Spaz Boy Melts in Acid Rain

I decided to shortlist my favorite countries, which was less than easy. In fact, I found it to be difficult. (Very difficult. I actually had to change the number from ten to twenty). Nothing against countries that didn't make the list, I love them all.

1. Turkey
2. India
3. Russia
4. China
5. Croatia
6. Hungary
7. Brazil
8. Czech Republic
9. Belgium
10. Sweden
11. Burkina Faso
12. Iran
13. Cambodia
14. Ireland
15. Egypt
16. South Africa
17. Argentina
18. Italy
19. Mongolia
20. New Zealand

For some reason lj and my computer both claim "Zealand" and "Burkina Faso" are not words:)

So there.

:D

I want need these things.

-A job.
-A passport.
-A laptop. With video software.
- $$
-The Goddess in Every Girl: Develop Your Teen Feminine Power (novel).
-Subscriptions to National Geographic, British Vogue, and Bitch magazine.
-Basketball shorts
-An iTunes Card.
-Rollerblades.

A new website was created a few months ago called ThisIsNotTom.com, and it's pretty much amazing.
THE SITE IS A SERIES OF ONLINE RIDDLES; AT FIRST THEY SEEMINGLY LEAD YOU NOWHERE, BUT OVER TIME, THEY EVOLVE INTO A STORY-- A STORY OF CONFUSION AND INTRIGUE, WRITTEN BY AN AUTHOR [JOHN GREEN] WHO IS, HIMSELF, BEING LED UNAWARE THROUGH THIS LABYRINTH OF CLUES.
It's all quite mysterious, tricky, exciting, and incredibly entertaining. If you're interested, there is a youtube account (and also a twitter) that follow the riddles, and give more clues, helping to unravel the puzzle. I must say, I'm both addicted and frustrated with this site-- the riddles are immensely difficult, but it's very satisfying when you finally solve them.

TIPS FOR SOLVING THE RIDDLES:
I. Look at the images for clues.
II. Check for unusual spelling and capitalization.
III. Google-- often.
IV. Look at the URLs and View Source for more clues.

LINKS: thisisnottom.com, thisisnotforums.com, twitter.com/thisisnottom, youtube.com/user/isthistom

I've had to type this on here because I don't have Microsoft Word, and this is the next best thing. It's basically an outline I've created for the reporters and section editors to follow during the next school year; hopefully, it will help to create more structure to the class and emphasize quality over quantity.

A Reporter's Daily Schedule

WEEK I

Monday: Brainstorm. Write article concept on sheet before leaving class.
Tuesday: Research and Interview. Prepare skeleton draft.
Wednesday: Skeleton draft due upon entrance to class. Work on first draft.
Thursday: First draft due upon entrance to class. Revisions.
Friday: Perfecting the article.

WEEK II

Monday: Paper layout design. Bring in magazines for inspiration.
Tuesday: Formulate layout onto computer.
Wednesday: Photographs, icons, and images-- working in photoshop.
Thursday: Placing everything on the page, perfecting the page.
Friday: Layout and article checks; grades.

Article Worth: 30 points
Layout Worth: 30 points

A Section Editor's Daily Schedule

Week I

Monday: Lead group in brainstorm. Ensure every member has a timeless (Unless otherwise specified) article topic before departure. Ensure the logistics for each article are planned out in advance (i.e. How will you collect your information? Will you need to go anywhere? Can you compile the article information by Wednesday? Will you need to use a camera? When?). Have group sign up for topics, and sign up for a camera time slot.

Tuesday: Make sure the group stays on task today. Suggest and allow the utilization of telephones and computers to set up interviews and gather information and quotes. Be sure no reporter is attempting to plagiarize an article or any information. When a reporter has down time, suggest (and enforce) that they write questions for an interview. Look over their questions, and be sure to guide them in the right direction if they are missing a key point to the article. Have reporters begin skeleton drafts. Remember you, too, must write an article, so if any one reporter is consuming most of your time, request an editor-in-chief's help.

Wednesday: Check off student's rubrics as they enter the classroom if they have completed their skeleton draft. They should have collected quotes and all information by now, so they have the hour to begin their first draft. Remind them to stay on task, help them individually when needed, but also work on your own article today. Also, ensure the reporters each have a form of alternative coverage planned.

Thursday: Collect reporter's first drafts upon their entrance to class. Loosely edit them during this hour, giving them back to the reporter to make the true revisions (i.e. The article's intro is awkward, so you tell them to reword it. If they require more direction, call for an editor-in-chief). Correct all obvious grammatical and spelling errors-- give the reporter a warning if there are many; they may lose points.

Friday: Today your first draft is due to the editors-in-chief. Keep in mind you only have two drafts, so try to make this one as perfect as possible. Ensure your reporters are perfecting their final drafts as well. Evaluate all articles and reporters in your section by the end of the hour. Sign their rubrics after giving a final score and turn them in to the basket. Then turn your first draft and own rubric in to the editors-in-chief as well.

Week II

Monday: Assign partners within your section to be working on layouts together. Hand out paper layout spreads. Ensure group members are staying on task. Work with your own partner on this as well. Today you receive you first draft back from the editors-in-chief. You will need to revise it by tomorrow, when it is due.

Tuesday: All partner groups must now compute their drawn layout designs onto the computer. This includes adding all text boxes, photo boxes, and shading. Ensure columns vary with each article for visual interest. Have reporters work on manipulating fonts for effect as well. Turn in your article's final draft today.

Wednesday: Ensure all reporters have a photo, graphic, or uploaded drawing/cartoon to work on. Help them with the use of photoshop, and complete your own images as well. Ask the Photo Editor for any guidance.

Thursday: Ensure reporters place all typed and completed articles and images on their pages. Go over their guidelines with them to ensure they will receive all of the points they deserve. Turn in official layouts stapled to rubrics.

Friday: Receive layouts and articles back and go over them with group. Explain why certain grades were received, and fix any remaining discrepancies.

Okay, so school began three weeks ago, and it's been amazing. Sort of. See, I love my classes (Especially yoga and French), but I've been getting 2-4 hours of homework every single night, and 4-8 hours of homework on the weekends. It's ridiculous! I barely have time for myself anymore, especially with all of my club activities (Okay, I take that back. I have lots of time for myself. I simply choose to put it all into school-related issues. And the Olympics. I've been watching a lot of Michael Phelps and Nastia Luken when I should be writing literary analysis essays at 2 AM.).

Here is my schedule this year:

0- Algebra II: This class starts at 6:30 AM. No joke. On the bright side, at least it's not honors chemistry. On the downside, it's non-honors math, which makes it incredibly boring at times. I kind of regret not signing up for honors, but I know that I'm better off in a normal math class, as I prefer to be taught, not simply handed a text book and told to figure it all out on my own. I can't really do that with math.
1- German II: Certain parts of me love this class, and other parts of me loathe it. How can one 55 minute segment of my day feel as though it's dragging on for four hours of it?
2- French III: I love this class. I love Madame Marifino. The only bad thing is that it's right after German. And that Olive's not in it this year. Otherwise, it's the best.
3- AP English IV: Yuck. This class would be amazing, if not for the fact that it often monopolizes 2/4 hours of homework on most nights, this weekend especially. I must read Brave New World, read four poems, answer 10 essay questions, and write a TPCAST. None of which I have started yet. You see my problem.
4- AP Government: Fairly enjoyable. I love discussing politics and history, but the class is mostly textbook based, and I prefer lectures.
5- Yoga: This class is a godsend. It breaks up my day nicely, as I don't have a lunch, and allows me to relax. The only problem is, we have to run around the track at the start of every class, which pretty much sucks, as it's still in the 100 degree range.
6- Physics: Surprisingly, I like physics. It's not honors, but it's still challenging, so that's okay. We use the socratic method in class, so we have to do quite a bit of thinking. It's not lecture based, but I like it anyway.
7- Journalism: A hated end to my day. I am so incredibly bored in this class. I often feel as though my brain will melt out of my ears from sheer lack of mental stimulation. Yes. It's that bad. I suppose it wouldn't be so awfully horrible if I were an editor, but I was not appointed to that lusted-after position, and I must therefore sit around with a bunch of freshmen and learn about the inverted pyramid, which I've known about for years. Ugh.

So, that's basically my day. On average, it goes by pretty quickly, although I sometimes don't get home till 5 because of clubs, which is okay, but it usually leaves me pretty tired.

Mainly, they're frothy teen romance novels; but then, what else is summer for?


-Things You Either Hate Or Love
By: Brigid Lawry
-The Rules of Survival
By: Nancy Werlin
-Nothing But Truth (and a Few White Lies)
By: Justina Chen Headley
-Jane Eyre
By: Charlotte Brontë
-Bass Ackwards, Belly Up
By: Elizabeth Craft
-The Scarlet Letter
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne
-Girls Dinner Club
By: Jessie Elliot
-Defining Dulcie
By: Paul Acampora

Yes, that's right. My imaginary ulcer is acting up again.
I feel... horrible inside.
Maybe it's because I'm always beating myself up about my appearance and my utter lack of talent in the world of all things academic (Actually, in the world of all things, period), or maybe... maybe it's just the general negative lifestyle I've created for myself-- constantly meditating on my imminent death and obvious failures.
Having major social anxiety doesn't help, either.
On the bright side, my birthday's coming up. On the downside, the only person to have remembered it so far is my dentist.
Ah, well.
C'est la vie.

As it is summer and I therefore have nothing better to do, I've created a list of all of the "stuff" I want. I know that there are places like ebay and amazon.com for this sort of thing, but seeing as I'm too lazy to create an account (And I don't have a credit card...) livejournal will have to do.




--The Goddess in Every Girl: Develop Your Teen Feminine Power
By M. J. Abadie

--A Bicycle

--A Passport

--The Unbearable Lightness of Being
By Milan Kundera

--A subscription to Bitch magazine

--Basketball shorts

--The Marie Antoinette soundtrack

--Love and Other Four-Letter Words
By Carolyn Mackler

--Through the Labyrinth: The Truth About How Women Become Leaders
By Alice H. Eagly

--The Tombs of Atuan
By Ursula K. Le Guin

--An itunes card

--Rollerblades

--$$

It seems that I have failed (miserably) at every single one of my New Year's Resolutions. I've eaten a hole into my pantry; I've been a bitch to everyone I know, especially the few friends I have/had; I'm getting a D in Hnrs. English; I'm broke; I have $40 in library fines, not to mention the other fines I've had between now and January (They should seriously just take my card away-- bar me from my public library privileges for all eternity); I haven't traveled anywhere new, or at all, for that matter; the closest thing to spirituality I've found is clinical depression; I've been completely selfish and haven't volunteered for anything, and the last word I'd use to describe how I feel about myself right now is love.

Pathetic, I know.

Lately I've been contemplating my death and the deaths of others. When I was a Christian, it was all pretty clear-cut; when you die, you either go to heaven or hell. Now, that idea seems very primitive to me; it's like an ancient peoples way of explaining what happens to those who are good and go unrecognized, and to those who are bad and go unpunished. It attempts to explain what can not be explained in a very simple, comforting way. Although it's impossible, I really wish that I could believe an explanation like that right now, because even an eternity in hell is more appealing to me than an eternity of... nothing. Blackness. Nonexistence. Whatever.
Whenever I think about being dead, I feel like crying. I mean, what's the point? You live a life (whether it be meaningful or not), and then it is cut away from you and you have nothing left. Not a sense of self, or any kind of identity; you have no thoughts because you are no more. You don't matter, and the reality that we live through right now also does not matter, as everything and everyone within it will eventually wither and die; it won't make a difference whether or not I ever passed Chemistry, or if the human race put an end to global warming, or even that a place called Earth once existed.
We're all going back to where we came from, and I don't quite want to come to terms with that. I think that it's a pretty cruel joke to be allowed a glimpse at something so beautiful and painful and amazing, and for it to disappear just as quickly, gone without a trace. It's unsettling to be sitting in class at school, or to be watching TV, and realize that this is how you've spent your life, and in an instant it won't be yours or anyone else's. It'll be a different reality (or a lack thereof)... Not one where you see dark, or speed around the galaxy, but one where you personally and everyone else do nothing, think nothing, and are nothing.
One may think that when they die, others continue living-- that's what it seems like to those of us alive today. I disagree with this, though, because when you stop existing, your perception of others ends as well, and they therefore exist no more than you do. (So really, I don't exist, and this computer doesn't exist, and you don't exist because we eventually won't anyway).
A friend of mine told me that she considered death to be a peaceful thing: letting go of all of your earthly burdens and being enveloped in the welcoming darkness, following the life cycle like every other human to have ever walked the earth. On the other hand, I see death as chaos: A disillusion of order, a loss of self and others, everything that ever made you you erased.
You may consider my new(ish) theory bullshit, but so far, no greater explanation has made itself apparent to me; this is what makes sense to me right now, no matter how hard it is to deal with.

Because it is (clearly) inevitable that I will publish a book someday, I've accumulated a number of possible titles for it:

-An Economy of Words
This is supposed to be ironic; the entire book should be filled with long, fluffy sentences that would put Dickens to shame.

-A Conflict of Interests
This would probably be about some sort of romance that could never go right due to (You guessed it) a conflict of interests.

-Among the Dead and Dying
I just think this one sounds cool.

A book with any one of these titles would [obviously] be a work of sheer genius; therefore, if I choose one, I can not go wrong.

Amazing:
http://thenonist.com/index.php/thenonist/permalink/hot_library_smut/

Resolutions for next year:

1. Don't eat junk.
2. Attempt to be a nicer person.
3. Get straight A's.
4. Save money to study abroad.
5. Avoid any new library fines:D
6. Travel somewhere new.
7. Find some form of spirituality.
8. Try helping people in need.
9. Learn to love myself.

Christmas spirit is something that my family must be seriously lacking...

We started the blessed day off by going to my dad's house at around 10 AM; upon arrival, we sprung from the car, ran into the house (Bundles of presents in tote), and all exclaimed--not in unison, of course (although that would have been funny)-- "Merry Christmas, Dad!"
Sadly, the well wishes were not returned. My poor dear father, depressed that we had broken Christmas tradition [i.e. waking up at 4 AM and reading the entire book of Mathew before opening gifts....], was scowling as he made pancakes. In an attempt to cheer the unfortunate old man up, we smiled and laughed, but to no avail; my father, however, managed to successfully damper everyone else's moods. About an hour later, we opened gifts (I got gift cards to B&N, Borders, Victoria's Secret, Nordstrom, and Forever 21:D), which seemed to make everyone happy, although no sooner had we all cleaned up the wrapping paper were we arguing--about religion (What else?).
Later, at Christmas dinner, we took out The Question Book, my family's new favorite "discussion" starter. Many timeless queries were asked, including: "Is capital punishment right?," and "Is there a basic moral code that all humans value?" Responses included the ever popular "Yes... Um... Er, no... Maybe?" and also "According to the scriptures..(Fill in the blank here).."
One can only imagine the spiritual tirades questions like that allow. After a full hour of political and philosophical combat at the dinner table, we watched the Bourne Identity [I must admit, it wasn't as absolutely horrible as I predicted].
As far as Christmases go, this one was thoroughly uneventful... But then, that's how they all are.
[The Exception: My fifth Christmas, when I got a nanopet and it starved to death. That was just plain terrible.]

My Uncle Zero just died last night. He had a heart attack at a taco bell. His friend said that he was fine one second, and the next he was complaining about arm pain, and just like that, he was on the floor, dead. That fast.
I never really thought people could die that suddenly. I mean, I knew they could, but I never really considered it actually happening. All of the other relatives I've had die have died of sickness-- like really long fights with cancer, so you were prepared for it.
My dad got the phone call at 11:50 last night, and I was the only one up. The look on his face, and the sound in his voice when he whispered "My brother's dead?" will stay with me forever. I didn't really know my uncle that well, but its scares me so much to imagine me in my dad's place someday, and one of my sisters in my uncle's. I don't know how I would handle it. I don't know if I could.
I spent the day watching Nickelodeon and playing dominoes with Nicole instead of reading A Tale of Two Cities like I was supposed to. I guess I wasn't willing to be alone with my own thoughts, for fear of what I might think. An odd thing keeps popping up back into my head, again and again. After my dad got the call, the first thing he said was "It was his birthday last week, and I forgot to send him a card. That was the first time I never sent him a card." It's weird that he would be thinking of such a trivial thing as a card, but at the same time, I know that I would have been thinking that same thing, too.

My first week of school is over-- with little incident, I'm happy to report... Although I am behind in Chemistry, thanks to Mr. Beaty's wonderful lack of teaching skills.
Here's my official schedule:
· French 1-----Madame Fry is so cool. Her class is 3 chapters behind in their French book, but I think I'll learn more with her.
· Beginning Theater-----Ms. Beaterman seems like a wonderful teacher. She's funny and energetic, and has already taught the class improv and sword combat.
· World Studies-----No substitute for my Humanities class, and it's not even AP Euro, but the way-too-easy-to-actually-be-worth-any-credit vibe makes it kinda fun.
· H. English 1-----I was so mad when they wouldn't let me take English 2 because of their stupid little rule book, but when I got to the class it turned out to be awesome. Dr. Kemmer is great, and his teaching skills are phenomenal.
· LUNCH-----I've been hanging out with these girls named Cassie, Meghan, and Shaun. Cassie's in my 4th period, so she introduced us all. They all seem nice, although the conversation is very awkward and strained. Lunch is 55 minutes long, so it basically feels like an eternity. They have food that seems like it came straight from the mall (Like Pizza Hut); music is always playing, and today a DJ from 98.3 came for the whole lunch period. It was pretty cool.
· H. Chemistry-----Apparently a sophomore class, and for good reason. They're way ahead of Mr. Beaty's class- by A LOT. So, lucky me, I've got a load of makeup work to do... But the teacher, Mr. Jagiello, is awesome.
· H. Geometry-----By far, the most boring class of the day. Compared to Mr. Warner's class, I always feel like falling asleep. Bleh.

............

Was not only finding out that my mother was engaged to her boyfriend of two months over the phone, but also that they're getting married in TWO WEEKS in UTAH, of all places. The worst part is, she didn't even tell me they were getting married so soon- my sister did. Apparently, she wanted to wait till I got home so she could "tell me in person", or whatever. That would have been one whole week before their oh-so-charming wedding in his Mormon family's backyard. Whoohoo! Won't that be fun!

I can't believe I'm getting published! My poem so far is a semi-finalist in a competition and it's going to get it's own page in a book:D


Here's how it goes:


If only I had been there
But what could I have done?
I could no more have stopped them
than the rising of the sun


Please just one less victim
No more awful cries of war
Can any even tell me
just what we are fighting for?


I beg of you to listen
to my final hopes and cries
To stop your useless hatred
and your upbringing of lies


So that the fate of another changes
And one less innocent dies.