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last night my neighbor's house got on fire.

there was heavy rain that night, and there was lightning. the lightning struck their roof, generating heat, and when the shingles reacted with the oxygen in the air, the fire triangle was completed and destruction occured as a result. they made it out safely, and no one was injured. the firefighter response was quick and effective. damage had occurred to the house, but that was unavoidable.

hopefully, they have the proper insurance and they are able to recover. but something struck me watching this play out (i hate to make everything about me, especially considering i am but a blip in the Everything, but it is what must be done) that change, true change, cannot be predicted.

change is inherently chaotic, the opposite of order. change is a natural result of the chaotic universe, of the fact that we live in the intermediary stage between the pure order of the singularity and the pure order of heat death. change is what allows life to exist in the first place: if life did not continously perform various actions to prolong its existence, it would return to the dead particles around it. and yet we are inherently afraid of change, because change means uncertainty, and uncertainty means the potential for death.

as such, we have many systems in place to avoid change: laws uphold society and prevent anarchy, managers ensure teams stay working together, firefighters handle emergencies capable of destroying cities. security seeks to prevent change, to prevent chaos. but true change bypasses all of these systems. it cannot be predicted or tested for; it comes when no one expects it, in a form that no one is able to expect. and when it occurs, it disrupts, and its ripples are felt.

i am sure that the family who's house caught on fire will be able to recover. but they did not prepare for a situation like this, because they couldn't have. it is because of this that first responder workers exist: they are there to handle problems that disrupt on an unforseen scale, and they push the threshold for true change back farther. but if there ever is an event so monumentally disasterous that is displaces all the systems we have in place to prevent the disruption from occuring, then we have a situation that will ultimately devolve into chaos.

and if disruptive enough, order would not be rebuilt.

i like to think that meaning can be found in anything, even the seemingly meaningless. for example, using a random sentence generator, we can create the sentence:

"slave is intentional and banannas provide inwardly fairly mountain goats!"

this sentence is instinctively meaningless, as it was created without any intent or message. however, it has more meaning than "rjen1f54ugdjh3ifjfg6vdh", and even more meaning than "ttttttttttttttttt". the sentence is constructed using words that have meaning, and as such, it borders on the edge of meaning. does the phrase "fairly mountain goats" mean anything? surely, "intentional slave" must mean something, even if it was not intented. Another example:

The parmasan is eating you because plastic drain mostly?

does the idea of "parmasan eating you" mean anything? Is there any meaning to plastic mostly draining? is it possible to find, in the chaos, in the inherently meaningless, something accidently profound? Maybe not in these examples, but perhaps elsewhere, or through some other method. Let's try another technique.

the trench literary group Oulipo is known for experimenting with strange writing restrictions and experiments, such has writing books without the letter E. one such experiment is known as "N+7", where you take a text and shift every noun to the one 7 words later in the dictionary. using this website, this is the first 5 verses of Genesis 1 (King James Version), following N+7:

In the belt Gossip created the help and the effect.

And the effect was without frenchman, and void; and deal was upon the fantasy of the deep. And the Squad of Gossip moved upon the fantasy of the weddings.

And Gossip said, Let there be lip: and there was lip.

And Gossip scheme the lip, that it was gown: and Gossip divided the lip from the deal.

And Gossip called the lip Defence, and the deal he called Note. And the exchange and the mountain were the first defence.

again, this text has now lost its meaning, stripped of its original purpose and intent, becoming meaningless. yet, somehow, there is power, in "the fantasy of the weddings", and "the help and the effect", "the exchange and the mountain". it may not be as cohesive as a text written with intent, but there is meaning buried in the nonsense, if only you wish to look.

lets return then, to the string of characters. removing the words entirely, which gave the previous examples their meaning, and see what happens. using random.org, we can generate random strings of characters. here some examples:

ILuwFbLAeJqrkhEMtzvD

XFlTKSFpaoSNEiXxnwfn

brYAQMbKhPEnmfLfUhGJ

EnApImRSDZASVrVIYytm

we are almost falling into the completely meaningless now. and yet, i still see something in the noise. "pao". that's a fun sound! "ILuwFb". one letter off from some strange abbreviation of "I love facebook". "Im". insert an apostrophe, and you have a statement of existence. even in the noise, there exist patterns, blips of meaning crawling out of the depths of nothingness and interpreted by our pattern seeking brains.

so what's the conclusion here? well, it's that even though there is no purposeful meaning in nonsense, our brains were designed to recognize patterns, and will find something, anything to latch onto. perhaps you may see this as reflecting some deeper truth about the universe, or maybe you see that's it just humans naturally doing what evolution decided it best we do. either way, it means that meaning can be found anywhere and at any time, even in the meaningless.

i made a post on YouTube the other day stating that i'm planning to release the next album on June 1st, 2026. This one will hopefully be above 30 minutes so it actually counts as a album. Most of the songs are fully written and many of them are in production. The two ones calling for lots of mixing and mastering are coming along smoothly. alright that's all i wanted to say bye

Hey, what can you say?

We were overdue

But it'll be over soon

You wait

That Funny Feeling - Bo Burnham

We had a project due today in my Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) class, a college readiness program. We had a substitute teacher, one we've had before, who was known to be lax. Soon after class began, I saw one of my partners for the project go onto an Unblocked Games website (I will not give the URL). The website was disguised as an education platform, falsely claiming to offer "free courses, learning, and education". The login page was entirely faked, with it just redirecting to what I assume was an embed of an entirely different Unblocked Games website. First, he went to play a browser copy of the mobile game Paper.io 2, then a knockoff browser port of Geometry Dash, until finally settling on an embed of Sandboxels.

I also counted 4 headphones on people's heads and 8 phones in use by the end of the class. My other partner on the project spent the entire class listening to music on the Chromebook. Specifically, the song Need You by Lil 50. A girl across the classroom was using her phone as a mirror to do her makeup. Most others were watching TikTok or Instagram Reels, and a select few (only girls) were working on their project. The substitute was also on her phone. The partner who was playing Sandboxels pivoted to watching a video of a guy driving a car, and when it began to buffer, he scrolled on TikTok on his phone until the video loaded. Eventually, he got bored and went back to Sandboxels. When the attendance collectors came in, all the phones went away, but one girl on the other side of the room kept her headphones on, and my project partner continued to play on the school Chromebook, not even noticing or reacting.

The actively disruptive group in the class, the trio of boys, spent the class on their phones and arguing with a girl at their table. They had brought with them a plastic duck or chicken and fought over it. At one point, one of them pretended to give it CPR and kissed it, then asked the girl "If you were dying and needed CPR, would you let me kiss you?" Later, one of them began shoving his debit card in the girl's face, saying, "Go on a shopping spree" and "My card number is 1267".

The trio eventually got loud enough to catch the attention of the substitute. The sub questioned why they had a big squishy plastic chicken-duck, and one of them seemingly joked to their friend, "Did you smuggle something inside the duck?" Throughout the rest of class, they fought with the girl over her water bottle and the chicken-duck, until shortly after the bell rang, when their fighting pushed them right onto my desk.

I left the class to my next period, where it was clearly obvious, though I could not know for certain because I could not walk around as freely, that many of them were watching YouTube, playing games, or hiding their phone behind the computer screen. I saw, at one point, as a tall white boy passed by my desk, that his YouTube home page was filled, top to bottom, with Mr. Beast-style clickbait thumbnails (I Survived __ for 60 Days, I Went To The World's _____ _____, Last One To ____ Wins ____ Million Dollars).

We have a test tomorrow in that class. Considering our previous class averages on tests (77.78% is the one that stands out to me), I am not expecting much.

i'm a little bit worried about the results of saying this. that's not to say i'm worried about being "cancelled", because this website is so minimal and obscure that almost nobody is going to find it, let alone care. but i am aware that what i am going to day make feel accusative, so i'll say up front: i am not attacking anyone personally on the ground of what they believe or who they are. i honestly don't care that much, because you aren't me. but what i do care about is the broader implications of some things, which, granted, i could be very wrong about. so, just take everything i say with a grain of salt, and please don't take it personally.

with that out of the way, i'd like to quote the lyrics to Will Wood's Suburbia Overture, specifically the final section, "Love Me, Normally":

Do you know the difference between blazing trails and slash-and-burn

Going against the grain and catching splinters

You pull out your Rorschach like a paint-by-numbers treasure map

The ink upon your jigsaw piece trace you back to your fingerprints

the line "going against the grain and catching splinters" is likely a reference to Romans 2:9-11 in the Presbytarian Bible translation "The Message":

"If you go against the grain, you get splinters, regardless of which neighborhood you're from, what your parents taught you, what schools you attended."

it usually begins with something genuine: a group of people whose dominant hand is different from the majority, a group of people attracted to a gender that the rest of their gender finds unattractive, a group of people who struggle mentally with something that affects their day-to-day function. all of these traits are real and the conflict it creates with the mainstream is something that needs to be eliminated. left-handed people should not be treated differently, gay people should be able to love as they wish, and people with mental disorders should not be belittled and should receive proper treatment.

but a tradeoff emerges once you acknowledge the existence of an exception to the norm. when these traits become part of the public zeitgeist, but before they reach the state of being considered fully "normal", there is a potential for misidentification or misuse to occur. you may, for a while, believe you are one way, or that you have a problem that is actually called by something else, or entirely nonexistent. of course, this is perfectly natural of people and to be expected of large societal changes, but it is still a character flaw.

it is somewhat well-known that medical terminology once strictly reserved for psychiatrists and doctors eventually enter the public vocabulary. And as a result, their definitions broaden into everyday people's lives and become semantically bleached, so that they refer to situations far less serious than the original medical contexts or lose their meaning altogether. the word "insane" was originally created to describe serious, life-threatening mental illnesses where normal behavior and social interactions become near impossible; now it is just used as a general intensifier, or for things that are shocking or surprising. "dumb" used to mean unable to speak; now it just means stupid. and, more recently, terms like "PTSD", "gaslighting", "depression", and "hyperfixation", have been pulled out of their original contexts and have begun to lose their meaning. "PTSD" can now just mean stress from a painful memory, "gaslighting" can just mean lying, "hyperfixation" can just be a normal interest. terms that originally referred to severe, strong, and serious states of mind and human interactions now refer to everyday phenomena, stripped of their original purpose.

and of course, this is just the natural evolution of language and culture, and there is little that can be done to avoid this. but this does not trouble me as much as what comes attached with it: the misuse of the exceptions themselves.

if talk of mental disorders like autism or DID or depression constantly surrounds a person, then it is not unreasonable to say that they might begin to believe they have one of these conditions, because of the semantic bleaching of the terms related to it. if one does not understand the severity at which autistic people struggle to understand social interactions and cues, then they could begin to believe that their shyness or their simple introversion is the same as what an autistic person experiences. the condition loses its severity, and eventually, loses its meaning all together.

likewise, someone having just entered puberty, who is still a little behind the curve such that they are too young to have experienced the emotions and desires of sexuality, may believe they fall under the aro-ace umbrella. logically, it makes sense: "i experience little to no romantic or sexual attraction to others, which classifies me as aroace." but in reality, they have simply not lived long enough, and when they do experience attraction, they may realize their mistake, or they may deny their own feeling, or they may create microlabels inside the umbrella to stay within the community they have rooted themselves into.

i do not fault people for this: like i mentioned before, it is to be expected of these societal shifts, which are good shifts. but it is still a character flaw. it is a mistake to say that one is multiple people in one body when one has a fundamental misunderstanding of DID or OSDD and has only received one's information from creators on social media. one may have some other issue, or one may just not be "normal", but conflating that with a serious mental disorder will not help the reputation of the original founders, the ones who suffered to get the help they needed and to get their condition in the public spotlight. it is damaging to the community one claims to be a part of.

this is not to say that everyone who identifies with a mental disorder or a particular LGBTQ identity because of social media or the Internet is lying to themselves. in fact, this is clearly not the case. there are obviously many people who learned about themselves through social media and changed their lives, becoming prouder of who they were or receiving the help they required. but there is a tradeoff. there will be misidentification, and there will be misuse, and that is ok. but it needs to be recognized and understood in its full nuances, because it is damaging to the original community who actually deserved better. i will criticize both the people who misunderstand ADHD or other mental illnesses AND those who attack others for misunderstanding it. the former has a lack of understanding, and the latter has a lack of empathy. society will not get better if we allow culture wars to consume everything and take priority over our abilities as humans to learn and coordinate and control ourselves.

but to those who oppose the norm, who contradict the assumptions and beliefs of the vast majority of people, those who go against the grain (myself included): expect to catch splinters.

Well Lot, he had his lot in life, Job his job and I guess you'll too, and die

The Lord looked down, said, "Hey, you're only mortal"

Giveth and taketh away 'til things come out a certain way

Leave you wondering when they might go back to normal

Leave you wondering why they can't have just been normal

i've always adored bill wurtz's music. there's something about his blend of seemingly nonsensical lyrics, jazzy chords that change up the song every 5 seconds, and surrealist visuals that just clicks with me. and, though he hasn't uploaded a video to YouTube since 2022, he's still been active in interviews and on the questions form on his website. so im gonna ramble for a little bit.

bill wurtz is most famous for his video, "history of the entire world, i guess", a 19-minute long documentary that's exactly what you get on the tin: a summary of the entire world from the big bang to [2017], complete with the jazzy jingles and the surreal visuals mentioned above. it's racked up over 180 million videos, and even if you haven't seen it, you definitely know it for the meme "the sun is a deadly lazer". it's really fun and cool and absolutely worth watching if you haven't seen it, or rewatching if you have.

it's also the sequel to "history of japan, which, as you might of guessed, is about the history of japan.

bill wurtz became popular through his weird videos he posted on Vine (rest in peace). here's some good ones.

after he made history of the entire world and Vine shut down, he pivoted into making longer form content and then music videos. one of my favorites from this period is "and the day goes on". this song really shows that, while bill's lyrics may seem nonsensical on the surface (jumped out of my suitcase and went travelling down the road), they definitely mean something, and they generally convey this feeling of optimism and happiness, even if you don't know why.

there's certainly also a lot to be said about the visuals, but, as bill wurtz has said in interviews and on his questions page, he's just trying to be reasonable. and i think that speaks for itself.

in march of 2019, he released "might quit", his final song before an almost 2 year long hiatus. there are lyrics from this song that live in my head rent-head (and i've tried to explain, but it hurts to describe, so i'll sing this song instead). it's really just a beautiful song.

then bill disappeared from the internet, right before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (i don't know if his questions page was active during that time, but he wasn't uploading videos). but then at the start of 2021, he suddenly released "here comes the sun", also one of my favorites. i believe i remember reading somewhere (on Genius, i think) that bill was working on this song for nearly 11 years, and it definitely turned out great. (if you're at all in the music theory or jazz side of youtube, you also might recognize the lick in the verses of this song).

this song especially exemplifies the optimism in bill's lyrics. the "storm coming in" and the fact that "time waits for no one" contrasts with the sun, representing hope and love. this song probably has the clearest meaning compared to something like got some money or mount st. helens is about to blow up.

after here comes the sun, bill wurtz was releasing 1-2 songs every month until november of 2022, when he disappeared again. my favorite song of his ever is from this period called "fly around". it's not as jazzy as got some money or some of his other songs, but the lyrics and music just seem to click with something inside of me, i can't explain it.

i also really like these two:

his final song released so far is titled "where i've been", which, judging by that title, really seems like it should've been released after the previous hiatus, but bill can do what he wants.

after that, he uploaded 4 animations, "2 friends on the beach", "out to lunch", "perfect", and "how to pull a rabbit out of a hat". perfect is my favorite out of all of these, with it depicting two people just in a parking lot talking nonsensically about "predicting the past" and "self-owning cars" and it seems like it shouldn't make sense, but somehow it all does. it also ends with the line "everything is perfect".

after that, bill wurtz disappeared again, but like i mentioned, he is still very active constantly updating his questions and also appearing on interviews. despite not uploading in a while, he's still not dead, and is still working on stuff. i don't know if or when it'll be released to the public, but i know i can't wait.

anyways, that was a lot of rambling without me saying much, so just: listen to bill wurtz! watch his videos, visit his website, and just enjoy your time.

i feel i have given off too much of an air of narcissism, so, if possible, id like to make a course correction, despite knowing that almost everybody has no interest what i have to say.

maybe this was a bad idea.

it's a problem i think that almost everybody, except those with a near-perfect will, face. and of course, modern technology has played a role in it, but i believe this occured even back in the days of blood-letting and exorcisms.

wasting time is an affliction of the soul, a difficulty faced solely by beings capable of recognizing the importance of time. stars and plants cannot "waste time", and neither can they spend it, buy it, or utilize any of our money-based metaphors for it. likewise, i would argue a single-celled amoeba cannot "waste time": its actions are determined solely by its genetic signals, and thus, it has no conception of "seizing the day". it just does, and whether it does it efficiently or not is irrelevant in its eyes (of course, it can make the difference between life and death, but the cell is not aware of this fact).

only the more intelligent organisms, capable of remembering their past actions clearly and learning from them, are capable of "wasting time". humans are not alone in this. birds can waste time, as can primates and dolphins and octopi. their cognitive abilities are (i assume) high enough that they are capable of seeing their own faults and recognizing the passage of time. humans are unique, however, in that our interconnected social networks and population of 8.2 billion and counting depends on us being productive and working together. and procrastination (wasting time) is very obviously the antithesis of what society calls for us.

i have described the act of wasting time as an affliction, something to be avoided, but is that true? after all, to quote the Vi Hart video i have cited previously, "efficiency is a tenet of capitalism, not a moral good". does it really matter if we don't waste time, that are actions are done as quickly as possible (spared no expense)? as long as it is done, what difference does it make in the end?

unless we solve the problem of death and decay, time will always matter. we do not live forever, and if we wish to accomplish as much as we want in the little time that we have, it must be done efficiently. we must not "waste time". this is not to say that tasks should not be completed without quality assurance, or that we should complete as many actions as we can blindly and without thought. but we should try, as much as we can, to use our time to the fullest, for one day, it will run out.

that might be an obvious conclusion, but that doesn't mean it wasn't worth saying.

i've thought about doing this for a while but it's only now that i think im finally using this website for something worthwhile.

it's become quite apparent to me, as i grow older, the effects of the internet, social media, and tech companies that i have been so deeply intertwined with since i was a 2nd grader checking out the extremely basic and outdated html guide in my elementary school library. and i admit that i have only been able to see this clearly through the influence of people who have created "content" for the internet and the denizens of it: namely musicians and comedians Will Wood and Bo Burnham, and today, Vi Hart's most recent video. their creations, that went viral through the almighty algorithms which are rapidly approaching the state of "new government" (despite only being machines optimized for maximal engagement) have ironically lead to the development of my sincere distaste, bordering on hatred, for these "platforms".

but it's not the technology: there is great value in the internet itself, in allowing people to connect with anything and anyone, and learn anything. but it was obvious from the very start that, if not managed properly, if corporations were allowed to dominate and take the place of the human voice it was designed to amplify, then things would go horribly wrong.

seems no one was paying attention.

yet i find it extremely difficult to distance myself from the technology, because it is specifically and intently manufactured to be as addictive as possible by utilizing real peoples' thoughts and emotions and creativity to hijack your dopamine receptors and increase time spent on their apps. it's not helped by the fact that, as a nearly gen alpha child, i was practically raised by the technology, as were all of my peers.

and i know that most of my peers don't recognize the effects of this tech on them, don't see the atomization of society it has created, don't see that culture has been torn apart and taped incoherently back together and then smashed into pieces. they don't see, or perhaps don't care, that attention has become a commodity, that thoughts can now be quantified and feelings sold on a market.

they don't see the legacy of the human race, the empires that have risen and fallen, the lives loved and lives lost, every conscious and unconscious thought and action of every human being, that has led us to here, where the massive tech corporations can leverage AI to control what we think we know. they don't see the billions of dollars of donations made by Google and others, going to our politicians who were born in the 1940s and have no understanding of the great con at play.

if all of my generation knew, and all of my generation cared, then we, as the future of the human race, could do something, could fix the dark path of the corporatocracy we are headed down. but that's not what's happening.

i don't know how to fix this. hell, i don't even know if it's possible to fix this. but i know that i'm not alone, that there is a group of my peers, no matter how small, that see what is happening, and agree with me.

my only hope is to find those people before it is too late.