September 2005

Comments on Camus

September 23, 2005 – 3:48 pm
Filed under Books
2 Comments

It is really starting to scare me how much people seem to be against the main character of Albert Camus’ The Stranger. It was assigned as summer reading and now we’re going over it in our literature class. The reason that all of this Stranger-hating is starting to freak me out is because I can relate so well to him. When people in class start to dissect his personality, they’re all basically like, “Yeah, he’s basically a cold, numb, emotionless poop head. He’s cruel and heartless.” I just want to stand up and go like, “Uh-uh. You’re wrong.” I tried to defend the character a little bit in my answers to the guided reading questions we got the other day, but my literature teacher didn’t read them.

Basically, the story is about this guy. And by the way that the book is written, in short, dry sentences, it sounds like this guy, Mersault, pretty much doesn’t care about anything but himself. Or…. at least that’s what the people in my literature class say it sounds like. The book starts with Mr. Mersault going to his mother’s funeral. There are several things that might make some people think that Mersault is an evil self-obsessed pee brain. Like how he doesn’t sound too upset at the fact that his mother has just passed away. Or like when he says that maybe after the funeral, everything would have a more official feel to it. Or like when he wanted to get home straight away after the funeral.

Yeah, I guess that does sound pretty cold and evil. But really, you have to look deeper into the story, people! I think this guy suffers from some pretty massive ADD. Or at least some kind of anxiety disorder. He isn’t devoid of emotion. In fact, I might even say that Mersault is extra sensitive. From the way that Mersault reacts to environmental influences like bright lights and noises, it seems like Mersault has to remain relatively emotionless simply to keep from teetering off the edge…… like he does later in the book.

I honestly feel very bad for Mersault as he endures his mother’s long funeral procession. For somebody with his impatient personality, the whole thing must have been tortuous. Not because of his mother’s death (it isn’t really clarified in the book whether or not he feels anything about that, he might and he might not), but because of the environmental factors: the blinding sunlight, the drone of insects chirping as he walks down the country road, the utter dullness of his surroundings and the monotonous color scheme of the day. All Mersault wants to do is feel safe and secure inside of his normal day-to-day routine.

I just don’t get what this book is supposed to teach us if everybody thinks that Mersault is truly bad to begin with. What’s the point of that insane murder trial at the end of the book? I think that we’re supposed to sympathize with Mersault. I honestly thought that that was the point of the book. To show us how small events can lead to something very tragic and how cruel the world can sometimes be. We should feel bad for him. Everybody else in the book seems to be against him already…. But then again, I found many parts of the book very humorous, while many people told me that they found it horribly depressing…. Well, anyway, I’m really sorry if you just read this entire post and the whole thing just flew over your head. I didn’t feel like giving much background about the book….. Go read it, though. It’s pretty good and it’s VERY short.

The Annual September Sick Day

September 21, 2005 – 4:20 pm
Filed under As It Happened
0 Comments

I hate that my family never believes that I’m sick. Maybe it’s because I’m sick so often and when I am, I usually take the maximum number of days needed off of school. I woke up Monday morning and told my mom that I wasn’t feeling well. I can’t recall exactly what she said, but it was probably along the lines of (and with a very sardonic tone) “Let me guess. You’re going to miss school.” Well, yes. That was what I was planning, but I never want to admit that. I feel that it is always better to have people tell you that you look deathly ill rather than to tell them that you feel deathly ill. That way you can say that it was their idea. Otherwise, you end up sounding like a pathetic weakling who takes the day off every time your nose runs…. Which is what my sister called me when I asked her to get my homework for me. Honestly, you’d think that she could just help out a bit? Noooo, she just has to be like, “Max. You’re pathetic. I’m going to walk away now and be a total jerk to you all day because I don’t believe that you’re actually sick even though your nose is running hard enough to produce power for the entire Western New York region.”

I can’t see why they wouldn’t take me seriously. Just the day before I had woken up complaining that I wasn’t feeling well. Since nobody in my family believed me, I basically had to embellish a lot. “My head really hurts.” — “My nose is killing me.” — “I don’t think I can go to school.” I can never say I AM NOT GOING TO SCHOOL. I typed up some notes for my teachers to write homework on and gave them to my sister. She just called me pathetic again and left. I ended up having to go with my sister and mom to school so I could pick up my homework. When I went back out to the car, my mom and I needed to go straight to the clinic for my mom’s appointment. I waited in the waiting room, trying to distract myself from my extreme discomfort by watching the news on the TV.

I was a little happier when we got home because I would be able to watch Ellen and Martha. Monday was going to be Ellen’s LIVE Post-Emmy show. Her first LIVE shoe EVER. So when I saw that on her website, I was pretty excited. My excitement turned to frustration, however, when the show did not start for five minutes and instead the Channel 2 logo stayed fixed to the screen. My frustration worsened when I found out that something was dreadfully wrong because OHHHMYGOSH IT WAS A RERUN WHAT THE HECK. I called Channel 2 up and they told me that they were having engineering problems. Can you believe it? On the day that I was sick? The nerve.

I’d like to end this on a slightly happier note and say that I did get to watch Martha. And Channel 2 played the LIVE Ellen show the next day. And I was sick then, too, so I got to watch it. So there.

Martha Martha Bo Bartha

September 12, 2005 – 9:24 pm
Filed under Television
5 Comments

I’ve been totally stressed out today. Not because of school. Not because of homework. Not because we forgot to get a stupid notary public signature on my early dismissal form….. well, partly from that. The major reason that I was totally stressed out and panicky today, though, that reason is Martha Stewart.

In case you’ve been living in a hole for the past year, Martha Stewart’s new LIVE show, Martha, premiered today at 11 AM. In order to watch this show, I had to go to Target and buy a VCR so my friend can tape it during the school day. Why can’t I tape it myself? Because. I waited way too long to call the cable people (last Friday, to be exact) and they are coming this Friday to install it. That is five days of Martha that needs to be taped. ONE WHOLE WEEK.

I spent some time Sunday working out the time settings on the VCR so that it would tape properly Monday morning at 11. I set it to tape five minutes before 11 and I also set the VCR clock five minutes forward. Just in case. I tested the record mode and the timer-record mode. Just in case. All seemed to work fine. (Insert ellipsis and “DUM-DUM-DUM!” here.) All seemed to be working fine.

I spent much of the school day giddily awaiting the end of the day where I could rush to my friend’s house and retrieve the tape. When I actually did get to do this, she and I walked to her house, we went to the TV and I pressed rewind. The VCR made a few clicking noises but nothing that signified any significant rewindage. WHY ISN’T IT REWINDING??! I pressed play. There was the dirt bike piece that we tested the VCR with. La-la. Then nothing. Just fuzz.

Thank God for TLC. TLC comes with broadcast cable service, it plays episodes of Trading Spaces ad nauseam, and it plays a replay of Martha every day at 6 PM. We were saved. I set the record timer to 6 PM. I told my friend’s little sister to check if the little record light was on at six and if not, to press record herself, just in case.

I went to a meeting, came back, did some summer reading listening (the public library has an abundance of audio books, FYI), and paced back and forth until 6:55 when I could take it no longer and dashed over to my friend’s house to get my tape. And praise-the-Lord-Almighty-Amen! It had taped! Unfortunately, this still doesn’t solve the great VCR not taping when it is TOLD TO dilemma. I was informed that some record-button pressing was required to tape the show and that the timer did not tape as it was supposed to. Stupid VCRs. I thought it was just an old person thing that it’s impossible to set the timer on them.

I got to go home and watch the tape. I have to say, I was a little disappointed. It was a tad bit unceremonious. Not much really happened. I would have liked to have seen Martha use her pagillion-dollar gigantic set, but instead, all she did was prepare scrambled eggs and meat balls. Not that great for a series premier. I did enjoy, however, Martha’s slight fidgetiness and her somewhat fast-paced neurotic personality. I checked out this week’s show schedule. The upcoming celebrity guests seem pretty cool.

On another note- My history teacher scared the crap out of me today when he said that you could get Hepatitis-B from spit on a sidewalk.

Holy crap, I haven’t written for a long time!

September 11, 2005 – 10:08 pm
Filed under School
2 Comments

I’m writing this in my little lazy phase between when I finish everything I need to do for the night and when I need to start getting ready for bed. I think it’s probably because I really hate living in rituals and getting ready for bed is just one big nightly ritual. So I kind of never want stop procrastinating and get my butt up and start brushing my teeth and washing my face and all that jazz. So instead of doing what I probably should be doing and going to bed early like I need to be doing, I’m going to update this poor excuse for a weblog.

School started this week. Or last week. Whatever. It started Wednesday. This school year is going very smoothly. Maybe a bit surprisingly smoothly. I write mental blog entries in my head sometimes and since I’ve been searching my brain for ideas of what to right about on this site, I thought about writing about the upcoming school year. In my imaginary blog entry, I would come home from another same-old day at school and write about how I’m a nervous, anti-social wreck who can’t talk to anybody and how I hate school so much and blah blah blah.

It’s not really like that this year, though. I am still kind of insecure and I don’t talk to anybody at all, but I think I’m a bit more comfortable with my surroundings. I’m not the hopeless, depressed, scared person that I was so much of last year. At least I hope that I’m not or that I will become that way as the school year progresses.

The majority of my classes are interesting this year. I guess that’s one of the benefits of being a senior. The classes aren’t so schooly and they’re actually interesting. As courses are getting more specific, we’re getting into more meaty, satisfying subjects. I scanned through my Evolution textbook, and some of it is really fascinating. The only class that I haven’t warmed up to so far is math. I think it’s basically because we started out by learning about bar graphs and stem and leaf diagrams and nothing is more boring than bar graphs and stem and leaf diagrams.

Seniority has is benefits as well in that I can leave whenever all of my academic requirements are fulfilled for the day. I have study hall and lunch the last few periods of the day so instead of staying I can just be like, “Yo, I’m leaving” and go. So….. yeah. I’m kind of glad that I can start my school year blogging on a positive note and not on a tragic, morbid, teenage cliché note. Ta-da!

Are you looking forward to September? Yes, actually, I am.

September 2, 2005 – 2:17 pm
Filed under As It Happened
4 Comments

September is coming and as nervous as I am about the school year, I am not not as depressed about it as I have been in previous years. There are some things that are the same. I’m frantically trying to get all of my back to school shopping done and I’ve hardly made a dent in my summer reading. Still, September is promising to be a really exciting month for me and I really don’t want to go all Green Day and sleep through it.

The election is in September. For those who don’t already know, my father is running for office this year and it’s been a pretty exciting race this year. There are about five candidates and it’s basically been a bloodbath of a campaign for everybody. I don’t think I could ever get into politics, I’m just not cold and heartless enough. In July, when people were still petitioning to get on the ballot, my father’s campaign workers were working night and day searching other candidate’s petitions for bad signatures, repeats, fake names, things like that. There was one of the opposing candidates who didn’t have enough signatures and he was going to be kicked out of the race. When my mother told me this, I went, “Aww…. That’s so sad.” She looked at me like I was crazy.

Martha is in September. September should just be called National Martha Month. The month of Martha’s comeback. I am so unbelievably excited about Martha’s (TWO) new shows that I am more than willing to cough up enough money for cable and learn how to use a VCR to watch them. Two whole shows -one that’s on every day- to feed my addiction!

And then…. Buffalo Buzz is in September. And this is where I’ve probably lost a few of you. This by far probably the most exciting if not important thing happening in September. Back in the summer of 2004, my sister had the idea of starting a newspaper called The Buffalo Buzz. This was not our first self publishing endeavor, we had created such titles as “The Elmwood Enquirer” and “The Black Cat: Buffalo’s Dark Humor Zine” in the past, but this one was definitely the one that showed the most promise. Come on, it definitely had the most catchy name.

Well, we started writing it. Mostly on and off since none of us really have any organizational skills. I don’t think we really got that many visitors, but we must have gotten a few, because at the beginning of the summer, I got a phone call from the owner of Buffalo Rising. He said that he was interested in getting The Buffalo Buzz to be affiliated with or even part of Buffalo Rising. I was very excited and after a brief meeting with the co-owners of Buffalo Rising, my sister and I agreed to have Buffalo Buzz be a channel on the Buffalo Rising website when it relaunches on September 12th.

Since joining Buffalo Rising, my life has been very busy, but in a really good way. I’ve been having meetings with the owners every few days discussing the new web design and working with them on the Style channel of the site. Just a few days ago, I met with the style editor for Buffalo Rising and we decided that it would be a really cool idea to have some sort of Back To School photo shoot featuring clothing from local stores. It’s amazing how much people do for you if you tell them they’re going to be featured in Buffalo Rising. We already have several local shops donating clothing, we have the shooting location set up, we have lighting, we have models, and we have a hair stylist from a local salon set up for the shoot. We plan on shooting on next Tuesday and putting the photos up when the site launches. And I’m going to be the photographer.

I am so insanely excited about all of this. It’s such an opportunity and I’ve always dreamed of doing something like this. Joan, the style editor at Buffalo Rising, asked me the other day if all of this was making me nervous. A chance to act like completely stressed out workoholic? I’m sure that eventually the feeling will get old, but for right now, it is so much fun!