Color!

Color has always fascinated me. I was reminded of this yesterday when my mom sent me to the pit of doom to hang up 25 pieces of laundry (oh gnoes!). It was quite a challenge, until I found the baskets of laundry behind the door. It's much easier to do a job when you have the right materials. So, back to relating this to color. I had hung several shirts when I looked up and realized that I had subconsciously been hanging them in the order of the color wheel (incidentally, I purposefully do this very thing in my own closet, which probably explains why I started hanging everyone else's clothes that way). I had hung almost all the green shirts and had just put up a few blue ones. So I continued the trend and hung them all in color order! It made the job so much more interesting. Since it has been brought to my attention once more that I love colors, I'll ramble about it for a bit today. I'm sorry if you get annoyed by the fact that I'll be typing every color-word in it's color, but I just can't resist. I promise I probably won't do it again.


Just consider the very concept of colors for a second.










Aren't you fascinated? You should be. I mean, think about how it occurs. Certain molecules are shaped so that they reflect only certain wavelengths of light. The specialized cells in the eye then receive the waves of light and interpret them into this idea that we call color. See, look! They did it just then so you could read the word! Astonishing! Of course your eye only do this if you're not colorblind, and if you were I would show one of the shirts I received for Christmas and then laugh at the fact that you would have no way of knowing why I was laughing.

And then there's the whole idea of colored light and colored pigments being very different. We generally thing of colors in terms of pigments (or at least I do, since I've been working with them as paints and pencils for most of the past week), meaning that we think of the primary colors as red, yellow, and blue, and that white is the absence of pigmentation and black is all colors. Thinking about it this way makes me happy because it can be easily seen and tested by me with things I have sitting around that I really should be putting to other uses. At the same time, it gives me great joy to ponder colored light (which is much different) because I really don't exactly understand how it works, and being confused can be a pleasant relief. How on earth can green be a basic color while yellow isn't? I can grasp that black is the absence of colored light and, thanks to rainbows and prisms, I can see and accept that white light actually contains all colors, but how on earth would you get yellow light if it's not one of the basic colors? I tried to figure it out by making a custom color for my desktop since it uses the colored light system rather than the pigmented color system, and when I picked a pure yellow the boxes underneath told me that (and that whole spiel about boxes and custom colors probably made no sense, so just forget I wrote that if you're confused and move on to the main point of the sentence which comes after this parenthetical note) yellow is made of equal parts red and green. What!? When I mix equal parts red and green paints, I get a neutral greyish-brown color. Definitely not yellow. How? I think I'm going to have to do some research eventually, but I've been telling myself that for some time now. Someday I'll actually get around to it, for I can't just leave such a riveting question like this unanswered. Why do colored light and pigment divide differently anyway? I mean, if we see colored pigments based off of waves of light being received by our cone cells I guess my mind is just stuck in pigment mode.

Once you finish thinking about that, you can then consider the complexity of the eye and brain that allow the phenomenon of color perception.

And to finish up, you can hardly help but admire the creativity of a God who can invent the delightful concept of colors.

Optometrists

The optometrist's office isn't a nice place to be, in my opinion. I am always annoyed, conflicted, and downhearted there.

The annoyance is both from the atrocious interior design of my optometrist's office (that wallpaper makes me want to sob sometimes) and that little eye-puff machine. That one where they tell you to stick your chin on a ledge of some contraption and look at the lights while they sends puffs of air into your eye. I know it's coming, but I can never stop myself from blinking, which annoys me. Even though the whole point of the machine is to make sure that your eyes do blink when something comes at them, for some reason, I always want to do my best not to blink.

Once I enter the examiner's room and they start testing my prescription with the face-piece-of-the-many-lenses, the internal conflict begins. They always ask whether 1 or 2 looks clearer, A or B, or some other combination. Some days I'm in the mood for everything to follow a pattern, so I get annoyed when the clearer choice doesn't fit in with the pattern. Then I have to decide if I want to follow the pattern or pick the clearer choice (don't worry, if the difference is definitely noticeable, I pick the more defined lens no matter what, but sometimes there really is no noticeable difference between the two options). Sometimes it's the inverse; I'm tired of everything following a sequence so I want to make the order of choices as unpredictable as possible. Most days it's a combination of the two, so I'm stuck with deciding whether to build patterns, break them, or just do what actually follows my vision best. In the end, I usually opt for the latter on almost all of them and even if I don't every time I end up with an accurate new prescription by the time they're done.

I'm downhearted because my prescription needs to be strengthened by at least a smidgen every time I visit. I wish I could keep my eyes from getting worse, or maybe for one day I could be able to see without my glasses or contacts. But the reality is that both those wishes are unlikely so I just move on with life. I can still see better than some by a long shot.

The Mystery Unveiled

A bit back, I wrote about a mysterious object which I swiped from someone's garbage. Originally, I had planned for it to be part of the white elephant gift exchange, but fortunately I've actually found a place for it at my house so it gets to stay with me and now I can tell you about it, although I think I already told Ellen about it.




And here it is. This massive piece of woodworking measures 3' x 4' and is fairly bulky and entirely useless except as a kitschy decoration. It does show some decent creativity and skill. The use of colored stains instead of opaque paints allows the grain of the wood to show through (one of my favorite features of the thing) and the pieces were well cut and sanded. I considered hanging it in my room, but I don't have enough for my artwork and smaller pieces of oddity (like the linoleum tile from the chemistry room or the horseshoe that was worn long ago by a Clydesdale that belonged to some relative of my old gym teacher's) as is, so I decided against it. However, my dad is willing to attack it to the wooden beams in the ceiling of the area of the basement that serves as a craft center. Although it would have been fun to see some poor person wind up with this on Friday (I had even come up with a way of bestowing it upon someone without them consciously picking a three-by-four-foot piece of plywood - it's a pity I can't use the little trick anymore), I'm really quite glad that it gets to stay with me.

But fear not, I still have a "fun" prize for the albino pachyderm exchange!

Over-Achievment in Art Strikes Back!

So I've finally decided that my world would be a happier place if I just decided not to make everything I ever do a complex masterpiece. But it's a little too late for the two art projects I have to work on over "break". I'll enjoy working on them, and they'll look pretty good by the time I'm done, but that time is a lot sooner than I'd like it to be considering how precise I'm being.

First, we have the photorealism project that was originally supposed to be due the day before Thanksgiving break, but we kept on getting extensions so now it's not due until the second day back from winter "break". This one is the least of my worries time-wise, but it will still be a hassle to get done. Here's the current progress:

The picture on the right is a photo montage I made with an obscene amount of detail (which is hard to see in the picture, I'm not the world's most accomplished photographer). It it now my job to reproduce it in colored pencil onto the paper on the left. I've already made some good progress, and I've done most of the sky which will probably be the hardest part.

Here's a close-up of the bee-homes. I've got to make them a little more orangey, but other than that, they're pretty much done. It's one of my favorite parts of the composition.

And here we have the two skies compared. The colored pencil one needs to me darker before it's done, but I'm happy with how it's coming along.

Now for a preview of my current project. Sometimes I debate whether or not there's any chance of it being done by the end of the quarter, but that's depressing so I normally switch thoughts quite quickly. For the project, we choose an artist whose style we want to imitate, and then we paint a self-portrait on a 24" x 30" canvas. The artist I chose had two main styles: using tiny dots of primary color to cover the entire canvas and produce the visual effect of other colors, and the use of small squares (normally about a quarter inch by a quarter inch) of mixed color to produce a mosaic-like final effect. I chose the latter style because it's slightly less time-consuming, but let's take a look at what I've managed to accomplish in about 9-11 hours:

This is all I've gotten done. The canvas is about twice as wide as the wave, and there's still about 8-12 inches above it too, so I don't really have much accomplished.

As you can probably see, this is a portion of the painting. The squares are about three-quarters the size of the real ones. You can see the little dots of white between the squares that I need to fill in. On the other parts of the canvas, I'm underglazing it with a watered down coat of paint so I don't have to worry about the white specks.

Let's play find the artist! The paint on my hand has worn off to some degree, but while I was painting earlier it served as a test palette, so it was entirely covered in tiny squares the colors of the waves. One of my friends suggested that we cover my arm in the squares, hold it up to the canvas, and have people try to find the arm. He called his game find the artist.

"Nature Always Finds a Way"

Wow. It takes a ridiculous amount of blind "faith" to be a hard-core naturalist. We watched a movie in biology about how mutations allow evolution. One example was that two-winged insects evolved from four-winged insects, and to "prove" it, they showed a specimen from a a group of drosophila (a two-winged species) that had been bombarded with enough radiation to mutate a blue whale into chihuahua. This fly had been mutated so that it had four wings, like its supposed ancestors. Sure, it couldn't fly and died pretty quickly, but since it's possible for a two-winged fly to mutate into a four-winged fly, no matter how dysfunctional, it must be possible for four-winged insects to evolve into fully functional two-winged insects. The conversation following the video went something like this:

• teacher: "Isn't incredible how they can prove evolution?"
• me: "Have they been able to do anything in the opposite direction? Like produce a two-winged bug from one with four wings, like they think really happened?"
• teacher: "Oh, I'm sure they have. They can get all sorts of mutations to show up if they try long enough,"
• me: "I wonder if they could have used the wings. The fly in the video couldn't fly with its extra pair of wings," (as a side note, I wonder what you call a fly that can't fly?)
• teacher: "I seriously doubt it could have. I mean, that's a pretty major mutation and it probably messed up a bunch of things,"
• me: "How could it have passed the genes for four wings to a new generation if it would die before mating because it can't fly away from predators?"
• teacher: "Oh I'm sure most of the first ones died,"
• me: "Then how would they pass it on? How did it help them survive?"
• teacher: "They would eventually have learned."
• me: "How? If they keep on dying, how would they learn to fly with two wings?"
• teacher: "I don't know. That's a really good question. But nature always finds a way. Nature always finds a way."

At this point, I gave up on the argument, because it clearly wasn't going to go anywhere. But some of my classmates looked interested, so hopefully they aren't so willing to blindly accept something that seems so unlikely.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

This may possibly end up being one of the corniest-titled posts I've produced yet, as you will soon discover. It is trebly meaningful.

First, I've made a resolution that I'm going to try not to stress out about all the crap that my teachers are going to throw at me within the next few weeks. So far, it's working. Let's see if I can keep to my decision and keep from being bogged down by despair.

Second, it is the title of a fun song from Spam-a-Lot brought to the world by Monty Python. I sometimes sing it during biology with a friend of mine who also loves it. She knows the words, and I'm content to sing the few words I know and sing "la la la" with great energy for the parts I don't know, so we make a great duo.

Third, (and this is the part that makes my title kind of lame), I discovered something fascinating sitting on someone's curb for garbage collection after school today. My mom pointed it out as we drove past and I told her to turn around and let me get out and snag it. So we turned around and I had to stuff this thing in the trunk along with six backpacks and a clarinet because the car was already crammed with seven people in a vehicle made with six seatbelts that provides uncomfortable seating even when only five people are in it. This item is now sitting in my room, and I'm not sure what to do with it. When I started typing this, I had intended to describe it and add a picture. But presently the only possible use I can come up with for this unique piece of craftsmanship is the white elephant gift exchange, and I don't want to ruin the surprise for anyone. But I can assure you it relates to the title of my post. You can try to guess if you'd like, but asking any of my siblings, the Corbins, the Browns, or the McCrates is cheating (even though most of you wouldn't know who they all were to ask them, I thought I'd make it clear that you can't ask them for those of you who do know them).

David Darling's Encyclopedia of Science

I accidentally discovered something wonderful and exciting on the internet the other day. It calls itself "The Worlds of David Darling" and the main page contains two links to archives of knowledge called "The Internet Encyclopedia of Science" and "Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy and Sustainable Living". If you scroll down the page, you will find links to articles about recent science news concerning topics such as antigravity, supermassive black holes, and other fun things. Although it doesn't go into in-depth details for most, it gives some interesting links to visit.

Here's one of my favorites: Educational Games from Nobel Prize.org . I must confess, I couldn't beat any of the ones I tried (all I tried were a few from the medical section). I dare you to see how long you can stand the Mr. Split-Brainy game. I was fed up after the first coffee break. There's one with an excellent name and description, but I haven't tried it yet. It's the Nuclear Weapons game, and here's the description: "Take on the mission to disarm the world of nuclear weapons with the help of eight 'Peace Doves!' " Yes! I can't wait to help the Peace Doves! It's what I've been aspiring to do throughout my entire life. It will give me purpose and meaning...
I'm sick of the existentialist books we're reading in English class.

Games of the Future

From the imagination of my youngest sister I bring you a game of the future. It has no name yet, but my six-year-old sister taught it to us with such great enthusiasm that it's preposterous to think that it won't be the next "thing". Here's how you play:

1. One person (we'll call them person A) starts it off by asking the person to their left (who we will cal person B) the question "odd or even?"
2. Person B answers by saying "odd" or"even"
3. Person A then asks person be to say a number.
4. Person B replies by saying a number, but it doesn't have to correspond with their earlier answer of "odd" or "even" (ie. if person B said "odd", they can say "four" in response to the second question even though four isn't an odd number).
5. Now person B repeats the question from step 1 to person A.
6. Person A must choose whichever answer person B did not choose.
7. Person B now asks person a to name a number, and the same guidelines from step 4 still apply.
8. Person B now turns to the person on his/her left and starts the process anew. This is repeated indefinitely. It is sure to provide endless hours of distraction.

No goal or end point is clear, but Amanda assures us that it's fun. After being stuck at the dinner table for a full cycle through my family of nine people, I admit that the intrigue still escapes me, but it must be something revolutionary.

Chlorobat

I've decided I really don't feel like going on about how much the combined forces of french, art, biology, and now english as well are preparing to boot me into a chasm of despair. Instead, I'll introduce you all to my little friend Chlorobat.

You've probably seen him chilling on the right side of my blog, but if you haven't you should look for him there. He's a dark green bat that I adopted from some online thing linked to Ellen's blog. Unlike other virtual pets, he doesn't require any attention or feeding. You can feed and play with him, but he evidently doesn't need that to "survive" considering the fact that I didn't know you could do such things until about a week after I adopted him. The little fellow will follow your mouse pointer around if you click on him, and if you want to watch him catch a fly (using echolocation, of course), click on the little button on the bottom right corner of his habitat that would probably say "more" if it wasn't cut off.

As you probably know, I put at least a little thought into every name I give, so it shouldn't be surprising that Chlorobat's name means something. Chloro- is the Greek prefix for green, (and as you can doubtlessly see, he is a lovely shade of that color) and bat means bat in English (and he is, in fact, a bat). In addition, his name sounds like chloroplast, the cell organelle responsible for giving plants their lovely color along with synthesizing the carbohydrates that fuel life.

About Digging Your Own Grave

It's generally a bad idea. However, I very nearly managed to do that very thing (figuratively). And who knows, I could very likely still pull that off in a different fashion by the end of this week. Instead I just dug a very deep hole and I should be able to climb back out by tomorrow morning, although a bit sleep deficient.

What I did was this: I created a complex, detailed photo montage of a surrealist landscape that I was to later ("later" originally meant by Thursday, if my art teacher hadn't decided to be amazing this morning, which I'll explain later) reproduce in an accursed style known as photorealism. Photorealism is just what is sounds like - drawing and coloring so that the final product looks realistic enough to be a photo. Normally, I'd have no issue with this method. Sure it's incredibly tedious, but it can be fun in a challenging, make-your-head-want-to-split-open kind of way. I mentioned earlier that I made my own "photo" to copy, but I think I'll mention some of the detail I was stupid enough to put in.
-a unicorn 3/8 of an inch long (yes I measured)
-a school of narwhals that easily fit into a one-inch square
-a wisteria bonsai
-a gorgeous sky full of clouds with indistinct boundaries
-a grove of bonsai, each plant being about 1.5 inches tall
-and an orange-ish colored river (or blood-colored if you're my slightly disturbed friend across the table) with more contrasting hues than you can shake a whole bundle of sticks at
-you get the picture, it has massive amounts of minute details (I wish "details" started with an "m", because I had a neat little string of alliteration going there)

This 9"x12" piece of cruel, beautiful masterpiece was orginally due this Thursday, but Mrs. Ficke is pretty much one of my favorite people in the world right now. It's now not due until next Friday! We don't get any more class time to work on it, but I always do more work on my projects outside of class than inside anyway so that doesn't impact me much.

Unfortunately, I've spent the last three nights staying up late (like 2 a.m. or so) to work on it, and I can't regain that sleep until winter break. Plus I still have a 50 point bi-weekly (full projects are 100 points) assignment due tomorrow, which I started this morning... I made quick progress, but I'll probably be up until 2 again because of that combined with the homework I didn't do last night.

That was "Part I: Art from Art Class" of my near disastrous week. "Part II: Art from French Class" and maybe "Part III: Why A.P. Bio Sucks My Life Force Away" will come in the next few days, if I still feel like writing about them. For now, I need to make sure Part I remains simply a hostile visitor, start diminishing the postponed doom of Part II, and make sure that the immutable dangers of Part III don't come up push me back into the grave I so ignorantly began to dig.

Happy Day After Thanksgiving/Black Friday!

In the Gast house, Thanksgiving preparations started Wednesday. We cooked pies, turkeys (yes, plural, we had about 30 guests and made enough bird for everyone to take home leftovers), sweet potatoes, cake, homemade cinnamon applesauce, a cheese ball, and I think that's it.

I got the supreme joy of dressing the turkey. I had no idea that playing with the raw poultry could be so fun, but, surprisingly, it was. There was just something about the texture and the way it was kinda squishy and rubbery that was unexpectedly simply delightful. I also got to look inside it's ribcage and pull its neck out of its backside where the turkey slaughtering company had stored it in the event that you wanted to use it to make gravy, along with a packet of mystery flesh from some organ that the bird once used.

I also got to make the most delicious sort of cheese ball, and I'll admit I ate quite a bit of the "scraps" after I was done "thoroughly scraping" the mixing bowl onto a cookie sheet.

We always sprinkle cinnamon on top of our pumpkin pies, and we frequently make it more interesting by making a stencil out of paper, laying it on top of the pie, and filling in the uncovered portion with cinnamon, leaving the shape of the stencil. I was in charge of making stencils for the pies. The first one was a perfectly normal, fall-esque sugar maple (Acer saccharum), but the second stencil was a sea serpent. I get a strange sense of elation from weirding out my extended family. I actually made a little story for the dragon and wrote it out in calligraphy and French, because it was a remarkably stupid story, and I would rather nobody else could read it.

Then came Thursday, the official Thanksgiving Day. I woke up at 7 when the sun started coming up above the trees to the east of my house and then proceeded to do what I've done every Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember: start the traditional jigsaw puzzle. Every year we get a new jigsaw puzzle of a thousand pieces or so (this year we got two, because I have a habit of finishing one by noon) to be solved as a family on Thanksgiving. I'm pretty much the only person who does it now, but after dinner I sometimes get some help.

There were no specific episodes that were especially interesting, but things followed the same pattern as normal. My uncle Mike showed up just in time for dinner (which is actually unusual I suppose, since he's normally at least a half hour late) and then got picked on for the entire time he was there without realizing it, my uncles and my grandpa all ate Reddi-Whip in strange ways and taught two of my sisters to do the same, my aunt moped around like the apocalypse was coming and she was the only one who knew or cared, my youngest sister threw a fit about something completely trivial, and one aunt and uncle decided to stay well past their welcome. I think they were having some sort of stand-off against the Corbins to see who could stay longer. They weren't even doing anything. They just sat silently on a sofa until they took the hint that it was time to go.

And so now it's Black Friday, and I pity anyone who has to work today. I also question the sanity of anyone who tries to shop today. Later today, my family and a couple from church will go pick out a Christmas tree from a tree farm, and we'll each pick out a new tree ornament like we do every year. Then we'll stuff the tree into the van (and I'll sit as close to it as possible, because surprisingly they make good pillows, plus they smell like frost and sap) and drive back home being forced to listen to the Partridge Family Christmas Album while me and at least three of my other siblings wish we could gouge our ears out, or stuff them with someone else's or something like that. Once we get home, we will drink hot chocolate and get out all our decorations to make the house all festive looking.

For now, I get to just sit here occasionally stirring some homemade chicken soup with rice and staring out the window at the delightful snow. This has been your host, Maple Gast, with a full report on a Gast Thanksgiving.

A General Rant at Several Aspects of Society

Particularly high school society, and even more specifically the society of high school girls. Even though I belong to both those categories, my many faults rarely include the ones I'm sick of right now.

First off, why on earth are my school mates so mean to those who are a little departed from the norm? They don't despise everyone who's unusual, which is good because if they did I'd be screwed, but you've all been through high school, so you know who I mean. Yes, they're often socially inept, they sometimes do or say awkward things, and some of them even try to get on your nerves, but that gives you no excuse to make fun of them at every opportunity. There are two girls in particular who everyone teases without reason. True, they do some pretty odd things, but not only are they incredibly sweet people if you ever meet them - they also have had rough lives. And the things that people target them for are things they have absolutely no control over and are things that really don't make a difference in them personally. Seriously. Do teens have some sort of sensor that tells them who's hurting most so they can jab at their wounds even more? For all the other people who are despised, I can generally see a way in which they've brought some of it on themselves, but that still doesn't give anybody an excuse to treat them like trash.

Now on to the more specific category of girls. Can somebody please explain to me why on earth life has to be a drama-gorged gossip fest? Come on. Does it truly matter who fought with their boyfriend last night or who got wasted at a party? Does that have any bearing on what meaningful uses you or anyone else could put their lives to? Why does there seem to be a need to create worthless drama when you could be doing something worthwhile?

The girl issue expands to the world in general: why the obsession with celebrities, particularly once they end up arrested or in rehab or something? Nobody even knows these people, yet there are so many individuals that make the life of some big-shot the focal point of their life. I can't even comprehend how that could be at all satisfying. Maybe they just want to ignore their own lives because something there is messed up. Well here's a newsflash for them: it's never going to get better if you keep shoving it out of sight.

That's all for now. But I can assure you similar things will be cropping up every now and then. I tend to detest society during the winter.

Captain Jack

My beloved little Finneytown High School is currently in its second year under the reign of the iron-fisted Cpt. Jack Fisher. While it's true that we needed a principal who would actually discipline students and keep the school a little more in line, sometimes Mr. Fisher can be a bit ridiculous.

His most recent decision was that locker signs are tacky, silly, juvenile, unprofessional, etc. and should be removed. So he took down every single sign from every single locker, be it for birthdays, sports, fun, or any number of other random things that we decide to make signs for. How on earth can it matter that locker signs are "unprofessional" when professionals wouldn't be storing their work in long hallways of lockers? Silly? Yeah some of them were silly and even tacky at times, but for goodness sakes, we're high schoolers. Cut us some slack. Silly quirks don't spell out a future of failure and academic slacking. If they did, all their brightest students along with most of the rest of the school as well would be headed for doom.

Several of us have serious issues finding our lockers if we don't look for the signs on ours or on our neighbors' lockers. If my locker number hadn't ended up being one of my favorite numbers, there would be no way I could find it without the adorable sign that my friend Anna made for me (it was brown and green with a panda bear and leaf rubbings that were actually part of one of my art projects). Colors and shapes stick in my head a lot better than numbers, so when all the lockers are the same shape size and color, the only thing to depend on is the signs that are hung (unless your locker is the last in a hall or something).

Furthermore, our signs show a variety of things. They announce tryouts for athletic and musical groups, tell the school when somebody should be wished a happy birthday, encourage performers (be they athletes, musicians, whatever), show team and school spirit, express pieces of a person, and much more. They have even been used to celebrate the lives of the two students who have been killed within the past two years. Does Cpt. Jack really want to take that away? He's always saying that we need more school and team spirit. More unity. We've got class tension down to a fine art, but he'd really rather we supported Finneytown rather than the class of '09 or '08, but he could help by not tearing down what things we do that are aimed towards his ends.

Mr. Fisher has also made several other regrettable decisions (such as the possibility of eliminating AP courses, but that's a rant for another day). Fortunately, we do get a lot of personal amusement out of his existence. Thanks to my mom who first noticed this, it's fairly common to hear him referred to as Grimace the milkshake monster from McDonald's due to the fact that he wears a lot of purple and has a physique much like that of our purple fast food franchise friend. There's also the myriad of jokes relating Cpt. Jack and rum, such as the ideas for t-shirts saying "Where's the rum gone?" or "If it was a dream, there'd be rum" along with others. The chief anti-Fisher movement right now is discussed with the coded phrase "Have you seen page 82 of the yearbook?" I can't really explain this one without a diagram, so ask me about it sometime.

It's Days Like Today That I Dream Of

It's quite lovely out today. All I want to do is throw my window open wide and sit on my bed listening to music and reading or sketching. But alas, this can't happen all day long. Eventually my mom tells me to close the portal to the brisk outdoors, the physics book calls to me to sketch vector diagrams instead of faces, and my biology book wants me to read a history chapter about Darwin rather than Foxe's Book of Martyrs. But I've decided, for some reason I really can't explain, that what I spent several minutes trying to write would do well as a poem. I'm no accomplished poet, but I think this one's okay.


It's days like today that I dream of
It's true I suppose that I dream of
Unnumbered types of ideal days
But for this time all I dream is today

Grey skies hang so low by the treetops
The dark clouds now send rain in fat drops
Preoccupied winds bring northern air
All that I want is to sit and to stare

To sing till my voice becomes weary
With window wide open see clearly
Phalanges and face embrace the chill
If only if only the time I could still

But nazis* do come shutting windows
And textbooks do beg to be unclosed
This day like today now runs from me
All I can hope is that more will soon be



*I hope you've realized I don't mean the actual German Nazis or anything, but my mother can be a nazi of sorts in my eyes for her very anti-open-windows sentiments.

Pavlov Strikes Back!

I made an interesting observation (well I think it's sorta neat anyway) today that further proves what Pavlov demonstrated with his famous dogs.

Today we had what we call an "early release day for staff development" which means students get out of school at 1:00 PM and the teachers stay to bond and grow together or something like that. We students love it, our teachers dread it. Apparently "staff development" is one of the stupidest things ever invented in the little suburb of Finneytown, if you ask my science teachers. Since two hours are cut off of our day, all the bells have to be shortened and we go to lunch during 6th bell instead of 5th bell. On normal days high schoolers eat lunch at 12:00 or 12:30, and on days like today lunch is at 11:30 or 11:00. So we're actually eating lunch earlier even though we go in a later bell. When sixth bell rolled around, the majority of my French class expressed that they were hungrier than they normally were by that time of day and welcomed lunch.

I hypothesize (and it may be purely coincidence, but who knows?) that we have become so associated with associating our fifth bell classes with the coming of lunch, that our bodies begin anticipating food once we enter our fifth bell class, even if it's earlier in the day, and by sixth bell we are more than ready to eat despite the fact that it's earlier than we normally have lunch.

Happy October!

Today is the last day of October, and it's finally acting like it. Hurrah for mornings when I can see my breath and I have to scrape the frost off my windshield!

Since today is the last day of October, it's also Halloween. Normally, I pay a negligible amount of attention to this holiday, but it was more interesting than usual this year. The high school and middle school orchestras played a Halloween concert last night (in which only three out of the eight songs played had anything to do with today), and today we went around to all the elementary schools and played the music there for the kiddies. It went pretty well, but not super exciting and atrociously horrible or anything. After two weeks of trying, I finally got my stand partner/friend's little brother to voluntarily talk to me. That's pretty much the only noteworthy thing that happened. Can't you tell how incredibly exhilirating it was?

As part of this, we were all expected to wear costumes. I was super geeked about mine. I haven't quite decided what I was/am (I'm still wearing it because I love it and it smells delightful). The original goal was to be the personification of autumn/a tree in autumn, which is what most people interpreted it as. There were a couple other thoughts on it though, including a forest goddess and a fairy. I wore a long flowing brown skirt (pretty much the only skirt I've actually liked since 5th grade), my orange crush shirt turned inside out, and brown tank top on top of that. My hair was in two braids, and pinned to the shirts and braids were dozens of beautiful fall leaves (there's currently still a fallen oak leaf right next to my face and it's smelling really good). To add to the effect, I went barefoot for most of the day (which I normally do anyway), painted dark brown spiraling vine patterns all down my arms, wore bracelets of all sorts of fall colors, and wore four pairs of fall colored earrings at once. I currently have two hooks through each earring hole (it wasn't a pleasant process and my earlobes are still kind of sore) and hanging from each of those hooks is another hook. I'll have to post pictures because it was a fun little get-up.

Gathering the leaves for my costume was quite an interesting experience. On Tuesday afternoon I got a phone call from my friend Morgan who told me that she was bored out of her mind and wanted to come over to my house. I told her I had to go on a stroll to get leaves to stick to myself. She called me "such a freaking hippie" and said she'd be over in a few minutes to come with me. When she pulled up, we didn't go walking right away. In her car she had a bunch of leftover baguettes from the Panera where she works so we had sword fights with a couple and then each took one to chomp on while we walked. So we walked around my neighborhood (which consists primarily of Catholic families who send their kids to private schools to avoid the depravity of public education) singing and talking about random things while picking beautiful leaves off trees and carrying whole baguettes which we occasionally took a bite out of. To make matters even more interesting, halfway through her bread, Morgan decided she didn't want to eat all of it so every once in a while she would tear off a piece and see how far she could drop-kick it down the street. I was walking around barefoot in rolled-up jeans and a vintage t-shirt with my signature purse trying to hold all the leaves we picked, and Morgan had on a mismatched pair of chucks (one was purple and the other was leopard print) an old pair of jeans with a hole at the knee, and a hoodie that belonged to her dad. We probably looked like we were on something. Some of the looks we got were priceless.

The only thing I did that I normally do on Halloween (ever since freshman year) is what my school calls Treat the Hungry. Small groups of people sign up to walk door to door on a certain street and collect canned goods for the Free Store/Food Bank. I went with Amy and Erin, two of my friends. The experience as a whole was unusual, and not always in a good way. All three of us had unorthodox costumes. I've never heard of anyone being fall (there was one girl in the orchestra who said she would've done it if she had had time to collect leaves), Amy was a Christmas-y elf, and Erin was something from some British movie called Clockwork Orange that I hadn't heard of and nobody got the reference until we dropped the food off at our school.

First we'll make some general statements. The street we did was very long (in fact, it was called Long Lane, but we only did the short part of Long Lane, which was still pretty long), and most of the people who live on it didn't pass out candy. There were therefore very few kids trick-or-treating so whenever we got to a house they were very eager to give us candy in addition to cans. And they were handing out the good stuff too. It was mostly chocolate and there were a lot of Reese's. Mmmmm..... There's also a little valley to help water drain away from the yards between nearly every house, and my 10+ year old wagon really wasn't handling it too well. My wagon had other issues too, such as the fact that it tipped over easily, was excessively noisy, and only had three sides. We managed to fix the last problem to some degree with a plastic bag and some thread and rubber bands (which I of course was carrying with me in my purse).

Now for some specific instances. We all met at Amy's house because she lives close to Long Lane. Once we actually started going to the houses, our adventures began. The first house gave us Reese's, which got me extra pumped because I love Reese's and the people in my neighborhood normally pass out the cheap stuff since there are so many kids running around.

The next house actually had candy bars for each of us. Not the little fun-size snickers, but decent sized candy bars.

The next house with people at it had a little girl and her mom sitting on the front porch. When we told the woman we were there to collect the canned goods, she told us to hang on a second and talk to Hannah (the little girl) while she went and got something. I had no issue with that as I'm around kids all the time, so I proceeded to say hello and ask her what grade she was in at school. No response. I asked her what her favorite game to play was. No response (I have to admit, at that point it was reminding me of a random encounter in Dungeons and Dragons where we fought a mindflayer and its thralls who didn't respond much to anything we said). So the three of us just stood there awkwardly glancing around and every now and then looking back at the kid. The poor thing looked absolutely terrified of Erin, and I can see why. Her costume was a bit dark. Eventually, we stopped trying to start conversation. Out of nowhere, Hannah just yelled "Hi!" and looked vacantly past us and didn't say anything else. It was weird. Finally her mom came back out and we went on our way waving to both of them. I think the little girl had some sort of mental deficiency. I wish we had known that before so we wouldn't have responded so awkwardly.

Nothing overly momentous happened until close to the end of the first side of the street. The three of us walked up to a house with a strobe light on in the garage and music blasting from a CD player. The song was, of all things, "My Humps". Standing in front of the garage was and old man with a pipe to smoke in one hand and a bottle of strong liquor in the other. He directed us towards the house where we were greeted by a handful of adults who looked, smelled, and acted completely intoxicated. They also had a toddler with them, and I felt very sorry for the tyke.

By the time we headed down the other side of the street, it was dark and some of the unlit houses looked very menacing. After knocking on a few on the darkened doors, we decided that it was best to just skip them. Who knows how many adventures we might have missed out on because we didn't have the time and my two comrades were unwilling to go up to each house.

The second side of the street didn't really have much worth telling. All the people wanted to get rid of their candy so we got like two handfuls each at every door. There were however two things that might deserve mention.

We split up towards the end to go quicker, and one of the houses Erin and I went up to had an adorable old man living in it. He urged us both to take the rest of his candy (a lot of it will probably end up feeding Tim, Amy's older brother) and then proceeded to give us a little history lesson about the origins of Finneytown High School. It was interesting to meet someone whose grandson had been part of the first class to graduate from our high school.

There was another house that provided us with quite an unpleasant, awkward, disturbing, etc. experience that the reader could do without knowing.

When we arrived at the school to drop off our collections, Erin's costume was recognized for the first time all evening. One of the history teachers (the best history teacher)/coordinators of community service stuff had seen the movie. He's a rather unusual person, and what's even more unusual is that his name is Lynn, until last year his mom (whose name is Gay) worked at the same school he did, he went to college with both my parents, he gave my older brother his first nosebleed, and his best friend grew up in the first house my family owned in Finneytown. At the school I also got to see my friend Anna's final costume (she had been trying to decide what to be for weeks), and another argument broke out about what specifically my costume was supposed to be.

That's just about it. I don't have any nice concluding statement to finish with, so there you go.

Dipodism

This is what happens when a friend and I talk on the phone for too long while we're both sleep-deprived. The fact that she kept on laughing only made us keep going because there are few things I like better than making people laugh.

The gist of dipodism can be embodied in a single phrase: "Life is best when lived with both feet."

Of course, this only applies to bipods. If you want to make it apply to all creatures, you'd have to make it "Life is best when lived with the number of feet you were born with." And that would imply that mutants born with too many or too few legs are living life to its fullest potential, which isn't exactly what we mean at all, so you'd have to change our motto even more to "Life is best when lived with the number of feet that a non-mutant member of your species would be born with." That's just too long, so we leave it at "Life is best when lived with both feet," and if anyone asks we specify that this only applies to bipods.

Two scenarios have been brought up to challenge this view thus far. I have countered them only as far as I desire, because if you pushed it farther or tweaked the situation, it could be shown that at times living with an abnormal number of feet would be preferable, but that would undermine our entire philosophy. We just can't have that, now can we. The only way to maintain an untenable philosophy is to pretend that the opposition was never voiced or say that fruit does not grow on that tree. Or you can say that the critics don't have enough "faith", but we haven't incorporated "faith" into dipodism just yet.

• Opposition 1: What if someone was provided the means to live because they had a disability?
  The specific story we use for this case is of a veteran who lost a leg in a war, came back, ended up unemployed and homeless, and was taken into a shelter because of his/her handicap. Our response to this is that if he/she hadn't lost the leg (and thus the foot) in the first place, he/she would've been able to find a better job and he/she wouldn't have had to live in a shelter.
• Opposition 2: What if, after losing a foot, someone settled down to a life that ended up being better than the one they led before the loss?
  While we recognize that this is completely possible for someone to be happier after losing a foot, we believe that this contentment isn't the result of having lost a foot. Wouldn't they be even happier at that time if they had both feet with which to enjoy their life?

So there you have it. Dipodism defended in a fairly shallow manner, but defended nonetheless.

So far we've only come up with two practices for our cult, both of which haven't been enacted yet. First, we really need to make up a dance move that celebrates both feet, but after more than a month we still haven't come up with anything truly amazing. Second, our cult meetings will involve sitting in the back of our French classroom drawing parallel lines across our wrists with a red pen to simulate cuts (don't worry, we aren't disturbed or depressed or anything, the reason for this practice comes from a completely separate story). Seeing as how we haven't had any meetings yet, we haven't gotten to scare the living daylights out of our French teacher so that he will go out of his way not to offend us in any way for at least three or four days.

As a last note on dipodism, an addendum was recently added. It's as simple as the main point of our philosophy and even more easily debunked: "It is always the right time to strike a pose." More specifically, it's always the right time for a group of people to count to three, spring out of their desks, and strike a pose (one that effectively demonstrates the use of both feet if possible). Unlike the two practices mentioned in the last paragraph, a group of my friends and I have actually done this on a couple occasions.

Characterization

I'm kind of disappointed with myself for not coming up with a title for this post better than the name of the English assignment I'm putting up, but nothing came to me. We have just been assigned what may very well become my favorite english project of all time. My teacher had pulled several random names from a phone book, and we got to choose one and create a character based on that name. The next day she handed us a list of quotes both amusing and serious that she had heard throughout her life and we were to come up with a person based on one of those as well. At the end of the project, the class will compile their compositions and we'll give a name to the town where all these fine people live. I actually ended up not using the name I originally chose for the one or the quote I chose for the other, but she doesn't mind as long as our creations are well-crafted.


First up is Naomi Brookmeyer. She is actually a mish-mash of at least ten of my friends and relatives, which I didn't notice until after I was done writing it. Here she is:

Naomi Brookmeyer awoke to the sound of her red-eared slider, Gershwin, knocking against the side of his aquarium/terrarium in petition for some breakfast. She swung her lanky, five-foot-nine, one-hundred-and-nineteen-pound figure out from underneath a tie-dyed comforter, planted feet with purple-painted toenails on a brightly hued shag rug next to the futon, and tripped over a well-worn denim bean bag as she clumsily made her way across the tiny, cluttered apartment bedroom and through the bead curtain that spanned the doorway. Rubbing the sleep from large hazel eyes and pushing strands of straight, shoulder length, light brown hair behind her ears she searched the fridge in the single-habitant apartment’s multi-purpose room that served as entryway, living room, and kitchen. She walked over to Gershwin’s home by the half-light provided by a lava lamp and a night light that let out pinpoints of light in the configuration of Ursa Minor, her favorite constellation. Only jumping a little when her sleek, lithe ferret named Linnaeus leapt onto her narrow shoulders from a nearby bookcase and fondly nuzzled her cheek, she gingerly lifted the screen from the turtle’s case and placed the leafy green within easy reach of the hungry reptile. After replacing Gershwin’s screen and stroking Linnaeus’ fur, she glanced towards the fish tank in the corner and, even in the dim light, her fear was confirmed. John Lennon, a minnow with an extra fin, was floating belly up like his deformed predecessors, Rachel Carson and Persephone, had within the past month. Her rescue mission for the mutated fish from the chemical choked run-off pond behind the apartment complex hadn’t fared too well so far. The twenty-one-year-old woman sighed and made a mental note to conduct a funeral for the ill-fated fish before interring him in the compost pile she had started next to the building’s trash bin. She flipped the light switch on and off several times with no effect before remembering that she had unplugged all her lamps. Someone had told her that unplugging your light conserved even more energy than leaving them off, and she believed it wholeheartedly. Giving up on the futile act of flipping the switch, she rolled hand-woven bamboo curtains away from her apartment’s two windows and suddenly noticed how late it was. She chided herself for staying up so late working on her term paper about the relationship between global warming and world peace and began tunneling through a heap of laundry on a quest for her Tidy Paws Pet Store uniform. With an exclamation of joy she darted into her bathroom (the third and final room of her living quarters), shrugged into her work clothes, applied a dash of mascara, and swept her hair into a bun precariously secured with a pair of chopsticks. She checked on Dalí and Emerson, hermit crabs, and swung her vibrantly hued patchwork purse onto her shoulder and headed out the door. Halfway down the stairs from her second story apartment she realized she had forgotten shoes. She half ran, half fell back up the steps and grabbed the first pair of shoes she saw, her mud-speckled hiking boots. Later when she sat down at the pet store to pull on her shoes she would discover she had neglected to bring socks, but for the moment she speed-walked the two blocks to her hob in her bare feet and pondered things like what she would add to her tofu soup for dinner or the lamentable fact that the customers she sold precious animals to couldn’t possibly love or care for them like they deserved of understand them the way that she, Naomi Brookmeyer did.

And next we have Claude Witherspoon (I'm not completely satisfied with his first name, any suggestions?). The writing style I used for Naomi fits the description of the assignment better, but I like the way the author interacts with the reader when describing Claude.

A pudgy, solemn-looking man of medium stature clad in garments that had probably seen better days strode proudly through the town square. His name was Claude Witherspoon, and believe me, he made sure you knew it. Though he was unemployed and seventy-two years of age, he carried himself with a dignity that somehow seemed to fit, perhaps because of its irony. You see, Claude had a gift. It was a gift that only a handful of the town’s more superstitious women gave any credence to (and even them only reluctantly), but a gift nonetheless if you asked him. He was an expert in the prediction of calamities. Of course, his predictions were very rarely destined to be fulfilled within the next decade, but he also had an uncanny knack for predicting that anvil-shaped clouds would bring storms, and that terminally ill persons would die. Some grumbled that he never predicted anything in between because he couldn’t really foresee further than the end of his nose and wouldn’t chance an unfulfilled prophesy before the end of his life, but he scoffed at these silly criticisms and continued to foretell doom, gloom, and despair. After all, who can control what the future chooses to reveal?

I hope you've enjoyed my character sketches. I hope to make more. If anyone can think of a random name or quirk, I could try to create an identity for it.

Happiness

My English class got into a debate on this subject earlier this week. Do people have any control over their degree of happiness?

From my perspective, they do. It's impossible do enjoy life without trying at least a little bit. Contentment is a choice. This doesn't mean that I don't think people should ever be sad, but that if you dwell on your misfortunes, you'll be a miserable person. You have to choose to work with what you have left and move on with life.

On the other side of the argument, they agree that you have to choose to be happy, but they think that that's unrealistic and rarely applicable to life. They said that you have to think about the bad things that happen too, it's impossible to just ignore them. They also brought up the topic of clinically depressed people, and how they can't really choose contentment.

In response to this, yes I agree that you're going to have to think about the bad things sometimes, but it's unhealthy to obsess with them. Yeah, it's hard to choose to get over your circumstances sometimes, and people may even think you're insane or you don't care, but if most of the world is unhappy, why should you listen to people telling you to act like every other normal person when your goal, in this case, is to be something that they aren't? As to clinical depression, yeah it's a lot harder for them to have a bright outlook on life. But a lot of clinically depressed individuals aren't born that way. The chemical imbalances in their brains are due to them thinking miserable and dark thought over and over again until those pathways build up in their brains and it's harder to think any other way.

Another point that was discussed was that some people are raised in such a way that it's easier for them to look past tragedies. Does that give them an unfair advantage over other people? Well I suppose it does, but that doesn't give people raised in less optimistic circumstances a good excuse not to try. Happiness (or rather contentment; I think that word fits better here) isn't based on whether good or bad things are happening to you, it's based on making a serious effort to live with whatever comes to you. True, it's easier for some than others, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

And contentment doesn't necessarily mean you're constantly frolicking about. As I like to say(but rarely get the opportunity to), "I'm usually happy, and sometimes I smile about it." In general (particularly in the last few months with the exception of last week), I have an internal peace thanks to God that doesn't exactly make me gleeful, but it makes me okay with life.

Maybe that sounds like I'm being too harsh, but I'm not trying to be. This is just what I think, and I have a really hard time sympathizing with people who live by their instinctive emotions.

I mostly typed that just to get what's been living in my brain out there, but does anyone have any thoughts on the subject?

Fall is Coming! (fo real this time)

So maybe I spoke too early the last time I said fall was here. Although I did say that we would probably still have some muggy days, the past few weeks have been a bit more than a few warm days. Here's a disgusting fact: on Monday we tied the record heat of 91º that was set during the Dust Bowl for the Cincinnati area on the 8th of October. The Dust Bowl! What is the world coming to? I suppose many would say global warming. Whatever is causing it, the tri-state region was certainly experiencing some warming.

Now, I think, it can officially be deemed fall. It's the first day of the season so far where people were cold enough that they realized how much I love the cold and find it exceedingly comfortable. Of course, with that comes the general consensus that something is loose in my head, and maybe something is, but I like it that way.

But watch. Now that I've said that, it will be like 90º again tomorrow.

Oodles of Doodles

And there's even a poodle!
I am ashamed that I even typed that, and I would like to apologize, but I think I'll leave it anyway. The heat is making me loopy, so hopefully that gives me a bit of an excuse.

To get to the point, I've noticed this year that my doodle output level has greatly increased, and some of them are very interesting, so I've decided to post some of the highlights here.

This is Horatio the Splendiferous. He's a talking turtle I created in precalc while the teacher spent like 15 minutes trying to communicate a concept to a student who needed it put into different terms. Little did I know that he was going to collect our work from that day, so Mr. Jacob, who didn't know me very well yet, probably wondered what on earth was going through my head.

Here we have a thunderstorm (complete with sound effects brought to you by onomatopoeia, which I think I spelled wrong). It happened during a sermon one Sunday when I was distracted by the fact we were supposed to be getting a storm that week.

This is an m&m, as you can probably tell. It has some nice shading, but I wouldn't count it as a highlight of my doodles except for the fact that it led to my next one, which is one of my favorites (you can see a smidgen of it to the far right on this picture)...

The Death Star! I was drawing the m&m during math class (most of my lovely drawings have been born in that class so far, and nearly all my masterpieces too) while my friend Mike looked over my shoulder and tried to guess what I was drawing. He thought it was a moon at first, so he told me I should draw the death star next. The girl on the other side of me didn't know what it was, so I decided I'd try it. It actually turned out pretty well, to my surprise. I think it's my best so far, but Horatio and the Annelida Lumbricus 3K (coming up next) remain the most popular among my colleagues.

And here it is, the Annelida Lumbricus 3000, also known as the invertible. We were talking about invertible functions in precalc, and the word invertible automatically makes me think of an invertebrate as a convertible. So I drew it. The text around it is a little hard to read, but it says "It's a convertible... It's an invertebrate... It's an INVERTIBLE! I call it the... Annelida Lumbricus 3K" Annelida Lumbricus is the Latin name for the family that earth worms come from.

This is yet another masterpiece from math. The part in pen it the unit circle with all degree and radian values for the specified points plus the coordinate pair for each on a cartesian coordinate system.

Here's the poodle I mentioned earlier. Not all that exciting, but I figured that if I used it as part of my little rhyming thing at the beginning, it might as well get a place of honor. I really don't like poodles all that much.

Here's some of the less exciting pieces of art.

The Wonderful World of Polarity

I'm not sure if any of you were aware of this, but I think molecular polarity is pretty freaking awesome. You should probably agree with me, because it's true. I mean, it accounts for why tape works, how plants transport water and nutrients without a heart-like organ, why towels dry things so well (and why they take so long to dry), why water expands when it freezes (without floating ice, many aquatic species couldn't exist), how flies can walk on walls and ceilings, why belly flops hurt so bad, how the cell membrane (and thus all organism, including us) can exist, and much, much more. If you ask me, that's fantastically amazing. I had wondered for years why stickers are sticky, until last year my chemistry teacher introduced me to the exciting realm of polar molecules. I wouldn't shut up about it for a few minutes. Just ask Morgan and Sara; they were stuck sitting next to me.

So... anyway... I'm pretty much just finding anything to write about so I don't have to do a biology lab write-up or an English essay, but I should probably stop stalling and go do that.

"He Is Thirsty Though!"

I rode on the back of my homecoming float (Woohoo. Class spirit. Oh nine. Can't you feel the excitement radiating from me?) with two classmates who were decidedly more ghetto than I. It was a lot of fun! I had forgotten how much fun it could be to be around the gangsta members of society.

One thing I picked up from this experience was a whole new application for the word "thirsty". Don't think I've completely missed this, I know it's been around for several months already, I've just never heard it so frequently in such a short span of time. It can be used for pretty much anything, similar to the way the word "crucial" (shortened to "croosh" towards the end of it's life) could be used in a variety of ways (but don't even think for a second that thirsty and croosh are even close to the same). For example, thirsty can be used in ways that seem fairly reasonable: "those kids be extra thirsty for some candy". Seems pretty straightforward, right? But then you come to other situations, like when you see your former math teacher watching the parade in his dress shirt, tie, slacks, and well-shined shoes, swinging his hands back and forth nervously like he is wont to do, and Porcha cracks up as she says "Mr. Rahn is thirsty fo real tho in his tie!" and Trey affirms her statement by shaking his head and saying "He is too thirsty!" It was quite an interesting and amusing experience.

Happy September 23rd!

I hope you had a wonderful first day of fall!

Okay fine, it doesn't feel like autumn considering it was about 90º F out there, but fear not, for a cold front's a-comin' mid-way through this week.

Why You Should Avoid Baby Showers At All Costs

1. They're full of giggling old ladies (surprisingly, they giggle a lot more than the younger women)
2. They're full of pink (even if the baby is a boy you normally end up with a dash of pink)
3. There seems to be some unwritten law that baby products can only come in pastel colors, and those only have so much appeal
4. Pretty much everyone does their utmost to flaunt their girly-ness
5. You hear all sorts of unwanted stories about other women's past experiences with chil-bearing
6. There's no food, only sugary dainty little snacks and there's only a certain nuber of anything you can take before you feel like the veterans are looking at you like you're some sort of pig (even if apple slices are what you take more than three of)
7. You feel underdressed if you're not in a skirt or nice pants
8. You can tell that some of the women clearly don't approve of your purse/bag of holding type IV and its adornments (this one might not apply to most other people, but believe me there's comes a point where it becomes akward instead of evil-ly fun to see them hesitatingly comment on it)
9. Shopping for cards for baby showers is absolutely nauseating (do you have any idea how many say something to the effect of "your life is about to get cuddlier"?)

Needless to say, baby showers won't be becoming my favorite hobby any time soon. And the worst part is I most likely won't be able to avoid attending them because if I ever have kids one will be planned for me whether I like it or not. People don't plan their own showers and they can't keep them from happening either.

My White Girl Moves

Although I took ballet and tap dancing lessons for six or seven years and I went to more than half of the middle school dances, I'm generally opposed to dancing. There are some exceptions (for instance, when we hear the absolutely horrible music at the beginning of listening activity tapes for French, some of us can't help but dance in place to celebrate its atrocity), but I avoid it for the most part. However, I do have some moves in store for situations in which dancing is practically unavoidable or I'm so bored or slap-happy that there's little else to do. They fall into three categories...

The Classic "Hey Look at Me I Practically Glow in the Dark" Moves: These include timeless techniques that you've probably seen (and maybe even used).

• the sprinkler
• the lawnmower
• the shopping cart
• milking the cow
• scuba diver
• etc., you can probably think of others

From the Creativity of My Fellow Social Outcasts: This list isn't that long, but it's interesting. Not all of them are original moves, but they aren't as common at those on the list above.

• The Epileptic Fit/ Tourettes
• The Hair Dance
• The Eight Point Blocking Routine
  

And finally, for the moves you've all been waiting for whether you know it or not...

Og's Originals: These are high-quality techniques that are great for when there's no alternative to busting a move, but you still want to celebrate your inner nerd. They all have well evaluated names that have been pondered for at least a minute.

• The Happy Dance
• Dyslexia
• The Move from English Class for Which I Have No Name
• The Oscillating Universe (that one is my favorite and the favorite of many others)
• coming soon... The Dipod Shuffle

At some point if I run out of things to write about, I might try to describe some of the original moves.

A Day in the Life of a Druid

Yesterday was as gorgeous an early fall day as anyone could wish for, so I spent much of it outside being all druidy (maybe druidic is the right word there... but I like druidy better) like I am.

I studied the magnificent defense mechanism of the rose, as a particularly large specimen defended itself against my lopers and my skin. The thorns don't grow from inside the stem, they are attached to the very outermost layer of the plant and are composed of an entirely different type of tissue with a higher concentration of cellulose. They can detach from the branch without too much trouble, which I hypothesize helps the plant so that if the thorn gets lodged in the plant's attacker, the thorn will break off in the intruder rather than the entire plant being pulled along with the would-be assailant. Puncture wounds from thorns also seem to have an uncanny tendency towards mild infection (as I know from several first-hand experiences), which would further discourage animals from coming back for a second attack. In addition to how well these things work, thorns are beautiful if you inspect them closely, especially the mature, woody ones. They are so hard and sleek and they reflect the sunlight so that they look faintly iridescent. I also admired the ways thistles protect themselves, but not in as much depth as I admired the roses.

While pulling thistles I noticed all sorts of exciting things in the dirt. I always love digging through living dirt full of roots and bugs and nutrients and all sorts of other thriving things. The first thing I found wasn't alive at the time, but it must have been an absolutely stunningly pretty beetle at one point. I found the empty exoskeleton of a beetle about the size of my thumbnail colored like a pale turquoise gem of all shades of aqua. I'll post a picture when my cruddy camera is happy enough to take one for me. I don't care if nobody else has any interest in pretty exoskeletons, it's going up anyway. After the ex-beetle, I noticed something about grubs that I had never noticed before. Normally I kill them right off (they eat my plants' roots) despite the little twinge of guilt I feel about squashing them, but yesterday I just couldn't bear to snuff out their lives. Especially once they started uncoiling and moving. It's so much harder to kill something that shows definite signs of life. Anyway, back to why they were so intriguing. All six of their legs are under the front quarter of their body and they trail the other three fourths along behind them as they crawl. I also liked how their bodies were translucent allowing me to see all the dirt in their digestive tracts.

To move away from the bugs and back to the plants, it seems that crabgrass can change shades of green. I was looking for signs of the weeds to pull them out before they went to seed, and there were some plants that had the right growth pattern for crabgrass, but they weren't the same vivid green. I pulled one out to find out what type of grass it was, and it came out the same way the other crabgrass did (different plants behave differently while being uprooted; it's hard to explain) and had the same root pattern. Fascinating.

I also spent some time walking along the fence where the fall-blooming clematis grows, breathing in the sweet scent of its blossoms. Later I sat up in the gigantic white pine in front of my house.

All day long I enjoyed the wind. The cool, brisk breeze of autumn. Sometimes it danced across my arms and kissed me lightly on the face, other times it impatiently tried to shove me this way and that, but it was always welcome.

In the evening I lit a fire in the fire pit out back and tended to the burning wood while watching the ebb and flow of the frenzied dance of the flickering flames. I came inside smelling heavily of wood smoke, which is one of my favorite smells in the world. Unfortunately, society doesn't smile upon those who walk about smelling like fire, and my mom is part of society.

I fell asleep with my window wide open to let the chilly fresh air in and my nose and toes tingling from the coolness of the night.

It was a jolly good day in the life of a druid.

Of Angler Fish and Toothpickase

I meant to write this two days ago, but my computer has been misbehaving so it's just now going up.

As of 2nd/3rd bell on Thursday, I am one of the most efficient (perhaps the most efficient) toothpickase molecule, tied for champion of the First Spontaneous AP Biology Ice-Off, and an artist in a whole new medium.

After spending the past few weeks taking intense notes and trying to conduct and incredibly complex lab (which is so much more confusing when your group accidentally skips an entire page of the procedure), my AP Biology teacher decided we would just take about 20 minutes of relatively light-weight notes and then spend the rest of our double bell doing a fun lab modeling some of the factors that influence enzyme activity. The enzyme we used was toothpickase, the catalyst for the breakdown of toothpicks. The molecule had a curious structure comprised solely of the index finger and thumb from one hand. One person from each pair had to see how many toothpicks they could break using just their thumb and index finger from one hand under a variety of conditions. My left hand is officially the toothpickase master! I catalyzed the breakdown of 48 substrate molecules (toothpicks) in three minutes, setting the record for the three teams in my class.

One of the things we tested was the effect of reduced temperature on catalyst activity. To model this, the possessor of the toothpickase molecule from each pair of students had to soak their hand in ice water for two minutes (the lab originally said 10 minutes, but my teacher decided that we'd get a similar effect from two minutes and it wouldn't be potentially hazardous to our health). Everyone eventually tried the soaking anyway, and some withstood it better than others. I was one who endured the frigid waters without too much trouble (my distaste for shoes is good for something: I'm good at ignoring the cold). Upon noticing this, a classmate named Eddie commented that I was taking it more like a man than he was, and he challenged me to an ice-off. I'm not sure he was completely serious, but by the end of the bell there was a four-way tie between us two and another guy and girl. We went two by two and I was in the first round facing Peter when Mr. Breines commented that eventually he was going to have to put a stop to our little contest, because after a while it would make us pass out. At which point I started panicking. (I'm absolutely terrified to an unreasonable degree of passing out, although I've been getting over some of my paranoia. I no longer begin shaking in fear when someone mentions losing consciousness, I just get a bit fidgety and if the conversation continues a cold fear grips my stomach, but it's been a while since it made me panic.) He said that we would definitely notice dizziness long before we actually started to depart into unconsciousness, which reduced my fear considerably, but I think he began to lose faith in that statement because at 6 minutes and 18 seconds he told us to stop. He made Erin and Eddie stop at the same time too, so we had a four-way ice-off tie out. Breines said he might make an announcement about the four ice-off champions, but it hasn't happened yet.

After we were all done with the lab, we randomly decided to dip the leftover toothpicks into the mostly melted ice baths and use them as pens to draw beautiful artwork on the table. The table painted black so the water really showed up. First Joe drew a little fish. Then Eddie drew a big fish eating the little fish. Then the big fish got turned into an angler fish by Sara and me. When the little fish evaporated, the angler fish ate the little mermaid instead, thanks to Eddie. Somewhere along the line, Joe drew a circle under the angler fish which promptly got turned into a wheel attached to its stomach by Erin and I added spinners to the wheel. I created a manta ray and Eddie added a hunter that was drawn to hunt down the manta ray, but Erin didn't like the hunter, so he was blotted out with water. The entire scene was sprinkled with holy water thanks to Sara, which started a debate over whether the splashes were bubbles or blood. The little mermaid underwent several wardrobe changes, because we couldn’t agree on what she should wear. Joe drew a rainbow so I drew all the Lucky Charms while singing/chanting them. Sea urchins, starfish, rocks, sharks, alligators, stingrays and many other wondrous things were drawn. And of course, the most dedicated of us made sound effects while painting and gave a detailed play-by-play of the story we were creating. When the bell rang, one guy and I stayed to clean up since we didn’t have to go far to our next classes, and we couldn’t agree on whether the art was debris from a nuclear explosion or an oil spill spreading across the ocean when the ineffective paper towels smeared it everywhere. Five of the seven people in our class that day participated in the public art (including three of us with red hands that were still icy to the touch, so the other two claimed it was the ice going to our heads that caused us to start doodling, but that leaves both of them with absolutely no excuse). It was fun. The next day our teacher said he was glad no administrators came to visit that day because all five of us would probably have been taken to the office under the suspicion of drug abuse.

Today Is Random Day

Today I'm in a very random and unfocused mood, so I feel like posting random and unfocused things.

Today was an excellent story-telling day. Two or three times I got to recount the dramatic tale of how I sprained my hand on Sunday (it was more riveting every time). I got to explain for the first time in many months why I very rarely wear shoes and why the shoes I normally wear are flip-flops. I made up stories for all the doodles in my honors physics and honors pre-calc notes and told them to my friend Sara whether she wanted to listen or not. I also told the story of how crowded the bathroom is at 7:30 am at my house (five girls want to use it at once). My fellow art students heard about the tragic incident of the toad in the night-time. I regaled my audiences with tales of travel mugs, sharpies, pencil sharpeners, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and all sorts of other random things.

Today was a day of discovery. I discovered that if you add up the speed that the earth is spinning, the speed at which we rotate around the sun, and the speed at which the universe is expanding, we are all moving tens of thousands of miles per hour at this very instant. I learned that curly hair is the result of hydrogen bonding in the secondary structure of the protein keratin that causes it to take on the alpha helical structure and that when you straighten hair, you're actually breaking the hydrogen bonds holding the secondary protein structure together, causing it to take the form of the beta pleated sheet. When water from the atmosphere or a shower or whatever soaks into the hair, the alpha helix structure is restored and the hair curls once more. I learned all about the differences between the higher education systems in the U.S. and in Europe. I learned that I can b.s. my way through all my English book tests, because they're all short answer/essay questions and I can fake just about anything in that format. Layla learned that my hair is fairly curly, which she didn't know despite the fact that she headed the convince-Maria-to-wear-her-hair-down-more-often campaign of freshman year. I discovered that I don't know how to conjugate all the irregular French verbs. I discovered that spraining your right hand really sucks when all your teachers pick the same day to have you write down loads of stuff for the entire bell. I discovered one of the foreign exchange students at my school this year. His name is Florian and he's from Germany. I also discovered that the cafeteria's new cylindrical tater tots are far inferior to last year's star-shaped tots in every way imaginable.

I had conversations about things like structures of different tree species, jellyfish, nicknames, instrument cases, O Brother Where Art Thou, temperamental color guard girls, pretty names. and gobs of other things.

I doodled/drew Cheerios, Oreos, turtles (one of them talks and his name is Horatio the Splendiferous), houses, shoes, thunderstorms, and who knows what all else, along with writing out the French alphabet song and a nonsense nursery song in French about sea turtles dancing the samba in cursive on my math notes, which my teacher is apparently collecting tomorrow... He'll get to see my pretty pictures (he only gets Horatio and the French songs, plus a flame border around my name, but that should be enough to make him wonder what on earth goes through my head).

This is only a small sample of how random I've been feeling today. If this was it, this would just be a normal day that I wrote down for once. I just can't seem to stay focused long enough to think of what other random things happened today.

Fall is Coming!

I awoke suddenly this morning at the dark and dreary hour of 5 am, and had absolutely no idea why until a the sound of glorious down-pour of sweet rain began streaming from the heavens reached my ears through an open window that let in the cooler and drier air we've been enjoying the past few evenings! It was beautiful. I couldn't fall back asleep with such a gorgeous sound just begging to fill my ears, so I sat in front of the window and drank deeply of the smell of clean water pounding the parched earth and the noise of raindrops plunking all around. The drought has been broken!

I listened to the rumbles of thunder from the west last evening, hoping it would bring what I thought it would. I admired the trees that were finally beginning to put of their dresses of yellow, brown, orange and scarlet. The past few days have been spent enjoying the reduced humidity and the slightly cooler nights, waiting expectantly for the advent of autumn. Even though there may still be some muggy days in store, I think this morning's downpour officially commenced the best season of the year.

Fall brings with it all sorts of wonderful things. Rich colors, refreshing breezes nipping at you with the promise of winter, cool crisp aromas. Plus it has pretty much every weather imaginable. The early days still host warm days while the later ones usher in chilly temperatures. The sun can shine down through the thick blue sky or the crisper, paler heavens, or clouds can hang low, blanketing the sky. Drizzle, torrents of rain, and snow are all welcome. Biting winds, playful breezes, mournful gusts of wind, or still, clear air are scattered across the weeks.

In summary, fall is absolutely splendidly fantabulous. And it's on its way.

Ode to a Toad

Some time ago, I wrote a apology in poem form to a poor, innocent toad that I accidentally stepped on during the summer of 2006. I had an unusually high concentration of dead frog/toad or nearly dead frog/toad incidents that summer after the CIY where I met my little friend Crapaud the toad (I think there were four dead ones, including the one I smooshed, and another one that I almost ran over with a lawnmower).
Anyway... for lack of a better topic to blog about, here's the poem. But don't worry, I'm not a complete poet so hopefully I won't die young like all the ill-fated people Josh listed in his blog. Sadly, you don't get the full effect of the original formatting, because the blog ignores spaces placed at the front of lines.

Ode to a Toad
I hadn't yet seen you
I'm sorry friend
I never intended
To be your end
So distracted was I
By star-strewn skies
I didn't notice you
Hopping on by
Then I felt the soft splash
And heard the "pop"
When I saw you I thought
My heart would stop
So sorry am I that
The death of you
Could have been caused by my
Unyielding shoe
So now I do repeat
I'm sorry friend
I never intended
To be your end

-By Maria Gast, in memory of the poor amphibian soul who she sent to frolic forever in sunnier bogs

At Least We're Learning

"But remember, at least you're still learning."

This comment was made by a senior in one of my classes when I was talking to another guy from my grade about how odd our english teacher is. The senior had the teacher last year and knew of more of her eccentricities than we had seen yet, but he managed to focus on the fact that, regardless of her personal tendencies, she was teaching us, and that was the point. This guy loves learning, and he's good at it. He asks in-depth and sometimes completely random questions about everything and will never be contented with what knowledge he has. And I'd be willing to bet that he's smart enough to know that however he much he learns there will still be so much out there that's a mystery.

This is how we should be as Christians. Despite what unusual, and even painful, things we go through, we should always be focused on the fact that it's helping us get closer to God and learn about who he is. We should always be curious about him and seek to know him better and better, even though we can't possibly get to know him perfectly with our finite bodies and minds. Let us not be discouraged by that fact, but take heart from it, because it makes God infinitely bigger than us, and I don't know about you, but I want someone bigger and better than me governing the universe. It also means that we never have to stop learning about God and being awestruck by everything that he is. God will never run out of facets of himself to reveal to humans. This relationship and knowledge of God won't pass away either, like the wisdom and facts that my classmate spends so much time amassing.

19For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."[c]
20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
-1 Corinthians 1:19-25