.
Garbage.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
A Comprehensive Review of "The Catcher in the Rye"
There are two typical reviews of The Catcher in the Rye that you see. One is
- i had to read the catcher in the rye for my english class and it sucked so bad.
The other is
- I love The Catcher in the Rye so much. I can see why it became a classic. J.D. Salinger really captured the essence of a teenage boy. I read the book once in high school and have just now gotten around to reading it again as an English professor, and I think everyone in the world should read it too. It's the best book I've read in a long time.
...But typically about three times that length. We don't really have to mention the obvious irony of a 50-year-old English professor claiming to know exactly how the essence of a teenage boy is, so I'll just jump right in now with my review, which is intended to be a compromise-- between the viewpoint of the first reviewer and the competency of the second.
--I'm not a discriminating reader. I generally like pretty much any book I read. We read The Jungle last year in history class and everyone says it was the most awful book they've ever read, but I kind of liked it. However, I did not like The Catcher in the Rye at all. I think the main reason is that absolutely nothing happens. In this book, we start out with the focus on a guy, Holden Caulfield, sitting there telling us why he doesn't feel like telling us the story he's about to tell us. He goes and talks to one of his professors, an old man who picks his nose, and then goes back to his dorm room. Then his neighbor comes in the room and clips his toenails. A little while later Holden decides to leave the school he's at altogether. This isn't exactly shocking, because he was recently kicked out for flunking all of his classes except English. I'm surprised he passed even that. The writing style of this book is the turdiest I've ever read. I've read funny, I've read dry, I've read florid, and I've read boring. But never before had I read a book as told by a moron. This Holden Caulfield seems to know around one hundred words and repeat them over and over again. At least three times in a page he will say "goddam". He writes as he thinks, too, and the problem with that is that he doesn't think about anything interesting. After he takes his old, ratty suitcase out of the dorm room and checks it at the subway station, very little else happens, and here's how it does.
-He goes out to a hotel near where he is in New York and, on his way up to his room, he meets the elevator guy, who also happens to be a pimp. The elevator guy sends his least exciting girl up to Holden's room. She takes off most of her clothes, and they talk for a while about where she used to go to school. Then she puts her clothes back on. A little while later the elevator guy comes back with the prostitute and steals five dollars from Holden. So after that, he goes down to the hotel's night club and dances with a blonde girl, who, by Holden's own condemnation, is very boring. All throughout this time Holden keeps making points about how phony everyone is and how he hates phonies. He then leaves and has a date with a phony girl the next day.
-He also buys his sister a record, and goes to the museum too. A while after that he talks to a former friend in a boring bar with a pianist who's phony. He drinks a lot and then soaks his head in the sink. He comes out and drunkenly calls up a girl he knows, offering to help her trim her Christmas tree. After she hangs up on him, he walks through Central Park and drops and breaks the record he bought for his sister. He sits in front of the pond and realizes his wet hair is frozen in the winter air and starts thinking about how depressed he'd be if he died of pneumonia. He decides to go to his sister's house.
-She's ten years old and the only thing she does is hide her head in a pillow and say "Daddy's going to kill you" (for getting flunked out). He sticks around for several hours, smoking some cigarettes, and then scrams when his parents get home. Soon enough he finds it's daylight and leaves a note with his sister's school's secretary to the effect that she should meet him at the museum. She does and gives him back a hat he gave her, and then they say goodbye. Then, abruptly, the book ends. Were you looking for a plot? Guess what: There isn't one! It's just some stupid kid who swears a lot complaining about how crappy his life is and how phony everyone he knows is. This book might be tolerable if J.D. Salinger had given Holden a less idiotic writing style and made him actually do something, but as it is it's just a piece of garbage. I have no idea why it's treated as a classic. I suspect that it's because it's a cheap book to buy and thus English teachers value it because they can buy a lot of them for only a few dollars. One thing's for sure, though: if you're looking to read something interesting, thought-provoking, good, or even competently written, look somewhere else.
- i had to read the catcher in the rye for my english class and it sucked so bad.
The other is
- I love The Catcher in the Rye so much. I can see why it became a classic. J.D. Salinger really captured the essence of a teenage boy. I read the book once in high school and have just now gotten around to reading it again as an English professor, and I think everyone in the world should read it too. It's the best book I've read in a long time.
...But typically about three times that length. We don't really have to mention the obvious irony of a 50-year-old English professor claiming to know exactly how the essence of a teenage boy is, so I'll just jump right in now with my review, which is intended to be a compromise-- between the viewpoint of the first reviewer and the competency of the second.
--I'm not a discriminating reader. I generally like pretty much any book I read. We read The Jungle last year in history class and everyone says it was the most awful book they've ever read, but I kind of liked it. However, I did not like The Catcher in the Rye at all. I think the main reason is that absolutely nothing happens. In this book, we start out with the focus on a guy, Holden Caulfield, sitting there telling us why he doesn't feel like telling us the story he's about to tell us. He goes and talks to one of his professors, an old man who picks his nose, and then goes back to his dorm room. Then his neighbor comes in the room and clips his toenails. A little while later Holden decides to leave the school he's at altogether. This isn't exactly shocking, because he was recently kicked out for flunking all of his classes except English. I'm surprised he passed even that. The writing style of this book is the turdiest I've ever read. I've read funny, I've read dry, I've read florid, and I've read boring. But never before had I read a book as told by a moron. This Holden Caulfield seems to know around one hundred words and repeat them over and over again. At least three times in a page he will say "goddam". He writes as he thinks, too, and the problem with that is that he doesn't think about anything interesting. After he takes his old, ratty suitcase out of the dorm room and checks it at the subway station, very little else happens, and here's how it does.
-He goes out to a hotel near where he is in New York and, on his way up to his room, he meets the elevator guy, who also happens to be a pimp. The elevator guy sends his least exciting girl up to Holden's room. She takes off most of her clothes, and they talk for a while about where she used to go to school. Then she puts her clothes back on. A little while later the elevator guy comes back with the prostitute and steals five dollars from Holden. So after that, he goes down to the hotel's night club and dances with a blonde girl, who, by Holden's own condemnation, is very boring. All throughout this time Holden keeps making points about how phony everyone is and how he hates phonies. He then leaves and has a date with a phony girl the next day.
-He also buys his sister a record, and goes to the museum too. A while after that he talks to a former friend in a boring bar with a pianist who's phony. He drinks a lot and then soaks his head in the sink. He comes out and drunkenly calls up a girl he knows, offering to help her trim her Christmas tree. After she hangs up on him, he walks through Central Park and drops and breaks the record he bought for his sister. He sits in front of the pond and realizes his wet hair is frozen in the winter air and starts thinking about how depressed he'd be if he died of pneumonia. He decides to go to his sister's house.
-She's ten years old and the only thing she does is hide her head in a pillow and say "Daddy's going to kill you" (for getting flunked out). He sticks around for several hours, smoking some cigarettes, and then scrams when his parents get home. Soon enough he finds it's daylight and leaves a note with his sister's school's secretary to the effect that she should meet him at the museum. She does and gives him back a hat he gave her, and then they say goodbye. Then, abruptly, the book ends. Were you looking for a plot? Guess what: There isn't one! It's just some stupid kid who swears a lot complaining about how crappy his life is and how phony everyone he knows is. This book might be tolerable if J.D. Salinger had given Holden a less idiotic writing style and made him actually do something, but as it is it's just a piece of garbage. I have no idea why it's treated as a classic. I suspect that it's because it's a cheap book to buy and thus English teachers value it because they can buy a lot of them for only a few dollars. One thing's for sure, though: if you're looking to read something interesting, thought-provoking, good, or even competently written, look somewhere else.
Saturday, September 18, 2004
About time for a new post.
Isn't it, though? It's been almost a week since I wrote anything. And this 'blog is archived weekly. So this week's archive will have two posts in it.
-Yesterday we went to the first home football game. We were out of our form. I didn't play any of the stand songs too well--though that might have something to do with that I didn't have any of my music--and the show could've been better. Probably a lot of our poor performance was due to the fact that Mr. Canter was off practicing for his brother-in-law's wedding or something and couldn't be at the game, leaving us with only the assistant director Mr. Kennedy. And also due to that it was dark outside. I didn't get back to the house until around 2230.
-I thought this up a few days ago when the school was having calzones for lunch: I think it would be funny to, every time you're saying "calzone", say "calzona". Just keep mentioning calzonas until someone goes nuts and yells, "It's calZONE! CALZONE! CALZONE!!" I thought that would be pretty funny. Doesn't have to be "calzone" though--you could do it with some other ward.
-I'm seriously considering getting a summer job at Crowduck. Our family has a summer tradition of, every year, going up to this awesome fishing camp near the Manitoba-Ontario border. It's in the Big Whiteshell Provincial Park, on Crowduck Lake, and it's the place I look forward to most each year. Really, all I'm doing in school each year is waiting until it lets out and we all get to go to Crowduck. It's the greatest place on the face of the planet. The air is clean, the water is clear, the fishing is great, and there's nobody else around for about a hundred miles. The way you get there is you follow a certain highway until it stops abruptly at the shore of Big Whiteshell Lake, and then you call up someone on the crew. They come over on a ten- or twelve-foot boat over Whiteshell to pick you up. You load all your fishing gear for the week on the boat and they ride you two miles over the lake to a dock that you would never see unless you knew exactly where it is. Then the guy who was driving the boat helps you unload all your stuff off the boat and onto a red pickup truck marked "Limousine". From there you're driven another two miles on a bumpy, winding trail through a thick Canadian forest. Just when it seems like the trail will never end, you catch your first glimpse of Crowduck over the trees and decide that even if the ride takes the rest of the day, it'll be worth it. But it doesn't take the rest of the day, and soon enough you find the trail coming out of the forest into the camp, which is a collection of about twelve buildings, eight of which are places for campers to stay. There's a dock at the bottom of a small hill and you can see for miles and miles over the lake's surface. On the other shore there's nothing but trees: no houses, no factories, no towns. The only way in and out is how I told you; or, if you're the owner, Bill, you can take your restored 1944* yellow float plane to a neighboring lake or the nearest store in Sioux Narrows. It's the kind of solitude you get only one place in the world.
-So that's why I'd like to work there. But before I try and get a job there, I want to find out what working at Crowduck would entail. I've heard that the crew usually goes to sleep around 2300 and gets up at about 0500. I also notice that the camp seems to be a pretty high-maintenance kind of place, so I wouldn't get too much rest in between then. Then there's the several skills I'd need to learn first--I don't know just how to drive a boat, how to gut a fish, how to operate the generator, or how to drive a truck. I can learn most of those things, but the important thing is that I don't know them yet. I'll have to get working now if I want to get working later.
-Driving a truck reminds me: Supposedly I can get my temps on the 24th. My dad used to be a Drivers' Ed. instructor, so learning shouldn't be too hard. I just have to listen to all the stuff he tells me to do and then do it and then take a test. Maybe. It's probably a lot more complicated than that.
-
-Okay, now I've caught you up on the last few days. Who knows when I'll be back?, but it probably won't be too far up the road from now.
*I think it's a '44--but it might be a '45.
-Yesterday we went to the first home football game. We were out of our form. I didn't play any of the stand songs too well--though that might have something to do with that I didn't have any of my music--and the show could've been better. Probably a lot of our poor performance was due to the fact that Mr. Canter was off practicing for his brother-in-law's wedding or something and couldn't be at the game, leaving us with only the assistant director Mr. Kennedy. And also due to that it was dark outside. I didn't get back to the house until around 2230.
-I thought this up a few days ago when the school was having calzones for lunch: I think it would be funny to, every time you're saying "calzone", say "calzona". Just keep mentioning calzonas until someone goes nuts and yells, "It's calZONE! CALZONE! CALZONE!!" I thought that would be pretty funny. Doesn't have to be "calzone" though--you could do it with some other ward.
-I'm seriously considering getting a summer job at Crowduck. Our family has a summer tradition of, every year, going up to this awesome fishing camp near the Manitoba-Ontario border. It's in the Big Whiteshell Provincial Park, on Crowduck Lake, and it's the place I look forward to most each year. Really, all I'm doing in school each year is waiting until it lets out and we all get to go to Crowduck. It's the greatest place on the face of the planet. The air is clean, the water is clear, the fishing is great, and there's nobody else around for about a hundred miles. The way you get there is you follow a certain highway until it stops abruptly at the shore of Big Whiteshell Lake, and then you call up someone on the crew. They come over on a ten- or twelve-foot boat over Whiteshell to pick you up. You load all your fishing gear for the week on the boat and they ride you two miles over the lake to a dock that you would never see unless you knew exactly where it is. Then the guy who was driving the boat helps you unload all your stuff off the boat and onto a red pickup truck marked "Limousine". From there you're driven another two miles on a bumpy, winding trail through a thick Canadian forest. Just when it seems like the trail will never end, you catch your first glimpse of Crowduck over the trees and decide that even if the ride takes the rest of the day, it'll be worth it. But it doesn't take the rest of the day, and soon enough you find the trail coming out of the forest into the camp, which is a collection of about twelve buildings, eight of which are places for campers to stay. There's a dock at the bottom of a small hill and you can see for miles and miles over the lake's surface. On the other shore there's nothing but trees: no houses, no factories, no towns. The only way in and out is how I told you; or, if you're the owner, Bill, you can take your restored 1944* yellow float plane to a neighboring lake or the nearest store in Sioux Narrows. It's the kind of solitude you get only one place in the world.
-So that's why I'd like to work there. But before I try and get a job there, I want to find out what working at Crowduck would entail. I've heard that the crew usually goes to sleep around 2300 and gets up at about 0500. I also notice that the camp seems to be a pretty high-maintenance kind of place, so I wouldn't get too much rest in between then. Then there's the several skills I'd need to learn first--I don't know just how to drive a boat, how to gut a fish, how to operate the generator, or how to drive a truck. I can learn most of those things, but the important thing is that I don't know them yet. I'll have to get working now if I want to get working later.
-Driving a truck reminds me: Supposedly I can get my temps on the 24th. My dad used to be a Drivers' Ed. instructor, so learning shouldn't be too hard. I just have to listen to all the stuff he tells me to do and then do it and then take a test. Maybe. It's probably a lot more complicated than that.
-
-Okay, now I've caught you up on the last few days. Who knows when I'll be back?, but it probably won't be too far up the road from now.
*I think it's a '44--but it might be a '45.
Sunday, September 12, 2004
The competition
I got up at around 1030 and found that family friend Karl was here and about to cook us all breakfast. Karl is one of Dad's buddies. They met in the Army, I think, but they haven't been together in that context for decades. Anyhow, Karl made us breakfast. I had a lot of bacon. I love bacon. (Rosie, if you're reading this, just keep your mouth shut.) Then I sat around for a while; then it was time for the band competition.
-I biked up to the school at 1328ish and we had a short practice for about twenty-five minutes, just fixing small details before we headed off to the 13th annual Talawanda Marching Band Competition. Then we piled into the buses. It was very crowded. Sardines get more maneuvering room in their can. And we had to sit like that for around forty-five minutes--I know how long it is, because my grandparents live in Oxford, where Talawanda is. And for some reason--they said it was to "keep the focus"--we weren't allowed to talk. So I tried to sleep. But I never could do it. Too uncomfortable, I guess. Keep in mind that at this time we were in our monkey suits for band--not the thick red winter jackets, but the pants are more than enough to make you sweat as much as those fat men who hang around in saunas. They're about two feet longer than normal pants because they come up to your armpits, about, and they're made of something like felt. All I know is that it's not comfortable--very itchy and hot. And what's more, they're a particularly dark shade of black, so as to facilitate heatstroke. I hate uniforms.
-We arrived in the Talawanda High School parking lot and scrammed out of the buses real quick-like. Then we stood around sweltering on an area of grass where we weren't allowed to play our instruments unless we wanted to get disqualified. You're not allowed to play your instrument pretty much anywhere at a marching band competition except the Designated Practice Area, because if you do play you get disqualified. A surprising number of things can get you disqualified. For example, if, when you're backfield and waiting for the lady on the loudspeaker to tell you you can Take the Field for Adjudicated Performance, you for whatever reason step over the line and onto the field, you're disqualified. Just like that! Luckily, nobody was stupid enough to do that before we got our clicks to march out to the front hash and change the block we were in into our form.
-It was still very hot. It was like being inside a really fat guy's armpit after an exhausting workout. Nonetheless, drum major Chad Rogers gave us our "dups" and we all brought up whatever instrument we happened to have to start playing our first note.
-DAAAA da da da Dat Dat Dat Dat DAAHHH, ...dadada daaa Daaa DAaa DAAAA-Daat! If you don't read music, that's the first couple of measures in our program for this year. I, just like everyone else, march a very inconcise route around the field, taking a tour of all there is to offer: the front hash, a few numbers, the back hash, and a lot of grass. I have to constantly stay between either Tom and Mike or Mike and Matt, while moving very fast, playing a trumpet, standing exactly straight, and not being allowed to turn my head. About half the time I'm walking blindly backwards. While you march at a competition, there is a judge who walks around out on the field, getting up close and personal while talking into a minicorder. Mr. Canter has instructed us to, if a judge stands in front of us while we're marching, run over him. Apparently this has happened before, somewhere. I did well on the opener once I got into a "groove", and I just kept right on through all the other three pieces. It was still monumentally tiring, though. Once you've marched your first five minutes and your hair has so much sweat in it that it feels like a drowned rat, you think, "Say, let's get out of here," but of course you can't, because aside from the fact that that's just not done and you would make the entire band lose the entire competition, it would probably get you disqualified.
-We finished the show without dying, and immediately I walked a long, circuitous route to the buses to change out of my sweat suit. Good thing for dry cleaning. Then my dad, who had previously shown up a little while earlier, took us to my grandparents' house for Chinese food, which had been ordered from Phan Shin, a local restaurant. I ate every bite of my Szechuan Spicy Chicken and an egg roll and a fortune cookie ("Life is a bold and daring adventure for you") and drank a can of root beer and took another with me to the awards ceremony, which theoretically started at 2000 but in actuality started at around 2115. They announced all the class-C bands first, which didn't take long because they're so small nobody cares about them. For the record, something called Green Marching Band won it. Then they announced the class-B bands, our class. There were a total of two bands competing in class B today, so it wasn't as much of an accomplishment as it could've been when we won the class-B championship over I think Batavia Heights. The judges went on to announce class-A and class-AA bands, and then told us all who had qualified for State competition: two AA bands. Figures, huh? Nothing else mattered after the loudspeaker lady said that, so we stopped listening and a little later I went down to meet Dad to go home.
-I biked up to the school at 1328ish and we had a short practice for about twenty-five minutes, just fixing small details before we headed off to the 13th annual Talawanda Marching Band Competition. Then we piled into the buses. It was very crowded. Sardines get more maneuvering room in their can. And we had to sit like that for around forty-five minutes--I know how long it is, because my grandparents live in Oxford, where Talawanda is. And for some reason--they said it was to "keep the focus"--we weren't allowed to talk. So I tried to sleep. But I never could do it. Too uncomfortable, I guess. Keep in mind that at this time we were in our monkey suits for band--not the thick red winter jackets, but the pants are more than enough to make you sweat as much as those fat men who hang around in saunas. They're about two feet longer than normal pants because they come up to your armpits, about, and they're made of something like felt. All I know is that it's not comfortable--very itchy and hot. And what's more, they're a particularly dark shade of black, so as to facilitate heatstroke. I hate uniforms.
-We arrived in the Talawanda High School parking lot and scrammed out of the buses real quick-like. Then we stood around sweltering on an area of grass where we weren't allowed to play our instruments unless we wanted to get disqualified. You're not allowed to play your instrument pretty much anywhere at a marching band competition except the Designated Practice Area, because if you do play you get disqualified. A surprising number of things can get you disqualified. For example, if, when you're backfield and waiting for the lady on the loudspeaker to tell you you can Take the Field for Adjudicated Performance, you for whatever reason step over the line and onto the field, you're disqualified. Just like that! Luckily, nobody was stupid enough to do that before we got our clicks to march out to the front hash and change the block we were in into our form.
-It was still very hot. It was like being inside a really fat guy's armpit after an exhausting workout. Nonetheless, drum major Chad Rogers gave us our "dups" and we all brought up whatever instrument we happened to have to start playing our first note.
-DAAAA da da da Dat Dat Dat Dat DAAHHH, ...dadada daaa Daaa DAaa DAAAA-Daat! If you don't read music, that's the first couple of measures in our program for this year. I, just like everyone else, march a very inconcise route around the field, taking a tour of all there is to offer: the front hash, a few numbers, the back hash, and a lot of grass. I have to constantly stay between either Tom and Mike or Mike and Matt, while moving very fast, playing a trumpet, standing exactly straight, and not being allowed to turn my head. About half the time I'm walking blindly backwards. While you march at a competition, there is a judge who walks around out on the field, getting up close and personal while talking into a minicorder. Mr. Canter has instructed us to, if a judge stands in front of us while we're marching, run over him. Apparently this has happened before, somewhere. I did well on the opener once I got into a "groove", and I just kept right on through all the other three pieces. It was still monumentally tiring, though. Once you've marched your first five minutes and your hair has so much sweat in it that it feels like a drowned rat, you think, "Say, let's get out of here," but of course you can't, because aside from the fact that that's just not done and you would make the entire band lose the entire competition, it would probably get you disqualified.
-We finished the show without dying, and immediately I walked a long, circuitous route to the buses to change out of my sweat suit. Good thing for dry cleaning. Then my dad, who had previously shown up a little while earlier, took us to my grandparents' house for Chinese food, which had been ordered from Phan Shin, a local restaurant. I ate every bite of my Szechuan Spicy Chicken and an egg roll and a fortune cookie ("Life is a bold and daring adventure for you") and drank a can of root beer and took another with me to the awards ceremony, which theoretically started at 2000 but in actuality started at around 2115. They announced all the class-C bands first, which didn't take long because they're so small nobody cares about them. For the record, something called Green Marching Band won it. Then they announced the class-B bands, our class. There were a total of two bands competing in class B today, so it wasn't as much of an accomplishment as it could've been when we won the class-B championship over I think Batavia Heights. The judges went on to announce class-A and class-AA bands, and then told us all who had qualified for State competition: two AA bands. Figures, huh? Nothing else mattered after the loudspeaker lady said that, so we stopped listening and a little later I went down to meet Dad to go home.
Friday, September 10, 2004
The Show
Today we did our first march of the show.
-Our show is the music of Chuck Mangione. You can find a copy of it to listen to at here, under, suitably, "Mangione Magic". There are four songs: Mangione Opener, Feels So Good, Echano, and El Gato Triste ("The Sad Cat").
-We were at an away game today, at Reading. Don't ask me where that is. I just know that I got there. The bus driver can worry about how to get there. Carrying our instruments, we marched away from our buses into, approaching it from the back, the Reading stadium, a hulking, unimaginative concrete structure with a view of the field and a nearby street. There was one scoreboard at the near end of the field. We were on the left side of the stadium, with the Readingites at the right side. Finneytown scored first, amazingly. Everyone cheered at our touchdown. I'll bet they would've cheered harder if they'd known those were the only seven points we'd get.
-We played some stand songs for the first two quarters, and then filed out onto the track to get on the field. In marching band, you don't just walk onto the field. You line up at the back and march onto it. We did that, and then drum major Chad Rogers gave us our dups, to begin playing and marching around.
-Marching isn't nearly as easy as it looks, and it probably looks pretty hard. There are about nineteen things you have to be considering simultaneously at any given moment, some of which are: keeping the right tempo, not missing any notes, whether you're in step, whether you're in phase, what the form is looking like, where you're about to go, what size steps to take, your roll step, and whether that noise behind you is a train or just a really loud tuba. As it turned out, it was a train, rolling along on a track that's apparently somewhere very close to the field. The train blocked out about the last half of El Gato Triste, but I don't think it had anything to do with me messing up right up near the end. I just forgot what was happening, forgot where I was supposed to be going. But all in all I did fairly well; perhaps not as well as I'll have to do in the contest tomorrow, but fairly well. Final football game score: Us, 7; Them, 30.
-Yep, we get to go to a contest in Oxford tomorrow, rather than sit on our butts like we ought to be allowed to do after the first show. I have to be up by 1340. This will be a challenge. I'm tired. Good night.
-Our show is the music of Chuck Mangione. You can find a copy of it to listen to at here, under, suitably, "Mangione Magic". There are four songs: Mangione Opener, Feels So Good, Echano, and El Gato Triste ("The Sad Cat").
-We were at an away game today, at Reading. Don't ask me where that is. I just know that I got there. The bus driver can worry about how to get there. Carrying our instruments, we marched away from our buses into, approaching it from the back, the Reading stadium, a hulking, unimaginative concrete structure with a view of the field and a nearby street. There was one scoreboard at the near end of the field. We were on the left side of the stadium, with the Readingites at the right side. Finneytown scored first, amazingly. Everyone cheered at our touchdown. I'll bet they would've cheered harder if they'd known those were the only seven points we'd get.
-We played some stand songs for the first two quarters, and then filed out onto the track to get on the field. In marching band, you don't just walk onto the field. You line up at the back and march onto it. We did that, and then drum major Chad Rogers gave us our dups, to begin playing and marching around.
-Marching isn't nearly as easy as it looks, and it probably looks pretty hard. There are about nineteen things you have to be considering simultaneously at any given moment, some of which are: keeping the right tempo, not missing any notes, whether you're in step, whether you're in phase, what the form is looking like, where you're about to go, what size steps to take, your roll step, and whether that noise behind you is a train or just a really loud tuba. As it turned out, it was a train, rolling along on a track that's apparently somewhere very close to the field. The train blocked out about the last half of El Gato Triste, but I don't think it had anything to do with me messing up right up near the end. I just forgot what was happening, forgot where I was supposed to be going. But all in all I did fairly well; perhaps not as well as I'll have to do in the contest tomorrow, but fairly well. Final football game score: Us, 7; Them, 30.
-Yep, we get to go to a contest in Oxford tomorrow, rather than sit on our butts like we ought to be allowed to do after the first show. I have to be up by 1340. This will be a challenge. I'm tired. Good night.
Wednesday, September 8, 2004
Real fast here, again
I'm in homeroom again, checkin' up on my 'blog. I'm mainly here to post the answers to that puzzle I posited to you all last week or whenever. Here are the answers I have:
CH: Archaic, monarch, chemistry... there are many many of them.
PH: Shepherd.
SH: Dishonor. I knew another but I've forgotten it for the moment.
TH: Thyme. No proper nouns, so I can't accept "Thomas".
-Okay, there you have them. Bye now.
CH: Archaic, monarch, chemistry... there are many many of them.
PH: Shepherd.
SH: Dishonor. I knew another but I've forgotten it for the moment.
TH: Thyme. No proper nouns, so I can't accept "Thomas".
-Okay, there you have them. Bye now.
Sunday, September 5, 2004
Fireworks
Times New Roman now. I'm experimenting.
I did absolutely nothing until about 1940. I knew I ought to be doing something, but I couldn't think of anything in particular. So I just sat around. And lay around. And that kind of stuff.
-But what happened at 1940 was, Mom and Micah and I went off downtown to go see the WEBN Labor Day Fireworks. It's a huge annual event. It's covered by a local news channel, staged on the Ohio River (the fireworks are shot off a barge), and costs probably a million dollars. Or more. And it's awesome.
We parked in a crummy kind of parking space, and waited for things to start at 2105. ('Cause today's 9/05, get it? 9:05 on 9/05?) They hyped things for a few minutes, a deejay made a speech about the Rozzi Family of pyrotechnic engineers, and mentioned the soldiers in Iraq, and then they started things up.
-They shot off a huge beginning round. It brightened the sky. A few seconds later, the sound from it reached us. There's a huge time delay. They fired off more fireworks. Bigger and bigger, in every color of the rainbow. Red, White, Blue, Purple, Orange, Green. There were little paisley type ones, and ones that were like cannons firing off the ground. It's like being inside a 21-gun salute. WEBN played music to go with it, and the sound came at us two seconds late, and the fireworks kept on coming. Bigger and brighter, and brighter! The sky was filled with two giant white marigolds! And then any other kind of flower! Passiflora! Chrysanthemums! Then a waterfall!
-The song changed, and the fireworks changed with it, turning to fit the music perfectly. Two cymbal crashes would coincide with two giant purple fireworks exploding the night, and then American-Flag color ones, and then things got better and better and bigger! The grand finale was like something out of an intergalactic spacefight. They shot about fifty charges into the air at once, and the sky turned blue. They sent up their whole arsenal. The sound, delayed, knocked us over, and, from 0.4 miles away, activated car alarms. The reporter covering things in a helicopter was hurled into the ionosphere. The music reached a fever pitch. The earth shook. Cars exploded. Buildings toppled. The sky caught fire. Then, with a final thrill from the song on the radio, everything went black.
-The WEBN Labor Day Fireworks 2004-
I did absolutely nothing until about 1940. I knew I ought to be doing something, but I couldn't think of anything in particular. So I just sat around. And lay around. And that kind of stuff.
-But what happened at 1940 was, Mom and Micah and I went off downtown to go see the WEBN Labor Day Fireworks. It's a huge annual event. It's covered by a local news channel, staged on the Ohio River (the fireworks are shot off a barge), and costs probably a million dollars. Or more. And it's awesome.
We parked in a crummy kind of parking space, and waited for things to start at 2105. ('Cause today's 9/05, get it? 9:05 on 9/05?) They hyped things for a few minutes, a deejay made a speech about the Rozzi Family of pyrotechnic engineers, and mentioned the soldiers in Iraq, and then they started things up.
-They shot off a huge beginning round. It brightened the sky. A few seconds later, the sound from it reached us. There's a huge time delay. They fired off more fireworks. Bigger and bigger, in every color of the rainbow. Red, White, Blue, Purple, Orange, Green. There were little paisley type ones, and ones that were like cannons firing off the ground. It's like being inside a 21-gun salute. WEBN played music to go with it, and the sound came at us two seconds late, and the fireworks kept on coming. Bigger and brighter, and brighter! The sky was filled with two giant white marigolds! And then any other kind of flower! Passiflora! Chrysanthemums! Then a waterfall!
-The song changed, and the fireworks changed with it, turning to fit the music perfectly. Two cymbal crashes would coincide with two giant purple fireworks exploding the night, and then American-Flag color ones, and then things got better and better and bigger! The grand finale was like something out of an intergalactic spacefight. They shot about fifty charges into the air at once, and the sky turned blue. They sent up their whole arsenal. The sound, delayed, knocked us over, and, from 0.4 miles away, activated car alarms. The reporter covering things in a helicopter was hurled into the ionosphere. The music reached a fever pitch. The earth shook. Cars exploded. Buildings toppled. The sky caught fire. Then, with a final thrill from the song on the radio, everything went black.
-The WEBN Labor Day Fireworks 2004-
Incredible!
Oh hey. I took out the first half of this post because it was basically just a bunch of personal information about me and I'm trying to step up my internet privacy. It was just my schedule for 10th grade. The second half of the post isn't really worth much either, but I decided not to mess up by post count. Whatever.
Thursday, September 2, 2004
Finally, back online
...However temporarily. I'm sorry for not posting in the last... week or so, but our Internet connection has been down the whole freaking time. Our house seems to have something against the Internet. We've had three Zoomtown people out to look at it, but as soon as the last one left, it reverted into its crappy state.
-I have a freakin' lot to cover. I think I already covered the hike, so I'll start with my first day of school, which was Monday. I woke up at freaking 0620. Then, with nobody to see me off because it was so early, I rode off into the dark on my 21-speed, to the Finneytown High School.
-Band was my first class. It was just as bad as it usually is in the practices after school on Mondays Wednesdays Thursdays. So I went to my first bell with a sort of "fleeing" mentality, even though my first bell was one I had been looking forward to with a bit of foreboding: art class. I knew as soon as I got in the room that this wasn't the right class at all for me. Everyone in the room was a year younger than me at least, it seemed; it was only a remediation class for 10th-graders. I paid very little attention to anything that bell. It has now been changed to accounting.
-Second bell was math. It's taught by a very boring guy named Mr. Rahn. We got an obscenely thick textbook and told us our homework to get it covered, and let us off to our next class.
-Third bell was history, where we talked about Indians with a not boring guy named Mr. McGlade. We've talked about Indians the last four days in history now. Well, it's still kind of interesting. Incidentally, in the Cherokee language (I didn't actually learn this in class--I have a Cherokee book in my room for some reason) there are some verbs that you have to put a syllable into to indicate whether the verb's object is alive, flexible, long, or liquid, and you can sometimes switch them around to say funny things, which might loosely correspond to "pour me some turkey!" or "slice me some gravy!"
-Fourth bell--Spanish class. My teacher Mrs. O'Connor just got over the cancer and is now back to normal, teaching Spanish like any other day. She's a fun person. Yep.
-Fifth bell is, retardedly, split into two halves, in between which is lunch. I spend it with my friend Aaron Bell, who I think I've mentioned before. It's very fun, but not for the class--we've been assigned Catcher in the Rye, which is, so far, about the crappiest book I've ever read. It's fun because Aaron's there and we can make up idiotic inside jokes pretty much at liberty. To make things better, my old old friend Lamont Giles sits right next to me too, and he makes up all sorts of funny crap. Like, the other day he made up three comic strips: Boxy Brown, which is about a cardboard box with an afro, Action Hank, who comes with Action Night Vision Goggles and Action Bills, and committed suicide in the first strip with his Action Letter Opener when Boxy Brown asked him what he needed the goggles for, and Muscly Arm Paperboy, who thwarted a weird old man who wanted to have popsicles with him in his cellar by riding off on his bike.
-Sixth Bell was woodshop, where I got to do nothing, and seventh bell was chemistry, where we heard about what exactly chemistry is. So there. That was my first day.
-After school I had another freaking band practice. And I also just got back from one. And furthermore I have a lot of homework to do. I've got to go away now.
-I have a freakin' lot to cover. I think I already covered the hike, so I'll start with my first day of school, which was Monday. I woke up at freaking 0620. Then, with nobody to see me off because it was so early, I rode off into the dark on my 21-speed, to the Finneytown High School.
-Band was my first class. It was just as bad as it usually is in the practices after school on Mondays Wednesdays Thursdays. So I went to my first bell with a sort of "fleeing" mentality, even though my first bell was one I had been looking forward to with a bit of foreboding: art class. I knew as soon as I got in the room that this wasn't the right class at all for me. Everyone in the room was a year younger than me at least, it seemed; it was only a remediation class for 10th-graders. I paid very little attention to anything that bell. It has now been changed to accounting.
-Second bell was math. It's taught by a very boring guy named Mr. Rahn. We got an obscenely thick textbook and told us our homework to get it covered, and let us off to our next class.
-Third bell was history, where we talked about Indians with a not boring guy named Mr. McGlade. We've talked about Indians the last four days in history now. Well, it's still kind of interesting. Incidentally, in the Cherokee language (I didn't actually learn this in class--I have a Cherokee book in my room for some reason) there are some verbs that you have to put a syllable into to indicate whether the verb's object is alive, flexible, long, or liquid, and you can sometimes switch them around to say funny things, which might loosely correspond to "pour me some turkey!" or "slice me some gravy!"
-Fourth bell--Spanish class. My teacher Mrs. O'Connor just got over the cancer and is now back to normal, teaching Spanish like any other day. She's a fun person. Yep.
-Fifth bell is, retardedly, split into two halves, in between which is lunch. I spend it with my friend Aaron Bell, who I think I've mentioned before. It's very fun, but not for the class--we've been assigned Catcher in the Rye, which is, so far, about the crappiest book I've ever read. It's fun because Aaron's there and we can make up idiotic inside jokes pretty much at liberty. To make things better, my old old friend Lamont Giles sits right next to me too, and he makes up all sorts of funny crap. Like, the other day he made up three comic strips: Boxy Brown, which is about a cardboard box with an afro, Action Hank, who comes with Action Night Vision Goggles and Action Bills, and committed suicide in the first strip with his Action Letter Opener when Boxy Brown asked him what he needed the goggles for, and Muscly Arm Paperboy, who thwarted a weird old man who wanted to have popsicles with him in his cellar by riding off on his bike.
-Sixth Bell was woodshop, where I got to do nothing, and seventh bell was chemistry, where we heard about what exactly chemistry is. So there. That was my first day.
-After school I had another freaking band practice. And I also just got back from one. And furthermore I have a lot of homework to do. I've got to go away now.
Monday, August 30, 2004
Realquickone
I have to do this really quickly, because there are about two minutes before this class ends and then I go back home to where our Internet connection is down. It's the first day of school, and boy do I wish it weren't. I'm really tired, but I still have to go to band practice at 1730. (I use military time. Get used to it.)
All right then bye.
All right then bye.
Saturday, August 28, 2004
The Hike
I got up, if you can believe it, at 8:00 this morning. I was astounded too. Then I gathered up my provisions, slipped on my shoes, and slipped off into Congress Run.
-The part I've already done many times before was the hardest part, because there the creek hadn't widened yet. It was about two feet wide. And the woods were about as thick as a tightly-knit wool sweater just beyond it. However, to avoid getting my feet wet, sometimes I did have to get up onto the bank. I did this as seldom as possible, because as soon as I did, I was met by a vast quantity of webs built by alarmingly large spiders, though they were probably just regular joes, out to make a bug like the next guy. I promptly got these webs all in my face, no matter where they were. If they were built on the ground, they ended up on my face.
-After about twenty minutes of that, I finally emerged into a wider spot on the creek, stationed at a subdivision called Central Park. It has to get wider because it goes through a huge tunnel there. I went over the tunnel, but I've gone through it before, and I can tell you it's not fun. It's a vast hole from which there is no escape but walking to the other side. It's an ideal place to get claustrophobics to Overcome their Fear. From the other side of that tunnel I walked maybe a couple hundred yards and came to the tunnel under Cross County. This tunnel is even more enormous than the Central Park one, and to make matters worse, there's no way to go over it. The traffic on Cross County is thick and there's a fence on the other side. So I had to go through it. And as I did, I noticed a beep from in my backpack. It was my mom's cell phone (which she had insisted I take along) going out of range.
-As I walked through it, I mainly stayed quiet. The end never seemed to get any closer. Foot by foot, I approached the way out, but it sure didn't seem like it. Towards the end, I got gutsy and started singing some of my Carmina Burana. Then I noticed the profound echo and started talking to myself to hear it. I also clapped really loud, and the sound didn't dissipate for at least three seconds. If you exploded a firecracker there, it would still be reverberating the next day.
-I didn't die, and I walked out the tunnel to a newly widened creek. Another little wash had joined it, turning it, for the first time, into Congress Run in earnest. I had also gotten to the point on Galbraith where there start to be houses. I watched the houses pass by and be replaced with new houses as I trekked through the dry creekbed. Mom called me--the phone was back in range--and asked just where on the creek I was. I told her. Then I kept walking.
-Eventually I came to Congress Run Apartments, and then left it. About there the creekbed became incooperative for walking in. I had to get up on the bank every once in a while to avoid having to walk in water about up to my knees. I tried that for a little while. And then, then I came to an impasse. It was another intersection of Congress Run with Cross County, and this time the tunnel wasn't big enough to walk through. I came up to the road to have a look around. There was nothing I could see to help me.
-Except crossing the road I had just not gone under. It hadn't occurred to me as an option before, because I was still thinking about Cross County, but now that I saw it, it made perfect sense. I walked leisurely across the street, not seeing a single car, and promptly found a pitiful little creek that couldn't've been the majestic Congress Run. Could it? I crossed the street again and sat down under a bridge to figure it out. I pulled out my print-out of the map. I puzzled. I couldn't figure out where I was, because the map had no street names. Eventually I decided I must be on the right track and went off downstream, using the term "downstream" loosely, because there was no current whatsoever. I skirted the border of a Horse Boarding place, rounded a corner, and punctually got lost. There was nothing to see on the banks. The creek looked dark and forbidding. I came to a spill of something that smelled like pumice soap, completely stagnant in the water, and decided I'd have to come up to ground level and have a look around.
-I came up behind an enormous, imposing, industrial-white building. At its side there was a fence, and on the other side of the fence I could see a golf course. I consulted my map to see just where on the face of the Earth I had wound up. There was no mention of a huge white building or golf course anywhere. Clearly the map was out of date. I called Mom and told her my predicament, whereupon she instructed me to find out where I was by way of the name of the building. I trekked around the enormous bulk of it and saw a sign that said, bluntly, "GENERAL POLYMERS". That was all. Then I walked up the street, found an "Advance Building Products", and gave her the address where I had found myself: 93 Caldwell Drive. I had come a long way, but even though the map said I could probably get to a railroad without too much difficulty, the golf course begged otherwise. I told Mom to come and pick me up.
-I waited for a while on the steps of Advance Building Products, and we came home. Then I ate a lot of food, and drank a lot of pop. And that's all I'm going to relay for now.
-Signing out
-The part I've already done many times before was the hardest part, because there the creek hadn't widened yet. It was about two feet wide. And the woods were about as thick as a tightly-knit wool sweater just beyond it. However, to avoid getting my feet wet, sometimes I did have to get up onto the bank. I did this as seldom as possible, because as soon as I did, I was met by a vast quantity of webs built by alarmingly large spiders, though they were probably just regular joes, out to make a bug like the next guy. I promptly got these webs all in my face, no matter where they were. If they were built on the ground, they ended up on my face.
-After about twenty minutes of that, I finally emerged into a wider spot on the creek, stationed at a subdivision called Central Park. It has to get wider because it goes through a huge tunnel there. I went over the tunnel, but I've gone through it before, and I can tell you it's not fun. It's a vast hole from which there is no escape but walking to the other side. It's an ideal place to get claustrophobics to Overcome their Fear. From the other side of that tunnel I walked maybe a couple hundred yards and came to the tunnel under Cross County. This tunnel is even more enormous than the Central Park one, and to make matters worse, there's no way to go over it. The traffic on Cross County is thick and there's a fence on the other side. So I had to go through it. And as I did, I noticed a beep from in my backpack. It was my mom's cell phone (which she had insisted I take along) going out of range.
-As I walked through it, I mainly stayed quiet. The end never seemed to get any closer. Foot by foot, I approached the way out, but it sure didn't seem like it. Towards the end, I got gutsy and started singing some of my Carmina Burana. Then I noticed the profound echo and started talking to myself to hear it. I also clapped really loud, and the sound didn't dissipate for at least three seconds. If you exploded a firecracker there, it would still be reverberating the next day.
-I didn't die, and I walked out the tunnel to a newly widened creek. Another little wash had joined it, turning it, for the first time, into Congress Run in earnest. I had also gotten to the point on Galbraith where there start to be houses. I watched the houses pass by and be replaced with new houses as I trekked through the dry creekbed. Mom called me--the phone was back in range--and asked just where on the creek I was. I told her. Then I kept walking.
-Eventually I came to Congress Run Apartments, and then left it. About there the creekbed became incooperative for walking in. I had to get up on the bank every once in a while to avoid having to walk in water about up to my knees. I tried that for a little while. And then, then I came to an impasse. It was another intersection of Congress Run with Cross County, and this time the tunnel wasn't big enough to walk through. I came up to the road to have a look around. There was nothing I could see to help me.
-Except crossing the road I had just not gone under. It hadn't occurred to me as an option before, because I was still thinking about Cross County, but now that I saw it, it made perfect sense. I walked leisurely across the street, not seeing a single car, and promptly found a pitiful little creek that couldn't've been the majestic Congress Run. Could it? I crossed the street again and sat down under a bridge to figure it out. I pulled out my print-out of the map. I puzzled. I couldn't figure out where I was, because the map had no street names. Eventually I decided I must be on the right track and went off downstream, using the term "downstream" loosely, because there was no current whatsoever. I skirted the border of a Horse Boarding place, rounded a corner, and punctually got lost. There was nothing to see on the banks. The creek looked dark and forbidding. I came to a spill of something that smelled like pumice soap, completely stagnant in the water, and decided I'd have to come up to ground level and have a look around.
-I came up behind an enormous, imposing, industrial-white building. At its side there was a fence, and on the other side of the fence I could see a golf course. I consulted my map to see just where on the face of the Earth I had wound up. There was no mention of a huge white building or golf course anywhere. Clearly the map was out of date. I called Mom and told her my predicament, whereupon she instructed me to find out where I was by way of the name of the building. I trekked around the enormous bulk of it and saw a sign that said, bluntly, "GENERAL POLYMERS". That was all. Then I walked up the street, found an "Advance Building Products", and gave her the address where I had found myself: 93 Caldwell Drive. I had come a long way, but even though the map said I could probably get to a railroad without too much difficulty, the golf course begged otherwise. I told Mom to come and pick me up.
-I waited for a while on the steps of Advance Building Products, and we came home. Then I ate a lot of food, and drank a lot of pop. And that's all I'm going to relay for now.
-Signing out
Prehike
Okay, so, yeah. I didn't really do much of anything today. I really was going to go to the trumpet sectional, but I was thwarted in that. I had my alarm all set to 9:00 sharp, and it even went off. But it was impossible to tell that it went off, because it seems that during one of my absences (band camp or something) Mom went into my room to sleep away from the power of Dad's snoring and turned the volume all the way down. I didn't hear a thing until I woke up and it was too late. So the most exciting thing I did was to go up to Kroger and buy a couple Lunchables for my trip tomorrow.
-And that's pretty much all. I'll probably post the answers to my Curiosity (I've got to think up a better name for those) in a couple days. Until then, keep commenting, and, uh, stay in school. Or something.
-And that's pretty much all. I'll probably post the answers to my Curiosity (I've got to think up a better name for those) in a couple days. Until then, keep commenting, and, uh, stay in school. Or something.
Friday, August 27, 2004
Feds Announce: Blog Cut 50% Today
I'm getting to bed way too late for three days before school. Last night? Three AM. Night before? Four. And I figured out my problem was I'm spending too much time typing in this blog, so I've decided I'm going to cut down today. And later, like, for the rest of whenever, I'll either do a short one or start earlier. That or not post at all. That probably won't happen too often.
-Well let's see. I woke up at the crack of noon, sat around awhile, and then followed Micah to Warder Park. He left me to go to Brian's house, so I wandered around it. First I went over to the west half of Burke's Pond, to try and find the creek that flows out of it. It wasn't there. Maybe it flows underground or something. Or maybe the cartographer was just trying to justify having a creek start nowhere at all by putting its beginning there.
-Then I went to band practice, six to nine. The last one before school starts! And now all my time is my time! I'm not going on my epic hike tomorrow, because as it turns out it's not actually completely mine. I have a trumpet sectional tomorrow morning. Plus it'll be too hot tomorrow. I'll do it on Saturday. That'll give me time to prepare tomorrow.
-How you guys doin' on that Curiosity? My mom couldn't figure it out. She got as far as the ch word before resulting to proper nouns and completely made-up words. If the comments box still says there're just two, and you already have the ch one, you can read it without having cheated.
-Okay, that's all I've got. Goodnight.
-Okay, that's pretty much it.
-Well let's see. I woke up at the crack of noon, sat around awhile, and then followed Micah to Warder Park. He left me to go to Brian's house, so I wandered around it. First I went over to the west half of Burke's Pond, to try and find the creek that flows out of it. It wasn't there. Maybe it flows underground or something. Or maybe the cartographer was just trying to justify having a creek start nowhere at all by putting its beginning there.
-Then I went to band practice, six to nine. The last one before school starts! And now all my time is my time! I'm not going on my epic hike tomorrow, because as it turns out it's not actually completely mine. I have a trumpet sectional tomorrow morning. Plus it'll be too hot tomorrow. I'll do it on Saturday. That'll give me time to prepare tomorrow.
-How you guys doin' on that Curiosity? My mom couldn't figure it out. She got as far as the ch word before resulting to proper nouns and completely made-up words. If the comments box still says there're just two, and you already have the ch one, you can read it without having cheated.
-Okay, that's all I've got. Goodnight.
-Okay, that's pretty much it.
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Warder Park
In my journal last night, I tried to draw a map of Warder Park. In accordance with what I wrote here last night--that it's "kvazaŭa ovalo", or "kind of an oval", I drew it as an oval with one right angle. But when I went to draw in the rest of my general area, nothing fit. So I went online to check on what it really looks like. And what I found is TopoZone.com. I believe what they have done is mapped out the entire world, in minute detail, and published it for your viewing convenience. I live in Finneytown, a suburb of Cincinnati, and I never even knew some of the things that they displayed there. They know Finneytown better than I do, and I've lived here (regrettably) for twelve years. First I found out what Warder Park really does look like. (I'm not going to describe it here, though, because you can just look at the map of it at TopoZone.) And then I noticed the little wash that comes out of Burke's Pond (that's what the little pond there is called). I followed it down through North Hill to where I realized it's part of the creek I usually creekwalk at. And then I followed it further, further than I've ever creekwalked. Past View Place Drive. Past the Cincinnati City Limits. Into Mill Creek, upstream to the railroad track.
-I love railroad tracks. When I saw the railroad, I realized that this was the event I needed to put a bang at the end of my summer. School starts in four days, only three of which count*, so I've got to savor things while they last. And I plan to use up one of the three that count by taking an all-day hike to the railroad tracks at Mill Creek. This will be incredibly great. I'll take my backpack, pack it full of Gatorades and lunches and stuff, set off down the creek, and not come back for twelve hours. The perfect end to my vacation.
-I'm losing my audience, it seems. Either that, or everyone who reads this is really quiet. Matt, are you there? Virgi? Aaron? Leah? Come on, guys, I need feedback! Let me know: do you want more funny? Or more other? Or what? I'm getting lonely here!
-Today's Curiosity (brought to you by Gooperton Rubber Membranes, Inc.):
Can you think of a word
:with a ch pronounced like a k;
:with a ph pronounced like a p;
:with an sh pronounced like an s;
:with a th pronounced like a t?
-Things to remember:
(1) The required letters don't by any means need to be at the beginning of the word--most of them aren't. (2) There is more than one answer to every single one of them. (3) And these are all English words--just when you thought you had come up with a loophole, huh?
-Answers to be posted when you all get fed up. If you have an answer you want checked, post it under comments. If you don't have the answer and you see someone has left a comment, don't look at the comments. If you do you'll just feel like a cheater. There's no prize, but you do get to pat yourself on the back if you figure it out.
*Tomorrow doesn't count, because I've got band practice.
-I love railroad tracks. When I saw the railroad, I realized that this was the event I needed to put a bang at the end of my summer. School starts in four days, only three of which count*, so I've got to savor things while they last. And I plan to use up one of the three that count by taking an all-day hike to the railroad tracks at Mill Creek. This will be incredibly great. I'll take my backpack, pack it full of Gatorades and lunches and stuff, set off down the creek, and not come back for twelve hours. The perfect end to my vacation.
-I'm losing my audience, it seems. Either that, or everyone who reads this is really quiet. Matt, are you there? Virgi? Aaron? Leah? Come on, guys, I need feedback! Let me know: do you want more funny? Or more other? Or what? I'm getting lonely here!
-Today's Curiosity (brought to you by Gooperton Rubber Membranes, Inc.):
Can you think of a word
:with a ch pronounced like a k;
:with a ph pronounced like a p;
:with an sh pronounced like an s;
:with a th pronounced like a t?
-Things to remember:
(1) The required letters don't by any means need to be at the beginning of the word--most of them aren't. (2) There is more than one answer to every single one of them. (3) And these are all English words--just when you thought you had come up with a loophole, huh?
-Answers to be posted when you all get fed up. If you have an answer you want checked, post it under comments. If you don't have the answer and you see someone has left a comment, don't look at the comments. If you do you'll just feel like a cheater. There's no prize, but you do get to pat yourself on the back if you figure it out.
*Tomorrow doesn't count, because I've got band practice.
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Esperanta Nokto
Mi faris decidon: Mardojn estos Esperantajn Noktojn. Se vi volas legi mardajn taglibraĵojn sed vi ne scias Esperanton, lernu ĝin. Ĉi tie estos bona ejo de komenci post mi trovas unu, kio kontentigas min. Mi rekomendus lernu!, sed ĝi ŝajnas esti... por malgrandaj geknaboj. Kun "Zam" kaj "Maz", kaj la bildoj en la nura kurso, kion mi vidis. Eble mi rekomendos ĝin pli poste.
(I'll translate just this one paragraph:
-I've made a decision: Tuesdays are Esperanto Nights. If you want to read posts on Tuesdays but don't know Esperanto, learn it. Here there will be a good place to start, once I find one that satisfies me. I would recommend lernu!, but it seems to be... for little kids. With "Zam" and "Maz", and the pictures in the one course I've seen. Possibly I'll recommend it later.
-And this much isn't there in Esperanto:
-If you still want to visit lernu! after that shining endorsement, you can find it, suitably enough, at www.lernu.net.)
-Do, nun ĉar mi skribas Esperante, mi bezonas ion por skribi. Ne multo okazis hodiaŭ. Mi vekiĝis ĉirkaŭ tagmeze, sidis dum tempo, kaj kontrolis mian rettaglibron. Ĉirkaŭ tiam mia frato lasis por apuda parko, malantaŭ lia lernejo. Ĝi nomiĝas Warder Park. Ĝi havas malgrandan lageton, iomege da arboj, kaj vojeton. Li estis dirinta al sia amiko Brian, ke li renkontos lin ĉe Duonarbo. (Efektive, li parolas la anglan, do li diris "Half Tree".) Mi finis ĉe la komputilo, kaj decidis peni trovi lin.
-Mi eniris la vojeton, kiu estas kvazaŭa ovalo, kaj komencis serĉi lin. Precipe mi serĉis Duonarbon. La Duonarbo strikiĝis per fulmo foje--tial la nomo--do ĝi devis esti facilvida, ĉu ne? Ne! Mi neniam eĉ vidis ĝin dum la tuta tempo dum kio mi estis en la parko. Mi ne vidis Mikahon aŭ Brianon aŭe, sed tio estis ĉar ili estis lasinta la parkon mallonge post mi eniris ĝin. Post mi iĝis hejme, mi petis ilin kie estas Duonarbo. Nek de ili volis diri al mi. Mi postiros ilin je la sekva fojo kiam ili iras tien.
-Mi spektis la televidon, spektis la televidon, kaj, por ŝanĝo de paŝo, spektis la televidon. Retrospektivanta, mi ne scias kial mi malŝparis ĉi tion belan someran tagon. Mi havas nur kvar tagojn antaŭ lernejado rekomencas. Nur kvar! Mi faros ion morgaŭ.
(I'll translate just this one paragraph:
-I've made a decision: Tuesdays are Esperanto Nights. If you want to read posts on Tuesdays but don't know Esperanto, learn it. Here there will be a good place to start, once I find one that satisfies me. I would recommend lernu!, but it seems to be... for little kids. With "Zam" and "Maz", and the pictures in the one course I've seen. Possibly I'll recommend it later.
-And this much isn't there in Esperanto:
-If you still want to visit lernu! after that shining endorsement, you can find it, suitably enough, at www.lernu.net.)
-Do, nun ĉar mi skribas Esperante, mi bezonas ion por skribi. Ne multo okazis hodiaŭ. Mi vekiĝis ĉirkaŭ tagmeze, sidis dum tempo, kaj kontrolis mian rettaglibron. Ĉirkaŭ tiam mia frato lasis por apuda parko, malantaŭ lia lernejo. Ĝi nomiĝas Warder Park. Ĝi havas malgrandan lageton, iomege da arboj, kaj vojeton. Li estis dirinta al sia amiko Brian, ke li renkontos lin ĉe Duonarbo. (Efektive, li parolas la anglan, do li diris "Half Tree".) Mi finis ĉe la komputilo, kaj decidis peni trovi lin.
-Mi eniris la vojeton, kiu estas kvazaŭa ovalo, kaj komencis serĉi lin. Precipe mi serĉis Duonarbon. La Duonarbo strikiĝis per fulmo foje--tial la nomo--do ĝi devis esti facilvida, ĉu ne? Ne! Mi neniam eĉ vidis ĝin dum la tuta tempo dum kio mi estis en la parko. Mi ne vidis Mikahon aŭ Brianon aŭe, sed tio estis ĉar ili estis lasinta la parkon mallonge post mi eniris ĝin. Post mi iĝis hejme, mi petis ilin kie estas Duonarbo. Nek de ili volis diri al mi. Mi postiros ilin je la sekva fojo kiam ili iras tien.
-Mi spektis la televidon, spektis la televidon, kaj, por ŝanĝo de paŝo, spektis la televidon. Retrospektivanta, mi ne scias kial mi malŝparis ĉi tion belan someran tagon. Mi havas nur kvar tagojn antaŭ lernejado rekomencas. Nur kvar! Mi faros ion morgaŭ.
Monday, August 23, 2004
Not A Beginning
As it turned out, I am able to post today. Only, there's not much to post. I can't believe summer's not even a week from being over and I have to spend two more of my precious six days doing band stuff. Technically, I'm not doing band stuff for the whole day, but it's strategically placed from six to nine in order to ruin any plans I might've been able to make.
-Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you: I'm in band.
-I have acquired a fan base, it seems. I have Mike Mintz, whom I e-mailed just yesterday for the first time, my mom's friend Virgi, who wishes only to be known as "vir", and probably several other people who haven't posted yet. For example I also publicized this to my friends Aaron and Matt and my stepcousin Leah. They should be coming as soon as they next check their e-mails. Matt already has, but I guess he's the quiet type--didn't post anything.
-Well, I got to kick my brother's friend Brian off the property today. It was fun. If anybody knows Brian Floyd and wishes to insult him, this is the place to do it. The official anti-Brian headquarters. But in true Brian spirit, after I kicked him off he never really went away, but just lurked around outside the house and across the street. He didn't actually go home for hours. My brother and Brianless have some kind of symbiotic relationship, where they have to meet at least once a day and exchange nutrients, by way of tapes with farts recorded on them. I'm serious. They actually record their farts and listen to them, at full volume. Once, Micah recorded some off of an unnamed Internet site and he had to make sure Brian wouldn't know, so he wouldn't say he was cheating. I can't think of any way to describe "idiots" better than them.
-I biked on up to band practice at the high school. We had a kind of an "off" day. One of the main reasons was that maybe eighty percent of us were actually there. One guy in my section was there but couldn't march because of a sprained ankle. So we didn't do too well. Oh well, I guess.
-When I got back, I watched a little bit of Stargate on the SciFi channel--it's my dad's favorite show--and then Mom came home with Micah from swimming at the YMCA. Promptly our neighbor, Mr. Boyd, walked up to our door and probably didn't even bother knocking before he came in. Mr. Boyd is 61 years old, has completely white hair, and weighs about three hundred pounds. Lately the controversy has been that he found a hole in one of his screens and his wife blamed Micah. She says he wantonly threw a rock at it, in her full view. Now, Micah's pretty brain dead, but he wouldn't do something as moronic as that. It's much more likely that it was a ricochet from one of our slingshots. But Mr. Boyd wouldn't hear it. At first he was fairly calm, but he gradually crescendoed into a towering rage, yelling at everyone who tried to say any kind of word to him at all. He brought out past occurences that Micah definitely had nothing to do with, like Mrs. Boyd's "gazing balls". Mrs. Boyd rabidly claims that Micah stole some kind of big purple glass ball from her garden and smashed it to smithereens somewhere. She won't see the logical solution, i.e. that the ball was stolen by some other idiot kid, or just rolled away maybe.
-Likewise with the screen. Mr. Boyd backs her wholeheartedly, to the point that when I tried to make him realize he was acting like a twit, he yelled that "I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOUR SMART MOUTH! I AM A 61-YEAR-OLD MAN!" I pointed out that he was in our house, but he couldn't hear it over the sound of his own yelling. He then seriously threatened that he would take Micah to juvenile court over this. Micah put forth that he would gladly go and prove Mr. Boyd to be the idiot he was (and even calls himself), but Dad yelled that our position in the matter was completely untenable and we would lose so fast we couldn't even say hi to the judge first. Micah has a previous record. When he was six he kicked a bunch of holes in the walls of a condominium being built near our house with his friend Joey. The builders had him tried and convicted, but he did cleanup work so well on the first few days that they let him go free. He still has that hanging over his head, though.
-At about this time I went outside. Though eventually I did come back to the house and listen to things through the storm door, nothing else of real import was said. Once things had cooled down a bit, I came back inside and listened to Micah's Weird Al Yankoviĉ CD and read some Calvin and Hobbes and then decided I'd better make sure everyone out there in Internetland knew I was still alive. Now you know.
-Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you: I'm in band.
-I have acquired a fan base, it seems. I have Mike Mintz, whom I e-mailed just yesterday for the first time, my mom's friend Virgi, who wishes only to be known as "vir", and probably several other people who haven't posted yet. For example I also publicized this to my friends Aaron and Matt and my stepcousin Leah. They should be coming as soon as they next check their e-mails. Matt already has, but I guess he's the quiet type--didn't post anything.
-Well, I got to kick my brother's friend Brian off the property today. It was fun. If anybody knows Brian Floyd and wishes to insult him, this is the place to do it. The official anti-Brian headquarters. But in true Brian spirit, after I kicked him off he never really went away, but just lurked around outside the house and across the street. He didn't actually go home for hours. My brother and Brianless have some kind of symbiotic relationship, where they have to meet at least once a day and exchange nutrients, by way of tapes with farts recorded on them. I'm serious. They actually record their farts and listen to them, at full volume. Once, Micah recorded some off of an unnamed Internet site and he had to make sure Brian wouldn't know, so he wouldn't say he was cheating. I can't think of any way to describe "idiots" better than them.
-I biked on up to band practice at the high school. We had a kind of an "off" day. One of the main reasons was that maybe eighty percent of us were actually there. One guy in my section was there but couldn't march because of a sprained ankle. So we didn't do too well. Oh well, I guess.
-When I got back, I watched a little bit of Stargate on the SciFi channel--it's my dad's favorite show--and then Mom came home with Micah from swimming at the YMCA. Promptly our neighbor, Mr. Boyd, walked up to our door and probably didn't even bother knocking before he came in. Mr. Boyd is 61 years old, has completely white hair, and weighs about three hundred pounds. Lately the controversy has been that he found a hole in one of his screens and his wife blamed Micah. She says he wantonly threw a rock at it, in her full view. Now, Micah's pretty brain dead, but he wouldn't do something as moronic as that. It's much more likely that it was a ricochet from one of our slingshots. But Mr. Boyd wouldn't hear it. At first he was fairly calm, but he gradually crescendoed into a towering rage, yelling at everyone who tried to say any kind of word to him at all. He brought out past occurences that Micah definitely had nothing to do with, like Mrs. Boyd's "gazing balls". Mrs. Boyd rabidly claims that Micah stole some kind of big purple glass ball from her garden and smashed it to smithereens somewhere. She won't see the logical solution, i.e. that the ball was stolen by some other idiot kid, or just rolled away maybe.
-Likewise with the screen. Mr. Boyd backs her wholeheartedly, to the point that when I tried to make him realize he was acting like a twit, he yelled that "I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOUR SMART MOUTH! I AM A 61-YEAR-OLD MAN!" I pointed out that he was in our house, but he couldn't hear it over the sound of his own yelling. He then seriously threatened that he would take Micah to juvenile court over this. Micah put forth that he would gladly go and prove Mr. Boyd to be the idiot he was (and even calls himself), but Dad yelled that our position in the matter was completely untenable and we would lose so fast we couldn't even say hi to the judge first. Micah has a previous record. When he was six he kicked a bunch of holes in the walls of a condominium being built near our house with his friend Joey. The builders had him tried and convicted, but he did cleanup work so well on the first few days that they let him go free. He still has that hanging over his head, though.
-At about this time I went outside. Though eventually I did come back to the house and listen to things through the storm door, nothing else of real import was said. Once things had cooled down a bit, I came back inside and listened to Micah's Weird Al Yankoviĉ CD and read some Calvin and Hobbes and then decided I'd better make sure everyone out there in Internetland knew I was still alive. Now you know.
A Beginning
-Since my Mom's been bugging me to for so long, I've just gotten around to creating my own "blog", which sounds like something that you would cough out of the back of your throat. And in a way, it is. This will be the projection of how I see things, for all to enjoy. I can't promise exact accuracy. Nor can I promise frequency of posts, because I already have something rather like this that takes up a lot of my time. It's called my journal. I write in it for upwards of fifteen minutes every day, so I won't always be in the mood to write yet more things here.
-Okay, let's get a few things straight. Rule Number A: There aren't any real rules around here. Mainly this is because I wouldn't be able to enforce them even if I could come up with any. You're allowed to disagree with me, even though you're probably wrong if you do; you're discouraged from swearing at me, though I can't do anything much about it, so you're technically allowed to do that too; you're allowed to talk in Swedish or Czech, though if you speak either of those I probably don't know you and can't fathom how you got here; you're allowed to throw Twinkies or whatever your snack of choice is at your screen when you read something that you particularly don't like, because it's not my screen... In short, you have pretty much a blank Czech. So toss away. Let's get things started.
-Today I got back from Gilboa Rock Quarry, where I had previously SCUBA'd and climbed the on-site rock wall. Then I ate some cereal, and visited several websites. Then, for no particular reason while watching my mom check her blog, I felt the urge to have one of my own. I think it's so I can show her how it's done. Hers is so boring you can hear your computer falling asleep. I get bored sitting in the other room when I hear her typing. So I'm going to show her up. Which brings us to here. I'm sitting here at my computer typing words that I hope, in some way, will amuse you, or at least not be fatal to you. And that's all a person can ask to have, isn't it: a page with a bunch of amusing, non-fatal words.
-I've got to go create a profile of some sort. I can't say for sure when I'll write next. It's impossible to be sure of anything. Like, what proof do we have that the yogurt in the fridge won't sprout legs and stage an uprising? It's wildly improbable, yes, but nothing's impossible. To that end, I'll say that I'm fairly sure that I'll write again tomorrow, but not completely certain. I have to go now, though. The yogurt is throwing Twinkies at me.
-Okay, let's get a few things straight. Rule Number A: There aren't any real rules around here. Mainly this is because I wouldn't be able to enforce them even if I could come up with any. You're allowed to disagree with me, even though you're probably wrong if you do; you're discouraged from swearing at me, though I can't do anything much about it, so you're technically allowed to do that too; you're allowed to talk in Swedish or Czech, though if you speak either of those I probably don't know you and can't fathom how you got here; you're allowed to throw Twinkies or whatever your snack of choice is at your screen when you read something that you particularly don't like, because it's not my screen... In short, you have pretty much a blank Czech. So toss away. Let's get things started.
-Today I got back from Gilboa Rock Quarry, where I had previously SCUBA'd and climbed the on-site rock wall. Then I ate some cereal, and visited several websites. Then, for no particular reason while watching my mom check her blog, I felt the urge to have one of my own. I think it's so I can show her how it's done. Hers is so boring you can hear your computer falling asleep. I get bored sitting in the other room when I hear her typing. So I'm going to show her up. Which brings us to here. I'm sitting here at my computer typing words that I hope, in some way, will amuse you, or at least not be fatal to you. And that's all a person can ask to have, isn't it: a page with a bunch of amusing, non-fatal words.
-I've got to go create a profile of some sort. I can't say for sure when I'll write next. It's impossible to be sure of anything. Like, what proof do we have that the yogurt in the fridge won't sprout legs and stage an uprising? It's wildly improbable, yes, but nothing's impossible. To that end, I'll say that I'm fairly sure that I'll write again tomorrow, but not completely certain. I have to go now, though. The yogurt is throwing Twinkies at me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)