January 2004

A million doesn’t seem like that much….

January 30, 2004 – 5:00 pm
Filed under Friday Fives
3 Comments

From fridayfive.org:

You have just won one million dollars:

1. Who do you call first? My mother, probably.

2. What is the first thing you buy for yourself? A brand new 12 inch powerbook G4!

3. What is the first thing you buy for someone else? I’d want to buy my family a new house, but that’s sort of for me, too. :P I’d probably ask the people in my family what they want me to buy them.

4. Do you give any away? If yes, to whom? I might give some to my family…. maybe not my friends, you never know, some day they might not be my friends and I’d be like, “darn! Why did I give them that money?”

5. Do you invest any? If so, how? I’d probably save some for an apartment for when I go to college and stuff to go in it. I *really* don’t want to stay in a dorm. Too gross.

The Looney Bin

January 29, 2004 – 1:37 pm
Filed under As It Happened, Books, Flashbacks
2 Comments

I’m reading One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest for school. It’s a somewhat depressing book, as most books assigned by a teacher are. There’s a sadistic quality about english and literature teachers, like they get pleasure out of the suffering of characters in books. It has a bit of an innocent tone which kind neutralizes the whole sadness of it. Much better than 1984, which was assigned earlier this school year. Anybody who reads that book an enjoys it must seriously be somewhat sadistic, or perhaps masochistic.

The book takes place in the psychiatric ward of a hospital, and is told by the patient who’s been there the longest. He’s part indian, and everybody thinks he’s deaf (but as far as I can tell, he’s faking it, as he notes what people are saying in the book). There are several parts of the book which seem real to me, but probably a bit surreal to others who haven’t experienced. The psychiatric ward of the hospital seems to be a bit like a very depressing school. The florescent lights, the constant drone of who knows what. The students having facts from teachers pounded into their heads constantly.

One place that I’ve experienced things like the psych ward in the book was at an after school program that I attended while I was in the fourth grade. Man, that place was seriously one of the most depressing I’ve ever been to. The after school program was in the basement of a community center. No windows, stuffy air, the smell of cleaning products, evil florescent lights….the bright little home work room…. There was also such an orderly, cramped, confining feel to the place. All of the counselors and people who worked there seemed unbearably calm and collected. I think I acted the way I did there because I was subconsciously trying to break up that terrible peace. Anything at all to make that surreal place become more real.

I was driven to do things so incredibly insane, I don’t think I’ve ever really acted that badly anywhere else. I remember one time, this girl and I were waiting to be picked up or something, and there was a pile of floor tiles on a table. We picked some of them up and dropped them on the floor. They broke, and we got in trouble. Today, I don’t why I was compelled to do that. Perhaps because the floor tiles seemed squashy? What I do know is that for some reason, that place made me very insane.

Somebody should seriously do a study of children’s behavior inside and outside of places like that. How can the mentally-challenged be put in places like that when those kind of places turn normal people insane? At least try to make places like that more friendly and brain-nourishing.

I am so out of it.

January 27, 2004 – 1:19 pm
Filed under As It Happened, School
3 Comments

Yesterday I had a Math Exam. The only exam that I had the entire exam week. I think I failed miserably on it. At least I failed miserably on a few questions. I felt so completely out of it that in the blank space for my math teacher’s name , I wrote down I teacher that I never even had! Now everybody who reads this will probably think that I’m some sort of pot head….. which I’m not. :) Perhaps fate is punishing me for not studying enough. I swear, the practice exams seemed easier than this one (excepting only a few questions), and they were past exams! My math skills stink. I don’t even have my times tables memorized and when I’m adding, sometimes I still count on my fingers. What’s 12×8? I have no idea.

This exam week is boring. Besides the pluses that I don’t have to go to school and I get to sleep in, it’s very depressing. For one thing, my mother is at work, my sister is at school, and even though my father’s working at home today (because his terrible office is freezing, I think), he seems to be in a bad mood (as usual) and is mad at me for “going up and down the stairs!” Gar. I wanted to go shopping today, but the person I called to go is not picking up and I really don’t feel like walking around town in this wet, wet, cold weather.

So I guess I’m stuck here, waiting for my sister to come home from school or my mother to return from work so I can finally do something. American Idol is one tonight, that’s at least a good thing. Although anything good is being turned rotten by the fact that I have a ridiculously *HUGE* test in science this Friday (on everything we’ve learned so far) and the fact that I have to read 60 stupid pages of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Friday, too.

Why must teachers ruin relaxing weeks off by giving us assignments like that?! Teachers do seem kind of self-centered about their classes, or perhaps “class-centered”. It seems like they think that their class is either the only class that assigns homework or the only class worth doing homework for. Either way, it’s very irritating.

Am I a total blog-obsessed geek?

January 26, 2004 – 6:34 pm
Filed under Blogs
2 Comments

Okay, so I found this *totally* *awesome* *coolest* *blog* *ever* blog called dooce. I was totally excited about finding this *totally* *cool* blog and I wanted to share it with some people. I started chatting with two of the few buddies who were online. Both of them, that’s both! of them went like, “blog?” when I told them that I thought that I had found the coolest blog ever! I told them that blog meant “weblog”. Then, it seemed as if one of the people I told this to thought that I was a dork that shortened words to act cool.

Gar! Am I really that much of a computer nerd and I just don’t know it?! I’ve never really thought of myself as a computer geek, although some people probably think I am. When the word “computer geek” is said, an image of either an oily faced teen who wears ugly clothes with glasses and a pocket protector or a messy-haired thirty-fourty bag eyed guy with glasses and a pocket protector comes to mind. I don’t think I’m either of those. Perhaps there should be another word for it, other than computer geek or nerd. I mean, for goodness sake! I’m not like those people who only play dorky war games on their computers all day and then obsess about how much RAM my computer has! I don’t even know what RAM is! I pronounce MBs, “em-bees.” How can people say I’m a computer geek?! *Pants.*

I really can’t stand it when people see me on my computer and then think I know absolutely everything about computers. I don’t! Although sometimes computerly-challenged people do sometimes get on my nerves.

On several occasions, my grandfather has asked me to run little “internet” errands for him, the most recent being finding out the value of silver on the stock market. How am I supposed to know how to do that?! One problem with people like my grandfather is that they completely miss the point of the internet, which is probably most annoying. “Can you visit other countries on the intra-net? Bring up Italy for me, would you?”

I know I shouldn’t be making such a big deal out of it, he is after all, like eighty years old. I do feel slightly guilty about writing about him that way, but it is very irritating. I don’t consider myself a computer geek, and I wish other people wouldn’t. I like designing web sites and I like writing in my little online diary. So call me an obsessive designer and a writer. It sounds much nicer,

So anyway, go to dooce.com. It’s really cool, despite the *f* word being used quite a lot.

A somewhat depressing weekend.

January 25, 2004 – 12:22 pm
Filed under As It Happened
1 Comment

I wanted to go out and do something yesterday, like go to a movie or something, but (Gar!), when I was getting out of my loft bed yesterday, I stepped down wrong. The result was a very hurt toe. At first I was shouting quite a bit because it hurt so much, then I also realized that it was bleeding through my sock. I covered it in tissues and badages, and that’s how it still is now. It was very frustrating having both my parents not answering their cell phones. My sister left a bit of an exaggerated message on my father’s voice mail thingy. It went a bit like: “Come home right now! Max fell out of his bed and he hurt his toe! There’s blood everywhere!”

Friday night was fun. My sister had ski club until about 11:45ish, so my parents and I went to a really cool restaurant. After that, we went to a little fine foods store and bought some candies. Then, we went to blockbuster and rented Bring It On Again and Once Upon A Time In Mexico. My mother and I watched Once Upon A Time In Mexico. I think we both agreed that the movie was pretty terrible. From start to finish, we had absolutely no idea what was going on or who anybody was. Plus, there was a lot of gore, which probably would have been okay, had we known who the people were and why they were getting their eyes ripped out, etc.

Then, because my father had already gone to bed, it was up to my mother and I to go pick my sister and her friend (who was sleeping over) up from ski club. It was a bit irritating when we got home, because I was a bit exhausted, but my sister seemed as if she had just had a gallon of caffein injected into her bloodstream. She and her friend stayed up a little later watching Bring It On Again.

The next day…. Saturday, that would be, I watched Bring It On Again with my sister and her friend, who were seeing it for the second time. It turned out to be not so bad. It didn’t really have that interesting of a plot, but it was fairly funny, in a silly kind of way.

Then, last night, my sister went to blockbuster to buy some movies with the gift certificates she had gotten for her birthday. She bought The Lizzie McGuire Movie and Alex & Emma. We started watching Alex & Emma, but about half way through, my sister got very irritated for some reason and yelled at me to get out of the room.

This morning, she was in a bit of a better mood, and we watched the rest of the movie. It was very, very good. I really like romantic comedies, and this one seemed like a classic. It was one of those make-you-feel-all-warm-and-bubbly movies. It was very cute.

So now I’m sitting here, typing, wondering when I should start finishing Hamlet and start studying for the exam I have tomorrow. Eeek!

I Made Fonts!

January 23, 2004 – 5:23 pm
Filed under Etc, etc, etc!
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myfonts{Click on image to see it larger.}

I made my own fonts on fontifier.com! The first time I tried to make a font, it didn’t work out too well, probably because I didn’t use a felt tip pen and didn’t really follow directions. The second time at trying to turn my handwriting into a font worked much better. After that, I decided to make a decorative font! I might make some available for download later. :) This is fun!

The start of my Friday Fives….

January 23, 2004 – 3:04 pm
Filed under Friday Fives
2 Comments

From fridayfive.org:

At this moment, what is your favorite…

1. Song- hum…. I don’t really listen to music enough to really have a favorite song. The most played song on my iTunes is Miss Independent by Kelly Clarkson, listened to that 29 times on my iBook! I’m also liking Every Day Is a Winding Road by Sheryl Crow, but that’s not on my most listened list, since I only recently bought it.

2. Food- Probably pasta? That’s mostly what I eat. I also like pizza with green olives (no meat, I’m a vegetarian).

3. TV show- Friends and American Idol, if you count shows that are still playing. Dark Angel if you’re counting cancelled shows. Friends, American Idol, and Dark Angel, in general.

4. Scent- I’m presuming that this has something to do with perfume, but I hardly know anything about perfume, so I’ll just name something that I think smells good…. The Apple Store (really good smell), Krispy Kremes, and pages of new books.

5. Quote- I’m not really a quotes collecting type of person, although I did like one quote I heard today, but unfortunately, I forgot it.

What a headache of a day

January 22, 2004 – 6:00 pm
Filed under As It Happened, Dental Stuff, School
2 Comments

I had a somewhat bad day at school. I hardly got any sleep last night, and I was pretty tired when I got there. The test I had in Spanish I think I may have passed, but the history test, I really think I completely flunked. I guessed (badly) for most of the questions. It was terrible.

I couldn’t really study last night because I was trying to finish Hamlet for literature class. I also had to watch American Idol, then I was like, I want to watch The O.C., too! I still don’t really get all the hype around that show. It’s a good show, but it’s not as huge and sensational as people say it is. I sometimes think that it’s a sort of stuff subliminal advertising show to make people want to buy stuff by having “cool” people using them. I seriously wanted to go out and buy some comic books and an iPod after I saw the main character on the show using them.

Anyway, I told my literature teacher that I hadn’t finished the book yet and that I could hand it in Monday (even though it’s due Friday), and he was okay with this, although, maybe it’s just me, but he seemed a bit disappointed. He must think I’m such and idiot. He’s given me time for other reading too, like the summer reading. I got like one of two weeks extra to finish my summer reading at the beginning of the school year. Then, like a day or two ago, I found a poem I thought I had handed in to him in my binder. I turned it in late, but I think I got an “A” when I got it back.

The weather’s supposed to be cold again tomorrow, maybe another cold day ahead! That would be really great, because (one) I wouldn’t have to take that quiz tomorrow and (two) the book report things wouldn’t be due tomorrow and the due date might be extended from tomorrow to next Friday, since many people might not be in school next week because of it being a week for exams.

After school, I had to go to a dentist appointment to have my expansion with my expanders checked up on. I wasn’t feeling very outgoing today, so I didn’t mention that I thought I might have a cavity, but since he checked up on my teeth, wouldn’t he have mentioned it if I had a cavity? Gar.

Okay, you don’t like Bush, we get it!

January 21, 2004 – 6:58 pm
Filed under Illustration, Opinion
6 Comments

antibushstuff.jpg{Click image see it larger.}

I’m not a very political person. Probably because I can’t vote and because I basically tend to follow what my elders agree with politically. I’m not a huge fan of Bush, I really didn’t like the whole war with Iraq thing, and I sort of feel sorry for him. That said, I still don’t like how people are so completely mean about him! I mean, I guess people have been mean about other presidents, and I shouldn’t be talking about this since my memory of presidents mostly only goes as far back as the beginning of Clinton, but still…. I think we’re getting a little over the top.

Sure, he’s not everybody’s favorite guy in the whole world. People don’t have to go on about it. I can hardly walk into an independent book shop without being bombarded by rude anti-bush books, posters, bumper stickers, buttons, games, and other annoying things. Do people need somebody that desperately to pick on? Does it make them feel better? I was in a shop once and saw a deck of Bush playing cards with pictures of pretzels on them! Come one, anybody could choke on a pretzel!

Then there are all of these anti-bush magazines and books, too. Enough already! I understand that you’re exercising your constitutional rights as an American, but you’re going too far!

Are stores trying to seem more intellectual-friendly by selling things like that? I mean, nearly half of the people in the country voted for Bush, and I don’t think stores want half of their customers never to return due to having angry anti-Bush products thrown in their faces!

There are also several anti-Bush websites that I have seen. Some websites compare him to animals, some websites make fun of his word pronunciation (which is fairly funny, but those words tend to be mispronounced by many people).

I think that we should all ease off a bit. He may not be the best person in the whole world, and many people dislike him very, very much, but let’s all be a little more polite.

If every day was a snow day….

January 21, 2004 – 2:51 pm
Filed under As It Happened, Theatre
1 Comment

That would be great. I went to a theatrical production of A Raisin In The Sun today as a school field trip. It was pretty good, and the set was *fantastic*, but it was a bit too long…. Three hours long. The play started at 10:30 in the morning and ended at about 1:20 in the afternoon. From there, since us high school kids are so grown up, they got to save money and have us find out own ways of transportation home. It wasn’t even the end of the school day when we got out.

I felt a bit awkward walking in the opposite direction most of the people were walking in (even though that was the direction I needed to go to go home), so I walked in the direction most of the people were walking in. :) I went to a coffee shop and got a hot chocolate and an oatmeal cookie, then I started to walk home. It was freezing! It seemed even colder than last week when we had all of those cold-days (like a snow day, except off because of cold, not snow), but when I got home and checked the weather online, I found out it was only like 20° outside. It was like -4 or something last week. When I got home my hands were seriously aching from the cold.

Now that I’m home, I have to start reading Hamlet, which I have a literary analysis of due on Friday. Plus, there are two tests tomorrow, then there’s also a make-up test which I’m not sure if I need to take or not. Then Friday, we have a quiz. Since next week is sort of exam week for some kids, I get much of that week off, but on Friday of that week, there’s a test covering everything we’ve learned in a certain subject. Too much work!