Friendship

On more than one occasion, I've found myself in positions that could have easily been avoided. For instance, I am currently upside down in my chair. That could have been avoided had I placed my butt on the chair first, rather than my face.

I could have also avoided embarrassment in social situations by thinking about what I say before I say it. I'm sure I've scared off  a number of potential friends by telling them things like, "My cat threw up on me yesterday. It was yellow. Oh don’t worry, not the cat. The puke," or, "I once ate a beetle because it looked like a Raisenet!" or, "I love you." I’m sure it happens to you as often as it does me.

It’s really a painful situation for all taking part in the banter (unless someone’s a d-bag). After I say something stupid, my thoughts are kind of like this: Oh. My. God. Who just said that? That was so stupid of them. Wait…that was me! GAH! WHAT THE HECK. Stop looking at me like that! Uhh, I must redeem myself…Uhhh…uhhhh, “Just kidding!” [everyone laughs awkwardly]

Everyone else is thinking something along the lines of Wow. This poor guy. I can’t believe he just said that. What should I do? I could laugh it off, but he might think I’m laughing at him…’cause I would be. I wonder if it tasted like a Raisenet. Oh, wait. He just said he’s kidding [awkward laughs].

The jerks that are in on the conversation start laughing hysterically and thinking My hair is so cool. Where’s a mirror. Ooooh, yeah. Sexy.

[paragraph smoothly leading transition to next paragraph about main topic]

And though lions would be ten times more awesome if they had laser vision and could fly, they still wouldn’t make good friends, and not just because of their chainsaw claws. They wouldn’t be able to do the two basic things that make people friends: shared experiences (lions aren’t allowed into movies – they distract the audience with lasers on the screen) and conversation (their accents are horrible).

Shared Experiences

After you go to the movies or to a restaurant or whatever with some friends or acquaintances, you always feel closer to everyone who was there. Unless you told them about your cat’s puke (or unless someone was a total jerk). This is because suddenly you have something in common with everyone who was there: the experience.

The experience is now something that everyone who was present can draw on when talking to each other. They can be like, “Oh, hey! Remember that one night when I did that thing with the straw and the waitress?” “OH YEAH! That was awesome! Haha!” “I know!” Only the people who were present will have a clue what they are talking about.

Not all experiences are created equal, however. Saying, “Remember that one time when we were walking to class and nothing particularly interesting happened?” is bound to get a less enthusiastic response than, “Remember that one time when we were cliff diving and that lion flew over and caught us? His accent was hilarious!” Here are some different experiences and their likely effectiveness in bringing people together.

-Watching television: It’s not very effective

-Sleeping: It doesn’t effect FRIEND.

-Seeing a good movie: Normal effectiveness

-Discovering a world with a totally rad lion in the back of a wardrobe – Like, really really effective (But what the heck were you planning on doing in there?)

The experiences don’t necessarily have to be fun to make people better friends. Traumatic experiences also bring people closer together.

-Stubbing your toe: Not effective at all, and everyone thinks you’re a wimp because your eyes start watering.

-Everyone present stubs toes: A little effective

-Seeing a bad movie: Kind of effective

-Emergency room run: Very effective.

-Shank or gunshot wound: It’s super effective! (must be accompanied by ER run, however)

Of course, this has its exceptions. For instance, if you stabbed your friend, that could be pretty bad for the friendship, even if you drove him to the ER afterward. Death can do some considerable damage to the friendship as well.

Conversation

Conversation is a different creature from shared experiences. Unlike those, with a conversation you can’t just jump right into the good stuff. There is a very strict code of conduct when it comes to conversations.

First of all, there are three different levels of conversation: “shallow”, “deep”, and “like, really deep.”

Shallow conversation topics are what you would expect. They consist of things you talk about with strangers when forced to interact with them, such as the weather, the news, and how one time you threw up on your dog (oh, wait…). Compliments about appearance also are in this category, but you must use them sparingly and subtly. If you overuse them or interject with one at an inappropriate time, bad things happen (involving some tweezers and arm hair).

Topics in the “deep” category deal mostly with emotions or emotional things that aren’t normally considered appropriate to discuss with strangers. Things like embarrassing anecdotes, love life, and feelings that don’t involve the person you’re talking to are on this level. Compliments about someone’s personality fall under here, too.

Things that are, like, really deep are secrets, like how you sleep with your teddy bear still, or how you have all the seasons of Gilmore Girls on DVD, or how you have a shrine to Ke$ha in your closet.

With those in mind, let’s see the rules for what society dictates is a normal conversation.

1.      Start with the shallow.

2.      After (or if) initial awkward interaction subsides, you can move to deep stuff.

3.      Repeat about a billion times.

4.      After step three, it’s probably safe to proceed to, like, really deep stuff.

Deviations from this method can result in a number of different situations.

1. “This is a little awkward.” This usually happens when you proceed to step two prematurely. They don’t know what to say, and their lack of response makes you self-conscious. D-bags do this religiously.

You: How’re you liking this weather.

Stranger: It’s nice.

You: Yeah. You are so nice and caring.

Stranger: Who are you?

You: But you can be a little selfish. I ran over my neighbor’s cat this morning.

Stranger: …

2. “He’s outgoing.” This also happens when you skip to step two, but it’s done with charisma and class.

3. “I think you’re creepy.” This always happens when you jump directly to step four and skip the other three. No exceptions. You can’t tell someone whose name you just learned that you occasionally feel the desire to dress up as a woman. You just can’t. Unless you’re a woman, I guess. It would still be kind of creepy to tell someone that, though. This also occurs when you repeatedly proceed to step two prematurely.

You: Hello!

Stranger: Hi.

[awkward silence]

You: So, I kind of think I might kind of, like, like this one girl. She’s so nice. At least I think she is. I’m divorced. Well, kind of. It's complicated

Stranger (now creeped out): Oh…uh, that’s cool.

You: Yeah. I love you. What?

Stranger: …

As a rule of thumb, with acquaintances you should stick to shallow topics. With friends, you can use shallow and deep topics. Reserve the really deep stuff for people you know won’t get creeped out.

Spiders

Spiders and I have a love-hate relationship.

We both hate each other, and we both love to hate each other.

It wasn't always this way, though...oh, wait. I think it was. I honestly didn't realize how deep-seated our blood feud was until now when I tried to think of a time when I didn't hate spiders (here's a secret: I couldn't).

What I did remember was looking flipping through children's science books when I was young, fascinated with everything...except the spiders. I would purposefully skip over the pages about them, or, if there was a particular bit of information I wanted to read on the same page, I would cover up the pictures of spiders.

Our feud started to pick up pace in middle school when spiders started stealing my socks (I know it was them). That's when I adopted my mantra, "The only good spider is a dead spider." It's true. How many spiders do you see volunteering at hospitals or donating money to charity? None, that's how many. You can't even find one spider that isn't currently plotting a murder.

See this bugger?

Yeah, that's right. He is scary. He's the Tree-dwelling Funnel-web spider. He's aggressive. If you get close to him, he stands on his hind legs to get ready to pounce. What's worse is that his poison doesn't affect most animals. His prey consists of monkeys and humans, yo. Tell me that you didn't just pee your pants. Go ahead, tell me.

...You're such a liar. Anyway, I'm pretty sure there's on of these in my garage or something. He's been sending waves of spiders after me for years now. I thwarted on of his biggest advances several years ago, and since then, I think he's been being pretty cautious.

You see, one night I was playing video games, minding my own business, when suddenly, the most disgusting, creepy-looking spider you could ever imagine was running right at me. I grabbed a shoe and sent him back to spider hell (there is no spider heaven). Five minutes later, a freaking black widow is advancing on my position. I panicked, but managed to send her back from whence she came too. She looked like this:

After that, I knew something was up.

I grabbed a can of bug spray and searched the house. I found about three separate ambushes set up for me: one in the television room, one in my bedroom, and one in the bathroom each consisting of two or more spiders. 

For some reason, I went into the garage that night. Why I would go to spider central after having survived several attempts at taking my life, I don't know. But that was when I saw him: the big boss. I knew he was the evil mastermind behind the attacks from the moment I saw him. He was standing there looking all smug - right there in front of the door. I whipped out the spray, but too late. He had already scurried back to his lair. I was a paranoid mess for the rest of the night.

One of these days, we're going to face off. Like Harry Potter and Voldemort, but with less wands and love and stuff, and more shoes and guts and bug spray.

9 Things I Enjoy

1. That moment immediately after killing a spider. It's that moment where you feel the relief wash over you. You know the world has one less spider to worry about, and you feel as if you have done the world a great justice. It's a very short-lived feeling, however. You quickly realize that where there is one spider, there are more...just out of sight...likely planning to avenge their fallen comrade's death tonight while you sleep.

2. Waking up to the sound of rain on my window. It's nice.

3. Being able to enjoy my birthdays. It seems that past age twenty-five, birthdays become something to dread. You are no longer getting older, you're just getting old.* Plus, most of the presents you get you could have bought yourself.

4. Logging into Facebook and having notifications. What? Someone appreciates me? I wonder who it is! I wonder what it's about! I hope they liked my status. Those are my favorite song lyrics, like, ever. Ke$ha is so deep. What if they liked it and commented on it! What if they're all comments! Gah! I'm so excited!

5. Waking up before my alarm clock. Everyone hates their alarm clock. It's a universal truth as absolute as death or the fact that everyone at, one point or another, accidentally swallows a beetle they mistook to be a Raisinette...Wait, what? You haven't? Well, you will. Trust me.

Anyway, it's always fun to beat your alarm clock at his own game. You can celebrate by taunting him, turning him off, or getting revenge by screeching in his face. That'll teach him.

6. Finding money in your pockets. Almost as good as finding it in someone else's.

7. Scaring cats. They get all puffy.

8. Cats that chase lasers. They are automatically ten times cooler than cats that don't. And their twenty times cooler when they're out for the little, elusive dot's blood, when they chase that thing with everything they've got. Only one thing could be better than this. (Hint: it's the same thing, only with tile floors.)

9. Mandarin oranges. They're like baby oranges.

*I apologize if I ruined birthdays for you.

Brain

My brain hates me. 

He doesn't just dislike me. If he saw me out in public somewhere, he wouldn't just avert his gaze. He would  plot an elaborate scheme to murder me involving apple juice, rubbing alcohol, and spiders all while muttering nasty things under his breath, like how I'm nothing without him and how I should go die in a ditch.

Fortunately, he kinda sorta needs me somewhat in a way that if I were to die, he'd probably die too. So instead, he makes me miserable in a great number of non-lethal ways. He forgets birthdays I want to remember. He messes with my emotions. He makes my muscles twitching incessantly when he thinks he's being over-worked (or he's bored).

He's particularly fickle when it comes to academics. I've come to find that the majority of the time, he cooperates when it benefits him. He enjoys learning new things since, face it, he can't really do much else for fun. He usually helps me on tests and stuff too, since if I do well, he gets more informative fodder. But on some odd occasions, he just decides to stop working during important tests or activities that you would think he'd benefit from. I think he does it to make sure I know who's in charge.

He flexed his figurative muscles during the SAT when I was doing the timed essay. He held a good idea just out of reach, sometimes throwing little parts of it out for me to grab, but not enough to build anything out of. He single-handedly kept me from getting over a 2000. That jerk.

To keep me in constant fear of essays of the timed variety, he's done that with one I've had since then.

If I were to have a conversation with him, it'd probably go like this:

Me:  'Sup, Brain?

Brain: I hate you.

Me: Yo, I know, dude. That timed essay yesterday? That sucked. Not cool, man.

Brain: I know, it was awesome, right? You like failed totes. Big time. Good times, good times.

Me: You make me sad.

Brain: You bet I do, sucka!

What a dick.

...So to speak.

Mind Games

The other day, I joined my sister in watching TV. After a moment, I decided that the TV was too quiet. Earlier that day I hadn't been able to find the remote for the television. I figured it was still lost so I got up and turned it up manually. I turned and asked my sister's approval for the new volume: "Is this good?"

Her eyes opened wide in shock, and I started to feel a little nervous. What? Is there something wrong? Is the TV so loud it's offensive? Is there a spider on me? Oh, I hope there isn't a spider on me. I would flip out if there was a big, hairy, eight-legged killing machine on me. They are vile, vile creatures. Where's a shoe?!

After that thought process, she asked, "Can you read my mind?" very surprised-like. Huh? What kind of a question is that? I just wanted to know if I turned up the volume enough. Then I realized she had been wanting the volume up too.

Apparently, before I turned up the volume, she had been thinking about turning up the volume, but she couldn't find the remote and didn't want to get up to turn it up. So when I got up, turned the volume up, and asked her if it was loud enough, I freaked her out. 

I proceeded to tell her that she shouldn't be thinking those things she thinks all the time about that one person.

10 Things That Annoy Me

These aren't in any particular order.

1. Getting texts when I'm busy. When I'm trying to do something important, the last thing I want to do is to stop what I'm doing, pull out my phone, and text someone back thus initiating a repeating sequence of stopping, texting, and starting again. But if I don't text back, they usually get mad that I didn't. It's a no-win situation.

2. When I text someone, but they don't text back. It hurts my feelings. It makes me think, "What, I'm not important enough for you to take a minute to text back?" Usually while I'm waiting for someone to text back, I start doing something else. Then when I get a text, but it's not the person to whom I had originally sent a text, I get annoyed that they made me stop what I was doing.

3. When I don't know what to do with my eyes when I'm walking the opposite direction of someone in a hallway. You know they're there. They know you're there. But you two don't know each other. You look at them, but you don't want them to think you're staring, so you look away. Then you worry that they'll think you purposely choosing to not acknowledge their existence, so you look back at them. You make eye contact, and both of you quickly look away, desperately wishing that you were somewhere else.

4. When someone leaves a box of cereal in the cupboard when it is practically empty. I mean, seriously. Why couldn't they have just taken the rest of the cereal? What were they thinking? That the no one would mind if there was hardly enough cereal to fill a shot glass with the cereal? I mean, how hard would it have been to pour out the rest into your bowl and throw the box away? This usually ruins my mornings when it happens.

5. Mispronounced words. Particularly when "library" is pronounced "libary" and when "espresso" is pronounce "expresso." Also "pacific" rather than "specific."

6. Blatantly auto-tuned music. If your voice needs to be corrected so much that you sound like a robot in your songs, you shouldn't be singing. Even if it's for stylistic purposes, it sounds stupid.

7. My generation. They're stupid, lazy, and dont no much abowt spelling punctuation or grammer and have a unearned sense of entitlement

8. When I'm trying to tie my shoes, and my kitten tries to make it as difficult as possible. Nearly every time I put on my shoes, the kitten is there. He stalks me around the house in the morning, just waiting for me to put my shoes on. I think it makes his day when he makes mine harder. I try to tie them while he's grabbing them, pouncing on my shoes, and scratching up my hands. Usually once I start on the second one, he's successfully undone the first.

9. How people think tacking "just kidding" onto an insult makes everything all right. Don't look at me like that. Yes, like that. It looks ugly. Oh, that's...what? Oh, that's your normal face? Oops, sorry. You should get something for that. Like surgery...or maybe a paper bag? Just kidding. You look nice, at least in this light. Just kidding. You look bad in all light. Just kidding.

10. The way that apple juice always seems to be in every other fruit juice. It makes me scared to drink any juice. I'm allergic to apple juice. If I drink enough, things happen. Bad things. Horrible things. The kind of horrible where I should only consider drinking it if I'm constipated. And at home. On the toilet. It's not fun when I drink a glass of juice, only to find out it had 25% apple juice so I have to spend the rest of the day terrified that I'll have the dirty squirties at a very inopportune time.

Vampires

They are scary. And the other day I had a close encounter with them. At school, of all places. It was all very strange.

I was summoned from class to go see them. They made me sit down and read a booklet before they would take my blood. It was quite possibly the most boring piece of literature I have ever read, full of stuff that I could have only been written by someone with severe xenophobia, or at least a hatred for Europe, Africa, and various third-world countries. Vampires are very unexciting people. They also made me sign some stuff.

After that, they interviewed me. I guess they like to get to know their meal before they actually chow down. So I answered questions such as, "What is your birthday?" and, "Are you male?", as well as complied with some demands such as, "Show me your ID," and, "Let me see your arms." It was simple enough. I suppose that this ritual is to ensure the quality of their meals. They even had to look at my blood first before they ate it by stabbing my finger. Vampires are so picky nowadays.

After the interview, they told me to take a pop quiz on the computer and left (probably because I was still in school). It seemed to consist mostly of questions concerning my sexual activities and foreigners, or perhaps my sexual activities with foreigners. I'm not sure. I apparently passed because they came back and led me to a bed.

I laid down and braced myself for the bite, resigning myself to my fate (a fate, I might add, that could have been easily avoided had I not been so apathetic toward the whole ordeal). You can imagine my surprise when instead of biting me, they jabbed a needle in my arm. They gave me a ball to squeeze too, likely for stress for relief purposes (it helped a little). They dripped it into a nice little plastic bag, patched me up, and sent me off.

It appears that vampires are just as subject to the effects of corporate America as common people are. They're too fat and lazy to go get their own blood, so they buy packs of the stuff from the more business-minded vampires. A good move on their part. I mean, you don't see farmers harvesting their crops, then spraying them with herbicides and salting the ground.

Some more things I did not expect from the vampires are that they like Lady Gaga and that they would also give me food. Lots and lots of food.

Also, I got a t-shirt.

and a sticker.

"This does not bode well,"

...I thought while typing out this blog post, "This does not bode well at all for my productivity." It seems that this site may very well become my primary means of procrastination, perhaps for the rest of my life. It's way too much fun. Plus, there's a meter that measures how popular I am.

I've only had three blog views, and yet I fantasize that I will have at least one-hundred by tomorrow. One of them was apparently using Jakarta Commons-HttpClient. I have no clue what that is. It sounds like something I'd have to learn to speak HTML to use. I don't need HTML. I have Spanish.

Anyway, let me talk about something that has been troubling me lately.

I haven't had my first kiss yet. At least if you don't include my mother. Or my childhood friend. (she was like three, I was two). 


I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Alex! ALEEEX!! Me! I can be your first kiss, Alex! ALEEEX!" but I'm sorry. These luscious lips are sealed until I find the right woman. Or so I thought...

I recently landed a part in the school play as a WWII Sailor. When I auditioned for the part, he was to simply be narrating his journal entries. Stuff about D-Day and death and kittens or something. That was all.  But when I got the part, they dropped this huge atom-sized bomb (is that right) on me. He was no longer writing in his journal; he was writing letters to his girlfriend. Apparently, back home they were competition ballroom dancers (I'm assuming) because somewhere in the scene they are going to do the tango. Also, they are going to make out or something.

Well, not make out, per say, but rather reenact this famous WWII picture. It's a bit of a stretch, but I'd be fine with it if it wasn't for a little teensy problem. It's going to be my first kiss. I didn't really picture my first kiss being in front of an audience. Not that I pictured it. Men don't think about that stuff...

Perhaps this is life's way of saying "Yo, you've waited to long to kiss a girl. And yo momma don't count. Neither does that chick from back when you were two, yo." So now life has assigned be someone to kiss.

Speaking of being old, I'm going to turn eighteen in a few months here. I was worried that I would have to kiss her after I turned 18, since she's like sixteen (thus a minor). I've had nightmares. Horrible nightmares full of kissing and bad breath and police bursting in and slapping some 'cuffs on me saying "You're under arrest for statutory rape, you pervert, you!" Well, I haven't really, but I've thought about what would happen.

How do those laws work anyway? Look at these two different scenarios:


a) A 17-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl kiss. Aww...how sweet!


b) An 18-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl kiss. Look at that filthy, perverted rapist! Get him!


Wha-? Being done here is no making of sense. (chew on that for a while)


Anyway, I'm going to be 17 still when we put on the show. And I mean the play.


But yeah, first kisses and all that. Mine will be out in plain view for all to see. Don't miss it.

My Blog

Hoooooly crap.

This blog is overwhelming. I made it, thinking, "Oh, this will be easy. All I have to do is write stuff." Then I look around, surveying my new website (I do love having a new website. It gives me a new place to procrastinate. It was getting too difficult to procrastinate on Facebook or YouTube.) when I realized what I had gotten myself into.

I mean, look at the size of this thing! Oh, wait. you can't. What you see is similar to what one sees when the look at the line for a ride at Six Flags. You see the entrance, all nice and neat; and the line looks so short! What I see is what one sees after they've been standing in the line for two hours and still have another two hours of the cycle of sitting on handrails, being told not to sit on the handrails, and then sitting on them again. I see the labyrinth behind the elaborate disguise of walls and foliage.

When I discovered I could make this blog look pretty, I had to! I don't want an ugly blog for my readers! It has to be perfect! So, I go to that design template thingy and attempt to give my blog a makeover. I searched through the vast forest of backgrounds, looking for something that my blog would also be: something random, yet insightful; something nonsensical, yet brilliant; something completely off the wall, and yet still every and any person could relate to it. I settled on this yellow-ish background with some out-of-focus lights on the side.

I looked painstakingly through the fonts, trying to find the perfect one: Courier, Georgia, Helvetica, Tebuchet! I settled on Arial.

Then there's this HTML crap. What the hell?! I'm supposed to learn a new language to have a successful blog? This is crap! I've already learned enough Spanish to survive un fin de semana en México! But never mind that. I'll just ignore it and hope it goes away.

The elephant in the room is that no one reads this blog, and in all likelihood, no one will read this blog. Seriously, I'm just a seventeen-year-old high-schooler in a world of hundreds of thousands of seventeen-year-old high-schoolers. There are no doubt many more interesting seventeen-year-olds there. Maybe even a few, more-interesting adults. But nothing beats teenage angst. Just ask Stephanie Meyer.

Anyway, I think the point of this blog was to beg forgiveness for my web design incompetence. Or maybe it was to introduce myself.

Hi. I'm Alex, and this is my blog.