Search the Community

'Or Eat Pies' Old School Log Lacking Pies I am in need of a banner, so if you are good at such things and interested in making one please let me know! ~~~Table of Contents~~~ 01. Introduction 02. What's Current 03. My Goals 04. Questing! 05. Combat and Slayer 01. Introduction Welcome one and all, fellow 'Scapers and Slammers, to my humble log no longer involving too many Pies. This is the boring part where I talk a little about myself and my Runescape self for all those interested. For all those not interested, I would like to direct you to the "What's Current" section of my log. A lot of you reading this log probably joined this forum after I went inactive (which happened a lot in my career, but for our purposes here I mean the final time when I went inactive for four years) and have absolutely no idea who I am. Also, a lot of you probably did use the forum but still didn't know who I was because I mostly never left this sub-forum. :P But hopefully as I come back to the world of Runescape and Sal's Forum's I will see at least a few familiar faces. If you don't care to find out who's being the computer screen on this end then don't read this section. My real name is Nathan, or Nate, I'm okay with indulging that bit of information because my username on Sal's was actually 'Nate' for a very long time. I attend school full time currently at a university but I live at home with my parents and commute to class/take online classes. So I get to miss out on all the fun parts of college, but we do those anyway our own way. I also work two jobs while going to school, 40 hours a week combined, and still somehow barely have money. Aside from all that fun stuff, and this game, I also enjoy a lot of outdoor activities; longboarding, skateboarding, I'm going to start freeboarding, disc golfing, golfing, camping, hiking, road trips, and I plan on running a Tough Mudder this summer. I also love reading, but not when it's for class. I am set to leave halfway through this summer for Air Force Basic Military Training, I'm going in for Security Forces, and I really hope to see the world. My Runescape career started when I was pretty young. I began playing in 2005, I believe, on an account no longer ranked on the hi-scores (in fact, none of my old accounts are now, can anybody tell me why this is?) named either Armyboy_1818 or Armydude_1818. I played on this account for a while, noobing out and getting the feel for the game. I made several accounts while playing on this one that I never really got into. But probably around 2007 and 2008 I started really getting into pures. I made so many I can't even remember the names of all of them, sometimes they'll randomly come to me. But I never really got successful at PKing. I started a few Level 3 Skillers as well because I had so much respect for them when I saw them. You might be wondering why Pies are all over the beginning and title of my log, besides the fact that my Username is 'Pies.' Well back around this time I was in Sal's clan chat, where I used to be a regular, and Fractangle, a few others and I were talking about the Evil Chicken. I'm not sure exactly how it happened now, but I'm pretty sure Fractangle and joked about the Chicken saying "Begone, Or Eat Pies!" and I thought it was a great idea, logged out, and BAM, 'Or_Eat_Pies' was born. That is the name that any of my old friends will remember me as. From that day forward I always got a laugh from Random Events, and Fractangle and I remained friends for a few years after until I went inactive. A few weeks ago I heard that Old School was coming back from a friend at work. I went home, bought the $2 membership, and then I was sucked right back into the crack-like addiction that is Runescape. Unfortunately I was not able to figure out the details for that account or any other account, so I made a new account, 'Toufer,' pronounced (Two-fur). And I'm ready to get back into the game, and hopefully reconnect with some old friends! Enjoy my log! Please leave a comment Any and all criticism is encouraged Any and all advise is welcomed Any and all support is awesome! 02. What's Current In this section I will post my current bank, my current quest points, my current skill levels, and maybe some more if I think of anything else... Current Quest Points: 8 (Expect this to be rising, as I am working on quests currently Current Cash Pile: 32K Current Total Level: 527 This bank is out-dated, I will get a current one up soon. My Old School Tracker: http://www.07tracker.com/track/toufer 03. My Goals My Long-term Goals are... Attack [ 40 / 70 ] Strength [ 32 / 70 ] Defence [ 32 / 70 Hitpoints [ 34 / XX ] - No real goal for Hitpoints; whatever happens, happens. Ranged [ 21 / 70 ] Mage [ 1 / 60 ] Prayer [ 16 / 56 ] Fishing [ 61 / 80 ] Cooking [ 57 / 80 ] Woodcutting [ 57 / 80 ] Firemaking [50 / 80 ] Fletching [ 19 / 80 ] Mining [ 19 / 60 ] Smithing [ 30 / 60 ] Crafting [ 1 / 60 ] Farming [ 1 / 50 ] Herblore [ 1 /50 ] Thieving [ 27 / 60 ] Agility [ 1 / 60 ] Slayer [ 22 / XX ] - Slayer will be my main means of raising Combat, no exact long-term goal for Slayer at the moment. Hunter [ 1 / 80 ] Construction [ 1 / 50 ] Completing all of these in 4 months while be near impossible. Maybe for some players it would be easy, but my Runescape background is mainly pures and Level 3 Skillers who are pretty limited in their training areas. It will be nice to use more of Runescape's features though. My current, short-term goals are... Attack [ 40 / 60 ] Strength [ 32 / 60 ] Defence [ 32 / 60 ] Hitpoints [ 34 / XX ] Ranged [ 21 / 70 ] Magic [ 1 / 60 ] Prayer [ 16 / 43 ] Fishing [ 61 / 70] Cooking [ 57 / 70 ] Woodcutting [ 57 / 70 ] Mining [ 18 / 40 ] Smithing [ 30 / 40 ] Slayer [ 22 / 50 ] Big Goal! Other Goals... Total Level [ 445 / 1000 ] Quest Points [ 8 / 100 ] Cash Pile [ 135K / 5M ] These will definitely be doable in that 4 months. I will achieve all of these short-term and miscellaneous goals. My Old School Tracker: http://www.07tracker.com/track/toufer 04. Questing This is the section where I will post all of questing information, achievements, maybe tips if I come up with them, and the what not. Also, I might ask some questing questions here, so if you can answer them for me then please do! Quest points goal [ 9 / 100 ] Got an Ice Warriors Slayer Assignment recently so I completed the Quest Knight's Sword! Got me 30 Smithing, I've been the lazy the past few days so no pictures. Just completed Tree Gnome Village, with the generous help of a friend who sat and blocked the Level 112 for me while I shot 500 Arrows at him to kill him. I have never before done this quest in my career, could anyone advise me on the spirit trees? Are they even useful? I couldn't find a guide about them. I completed Witch's House for a little Hitpoints experience to offset the experience from Waterfall, which I forgot to take a picture of. I also completed Waterfall and Cook's Assistant when I first started the account. 05. Combat and Slayer I was originally going to make my account a pure, but that's always limited my playing of the game. So I decided to hell with that, I'm going to play parts of the game I never got to before now. Attack [ 40 / 60 / 70 ] I competed Tree Gnome Village for 36 Attack recently, shooting for 40 first, then some Strength, and then I'll shoot for 60 and do some more Questing! Strength [ 32 / 60 / 70 ] I plan on keeping Strength even, if not a bit higher, than my Attack. In the past I've usually kept Strength a lot higher, but I'm going to keep a balanced player. Defence [ 32 / 60 / 70 ] I plan on keeping Defenced balanced as well, and I really need to start training it soon! Hitpoints [ 34 / XX / XX ] Hitpoints I won't worry about, it will be what it is. Ranged [ 21 / 70 ] I believe I almost reached 70 Ranged on 'Or_Eat_Pies,' but I didn't quite make it. I would love to get this achievement for once. Magic [ 1 / 60 / 80 ] I definitely need to get 45 soon for teleports. It's either a pain or a money-hole to train though. Prayer [ 16 / 44 / 70 ] I will just bury all the bones I get from combat as well as those I see laying around. I don't plan to buy any unless I don't get to my goal as planned. Hitpoints [ 34 / XX / XX ] I have no plans to specifically go for Hitpoints through combat, or not to. What happens, happens. Slayer [ 22 / 50 / XX ] I plan on raising Slayer as high as I can as early as I can, it's always a skill I've loved, even if I haven't done much of it. NOTE: There will be more coming soon, this much took me long enough. :P Oh and we happened to be friends add me in-game and send me a message! Username is 'Toufer' Shout out too... Finisterra Goggie Fractangle Wiltingplant Blake010101 Lord Earth Breaker Plasmid Rocky Old school forum supporter / friend Icyy Lord Earth Shout out to the guys that my Sal's profile says I'm friends with and I faintly remember... :P Magic of Woodcut MrBombi Xavi R.I.P... Svanbo, 4 years inactive Uther... 4 years inactive Peanuts/Can 0f Spamm... 4 years inactive That One Guy... 4 years inactive (I don't actually remember you at all, but my profile says your a friend lol) N0va... 4 years inactive ( Old school forum supporter / friend) Some of my old Runescape friends that I actually remember. Hopefully I'll remember more soon, and hopefully we get back in touch! P.S. you probably only know me as Nate, Or_Eat_Pie, or Blunt Skill Past Runescape names... Toufer (current) 3P Raven DMTedious Or_Eat_Pies Blunt Skill Skillerish Sha_B_A_M_Pk Banish3d (One or more of these lol) B4nished (One or more of these lol) Ban1shed (One or more of these lol) Armyboy_1818 (maybe Armydude_1818) Old Or_Eat_Pies pictures for nostalgic purposes.

Hi guys, I am attempting to start up my YouTube channel with a quest guide series, Please give me your feedback on the videos! Thanks! ~~~~~ Playlist ~~~~~ Cook's Assistant Doric's Quest Restless Ghost

Hey guys, this is an intro to a story I am debating about writing. Thought I would share it with you, it's sort of a very demented, twisted "school society". Let me know what you think! P.S. I am not depressed or weird, please don't think that from the story. :) Identical Through the classroom door I preceded, veering left towards the bathrooms about twenty yards away. I walked slowly, not of my own intention, but an inner switch thrown the moment my presence had escaped the classroom. I looked up, gazing at the storm clouds that never dropped rain, the grey, depressing sky that never changed, never altered, never revealed a difference from one day to the next. My vision descended as I stared at the row of cars, all short, compact, and black, lined up perfectly parallel to one another, silently watching us like prison guards, yet, more dehumanizing. I arrived at the bathroom and entered with the slightest creak of the swinging door. The same creak would be heard on every swinging door that was the entrance to every bathroom in this school, or in this world. The same door, green, dark green with no markings, but one blue triangle that occupied the space exactly one foot from the top of the door, adorning a small picture of either a white man or a white woman. We had tried to alter this reality. Marcus had scratched a door; the very one I had just entered moments ago, with a pen that had run out of ink. A small, white line appeared on the center of the door. We rejoiced; for an incision had been made on the flesh of a world we existed in but did not know. Our happiness was brief; the same day a small, white scratch appeared on every bathroom door, identical to the one Marcus had made. By the end of the day Marcus had disappeared, and the memorized events ran through every boys mind as if it were a recording: First, Marcus would be called from his classroom, asked to walk to the office, which he would do, aware of the consequences that awaited him, but knowing without a shred of doubt, that escape was impossible, that punishment was unavoidable. Marcus would open the office door, and three men, the Doctor and his assistants, would cover his head with a dark dag. Marcus would be led to a small room, bare but the exception of a single chair, raised to sit evenly in distance from the floor and the ceiling. Marcus would climb onto the chair, and sit all the way back, in perfected, accepted, taught fashion. Even at the moment of death our lessons do not abandon us. The Doctor would play Marcus the same message, a pre-recording that explained the predicament he was in: Marcus was seated precisely four feet from a drill angled straight at the middle of his head. There was one lever on the side of the chair. Marcus could choose either to pull this lever, activating the spring in his chair to drive his head into the drill, killing him instantly but by committing suicide, or he could wait as the floor automatically raised itself six inches every sixty seconds, killing him just short of nine minutes, slowly, but surely. The voice then told Marcus that the lever option would be available to him during the time the floor was raising, making him the master of his own death at anytime he chose. Marcus did choose. Identical to the nine children before him, Marcus pleaded, he begged, streams of tears flowed from his eyes as he promised never to break The Rules again. All in vain. The floor began to rise as the recorded clicked, signaling the end, of both the message and Marcus. Marcus screamed, he cried out, only to be heard by the whining of the floor rising towards the glistening drill. Like the nine children before him, Marcus entered a stage of hysterics, where he began to giggle, an evil, corrupt sound made by the mind of a child who has lost every sense of who he was or who is presently is. Marcus giggled, a dreadful sound that brought a smile to the Doctor’s lips, for this sound, this demented form of laughter, was music to his ears. He watched as Marcus slid his hand toward the lever, gave one last satanic giggle, and then pulled the lever with all the strength his twelve year old body could muster. The Doctor watched as the drill entered Marcus’s skull, penetrating what the doctor knew was six inches through his brain, murdering the boy in half of a second. We all knew these events. We knew, because the moment Marcus sat in the chair, we were forced to watch.

Chipotle is putting me on the road of being manager. By that, I mean they're starting to teach me how to do everything for each station. I for the most part know everything on grill, I just need to learn the correct way to cut lettuce and onions for prep, and I need to master rolling for line. After that, I just need to learn how to do inventory and deposits and all of those other manager ish things. In related terms, today I noticed how much faster I am on line than before, how comfortable I felt, and how happy/flirty I can really be with customers. School. I love my classes. English might be a pain in my ass later, and public speaking seems a little fishy the way she's doing class so far, but I love my schedule. The only problem being that they are all late night classes, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It kills my social life, but what would I really be doing most of that time anyway? As for real life in general, I've been much, much better. The only times I ever think of Sarah are when there's something that outright blatantly reminds me of her. I drove by an office building with the number 379. Herpderp her first 3 numbers. I was throwing out the garbage for Chipotle and saw a HUGE fish tank. Herpderp all of Sarah's fish died. (Twice ahahaha). See a person who was in some way associated (the only ones I've seen lately are one's she's blatantly admitted hating, but still hangs out with them because herpderp she has no friends.) A few days ago I was talking with Paula in the food court and one of Sarah's exfriends (ex friend because she apparently lied about a bunch of fiddlesticks and then dated Sarah's ex or something idek wtf happened there) and she kept walking by and giggling. At least 3 times. Then like twenty minutes after her last "visit", Natasha (fat indian girl that Sarah REALLY hated for a multitude of reasons that were actually legit) walked by, pulled out her phone and called someone and stood maybe 10 feet from where I was sitting, pretending like she wasn't there. I eat consistently. I work out consistently. I have plenty of me-time, and plenty of friend-time. I'm meeting new people. I'm getting back out there. I'm getting closer and closer with a lot of people. I'm learning who I am. I'm having consistently good days. I'm on the right track. I'm better :].

At 8 pm

it's been a fricking blast. Shame that i'm still doing work though (History sucks!) Off to the Alps tomorrow to Snowboard for a week tomorrow though to fudge over my overdraft on alcohol and good times, so fudgeing pumped.

when flatmates throw fits of rage because they're shizzle at holding their drink and as a result feel the need to inflict internal pain to the external surroundings, breaking my shizzle all the time. Especially when they've already been to an official University hearing from smashing a door in last time they decided to be a complete dick and break everything. Next time the guy decides to be ultimate dick i'm just gonna report them to the Uni and get them chucked out, he's already been told that if he does anything like it again he'll be out. And I know that most of the rest of my flatmates will hate me for it because despite the fact that he's the biggest dick in the world every time he gets drunk (which is pretty much every night), most of them seem to be able to look past this. Probably because it's mostly not their shizzle that gets broke. But I don't care. They can suck on my super-erect schlong. :P

got results of A levels on thursday :c sort of kind of decides what University I go to. The way things turned out I should sail through requirements but my habitually erratic grades makes me wonder otherwise. If I turn up some time on thursday/friday sounding like death then you'll know which way it went :P

Yep, that's me now. In the past two weeks I've been through a senior class trip to Disney World, the school awards ceremony, Vespers, Ivy Day, more awards, the senior banquet, an official senior comedy club night, prom, Senior Singout, graduation, and an all-night Senior Celebration. If any school in the world makes more fuss over seniors graduating, I don't know what it is and I'm glad I didn't go to it. ^_^ Since I obviously don't have the time or space to write about everything, I'm in danger of writing this entry as either a list, a failed exhaustive analysis of everything that's happened, or an off-topic rambling philosophical monologue. Instead, I'll just write about some highlights and anecdotes. Everyone's name is false, of course. Disney was fantastic. Everything sort of blurs together, but some of the highlights were as follows: Buying a Captain Jack Sparrow hat and a kimono, and wearing both around Epcot for the rest of the day Dancing in my Jack Sparrow hat, kimono and poncho with the senior class during a thunderstorm as the fireworks lit up the sky over Disney Swimming with Dean (my best friend), Tupdike (my friend the grandson of John Updike), my prom date Tina, Brett the troll, whom I've known for eleven years, etc. Animal Kingdom rides with the Yeti, in a safari zone, and in a dinosaur dungeon with the above, plus others like my friends Val (the valedictorian) and Jacky, the class Historian who's possibly the nicest guy I know The Rainforest Cafe and awful monkeys that would start screaming at everyone at an earsplitting pitch once every five minutes or so Borrowing receipts from Tina to blow my nose on because I had a terrible cold and nobody had any kleenex A stellar haunted house, appalling Brer Rabbit water ride, Space Mountain, etc. with various other friends Eating out at a Moroccan restaurant (twice) and trolling one of my friends by getting the Moroccan waiters to serenade her with a Happy Birthday song We were there for about four days, from Thursday through Sunday (which was an all-nighter; the plane left at dawn). Here's a nice picture from the end: After that was a nice recuperation day, followed by an awards ceremony the next morning where I won plaques for being the best in AP Literature and Composition and Honors Physics. Then we had Vespers that night, which is something where everyone walks across the auditorium stage and gets flowers, followed by a dinner with graduation pictures and then an excursion to a comedy club. Here's a pic of Dean and me in grad robes: Wednesday was Ivy Day, which I'm not going to talk about because it was a lame ceremony. That night we had an awards ceremony, though, and I was given a $2,500 scholarship for basically being outgoing and writing a great essay about my sombrero. I think it had something to do with being a good student, too, but I'm not sure. (Actually, I think that was Tuesday but whatever.) We also went to a banquet down in Boston, which was tedious and not especially fun. After that we received our yearbooks. Apparently I was voted Most Outgoing, which is cool. The next day was prom. It was great, as might be expected, but not without some issues, as also might be expected. :P Tina picked me up late and then forgot something at her house, so we had to pick that up, and then I realized that I'd forgotten her corsage, so we picked that up as well. By then we were super late for pictures, so we hurried over to my friend Grace's house, took about sixty pics and hightailed it to the promenade. All chill. Tina (she made her own dress, plus a matching bow tie for me) and I: From left: Tina and I, my old D&D buddy (going to a tech school and joining rowing crew, because he's 6'5") and his girlfriend, Dean's fourth (?) ex, who entered college a year early and decided to go to prom with him now that she's out, Dean, Grace (my friend from the school magazine), and her boyfriend. The prom was fun, obviously, with the main downer being actually dancing with Tina. Both of us are much better at dancing solo than we are dancing with someone else, so the couple times we actually danced together were a little bit... weak. I wish I knew how to grind, but that might have actually been worse, since we're not really together. I also threw up twice during the prom, because I dance extremely vigorously and I ate a big dinner (always a bad idea). The first time, it was all right enough, but the second time I started gagging while dancing with Tina for the third time, and obviously that was... less than ideal. So yeah, prom wasn't exactly perfect. I drove down for breakfast at Dean's house at 2:30 in the morning and shared some bacon and fruit salad with him, his prom date and two of our friends. Then we watched half of Beauty and the Beast and slept until 11AM. Fun stuff. Then we hightailed it to the high school, watched Senior Singout (an hour-long movie put together by Jacky, the class Historian, about the class of 2011 and its growth together), and autographed each other yearbooks as we fought off tears. After getting the crossing guard's signature for my yearbook, I headed downtown for lunch with Jacky, Val, Tina, and five other friends. It was a good day. Finally, graduation day came. The ceremony went off smoothly, Val mentioned me in his speech as "the guy who wears a sombrero to class" (just as the class president had), and my family took a zillion pictures that haven't been uploaded yet. Then we went out for a 12-hour Senior Celebration from dusk until dawn, going from a music hall with a hypnotist to a triple-decker boat in Boston Harbor that had a disco dance floor and a buffet to a deluxe bowling alley to IHOP. Man, I'm going to miss my class so much.

Last ever school entry! (maybe Exams, idk) School is over! forever! [/Alice Cooper] went to the Pub with the teachers on friday, got pissed and then slept with a student science teacher.... good thing I officially had finished school about 6 hours prior. Now to finish my exams, get into Uni and decide how i'm going to muster all the cash i'm going to need for summer and uni life.

Took my Final Exams for Math. 115 Questions with 90 Minutes to finish, but I rushed it and finished in 50 Minutes. Hoping I did good.

So I've just had one of the craziest weeks of my life. For the second week in a row, I went 1 night-for-3 in terms of sleeping AT ALL (all nighter on Tuesday, passed out between midnight and two on Wednesday, another all nighter Thursday). The April Fools event didn't help, but at least I got nearly all of my scholarship applications in. Two of my three AP courses wrap up next week, so things should get easier soon. April Fool's Day was awful, beyond a doubt the worst April 1 I've ever had. After my all-nighter I walked three blocks through the snow in bare feet to my friend's house as part of an April Fools stunt, as Senior Prank day was being cracked down on with a police presence at school. (I also wore my Kenyan kikoi, a sort of female wraparound toga that I bought in the Kenyan marketplace, and the sombrero I bought on a Mexico missions trip.) After a great breakfast (the only good part of the day), I got a ride to school and then spent the entirety of AP Literature and honors physics trying to put my nightmarish scholarship portfolio together. Between these two awful classes were AP Statistics, in which I had a quiz and probably secured my first and only failing grade, and gym, in which I played volleyball and worked out in toga, sombrero and bare feet. Afterwards I was approached by the gym teachers and informed that state law forbade bare feet in school (because Massachusetts is fascist), and I had to borrow the gym teacher's sandals. Since my feet are bigger than the feet of all four gym teachers (quite an achievement), I didn't have to wear actual shoes. I missed lunch and the first third of AP Government and Politics to finish putting my scholarships in order. Then, after honors pre-calc, I finished my AP Stats quiz, cementing my failing score, and went to my Record Magazine meeting, where I fell asleep and was physically unable to work. I went home, did my paper route late and had to deal with an hour of trying to force my mom to mail an application for a $20k scholarship that she had refused to mail earlier, because she didn't think I would get it. I succeeded, with a little help from my father, but the postmark date will be a day later than required, so I have very little chance of getting it. Dartmouth Decision: Waitlisted. I'm pretty annoyed. I love Gordon, my second choice, so I would have been fine with a polite "no," but being deferred is awful and anxiety-inducing. I'm going to enroll in Gordon and then change over to Dartmouth if they let me in. That should be good enough.

This is totally irrelevant to the rest of the entry, but has anyone who reads this gone to Washington, D.C. for the National Youth Leaders Conference or whatever, the NYLC? I got an invitation, and know enough about it to know that it's not just a waste of time and money, but it is pretty expensive. Feedback would be awesome. The last week has been very colorful, for the most part pleasantly so, with some exceptions. On Friday I had my driving test, but although according to my driving school, my mom's Mercury was acceptable to the DMV, the DMV thought otherwise. The DMV seems to have an unwritten policy of disagreeing with my driving school on everything that matters. I failed my first driving test because the driving school taught me to parallel park the wrong way, and now it seems that, thanks to them, I'm getting my license another month later than I ought to. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, when the revolution comes, the DMV officials will be the first against the wall. On Saturday I went to a political party for an aspiring Republican congressman. I'm currently unaffiliated with any party, but my mom's wealthy friends who gave me $500 for Kenya had asked if I'd serve hors d'orderves to the guests, and this is a bit of an honor. (In all honesty, I like the Republican Party better than the Democratic Party anyway. The Democrats are terribly inefficient in Massachusetts; except in the governor's seat, it's basically a one-party state.) So I served hors d'orderves without ever figuring out what they're supposed to be, or why they merit a French name, but I had a lot of fun anyway. It was a relaxing evening, and the speakers were good. (Incidentally, the only people I knew were the guy who owns the driving school and his daughter. Awkward.) Also, I wore my unofficial Rainbow Coalition shirt to the party, which doesn't actually say "Rainbow" but looks just like one. I don't think anybody got the joke, which is a good thing. Sunday was great. I went over Trevor's house after church and helped him finish making up the guest room, which he's been trying to get out of the way for a year. Then his parents and little brother came over and we had a little party. Star Wars II and III were on TV, as was tennis. It was a good day. I struggled with manic depression all week, unfortunately. I've been rethinking my whole life's philosophy for the 327th time over the past few weeks, and it hasn't been pleasant. The worst part is knowing that I can't see Gaia at all now, and not knowing what or how she thinks of me. (She seems to be extremely happy at Gordon thus far, from Facebook and the word on the street, and this is a little comforting, but not much.) Also, I see her sister every day, because she's in two of my classes this year, so it's almost impossible for me to forget about her. I can never say anything to her sister because I'm afraid of saying the wrong thing, which is ridiculous because I don't have a crush on her sister at all. But I know that the two of them are very close, and I don't want to convey a negative impression, which I probably already do. Anyway, we have nothing to talk about and I have to rely solely on Gaia's sister's good will for her opinion of me, which matters tremendously for some reason. Maybe things will be easier after we all ease into the school year some more. Also, it's been difficult to talk to people, although it's gotten much easier over the past few days. I sort of drift between the smarter athletes and the ex-nerds (guys who still enjoy nerdy stuff but have too many social skills for anybody to care), as well as other, more liquid stereotypical cliques. People like me, but I don't really fall neatly into any inner circles outside of youth group. My friend Dean is probably the closest thing to another Emanick in our year, though, so I'm trying to hang out with him more. Maybe I can help make his AP load less drudgerous; even in academia, misery loves company. :) Study has been fairly awesome this year, though. Our Best Korea-style administration decided to get rid of senior studies this year, probably because people liked them, but I still have a lot of friends in study, including our valedictorian, who is partially insane because he gets about four hours of sleep per night. He is literally nocturnal during the summer, and amazingly he still has a social life, probably because his deadpan way of speaking is so attractive. He sleeps in about three classes and has no reservations about telling the teachers this. He's pretty much my hero, even though I'm not sure whether I like him or not. :) Wait, I called this "Global :( ness", right? Oh yeah, I had a reason for that. So a year ago, partly because Gaia was so interested in it, I joined up with Not For Sale, which is an organization dedicated to fighting human trafficking around the world. I never stopped supporting the organization, but knowing that Gaia was too busy to join it took about half the fire out of me, and I was too busy to help much. And in turn, guilt led me to avoid Not For Sale because I increasingly took it (ironically) as a symbol of my lack of motivation and failure to love more than I feared. I've worn a bracelet for about ten months now that shows I'm committed to it, and I never eat Hershey's products as an individual boycott of trafficking, but I never really had the strength to help. In June signed up to help with my friend's Global Awareness Club so that I could sell Not For Sale chocolate and give schools in Uganda that helped fight human trafficking some money, but I never ended up doing this. I put collecting the order forms off week after week and month after month... and nothing came of it. And then on Monday I realized that it was actually still possible to turn in order forms, which made me extremely grateful for being given a second chance. :D I promised to pick up some forms from my friend, whom I'll call "Lynn," and this was finally possible on Wednesday. The deadline for turning in chocolate forms was Thursday, so I had pretty much 24 hours to sell chocolate. I think Lynn assumed that I would sell maybe 10-20 $5 bars, tops. 24 hours isn't much time. But motivation is always lurking somewhere in your psyche, and if you know how to coax it out, it can be a wonderful servant. I sold $305 worth of chocolate bars, 61 in total, in 24 hours, and honestly I wasn't even trying that hard. :) I think all the experience from selling my school magazine came in handy. Lynn said "Wow, that's incredible" like four times when I turned in the form. $305 is about a quarter of the money that the club raised all last year. Amazing what a little guilt can drive one to do, no matter how illogical. The rest of the :) ness meeting was spent discussing strategies to raise money for a school in Ghana. Apparently we're going to be melting old records into bowls and then selling them for a cutthroat price. I am the only guy in the entire Club - last year some people thought this was a feminist club - and so I'm in charge of soliciting my friends. It's going to be an interesting year.

So, school started on Tuesday. This year, the school system decided to try something new, and sent our schedule to hell in a handbasket, with said basket apparently having been woven together with tax dollars and manufactured in Best Korea. Instead of eight classes, we have seven, which means one less elective or study hall, and instead of four classes per day, we get six classes per day, and seven different types of days instead of two, which means that the awkwardness of finding a lunch table with your friends lasts for the first two weeks of school, rather than the first two days. Oh, and also a longer school day. The only bright side is that our school starts ten minutes later than it used to. This is my schedule: A- Exploring Photography B- Study C- AP Literature and Composition D- AP Statistics E- AP Government and Politics F- Honors Physics G- Honors Pre-Calculus Needless to say, I will be slightly less active on Sal's this fall. On the seven days before school started, I wanted to be busying myself re-establishing some friend connections, but instead I went to Texas from Tuesday through Saturday, got home at 11PM, rushed off to a performance with my comedy troupe on Sunday morning, then went straight to Connecticut to help my family pack away my grandmother's apartment so that she can move into our house next month. I probably shouldn't complain, since I consented to all of this and going to Texas (albeit with free airline tickets) is quite fortunate, but this insane busyness ruined most of my plans. I was up until midnight finishing my summer AP Literature homework on the night before school starts, which obviously doesn't bode well for the year to come. With five binders and about as many textbooks, and with most of them being required every day, it simply wasn't viable to use a backpack to carry my stuff around. So I brought a wheelbarrow to school, as a political statement against the new schedule, and threw all of my stuff in it. The Student Dean thought this was a safety hazard, since if I'm carrying a wheelbarrow and I fall down the stairs, I might hurt someone. :P So instead I had to spend $100 on the largest tote bag in stock at two large department stores, which is still not big enough to hold all my stuff, so I have to strap my largest binder and my lunch to the tote bag. This is not working either, and I may have to spend even more money on other solutions, which might be just as useless. Oh, and I can't use my locker because there are only four minutes of passing time, and my school has four large floors, so it's impossible to get to your locker between classes, since lockers are scattered all over the building. Classes themselves are okay. None of the classes seem overwhelming in and of themselves, which is good because AP US History would have provided quite enough homework all by itself last year. Photography is cool because our class is tiny and the teacher, who went to high school with my mom 600 miles away from here, loves everybody and acts half her age without being patronizing. Not much idea what we're doing yet, though. AP Literature seems like a huge pile of work, but at least I love the subject, and it's going to be incredibly useful for my writing career. The subject material and the teacher are both fantastic. My teacher is on a federal jury right now, in a case that reminds her of James Bond and 1984, so she misses classes to attend the trial sometimes. Cool stuff. AP Statistics doesn't really seem that hard. It's only about the difficulty of an honors class, from what I hear. Ironically, I've gotten the most work from it so far, but it's only a matter of time before other classes catch up. :P The class has almost no guys in it, so I'm almost totally isolated, but at least I have a couple of friends from algebra in it from last year. Gaia's sister is in this course. AP Gov & Politics is definitely my favorite course. It hasn't assigned any homework yet, because we had so much over the summer and we're just reviewing the material right now. We spent eighty minutes talking about the war in Iraq yesterday, which was fairly awesome. Honors Physics is probably my hardest course. I got a C in honors intro to physics three years ago, my only C ever, and not without reason. I'm terrible with formulas, compared to most other things. In the last 27 months I've forgotten almost everything that I ever knew, so the course is terribly hard right now. Fortunately, I have a lot of friends in the course. Oddly, there are eighteen guys and only one girl here. The heck. Honors Pre-Calc is a decent course. I have friends in it. Gaia's sister sits across the room from me. (I don't have feelings for her, but I know her to some degree outside of school and have rarely spoken to her inside school, which makes things awkward. Also, I'm not even sure if she likes me as a person, unlike Gaia, whom I at least know likes me in the normal sense.) I've felt incredibly depressed recently, and also very tired. (Both of these reasons explain why this entry is written so badly.) I have no idea why I'm so incredibly unhappy, and it's a major problem, because I have no patience with anybody else right now, and I have nobody to blame for anything but myself. The only reason I can think of for being depressed is my Gaia Conundrum, but that's ridiculous, even though it's probably a huge factor. I refuse to give myself permission to keep on being unhappy about a girl who so gently turned me down fifteen friggin' months ago. If there's no other reason, I'll invent one. Dwelling on unhappiness only makes one more unpleasant, after all. I'm retaking my driving test tomorrow, possibly in Hurricane Earl. Wish me luck! :P

Trying to write a 5000 word essay on the origins of the First Crusade. Tracking down accurate sources from various Benedictine Monks, Byzantine soldiers and French peasants is a pain in the rear.

So I wrote half of a great entry about the Deathly Hallows and the subtle philosophy and genius behind Harry Potter, and was going to put it up here, but then lost interest and stopped. I'm starting to get seriously worried about my ability to actually muster the energy to write these days. :/ Anyway, I got my exam grades back and finished my best ever semester at high school. This is cheery. :closedeyes: Here's what I got for second semester: Honors Algebra II- B+ Chemistry- A Spanish I- A- Gym- A- AP US History- A Astronomy- A+ Honors American Literature III- A I'm still really mad about how few AP courses my school offers for juniors. My only other options for APs this year were science courses, which I had no room for, and I don't plan to make my career in science anyway. Next year I'm taking three APs, though, so that should make up for this travesty. There's an award given to the best student in every subject at the end of every year, and I won the Chemistry and AP US History awards, along with one of the school magazine awards (my friend and I were both so good that they gave us both an award :P). My best friend won the Honors Chemistry award and was called right before me, and so we did a bro high five in the aisle, and that was pretty excellent. Then Gaia's sister, who was sitting across from me, told Gaia about how many awards I'd won (tied with our valedictorian; even he only won three, unlike his five from last year :o), and she congratulated me on Facebook, so yeah, that was pretty cool. And I got back my 5 on the AP exam, so this also makes me happy. And I joined a gym and went every day last week, and plan to go every day this week as well (minus Sundays, which will be my day of rest :)). So this is excellent too. That said, my grandmother almost died last week, and I have no idea how much longer she'll be hanging in there... and on top of this, I have next to no social life at present, which is depressing me because my brother spends LITERALLY 80% of his waking hours at his friends' houses. He's only 14 and he never comes home anymore. This makes me feel like a complete loser, because I'm home pretty much 24/7 and I still don't have my driver's license, so I still have to depend on my parents for rides. Of course, none of this is a big deal (besides my grandmother almost dying, which I don't want to talk about), but without anybody else around to energize and exhort me to action - since my father only cares about chores and my mother has spent the last week or so with her own mom - I feel like I'm falling into complete apathy. I don't like large cities, but I'm seriously starting to consider moving there and living in a small apartment if I continue to act so lazy when alone. :s Anybody else have problems like this? I don't need sympathy or anything like that, but suggestions for getting out of a slump would be helpful. :s About the grades, I just put those up because I always do, and the fact that they're a month late is just a triviality.

So, for once this afternoon I had a breather. My four literature journals were due today, and I don't have to finish reading Light in August (by William Faulkner) until Monday. But my Advanced Placement US History exam is tomorrow, which I've been studying for all year and can't quite contemplate without a little thrill of fear. Even worse, I have my driving test 24 hours later. It's as if the universe decided to deploy everything it has, toss the black holes and quasars at Andromeda so I can live, and then hurl the rest of its surplus energy at me, right now. Well, okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration. I'm probably going to get a 5 on the exam (highest score); I have a 95% in the class and know pretty much everything that happened in the United States from 40,000 BC to 1993. (Except those blasted Supreme Court cases and writers - get in your own subject, Kerouac!) And since I'm done with studying by now, I've had a relatively relaxing afternoon. My 145 algebra problems and handful of chemistry problems I can simply ignore for the present, since students who take an AP exam get the day off. Gaia took the AP Lit exam today. She says it was hard, but at least she's got that over with. :glasses: This morning was pretty fun. We played volleyball in Relationships class, the official name for eleventh grade gym, which I will never tire of mocking. Then in AP History we played two board games that the AP History class from last year created after their exam was over - one a nerdy version of Clue and one a nerdy version of Chutes and Ladders. Apparently Reaganomics is the solution to winning Chutes and Ladders. And apparently John Brown, the insane abolitionist who tried to start a slave uprising in Virginia in 1859, is incapable of standing up after he's had "a few good ones." This is what I learned in class today, and this is what I will mention in my essays tomorrow morning. Then we had Astronomy, which was better than last time because we didn't watch a movie about black holes that put me half to sleep. (It wasn't the movie's fault, really - I was just tired.) Instead, we talked about black holes, which was somehow more fun. Our teacher is recovering from a major operation and won't be back to normal for months, so instead we're having a succession of substitute teachers who aren't really sure what to do. The class is still a joke, though, so I don't mind. Then we had literature, which was fun because we spent the entire class complaining about life, discussing the schedule for the rest of the month and reading our ideas of what a William Faulkner-style prose piece would sound like. I hate William Faulkner. I want to write him a time-traveling letter that reminds him what a proper noun is, and that they exist to be used, not used twice per page and then ignored. Then I went home and stressed like heck, took my last driving lesson and lazed. Good night, guys. Wish me luck and sanity.

I am now addicted to the word "smashing," because it's such a scintillating word. I am also addicted to the word "scintillating," but this is more difficult to incorporate into casual conversation, so I don't use it as much. I'm also addicted to "Fireflies." This is less than scintillating. Nothing much happened this week, but I figured out how to get my AP History homework done before midnight, which is, again, smashing. I now have high hopes of avoiding practically dozing off during Spanish class. Also, we wrap up the main curriculum in five weeks and move on to reviewing, which will mean that I'll have more time for pretty much everything. Yay? My relatives showered me in money for Kenya so I'm pretty much set, financially at least. One elderly second cousin of mine sent me $1,000 and an extremely nice letter (he's a legit millionaire but is so conservative with money that for a long time after being millionaires, he and his wife cut each others' hair). I've barely seen Gaia all week and miss her, but she's in a zillion photos in the New York City Facebook album, and since I'm the designated tagger for my youth group, at least I've gotten to "see" her. Not talk to her, though, which would be much nicer. Ah well, I'll have to get used to never seeing her when September rolls around, so meh. I got someone to go with for the junior prom on the advice of one of my female friends, and she's pretty excited about going with me (or just going, period, I guess), so that's good. Hopefully I can learn to spell her Polish last name before the prom. Not that I'm going to be writing it or anything, but it seems weird not to be able to spell my prom "date's" last name. She's quite nice, so it should go well. I'm appearing in the school talent show on April Fool's Day, performing a dramatic reading of a poem I wrote. It's actually pretty cool, and I can act it out really well. I won't win, but it should be fun anyway. According to Gaia, the poem's title is a takeoff of Wallace and Gromit, which is also pretty smashing. I'll post the poem up soon, I guess. In the meantime, have a great weekend everyone.

I love exam week. Or at least, I prefer it to normal school weeks, which generally involve about five "Post-Midnight Experiences" (PMEs, I call them) as I struggle to catch up on my laziness in getting things done. I may not be much for working fast, but I have a heck of a work ethic to stay on task until I finish whatever I'm doing. My assignments, as you might expect, are generally much longer and complicated than the average project - I'm not sure I'll ever forget the month-long biology project I put off until the final day, then worked all night on, only to find out that at 21 single-spaced pages long, it was at least three times as long as the next longest project. I got a perfect score, but I'm not sure it was worth the effort. Anyway, constant studying/procrastination, combined with adequate sleep, is a heck of a lot better than sporadic homework in combination with PMEs. Especially when I got to hang out with my youth group friends, including Gaia, twice that week while doing things like a mall hunt and making blueberry smoothies. After ~14 hours of studying, with a mortifying three hours spent on something that wasn't even on the exam, I finally had my Honors Algebra II exam on Tuesday. I thought I would ace it, which, given the fact that I only had 86% in the class, was definitely necessary to avoid being burned at the stake by my overzealous "scholastic conscience." I certainly did fairly well, but I only got a 93% on the exam, and even this was thanks to getting some extra credit points. I would have needed a 106% on the exam to get an A-, and that was almost impossible, but I suppose a B+ for the semester, in an honors class, isn't that bad. It was extremely hard to concentrate that afternoon, and I finally steeled myself to leave the house, walk to the nearest pizza restaurant and study there instead. (It was difficult to concentrate, especially after a really cute 8-year-old I know walked in and started talking to me - but not impossible, which was an improvement over my bedroom.) I almost fell asleep while reading my chemistry textbook, but eventually I finished going over it, went home, did my AP US History homework (since my teacher is an agent of Sauron and thinks assigning homework to be turned in on exam day is funny), and went to bed. Thankfully, AP History was again my only exam that day, and it wasn't until 10AM. I walked to school with my trademark sombrero (which I only wear to exams, holidays and other school events), cunningly evading the one member of the staff who cares about the "NO HATS IN SCHOOL" policy, and then sat down for the exam. I thought I did fairly well, but I wasn't sure if "fairly well" would cut it, since I had a 93.1% in the class and less than an overall 93% would mean a drop from an A to an A-. For once, I was right about how well I did - I got a 92%, but everyone got an extra point because one of the questions was badly worded, so I actually scored a solid A in an Advanced Placement class. 5.6 weighted GPA - HECK YEAH! (As some perspective for non-American-grading-policy-nerds, this kind of average is high enough that even a perfect score in an honors class is lower.) Youth group was great that night. No awkwardness with Gaia = epic. Hopefully I'm past that stage now. Honestly, I wasn't even expecting her to be there since she had exams, but I guess the fact that this is her last regular exam season in high school might have helped convince her to make it a slightly more fun week. Somehow, anyway. I was thoroughly convinced Thursday would blow, because I was depressed that morning and I didn't know what to expect from Art II, having taken an alternate curriculum from the rest of the class and so having no idea what the exam would be like. Fortunately, my first exam was Chemistry, and lots of other people felt the same way by the third morning of exams, and so we gradually cheered each other up. I was fairly sure I did well on the exam, too - and although I got 13e wrong (caffeine isn't a homogeneous solution, I guess), I still got 100%. The class didn't do very well on it overall, so everyone got 4 extra points. If getting a 104% on an exam, and an A+ for the semester overall, isn't an ego boost, I don't know what is. So then I went down to Art II. One of my friend's brothers is in the same class as I am (heck, I guess he's my friend, too), and he lent me his notes to read so I would have a chance of passing. As it turned out, the notes saved my life, as they dealt solely with pottery and the exam also dealt solely with pottery, despite the fact that this is the one project I did ALMOST NOTHING on, doing origami instead. I still couldn't get a lot of the answers, but everyone else was "cooperating" on the test and the teacher obviously didn't care. (This is the woman who thinks I'm a genius for writing an essay that read like I was drunk while writing it, FYI. She's nice, but she isn't suited for her post IMO.) Eventually I succumbed to temptation and asked for help on the exam that tested me on a project I didn't participate in. This is the only time I have ever cheated on a test or exam, and I'm not likely to find a time when it's less objectionable. I got a 94% on the exam, which gave me an A- for the class. I'm happy. Then Friday rolled along. I had Spanish first, after a hearty breakfast at my friend's house with a fellow exam-taker. Unfortunately, I left my sombrero in my friend's car, so I was bereft of a great morale booster, which I really needed because Spanish is my worst subject. I only scraped an 89% on the exam, which did nothing to my GPA. I remained at a low B, which is admittedly not terrible, but hardly something to boast of in Non-Honors Spanish I. Then I joined my fellows in the hallway outside Honors American Literature II, where we helped each other to feel better by complaining about how long and hard this would be and how badly we would do. (No, seriously. I think that actually helped us feel better.) Eventually we made it inside and began scratching out long essay paragraphs feebly - I wrote about how the unification of desire and duty made individuals stronger, based on Narrative in the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Huckleberry Finn, and The Bean Trees. I had a 93.0 in the class as an average, the bare minimum to keep a straight A, and got a 93.0 on the exam, too. So this is probably my best semester ever, GPA-wise, but by the skin of my teeth. So this is my report card (I don't know why I feel compelled to share this, but I do): Subject/Semester Grade/Exam Grade/Overall Grade Spanish I/83/89/B Honors Algebra II/86/93/B+ Art II/89/94/A- Honors American Literature II/93/93/A AP United States History/93/93/A Chemistry I/97/104/A+ Since nobody will have read this far... I ACCEPTED A 75 EURO BRIBE TO REDUCE DANI'S WARN LEVEL@@@@

Warning: This entry is about my impersonation of a relatively racist Southerner for school. If you're offended by this kind of thing, please don't read. A couple of weeks ago I had the assignment of arguing for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to be required reading in schools...in 1885. What a spicy assignment! Given my passion for all things ridiculous, I immediately decided that I wanted to be an ignorant Southern racist who loved the book because he thought it favored black slavery. The book, after all, was interpreted that way by many upon release. Soon my teacher decided that we could only argue from the perspective of genuine historical figures. This was a problem, but only for a moment. I decided to be a Louisiana congressman of the 49th Congressional Session, whom nobody would ever have heard of, but would still have information online I could hunt up. I disregarded the most interesting member of Louisiana's 49th congressional representation because he was a Republican, and that meant he probably favored the abolition of slavery. I then decided on Louis St. Martin as my subject, but halfway through my debate I picked Edward Gay instead, since he lived in various parts of the country during his lifetime and had been living in St. Louis when Huck Finn sailed past in 1840, which became part of my argument. It was rather difficult to find information on Edward Gay on Google, since... y'know, Edward. Gay. I posted a Facebook status commenting dryly on this unfortunate situation, and Gaia posted on it, saying "hahahaha that's great." Made my night. :) We're almost back to "normal" sometimes! I love it! I had to make a costume for the debate so that I would look a bit like Congressman Edward Gay. This is my outfit: When it came time to giving our speeches, my friend, posing as President Grover Cleveland, went first. His speech sounded very liberal-minded and modern, a little off considering the 1885 setting, but it was totally fine otherwise. Then some other guy went, the opposition, I forget exactly who. Then it was my turn to give an argument. I started off a little weakly, but I had an excellent Southern accent, if I do say so myself, and aside from the first sentence or so I was solid and strong the whole way through. :) Below you can read my argument, if you choose. It's certainly more interesting when read in a strong accent. My name is Edward James Gay, and as a proud Southerner and Louisiana congressman in the House of Representatives I come before you today to argue passionately against the censorship of our new Southern epic, Huckleberry Finn. Like the brave Sheriff Sherburn from the book under review, I was born and raised in the South and I’ve traveled in the North, so I know the average all around, from Illinois to Missouri, to the deep Louisiana heartland where the final chapters of Huck Finn take place. I grew up in the same times as Huck Finn does, in the same places, and I was beginning my very first business in St. Louis, Missouri at the same time as Huck and Jim went drifting past. Now, I know many of you may be concerned about the lies of some Negro-lovers, who I hear have been arguing that Huckleberry Finn is anti-white supremacy, what with the main character, Huck, trying to steal a slave out of slavery and all. But look at the way the boy is raised! He’s been trying to survive since day one, and he steals everything without a qualm; as Jim and he decide that stealing anything besides watermelons and persimmons is a moral thing to do, based upon their skewed moral examples back at home. Now, this may not be a credit to Southern honor, but it’s the truth! As a congressional leader of Louisiana before and after the Civil War, I have seen the standard of living in my state fall from the very highest in the South to the very lowest, and I know what it is like to watch your people suffer and discard their pride for survival. Before we condemn Huckleberry Finn for displaying imperfect characters that represent the worst aspects of the pre-war South, we must understand how very real the situation Mark Twain describes is. “Sir,” I hear you cry, “how can it be that Mark Twain supports the doctrine of white supremacy when his protagonist spends the entire book stealing a Negro?” That is an excellent question. I know well that no real Southerner would support a book which promoted the abolitionist creed that whites and blacks are equal, but I, as genuine a Southerner as anyone you ever met, am fully in favor of Huck Finn. Why? For two reasons. First of all, Huck Finn is NOT a heartless abolitionist sympathizer. At no time in the book does he accept the idea that a Negro is as good as a white man, only that he does “believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks do for their’n.” This is certainly an acceptable, albeit sentimentalist, attitude for a Southern narrator to take. Furthermore, Huck seriously considers turning Jim in at two different points, when slave hunters sail past as he rows towards what he thinks is Cairo and when Jim is sold by the two con artists Huck has foolishly taken up with. Huck never actually rejects the idea of white superiority, and as he says, “a body that don’t get started right when he’s little, ain’t got no show.” Whether or not this is true, his failure to turn Jim in represents a fascinating character weakness rather than a belief in racial equality. Secondly, Mark Twain deliberately wrote the end of the book to ensure that Huck’s ultimate act of betrayal towards the South, his attempt to actively steal Jim out of slavery rather than do “whichever came handiest at the time,” was muted by the fact that Jim was already free by the laws of the land, and so Huck’s sentimental heart fails to cause any great injustice to Jim’s mistress after all. This is telling, for Mark Twain is no Northern abolitionist or carpetbagger, and after all he was born and bred in the same South Huckleberry Finn and I were. The Missouri Jim flees in 1840 is one in which one out of forty Negros is legally free, and so it’s no aberration for Jim to be the same. Although Twain certainly sympathizes with the Negro more than most whites, he never turns the white-black status quo upside down, and he specifically writes to ensure that, against all odds, the climax of the book involves no Negro-stealing. This preserves the humor so that we may enjoy it without the crisis of conscience Huck suffers under throughout the novel. Why should we protest a realistic novel just because of an imperfect narrator? It’s just a book, folks, and not a bad one either. This, I was told by one of the student judges later, was probably the best-delivered argument out of all eight presented that day. However, when it came time to do the rebuttal, I blew it. I started off well, attacking a couple of people, but I chose somebody to attack that I had next to nothing to go on, and I stammered and stuttered for the last minute of my two minutes provided. Actually, that's not true... I just stopped talking. I hate it when I freeze up like that. With the ten-second warning, though, I had to say SOMETHING to redeem myself, so, building on what the "concerned parent" I was attacking had said about her children possibly deciding to run away after reading this book, I decided to growl the following: "You're a TERRIBLE parent." The line was perfectly delivered, and the girl told me afterwards that I'd attacked her more successfully than anyone else. This was obviously not true - unless this had been a TV show or something else where drama mattered, I would have looked like a complete fool. As it was, my actual rebuttal grade must have tanked. But hey, at least I finished up in style! :P

It really sucks. I have a feeling that todayI did a B-grade effort on my Politics exam which I should have cleared easily, which means a painful resit in June. Luckily, that was the only exam I have until then so I have many a month to contemplate my fail. On the bright side, it's my Birthday in a week and the week after that I have French Exchange! Sounds boring, but in fact it's little more than a week off school to go meet some weird people who eat funny food that I haven't seen for a while..... Tl;dr

So, my dad works as a Latin teacher in a school more than a hundred miles away, since there are so few jobs teaching Latin in high school, and he technically doesn't have his teaching degree so he couldn't teach Latin in college even if he could find a job doing that. For some reason the kids love him. He's had betting pools running on him versus the gym teacher on who would win in a wrestling match (he's 6'5", although not built like a bodybuilder), and kids come up to him all the time telling him that he's their favorite teacher ever. I can see why, since he shows his kids movie scenes occasionally, but he works them harder than they're used to so I wouldn't have thought it. Huh. There's this random kid named Ahmed in his Latin III class (I think it's Latin III) who talks in class constantly. My father has to constantly tell him various things to "quell" him, since he's endlessly stirring up restlessness, and a bunch of kids in the back of the classroom have started a list of things my dad has said to Ahmed since a certain point in the autumn. It's very long. They've also made up various things that my dad never actually got around to saying to this kid, like "Ahmed, you're fat," and "Ahmed, I hate you." When my father was telling me one of his stories I realized he missed an excellent opportunity to say "Ahmed, I'll kill you," but perhaps it's just as well, given the state of schools these days. For some reason the government seems to have missed the fact that teachers who commit homicides generally neglect to forewarn in the middle of class the kids they plan to murder. My "little" brother runs/ran track, and last year his main rival in the track team was this insanely fast kid a year older than him, the brother of one of my classmates. My dad would give his class weekly updates on my brother's latest "battles" with the insanely fast twerp, and for some reason his class loved these things. This autumn the twerp left the middle school and joined the high school track team instead, so my brother would be Top Dog now, except he's hurt his legs so he can't run like heck anymore. (Like father, like son! I'm the smart one.) Anyway, the twerp decided to be an idiot around November and bring knives to school in his backpack - real, manly knives, not little butter knives, not that I saw them or handled them or waved them around or anything. As I implied, this was idiotic. He was caught and suspended, and it appeared in the paper on the front page, without his name of course. (You can tell a town has nothing to report when it informs everyone within five miles that a 14-year-old boy has been caught bringing knives to school in his backpack.) A Facebook group appeared within hours, of course - "Save Twerp" (not the boy's real name, I'm thoughtfully avoiding revealing his real name). I joined it with amusement, knowing that whatever Twerp needed saving from was unlikely to be affected by Facebook. My father told the class what happened to Twerp a few days later. They cheered; apparently they now hate Twerp after listening to my father regale them with his many stories about Twerp's rivalry with my brother. I act like I hate him, too, because it's really, really funny and I don't actually know him. Anyway, fun stuff.

Turns out... a substitute teacher I have more often than any other went to a San Francisco wedding on the same day I did, starting at the same time, October 10th. FYI I live 3000+ miles from San Francisco and I'm pretty sure the people are totally unrelated. Too bad we didn't see each other. :)

Apparently people think that most other people have nothing better to do on Friday night then go to the theater and watch their friends lie, cheat and scam their way to a tremendous box office hit. They're wrong, obviously. The best way to spend a Friday night is to do a little history homework, go on Sal's a little bit, and then play some RuneScape. But I have no life, so I opted for the first idea. Tonight was the opening night of the year's first school play, Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels, about two British con men who do exactly what I just talked about. (At least, I think they're British. I got the impression towards the end that this was set in Majorca, not Britain. But I haven't a clue where Majorca is, so for all I know it's set in both places.) And yeah, several of my friends were in it. I didn't know who any of the cast was composed of, although I could make some shrewd guesses, until I looked in the day's newspaper and saw a picture on Page 2 or 3 of the main cast and ensemble. (Yeah, that's right. Our city is so low on crime and violent political struggles that we have to put fun, interesting things in the very first section of the paper to keep interest up. Even in November.) I didn't know Gaia would be in this play until this afternoon, either. She wasn't one of the main characters, but she was one of the ensemble, meaning that she appeared in eight or nine scenes without doing anything especially significant. (I'm trying as hard as possible to get over her, so I won't talk about how great she looked, but I can't help but at least mention how I'm not going to talk about that. ...Wait, dang.) So I walked in at about 7PM, just on time, wearing my green and gold sombrero that I typically wear to this sort of thing. Somebody was waving for me to come sit with them, and since I wasn't wearing my glasses yet and the theater was dark, I hadn't a clue who it was until I got close. It was my youth leader, who lives about 30 miles away but comes here pretty often for events like this that some of his kids are involved in (like football games and plays). So that was pretty good, as I hadn't gotten a chance to talk with him in a while. The play started, and, like all plays worthy of being performed by our school, it was a musical. I always get really philosophical about these things and start applying them to my own life, even as I watch them and crack up at the weird antics of my friends. (Two friends I've known since second grade played the senior con man and his French confederate, who, cynically enough, was the Chief of Police.) As always, the musical's theme seemed weirdly related to things I was going through at the moment. The main characters were cynical and wishing for a change in how they ran their lives - at least, the older con man was - although not unhappy about it, apparently. Recently I've felt unusually cynical and ambivalent about everything that's going on around me. Sometimes I don't really care about anything; if I do care it's because I know I should, not because I want to. I hate these stages. I attribute it partly to my deplorable sleep pattern recently and partly to my introversion and missteps over the past year. I feel this way least when I'm on Sals, fortunately, so I doubt anyone has noticed this attitude shift outside of this blog. I hope it stays that way, and I get over this. But in any case, I connected this to the plot and it made me think. Yay? I'm not going to spoil the play - well, I'll spoil the end, but not the middle. As it went on, though, the characters began competing to trick an heiress out of her valuables, a young and an old con man whose paths had collided weirdly. Obviously and predictably, they both began to fall for the woman. The whole thing was hilarious and twisty enough that this predictability didn't matter, of course. For something like the 3,000th time since June, though, I started thinking about Gaia and why exactly it was that we weren't together when we're so similar in so many ways, and what I'd messed up on, and a million other things of the like. (Usually these thoughts come up for no reason, but when I'm watching her onstage in a romantic play for about half the play's running time, this is impossible to avoid.) It didn't much affect my enjoyment of the play, I'll happily say that. But it was a disturbing side current. Like I said, I was wearing my green and gold sombrero that I bought in Mexico when the play began. I'd been wondering whether Gaia would see my youth leader and I - probably thinking I tagged along to watch her, just like I did at an April play and a July concert of hers, and like I didn't do at her baptism - I'd come because of another friend, and didn't know she was involved until that morning. :/ I doubt she thinks I'm stalking her or anything, but still, I do have a history of turning up at a lot of her events. None recently by intention, but I wasn't going to MISS this because she was in the musical. :( And, uh, yeah, the sombrero didn't help, because I couldn't have looked more conspicuous without trying if I'd tried. (Well, obviously. But you know what I mean.) I took the sombrero off after a few scenes. Shortly afterwards, several characters with cowboys hats, including the whole ensemble, appeared onstage. When the cowboy hat part ended, I remember to put my hat back on. Go figure. So. As the play went on, I started to think about how amazing Gaia looked and how awesome it was that she was onstage and so confident, and there was me feeling awkward a lot of the time. Of course, I have my own moments; it's not everyone who can make the whole class laugh on a regular basis and write killer songs that everyone enjoys. But I'm not a stage person, or at least I've never tried being one. I didn't feel jealous of her, but I felt a little inadequate and ashamed. Everyone has their circles, I guess, but I wish I could be part of mine more often than the center of it. :/ When the play ended, it became clear that rather than the con men conning the heiress, she had conned them instead - and of course she never ended up with either of them. The French police chief was the only one who ended up with a significant other, and this was because of a one-night stand suggested by the elder con man as a distraction. So in the end, the lesson I took from the musical was that taking philosophical life lessons from stage productions is ridiculous, because in the end absolutely nothing was conveyed. If I took this lesson seriously, then I'd have to disregard it as ridiculous, and so the universe would explode from the paradox. I guess I'm disregarding the lesson and continuing to take musicals as complex allegories of life, then, and saving the universe in the process. Yay! Basic point of this whole entry: It's impossible to get over Gaia when I see her in things like this, and I have no clue how I'm ever going to stop boring you guys with my blog entries always being on the same subject, but at least now I know to ignore the message of musicals. Oh, and random thing: If you want to see Fencefry singing a Skillet song, click here. :P

My school has a class competition every Thanksgiving, where the freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors all try to out do each other in "school spirit," which means wearing the school colors, putting on the best performance in an all-day assembly (half days ftw :P), yelling the loudest, and not skipping school that day. We do it all on the morning before Thanksgiving Day, on which our football team plays a rival team from the next town over. I have never attended the game, because not only am I not the biggest fan of football, but my family attends a Thanksgiving dinner about 200 miles away every year, so even though I'd probably have gone the last two years, I couldn't have. But that doesn't mean the competition isn't a blast for me. :) When I was a freshman, we did great and I hoped that we'd win... but the seniors won, because as it turns out freshmen have NEVER won in the history of the competition, which has been running for sixty years. <_< The sophomores have only won three times. Apparently it's mostly a contest between the juniors and seniors. My literature teacher said that we probably deserved to win after watching it two autumsn ago, but she might just have been polite, or biased, or something. Meh. When I was a sophomore, we did even better, even though - IMO - our banner presentation wasn't the most interesting idea. There had only been two sophomore classes that had achieved victory in more than six running decades of Color Day, but I felt that we had as good a chance of any. And we did, apparently, as you've probably already deduced if you've been paying attention. :P We actually WON the contest, for the first time since 1989. It was incredibly exhilarating. So now we're juniors, and unless the staff has decided to turn over a new leaf, we'll probably only have the seniors to compete with, since this years' sophomores aren't stellar. (I mean, they're good, yeah, but not amazing.) Which means that the seniors, for the first time since 1990, are coming into the contest as the underdogs. IMO they're not as strong as last year's class, but they're still very good. Less likely to skip school, too, on the whole. :P AAAAAANYWAY... if you read this blog regularly, I'm guessing you're more interested in my connection to all of this than in a random contest in a school you've never heard of. This year we're doing a song theme - "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid. Never would have happened if my friend had been elected class president, that's for sure. :closedeyes: But aside from the fact that mermaids and football players don't have much in common, the tune is really catchy. I'm well-known in my grade for rewriting old songs and amusing ways and then singing then in front of my peers; I don't have a great voice, but it's tolerable. I stayed up until 2AM last night rewriting the lyrics. This is now a very typical bedtime for me. I'm so used to getting little sleep that I barely have any motivation to actually go to bed on time. :s Usually I'm fine during the day anyway, but today I felt awful throughout chemistry and the latter part of algebra. The main thing that kept me going was the knowledge that we had the day off tomorrow - that and the idea of showing my song to my classmates. So, I showed it to the people who also were working on the preparations, and they were all, "Emanick, this is great!" and they asked me to sing it, and I told them I couldn't do it without the rhythm, so somebody used the teacher's computer to bypass our school's anti-YouTube proxy and get a Little Mermaid music video going. So I sang it, with all the ironic body gestures I typically do when singing something more amusing than serious. It was all about unity, and it went beyond football and sports and extended to all parts of high school, while emphasizing how we would totally crush our rivals on the field. Pretty much propaganda. :D But propaganda is pretty fun to write, especially when it doesn't encourage killing people. (Actually, I doubt it's at all fun to write propaganda encouraging killing people, but then I haven't tried it. Maybe the amazing high it gave the Italian fascists was the principle cause of the rise of European fascism and World War II, idk. And yes, I know they didn't talk about killing citizens, they just did it quietly. Leave me alone and go troll the Lichtensteinian House of Representatives, Dani.) So I guess the consensus is that we'll combine my song with another student's, since we have up to ten minutes and my song only ran as long as the original tune. My parts will probably be better, but meh. Arrogance kills puppies. Also, I'll be facing off against Gaia's class, which adds another minor note of drama into all of this. I've pretty much given up on ever being in a relationship with Gaia in the foreseeable future, or even being friends, or hanging out, at all. In fact, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to hold a non-awkward conversation together again. I have NO IDEA what I did wrong. Well, okay, I know a million tiny to moderate actions, or facial expressions, or whatever, that I made which weren't exactly the right ones to make. But I'm pretty sure she didn't want a relationship in any case, so I'm not too upset over that. I'm just depressed that everything is so screwed up that I have no idea what's going on anymore. Maybe it's all in my own head. A lot of it is. I'm not an initiator. I'm better at following than leading. I really need practice in forming a relationship, badly - but then there are practical concerns. Okay, girls like me. There's this one girl who I was always shy around before I was attracted to Gaia, not because I genuinely wanted to be with her but because she was extremely good-looking. Now I'm on the other side of a nonexistent relationship (I know, fail), and I'm somehow more confident and experienced because of being 0-1 rather than 0-0. If that counts, and if you take teen quasi-romantic drama as a game, that is. Anyway, I think she likes me (she was the one who praised my song the most this afternoon, too), so if I could find a way to actually ask her out, or rather the "buildup" equivalent of that, I'd have the practice I need. But it's SUCH AN EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT to enter a relationship. For me, anyway. (It's a time investment, too.) And although I've recently stepped up my efforts to stop being attracted to Gaia, out of sheer sporadic agony, I don't see myself being legitimately attached to anyone else anytime soon. No matter what I do to my head, I'll still be fascinated by Gaia for months to come. If I met my 15-year-old self (from 18 months ago, not 7), and 15-year-old Emanick was a jerk, he'd burst out laughing and tell me what an idiot I was to throw away my principle of "never seeking a relationship" for nothing. He'd be the idiot, of course. She's really transformed my life in a lot of ways. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm depressed a lot these days. Still. So yeah, if I was in a relationship with this girl, until I really got to know her well, I'd be lying if I told her I loved her, or that I thought she was "the best," or a lot of other compliments that she might or might not expect to hear. I don't want to be a liar, but I do want to be ready if I ever run into "somebody" again. I still can't stand to think about Gaia as not that "somebody." Argh. And about this other girl, I'm not even sure she likes me, and if she doesn't... well, that would be unfortunate. It's not as if there aren't other people who probably like me - like that girl who asked me to stalk her on Facebook :P - but she's the most attractive person I know, aside from Gaia (who's attractive in an everyday-awesome way, not in a TV-star way or whatever you would call it). I feel like an objectifying male pinhead, or whatever, but that makes it more natural to seek a relationship with her. Also, she's nice, and she's fairly smart. Unless she's a lesbian or in a relationship already, not too too much could go wrong. :P But for now, I'm not going to do anything relationship-related at all. I'm going to sort of ignore the subject in regards to myself, assuming I can do that, which I kind of doubt. I have enough stress as it is. I don't need to practice it. Although now that I think about it, I kind of miss the drama...