Quantum Teenager

Random stuff

--People that I don’t like are usually found chewing gum.

--The short story “The Assignation” by Edgar Allan Poe suspiciously resembles The Great Gatsby

--Some people coming through the drive-through at McDonald’s like to tell me that their food is To-Go

--If you click on characters multiple times in Starcraft they say funny things.

--Graduation ceremonies are bound to turn into popularity contests even when the principal says, “Reserve your applause for the end.”

I can’t think of any more useless junk with which to fill this thirty-minute session. I guess I’ll have to think of something else to write.

I threw this thing in the garbage, and somehow my parents found it, even though I was sure to hide it with a layer of stained paper towels and half-eaten fruit. Sigh.

I have one hobby. I like music. Not the crappy commercial stuff celebrity’s are pumping out nowadays. I’m talking old-school jazz.

It’s got character. It’s got a story. When I can listen to a song and write lyrics for it, or tell a story about it, that’s how I know it’s quality music. I get that with classical and jazz. Pop music’s pretty formulaic. Like soda. Throw in some sappy, sugary, romantic syrup, and a few artificial flavorings to make it barely distinct, and you’ve got one hell of a song. Like junk food for the soul – delicious, and unwholesome.

Here’s some bluesy jazz lyrics I made up the other day:

“Nightshades”

Midnight

A cabaret

Dim, gloomy shades drawn ‘cross the

Empty windows

And all of the passerby

Hurried by while the

Emptiness crept out

Into the seats and stage

 

And through the door

Stepped Neville Moore

Said, nothing at all

He said, nothing.

 

His frowning face foretold

Heavy times, regrets, sighs

He swayed as if from

A dozen cocktails

Set at the piano played

A single note, his

Desperate eyes, defeated, cried

“Oh, Lenore”

 

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got so far.

It’s ever so painful to write in this stupid thing, when I know I’m expected to. Maybe I’ll make like that crazy lady from The Yellow Wallpaper, and start finding lolling heads and death imagery in the walls of my room. Then maybe they’ll make me stop writing, when I show them that I’m even crazier than they originally thought.

I love to surprise people.

The other day I shot the neighbor’s dog with a BB gun. Mom forced me to march over and apologize for it and placed me under house arrest. She didn’t seem to understand that it was standing in the middle of the street and some guy in a hot rod was speeding around the corner. She also didn’t seem to understand that I’m sixteen years old, two years from adulthood. Dad would have understood. Whatever. At least Holden Caulfield would be proud. You know, that Catcher in the Rye guy. Dogs are pretty similar to children, anyway.

I like to read.

Did I mention that? I know I mentioned Edgar Allan Poe. And The Great Gatsby, among other things. Some of those are just things we’re forced to read in English class, but I really do like that kind of stuff. I don’t always understand the symbols and imagery and literary analysis crap, but I do like knowing that it all means something. It’s like staring at the ocean. It’s beautiful and mysterious, and though you can’t see very far down, you know there’s another world down there.

I wish I could scuba dive.  

Coral reefs are probably the best things on this planet, in my opinion. As well as rain forests.

Not that I would live in them. I’d like to become a writer and build a house in the middle of nowhere in Montana. Where Christopher Paolini lives. Or New Zealand. That’s where they shot The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Yeah, Lord of the Rings is alright. It’s kind of dense for me sometimes; it took three tries for me read all of the books through. I definitely respect all the work Tolkien put into it. Though people don’t read “well-written” stuff nowadays. It’s mostly just whatever’s accessible, whatever’s convenient, whatever’s easy to read. I won’t name names…

I’d consider Eragon the exception. It’s not classic type literature, but you can tell that that author, Christoper Paolini, put a lot of work into it. It makes you wish for simpler days, when we could settle our problems with magic instead of guns and economics…well, no changing that anytime soon. I think I detect some environmentalist bent in the writing – he does, after all, live in practically wilderness.

Anyway, I myself am pretty biased at times. But, hey, at least I tell people what I’m really thinking.

Oh, man, I’ve been writing in this thing for forty minutes. That’s embarrassing.