My words will someday rule the world. Today, I'll have to settle for just Roslyn High School.

Out of complete avoidance of other duties, I have decided to post my upcoming column in the Roslyn High School newspaper called the Hilltop Beacon (because, it is so important to know that the name of my high school's newspaper is based on our location on a hill). I guess this is like a pre-release special edition of my column. I might as well also post the column that was too risque (obsessed with post-structuralism) for publication. That'll be soon. Perhaps. And I'm Brian Sherwin. I probably don't have to tell you that...but I feel obligated to do so. What? I have no idea what I am saying anymore. I'll stop and let a previous self speak for this present gnarled and mangled self.

The Skeptic

Boring, boring mundane, and boring mundane….it’s all so boring!!! That thought usually swirls around the coffee in my mind like a dissolving creamer. I need caffeine. I don’t drink coffee. But this type of thought progression probably occurs in your head constantly during school. Wake up! The revolution against boredom begins with you. Students of the world unite! All you have to lose is your chains! WAIT! Before you proceed to run into the streets with hammers and sickles and confetti and balloons and Happy Jewish New Year, read this article. I have a permanent solution to boredom: a keg of absurdity, a bottle of creativity, and a shot of freedom.

During the sixties sexual revolution, a few UC Berkeley students organized a free speech movement. The UC Berkeley administration banned political activities: getting signatures for speeches, recruiting activists, and handing out pamphlets, and students of the free speech movement protested to force the administration to remove the ban. Mario Salvio, of the free speech movement, released these words from the bowels of his soul in a speech to students participating in a sit-in, “Here is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” Boredom is the machine. If “the machine” has” made us “so sick at heart,” then we must act absurdly to “make it stop.” We live in a gray fortress of sameness and wear gray everyday. I run the ticket booth to the catapult, and you have to light yourself on fire and be dressed in a florescent pink jumpsuit to get launched over.

Back at Berkeley in 2002, artist Jonathon Keats, who copyrighted his mind and sold his thoughts that he had while staring at a nude female, attempted to get Aristotle’s law of logic passed as a law. Aristotle’s law of logic just says that each thing equals itself. The newspaper that you are reading equals itself. If you don’t understand, then just ask me. Keats claims that attempting to get the law passed was an artistic endeavor that questions the processes of the legal system and the reasons we pass certain laws and follow them. No one would have actually been able to break this law. Why do we break laws? If there’s a law that can’t be broken, then what is the purpose of it? If no one ever broke any of the laws, then would it be necessary to have laws? Without humans, would there be laws? Natural laws - are there natural laws without humans? We have legal laws, why do we need societal laws? Why must we wear shoes in public?

Keats and Salvio broke away from the confines of boredom. They acted creatively and absurdly in order to transform reality into an interesting place to live. First, I have a minor and practical suggestion. English teachers should give the option to students to choose their own summer reading books. There should also be more creative writing in class. I applaud the A.P English Literature teachers for setting aside time for journal writing. All grades and levels of English should do so also.

The imagination is the most immediate escape from boredom. Creativity, absurdity, and the imagination can lead you to personal freedom. Scribble insanities on your binders, paint like a kindergartner, CREATE! CREATE! CREATE! All you need is pen and a piece of paper. You don’t even need a pen and a piece of paper. You’ve got your mind; you don’t need a copyright to own it. The theater is closed.