The Blog The BlogJaketopia page is a mess. Can't even read it and I'm the one who wrote it. Just run-on sentences. Need to re-do.
I'd like to credit my school counselor for moving me to do my work. I finished my ELA project on time, finished all my other assignments. Just need to catch up on journalism work. Just do it...
12:40PM. Life update...
12:31PM. Sometimes I come on here to say something serious like the post below and I realize just how laughable I sound. Anyone reading this probably rolls their eyes at my elementary fantasies of a better world and guffaws at my delusions of grandeur. You probably want to put me in a half-nelson and give me a playful knuckle to the head. I'm just a kid. What do I know?
And I'm not being sarcastic. I know I'm silly. I don't know how the world works.
11:44AM. Don't you feel like we're playing God too much?
Biology classes teach the concept of "artificial selection" casually, brief lectures delivered in the same manner as the ones about fossils and the pressure of gases. This can't keep happening. This isn't right. Sometimes it tears at me, like right now. It's not just our luxury service dog-breeding that's removing us from our grounded places in the universe. We've stunted human evolution by ceaselessly creating new pathways and shortcuts for dysgenic bloodlines to continue through. We've weakened ourselves and completely weakened our purpose for being strong. It's so possible for anyone to survive and for any individual to reproduce. Pleasure, intimacy, and the core reason for intercourse have all been muddled and tainted by sin that began to erupt 10x more rapidly into average society post industrial revolution. On top of this, the internet, media, and pop culture have radicalized and ruined what sex should be, turning common desires from sweeter ideas into an amalgamation of different violent dances of two-person masturbation (as if there weren't already sicknesses on the streets leading us to this place in the world of lust -- we've just sped it up and made it worse). Our exponential growth in population WILL come to a halting end. This expedituous expansion of mouths to feed makes us not unlike to rabbits, and their overproduction of hopping bunnies, except it makes us completely something otherworldly, because now we have nothing stopping even the runts from surviving. We will continue to overpopulate the earth until we experience a great reset that I DO believe will happen. It's kind of Malthusian, part of what I'm trying to say, that we're going to keep doing this until we detonate some great war, famine, etc that causes a great reset, but that's not what I came here to say. I Also didn't come here to sound like a eugenic, because that's not what I'm talking about.
I haven't really reached the point I came here to make and I'd like to apologize for that, I'm a little incoherent right now, I just came here to collect my thoughts and type them all out. What I've been trying to get to is actually common knowledge and very oft discussed, but I believe in it strongly. We've enabled, if not encouraged (especially in The West) unhealthy nonheritable traits to continue to rise, most notably diseases like obesity, because we've taken the practice of post-modernist delusions fact-rewriting into our very, very dirty hands and decided to spread information that gives people no reason to believe that what they're doing is a detriment to their quality of health/life.
It IS sustainable to return to a life of civilized "savagery" (oxymoronic but let me explain). Perhaps there is a perfect balance of modern conveniences and wilderness. The mental clarity and physical advantages of oldstyle survival paired with modern soap and towels. Maybe that would be perfect.
Now I've just lost my train of thought and don't know where to go.
11:59AM -- one minute from PM. Walking back from lunch, I saw a young man clad in a suit walking through the halls, with a bit of a gimpy saunter. He reminded me of The Penguin, minus the obesity. He was even carrying some elaborate staff.
I was listening to this song when he passed by me. That song, with its strong and heavy instrumentals, reminded me of Ozymandias. So I grinned and pictures Adrian Veidt and Oswald Cobblepot casually crossing paths...
//
PS: If I was a Watchmen character I'd be the mild-mannered second Nite-Owl. Daniel Dreiberg.
10:10AM. Have to hurry posting this or I'll run out of inspiration to work...
I just wanted to pop in with a life update. Past few weeks feeling under the weather. Sort of. Kind of going out of my head. Obsessing over things, blasé attitude towards life, etc, had this thin layer of calm resting over everything and overall felt pretty numb, out of touch, in dreamland. Always in dreamland. Always in Jaketopia. Yesterday, during lunch, felt like I was going to pop. Visit school counselor for first time. I like him. We talked for ~1hr30min and I just poured my heart/soul/etc onto him littered in with my classic WITTY BANTER and CHARISMATIC TAKE ON THINGS. He recommended Candide by Voltaire to me and said that it reminded him of me. I made him laugh and towards the end of the conversation I was feeling more grounded, which was good. We were talking about what's stopping me from doing things, and he said, "Why don't you just do what Phil Knight says?" and I said, "What?"
COUNSELOR: Why don't you just do what Phil Knight says?
ME, again: What?
COUNSELOR: Why don't you just do what Phil Knight says? [this was for the third time -- he was being patient with me]
ME: Oh, Phil Knight. "Just do it." I get it. That's a good one. I thought you kept saying "Bill Nye", and I was like, do what? "Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill."
And then he laughed, and I laughed, and he said, "I figured you'd pick up on that one," and I felt like myself. And we kept talking, and he wasn't being a doucher about being "candid" with me (get it?) and I appreciated that a lot. And he seemed to understand. I told him about the cities and the whole sin thing and I told him about consumerism, and he cracked a joke at me later about how what I was, and what I care about, is all a product of consumerism, and I smiled, because he wasn't being a doucher about it, and he was right. And he knew it was ironic, and he said he was digging at me, and I explained to him all my hypocrisies and he told me I sounded really self-aware. And it felt like talking to a friend, and I really enjoyed it. At the end, he told me he really enjoyed the conversation, and he thanked me. "I didn't expect when you came in today that I would have this conversation. I enjoyed that a lot, thank you." And that made me feel happy. And I said thank you, too.
Getting off the bus, my mind was revving, operating on high-energy. There were about a billion things going on in my head, and this is how it is all the time, but now it's all a little louder, and I still felt like I was going crazy. Like I had been for a while now. You know how it is, up and down, up and down, and neither up and down are really good. The middle is perfect. Goldilocks. Just right. So I'm lurking in the upward section, and I finally, finally feel like I'm going to do something to balance myself out, and I talked to my parents briefly, found out we were going to Savannah next weekend (which was really nice to learn, except sad because it meant I wouldn't see Anna next weekend, but I'm seeing her tomorrow, so everything's still lovely), drank a half-full glass of water (ice cold), refilled it, then headed down to the basement to lift weights. Finally, I felt like my mind was clearing.
Yesterday -- hit bi's, tri's, chest, a little bit of shoulders (just in between primary sets), and quads/glutes. Felt really, really, really good. I went down there feeling kind of chilly and dry, ended steaming hot, very sweaty, and incredibly, incredibly sore. And I felt clear-headed once again. And I also looked kinda nice. And I felt strong again, after dropping down to 102lbs (I'm not violently underweight -- I'm just 5'2).
Now, moving on from that, I had an ELA project to do. And it's IMPORTANT, VERY important, and I'm VERY behind, and it's due on Monday, and my weekend's booked (with delights -- Anna's coming), so I really, really have to get it done. Something to know about me: I have this overlying sense all the time: "Everything's going to fine. Everything's okay." And this is so drilled into my mind that I can hardly take anything seriously, re: that blasé attitude I described earlier. Nothing seems to matter when everything seems like it's going to be okay all the time. So I have a hard time completing my schoolwork. Allow me to start an unrelated tangent here:
We get a month to write essays in ELA and I write the entire thing in 40 minutes and get a 96. So what could have happened if I spent the month on it? I do this for everything. I put more work into not having to do work than I do... actually working (repetition, much?). You know that poem, "I saw the greatest minds of my generation destroyed by madness..." Replace "madness" with "laziness", and replace "I", with my name, followed by a disappointed epithet: "Jake, fart-sniffer and arrogant ninth grader..." (this is because I'm inadverdently calling myself one of the greatest minds of my generation -- I must be using the term "greatest" very, very loosely). I'm a lazy person, and I need to get myself in shape if I want to succeed. Because everyone tells me I have a lot of potential (I know I tell myself that, staring into a vanity mirror every morning and lubricating my hand while I stare at myself...) (sorry for these bad jokes), and I feel like I'm washing it down the drain by not putting anything into anything that matters. I started the year strong with all A's and let everything swirl down the sewer, for no other reason than not completing my work. My average grade for tests and quizzes is around 95, but my average grade for homework and projects would really knock me down a notch, solely because of my lackadaisical efforts and the fact that I'm not contributing to my life how I should. But I'll change this. But that's also what I say every year... And to be clear, I still have almost all A's. There's a couple holes that have been dug that I'm resolving ASAP, and then we're back into big alphabet territory.
There's a lot of irony in someone as competitive as I am being in this position.
And I've got this obsession with people knowing who I really am, knowing I'm a good kid, smart, etc, but I put so much of my time and conscious behavior into making it seem like I'm not as intelligent, not as competent, so I get expected less of. And I really shouldn't do this. I want to be a successful person and live a successful life and I fear that my ego/indolence are going to drag me down to an irredeemable place. I'm in high school now. Things actually matter, and I'm still acting like it's second grade. At this point, it's a question of whether I'm doing all of this out of a idolatrous love for myself, or a clever, cunning hate for myself...
But I didn't come here to end on a bad note, or even get into one at all! In fact, everything's going very, very well right now...
This is on the clauses of: Girlfriend coming over tomorrow and it's a me & wife weekend. Nothing feels better than waking up next to her and I have a couple days of that ahead of me. So that's obviously incredibly nice. Next, yesterday I registered for a weeklong summer camp that I've been attending for a few years now, typically for two weeks, but this year it works better for only one. I go to the UGA campus, write for a week, hang out with friends, and see my girlfriend at the end of it. It's amazing. After that, like I already mentioned, Savannah next weekend! Then, I feel like I'm building healthier habits agin. And furthermore, I do honestly think I can get this ELA project done if I put my head down and work for the whole day today, and then some on Sunday.
Oh God.
It just hit me that I only have two days to do essentially everything for this project.
I believe in myself...
//
PS: Published this. Then realized I never finished my thought after the tangent about academics and personal weaknesses. I was going to say, I've got this ELA project to do, and I was incredibly driven to work on it yesterday evening, and then the moment I was done with my workout, I went upstairs and got distracted with my Invincible compendiums, a compendium in the form of a trilogy that I've just finished establishing. Wow, I love that comic.
5:34PM. Last note of the day. I'm getting overeager. I always get in a blogging-frenzy when it first goes up. All I have to say:
1. Blog layout inspired by Terry A. Davis' rants. Familiar?
2. Whenever I'm writing, I imagine Anna reading it back and doing a sigh, smiling, and then in her voice, I hear: "It always annoys me when you don't use commas." And I get some heart eyes and my little beating thing does a big thump. Although that did make me really hot-tempered when we first started dating. To explain to anyone else that feels like she does when you read my constant run-on sentences (like this one):
Purpose in my fiction: creates tone (frenzied, excited, fluid). Or builds character, showing that's how they think. Constant, overwhelming, etc. Purpose in my blog: It's my damn blog, for God's sake! Let me say what I want! Just kidding. Combination of not needing to be grammatically correct in informal settings, and simply forgetting.
Maybe I'm pulling the whole "purpose in my fiction" stuff out of my ass. Who's to say?
5:24PM. Life update: 1. I miss my girlfriend. She's taking a nap. 2. Finished Watchmen today (could you tell?). Took longer than it should have just because I was busy reading other things. Great book. Obviously. Said everyone ever. 3. Went to library recently. Got: new Jeff Lemire books. Couple of Before Watchmen books. Plus Doomsday Clock part 1 and 2. Next, will read Saga of the Swamp Thing, maybe. It's another Alan Moore classic/general comic book history classic. I started it a long time ago and didn't get hooked. 4. I miss my girlfriend again. Note: here's another difficulty of being a super-hero. I would have to hide it from everyone which is a strain on A) my boyish ego and B) my relationship, because I don't want to lie to her, and also it would make me available less, and ruin trust. Naturally, Anna would know my secret identity first, but I just have this thing about telling people things like that. Every time I want to commit to something or do something big, I have this big stigma about telling anyone my plans, because I feel like it jinxes me, or does something to make everything meaningless, or trivial. Like when I speak on it or announce it, it's just novelty. Another note: if I were actually going to become a super-hero, I shouldn't talk about it on this blog, because when a new vigilante pops up in the southeast, you'll all know it's me, if you know me well enough, which you will. And I'd honestly end up announcing my super-hero name on this website before it became reality, and I'd get attached to the name when I said it, so it would probably end up being my actual title. Then everyone would know. But, maybe, all of this will actually undermine your belief that I WAS the mysterious masked crusader in the shadows/news because I've just explained why that would be a bad idea after posting it here. How would you know what I actually intend to do?
PS: this blog is actually going pretty swell so far, and it's just day one. A little incomprehensible and wordy -- but when am I ever not? It's on brand.
5:22PM. Line from Rorschach. "... And all the whores and politicians will look up and shout: 'Save us!'. And I'll look down and whisper: 'No.'"
Good quote, but if I was a superhero, I would save all the prostitutes. I would help them and free them. In fact, that would be one of my main goals. Ending prostitution. Freeing the women. Etc
5:11PM. These days I'm stuck on being a superhero.
It was inevitable, considering I've been stuffing my head with a mix of gaudy & exciting and conversely thoughtful & grim crime-fighting tales for about a year, and I've always been in dreamland experimenting with what superhuman powers I could imagine. But I'm really stuck on it now. You know how I get. I'm in fantasyland again. Every day I feel like I'm just in Jaketopia.
It would be great if I was a little kid again, too, because then I could wrap it all up in elementary terms and write a laughably youthful essay about it for my class. It'd be called "If I Was a Super-Hero" or "Why I Want to Be a Super-Hero" and have a byline below it that says "by Jake K". And it'd outline my main points, which wouldn't change much if I was 5 or 15. More on this later.
3:37PM. Someone named Ren who follows me on Instagram seems to be the only person who still engages with my websites and content. Makes me happy. Whoever you are -- I am thankful.
3:24PM. It is SUCH a relief to finally have a blog again! I've got my voice back!
I could say anything right now. But instead I'll just say something boring. I just saw how this website looks like on my mobile device (Pixel 6a) and it's not great, but it's readable. And ATP that's what I'm looking for. So much less stress than having 100+ lines of CSS like before.
2:27PM. Was tempted to change fun fact on the index to a rageful, embittered sentiment about what just happened. Had an amazing, compact, in retrospect, perfect index.html up. Accidentally overwrote it with an irrelevant file. Drove me to madness. But I solved the problem in just a couple minutes and just tried to re-write what I vaguely remembered typing there literally ~30min earlier. It was only two paragraphs, really. Not even -- half of it is just a list, which was still in my clipboard. Now I'm laughing.
Today's been a pretty good day.
Writing on an online blog like this makes me feel like Rorschach now. The next time I read about a guy who journals, I'll think it makes me feel like him.
Many more posts to come. Will be less curt then. I'm just in a hurry to upload the site to the web now.