Chewing Staples

Courtesy of Portland Press Herald

To whoever thought it was a good idea to glue metal to the faces of children,

I sincerely wish you step on a LEGO while stubbing your pinky toe. You deserve to walk the LEGO Fire walk for eternity. What kinda ludicrous idea is that! "Hey look at that, your teeth aren't straight... let's just apply immense amounts of pressure until they are straight, slap some staples on there to keep them straight, and let this child deal with massive pain for the next week or so." Fact: braces are the spawn of Satan. Braces are up there with LEGOs and stubbing you small toe (I don't know why but it's always that toe). Braces are the bane of my existence.

There are a lot of things that I hate, but the few things I like, I enjoy more than I enjoy getting a package in the mail. This includes, of course, eating. Braces make eating painful... PAINFUL! Imma go crazy, I need to feed... like vampires... hehe.... where's the door? I'll let myself out. Anyway, for those of you who have been blessed with not having braces, let me explain. After laying down with your mouth open for an hour getting metal wires strapped to your face you get sore, really, really sore. If you've ever felt the insane pain of being sore in your abdomen (your abs) and sneezing, that's what it feels like every single time you chew, except in your teeth... hehe, imagine sitting at the dinner table and every time you chew you kinda just a stabbing sensation in your abs... hehe. One more thing on food, braces make everything tastes like metal... everything. I feel like I'm sucking on a marble 24/7.

Another thing that I hate about braces, they make you look like an idiot. I'm sorry to any of you who have braces, but let us be honest, we look dumb. Can you imagine a grown man with a grill all up in his teeth, no ya can't, because it's not right. Not to mention, I'm a pretty big nerd I guess you could say, I prefer eccentric... To say the least I bring my DS to school and battle my friends with my Pokémon team. On top of that, my Wasian (Asian/White) exterior does not help, I confirm a lot of stereotypes about Asians (martial arts experience, good grades, etc.). To add on to all of that I live in a small community, with a small school district, and a whopping total of five Asians in my school. To conclude, braces have given me a -200 appearance drop on my power level, all I need is glasses and I'm the stereotypical Asian, and nerd, at the same time.

Hey, look at that, I got a top hat.
Courtesy of Automative Digital Marketing

Finally, some advice brother to random readers, don't ask people who just got braces, "You got braces?" This is because we have to say, "Ya," when we wanna say, "No, I just decided to drill thumbtacks through each and every one of my teeth." To say the least, braces=Satan.

"The Art of Keeping Up with Yesterday"

Courtesy of Number Works n' Words

If there's one thing that I struggle with the most, it's procrastination. Those of you who actually noticed that my posts are being posted ages apart, you're my favorites, and to those of you who did not, I don't blame you (but you're still not my favorites). I apologize for being lazy and procrastinating, but as an optimist I prefer the term, Pro Procrastinator. Wow, now that I typed that in I realized how massively stupid that is... I'll change it later. Anyway, this thing where I don't do the things that I should be doing and put them off by doing other things, it's not good. I've got it down to a lifestyle, not a science, this is like, a whole nother' subject that I could teach as a professor at Harvard or something. Sorry, is my ADHD showing, let me cover that up (I don't have ADHD... yet).

So first things third, homework. Nobody wants to do anything even relating to school after spending seven hours in what feels to be a building overflowing in hormones, learning at a pace either too fast or too slow, and learning in general. Not my fault I don't care about the science behind the reproduction of mushrooms and how we can use math to calculate how fungi will grow. That sentence most likely put most of you to sleep. I always end up doing anything other than my homework, I sit there with my homework in front of me and then I realize how detailed the wall is. Then I realize how soft my carpet is, and how odd the fan looks, and that odd white noise that my brain chooses to ignore.

I can do the arts too...

Then, I got this system where I let myself watch "one" Youtube video, or an episode on Netflix if I've been working for a while, as a break, and I swear, if the lords of the interwebs didn't put a "suggestions" or "next episode" bar after you finish the video or episode, I would be getting sleep for a change. We all tell ourselves, "One more episode couldn't be that harmful," and then you finish watching everything involving cats on the internet, all eight seasons of your new favorite show, and six movies at 6:15 a.m. the next morning. You look at the time and you reach that point of absolute insanity and you begin to do that thing where you cry while laughing because you know you're massively screwed. Like when you spent all night studying for a test and you reach that insane state of mind as you realize you have no idea what you're doing while taking the test. Yeah... I've got way too much experience with this.

I got this friend in math and the things he says are gold, and yeah, I made that, be proud of me.

This post itself is me procrastinating, I should be doing homework right now but... meh. Welp, I'll try to post more often and may you have a magical day/night.

The Snooze Button

See this little guy, it's my alarm clock, and if you dare press the snooze button, you will receive another minute of sleep, but it will roll off the nightstand and under your bed while piercing your ears with what sounds to be R2-D2 with Tourettes Syndrome

Dear that one guy who decided it was okay to make children wake up at ridiculously early times just to be forced into a confined space to learn,
I sincerely wish I could judo kick your face so hard that your body goes into orbit with Jupiter. If there's two things I hate most about school, it's homework and the immensely illogical times that school begins and ends. My school day starts at 7:35 in the morning, in other words students are forced to fall out of bed at around 6 o'clock if they want a sufficient breakfast and to not break the law by skipping school.

Image Courtesy of THX
What you alarm sounds like in the morning (if you can't retrieve any memory of what this sounds like you're too young for the internet).

Personally, I have given up on waking up for school. It has come to the point where I have two alarms set, one on my phone and one on that little slice of that I call Talbot. That's right, I named my alarm clock after a villain from a video game, not crazy... then again I did name my alarm clock... Anyway, it's not working. As a kid I wasn't much of a morning person either, through hard work I developed a special routine. To begin I chose what to clothes wear the night and I then proceeded to through the clothes on the ground. The next morning I proceeded to, literally, fall out of bed and, using the spirit animal of the worm, I began to squirm into my clothes on the ground. I've never been a morning person, never will I ever be. I find it almost funny that I have the physical ability to get up and shut my phone alarm off just so that I may go straight back to bed. Then Talbot starts ringing in attempt to crumble Mount Olympus and destroy all of sealmanity (kinda like humanity, but with seals). Therefore, I have adapted to my dreadful environment and developed the ability to change my alarm while still asleep. I know, it's straight up witchcraft. I have been receiving fragmented memory of these anomalies in which I roll over and feel around for my clock, constantly mashing buttons until I am able to either post-pone my arrival into the cold, dark morning of despair, or I'll turn off the alarm completely.

Turning off my alarm causes me to not wake up, me not waking up causes time, in which I should be using sufficiently, to pass, passing time causes my motherly unit to realize that I am not awake, realizing I'm not awake causes my mother to make all seven layers of absolute hell break loose, thus activating my mutant ability to be at the bus stop in five minutes and thirty seven seconds. Activation of mutant abilities causes the inevitable instant exhaustion, instant exhaustion causes failure, failure causes depression, depression and failure eventually lead to my living in a box, a fairly large box though. Sponsored by DIRECTV. Now, I must finish the rest of my horrid homework, and make sail for dreamland, wish that your ancestors be with me.

That Week

Courtesy of Say Something Sarcastic

So it's that time of year again! For some of us, it's the end of the quarter, others have midterms, and I'm not even gonna mention school's with trimesters, y'all are weird. Anyway, for those of us with quarters and midterms, this is the week in which we die. Not literally of course, but if you're not up at midnight studying like I am right now, you gon' fail. Hahaha, I wanna go to sleep so bad. That's right, we got the finals and midterms! One of the absolute worst parts of the school year, almost as bad as semester endings and those massive standardized tests that we have to take at the end of the year (two blogs for a darker day).

I've dreaded these weeks for as long as I've been able to, which is like... a long time. If you've read my about page (which you SHOULD have), you'll know that I tend to procrastinate. I am so lazy that my about page (READ IT) just ends with a procrastination joke because I was too lazy to think of anything else. I could not sit for more than ten minutes thinking about what to write, so I used my procrastination as an excuse to procrastinate. Procrastination to the max! Back on topic (apologies), this week I've had four tests, two in different languages, a project due, and last week I had four tests. Almost all of them were finals or chapter/unit tests. 

Courtesy of Binary Options

My ability to waste a large amount of time in an extremely efficient way does not help my performance. This post itself is me procrastinating, I have a vocab final tomorrow and I'm all like, "Well I got to get to work," then I look at the vocab sheet, "Mmmhhm, mmmhm, yeah that's not gonna happen." Then, after feeling guilty of not doing anything, I get started on a post so that I feel like I'm actually contributing to my own wellbein. Eventually, the guilt eats at me until I end up using something like Quizlet to study. This might be because I never really studied until this year. Not to brag (what people say just as they're about to brag), but before I became a Freshmen, I was the one student who didn't study, yet still recieved an A. The work would get done, but I never studied. My teachers and fellow classmates hated it because it's "unfair," and to my fellow classmates who hated me because of that, welcome to the real world. Although, this hasn't given me the greatest study habits for the tests I'm taking now.

So, if you haven't noticed, I love to sleep and not sleeping is awful. This week has kept me away from the sweet embrace of my bed and myself is not happy about it. Whoever decided it was a good idea to: give students all of their tests at the exact same time, make the tests worth around fifty percent their grade, and expect the students to wake up extremely early after binge studying for seven hours, I hate you. Well, at least all my tests are over now, well, that is until semester endings.

Netflix: The Gift and the Curse

Image Courtesy of Twitter

Okay, let's talk entertainment. There are few things in the world that I love more than Netflix, food, sleep, and food. It has come to my attention that when provided all possible episodes of the new show that I have become hooked on, I will watch all possible episodes of my new favorite show back-to-back. Should I never finish this post due to my urge to continue watching, I pay may respects to the few of you out there who are reading, it's been an honor. In all seriousness though, Netflix is amazing, I could leave my chair right now, watch a season of a show of my choosing, and most likely never finish this post because I have decided to live in a tree house pillow fort, and if anybody needs me that's where I will be, watching Netflix and coloring. This majestic stallion delivered to us humans by God himself is great enough that I can devote a portion of my life to wasting myself away on the beautiful wings of entertainment that we call TV shows and movies. Yes, I may have over exaggerated a little bit, but I can not overemphasis how great this device is.

Yet, there is a twist, if you have the ability, which I hope you do, to remember three of the things that I love in this life, you'll remember that sleep is on that list. Netflix has driven me to the point in which I must choose between the things I love, sleep, or Netflix. I know, tragic that such a young child must make such a hard decision, #firstworldproblems. That's right, I just used a hashtag, I'm twenty-first century like that. Anyway, I've reached a point that when the sun goes down I must choose, to sleep or to continue watching. We all have our own Netflix records (or at least I hope we all have our own records), the most time we've spent binge watching a show or series, and I'd rather not share my own because I fear that any or all respect that those of you reading this have for me will be lost. I, myself, find it awfully sad that one person has the ability to waste so much time, yet I enjoy doing so.

In the end Netflix is fantastic, but, as it is said in Spiderman, also on Netflix, "With great power there must also come great responsibility."

The Glass Is Always Full

Courtesy of  Costa Rican Times

So, I recently figured out that being injured... sucks. Ever since I got hurt all I can do is hobble along on my massive black boot throughout the school day and then I have to come home, elevate my leg, and ice my foot. Most of my day is spent either sitting in class, laying at home letting my brain rot, or laying at home doing homework. Not doing anything is making me feel sick and tired when I'm not doing anything to make me feel that way. Now I'm not writing just to complain, and I know it must sound awfully annoying, but during times like this we all have to stay optimistic.

Optimism can be a great thing, and I try to stay as optimistic as I can whenever I am able to, but it's hard. We all hit rock bottom, or somewhere near rock bottom, every now and then. We reach a point where it seems useless to keep on going, or even keep on living. It's hard to leave that point, to keep going until it all gets better, especially in this hateful world that we live in. It's at these points that we have to stay optimistic. I'm not sure where this was from, but I came across a small piece about optimism and it said to stay optimistic and used falling down the stairs as an example. When you "fall down the stairs" (metaphorically and literally) don't complain about getting hurt, instead say, "Did you see how fast I got down those stairs!?" Another example would be the picture that I used for this post, the whole "half full" thing is just not good enough, stay optimistic and realize that the glass is always full, even when there's no water, it filled with air.

We live in a world that will happily beat you down when you are at your highest, and the world will beat you again when you're trying to get back up. Sometimes, you have to focus on the good things, the lives that we live have hateful things within them, but there are great things in our lives too. Food and sleep, for example, are two of my favorite things in this world. So, if I'm feeling down, I'll sleep or chow down. What can I say? Sleep is frickin' amazing and food is frickin' delicious, don't judge, but that's a couple of blogs for other days. So, what I want you to take from this is you have to remember that it's not the end of the world, I know it may seem like it, but it's not. We are all afraid of endings, ending of the world, ending of lives, ending of our own purpose, but endings don't have to be something that we're all afraid of. The end of the world may just be the end of an era, and with the end of every era, there is a new beginning.

Firsts

Image courtesy of wiki-land

Conveniently, this is my first post and I felt "Firsts" to be an appropriate topic. There's a first for everything, or so it's said. But, firsts can be scary; anything ranging from trying new foods to skydiving with a baby panda bear strapped to your chest while you use a parachute made out of a quesadillas (do not attempt, although if attempted one would reach max awesomeness) can be scary because they're new. In my own opinion, firsts are wonderful things, no matter what they are. Each and every one of them opens up a new path to new experiences and new things. What would have happened if you didn't try something that love today for the first time? If I never tried gymnastics, my love and passion for urban gymnastics wouldn't exist. 

I'm not saying that all first things are good either; today I fractured my ankle, I've never had a bad injury in my life until just a couple of hours ago. Also, I fractured my ankle doing one of the things I love, my friends and I were doing an urban gymnastics course up at the Utah Olympic Park. Even though it hurts and it keeps hurting as I type, I'm somewhat glad that this happened. Sure, I'm gonna be bored for a while and not being able to do urban gymnastics, mountain biking, or the many other various activities that I participate in is going to be awful, I'm still glad that I am having this experience. Back in the seventh grade I had an art teacher, she went by the name Ms. Corrigan, who I thought was great, one day of class she walked in and her whole face was bruised. I'm saying her whole face was black and blue. She took off her sunglasses to show us her bruised eyes, explained what happened, and said, "The worst things in life make the best stories." I know that my friends and will look back on the bad experiences we've had and laugh; the first time I badly hurt myself will not be forgotten. So, my advice to you is to accept firsts, and don't worry about the possible outcomes, because you'll either be happy that you tried something new, or its gonna be a funny story for the future.