These days, shows targeted towards kids don’t make any damned sense to me. This isn’t because I’m 18, this is because today’s kids like to watch really weird crap. Over this past winter break, I sometimes went to sleep at a variety of unorthodox times, such as 11am, or noon. Because of this, I had the opportunity to see what kind of stuff the TV networks had for kids these days, and I found out that all of it was confusing, nonsensical jargon. Back in my day, on Saturday mornings we had Captain Planet, X-men and Cro, the historically-accurate cartoon about a smart Cro-Magnon kid who was raised by stupid, stupid Neanderthals. Today, however, there’s all these scary animals who don’t resemble any actual, existing animals, and they say all this weird stuff, and I don’t even get any of the jokes. Then I turned to Nickelodeon, which used to have that show called “You Can’t Say That on Television,” which, if I can remember correctly, was about a bunch of kids who lived in lockers and told retarded jokes, and about a really nasty cafeteria attendant who made me want to throw up. It appears that, these days, Nickelodeon is more like a cult, and they have all these messed-up cartoons who keep saying all these strange words to the kids, like “Dooniz,” and “Freeble.” Apparently, this is the same thing with the Disney Channel. In between Aaron Carter and Lil Bow Wow videos, they talk about computers and the internet destroying any semblance of a normalcy in the world, and they instruct kids to say the word “Zoog” over and over. I think that today’s kids are much cooler and smarter than any of us could ever hope to be.

Also of note is that the light-up shoe fad is back amongst the youngsters, and whenever they take a step, a tiny red light blinks on. Those things are so sweet. I’d probably buy a pair if I wore a size two.

Every couple of months, there’s a page included in my planner that asks me several life-important questions, such as “Which of your academic and personal goals for the semester have you met?” and “What progress are you making?” These inquiries are followed by several thoughtful lines of blank space, which allow me to respond to them, and really get my damned life together. I’d have to say that without these pages in my planner, I would be so lost. Whenever I come across one of them, I say to myself, “What changes do I need to make in order to meet my goals for this semester? Christ, I never even thought about that before. Thank you, planner.”

For those of you who don’t know, Cap 10 is a sparkling mineral water that tastes like how water would taste if water tasted like crap. The first time I had it, I was repulsed, and I wondered why people would buy something like that. For some reason, however, I began to put just a little bit of the sparkling water into a lot of various juices that I drank. Even though this practice made those juices taste worse than they normally did, I gradually increased the percentage of Cap 10 until it was at about the 50% level. A few short months later, I was chugging down raw bottles of Cap 10 left and right, and these days I have a full bottle near my bed at all times. According to its Nutrition Facts, all there is in Cap 10 is a little bit of sodium and some calcium, but I think they forgot to mention all the cocaine they include in the drink.

Thank God for Martin Luther King. If there were 364 people just like him, I’d never have to go to class. Also, as an added bonus, there wouldn’t be any hatred or prejudice.

Is it some sort of rule that every teen sitcom must have at least one episode where one of the characters gets a job, usually at the mall, where they are required to dress up as some sort of embarrassing fast-food mascot? Although this plot device is over-used, I’ll admit that it can certainly lead to many hilarious situations. For example, suppose this person gets stuck in the costume on the night of the big autumn school dance and has to attend wearing the giant chicken outfit. After the ensuing comedy, the moral would be that it doesn’t matter how you look so much as what kind of person you are. Or, suppose this person works at Captain Blackbeard’s Fish ‘n’ Dip and has to dress up as a pirate. Then, when all his/her friends stop by the restaurant to get some food, the character has to put on an impromptu funny accent so that they can’t tell who it is, and so nobody knows that this character has a job as a ridiculous fast-food pirate.

Speaking of funnels, does anybody remember those big yellow funnels where if you put a coin it, you could delight in watching it roll around and around until it finally fell through to the bottom? I don’t know if they still have them, but I remember seeing them at a lot of weird museums. They were definitely worth the penny it cost to use them because you could have these crazy races, or make two pennies roll in opposing directions. If you’re really cheap and don’t want to waste the penny, the best part was that you could grab them before they fell into the hole in the center. Those things are easily the most entertainment a penny can by. My emotions on this are best summarized by this clipart picture.

OK, I realize that whinny, often overly-sarcastic errant complaints make up about 98% of eKarjala, but today I have something legit to talk about: buying textbooks. Student bookstores, with a completely straight face, will tell you that the used science textbook you need to get is worth $80, which is a crazy price for a poorly-written parade of information you couldn’t care less about. But you need to buy the book for the class regardless, and have no choice but to pay their price, even though everybody knows that the only good thing about textbooks is that sometimes they include random comic strips. It’s always a joy to be studying for a test and stumble upon an out-of-place Calvin & Hobbes cartoon. After awhile, I stop studying completely and begin to frantically flip through every page looking for another Marmaduke strip, leading to a poor grade on that exam. I have never gotten above a D in a class where the textbook has comic strips.

Anyway, you buy the science textbook and are now broke. Flash-forward four months later. The semester is over and you want to sell the book back to them, as per the system those stores have established. But now they say, “You want to sell us this piece of crap? Here’s 78 cents. Go buy yourself a Snickers.” My current plan is to keep all of my textbooks and never sell them back to the stores, because then they won’t be able to make another $80 off of it. Also, this affords me the opportunity to write funny captions on all of the pictures.

Speaking of pictures, I recently got editing software for my camcorder which allows me to put pictures and movies on my computer. With that said:

This is a picture of me.

This is a picture of how I’d look if I were a bad Paint Shop Pro effect.

This is a picture of how I’d look if I were teen pop sensations S club 7.