January 2005 Archives

I'm halfway through my senior year of high school. And I'm nostalgic already.

Except school slightly sucks, so not really. I might get my first "B" since tenth grade academic access English this marking period [in American Studies II, which, since I'm an American, you'd think I wouldn't have any problems with]. :O Isn't that exciting?

Whatevz, I'm in college already. But there's a little part of me that wants to be valedictorian, so I might just have to not fail the rest of the school year. We'll see.

Watched The Birdcage [<3!] & Ever After [<3!] this weekend. & went to the library & got about a bazillion books on the 1920s out for my research paper. Which isn't even due yet. How organised am I?

Because a certain gym teacher is not certified to teach ickle sophomores how to swim/not do drugs, our gym teacher is teaching his class, so we now have this certain other gym teacher on Mondays & Wednesdays.

It's super because he's a bit creepy & says things like, "girls, I understand if you have your period and don't want to participate; you just have to communicate with me" & is rumoured to have slept with a female student at his last school. Cool, huh? I love pervy gym teachers. [As does she & she.]

PS: I like boys. & the colour pink. A lot. [In case you forgot during my brief blogging hiatus.]

One of twelve myths every Catholic should be able to expose.

--an ad I followed from The Drudge Report, which I was assigned for an AP gov project on bias in the media.

God, I hate fundamentalists.

Eight million days into having my phone and I only discover today [accidentally] that the camera has a zoom option. I ask you! Could I be any dumber? In other cellphone news, this girl just got one. You hop on that technology bandwagon, sistah.

Two-hour delay this morning. Which is utter nonsense. Did the roads get any better from seven to nine? Did I do anything but sleep through the extra two hours? Oh, well. The administration prolly just felt guilty because all Philadelphia public schools were closed tod. & were like, hey, maybe let's give 'em a two-hour delay. Le sigh. If only I were an AM kindergartner.

Somehow the mischievous gods of winter managed to give us what could have been two snowdays' worth of snow on a weekend. Thx, guys. You sure know how to plan a blizzard.

And now for some kewl linx.

Word Frequency Analysis of Bush's Inauguration Speech.

Boy with toy gun shot by Israelis.

Norway to kill 25% of its wolves.

Roe v. Wade 32nd anniversary was yest.

J20 was fun. V. long bus ride to Silver Spring, then metro trip into DC. We were waiting in a long line to get through a security checkpoint, then this guy walking told us that there was no line at the checkpoint two blocks away, so we went to that checkpoint and were able to get in pretty quickly.

Though we missed the actual inauguration, we were on the parade route an hour before the parade was actually scheduled to begin, so we left the secured area and had lunch at Potbelly's [delicious vegetarian sandwich <3], categorizing the people who walked by as we ate into conservative/liberal. [Fur coat and/or cowboy hat = mark of Republican.]

After food, we went back to the parade route. [Guy in uniform at security checkpoint: "I've seen you before, haven't I?" Yes, just can't get enough of being patted down by those hot female security guards.]

Where we were standing, the crowd was largely anti-Bush, so we had some fun chants going. There's nothing quite so energizing as participating in angry chants. There were lots of lovely posters, too. The only thing that made me a little uncomfortable was when some of the protesters started arguing with/booing the pro-Bush people. They support Bush, but they aren't Bush. It's not their policy that's screwing over half the world. Though they probably don't realize it, they're being screwed over, too. We're all in the same boat. [But maybe that's just me and my hippie love-everyone philosophy.]

After Bush passed in his motorcade, we attempted to exit the secured area, which was the really exciting part. On the other side of the fence, there were more protesters burning flags & similar. So on our side of the fence these scary stormtroopers with masks and nightsticks and motorcycles were getting serious.

Scary stormtroopers: You can't leave yet. Go stand over there.
Crowd: . . .
Me: *under breath* tell me what a police state looks like / this is what a police state looks like [a chant that struck me as a bit over-the-top earlier]
KT: I would probably not say that too loudly if I were you.
Us: *waits for scary stormtroopers to let us out*

And eventually they did, but I was just waiting for a riot to break out. Now that's what a real protest is like. Oh, yeah.

And now for the day in txt message form [as received on my mobile throughout the day]:
11:04 Lots of people are getting into parade route - Uncnfrmed gates openng on Cnstitution Av- Marches starting soon
11:17 Crowd outside Access Pt at 7th and D holding up Access Denied posters and chanting Let Us In - great photo op
12:09 Bush's parade starts at 2:00 - People still being allowed entrance onto route
12:18 Best entrances for Parade: from N side: sw corner of Pershing Prk - from S side: mellon fountn or fed triangle
12:24 Good Back Turning photo spots: Nat'l Archives, Mellon Fountain, 12th and PENN and more on the way
12:41 Anrchst Rsist March now leaving Logan Circle
01:07 If you are on the parade route find a good position and hold it. republicans on the way
01:44 reports of tear gas being deployed at 7th and D
02:05 reports of people assembling to rush entrance at 14 and D
02:07 Entrances B (13th) and C (E St.) still open but slow
02:14 Medics and Food at Dupont 3:30 pm - Rally at 4pm to be followed by roving street party
02:20 please disregard text about 14th and D
02:40 reports of the motorcade leaving capitol
02:44 14 and F borders book store has available bathroom
03:04 presidential motorcade now rolling
03:35 repeated pepper spray 14th and penn
03:44 folks having a hard time getting back out at 15th and h
03:53 protesters being denied permission to leave Penn and 13th
04:00 queer fist at 17th and rhose island now - 70 strong
04:05 protesters now being allowed to leave 13th and penn
04:11 Call for support of Die-in at 16th and Hst - Now
04:32 L and Connecticut Spontanious Street Party Now
05:07 J20 Banner Drop 15th St & H St - happening NOW!!!
11:43 J21 9am Jail Solidarity Central Cell Block 300 Indiana Ave NW Wash DC Courtroom C-10

:D I heart activists AAF. Vive la revolution!

I hrt snow AAF. I hope I don't get tired of it from going to school in Boston. Prolly not. lessthanthree.

Tom. is the DC trip [no matter the weather, yeah?]. I've signed up my mobile for counter-inaugural/J20 updates from like three different groups. Hopefully they willna use up all my txts. And I don't know how much protesting!freedom we'll have, considering we're going with school & getting arrested for civil disobedience is probably not an option. But it'll be nice to be informed, just in case.

PS: My hair is atomic pink. I figure election to inauguration is long enough to make a statement. & in case yr thinking of emulating, black hair dye does not bleach out well. But the pink is sexy, so it's all cool. As they say.

So guess who left her [brand-new Lin Gyi] wallet at the public library yest. when making photocopies of vocab exercises? How dumb can you be?

Very, apparently. But the library called me and left a "we have your wallet, you ditzy bitch" message. & there was only like twenty dollars in there anyway, so if someone plundered it, they wouldn't find very much. No credit cards, either. Just way too many school IDs, plus my library card, my blood donor card, my original Will Bruce "peach for life" card, & assorted other cards of no monetary value. Maybe some phone cards that I never use ever.

But whatever, it's the library. I'm sure the first person who found it [maybe the kind womyn who gave me dimes for the copy machine?] took it immediately to the front desk.

Yest. I attempted to upgrade to MT 3.14 [an auspicious version number, one would think], but instead wound up fucking it up completely. So after much frustration & many fruitless attempts to get MT to work again, I finally found a solution in creating an entirely new subfolder for MovableType & installing 3.14 there from scratch.

Oh, computers. Such fun you are. & I think my lovely menstrual hormone levels probably multiplied the frustration x8.

But whatevz, I can blog again, so I'll leave figuring out how to put mt.cgi back into the main directory without further Fucking Things Up Beyond Repair until later.

& just so the gods of electronics do know that I love technology, some appreciative links:

Firefox 1.0 makes my heart sing. I absolutely adore the google search/"dict "/"imdb "/"amazon " toolbar option. We shall be fast friends, methinks. & my other favourite thing evar is live bookmarks. Not only does "latest headlines" make me about ten times more well-informed, current-events-wise, but I added a little "hoe.org" live bookmark, so that all my recent entry titles are conveniently at my disposal in the toolbar. Plz, Firefox, have my babies.

Newsmap [link courtesy R] is mad freaking awesome. I love the global community spirit as well as the yummy colour-coding. Of course, when I excitedly went to look at the Deustchland news headlines yest., I almost killed myself/choked on my own bile when I saw "Aniston verließ Pitt." I'm sure the lives of 82 million Germans are pretty much not at all affected by the break up of Jennifer Aniston & Brad Pitt.

PS: I won "most intelligent" for senior superlatives. I'm supposed to bring "props or costumes" to get my picture taken Wed., so if anyone has any clevar ideas that aren't HAY PRETEND TO READ BOOKS UPSIDE DOWN!, plz feel free to share. Also, if anyone knows who teh guy is [coughAT&yryearbookconnexionscough], that'd be cool, too.

PPS: How hot did Michael Moore look at People's Choice?

PPPS: K.Farbs singlehandedly caused the Great Depression & my impoverishment. Thx.

the only thing keeping me from dropping out of school is:

"You didn't read the article, did you? *doesn't wait for answer*" - an interactive period four AP government game.

My friend Miriam and I who sit in back of the classroom have compiled a list of actions a peer of ours does quite often in class and assigned point values to each one.

A small selection . . .
having one-on-one conversation with teacher
answering teacher's question
sucking up to teacher
completing teacher's sentence
talking
... without being called on
... while someone else is talking
... without saying anything of substance
... for an extended period of time
... like an old person
... about the inauguration trip
... in front of the class
... from the podium
telling political anecdotes
using character voices when telling stories
dropping names
using the word "scathing"

So in between diligently taking notes and respectfully listening to our revered teacher lecture, we are making tally marks on worksheets. On a good day, he'll earn over 300 points [he talks more than everyone else in the class combined, I swear]. Tod., perhaps because it was a Monday, he only just reached 200. [But at lunch he used 'scathing' three whole times, so he def. deserved 30 more points for that.]

It's terrible, but delightful fun.

Going to the library. & using computers the whole period.

Whether a young working-class woman, a college graduate, flapper or feminist, the new woman insisted on her right to unrestrained behavior--to drink and smoke in public and to obtain sexual satisfaction--and in general sought greater personal freedom and equality with men in her social life.

I saw a girl wearing flip-flops tod. I mean, I know the weather's been unseasonably warm, but it hasn't been so warm that frostbite is no longer a risk. Flip-flops are simply not a year-round fashion item and that's that. & don't pretend you're so poor that it's the only pair of shoes you own because the rest of the time you're wearing those ugly Uggs. With your jeans tucked in. Girl, please.

</high school fashion tirade>

Happy five-and-two-thousand! The year I shall graduate from high school and begin college. Hurrah, hurrah!

New Year's Eve = M&M's partay. Mega!fun. Wish there was more dancin', but white kids are too self-conscious.

Wasn't making out with any boys by midnight, but was in close proximity with a boy on the couch when the ball dropped, so I'll settle for that.

Resolutions, schmesolutions. I hrt me & I wouldn't keep them anyway. That's what I get for growing up in Amurka. Too much self-esteem.

The easter egg on the first disc of the extended edition of The Return of the King is the funniest thing evar. OTP! [Hey, I just found a German translation of the interview, and I can actually understand most of it. Wow, my German's better than I thought. :O]

I tried to give blood tod. because the American Red Cross called me last week asking me to set up an appointment. So I go, read the "don't donate if you have mad cow disease or visited x, y, and z countries" information, sit down with an old man who asks me all my personal information, and then he's like, "Oh. You can't donate blood again until January 18th."

Me: -_- Then why did they call me to set up an appointment?

So then I had to wait eight gazillion years for the mater to return, but since I got to call Kali back, it was a'ight. Even though our conversation was about three minutes long because she was "shoe-shopping."

And since the school's having a blood drive the 21st, I can actually participate in it now & get to skip class. \m/

During the 'it's not fifty-six days yet, you overeager bitch!' fiasco, my brother was purchasing a PlayStation 2, so I got to play Kingdom Hearts ton. How much do I hate Donald Duck & Goofy? I mean, I'm chill with the Disney princesses &c, but the "gawrsh" & irritating duck voice are nerve-grating. And can anyone explain the Goofy/Pluto thing? They're both dogs, right? But one's a pet and the other can talk . . . ? I feel kind of sorry for Pluto.

PS: Warren G. Harding is officially the coolest president just because the "G" stands for Gamaliel.