…overhead train tracks i wanna know the person who invented you recycled cups in coffee shops look at us eco friendly eco friendly environment we care buy our tea $2 small twofiftyforalarge hot water and a teabag…

New York City claims to be the 6th greenest city in the United States [cit.]. I think this is a great accomplishment.
In fact, about a year ago, the new “Clean Air” hybrid electric buses have been introduced. I would skip an older bus and be late to school just to ride one of them back then. Anyway, it’s a great innovative new technology. Taking into account that buses usually make a large amount of stops while running (up to the point where it’s unbearable, especially in Manhattan), gasoline becomes rather wasteful while the bus isn’t in motion. The new hybrid technology enables buses to run on electricity at slow speeds or while idling. The gas is being used only when the bus accelerates to normal speed. This idea is nothing short of genius. Not only does it save energy, it greatly reduces gasoline emissions, keeping the air clean. It’s amazing how far we’ve come to invent such a complex technology that alternates between petroleum and electricity in vehicles. The only problem is the wastefulness of the nickel batteries used, but I’m sure new technological advances will resolve that soon.

In other completely unrelated news, trolleybuses have been used in most Eastern European countries since World War II [cit.].

I haven’t really updated recently. I have no idea what to write, or more precisely how to write. I started out writing as an angry kid pissed off about everything, then I moved on to being kind of alright and trying to be witty and all, and now I became so ashamed of humans that I want to write in a serious tone again. I hate sounding serious. I stopped being serious in writing because I realized that I’m no Dostoevsky, thus it sounds lame when I try to pull him off. Now I realized that trying to be witty doesn’t work, since I’m not really Mark Twain either. Perhaps I should try to be a romantic now and write about trees and stuff. Or be semi-serious and write dark satire. No, the latter won’t work. Only Fellini could pull that off. He’s got style.
Maybe I should just be okay with myself.

Today roughly two-thirds of my AP Calculus class were missing. Happy Chinese New Year!

Yes, it’s that time again. I always keep a text file where I paste the funniest, smartest, and/or stupidest conversations I encounter while Instant Messaging. Well, every once in a while I reset that file and post the best quotes here. This started a while ago when going through the ritual of discussing our logs with Mike, I decided that some of the things said were brilliant, yet bash.org would never approve them. That is when I decided to post them on my website. You can use the search field on the bottom to check out previous conversation anthology posts.
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I’ve just checked out Franz Kafka’s The Castle from the library (which I had to request to be brought from storage) and found out that this copy was printed in 1945. It also contained a little disclaimer in the beginning, stating that since paper is a resource useful to the war, publishers then had to use it as conservatively as possible, thus the book itself was printed in the most efficient way possible.
But there is no reason to order new copies. Who reads Kafka, anyway? We need to bring Burger King to Baghdad first. Priorities.

Apples + green tea for the gloomy days!

Winter is without snow. Both Hitchcock’s screenings at Brooklyn Lyceum have been canceled and rescheduled for March. Reading Swift, reading Wilde, reading Kafka. AP English had kept me warm alright. Anticipating replies from colleges. Buñuel is nice. Radiohead too.

Speaking of Swift, Gulliver’s Travels is the best of satire. A fellow named Master Bates, Swift pissing on the government (quite literally), as well as this

“Thus, gentle reader, I have given thee a faithful history of my travels for sixteen years and above seven months: wherein I have not been so studious of ornament as of truth. I could, perhaps, like others, have astonished thee with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matter of fact, in the simplest manner and style; because my principal design was to inform, and not to amuse thee.”

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, Part IV, Chapter XII.

Awesome.

It’s the regents week break. No school until next Wednesday. Metrocards work!