Jobs

Jobs are pretty cool when you think about it. Hour long commutes are not, as I realized. But I mean, after you get out of work, you're done. No homework, few continuing responsibilities, they're surprised if you get something done by the first week. In school overload happens first day, first second, and I say really? We get such a hard education experience to do what, ruin our childhoods? High school needn't be so specialized, it really needs to culture kids to their needs and make sure they have fun. Only if you cause them to become involved in their environments will they actually learn, and it will be many times better than some of the set ups we have now. This process involved discarding some accepted methodologies, but is it really necessary to have such stringent policies involving education when later in life you find out you actually have free time? Just my two cents

/end rant.

Homophones

It's really not that hard to differentiate between "your"/"you're", "they're"/'their"/"there", etc. Why it still happens so frequently after so many years of usage I have no idea. If people spent the extra five seconds thinking about which word to pick they would look a hell of a lot less dumb. To grammar nazis like me, anyway.

How disgusting

As the world came tumbling down, Shinji realized the meaningless implicit in a homogeneous existence-- he knew there was something...more to life, but he had difficulty grasping what it was. He was paralyzed by his lack of confidence and indecisiveness, spurred by the neglect that seemed all but ubiquitous during his childhood. But at this instant, he felt all his hopes, fears, doubts, worries, and emotions work in solidarity, culminating in a sort of epiphany: he had to reject the zeitgeist and embrace his individuality. So he decided to live. And thus he broke free from his unconscious and found himself, in his physical manifestation, on a beach, with Asuka lying next to him. He stared blankly at the sea of LCL before him as the tide gently ebbed to and fro. Just my two cents

='w'= Sarah Palin, I'm calling you out

The single thing that I hate most in this world must be irrational people. The fact of the matter is, as long as one has a general sense of what is going on or has the willingness to learn and accept what is happening, one can make rational decisions. Those who are new to a situation can easily prevent themselves from seeming ignorant by waiting until they understand before acting or by simply declaring their lack of knowledge. Others, who refuse to to even glimpse the reality of the situation, self-indulging themselves in their own prejudices, are the ones who truly annoy me. These truly ignorant people who refuse to acknowledge anything then make matters worse by affecting everyone else around them. Some attempt to force their dogmas onto others and some attempt to attack those who don't share their beliefs. Religion, political parties, practically anything that can be divided into factions have people like this. Irrationality and ignorance become almost interchangeable within these factions. Refusing to see the other side of the argument, factions like these are historically known to have caused some of the greatest disasters known to man. Blah Blah Blah, Blah Blah Blah, Blah Blah Blah.

Ugh, man its annoying to hear myself (or anyone) blather on like that... SO, to put it simply, don't be a prejudiced scumbag and try to be accepting of other people's viewpoints. Don't act rash and immediately label ideas as dumb or irrelevant, and if you did, don't be afraid to change your opinion. If you don't, you may end up being like a terrorist (my idea is right, you can go die), a religious fanatic (the Catholic Church, Al Quaeda), or Sarah Palin (GAHHHH).

Stupidest website layout ever.

It took me like five minutes to find the right button. As in, I spent five minutes looking before giving up and asking someone where the link was. Fuck everything about this.

About damn time.

I get a lot of "You're Chinese! Why are you taking Chinese?" which is really rather annoying in its ignorance. I grew up speaking a dialect of Chinese which is extremely different in its vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammatical structure. Hell, as far as I'm aware there's no way to write the language. I have, however, spent many Sundays throughout the first half of my life attending Chinese school, but two hours every seven days and having my mother "help" me with my homework (a.k.a. do all the parts I had a hard time with. Jeez, kids give their parents so much shit.) really hadn't done much for me. So I'm taking Chinese at the moment because I don't fucking know Chinese. Unfortunately I really can't say the same for a good 90% of my class.

So I frequently end up (this year in particular) looking like a derp because I forget what I'm supposed to say for something we've rehearsed and I'm not fluent enough to improvise. Meanwhile all the kids who've spoken Chinese at home with their parents for their entire lives are writing advanced papers and giving presentations that no one at my level can understand. Some of them have even told me that they're in it for the easy A. Somehow the teacher finds nothing wrong with the extremely high average level and her standards are distorted as a result.

Huge kudos to the folks who started out with no knowledge of the language whatsoever and are hanging in there, like Claire Egan, Andrew Martin, Woojin Jun, John Choi, etc. I don't know about them but I'm taking the next plane to Free Elective Slot out of here. I've certainly learned a good amount but I can do this elsewhere, just as effectively and more enjoyably than I can here.

tl;dr Goddamnit, Chinese people.

='w'= Time is of the Essence (PART 2)

Ahhh, a subject we are all probably familiar with, procrastination. (If you claim you aren't, my advice to you is "stop reading and get back to work you lazy bum".) That 4 hour project that's due next week? do it the night before its due. The 8 hour project? Just working on it for 2 days should be enough. Seriously, who doesn't think this? (If you don't, then kudos to you, many of your peers will become jealous of you and probably find a way to hook you on to video games so that you too can procrastinate. Its almost like a zombie infestation, except half of us are already infected. P.S. I'm on the winning side.) It gets worse when it gets near the end of the year or when you reach senior year. (A project? Nah, I can do that later. Homework? Do I need to even finish it to pass this class? It gets really bad really quick =,=. ) Personally, the amount of work that I have to make up from this lethargy includes 5 outlines, 1 major project and a draft for a major project. The worst part? I really don't care.

Don't get me wrong, I have fairly decent standards (at least a B in every AP class, a B+ for non-AP), but with the end of the year closing in and with the lack of motivation to do any sort of school work, the idea that all this work can be finished at a later time is very...enticing. Its pretty much gotten to the point where all the make up work becomes shoved to the back of my mind until their due dates are directly in my face (and as for projects, who minds if they take a couple points off for it being late?). Diagnosis? I'm a lazy arse.

I guess it could be considered hypocritical that I slack off knowingly that this will happen all over again, but everything short of summer break has ever been able to break this streak. Nearly everyone I ask also agrees: procrastination is incurable. The best way of dealing with this monster that I have found is to make it so that your work is interesting. This way you ACTUALLY WANT TO DO WORK, BLASPHEMY spits on ground. (But then again, who actually wants to do 2 hours of calculus packet?) If life had a reset button so that you could do all you wanted, then go back in time to just finish up work, it would be so easy...

Well I guess I finally finished my long 3 day rant on procrastination (the first 2 days I procrastinated...tee hee), so closing advice: find a job you enjoy, or else you're screwed.

Music and Ra

There will two topics of this blog post.

Music:

So this weekend I was stuck on a 4 hour bus ride twice, where they lied about it having wifi. Okay not lied but seriously, 5 bps is not really wifi in my humble opinion. Because of this I left my mp3 player at home, and not even I can sleep for 8 hours. Thus I defaulted to this friend's music repository, which unfortunately was all "indie rock" and pop. Granted, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was, and there's a couple that stood out like Airplanes, Grenade, and DJ's Got us Falling in Love. However, The level of sophistication of trance music and DnB is just levels above most indie rock songs and the such. It's 7-12 layers vs the 3-4 layers that presents itself in pop/rock. In addition, they're not that hard to make either, because all you need is a computer and not a expensive mic plus a good guitar. Someone should really tell me, why is pop/rock better than electronic music for you guys? Is it the lyrics or what?



Ra (Heroes of Newerth):

New hero! Perfect, he suits all my playstyles. He can suicide for tons of damage, and he takes guts to play correctly. If you're afraid of dying, you'll be useless. What really limits him is the way people play him. He stays constantly on the edge, dealing damage to everything around him (including himself). I believe him to be a perfectly balanced hero, since his first skill costs a whole 20% of his maximum health, and his third requires him to be damaged to do anything. Played at the hands of an inexperienced player he's just must easier to suicide now, but if you can judge his damage and hit point levels well, he will be scoring huge nukes on a team while always a few hits from dying. He does get countered by chain stuns, since they simply destroy his ability to walk next to people to kill them.
A bit of a mini guide:
Skill build should be 3 1 3 2 3 4 3 2 2 2 1 4 1 1 1 s 4 s...

This gives you enough regen to harass like a madman. Your item build should involve a shield, since you deal enough damage to last hit easily. Start with some regen. This hero actually excels at levels 1-2, and tapers off at 3-5 but comes back strong at 6. The reason is that the heroes you lane against usually manages a lot of harass and you cannot go in at will since they have skills to stun and run away from you. Level one everything's even, and you should just run into a cocky ranged hero wanting to harass you to slice him a few times.

Your core is a HotBL for the health and defense, and then a shamans for the regen. After this you should get a heart if you're doing exceptionally well, bkb for stunner teams, or work towards a frostwolf's if you somehow don't see the need for a ton of regen. By this time you can finally spam skills, and you should be to get some farm up. You regen about 100 hp every 4 seconds so live on about 50-75% hp when farming.

I do have to emphasize though know your damage, and know who to explode on. That's how you win at Ra, and it doesn't come unless you have experience!

OHMYGODYES

...now what gave Google the idea that I would be interested in this?

The Challenge

Every time you accidentally say two lines in succession that rhyme, attempt to complete it as a limerick.

Unrelated: 4:20 PM. Noticed a neighbor supervising some green mechanical pancake on wheels on my way home.

Theories:

Lawnmower equivalent of a roomba.

Pooper scooper deluxe. (yes he has a dog)

Tomorrow morning when I wake up, all the grass on all the lawns in my neighborhood will be gone and pancake will be stacked. Then proceed to take over the world.

His son, whose entire body minus his brain was destroyed in a tragic shopping accident (OH MY GOD SO MUCH BLOOD AND PASTA), is getting acclimated to his temporary container until a new body can be constructed.

...house centipedes...

Problem Solved

Victor has been taken care of. Some people have been complaining about the controversial message in his most recent post.

June 6

Happy 67th anniversary of D-Day. Let's stop shooting people now; it's rather not nice.

That is all.

Amun

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

='w'= Time is of the Essence

PROCRASTINATION!!!
(will finish this later)

The Effervescence of Time

So I'm pretty sure all of have had some sort of similar experience: you wake up in the middle of night and realize that you are going to die; you become aware that you are, in fact, subject to an inescapable fate that only becomes more and more relevant with the immutable tick of the clock. The whole idea of losing all sense of awareness and conscious thought can be a little overwhelming to some. Personally, being a strong proponent of individuality and free will, I find it more frightening that our lives are essentially chained by the reigns of fate-- we have an abject lack of choice when it comes to death. Some people find solace in religion like Christianity and Islam, which are afterlife-centric; others try to live life the best they can without wondering what happens afterward.

Although I was brought up as a Catholic, I've recently become disillusioned with the validity of many of its fundamental tenets, exacerbated by the ubiquity of hypocrisy within Christianity I've been exposed to through in both my expositions in history and personal experience. Consequently, like most people, I'm very unsure what to think about this whole death issue. While my emotion yearns for a "happy ending" to life like the Christian heaven, my rational thought urges me to think otherwise. Maybe our anthropocentric thoughts are simply the result of our natural tendencies to overvalue our existences and that we are simply like any other biological creature-- we are born, we live, we breed, we die. But I don't endorse this depressing mode of thought. Rather, I believe that our consciousness is too visceral and real and that what Chomsky calls the "creative impulse" of man suggests something deeper about our lives than just spontaneous, absurd existences. But of course, I don't actually know anything and no one ever will. Maybe we can find meaning in our lives through our impact on other people-- but I am reminded of the words of Sartre in his iconic play, No Exit: "Hell is other people." I have to agree with Sartre here; each individual's concept of his/her meaning is influenced by the culmination of external beliefs and opinions imparted to him/her, that is, we are all trapped in a sort of existential mire, marked by our inability to determine our own so called identity.So trying to influence others will not actually achieve anything, seeing as it will only cause us to drift away from who we actually are. So maybe instead we could, as the famous Abraham Maslow proposed, find self actualization, a sort of existential epiphany, later in life. But I don't think the chances of that are likely. Time sure does pass by so quickly...

The SAT IIs

Warning: in an attempt to recreate the morning as accurately as possible there'll be some profanity. If you explode when seeing profanity, leave or prepare to die a fiery death. Repeatedly. Also, racism bad. Any apparently racist comments will be jokes. Probably.

Background: Missed the signup deadlines for May's SATs. Delayed signing up for June's until I figured out whether or not I was going to ARML. Continued dicking around until the last day to sign up because I'm lazy. Ended up having to sign up to take the tests at a high school in DC with 100% black attendance. Not saying I was expecting to get knifed or something but that irked me a little bit. ("At least you know you'll be the smartest kid in the room!" -Matt Callahan. I don't endorse racism but it doesn't appear I can say the same about white people.)

So here are the thoughts I had this morning that are worth mentioning, in order:

Stand on the left side of the hallway? Ok. Why am I the only one on this side? [There are like 15 kids on the other side.] I must be special. [Couple kids join me in a bit. Turns out it was people taking the normal SAT vs subject tests.]

What the fuck?! Biggest goddamn house centipede I've seen in my life. Get me the hell out of here.

Mmm... I'd tap that.

Check out that centipede. [Different one. Smaller.] Kids are shifting their feet to get out of its way, like it owns the damn place. Fucking centipedes.

[After like fifteen minutes of standing in the hallway we get taken to a classroom.] Hey, only like half the people in this room are black. Even some Asians up in here... the hell? Eddie Rim? Huh. Small world. Probably also was lazy. [Not judging him.] I should go tell him I have an eraser he at some point drew penises on. [Never did.]

[I hear some Korean girls talking about IBET. At least, I think they were Korean.] Damn, what is going on here? Is everyone in this room from TJ?

It's eight-fucking-forty and we still haven't started the damn test. Maybe proctor lady didn't make a mistake when she "accidentally" said we'd be getting out at 1 or 2.

People around me derping about how the SAT IIs are worth college credit. The hell? Thankfully some girl corrects them. Saved them from my wrath. [Later on, proctor asks us if the tests are for college credit. What the fuck.]

Those test booklets are huge. Trees: Q_Q

LOL MATH 2 LOL.

Oh god, have to copy this long-ass statement in cursive. [Most difficult part of the test, hands down. Took me like five minutes to write three lines.]

[Half the room leaves because they've only signed up for one test. Teacher asks if there's anyone taking three tests. I'm the only one who raises a hand.] Fuck. [sigh] Whatever.

[Remaining Korean girl from TJ says to Eddie, "Hey, don't you go to TJ? Nice!"] Damnit, what about meeeeee? :(

Free Capri-Suns? Thanks but I'll pass. A pouch is like two mouthfuls of drink, anyway. We all got bigger but those pouches sure didn't. Must be why the straw's so thin. Clever, Kraft.

LOL CHEMISTRY LOL.

[Everyone but me leaves. Commence eye rolling and banter with proctor.]

What the hell? There are two doors between the hallway and the bathroom.

Fuck, physics... First three answers are all A. Goddamnit.

[The question was like, what are the directions of the net force and acceleration for a ball thrown straight up when it's 1) going up? 2) at the top? 3) falling? Lol.]

Left like four questions blank because I don't know anything about optics and lenses and neglected to look over that material [that was 3 of them] and because I ran out of time on a question that involved impulse. Fucking impulse. But...

HOME FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

And that was it. Spent four hours in an all-black high school and emerged unscathed. I do smell like cologne, though, since one of my parents' Hispanic employees took me home in his car.

Moral of the story: fuck house centipedes.

EDIT: God damn it. Just realized I dated everything June 3 instead of June 4. ALL THAT WORK FOR NOTHING.

The end of the year as we know it

It's almost closing time for the school year, but it sure doesn't feel that way. Working on final projects + normal workload + college stuff kind of sucks doesn't it? I'm sure a lot of you are feeling more pressure now than any other time during the year. So my question is: why bother? What's the point of giving us all of these assignments now, when no one cares anymore, and while we have more important stuff to do (college stuff, planning for the summer... maybe even getting to enjoy the last few weeks in school with our friends.) Is it all really necessary? I for one don't think these "Culminating activities" really contribute much to our learning experience anyway. For example, for two of my final projects, I'm making movies. It really just seems like we could be spending our time on something more important sometimes. Just my two cents.

='w'= Baby, I was born this way!

First of all, I'd like to say that as a Japanophile, it is my sworn duty to hate anything distinctly Americanized in any way, shape, or form. This applies especially to Lady Gaga, whom I hate with a passion that is more fiery hot and burning than any other type of passion. (Seriously, just looking at one of her music videos makes me shudder with horror =,= ) But I have to admit, her lyrics for the song "Born this Way" are surprisingly good O_O (then I saw the music video, and lost all hope for the strange singer whose name is reminiscent of a babbling baby). Which brings us to our main topic: social conformity.

As much as I dislike Gaga, I really need to give her some credit for having the guts to do something so outlandish. Seriously though, what type of singer would jeopardize their multi-million dollar career to express themselves in the most bizarre ways possible? (Of course, being bizarre has become one of Gaga's selling points by now. =,=)

Moving on to a different singer, one of my all time favorite singers from Japan is Piko (as shown in the picture above). His vocal range is amazing and I love his songs. Yet, I'm reluctant to tell others about him. Why? Because occasionally he wears gender ambiguous clothing while he sings at a vocal range that is indistinguishable from a girl's. This really shouldn't bother me, because I like the fact that he can sing on the same level as Gazelle and I don't really care what he wears. Yet, mother culture has taught me that cross-dressing is unacceptable and I follow those rules.

I've often said to myself "screw the social norms", but next thing I know, I'm acting like a total conformist, going against what I originally believed in order to follow the social norms. In psychology, it has been proved that people tend to follow what is socially acceptable in order to become accepted. Yet, in today's society, it seems like the ones who have the most fun and become the most successful are those who ignore the social norms and act on their own. We are all restricted by social norms, yet all it is is a mental barrier that doesn't really exist. Its important to understand that when a person sees someone who isn't within the social norms, their initial reaction is NOT scorn, but surprise and a desire to know more about the person before making a judgement. Even knowing this, it is still incredibly difficult to break out of this mindset.

I often have this conversation with a friend of mine who is bi-sexual (or maybe even lesbian, I can't tell at this moment). Her hair changes color every month and she is proud to have a girlfriend with whom she can been seen with nine out of ten times. I think she is an amazing and brave person who really has broken away from the mindset, but even she admits that she often has trouble ignoring the social norms. The only other person I know who has broken the mold even further is a straight girl who hangs around with the lesbian group at school, wears neon expressive colors every day, and isn't afraid to give a hug or express herself at any given moment. I often feel fake just by standing in her proximity.

I guess all I can really do is to try to fight off the mindset. It may be awkward at times, but that awkwardness is really just in the head. So until then, ROW, ROW, FIGHT THE POWER

ATTEMPTED ATTACK FROM RIVAL BLOG

ATTENTION DEAR READERS, WE HAVE BEEN COMBATING A SERIES OF ATTACKS FROM ONE "P. NAIK" STARTING FROM ~8:50pm TODAY. IT SEEMS THE PERPETRATOR HAS FEARED OUR GROWING NUMBERS OF FOLLOWERS AND HAS ATTEMPTED TO CRASH OUR SERVERS BY REPEATEDLY REFRESHING OUR PAGES. WE ARE DOING OUR BEST TO MITIGATE THESE ATTACKS AND WILL KEEP YOU POSTED. HERE IS SOMETHING TO LISTEN TO WHILE WAITING FOR YOUR DAILY DOSE OF PROSE FROM MBPS:

LoL

League of legends has been, over the past few weeks, experiencing an unprecedented surge in its player base that I can only say is all too evident at TJ (where it seems everyone and their mother is playing it). Not only this, it seems like everyone has been talking about it constantly. I think its an okay game at most, but no where deserving of the hype most people give it. Here are just a few of my qualms concerning LoL's gameplay and interface after playing ~200 games:

1. There is no deny mechanic. LoL's predecessor, DotA, implemented a gameplay mechanic known as "denying," which made it possible for one to kill his/her creeps (thus- who would have guessed-denying the enemy of experience and gold). While I understand that this whole concept of denying can often be frustrating to new players, it decreases the skill threshold by making it more difficult to dominate a lane. I think this plays a large role in one of the major flaws i see in LoL, which is that it is really hard to tell who is good or bad at the game (seeing that people like kwan can win a lane in LoL whereas in DotA he would just fail miserably all the time). But I have to say, no denying does make the laning phase more chill, which is what they might be going for?

2. There is no way to save or watch replays. Not only does this make it a lot harder to improve your game by taking note of your mistakes, but it makes it impossible to relive those "Wtfloldidthatactuallyhappen" moments that makes these games so idiosyncratic and enjoyable.

3. People take LoL too seriously. Like one time I went to jungle and there were 5 people waiting for me. It wasn't really fun.

4. Hero kills are worth too much money. While this detail might seem somewhat trivial at first glance, what it does is foster a paradigm of gameplay contingent on aggression and harass (which is just annoying) rather than a more passive style that focuses on farming up a carry. Furthermore, it actually punishes the player for getting kills because you become worth significantly more money whereas dying a lot makes you worth almost a creep.

5. There has to be a jungler for the experience advantage. And no one wants to jungle. So i have to jungle. And whenever I jungle I get five man ganked by try-hards (see above).

6. AP.

Just kidding

I'm actually an Schizophrenic. I do all the thinking around here. Those guys? They're all actually just me. I bet you didn't expect that. I couldn't possibly have such a in depth argument with my self right? Well you're wrong. Look:

Hi Broskis! =.=

See, that was John. My point is proven. Have a nice day, but not really because it's way too humid.

An FYI

Most of us are TJ kids, with the except of John. He goes to Woodson, which is where R, Z, and I would be going if we weren't going here. And no, this blog won't be about his life, damnit. Mine, maybe. But definitely not his.

Also, happy June. Three more freakin' weeks.