Who the hell came up with standardized testing?

I don't know where these people came from, but for some bizzare reason, sticking pointless tests on everyone in order to judge how well they can fill in little scantron boxes is not exatly my idea of a fair grading system.

On the one hand, people who can afford to drop a thousand dollars and two days a week for a Kaplan or Princeton prep course are going to do fantastically better than those who don't have the time/money to spend learning freaking "tricks." On the other hand, people who can memorize all those idiotic "correct" rules are going to do fantastically better than the creative geniuses who question how bending the rules affects the final product, in both positive and negative ways. So where exactly does that leave all the dirt-poor creative geniuses? Hmm? Where? Where?

(Note: I haven't said WHICH standardized test I'm raging about.)

Such is the system we live in - dominated by buracracy and corruption. I'll bet the guy who makes these stupid tests gives his kids the answers before, so they can memorize them. Or something like that.


Anyway, I just played Sudoku for the first time, and I have to say, that game is IRRITATING! You think you're got it alllll figured out, and then you're seven numbers from completing the damn thing and turns out you made a mistake somewhere. It's the biggest waste of time I ever spent. I don't understand how certain people can play Sudoku for hours and then yell at me for "wasting" time writing/reading fanfiction. At least I'm doing something creative!

Speaking of which, I rented "The Brothers Grimm" out of boredom, and I have to say it's not as bad as everyone was complaining. Really. I think half the reason people didn't like it was because they cast Damon and Ledger against type, and since they were cooperating and not fighting for the lead, there wasn't one main guy for all the girls to like. And it's a little slow in the beginning. And really weird at the end. Okay, so it's not that good, but it's worth watching through once, just to see Damon playing a thick idiot and Ledger looking all scholarly in glasses and slipping into his Australian when he gets excited. And the dude who played the Italian torture expert was a laugh.

I was then forced to watch "Pulse" (the Japanese movie) and that thing was WEIRD. I mean REALLY weird. Not like horor-movie-people-being-stalked-and-tortured weird, but the kind of what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-these-foggy-things-moving-in-slow-motion weird. And people turning into burn marks. And red tape. That was the weirdest bit. I mean, yes, okay, so there's this whole thing about people and ghosts and rooms no one wants to go into and spooky intelligent websites and incomprehensible computer programs and then suddeny, RED TAPE! Oh my gosh, it's freaking tape! That's red! It's on the doorway! Run for your life! The red tape will eat your soul! Well, actually, the room eats people's souls or something profound like that. I dunno. I wasn't really following the philosophies.

So, I'm just going to go back to watching Law and Order for a bit. See, Law and Order makes sense. Here's the crime. There's the police, who investigate the crime. There's the district attorny who prosecutes the offenders. These are their stories. DUM DUM! Simple, yet can provide enough twists and turns to capture my attention. Nice, easy watching when I'm too tired to contemplate anything complicated.

Like now.

DUM DUM!