Not Quite an Intro
Well, the first issue went well, and here's the second. I can't say the response was as good as I hoped, but it was what i realistically expected. Distribution proved to be the most difficult problem. I think it will be easier this issue since people already know about it. Please! Spread those locker numbers if you know them.
Also, we really didn't get as many submissions as I had hoped. Send in your stuff! We welcome your submissions. We would really like to include some cartoons and/or drawings. Although I could write forever and then some, this paper is all about hearing from you.
I believe there have been some problems sending mail to us. Our address works, albeit the few hours delay from the time mail is sent until we actually get it, just make sure you don't capitalize any letters. If you can't get a response out of us, you can always put your message in the form on our webpage, it will work for sure.
This issue should be a big improvement on the first, and I hope it continues that way. Send us your shit, and enjoy the second issue.
Candles
I burned all my candles today.
A motley group,
but each indigenous to its own spot.
Altogeter,
Beautiful in pattern. But not in precept.
Casting shadows forward
their red pupils all turned upon me
Crying out "Why?"
I had burned them so carefully
bending them,
urging their wicks to the correct place
so that they would burn more fully.
Yet some jumped over the sides;
some fell in and went out.
Because: Candles,
no matter how much we resist,
are fated to be burned.
Humanity???
Our world is a strange place. Its people seem to lack the intelligence to use it properly. We have been given a great gift, a gift greater than any other imaginable, a planet of our own. Yet we spend incredible amounts of money destroying it. It isn't often that a species is given a fighting chance to survive. The government of this country will use excuses to the affect of "national security" and "military superiority", but when one considers the major problems affecting our species at the moment, AIDS, drugs, racism, don't you think we, the most intelligent form of life known to exist, would have the good sense to put aside our petty political differences to join forces with our fellow humans and fight to expand our knowledge and enrich our culture as a race? Of course not. Then we would be using our minds, and, of course, we can't have that. Widespread censorship and secrecy prevents anyone from expressing their true feelings. Fear of persecution by the very forces that are supposedly fighting for our protection keep people from saying what they feel. Rampant paranoia makes everyone both a suspect and over-cautious at the same time. Think of how the world could be if the $250 billion or so a year we spend on national defense funds were diverted to curing diseases or exploring space, or other forms of scientific research. It is then that we will truly have a chance to survive. We must make a combined effort to move forward in our development. It is our only chance to escape the impending doom of mass poverty, nuclear destruction, and political persecution. I would ask the people of the world to open their blinded eyes and look at crucial issues instead of sitting on their asses behind a desk worrying what terrible weapon we can build next. I realize that this kind of idealistic thinking is definately not practical in present time, but we have to make it practical. It can happen, over time, if we would just begin to really use our minds and bodies as instruments of production and positive growth instead of senseless killing machines. It can happen. Our world is definately a strange place.
Who needs it, and who wants it?
I'd like to take my allotment of paper space to discuss a little something I'd like to call useless classes. I understand the need for a well-rounded education, but not at the expense of a good education. We are forced to take classes which in the real world and/or in further education are worthless. Take for example the four credits of English we have to take, everyone doesn't really need to take four whole credits. The most any student, even the college bound student, needs to know is how to write a good essay, after that everything else is to torture us and even worse waste our time. For example number two let us discuss Phy. Ed., the state requires that we only take 1.5 credits of Phy. Ed., but the wonderfully enchanting Greenfield district requires two credits out of us. I see where I could gain a half credit of time to use on something more useful real easy. Let me put the truth right out on to the table, if we are fat lazy pigs after 1.5 credits of Phy. Ed., we will also be fat lazy pigs after 2 credits of Phy. Ed. No, administration, this does not mean add more required credits it means subtract. Who really needs Biology, for the most part I could care less about
what an amoeba or bacterium is and I'd imagine most people would agree. A basic understanding of math, the ability to read a map, being able to write a paragraph, and knowing how not to get some form of nasty ass STD is all any one really needs to learn in school.
The real trouble with these restricting requirements is the inability of the school to decide whether to graduate a well rounded vocational/technical student or well knowledged college-bound student. What these requirements do is to meld the two together like melding two cars together, at night, going 90 Mph, head on, and scratching yourself while your doing it. They are
doing no one a favor with this practice, the requirements that is. They are placing us at an unfair advantage against the rest of our peers from other school. The college bound students do not have the opportunity to attain the necessary knowledge base to succeed well in college, and vocational/Technical students lack the skills they need to do well in their market. Our requirements as they are now help none of us.
Now, I would just be a whiny bitch hag if I didn't offer a solution, so I will. It is a relatively easy solution if done correctly. Separate the college-bound students from the vocational/technical students. Let each be a separate school within Greenfield High. This would greatly help each group of students education be better suited to there future plans. It would not be like throwing up a Berlin Wall between the students, but a different course path for a better future. There would be no need for extra administration or support personnel, but maybe a few more teachers to teach more useful courses. Hopefully, all the useless classes would fall through the cracks.
Relatives.
You know those people. Your "relatives." A fitting word. Certainly not "friends", but relatively friendly. A major interuption of their friendlieness is their jealousy and therefore desire to make you feel like you're not living "right." Sure, they say they're trying to help you. Give you "advice." Screw advice. The whole concept doesn't work. It's definitely not somthing that directly persuades anyone. It's a socially acceptable way of using fear and guilt to control people. They'll say they're doing it for your good, and I don't doubt that they outsmart their stupid selves into zealously believing it, but, for mine own part I've never received a completely pure peice of advice from my family. Of course you could argue infinitely about the pureness of advice. If they consciously intend goodwill is it pure despite their unconcious desire to control? Is their controll even condemnable? It's not their fault no matter how it is. Whether they're wrong or right is not the point. They are. I just become so sick of hearing their simple, rhetorical, reverse-psychology crap. No one can ever truly learn by what someone else tells them. This proves a cold fact for those who would sit at home and read for the rest of their lives. They would be the smartest, dumbest, and deadest people around. The ironies in trying to learn entirely from other's words are so abounding. Literature, at least good literature, is written about life. It is not life. It's the best way I have found for preparing myself for what life is, and it definitely helps to understand it. But, I keep it in check as being just that. I go out and live as much as I can, because that's the only true way any human can be satisfied. They say they've been there before. Well, by all means, tell me how it was. Don't tell me how it is. For that is somthing I'll have to see for myself.
If you haven't already broken out laughing at this article maybe you don't have the love of ironies that I do. Even as I condemn the motives of advice, I feed it to you. I hope you came out of that first paragraph saying "Ya, he's kind of right." But I hope you question me also. Go find out for yourself. Live.
Dolls
Plastic hollow insides
wrapped in tiny pink dresses
choking on their own lact
ruffles
Orange skin
coated with concealer
all shades of chemicals
Forever trapped
inside daddy's corvette
not even ken can rescue
A lost and empty body
replaceable
easily forgotten
Caroline
Caroline is a sweety
Caroline is a witch
Caroline had some weedy
And turned into a bitch
Caroline is all better
She had her fix for now
dropped some on a letter
licked it up and down.
Caroline saw sparkles
floating all around
Caroline saw circles
And then she hit the ground
People
People are a wonder: Simply stated. Noone can ever tell why they did something, or why someone else did something, because even if a person may think they know why, there is almost always something else. If a person carves a skull into their skin with a knife, why did they do it? Unless they are psychotic, the person can't say, "'cause I felt like it" and actually mean it. Or maybe when asked "what's up" the response is usually "Nothing" even if the person is bursting with excitement about something. It's all automated. They say we are individualists, but what's so individualistic about joining the great mass of people who believe they are individuals? But society sees thrm as that. Long ago, the first person colored their hair. He was an individual. But he started the unindividualisticness of dying hair. Our minds tell us we are, and I'm not saying that I'm not, I am as glued to the mainstream as anyone. Right now, the fad is to be different, so how are we to know who's actually different or who is being different to fit in? Maybe if the human being wasn't so complicated, we would be able to tell. Life just isn't that way. This is just one of thost teenage confusions. Never answered, but makes me feel better.