karatetentacles

I love that within hours of colder weather, I get sick.

ugh I feel miserable and I can't tweet about it! What am I supposed to do!?

I love everyone who's called me so far. Seriously, it makes my day. I can't really carry a conversation because I feel like my head is about to explode and I have to sneeze every two seconds, but yeah. Love you all.

I started blogging for my school newspaper. I'll link you loyal readers to it when it goes live -- hopefully Wednesday.

And now fakecrazycrayon and fakesuchducks are following me on twitter... but I don't understand the joke because I haven't been on skype and I miss you guys!

I made a video-day-2 but I don't like it very much... the idea is funnier than the execution. So I'll just leave it with the one-day video... bleh. The blog's enough, rite?

We get cool missions and stuff.

I'm not just doing it for the iPod.

I'm doing it for the good of your INNER SELF.

Your INNER SELF needs this.

No spam, unless you count random bands e-begging for you to be a fan of them (which are easy to ignore, and nothing dissimilar from youtube), and they have those really cool widgets. Now I can play DFTBA Records music on my blog! Check out that widget over there! -->

So sign up if you haven't already. Here's the thing again:





So yeah. It's awesome.

Sigh. I promise I had a really good idea for a blog, and that I filed it in my blog folder., but I think it got corrupted or something. Because now I don't remember it.

Speaking of Kristina (if you clicked the links...), I think I kind of love her. I mean, I loved her before. But through BEDA, and through Mrs. Nerimon, through this new CD she did with Luke Conard (with whom I'm in love), and through the Parselmouths thing... I dunno, I think my love for her just tripled in the past month.

I already ordered ALL CAPS!, which is Luke and Kristina's CD. I'm soooo excited for it to come. I'm listening to the tracks on the MySpace (linked) and LOVE IT SO MUCH. It's a damn good thing I'll probably get a job at Cinemark this summer... I keep buying things online. Damn debit card...

But yeah, I have an interview Thursday night at 8... right during the Office, but whatevs, I'll live until I get back and can watch it. It was going to be Wednesday, but I have the Five Minute Film Festival to attend! It should be pretty fun -- I hope most people remember it, since we won't have our usual Wednesday-morning meeting due to a late start. Ugh: I totally don't get to utilize my sleep-in time due to my lack of doing-math-homework skills. ):

Whatever. Gonna finish my paper application, read Cuckoo tonight since I won't have a lot of time Wednesday night (because of the Film Fest), and study a little more for my test tomorrow. A'ight cool love you all bye!!

I love the fact that I learn all this interesting information via P-Nelli. Today we talked about the invention of LSD.

See, it was designed by the CIA as a means of forcing captured prisoners of war to talk. But they didn't want to use it on prisoners right away, so they decided to test-run it on some college, or just out of college, aged kids. Obviously, everybody got addicted to it, and by the time the CIA repealed it, everyone already knew how to make it. And that's why we have Ken Kesey writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Also. I was in my school library earlier today. And I was trying to find Three Cups of Tea in the nonfiction section. I stumbled across the 800's, which all you Dewey Decimal lovers know is where they keep the "Literature." This confuses me. What makes the books in the nonfiction section of the library "literature," but Kurt Vonnegut and John Green have to sit in the fiction part of the library? Why is Virgil's Aeneid on some sort of pedestal? Because it's old? Really, that's a valid reason? Or is it a different reason that I just don't know? If anyone knows, please tell me... it's kind of bothering me, in this weird sort of way. (Among these books were Shakespeare, Dante, and that 1001 Arabian Nights.) Why are these in a nonfiction section of a library and not just labeled as "classics" or something?

So I get home from school and jump on skype, expecting to talk to Sierra (@crayolaawonderr), but she's on the phone. So I check twitter and see that John's broadcasting live! So I immediately go there and he reads some amazing poetry and answers questions for... what, an hour and a half? Two hours? Not even an hour? I can't tell. Alan was nice and gave me operator powers. I felt special. (: It was a fun show, full of product placement and Agloe talks and Willy and sellouts and... awesomeness.

A few days ago in EHAP, we discussed Niche. That man is a genius. He basically said "Up yours, Freud. We aren't controlled by our subconscious, we have free will." I totally agree. I think sometimes our actions are influenced by our subconscious, but we are ultimately responsible for our own choices, unless there is some flaw in our initial design that somehow alters our brain function (so yes, I do believe there are loonies out there). And we do get influenced by things that happen to us, but it's more of a learned behavior, you know? Like if my father did something to me when I was little that would cause me not to trust him, and I didn't trust him as I aged, that wouldn't be something that influenced me on the inside: it'd be a learned behavior. I taught myself to distrust him.

This blog is really random.

TENTACLES OUT.

I was on the Nerdfighter Ning this morning, and one of the discussion topics was "Life Changing books." So I started writing mine.

This whole year in my English class has been a life-changing experience when it comes to literature, but I'll list some that have really affected me throughout my life.

1. Harry Potter, JK Rowling. It wasn't my "spark" to reading, really, but the series and the aura around them is so amazing and it got me into the internet/nerdfighters/wrock/my friends.

2. Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger. We're gonna read this book in English class later, so I'll be much more aware of the deeper themes/etc, but I absolutely adored this book. I felt so bad for Holden, and it sort of changed the way I portrayed myself, and how I handle personal relationships.

3. Inferno, Dante. This book taught me that absolutely nothing an author does is unintentional. Everything has a meaning, a deeper theme, a crackpot reason for existing. Plus, it helped me reevaluate the meaning of "morals" and Hell and Christianity. Love it.

4. A Separate Peace, John Knowles. Love it. Love it. Love it. It's so... I can't even explain it. If you've read it (and properly understand the symbolism), then you'll understand why it makes me cry, even before the second accident. /vague, but I don't want to spoil it. It also changed the way I thought about literature, as less of a collection of interesting idiosyncrasies of characters and plot and storytelling, but about what all of it means.

Aside from that, specifically about the book, personally about my life, it's made me reevaluate my own childhood, my own fleeting innocence, my Finnys and my Lepers and my Brinkers and me. My Bookworms will vouch that I was completely convinced I was Gene for about ten seconds in a skype call. It's like Gene is a ghost on my back, something I need to be aware of all the time. I need to look for my adulthood, because if I don't... well... it'll kill me.

5. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain. At first, I hated this book. It was a summer-reading assignment, so of course I was spiteful, and didn't do a good job reading it. But then, I got to class and we talked about it. It reevaluated, like A Separate peace how I thought about literature. Of course, it did introduce me to the idea that characters run a story rather than themes, but obviously that's worked out now. Thanks, John Knowles! I think I'm going to read this one again fairly soon.

6. Twilight, Stephanie Meyer. Yeah, I hate it. We all know this. (And if you don't... well. Now you know.) But through it's horribleness, it helped me determine why I read. What I expect to get out of books. And Twilight didn't deliver that for me.

I think that about sums it up... funny how in 12 years of reading, only 7 have a lasting memory on me, and more than half have been read within the last few years. I guess I'm close to really "finding" myself, to making my judgments about literature as a whole. Close, but not quite.

And now, the 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]

Also, some exciting news:
@aplusk, aka Ashton Kutcher, is now following @realjohngreen, aka The One And Only John Green, on twitter. Awesome. *nerdfighters!*