I am going to miss you all...

Why will I miss you? Because this is some sort of April Fools' Day prank and I'm going to tell you that I'm taking a hiatus from the internet to focus more on the real world? Don't be ridiculous. Soon there will be no real world anymore, because the earth is going to be destroyed by an asteroid. It will be here in four days. It was nice knowing you all.

April Fools! (Although, if the world is destroyed by an asteroid in four days, do not blame me.) I love April Fools' Day. I don't know why. It's just fun seeing what Google and the gang do every year to "fool" people (and also fun, though a bit sad, to see how many people actually fall for such jokes as "Gmail Motion"). Even my classes had some April Fools' pranks today. It's just a fun day to be silly.

Some people, however, do not understand the purpose of this sacred day. They seem to think that April Fools' Day is about calling out pranksters.

"BREAKING NEWS! Herds of giant fish stampeding Botswana!"
commenter1: "lol wut is dis fer realz?"
commenter2: "April Fools! Haha! You are so gullible!"

NO.

It is supposed to go like this:

"BREAKING NEWS! Herds of giant fish stampeding Botswana!"
commenter1: "lol wut is dis fer realz?"
commenter2: "OMG! We're all going to die!!!!!!!"

The official April Fools' Rules dictate that if a witness to an April Fools' Day hoax such as this realizes that it is obviously an April Fools' Day joke, then they are bound by international law (which is sadly unenforced, much like the law against naming continents after famous cartographers) to play along with the joke. It's only common sense! Once you tell the gullible masses the obvious truth, it is no longer any fun. The only fun thing is being smug about having a healthy skepticism, which fades quite quickly because that's a pretty average ability. But if you play along, you might actually convince someone that giant fish are indeed invading Botswana, or that you can actually control the internet with your mind. And then you'll have a million people staring at their monitors trying to search Google for "Helvetica" telepathically.

I love April Fools' Day. If the earth is not destroyed by an asteroid, I'm looking forward to next year's pranks. Now, if only I can convince my school to say that Dining Services is being bought out by McDonalds.

Why I Really Should Never Ever Read Book Reviews

Have you ever noticed that there is always someone who is not happy? I could give everyone in the world free pancakes and then get hate mail the next day because one of the pancakes was burned and another one tasted like paprika. An angry group would probably threaten to shoot me, others would try to cast out pancake demons from me, and one guy would send me a picture of a bunny with a pancake on its head.

Media are similar to pancakes in this respect. I can read a fantastic book, then look it up on Amazon and catch a glimpse of a scathing review that completely disagrees with my perception of it. Then I feel like I’m a literary imbecile who would probably read any trash. I feel tempted to pore over the book searching for the terrible writing that the reviewer blathered on about. But I don’t really care.

One example is my current book, The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, which I think is a fantastic book on physics, and quite accessible to the average reader, but upon reading reviews I discovered that apparently some people have completely different definitions of science and literature than I do (fortunately, most of the reviews were good, so I still love this book and highly recommend it).

A particularly embarrassing example is The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, which I read in nearly one sitting on my way back to school after Christmas break. It was an exhilarating read, but when I looked it up online I found that most of the reviews were not about its shoddy historical claims (seriously, people have written dozens of books “debunking” it when anyone who knows how to use a computer can, in less than a minute, find a host of factual errors from the book), but rather about how terrible the writing was. And upon further reflection, I could see why they would think that. I still kind of like it, but in a way, reading those reviews ruined the book for me.

No matter how much I personally enjoy a book, someone, somewhere, is going to vehemently disagree with me. So, I have resolved to never read a negative book review again. I might read a positive one, but only if I’m sure that the reviewer isn’t only being positive because the book is good for fuel. Because books are important to me, and I’m not going to let anyone else ruin them for me no matter how bad they think the writing is. Even if the literary world suffocates under the weight of bloated prose. So there.

I Do Beleive

I’m sure you’re probably hyperventilating right now, but don’t worry. That typo in the title was completely intentional. All shall be explained.

It is snowing today. But that is not what I am writing about. Neither does it have anything to do (as far as I can tell) with the typo in the title.

Today’s reading assignment for Western Heritage was selected pages from “The Freedom of a Christian” by Martin Luther. A simple reading assignment, however, led to an astoundingly pointless chain of events.

I had ordered a book online for a significantly lower price, but had not yet arrived in the mail. I went to the bookstore to see if I could find a used copy that was on sale, but the only copies they had were new, and almost twenty dollars. I then debated the pros and cons of buying a copy of a book that I already (sort of) owned just to use it for two days, after which I would no longer be able to return it to the bookstore, and would end up with two copies.

I decided to see if they had a copy in the library. What luck! I checked it out and read the required pages, but it was rather confusing, because the page numbers assigned didn’t delineate any logical sections of the book. I decided that it must simply be a different edition of the book.

Fortunately, I got to class ten minutes early. As soon as I walked into the sparsely populated classroom, I sensed that something was terribly wrong, and my backpack seemed to grow heavier. As my eyes fell upon the few other students who were early, I felt confusion, and then more confusion, and then pure frustration. I had read the wrong book. And I owned the correct book. I immediately turned around and headed for the dorm, which was about 10 minutes away at a comfortable pace. I passed both of my Western Heritage teachers while I was speed-walking back to my room. One of them commented with a grin that I was going the wrong way, and I said something about having forgotten my book. Little did he know (may he never read this post) that I had literally forgotten all about my book.

I only got to class a few minutes late, fortunately. Unfortunately, I came back to a quiz for which I was completely unprepared. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t get a single question right. However, one quiz will not hurt my grade too much, so I’m not terribly worried.

After class we got back a pile of our papers from last semester that had been graded. As I looked over them, I flickered between elation (Thank goodness I mentioned Plato’s rationalism!) and despair (How on earth could I write “beleive” instead of “believe”? How could I ignore my spell checker’s fervent warnings?). See, I told you I’d explain the title. Isn’t it clever how I tied it all together?

I did notice one mistake that my teacher made, however. That comma was correctly placed, thank you. I didn’t mention anything about it to him, though; somehow I get the feeling that nobody else really cares about commas.

2010

So, a new year is upon us. It may even already be a new year where you are. And it will probably be a new year by the time I finish this post. 2010 was pretty good. I started college. And that, I suppose, is a major accomplishment. Here I shall commemorate the most notable music, books, and events that I experienced this year (in no particular order, because then it would take me all of 2011 just to organize them). It feels almost like my whole life has taken place in the last 365.25 days.

Music


Oliver the Penguin's album, "Button Pusher"
Charmaine's album, "Love Reality" (must listen!)
"On a Good Day", "Clear Blue Water", and "If I Could Fly" - OceanLab
"Hide & Seek" - Imogen Heap
"Airplanes" - B.o.B.
Britt Nicole's album, "The Lost Get Found"
"Fireflies" - Owl City
"You Belong With Me" - Taylor Swift
"Miracle" - Matisyahu
"The NaNoWriMo Song" - All Caps
"Touch My Hand" - David Archuleta

Books


"Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder
"It's Really All About God" by Samir Selmanovic
The Genesis Trilogy and "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle
"Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer
"7 Deadly Wonders", "The 6 Sacred Stones", and "The Five Greatest Warriors" by Matthew Reilly

Everything Else


Started college
Finished my first semester of college
Wrote my first story with 10,000 words (next year I WILL finish NaNoWriMo!)
Read the entire archives of xkcd, Unshelved, and pictures for sad children
Made some awesome friends
Went for one week without listening to music
Spent more than one week listening to music
Discovered "The Legend of the Seeker" show and "The Sword of Truth" series, which I want to continue watching/reading next year (thanks, Linda!)
Did some serious self-reflection


I'm looking forward to what comes in 2011! See you all next year!

The End!

I’m ending my experiment today. Huzzah! The main reason is that I’m going to church and can’t avoid music. The secondary reason is that not listening to any music is really boring.

I didn’t go insane. That was mildly disappointing. Oh, well! Now I know that I can survive without music; I’ll just be really bored. Lesson learned. I guess this is like one of those studies where they discover that vitamins really ARE good for you! (Who knew?)

Now… let’s see… what music should I listen to first?

“Safe” – Britt Nicole. Ahhh….