French Wisdom

*French class today*

Mme H: Who remembers what the imparfait (imperfect) tense is?
Weiming: It tells what you use to do.
Karla (under her breath): I use to sleep.
Me (sarcastic): Haha.

I apologize here and now in advance if I disappear from the Internet for the next year. I have to get up in 5 hours to do my history notes.

Birthdayday Cake

Keekee brought cake to school today in honor of Karla's birthday, which was yesterday. (I also apologize for mistaking yesterday for the Fall Equinox. It wasn't yesterday, it's tomorrow.) We were saving the last piece for Teresa, who went to Quiz Bowl, but Brian wanted it, so Karla was all like, "Go ahead, take it." Brian picked it up, and as he was reaching into a bag to grab a fork with his free hand, Mike punched the funny bone in his other arm. Before any of us knew it...SPALT.

There went the cake. We stood there staring for two seconds before rounding on Mike. He quickly picked it up and set it back on the plate, brushing it off a little. We were laughing like hyhenas while Brian looked at it and said, "Well, it's got less bacteria than spinach does right now.

Then he ate it.

Fall Equinox

Happy Fall. I'm not suited to say this because I'm not happy, but happy fall anyway. If I lived in any other part of the country, leaves would be turning red and orange and other pretty colors, but I don't, and the trees are green, and life sucks. I know I sound whinny and childish, but I slept 5 hours last night and the night before so I don't give a damn.

Rose and Teresa were being such bitches in Ac Dec today. (Oh yes. I've abandoned the use of nicknames, partly because people won't get confused and party because I don't care by some freak of nature they find this. They should know how they are.) We had to prepare 30-60 seconds of our speech, and Michele's topic is why the German school system is better than the American one. She started off with a line about the German school system, in German, then translated it and got to her point, using German terms in between. While she was talking, Rose and Tai kept whispering to each other about her speech, how it was confusing, how it sounded bad, blah stuff. And Michele knew they were talking about her while she was presenting because she kept looking at them, and I am pretty sure they knew she knew.

Then, after Michele finished, Garrity critiqued it as he does with all our speeches. He said the German line Michele said at the beginning was kind of confusing because Michele naturally talks fast, and it was in German. Then he asked the class, "Do you guys agree with me?" Rose and Tai responded IMMEDIATELY. Both said, "Yeah!" and Rose even said, "It sounds like gibberish." Which is DOESN'T. I don't actually like the sound of German, but when Michele says it, it's pretty. I don't know how else to describe it. She talks like it's natural, and she kind of looks Aryan too (blond hair, but light brown eyes), so it looks like she really knows what she's talking about based off of appearances alone. I was really glad when Brian Shapiro disagreed with them. He said something like, "No, I thought her first line was really interesting. She's saying something in a foreign language, so it immediately make me think 'What is she saying?' and it grabs my attention."

I also know Rose and Tai were being harsh on Michele for the sake of disagreement, because the opening of my speech was no better than hers, and no one but Becky spoke up when Garrity pointed out how rough it was. Both are right because I wrote it during tutorial without much thought. Becky's speech is AWESOME though. Her topic is "What is the Mona Lisa really thinking?" and she starts off with somthing like, "I can see her looking at she, a smirk across her mouth. [insert other cool stuff only Becky can make sound good here] ... Why does she inspires so many when all she does is hang from a completely uninspiring wall? Why is it that she is more well known than a Van Gough, or a Michelangelo? It is because she is Mona Lisa." Reading the words don't even compare to how great it is when Becky actually says it. The topic's so whack that no one be Becky would be able to pull off, and it's amazing when she does it. But I digress.

Becky was the only one who gave me feedback for my intro, and I know she was trying to help. Whereas Rose and Tai didn't say anything to me, but were critiquing Michele while she was talking. Talk about rude, disrespectful, and bitchy. At the very least, they could've honestly critiqued her and should've been respectful enough to shut up while she was talking.

I know Michele was hurt because Karla was talking to her during break, and she told Karla stuff, and I know Brain agrees with me because I talked to him after class. He also agrees on me that Rose is a lot like Sakura. They are both really smart, but Rose lacks a lot of wisdom. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees it.

This year is going to be hell, and not just because of my screwed up social life. In English, we started analyzing how Heart of Darkness is an allegory to Dante's "Inferno," and how he descendes into the 9 levels of hell. Some say high school is like Purgatory because we have to suffer, and we do eventualy get out, but I think it's more like descending into hell. "Abandon hope, all those who enter." That should be posted on every entrance to school. "The horror! The horror!" should be posted on the walls instead of those quotes that are nice, but have no application to life. I need to know how Dante escaped from hell. Maybe I should read the Divine Comedy. Then again, I doubt I'll understand half the things he wanted people to. Maybe I should stop thinking so much. If Dante and Marlow could go to hell and back, I hope I can too.

Blog Time

Ahhh, I've been meaning to write here for days. Unfortunately, over the weekend, everytime I had free time (or made an excuse to have free time) I didn't feel like writing, and every time I had to do homework, I really wanted to write. Does that statement demonstrate parallel contrustion? If it does, look at my awesome syntax! haha...

So I have officially found my anime soul mate. Liz and I have been disecting ALL the Naruto fanfics, including all the pairings I like, which are also the ones she doesn't like, how everything works, good writers, writers who just plain suck, fluffiness...EVERYTHING. If I were on College Board, I'll put an essay prompt on a fanfic on the AP Comp exam. THAT would be cool. But, as Corbett often (pronounced "of'n"--the "t" is silent) says, that's neither here nor there. I'm still not really into the original Naruto story, but it feels good being able to disect fanfiction with someone just as crazy as I am, and I find some fanfics better than the original anyway. Especially good SasuSaku and NejiTen fics. Liz doesn't care much for romance, but she agreed with me that we need fluffy fics (look! alliteration!) so we can be optimistic and escape from realism once in a while...or in my case, like, every day.

Actually, if you told me six months ago I'd like romantic fanfics, I'd have pointed and laughed at you. What happened? The AP exams in May, that's what happened. I ignored FFNet for two years, and when I was stressing the most last year, right before exams, I found that wonderful, wonderful site again and immersed myself in stories that are totally unrealistic, but made me un-stress.

While I am ranting about anime, for some reason, Tony found an old, old video tape today. I think it was from a year or two ago. We had recorded some shows on it, so we popped it in and started watching. There was an hour of Yu-Gi-Oh, and because I wasn't totally eager to get back to taking history notes, I watched with him. It never fails to amaze me how much that show makes me laugh. Honestly, it's a terrible show. The story sucks (well, okay, everything after the Battle City Arc sucks). The animation sucks. The dub voice actors suck the most. But maybe that's why I find it amusing. Childish, but who cares? I don't. And while I was watching, I remembered an ancient YGO fic I started in 8th grade. I uncovered it during the weeks before the AP exams and I always meant to finish it over the summer, but I kept putting it off. I SO want to finish that now. Must watch more YGO. It was one of the few things I wrote from back then that I like. At the very least, I should type the beginning of what I wrote up so it won't sit all marked up in red in my notebook forever.

All that said, my week:

On Wednesday night, at my flute lesson, Florence gave me the number to Four Seasons Orchestra. On Thursday night, I called. Left a voice message. On Friday, lady called back. I set up an audition time for 2:30 on Sunday. Three days was not enough time to prepare anything, so I got out Pan again, sauntered in Sunday, and did my audition. The scales went well. I choose A flat to play, and after I did, the judge asked me to play A. I did. The judge just said, "Solid," which was a nice comment. Thank you Florence. Pan went okay. Unfortunately, sight reading SUCKED. I think it was one of the worst sight reading experiences I've ever had. By some stroke of fortune, the key of the piece (Molly on the Shore) was in A flat. But it was Irish. And I hate Irish tunes because they're ALL fast, light, and airy (except for the slow ones, which are just depressing). Nothing against the Irish, of course, but why does all their music have to be played to a jig? So I screwed up horribly on that. I didn't go in with much hope, because it was a last-minute thing, so I was fine after the audition. They sent me an e-mail today. I didn't get into their top music group, La Primavera, but they said I have a spot in their Chamber Orchestra if I want. That's not that bad, but not that good. So do I want it? I don't know yet. I still want to play at Saddleback, and I'm not sure my parents will let me do both. I'll talk to Florence tomorrow. Also need to work on site reading. I don't mind going to Saddleback this year, but next year I'd really like to get into a really good group like La Primavera. They get to tour over the summer, and it'd be awesome to go somewhere and play after Senior year.

Last night, I went to bed at 12. I woke up a couple hours later and my head was spinning. I tried to walk to the bathroom but I crashed into the wall. I seriously thought, "Okay...I don't think I'm drunk..." After I somehow made it to the bathroom and back to my room, I took three sips of water and got the violent urge to throw up. Walked with the world spinning around me to the bathroom again. Didn't throw up. Walked back to bed. Lied there for the next couple hours without sleeping until mom got up. Talked to mom. Mom made me eat cereal. Cereal made me feel a lot better. Went to school half dead. Somehow am still alive and functioning. I talked to Karla and she said it might have been low blood pressure. I never get low blood pressure. I drink a ton of water, and I eat a ton of junk food every day. Might be something else, but I hope I sleep it off tonight. It was pretty scarey last night when I was lying in bed. I kept imagining myself waking up in a hospital with 5 billion wires hooked around me. Probably the closest I've gone to imagining my death. Right now, though, I'm not tired. I think I've screwed my body up, badly. I should go to sleep.

My Universe

If I were the Earth...

School would be the sun, because my life revolves around it.

Literature, anime, music, and art in general would be the other planets because they orbit around me and I around them.

My family would be the sky, sometimes dark and sometimes bright.

Akshar would be God, because I told him if he was running for the position, I'd vote for him.

And you guys would be the stars.

Am Thoroughly Depressed

And tired. And I still have math and physics homework to do. But at least I know I can do them. Unlike English.

I have this need to know my grade. If I know what I've been flunking on, I can work to make it better. It frustrates me so much that Stender hasn't graded anything. I don't care if he doesn't know how to use school loop. That's an excuse. If we are expected to figure out how to use it, so are the teachers.

But Stender hasn't graded anything and I'm positive I've failed everything. Not exaggerating (that much). My summer homework sucked. My grammar test sucked. My in class essay today sucked. I am going to fail high school English and be a failure for the rest of my life. Either that, or I'll land a job I thoroughly hate.

I really need to know my grade. It's been more than a week since school started. Stender doesn't have another Comp class. WHAT IS TAKING HIM SO LONG?! Garrity stayed up til 2 in the morning last night grading his papers (he told us a long story involving applesauce about it in Ac Dec). If my math isn't as sucky as it was last year, I think there are about 100 points already from all our assignments. He's the teacher; how are we suppose to know what to work on if he doesn't tell us?

Emo Notebook

So Mrs. Schubert, my math teacher, insisted we get a 1 inch thick notebook because the notes we take this year "are going to be used in calculus, college, and the rest of your educational lives." Yeah, right. But anyway, I got a bright blue 180 paged notebook and I wrote "math analysis" on the cover in l337 because I thought the numbers would look more math-ish. After I did that, I realized I spelled "analysis" wrong. >.< So I drew a cruve to cover the mistake and then I thought, hey that kind of looks like a hill. So I drew another hill-curve connected to the first one and drew a rising sun coming up behind them. Only I messed up on one of the sun's rays so I colored it black, which meant I had to color all the other rays black. Then I colored the entire sun black to go with the rays, and added some black clounds and birds in the horizon. Altogether, it looks emo.

I did a couple hours of math today, making up what I didn't do last week using the photocopied pages from the book. I shudder to think of the amount of ink and paper Schubert used up making those. I also did some problems from my "book" to make sure my first math quiz won't be a train wreck like the Elements of Style one. Then I attempted to do French and sat like an idiot for half an hour trying to remember conjugations of verbs from French I. It was incredibly sad. I had to look up all of them online to fill in the charts Mme H assigned.

Social Life

Aggghhhh, if I see any more of the Aubrey/Erich/Alice (not the one I was talking to last night)/Auburn/Tyler (Jacques?) tension, I might explode. It is one of the most annoying things in the world having Erich in PE with me. She drops oh-so-subtle hints about how PE should be a breeze for her after x-country and how she can run so fast. Ugh, if she really wants, she should do xc independent study. I know Dan did it last year because he couldn't go to all the practices and marching band.

After PE, I was walking with her to the buses and she started asking me about how Stender is:
Erich: Do you have to take notes in Stender?
Me: Only if he makes us.
Erich: Oh, no, I NEVER had to take notes.
Me (to myself): If you want to brag, talk to someone else.

*2 minutes later*

Alice: *is walking towards us from the other side of the P buildings*
Me: *waves*
Alice: *waves back at me with a tight smile*
Erich: Hey, I didn't get a glare this time.
Me (to myself): Maybe because I'm here and I've done nothing to make any of them mad at me?

Seriously, I can't believe Aubrey and Erich are mad at Alice over a guy. How stupid can you get? And Aubrey and Erich are also mad at each other; for some reason I forget. And Auburn lets Aubrey drag him into everything. I can't believe these people sometimes.

+2

I won't talk about how school went because it wasn't that great. I'll just say I got 2 fully right on the Elements of Style tests. Karla graded my quiz and told me. So that depressed me, obviously. Sat through Ac Dec depressed, came home, and read NejiTen fics on FFNet to escape from reality. Ate dinner, then signed on AIM. (Can't do my math homework with my book, can I?) It's funny how different people respond differently to the same thing.

Me: i'm failing english

Responses (in the order I got them):

Denice: i'm failing too :] (or something like that)

Kevin: school is sucking this year. calc isn't easy.
Me: it's funny how much this sucks. i hate english, you hate math. someone up there has a cruel sense of humor.
Kevin: yeah -_-

Akshar: that someone up there is a jokester and if you stick it out long enough, he'll stop bothering you
Me: thanks

Alice: "failing"
Me: huh?
Me: oh, i get it
Me: no, i'm serious Alice!!!!!!
Alice: "serious"
Me: ALICE!!!!!!!!

Nina: that sucks (or something like that)

Then, in the middle of all that, Karla called me.

To tell me that the math homework wasn't hard and even though I can't do it because I don't have a book, it was all stuff I've learned before so I don't have to worry about the quiz we might have tomorrow.

I was touched by everything.

Gaaah

I have been nervous all day. About school. I've done all my homework, I've cleaned my room, I've gotten everything ready for tomorrow, and I've felt anxious the rest of the day. Can't believe summer's over. And I've spent most of it avoiding things that what would be nice to get done. *sigh*...

I need something to do. Not something I need to do, but something that'll put my mind to rest. I convinced dad to take me and Tony to Borders, so mom went too, and I read vol. 11 of Naruto. It felt nice, not that the story's great, but it was a good distraction.

I know Junior year is important, but it'll still be like any other year. I hope. There's not going to be anything special about it.

Went to the end of summer party on Friday. Really didn't get much partying done; for the most part, I sat and looked at the fire. Brain said I looked dead. I feel sorry for ***e. I was standing with her, Brian, and Dan, and they started talking about Naruto (Why does everyone like it? It's not funny. The characters are flat. The plot takes forever to progress and there are those annoying filler chapters everywhere.). ***e said she didn't like Sakura, which made me think of something Garrity said once: "We dislike the people who are most like ourselves." That's really sad.