Author: displacedlocal

My Brother

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My brother and I have a unique relationship.
I was disapproving when we first met
When we were little kids my brother and I had a very…violent relationship. We often fought about everything, from who got the last pretzels(A joy I have now because he no longer can eat wheat) to who won in basketball.

Games often ended in loud arguments and we had bitter conversations often. This stayed this way until middle school.


Though there were a lot of good times too

In 2008 my brother first took me to fairfax and La Brea in Beverly hills. On La Brea lies one of my favorite stores, Undefeated. We walked and talked and my interest in sneakers was brought back.

Throughout high school we would often talk about street wear, cars, and sneakers. We would talk about what we found to be the best sneaker of all time. A Title that the Black/Cement Jordan 3 currently holds.

We would play basketball and we would go and make trips to Undefeated, Supreme, and Union.

Slowly I got closer to the point where he would have to go off to college.

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The Outbreak

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Subject 0 noticed his first symptom on November 5, 2012, A pinching feeling in the area of the brain stem. He thought nothing of it, this was his first mistake.

He was a large man who looks as though he had given up; the people of the town he lived in, Romero, referred to him as “genetic garbage.” An ironic nickname for the person who would be the downfall of that community.

His fever progressed quickly. It didn’t help that he was a cook at the most famous restaurant in town. Every cough, every sneeze spread the disease. It spread like wildfire. 90% of the people in town had gotten the bug when it became active.

It was like the collective life force of every person in town just decided to walk out. A soul on strike.

For 3 hours and 6 minutes they were proclaimed dead. After that point a sudden electrical pulse went through their inner brain and the brain stem. They were “alive” again. The survivors of the initial infection went out to embrace family members only to be surrounded and devoured alive.

Piece by piece, bit by bit they were ripped apart. It was gruesome and sickening.

As a doctor I was in the epicenter of the danger. I had subject 0 in my operating room at the time, cut open and currently being autopsied. when his eyes opened I jolted backwards nearly cutting myself with a scalpel.

He started pulling himself up, his entrails sliding out of his recently opened stomach. I stood there, awestruck at the giant man whose heart was still beating through his bare ribcage. He charged at me dragging his organs behind him. I took my scalpel and dug it into the right eye of the brutish beast.

He fell immediately as his brain was no longer functioning.

I heard a scream from the hallway.

I decided it was time to leave the hospital.

I exited out the only window in the room and managed to make it to a store nearby.

I fortified my little shelter with boards on the windows and building up what food stores I had in the convenience store I decided to stay in. There was a ladder to the top of the store and I decided that it would be a good idea to check it out.

I pulled myself over the top of the ladder and looked out over the town.

I was shocked. There were mobs of the zombies in the street, people were screaming across town, and the military had set up a barricade on the major street out of town.

I decided to get some sleep after a long day.

On day 2 I had a… rude awakening. There was a crash of glass at the front of the store as a huge hoard of zombies crashed in the front door. They were upon me nearly immediately. I ran for the back door as the filthy monsters shambled directly behind me.

I grabbed the door handle and gave it a firm twist.

A feeling of dread moved through my entire body as the handle refused to move. I stepped back and dove towards the door.

As I was charging at the door, it swung wide open. I fell flat on my face and saw a small blond woman laughing at me, slicing the head of the next zombie with the katana by her side.

“Hey dummy! get up and do something will you!” she yelled.

I jumped to my feet and she yelled “follow me!”

We ran through the alley to a small door in a wall.

I asked her who she was.

“I’m the person who is going to get you out of here, I am a journalist that is a master in 10 different types of martial art. I saw you on the roof of that store when I flew over in my helicopter.”

“I would have settled for a name,” I said.
“I’m Senior Aria Ellett editor-in-chief of On The Hill newspaper and you are going to have to follow me.”

She led me down a dark hallway to a set of stairs and we climbed up them.

She opened the door at the top of the stairs to a helicopter.

She said “Get in we don’t have much time.”

I hopped in and she started it up.

I now noticed the military personnel crowding the building. One of the soldiers fired a heat-seeking missile at our helicopter. It was speeding towards our helicopter. It would kill both of us it it collided with us. While it approached she fired a signal flare out the side and diverted the missile.

We were now out of range.

We had escaped.

But I couldn’t get rid of this slight pinching in my head.

Typeracer

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I have recently been shown a website called Typeracer.
This website is essentially a game that improves ones typing speed. The game works like this. You join a random race, you are paired up with people from around the globe, or you can join a friend’s game. Once you have joined the game, a countdown starts and you are shown a passage. When the counter hits 0 The race begins.

You have to type the paragraph with the fastest and your words per minute is measured. My average is 40 words per minute, but the top typists have averages of 180. A feat I could never even hope to accomplish.

There is another mode called “Instant death.” This mode is significantly more difficult because it requires you to never make a mistake because if you do get eliminated immediately.

Why have I spent so much time on a typing game you ask?

Since last year I have been working on my typing speed. This is because I feel as though when I am taking notes in class I can’t effectively get my ideas on to paper.

I tried various courses and programs to improve how fast I could type and I never could. I found them tedious and ineffective.

With Typeracer I have fun and I have become a much better typist altogether.

The Drafting Table

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In my home, in a secluded corner of the living room lies a large table with thin white sheets of paper laying over it. Thin metal wires line the sides spanning the entire length. A straightedge lies in between these wires hanging millimeters above the paper.

A bushel of pencils held together by a rubber band lay in a ceramic cup outside the wire.

I still feel the carpet from when I was a small child playing around it.

It has moved from house to house, the table itself changes but the items don’t. Each house has been drawn on it. From the renovations of my first house to the house in Ojai being built. When I wake up in the morning I can hear pencils drawing lines and ideas becoming reality.

This has been an important part of my creative process and it has made me a more complete student.

Having a father who was artistic and built himself from scratch makes me want to do the same. The drafting table in my house serves as a monument to the hard work and art.

So when I wake up in the morning when visiting home I am inspired to become the best I can possibly be.

The Jaguar E Type

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The 1961 Jaguar E type is my favorite car of all time.

Its looks feel as though they were forged by the wind flowing over it at high speed. The wheel arches flow over the tires like rapids pass over stones in a river.

The “barely there” bumper looks as though it is trying to hold back the beast that is the E type.

Classic 60s english car design elegance. The whole car seems to be in perfect proportion. From the opening in the front to the taillights. This car exudes beauty more than any car I have ever seen.

Alas, this car was built in the 60s and there have been many advancements in both manufacturing quality and safety. So this beauty was tarnished by the ages. The more “modern” E type, the 1974, was ruined by some of the most atrocious bumpers I have ever seen in my entire life.
A company named Eagle thought that this was a poor way to say goodbye to one of the most gorgeous cars of all time. They chose to modernize the car. Keep the classic look, but revamp what is under the hood. It turned out exactly as I had hoped.

This is near perfection. The bumper was done away with altogether. The car looks smoother than I ever could have thought.

This is a dream come true in vehicular form.

Ocean

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The ocean has been a constant throughout my childhood. I have lived in Los Angeles, and right now my family is living in Oxnard. Having the ocean a stone’s throw away has given me comfort and is a constant reminder that i am a single person in a sea of people.

At my previous school the ocean was visible from all of my classes. Here at OVS, while the view is fantastic, it is missing the pacific ocean view that I have had my entire life.

The sound of the waves has been a constant in my life and without it I feel as though something is missing.

Something about the water makes me feel like I am safe and at home. It might be the fact that the places I have always called home have been less than a mile away from the Pacific.

The constant crashing of waves was a natural metronome for my tennis playing and it felt as though the beating of my heart was in sync with the crash and the wind moving the sand.

The ocean has calmed me and has provided me with a rhythm that still beats in me today.

A point

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A point

A location in the universe of indeterminate size and mass

This is the beginning

A focused point of unfathomable energy

Expansion.

The celestial bodies begin to drift away

Hydrogen begins to react with itself as it becomes helium

The elements form together inside stars and through the explosive power of supernovas

The folds of gravity bring these pieces together

The universe expands constantly

never stopping

never slowing

it pushes beyond its edges and speeds toward some unfathomable edge

The stars fascinate me

How some flash of light millions of years ago

manages to hit my retinas and get deciphered by my brain to be defined as

a single point of light in an endless dark abyss.

The journey of trillions of miles over millions of years only to hit a retina in the eye of a person on

a solitary rock orbiting a giant burning ball of gas

and there are people too focused on the happenings of the Kardashians to notice.

Moving

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I had lived in the same place my entire life.

Los Angeles was my home. All of my friends were there.

I had made countless memories from Brentwood to Santa Monica.

The Ghosts of these memories stay even though I am now in Ojai.

The fence on 18th street is still broken because I ran through it playing football with my friends.

I still have a time capsule in my Brentwood backyard from a decade ago.

There are panels missing in my friend’s garage from stray baseballs.

Footprints in cement from walking over it while it was still wet.

The memories I have formed have stayed as ghosts. living, but stuck in a state where they are both stuck in time and begging to be relived.

Whenever I visit I can feel them. The memories that have past. I want desperately to grab them and put them all in a backpack and take them with me.

Alas, one cannot store memories like one stores clothing and items.

The move has been a difficult journey, but I am happy here and excited to make new memories with new people.

OVS has become a new environment that was scary at first, but has become a place I call home.

The value of a sneaker

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There is a phenomenon going on in the sneaker world that absolutely disgusts me.

People are being mugged and killed for sneakers.

The Jordan 11 “Concord” single handedly caused riots

This is a basketball shoe causing riots where people are killed. At what point did these people start valuing human life at the price of a pair of sneakers.

This has gotten so excessive to the point that I no longer go out and buy limited sneakers at stores anymore. I do literally all my sneaker buying online.

Waiting in a line outside only for a riot to form or someone to mug you on your way to your car is way to much a risk. This hobby has become dangerous.

The Air Yeezy 2 was one of the biggest sneaker releases of the year.

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Overwhelmed

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Like many students I get overwhelmed with my work very often. The process progresses over time.It starts during second period when I get my first homework assignment. In my mind I am scheduling out my study hall. By third period my study hall is full. In my mind I am praying that I don’t get anymore homework. Fourth period hits. Well now I am going to be up until eleven. Then I get a brief break for Journalism where I do a blog and some of my work in class. English comes and more homework is added to the pile.

During study hall I sit down and look at the giant list of of homework in front of me. My mind starts to race. The worst case scenario runs through my head first, what if I don’t finish any of it. The list starts to feel bigger and my time is ticking away.

The Walls get smaller and my heart beats faster. It gets harder to breathe. I get a faint ringing in my ears and a massive headache. Everything seems impossible and I just want to go to sleep and leave it to the morning.

I work up all of my courage and begin. I tear through the work slowly chipping away at the giant list.

I blast through graphs and formulas as math slowly works itself out.

Physics disappears as the laws of projectile motion get thrown around.

AP US History get thrown into the past when I answer questions about the revolution.

I expose the end to my articles in Journalism.

In English I power through Miller and Poe as the clock hits 11:59 pm.

Homework is finished and I crawl into bed.

As I fade into sleep I remember.

I have a vocabulary test tomorrow.

I say toss it, I’ll study during my free period, and I fall asleep.