S.A.D., B.S.A.T., C.A.S.H.E.E., R.A.C.E., U.S.A.

The rain has been getting to me. I think I have S.A.D. You know, when the weather is bad, you feel S.A.D. I couldn't think yesterday. It was like being a tiger in a cage. I couldn't sit down. Then Maive (my mom) got really loud. My ears hurt when she talks like that. It was about reading and school and what am I going to do. I already know what I'm going to do. I'm going to sing and act and make films.

It's this BSAT Official Study Guide book. It stands for "Bull Shit Academic Test;" like PSAT only with BS. It's written as funny, South Park funny, irreverent funny, so you can pay attention to it. It's supposed to make you laugh while you learn how to take standardized tests which I am really bad at. It does make me laugh. But I just don't like studying stuff I don't like to study--especially tests. And I hate Math. But then Maive told me that I got my best score on the High School Exit Exam in Math Logic. That doesn't make any sense.

So, she stopped trying to drag me through the BSAT and we read Howard Zinn's Young People's History of the United States and started on Middle Passage, by Charles Johnson. I read Chapter 2 in Howard Zinn which is about the roots of racism in U.S. History. Then, Maive got an email from a distant relative who is a rampant racist. She told Maive that "people in your part of the country don't know what's going on!" That woman said, "You don't get the real news." And Maive told her that she was "probably right, that it's been difficult to get the Pony Express out here on the Frontier."