All I have to say is

Next time I get home after two, it better be because I've been doing something interesting.
That is all.
Goodnight.

Fiction Friday

I just wanted you to know that I did 81 pushups (well, the knee kind) in a row today. Yesterday. Thursday, whatever. It's worth writing home about.
This is the second part of that one story. Remember?

And there was still a part of me that questioned it, a part of me that wondered if we would want to be there, when the supplies started running out. Did we want to be here now? I had thought that I did, thought that I would be one of the few, one of the fighters.

I'm not sure about that, not any more.

The first to go was an old man. He talked a lot. We all talked a lot in the beginning, but his was different. While the rest of us were trying to decide what to do, where to go, if anyone else was alive, he was telling us about his family. He was talking about people, his people. He was talking like they were still alive, like he was going to see them soon.

One night, we were sleeping in the woods, in lean-to's, before we found our tents. We heard rustling in the trees, but we didn't think anything of it. There were still enough animals out there that it wasn't surprising.

No one was shocked when they heard the gunshots. We just hadn't realized that he had a gun.

There were two others who hanged themselves, only a day apart. That was after we had stopped walking all together, and started keeping our own pace, a snake stretched a mile long. They just couldn't handle being alone, I think.
After that, there was one more. Yesterday, or it could have been the day before, a short woman who I'd never heard speak (except maybe to the one who was first to go) took a bit of tubing out of her pack, sucked some gasoline out of an abandoned car, and lit herself on fire.

I realized how much we hand changed when non of us even looked shocked.

That was when I asked myself if I still wanted to be around.

There were seven of us left. We didn't speak. We hadn't spoken since the first one to go. We didn't know each other's names. I had given them nicknames in my head. The weird, kinda crazy guy who had appointed himself to be the leader, he was Alpha. The skinny guy who hadn't looked like he would last two days when we started out was DeadMeat. All one word. The little one was Diva, because you could tell that she had been one before the incident. She was having trouble adjusting, I could tell, but no one said anything. I wasn't sure that any of us even remembered how to talk. Doesn't the brain just lose the pieces that it doesn't need? Maybe that had happened, maybe we all had words, but no speech. The other girl, the incredibly plain one, she was Wall. I was working on a better name, that wasn't really sufficient. There was another guy who had started out our journey just as horrible as we all did now. His name was Skid. And then there was Raw, who only did things in the excess. He would run fast and then walk incredibly slowly. I might have hated him for it, if I had the energy to hate anyone right now. We didn't have the time to hate any more. There weren't enough people to hate any more. One would have thought that we were better people now than we were before, but I knew that wasn't it. We had just become different...now...that...everything...

I fell asleep, finally. And I dreamed. I never used to dream. I'd go through life, hearing about the way things were in this other dimension. I was jealous, no, more curious about what it was like to dream. What would it be like, dreaming, I asked myself when I went to sleep.

I have dreams now. I have dreams that aren't so much dreams as they're memories escaping, flashes of emotion that I don't want to feel. Fights, disasters, anger, failure. I always dream about things that make me feel like that, make me feel worthless. I'm afraid that I'm dreaming them wrong sometimes, that I was originally a horrible person before, not just the bad person I thought that I was. I wonder how much my memories are addled now. These are the only memories I have, really. Even if I try, I can never remember my past while I'm awake. Maybe it's amnesia, maybe it's because of the bomb, maybe it's self-defence. I don't think I'll ever know why, and I don't think that I'll ever be able to remember while I'm awake.

Before the bomb, I always thought that the cure for all of my issues would be more time to think. If I just had time to look at all of my memories, all my past laid out to examine everything and see where I've gone wrong. Then fix things, obviously.
I've had time to think, now. Not about my past, but about life and decisions and just about everything that was making me crazy.
Surprise surprise, that's not how it worked out. When I had the opportunity to stop and think about everything, things just got worse. Thinking made me into a different person than I'd been before it happened. Thinking about things, it made me kind of deep. I was never deep before. I was thoughtless, and while things may not have been good, they were better, weren't they? Or was it just in my head, a sick kind of nostalgia? I hate that I'll never know.

But I'll get used to it, I know I will. I'll eventually be okay with the fact that I don't know what the future holds, that I don't know enough of my past. It will just take time.

That, I realized, is what we have in common. We're broken. We were broken from the start, but the bomb tore down all the curtains, let everyone see just how broken and messed up we really were.

And that was fine.

I don't really like today.

You should watch this. Yum. I love books.

Also... "I’m really looking forward to seeing Helena Bonham Carter, ‘cause I’m a huge Helena Bonham Carter fan. Yeah, and her and Tim Burton are like my Brangelina. Like, they’re like my power couple." - Chris Colfer
Is it odd that my celebrity crushes have the same celebrity crushes (or...admirations?) as I do?

I am going to write one of those blog posts that reminds me and everyone else that I really am just an angsty teenager. You can stop reading now. I will not be offended if there are no comments on this post. Really. You would be better off reading that really creepy Klaine fanfic that everyone on tumblr is talking about. Actually...no. Don't do that. I've heard about it, and it seems like it would be emotionally scarring.

I was about an hour and five minutes late for school today. Fantastic, right? I missed all of first block (the class that I'm really struggling in) and the very beginning of second block. Why? Because my alarm was turned off and no one else woke up. I woke up at 7:50. School starts at 7:15. I was ready to go at 8:00. I finally got to leave the house at 8:15 because I had to wait for my dad and brother to get ready. Fantastic. I'm a winner.
This was mostly because it was my dad's job to get my brother and I off to school today. He's 49 years old. He cannot handle waking up on time and waking his children up on time. This is a problem.
School was meh. I ran the mile, pathetically slow, as always. Who cares?
Lunch was meh. People were there. I feel like some talk of the upcoming sitcom "Derek and Samantha" may have occoured, but I really can't remember.
The rest of the day was meh. I got a ride home from one of my friends, since I didn't have a car today.
I got home and went on the computer a little, then took a nap. I laid in bed for about an hour. I must have been sleeping for some portion of that time, because I remember dreaming. It was about the blog. I had mistakenly redesigned it. It was light green and tan and white and the posts were only sorted by length, not label or time. It was odd and disfunctional.
I had dinner at some point in there. And I made brownies. I asked my mom to help me with some college stuff. I've been asking her to help me with this for days.
I note that it's 6:30ish. Since my class finished last week, and it ran from 7:00 to 10:00, I had been planning on sort of reserving that time to work on art stuff. My mom pointed out to me that didn't I need something from the store and she was going to the store later and it would only be a half hour or fourty-five minutes so why didn't I just come with her? I figured that would be okay. Three hours later (THREE FUCKING HOURS), we got home. An hour and ten minutes later, she finally found the time to help me with the college stuff, which turned out to not be as complicated as I thought it was. No art has happened. No homework has happened. It's 12:38 AM.
My mom is a good mom when that's what she's doing. When she's constantly at my grandparent's house, she isn't. There's some times when it's fine, and there are some times when I just need someone to help me with things. Sometimes, I just need my mom.
I sometimes wonder how my education would have been different if my parents had pushed me more. I'm not a terribly self-motivated person, but I wonder, if they had treated Bs like they were a bad thing, if they had made sure I did my homework, if they had focused more on that, would I be better off? If they had pushed me at art, would I not think that everything I have in my portfolio is horrible? No, instead, I think they wanted some well-rounded, emotionally stable child. They didn't really get one.
I wonder if I really want to go to college, or if I just want to get out of here. Because I do want to get out of here. I think it's funny that I've never questioned if I could live on my own, but I've questioned plenty of times if I could handle the work in college, handle that pressure. It seems like everything might be more real in college. And art school? I don't know if I want to be an artist, or if I'm just going into art because it's something where I don't have to feel so fucking inadaquate all the time, like I do at school. I don't think it's going to help, really. And apparently a lot of the portfolio work I've been doing is wrong. Great. Really freeking great. I don't know how good I am, compared to other people. And part of the art school concept is that I won't have to compare myself any more, I won't have to care that my ACT and my GPA is so many points lower than everyone else's, that I didn't get a five on all my AP's, that I wasn't as advanced and as shiny and as perfect as they are. I have this dream that maybe, at art school, I won't have to feel bad about everything, that I can just exist and do my thing and be fine with that.
And then I realize that after art school, I'm going to have to get a job and then be competing with everyone else. Even if I got published, I know I would push that competitive additude on myself, that I wouldn't feel okay about being mid-list while there are bestsellers out there, wondering what's wrong with me, wondering why more people aren't reading my book, wondering why they got the wrong message from it. And then, I would have those helpful friends asking "Is this based on real life?" No. It's not. You would like to think that you're him, I know. You're not. It was always supposed to be like that, all along. That's why you're not reading it.
And this, my friends, is what the month after NaNo really feels like. Too excited, too low, too meh. It's slightly worrying that NaNo makes me feel like this, but I can't explain it any other way. I feel good when I'm writing, and when you take away that adreneline, everything is suddenly a lot less colourful.
But I'll be fine, even if I don't see that now.

Go College

So, um, I'm, um, going to college. For real. Unless a deal to control the universe/a million dollar-three-book contract/a gorgeous wealthy man with EU citizenship come my way before next September. And if I'm going to get into college, I have to write an essay. Scary. If you've seen this before, it's changed a lot since then.
AgthisissonervewrackinggahIjustwanttoreadKlainefanfictionalldaylong. That is how I feel. Also, today was a snow day and that was fantastic. Even though my eyelashes froze. And I couldn't feel my thighs.


When I was five, I wanted to be an artist. When I was fifteen, I knew that art was something that I loved, but not something that I could do. A career in art was unattainable. No one ever said that it was impossible, but the feeling was there. I knew there were people who worked as artists and designers, but they were not like me, they were other people. In my junior year, my art teacher pointed out that I had been in his class for three years and asked me what I was going to do with my life. I stuttered out some kind of incomprehensible response involving old buildings. We talked about that for a while, then looked into schools that had programs in historical restoration. Later, I decided that I would much rather make new things. First, I thought that I was going to make buildings. But buildings, after all, have things inside of them. They must have furniture, and without good furniture, no one would appreciate the building from the inside. Without good furniture, the building is just a building; no one can inhabit it and make it into more than just a building. When it becomes something more, it becomes a part of the fabric of our lives, and that is everything to me.
I want to make pretty things. I want to allow people to live with furniture that make their lives easier and more beautiful. But there's more to it than that. I want to create things that work, to design furniture that is effective and attractive without being inaccessible to people. The ability to try and experiment with new things is an important part of my art. I tend to struggle with proportion, but I'm working on making that better. I see this as a challenge that I just need to work to overcome.
My interests other than art are about current events, books, and service to others. I need to know what's going on in the world and I like to be able to intelligently discuss things that are happening in the world. Over time, it seems as though political events have huge effects on the art of the age, and it's very interesting to see correlations between the two. Reading has been a part of my life for as long as art has, and I love the way books can take me out of my normal life and allow me to be a part of something else, to experience a life that I would never reach normally. In the spirit of telling stories that need to be told, I've written a novel every November for the past four years. This is a part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which embraces the idea of being creative without being self-conscious and just making things. My novels aren't good, but that's not the point. The point is to step outside of your box and do something that is crazy and new and fun. I also volunteer at a camp every summer. I find this to be very valuable and humbling. I'm a counselor who is supposed to be teaching campers about life, but I find that they often teach me more than I could ever teach them.
Everyone who makes things has inspired me to become an artist. By making something, a person can add to the material history that we as humans build. That can be your life's work, making things, and each of those things becomes a part of our collective past. To build the future, we draw things from our collective past, and that gives us an element of the cultural future. It's important, and anyone who creates makes a little part of our future.
Most of the art and culture absorption in my life happens on line. I read blogs about furniture and design. Because these are constantly changing, it's much easier to read blogs and see what people from all over the world think about design and trends than it is to try and find current books and magazines that cover the same things. One of my favorite bloggers is Anna Dorfman from Door Sixteen, who blogs about design, mostly pertaining to book covers and furniture. Without the Internet, my view of art would be limited to the things I see in my daily life and the things I can get from more traditional media. Things change fast, but those changes don't always reach my life immediately. The Internet allows these changes to reach me instantly.
While I attend THIS SCHOOL, I hope to gain the skills necessary to succeed in the furniture business while expanding my knowledge of art. I want to improve my abilities so that I feel comfortable calling myself an artist and feel confident about my work. I've been working towards this goal by taking art classes outside of school and practicing my skills. I want to be someone who adds to that vital material history of our culture.

Fiction Friday?

It's Friday as long as I haven't gone to sleep, right? On with the story. This is part one. Part two will be coming at a later date.

Kill me, or something else will. We're running. We might be running to smewhere. An outsider might think that we're running for a good reason, because we want to. They're lucky. I wish we were running to something or from something. We're just running, running so we don't do something worse. Running so we don't just kill each other.

I'm fine with that. I've worn huge holes through my shoes, and then I took them off and threw them into the ditch. We had all done that at one point or another. We had started out mostly presentable, somewhat dressed up. Now we were barefoot and dirty, in torn up clothes. We were the only onew who were left, as far as we knew.
It was okay. There was nothing to be sad about, not really. You were gone, but you had been going for a long time before it happened. We're all going, in a way. It just tore you away, like ripping off a band-aid.

It didn't matter though. I was done dealing with it. We hat all finished dealing with it for what felt like weeks. We didn't really know. .

I don't know when time stopped mattering to us. Probably around the time when dead bodies stopped shocking us, but hey, who really cares? I dont'.

None of us really talk any more. I have a theory about people, and that theory states that there are two ways in which people can become emotionally close. The first is spending a lot of time together. People don't do that. It takes too much effort and we don't know how. We've lost that ability, as a culture. Bits of past get forgotten like that. It's not like it was that important anyway.

The second way, that's what we all have now. It's growing close through hardships, strangers who have this weird new kind of relationship. We don't know what to call it, we don't know what to think about it. It's very foreign to me, but it's still a part of me.

We set up camp at the first sutiable spot we can find after the sun has gone down. We find wood, set up our tents (breaking into that outdoors store really was a fantastic idea, since it also yeilded some freeze-dried food. We were saving it for later, when everything in the fields and grocery stores was gone) start some firse, find some water and boil it. We had decided that, since we don't know what happened, really, we were going to boil all the water we drank. We weren't idiots though. We knew that there was probably nuclear contamination in us, in our food, in our water. We would all die of cancer. It kind of sucked, knowing that even if we lived through all this crap, we'd still die from it.

It had occoured to me that one day, we would run out of stuff. There wasn't food growing anymore, and we would run out, eventually.

Do you remember?

Do we all remember my birthday? Yeah, we do. And do we remember that song that I couldn't remember the name of?
Found it!



Good to know I'm working on getting into college, right? But really, you know that I'm burning CDs of A Very Potter Musical and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. And quite possibly some Glee music and Mike Lombardo and everything else that I dont' have on CD. Because A) I am living in the early years of the 2000's and I'm fine with that and B) I don't have a MP3 hookup in my car.
My brother just said that all the music I listen to is outdated. Ouch.
Um...I want to make a movie. And I want it to be about supervillians. Is that dumb*? I will be doing Screnzy now (even though I will be in France (!!!!!) for a portion of the month) because I need ridiculous challenges to keep me sane.
I got 50 seconds on the flex arm hang in gym today. That's an A+. I just thought you'd like to know. This will be the only fitness test that I won't be going for the improvement score on.
We will (hopefully) be having a Fiction Friday tomorrow. Just thought you might like to know.
I need to get my lifegaurding certification. Stat.
*Don't answer that.

This is your life

Yeah, it's cliche.
You get a cookie if you know where that's from.
The last three days have been...well...directionless? Yeah. I've been...reading copious amounts of Glee fanfiction*? I typed up a little of the novel. I read like ten pages of the book I'm reading for IR. I've started a new short story. I went to youth group. I've gotten some ideas for my Screnzy. I've figured some people out. I created something of a college essay and got edits on it (thank you so much, Lemonlime!). I read a little bit of Madame Bovary**.

IN THREE EFFING DAYS.
THAT IS PATHETIC.

Okay, I think we've all gotten our capslock out for the moment.
I think this feeling, this loss of motivation (under normal conditions, I lack motivation. This is worse than normal) is due to things being done. NaNoWriMo is done. Harry Potter excitedness is done. Thanksgiving is done. Joey and I are done. Even the stupid charcoal chess drawing is done. Class is going to be done on Wednesday.
I need to get on a schedule or something. This is worrying. I have too much free time, and the vast majority of it is being spent...well...watching youtube and singing songs from musicals and Disney movies. Not to say that's a waste of time...but...I should be doing other stuff.
Like cultivating my awesomance. It's like romance, but totally platonic and involving so much more shipping...and giggling like a fourteen year-old girl.
I sometimes think that I was frozen as a fourteen year-old girl. I haven't changed that much, I really haven't. That's a little worrying.

*Reading fanfiction for TV shows is way way way different from reading book fanfiction. Like, things happen faster. There aren't any novel-length Glee fanfics. And there isn't the question of style - a big thing in my mind concerning Harry Potter fanfiction is that it sounds enough like Jo, which isn't an issue with TV.
**I like Madame Bovary a lot. It's like...pretty language without being like "Where is mah symbolizmz?" or "Don't u see teh hidden MEANINGZZZZ?" which a lot of books are screaming at me. With excessive Zs.

There's a novel? Forrealz?

It occours to me that I have a novel ("Because I have a voice!" from The King's Speech trailer, which I have not seen the movie for because it is only showing in New York, Toronto, and L.A.) and since I have said novel, I can give you quotations. Yay quotations.

“Well, it's sort of like an apology. In fact, I think you deserve a formal apology. So here it is; I'm sorry. I'm really sorry that I thought and talked like I knew everything about your life, because I totally didn't. I'm sorry.” I looked into her eyes, which were pointedly looking away from me “Will you accept my apology?”
“I would.” My hopes flew, until I realized quite what that could mean. “Except for one thing.”
“And what is that one thing?”
“The fact that you said it in the first place. The fact that you said it in the first place tells me one thing, and that is that you think you really do understand me. You don't. I need to talk to someone, and you're here, and I'm going to talk. I hope you're okay with that. I hope you don't read more into it than it's meant as, because all I need is a friend. You're that friend.”
I nodded. “Okay then. I'm here to listen.”
“Just listening.”
“Yeah...yeah, just listening.”
“And not judging.”
“No judging will be happening.”
“And all psychoanalysis will occur solely inside your own head.”
“But it's helpful, it really is. I'm just trying to help.”
She glared at me.
“Okay then, I get it. No psychoanalysis. Got it. That's fine.” She could be a little scary sometimes.
“Here it goes.” She nodded, closed her eyes, and started talking.

That's it, then.

I won. I won with less than twenty minutes to spare. I'm sitting on the couch. I won. I won. I won.

Last year, I was jumping up and down when I won.

This year, I'm just sort of in a daze. I wrote a lot today. More than I thought I would have, because things ended up being added wrong. 9,208, to be exact.

My 50,000th word was "She" Fitting.

I was really, really close to not winning.* I was worried.

He thought he would be the only one to win. I have some things to say about this, but the internet is a public place (so they say)

I like this novel. I really like it. At the end of the month, with all the others, I couldn't stand the thought of reading them, let alone editing them. I want to edit this one. I want to make it good. I want it to be great. While we're on the topic of editing, how do you make people sound as though they're a certain age? How do you make them sound like they're men or women? Any ideas?

I'm going to jump up and down for a while now. And do my book talk. And IR homework. And you know, go to college. Go college!

I won. I won. I won.
I still can't believe I won.

I won.

I won.

I won.

I think it feels just as good as last year, if not better.

*Under no condition is it acceptable to call me with an hour and a half of NaNoWriMo left. I do not care if your leg just fell off. You should not be seeking my attention. Sorry if I was being a bitch, but...I was very stressed out.

Um. Crazycakes. That's my life.

I wrote a lot today* and I still have a lot more to write, but it's okay. Remember when I saw Toy Story 3 and my basic reaction was D'awww + tears? Mmm yeah, Pixar did it again with their "It Gets Better" video. Probably the best one I've seen yet.

Now you know what company should make an "It Gets Better" video? Herman Miller. Also, Alan Rickman. That would be good, simply because he is in it.
I'm sure I had things to say when I opened this blog post. I'm really sure, but they're gone now. NBD. Um...writing is making me crazy. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be in an emotional state on Wednesday, so watch out. There's some stuff, people related stuff, that I kind of need to talk about, but I can't really talk about it here because things are weird and yeah. Someone is about to win a prize for their fantastic skills in the expression department, no? Speaking of prizes, I'm going to be entering writing contests. I've found them. I'm going to do them after College (AHHHHHHHH WHY MUST YOU BE SO INSANE AAAAAAAAAAAAH) and NaNo and portfolio are done. Yes. Also, Scholastics, which I need to enter. I might be entering for both art and writing. I'm not sure.
I have a gym test tomorrow. It's about swimming. I liked the swimming unit. Except for the day when there had been a swim meet the night before and the pool was really low and lacking chlorine and smelled like B.O. that part was gross.
What else? All of my art stuff that was scattered around my house is currently in my room because we had Thanksgiving here and I had to move it. I cannot function with all of this stuff in my space. AHHAAAAAA. Do not like. Need to clean. Nowwwwwwwwwww.
*When I say today, I mean the today it was before midnight. Get with the program here.
Okay, this is just so I know what I have to do this week. Disregard this entirely.

• Email mr.b about letters of rec
• call ccs guy about interview
• work on vellum architectural colourrr
• work on chess pieces
• touch up weird random design
• do l'hotel de ville in pen? Maybe. If time
• start typing up novel???
  
• get transcripts and scores sent to schools
• list writing contests and dates
• shipping news - book talk
• shit just got real
• ccs tomorrow first block? Eh?
• how fast to use nano code?
• when to type and edit novel - type - add 40k of extra story - print out - read - edit - have betas read, etc.
  

Isn't it funny...

That I haven't blogged in a week? That I need to write 16,000 words by the end of the month? That I started typing out "Sixteen thousand" because it's two words when "16,000" is just one?

Yes. Of course. All of the above.
College. College relates to all of the things I need to blog about right now. When I say that it relates to all of the things I need to blog about right now, I mean that it loosely relates to some of the things I need to blog about right now.

I'm starting to think that they make applying to college difficult and confusing to convince people not to go to college, which is looking like a better option every day. And then I remember how much I hate flipping burgers, which is what every single person who doesn't go to college ends up doing for their whole entire life, right? Seventy percent* of the U.S. population currently works at McDonald's. When you stop and think about that one for a half second, you realize that the concept is economically and physically impossible. There aren't enough McDonald's in the country to make space for them, and if everyone was working at McDonald's there wouldn't be enough people to buy the food. Also, duh.

Mr.Apgov is very convinced that he's teaching a college course. Whatever, right? Let the teachers think what they want to think, they're not hurting anyone. Except sometimes they are. If anyone reading this blog is in college or has taken a real college course or has ever thought about higher education as a concept, could they please verify the fact that you generally don't focus on regurgitating useless information while you're in college? Or, really, for that matter, while you're in a non-mandatory high school course? We have a project right now that seems to be focused on learning an unnecessary amount about a specific president. Mine is Andrew Jackson, known to be a total jerk and waste of space. Also, he was really into populism, an idea which I'm not terribly fond of. And frankly, I don't think that finding the names of every single person who he ran against in the presidential election will help me on the AP test that I'm not taking**.

So. Thanksgiving was good. Food was good. Leftovers consist only of turkey, turkey soup, and more turkey, which is a massive disappointment. All I want is some mashed potatoes. Is it that difficult, really?
On Buy Nothing Day, I bought stuff, including a prom dress. I'm unnecessarily excited about this dress. If you're someone who has already heard about it, then I'm very sorry. It's a very exciting dress.

I've been watching some...television...on the internet, of late. Dear Fox, please please please, do not show me another advertisement for Panera about how to make the perfect crust (Spritz the bread with water, then spray the inside of the oven!) or Bob's Burgers. That show makes me assume that Family Guy and SouthPark are the height of intelligence and cultural achievement. I am not interested in either of your advertisements. Please, switch things up, just for once. You, like Facebook, could decide that I'm Mormon and give me several thousand advertisements for "LDS Modest Prom Dresses".

*My made up statistic was written like that to make it two words long. I am fantastic.***

**I'm switching out of the class next semester, and it turns out that no one actually cares about AP Gov. Except, of course, State. Everyone wants to go to Michigan or State, for some mysterious and unknown reason. They can't have the best program for everything, guys!

***"Lucio, a fantastic. And he is fantastic." - Mrs. Aplit, who is fantastic.

2 AM, we've got to stop meeting like this.

I'd much rather sleep with you.
Anyway, we have an excerpt. An excerpt, you say? How exciting! Jazzhands are in order, surely.* I've been on the computer a lot, mostly getting distracted. If all the words I see suddenly got a lot smaller, does that mean that my vision's going? Because it totally is.

“Yeah. This is impossible. You're amazing, but you can't do everything in a superhuman way. You'd kill yourself trying that.”
“I want to try, though. Don't you just want to hit that point where you've given something everything you've got and you know, for once, that you really wanted something?”
“Wanted it enough to die for it?”

So yeah, that's what I'm writing right now. Partayyyy. I think things are getting angstier** for both of my main characters, when in reality, only one of them should be angsty. But the diolauge? I love it so much. I love writing diolague between tehm, because they talk the way all of the characters in my head talk (and you should know that the above conversation isn't between them) sort of bantering back and forth very quickly, adding onto each other's unfinished thoughts because they fit together so perfectly.
*As I type this, I'm realizing just how interesting the things I'm writing right now will look in the morning. 'Tis the beauty of NaNo, is it not? Stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
**Spellcheck*** is telling me that this isn't a word. Clearly we need to have a chat about language.
***My footnotes have footnotes; I need to go to bed. But...shouldn't wizards have spellcheck? Yesh. Makes sure you don't do stupid things like sectumsempra without knowing what you're doing.

The Missing, The Wrong, The Emtional, and The Other

Consider this to be part two of the Harry Potter post. Spoilers abound. Most of these are minor issues, but I need to tell someone about them. Overall, I thought the movie was amazing, but there are some little things...

The Missing- Peacocks. Where are my peacocks? Yaxley said "He always did well for himself, Lucius. Peacocks." in a fabulously mocking way, and I want some albino peacocks! This is not okay!
I love how we awkwardly repair things that were left out in previous movies, like the entire relationships between Bill and Fleur and Remus and Tonks. And why on earth does Bill have to explain the scars on his face? Because of the failures of previous movies, that's why.
Andromeda is the one person who I'm really sad that they cut out. We know next to nothing about her, but there's so much you can imagine. What would motivate someone to leave their whole family behind? Can it really be all about Ted? Shouldn't there be something more? How does she feel about her sisters? How do they feel about her? I need to write a novel about this, clearly. Harry mistakes Andromeda for Bellatrix when he first sees her, so why couldn't HBC just play her with different hair and costume? At the end, sort of after the battle, aren't Narcissa and Andromeda supposed to see each other and have some sort of emotional reunion? I really wanted to see that. Without Andromeda, that cannot happen. This is a big problem
Charlie. Charlie...Charlie. Why are you not in any of the movies, Charlie? Why must they just cut out Weasley siblings? Why not cut out, say, Wormtail? No one needs him, but we need Charlie!
Krum was missing too, because he was supposed to get angry at Xenophilius about the Hallows symbol. Sigh. I guess it wasn't that big of a deal.
Why haven't we ever had a person identified as Rodolphus Lestrange? There's a bunch of generic Death Eaters who could be Rodolphus, but we don't know which one is him. He's not very significant, and given the things I assume about their relationship, Bellatrix was never too attached to him anyway.

The Wrong-Malfoy Manor was supposed to be like a bigger, kept up version of 12 Grimmauld Place combined with Manderly* and maybe a little bit of the Ministry of Magic thrown in. It's wrong. Too...Hogwartsy, really. And Narcissa, why the bangs? WHY? That is gross. Also, Lucius? Are we too busy sitting around the house all day to shave and clean up our hair? In the fanfiction, you are pretty into your appearance. I wold appreciate it if you could keep that up in the film. Why is Voldemort moving and talking like a normal human? He is not normal. This is wrong.
Mundungus Fletcher, you are completely wrong. Ew ew no. You are supposed to look like a pile of rags. Why do you not look like a pile of rags? Why do you not look right? Tonks, what is happening with your hair? You can change it very easily, so why on earth would you leave it ugly? Ew. Do not like. Bill, why do you not have enough scars? You're supposed to be really scarred up, but there's like three cuts. Big deal. Hagrid, when did it become okay to fly motorcycles (which are supposed to be black, not blue) in the street? Around muggles? What is up with you?
I'm done talking to fictional characters now. Maybe.
Fred's reaction to the holey joke should have been bigger than it was. That is a terrible, funny joke. Act like it is. And Mrs. Weasely, you're supposed to be actively preventing Ron, Harry and Hermione from going off to search for horcruxes. Why aren't you?
Why isn't Fleur's family at the wedding? Wouldn't you make sure to remember your child's wedding? I would. Why does Harry look like Harry? He's supposed to be looking like the redhead muggle boy from the village.
Throughtout the movie, the apparation is really weird. It's not as bad as the time travel in Time Traveler's Wife**, but it's pretty unrealistic and weird. Do not like.
What else? Mr. Lovegood is way too out there. He makes Luna look totally normal, but they were supposed to be around the same level of crazy. And he didn't just say "Voldemort" to get Harry caught. There were more people in jail, I thought. And no lantern.
When was Dumbledore buried on an ISLAND? That never happened. Weird, that was. And also very dramatic.

The Emotional-I feel like I should have been sad when Moody and Hedwig died. It was just kind of like they were there, and then they were gone. But when Dobby said he was a free elf? That he had no master? I was basiacally falling apart. Why, why does he have to be so devoted? Fred is going to die in the next movie. Fred is going to die. Fred is going to die. What am I going to do when Fred dies?

The Other- The entire scene where Harry's trying to get the sword out of the water reminded me so much of the water drifting scenes in A Single Man. I just heard like...two days ago that Bonnie Wright and Jamie Cambell Bower are engaged. Apparently this happened in like...May. When we were wating for the movie to start, we were talking to these other people about AVPM and someone said that we went to the same school as Lauren Lopez, and someone asked if we went to U of M. Um..no. Do we look like college kids? Really? Um...I really like The Politician's Wife, which I read like two months ago. As for ships I like to read in fanfiction, Dramione is an old standby, Drarry's generally good, and I love Snape/Anyone, Any of the Malfoys/Anyone, and...that's it. I don't think Ron's cut, after he got splinched, was totally unrealistic.
And, just so you know, if you're going to the movies with me, do not ask me questions about the plot and possiblities of Harry Potter while we are still in the theater. This is release day. For reals guys, shut up. Unless, of course, you're saying "Dobby!" when appropriate.

*Yes, I am referencing the world outside Harry Potter. I visit there occasionally.
**What, with chunks of people vanishing? That's bad. Really bad, actually.

The Good

I just finished watching Harry Potter. 24 hours ago, I was watching Harry Potter. I love today. In celebration, here's a brief* explanation of the things I loved about Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows (Part One). There are major spoilers here. I hope you're okay with that.

First off, the entire scene with Hermione's parents was pretty heart-wrenching. And then she just melted away from the pictures. Epic sadness, right there. That opening sequence, with Hermione and Harry and Ron, that's really good. Not the same as the book, but good. I liked the entire Malfoy Manor scene too. All the Death Eaters laugh when Voldemort says that Charity Burbadge would have them mate with muggles, but Snape doesn't laugh, or even smile. I like that little nod towards his blood status and lack of humour. Snape is really a fantastic character and Alan is a great actor, even if we only see him for 30 seconds. I didn't expect to feel anything when Charity Burbadge died, but I was kinda sad. Tom Felton was good** in that scene too. I really liked Bill Nighy as Scrimgeour. If anyone was going to play him, it should be the crazy old man from Love Actually, even if he doesn't quite fit the book description.
The scene where Ginny and Harry are kissing and George walks in on them and stares awkwardly? That was perfect, even though it's not cannon. And um...the toothbrush? Odd. The wedding was amazing.
I think the trio were fantastic in this movie. Just thought you ought to know.
At 12 Grimmauld Place, I think it's the cutest thing ever when Dobby and Kreacher come on in with Mundungus. That is awesome. Dobby was so great in this movie, and I think they've changed something in the CGI, since he looked...different. In a good way.
I wasn't a huge fan of the whole ministry scenario, but the kiss? That was good in an awkward way, which is the best kind of good (as long as you're the one who's not feeling the awkward).
In the camping trip, someone clearly shippped Harry/Hermione. I shipped it too. When I was twelve. Still, I vastly prefer it to Ron/Hermione, and anyways, it was cute. Hermione's line about how she thinks logicly and blocks out extraneous details? Amazing.
On their visit to Xenophilius Lovegood, I liked the plums. And the animation of the three brothers? Unexpected, but perfect. It felt Burtonesque, it had no diolauge, it felt really graphic, and everything was amazing. Yay. I especially liked the bit where the candle is blown out and the colours switch, with the blood from the throat slitting. That was a good image.
This is random, but I really like that one snatcher, with the scarf and the eyeliner.
Malfoy Manor again? Yes. Ahamazing. I love Helena Bonham Carter so much. And when you look up to see Dobby unscrewing the chandelier? Priceless. Ahh, all of Dobby's lines here are perfect, and if I was in a somewhat emotional mood, just saying one of them would make me cry. Dobby is a free elf!
That movie was 2 hours and 20something minutes long. It felt like it was an hour, tops. Time is weird like that.

*Harry Potter and brief are mutually exclusive. Didn't you realize that?
*I originally wrote that as "god". Can you say "Freudian slip"?

Fiction Friday

I'm jealous of you. I know this is a fully irrational feeling, but I can't help it and I don't care to help it in the least.

Is that wrong? Is dissatisfaction wrong?

Is rebellion wrong? And what if, for once in my whole entire life, I did something that no one would have expected me to do and what would they do then? What could they do then? They have no where to run, no where to hide, and nothing that they can change about me. Bite me. Try it. Kill me. Try it.
I wonder sometimes, if they, if you pass out life as a punishment or as a gift.

I think it's a little bit of both, depending on what kind of a mood you're in. That's sick. That is really, truly sick.

I want you to care about me, and I want you to leave me alone and I want you to be concerned about me, all at once. Can you manage that? Please? For me?

I may cry tonight.

After all this time?

Always.

Quote of the Month

"Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night's sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too."
Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler

Just a thought

What if you're afraid of being normal because if you're normal, no one will care? Like what if you feel this need to be consistently outrageous, and without that, you fear that you're nothing at all?

That was a plot bunny, right there.

If I wasn't an artist, if I got scared of it all and ran away, what would I do?

I would write. I would go into foreign affairs. I would follow plan A. I would go to a university and have no idea what to do with my life until halfway through my senior year.

That's a good life decision, that is.

The thing on my leg

I had lotion on my hand and the sharpie won't write on lotioned flesh. Lotioned is totally a word.

Um. So I've been acting sort of totally messed up this (day, week, month, year) and I've realized exactly why. Thought you should know that. The reasons why are written on my leg. Right leg, inside, nearing ankle territory.

I'm blogging from the outside, where I'm listening to Vampire Weekend and writing. Yay. It's warm today, and that makes me really happy. I'm going to see Hairspray tonight and playing QUIZBOWL tomorrow and going to see the boy in Cinderella tomorrow and it's just great. Yay.

Someone, let's call her Zombie, and I have been becoming kinda friends. And we have gym together. We're swimming next week, and so I must ask the essential question: should I wear a one-piece or two-piece? Big choices here.

Um...what else? There has to be something else. Oh, gymteacherwhotellsusnothingaboutherlife said that her dad was getting married this weekend and that it would be really awkward. I second that opinion. It's always funny to find out stuff about teacher's personal lives. Like when we (I) found Mrs.AP Euro's husband on facebook*.

The novel is...okay. It's going okay, and that's all I have to say about that. I just hate that no matter whose voice I'm trying to write in, it always comes out with this overriding feeling of Samanthaness. Ewww. I don't want to sound like me, just like I wouldn't be myself if I was given any kind of choice in the matter.**

*That never happened. Or maybe it did.

**I told that to someone once and they gave me a very...eugh answer "You should always want to be yourself."

This is scar(y)

You know what I'm going to be doing a week from now? Crying. And maybe getting ready to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.This is big. This is monumental.I'm dressing up, of course.But I can't help thinking, when this is over, what am I going to do?So that's my question for you: What on earth am I going to do after Harry?

Paper is like Human Flesh

This is everything written on my hand and arm:
Chess Tomorrow
Art was better when it wasn't about the artist?
Blood
Health Thing
Dracofic
Hatredfearhatred
No class dec 1
Blogging scholarship
Rise in Michigan-centric advertising
Sugar Quill
Laser Printer and acetone on paper
Scholastics
Send letter of rec info
Docufide

The thing is, when I read this list, I know what every single thing on here is about and what I need to do regarding it. Hmm...this is an excellent system of organization. I will be successful in life. Fo' Sho.
I...um...well, it's 12:23 and I still have Gov homework (forealz, that is the only class I have homework in this year) to do and so yeah...bye.
Whose idea was it to make me spend three days watching an Eating Disorder documentary in Health and a Genocide in Darfur documentary in IR. WHY ARE THEY ON THE SAME THREE DAYS? ARE YOU TRYING TO MESS WITH MY FRAGILE MENTAL STATE?
Capslock may be messing with my fragile mental state as much as these documentaries.
Also, I need to stop sounding so crazy on the blog. Going to work on that. Add it to my list!
That title? My art teacher said that today. It seemed very fitting.

This post is questionable

What is happening with that title. And what is happening with my life?

I wrote 1882 words today, so that's mildly sexy.

Why is everything about sex now?

Because sex sells, that's why. Isn't that pathetic? Yes, yes it is.

Does the vast majority of this novel, like every other novel I've ever written, take place within the heads of my main characters? Does that disgust me? Does it disgust me that my characters don't feel like separate people, even though they are? Is characterization one of my main flaws as a person? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Was that a stylistic choice? Did I attempt to lighten my hair a little more today? Did it go well? Did I cause a TV to fall in the back of my car in an attempt to get to the library in time to return a DVD? Was that DVD Cat On a Hot Tin Roof? Was it totally awesome? Did it remind me absurdly of A Streetcar Named Desire, but with a markedly different ending? Did I think that Brick was pretty hot? Did I start the chess still life in CHARCOAL today?

Most importantly, have I been binging on fanfiction to procrastinate on my NaNoWriMo and my portfolio? That one, is, of course, a solid yes.

My brother is coming home tomorrow. It sure was nice to be an only child for a couple days. Zut.

A Belated Fiction Friday

I was going through my drafts and dug up this old post from July. I don't know why I didn't post it then, but I'm sure I had a reason.

I was going to post this yesterday, but then I forgot and it suddenly turned into today. Funny how time happens, isn't it? I wrote this a couple nights ago when I couldn't fall asleep 'till 6:30 or something. Staying up late is fun until about 4, when all you want to do is get some sleep. Annnd...I found a new video of Jo. Why didn't anyone tell me about this when it happened? I think it's cool.


Anyway, here it goes. The story, I mean.

"What do you do when you're alone?"
"What do you mean? I'm always alone."
"You're not alone right now."
"Actually, I am."
"No you're not, silly. I'm here."
"Yeah. You. But you're always here. You don't count."
"Ouch, what would you do if I was gone?"
"I would wait for you to come back, of course."
"I'm never coming back."
"Way to tell me in advance. I'll spend my time hating you with ever fiber of my being."
"Why is your being so fibrous?"
"Because I eat my fruits and vegetables, just like mommy says I should."
"When was the last time you talked to mommy? She disappointed in you?"
"I don't have a mother."
"Neither does God, and he turned out alright."
"Yeah, something just went wrong with me, I guess."
"Something went wrong with all of us, didn't it?"
"Then what seperates them from us?"
"Getting caught."
"Someone once told me that grade-school bullies end up as cops or criminals."
"I wasn't a bully."
"Neither was I."
"So we keep on getting fucked by the bullies, over and over."
"Pretty much."
"Shit like that makes me lose faith in socicety a little more every day."
"They've lost faith in you, don't you think?"
"Kicked outta the playground for good."
"I always wonder if life is easier for other people."
"Or if they're just better actors."
"I used to want to be an actor."
"Really?"
"I thought it was an art where I could hide myself. Everything else, it seems to revolve around putting yourself out there, and I just wanted to hide."
"I kind of think we're all looking for someplace to hide."
"But it's better for us, I think, not to find it."
"Getting too safe and too comfortable is what kills everyone sooner or later. You have to keep moving, even when you don't want to."
"What's the danger in getting yourself killed sooner rather than later? The dead only pity the living."
"And you can talk to them?"
"No, but I like to think that they have it a little better than this."
"Oh, welcome to the middle ages! Where are the horsemen?"
"I killed them."
"You gotta stop killing the symbolism. Wasn't the house of Usher enough for you?"
"I just wanted to be one of the cool kids."
"You're not a cool kid, and you're stuck that way."
"Can't people change?"
"Never enough. Never, ever enough."

So yeah.

I feel like all y'all deserve something more, but I don't really have anything to give you. So...wanna read my college essay? Yay college.
This was for the architecture school. Just so you know, if that isn't evident. Also, it's kind of dramatic, which...well...maybe wasn't the right thing to go for. Either way, I got in.

I like pretty buildings. I want to make pretty buildings and Lawrence Technological University is the school that can help me achieve my dreams. The first time I remember noticing a building, it was a church. I'm not sure where it was, but it was magnificent. The whole time I was there, my main focus was the ceiling. Where I come from, ceilings look like a flat, white piece of drywall. This was different. There were arches, there was stone, and it merged so effortlessly with the walls and windows that it appeared to be other worldly. Never before had I given thought to a ceiling, but after that, the thoughts wouldn't leave me. I realized I needed more of this, more pretty buildings.
I'm an art kid. I'm the one who turns in a math test covered in doodles, after which I go off to the nirvana of Commercial Art. Commercial Art taught me something that no other art class bothered with: Craftsmanship. Mr. Boyer, my teacher, thought that planning a project out and executing it perfectly was just as important as, if not more important than, having a good idea. I learned from him that a good idea isn't the only factor that goes into a good project, but that you need dedication and attention to the smallest of details to make a finished piece that you can be proud of.
For a long time, I thought that I wasn’t a natural leader. People didn’t gravitate towards the idea of following me, and it was a challenge for me to lead others in the right direction. Then I decided to become a counselor at the camp that I’ve gone to for years. Suddenly, I had to be a leader. People were relying on me. After the initial shock, I realized that I wasn't bad at it, that I could make judgments about the right thing for my group to do. I could persuade people to listen to me, and maybe, just maybe, I was a bit of a leader after all.
Everyone has their hopes and dreams. Some are possible, some aren't, but we cling to them because without them, we would have nothing. I want to re-purpose old buildings or design easy-to-construct, durable shelters for disaster victims. I want to make things that cause people to question the assumptions that they used to make about buildings. A building can change the world. I want to make magic, and architecture is that magic.
Lawrence Technological University can help me make magic and change the world through architecture. My leadership skills, dreams, and attention to detail will make me a successful architect.

Yay

I haven't blogged in a week. I've been tired and stressed and portfolio day didn't go nearly as well as I had hoped, but that's okay. It's fine. I'm alive, I'm mostly functioning, my hair is blonde (but not the parts that I can actually see without a mirror. Funny, that.) I was Narcissa for Halloween.
I have these ideas of stories that are told with words and pictures, but they're not illustrated, per say. They're just stories with images that sort of vaguely relate. Not like when people (not naming any names here) are writing a blog post and are like "OMR, no one will read this without a PICTURE" and proceed to find a random picture of a field or sunset on flickr and post it. These would be illustrations, and they would preferably feel like this and this and this. Like the kind of book that you just want to put on your shelf and read and love and sniff occasionally.
The pile started to fall over today after I turned the light off and hit it at the wrong angle. This is slightly worrying. Do I need a new bookshelf? What am I going to do with these books when I get to college?
NaNo Excerpt time? I think so. You should feel so privileged in that you are allowed to read this, which just so happens to be my baby. I may have gotten into a physical fight with someone who was larger than me in order to maintain possession of this book. It's that important.

She insulted me, yeah, but the way she insulted me, you could tell she was thinking about how I felt and what I thought and what my place in the social order was. That's an exciting feeling that someone who was once a far off social stretch has noticed you and given you some thought.

So that's the end. It's a short excerpt. Also, why on earth am I incapable of writing a character who doesn't sound exactly like me? WHY? Am I just too cemented in my voice? WHY?
Also, I'm so freeking behind on my wordcount. Like, 3,600 words behind. Kill me now, kthnxbai.

Plans

Tonight I'm going to go to quizbowl, then take the crap over to the library, then go home and work on the architectural drawing until my hair falls out.
Fun.
Tomorrow I'm going shopping for various halloween related items and then going to my friends house to film a zombie movie. If I finish the drawing.
Saturday I'm going to an art class thing.
Sunday I'm going to Portfolio review day. I'm scared. What if they don't like me?
NaNo starts Monday. I have so much more planning that needs to happen. AHHH.

I may be bleaching my hair soon.
I may be considering a gap year because I can't handle getting into art school soon.
I may be considering learning Russian soon.

Skirt day was last week Monday.

(my life)

Didn't that book come out at around the same time as one of the Harry Potter books? And didn't they confuse me when they said "book release" on the news and I was like "OMG HARRY POTTER I LOVE HARRY POTTER AHH SO EXCITED" and then I saw Bill Clinton* and was like "dude, who cares about this guy?"

Anyway, today at lunch the topic of me and my physical ability came up. Someone asked if I thought I could beat up someone else at my table. I said maybe. They said no. Everyone else said no. This left me curious, so I began brainstorming the various people who I could beat up. Remember that earlier this day, I had gym. We're playing flag football, and every other down (play? whatever they're called) a girl has to be the quarterback. There's this girl on my team who's really athletic, so she's always quarterback when it has to be a girl.

She was tardy. I had to be quarterback. It was terrifying. I fell on my knee, which is currently bright red. Then I caught a ball the wrong way and jammed my finger and I could only bend it a little bit. I panicked about NaNoWriMo. Then I thought for a second and realized that planning to hand-write it was probably a good idea, since I don't need my right hand to write things. When I was on my way home, I shut my foot in the car door. Don't ask how it happened. I'm very poorly coordinated.

Other things that happened today: I was late for Gov, I did the wrong questions for Health, and I got two VHS tapes from the library stuck in the VCR. All I wanted was to be nostalgic for AP Euro with some Black Adder! That's all, I swear!

Today is one of those days that just makes you want to facepalm

*I've learned from my presidents. Don't inhale.

Bam bam bam

I want to start out with a quote.
“A paper town for a paper girl,” she says. “I read about Algoe in this book of ‘amazing facts’ when I was ten or eleven. And I never stopped thinking about it. The truth is that whenever I went up to the top of the SunTrust Building - including that last time with you - I didn’t really look down and think about how everything was made of paper. I looked down and thought about how I was made of paper. I was the flimsy-foldable person, not everyone else. And here’s the thing about it. People love the idea of a paper girl. They always have. And the worst thing is that I loved it, too. I cultivated it, you know? Because it’s kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way. And Algoe is a place where a paper creation became real. A dot on the map became a real place, more real than the people who created the dot could ever have imagined. I thought maybe the paper cutout of a girl could start becoming real here also. And it seemed like a way to tell that paper girl who cared about popularity and clothes and everything else: ‘You are going to the paper towns. And you are never coming back.’”

I think people think that I've been being more and more introspective lately.
That's because I have been.
I don't really know why.
That's a lie.
There's a million little reasons why.
Talk to me. Just because I'm not talking to you doesn't mean that I don't want to talk, I've just...lost that ability.
Not that I ever had it in the first place.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
Right?

Stalin's in the Closet

Michelle: Where's Stalin?
Mrs. AP Euro: Stalin's in the closet.
Here's the real question: is it homophobic to laugh at that? I don't think so.
I vaguely remember some article or pictures somewhere of a bunch of nude drawings that Stalin censored and wrote things on. Whatever he wrote, it made someone think he was gay. I got on google (because that is what I do) and found this and this piece of crap and this. Cooper Union, why do you have to be so hard to get into and so cool and so free?
It seems like sexuality has come up in about 16 bizgillion conversations of late.
I do not know why that is.

This is Ramblypants time

I do love my ramblypants.
Harry Potter. Someone told me today that Harry Potter will never be just a book for me, that I can never read it without my preconcieved views about it and my larger than reality ideas of Harry's world. First, my inner Drarry fangirl says this.
They're totally right. My first impressions were nothing. I was eight. I needed something bigger than me to be a part of, and Harry was it. Harry was there for me when I needed him. I reread the books so much, because if you're having a shit day (or a shit year, in some cases) Harry Potter makes it better. That says something about a creation, if it goes on to create more and more things and becomes so much more than the original. Think of the Bible. It's a book. No big deal. Would you say that the Bible represents a lot more than a book for some people? I think it does. It's inspired art, it's made it into an awful lot of literary references, and there's a lot of people who care about it. Let's just face it...there's a lot more Harry Potter fanfiction than for the Bible. Annnd, I would love to be in this room. So. Much. Even though HBC has wayyyy too much hair. I have a lot of hair, but no amount of product and curling could make it look half the size of that. Attention hair sylist: We may spend a lot of time on the internet, but we can tell when somone's hair looks completly impossible.School...Gov isn't going well. Lit's going well, I'll have to see how I do on this big epic scary essay that's due tomorrow. Health made me get a little teary-eyed today, but I pulled it together. Gym was good, mostly because I didn't have to sweat. IR was good until I went to the bathroom and people stole my spot so that they could be gross and couple-y while I sat on the floor and noticed a weird pang in my ribs. French was...a tad ridiculous. Moreso than usual. We walked around the room and waved our hands in the air. True story.
I need to start going outside more when the weather is nice. Tomorrow, after quizbowl (assuming it's not raining) I will be going on a bike ride. Fo' Sho'.
This is for you if you think it's for you..."I mean, to be honest, I’ve never even really understood the war between nerds and popular people. Like, who do…who do…who do you guys got? ‘Umm…we’ve got George W. Bush and, like, Tom Brady.’ Oh, okay. Well, I see your George W. Bush with Bill Clinton, and I raise you an Abraham Lincoln and a Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And, I can easily see your Tom Brady with the thinking man’s football player, Tiki Barber, and I think I can raise you, hmmm, an Isaac Newton, a William Shakespeare, a Blaise Pascal, an Albert Einstein, an Immanuel Kant, an Aristotle, a Jane Austen, a Bill Gates, a Mahatma Ghandi, a Nelson Mandela, and all four Beatles. We win." John Green, of course.
Umm...I haven't gone runnning in a week...and maybe a half. Yay fitness.
Umm...Art is killing me right now. We are artists, we create your world and we destroy it and we love to do so because we want you to ask the tough questions.
Wednesday is wear pink against bullying day, or if you're the kind of person who can say "gay" in public, it's wear purple in honor of those who've comitted suicide day. I will be wearing purple. Apparently it would be too political for my school to say "Don't bully people because they're gay." So they're sayng it's alright to bully people because they're gay? I'm confused. Anyway, the city where I live isn't the most...accepting and open-minded place in the world, but it could be a lot worse.
NaNo ideas are coming along nicely. Being misunderstood and failing at relationships because of it? Yayyy! Having minor characters and sub-plotzzz (finally!) for added depth? Yay!
This is a jazzhands opportunity.

Macaw

In first grade, we decorated the entire hallway with rainforest scenery. If I remember correctly, I made a macaw in art class. Speaking of art class, I saw my middle school art teacher at drawing today. It was weird. I don't think she saw me. I didn't say hi.
Mmhmm...yum.

Quote of the Month

Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left it the world.

Walt Disney.

Llama

This is going to be a short post just to get things out of my mind. I haven't started on my homework yet. Things are getting urgent. I'm having more and more trouble thinking up relevant titles lately. Class went well tonight, and at the end, Sophomore said "It doesn't look like you even tried on the face." I gave him this look and he said "Oh. You actually did try." You idiot, I'm trying to get into college! Of course I'm trying to make this good! Why would I even show up if I didn't want to try? Why are you here, with your whateverH pencils and your distracting, relentless monologue? Grr. Anyways, I remembered my dream from two nights ago and I can't get it out of my head. My mom was telling me that my great-grandma killed a dog and then something about her hair. This is very odd. I took my great-grandma to the dentist today...and they're using my logo for the school play! Yay!
None of that made any sense to me, so it surely won't make sense to you.
I need to do my gov current events, my lit facebook thing, and my lit essay. Agh.

"It was the imperial dream of a feudal age that made men enslave others."

That's from Native Son. Page 389.

Today's post is a list. I'm Samantha, and I think in lists. We talked about lists in health today and about ho they help me manage stress. Also, Mrs.Health teacher asked me if hi!School had gone by so fast and my answer was a resounding no. And no, the past three years were not the best years of my life either, because that would be sad and pathetic.

On with the list.

1. I think some grumpy old man called me a bitch today because I had the audacity to turn left at a four way stop. He was driving a black Chevy (impala?).

2. Peter brought gummy bears to quizbowl today. As always, I was cautious when taking food from Peter* but these gummy bears were mostly normal. A little bit less waxy and tasting more like actual fruit than regular gummy bears, but still good.

3. We spent half of quizbowl studying art today, but...there were so many things they just...didn't know.

4. The network went down at school today, and everything went crazy. It felt like what going to school 20 years ago felt like, but with elmos instead of overhead projectors.

5. Water-based markers of vellum!?!? Crazymaking.

*Remember the rice wine? That was gross and tasted like rubbing alcohol.

I'd just like to point out

That it's tententententen. And I'm so close to finishing this stupid drawing, you have no idea.

I'm thinking about professionalism and people who tragically misunderstand each other (Paper Heart) and supervillans who care about each other and art made of duct tape (DUCT TAPE!!!!) and strangely magnificant paper shapes and words in the sky and novels that are all part of the same story happening at different times.

Mental overload, just a little bit.

But I'm excited.

You want all those ideas mapped out, even if it makes for a less graceful and amazing blog post? You bet you do.

1. Professionalism. When do you become professional? Is it when you make money from something? Is it when you make a living from something? Is it when you go to college for something?

2. Paper Heart. That's the novella project, that's the NoQuNaNo, and that's the title that I just pulled out of thin air. Check it out, yo. Read it. Next summer. Tell your kids, tell your wife, and tell your husband.

3.The summer novel...Supervillans. There's four. The novel has pacing, yo.

*4. Duct tape. It looked like a painting. And then I went closer and it looked like cut out paper. And then I went closer and holy cow is that duct tape? It was ahamazing.

*5. Sculptural paper shapes. Sitting on the floor. It was awesome. They were folded paper, but they looked like they were magic.

6. Words. In the sky. This should happen in a movie.

7. A series of novels where different people tell different parts of the same story. Just thought of it today. May unseat the supervillans as the summer project. Is amazing, no?

*AAAAAAAAArtprize! I went there yesterday! It was awesome! It was mind-stretching! Yay!

Dear Universe

So...erm...someone messed with my blogger dashboard....erm...what's happening there?
Today kinda sucked. Someone took the time to tell me that I looked disheveled* during first block. My shoes were untied and I had gotten out of bed less than 20 minutes before. Big deal. It's first block. First block is as close to my natural state as most people will ever see me in at school. In nature, lives are nasty, brutish, short, and pantsless. Honey, you're lucky that you did not see my pale, purple-tinged legs today.
You know who does get to see my pale, purple legs every single day? My gym class. Sexy, right? I've been studying during gym. It's taken my mind off of the constant emotional pain that I feel.
Umm...And then I felt rather angsty and full of self-hatred** and then I talked to Emaline and felt better because I have something to challenge my health teacher about tomorrow/today. Also, I don't need health. I have Henrik Ibsen.

*If I was one of those women who look put together (you know what I mean), would I look sheveled? Is there an opposite of disheveled?
**Feeling this with alarming frequency. Need it to go away. RIGHT NOW.

This post comes to you in five parts

Part One

Homecoming! Was great! Yay! People were pretty! We dared to venture into the middle grinding pit and came out sweaty and disgusting and in desperate need of a shower.

I started feeling a little bit nostalgic. This is my last homecoming. Ever.

Part Two

Jo. On Oprah! I watched it. Most of the stuff she said was in other video interviews*, but it was still cool. She's still my role model. Also, she's said before that she's estranged from her father, but in the interview, Oprah asked if she cared to share her reasons, and she said no. It really makes me wonder. Inventing possible histories right now.

Part Three

Quizbowl. I love quizbowl. It's great. But this year, it's kind of different. I feel weird about it.

Part Four

College! Columbus is looking nicer and nicer. I'm thinking about illustration more and more. I have no idea what I would do in illustration, but it looks...cool.

Part Five

I got into a college today**. Massive relief. My interview wasn't so much an interview as a "Let me recalculate your gpa. You're in. You should apply for scholarships. Take a free pen!"

No really, they had purple pens. It was awesome.

*Yes. I've watched them. ALL.

**So, uhh, if I wanted to...I could go to school for architecture. OH EM GEE CHOICES HOW WILL I COPE WITH ALL THE CHOICES PANIC TIME.

Seniortisis

It's like elephantisis. Only not.
I'm a senior. It's class colour day*. I'm just now realizing that I'm a senior, and people know I'm a senior, and this is my last year of school. This is the last time that I'm going to be amazed at the sheer number of juniors around me**. This is the las time for all of this, and I'm overcome with a weird sort of nastolgia. I need to do something to make my mark or be memorable or something, anything to be excited about. I need some more colour, we've had a lot of black and white lately. What should I do***?
*Yes, I will get you a pictureof what I'm wearing at some point in time.
**Juniors wear red. It always looks like there's a million of them.
*** Before you say it, no I will not memorize the City on a Hill speach. Or the Cross of Gold speech, or any other prime examples of American oratorial tradition. It's just not happening.

Pterodactyl

I'm working on something of a college essay right now. It's very deep. And the prompt was very, very vauge*. And I'm working with my mommy to complete the college spreadsheet of DOOM. What else am I doing? I'm being hugely determined to finish the stupid horrible drawing TODAY. Even if I have to stay up all night. I slept 'till crazy late, so it shouldn't be that difficult. Waking up for school tomorrow will be fun.

It's just occurred to me that I might have AP Gov homework. Yech. And Lit...I have to make punnery happen. Health, nothing. Gym, nothing. Clothes, though. IR? Work on memorization, which I know that I'm going to fail at. French, nothing.

So I went to Cedar Point yesterday. I rode all the big, attraction coasters (Maverick, Dragster, Millennium Force, etc.) and got some people who really hate roller coasters to go on the Gemini. I hate the Gemini so much. Too much brain shakey. Umm...Other than that...It was fun! Yay! Fun time with fun people.

*Something along the lines of "Tell us about your qualities that contribute to your skills as they apply to our university"**

**Actually, that's way more complex than the prompt was.***

***Holy cow, my footnotes have footnotes! This is jazzhands exciting!

Books are sexy

I think if I mention sex more on the blog, I'll get more google hits. We could make this into an experiment with an if-then statement and a writeup and everything. Party time!*
I haven't blogged in eons, but I'm not really sure why. I've been a little bit down lately. Like, I still have times when I'm over the top slap happy excited, but there's something of an underlying current of negativity. I don't know why.
I'm reading Native Son and Merchant of Venice for AP Lit. Aaaaand today I went to the library for TAB and got a book about animation** and when I checked it out, they said I had a hold and it was...dun dun dun...THE VIRGIN SUICIDES.
Do we remember Middlesex? Oh yes we do. I'll be reading this tomorrow, and hopefully it will be just as good, if not better. However, by my first assessment, it's astonishingly thin. I hate thin books. Unless they're The Great Gatsby. That was good. Or...the Eames book that's earned a permanent place in the bedside collection***. Or...novellas.
Novellas. Mmm...Novella project. What do y'all think is an appropriate wordcount for The Novella Project? Is 30k enough? That's when I always seem to run out of story.

*I'm actually considering doing this.
**Stop motion animation coming at some time or another...whenever I have time, which is basically when I get into college.
***Book lovers never go to bed alone.

Huh.

I'm working on the architectural drawing right this very minute. Party time!
Hm. I must have something interesting to say...thinking, thinking.
I was thinking about death earlier. For a long time, the idea of dying freaked me out, and then I kind of accepted it, but as I was thinking about it again, it started freaking me out again. Any explanation for my sudden regression? Is this a bad thing?
We read this story in Lit, and I really liked it. It was about this crazy guy and it didn't make any sense, but the more I think about it, the more it's growing on me*.
I'm thinking about my NoQuNaNo/The Novella Project. I hope that I'll be able to write it in November, edit it all spring, and then post it next summer in increments. I think we've all talked about how I feel about serialized novels. It's like TV! Only better! And you can read it whenever you want! Talk about JazzHands!
Peterodactyl.
*Like a fungus. But not really.

Quote of the Month

"We artists are indestructible, even in a prison cell or concentration camp I would be almighty in my own world of art. Even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell."

Pablo Picasso

I'm just...

I feel...I don't know how I feel. I'm trying to work on art, but nothing's working. I'm going no where. I was going to go for a run tonight, since I've been trying to do that before bed, but then my mom tells me about how she's so worried when I go out late at night and could I at least take Richie? Eugh. Nothing's working. It feels like I'm failing at everything, from Art to Gov to Quiz Bowl. I don't want to go to school. I don't want to do anything, because everything is futile now.
I haven't been blogging as much as I was a week ago. I wrote this one post, but it wasn't any good and it was the kind of thing that makes people worried about you.
I filled six pages of my sketchbook today. I got this new, little sketchbook, so the pages fill a lot faster. I've filled 26 pages since the 2nd of this month. 26 pages, 12 days...there's two hundred pages in the sketchbook. How long until it's filled? You do the math. I'm an art kid. It's around 90 days, isn't it?
I'm kind of done with feeling. Just sort of...feeling empty right now. It'll go away, it always does. I think I need more purpose or more motivation or less apathy or something to break me out of robot mode, which I'm clearly in right now. I feel like there's kind of no purpose to school anymore, it just takes up a lot of time that could be better used for other types of pursuits. During AP Gov, I could be sleeping. I like AP Lit, even when I don't understand three quarters of the things people say. During Health, I could be sleeping or eating sugar filled foods or listening to musical soundtracks on Grooveshark or having sex or smoking pot or doing a variety of things that probably don't contribute to my health in a positive way.* During Gym, I could be gaining skills that will be useful in real life and also not involve sweating and being warm, which I have a personal adversity to. Heck, I could be searching for my spousal visa instead of Gym. My spousal visa to a country where they have longer lifespans and less Gym than the United States. During IR...I like IR. During French...well...I could be sitting in the guidance office, waiting to meet with people about onsite admissions, which I did for forty minutes of a fifty-five minute blockthing today.
I haven't told my parents that I'm doing onsite admissions. Any idea where I might be able to find my social security card? They're being kind of useless about the whole college thing, so I figure that telling them wouldn't do me any good. I wouldn't have told them about like...National Portfolio Review Day if I trusted myself to find the college where it's at all on my own.
While I was wasting time in the guidance office, I found their little pile of Ringling advertisements. Ringling is known for animation... I've been thinking about animation... and RIT is going to be at Portfolio Review, so I can check them out like my art teacher has been urging me to.
I kind of hate this shit.
I kind of think that I would be better off born in a different era, when college wasn't considered such a necessity.
I hate those days when it feels like my life belongs to school. Today was one of those days.
*I still don't get why pot is so bad for you.

Okay, yeah, this is a little...

Weird little juxtaposition of events from school today. In first blockthing, Mr.AP Gov is discussing the emergency drills. In case of fire or bomb threat, turn left, go down the stairs, and go to the far corner of the parking lot. In case of tornado, go in the hallway with a book over your neck to protect from flying er...cardboard. In case of Columbine type shooting, sit in the corner with the lights off and put a sign on the door that says we're in the media center, just in case the shooter is looking for Mr. AP Gov. Unless, of course, one of you is the shooter, in which case, we're actually in the media center. Or maybe that's not the plan.
Here's the big deal: Any one of us could be the shooter. You could be the shooter. I could be the shooter. We could all be the shooter, we could all be the victim.
Then in AP Lit, second blockthing, someone brought up the shooting at the end of Empire Falls. Was the shooting kid just a little messed up, but would have been okay if he had friends, or was he truly a psycho? The thing that I so desperately wanted to say, but I just couldn't (because then they question me even more, then I get sent to the school psychologist again*) was this : They're the same person. There's no difference between the kids who shot up Columbine and every other hi!schooler you know. So what, one of them has friends and the other doesn't? One of them plays violent video games and the other doesn't? One of them is athletic and the other isn't?
What's the big difference?
We're all human. We're all messed up. We're all fighting our private battles, and no one has any idea who we are.
*One benefit of budget cuts - they laid off anyone who is there to talk to me about the problems that I'm crying out for help with, when in reality, they're not problems at all.

Awesum Possum

I could have spelled awesome right, but then it wouldn't visually rhyme.
I got home at 1:55, when school is supposed to end. That was awesome.
I have French last, and I have people in that class. 'Tis awesome. Also, FRANCE.
I have IR before French. It was...okay. The student teacher reminds me of...someone else*...an awful lot.
I have Gym before IR. It's gonna suck.
I have Health before gym. I don't think the teacher likes me very much.
I have Lit before Health. PETER IS IN THIS CLASS, thus, it is amazing. And awesome.
I have Gov before Lit. It's early. Awfully early.
I'm going to finish my objectives and then work on (dun dun dun) art.
Awesum.

Contemplate

It's the eve of my last first day of grade school ever.* I should have something to say, something about friends and learning and everything that's changed me over the years, but I don't. All I can think about is how much I don't want to go tomorrow, how much I don't want to write this stupid AP Gov essay, and how much I would rather be at camp right now. I was there earlier today. It seems wrong that I can move from a place like camp, where I feel at home, to a place where I don't want to be at all and is slowly sucking my soul in less than 24 hours.
The soul sucking is speeding up.
I still don't want to go.
I hate this essay. Hopefully the teacher will think that I don't know how to write and have very low expectations for me. Because that's all that's getting written tonight.
I'm so done with school.
I'm going to work on the architectural/Escher drawing every evening this week until I'm finished with the inking. This will take eons.
*Smile and nod. I know that it didn't make sense.

I woke up ten minutes ago

I don't usually remember my dreams, but this summer, there's been at least five, maybe ten dreams that I remember. They've all been kinda weird. In this one, I was marrying this guy (real person) I've known for a month. And I was getting married in my front yard. Most of the people there were vauge unnamed family members, but I saw a friend's mom there. Apparently this guy is actually my friend's older brother, but they just have never mentioned him in the years I've known my friend. And then I went to the bathroom (the downstairs one, if you were curious) and when I was on my way out, my mom walked up to me and told me that even though it was all a surprise, it would all work out well. And the whole time, I'm asking myself how on Earth I'm going to explain this to Joey.

My Book Review

This is for AP Gov. It's still in progress, so any help you can offer is very welcome.

I am the kind of person who likes books, but I just couldn't stand Hardball.

Hardball's first turn-off to me was the cover. If you're a supermodel or Johnny Depp, it's okay to put a picture of you on the cover of your book. If you're a rather unattractive guy with a bad eye and nose combination, then your picture should be reserved for the back flap. The book is something of a manual for the aspiring politician. Matthews begins by telling us how important it is to meet and make friends with every available person, especially the people who we might come into contact with later in our political carrears. He uses Johnson as an example of someone who, unable to persuade masses of voters, sold his policies retail through connections in Washington. He tried to make those connections when he first got to Washington, introducing himself to every other congressional secretary. Later, when he was elected to congress, he did his research, learning everything there was to know about the habits of his fellow Democratic senators. He would persuade them one by one, that they were the most important person to him and that he cared about the things that they wanted. Johnson was an old style politician, never fully understanding television and the huge role that it would soon play in national politics, and choosing to avoid cameras at a time when many others would have welcomed them. Matthews then moves on to discussing the contrasting strategies of Carter and Regan. Carter, running as an outsider to Washington, never associated with influential Democrats and even sold the presidental yacht, which had been useful in persuading congresmen to pass bits of legislation. Regan was much smarter in his strategy, running on the same kind of outsider platform, yet he managed to make friends with influential people, which ended up being rather useful to him. Next, Matthews goes on to explain how all politics is local, a chapter that can be boiled down to one sentence: No mattter how big you get, don't forget the people who got you there. In the third chapter, we learn how to enlist supporters who care an awful lot about your cause. If they feel as though they've helped you, they're invested in you. Once they're invested in you, they'll do anything to help you win. In this chapter, Matthews uses Carter to explain the perfect way to create a network of supporters. Carter would round up Democratic candidates who had lost their races and enlist them and their supporters. The people who had lost would be looking for something new and someone who wasn't like the standard presidental candidate. Before his candidacy, Carter was a nobody, but this network that he had created made him into someone who was the underdog, with lots of underdog supporters. The Kennedys had a similar strategy, in which they asked their costituants to help them gain office, and when they were elected, they had supporters, not just voters on their side. The next chapter focuses on the party equivilant of being loyal to your voters, which is keeping your promises. If you say you'll never raise taxes, you should never raise taxes, no matter who in washington is pressuring you to do so. Your party helped you get where you are, and you have to do the things they expect you to do. This also means that it's mandatory to associate yourself with the right kind of people. If there's a scandal involving someone who you're close to, the scandal can bring you down too. The next chapter has a very simple point, which is to watch your enemies far more closely than you would ever watch your friends. The sixth chapter follows trend and tells us the entire point of the chapter in the title, which is “Don't get mad; don't get even; get ahead” Instead of getting mad and, most likely, doing something stupid, just ignore it and move on. Matthews uses the example of a campaign manager on a vandetta to get rid of a former employer. He was successful, but it was unnessecary and, frankly, quite silly. At the end of the chapter, he uses an example of Newt Gingrich causing the shut down of the government all because he had to sit at the back of Air Force One. Matthews hits the point home that getting even in politics will only succeed in making you look foolish. The next chapter focuses on how to react when you're criticized. Matthews reccomends catching everything thrown at you and either refuting it or admitting to it and doing your very best to spin it. One way to spin things is to hang a lantern on your defects. If you're not from washington and you aren't nearly as influential as other candidates, you say that you don't come from washington and you're just a regular guy, someone they can identify with. The next chapter is obvious in it's point, but so many people miss it. No one, especially not a politician, should ever talk unless they know they're going to say something that makes them look smart. When you're silent, you're always the smartest one in the room. When you dare to open your mouth, it gets to be questionable. The chapter after this focuses on how to persuade others, agreeing with them on point after point, and then bringing them over to your side for a single point, the one thing you disagree upon. The next chapter focuses on the exact same thing as the third chapter ago, in reacting to criticism. Most authors would have combined reiterative chapters, but not our dear friend Matthews. Nope, he gives us the same stupid message over and over. Thanks for that. The next chapter goes on and on about the same concept, spinning news so that it suits your interests. The rest of the stupidest fucking book that I've ever read goes on and on about the. Same. Exact. Thing.

No one cares. Also, the author is ugly.