Things That Don't Matter

Music, like television, has both the annoying and the awesome. Really as far as music goes, people can listen to what they want, but where’s the fun in that? Also like television, a lot of these topics will probably be revisited and expanded on at some point.

Annoying: I’d say that the cut off date for good music was around 1995. With few exceptions, I can’t stand modern music. Occasionally I’ll hear a song on the radio and think yeah that’s kind of catchy, I can see why it’s so popular, but other times I don’t get it at all. This is especially true with rap music, which generally speaking I cannot stand. The only rap music I’ve ever come close to liking is songs done as jokes, like the ones in the SNL Digital Shorts. Sometimes real rap music seems like a joke, it’s just so ridiculous. They all seem to be about how tough it is to live in the “hood” or something sickening like that. The truth is, all of these things like gang violence and drug addictions come from just plain being stupid, no two ways about it. Maybe I’m crazy, but I think a pretty easy way to avoid gang violence would be to not join gangs, is that such a hard concept? Rap music therefore boils down to people being idiots and if there’s one thing I can not stand it’s idiocy. The other music I don’t understand is heavy metal. Congratulations, you can turn your amp all the way up and make noise while screaming into a microphone. It’s just loud noise, not music. Also I’m not a fan of country music, it all seems to be about trucks or guys who cheated on you (probably because you sing country music!).

Awesome: Most of the bands I like stopped making music decades ago and resurface only occasionally for some sort of revival tour or Superbowl halftime show. Bands like The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Boston, Pink Floyd, Queen, the list goes on. There isn’t really much to say about them except that they were, and continue to be, awesome. Now, I mentioned before that with few exceptions I can’t stand modern music, it’s time to talk about those exceptions. In general, the modern music I like is commonly referred to as “indie” because these bands at some point released albums on record labels independent of the big four. However, all of the ones I like have since signed with a big four label, making them simply alternative, which is great because it means I don’t have to be a pretentious twat to listen to their music. It seems that the definition of the word indie has been expanded to include everyone not born with a record contract. It almost seems like it’s become it’s own genre, which is stupid. I’m very strongly against liking music just because of the image it purports, which admittedly is somewhat of a double standard because I’m totally for not liking music based on its image. Anyways, #1 on the exceptions list is R.E.M., who are probably just about my favorite band of all time. I’m counting R.E.M. as modern because their latest album, Accelerate, was released last year. #2 on the list is The Decemberists. The Decemberists stand head and shoulders over every other band I’ve ever heard when it comes to inventive lyrics. Their next album due out in March entitled The Hazards of Love is going to be a rock opera, telling a narrative throughout the entirety of the album. Up until a few days ago they had a song from the album publicly available as a free download on their website. The song is called The Rake’s Song, and it’s about a guy who gets married at 21 and has 3 kids, but then his wife dies giving birth to a fourth and now he’s stuck with the kids. He want’s to go back to his life of freedom so he kills them. How awesome is that for a song?

That’s about all that jumps out at me right now.

You know what’s funny? I actually worried more about offending people with this post than I did with religion.

I’ve come to the conclusion that post-Christmas winter sucks. In December winter is this magical time with snow and Santa and happiness. Everyone’s looking forward to being able to spend their year’s earnings on generic gifts for their relatives and friends in the hopes that they’ll get stuff back in return (I’m a big believer in that nothing we do is ever totally selfless), but after Christmas it just sucks. It’s cold and gray and wet and depressing and you’ve still got half a school year ahead of you. In December there’s all those songs, people singing “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!” but when you hit late January and I hear anybody say that I say shut the hell up it’s friggin cold and it’ll probably just rain and I have homework and two essays along with a project and it’s been a few days so I need to come up with an update for the site but everything sucks so bad right now I can’t come up with anything past “things suck” and who wants to read that? I miss green. I look at photos from this past summer’s vacation and I get this longing feeling. I want it to be green and warm and sunny again, with school almost over and summer with it’s lack of responsibility. Although this year it’ll probably suck as bad as the rest of the year. My parents want me to get a job, as well as I’ll have to decide on colleges and start putting together applications. This counts as a job right? Takes more effort than bagging groceries, and if I can get more people to visit I might actually make money off of it as well. Anyways, there are three good things about winter, 1. skiing, but I don’t get to do that this year because my dad had knee surgery. 2. snow days, but they get added on to the end of the year which it really stupid, and if we have too many they cut out of April break which is even stupider. Sometimes I just want to go up to whoever’s in charge and deck them. 3. skating. A friend of mine sets up this skating rink in his back yard every year and it’s loads of fun. He has these awesome skating parties which I absolutely love because, well, they’re the only real parties I ever get to go to, and there’s other people from my school there who I don’t always know as well but are nice, and I get to socialize and be a normal person. Also I’m much better at skating than most of them so I get to show off a little, which I rarely get to do with anything non-academic. Still, none of it is enough to make up for the cold wet and miserable part. I miss summer.

Today we said good bye to George Bush. I’m not at all sad to see him go. In my English class we’re doing a unit on poetry, so I thought I’d try my hand at it.

The Bush Years

I was walking down the street one day
in one of my better moods
The sun was bright, the sky was clear
Everything seemed all right

But then I stopped in my tracks
for there was the most peculiar spectacle
an elephant
perched precariously on a telephone pole

I inquired of him
“How did you get up there?”
to which he replied
“I do not know”

I questioned him
“What are you doing”
And he said
“Looking for terrorists”

“Up there?”
I asked, unbelieving
“Where else?”
he replied, as if I were unworthy of his time

“I don’t see any”
I put in
“Neither do I”
said he, with a sigh

He stuck his ear
to the wires
“Whatever are you doing now?”
I asked, almost not wanting to know

“I’m listening”
he said.
“To what?”
I asked

“Phone calls, what else could I be listening to?”
he replied haughtily
I stared dumbfounded
“No seriously, is there something else I could be listening to?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s illegal”
I said, more concerned than ever
“Nonsense”
he said
“It’s as American as apple pie”

I decided not to pursue the matter
it didn’t seem worth my time
Exasperated I looked to the sky
Where a vulture circled

The elephant noticed the vulture too
“That bird’s a Dick”
he said
“I know he’s just waiting for me to die”

“How are you going to get down?”
I asked
and he looked at me bewildered
“I don’t really know”

“Well shouldn’t you have thoug…”
“No more questions!”
he exclaimed
and fell off the pole.

I think too much. That’s pretty much what it comes down to. I can never decide on anything without endlessly weighing the pros and the cons. A lot of the time after I do something, all I can think about are the cons. Everything sounds like a great idea before I do it, and a horrible idea afterwords. That’s mostly the reason why all these articles get put up here pretty late at night. I come up with ideas during the day, they sit for a while, gather substance, and then by night I have enough to write about, and I’ll think it’s great. However, the next morning I always wake up and think, “Wow, that was a really stupid idea, I should not have said that.” I do keep my resolve, I have yet to remove an article. It’s part of the reason I hate mornings. Everything sounds like a bad idea in the morning. I’ll come up with something at night, go to bed thinking about it, building it up, and then in the morning I wake up and it all sounds so ridiculous. It’s probably partly due to that I have to go to school in the morning, and that bad feeling spreads to everything else. I can guarantee you that I’ll wake up tomorrow and think that this post was dumb. Whenever I’m working on something or trying to decide something I’ll always go back and forth and back and forth between whether it’s any good or not. It’s like a mental war zone, and I’m always the one and only casualty. It’s pretty damn annoying. On the one hand, it might keep me from making bad decisions, but on the other hand it gets in the way of me just doing something without worrying about it, it takes away any and all spontaneity. See, there I go again! Both sides of the issue. Why oh why can’t I be single minded?

Things I thought when I woke up this morning: This post was too short, this post didn’t say what I wanted it to say, this post wasn’t funny, damn it I forgot to categorize this post (since corrected), and god damn it I should have done that homework!

Television is both awesome and annoying, depending on what you’re watching. Most of the topics I touch on here will probably get their own articles dedicated to them at some point, but I have to do this quick, I have homework. Here’s what’s awesome:

NBC: NBC is my favorite network at the moment for one reason, Thursday. Their Thursday lineup has My Name is Earl, Kath and Kim, The Office, and 30 Rock, all excellent sitcoms and well above what passes for quality television these days. The rest of the week I’m not so big on NBC, their reality shows are horrible, (what reality show isn’t?) and their dramas and or action shows are dull, or at least, they’ve never interested me enough to bother watching one. The only other NBC show I watch is Chuck, which was entertaining last season, but I don’t see how much longer they’re going to be able to drag the story out, it got repetitive halfway through last year.

The Daily Show/Colbert Report: I put these two together almost as one show, seeing as I watch them one after the other. I don’t get Comedy Central, but they’re nice enough to put the episodes online the next day, with fewer commercials too! This online full episodes thing is great for me and I hope it continues. The Daily Show often focuses on mocking other news networks rather than the news, especially FOX. FOX News has said some of the most ridiculous stuff I’ve ever seen, the Daily Show has a library of clips from them that could take you a lifetime to watch, although that much exposure to Republican propaganda can’t be good for your health. The Colbert Report moves at a much faster pace than the Daily Show, which I like, and Stephen does a great job of mocking conservatives by pretending to be one. It’s amazing how ridiculous some of the policies sound when he delivers them. Admittedly, he exaggerates a little, but I don’t think he’s that far off the mark.

South Park: This show is just hilarious. I love the way in a lot of their episodes how a plot is derived from a figure of speech taken literally. For instance, a recent episode was about the latest Indiana Jones movie, they asserted that Indiana had been, well, I’ll substitute what they actually said with slaughtered. Then they had the characters deal with the tragedy of seeing their beloved friend Indiana slaughtered like that, as if they had witnessed a real friend of theirs killed.

The Simpsons: The only show that makes the FOX network worth watching. And I don’t think they’ll be around too much longer, all the original writers have gone and episode plots have lost, well, I can’t put my finger on it, they’re just not the same anymore. The show is still decent, but it’s not what it used to be.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog: Dr. Horrible was a web exclusive produced last year during the writers strike. A bunch of writers and actors weren’t doing anything, so they came up with Dr. Horrible. I heard about this as one of those “anything’s possible on the internet” type things which always sound great but end up disappointing. This was not at all disappointing. The plot was great, the acting was professional, and it was a musical, but the songs were good. I watched it the other day and they’re all stuck in my head. I recommend everyone see it, here’s a link: http://www.hulu.com/hd/29272. A side note about Hulu: Hulu is awesome. They have all professionally done stuff, the ads are limited, and the ad volume is actually lower than the rest of the video, which is incredible. That may not sound like a big deal, but some places have the ad volume ridiculously loud.

Here’s what annoys me:

The CW: (Shudder) I don’t know where to begin with this network. Their claim to fame is shows like Gossip Girl and 90210. I tried watching Gossip Girl last night so I might have grounds to criticize it, but I just couldn’t do it. All the characters are so whiny, they complain about unimportant problems like their lives hang in the balance. What dress to wear to the dance could pass for the plot of an entire episode. I hate hearing all the stupid gossip when I’m in school, what on earth made them try to bring it into my home?

Reality TV: ALL reality TV sucks. Reality TV should go die in a hole somewhere. It’s ruining television. First off, reality TV is an oxymoron, the idea of TV is that it’s not real. Shows have writers for a reason, to come up with clever and entertaining plots. Writers are the very base of TV, I would class them as more important than all other groups involved in television production. When you take them out you have nothing. People are stupid, I watch TV to be away from all the stupid people, I don’t want all those stupid people on my TV.

That about covers TV for now, like I said, some of those sections will probably end up with their own articles at some point, especially the annoying ones.

The 40 minute bus ride to school is normally silent. What do you expect from a bunch of teenagers at 6:30 in the morning? Or rather, any time before midday-afternoon. However, the ride home, although shorter (I’m first on first off) is much louder, and a good deal more entertaining. Being an junior, I sit near the back, not in the back, but near. The last few rows are reserved for a pretty scary bunch, but it actually can turn out to be some of the most interesting conversation you’ll hear. It seems to be an unspoken understanding that ‘fuck’ has to be used at least once in a sentence to be grammatically correct, and heavier usage or a mixing of other swears is encouraged. I don’t really see the point in this, I guess it’s probably got something to do with rebelling against the idea of what is essentially a banned word, but I wouldn’t accredit this group with that much thought. I don’t mind, it’s just a word like any other, big deal, where it gets fun is listening to the conversation in between the expletives. For kids who’s clothing style would identify them with those averse to culture fads and society in general they are a rather gossipy bunch. My ears pricked up one afternoon at the name of girl aforementioned here. I worried for a minute that she was friends with these people, but was relieved when the conversation resulted in no one really knowing her but thinking she was nice, one of them told an anecdote in which they had showed up at her house one time for some reason and been invited in. I wondered if I would be greeted the same. Probably not. Oh well, that’s not what I’m talking about now. The influence of drugs can be picked up easily from some of their stories in such phrases as “I have no idea why I was there.” More often than not the influence of drugs is mentioned directly. One time the entire bus ride home consisted of a discussion on LSD. There are sometimes glimmers of intelligent conversation in the form of a hot political issue in the news being mentioned, but quite often they have the complete wrong idea about it, which annoys me more than anything else. You can swear and be as drug addled as you want, but being ignorant is going too far. They tend to be extremely politically incorrect, if not down right racist, and sometimes it’s hard to distinguish whether or not they’re joking, which scares me. I had been under the impression that this was the 21st century. I often find myself wondering about the parents who produced these horrors. How negligent were they? Or were they negligent at all? Newtown is a pretty affluent place, but that can go both ways really.

This afternoon as one of them walked down the aisle to join his comrades he proclaimed, “Hey, I support abortion now.” It didn’t turn out to be the in depth political discussion one might expect. I wonder who he knocked up…

In case you haven’t read my previous posts and therefore have no idea what’s coming here, the overall theme of this post is that religion is stupid, and if you’re going to be offended by that then you might as well not read this, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about religious people, it’s that they’re extremely stubborn. God could walk up to one of them and say “I don’t exist,” and they wouldn’t believe him. They’d call it a hallucination. But if god came up to them and said “I need you to enslave black people,” or “The Jews need to be exterminated,” they’d call it a vision. Now, for the most part I’m going to refer to religion mostly as if I were referring to christianity, but keep in mind, this goes for ALL religions, christianity is just the easiest one to refer to seeing as it’s pretty straightforward (and unimaginative, if you’re going to make up something as ridiculous as a god then you might as well make him fun and interesting). You may also notice that I don’t capitalize things like christianity or god, and that is because I feel they are undeserving of the time and effort it takes me to press SHIFT. Religions were mostly made up by people in the stone ages who had a pretty good idea of how to get a lot of money and power from a lot of very stupid people. The original con men. To use a modern example, L. Ron Hubbard, founder of scientology, has been quoted as saying “The best way for a man to make a million dollars would be to start his own religion.” I prefer to think of good old L. Ron as more of a businessman than a prophet, and he’s actually on to something there. Maybe I’ll start a religion. The Church of You’re an Idiot if You Join This Church. I’d be a millionaire overnight. I really, really hate people of any religion who make fun of scientologists. What gives you the right? Your religion is just as stupid as everyone else’s. I would actually say that scientology makes more sense than something like christianity, and is probably more entertaining, being made up by a science fiction writer. Just because christianity is more wide spread doesn’t make it any more right. If you’d never heard of christianity before and someone came up to you and said the universe was created by god, and god has three parts, the father, his son, and this ghost thing, but they’re all one thing, and there was this pregnant virgin who gave birth to the son, who is also the father, and so on and so forth, you’d probably have pulled out your cell phone and dialed 91, with your finger poised over the 1 in case this lunatic attacks you. That argument I actually stole from Bill Maher, comedian and producer of the recent movie Religulous (Religion + ridiculous), who once asserted that religion is a neurological disorder that justifies crazies and stops people from thinking. I’m not going to go quite that far but I do think he’s mostly right there that religion is used as justification for some pretty unjust stuff. Religion can often be found at the heart of the bloodiest conflicts the world has ever seen. The Crusades, WWII, the ongoing conflicts in the middle east, if people just gave up on their stupid beliefs the world would be a much more stable place. Some people say that religion helps keep order and gives us a sense of morality, which it did, once, in the middle ages. But now we have modern society with organized rules, I was never taught religion and I don’t consider myself an immoral person, and I’m willing to bet there are loads of other people out there like me (in that respect, no one is quite like me, in the sense that I’m awesomer than everyone else). Some people will say that religion helps to guide people, and comforts them in hard times. I say that religion gives people disillusions and helps them hide from reality. If you have problems in your life then deal with them, don’t hide behind some stupid old book or sit crying in a church. The problem with this whole stupid situation is that people are taught their religion from birth, they really have no chance. There really isn’t a solution to this problem other than for people to stop teaching religion to their kids. I implore you, don’t teach your religion to your kids. Let them make up their own minds, don’t ruin more generations. Another thing I hate about religious people is that whenever you point out all of these flaws in their beliefs they go all quiet and say something along the lines of “I don’t want to talk about it.” If the world is going to be forced to put up with all the problems caused by your stupid religion then we sure as hell are owed an explanation. And it better be a damned good explanation too. I have yet to have one person provide me with such an explanation. Some people have also told me that they hate atheists who go around pointing out faults in peoples religions, but those atheists are much less obnoxious than all those Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on doors. Now, some people will ask “So, Mr. High and Mighty, what is it that you believe in?” My response to that is, I believe in what makes sense, science. Science is the result of cold hard evidence and experimentation, it makes sense and can be logically explained. Not just “god did it.” You may point out that science’s explanation for the beginning of the universe is a little rough around the edges, but I say at least science has this awesome explosion. Christianity begins with a six day work week. Science is what’s enabling you to read this, it makes everything in our world work, it makes our world, not some god. God (capitalized because of grammar) doesn’t magically carry my post to you. I wouldn’t mind religion so much if people would keep it to themselves. People can believe all the stupid things they want to believe, but they don’t just leave it at that, they have to go out and get other people to believe with them, which is admittedly what I’m doing here, but with religion they tend to do it in the form of a war or genocide. Religion wouldn’t be so bad if it was practiced individually, but making it organized causes nothing but trouble. Catholics are the worst, what with a pope and everything. All the other christian denominations come after them, and then probably islam, followed by hindus, jews, and then buddhists. I don’t believe that there’s much else to cover here. What I find so funny here is that there isn’t much I’ve said that isn’t cold hard fact, yet there will still be people who say I’m wrong. I guess I’m going to have to put up with all these people, but it does seem that religion is undergoing somewhat of a decline in popularity, a trend that I hope continues, maybe future generations won’t have to deal with all this idiocy.

Update: A muslim friend of mine pointed out that he wasn’t offended at all by my post because I went so heavily at christianity. He was actually disappointed by this and requested that I include his religion in my bashing. I intend to fulfill this request, but first I need to brush up on my islam, world religions was a whole 6 months ago.

I’m a little disappointed that I missed out on all the fun of yelling about candidates during the election, but I figure it’s not too late to still get out what I have to say about all of them. This post will probably fall into both the things that are awesome and the things that annoy me categories, because there were a lot of both. One of the first things I loved about this election was the political comedy that went along with it. Every day Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had fresh material, some candidates turned out to be gifts that just kept on giving. The election seemed to pull SNL out of what had been a slump, everyone talked about Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin impression, (which was awesome) and the opening political sketches were replayed over and over again. Some of what happened didn’t really even need writers, some candidates were laughable on their own.

More seriously now, I’ll go through my candidates from favorite to least favorite.

1. Barack Obama: One word, awesome. I don’t get all these people who say that there wasn’t the candidate for them in this election, that neither was what this country needs. Well then, what does our country need? Obama boosts our worldwide image, people love him overseas, something that we haven’t seen for the past eight years. Obama isn’t a war happy maniac who’ll go around starting fights that don’t need to be fought and dancing around the big red button. There’s also the simple fact that Obama has what appears to be a fully functioning brain, another thing the white house hasn’t seen in a while. It’s a fact that the economy does better under democratic presidents, I think that no matter what he does the feeling of security people will get just from knowing he’s in charge should be enough to help boost our trembling economy. A lot of people complained about Obama’s tax plan, and admittedly it’s probably his weakest point, but my thought was, if you’re making over $250,000 a year, then you don’t need all that money, we do. Education is way underfunded, along with loads of other internal programs that have lost attention next to the the black hole of the Iraq War, which Obama will hopefully get us the hell out of.

2. Joe Biden: meh. Obama’s choice of Joe Biden was a little boring, but that’s probably a good thing. There wasn’t really any more room for exciting candidates on that ticket and Biden filled out the boring old white guy requirement perfectly. He did say a lot of stupid stuff though, the Obama campaign should have kept a lid on him like the McCain campaign hid Palin. No one would have noticed.

3. John McCain: old. John McCain was old and out of touch. His temper was equal to that of a… hmmm… something that doesn’t have a very large temper. The War in Iraq would go on forever and I’d probably turn 18 around the same time the draft went into affect. Also, his health care plan was dumb, a $5000 tax credit? That would force a lot of people getting health care from their employer to switch to a worse plan, and there’s not really such a thing as a good plan in health care, only bad, and worse. Insurance companies are downright evil, we’d be better off without them. Universal health care is one of the many reasons Canada is better than us (also Britain I think). I got really annoyed at McCain’s constant assertions that Obama was a socialist. There is an actual socialist candidate for president and he went on The Colbert Report and said that in no way was Obama socialist. Also, socialism isn’t the great evil that conservatives like to make it out to be when they explain things to their base (trailer trash). Socialism has never been handled well, and on the whole it’s probably not a great system, but it has its merits. Look at where Capitalism has gotten us. McCain was senile and contradicted him self more times than I could count, and based on McCain’s ability to keep track of how many houses he owns he probably wouldn’t be able to count either.

4. Sarah Palin: it is hard to find the words to describe how much I despise this woman. What is this country coming to? It legitimately scares me that someone like this could make it so close to the white house. I disagreed with absolutely everything she said. I couldn’t fit all of the stupid things she said into a post that would fit on one page. Palin is the physical incarnation of everything wrong with this country. Everything. She ruined Alaska. Alaska used to be a place you would hear about and imagine a majestic wilderness filled with adventure. Now I can only think of her, the magic is gone. The Daily Show visited Wasilla, which looked like nothing more than your average mid sized suburban city. For those of you who live around here, it looked like Danbury, except everyone was a hick. I visited Wasilla’s website and was greeted by something that looked surprisingly professional: http://cityofwasilla.com/. Way too good for some little nowhere town in Alaska, so I looked up an archived page from six months ago and found this. Quite a contrast. I wonder how much they paid for the new one, probably not as much as they wasted on clothes. That was another thing, they complained about Obama having too much money for his campaign, when they’d just gone and blown hundreds of thousands on designer clothes. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I hope to never hear from Palin again.

A little something about Congress: Go democrats! A few people have told be that they don’t like having one party have all the power, but I say that it’s way better that way, because stuff actually gets done. I would prefer a republican majority to a split, but the current situation is the best of all scenarios, the democrats have the right idea.

It was a pretty awesome election overall.

People tell me that because I haven’t read the books or seen the movie, I have no right to criticize the Twilight franchise. To them I say, I can criticize whatever the hell I want. From people who’s opinions I respect (my younger sister) I have heard that it wasn’t that great. Way over hyped. From people who’s opinions I have little to no respect for (most of the rest of the people at my school) I have heard “Oh. my. god. It was so great. I saw it, like, 10 times on, like, the first day it was out.” While I don’t respect the author’s work, I respect their ability to milk culture fads and exploit the very easy target audience that is girls between the age of 12-18. They have made a lot of money off this whole thing, and for that I respect them. I could probably do the same thing, but I have morals. Here’s something I don’t get, where the hell has this vampire obsession come from? Now that Twilight is such a huge deal I’ve heard all these people talking about other vampire novels. What’s so exciting about vampires? And how did vampires go from being scary to the main characters of romance novels? I don’t know about anyone else, but if I were a girl I’d be more than a little uncomfortable making out with a vampire. That is one hickey, or “love bite” that is going to take a loooong time to wear off.

Maybe I’m just bitter for lack of having one, but high schoolers in relationships annoy the hell out of me. There’s a kid I know who about two weeks ago got a “girlfriend” and his Facebook status updates were all “I love her so much”. That lasted for a number of days I could count on one hand. Then it was “I made the right decision” and everybody was writing sympathetic things on his wall. Two to three days later they were back together again, and once again it lasted 4 days max, and once again everyone was saying “Oh, if you need to talk just call me”. Jesus Christ, they were together for a total of 10 days maximum, probably less. How attached can you get to someone in that period of time? I could maybe understand if it was something that had lasted a while, like 5-6 months maybe, but 10 days? Get over yourself.

I don’t get high school relationships. They all end when you go off to college, unless you’re one of those sad people who stays in your home town bagging groceries in which case your girlfriend will probably dump you and look for someone less pathetic. So all high school relationships end. So why do people bother? I guess maybe the reason people like it is that there’s no real commitment, it’s expected that you’re going to break up, there’s no two ways about it. I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t think I’d want to stay with my high school girlfriend, no matter who she was. I’d want to go off and try other things, no one wants to be tied down right at the starting gate. Now, all this criticism of people high school relationships is a bit hypocritical, because if given the chance with um, shall we say, the right person, I would totally have one. Until then though, I remain ever the critic.

Short story I wrote about all this:

The Beginning of the End

She lay on the bed, which was a mess, and he sat in the chair by the desk at the computer. The silence was penetrated every now and then by bursts of clicking from the mouse. She picked up one of his computer magazines from the floor and flipped through it.

“What do you find so interesting about all this?” she asked after a minute.

“I don’t know, what does anyone find interesting about anything?”

“Well this, it just seems like a bunch of numbers and names that don’t make any sense.”

“It makes sense to me,” he said, and then it went quiet again, the clicking resumed. But after a few minutes he stopped, and then he spoke.

“It’ll have to end someday,” he said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He swiveled around to face her.

“Our relationship, it can’t go on forever.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re in high school. We’ll go off to different colleges, have different lives. Marry different people. That’s what happens. You don’t expect us to be together forever do you?”

“Oh, well thanks, it’s nice to know I mean so much to you.”

“Hey, don’t take it like that. That’s not what I meant. You mean the world to me.”

“Well how am I supposed to take it? You just said our relationship is doomed to fail.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I… I don’t know. I never thought about it much.”

“Well I do. You know me, I think about stuff, I think about us a lot, this comes up once in a while.”

“I wish it wouldn’t. Yes, all relationships end sometime, you’re just supposed to enjoy the ride. It isn’t any fun if you’re pointing out the end all the time.”

“Fine. I’m sorry I brought it up. I’ll never bother you with anything again.”

“Oh no, don’t be like that. You know I love how we talk about stuff. It’s just that there are some things better left unsaid. Things people don’t want to hear.”

“Then those people are avoiding the truth. I’m sorry but I’m always thinking about this stuff. I never stop, even when we… you know… get intimate. When others’ minds would go blank I’m still tossing it all around in my head.”

“Great, you have no faith in our relationship, and I’m bad in bed.”

“That’s not what I said at all. This is silly, we’re both just trying to one-up each other at misinterpretation. I love talking with you, I love being with you, I love you.”

There was a pause in the conversation, “I love you too,” she said. He turned back around to face the computer, but didn’t resume using it.

“How do you think it will end?” he asked.

“I honestly have no idea,” she replied.

“Do you think we’ll go quietly, or will it be one of those messy breakups?”

“I really don’t know, and I’d rather not talk about it. You act like you’re looking forward to this.”

“No, I’m not at all.”

“Then quit talking about it.”

“Fine,” he went back to the computer. “Wanna go out somewhere this weekend?”

“Can’t, I have stuff to do.”

“May I enquire as to what?”

“You may, but I may not answer you.”

“Oh.”

“I should go now,” she said. And she left.

The guy is actually mostly a self projection. I suggest that no one ever have this conversation with their girlfriend.