Wow this book is not appropriate. It somehow manages to be incredibly sexually explicit without there being any sexual relationships (mostly), and I kind of wish it wasn't this explicit but it's a good book so it's fine. The main character is not okay. People who go down into wells to think and then stay there for a while without water are probably not okay, but the people that are TRULY not okay are those that COVER UP THE WELL AND LEAVE THE PERSON IN THE WELL TRAPPED THERE WHILE KNOWING THEY ARE TRAPPED THERE. May Kashara, I'm looking at you. Please learn that this is not okay. If you want to know what it feels like to slowly die, go into the well yourself!!!! (She does go into the well, actually, and she is freaked out by it). Anyways, I don't quite know where the story is going. I don't want Creta Kano and Toru to get together, but the book seems to be leaning somewhat in that direction...it would be interesting if they moved to Crete. Change of setting, I guess. Thank god May Kashara is going back to school - she needs some sort of real world exposure. Anyways, I am very excited to keep reading. Kafka on the Shore is next on my list and then maybe 1Q84, which both of my parents say is their favorite Murakami book.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Do you expect me to stand up for the kid that bullies me if he's getting bullied? This is all hypothetical, but it's a thought that's been on my mind because we were discussing bullying in health class today. One kid in my class said that they would make the "better" choice and stand up for him, but I think "better" is kind of a strong word. If, hypothetically, this kid has told me to "shut the fuck up" and made fun of my friend and I (you know who you are) for absolutely no reason, am I still expected to be an upstander if he's getting bullied? Maybe this makes me a bad person, but I would probably not help. Maybe I'd mutter something under my breath, something like "quit it," which is what I say whenever I see something dumb and unjust happening, but I do't feel an obligation to step in.
I think in scenarios like this, there isn't a "better" choice - not helping doesn't make you a bad person. There have been times when I haven't stood up for people and regretted it afterwards, but when I look back on these times I realize that it's only when people I care about, like my friends or my brother, are getting bullied. I wonder if bullies get bullied. It's supposed to be classic for middle schoolers to experience bullying, for there to be some big sort of social heirarchy, and maybe that exists, but I feel like "social groups" is a more relevant way of describing middle schoolers. No one is much cooler than anyone else. Everyone sticks to their groups, no one gets judged (at least out loud) for it.
Is judgement the same as bullying? I tend not to think so, unless it's malicious. Internal judgement, at least, is just thinking but maybe not very nice thinking. Now, if you're not keeping the fact that you think Jeremy is stupid in your head, and you tell that to your friends, that's bad. But I have not-so-nice thoughts about people all the time; it's a normal part of the human experience, isn't it? I'm not being bad just by thinking, am I? It only becomes bad when your judgement is strongly influenced by bias, I think, but the line becomes so blurry - does the fact that I think Jeremy is stupid have to do with the fact that Jeremy is also gay? Or are those two completely seperate things?
(I felt it was important to clarify at this point that I may use sexuality in these examples, but be aware that these are just examples and I'm a genderfluid/nonbinary person myself and I am not straight!)
I think "the better choice" is real, and I think it can also be dumb. It's all contextual. What's the takeaway? There isn't really one. None of my ramblings have takeaways. Just be a good person.
Is being "meaner" the key to being a better person? I've pondered this a lot. Sometimes I feel so wrapped up in the idea of being nice that I forget to tease my friends, that I forget to correct their mistakes. And then other times I feel like I'm on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Am I a terrible friend? In trying to protect those I care about, am I actually being mean or homophobic or offensive? I don't want to be like that. It's so hard to find balance, and I feel like no matter what I do I'll never be good enough for you (or vice versa). We don't deserve to be each others' friends, do we?
Sometimes I feel like feeling these depressing thoughts is just a kind of way to fit in. I'm not actually sad, I just want attention. I want to move to a new school, a new town, start over with normal people who don't really know me. I have a song on my album called "I'm Much Cooler on the Internet" but by god, I'm not cool anywhere! I don't want to be, I guess. I just want there to be people who care about me on a deeper level - people who will actually try to make me feel comfortable and understand me. I have friends like that. You're not one of them.
I feel like I've said too much. This is the internet, after all, and I think I've shown you this website before. I love to show it off, it's my hobby besides my novel. One of the things I'm good at. The internet is a place where I can be isolated and no one can judge me because no one knows me, and yet everyone can see me; I'm an artist in a display case, where people can see me working and they can see my work but I can't talk to them about it. I can't explain. As my art is, I am also the installation.
I love you, but I need a vacation.
I'm not a television person, and I'd thought for a while that The Amazing Digital Circus was not an appropriate show for people of my age since at that time, I thought most longer indie shows were similar to Hazbin Hotel (which is not at all appropriate). And yet a friend of mine told me that Netflix had it rated PG, and they told me they thought I'd like it, so I binged it all in one day.
I don't know why Netflix has it rated PG.
The Amazing Digital Circus is "inappropriate" in a different kind of way than shows like Hazbin are - it's just...deeper (and also they curse now, and it definitely contains some crude humour). And scarier, both in concept and in some of the visuals, like the torture scene in episode 8. I love it! It's so good! So I was very excited for episode eight to come out and BOY WAS I NOT PREPARED. OH MY GOD I CAN'T STRESS ENOUGH HOW CRAZY THIS EPISODE WAS. I was not expecting one bit of it and yet I was in for it all. I loved it! Not my favorite, but pretty close. Kinger! Kinger is great! He was so good in this episode!!! (I still prefer the Kinger scene in episode 3, but it's pretty close.) And Caine's song was so fun and I was not expecting more music! Caine is was such an interesting character, and I actually feel for him a lot, even though I know he's bad...it really makes me think. Is he a villian, or does he just not understand why the humans aren't liking the things that are his sole purpose to create? I think the latter, and I think he has fair motivation, though maybe he shouldn't be able to go to the lengths that he did. I had to cover the screen during the Gummigoo torture scene because that was quite frightening, but the whole torture montage was incredibly well done. Additionally, the alligators/crocodiles (?) were the exact same as the one in the pink pool at the very beginning, with the red AI. I don't think Bubble is the blue AI, though I'm not sure who is. I'm kind of with the "Bubble is a virus" theory. What I also think is interesting is how in the code at the end, Ragatha and Scratch are mentioned in the Caine file. Scratch intrigues me, and I feel like there's definitely more to him than what was mentioned in this episode.
Aside from that, great show and great episode. I can't believe the next one is the last one! I have no idea how they'll wrap the show up, but I really hope it's a good ending.
I don't understand why people pay so much to put there faces on billboards. I was in Michigan recently visiting family, and where my family lives, it's much more suburban then where I live on the East Coast. Here, you have to drive a bit to encounter billboards, but in Michigan they're everywhere. The majority of them are for injury lawyers, and when I'm driving with my parents they sometimes point to a billboard and they say, "oh, I knew that guy in elementary school," because they did! One guy on a billboard is my aunt's neighbour, and he complimented her dog once. And yet as much as I look at these billboards, I never feel compelled to look the companies up. If I was actually injured in a truck accident, I'd google it. Or would I? This makes me think about things actually sticking in your head. If I was in a truck accident and I looked up lawyers and I saw Meeple & Meeple Attorneys come up and I'd seen them on a billboard, would I be more likely to choose them? Hopefully I never have to know. I don't want to be in a truck accident.