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February 26, 2005
XXX
I can see you biting and scratching. She learned to tease him, too. The moans were rhythmic, then at times like the cooing of doves.
So my [and Steve Jobs'] birthday was Thursday. That morning before school I received a darling bouquet of pink balloons on a stick from M., which I carried around for the rest of the day because they didn't fit in my locker, which, incidentally, was decorated with a shiny "happy birthday" banner and a shiny pink tiara resting in a nest of shiny pink grass with a note that said "wear me." [That was probably a run-on sentence, but I never cared about that before, so I certainly shan't start now that I'm EIGHTEEN.] I less than three my friends.
It started to flurry around 11 of the clock, and at the actual time of my birth [approx. 12:22pm], our high school principal came on the loudspeaker and announced that we would be getting out at 12:30 on account of snow. Ker-ching!
My darling friends and I then went to the Starbucks at Barnes and Noble and they treated me to chocolate mousse cheesecake and hot chocolate. And some random woman, noticing my "birthday princess" tiara, no doubt, asked me if I was sixteen. x.x I mean, I'm sure there are many women who would love to be guessed to be sixteen, but most eighteen year olds are not among them.
Then I went home, where there was my One True Dress hanging on my bedroom door. Except my mum had purchased it in a size too large. x.x
And then we went downtown for my birthday party. :D Yay.
Our cab driver on the way to the train station was a Nigerian political cartoonist from the Ibo tribe [who also spoke German]. I told him I read Achebe's Things Fall Apart for school and he said he spoke to a local high school about it a few years ago and asked me whether I liked the novel. It was pretty awesome that something I did in Mr Kelly's English class was actually useful for something, like connecting with a random stranger. Fancy that.
Friday morning we had a two hour delay, which was lovely since I hadn't got to bed until late. & then I left school early to hear Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA-ASSHOLE) talk to old people about social security. "If you are 55 or older, this will not affect you at all."
It was pretty much the most boring thing evar, but a little group of students from my gov class had a nice lunch together and spent some quality time in the "ghosts on the go" [chunder!] van with Ms Hauger. So it was mostly better than going to physics, gym, and German.
After school I went to the mall with M. & KT to exchange my dress for the next smaller size. Except when I got to Bloomingdale's, there was no seven on the rack. Fortunately, though, after calling the m. and telling her there were 11 dresses in my size at the Mall of America, the saleswoman found a size seven that someone had been trying on, so all my panic was for nought.
With my Prom Dress of Love safely exchanged, we went to Gimpy's house to watch Harold and Maude, which is pretty much the best movie evar. I want to be Maude when I grow up.
well, if you want to sing out, sing out
and if you want to be free, be free
'cause there's a million things to be
you know that there are
Posted by almeda at 3:35 PM | Comments (2)
February 23, 2005
PG-13
My last post as a legal minor. Treasure it.
All my fellow seventeen-year-olds might not want to tune in to my blog tom. It'll pretty much be all pr0n. And cigarettes. And lots of other mature material that only adults will be able to handle.
Yeowww. Sizzle.
Posted by almeda at 7:37 PM | Comments (5)
February 22, 2005
Free Mojtaba and Arash!
Committee to Protect Bloggers.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.- Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Posted by almeda at 12:00 AM | Comments (1)
February 21, 2005
"Dresses are much harder to get than boys"
Friday evening I had an intense craving for french fries and ice cream, as well as a $10 gift certificate in my possession from winning the library's guess-how-much-candy-in-a-jar contest, so KT & I went to pre-teen central: the mall.
She bought chicken and noodles from some Asian place while I waited a gazillion years for a paper boat of freshly-made french fries accompanied by a little cup of cheese wiz.
Yum. So we ate and talked and I stared at the cute guy sitting a couple tables away who reminded me of someone else.
Then we decided it would be fun to look at prom dresses, because we are teenage girls and that's the sort of thing we enjoy. So we went to Macy's and I tried on a pretty cute $30 [!] dress, but it wasn't quite prommy enough [Semi-formal is, I believe, the word I'm searching for].
After exhausting their fairly meagre selection and laughing at the mannequins with the ridiculous purple hair, we went to Bloomingdale's, where gorgeous, expensive dresses abounded. [As well as a few ridiculous, expensive dresses.]
Armed with cameraphone, I tried on some dresses and eventually fell in love with the one below with a glorious tulle ballerina skirt. There's a sale on my birthday, so we'll see.
After KT made an emergency phone call to her m. to purchase the perfect prom dress, we went to FYE & I cashed in my gift certificate for The Beginning Stages of....
And then we had ice cream at Ben & Jerry's and went home. A good night, all in all.
On Saturday, I watched Mulan II with Ryan. Worst. Disney straight-to-video/DVD sequel. Evar. And we watched clips of Harold & Maude, Prangstgrüp movies, and listened to his Natural Voice Text to Speech Reader say silly things.
I have a phone interview with a Penn alumnus in an hour and a half. And I feel like shite. Which makes me kind of regret not going to school last Wednesday because now I have to go to school no matter how sick I am, so I don't miss more work/gain a reputation as a truant [although this kid has pretty much everyone beat]. But whatevz, never fear, I'll suck it up. & hopefully it'll go away in time for my birthhhhhhday. & I think I'm having a birthday party the evening of March the 5th. So don't make other plans, pliss. Kthxbai.
Posted by almeda at 1:13 PM | Comments (4)
February 20, 2005
hey! it's the sun
On Valentine's Day, instead of staying home to finish writing my American studies term paper like a good little honors student, I took the train down to South Street with my friend M. to rock out to the choral symphonic pop aural euphoria that is the Polyphonic Spree.
Because M. is way anal compulsive about being on time, we reached the TLA a good hour before the concert was set to start. So, being cold, wet, and bedraggled from walking 12 blocks in the rain, we grudgingly succumbed to the lure of the pseudo-bohemian corporate coffee house found on every corner of every city in the country: Starbucks.
I and my hot chocolate and M. and her super grande mocha latte cappuccino espresso [or something like that— can you tell I'm not a coffee drinker?] then ascended the stairs in the back to grab a prime spot by the window in the second floor seating area for spying on urban pedestrians in the rain.
So we sat there, whiling away the time, nursing our drinks, talking, gossiping, reading the quotes and disclaimers on our coffee cups, &c.
Eventually we decided enough time had passed and we could go to the TLA now. M. first had to make a stop in the loo, so I went downstairs to wait for her. Sitting at a table across from the cashier, I noticed two handsome young men whom I had seen from the second-floor window and idly wondered whether they were attending the concert that e'ening.
They, along with a man with a shaved head and a shortish woman with shortish hair, were purchasing coffee. I chanced to overhear the shaved-head man say to one of the other young men, "Your short hair still freaks me out. In a good way," and, noticing a little streak of red hair on the back of the guy's head, I wondered if he hadn't perhaps recently had dreads.
M. emerged from the lavatory and we walked across the street to the concert. I considered buying a t-shirt on the way in, but one doesn't really get that overpowering need to buy merch until after the concert, when there are a billion other people in line and all the smaller sizes have already sold out.
It was pretty empty when we walked in, so we got good spots near the front, after M. deposited her umbrella [which she never went back to get] on the floor next to one wall.
The opening band was Pilotdrift, a name which reminds me of Driveshaft. They weren't bad. Endearing, in a head-bobbing sort of way. Cute Texas accents. M. said they were too similar to Radiohead for her, but I liked this creative bit at the end where they all played drumsticks on random surfaces. It touched a special place in my heart.
Next was Mike Doughty, who had quite a fanbase in the crowd, and was very willing to have conversations with the audience and improvise. People would request songs, and he'd say, "maybe later" or politely: "not tonight, but thanks for asking." He played a lot of good songs. There was this one fanboy to the left of M. and I, mouthing the words along to all the songs. Cute. Of course, on the other side there was a Spree fan who was not at all impressed with the musical stylings of Mike Doughty & guitar and who intermittently shouted things like, "No more songs!" Oh, well.
And then it was the Polyphonic Spree! This kid once said the Trocadero is the church of atheists, and while we were at the TLA & not the Troc, it was probably the nearest-religious experience I've ever had at a concert, what with the robes and the arms raised in the air and the all-around positive vibes that I don't really associate with church, except maybe black people's church. Unless there isn't really a lot of clapping and testifying and singing in real black people's churches. I can't say I have much experience/knowledge in the matter.
Anyway, it was good times. Everyone on the stage is just so excited and joyous that you just can't help but to get caught up in it and bounce and sing along and throw your arms in the air with them. There was confetti and coloured lights [okay, yes, there are coloured lights at just about every concert evar, but they are more fun when all the band members are wearing brightly coloured robes] and tambourines and the music is just so much more fun live.
I loved that you could see the people on stage getting sweaty and I loved that the drummer [who reminded me a little of David Arquette] jumped into the audience, crashing cymbals. I was also really glad they played "Soldier Girl," 'cause that's one of my favourite songs.
There was this one guy standing in front of us who looked like Eugene Levy and I could not figure out why he was there because I don't think he danced at all. I thought maybe he was a critic, but M. said she did see him get into it a little bit, so maybe he was just a v. stoic fan.
For the encore, they reentered the stage by threading their way in a long line through the audience, and I was about a foot away from the line, a perfect vantage point for noticing that one of the guys in robes had a streak of red in his hair. And then I was like OMG I SAW THE POLYPHONIC SPREE IN STARBUCKS. Except not all of them, just the flautist and three guys. But still!
They ended with a cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," which was pretty much the best thing evar. And then Tim DeLaughter had us say with him "Together . . . we're heavy" and released us into the night.
Posted by almeda at 12:54 PM | Comments (1)
February 14, 2005
Things that make high school a singular experience
My report card came this weekend. All "A"s & I'm still second in the class. GPA: 4.521. Also spent about 8+ hours working on stupid catapult for physics. & completed 3 pages of 5-page paper due tom.
Polyphonic Spree ton. Hurrah.
PS: Happy V-Day.
Posted by almeda at 3:12 PM | Comments (6)
February 8, 2005
Grade of 100.00% is derived from 125 Accumulated Points / 125 Maximum Possible Points
I'd like to take this moment to treasure the fact that it says 100.00 next to PHYSICS AP-0440-61 on LetterGrade.
It's especially precious to me as soon she will put in the grades for the test we took tod., and though I somehow managed to guess the correct answer for each of the three multiple choice problems, I fear I did not fare so well on the other six problems on the test.
Mostly I loathe school these days.
Posted by almeda at 9:19 PM | Comments (4)
Things for Friday 02/11
There. Now I don't have to store such stressful information in my brain.
I received late xmas presents last night: America (the book), Björk's Medulla, and Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna. xDDDDDDD Good shit, as my peers would say.
In Deutsch class tod. we had Karneval, which involved storming other classrooms in the language wing and shouting "Karneval!" while tossing candy to unsuspecting students. Don't be jealous.
Posted by almeda at 5:13 PM | Comments (1)
February 6, 2005
Things I Like
The other night whilst tidying the living room I was listening to Vitamin C's "Graduation" [from a mix CD that was the invitation to Patty Greenfield's sixteenth birthday party], and it made me really sad. Damn music & its emotional manipulation. But then "Maneater" came on & I forgot about being sad. Don't worry.
Also I tolly saw this girl who gets changed in my gym locker row on Wheel of Fortune. It was really weird, especially because I never watch Wheel of Fortune. But there she was on the teevee with her little best friend and they won like $20,000 and a shopping spree and it made me almost kill myself.
My Harvard interview was this morning. It went really well. I printed out a list of all my activities/awards/etc. that my guidance counselor had me make and brought it with me, so the interviewer just went through the list & we talked about each one. I was really comfortable with her & she was really impressed by all the stuff I do. And then when she asked me about my SAT scores, she was like, "That's astounding."
I enjoyed it more than my MIT interview, I think. Maybe because I was less nervous/liked her better? I also didn't bring the resumé with me to the MIT interview, so they asked me stupid questions to which I couldn't think of fantastic answers on the spot. But whatevz, I got in, so it doesn't matter.
I did notice that I was saying 'like' a lot, so I thought of you. & I tried not to say it as much, but it was difficult. And she was probably too busy paying attention to the content of what I was saying to notice. One hopes.
Not that I particularly want to go to Harvard, anyway, but they have my application fee already, so I figure I might as well make an effort.
PS: Supersize Me is so good & bad at the same time. Chicken nuggets are prolly the nastiest thing evar. But surprisingly, what really grossed me out [besides the gastric bypass surgery] was the soda. Drinking those huge cups of coke everyday is just not appetizing to me at all. Yay for flavoured corn syrup. Mmm.
Posted by almeda at 5:45 PM | Comments (1)
February 2, 2005
Mid-Year Report [see, MIT? I'm not a slacker]
1) ENG IV H/AP-0140-31 94.34 A
2) AMST II AP-0240-21 90.19 A
3) AP AMER GOVT/POLTICS-0250-41 95.34 A
4) CALC AP BC-0360-11 99.45 A
5) PHYSICS AP-0440-61 90.02 A
6) PE-0515-71 100.00 A
7) HEALTH ED-0560-51 99.72 A
8) GER V H/AP-0630-81 97.29 A
I had almost resigned myself to getting a "B" in Amst, but my teacher, in his benevolent wisdom, gave me 50/50 citizenship points.
Hey, guess what. Unemployment has not been as high as it currently is in Germany since the 1930s. How bad is that? V. bad, let me tell you.
And thus concludes today's dose of trivial minutia like my grades combined with sweeping international trends like 5m people unemployed.
Posted by almeda at 4:54 PM | Comments (3)