Take a picture, it'll last longer

That title had nothing to do with the post, but I saw two posts in my blog feed with the same title, so I figured that I should jump on the imaginary bandwagon.
Really, the title should be "If I don't write this, it will irritate me to no end."
We had an epic quiz bowl tournament today in Indiana. Indiana is a little bit like Ohio in that it's mostly a corn field. We came in second in our division of varsity, which sounds a lot better than it is. Anyways, on the way home, we were playing Mafia, which I trust that you've played in some form before. If you don't understand it and have a burning desire to find out how to play, ask in the comments. While we were playing, I accused someone of being in the Mafia, as did a few other people. They had a chance to make a case for themselves, in which they said they didn't do it, then made the sign of the cross and said that they didn't do it and wouldn't lie about it. We all voted to convict them anyways, and shortly thereafter, they said (to no one in particular, or maybe towards me) that people didn't take religion seriously anymore. I was kind of dumbfounded.
If you take your religion so seriously, why are you bringing it into a game? It is just a game. It does not matter. If your religion is something that you do take seriously and it does matter to you, this is not the time to talk bring it into question. I said that I thought they were full of crap for pulling the "I'm a religious person" argument. There are a lot of religious people who have done bad things, significantly worse than trying to win a game. Saying that you follow a religion does not make you a good person, that's something you have to prove through your actions, not your label. No, it has nothing to do with what religion you choose to follow. There are people who have done bad things who have followed my religion too, and I'm not a good person simply because of my religion.
I'm done now.

Yeah, Well

Was that not the least committal title ever? Are you loving the negative situation in that last sentence?
Yes, I got a terrible grade on my physics final. Yes, I'm getting a B in that class. Yes, I have absolutely no idea what I'm getting in APUSH. No, that's wrong. I'm getting something between a C- and an A+. It's not my fault that the grades aren't entered. Yes, I am feeling a little bit angry and stressed and tired and weird about the whole school situation. Yes, I am looking forward to French 4 next semester. Yes, I'm eating cranberry sauce with yogurt. Yes, I've recently finished reading a 255k word Harry Potter fanfic.
We're going to pretend that never happened.
The moral of the story: I do not want to think about school anymore. I need to write something realquicklike.
While we're on the topic of writing, I'm starting to think that short stories have to be conqured in a completly different way than novels do. With novels, characters are important, and they have to be right, but with short stories, it's this weird snapshot, and you just need a few moments. Although maybe what I'm talking about is flash fiction more than short stories. I have a growing affinity for flash fiction, but I'm not sure how I feel about legit short stories. Short stories, I think, require some degree of character development, but I don't know if I've ever pulled that off successfully. Either they're novel characters, or they're these faceless beings that are only there to get my point across.
I'm pretty sure that these questions of character are just the aftermath of my NaNoWriMo. I wouldn't consider myself to be at peace with it yet, if you were curious.
Sigh.

Feel the love

I'm finishing up my cheat sheet for French and reading Harry Potter fanfiction. My friend and I have agreed that it's strange how we know very little French, but we're both getting As in the class. Reasonably high As too. Sigh.
What I was really blogging to tell you about is this. Quote Book.
I like it more than I should.
I have a crazy little idea about starting something similar.

Crap.

61% of people who graduate from SCAD with master's degees in historic preservation are working in the field after six months.
61%.
Master's Degrees.

This is more than mildly worrying.

You

You know who I am, because everything is out there, out there for you to read. Every little thing, everything I worry about, everything I want. Everything I dream of, you know it all.
On the flip side, I know nothing about you. That worries me, a little bit.

I don't want any of this. I don't want all this crap, I don't want my life to be complicated by everything that they're trying to bring in. I just want it, and I'm scared I'm scared that I will never get closer to it, and just be stuck here when everyone else keeps on going and going.

You and I need to talk for hours and hours. We used to do that, we used to be able to talk about everything. When was the last time that happened? It was a long time ago, it was probably in middle school. I don't want to lose you, but I feel like it's already been done.

You already think I'm crazy

I remember reading this article a while (ehh, maybe six months?) ago about this guy who published his novel while he was in hi!school and then went on to go to some Ivy League university. The novel had done pretty well, but it wasn't the reason he got into the school or anything. Does anyone remember this article? Does anyone remember his name, or the name of his book? I feel like it was an interview with the college newspaper.
This is like the time when my APUSH teacher mentioned Frederik Law Olmsted, and I remembered him from an article in National Geographic a couple years ago. He designed parks. It's the inverse situation of the time when someone mentioned that there was a guy who died from radiation a year before. His name was Alexander Litvinenko, if you were curious.
Isn't it great when you remember useless little things, but you know a total of three phone numbers?

No really, I'm a positive person.

I read Wintergirls last night, making it the first book I've finished in 2010. I paused my reading three times, once to put on my pyjamas and twice to consider studying for French. It was really good, but reading it right before you go to sleep is not a very good idea. I don't usually remember my dreams, but last night, they freaked me out a lot more than dreams ever should.

Quote of the Month

"Wicked people never have time for reading," Dewey said. "It's one of the reasons for their wickedness."
Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler

People

French teacher, I'm sorry that I wasn't paying attention in class today. I was busy reading Push. I'm 100 pages in, and I really love it. The spelling is a little irritating, but other than that, it's good. I can't wait until class tomorrow so I can read the rest of it.
It makes me think about people. Well, that and Omegle. They both make me think about people in a weird way. Omegle makes me think of how people relate to each other. When you chat on Omegle, a lot of people ask a/s/l. I never tell them. Knowing that I'm a sixteen year old girl from Michigan really doesn't tell you anything about me. If I told you that I've know more about Harry Potter than I should and I like Quiz Bowl and I like French but I can never remember new tenses and I spend too much time looking at interior design blogs and I want to live in a big city and I was kind of angry at springs and the whole entire world during physics today, I feel like you would have a little snapshot into my mind. I like the snapshots. I feel like they give you so much more, and it tells you something, the things that people choose to include and choose to leave out.
Push? Push makes me think of the huge differences between my life and other people's lives and how our background influences every single part of how we interact with others.

Burn

"I'm going home soon. I have a bunch of homework to do, and then I'm going to whine a lot."
"So you're going to blog again?"

Damn, am I really that whiny?

Engaged

I am not paying attention. I don't care about what I'm hearing, I just want to get out of here. When I get out of here, I'm not going to be doing anything. I'm going to curl up in a ball and just sit there, because right now, everything feels like it's too much effort. Today is going to be this week's designated tragic day, in which I avoid doing things and I avoid people. We've had a sharp uptick in these types of days ever since NaNoWriMo. Before that, was generally somewhere in the middle, but now, I'm either pretty good or rather pissed and just trying to get through and get over with the day. It almost feels like, on these days, that I don't need other people anymore, because other people just mess things up.
Good God, that sounded tragicaly emo. I'm sorry.

Before we start, I would like to show you We All Have Secrets. It's like PostSecret (which I adore), only a little different.
Today someone said that the only books I like are unoriginal. This is absolutely true. However, they had this negative connotation of unoriginal, and that doesn't make any sense to me. Everything about me is completely unoriginal, yet I still find a way to like myself. The clothes I wear are unoriginal and mass produced, the hairstyle shared with thousands, the books I like, depending on which ones, are shared with millions. I have nothing original around me, and I'm fine with that. I think there's this overwhelming desire to consider anything original to be good, that we lose the beauty of having something completely unoriginal done very well. I can go to school and read the same book that every other kid in America has to read, and I can still love it. I can love watching the same movie over and over the same way I can love talking to the same people over and over. If the book is good, and the movie is good, and the people are interesting, then what is there stopping me from enjoying it? We've had enough people on the planet who have had some inclination to create things that there's almost nothing original out there. Everything has been tried before, but it's a little bit different every time, and that's why it's interesting.
On the other hand, origionality does have it's values. I could write a completly origional novel about the Glaggeden, a group of creatures that live on a star. They live on a star because no other authors think of writing about creatures that live on a ball of firey gas. These creatures can not talk, because all those other novels have talking creatures. They can not have internal conflict, because all those other novels have internal conflict. They can not have a war with some sort of other creatures, because all those other novels are about war. In fact, because literature has an overabundance of characters that are creatures, I am considering of making them into plants instead. We have an award winning novel coming up as soon as I can figure out what happens in it.

Start off awkward and disjointed.

Hello lovelies. I hope you had a happy new year! Mine has been pretty amazing thus far, if you were curious.

Now that we're over a day into the new decade, I feel like I can gain perspective and make some conclusions about the last one. Everyone else was doing this a week ago, but I wanted to wait until it was truly over. That's how I roll. So, without further ado, this is the list of important things that I did in the last ten years.

• I learned to read.
• I read a bunch of books, then I lost my attention span for books. That made me really sad.
  
• I went from being a dorky six-year-old to being a dorky sixteen-year-old.
• I went to school. A lot.
• I understood things a lot more. For instance, when 9/11 happened, I had no clue what it implied for the world. If it happened today, I think I would have something of a clue.

Do you feel as though your life has been changed by reading that list? You should.
I saw this quote written on the wall of a school we were going to for quizbowl, and I liked it a lot, so I decided stick it on the blog.

“If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.” - Henry Rollins

According to my spreadsheet, I am 22 words ahead of where I need to be for WriYe. In reality, I'm 200ish words ahead of where I need to be, because they are not accounting for NaNoWriMo.
Also, I have recently come to the realization that I could go to prom this year, if I wanted. I could go to prom with a guy, if I wanted.
This is an insane concept.