Funny but only to me.

Today at another track meet one of my plastic water bottles opened up in my backpack and got everything inside soaked. Thankfully, it was disgustingly hot today (at least for a Californian), so most of my stuffed dried off pretty good after letting it sit in the sun. 

This has happened to me so many times before, it's not even funny. I think the cap unscrews just enough when I shove my track uniform and shoes in my bag with all the half-closed water bottles. As expected, all of my papers in the folders are only wet at the bottom. Seeing this, however, takes me back to the last time I was in Kauai and my aunt carried the iron from her hotel to a relative's house. The water inside the iron spilled all over the bag, making her book and her daughter's book have the same looking water stain as me.  What an odd way to get your stuff wet. At the time I thought it was kind of funny. My aunt didn't even seem too bothered by it. Today when I saw this happened to me again, I shrugged my shoulders with indifference and laughed internally in pleasant memory.

Liberty Paints

 KEEP AMERICA PURE

WITH 

LIBERTY PAINTS

Here's some notes I took in class about Chapter 10. Probably my favorite chapter in the novel (besides Ch. 13), and one of the best I've ever read. I was re-reading it and got sucked into the paint plant all over again—that's how well done it is.

Another panic

Yesterday on my way to school, I started to go without plugging in my iPod into the aux cable. At a stop sign, I fumbled around for it in my pocket and tried to shove the cable in, but for some reason it wouldn't budge (you can probably hear the internal "fuck!" through the screen). I pushed harder, but of course that didn't work either, so I gave up and went the rest of the way in silence. Now parked I shined a handheld flashlight into the hole, revealing a tiny piece of metal lodged in the bottom of the jack (now an audible "fuck!"). 

I spent the next few minutes hitting the iPod against my copy of Invisible Man to get it out until it finally relented and flew out. I have absolutely no idea where that metal was from or how it got in the jack, but for a minute I got scared this iPod would be done for.

This shuffle is probably one of the few things I really don't want to lose. I know people think it's "performative" or "doin' too much" to use an iPod instead of your phone, but this thing is small, doesn't need service, has its own battery, and just works. Apple Music has disappointed me lately with the unfortunate destruction of the radio and the new interface, so now I only use it on my computer and when I want to wear AirPods. 

No, I'm not trying to be different. I simply like this product for what it is.

Review: DJ & Arthur New Hope Episode 2

This a fun part 2 to the series they started a few weeks back. I especially like the perspective changes and the fact that we literally move into DJ's subconsciousness to fight enemies and ultimately level up. It reminds me a lot of the final part of EarthBound where you enter Ness's mind (Magicant). In my eye, the monsters he's fighting and the experience he gains is from his own internal conflicts and "monsters", and the leveling up after he awakens can be interpreted as a symbolic growth of overcoming said internal challenges. If you take it literally and in the context of the story on its surface, he's just fighting a monster in a dream world to get more EXP, like an RPG game would normally entail. However, the fact you can run with both ideas makes the video more enjoyable. Even if this was unintentional, DJ's quote of "I don't like killing, I really don't. I hate hurting things that have feelings and lives," can further illustrate the notion that although overcoming your greatest internal conflicts is altogether great, sometimes it helps to realize the root of the issue and the fact that the process may not leave you feeling glorious. In the case of DJ, his triumph came at the cost of having to hurt another "living" being, which could be diminishing the symbolic representation of his childlike self (plush dolls and video games).

If this isn't the case, then it also works to say that he merely defeated a monster in a fictious game. Indeed, the entire premise of the series more or less diffuses the inner passions for video games and skit-making to YouTube, and I believe seeing it all only in this light is perfectly okay, too.

Thank you DJ and Arthur for making this second part. Meantime I'll sit tight for a part 3.

New! Super Mario Desk 2: Yoshi's Island

I got a hand-me-down desk today that a family member wasn't using, thus I completely removed my old black desk. This one is white and a great deal smaller, but it gives my room more room and somehow finally gives me space to have a paper and keyboard in the same space. I can finally do physical homework with a keyboard in front of me. As I'm writing this I'm procrastinating on my chemistry homework. 

This is pretty much all I have to share today. 

Math Books and "Calculature"

You can infer from my most recent YouTube post (https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxcWlsbQ-UTqbLsD7ipZcJYUlmtPIhrzZ6) that I'm sort of looking over the next concepts of math. And perhaps the only, only thing that is appealing about opening this book is the gloss of the pages. 

So I scrapped that and left the book siting open on my desk. Later at a track meet, a friend (who's in BC, super smart) helped me understand how to do it a little bit better. Another (BC) teammate told me that learning stuff from a textbook is hard because it often makes easy concepts sound/look much more difficult than it really is. That made sense. When I looked back through the book at the theorems and definitions I already know, the verbiage and notation were pretty confusing. 

This isn't to say learning via a book is impossible, but maybe it would help to use it in conjunction with the limitless (pun intended) online resources. Or, you know, just register for a college class if you want.

If you're going to be a senior in high school someday, I'd strongly recommend taking AP Calc and AP Lit concurrently if your school offers it. That way you can say you took "Calculature". I know some students get ahead in math and take Calc before their senior year, but at the very least, I think that AP Lit should strictly be a senior course at ALL schools. 

As a bonus, here is the math my friend did during the meet: 

IIRC the question is on the left side, and anything that seems like nonsense is because it's other work from other questions or just explanations.

Don't accidentally

 Don't accidentally spill some 6M hydrochloric acid on your finger. It feels like pineapple on your tongue, on your finger. It should make sense to you why it feels like that. Still, scary!