Category - Rants

A lot has happened in the past week.

I had a physics test on Tuesday. I needed to study a lot for it, because I got only 12 out of 20 right on the first test. Luckily, my physics professors know how hard their class is, so a 60% is only a C+ (at my junior high it would have been a solid F). Still, I don't like C's or even B's. (Maybe I should mention here that you're allowed to have a handwritten cheat sheet for each test. I got a 60 with a cheat sheet.) So all the time I spent copying formulas and the answers to common problems paid off, because I got a 15 out of 20 - a B. I now have a B in the class. Yay.

I had a date planned for two Fridays ago, but it got postponed. A few minutes after sending off my last post, I rescheduled. We agreed Friday night.

On Wednesday, I did the whole "Are we still on for Friday?" thing. You know, where you... ask if you're still on for Friday. She said yeah, and that she'd like to bring a friend along. Oh crap. I try so hard to make my intentions made clear without looking like a jerk or a fool, but apparently I don't try hard enough. So I'm like, well, I think it should be just you and me... And she's all, oh, so it's like a date? And I'm, well, yeah... And she goes, oh, sorry, I'm not... whatever whatever. So I'm like, that's cool, you can bring your friend. And she's all, okay.

I was very disappointed about that. I've been trying all year, and I've still never been on a date. I talked about it to my friend Daniel, and he sent me some e-books on how to pick up girls and communicate with people and things like that. The one about girls caught my interest. It was from a guy in the seduction community, which I had only ever heard of on Wikipedia. Basically, it's a loosely-knit group of people who practice the art of picking up women. This one guy's recommendation was that you stand out and play hard to get. Well, everybody tells you to do that, but he explained it in detail. According to him, you have to say something crazy to get her attention, tell lots of interesting stories, and then act like you don't give a care about her. I mean, there's more to it than that, but that's basically it. If you do it like he says, then she's supposed to be begging for your phone number as you come up with excuse after excuse not to give it to her, only to divulge it finally after she's practically grabbing your arm. Or whatever.

Besides being awfully manipulative, it requires you to act like someone you're not, which is not only dishonest but also a lot of work. Although, I have to say, acting like myself isn't working well at all. There's got to be some sort of middle way where I can still be myself, but in a better way. I hope I can gleam some valuable information from the other e-books, which I haven't read too much of yet. The other one I've read most of is about body language. I find it interesting because I can't read body language at all. I'm hardly ever aware that someone may be using body language to convey feelings other than what they're expressing verbally.

There's just so much I have to think about. I could probably follow that one book to the letter and take a girl home every night, but I wouldn't like it. I probably should make a habit of approaching random girls -- I'm sure not meeting many as it is -- but how do I go about it? Should I continue to act the way I am even though it frustrates me in ways you can't possibly imagine? Should I pretend to be something I'm not? Should I actually change? Why should I even have to read these books anyway? It makes me feel like less of a man that I can't do these things myself. It's like I was born not knowing how to engage in social interaction.

Once I read an article or something that said how smart children are treated differently by adults. They don't spend as much time fostering the children's emotional and social development as much as they do with other kids because they think that the smart kids are just so precocious that they don't need their help. But it's not true. The result is that you have smart, neglected kids who can't do anything. So the article went. I wonder if I can find it.

So, maybe I need to practice reading body language and doing things like that. Actually, while I'm at it, why don't I go off on this tangent: Kissing sucks. Actually, I don't know whether it sucks, but here's what sucks about it. Being a good kisser is a great thing, and if you're not, everyone you ever love will hate you. That's a given. There are good kissers, and there are bad kissers (so I hear). But the thing is, you can't practice. I've never slipped anyone the tongue. How will I know what to do? Oh, easy, just read a book about it. Okay, but I'm thinking of the stereotypical comparison of learning to ride a bike. Imagine that you only learn how to ride a bike by reading a book. Then one day, the local volcano erupts, and you need to use your bike to make a speedy escape. You'd better make damn sure you read that book thoroughly.

Okay, so, I decided to go on the non-date which we still had scheduled. I got to restaurant in about half the time I thought it would take, so I was just sitting at a street corner for a while watching the cars and people go by. Behind me was the university, and across the street was the Outside World. A car came out of the university and slowed down as it passed me. The car was full of girls, about four of them. It looked like they were going to ask me for directions, so I got ready to point.

The one in the back on the passenger side spoke: "Excuse me, which way is UF?"

"...It's right behind you," I said, pointing backwards, but they didn't want to hear. They just kept going. Then I said something that they definitely wouldn't have wanted to hear.

Girls, man.

What is it about me that makes me like a human punching bag?

So, anyway, tonight we went to Tijuana Flats -- a "fast casual" Mexican place that I love -- for dinner, with the girl's friend, who I had seen around. We ordered, ate, and had some light conversation. It was rather uneventful, and I had a good feeling that I could have pulled off a nice evening without the extra friend there.

They said they were going to go to a concert afterward, and I didn't really want to do that, but when they said it was on campus, I figured I'd go along. It was at the student union, where there's an amphitheater in front of a lake. It's pretty nice. The first guy had a loud guitar, and he played drums with foot pedals. Other than his singing, he sounded like the White Stripes. The next guy was a little more talented; he played the acoustic guitar and was very rhythmic with it. Finally, there was the headliner: she was the woman who did a lot of the soundtrack for Juno, a movie I actually saw. So some of the songs, sung with her distinctive voice, were familiar. But they were all captivating and entertaining. Her name was Kimya Dawson.

She was very funny, and it turned out that the tour was a family affair: the first guy playing was her husband, and the second was a good friend who got a namecheck in one of the songs in Juno (which prompted his local newspaper to publish a story saying that an area songwriter's name would be mentioned in a song in an upcoming movie). At one point, she had people in the audience raise their hands to request songs. A big group of people raised their hands together, and they requested a song of hers and asked if they could go down and dance to it. She let them. There were about twelve of them, and as she did this moderate-tempo acousting number, they were swing dancing and generally flailing about randomly. Then she asked anybody who had ever dreamed of auditioning for Annie to come down and sing "Tomorrow" with her a cappella. A lot of people did. Finally, a huge number of people came down to dance to her final number, and they continued to swarm around her and give her hugs long after her set ended.

During the set, my non-date and her friend had gotten about four other people to meet up with them, so I was now in a large group. There were a lot of things going on at the student union (they have a whole program of things to do on Friday nights to keep kids from going to parties, I guess), so a few people decided they wanted wax hands. I don't know if you've heard of them, but it's where they dip your hand in wax and then it hardens and you buy it for ten dollars. After waiting in line for an hour even though I didn't want a wax hand, I realized that the night was winding down, so I decided to leave right then. My non-date seemed to understand.

On Sunday, I asked a girl out to dinner. It was not the first time. I always get blown off, so the date never happens. Tonight, the tradition continues. Yesterday this girl said she couldn't have dinner Friday night because her ride was picking her up for spring break on Thursday afternoon. She offered to reschedule. We will reschedule later.

I want to have a normal love life so nobody thinks I'm a retard. Seriously, 18 and I'm going on my first date? And then I shout it from the mountaintops to all my friends, and they're all, "Congratulations, Jordan, for finally doing something we managed to do at the age of 13!" And my parents would be all, "We met in high school and got married a few years later!" If I weren't embarrassed enough before, now I have to tell everyone that I've gotten worked up for nothing. Yeah, moping in seclusion till Saturday sounds good.

Tomorrow is the last day before spring break, and unlike people who have already left, I shall be going to all of my classes as usual.

In other news, what's up with selling out? One of the things that attracted me to the No S Diet was its noncommercial nature -- one average Joe came up with this extremely simple diet plan (14 words long) and made a web page about it to promote it to other like-minded Joes and Janes. The site says, "You wouldn't take diet advice from a fat person, why take it from a fat book?" Well, the guy accepted a book deal that fell into his lap, and perhaps we can say that he has "sold out." His 14-word diet has become a 208-page book with some random nutrition expert for a co-author. If I hadn't been happily practicing the No S Diet, I might be turned off by this. What is the deal?

I sure hope I'm not a sellout because that's not cool. If there's anything sellouty about this site, it might be the store. But since no one's ever bought anything from it, I'm not sure whether it counts. On the other hand, today I rejected the umpteenth advertising offer to come my way (actually, it's probably closer to the umpth). I hate advertising, so the last place I would want to see ads would be my own site. Hooray for principles?

Okay, I want to ask you something, so I'm going to resurrect Jordon Asks You. This is a question I've been thinking about quite a bit, and I'm not sure how I would answer it myself. The question is: Would you date someone with different religious beliefs from you? Why or why not?

This might be of use to someone: this Reverse IP Domain Check shows web sites hosted on the same server as a given site.

Here's a video with a tip for shutterbugs: how to make a $1 image stabilizer for any camera.

Another one of those videos: Are Americans Really That Stupid? (Answer: It's probably just selective editing.)

I'm still alive, really. I've been busy. I present to you a post I started working on yesterday but didn't have time to finish.

Tuesday was Free Pancake Day at IHOP, and my sister really wanted to go. We went with our friend Amanda. The pancakes were good. They tasted really free. Since man cannot live on pancakes alone, I also had some eggs Benedict. The point of letting everyone have a free short stack was to raise money for charity, so we did our part. In that sense, the pancakes weren't really free.

They still tasted free, though.

Also Tuesday, I had my first test in my programming class. I think I got an A. It helps when you already know some basic programming concepts. Today in programming discussion, we were doing exercises with loops (which were just taught yesterday). The hardest one was to implement Leibniz's calculation of pi. I got it, and I've been playing around with it. It turns out that it converges to pi extremely slowly. With 1 billion terms, it's accurate only to 8 decimal places.

Of course, the proverbial elephant in the room is that it's Valentine's Day. You know what that means: it's my anniversary... of switching to Linux. You probably know how I feel about Valentine's Day, or you can probably guess. After reading this, you will be able to guess.

I went to a Gator Freethought meeting last night. To make things interesting, the topic of discussion was how your religious beliefs affect your views on love, sex, dating, and the like. To make things more interesting, "stoplight" dress code was made optional: wear green if you're single, red if you're taken, and yellow if you're "It's Complicated." While the people there spent the entire time debating the definition of love, I couldn't help but wonder: Why cant everyone dress this way all the time then we wouldn't have any problems or rather I wouldn't have any problems. Seriously the last 3 girls I asked out or wanted to ask out were already taken and I didn't know it at the time WTF. I hate this. I really do. And it's only getting worse. I'm just going to make this clear:

I can't get a date.

There. I said it, for everyone to hear. It's hard to exude coolness and confidence with a track record like the one I have.

However, I do have some joy in my life by volunteering for Get Carded, which gives out organ donor cards. Today we gave out cards with a Valentine's twist: "Have a heart, sign a donor card" was the slogan, and the idea drew some people. The chocolates also drew some people, no doubt. It was a productive day, though, and that's good. I like knowing that I'm helping to save lives.

Time for Ask Jordon:

Brian: Is Justin secretly Stephen Rea?

Your IP address indicates that you sent this from the University of Oregon. Is Brian secretly my friend Luke?

Dan in Japan: Did you ever read Pulp Novels? If so, did you have a favorite hero? (Example - The Spider, the Shadow.. etc.)

No, Dan the Man in Japan, I've never read those kinds of things. I think they were before my time. I thought Pulp Fiction was okay, though. By the way, your IP address indicates that you are in Japan. Good job.

Just to fit into the theme we've got going here, here are 50 Very Simple Ways to Be Romantic.

And this probably fits in too: Your Eyes Don't Lie - Reading Thoughts By Eye Movements.

When you call someone, isn't it considered polite for them to, say... call you back?

I count this as number four. Time to move on. What does the world have against Jordon Kalilich?

Just before I left home on Monday, I decided on a whim to take up the shovelglove again. I briefly took up this form of sledgehammer exercise two years ago but stopped after I overexerted myself. Since then I've been lazy/trying to forget it/afraid of exercising. But for some reason, I remembered it and decided to give it another try.

I brought my 4-kg sledgehammer and have started doing some movements with it in the morning. A 14-minute session is recommended, but I think I'll work up to it this time. Last time, I tried to do the whole 14 minutes too soon, and I couldn't move my arms for a few days. I'm doing the same movements I did last time: shoveling, churning butter, chopping wood, and flipping the lever. I think I'll try the Ab Killer as well.

Do check out my online HabitCal (habit calendar) on which I'll mark my successes and failures. (The color code is: green = success, red = failure, yellow = exempt day.) Right now I'll count doing the movements as a success, but when I can do the full 14 minutes, I'll be tougher with the definition.

I am Jordon. People ask me things. I answer them.

Michael : I would like to know the truth about the Beatles 1964 coin that is resurficeing,. Who made it, Why and Who were they given to. I Thank you, Mike

Hm. I know about the Beatles, and I know about coins, but I don't know about Beatle coins. A quick Google search suggests that some bronze coins were made to commemorate a visit they made to the United States in 1964. Since I didn't bother to go past page one of the Google search results, I don't know who would have issued them, and it's possible that some or all of them were made years after the fact.

Tim: How much does it need to go to Ameryca one time?

Tim, thankses, to ask to me over a travel towards the Ameryca. It is a beautiful station of job, that the sure one is that estimated. The Ameryca, For Your Information must once be a lot. I hope that you he find it valid.

Here's a fine example of stop-motion animation with real people: Tony vs. Paul.

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Nothing.

Here's a list of most common nicknames for first names based on 1990 US Census data.

All right, I'll admit it: I wear clothes. Inevitably, those clothes get dirty. Ordinarily, it's simple to wash them, dry them, and go on your way. But things aren't very ordinary right now. I've been in college for a few weeks, and after taking my laundry back home to be washed, I came to the realization that I'd eventually have to do it myself. The realization came on Saturday when a simple squeeze of a ketchup packet went awry. It went awry on my pants.

After leaving detergent to soak on the stain for a few days, I finally had some time to do some laundry today. I wouldn't have even known where my dorm's laundry room was if I hadn't passed it while exiting the building when the fire alarm went off. When I got there with my laundry, some detergent, and my homework, I realized that I needed quarters. So I had to go all the way back to the dorm for quarters. I left my keys in there, so when I got back to the laundry room, I couldn't open the door. So I had to go back to my room with all my stuff again. The third time was the charm.

The washers and dryers were pretty simple to use, so that was good. The atmosphere was pretty conducive to doing homework (even though I'm apparently one of the slowest homework-doers in the world). And the ketchup stain on my shorts went away completely. I couldn't even identify the pair of shorts that had been stained. (I wear jean shorts all the time. I have hundreds or thousands of pairs.) Holy stain-fighting action, Batman! This laundry detergent stuff really works. And that's why I think doing laundry will be a (mostly) pleasant experience in the future.

Apparently, someone recently noted how nice it is that I never seem to be lonely. I'm an introvert by nature. I like people, but in smaller doses. I like being alone sometimes. I'm not always lonely when I'm alone, and I'm not always alone when I'm lonely. I've been feeling somewhat lonely in spite of having people to hang out with. I can be with someone, but it's not the same as being with someone. I'm in need of a special kind of company, the kind that... oh, I know what you're thinking. Jordon tried to talk to a girl -- again -- and she didn't give him the time of day -- again! If that was your guess, you're correct.

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a good looking guy. The face is "eh" at best. No muscles or anything. Lousy sideburns too. (Do the ladies even dig those?) But what do I give off besides being terribly physically unattractive? Or is it just my luck that every girl I want to get to know better is preoccupied with some other guy? What the hell?

Darn it, the Beatles, you've said it for me again. And with that, I'd like to turn our attention to Thoughts of a crazy RedHead, a blog that consists of the thoughts of a 20-something woman in New York City. I've been reading it for a while because it's interesting to climb into the mind of an average (?) woman, and that's exactly what blogs allow for. What's also interesting about this blog is that I'm on "Red"'s blogroll. That's how I found out about her blog, in fact. I wonder why she finds my blog interesting when her blogroll is otherwise populated with names like "Charming but Single," "Persona of a Princess," "New York Moments," "Tired of Men," and "Bridget Jones Has Nothing On Me." If I had to guess, I'd say that she probably feels the same way about me: that it's interesting to see the way a high-schooler-turned-college-student-type-guy thinks. I've tried e-mailing her, but I've gotten no response. Maybe, if she reads this, she can leave a comment here.

Take that: Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia.

This is how the world works:

You are born. You go to school. You move away and go to school some more. You get married and maybe have kids. You work for a few decades and then you die.

That's just the way things happen. It doesn't matter if you want to do it, or if you want to skip or rearrange the steps. As the robots say, "YOU HAVE TO GO TO COL-LEGE." (Robots know that syllables break at double letters.) It may seem like I'm trivializing the whole thing (going to college, I mean), but it's anything but trivial to me. Over the past few days or weeks -- I don't know -- I've become increasingly and consumingly worried about money. I'm trying not to spend any money from now until indefinitely. It's all going into the bank, where I can't touch it until I'm 18 (a few months from now). College costs a hell of a lot of money. I'm fortunate to be smart and poor enough to have tuition paid for, but more basic needs such as food and shelter are still up to me.

I've been consumed by thoughts of living in college an an aglet budget. An aglet is the little thing on the end of a shoestring that holds it together. And here I find myself being (arguably) funny again, after having spent much of the day moping. I guess this is really why I keep blogging. Anyway, if you can still take me seriously, I more and more frequently see scenes of the college life that awaits me: sharing a bedroom with a stranger, dining at Taco Bell, probably having to juggle school and a job, walking down sidewalks to get from place to place, and maybe hitching the bus -- which, I think, is free for students. It won't get me to my aunt in Columbia County, though.

It really is strange. I live a comfortable life, and I don't have to worry about much. But soon, I will, so I'm getting an early start. I would probably be much more comfortable with this whole thing if I knew what I was going to do with my life. Everyone I know either has great career goals or is at least going to college in exotic and interesting places, but I have neither of those things, and they're in no position to be able to sympathize. Having career goals might even give me motivation to go to college. But as things are, I don't want to go because it seems like some huge, life-altering, pocket-draining thing I just have to do for no reason. And anyway, no subject in school has ever struck me as being particularly interesting, which means that I'll probably resign myself to a job that I don't care about and live out my days toiling away in misery.

I just wish I had someone to love and understand me. It's what I've always wanted, but it's times like this that I could really use it the most.

Stop laughing. I'm sad, okay?

Nara Dreamland was a theme park in Japan that was like a rip-off of Disneyland. Some parts were pretty similar, aside from the fact that nobody went there and it looked abandoned.

I put off my application for the University of Florida. I put it off, and I put it off some more. And then, with about a week and a half before the deadline, I was almost done, except that I found out that I needed the school to send my transcript? I had thought that the university would request it themselves, but I guess not. On Monday I filled out a form asking the school to send my transcript, and two days later, I got a hard copy so I could actually see how much credit I was getting for each class I was taking (that was also the last part of the form). Wow! Did you know that I'm getting 1 credit for each class? Apparently they don't discuss how much credit I'm getting for taking AP Calculus AB in one semester and AP Calculus BC in the next. Nobody knows, actually, so we're just going to have to see. I made my best guess and fired off that application (online) on Wednesday. Then I got some stuff together, including a recommendation letter I had hastily gotten from Dr. Singkornrat earlier in the day. She had been short on time, so I advised her on what to put down. Then she signed it so that I'd have a copy to send out that very night.

The Early Decision deadline is Monday, October 2, so I was really worried about the envelope not getting there on time. Yesterday my dad went to the post office and made sure it would get to the university overnight, so they should have it now. Maybe I shouldn't have done the Early Decision thing. It basically requires you to sell your soul to the college; if they accept you, you're contractually bound to go there. The only advantage (?) is that you find out earlier... and you're more likely to get in? Oh well. That's the option I chose, anyway. Everyone else was doing it, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. At least I don't have to worry about being rejected because of a late application.

When I started back at my old job earlier this month, the last thing that went through my mind was how much I should get paid. I never discussed it with anyone, so when I got the application, I was a little startled to see that I could write down how much I wanted to get paid. Because I had made $7 per hour originally, that's what I put down. (Was this a mistake? Hint: Why would be writing about it now?)

I got my first paycheck last week. For working 15 hours, I got a gross pay of $105, which was to be expected. My sister, who started working the same job during the same hours, did not get her paycheck. She hadn't signed an important form, so some dance had to be undertaken with the main office of the company. She got the check today, and it was for $120. She made $8 an hour. I confronted her about it, and she said that she didn't see any part of the application where you could write down how much you wanted to make. Ergo: she left the field blank, and Accounting or whoever gave her $8. I, who have an extra 15 months of experience at the company under my belt, gave myself $7, and some middle-management screwball grinned an evil grin.

Apparently I should ask for more money -- that is, ask for a raise. Here's the funny (or funnier) part: Sophia, the office manager who I've known since I started working there three years ago, is leaving, and so who will I have to plead to to get a raise? I don't know! It'll be somebody I've never met before. Way to make a first impression. Here's this long-haired boy or kid who makes butt at his current job and wants to make twice butt. Would you give him a $1 raise? Why do I have to be the one to suffer for actually reading the application and signing my name where necessary? Why do I have to be the one to suffer for failing to consider important questions and passing off foolish assumptions as answers? Whose fault is it, anyway?

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. It's a sentence, man. But it raises the question: are there really any Buffalo buffalo?

Youth Against Sudoku. I wonder if crossword puzzles were ever met with this kind of resistance.

Applying to college is a really laborious task. I don't care what you say. It is. I know I won't think so years from now, but I won't be applying to colleges years from now. I was just taking some time to review the only application I've started working on so far, and I realized that I need to know how much credit each of my current courses affords me. My sister told me I have to get a copy of my transcript from the Guidance department. There's a three-day waiting period.

And you know what? If I didn't have a sibling applying to college at the same time as me, I never would have known that. The thing about applying to colleges is that they make it as hard as possible. Nobody tells you how to do anything, and if you can figure it out, you're probably smart enough to be approved. So I guess I'm not? Anyway, it's really frustrating now that I see I really, really need to get busy with these applications. That's what I get for not knowing anything about applying to colleges? Note to self: the deadline is Monday, October 2! This is really not cool, you guys. The whole rest of my life is at stake due to the things I've done (and not done) over the past few weeks. Don't be like me, kids.

Anyway, it's that time of year again for BAT testing of the freshmen and sophomores. That means that the rest of us get to do nothing while they test. Well, I can't say that we're doing nothing; it's just that we're doing nothing educational. In fact, part of this post is being written on a Mac laptop in class. The desktop is littered with saved files, and the computer's clock is set to Monday, April 19, 1976, but at least it has a working Internet connection, which can't be said of some of the other laptops here at school.

Also: why would anybody tile a photo for use as their desktop wallpaper? They'd have to be thinking, "I really love this picture, so if I see it on my screen nine times, then I'll love it nine times more!" Oh well. That's just a little pet peeve of mine, I guess. It doesn't harm anybody. Another thing that doesn't harm anybody is reading lots and lots of Dinosaur Comics. That's how I spent much of my free time in class.

Yesterday was the first of the two test days, and a lot of juniors and seniors showed up late or didn't go at all. After all, why should they if they're going to be doing nothing for half the day? Today there were even fewer people, and some classes were brought to a standstill. Yes, all of the students still have all of their class periods, but most of them are shorter due to the testing. And you might imagine how the teachers have reacted: mixedly. (Is that a word?) Some don't care if their students skip these rather unimportant days, but others are deeply concerned about losing their teaching time.

But the fun doesn't end there. Tomorrow is a "professional study day" for the teachers. It's something they've just introduced this year. Every once in a while, the teachers will have to attend workshops during their work hours, so they'll let the students out early. To compress our schedule, they planned to have 67-minute class periods (instead of 110 minutes), and they were going to let school out at 11:58. I guess there was some criticism about that, so they changed tomorrow's class periods to 65 minutes, and they're planning on letting us loose at 11:50 instead. Eight more minutes of weekend!

This is really interesting: Pictures That Lie. It's a sort of chronicle of notable photographic forgeries, from 19th-century cut-and-paste jobs to, well, 21st-century cut-and-paste jobs.

In Soviet Russia, city abandons YOU!

One year ago: "There are only four more names left on this year's list of 21 names to be used: Stan, Tammy, Vince, and Wilma."
Two years ago: "I've been told he has quite a sense of humor. He laughs at his own jokes."

The following post is a rant. It reflects my emotionally charged opinions on serious topics. It will probably be funny to you, and it will probably be funny to me in a few decades, but it is serious to me now. So don't laugh.

Started applying to the University of Florida a little while ago. I looked at a college application one time, and it didn't seem to be that bad. This one has many of the same questions and it is bad. Bad, I say.

There are lots of very personal questions. I don't know if I should put my race (it's optional) because I don't want to be discriminated against for being white. That is, I don't want to be denied in favor of an equally good (or not as good) student who is of another race. Quotas! Let the best students get in. The main reason I say this is because my own future is at stake. If that means that I'm a selfish, heartless bastard, so be it.

I also have to put how much money my parents make. I don't know the answer that question. I asked recently because it was asked (optionally) when I was signing up for the ACT. They wouldn't say, so they must not make very much. CEOs who live on golf courses don't shy away from the subject, after all.

The question that distresses me the most basically amounts to, "Have you ever gotten in trouble at school?" And if you have, you have to say so and describe it, unless it's been expunged from your record. How am I supposed to know what's on my record if I've never seen it? Unlike my perfect sister, I got three detentions in grade school, mostly for trivial things, and mostly when I was very young. The most trivial was for flicking a tiny ball of paper off my desk. That was in third grade. The teacher thought it could have poked an eye out or something, even though it just fell to the ground. Yes, I'm talking to you, Ms. Phyllis Martin. I swear it's true. I got a detention for that. I shouldn't have confessed to it because now it's about to French Connection United Kingdom up my life. I'm more worried about the more serious ones, though. Those isolated incidents that took place long ago will shade colleges' perception of how I will be in the future. Damn it!

I wanted to apply Early Admission or something like that, meaning that if they accepted me, they would let me know in December and I would be contractually obliged to go to their school. I like the knowing in December part, but I read the fine print, and you have to pay the first year's tuition within 30 days of being notified of your acceptance. Seeing as the Bright Futures scholarship, which hopefully will get me all the way through college, only starts taking applications in December, I don't know if I could do it. What the heck?!

Never mind that I haven't written the essay(s) I need to submit. I need to write about how I'll be a valuable asset to the school. I can't do that today. I'll do it on Friday. I guess I need to do some other stuff first, like figure out what the heck is up with this application. Advice, anyone? As in, my friends?

Why college? Why school in general? I know these problems may seem trivial, but they're part of a bigger thing: why such a big hassle in order to make money? Why make money to be happy? Sometimes I wish I could just run away and live in the woods by a pond like Thoreau. Or maybe join a commune or something. You know.

In other news, if you haven't heard about it already, Steve Irwin (the "Crocodile Hunter") was killed today by a stingray. Hard to believe. He was only 44, and he had a wife and two kids.

Three years ago: "Oh well. I used to hum a lot too. And then I turned five."

It's time for a follow-up to my post about our vanishing civil liberties. On June 26, I said:

Let me begin by saying that I was wrong. I did not see our civil rights being chipped away every zarking day. But I've been able to rip plenty of examples from the headlines nonetheless. For one day, I'm playing the pundit. Let's begin!

June 27: A columnist for the Washington Post reported on the Senate's debate on the proposed constitutional amendment that would make it a crime to burn or otherwise desecrate the flag:

We've got bigger problems than flag-burning. The idea of criminalizing this exceedingly rare act just can't hold water. In the first place, the Flag Code, which sets down guidelines (not laws) on how the US flag should (not must) be treated, states: "The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning." It's okay if you want to destroy the flag because it's old, but according to some people, it shouldn't be okay if you want to destroy the flag to make a statement. Determining intent could get touchy, and so flag-burning might have to be a thoughtcrime. If you ask me, freedom of speech means tolerating people's opinions and how they express them, and if it makes you mad, you always have the right to give your own opinion in response. Burning a flag would be a victimless crime; it does not make soldiers die in Iraq or cause senior citizens to lose their Medicare benefits.

Also, the potential exists for lawmakers to take the definition of the US flag way too far. A flag-burning bill under consideration would define the flag as "any flag of the United States, or any part thereof, made of any substance, in any size, in a form that is commonly displayed as a flag and that would be taken to be a flag by the reasonable observer." That's odd, because the US flag is defined very specifically in other legislation. Moving along...

June 29: News.com.com.com.com.com reported on Congress and social networking web sites.

There's a difference between spying on people and trying to keep them safe. It's difficult and unnecessary to record the browsing habits of Internet users just to weed out a few bad ones. Why make everyone feel unsafe? Why don't they wait until they suspect that certain people are up to no good? Isn't that the way you get criminals? From the Internet to airports, it's terrible for law enforcement (or pseudo-law-enforcement) to investigate just everybody (or worse, random people). They'd be wasting all their time on innocent, innocuous people when the real criminals could be getting away. If they're doing their job right, they should know how to spot the bad guys by other means.

June 30: This is very disturbing: Has This Country Gone Completely Insane?

Again I say unto you: don't think it can't happen here! All I can say is watch out, Michelle. Could poetry readings be the next target? (By the way, Michelle, does Coral Springs for Peace sell t-shirts? I'd like to get the chance to exercise some basic civil rights before they get taken away.)

July 8: Another incident of schools acting as though their students have no civil rights. This time cell phones are the issue. (The original article is here, but you have to pay to read most of it.)

Most schools would say that if you're a student, you can be subjected to random, meaningless searches without probable cause. I don't think this is right at all. Maybe it's the fact that I'm a student, maybe it's the fact that I love my freedoms, I don't know. It's one of those two. But making students think that unconstitutional searches are okay only teaches them to accept future unreasonable searches when they're adults.

July 11: MSNBC reported on the future of the Internet and where it lies: Washington.

No! What's wrong with benign neglect? This basically boils down to an argument of free speech vs. big business, and we all know who's going to win. Unfortunately, this is not a question of "if," but of "when." Enjoy your free speech while it lasts!

July 25: Finally, we look at a federal judge throwing out a lawsuit against AT&T that would have required them to state whether they had given the government their customers' phone records. The Associated Press reports:

I think that people have a right to know if they're being spied on so that they can do something about it. I don't think that saying whether a company gave phone records to the government is tantamount to letting the terrorists win. Terrorists are not stupid. If they know that they can't communicate by phone, they'll find some other way. And it would seem that they know they can't. The government will probably spy on people no matter what, and the terrorists are going to have to get craftier if they want to kill us all.

Okay, that's enough punditry for a long time. I'm glad I got that out of my system. But wait, there's more! The links, that is.

If you've been to an airport within the past, say, five years, you may have had your bags searched without probable cause. (I know I have!) In case this happens to you, be prepared to let the Homeland Security guys know how you feel with your Fourth Amendment luggage tag.

Last week on Comedy Central's The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart was given a briefing on net neutrality (YouTube link) by the show's "resident expert," John Hodgman (best known as the PC guy from Apple's Get a Mac ad campaign). It's worth watching, even if you already know what net neutrality is all about.

One year ago: "Such a long way, but the only way. I'm determined to work for it."
Two years ago: "I say bypass all the funny squiggly lines and learn to type instead."