Posts Tagged ‘the real world’

Twenty Twenty Twenty One Hours Gone

Saturday, January 1st, 2022

Jeez, how did this year go by so fast?

In the midst of the chaos of 2021, it was actually a great year for me on a personal level. I remained dedicated to my studies and hobbies despite a worldwide pandemic and repeated human fallacy telling most people that giving up is the better option; I was able to go out and actually do things after a year indoors, meeting people I have always wanted to meet and going places I have always wanted to go; I started this here blog. I can tell that the person I am has become more mature and more realized, due in no small part to support from all the people I have connected with and the experiences I have had along my way. I’m grateful for all of it, and I know I personally wouldn’t want a do-over…

…even though the world could really use one. If this year proved anything on a major scale, it was that we as humans are all still self-obsessed, anxious, confused little babies with false concepts of freedom and liberty implanted in our heads, acting on our base impulses. Every headline about humans ignoring COVID safety protocol and media pundits taking advantage of ignorance for their own selfish gains has been more agonizing than the last. The Omicron strain doing its very un-sexy thing doesn’t help. I received my booster shot on Monday—and that’s after two jabs and a minor bout with the ‘rona—but I’m still a human. And humans are as resilient as they are fragile.

But then again, every year is its own strain of hell; COVID just made the flames higher and the stupid crap stupider. Being able to recognize that certain things are, at their core, extremely stupid and laughable is a really crucial part of making life somewhat enjoyable. And I sure did a lot of that last year!

So what does this year have in store? For me, it means escape—escape to the college of my choice and a chance to start fresh. It’s the only thing that seems certain when it seems like the ability to do anything exciting is based entirely on how reckless other humans want to act on any given day. It’s hard thinking about the future when things seem so murky. In the meantime I’m trying to follow the advice assorted elders push upon me: savor this time while you still can.

The mask mandates that are repealed or disregarded…the underlying shiftiness of newfound lukewarm winters…the recklessness of humankind on display everywhere from the grocery store to the Facebook feed…the creepy fake ducks I saw in a (most likely man made) pond outside a developed community I drove by last weekend…varying states of growth and regression, evolution and de-evolution…what a weird, fascinating time to savor.

Happy 2022!

Circumstances

Friday, December 17th, 2021

Good news: I survived school today!

I’m not saying that because it was a bad day—it was an average day, and my week was a good one overall. I say that because some attention-seeking brats decided to use TikTok, the greatest social media platform there is, to spread false rumors of nationwide school violence today in the aftermath of the horrendous Oxford, Michigan massacre. I guess the human race still needs to prove how senseless it can be. It blows my mind how someone could look upon such cold blooded slaughter and then capitalize on it by spreading useless, irrational fear capable of unsettling people young and old across the nation. We are already bombarded with an overload of subliminal fear-mongering in our day to day lives; we don’t need a new generation of coddled edgelords continuing the grift. If I’ve learned anything by watching the twenty-first century news cycle, it’s that

  • my university of choice is going to be overrun by this gang of frothy-mouthed militants
  • my hometown is going to be Hiroshima’ed by that warmongering country
  • my few hopes and dreams are going to be stolen by this capsized group and
  • my entire life is in the hands of that secret-but-not-secret cabal of all-powerful baby-slurping ‘liberals’

messages that only encourage the populous to withdraw, to mistrust others, to get a gun and keep it loaded. Make sure it’s military grade, too; and never keep it locked up—you never know when you’ll need it.

Luckily none of my peers felt that need today, as the school day went without disruption. I wore a discreet Safe As Milk pin on my shirt because the other thing weighing heavy on my mind was that today marks the eleventh year since Don Van Vliet—better known as Captain Beefheart—died. A quote of his hangs attached to my bedroom mirror—“The stars are matter; we’re matter; but it doesn’t matter.” Offbeat, yet eloquent. Maybe if we chose people like Beefheart over the fear-mongers in power, we’d be a better species.

A Whole Lotta Love For The Unlovable

Saturday, November 20th, 2021

The more I hear talk of “societal progress” and the like, the more numb I become when I see heaping piles of evidence of societal regress. It feels as if there’s no logic in the world we live in, a world where killers walk free while the kindhearted are rendered powerless. “Disappointed, but not surprised” is a sentiment I’ve been seeing around a lot lately, and it’s not hard to get disappointed at how cruel humans are towards each other. Why is it that, when the public good needs protection, the only response is the enforced individualism of useless culture wars? I thought we were supposed to judge each other on a moral basis, not on arbitrary factors like the relative pastiness of our skin. Or maybe we are judging each other on our morality: the ones least interested in protecting human life get put at the top while the bottom of the chain belongs to the people who just want us to all get along. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing how blatant this display has become.

It’s easy to forget the things that bring joy to life when such emotions and chaos are swirling all around you. Yet I’m still reeling from DEVOtional two weeks ago, and it’s painful knowing that it’s going to be five months until I get the chance to congregate with all those beautiful mutants again when DEVO hits New York. But that weekend also gave me a renewed vitality and sense of worth in a world where I constantly feel shoved to the background in favor of the usual army of apathetic conformists. Being my true self was an advantage for once.

Smooching The Moon

Tuesday, October 19th, 2021

It really does feel like time is a human construct sometimes. A month ago I was navigating train lines, electronic refrigerator doors in drugstores, and music festival crowds in Chicago, yet it feels like a lifetime ago. I have a long awaited trip to Cleveland and Akron in less than a month, and the wait feels like double that. In the meantime my schedule has been fuller than ever. It is as exhausting as it is worthwhile, and it feels like everything now is in preparation for the future. Whether that future is near or far depends on the situation.

A big part of my busy day, as always, is observing other humans, which is hands down one of my favorite hobbies. There’s nothing more fascinating than examining the personas people form in both real life and the digital world. There’s a lot of dichotomy involved with reacting to what others do. Example: knowing that there are couples whose supposed ultimate fairytale courtship moment of Luv included the phrase “I AM WEED” makes me simultaneously lose all faith in humanity and gain hope that I’ll someday find a boyfriend. It’s all about trying to maintain a positive mindset in depressing times. If even the most delirious, vapid, overindulged humans can find mates, that opens up a lot of doors for the rest of us. And you’re going to have to make judgments if you’re going to get anywhere. Too many people act as if they aren’t “judgmental” as if judgment isn’t an innate component of human/animal nature. Deciding that funky smelling milk isn’t safe to drink is as much a judgment as choosing the people you choose to surround yourself with. Some people are entranced by the stench of that rancid milk. If observation has taught me anything, humans are often very flawed creatures.

Asserting yourself and the things you associate with opens the door for others to make judgments about you. Too many people hide their best traits out of fear; too many people cover up their flaws to pass under societal radars. It makes you feel almost grateful that there are people so proud of declaring that they are, in fact, weed, because at least they’re being honest. This makes it easier for the rest of us to make correct judgments and stay as far away from them as possible. It’s going to be refreshing to indulge in some freedom of expression with people who aren’t afraid to be themselves and aren’t marijuana courtship string bean swamp creatures in the process.

Quaran-Times

Friday, October 1st, 2021

I won the lottery last week. Despite two vaccinations last spring and what feels like an eternity of relentless caution, I tested positive for COVID-19. Whoopee.

At least I pulled the luck of the draw in terms of symptom severity. Nothing surpassed the level of a particularly wicked cold, and I recovered very quickly. Judging by the time frame, I wouldn’t have been contagious for my comrades in Chicago, and when I learned of my ailment I was already back from my glorious weekend of concert attending there and keeping my mask up full time for school. My school hasn’t experienced any COVID case spike since my return as well. Not all is bad under quarantine.

In the meantime, I was forced to do my schoolwork online, giving me unwelcome flashbacks to last year. While getting back into the groove was easier than I expected, it was hard being separated from my other activities. As horrible as communicating with other people can be, once you’ve assimilated into society to some degree, you can’t take it out of you easily. Having human interaction stripped from you after getting used to it—and sometimes even enjoying it—does absolute wonders for one’s mental health. The friendships I forged over the past year or so have become invaluable to my current experience. There’s something strangely special about knowing you’ve left reverberations in other people’s lives. When those people make your own life worth living, stepping away bores a hole in you. It’s strange being aware of your own existence in this way, but it’s also eye opening. And ache inducing.

But at least I get to go back to what’s as close as I can get to the life I want to live. It could have been worse. I could have not believed that COVID-19 was a serious threat at all. I could have been without a vaccination and open to a world of pain worthy of a primetime-traumatize shock story. I could have signed my life over to some bile-spewing pundit and brainlessly ingested discredited animal medication as “protection” because he told me to. I could have been an idiot. At least I’m not that.

Don’t Be Gaslighting Me, Mofo

Friday, August 27th, 2021

Fall is truly falling, isn’t it?

While my previous logs were written from my room, I wrote the entirety of this piece over the course of a few study hall periods, as school is back in session. I must admit, I forgot how much teenager germs still make me gag, all the more a reason to wear a mask walking to and from my classes. Almost all of my peers are abstaining from wearing theirs since there is no enforced mandate. My COVID concerns still linger, so it’s still slightly unsettling, but I’ve managed to make myself comfortable. It helps that all my teachers are nice.

Yes, fall is kicking in, though the runoff of the hottest summer the Northern Hemisphere has ever experienced (thanks, climate change!) doesn’t make it feel that way. Neither does darling little Delta lingering around the corner, waiting to crash your party and leave you realizing the next morning that the previous night wasn’t as good as you thought it was. It’s a real pity. I thought this was supposed to be an ascending fall, but I guess the only positive curve is the hospitalization graph!

On my calendar, September holds large scale events that I have been anticipating since March of last year, yet the threat of Delta’s dance keeps them hanging in the balance. The first on my list, the Riot Fest gathering in Chicago, has already had two of its biggest acts—Troubled Trent! Frank! Nooo!—withdraw out of COVID concern only to be replaced by…Slipknot. Didn’t one of their members just catch COVID, and didn’t another one just straight up die a few weeks ago? My condolences, of course, but I didn’t expect overly angsty (and, it seems, painfully mortal) nu metal to be the soundtrack to the world’s reopening.

Me being me, the prophetic songs of DEVO, who are still on Riot Fest’s bill and have a show I’ll be catching at Radio City Music Hall two days later, sound like a much better choice. They also seem brazenly enthusiastic about finally getting back out on the road after years of Mark Mothersbaugh being too busy making movie score money. I assume they trust their fans with actually taking precaution and getting their shots, considering that both of the group’s frontmen have caught the virus in its early days; Marky Mark even needed a ventilator. His recovery was also apparently interrupted by the indulgent partying of the youthful TikTok stars living next door, a modern day exercise of the “live fast, die young” mentality that has latched onto so many. There’s no good future in sight, so why not submerge ourselves in fun, partying, tossing cash around, assorted acts of degeneracy that our parents’ bank accounts let us get away with while we still can? It’s saddening to see, yet it’s not an unnatural response considering the circumstances.

It seems like everyone is thinking, “what can I do that makes me happy before the world burns?” That includes myself. But typing on an energy-consuming computer with the lights on isn’t actually as damaging to the environment as carbon dioxide-pumping, uselessly polluting companies want me to think. Neither is letting yourself loose in a crowd of like minded people while your favorite (and not favorite) bands bring their songs to life.

So, DEVO and Slipknot, eh? Not all jumpsuit wearing, clown mask bearing bands are made equal. But can we expect anything to not happen at this point?

Poor News Report

Saturday, August 21st, 2021

It’s 2021, and the boys are back in town—the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan boys, that is. Almost twenty years after the American military sent the Taliban’s government went into exile, they’re back in power after America’s (truly weak sauce) withdrawal. You would think that twenty years of occupation would have produced some hurdles for the Taliban to climb, but their regain of what they had lost was sickeningly swift.

It’s the miserable end of a miserable war that has been going on since before I was born, one that, looking at the plain hard facts, ultimately proved useless for the greater good. The money has been spent, the death toll is still staggering, the weapons suppliers are doing exceptionally well, and the innocent people of Afghanistan, humans like you or me, are back to being incessantly victimized by an excruciatingly oppressive and fundamentalist state. Got enough of rose-tinted late 90s-early 2000s nostalgia? Try going back 500 years, when women weren’t permitted autonomous thought and simple forms of recreation were considered a front against the man upstairs. Heaven on earth, truly.

But is that really that different from the country I reside in? You can rejoice in the streets about how a man in a blue tie is in office, but that isn’t stopping the men in red ties, the conservatives, our own Taliban, from trying to exert their own archaic control over the populous. Bills proposing the restriction of voting rights, abortion, and gender expression continue to pop up like kernels of butter-drenched popcorn at the movie theater, granted that movie theater hasn’t closed down because of a local spike in COVID-19 cases.

The COVID problem is also an important matter here, as leagues of religious fundamentalists claim that wearing a mask for the safety of others in the middle of a worldwide pandemic is some ungodly offense. Vaccines, too, are seen as satanic, as they’ll apparently rape your body with either a tracking chip or reptile DNA, depending on which science disbeliever you ask. All this when hospitalization rates of those who abide by these reckless behaviors are spiking from their selfishness. We’re going back once again, back to when leeches and snake oils were used as cure-alls. Mind, these are the same people who also want to restrict the bodily autonomy of women and other innocent people in the name of the lord, just like those Taliban boys over there.

And did we all just forget about when the so-called patriots who believe all of this tried to pull their own takeover at the Capitol building last January? I witnessed the attempt at insurrection on live television, and I can remember it like yesterday. Unsatisfied by Biden as the country’s choice of president but fully aware that his election win was genuine, I had innocently turned on the news hoping to simply observe his presidency be validated, because seeing democracy actually happen successfully is pretty satisfying in today’s perpetually corrupt hellworld. I was aware that the moment was one that would be placed in the history books after months of incessant “Stop The Steal” squabble calling for another four years of Trumpolini (like the country hadn’t been decimated enough by the first four). I also expected counterprotests at the scene by those delusional goons indoctrinated into his suicide cult of personality, because you can’t help but do so after four years of fringe conspiracy insanity becoming mainstream political discussion.

What I ended up seeing was a nation’s people mobilized against itself, their brains rotted by lies and conspiracy, exerting violence in the name of tyranny, the decimation of what remnants of democracy we still claim to cling to. The halls of the Capitol became the stomping grounds for a horde of neurotic rednecks, a deranged militia free to roam in defilement of something once considered worthy of protection. All sanity and sense of what should be was forcibly ejected out the window. The patients had taken over the asylum.

It still unsettles me to think about; I never would have expected for the world’s forces of de-evolution, those dangerous delusions, to catalyze such an attack, to go that far off the deep end. People died that day. Many others feared death or worse. It was a nail in a coffin.

But we’re America. We’re united. We believe in freedom—freedom to treat others like dirt because they’re different than you. It could never happen here, could it?

Born On The Third Of July

Sunday, July 4th, 2021

Well, I’m one day deep into my seventeenth rotation around the sun! Adulthood has never felt so close.

The day before my birthday (two days ago), I was taken on a (successful) record shopping excursion to celebrate. Afterwards, on a whim, we stopped at a farmers market not too far away just to see what was happening. What we saw was a hellish site: endless vendors of new bootleg merchandise (colorful phone cases; flimsy accessories wrapped in thin plastic bags and piled into “$3 each” bins; mechanical squeaking toy dogs with Terminator eyes); a disturbing variety of Confederate flags and Trump 2024 trucker hats; county fair style foodstuffs contrasted by unvaccinated Amish girls peddling homegrown produce. The outdoor venue—I didn’t dare venture inside any of its buildings, including the “small animal auction”—was populated by an unmasked crowd facing the heat for the chance to consume, consume, consume before the barbecue weekend kicked in. I cautiously bought one item: a stand hawking five dollar bootleg music posters happened to have a reprint of an old DEVO concert poster (from Hawaii, of all places) in surprisingly good quality. Considering the essence of their theory of de-evolution wafting around me at that moment, it seemed fitting to rescue it from its dusty prison.

The aforementioned 2-DEVO, now safe in my home.

The whole experience reminded me a lot of today’s holiday. From birth, I have been told that America is the world’s melting pot, a place where people of all cultures can gather and become one in perfect harmony. I would later learn of this hypothesis’s futility on a fractured planet with such a stark divide between those who get fair treatment and those who are not allowed. Yet what I saw on Friday reminded me somewhat of such a utopian ideal. All present at that market, whether merchant or consumer, dark skinned or pasty, young or old, obese or twig thin, wheelchair bound or able bodied, vaccinated or not, were equal. Everyone was allowed to indulge. And I cannot recall seeing a single mask at that gathering, giving everyone a chance of contracting something. It was as if the COVID-19 pandemic was done away with in a flash, allowing these ugly Americans to shamelessly expose their collective selfishness with even more pride than before. “Who cares if COVID remains a mean mistress to some; if I can’t consume and obtain, I am nothing.” Simultaneously, while the toll of death and destruction from this summer’s heat wave continues to rise, these same goons don their No More Bullshit baseball hats and declare that humanity’s collective decimation of Earth is nothing but a hoax. The sales slashes, on the other hand, are real. The land of freedom for some, not all; the home of a primarily brainwashed and complacent populous. Lovely.

I got the chance to breathe the day of my gestation completion anniversary, whupping my 5K time in the morning and partaking in an exquisite birthday dinner that afternoon. It was nice to have a break from being constantly reminded of your mortality and actually feel kind of special. I’m a human being with consciousness and an ego. I worry about the state of the world a good amount. But I also like good food.

I do feel a bit older, though I’ve felt internally older than my actual age for a while now. Having to persevere through the world’s worst for seventeen years callouses you like that. Yet just like Frankenstein’s monster, learning about our world and how it functions from the perspective of an outsider often wears me down to primal emotions of sadness, anxiety, anger. It’s a dwarfing gangliness that is near impossible to permanently eradicate. But it’s refreshing to take a walk on a lighter, more fulfilling side every once and a while.

No, No, No

Sunday, June 20th, 2021

What a cruel world we live in! For every installment erected in remembrance of the innocent dead, there should be one more dose of true justice served to those who have suffered, but alas, that is not the reality we live in. Supposedly, in order to commemorate the fallen, we need to continue perpetrating the cruel systems that resulted in those lives being lost. Wouldn’t Veterans Day be the best argument against ending useless wars across the planet? Apparently not.

Fighters in the endless and honorable war against idiocy and division oftentimes throw punches by virtue of staying alive. How else will their traditions of plain and simple empathy continue to exist? They really do deserve a break, and it’s nice to see when they are allowed time to relax, to celebrate what has been done. Yet I can’t stop thinking about how so many witness such acts and smile without thinking anything of what work still needs to be done to ensure true equality.

How come we live in a world where people still belittle and abuse others over such arbitrary attributes such as the melanin concentration of one’s skin cells or what one chooses to do in the privacy of their own bedroom? Where is the world where people are judged by their morality and the moralities of those they associate with? How many more people have to suffer and die for the most absurd reasons before justice is served?

Break time is valuable and necessary to remain sane, but never forget what you are fighting for.

Flash Flood

Sunday, June 13th, 2021

The five hour drive was worth it. Kent was a success!

From exploring the town Wednesday night to touring the campus the next morning, my time in Kent was a fascinating and eye opening experience. I was not sure what to expect, as judging a location’s current condition when most of your knowledge comes from its history can be difficult. Yet I was overall extremely satisfied while I was there.

Twelve beaming floors of library at Kent State.

My primary gripe: leaving so early. We stayed just one night, and a large part of me wanted to do nothing but continue wandering the campus in the burning heat, taking in the brutalish buildings and towering trees, fantasizing about undergraduate life. Chances to escape from my usual surroundings are often scarce and always short lived, making every drive home something to dread. Too often these excursions seem to zip by in a flash in retrospect, which is what I guess results from savoring something so much that you let go of some of the uptightness you’ve grown accustomed to and start living in the moment…not that’s a necessarily bad thing.

This temporary change of scenery extremely refreshing for my psyche, but it was also enlightening to spend time in a place that holds both historical significance and increasing relevancy, especially since learning of the massacre that occurred on campus in 1970 left a large impact on me. It was a genuinely sobering experience to walk where four young innocents had their futures obliterated decades ago, the same grounds where modern youths currently prepare for their own postcollegiate lives to unfold. Seeing markers for where protesting students were shot and the sectioned off areas in the nearby parking lot showing where the four were killed seemed unreal in the moment, and my emotions only began to really hit home after leaving. I was able to leave that campus with feelings of actual hope of an actual future. Allison, Jeffrey, Sandra, and William suffered a very different experience than what I would envision for myself or anyone else.

A memorial for the four slain students by the parking lot where they were murdered. The lot is still in use.

The abuse of illegitimate authority that resulted in the May 4 massacre remains the same today, albeit in more refined form. At Kent State, the memorials and informational placards are the most blatant reminder of why the good fight is still worth fighting, though the somewhat seedy wooded areas on the outskirts of the town that we got lost in upon our initial arrival also seem to serve that purpose. I remember reading that, during that period of turmoil and pain, Kent State’s liberal students considered the campus an “oasis” from the surrounding deep red territory. Living in an area where I am constantly bombarded by Trump 2020 signs alongside various less explicit methods of bigotry, I can’t help but feel for them. If only life was just and everything was easy.

Despite this, the chances of me joining their ranks as a “Golden Flash” have only become more likely since my visit. Kent State genuinely felt like a place I could worm my way into and find plenty nourishment. Brand new things and brand new places often have an atmosphere of impenetrability and intimidation, as they are associated with breaking out of one’s comfort zone and embracing a new world. But I didn’t feel as much like a fish out of water in Kent. Actually, my visit felt more like I was entering a comfort zone of sorts. It was a comfort zone formed by both the assertion of myself as an independent person and constant reminders of history and the experiences of others. But isn’t that a fundamental—albeit complicated and looming—aspect of the human experience?