Call it torture

Dear colleges that are sending me application letters,

Everything you send to me looks alike. There’s a picture of a token group of interracial males and females sitting outside with books smiling, a list of the exact same undergraduate options, and a business reply card that I will probably never fill out.

If you want to make things really easy for me, you could just pool your publication funds together and send one collective parcel with the name of your college, its difficulty on a scale of one to ten, and an approximation of the number of girls in your town who might be interested in pursuing a long term relationship with me.

Yeah, that would be great.

Love,
Casey

Breaking Fast

In the past few weeks, my mother has, much to the urging of my brother, brought back from Publix the various cereals of our childhood.

First, it was Golden Grahams. A cereal that is easily manageable, the flakes had just the proper amount of golden and not too much graham, making for a sustained box lifetime of approximately 23 hours.

Then, she brought home Life. This variation, however, was new: Honey Graham Life. While it sounded appetizing, it came off a bit strong at first taste. I think that this could have been an honest mistake on the part of the honey adder on the production line, I can still assure you that no, Mikey doesn’t like this one.

Last week was my favorite because Mom brought home Smacks. I’ve always been a fan of Honey Smacks. Not just for their sweet taste, but the added perk of flavored residual milk at the bottom of the bowl. Something about that little frog’s cereal is inexplicably wonderful. Plus, it comes in a giant box, allowing many indulgences.

This week, Mom brought us Kix. You know: “Kid Tested, Mother Approved.” I’ve been testing them for a while now and while they certainly are not in contention for the award of best cereal, they hold their own in the whole grain division, barely nudging out Cheerios from the race. They are essentially carbon copies of Cheerios, but Kix have a slight manageability advantage in that due to their largely spherical shape, they float in the milk and one does not have to go fishing for his cereal after a given time of submersion.

That’s been the cereal roster for the last few weeks. This week, I think I’ll lobby for Honeycomb. Or Cookie Crisp. Or Cocoa Puffs. Or Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Or Cap’n Crunch.

Oh God, I can’t decide. It’s times like this I wish I had more than one stomach, like a cow.

Announcement

I forgot to mention this, mostly because it’s not that big a deal yet.

But in case you haven’t already heard, the new Co-editors in Chief for the 2005-2006 Aftermath Yearbook Staff at PHUHS are Christina Chan, Egle Vilkelyte, and myself.

You may go back to not caring.

Groundination

My report card being what it is at the end of these six weeks has acted as a catalyst for my inevitable restriction. This year has been the first time in my life during which I have been granted the opportunity to do normal teenage things. Some of which I’ve taken advantage, some of which I wish never to experience, and some of which I have lacked the gusto to actually pursue.

However, for an indefinite amount of time, I will lack the freedoms that I have enjoyed so thoroughly this year. Perhaps, though, this will pass soon so I can muster up the confidence to lead a normal, Kevin Arnold-like childhood filled with all the items that put the “wonder” in The Wonder Years.

So for the time being, I’ll just hope unceasingly that this, too, shall pass; there are so many things to do before it’s too late.

Annual Self Pity

I decided that this Valentine’s day, instead of feeling sorry for my lone self, I would bring the rest of single society down with me.

I am of the opinion that the majority of those folks who regard Valentine’s day as a commercial institution that is wholly unnecessary are in the same boat as me: HMS Lonely And Bitter. So, if you’re one of my fellow passengers, I’m just here to give you a friendly reminder regarding the origin of your defensive sentiment regarding February 14.

Have a nice day, fellow lonesome losers.

I'm the fastest kid at recess

So, things are now on an upswing in my life thanks to the emergence of one of my new best friends in the world: Healthy Cow Chocolate Milk.

Apparently, the cafeteria gave up on the antiquated ways of subservience to Velda Farms. Now, the good folks at Healthy Cow Milk are making the world a little brighter, one half pint at a time.

Not only does this stuff taste way better; the boxes are a billion times more interesting. Back in the day when we had to read some corny joke and turn the carton entirely around to see the punch line, everyone had a pain in their arms from all the turning and a pain in the brain from the horrible, horrible joke. It was like watching television on an old black and white set while having a hand standing contest underwater – just silly and exhausting.

Now, however, we have clever quips at a horizontal level right there at our fingertips. Among the myriad of silly sentences, my personal favorite is, “It takes 100 cartons of Healthy Cow Milk to be as fast as the slowest Healthy Cow.”

The Great Flip

I think that since those ancient folks separated time into fixed passages known as days, weeks and months, the intrinsic human mind has managed to separate other reified entities against the ever-present intangible backdrop of the passage of time.

Take, for example, our mental plus and delta chart of the events of the present: our proverbial tally marks seem to clump up in a sole column as any specific and predefined amount of time passes us by. Likewise, when the sun ducks underneath the horizon or when we’re forced to flip up a page in our calendars, so too do we flip up the pages of the mind and of the heart. After the Great Flip, we are faced with so much environmental newness that in order to be distracted by the follies of the present that are seared into meticulousness, we shift position until it is just different enough to invoke new feelings yet just similar enough to sneak its way into our boxes.

It happens to everyone all the time, but each individual’s schedule is different because if everyone were to make the Great Flip at the same time, the world would suck even more than Dr. Y tells us we say it does. I flipped when the clock struck 12:00AM Monday morning. I can only hope that the interim until my next flip is exceedingly short lived; I am so not used to this that I had to take the nail out of the wall to make the change because its head was too big for my largely unperturbed perforation.

I guess what I’m trying to say with this long, drawn out narrative is that this week sucks, but come Monday, it’ll be alright.

Pantapalooza

Unless you’ve been living under a rock as the fashion world has been spinning around these last few years, you know that girls’ pants are all the rage on male legs. These tight little excuses for clothing are apparently all the rage amongst the emo crowd, and yesterday at lunch I tried to be society’s slave. I traded pants with Taryn. I fully expect a line of parental questioning regarding this event; the “last time”:http://sociallyconsciousbird.com/wordpress/?p=29 I traded garments with Taryn, the folks wouldn’t let it go for a while.

Upon slipping into the ultra-long, ultra-tight jeans, I’ve noticed a few things about girls’ pants that were quite interesting:

# There is excess butt room. I thought I had some junk in the proverbial trunk, but compared to girl, they have got it going on. I originally disliked this feature, but as the hours wore on, the butt grew on me. I think its main selling point is the room for growth: you know, prospective butt room that all of the sistas will be jealous of whence I fill the void.
# Thanks to the constriction of the jeans, I have a newly formed schema of just how luxurious my thighs really are. I know you’re jealous. Go on, eat your heart out.
# The (obvious) shortcoming of girls’ pants on a man’s figure is the constriction of the nether regions. I found myself readjusting myself with every beat of my tiny little uncomfortable heart, much to the dismay of my female compatriots who, in their wincing at my fiddling, expressed noticeable discomfort.
# Girls have the greatest clothes ever, primarily because they are stretchy.

Overall, wearing Taryn’s pants was a worthwhile experience. I think, however, it went on just a few hours too long. This extended period of discomfort in low-riding pants scarred me for life. No, I don’t think that acquiescing to the demands of the new style of society is for me. For the time being, I’m content to wear my Wranglers.