After reading the Tao-Te-Ching, I had a revelation.

I AM A PRETENTIOUS FUCK.

In other news, I worked for the theater today, and one of our patrons is named Tippy McIntire. If you are reading this, Tippy, know that you are my hero.

It's funny. I was thinking today about what would have happened if I was "successful" at age six. If there hadn't been "a happy accident." And the sick part is, I wish I HAD been successful. I was a perfect aesthete then, and now I'm just a resentful teenager shuffling into Mediterranean restaurants, fending off the private school bastards who like my jacket, and being fended-off by the self-conscious twits who think that they are "genuine" because they steal from Salvation Army. "Authentic" because they can put on poverty like a bad accent. They are a waste of air.

I have grown a carapace this year, and I want it to galvanize. I don't want to fall down the steps or into the unmentionable. I want the days to roll off my shoulders like unimportant rain, until college, when I can give humanity a chance once more.

High school is a ladder, wherein the desired clamber up the rungs, spitting on the undesirables below. I thought it was going to work, I really did. What a fool I am.