Switching Lanes

For the past two years or so I have enjoyed writing Z Has No Life, however infrequently, but I am now beginning to change lanes to a different type of blogging. Over winter break I'll be doing some initial work on what may or may not become my senior project for next year (partially depending on the reaction it receives, should anyone react to it). Since I want to go into journalism, I'm now looking into trying to report on major news stories without bias. You can check out my work at faxonly.blogspot.com , which should be updated much more frequently than this one.

This does not mean I will shut down Z Has No Life, but the posts will be even fewer and far between (if that is possible).

School

Skipping school is never recommended, especially the first day. If you do end up having to miss that first day, you better have a good excuse. I've come up with the top ten excuses you should use in case this very situation happens to you.

10. Got hired as economic aide for President Obama

9. The dog ate my homework, so I had to go to the vet

8. The computer ate my homework, so I had to go to an electronics store

7. Oprah gave me a free day off

6. Spent the entire month reminding Obama that he's now hit the big 5-0

5. Got fired by President Obama

4. The DeLorean overshot

3. Was part of the Libyan revolution

2. Got washed out to see by Hurricane Irene

And the number one excuse for missing the first day of school:

1. Was afraid Rebecca Black would release a new single about it

Internet

For the past week, I have been without internet while my wireless network has been down. There are a lot of things that are not as exciting without the internet. I've compiled a list of what you should stay away from in case you ever have a similar problem:

10 Things Less Exciting Without the Internet

Editing Wikipedia - I haven't yet found the "Edit" button on my encyclopedia. Must be some weird formatting or something.

Watching Television - My show keeps getting interrupted by some weird marketing schemes. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a plot twist or not.

Fantasy Sports - I was excited for baseball until I realized that I'd have to keep track of the roughly 400 players who play every night.

Chatting - I called someone on the phone. They laughed and hung up.

Mail - No one in my generation has ever heard of "stamps". No one.

Search Engines - Spontaneous trips to he library take a lot more out of you than spontaneous trips to Bing or Google

Windows - It got bright outside, so I tried minimizing it, clicking and dragging... nothing worked. There wasn't even an exit button I could push.

Tweeting - To be fair, most ornithological creatures were already doing this before it hit the mainstream.

Facebook - On the bright side, my high school yearbook doesn't include FarmVille.

Fridays - I had just gotten used to Rebecca Black...

Back to the Future

26 years ago yesterday, the movie Back to the Future was released. It was the top-grossing film in 1985, staying on top of the charts for 11 weeks. Even today, it's still awesome. All of us have wished we had a time-machine DeLorean. Of course, there are some other things we wish were time machines too. Here's a list that traveled back in time to me from five minutes in the future:

8.8 Things that should be Time Machines

• Our own car: 88 mph and all I got was a speeding ticket
  
• PlayStation: It only does everything... except legitimate time travel. Oh, and securing your personal information
• Lawn mowers: Many a day have I slaved behind this machine, wishing to go back to last week when the grass wasn't so tall
• Macs: They're so happy and darn friendly- They have to be hiding something
• The Death Star: A movie that needs to be watched over and over again, sort of like Back to the Future
• Amelia Earhart's airplane: She didn't get lost on that last flight; she simply became the first person to circumnavigate the time stream
• The "Back" button on web browsers: Sometimes we all want to go back and erase our mistakes
• Skateboards: At the very least they need to be hoverboards, like in Back to the Future II
• The Free Parking space in Monopoly: This one might be a bit difficult to understand. A lot of people put their own variations on what Free Parking means. Is it just a blank space? Is it a jackpot space? Or is it-
  

Friday

In case you forgot...

(For some reason it looks like the original got taken down. Nice try, Rebecca Black.)

We all know who Rebecca Black is. The "star" of the now-infamous Friday music video, she has been ridiculed many times over on the Internet. Now that the commotion surrounding Black has died down, I'd like to offer her some real advice.

In just a couple years, Rebecca Black may be looking for her first job. Given the impact of her video, it may be tough for her to find one. She'll have to be skilled at whatever profession she chooses. Luckily, I have some suggestions for her:

10 possibilities...

• TGI Friday's (Now that we have the obvious out of the way...)
• Brainwashing Agent (You'd be surprised)
• Professional Seat Selector (If she could ever make her mind up)
• Disk Jockey (Partyin' Partyin' YEAH!)
• Congressperson (Partyin' Partyin' YEAH!)
• Amusement Park Ride Operator (Fun Fun Fun Fun)
• Janitor (Lookin' Forward to the Weekend)
• Dictionary Author (Fun, fun, think about fun - she knows what it is)
• Friend Locator (She's to her right- aay)
• Calendar Designer (She knows the days of the weekend... but we're worried that she may put too many Fridays)

And 5 that are out of the question...

• Singer (Should have seen that one coming)
• Suicide Hotline Operator (Enough said)
  
• English Teacher (No matter how hard you try, bowl does not rhyme with cereal)
• Professional Seat Selector (It's been three months already, just pick a seat.)

And finally,

• Any job anywhere that anyone has ever heard of "The Internet"
  

Summer

It's been quite awhile since I've made a post, mainly due to my incredibly complex schedule for the last two months. It's been hard to fit not having a life in between so many activities that might actually pass for indeed having one.

The good news is that it's summer, which offers many ways to not have a life. For example, you could:

Edit Wikipedia...
Go to Band camp (or strings, whatever floats your boat)...
Build a tricked-out boat...
Attend E3 (You're running late)...
or even write a blog!

Here's a look at some other possible summer activities for those without a life:

• Get a summer job. I've found my best success has been at nuclear power plants and Geek Squad.

• Watch a movie. With the amount of superhero movies being released this summer, it shouldn't be too hard to find one that allows you to both have a life (attending a movie) and not have one (come on, superheroes?) at the same time.

• Hold a barbecue. For added flavor and potential health risks, hold a barbie-cue. Just... don't invite Ken.

• Watch the science channel. The new one, from Discovery. We hear Morgan Freeman is hosting a show, so if you can't watch it, at least listen to it.

• Have a Water Gun fight:

Enough said. (Who put a Generation V Pokemon in here?)


With these helpful tips, you're sure to find at least one thing to do this summer that will ensure that you remain without a life!

Blogging

Recently, for her senior project, my sister decided to keep a blog for her senior project, detailing the adventure of maybe getting a children's book published (or maybe not). I'm wondering myself how she'll get a book published when she can't even capitalize her "I's", but who knows? Maybe our next generation will be one that knows texting as their first language.

Another thing I immediately noticed with my sister's blog is that she took full advantage of the customization feature provided by Blogger, spending nearly an entire day playing with it (and nearly earning a no-life shoutout). I realized that I... haven't spent much time customizing my blog, so you may see some changes around here in the next few days. Maybe you're already seeing them.

I can't help but notice how... limited Blogger's customization options are. I think they need a few suggestions. Here's what I think we should be able to add:

• The TI-Nspire CX: Frankly, these just look cool. I wouldn't mind having one or twenty of these lying around.
• Hangman: Am I the only one that finds Hangman odd? You're telling some innocent little stick figure, "I'm going to execute you just because my friend here is too dim-witted to know the word Syzygy" The main problem with the next generation won't be violent video games, it'll be Hangman.
• Microwave Ovens: I was pretty hungry when I wrote this. But think about it: Wouldn't it be cool to be able to have a microwave oven on your computer? I think that would be pretty gnarly, myself.
• James Earl Jones: I would take full advantage of any tool that would read my posts in the voice of James Earl Jones. Better yet, get James Earl Jones to drop whatever he's doing and come read it live, in person. Optional: Clint Eastwood.
• Quick-Quotes Quills: It beats typing with one hand, like I'm doing right now.
• A Barbershop: I don't know if anyone else out there needs a haircut, but I do. The barbershop should come complete with classic barbershop pole and a barbershop quartet. But wait! Call now and we'll double the offer: Two barbershop poles and a barbershop octet!
• A Drink Machine with Lyndon B. Johnson's Favorite Beverages: If only so people don't end up doing this. We wouldn't want that to happen again.
• A Recorded Message that says, "Go Play Outside": Because really, what are you doing reading this anyway?
  
• Flashing Banner Ad: All the good websites have those contests where people can be the 1,000,000th person to view the page (I win those all the time, I must be really lucky). Why can't we?
• Rebecca Black: I can almost guarantee that you'll be seeing her here in the future. As if she hasn't been mocked enough already.
  

Florida

Recently, my high school band took a trip down to Florida, to perform at Disney World. I learned quite a lot on the bus ride down there as well as at Disney and Universals' parks and had a great time. There were several things that really stuck out to me though, which I felt had to be shared.

• Twilight actually has one good point: If writing that bad can be published, I must be a good writer.
• Taco Bell is offering new menu options for Lent, which don't include meat. So, Catholics can still enjoy their favorite meals with the comforting knowledge that they have been unaltered or changed in any way.
• KFC made a huge mistake concerning their restaurants in Kentucky. They could have saved space by just calling them "FC"
• Never ever ride a bus for 50 hours with hormonal teenagers who have been sleep deprived
• If your friend tries to convince you to ride a ride and only answers "You'll see" to any questions about it, agree to ride it. Then at the last moment, jump off the ride and ditch them. You could have better friends.
• I still haven't figured out why Disney sues people so much, they make enough money off of unusually high prices for usually mediocre food.
• If you're on a ride that is extremely terrifying, go ahead, scream your head off. Then, when the ride ends, moonwalk through the exit.
• You should always have sunscreen. But if you forget and get sunburned, you can always go to Universal's Islands of Adventure and pretend you are the newest supervillain, arch-nemesis to sunscreen-man.
• Floridans, like most other people, think of themselves as funny. Given the number of Wizard of Oz jokes made at my group's expense, they clearly aren't.
• Disney and Universal, despite their efforts to be completely different, are in fact exactly the same park.
• Epcot has lots of fun things to see and do. However, don't go during the annual golf tournament.

No Life Shout-out
At this point, I'd like to give a shout-out to someone I met at Disney World who also has no life. To Kevin, who I met in the Japan store at Epcot while reading a Pokedex, you sir, have no life. Congratulations!

No Life Challenge
For those of you heading to Disney World, perhaps over Spring Break, I challenge you to a game of I Spy. On the "it's a small world" ride, you can see an image that bears a very close resemblance to something from the Legend of Zelda games. Can you find it?

Warning Signs 2

Here are some more signs to watch out for. If you or someone you know has displayed this sort of activity, they may have no life. Seek professional help immediately.

• Watching Ted Talks in your spare time. My name is not Ted! Stop calling me that! Okay, so maybe I do watch too many...
• Building an igloo while waiting for the bus stop. I'm being "home" schooled today.
• Listening to music on JWPepper or other sheet music sites. I don't know who "Fifty Cent" is but I can listen to some good music here for free!
• Trying to put the craziest spin on a bowling ball rather than just aiming for the pins. When I go bowling, I play H-O-R-S-E.
• Caring more about the composer who wrote the score for the movie than the movie itself. I don't really want to watch- wait, did you say John Williams wrote the music?
• Programming a calculator rather than paying attention in math class. Though, paying attention in math class should be a warning sign in itself.
• Instead of a designated highway cleanup, you participate in designated Wikipedia cleanups. "I can't [leave], this is important! Someone is wrong on the Internet!"
• A refusal to Kindle. It's the first step from here to Fahrenheit 451.
• Measuring the angle at which snow falls. Once you get past about 50 degrees, the odds of having a snow day rise.
  
• Watching an entire marathon. They're really quite exciting if you can make it past the first two hours.

____________________________________________________________________

Recently, in a study completely fabricated by myself, it has been revealed that teenagers aren't being very creative. We found some of the main causes, whose fault they are, and what you can do to rid yourself of the uncreative plague.

• The first main cause is homework. Obviously, teachers are at fault here. But there is a simple solution: Drop out of school.

• Another cause is a lack of sleep. Clearly, the person to blame is a carpenter who makes bed frames. For this problem, there's another easy solution: caffeine.

• Distractions can also prevent you from being creative. To get rid of the distractors, distract the distractors.

• Writer's block can be a big problem too. When this happens, you must find the little kid who wants to be an architect when he grows up and knock over the tower he built out of the blocks.

• Finally, overeating can halt the creative process. Don't ask me how. Farmers are obviously the people to blame here. If this happens to you, simply send all the food you would eat to Africa and starve yourself. You'll probably die, but you'll be creative in the meantime.
  

Ingredients for a Snow Day

3-4 inches of snow, preferably good for packing (varies with location)
About an inch of ice (varies with location)
The kind heart of a school superintendent (if you can find one)
At least 3 weathermen predicting trace amounts of snow
At least 1 steaming mug of hot chocolate
1 toboggan, Calvin and Hobbes model (stuffed tiger optional)
1 large hill
1 overconcerned parent with a rather embarrassing coat they want you to wear outside
At least one other coat to switch to when they aren't looking
1 television (daytime TV optional, movies are an acceptable substitute)
At least twenty-five posts using the word "snow" on Facebook

Combine ingredients and cook at approximately 25 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. Let sleep in until at least 9:00.

By no means should you include the following:
Snowplows
Snow shovels
Power outages
Frostbite/Hypothermia
Thin Ice
Any superstitions you may have
Dental Appointments