Wednesday, October 31, 2007

A quick song..."Lalalala..."

"America"
By Calibretto 13


"Here in America I'm proud to say
That everyone's free and everything's OK
Do what you feel cos it's all good
Live how you want and not how you should
This is America land of opportunity
We kill our babies and we worship nudity
Our government's corrupted, sin is accepted
Forget about Jesus, cos He is rejected
Make your own god, worship yourself
Put the Bible on the shelf
Here in America we do what we want
We're a Christian nation believe it or not
Now it ain't alright and it ain't all good
Let me tell you something you've misunderstood
The red, white, and blue just ain't in my blood
Maybe it's because of what this country's done
Now if we were founded on "In God We Trust"
We gave it up for sinful lust
Now there will come a day when we're gonna pay
So America turn back the other way!
I am an American and the country in which I live
Is a country of hope and happiness and freedom it will give
But I don't see it that way because this holy blessed land
Has turned its back on the great I Am and jumped from His holy hand"
Welcome to America. I'm still not really liking it much. I went to the dentist today. Hate dentists...Went to THQ to see all the fat American officers today...YUCK! As my ever helpful friend Priit pointed out, i should count the days. Only problem is that i'm American, and therefore too lazy to count anything more than the number of pounds i gain. Urgh...negativity...seems that's all my blog has had lately, but you know what? That song should explain it all. A song from an American band, sung and recorded in America. Geeze, what will it take to turn this place around. A lot more than i've got up my sleeve. But now it's halloween, a great day for obese children. And so i'm looking like a farmer with a tucked in, buttoned up blue, black and white shirt (my silent salute to Estonia). You wouldn't recognize me if you saw me. Freaky. Anyway, i gotta go now. Cya later.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

In case you were wondering, I'm still in America...

Don’t you just love my posts that freak out some, irritate others, and makes whoever is left just want to attack me with shurikens and kunai? I know I do! And I think my last blog post may have achieved that. But I don’t ever apologize for my blog, unless I’ve insulted pokemon. That’s the only time I ever apologized on this blog. I’m still not happy to be in America. And I’m sticking to that. Part of why I don’t like it is the way it changes me. I look at everybody and think “they have 20 GB Ipods that work perfectly, I have a 1 GB MP3 player that is in several pieces.” Or “they have a GameBoy DSes while I have a couple of battered, scratched, and barely working SPs.” Or even “they have their own personal portable DVD players while I have no DVD playing anything. Oh wait, I have an X-Box, but it’s a hunk of crap that I’ll be lucky to get 20 bucks for. And it does play DVDs, games or music anymore. So BOO-HOO!!!” Even though this has been the situation for months, if not years. The situation that everybody has better everything than me (I forgot to mention everybody’s cool “in-style” clothes next to my literally ripped second hand clothes) but it hasn’t bugged me because I’ve been far away, were in comparison to everyone else I live in luxury. It’s really quite frustrating. There are adds everywhere. Even on the milk! I go to eat breakfast and the milk tells me to buy some crap DVD!! It’s not nice!!! Well anyway, welcome to America. Fat is the word. “Freaking Annoying, Totally!!” Urgh, this isn’t culture shock, this is…I don’t know. It’s the black hole of America trying to suck me in, and knowing that is my greatest fear. I will not surrender to the greed. I will not surrender to the “money is life” mindset. I will not judge myself by my insignificant stuff!!!!! I have much higher and better standards to judge myself by. Because though so many America have it so good in the electronics, clothes and house departments, I carry my bible in my bag, NOT my Ipod (which I don’t have) NOT my DS (which I don’t have) and NOT my portable DVD player (guess whether or not I have it). Anyway, that’s another pointless rant of my impotent rage at life in America. Don’t know how I’ll survive next September…anyway, must go be un-American, Cya!

P.S. If you are some sort of secret service agent and think I’m being terrorist-like and un-patriotic than pull out your sniper rifle and hit me…

Saturday, October 27, 2007

“America/America/Your food makes me so sick/I wish I was/In Estonia/where the food tastes so good!”

I hope you liked my new version of that good old song “America”. It basically shows how I feel about being in America right now. Unhappy. I love Estonia. And I miss it a lot. After going to bed around 6:30 PM last night (jet-lag sucks) I had a wonderful dream about walking in Old Town Tallinn, seeing the beautiful old buildings, walking on the cobble stone roads, laughing at stupid American tourists…then I woke up in a bed on the third floor of the Salvation Army’s missionary condo on Nanuet, New York. I looked out the window…no beautiful old buildings. Nothing. Only a bunch of identical suburban houses with picture perfect lawns and a very flat street. I miss Estonia. I feel like being in America, just crossing the border, changes me somehow. I feel different. And I don’t like it. It’s like there’s something missing. A part of me that I keep very close to my heart is gone. Estonia, how I love you. Being in America doesn’t only rip off a piece of my heart but it replaces it with a dark, parasitic greed. I haven’t even been in any stores yet. But I can feel the desires welling up inside me. The desire to have everything I want. And to have it HERE! And to have it NOW! Welcome to America. I miss Estonia. I miss home. Many people would assume that America IS my home, seeing as how I’m technically an America. I may have an America passport, but my heart has never lived here, even when I did for the first 14 years of my life, America has never felt as much like home as Estonia. Hope this trip goes by fast, because another part of why I wish I was back home is that now that I’m here, things are going to start happening fast. And it’s going to sound like this…BOOM! Halloween..BOOM! College visits.BOOM! ThanksgivingBOOMtime2go. Things are going to keep coming at me fast and furious. That may not sound like a lot of things, but in America, things have a way of sneaking up on me from behind and garroting me. And it’s not a nice feeling. I miss Estonia, I wish I were home.

But America isn’t all bad. In America there are great radio stations, I’m sure of it. But since my MP3 player is a hunk of slag n’ plastic and since no one deemed us missionaries and our sacrifices worth anything we don’t even have a clock radio in this place. And I’m absolutely sure that America has great TV, I’m sure of it. How could America not have good TV? But since my mom is aspiring to be Amish we can’t watch TV right now. Great. But now the final thing I’m sure America has. Great internet. It must have great internet. I mean of course America’s internet will be better than the rest of the world, right? Well right now I am once again writing this blog post in Microsoft Word and not on blogger as I would like because I’m not able to connect to the internet right now. Crap. Welcome to America. Well I guess after saying all that I have to take by my opening statement at the beginning of this paragraph. America is all bad. But it’s people aren’t. To finish off this very negative, anti-America post I will say something very positive, and pro-American (as in American person), and happy. Roughly 2 years ago my beautiful, beloved and cherished Nintendo 64 (N64) was stolen. It was the second N64 to have been stolen from me since moving to Estonia. And it made me sad. And then when I came to America to buy a replacement I was told that no one would sell me one. Once again I was sad. But because the thieves who stole from me the second time were stupid and un-thorough teenagers they missed several games and controllers, so I was left with N64 stuff, but no N64. So now as I prepared to sell my X-Box I also decided to sell my old, and useless to me N64 stuff. Until I was hit with a sudden inspiration. I probably wouldn’t get more than 5 bucks for that old N64 stuff anyway, but my cousin Adam has an N64, why don’t I just give it to him? Spread the video game love. So I fired off an E-mail to my cousin (who I normally don’t E-mail with much because all I ever get from him is chain mail) telling him that I would love to throw some free stuff at him. Then yesterday, before dying in bed, I checked my E-Mail, saw one from Adam, opened it up and what to my wondering eyes did appear? Adam told me he never used his N64 and so if I were to give him the stuff it would just go gather dust with the rest of his N64 stuff. He then went on to say that because he never used it, would I like free stuff thrown at ME? Now I’m not used to free stuff being thrown at me outside of Christmas and Birthday so wrote him back an ecstatic reply saying that, yes, I would like an N64 to give a nice home to. So now when I leave America I will leave the proud owner of a Nintendo 64, meaning that the age of nostalgic fun will return. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to beat Zelda:Majora’s Mask this time! (Every time I get to the last dungeon my N64 gets stolen. It’s happened twice, and I‘m starting to see it as a personal challenge!) So I’m quite happy now, well, as happy I can be after everything I told you about in the first 2 thirds of this post. But now I must go, so until next time, Tsau mu armsad!

Thursday, October 25, 2007

All packed and ready to rock and/or roll! (Goodbye Estonia....)

Well as you may have guessed from the title of this post, I’m all packed and ready. In just a few hours I’ll be “going on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again, oh babe I hate to go…” You get what I mean right? But though it’s late I can’t sleep, so instead I’m writing you this post. I wanted to tell you what I did tonight after I got you guys all excited with my last post. I know you’ve all been wondering things like “Who is Nadia?” or “How hot is Nadia?” and most important, “How good of a duelist is Nadia?” and also the question many people ask when they hear that a new girl has joined my group of “girlfriends” (friends who are girls. Nadia is chick #4) “When is Chris going to marry Nadia!” Anyway, for those of you who didn’t read my monstrously long last post I’ll give a little background. Elis tells Chris “I have a new girl to come and be nerdy with us” Chris tells Elis “Juhhei! I thought was the only person on earth still playing Yugioh” and to finish Elis tells Chris “She’s excellently good, and will wipe the floor with you in a nerd card game! You’ll love it!” so Chris…I mean I have waited several days to meet this girl wonder who would beat me up and be my friend. First problem though was that she was 30 minutes late. Bad. Then we go to duel (play a game of Yugioh) and rather than the high tension thriller duel between 2 powerful opponent that I was hoping for it ended up being a one sided and all to quick one sided walk in the park that left me feeling rather guilty for winning so completely and quickly. Most people would say “Good, you won!” but it’s not the victory as much as the struggle to get there that makes things worth it. I always say I wish life were easier, but if it were I’d be bored out of my skull. So I was quite disappointed, especially after Elis had gone through Nadia’s deck and gone “Ooohh” and “Aaahhh” Every few seconds. But Nadia had told me from the start that her game is, in her own words, MTG (Magic The Gathering) and she is not, as I had been led to believe by Elis, a Yugioh master. So then after some very one sided trading (still guilt ridden from my easy victories I traded some of my good cards for some of her better junk. You never know, maybe she’ll surprise me and get better somehow) we left the corps and walked through Old Town, and talked and joked. Its great being with a similar nerd because you can make jokes no ones else would get. (Yugi, “Bla bla, cards games bla.” Pegasus, “Bla bla bla, attack mode, Bla.” Yugi, “Bla bla bla?” Pegasus, “Bla!”) Very fun. Then at Viru Gate I said good-bye to my friends who I won’t see for a whole month…

And I felt quite sad about it. It made me think. If I’m this sad leaving my friends for a month, how will I survive going to college? I have serious doubts that anyone at either of the colleges I’m considering has quite my style of nerd. But I can hope and pray. Anyway, now I’m home, listening to a mix of all my favorite American music (“Famous Last Words” by My Chemical Romance, “Paralyzer” by Finger Eleven, “Sweetness” by Jimmy Eat World, and “All that I’ve got” by The Used) and a little German too (before a trip to America you just have to listen to Rammsteins “Amerika” because it’s “Wunderbar!”). And our power just went out a second ago (the great plus of blogging on a laptop is that if the power goes out, my post doesn’t! But now It’s back so everything’s happy. So pretty soon I may be seeing some of you…I can only hope. I am hoping to see some of the girls I’m stalking (at the moment I have three, I got a new one today) and I should see at least one. We can only hope. Anyway, I need to go get some sleep now. 4 hours of sleep will be worth it (I hope). Anyway, keep watching, because I’m hoping to keep you posted about how life goes in America. Tell you about my college visits and all that. I actually had a really weird dream last night about visiting Thomas More. I had gone to bed thinking about Nadia and Yugioh and college. So in my dream a group of Russian girls at Thomas More stopped me and told me that to be accepted to Thomas More I would have to beat them all in duels. Then, sort of like those dreams where you find out you forgot to put your pants on, I had the wrong deck, and through horrible stupidity got my butt kicked and was told that I would never be able to go to college because I was too stupid to beat a bunch of girls at a children’s trading card game. It was freaky. I’ve actually been having a lot of college related dreams lately. Not all bad, but mostly (Recently I had a good one that my roommate was a super special awesome nerd who loved nothing more than playing with friends (like me) on his X-Box 360 and playing nerd card games with his other nerd friends. It was a nice dream, but I know that neither the nice nor the bad will happen. Everything will work out for the best, and with a total lack of nerdiness. Oh well, I guess I can always just read Acts of Gord (www.actsofgord.com), play Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw games (www.fullyramblomatic.com), and watch Yugioh Abridged (www.yugiohabridged.com) for my daily dose of nerdiness. That’s life. Anyway, I really have no more excuses to continue blogging, so I’ll see you all in America!



P.S. I totally endorse those 3 websites, but with a warning, none of them are for the faint of heart and/or easily offended. So now that I’ve warned you please don’t come screaming at me with your hatred of nerdiness. Cya!

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Wow, it's been a while and a LOT has happened! (Warning, this post is long, take it in segments if you're not up to it.) P.S. I'm applied to college!!

Sorry for not having written in so long, but you know how life gets. I’ve had a lot of other stuff to do, like…video games…and TV….and FaceBook…and writing essays and sending in applications to colleges! Wait, did you read that right? Writing essays and applications to colleges!? What have you been missing? Quite a bit I’m afraid. So now I’m going to write you a nice big post about it all. As you may have guessed by now, I just recently finished my essays and applications for Houghton (In Houghton, NY) and Thomas More (In Merrimack, NH). Now besides meaning that I’m a big boy now it also means that around January first I will know who loves me and who doesn’t. I made two superb essays for Houghton and a little less superb, but still great essay for Thomas More. On my Christian character recommendation form for Houghton my friend Andrus practically told them I was Jesus (I have been extraordinarily flattered by people’s opinions of me during this application process) and in my academic letter of recommendation for Thomas More, Captain Stephen Court (PhD) over in Australia basically said I’m a great guy who they should throw money at. What college could reject all that? I mean seriously, once I get accepted to both and they start fighting over me it’s going to get pretty violent. Now that might sound big headed and overly confident but the truth is that I feel extremely confident. And I feel I did a very good job all throughout the application process and have earned my bragging rights. So while I still have bragging rights I will brag.

Let me see…what else has been happening? Well we had a big annoying regional congress a little while ago. It was a great. Lots of people from everywhere all running around our corps making a mess. Very exciting. I did rather enjoy it though. But the food was horrible. Anneli is still threatening to sue, because she claims that chicken is still bothering her. I say it’s been 2 weeks and that chicken should have (hopeful) run its course by now but…She says otherwise, and who am I to argue? Now that I’ve started what was meant to be a long post I seem to realize that why I haven’t blogged lately is because life has been relatively boring lately. It’s been like this, Wake up, study, chores, study, prayer room, study, corps, study, sleep, and repeat. Oh, there’s something. We’ve been having a prayer room again and I’ve been loving it. I don’t know if anyone else likes it as much as I do, but to me it’s a wonderful way to just recharge. It helps me keep going with my schoolwork, and corps work, and life work…it’s great. And though the prayer room hasn’t been so popular with everyone else (“I’m too tired from school/work/video games!”) there have still been a few people who will cover the shifts.

Since I was just bragging about my essays a minute ago let me tell you about them a little bit. Especially the Thomas More essay. The two Houghton essays were pretty easy. It was basically just two essays about me. And as you’ve noticed I love writing about myself. So I was able to finish the Houghton essays only after editing out half of what I’d written so that it was short enough for them. And they are great essays too. I’ll probably put them on my blog someday. But the Thomas More essay was hard! Three pages about heroism, and how education can prepare you for heroic action, and “who do you think is a hero?” at first I had trouble with this because I want to write about my favorite Old Testament hero, Joseph! Temptation dragging you down? Be a man! RUN AWAY!! It’s worked for both me and Joseph. So I started writing about Joseph. I wrote to great pages about how “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” but how Joseph was too heroic to care. But you know what? I read it over and I thought “well that sucks” and it did. If it had been paper I would have crumpled it into a ball and play basketball with it in my trash can. But it wasn’t so just saved it on the computer and started over. Then I decided I’d pick the most heroic hero in all hero-dom, the one so full of hero-ness that he can only be called the ultimate hero. Someone who sacrificed himself and saved the whole world. Who is this excellent hero? Well I thought it would be obvious. 007. No wait, sorry. More like 777, Jesus! Duh! I wrote a sweet essay about Jesus in all his majestic heroicness. And you know what, Jesus rocks! It was a great essay, but it took me three tries, several days, and lots of hours to get it right. I’m glad it’s done and sent off. It was such a pain in the butt to do, but I did it, and I feel very content.

One other interesting tidbit of info is that on Friday (today’s Wednesday so…CRAP I GOTTA PACK!) morning my plane takes off on its way to the good old U.S. of A. Now when I say “the good old” I don’t mean to say that it is more good, or older than, Estonia. Because it is neither. I’m rather excited about this trip. It’s going to be fun doing things like, eating American candy, seeing friends and family, drinking root beer, visiting exciting places, eating American junk food, and jogging my memory with repeat déjà-vu. Almost everywhere I go In America gives me déjà-vu But then again, I’ve been so many places it’s not surprising. Or maybe it’s just that the whole matrix thing only happens in America. Déjà-vu means they changed something. So maybe in America I’m being chased by matrix secret agents, and I’m going to find out I’m the chosen one and…maybe I should watch less TV. But anyway, I’m wicked excited because of thanksgiving, a time when it is culturally acceptable to stuff your face full of delicious food. And I’ve had the wanderlust on me for months, just the desire to travel. I’ve stayed in one place far too long, time to move around a bit. I still want to come back of course. But I just love to travel.

Now it’s time for just one final piece of “Chris’s trivial life trivia” before we go. I’m going to tell you what’s happening on the “happenin’” social scene. The other day I was chatting on MSN when my friend Elis told me she had some news for me. At first I thought “Do I want to know?” because many times when I’m told there’s news for me it turns out to be some story of soap-opera type drama full of sex, cheating and lies all going on down in southern Estonian with those I once called “friends”. And course this type of news upsets me greatly. It makes me want to go down to Tartu with a machete, welding mask and blacksmith’s apron and play John DeFoe (Matt, you know half of what I write only you will understand). But it turned out this wasn’t machete type news. This was my favorite type of news. Nerd news! So now a very special broadcast from NNN, the Nerd News Network. Elis told me she had a new friend, and not only a new friend but a 17 year old girl. I’m 17…And not only is this girl 17, she also speaks English, loves anime and (my favorite bit) plays Yugioh. And she’s Russian too! So tomorrow, Thursday, Elis says she’s bringing her friend Nadia to the corps to meet me. And I gotta say I’m excited. Now you all probably think (and rightfully so) that I’m slightly obsessed with Yugioh. Well I am a little. It’s loads of fun, really relaxing and gets me to do math without it feeling like math. And I already have the cards so why not? And believe it or not Yugioh has actually been a bigger deal for me than most anybody thinks. I’ve been praying about Yugioh for over a year now. I had this great vision of going to play Yugioh here in Tallinn and using it to meet people and invite them to the corps. It’s what I did in Tartu, and in Tartu kids came to our little VBS thing because I had translated their Yugioh cards for them. I truly believe I could use Yugioh for ministry. But the only problem is that to participate in tournaments and stuff costs money. And I need money for other things, like college. So for over a year I’ve been praying about this and using a variant of the “fleece” method of praying, just like Gideon in Judges 6:37-40. I did some research online and realized that if I bought the Zombie Madness deck than I could create an unbeatable deck using those cards along with what I already have. So I prayed something along these lines, “God, if it’s your will for me to invest my time, energy and money in meeting and inviting people to the corps using Yugioh than let me find this deck for sale. And if it’s not your will, then I’m sure that being both omniscient and omnipotent that you will have worked out all stores being sold out.” And guess what. I’ve looked in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia and America during our last visit. And every place will have every other Yugioh deck ever made, but not that one. So after months of searching Kaubamajas and asking sales people if they’re sure they don’t have one in the back room somewhere I gave up. I really wanted to go play Yugioh. But not if it wasn’t what God wanted. So I started praying that if it wasn’t God’s will than he would take away my love for the game, and desire to play it. But he hasn’t. Instead, out of the blue three of my best friends, Anneli, Evelin and Elis have suddenly taken a great interest in playing Yugioh. Not in actually buying their own cards of course, but playing with mine. So I had been trying to figure out what it was God wanted. He doesn’t want me to spend time and money on tournaments, but he does want me to goof off with my friends…? Giving me a bunch of new playmates isn’t a great way to take away my love for the game. But now maybe this girl Nadia will come to the corps, meet me, have a wicked good time playing Yugioh with me, spend more time at the corps, and end up getting saved. That would be great, but I can’t see the future so for now I’ll just keep trying to work out God’s will for my life. And if you guys could pray for me about me figuring out God’s will, that would be great. Because Yugioh is the least of the things I’m praying about. Pretty high up on the list are things like which college to go to if I get accepted to both, and who to marry, if anyone. So thanks in advance for your prayers.

Anyway, that turned out a bit longer than I thought. Sorry about that. That’s almost three full pages and just over 1900 words. Wow. Anyway, I need to go now; my sister wants to use her typing instructor thingy on the computer. Until next time, Cya!

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Time SAT practice Blog posting!

Because my time for taking the SAT (again) in an attempt to get a higher score is drawing near i've been doing lots of practice and reading. And one thing that i want to practice, because i feel i owe it to myself, is the Essay. This was something i scored surprisingly low on. Which really stinks because i thought that since i write several essayish blog posts every week i would be able to get a super high score on the SAT essay. But i didn't. I blame the fact that i was dead nervous, and also that i was being timed and had to end it mid-sentence. It was quite upsetting. And also what really brought me down was having to write about their subject. As most of you know, i can write wonderfully about whatever i want, but when it comes to writing what some stupid SAT paper says to write about i just hate it. If only they could ask me to write about how i think video games and anime should rule our culture...then i'd give 'em the best dang essay they've ever seen! But anyway, to practice for the SAT essay i'm timing this blog post. If i go over 25 minutes then that's BAD! If i do it under 25 minutes, and still have a good, coherent blog post, than that's GOOD! So let's just cross our fingers.

Another thing i've been doing lately is getting ready to apply to colleges. I've finally decided which two i'm going to apply to, Houghton and Thomas More. And if neither of them accept me i'll either stay in Estonia, or go to Melbourne, Australia (which i think i usually spell wrong), or go to Vancouver, Canada, or maybe even Hawaii! If you want to know why i would go to any of these places then click here http://www.614network.com/training.html and check out War College, Order614 and Revolution Hawaii! But anyway, in preparing for application i've needed to gather several important things. One of these things is several academic letters of recommendation. So being a homeschooler who do i have to write academic letters for me? Well my mom, and then...ummm, who? Well, the only "teachers" i've had other than myself, the computer and my mother in the last few years has been all my Battle School instructors. So i wrote to them asking for academic letters and the first to reply was Captain Stephen Court. If you you know that name you might thinks it's cool that i have him writing one of my recommendations. If you don't know then i'll explain a little. He's written a pile of books, gotten a PHD, and is just a really cool guy. And he's Canadian too! It just doesn't get much better than that. And i was quite pleased with the letter. Let me tell you a little..."He demonstrated himself to be a young many of integrity, commitment, and seriousness, applying himself to a very challenging regime in a very difficult environment." And also..."His outstanding character and commitment make him an excellent candidate for scholarships that your college might make available for exceptional students." You hear that? I'm "exceptional"! I rock! I can't wait to get to college and everyone will be like "Oh, you're that awesomely amazing cool kid i heard about. Here, let me throw money at you, and over there is a group of your fan girls. You might want to watch out for them though, though could kill each other fighting over you...." Yeah, that would be kinda nice. But something tells me reality won't be catching up to my fantasy anytime soon. So anyway, i'm still under 25 minutes, and i'm already done! Yay! Now if only i hadn't cheated by pausing the clock every time i went to get links or qoutes, and by planning out this post before i started, then maybe this would have been a realistic test of my SAT essay abilities. But now i must go. Cya!

And now 4 minutes, 46 seconds left on the clock for revisions...or sleep....

Monday, October 08, 2007

Moral outrage! Or rightous anger! Or just really, really mad!

I'm sure those of you who get out much recognize the demonic bunny pictured there. Those aren't ears, they're demon horns. And that's not a bow-tie, it's something much, much more evil. I'm just not quite sure what it is. But for those of you who don't get out much (and are probably better off for it) that is the Playboy bunny. A bunny that now sits on everything from magazines to video games, from T-shirts to young girls' purses. Now you may remember when i wrote about how angry i was that there was a Playboy "accesories" shop, selling purses and necklaces and other blingy girly trinkets, in Ülemiste mall and how we should boycott it/burn it down. But now i have just been made aware of an interesting piece of porn trivia (for those of you who never, ever, ever, ever get out and are so, so, so, so much better for it Playboy=Porn) Playboy magazine was not sold in Estonia until recently. And now that it is being sold here they (the Playboys) are having a HUGE add compaign about the fact that Playboy is now here. There are Playboy bunnies everywhere. Along with many pictures of women of unrealistic propertions with a look on their face that i doubt many real women ever have unless payed large sums of many to stand around naked. And i'm told that on the radio they are offering free subscriptions and some such crap. It makes me ANGRY! For several resons it annoys me. One is that porn is just bad. End of story. No redeeming value anywhere. Period. Another thing is that if Estonia is going to have porn why import it? I could see some slight good coming out of helping the Estonian economy if some Estonian company made porn. But foreign porn? Is there any huge difference in quality i'm just not aware of? If you ask me Estonian women are, on average, more beautiful so...i don't get it. I just don't get it. And it makes me mad. It's bad for the women in the porn. It's bad for the men buying the porn. It's bad for the young people who will inevitably get their hands on it eventually. IT IS BAD!!! Anger....and the sucky thing is that other than boycotting it myself as i have been for years there's not a whole lot i can do. I could hunt down and blow up every shop in Estonia selling Playboys. But then there would be almost a grand total of zero shops left. It makes me angry. And i've written a blog post saying so. And for now, that's all i can think of to do.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

I am the Essay master! I'll kick your Essay! (Plus a much awaited apology, and more taunting from Finnish bands.)

Yesterday I sat down with my Houghton application and I read it over and said to myself “It’s seems they want not one, but two essays from me to go along with my application. Guess I should get started!” so 903 words later I had two beautiful new essays on life, the universe and everything (42). But mostly about my relationship with Jesus and about a trip that impacted my life (I picked Battle School). So hopefully these two wonderful works of writing will win me a place at Houghton. Normally I tend to be kind of sarcastic and exaggerate, but I’m serious when I say these two essays rock. I did a good job on them, and am very proud. And you should be too. Not proud of me, but proud of how much you’ve helped me. How was I able to pump out two beautiful essays in under an hour? I’ve been practicing for roughly three years on my blog. And therefore you have helped me by reading my blog, commenting and encouraging me. So now I give you all a big heartfelt round of applause for just being so dang good at reading my junk. Thanks everybody. But anyway, it’s very uncharacteristic of me to spend so much time thanking people on this blog, so I’ll stop now. But I do have just on last thing to say. Keep reading my blog, because someday, when I’m rich and famous, and use million dollar bills as toilet paper, I’ll still be writing on this blog. And someday, when I get some great award for doing something all cool and heroic or something then in my acceptance speech I will mention you, my loyal readers. But as I already said, that’s more than enough cheesy “thank you”s. If you overdose on that stuff it could make you sick.

Anyway, a while ago I wrote a post about getting a job at MegaGame, and on that post I put a picture of Pokemon Vs. Yu-Gi-Oh! which caused something of an outcry among the more legalistic anime watchers out there. My friend Matt put it rather nicely when he commented saying “Pokemon = monsters. Fluffy, cute, harmless monsters, but still monsters.Yugioh = Playing cards. Playing cards imbued with the spirits of ancient Egyptian demons [Monsters], but still playing cards.You've heard all those stories about pets eating people's yu-gi-oh cards, right? Now imagine that pet was a Charizard. 'Nuff said.” sad, but true. Only that Yugioh also has monsters, not demons. Demons is Inuyasha, or Naruto with his demon fox. But it is true that the cards would be rather useless when compared with a big fire breathing hunk of anime. And in the case of the picture I believe that Yugi/Yami’s hair would act as a lightning rod, meaning that if Pikachu were to try fighting the paper/cardboard card of Slyther then it would have “shocking” results for Yugi/Yami. I wish I had air like that…Anyway, I am sorry for my anime inaccuracy. From now on I will try much harder to keep my blog anime-realistic. And let’s just forget the fact that Yugi/Yami and Ash and Pikachu would never met in real because they’re not real. And they wouldn’t meet in anime world because they are from two very separate anime that could never mix. So there you have it, my official apology, now you can rest assured that my blog is now anime fallacy free.

Anyway, the final thing I need to blog about is something so horrible, so terrifying, so downright wrong that it could end up making you very angry at the world for taunting me.First NightWish came and I couldn’t go. Then I found out NightWish is coming AGAIN on December 28th, mere weeks before I turn 18 and would be able to go. And now, on October 10th, Apocalyptica is coming over from Finland and playing (If I remember correctly) at Saku Suurhall. Meaning I would be able to go, if I weren’t BROKE! And I would just do another little MP3 player concert like I did with NightWish except that my MP3 player is broke too, just in a very different sense. So now I have the tortured knowledge of knowing that two of my three top Finnish bands are coming and I will never see any of them. All I need to be truly tortured is have The Rasmus play somewhere were I won’t be able to go for some ironic and taunting reason. At least Evanescence hasn’t taunted me yet, because that I just couldn’t take. But anyway, I most go now. As always feel free to comment saying how much you love me. Cya!

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

In loving memory...

Yesterday was quite an...exciting day in many ways. First, at Stockmann, i went 40 minutes and only got 1 Kroon (Then a bunch of generous people gave me stuff later so it was kind of worth it). Then at the corps i got Elis mad at me AGAIN, over nothing AGAIN! Then as a grand finale to the night my beloved Mp3 player, the light of my life, the apple of my eye, was knocked down and broken. This is the most horrible thing to happen...ever. Well, as far as electronics, there are many worse things, but they are so bad they aren't even in the same category as broken MP3 players. My X-Box stopped working...and with time and counseling i got over it. But now this...and so soon before that TEN HOURS on the plane to America...the horror! How will i survive?! I don't know what to do other then write a fairwell post for it, because i've tried fixing it myself, and by living in Estonia i can't get the warranty or anything without paying enough money for several brand new MP3 players. And so i dedicate this blog post to the memory of my MP3 player. Good night sweet prince, and a flight of angels sing thee to thy rest.


My Creative Zen Nano Plus Super Special Awsome MP3 Player
December 2006-October 2007







P.S. Does anyone other than me get all the jokes i chuck into EVERY post?

Monday, October 01, 2007

Stockmann again.

Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, those of you who are faithful to the Chronicles, those of you who, through continuous reading, have become ultimately cool…well, those of you who’ve read about me at Stockmann before should already know that every few months The Salvation Army here in Tallinn collects money at Stockmann (a big store) every few months or so. And because we usually have so few volunteers, and so much me, I usually spend several hours every day standing and praying people will stop laughing at my UFO shaped hat long enough to give the Army some money. No, seriously. That’s pretty much what I do. Stand, pray, and think. It’s the perfect job. If only I could get paid for it…but my reward is in heaven and all that cool stuff so…in your face you pay-cheque getters! Anyway, another way this job pays is in cool stories of what I get to see. And after seeing, then get to share with you, my honored reader. So here we go again with a bunch of way cool Stockmann stories.

One thing I enjoy doing while standing is look at people. Now that might sound odd to you, but what else are you supposed to do for 2 hours besides try to make eye contact with everyone? So one funny thing I saw was a nice old couple walking together, one of those cute old couples that girls say to their boyfriends “I hope we’re still that much in love at that age…” while the guy thinks “I hope you don’t look like that when you’re that age!” you know the type. And apparently this couple had been together a very long time because they obviously did everything together. Even scratch their heads. It was hilariously funny. As they walked past they both as one reached up and scratched their heads, then still in perfect sync with each other brought their hands back down. For a second I thought it was some planned joke or something, but I could see no punchline. So must just assume that through their cute old couple spidey senses they both did everything together. It was quite strange. Another fun thing that I saw, and always see when at Stockmann, was a woman get her heel stuck in the floor. The floor at the entrance is this thing rubber full of holes so that snow can go in and melt without making a big slippery problem. And this floor seems to be just made to trap young ladies in heels. And today this one lady did this amazingly cool thing where she got her foot stuck and didn’t notice so lifted up her foot and took half the floor with her. It was great. I was about to rush forward and be a gentleman, but she got free herself so I contented myself to laugh quietly at the absurdity of high heels. Another cool thing about being at Stockmann is that if you stand at the front door, where I was today, then you’re right by the perfume. Now, normally I wouldn’t this was a cool thing, but today it was, because they were advertising a perfume with the coolest name I’ve ever heard. “Midnight Poison” doesn’t that sound great? I want to meet a girl wearing “Midnight Poison” I’m assuming she’d have black hair and a blue dress just the like the girl in the add. And she’d probably have a twin with blond hair and a white dress wearing “Midday Antidote” or something. I don’t know why I thought it was so cool, I just think perfume names like “Envy” or “Dessert Breeze” or whatever they are just can’t compare to “Midnight Poison, the poison they use at midnight”

While I’m on the subject of perfume I’ll tell you about one of my new friends. My many new friends, I’ll tell you about them all, actually. As I was standing, rather bored because no one had even acknowledged my existence in the last 15 minutes, a couple of teenage girls walked past and one stopped and whipped out one of those strips of paper you put the perfume on to smell it and stuck it under my nose. Since my mouth is under my nose for a second I thought she was trying to feed it to me, but then I realized I should sniff, which I did, and than thanked her, which both her and her friend thought was hilarious. I bet it was love at first sight and now their going to hunt me down and shove even more scented papers up my nose. We can only hope. Anyway, my other friends were actually some old fans I hadn’t seen since I last stood at Stockmann. A group of 4 boys who have visited me other times at Stockmann were pleasantly surprised to see me and stopped dead saying things like “it’s him!” “He’s back!” and “I’m hungry! Let’s go!” all very exciting. So we chatted for a minute, and I gave them a “Mis on PäästeArmee?” (What is The Salvation Army?) and invited them to youth night. There’s another group of young people who I’ve invited and seriously hope come. If every young person I’ve invited in the last month came then we’d have 9 new people at youth group. That would totally rock. I hope and pray that they come. Because if I get 4 new guys at youth group than all that leg, back and neck ache from standing for so long will be worth it. Though I’m also very curious about these boys because after leaving Stockmann they headed in the direction of MegaGame, which is right by Stockmann…do I sound obsessed by the idea of this job at MegaGame? I am. I’m hoping you will have guessed that by now. So if I already know some of the regulars than they should totally give me the job…right?

Anyway, enough about my obsessions. Two last things and then I’m done with this post. One other interesting thing that a saw was some poor guy who would have given me ten Krooni, if only he hadn’t been stealing some cheese. This poor guy would have made a clean get away if it wasn't for me. He walked through the alarm thingies with no problem that he could see, so then stopped to give me ten Krooni. Only problem is that once he'd gotten out his ten the security guard asked him to open his backpack. Inside was tons and tons of cheese. I mean, Estonian cheese is really, REALLY good. But worth stealing? So i didn't get ten Krooni because of the security guard. When he came back from doing whatever you do with cheese nappers he gave me a kind of apologetic look and i gave him a "Just doing your job" nod. Quite exciting. The other exciting thing that happened was that Kristi, the long lost exile, stopped through and said hi. Kristi has been away in Hawai since...forever, and is now back. So i was very happy to see her. She gave me five Krooni and let me borrow her super special awesome extra cool Salvation Army spy pen. And she was quick to point out that though at times it may feel that no one reads my blog SHE DOES!! So now i need to write an apologetic blog post later because i've had several small outcries because of things i've written. I'll do that later. For now i must go, i need to get my dad to fix the laptop because i just made the "E" key fall off and "E" is ExtrEmEly EssEntial to mE whEn blogging. I didn't notice how much i used "E" until it was gone. But anyway, i'll Cya!