This year

Not that. Although it's pretty exciting.
Firsts
First year spent blogging long
First time I drove legally
First time I drove alone
First time I made youtube videos
First time I stayed up long enough to see the sunrise all alone
First time I had a stupid idea that other people liked (no, Shakespeare makes no sense after 2 AM)
First time I wrote a novel (I'm still excited when I think of that)
First time I painted something that was pretty permanent
First time I realized that I feel more at home at camp than at...home
First kiss

All in all, it was an exciting year, and I have no idea what to expect in 2009. Should be fun.
What I'm reading- A History Of Warfare. Pretty cool. It's the third nonfiction book I've read.

Nano?

I was thinking last night, and it occurred to me that I had to write another novel before the end of this year because NaNoWriMo was last year and I haven't written anything at all this year. Clearly, I was not thinking straight.
But I still have to write a novel next month.
I want it to feel like A Series of Unfortunate Events. I think this is the only series with more than 10 books that I've read all of. Just that sort of feeling with the narrator and it happens a long time ago, but...not.
That made so little sense.

Your questions, answered

Andrea! asked:
What is the meaning of life in a maxium of 5 words? 42, happiness, finding meaning
Which brand of rootbeer is the best? I like mug, but I know you like that one brand, Frostie
How many empty cans of rootbeer do I have on my desk? About a million
What is your favorite color? Let's go with purple. Dark purple, although I like dark red too.
Did you know I have a coupon for 55 cents off Mentos Gum? You're really lucky, Andrea
Why 55? 55 sounds nicer. Sort of like making things cost 4.99 instead of 5.00
Why not 50? Didn't you hear me the first time
That's pretty stupid, isn't it? I don't really see the point in coupons for gum, but whatever.
Oh, it's 55 cents off any two pocket bottles. That's not as exciting
I bet you wished you had that coupon. Not really. I'm not a big fan of mentos gum
Did you want me to be more serious? Nah. These questions are so much easier to answer
Are you excited for Christmas?! I was terribly excited for Christmas. It went relatively well, and even though one of my cousins was rather surprised by my religious views and got a little converty on me, I was much less annoyed by this than my mom was.

fiberfiend6891 asked:
If you could change your name to anything, what would it be? Something less popular. Did you know that Samantha was the fourth most popular name in the 90's? How sad is that? See here. For 1993, the top four for girls are Jessica, Ashley, Sarah, and Samantha.
Why do bad habits die hard? That depends so much on how you define bad habits and dying hard. I guess all habits die hard, but the only ones you're really trying to get rid of are the bad ones, so that's the only time you really notice it.
What's a soul? A soul is you. When you die, your soul goes into the bucket o' souls (not bucket of souls. O') and gets mixed in with all the other souls and that's where new souls come from. It's not like you can actually, like, touch it or something. Souls change and grow as you get life experience. Does that make sense?

Bianka asked:
why do some things seem so obvious to me and not other people? (and vice versa) Because everyone thinks differently. For instance, I recognize cars and tables and chairs when I see them, but many people do not. However, I suck at memorizing things.
why can't i be as good at quiz bowl as robert?? Because you are a human, not a superhero. It's okay. I'm just human too.
why do some things have to be complicated? Because people are complicated, because life is complicated. It would get annoying if it was more shallow.
why do people get offended so easily? Who did you offend? Because people are touchy about certain things. For instance, if you called someone around me a retard, I would be offended because I'm touchy about that, my life experiences have shaped that. Other people might not be offended because they don't have the same life experiences.
why is it not racist to call me white? I don't think it's racist to call someone brown either. I would prefer white to "Caucasian" where the hell is Caucasia? Does that mean that I'm not German and Lebanese and Irish and Dutch and English if I'm just "Caucasian"?
why am i so frustrated with this thing that's happening??? actually i already know the answer. I don't know what's happening. Email me about it, kay?

Zoopsia asked:
what the hell is water? H2O. It can be found in lakes and rivers and oceans and underground and in bottles by evil people who feel the need to steal our water and charge outrageous amounts for their wasteful containers.
who knows less: two people who know nothing about a subject or a lone person who knows nothing about said subject? One person. Assuming that all people have basic human knowlege, the two people have 2basichumanknowlege, but the lone person only has 1basichumanknowlege.
why does bianka have the impression that it's not racist to call her white? I'm not sure. Race seems to be one of those things that we just aren't allowed to talk about, and that's a problem. If we could just start a conversation and make sure that no one's going to get offended, then that would solve a lot of our issues.
why are womens feet shorter than mens? They aren't always. I have relatively large feet for a woman. It usually relates to height, and men are generally taller than women.
why are fire engines red? You do realize that the fire engines here are green, not red, right? I suppose that's the majority because red is visible no matter what season it is, along with the fact that if you see a giant red vehicle (the squad, my dad calls it) you are going to move. It's hard to confuse a giant red thing with much else.

Thanks for all the questions! It was buckets of fun to answer all of them. Buckets of fun is my new "thing", just like tragic and no shit were. I'm not sure how long it's going to last.

Anger

There are three main reasons that I blog about what I blog about. Confusion, anger, and excitement.
Today's the second one.
I wasn't planning on blogging today. I figured I would take the day off, spend it with family, get presents, eat food, whatever. However, I went to church last night, and one thing that I will never fail to blog about is church. Mostly how much I disagree with everything that they're saying, but whatever. One thing that happened tonight was that my pastor said something that I would consider to be very much against my beliefs. My pastor said that the only place where you'll be told to love your enemies is church. That wasn't the whole sermon, just one small part of it, but it's the part that hit me the most. I'm not affiliated with the church. I'm not a member, and I don't share many of their views. However, I try to forgive people. I try not to be hateful. I'm not perfect, I don't always forgive, but I do my best. It's true that I've been going to church for a while, so maybe that's why I try to forgive. It's also true that my parents have tried to teach me to be forgiving. It's also true that all sorts of factors go into something like that. It's also true that Christianity is not the only religion in the world, and religions in general teach similar things.
I feel like I haven't really gotten anywhere with this post, but it made me less angry, which is good.
Have a very merry Christmas.

Questions

What do a handwarmer, five books, my Euro binder, my camera, my mp3 player, a ruler, several pencils, my algebra book, my geometry notebook, and several magazines have in common? They were all in a giant pile on my desk.
Why do I think that Concord Free Press is so amazing?
There's something that is missing from our way of doing things. We've been turning more and more into consumers who are completly uninvolved in the creation of everything. This is different. It's the sort of different that I connect with knitting and writing and youtube. It's the idea that things are more entertaining if you had something to do with making them. I suppose this was all started by something I heard on NPR a few days ago about copyright and how it makes us all consumers of culture instead of creators.
Concord Free Press gives out books. Not just giving free books to poor kids in Bangladesh, giving free books to everyone who wants one, only asking that you donate to charity and give the book to someone else. They don't make money. I wish I'd thought of this idea first. Maybe this isn't creating, but it's impacting who gets things and how publishing works and how books are read, and that's something important.
I had this idea. It involved you, my readers. You know how I ask a lot of questions? You don't. You comment every once in a while, remind me that you're alive by the three followers blogger tells me that I have. I want you to be involved. I want to answer your questions. Any questions that are in the comments on this post by Saturday will be answered. They don't have to be about me or my blog or ApartmentTherapy, they can be anything. I will answer all of them to the best of my abilities.
I am unreasonably excited about all of this, so you best have some questions.

Ten kinds of Awesome

Can anyone say that this isn't awesome/hilarious/nerdfightastic?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yz4FdBhukk

Love Love Love

I've been singing this song for the past three days. The video's not great, but I love the song. So. Much.

I read The Dead and the Gone yesterday. It was interesting, but not particularly well written. I also read Skipping Christmas, which was neither interesting nor well written. The Dead and the Gone got me thinking about survival skills and the lack of them. Which, of course, led my thoughts to the post apocalyptic commune thread. That is pretty much the most interesting thing I've thought about in the past two days. The basic premise of the book is that an asteroid hits the moon and fcks with the tides, causing large portions of New York to flood. And then since the gravity is different, volcanoes start errupting (this part doesn't seem quite possible) and basically, the shit hits the fan. I disagreed with the lack of emotion in the books. It seems like most people would be freaking out about the fact that both of their parents are dead a little bit more than he was. I also thought that it was weird how he wasn't comfortable going through his parent's stuff to find the money and papers he needed. It was okay overall.
I want to read Wicked.

Creepy, hopefully

I wrote this story for English a month or two ago, and I knew that you would want to read it. Just knew with my sixth sense like that. Actually, with all my extra senses obtained at quiz bowl, I think it's like my ninth sense. Something like that. Consider it a Christmas present of sorts.

He walked out of the barn, staring down, his boots making the dust swirl up and disappear. There was an eerie calm around, like a twister just passed through. There never was that calm without the storm first, but he wished there could be. He never really regretted it, he only wished that he could be calm without hurting someone first. The calm never lasted either. It was a momentary thing, a momentary break from the constant anger that engulfed his life. He'd never been truly happy since he was a kid, he thought. Never that feeling that there is absolutely nothing to worry about, that feeling that everything is going to be alright. He put his paw on the door handle and turned it slowly. He pushed and walked in. The others were there, playing cards and talking. He pulled up a chair, the legs screeching on the rough floor. They were talking about something and he was pretending to be interested. He had gotten good at pretending lately. Too good, really. He just sat for a few minutes, listening and contemplating. There was a high-pitched scream from the barn. Now was the time to look surprised, he told himself, and did so in such a false way it made him feel sick. He followed the other men out to the barn to see what was the matter. They were standing there in shock, trying to find who they could blame for the body hanging, just hanging there. This couldn't have been the first time that someone had been found dead, no one was shocked enough. It wasn't a regular occurrence, but this couldn't have been the first time. "She did it herself." One of the men said definitively. "No, there's no way she could have gotten up there. Someone tied her up and then hung her." They kept on talking amongst themselves, and he realized that he had to get out of there. How could he do it though, without anyone noticing that he had gone and getting suspicious? He could start a fire to distract everyone, but someone would see him doing it. This was the problem. The calm ended so soon and the panic set in again. This was what he got for taking his anger out on other people. This was what he kept on doing, letting himself get out of control again and again. "You know that new guy, the big one who's a little dim?" Reality crashed back in. "Yeah." "He's not here, is he?" "I think he said he was goin' to see someone." "Right." He said. Everyone knew what the man meant. "He did it. He must've done it." "We'll go north, you four go south. There's no reason to go to town, nobody with sense would run to a town where they might be recognized. They'd go off somewhere, the wilderness, you know. That's where we'll find 'em." He said. He had a plan now, it was going to be okay. He headed his group out, south. After a while he got far enough away, out of sight and earshot that he could just go in the river. Just into the river and disappear.

Happy Dance

We have a snow day today. I got up and hoped for this at two, when my mom told me that there wasn't a snow day yet, and I needed to do my homework. And then I went back to bed. And now we have a snow day.
Thanks Chris!
I think today shall be spent reading my NaNo and maybe baking cookies. Baking lots of cookies.
Merry Christmas! Happy 17 day long Christmas break!

Ahh! Books!

I was looking through the archives today and I realized that it's been almost a year since I posted the list of the books I like. How sad is that?
Last year's picks were Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The View From Saturday, My Sister's Keeper, Anne Frank, and Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes.
Harry Potter, The View From Saturday, and Anne Frank are still on the list. I don't see them ever coming off the list, honestly. I love those books, I can read them again and again and never get bored. New for this year are Paper Towns and Catcher in the Rye.
I read Paper Towns in October and Catcher in August and November. I was just wondering what happened to the first half of the year, reading wise, and then I realized. Jodi Picoult stole it. I really like her books, my current favourite is probably The Pact. It's at least in the top 20, along with Nineteen Minutes. Another good book that I read this year was The Bell Jar. I think it belongs in the top ten. I'm reading Conversations With God and The Secret Life of Octavian Nothing right now. They're interesting. Conversations With God deserves another three posts.
Remember when I wanted to read like, 75 books this year? I don't know if I made it or not. I've totally lost track of the books I've read, and I don't really care. I guess it matters more what books than how many. Is realizing this some sign of personal growth? It better be.
The books that I want to read next year fall into the Deep category. Deep and old.
The books I really should read: The Great Gatsby, Catch-22, Lord of the Flies, The Koran (at least some portion of it), and As You Wish.
Maybe we should call this deepish and oldish. Can the oldness in The Koran compensate for the newness of As You Wish? If you know of any books that I should read, put them in the comments. I just might read them. Wouldn't that make you feel so influential and special and shiny and wonderful? Yes. Yes it should.

I love quotes.

With the kind of obsession usually reserved for Apartment Therapy.
Some of these have been reposted. You are not losing you mind. It is okay. Several of these are last words. I think they're cool, in a die the way you lived sort of way.

To hold a pen is to be at war. -Voltaire

I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves "Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment." -Kurt Vonnegut

So it goes. –Kurt Vonnegut

Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one. –Quentin

It's very beautiful over there.-Thomas Edison

Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man. - Che Guevara

You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everyone dances with the Grim Reaper. - Robert Alton Harris

They understood things of the spirit in Japan. They disemboweled themselves when anything went wrong. - Sylvia Plath

We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel —”Yes, that’s the way it is or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought. – John Steinbeck

I don't know. Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions. - J. D. Salinger

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness. - Dali Lama

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH- George Orwell

How inconvenient! Always before it had been like snuffing a candle. The police went first and adhesive-taped the victim's mouth and bandaged him off into their glittering beetle cars, so when you arrived you found an empty house. You weren't hurting anyone, you were hurting only things! And since things really couldn't be hurt, since things felt nothing, and things don't scream or whimper, as this woman might begin to scream and cry out, there was nothing to tease your conscience later. You were simply cleaning up. Janitorial work, essentially. Everything to its proper place. Quick with the kerosene! Who's got a match! - Ray Bradbury

The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.-Erich Maria Remarque

I'm just scared of ghosts, and home is full of them.-Alaska Young

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.-Kurt Vonnegut

We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. 'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever.-Philip Pullman

Religion is not "doctrinal knowledge," but wisdom born of personal experience. - Martin Luther

The Tip of the Iceberg

Everyone knows about my Apartment Therapy obsession, right? Here are just a few things that I thought were awesome. More than average awesome. New heights of awesome.I love these stairs. Same black floors look, only so glossy. So, so glossy.Is it weird that the first thing I thought when I saw these stairs was "That's the same wallpaper as in Door Sixteen's bathroom"?I love these stairs. I love these stairs so much.This is sort of the same concept as the stairs above, only more realistic. This is a pretty good floating shelf thing. Me like.Same room, different view.I wish I had that many books. And I lived there.We all know how amazing the Seattle Public Library is, right? That is a library. Love.We're not going to discuss how giddy I was when I saw that faucet. Isn't is so awesome?
And this room. It's calm and empty and blue. I like calm and empty and blue quite a bit.

Telling the truth

I feel like it's time to tell everyone something that I've been thinking about for a while. It has to do with politics, it has to do with morals, it has to do with religion.
I'm pro-life.
Let's think about it. I'm against the war, against capital punnishment, for healthcare for everyone, and vegetarian.
I'm also a Christian.
It seems like there is a certian brand of Christian, a certian brand of pro-life that has decided that they should be the ones representing all of us. They seem to think that Christians should have a certian set of political beliefs, ones that I don't share with them.
Labels sure are fun.
I guess I'm pro-choice too. Pro-choice in the way that I don't think that anyone's beliefs should influence anyone else's actions unless those actions are affecting them.
Basically, do your own thing. My religion shouldn't have anything to do with it.

Memorable

Everyone wants to be remembered. It's the new popular, the new famous. Memoirs are some weird form of that, like we write something that was significant to us because we have some crazy belief that someone else may care what was significant to us. It may get remembered, it may not. The important part is not being remembered, you're dead and you don't care. The important part is feeling like you will. In the end, we're just bugs in amber.
So I'm posting it. I'm posting my memoir that feels to personal to read to the class. This is one of those things that seems like you can do it until you're just about to. That's the point when you say that you can't and you freak out and you run away.
My cousin Steven had downs syndrome. When you know someone with a mental disability like that, it changes the things you value. It’s not a sudden thing, more of a gradual realization that the things you once held at an utmost importance don’t really matter. Steven died when he was three, when I was in fifth grade. I sometimes wonder if he would have affected me differently if I had been older, if he had lived longer. I guess it’s impossible to ever figure out exactly how I would have changed. I know that it made me the person I am today and that’s probably a good thing. Since he died so young, I think it gave me a better appreciation of my own life and a better understanding of the fact that I will die someday, and I’m okay with that. When I think about all of it, his affects on me didn’t have anything to do with him. It had more to do with me and the fact that I had never thought about that kind of thing, dying, before. I didn’t need him to die, I needed anyone to die, just enough to wake me up. It made me the person I am. It made me able to tell people that they’re going to die and not make it feel weird for me. The thing that really makes you grow up is accepting your eventual demise, and it seems like I’ve accepted that earlier in life than some people.
I remember when I heard that Steven had a stroke. It was Monday, and I was staying home sick, standing in the short hallway between my bedroom and the family room when my dad, who was sitting at his computer, working, said that he had a stroke. My mom thought it was Steven, one of my uncle’s brothers, but my dad said it was my cousin. That night was a blur, I don’t think that any of us really remember what we did. The next day I went to school and the school physiologist talked to me. I’m not quite sure why, it didn’t really help me deal with things, but she asked me about my cousins. Over the next few days, we would occasionally hear something about his condition. They were drilling holes in his head, it was the hole in his heart that caused it, they’re taking him off life support. It happened too fast to realize. I didn’t know what to feel when he finally died. It was sad, but it was different from anyone else who had died. I was angry at something, I don’t know what or why. It was weird, then next few days. The funeral was on Good Friday, sort of ironic. I don’t think anyone appreciated the irony. I don’t really remember much about the funeral. I remember playing BS with all my cousins. Looking back, that probably helped more than anything else. It got my mind off of everything, at least.
The thing that was so bad about Steven dying was that he was young. If you can avoid it, never go to a funeral for anyone under the age of sixty. They’re so much worse than old people funerals. Old people are allowed to die, and some of them are freakishly morbid because they and everyone around them has accepted the fact that they will die one day. No one expects kids to die, it’s just not allowed.
The thing that I learned from this, the thing I’ve learned from everything in my live, was that the only experiences that really shape us into who we are now are the really tragic ones. No one learns anything from being happy. You learn things from having bad things happen to you. You learn how to deal with it, you learn how to move on. That’s one of the most important things you can learn, and I’m thankful I learned it when I did.

These are the moments

That just hit you.
I went to the DIA today. Apart from causing me to miss the majority of the school day, this means that I saw a lot of paintings today. I've blogged about my love for the dia before, and this exhibit didn't change anything about that. Part of the reason that art is art is the way that it impacts you and the response it ilicits. I'm not usually a person who feels connected. Connected to paintings and everything else, it just doesn't happen much. There was this painting, Self Portrait with Hat and Coat, that I really liked.
It's not really that exciting, but the combonation of that and Conversations With God, and just the stuff I've been thinking about lately, it sort of made me realize something. I want my writing to feel like that painting. That painting looks like everyone has felt at one point or another. If you peel back the outside, I think more people feel like that than would care to admit. If I can capture that, I'm good.
Also, this is embarassing

Responsibility

Responsibility is one of those things that make me curious. Where do you draw the line between letting people do their own thing and butting in because you feel like you should be responsible. If someone was going to kill themselves, are you supposed to tell someone? Because this sounds like I'm going to do something I shouldn't, I'm going to remind you that this was inspired by a story that we read in English. Johnny Bear, by Steinbeck. What if it doesn't seem like a big deal or anything that would turn into a big deal later? If you see someone shoplift, are you supposed to tell the people who work at the store? How much duty does the government have to protect us before they turn into big brother? Is it ever okay to steal things? What would happen if you never talked to anyone? Would people think you're crazy? Is there anything wrong with being crazy?
These are the exciting things that keep me up at night.

When has it gone too far?

Man killed at Walmart
What's Christmas about? Something like this happens every year, someone gets killed over a TV or a Wii or a DVD player. How many people have to die before we really get it?
Why is it so hard to stop with all the useless foreign made crap? When will we, as humans, realize that experiences always seem to mean more than the crap? It's just ridiculous that, according to the demonstrated morals we see here, getting a good deal is more important than someone's life. How can that be justified? I understand that the people who were in the crowd would be crushed if they tried to stop, because people were pushing from behind them, but still. This isn't the first time someone's died for crap.
An interesting website

Another post about NaNoWriMo

Yet again. I feel like there was just something missing from the OMG I WON post.
NaNoWriMo taught me things that I could've never learned in school. The primary goal of NaNo is just to get words down, no matter how bad they are. There's really now way I would have learned that I should be able to write 2000 words in an hour and a half without NaNo. This will come in very usefull in life at some point. I'm not quite sure when, but I know it will. Write or Die is an invaluable tool when it comes to writing fast.
The biggest thing that I got out of NaNo was a huge sense of accomplishment that I haven't had in a long time. I feel like that novel represents something that I've been wanting for a long time, probably since I was in eighth grade. It means that my dreams, they have a chance. This is, in a way, the beginning of everything I want. It changes your future. Not in the same sense that something huge and crazy does, it's more of a worldview sort of thing.
It's amazing.From Post Secret, clearly.

Fine

I was tagged. 7 random, unknown things.

1.I was getting a B- in Euro (and I was ridiculously excited about that), but the grades were miscalculated.
2.I think I'm more proud of NaNoWriMo than anything I've done in Hi! School so far.
3.I believe that English teachers are the only human beings capable of making a book that I love (The Giver) boring. Particularly my 8th grade English teacher.
4.I don't really hang out with my friends outside of school. Which sucks.
5.I'm a hypocrite.
6.I want to be a minister, but I know I would be a really bad one. If I could afford to go to college for a field I would never work in, I would go to seminary.
7.I have an obsession with furniture design. You already knew that though. Well... let's think. I have a Pandora radio addiction, but you knew that too. Huh. I like cars? That's obvious. I want to move to a big city. That's good. I don't think I've talked about that before on the blog, only that I can't live in this town my whole life. I want to move to the city.

I'm not going to tag anyone. Deal with it.