✨ My First Date with April ✨

It was November 2023. I had met a beautiful woman named April at school (sko dawgs) and had emailed her about a potential date. We were about to start Thanksgiving break, so both of us would be traveling 6 hours home for the week. Fortunately, we happen to live near each other. It was perfect. We were going to meet up in a city near both of us. we were going to spend the day climbing a mountain in Winona, Minnesota.

Now you may be thinking, "Winona doesn't have any mountains." As if I'm not aware! What it does have is a peculiar rock formation on top of a bluff which towers high above the city. It is called a sugar loaf, and there are at least five of em out there according to Wikipedia. (I had no time to count them.) It takes a little while to hike the trail up to the top of the bluff, but it was by no means impossible. Once April and I reached the top of the bluff, we were astonished by the beautiful sunset view. We had climbed a mountain, and it was worth it.

April and me on top of the mountain 

I had heard years prior that a group of crackheads wanted to push the sugar loaf down the bluff into the traffic circle below. I deemed it my mission to accomplish what they never could. With April's help, we would push the sugar loaf off the bluff.

I quickly learned that pushing a 85-foot multi-ton rock formation down a cliff is easier said than done. I pushed and pushed to no avail. April joined in. We pushed and pushed, seeing no more progress than before. After about ten minutes, we gave up. Sure, I suppose I could have continued until my muscles gave out. But do you want me to suffer? The sugar loaf was going nowhere.

We resorted to throwing loose parts off the cliff. If a piece of stone was loose, we could just peel it off the sugar loaf and chuck it down. In retrospect, this was a terrible idea. We were not only damaging a rare structure on the national register of historic places, but also endangering anyone who might be hiking up the trail below. We should not have done it. It was wrong then, and it's wrong now.

After we hiked down the mountain, we decided to spend some time in the city proper. Winona has a beautiful downtown, and it was about dinnertime. We were planning on eating at Blooming Grounds. I had hyped this place up as delicious. But we arrived at the site, and it was closed for repairs! They were remodeling the store. Even stranger-they left the door open and unlocked. What were they thinking? I wanted to explore inside, but April convinced me not to.

April didn't like that I went inside Blooming Grounds.

Instead, April and I went to Toppers Pizza. Toppers has a location in Lincoln, Nebraska, near our school. However, I had not yet been there. With Blooming Grounds closed, we had to go somewhere, and Toppers was close enough.

We both ordered boneless wings. I got the honey barbecue wings, and April got the garlic parmesan wings. Then we split them so that each of us got I think April enjoyed the wings more than I did. She really liked them. I thought they were okay. Toppers is nothing mind-blowing, but I can see why it's popular.

Downtown Winona is also home to a comic book / card shop I've been to a few times. Think of it like Android's Dungeon from Simpsons, but in real life. A friend of mine likes Magic The Gathering, and another friend likes baseball, so I had been a regular customer in the past. (These guys are still around, but I did NOT want them tagging along on a first date.) April and I stopped in to see what was up. Nothing piqued our interest, so we left and went to a bookstore nearby. 

This bookstore is really neat. It has two stories and a cat! This cat is fat, brown, and fluffy. Is it bad for the books to have a cat running around between them? I don't know, man. I'm not a scientist. April and I enjoyed our time at the cat bookstore.

April and me petting the cat. 

April and I stopped into an organic grocery store, but it was mid. So we went shopping at Target instead. We spent so much time in Target buying Christmas ornaments and knick knacks. I also bought a blanket for my Lincoln Zephyr, since April convinced me that everybody needs a car blanket. While in Target, I passed a young girl wearing a Camp Cherith sweatshirt. Camp Cherith is my camp I work at, but it's hours away from Winona. It didn't help that I was also wearing a Camp Cherith sweatshirt I stole from Maddie Hopkins. The little girl gave me a sly look as we walked past her. I thought, "Does this sly girl recognize me? Is Sly aware?" After thinking about it some more, I concluded that Sly is very aware. If she were not aware, she would not be Sly. I am grateful that Sly did not bring up my ex-girlfriend from the summer. I would not like to explain my previous relationship to April. Not on our first date.

At the end of the day, we had spent a whole 5 hours and 40 minutes together. I was having so much fun that it felt like no time had passed. Now, when I look back at that day, I see nothing but good memories. 

What happened next? Well, take a wild guess. April and I spent some more time together over the next month. We even carpooled back and forth between Nebraska and Minnesota a few times. I got her a whale plushie named Justin for Christmas. A few months later, we decided it would be better if we went our separate ways. April transferred schools at the end of 2024.

April's lasting legacy, in regards to my online presence, is small. One night in December, she wrote "W4M H4M" on my refrigerator in magnet letters. In the videos VOTE FOR AARIN and VOTE FOR JOSH B (they are the same video, but slightly different), Ryan Edinger can be seen sitting in front of that very fridge. Big Ryan fan btw

Game Night Movie Review

Rachel McAdams is my queen. A review of Game Night (2018) dir. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. Spoiler alert.

This movie is really fun. I wish I had a game night crew. I felt really bad for their neighbor. Is he very strange? Sure. I feel for him though. What's his name? Gary? Erik? I can never remember.

I think it's really interesting how many layers of criminal affiliation the crew can get themselves into. I wouldn't say the ending is unpredictable like High Fidelity (2000), but I could not have guessed the steps by which we reached it. 

"Semi-Charmed Life" is one of my favorite songs. In fact, my bestie Gabriel wrote an article defending the stance that it is the best song ever made. It was nice to see it here. It was used somewhat tastefully.

I thought the black couple's subplot about cheating was really lame. Every time we went back to it, I wanted to fast forward. The Denzel Washington bit paid off in the end, but it was a painful journey.

On the other hand, I really liked the British girl. Ryan was an annoying character, and I don't know why they keep him around if they are willing to kick Gary out of their group. But his date for this movie was good. She's the voice of reason to his nonsense.

The bullet removal scene threw me for such a loop. Such an obvious thing, yet they missed it.  

Eminem thought it was just a prop gun. You know, for the game.

If this plot happened to me, I would be upset. I would not want to be Rachel McAdams in this movie. I would be willing to be her irl though. She won the movie in the airport scene. 6/10. Can't wait to watch Send Help (2026) starring Rachel McAdams.

Re: the last review. Now that I am sober, I am giving The Civil War on Drugs (2011) dir. Trevor Moore and Zach Creggar a 6/10 as well. And while I'm at it, I'm bumping up High Fidelity (2000) dir. John Cusack up to a 9/10. That movie is too personally important to be anything less. 

The Civil War on Drugs Movie Review

I love WKUK and Nora was willing to watch this with me. A review of The Civil War on Drugs (2011) dir. Trevor Moore and Zach Creggar. Spoilers ahead.

I really liked a lot of gags in this movie. They were not only funny, but also memorable. The Jamaican slave, Doug the soldier, the man who could shoot straight up, the Indians being frat bros, and especially President Lincoln. Nora and I were quoting Lincoln's "It's a plant! In nature!" and "Legal now! Always gonna be legal! This is the United States of America!!" The way he shouts gets a kick out of me.

I usually don't like when the conflict of a movie is due to a misunderstanding. Like, in Gravity Falls S1E19, when Dipper things Grunkle Stan is bullying him, and he hears an out of context clip of Stan that proves his point. And he hates Stan until he learns the context, which proves that Stan loves Dipper and is teaching him discipline. Good episode? Sure. Lazy plot point? Absolutely. I think Civil War on Drugs uses this plot point to good use, because it's so over the top and ridiculous that it becomes another bit. How the writers went almost the whole movie without mentioning slavery whatsoever is impressive. 

I found it funny how Zach is a different character in every scene. My favorite Zach character is Abraham Lincoln. My least favorite was Ulysses Grant. I didn't like the Grant scenes very much; I am not big on gross-out stuff. 

I love historical fiction where massive details change. The war having 3 days of conflict and 150 deaths is crazy. See more crazy inaccurate history in the upcoming Amish Media Group film Berger (2026) coming out this month, on 16 February 2026 (tentatively). I can't wait for Mars to come out.

Somebody should score this film. But not me, man. I'm too high.

Idiocracy Movie Review

 Mike Judge made this one too, so Gabe bought it on iTunes. A review of Idiocracy (2006) dir. Mike Judge.

Randies online like to look at anything Trump does and claim, "This is just like Idiocracy!" And I have to admit, they were onto something.

• Corporations have too much power over public life.
• Politics is more about entertainment than about justice or virtue.
• Our society is hypersexualized; every man, woman, and child is so porn-brained they can't even think straight anymore.
• People have very short attention spans. If it doesn't immediately grab you, you move onto something else.
• There's trash everywhere. (This was especially poignant, watching it in St. Paul, Minnesota.) 

But just because it's very accurate doesn't mean it's revolutionary. Most media that "predicted" something was just looking at the problems of its day and making jokes about it. We as a society haven't changed so much since 2006. The movie is a critique on "capitalism" (what teenagers on Reddit call greed), but it's also about society's inability to analyze itself and its own flaws. Everyone who promotes Idiocracy online exempts himself from its symptoms. Notice how most people that make the Trump-Idiocracy comparison online usually support abortion or have a "Be gay, do crime" sticker on their laptop. "Everybody is dumb except me."

The means by which we avoid an idiocracy is not by yelling about Donald Trump or big companies online. We must first learn to admit our blind spots and grow out of our own self-enlightenment. President Trump and TikTok were but a twinkle in the eyes of God when this movie came out; we cannot blame a few scant pieces of modern American society for our collapse. Our current political / cultural climate is accelerating towards an idiocracy for sure, but change comes from within. What is the LORD's monologue saying at the end of Job? Repent!

This movie is kinda ugly and sometimes annoying. All the CG looks like a PS3 game or a Nickelodeon cartoon. I'm leaning more towards PS3 game with how much brown there is everywhere. Wasn't very funny either. At least not compared of Office Space, which is both beautiful and hilarious.

This is the most centrist post on this site in its 13 years, so I can't help but review Idiocracy as a 5/10.