a summer countdown post: day 1
Imagine stepping through the frame into a sepia-tinted haze, where you could sit on the side of the road and watch the locals passing by. Who lived and died before any of us arrived here, who sleep in some of the same houses we do, who look up at the same moon, who breathe the same air, feel the same blood in their veins—and live in a completely different world.

well. here it is. the year is over, and we have a half day. but it feels like we’ve done this before.

the final question of our english exam was to tell a story about what we’ve learned about ourselves and a lesson for the rest of high school. personally, i can’t tell you what i learned about myself. these hands look the same as they did so many months ago. the lesson i took from our freshman year is that time moves slow until you aren’t looking at it. it’s like the idiom, a watched pot never boils, and all that. however, today is june 9th. and i can’t tell you when the school year started. i look at my watch, seeing the seconds tick by. but when the summer blurs by, as it always does, i will be shocked when it’s time to go back.

so here’s to the future. here’s to all the dreams we have. here’s to all we’ve gained, all we’ve lost. i’ve said it before, and i’ll say it again. make yourself some memories.

this marks the end of the 22/23 cycle for the blog. i suppose there might be some posts this summer. maybe. i thank you for reading and staying with us through the years. this is lucas, signing off for now. •


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I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then

a summer countdown post: day 2

seasons don’t fear the reaper

nor do the wind or the sun or the rain

let’s talk about something different today. music! i’ve been listening to a lot of that recently.

it’s weird to think that music ever became a thing. at some point in human history, we heard a noise and thought “mmm yes more of that please”

and now we’re here. and where is here? we’re drowning in this age of postmodernism where everything is memeable and long form discussion is kinda dead.

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think about it! we continue through life being better and worse and living and loving and trying and failing and rising and falling. we are forever rising above our limits and crashing through the rock bottom.

wait this post was supposed to be about music.


lucas’s things you should listen to

  • little dark age by mgmt
  • it’s golden hour somewhere by lovejoy
  • (don’t fear) the reaper by blue öyster cult
  • istanbul (not constanople) by they might be giants
  • twentieth century fox by the doors
  • miserlou by dick dale
  • stardust by the pied pipers
  • mexican dream by piero piccioni
  • trying by cavetown
  • madhouse by matt maltese

if you think that you’ve seen some of these songs from this blog then you probably have. ok see you tomorrow :)))


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a summer countdown post: day 3

no tears, no fears

no ruined years, no clocks

see, what’s interesting about this post is that i’m writing it the day of. just writing along. today’s post is about procrastination. it’s funny because that’s what i’m doing.

those of you who frequent my little corner of the internet might know i have a hate-hate relationship with procrastination. i do not like it. i don’t enjoy watching my grades drop. i do not like green eggs and ham, i do not like them sam-i-am.¹

procrastination is a killer catch-22.² you know that the work needs to get done, but you cannot do it due to some irrational restriction of the mind. you get two choices: try to do the work or just don’t bother.

if you don’t bother then it’s the path of least resistance. if you try, you will likely fail due to a distraction i.e. social media or hunger or someone coming to bother you. once you are off task, it’s hard to claw your way back and you fall off into the same outcome as if you never tried. you understand the problem here yes?

so what’s the solution? we can’t reach for the sky as we’d fall right back into the loop. if we go bare minimum then it’s the path of least resistance once again, and nothing happens. so here’s what happens. we go slightly above the bare minimum. not high enough to never start, not low enough so that we don’t have to try anything.

our goal has to be a s.m.a.r.t. one. wait an acronym NOOOOOO-

  • specific
  • measurable
  • actionable
  • responsible
  • time-bounded

your goal has to be specific. you cannot clean the whole house, but you can pick up that laundry pile and move it into a basket.

it has to be measurable, in that a difference is noticeable.

it has to be actionable, which is something you can do right now.

it has to be responsible, something that is an actual goal rather then “i will play an 80 round game of btd6”

and something that’s time-bound, something with a reasonable time limit. you cannot get anything done if you want to do it in two months.

and most of all, you cannot lie to yourself. you must be able to acknowledge the problem.

this post has become very serious and i’m not really happy about that so we’re going to go on a sudden tangent about trains and then an outro.


so trains. they go chugga chugga. maybe even choo choo. they are better than cars in every way and the fact that we went for the interstate system is a shame. you can sleep on a train or have tea on the train all the while going up to 110 an hour. faster than cars! and you can have more people on a train than in a car!

people complain about high speed rail being too expensive to put throughout the country. but counterpoint. the highway act of 1956. we dropped twenty-five billion dollars to build forty-four thousand miles of road. some of those roads are more neglected then the 9 key on your microwave.

if we did it before, then we can do it again. i want trains. ok bye.


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1: wow i really did put that in here. hmm. clearly i am mentally stable.
2: am reading this right now. catch-22 is a very good book.

a summer countdown post: day 4

oh so happy, oh oh so happy

i’m pretty cool once you get to know me

i think we’re all going through some sort of heartbreak right now. it’s not the kind of heartbreak that you get from losing your love. i think it feels more like we’re all in the world right now and we don’t know how to be, if that makes any sense.

it makes sense why some of us might feel this way. all we’re doing is exam review after exam review, and in 24 hours we’ll be knee deep in the actual exams. i have several reviews that are over one hundred questions. and the most they’re worth is a few points extra on the exam. so what’s the point? it feels like i’m earning a diploma for someone else. and that’s probably not good.

there is a light at the end of the tunnel. in 4 days, less than that even, we leave. and then we don’t come back. i, for one, will not miss it. i’ll see you all tomorrow.

what’s this?

the consequences of my actions, now?


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a summer countdown post. day 5

so. how’s everybody doing? having fun? i’m currently waiting for this webpage from 1997 to load so i can do my biology lab. you would think that a gif from 1997 would take milliseconds to load but noooooo we can’t have good things. this blog, the one you are currently reading right now, has a first meaningful print of 2.2 secs. that’s the first bit of content you care about if you’ve never visited this site before. in comparison: i’ve been waiting for a couple minutes. for one image.

anyways i’m talking about technology. surprise?

it’s incredible what we’ve done. take computer components! we have taken rocks, smashed them, infused them with electricity, inscribed runes onto them, and fooled them into thinking. we went from massive mainframes to the chromebooks you are likely reading this on right now. a raspberry pi, a 35 dollar little credit card sized computer, is several million times more powerful than what sent man to the moon.

how about the internet, huh? the massive, revolutionary little technology that made everything before it completely obsolete. the telegraph is dead. the phone lines are dying. so is radio. hell, even the internet is dying.

let me explain. here’s a photo of the first ever website, still accessible at info.cern.ch:

this was web 1.0. this was tim berners-lee’s original dream; an interconnected service giving access to information across the world. pages not built for style, but for raw access of information.

but then we evolved. we wanted more, we wanted better. so on we march to web 2.0: where everything is interconnected. again. now understandably this seems like web 1.0 yet. but the major difference was in web design. 1.0 was all about static pages, guestbooks, the browser wars. 2.0 brought social media to what it is now. the personal web page became outdated, and facebook pages became the new. there was an emphasis on user-generated content, ease of use, interoperability.

but now here we are again. it’s always such a pleasure. web 3.0 is, what looks to be the next evolution of the internet. and it’s such a disappointment. you heard of nfts?

nft stands for no f!cking thanks
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

these are monkey jpegs. that are selling for more then a new car. you must understand my displeasure here. this idea that everything must be decentralized, written permanently on the blockchain. so here’s what i propose.

if we can’t go back to web 1.0, then let’s at least stay in web 2.0. don’t buy nfts from crypto bros.

hey, we have the ability to change things. we’re the next generation and all that. so let’s veer far, far away from all that threatens this valuable resource. thank you.


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