in his standing. When he tries to go back, he finds that the path back has changed. He has no way of knowing where he is, and it terrifies him.

Funnily enough, I had a similar experience way back when I first played Animal Crossing, back when I was eight or so. I know it sounds unlikely, but it's true.

I had just discovered the wonders of donating to the museum, and decided to go explore its halls, to see where my donations had ended up. I explored the fish hall first, I believe, or was it the dinosaur hall? Perhaps even the bug hall. No matter. The point is, I entered one of the doorways, and began to explore.

Each hall of the museum is set up like this:


Note the two doors leading in/out of each room. Now that I'm older, I recognize that those doors are for ease of museum viewing: go in one door, walk around the room, go out the other door with no need to turn around.

But when I was young, the spatial qualities of the museum were mysterious and foreign to me. If I went through one of the two doors, where did I end up? If I went through that other door, would I end up in the room I began my adventure in, or would I end up in a completely different room, and be forced to navigate my way through a maze of exhibits and doorways? As soon as I realized the possibility of becoming lost in the museum, trapped forever, I hurried my character out of there and never entered the exhibit halls again. Brewster's Cafe was one thing, but the rest of the museum was off-limits.

Despite Animal Crossing being, at its core, a happy, friendly game about a town with animal residents, emphasis on game, the museum terrified me, and it took a long, long time before I was willing to brave its halls again, even after I'd seen an online map of its layout.

Reading about the terror of the house's twisting hallways didn't resonate with me at all until Animal Crossing. Then it hit me, and the horror of the book became a reality.

It's funny how memories work like that.

(I've wanted to write something with a clock motif for a while, but this turned out like shit. I doubt anyone other than me can even decipher what this is about. I wanted to put some alliteration, consonance and other poetic elements in here, but oh well. Maybe I'll edit this later, maybe not. I'm done with it for now.)

It begins.

Tick.

The clock starts, and so does his wait. Anticipation is his only ally; he can’t afford to waste his thoughts on the present. He spends his time with Them, talking and laughing, but always, always somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he is waiting. He is watching, he is planning, he is preparing. Being taken by surprise is not an option.

They all smile at him. Their feelings are genuine; he can tell from the lights in their eyes.

The clock ticks onwards. Time passes. He can feel it.

Tock.

His brain begins to ache with repressed revelations. A heavy weight settles on him, like a thick, musty blanket. He can’t breathe.

They all smile at him, but the pounding in the back of his skull blurs his vision. All he sees are hazy halos of light. Faces are fuzzy: they can’t be read. Eyes become dark smudges.

Are They smiling, or baring their teeth?

Tick.

They talk and laugh, but all he can do is stare and wait. He watches the way They move around each other, examines how many times They turn Their heads towards him, keeps a running count of words and phrases said by each individual in the conversation. He scans chat logs, looking for any mention of him, afraid that when he isn’t present, he is forgotten.

His name, in print. Once, twice, three times. Almost enough to get his lungs working again.

Tock.

Not enough to get his lungs working again.

Tick.

He is doomed.

Tock.

The final stage has begun. He can’t even speak, because he knows that They don’t want him to. He is the useless one, the accessory, a superfluous teratoma that can easily be hacked away from Their body.

This is what he waited for all along: this knowledge. He is nothing. He is nothing, and he can’t let himself forget it.

The thoughts at the back of his mind burn. He desperately hopes that They can’t smell the stench of charcoaled flesh emanating from his skull.

Tick.

It hurts.

Tock.

He forgets.

But he remembers the wait. He always remembers the wait.

It begins.

An interesting thing I've seen is how many feminists who talk about how women don't have to be feminine to be women, etc. are very feminine. They make the argument that femininity =/= badness, which I agree wholeheartedly about.

But then they make a weird argument. They say that there aren't enough feminine, positive characters in media. Which is true, but they say it's the fault of the masculine female characters, and, uh, I don't see any of those! When they do, they are bitter and cruel, and secretly long to be feminine.

There's also the problem of the Exceptional Girl, or whatever the term is. The problem that occurs when a show creates one female character who is wow! amazing!, but she is the only female character, AND she has no development other than being perfect (usually).

And then there's the whole matter of girl characters "proving" themselves to be as good as the guys. If girls aren't inherently considered less-than, why would we have these episodes??? And THEN, at the end of the episode, the male characters all laugh at the man she beat because "he got beat by a GIRL. its funny because she has slightly different anatomy than me". Either that or they grudgingly accept that this girl is AS GOOD AS THEM.

WE ARE SHOWING THIS TO OUR KIDS AND I AM SO FUCKING SICK OF THIS SHIT

I can't stand TV. Kids' shows need to be better quality. It's not perfect, but a good example is Adventure Time. Finn has a crush on Princess Bubblegum because she's a brilliant scientist and mathematician. Sure, it's a show about saving princesses, but all of the princesses are unique, and, GASP!, they're actually people!!! I think it says a lot that Adventure Time is hundreds of times more feminist than any other kids' show I've seen while being a show about SAVING PRINCESSES.

Another show that gets close is, I guess, Teen Titans. A 3-2 boy-girl division (if it's mostly girls it's a girls' show, of course!) and female characters with character. Sure, the outfits were weird, but at least they were better than most clothing in the superhero genre.

You know what? I think I'm going to make Chris in my story a girl and have a 7-5 girl-boy ratio. Because it isn't a book for girls, it's a book for everyone, and fuck anyone who says it can't be a book for everyone when the majority of the main characters are girls.

I'm feeling especially angry today. Can you tell?

Mom is quietly talking about me to friends on the phone. "Quietly".

...I really wish she wouldn't do that.

Why do I always feel like being productive with non-school related things right when I start needing to focus on school?

I am going to fail every final. Every. Single. One. Even English.

ESPECIALLY English.

...Okay, that's a lie. Especially Math. And maybe Spanish.

BUT ENGLISH TOO.

My personalDNA Report

Interesting. On a test like this I'd usually get Slightly High Masculinity, Average Femininity, and Low Extroversion, but I answered a few things a bit differently than I normally do.

Oh, Raven/female!Link. I do not understand you, but young me loved you dearly.



Five minutes well spent. Perhaps this will help me understand my younger self. My really, really weird younger self.

How did they think? WHAT did they think? Did they think? Mysteries.