The NEAAAT Times

Written 1/14/16

     To preface this, I don’t have any unusual inclination towards parentheses. After a more than three-week hiatus on this despicable article (yes, I finally reveal my true opinions on my own work, I’m my own worst critic and all that), I’ve finally decided I can write again. “Why the mysterious hiatuses likely born out of laziness?” I hear you ask. Or so I am told that you ask by the voices in my brain. My answer is this: While I don’t need to verify my reasons with anyone but our ever-benevolent overlords of newspaper (praise them in all their glory and might so that they do not smite my soul to the void) I shall tell you with great seriousness that it had something to do with me going insane. I may have been staring at my new Necronomicon for a bit too long, but I promise that I had pure intents. Pure intents of pursuing power and glory as well as the forbidden eldritch knowledge of my deceased (rest in peace) master, Lovecraft.

     It is a new year (as you should know, people are constantly talking about the new year until January ends), this being 1.6 decades into the 21st century. There are many things that are meant to happen this year, such as the presidential election and all of the antics included in that (praise be to Trump’s hair, the benevolent fox) and the final State of the Union Address (which as of writing has already happened). There’s non-political things happening this year as well, like Christmas. And Halloween. Also the summer months. Mainly those things that only happen every year.

     Do you remember when there was the cold or whatever it was going around the school? Now there’s a new epidemic and it threatens to be more consuming and competitive than even Ebola; the Patria―I mean the cubes-with-colored-sides-that-you-move-to-make-patterns-and-such-stuff-that-are-really-time-consuming-and-often-annoying-sort-of-like-an-addiction. I am of course talking about colored dice. And Rubik's Cubes. They’re the same thing, right? And much like an addiction you feel the need to pursue them until they consume your very soul and mind and dictate the use of every single dollar you manage to earn. And much like colored dice your luck with them may vary, and generally those who do well with them either have some advantage gained by the process of the item’s creation or a trick that they themselves utilize that they likely found on the internet. But fear not this strange addiction, for there is a way we can keep it away. Give these self-proclaimed “Cubers” what they want, a place where they can “Cube” in peace, free from the watchful eye of the public and the ridicule of early 90’s mentality towards intellectual pursuits that some people may harbor secretly or openly.

     Have you ever had a fantasy of what you would do if you won the lottery? I have. I would finally buy myself out of the massive amounts of debt I’ve racked up by people exploiting a loophole in my greatest enterprise. I knew I should have changed the rules on the one-dollar caresses. But no, I had to keep them like that because I was being rushed out the door on the opening night. I realize that I digress, however. The current “Powerball” lottery is worth somewhere around 1.4 billion dollars. Never mind the improbability of winning (which has already been discussed elsewhere, so I shan’t restate facts that have already been spoken in greater detail) but there’s also the fact that you would have to completely change almost everything about your life just to decrease the chances that you’d be robbed and killed by someone who doesn’t understand the idea of electronic bank accounts and the wait time between winning the lottery and receiving the money and that your bank account would be monitored by people who monitor bank accounts for a living to catch theft you’d also have a fair amount less than 1.4 billion dollars to spend. It’s still an unnecessarily high amount of money, but less comparatively.And you also have to consider that you would have to uproot yourself and your entire family, leaving behind friends that you may have made and enemies that you have definitely made. But hey, at least you get to wear fur and the latest Nike products every day, right?

     There are bench-marks. And end-of-semester report cards. Personally I don’t really understand the need to call them benchmarks, which implies that they are only a measurement of what you have learned already, as opposed to mid-term exams, which implies that they are a stress-worthy measurement of what you have learned that if you completely fail will destroy whatever grade you’ve managed to scrape together from the various amounts of work you have put in. And with the report cards there’s the same situation there always is: Students feel ashamed of their grades or fear punishment from parental figures so they attempt to hide their report cards so that they can skirt punishment, despite the unlikeliness that they can keep the secret forever.

     Do you have issues speaking in front of people? Are you not particularly interested in the Walking Tour and think that it may not be all that important or useful when it comes to teaching the standards you need to know to pass those “bench-marks” and also your actual final end-of-course test? Do you have something special that you may be excited or apprehensive to share with an audience of adults that you feel will be judging and criticizing your every action? Then I have wonderful news for you (which I say with no sarcasm at all, despite this being satire [a branch of comedy involving commentary on recent, long-past and upcoming events mainly using sarcasm as a way to entertain and also occasionally inform], I promise you)! The “Student Expo” is coming, just like winter (which is already here) and the night of razorblade apples (which passed a while ago and is technically still coming, but not in any sort of capacity that you would need to start preparing by buying razorblades and apples and maybe a costume that would actually keep you warm on the cold night of fright). I’m sure someone else has written more about this and can inform you better on it than I, so please go to them instead. Please. For my sake.

     Are you a newspaper editor who has to read over this and then actually place it into the newspaper? Then I have news that you’ll love. I’m done with this article, and you can relax your worried muscles. Which means that my unreliable, occasionally lazy piece of organized madness has to conclude.