It’s a foregone conclusion that I should have learned by now. Getting to know someone over a short period of time is no easy feat, but not an impossible one either. Especially considering when a person’s close to me, I really have no excuse to not know how they function. Dissecting people’s behavior’s has come somewhat naturally to me, and it only takes me a little while to absorb all of their diminutive mannerisms and idiosyncrasies coupled with their overall demeanor and response pattern. Needless to say (quick tangent: the expression “needless to say” is a dumb paradox, since if I didn’t need to say it, I wouldn’t, eliminating the use of the expression and the need for the expression itself, but I’m actually going to say it even though it’s likely redundant or irrelevant) there shouldn’t be a reason why I don’t fall in line with how someone else is, since I obviously know them all too well.

I hate being blown off. So do most people. This begs the obvious question of why I would knowingly do something like that to someone who I know will hardly be indifferent to it. Especially when it wasn’t even that hard to show up, it just came down to my laziness and some other dumb excuses that I used to defend myself but ones that I know are lame and hardly apply. Even then, not only was it a matter of blowing someone off, it was the manner in which I did it. Choosing people who don’t even deserve to be considered was the worst decision when trying to stay on the best terms possible with everyone.

And of course, there are the comments. Most dropped in jest, barely a few with a hidden meaning unintended to be discovered. Even the seemingly harsh ones are all  supposed to be interpreted conversely, since that’s my personality - how people should see me. Of course, there has to be a limit, and I tend to exceed it when around those who I believe will follow suit with my philosophies due to my sheer level of comfort, even when I subconsciously know I shouldn’t. There are some things that just can’t be taken lightly due to their subject matter or due to the context they are placed in, and though that may be the areas where I find the most humor, it is where others find the most hurt. When aimed at those who do tend to be reactionary in instinct, it shows an utter lack of the skills I bragged about just a few lines earlier.

I should know better. Until I do, I’ll never be good with people. A promise of perfection perhaps isn’t practical, but I’ve given it. Now I just have to live up to it. Based on how I see myself, no big deal. Based on the track record that I’ve accumulated, a slight bit harder. 

I’ve never liked birthdays. The whole social concept is flawed. Why celebrate a single day out of the year? Just because the earth was at that exact point with respect to the sun doesn’t sound like an apt cause for joy and celebration. Are we celebrating the fact that we made it all the way around once without dying? Are the presents a reward for doing so, an incentive for repeating the feat? Do we expect all of these things to occur naturally? And most importantly, why the hell does everyone advance a year of age on the first day of the year in some oriental countries? 

I’ve always resented every bit of it. Getting gifts and having to write awkward thank you notes, having to pretend to like gifts when you really wonder how people thought of them, having to look surprised when you already know what you’re getting, and having to deal with the party atmosphere and being sociable. Having to buy gifts for others not knowing if they’ll like what you’ve chosen out, spending hours on the task, and settling on a gift card because that’s a safe option. What a thorny agglomeration of things I’d rather avoid.

Birthdays 1-17 (with the exception of about 3 of them) were all like that. Ignoring the 17.6% success rate, my eighteenth proved to be rather different.

Firstly, there was the totally unexpected midnight deal with three of my best friends showing up at my house and bringing with them a cake that I still haven’t managed to finish, despite all my efforts to gain weight and offer others around me the opportunity to gain weight. Throw in the fact that they barely planned it a few hours before it actually happened, and that made it all the more symbolic of them, and by extension, special. They hung around to talk for a good hour, and by the time they left it was 1AM and I had left an annoyed girlfriend hanging for quite a while.

Speaking of whom, she was the one that made the next 23 hours just as special. She wrote me a card for every period of the day (for those keeping score at home, that’s 6 of them) and had a little something to accompany it. Even though the dinamitas were exquisite and the water gun practical, what really made my day was the picture frame with two of my favorite pictures, that I now keep in my car so I can see it whenever I want to (Hopefully this does not leave me mentally incapable of driving resulting in my untimely death. Love kills.). But just the thought of it, and how she’d spend all that time just to make a day I didn’t think much of into something really special was the thing I cherished the most. Especially going on a date afterwards, for the first time in so long. 

It’s still a dumb day. But even though it has no special significance to me, it showed me that the people in my life do. And despite my overly inquisitory demeanor (see the opening paragraph), this is something I know I don’t need to question. I don’t know how to put into words (a rare occasion for me, as you can imagine) how just a few friends (albeit some of the most important people I’ve ever met) know me so well, and know how to show me how wrong I am (something they shouldn’t get used to, because it really doesn’t happen all that often).

In possibly related news, I’m in an illegal relationship. 

Probably the most hyped movie to be assembled of the generation, I’m sure most people marveled at its production, acting, and overall experience. But talk about hyped. Five movies to tie in the story beforehand, an ensemble cast headlined by one of the legendary faces of this decade’s acting, and a countless amount of advertising for promotion that it really did not need. They showed off their trailer at the Hunger Games and Mission Impossible, rang the stock exchange opening bell, and released a special comic-book series to accompany the storyline. Among all of this, I’m sure most avid fans and casual observers (like myself) were hoping that all the pressure didn’t transform this installment into a glorified version of Transformers with a noticeable Michael Bay influence, or (at the other end of the spectrum) a underdeveloped story emblematic of DC’s Green Lantern. And of course, every other person was wondering whether it would suffer from the lack of the flagship hero Spiderman (who did look quite amazing in the trailers). 

I remember awaiting its release ever since watching Captain America in July of last year (an altogether okay movie, and nothing close to special like any of the other films), and even though I’ve been more excited waiting for other movies (see, the Dark Knight Rises ever since 2008). So waiting an extra five days after its premiere to see it was no large feat.

Getting to the theatre in a timely manner was an adventure that was worthy of inclusion in the movie itself. After effectively pissing myself during the AP Exam (which ended 75 minutes late, for the record), I had to drive six miles on freaking surface streets in 15 minutes to pick up two lazyass people who didn’t have a ride while my future roommate calmly sauntered over to the theater to get tickets for all of us. Fantastic. We all barely made it in before the stupid roller coaster commercial came on the big screen reminding us that drinks were in the lobby and smoking was not permitted. Because we were totally planning on doing so, right?

The first thing that irritated me about the movie was Natasha Romanoff (what a collectively disgusting name) and her short hair. Though it does take some time between Iron Man 2 and the Avengers to occur, you’d think the last thing on Scarlett Johansson’s mind would be to get a freaking haircut. Despite the fact that I could only focus on her bloody-looking head (which I finally figured out is an allusion to her ‘super’hero name), she did start of the movie rather interestingly. Her talent was rather fun to watch, even though she was pretty useless every time there was a fight that involved more than hand-to-hand combat.

Jeremy Renner <3 Ever since I saw him in the Hurt Locker, it’s been really fun to watch this guy through a bunch of movies. The Town, Mission 4, and now this. It only makes me all the more excited for Aaron Cross and the Bourne Legacy, since Renner is really just a badass. Especially that one shot of him firing the arrow as he falls off the building. All this said, it really sucked when he got mind-tripped by Loki at the very beginning, and we didn’t really get to see him frequently until like halfway through the movie. And he couldn’t do anything besides shoot arrows, which was kinda a buzzkill. Still cool, though, except for when he finally ran out.

The first half of the movie was kickass. How they finally brought the whole team together, using Romanoff to get Banner (surprisingly played really well by Mark Ruffalo) and using Fury to get Rogers, and Coulson to get Stark. Quick Tangent: has any actor been given better lines throughout all of his or her major films than Robert Downey Jr. has? As the eccentric Stark, as the insane Sherlock Holmes, and whatever the hell he was playing in Due Date and Tropic Thunder, he’s had more priceless and humorously sophisticated lines than anyone I remember seeing recently. And the casting is perfect, since you can’t really imagine anyone else pulling off what he does in just the same way. Anyway, the characters that the director of each individual superhero movie built up held true, and it was evident when they all ended up clashing.

And from that, it did turn into an action flick, but not the mind-numbing, overly-epic, half-an-hour-too-long mess that was Dark of the Moon, but instead a fast-paced Bourne Ultimatum (with special effects) kind of action. Even though the ending did kinda turn the whole thing into Hulk 2 (the only guy to really kick ass while everyone else was tired or out of arrows). It was enough to satisfy based on what each one had showcased in their individual movie, but not laden with the testosterone of Expendables 2 that would easily hype up a guy (metric equivalent = 10 girls).

I don’t ask for too much. When someone talks to me, I don’t mind if they’re smarter than me, or if they have a higher standing than me. I treat them the same way in which I treat everyone else. Everyone, regardless of their life or stature or position, is to be treated at a certain basis, from which they can ascend or descend based on my interactions with them. I use that as a general rule, and the only way you can be offended by that policy is if you think you’re better than me. And if you do, then I don’t care about offending you.

I just ask for the same kinds of things in return. If I haven’t shown you anything good or bad about myself, I’d like to have the same indifferent treatment that I’d give to you. Though acclaim is nice, I’d rather not be treated as if I had such a thing if in actuality, I don’t. That’s why I take it as a slight when I’m met with condescension, since most likely I’m better than you in most ways possible. 

So on Wednesday, me and my friends decided to work, a rare occurence in this period of time known as second semester. It’s hard enough to get myself to work, let alone get a group of us to come to a consensus that doing so is in our best interests. The library presents itself as a prime place to get some joint work done, especially due to its proximity to us on the day in question. 

We decided to get whatever it is we were working on done on the upper floors, since all of the common joint-work spaces on the bottom floor were occupied. Considering that all of our library cards were expired, we worked in the closest possible place to those rooms - the circular tables just outside. Unfortunately, the tables proved to be rather small, and we needed to crowd five people around a single unit. This would necessitate moving some of the chairs such that a five-seat circle was possible, which we did. We began talking in hushed voices, as to not disturb the computer users who were a good twenty feet away, and likely could not hear us anyway, as their minds were lost in cyberspace.

In any event, we were minding our own business, making attempts to work, when a short Asian man with a discernible accent approaches us. Since he’s a library worker, we naturally take no note of him, since, you know, he’s a lirary worker. He, however, took notice of us, and decided to say a few choice words, none of which made sense to the casual observer. His first comments were “You can’t move around the furniture, it’s in violation of a city code”. That initial line stank of bs, an as I would later learn here, there was no evidence of nay such rule. Whatever, though. Despite the fact that he was mildly irritating by the way he talked, we decided to give i the benefit of the doubt since he worked here and he was just doing his job. So we moved all the chairs back to their respective positions, and waited for him to go away. Which, of course, he did not. He then proceeded to say “You know, the second floor is supposed to be a quiet place”, physically looking down on us with a noticeable note of derision in his ridiculously annoying voice. Now, that’s the kinda statement that got me angry in a split second. Though I should have thought better of it, I stated “it’d be easier for us to be quiet once you stop talking to us”. This is likely what caused him to kick us out of that section of the library.

No matter though. We actually wanted to get some work done, so we went to the middle floor, where the couches were taken, so we sat on the individual seats that all happened tot be in a line, while two of us sat on the floor to preserve the circle-like atmosphere. We actually began to be productive, for a solid 15 minutes, when another library worker walked by and politely told us that sitting on the floor constituted a fire hazard. Now, while this seemed like as much bs as he municipal code excuse that the other guy had pulled, the lady had a smile on her face and seemed understanding, so I decided that I should get up. Speaking of the other guy, he appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, to chastise us yes again, saying the same things that the lady had said but with a disgusting look on his disgusting face and his accent dripping of disrespect. I was in no mood for his words, and I simply did not want to listen to his tone of voice, so I got my stuff together and prepared to leave. The asshole simply did not know when to give up, however, because he followed it up with “you guys really need to understand that the library is a quiet place”. No shit. The only reason we were talking loudly (for that split second) is because we were talking to the other lady who had asked us to move. Which I promptly told him. His ears, apparently having the power to shrivel up and deflect any strands of sound he did not want to hear, chose to ignore this, and parked himself ten feet away, waiting for us to move once again.

Not fifteen seconds had passed, while we were still getting all of our crap together and deciding the next place to station ourselves, his patience dried up (to his credit, it lasted way longer than mine did), and he came back over to us and started bickering some nonsense about a $15 fine and how we’d have to leave the library. By now, as those who even mildly know me can imagine, I was furious, but I bit my tongue such as not to receive something stupid like a lifetime ban from the place. The guy walked us out, choosing to stare straight forward instead of meet my eyes as I glared at him throughout the whole walk out.

An additional note: shortly after (give or take 20 minutes), I had to talk to the main desk inside of the library about something, and I went in alone as the others were reluctant to meet the worker again. I took care of my business, and walked back out, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the same guy following me out from inside of the children’s section. It took all my strength not to turn around and give him a few choice words. Would you look at that, maybe my temper is getting a little better.

In short, if the guy were simply a little more like the lady, and he composed himself a bit differently, all of this crap could have been avoided. Half of his allegations against us were not even true, and the ones that we took to be true sounded questionable to begin with. I was objective towards him until his demeanor gave me a reason not to be. He, seemingly from the start, had starkly contrasting intentions. Let’s just see how it turns out next time we see each other. 

Whenever you know that a day isn’t going to go well from the moment that the infinitesimal rays of the sun make their way to the edges of your eyes, it isn’t going to go well. That’s why, when today I was greeted by the dull blandness of vast clouds, it could only be worse.

Nicknamed “la tortura” by Mrs. Homstad, the AP Spanish test was one I was actually looking forward to. My favorite part of the test was that I couldn’t study for it in any way, so I wasn’t actually concerned walking in completely cold, devoid of any Spanish speaking for four days, and an actual practice run for about a month and a half. Though that turned out to be true in more than one way (the day was not altogether warm, as mentioned above), it didn’t necessarily turn out for the better.

Having to leave my house at 7:05, a full 45 minutes earlier than I’m used to, was an undeniably unpleasant experience. Knowing that I needed to get all the rest I could get with my reduced stamina, while having the burden on my conscience of studying, made those extra forty minutes quite valuable. In any event, I wasted them away by looking over dumb crap that I already knew, then finally succumbing to sleep. Oh well, I would be fine.

Actually getting there on time didn’t (surprisingly) prove to be a problem, the only discrepancy being that all other 50 people were already stationed near the front of the library doors. I’d brought two bottles of Gatorade so that I’d be sure not to ask others for food, but there was a caravan of food awaiting all of our arrival. There was obvious tension in the air, as there is before any AP Test. And then Homstad left, and that sentiment doubled.

In these dire times, there is always a moment of comic relief. As my friends and I (unsuccessfully) tried to inconspicuously move towards the elevator as to get to the testing room first for the sake of good seats, we were followed by essentially the whole group. As we ascended to the pinnacle of the library, eager to rush out of the confined space, we glimpsed Ms. Jordan (apparently our proctor) standing there defiantly, her arm outstretched in an iconic manner as if every fiber of her being was dedicated to hindering our passage.

After stripping us of any means of outside communication, Ms. Jordan allowed us to enter the next chamber, while setting herself up in her prearranged stance to do the same to the next group coming up the elevator. After an extended delay, we were finally ushered into the damn testing room. 

You know how, when you have to pee, it becomes hard to focus on all other endeavors you’re striving for at the moment? Well that deadly affliction hindered me during the part where focus is pivotal in the AP Exam: listening. Perhaps those two bottles of Gatorade weren’t the smartest idea, but considering that I failed two of the listening sections due to this…distraction made them seem like a horrid decision. After that followed the reading, which was easily the surprise of the test, lacking difficulty.

Of course, being a long test, they find ways to make you talk about stupid crap, just in a different language (the problem with this being that bs-ing in a different language proves to be complicated), such as inviting your best friend for your older brother’s graduation (wtf why would he want to come?). Of course, this leads to me writing dumb stuff like how he’s the first person in my family to be this smart and how it’s a momentous event for my relatives and how my best friend needs to be more involved in my life. Then, of course, the Collegeboard decides to test out controversial topics such as whether technologically-produced art is indeed art. Half the time, I wonder if they do that as a survey to see what the youth’s opinion is on the matter. Anyway, it did provide for some thought-provoking material, though I would rather that my thoughts  be provoked in a more familiar language, such as English.

Everyone hates job interviews. We all suck at them in our native languages, and even more so in foreign languages. So logically, to screw us all over, they give us a simulated conversation about working for a children’s camp (sounded like a work camp for some reason). I have no interest in working at a place such as that, let alone working at all (too much effort for a lazyass like me), and it was even worse having to answer repetitive questions such as “where have you worked?” or “what experience do you have?” and “what qualities could prove useful?” plus the extra frustrating “why did you apply here?” Disgusting. 

Then we had to talk about water for two minutes. Water. Not gonna waste even two minutes typing about that.

The shittiest possible part of this was that (being in the second group to take the speaking portion), we were stuck in that damn place for a solid six hours, since the first rotation took an inexplicable 45 minutes for a 20 minute process. To their defense, we took 30, but still. I had plans after that! Nobody thinks about what I have to do.