#24 - Mandate-imposed US drinking age - Unconstitutional?

As you might know, all US states have a minimum drinking age of 21 because the federal government threatened to cut highway funding by 10% for any state that didn't raise it from whatever it was to 21.

The thing is: Is it even constitutional?

You see, 18-year-olds are allowed to:

1. Serve in the military
2. Get married
3. Leave home without being considered a runaway
4. Buy/rent a house
5. Buy/rent a car
6. Sue or be sued
7. Be sentenced to death
8. Vote
9. Adopt a child
10. Get an abortion
11. Consent to sexual activity with other adults (and even buy and star in pornography)
12. And do other adult things (because they are adults)

So then why can't they drink? They have a say in who gets to run their damn country but they don't have a say in what they do to their own damn body?

They are adults by law, aren't they? Isn't this age discrimination?

Didn't we learn anything from the Prohibition?


Remember Korematsu v. US, in which a Japanese-American man dared to ask what trial he had, by what jury, and how he was convicted of being sent to an internment camp? The answer? "It's for everyone's safety." His crime? Being Japanese-American.


For those using the argument about safety:

Do you really think the raising of the age limit is the only factor that contributed to the steady decline in drunk driving accidents in this age group since the mandate was passed? Of course not. There are also other factors such as improvement in awareness and education of drunk driving and its consequences.

What makes it alright to give 18-20-year-olds less rights than 21-year-olds? They are legal adults in every other sense, we think they should know what to do with their body if they might know they want to sacrifice it fighting for their country.

...Said a legal adult to another legal adult

Also, they can make their voice heard about who they want to be the leader of their country. The leader of their entire nation, which has over 300 million people (yes, one vote can make or break the election). Yet they are not considered mature enough to decide what to do with their own bodies?

You know, in my residential state of Florida, we can get a hunting license without parental consent at the age of 16. They can kill animals on their own, without supervision, but they can't drink. They can be responsible for other beings' bodies, but not their own...Makes no sense to me.

Last but not least, like all humans, they learn from experience. People don't just wake up on their 21st birthday and have an epiphany about responsible drinking.

Basically, 18-20-year-olds are adults. A-D-U-L-T-S. They should have the same rights as other adults. They are not children, as they have reached the age of consent.


Whether or not you think it is alright should not be up for debate. Who are you to deny another group their freedom?

Also, just so you know, all those "studies" about alcohol affecting brain growth are also known to use extremely high amounts of alcohol which would cause brain damage to any human 21-and-older just as much as any human 18-20. Also I am not in the age group of 18-20. I do not advocate binge drinking or minors drinking, but I believe that people who are adults by law should be covered by its full extent.

Remember when 18-20-year-olds got the right to vote because of the draft?

The legal age is 18. Let's keep it that way.

#23 - Coming out to friends (and a teacher - indirectly)

My parents still don't know I'm an FTM. They still view me as a girl in a tomboy phase. I have known I was FTM since I first learned what transgender meant when I was 9 years old. It doesn't have to show in early childhood to be real - heck, I didn't even know I had a choice when I was a kid. The words that cycled around in my head every time I wanted to tell an adult something were, "Nobody believes me."

Adults are usually so condescending

A while ago, I came out to my lunch buddies. I literally said, "I want to be a man when I grow up." Surprisingly, they were cool with it. One of them was a hardcore conservative republican. She was OK with it too.

(Not bashing republicans or anything. I hope you understand what I mean by hardcore.)

We were also doing "conditional" sentences in French and we were given imaginary scenarios to write conditionals for. They were:
What would you do if...
...you could be any avatar (aka anything)?
...you found a prince, a sheep, and a rose on an uninhabited planet?
...someone gave you 1 million dollars?

Of course one of my answers was, "I would take the million dollars, become a prince and live with the other prince on the uninhabited planet."

The other was, "I would use the rose to propose to the prince and have the sheep as my bridesmaid."

So not only did I come out as transgender (I even use a male name in that class, though I am still referred to as "mademoiselle" and "elle"), I came out as a gay transman.

May the god I don't believe in help me if she is LGBT-phobic.

Those assignments haven't been graded yet since they were turned in right before our three-day weekend for Easter. People here celebrate Easter, so there is usually some delay in grading around this time.

I would like to see my teacher's reaction. Hopefully it's not that bad.

UPDATE ON FRENCH TEACHER

So my French teacher decided to was ok to "correct" my sentence from "I would...become a prince" to "I would...become a princess."

Screw you, French teacher. Screw you.

#22 - Words hurt, especially from your mom

Here are a few things my mother has said to me in the past few days:

"You're sick!" (As in mentally. All I did was cut my hair. Really.)
"I'd rather die than have a child like you!" (I stayed up past bed time. In my room. Listening to music. Quietly. With my headphones.)
"You're just waiting for me to die, aren't you?" (Said immediately after the previous one)

My mom keeps insisting that I am mentally ill and I need to be taken to some kind of psychiatrist. I do not want to go to a psychiatrist because I do not believe anything is wrong with me. If there is something, it isn't severe enough to interfere with my daily life.

It's not the first time she's said things like these. I can remember words like that from as far back as when I was 8 years old.

She even thinks I'm anorexic and checks that I've actually eaten my food after every meal.

I am not nor have I ever been anorexic. Or bulimic.

The morning after she told me she'd rather die than have me, she kept trying to get me to keep my door open, thinking that I would probably kill myself if she let me close it.

I have never attempted suicide nor do I ever plan to. I prefer to keep my door closed because I don't like the way she acts and so I want to limit interaction with her as much as possible.

She checks every package of stuff I buy from the internet.

I have never bought anything bad online, just band merch and CDs.

Also, usually every time I try to educate my 13-year-old brother on something he believes that is true but I know to be untrue and he resists and I insist on educating him (not like things about opinions but facts, for example, the fact that a girl does not pee out of her butthole. He is 13. He should know that.) - "Stay away from her! She's crazy!"

She's even hypocritical sometimes. She tells me my "darkness" scares her. All I do is wear black clothes and have naturally black hair. The clothes are mostly because my dad said a few times that since I'm "the pale one" in my family, black actually looks good on me. My mom's the one who sits there watching crime shows and shows about the end of the world all day. Now tell me who's "dark"!

To my mom-

I'M SORRY FOR BEING BORN, THOUGH TECHNICALLY THAT ISN'T MY FAULT BECAUSE YOU WERE THE ONE WHO HAD SEX WITH MY DAD AND DIDN'T GET AN ABORTION OR HAVE ME ADOPTED. SO IT'S YOUR FAULT. THIS BIG FUCK-UP IN YOUR LIFE IS YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT, GODDAMMIT!

#21 - Video about fireworks

Back in August of last year, I made an "Employee of the Month" thing from an already existing Youtube video of fireworks.

The weird thing is that my video somehow has more views than the original.

Mine:

Original:

Follow the video to Youtube. It's in the description and I can't seem to link it here.

After many, many times of watching it, my edit doesn't seem as mind-blowing as it did when I first made it :(

#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.