Eighteen

I turned 18 today. Not much happened. I woke up at 10, learned a couple riffs, played a couple games of chess, went to the gym, ate, ran, and hung out with a friend. I really wasn't expecting to feel any different, but the little change I expected to happen didn't. Maybe its because I didn't do anything BA and go to a strip club or smoke a pack of cigarettes, but the 18th birthday thing seemed like another faux-momentous moments, like senior year, high school graduation, and a few other things that have brought me slightly closer to adulthood. All of these things seemed like they were just things that were done, things that didn't change much; you just do it and then move on. I'm really hoping college won't be like this, because I'm really looking forward to being less of a pretend person.

Look at me, I'm a Communist!

Quite frankly, I'm a bit ticked off that Obama hasn't begun to address how we are going to pay for our massive bailouts and a mega health care bill, but what's frustrating me more is how people are treating the change in presidential policy.

Obama is not a Socialist. Obama is not a Communist. Obama is not a fascist. Obama is not a Muslim. Obama is not a Socialist.

Socialism is a form of government in which the government, among other things, levees high taxes, spends massive amounts of money, controls the bank, and suppresses individual freedoms. Right now, Obama hasn't done hardly any of this. He isn't taking away anybody's rights. He hasn't changed gun ownership rights, nor changed how the FCC, nor anything else pertaining to individual rights, really. In fact, the only thing he's done in this field is allow states to do their own thing and decide amongst themselves whether or not they want to discriminate against homosexuals. He's not raising taxes on the whole, unless, of course, you've heard that one guy say that he heard about him raising taxes, in which case he's raising taxes a tenfold. We're in a recession and he knows better than to raise taxes. He doesn't own the banks. Congress decided that it would be worth it to bail out some banks (with a huge price tag, woot) but he doesn't control what they do with the bailout cash. I don't think anybody really wants the government to own the banks and most people want to get the government out of the banks as soon as its possible to do so without losing our nation's creditors. And he's calling for substantially increased government funding, but that's precisely what we need in this time. The government creating jobs is what undid Hoover's failures and it will do the same about Bush's. He's going to the left, but he's going to stop before we are a socialist nation.

What's also grinding my gears is how people don't know the difference between Communism and Socialism. Communism essentially has no government, much unlike Socialism. Communism is a form of 'government' in which people put into the pot what they can and take out what they need. It won't work with real humans, but in a perfect world, it would be utopia. Communism didn't ruin nations like China, a failed attempt at Communism that turned out to be fascist dictatorship did. Obama is not a dictator and he never will be, so stop thinking we are going to start a neo-Communist revolution.

An Absurdity

I'm watching Fox News right now, because I have nothing better to do in my life. I checked out Comedy Central and it didn't catch my interest, so I went to the most amusing network on television. They are seriously trying to make the argument that Sarah Palin's resignation will boost our economy. Usually I can see the conservative perspective on things, but for the life of me, I can't see their argument here. We all know that she's going to spend the next two years roaming the country, getting paid obscene amounts of money to make poorly developed speeches to her conservative fans, but she seems to forget that 80% of America can already see through her Rove-with-a-vagina conservative appeal. its also no news that she is going to make a run for the White House, but she and her brainwashed idiots at Fox News seem to be the only ones that haven't got the memo yet. She has no credentials. She has no foreign policy experience. Aside from going to five different schools to get her bachelor's in journalism, her only credentials include failing at being the last breath from a dying McCain campaign and failing her Alaskan citizens (all 686,293 of them) when she decided not to follow through on her promise to serve her four year term as governor. If she manages to brainwash the 60 million votes she'll need to steal it will be the worse mark on our nation's record since Reagan sleeping in meetings, Eisenhower saying that Brown v. Board was a mistake, or Hoover falling asleep at the wheel of a falling economy.

Social Networking Utility?

Facebook has to be one of the most overrated things to come to fame in the past decade. Somehow, newscasters and most adults got the impression that one single website defines our generation, when really, it just damages it. I'd be great if facebook took two years back. Maybe if they stopped changing formats, kicked the ridiculous apps and pointless quizzes, and make it less of a stalkerbook, it would actually be a social networking utility. Its hardly social nowadays. At first, facebook chat seemed like a step forward because it made it so you could have a conversation with somebody without people stalking it and without having to refresh the page constantly. But soon, the appeal wore off when servers became unreliable and people realized it was just a nooby version of AIM and only served a real purpose if you were online all the time. Nobody writes on others' walls anymore and nobody unassociated with stupid groups and events bothers sending messages. There's some merit to the networking aspect of it, I guess. But wouldn't it make more sense to network at work or at meetings than on a site most businessmen avoid?

There are a couple redeeming aspects of it. It sometimes actually helps organize events and provides people with a way to talk to people when they're afraid of talking to an actual person. One of my friends says, "the point of facebook it to talk to people you wouldn't otherwise talk to." I've talked to a dozen or so people on facebook that I wouldn't have spoken to otherwise, but I'd be able to live without those pointless little side conversations. But I'll admit its a good way to keeping in touch with high school friends during college, to whatever extent that's appealing.

I remember about a week after I got my account, when I got used to how things work and such, I thought I was missing something. Its like...what happens now? I'm still wondering. I've wasted so many hours on facebook its not even funny, and I know thousands of other teens have as well. Worth it? Doubt it.

from

from a flame

comes sorrow

the fire that burns a home

comes pain

the fire that burns the skin

comes love

the fire that burns a matrimonial candle

comes peace

the fire that burns a cremation

comes another mind

the fire that burns a joint

No Thanks

Porn has it place in society, though I can't believe its a good one.  People can do it if they want; their decisions, though likely destructive, aren't mine to make.  That doesn't bother me that much.  What does bother me, however, is when it isn't a matter of choice.  Even before midnight, there are Girls Gone Wild ads on Comedy Central.  No thanks.  Do not want.  I don't want my Reno 911 interrupted by reminders of how big the porn industry is.  It is my decision if I want to partake in such activities.  Or at least it should be.  I don't want to see hardly-censored tits when I'm at a stage in my life where I want to make generally good decisions.  Like any guy who has the balls to admit it, I've done that stuff in the past (and regretted it), and for me, that's where I'm hoping it stays.  If I want to change that, it should be my choice, not anybody else's.

Besides, if you want to do that, are 20-second Comedy Central ads really the place to go?

Of Things Lost

High school is no longer mine.  Its not like I'm leaving my home for college; when that happens I'll be welcome back.  I'm leaving high school for good.  No coming back.  No more first days of school, no more cramming for AP tests, no more staying up late for homework I've had dozens of hours to do, no more band concerts in my sweaty oversized tux, no more shitty band camps, no more competitions to see who can take more AP classes than everybody else, no more calculating to see if my GPA is above 4.165 or not, no more Supernova, no more audience-less jazz band competitions, no more thrills marching on the feild at Valley, no more listening to Dub push her students, no more 7 a.m. classes, no more waiting 10 minutes to get from the North lot to my house two kilometers away.  I'll go back, but none of that will ever be mine again.