Death is one of the many anomalies of this world, and with this lack of knowledge comes an innate fear of dying. People have feared death for ages, so to combat this trepidation people created images of afterlives to live on so their consciousness never truly disappears. This is my idea of why heaven and hell were created. Personally, I find more comfort in believing that there is nothing past death. You and whatever your consciousness is just disappears. From this assumption, I can live a generally stress and anxiety-free life, because in my opinion nothing actually carries meaning, worth, or consequence. I’m just here kickin it. I have a firm belief that if everyone thought a similar way, and cared more about living their actual life rather than worrying about their life after they die, then the world would be a happier place. People need to live in the moment, not in the afterlife.
I’m a big animal person. When I’m an adult, I’m probably going to have a ton of pets that I either own or am fostering. Here are some of the pets I want the most.
A cat (hairless or otherwise)
I’m allergic to cats, so if I get a cat in the next few years, it’ll probably have to be a hairless cat or a cat with hypoallergenic hair. I recently started allergy shots, but it’ll take a few years before I get to a point where I can actually have a non-hypoallergenic cat without problems. In the meantime, I’ll keep feeding my neighborhood cat so that my house is his favorite house on the block.
I have one dog right now, but I want to have a lot more in the future. I really like bigger dogs like retrievers and shepherds, so I’d love to have a few when I have my own house. Small dogs are super cute too, though. Honestly, I love all dogs.
This one shouldn’t be a surprise. I wouldn’t keep them as pets, but I would like to care for disabled opossums that can’t live in the wild. Besides, opossums actually live longer in captivity than they do in the wild. I’ll give them fun outfits.
Photo credit: @itsmesesame on Instagram
Rats
Rats are really cute, and they actually make pretty good pets. They usually have to live in bigger groups so they don’t get lonely, so I’ll have a rat colony. They don’t live super long, which is really sad, but I still want to give them good lives.
My best friend has leopard geckos and crested geckos, and I’m in love with them. Most lizards actually live for a really long time– leopard geckos live about 15 years and crested geckos can live 15-20 years. They also have pretty dynamic personalities. Some of my friend’s lizards like to be left alone in their enclosures, and some like to be held and played with. I think they would make for really fun pets.
Honestly, I could keep going on about the pets I want, but I’ll probably have my hands completely full if I end up getting all of these animals.
I thought New York was such a mess all around. I thought New York has so many crimes happening every day. I thought New York only had cloudy days. I thought New York had nothing that attracted me. I thought I knew all the facts about New York.
My parents told me so much why they didn’t like New York.
I watch the news on television about how terrible New York is.
However, It’s really different from what I expected.
My parents are right about the environment. It is a little messy all around the street, plus, there are lots of homeless people who come to me asking for money. Although there is trash all around the city, New York City is still attractive to me. After all, the people, the city, and the weather make it impossible for me to not see how perfect NYC is.
The best part that I will never forget is when I went to Time Squares for the first time. That night, right after dinner, my friends took me to Time Squares. The city looked vivid with the colorful LED lights and screens shining all over the city. As I walk towards the center of the street, listening to some random people playing the song, Empire State of Mind by JAY- Z, I feel alive again for the first time. At that moment I knew I became a New Yorker and I wanted to be a New Yorker. Watching people walking pass by with smiles on their faces. Don’t tell me it’s not paradise while everyone can be whoever they want to be and enjoy the night with their loved ones. It’s difficult to describe with words as there are so many beautiful and exciting moments happening every second.
I haven’t really been into Taylor Swift’s music since elementary school, but I really like the 10-minute version of All Too Well. Here are my favorite lyrics from it.
“Til we were dead and gone and buried Check the pulse and come back swearing it’s the same After three months in the grave”
Love the metaphor here. I feel like I’ve also been in a toxic, loveless relationship when I hear this lyric.
“You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath”
If your partner is trying to hide your relationship when you’ve told them you don’t want to, that’s a red flag. They’re definitely doing something shady if they’re completely against having a public relationship when you want one.
“And you call me up again just to break me like a promise So casually cruel in the name of being honest”
This lyric is really pretty. I love it. I don’t like people who say mean things and then try to excuse their words because they’re “just saying” or “just being honest.” Like, it’s not that hard to not be a jerk.
“You said if we had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine And that made me want to die”
This lyric definitely sums up the fundamental problem with Taylor’s relationship with the unnamed man (who is Jake Gyllenhaal). Taylor was only 20 when she started dating a 29-year-old. It might not seem like a big gap because they were both legal adults, but that’s the same age gap between a 16-year-old and a 25-year-old. That perspective makes the age gap clearly inappropriate. Also, Taylor was barely an adult. She had only been of age for two years, whereas Jake had been an adult for over ten years. She realizes later that he took advantage of her because she was young and is ashamed of it.
“But you keep my old scarf from that very first week Cause it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me”
Here’s another lyric that points out the problem of their relationship. Her scarf reminds him of innocence because she was barely an adult when he started dating her. She was young and innocent, and she didn’t realize that their relationship was inappropriate until it was over. Jake went after her because she was young, pretty, and didn’t know any better.
“Wind in my hair, you were there You remember it all”
This lyric is a reprise of the end of the first chorus. Taylor changes the lyric from “I was there I remember it all.” to address Jake and say “you were there you remember it all.” It points out that Taylor wasn’t solely at fault for ending up in a bad relationship with someone too old for her. Jake was also there, and Jake knew exactly what he was doing. He remembers everything too, but he doesn’t have the same shame around the relationship that Taylor does. Taylor didn’t know that the relationship wasn’t okay, but Jake did and he pursued her anyways.
“And I was never good at telling jokes, but the punch line goes I’ll get older, but your lovers stay my age”
I love the blatant call-out. It’s also completely accurate. Jake’s current girlfriend, Jeanne Cadieu, is 25 years old. He’s 40 years old. It doesn’t take a psychologist to realize all the reasons why this isn’t okay at all, but for reference – Jake would be 21 years old (the legal drinking age in the U.S.) while Jeanne was 6 (in 1st grade in the U.S.). With an age gap this big, it doesn’t matter if they’re both of legal age right now because it doesn’t change the fact that there’s a huge gap in maturity, experience, and understanding of right and wrong. The age gap is completely ridiculous and frankly disgusting.
In conclusion, Jake Gyllenhaal is a creep and a borderline pedophile. If this statement seems like an exaggeration, consider the fact that if Jake was attracted to a 25-year-old when he was 40 and a 20-year-old when he was 29, it’s reasonable to assume that he was attracted to minors when he was in his early and mid-twenties. He has a pattern of dating people that are much younger than him.
I really like this song even though the content is sad. I reccomend listening to it.
Leading up to the college visit trip I took last week, I was adamant about applying and going to NYU. So adamant in the fact that I was prepared to apply early decision, meaning if I got in I would have to attend.
When I tell you I was saved by a thread I mean it. I was millimeters away from making the worst decision ever.
NYU was not the place for me. I had thought that going to a school without a campus would be fun, my experience this summer in New York made me feel free, and living in New York and attending school seemed ideal. This was mostly because I was with one of my closest friends whose sister went there, so we spent most of our time shopping and eating rather than being students. It was a whole different story at the school. The tour guide talked more about her getting cut from the quidditch team than student life and did many other similar things, making me realize that maybe I wanted more of a college experience.
I had just gone to see Michigan before NYU, where I went tailgating and sat in the student section at the Big House. My friend who goes there showed me around and showed me what it is like to be a student at a big school. I had the best time and realized that this is something I can’t go without in college. I also thought the traditional campus layout would make studying easier, everything was just more simple.
These two factors combined and made me realize what an idiot I had been. Judging my college choices on a fun week I had without considering schools, sheerly basing the biggest choice I will have made in my young life on location.
I feel super relieved I changed my mind about applying to NYU early decision, and that I went on the tour as the feels at the schools were different than the ideas in my head of what they would feel like. It feels surreal that I was that close to making such a big choice based on nothing.
For this week’s blog, I’m going to go back to the pokemon theme and pick out some of my favorites to share with the readers of this blog.
To start Pokemon are a type of imaginary creature that has been incorporated into games cards and tv shows that have run for many years, starting in 1997. I have loved Pokemon since I was first introduced to it in middle school when a classmate gave me their old 3ds. The game omega ruby (a Pokemon game) was the first game I ever played. Ever since I have followed pokemon and tried to play as many of the games as possible. It means borrowing someone’s Nintendo Switches just to play the game and give it back is worth it to play Pokemon.
The first pokemon on my list is Toxtricity (low key form) This pokemon is an electric poison type, the primary reason for this pick is that it is one of my favorite pokemon and that it is powerful. Toxtricity is fast and it can poison enemies with poison-type moves.
Photo credit: Bulbapedia
The second pokemon in my dream team is Salamance. I chose this Pokemon for its dragon flying typing and its sheer power. this pokemon is a large blue dragon that is just super cool looking.
Photo credit: Pokemon. com
The third member of my team is going to be Swampert because he is my favorite pokemon. He’s a starter, this means that it is likely that I would have had him from the beginning of the game. Swampert is a water and ground type pokemon with the ability to learn very solid moves. Mudkip Swapert’s primary evolution was the first pokemon I ever got as a starter and has been my favorite ever since.
My music taste fluctuates a lot, and I’m constantly finding new songs to play on repeat until I hate them. Here are the songs I’ve been playing nonstop for the past week or so.
Tend the Garden by Gang of Youths
This song has such beautiful music, and it’s pretty sad. I mean, that’s to be expected from Gang of Youths; they did also make the song Achilles Come Down. Like Achilles Come Down, it’s a narrative, and it’s sang from the perspective of a father who presumably did something horrible and won’t ever forgive himself for having to leave his children. It’s a really poetic song and there’s a good amount of fairly obscure Biblical references, so if you’re into that kind of thing, definitely give it a listen. (Or a million listens, like I’ve done.)
This song is so fun to listen to. The music is a perfect blend of upbeat and chill. Joji has such a beautiful voice, too. It’s a really sweet love song and isn’t really sad. Good to listen to if you’re just looking for good vibes.
This song is totally different from the other two, but it’s so good. It’s basically another version of Black Beatles by Rae Sremmurd. The rhymes in it are super clever. If you like artists like cupcakKe, Megan Thee Stallion, and Cardi B, you’ll probably like this song.
Those are my favorite songs right now. They definitely all have very different vibes, but I listen to all of them all the time. I hope if you check them out, you like them too!
Do you remember when we got an alert about the new virus, the Coronavirus (COVID-19), and we were all so scared about it in 2020? People die every day, plus, we know nothing about this new virus. We stayed home and used Rubbing alcohol to spray everywhere when we got home right away. We began to lose the ability to connect with the other person. Sometimes we call our family or friends saying Hi to them and talk about how they are doing recently just to try to imagine we were talking to a “real” person. After a year in online class or work, we lost the motivation to do anything, we only have that little energy left to keep scrolling on our phones. Watching the public prank videos on Youtube from years before, and started to imagine when am I going to talk and meet new friends after the pandemic. At last, we all laughed and cried to celebrate the 2021 new year at home.
It’s only been two years but feels like it happened a long time ago.
When Omicron came up almost at the end of 2021, it didn’t scare anyone much. I noticed that people started to see this type of virus as a common cold. People don’t wear masks around, even gather with another person in the same room. People tell others that they have COVID, but they don’t care about it as long as they know they are fully vaccinated. Time has changed the way we see or think about the virus. The Covid deaths have begun to spike quickly after people gathered to celebrate the 2022 new year without putting their masks on. However, I wish we could go back to “normal” life when we all go to school or the amusement park without having our masks on.
So, as of right now my test results haven’t come back, but I’m pretty sure I have covid. My mom and dad both came back positive when they were tested, and seeing as I have been quite sick over the last week I’m pretty damn sure its covid. My mom is holding out hope that I’m negative so I can go to school, but I’m less optimistic. The actual sickness hasn’t been all that bad most of the time. The worst part for me are the headaches and the dizziness. Plus I’ve had these weird things I call “brain shocks” that I normally get when I miss my meds. I really don’t know how to describe them other than brain shocks. Thats like what they are, they suck ass though. When I was taking a different medication, Pristyq, they would get so bad that I would blink and get them. They suck, a lot. Anyway, I’m hoping I can go to school soon but I kinda doubt it. I probably won’t be back till next week, which sucks because I’m gonna get behind in AP chem and that is not good at all. Luckily it gives me more time to work on my research paper for english that I still have not finished. Anyway, long story short, don’t get covid, its not a vibe.
What is the point of shielding children from the more “negative” parts of life? For my entire life, I have never been able to wrap my head around why some people decide to actively shield their kids from discovering for figuring out more “adult” aspects of life. I’m not saying that every parent should give their kid a copy of Grand Theft Auto or Doom at age five as I have seen firsthand how that affects certain people. I believe that there is a perfect balance of what information a kid can take in as they grow up.
This balance varies greatly from person to person, but even if some kids can take more than others, it’s better to just let them find out on their own and have a real conversation about what it is than flat out blocking them from finding out. The second that a parent tells kids not to do something and doesn’t give a very good reason of why they shouldn’t do it, the kid is going to become curious and want to do it anyways. If a kid finds out what something is or even experiences it, there’s no point in lying about it. The kid already has an idea of what it is, and if you won’t tell them you can bet the internet will. It’s far better to just be honest and give the tools that the kid needs to be safe and educated about all these new things they’re learning.
What many parents don’t realize is that kids are growing up with a digital web that can get them what they want when they want it without anyone knowing, and if the kids aren’t taught how to navigate all of this with a level head, they could find themselves in a dangerous situation. At the end of the day, kids have free will that is just as strong as any adults, they will learn about life with or without the help of an adult mentor.
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