Thoughts on Halloween

Ah yes, Halloween. It's the end of October and the beginning of November. This is an exciting time for me because my birthday is just around the corner. Halloween is also an exciting time for me because I get to exhibit my extreme pumpkin carving skills. I make a pretty good jack o' lantern using not much more than my bare hands, a knife or two, and a few assorted power tools. Anyway my brother and I celebrated Halloween by renting Disturbia (the movie everyone in the world except for me has seen) and staying up late. Disturbia was underwhelming, as was the trick or treater turn out this year. Usually our porch is festooned with many small ninjas, pirates, princesses, and ghosts. Not so much this year. Luckily my brother compensated for this by giving out handfuls of candy bars instead of the allotment of 1 candy bar per child as recommended by the Federal Candy and Sweets Charity Committee. Due to the laws of physics, it is much harder to grab an individual tootsie roll than it is to grab a mini-butterfinger, so as a result we will have roughly one thousand tootsie rolls floating around my house for the next two months. I don't have a problem with them as long as they don't try to start shit with me. Like get stuck in my teeth and stuff. Tootsie rolls love doing that. They thrive off of cavities, in this way they are very much like the criminal underground of the candy world. While high-rolling socialites like Kit-Kats are strutting around attending shows and functions, tootsie rolls are hanging out in alleys distributing marijuana to children. It's feels pretty late and I start making less sense when it gets late so I'll cut this short.

In other news in my life I recently found that my score on the SAT is now an awe-inspiring 2040. I was very excited to find this out and even danced a bit before someone else mentioned there score which was of course higher. I have to remind myself that in a year or so I'll be out of this state ons oem grand adventure and while this grand adventure might not compare to Link's exploits in Zelda or anything, I think it should be quite interesting.

Until next time,
Andrew

The Ever Changing Spectrum

Everyday across the globe people are presented with the ferocious effects of the ever changing spectrum. The ever changing spectrum is all pervasive. It invades every aspect of life, taking joy in permeating every and all mediums of communication that we so rely on. Television, radio, internet, and print publications revel in the ever changing spectrum and the potential it provides. The ever changing spectrum, when properly presented, can make anything appear to be anything. The ever changing spectrum, when used in its most obtuse sense can make even slights against humanity that would be considered banal when compared against the true history, appear horrific and all encompassing.

The ever changing spectrum is completely impersonal. It does not care for the way people think or feel. It harbors no trace of empathy, the defining aspect of humanity. Its actions, and the painful justifications associated with them, are grounded deeply in the abstract reasoning of a system of logistical equations far too removed for us to imagine.

The ever changing spectrum is completely personal. It seeps inside our very core and distorts our views, taking pride in the way it can change an opinion into an argument, and an argument into fact. The ever changing spectrum takes things and turns them upside down and then sits back and watches as we struggle and fight and resist and, in the end, pull something beautiful out of the mess.

We cannot fully understand the ever changing spectrum but we don't need to, to be able to observe and appreciate the effects of its hard work. We find ourselves silently questioning every decision we make despite the barrage of accepted notions of normality and morality and philosophy that is hammered down upon our frail mentalities, thrust down our throats until our struggle against the system turns horribly and irreversibly organic, until we are left no option but to retch forward with the bile of our core, the instinctual dregs of our beings surfacing only when our accumulated principles and ideals are slowly but surely suffocated by the weight of this ever changing spectrum.

The ever changing spectrum is the way something that is assured suddenly becomes questionable. It's the way we cannot ignore our most pathetic pleas of humanity when presented with an issue of greater importance. It's the way we say one thing and mean another and by the end of the day have forgotten what we said in the first place.

The ever changing spectrum is the way our world challenges the individual to differentiate from the rest by saying what they think and thinking about what they say. By observing and considering popular opinion and then throwing back into the mix our own unique ideas with violent force. The ever changing spectrum is the way the world challenges us to turn the other cheek, before hitting us in a place we would never expect. And it hurts, this ever changing spectrum. It can hurt in ways unimaginable. And it feels good, this ever changing spectrum. It makes you feel better about yourself at the end of the day because even if the ever changing spectrum has dealt you a bad hand you never know what it'll deal you next.

I'm not resigning this to a pile of forgotten drafts.
I'm resigning this to the whims of the ever changing spectrum.

The Short Story From Hell-Part III

Part III

Jacob pushed his way towards the front of the ship, permeating through numerous layers of archaic and forgotten sections, passing many areas of the ship that rung with the sounds of memories that still floated, reverberating through the empty corridors on quiet nights like this one. It was always night aboard the ship but Jacob had long ago realized that some nights were especially dark, even in the pitch black there were periods of time when there seemed to be nothing that existed except the ship gently floating through the lifeless and unforgiving medium. Jacob passed these sections quickly escaping the reach of the past for a little while at least. He reached the part of the ship that served as a command center. It held all the instruments and gauges that measured, through all of their intricate levels of preciseness and infallibility the true nature of the nothingness that the ship had imbedded itself in so many years ago. Settling himself into a worn seat Jacob ran his hand along the smooth surface of the table that sat in front of him. This low lying sheet of material curved gently into the walls of the room on either side and when Jacob ran his hand along it, it came to life glowing like a weak campfire illuminating controls and information that Jacob had long ago stopped caring about. Jacob turned on the sensors; a ritualized practice that he felt was carved, like a groove into his memory, worn smooth over time by repeated use until the action itself was almost instinctual.

The sensors swept for a large distance in all directions from the ship. The ship was currently located deep within the bowels of the remains of a dead star, the nebulous collection of gases had long ago been ripped violently to one side due to an imbalance in the magnetic forces and over the years had drifted until its present state. From afar it resembled a dead creature, disemboweled and flung across the sky. Inside, it was a cavernous, consuming cloud of ionized particles and fragments of metallic dust that shimmer and glinted against light that was coming from hundreds of years away. In galactic terms, this cloud was as isolated as it could get and Jacob reveled in the feeling of suffocating escape, putting as much distance between him and fate as possible. He had felt the same way when he had entered the cloud many years ago. Racing along the convoluted paths it offered reminded him of a maze on certain days. On other days he was overwhelmed with a feeling of déjà vu when he considered his situation. It felt like his attempts as a child to hide from the world underneath the encompassing folds of a large blanket, feeling that the warm insulating layer would protect him from everything and anything in the world. It was this same instinct that drove him to fly into the cloud in the first place so many years ago. Committing to a life of isolation and loneliness was small price to pay for the feeling of safety and security that he occasionally felt, feeling invulnerable among the nothingness.

(to be continued)

The New Oceanic

Recently the blog received a bit of a face lift to commemorate the quasi-anniversary. I say "quasi" because I was too lazy to go back and check the exact date when I started, but I'm 90% sure it was around this time last year. Anyway, I decided to rename the blog. my blog is no longer The Monkey's Corner. I'm not saying that the monkey no longer has a corner, but that is not the main feature of this blog anymore. The monkey has decided that while the soapbox certainly has its place, it must be balanced out with some more coverage of events in my life and the world.

The New Oceanic is the name I chose for several reasons. First and foremost, it is outrageously vague. Second of all, if you think about it for long enough it begins to sound a little trendy. This is the perfect combination to represent my views. Vaguely trendy and comfortably opinionated.

I'll try and update again later tonight when I have more time. I'm still trying to hammer out a part 3 for the Short Story from Hell.

The Secret Faces

Today I had a very revealing conversation about the secret faces people often put on to hide what they're feeling. This is a very prevalent issue, especially in today's increasingly connected world where one feels pressured to commit to certain emotional paths that set concrete restrictions on what we can and cannot feel, or at least how we express what we feel. So, is hiding our true emotions actually a good thing? I think its good in moderation, it's never a good idea to flood your environment with a strong tide of misplaced or unthought-out ideas and notions, especially after emotionally traumatic events. Then again, its not a good idea to let one's poker face slide over for too long. I think that if we wear the mask for too long we start to lose what's underneath.

Picture Time: Crazy break dancers in Boston (though they came from NY). This illustrates a few key aspects of life: 1) people from Boston are fascinated by those hip hopping hip hoppers from Big Apple. 2) Child prodigies till exist today (look carefully, the kid in the foreground was doing exactly what the guy dancing is doing only a few minutes before. 3) It's a completely unjustified stereotype that black people know how to dance better than white people. BUT LOOK AT THEM.

My Slow Descent into Madness...

...is marked by a large amount of whining. Tonight I reveled in the maddening cycle of procrastination that has become quite usual for me this year. It really is quite unfortunate. I don't feel like I've hit a wall or anything, and at certain points, my flair for productivity seems endless, but it's nights like this that really put a damper on my senior experience. I'm currently taking three AP classes, not that many by the standards set by many of my friends and classmates, but enough to convince me, at times, that I may not survive the year. I am a high caliber student but at 11:00 at night when I find myself listening to tracks from the City of Angel's Soundtrack instead of doing my homework I know I'm not living up to my potential (it's a great soundtrack, by the way, and a wonderful movie, just not that conducive to critical thinking and analysis).

I STILL have not found time to work on the Short Story from Hell, I promise that I will write a new entry for that sometime before the weekend, as soon as I finish my work.

Until Later...

andritobandito

My Occasional Introspective

Today I had a tremendous insight. For me entire life I had battled the notion that every child will thank their parents later in spite of what sort of relationship they may have had growing up. My conflict with this accepted colloquialism ranged past the occasional exception; the child who was raised by drunks, the child who was raised in the system and had no parent to thank. No, instead I had always been of the opinion that children could not truly thank and appreciate the efforts of their parents because they didn't have a context to judge them against. They never would, even if they had kids of their own because the experience is unique to the people involved.

So today, while walking my dog, I realized that was not the true reason. Yes, I do not believe anyone can ever truly conceive or appreciate the efforts of their parents. However, I do think that people have the capacity to accept and convey reverence for something, as obscure or arbitrary as it may be. So what, in my opinion, is going to really obstruct my ability to appreciate the efforts of my parents? I think the reason is that, at the end of things, what I do with my life will define my and my family.

A House Smelling of Autumn

Recently I found myself at our local park with my dog, Killer. We were conducting our usual activities (playing fetch with small fluorescent tennis balls in close proximity to the practicing Pee Wee football team). I started to think about life which is something I do often, and usually with the brevity of Bill O'Reilly at a Harlem Globe Trotters expo. I began to think about school and life and the purpose of existence. Pretty deep stuff that was, rest assured, extremely trivialized by my dog getting a tennis ball confused with a branch. I came to a conclusion that everything I've done with my life so far has led up and is leading up to a life of some sort when I grow up. I grudgingly admitted that I had begun to work at school and at my extra curriculars just for the sake of working. This was a truly frightening notion. I began to think about what I really wanted from life. If I had to name one thing that I was dedicating all of this work and effort to. Because college is just another step and lately it's begining to seem like the goal. So I stood there for awhile, listening to the sounds of the park, the pubescent cries of the practicing football players, the incessant panting of my dog, smelled the air and made a decision.

I wanted a house that smelt of autumn. After a long, late, and exceptionaly hot summer, fall in the Northeast is finally beginning to rear its head. And that head smells of ground cloves. And cinnamon. And apple cider. And pumpkin pie. And while I may detest the East Coast for everything it stands for, the saturating humidity, the oppressively backwards social mentality, and their inability to make street signs, I do love the fall. When I dream, I often find myself dreaming of jumping into a steaming fresh-from-the-oven pumpkin pie and eating my way out of the delicious middle. Practically, if I tried that in real life I'd probably end up killing myself in an extremely unique, yet still horribly gruesome way.

So, if I could pick one thing to have that I could work towards, it would be that. A nice house nestled in a small forest somewhere smelling of autumn.

In other news, apparently I want to be a pre-law student now. I haven't wanted to be a lawyer since the 6th grade when that was all me and my friend Tyler could think about (until I saw the Client and realized that carbon monoxide poisoning was not the ticket for me).

Expect updates soon on the Short Story from Hell.

My Lack of Introspection

I've recently found myself lacking the time or energy to seriously take a look at my life and how I'm living it. It might prove to be a blessing later on, as over-analyzing anything your senior year is usually not a great idea. Instead I find myself going through the motions of what any good student should be doing and not having the luxury of being nervous. In fact, Ive found myself unusually calm as of late. I'm sure my true anxiety is manifesting itself in my dreams, but as long as it stays out of my head while I'm awake, I'm grateful. I never remember my dreams anyway.

In other news life is good.

Here's an update on the short story from Hell.


Part II

The sun beat down on the earth with the intensity that was impossible to calculate. Light coming from the star had long ago ceased to be pure white; the rays of energy now hovered on a different end of the spectrum. The light that stabbed through the thick haze was distinctly yellow in color and seemed to saturate the air. Despite the thick cloud cover, the intense heat combined with geothermal elements had long ago destroyed any countenance of humidity in the lower layers of the atmosphere. The air was dry and thin and seemed to break like something fragile into small and tumultuous breezes. The air whipped the land but barely scratched the surface; wind erosion was an unheard of concept. The wind served only to break loose and smooth loose areas of ground. The ground itself was of a distinct appearance. It was composed of hard compacted dirt, mottled gray in color, but covered in scraggly patches by grass. It was a grass of the greenest color and seemed to glow in the muted light cast through the thin air. Occasionally the dry wind would rustle through the grass blowing the blades into sheets of emerald that danced under jocular direction. It was without a conscience that the land was able to exist, and it was without a conscience that the land was without trees. It was an epic land, with large areas of space uninhabited by anything but the earth, the dancing grass, and the light headed wind. There was no life to speak off apart from the grass, and at times their soft, ephemeral whispers could be mistaken for the rustling of the blades against the air. It was indeed hard to distinguish life from the jaded grass. And there were no trees.

In reality, there were trees. Many years ago trees had co-existed with the grass and the wind. They towered above the landscape, not just in stature but in spirit. They dared to do what the grass only dreamed and what the wind could not understand. They were trees of all different varieties, some with broad leaves and some without. But as the years went on, and the rains became less and less frequent, the grass learned how to live without water but the trees did not. The trees died off and the land was barren, empty but for the grass and the wind.

The clouds were the first ones to get angry when the beasts invaded. Their ships burned through the clouds, charring and ionizing the gases they held in miraculous suspension, dissipating entire cloud banks in a single tremendous roar. As the ships lowered their bleeding hulks through the sky, they poisoned the air with tremendous toxins. These toxins were not entirely alien to the wind, but they were unpleasant and served to remind the wind where its priorities lay. It scuttled to a far off corner of the land and would stay there for quite some time. The beasts landed, but the gruesome ravishment was not yet complete. They erected tents and structures on the land, clearing the ground of grass, or as in a few unfortunate cases, merely crushing the grass beneath them. They turned the air humid and thick, saturating it with water and chemicals. These were the chemicals of life, but they forced life where life should not have been. The beasts left quickly, leaving behind the mysterious structures and tents with the rumbling of autonomous technology. The machinery never stopped, grinding away slowly in a mechanical fashion that the ground had never experienced before. After a period of time, the machinery stopped, and the air was still, laced with the bitter after taste of chemicals that were slowly, yet surely being transformed back into the natural components of the ground. It was the state of natural and universal equilibrium that the ground took so much pride in. It found itself lost in the meandering intricacies of chemical replacement and elemental composition, absorbing what needed to be absorbed and releasing what needed to be released, altering the state of things to allow for the variables that the beasts had disrupted. It was time consuming process but at the end of thing, the ground was satisfied with its work.
After a period of time the wind returned. The grass started its slow dance under the cautious direction of the wind. Things began to settle to normal. The structures remained. A great deal of time passed, the ground methodically fulfilled its duties, the grass danced, and the wind stirred the air into frenzied contrails. The clouds were unsettled but for a reason unknown. Something was happening beyond the sky, but the exact meaning or medium of such occurrence was, as of yet, undetermined. Then it began to rain.

My Unmarketable Major

Today I was getting a ride home from my ninja academy when the topic of college came up. They asked what colleges I applied to them. I gave them a list of small violently liberal schools on opposite sides of the continent. They asked what I wanted to major in and I replied confidently, "Anthropology."

"Hmm...Well that's very interesting. Not very marketable, but interesting."

To my credit, I recovered very well. "Well yes, but then I would combine it with a major or minor in something that would be marketable such as industrial welding or agriculture technology (both of which being common majors in my lovely hometown)."

The rest of the car ride home was relatively silent.

I began to think about it. How marketable was my dream degree. I love the concept of majoring in anthropology, the exciting allure of study abroad programs in far off lands, staying in mountain nations sheathed in early morning fog and surrounded by the ghosts of the past as I excavate an ancient bread cabinet. Perhaps I've just read too much National Geographic, however I refused to believe that this dream major of mine was truly unmarketable. Surely there was large demand for people with an extensive knowledge of ancient burial rituals. I don't exactly want to work in a museum when I grow up, but after watching The Librarian I think I could pull it off.

Seriously, Google that right now. The Librarian is basically everything that Indiana Jones strove to be but with slightly less plot, more CG, and also Noah Wyle.