#20 - "And I feel like the summer is leaving again"

It's only March, and I'm only in 10th grade, but I've got a lot left to do before school ends in early June, such as taking 2 AP exams, an MOS test, my (remaining) 3rd quarter + final exams, doing community service, finding a place to employ me, and finishing an online class outside of school. Not to mention all these contests there are for scholarships and summer internships!

I have lots of it.

Summer is the time for fun, when you can basically just forget about schoolwork (until the last week, when you remember you had summer homework) and stress, isn't it?

Except that I don't know what I'll be doing for my two-and-a-half-months of summer vacation (it's LONG here in the USA!) I don't have many friends, and the most I have lined up right now is two programs I could possibly do that last for 5 weeks combined and are both on opposite sides of the country from me and each other (one's up north and one's out west).

5 weeks may seem like a lot, but that's 5 out of about 10, so I have a lot of free days...

If I can't come up with 10000 art or other projects, this will be me all summer.

Also, I doubt that I will get all As on my 3rd quarter exams (some subjects are hard! Especially in IB!) as required by my dad as a condition of getting to choose my own summer programs. We made a contract saying that if I didn't, he got to choose the programs, or worse, he could choose not to send me anywhere at all.

That's unfair because he let my brother go all the way to Washington DC with his class for a week, and he's 2 years younger than me. He can't not let me go anywhere!

The problem here is that my 13-year-old brother has been halfway across the country without his parents, and I've never even been out of state without them.

Song the title is from:

#19 - Atheists "want to be god"?

There are some people out there who believe that atheists "want to be god". Being an atheist myself, this tends to annoy me.

I've seen people on the internet saying this:

A = "I"
Theist = "God"
Therefore "atheist" = "belief that oneself is god"

No.

No.

Just no.

I wonder if these people ever tried to analyze the words of the English language. For example, prefixes.

The actual meaning is:

A = "Without"
Theist = "Belief in God"
Therefore "atheist" = "without belief in god"

In case you are not convinced, here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.^[1][2] In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.^[3][4][5] Most inclusively, atheism is the absence of belief that any deities exist.^[4][5][6][7] Atheism is contrasted with theism,^[8][9] which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.^[9][10]

Or in case Wikipedia doesn't do it for you, let's take a look at the print dictionary, Webster's Dictionary, 1981 edition:

Atheism, n. disbelief in the existence of God

 Atheist, n. one who disbelieves or denies the existence of God

There you have it. "Atheism" is not a synonym for "narcissism".

Narcissism according to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

Narcissistic personality disorder, (noun) a personality disorder characterized especially by an exaggerated sense of self-importance, persistent need for admiration, lack of empathy for others, excessive pride in achievements, and snobbish, disdainful, or patronizing attitude.

So basically thinking that one is the center of the universe and/or god himself.

If you're still not convinced, maybe this will blow your mind.

You think atheists believe themselves to be something they do not believe in.

IT MAKES NO SENSE.

~~~



Please note that I am not using this song to symbolize the entire USA. I am simply using it to refer to "Jesusland".

#18 - "You should try parkour!"

Lately I have been feeling happier than ever, except that one of my neighbors moved away without telling me while I was away at a funeral. He still rides my bus though, but gets off at the stop before mine, so he's not far away.

We never talked, except when he told me there was a car behind me because I like to walk in the middle of my road (ONLY my road, as barely any cars go there). But now I'll have to walk home all alone. And possibly get run over.

Goodbye, life.

I also thought that my lunch buddies had ditched me after not showing up for a week, but then one of them found me and told me they had just changed location (we have no classes together). We sit outside now, by the art room, and I like it better than our table at the cafeteria.

I've been so happy out there that I haven't been able to sit still. I've just been climbing on everything. Also eating berries off a tree that I was warned were potentially poisonous. No side effects yet! Yay!

There's a tree full of these at school.

Due to my climbing on everything (I happen to do rock climbing as a hobby), one of my friends, Parker, suggested that I try parkour. Another contribution to that may be that I tried to grab the cover thing with horizontal bars to maybe swing on it or climb on top of it. I don't even know. It's probably for putting a plastic sheet on top of it in case of rain.

I didn't succeed despite being maybe 12 feet off the ground. That thing's probably 20 feet, and I'm only 5.

All the girls at my old school were f*cking huge, making me have height issues for the rest of my life.

Really, Parker did say so though. She said it would be cool if I could learn flips and stuff too. I'm not entirely sure if she was talking about parkour or freerunning though.

One thing about parkour is that I tried it in the summer for a few days. It was fun. But it just so happens that my crush also does parkour. That's the main reason I tried it in the summer, to see just how good it was and why he liked it.

This used to be me. I still like him, I just don't show it that way because he has a girlfriend already.

I might take Parker up on that suggestion. I might eventually be able to climb those horizontal bars.

She attached a condition though. Our exact conversation was:

Parker: "You should do parkour!"
Me: "I should?"
Parker: "Yeah! Can you do flips and stuff?"
Me: "No."
Parker: "If you could learn that, it would be pretty cool."
Me: *happy smile as I imagine myself doing this stuff*
Parker: "Just don't break any bones though!"

Fair enough. I've never broken one before anyway.

And I love Anti-Flag.

#17 - Teeth

Sorry I didn't upload a video. My camera's batteries are being really annoying right now! I tried and got 2 minutes of a (to-be) time-lapse art project in before it turned off and I continued on, not even noticing.

Sometimes I feel the urge to do this, even though it's not the camera's fault.

Anyways, I also just read an article about a 4 year old who needed many teeth removed and the rest covered in caps. I don't even know if the story was real, but there was a lot of outrage in the comments. Apparently the fact that her mother was not in the room with her during the procedure and "allowed her teeth to get that bad in the first place" sparked this outrage.

There was actually a person in the comments who believed the caps were made with "mercury-laced silver"...some people probably don't know what stainless steel is.

I also have a bad history with teeth, though not as bad as that girl, whether or not the story was fictional. When I was just 3 years old, I had to go to the dentist to get 7 teeth pulled and 4 covered with caps. Apparently I didn't cry or scream, but just stared blankly at my parents for the whole procedure. And yes, it got done in a day.

I mentioned the apparent non-painfulness because some people were saying that a 4 year old would not be able to stand the "painful" procedure. Also that it couldn't be done in a day.

Most people don't expect a child to have this expression during what is pretty much a mouth surgery.

All the capped teeth fell out when I was 12, and what I saw when I looked at the actual teeth that had been covered for all those years was disgusting: colored silver on the outside, with red, blue and yellow all on the inside. The red wasn't blood. It was a stain from what might've been blood when I first got the cap.

So appreciate your teeth. Even though I went through so much with mine, I still appreciate them, because I recently learned of the trouble of braces. I heard that when you have braces, you can't have certain types of food or open your mouth really wide to take a big bite, and things get stuck in them (maybe even your lip). At least caps don't prohibit you from doing anything. They just sit on top of your teeth and then you treat your teeth like any normal, non-braces wearing person would.

No thank you!

Another point of this post was to say that even though I appreciate my teeth. sometimes I have irresistible urges to pull them out. One in particular, though it doesn't matter which one I want to pull out because because of my bad tooth history, all my teeth now are adult teeth, and adult teeth don't grow back. Once I pulled a non-loose tooth in 4th grade, but that was a baby tooth. I had a similar urge that one time, but never again until recently.

#16 - First Youtube video

Today I plan to film and post my first Youtube video (not much editing will be done, because I don't have any skills not included in WMM :P). Please check it out. It should be out in 4 hours at the most.

Here is my channel - http://www.youtube.com/user/chibikona100

I already have some videos, but now I am going to start vlogging. All my previous videos are of me playing short (and easy) songs on the guitar and keyboard, and occasionally something else.

By something else, I mean something like this:

So please check out my vlog when I upload it. It will be a big help :)

Some songs to listen to while you wait-

#15 - Calluses

Why don't people like calluses? It has never made any sense to me why anyone would want soft, easily cut/bruised skin on their fingertips or feet.

I had calluses on my fingertips before I even started playing guitar. I don't know how anyone lives without those. How do you even prevent them?

I've seen beginners on guitar forums asking if there was an alternative to calluses.

There is no way out of calluses if you want to play guitar.

GET. OVER. IT.

If this is too much for you, consider another instrument. Preferably not string.

As for calluses on feet, well...you actually have to walk on hard surfaces barefoot for that.

I get stares when I do that, as if it's completely unnatural. And I live in a semi-rural area. It's not even that I do it in "public", I just do it occasionally at school (it rains so much here and I wear Converse, so wet cloth shoes can be my excuse for not wearing them) and within a half-mile radius from my house.

It really hurt when i tried to run on this American school track barefoot though. I was used to running barefoot, but it's like this track is a freakin' road. Made of tiny sharp stones. Or needles.

And that's why I didn't re-join the track team when I moved here. I'd been doing it since upper elementary school, but I can't run on this track!

Ever tried to run on these? No? Don't.

I actually wish my foot calluses were stronger. I'm pretty proud of my fingertip calluses though.

#14 - Everyone dies

RIP granpa

My granpa died last Monday. I was sleeping on my day off and my mom came in and woke me up, saying that dad had something to tell me. It was 7:00. That's when I found out.

Just the day before, my dad had been filling out my granpa's Visa papers to let him come to America and live with us.

But that's not what made me sad. You know what actually made me sad?

That I couldn't feel sad.

Well, at least sadness occurred

This was my expression throughout the breaking of the news.

.