My Life
After a week of meager sleep, I slept eighteen hours over two days and now feel, in the revered words of Winston Churchill, "fuckin' great!" Yesterday, for instance, I woke up with the smell of junior year in my nostrils. I wondered why.
It's been a goddamn long time since I last posted for the sake of posting. All of the thin stuffings that have appeared since September have been leftover shrapnel from college essays and GameFAQs fanfics. But today, the first thing I wanted to do when I got up was to write for this site and for myself. And eloquence be damned, I am going to write a wall of text. Less matter with less art.
Christmas break is finally upon me, and as the drama tones down, I wonder, What the hell has happened to me? Last year, I took test after test with enthusiasm that I literally defined. These days, I can't last for two full school weeks without a long weekend, a day off, some sort of respite from the inexorable daily grind.
And looking back, a hell of a lot of "stuff" has happened since last I wrote a piece like this. Despite all academic tameness, November of this month was as eventful as May of last year.
School, I s'pose is the first on my agenda. Taking less courses has drained my passion for the institution, and now I have this acute desire to get the hell out of high school.
First period "AP" English is a minor joke. Discussion, as last year, is ineffectual and superficial. This year, however, Jane has decided to kick it up several notches on the Jane-o-meter, as it were. Everything that she says makes me laugh. Perhaps it's the presence of Albert and Anandh; perhaps it's my becoming more detached; perhaps it's Kenneth Branagh's accusing eyes and tragic rendition of Alas, poor Yorick! But it looks to be a respectable, 88-able class. And much more enjoyable than last year.
Multivariable Calculus with Noeth is no longer a course, and this, perhaps most of all, is one of the reasons for decline. I rush on the homework to get it all done, get all the wrong answers, and then get royally fucked on the tests. "Class" is sporadic, always interesting, and reliably incomprehensible. There was a time when I was good at math. Those were good times. I don't think I've said this since ye old eighth grade days of Geometry, but I would consider myself blessed by God if I got an A- in that class.
Physics is ridiculously mind-numbing. McClung's experience with two-year-olds obviously bleeds into his senior honors class teaching, and that's incredibly legit. However, he also offers around six different methods to do each problem, on which he follows through with none - making it essentially self-taught. And... what's that supposed to mean? Why the hell are we going so slowly if it's all self-taught? And why are we doing labs when he just tells us what we're supposed to get? Fucking rhetorical questions are getting in the way.
Gym is surprisingly intense. 'Least it was for the second half of the first quarter. After discovering that hitting a softball requires neither physical strength nor hand-eye co-ordination, my team spirit shot up, and the season became legendary. Down six games to three with four games left in the season, we won three in a row... and then lost the last one to bad weather. Anti-climax, much? - Speedball, while fun, has not matched the lost intensity. And the weather outside mocks our decision not to play. Where the hell is the snow?
French disgusts me. I know I should put forth effort, but I cannot bring myself to do such a thing, save for fakejobbing every other homework and being a total jackass during class. I don't know how long I can keep up the farce to Leavitt que je suis un etudiant enamore avec la langue francaise, but if she ever finds out, then my first term success will be naught to the wrath of the second.
Sixth-period lunch... Heh. Well, last year's "If you're anyone, then you have math sixth period" rule applies this year, as well. Due to Calculus during this period, it's MV day in and day out. Not inherently a problem, but not dynamic, either.
Stats... kill me now. It's the jokiest subject in existence, and the pace of it is deplorable. But because of those very factors, motivation level for the entirety of the class is barrel-scraping. And the result: Mutschler owning an apathetic bunch of idiots.
Deep breath. Cleanse myself of school.
The logical thread of high school is college. All about me, my friends commit themselves to the finest higher-education institutions around the nation. I cheer them on and laugh with them, even realising that I won't be so highly calibrated. A bit of an idealist, I wanted to apply to a whole bunch of schools and see which ones would accept me. Well... I am going to apply to a whole bunch of schools and see which ones will accept me... except that I'm doing a totally half-assed job on their applications. Fuck the Ivy League. Fuck Illinois.
I sent an unrealistic early app to Yale. My logic about applying to a whole bunch of schools applied to this decision; if I got in, great, but if I didn't, I would still be chill. I had a spiffing interview, gave a strong showing on my essay. They deferred me, of course, and I think I'm living with that pretty well. I'm not sitting so well with my friends' attitudes of "hey, what the fuck, we're in college now." Jealousy? Maybe. Perhaps it's the pain of having chosen a different path.
Outside of school, this year has actually been somewhat more eventful than years gone by. From a borderline hikikomori lifestyle, I've started working three separate miniature jobs. The total is around five hours a week, but having my own income is an interesting sensation. Less interesting is the sensation of not buying any Christmas gifts for anyone, but fuck that one.
Teaching piano is the first of three. One of the two students is the legendary Krupa, Anandh's brother. The other is my sister's friend's brother, Kevin. Their civility in and out of context is shocking. In the presence of respective siblings, they are obtrusive, loud, and generally irritating as all hell. When subjected to my shepherding, they are docile, responsive, and - most shockingly, to me - eager students. I really get the feeling that they're learning because they want to learn. They're doing a great job of deception - that, or the art of piano genuinely interests them.
Working at Kumon is a minor joke. It is the highest caliber of Serious Business. The majority of the staff is a bunch of high school kids trying to kill time and make money, and the kids that Kumon instructs are often extremely loud. Yet, the first rule of Kumon is not to talk. That was the first rule that I broke, anyway, and the "Kumon spirit" got into me. There ain't nothing like stapling a whole bunch of Kumon worksheets, assigning a month's work of homework in the span of ten minutes on a Tuesday afternoon. Best of all is the anticipation for House later. Worst is the knowledge that three hours of actual homework have to fit between seven-thirty and nine o'clock. Here, Krupa is much more in his element - incessant, jackassish, the works.
My final source of income is tutoring the kid across the street, Krupa's friend, Shinya. I help him with, of all things, writing. As far as I can tell, I basically edit what he writes, tell him to make corrections, and sit around in his spinning chair. I usually fall asleep with my eyes open before slapping myself and asking him how far he has progressed. I only hope that I'm getting to him on some sort of subconscious level.
A nice transition now would be to talk about how Shinya has had a Nintendo Wii since launch, but instead, I'm going to talk about driving. My Master Plan of getting my driver's license bright and early during the year met entangled fates when I failed several road tests. I passed on November 1, the day after I sent in that ill-fated application to Yale. Since then, I've driven a little every week, though I no longer drive my mom around under any circumstances. Since getting my license, I've been remarkably legal, save for a $200 scrape on the first day, a one-time illegal transportation of an unlicensed idiot in her own car, and driving my dad home impromptu without my driver's license. The utility of having a driver's license is high, and while I don't like to drive, it's unfortunately very convenient, so I do it anyway. As long as I'm not paying for gas...
Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged is probably the best thing currently on the Internet after Livejournal, and it alone basically resparked my playing of the game. Eight, possibly ten of my friends now play the "Paper Variation" at school and out of it. Anime rules are hilarious, and epic is the name of the game. Screw the rules, I have money.
The other anime that I followed this autumn, besides Yu-Gi-Oh!, is Welcome the NHK!. Satou Tatsuhiro is a hikikomori, unemployed college dropout, socially inept. NHK is the first anime that I have followed since birth, and as I write, its 24th and final episode has finished downloading. After an amazing first half, it lagged significantly for around five weeks and has made a remarkable recovery in the last four. I am definitely anticipating it.
Internet Serious Business vanished at the end of November. After a disappointing 2006 character contest and a deplorably boring "Contest Season" message board, I gave away my GameFAQs accounts and haven't looked back. The only thing I feel like I've lost - get this - is a willing audience for the textual crap that I spew out onto this site. But hey, You Are Donkey Kong was my magnum opus, and they got the full brunt of that.
And finally, gaming is back in black. My hiatus from the sport last year was almost complete, but I have consciously made the effort to get back into it. After a few dabblings into the ROM of Tales of Phantasia, a GameFAQs Brit invited me into his fighting game tournament. After insisting that my computer would be unable to play the game and reminding him that I was no longer part of the GameFAQs community, I became furiously addicted to Garou: Mark of the Wolves. It is a damned fine game, surpassing the fabled Super Smash Bros: Melee.
GameBoy Advance is making its last callout with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Funny, how my last GBA game will actually be a Super NES game. C'est la vie, Nintendo! Because I'll be damned if I don't get a DS one of these days.
Wiifully speaking, Robert and I made two unsuccessful rounds to purchase one of the elusive consoles a few weeks ago. The first resulted in a breakfast involving Sprite! and Hamburgers! The second resulted in my purchasing Resident Evil 4 and a new GameCube memory card. It is a polished game with notable gameplay flaws, but it's effortless, difficult, gory fun that definitely made the wait for Wii more bearable.
Because I have it now. I've barely touched Wii Sports and haven't even opened Red Steel, but The Legend of Zelda is back. So far, the game doesn't seem to surpass Majora's Mask, but it adheres indecently closely to Ocarina of Time, and with polished control and graphics, it should almost definitely overtake its 1998 predecessor. Almost. I will find out this vacation.
So, those are the elements of life. How has it been? Really, not that bad. Asphyxiating nostalgia and apathetic academics aside, I'm spending much more time with my friends outside of school this year. "Time of my life" it has not been, because I have higher hopes for college, but "time of my life this far" would be only a minor stretch. I won't pretend that dancing with Patrick Wu on December 15 did not make my life. Because it did.
OH MY GOD THERE'S NO 24 WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?
I'm going to do my laundry... could I have some change.
SD
Dec. 24, '06
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