karatetentacles

1. I have not been on the internet since 5 this morning.
2. I tried to conserve the battery on my phone by trying to text as little as possible past 3pm. It just died.
3. My friend saw a silvery white hair on my scalp at lunch. I was baffled and perplexed.
4. I've started to read Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life.
5. I'm currently composing an email to the author, Amy K. Rosenthal.
6. I'm not watching HIMYM and instead am "doing homework" which translates to "chatting on skype and also reading my book."

1. because I have to be productive in one hour and don't want to get TOO much done before I go.
2.

... I have no number two. that's how unproductive today is. I'm gonna take another nap. (Third one in the five hours I've been awake!)

booklist:
1. everything is illuminated
2. the average american male
3. inferno
4. life of pi
5. othello
6. all quiet
7. slaughterhouse-5
8. a separate peace
9. wizards (collection of short stories)
10. cat's cradle
11. with the old breed
12. one flew over the cuckoo's nest
13. 13 little blue envelopes
14. extremely loud and incredibly close
15. youtube: an insider's guide to climbing the charts
16. timequake
17. how we are hungry
18. liberation
19. mcsweeney's book of lists
20. the bermudez triangle
21. running with scissors
22. you shall know our velocity!
23. the life and times of the thunderbolt kid
24. suite scarlett
25. breakfast of champions
26. walden
27. best american non-required reading 2007
27.5. harry potter and the sorcerer's stone
28. harry potter and the chamber of secrets
28.5. harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban
29. harry potter and the goblet of fire
30. a river runs through it
31. bird by bird
32. the things they carried
33. the hunger games
34. zeitoun

marrr I NEED TO READ MORE. D:<

because everyone is wrong and I'm right.

alright not really but c'mon. this is what I'm good at. this is what I /do./

I mean usually I can go off on my tangent and bitchslap everyone with words, but no, when you get the opinionated ones in the conversation, it's like "shut up, you're not Enlightened like I am." Yes, I'm full of myself, but I think this is one area where I can claim at least semi-expertise, you know?

I /get/ it. Things /click/ for me. It's like solving a math problem; it's like figuring out derivatives. And yes, they're the same. Figuring out the logic of a math problem is akin to figuring out the themes and symbolism of a piece of writing. There is, to a degree, a right answer.

If you look at Catcher in the Rye and try and use it as an excuse for killing John Lennon... NO. YOU'RE WRONG. You read it incorrectly. Try again. Minus $2000. No double Jeopardy for you.

It's a /hard/ math problem, I'll give you that, but if you're smart, you can figure it out.

Now, how you apply this symbolism and theme to your personal life -- that's a different story. That's something that doesn't belong in a classroom, not something that can be taught, but something you can do on your own. How a book makes you /feel/, makes you act, develops your take on life or whatever... that's the personal part of English, the part that math lacks. But to truly get that satisfaction of affecting your life, you have to get the first part down. You have to know what the author wanted you to take from it. You need to analyze the symbolism and imagery and metaphors and similes. You /have/ to, otherwise you won't really get it.

Maybe I can take this back to the math metaphor...

You have to know the unpractical part of math to get to the "real world" application. And usually, for the "real world" application, you don't need to get so... involved in the process.

Take All Quiet on the Western Front. It's really, painfully obviously an anti-war novel. It says it on the frickin' cover. But you take it, you analyze it, you learn the author's tone, you look at the symbolism, and you see the theme in all its glory. To get to the application, all you really needed to know was it was an anti-war novel, and determine whether or not you are going to take it to heart. Do you agree or disagree with the author? You only need the basic level, but to back yourself up, to really /learn/ from the novel, you need to get into the symbolism and metaphors and motifs. You need to look for allegories and know that diction is just as important as anything else.

Take /any/ book. Harry Potter. Hell, take Where the Wild Things Are. Take The Da Vinci Code or TWILIGHT, even. There are bits to be analyzed. There is something to /learn/. There's a theme to be gotten. There's an idea developed. There's a /reason/ the book was written, and I PROMISE it's /not/ just because the author was bored. Those books don't get published, those books have no substance.

Whether or not you agree or disagree with the idea is your opinion; what you take from the book is entirely personal. Personally, I disagree with the morals of Twilight. I think it's a shitty book. I don't think there's a lot of depth to it, and I don't think Smeyer was very subtle, but whatever. She is an author, she wrote a book, and I have an immense amount of respect for her. I do.

Now, she could probably stand to work on her narrative technique, which can and often does enhance the theme of the book.

Alright this is really long and rambly but whatever. This is what happens to me.

1. it's a lot of work.
2. tumblr
3. skype
4. facebook
5. super mario brothers 3 for the NES
6. tired!

So Shawnee Mission East, my high school, is known for three things:

1. Being rich.
2. Being smart.
3. Drinking.

There are five high schools in the Shawnee Mission School District: North, South, East, West, and the oddball Northwest.

I don't know how familiar you blog readers are with the National Merit Society, based of PSAT/NMSQT, but basically, here's the rundown of semi-finalists for the NMS from my school district:

SM West: Four semi-finalists
SM South: two
SM Northwest: three
SM North: two
SM East: seventeen.

Sad part? I'm on first-name basis with half of them. And most of them get drunk every other night. And all of them are very, very well off. (The other ones are Asians... but even some of them like to get a little funky on Fridays.)

Way to live up to sterotypes, SME. ;)

booklist:
1. everything is illuminated
2. the average american male
3. inferno
4. life of pi
5. othello
6. all quiet
7. slaughterhouse-5
8. a separate peace
9. wizards (collection of short stories)
10. cat's cradle
11. with the old breed
12. one flew over the cuckoo's nest
13. 13 little blue envelopes
14. extremely loud and incredibly close
15. youtube: an insider's guide to climbing the charts
16. timequake
17. how we are hungry
18. liberation
19. mcsweeney's book of lists
20. the bermudez triangle
21. running with scissors
22. you shall know our velocity!
23. the life and times of the thunderbolt kid
24. suite scarlett
25. breakfast of champions
26. walden
27. best american non-required reading 2007
27.5. harry potter and the sorcerer's stone
28. harry potter and the chamber of secrets
28.5. harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban
29. harry potter and the goblet of fire
30. a river runs through it
31. bird by bird
32. the things they carried
33. the hunger games

less than sixteen weeks to read seventeen books. I CAN DO THIS.

because I can't just do this and expect a good grade.

Simplify, Simplify reflection paper
Annie Dillard -- weasels emulation

The day before I embarked on my four day adventure, I updated my twitter encouraging people to call me. The whole purpose was to get to know people a little better. A lot of my friends I communicate solely through skype and twitter, so it was going to be hard not talking to them for four days. But two days in, I hadn't gotten any phone calls. I wasn't bothered -- I have a life, other people have lives, but I was a bit disappointed. I got a few text messages, just saying "what's up?" and "how are you?" but those didn't mean too much.

Then after school, on the third day, almost immediately after I walked out of the building, my phone started ringing. I was expecting my mother, telling me to hurry to the car, or my brother, saying that he wasn't coming home and was headed to the pool, but it wasn't. It was my friend, Arka. He lives in Webb City, Missouri, about a two hour drive from here, and just called to honestly ask me how I was. I could not have been more pleased. Sure, I could barely hear him as I crossed 75th street on the way home, and I couldn't talk to him for more than five minutes, but just the fact that he made the effort to contact me, where so many others hadn't, made me feel good.

My experiment seems a bit selfish -- it was more of a find-who-likes-me-the-most game. I don't feel that the people who didn't call me are any lesser friends, who like me less than Arka, who called. But he did win some friend-points. Maybe it was a little self-indulgent, a little narcissistic of me to assume that people would love to call me and chat with me outside of this internet realm. I probably would have caved and jumped on twitter once I got home had I not gotten that phone call. I really missed them, my internet friends, these people who I have never seen and probably never will see, in person, face-to-face. But I can say that they have affected me more than anyone else in this school, more than the girl who sits in front of me in chemistry who tells me about the parties she's been to and how drunk and high she was the other night. They know me, I know them, and I'm proud to call them my friends.

I don't think I properly remembered yesterday.

September 11th and all that.

It was a long time ago, or so it seems.

I was eight. I had no idea what was going on. I remember the TV in my living room was on when I walked downstairs -- when I still had my old room, when Ellie, my 9-year-old sister, was still little, when I didn't understand fractions and could still wait for Harry Potter book releases. I thought it was a movie -- I really did. I'd never heard of an explosion, of a real plane crash before, none of my relatives had ever died, and I see all the smoke coming off the building, and I didn't even know what it was.

What's an 8-year-old kid supposed to think when something like that happens? How's a parent supposed to react to that?

It's still this huge deal. I can't explain why. It became this rallying point for everyone. It sparked unfair anti-Muslim sentiment, but still united the country. It shattered America's innocence, I think. We're still young. Barely 200 years. (lol math, thanks Jules D:< ) We went from this group of old British men, united, formed ideas of liberty and justice and what we stand on today, and we boomed economically, and we were a "world superhero," and we've already gone through so much, but we've been lucky enough to never be attacked. No one's come here and picked a fight. We're secluded on an island... but that day shattered that.

I'm a proud American. I'm a proud capitalist. I love this fucking country, despite the McDonalds and the skinheads and the conservative farmers. We know how to rally around the important stuff.



There's all that shit going on, Will Smith, but look how we can combat it:


I'm gonna cry over there and read my depressing book about the Vietnam War.