Everyone's been on me to get posting again. ("Everyone" means Matt and my mom.) I wasn't aware that people were still checking even. I kept saying I'd update, but I never did remember to when it counted. Now that I've decided to get current, though, there are a lot of stories I need to cover.
-The most recent development is that our laptop has been fixed. Dad made it work again after a several-month hiatus, and it only took him about a day, so I'm mystified as to why he didn't do it sooner. Now we have a laptop again and, somehow--I still don't fully understand this--I got all my data back from before it crashed and burned. I plan to start designing my typefaces within the week.
-Other developments include our cat getting pregnant and winter getting on with what it does. In fact, winter has been spectacular this year, but it's getting close to its end. I wish it'd hang around a little longer. And actually I tink it's supposed to snow an inch or two tomorrow night. Maybe even a snow day?
-But here's the idea I've been harboring for a long time and I've wantde to write about except I kept forgetting:
-What is it about people that compels them to comment to me as I ride my bike past them? At least once a day I ride past some moron. As they disappear behind me, I always get one of two comments:
:"Can I get a ride?"
:"Yo, gimme that bike, foo!"
The person always thinks it's the height of hilarity to say this. They probably feel like they're very original, and saying that to me is their greatest accomplishment of the day. I doubt any of those idiots are reading this, but if they are: get some new material! Make me laugh! Or better yet, just keep your dumb mouth shut!
-There's another thing about me and my bike that's infecting even the smart people at my school. I ride my bike to school every single morning, and everyone in the area at that time is sure to see me because I'm very conspicuous biking in the middle of the actual street, but still when people see me they feel the need to notify me, "I saw you biking to school the other day." Matt has told me this and Rosie has told me this, along with half the rest of the school population. I'm not sure why. I'd appreciate feedback on this dilemma.
-I have read your comments and I have, in standard practice, promptly forgotten them. I remember BJ actually came on and said something to me--BJ is the captain of the academic team at my school, in case you don't know that, which is doubtful because everyone who reads this is in academic team pretty much--and Oh yeah! it was about that petition to keep Warder Park from being converted to a regular park. He wanted to know how that was going. Well, BJ, it's not going so great, because Dr. Tracy doesn't want to let me post my petitions on the school bulletin boards. He says that if I posted those, which support a political agenda, he'd have to let every nut with a political agenda post stuff on the boards. He doesn't want to have someone post a KKK thing there. He neglects to notice that he has never said a word about the Gay-Straight Alliance posters conspicuously plastered all over the school in vibrant pink. Quite a political agenda there, but he hasn't had those torn down yet. I'm going to have a talk with him about that.
-Other comments have gone into the void of my subconscious, but just ask me at school and I'll tell you about what you want to know.
-In closing I really hate TV. In my house that's all anyone seems to do. If there's no other way to spend time, like doing something productive, that they can think of they just switch on the TV. 95 percent of the time there's nothing good on. But they still watch it anyhow, like zombies. I can't stand it a lot of the time, though occasionally there are good shows (viz. The Simpsons, AFV, Stargate). It gets in the way of thinking. This goes doubly for video games. My brother plays video games continually. It's like he's dead in his chair. I don't understand why people go for artificial life. I prefer to actually live.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Sittin' here at my desk
I'm in accounting class right now, but even when I don't pay attention, I normally get great grades anyhow.
-The big story so far today (it's only 0842) is that it was perhaps three degrees outside today, and I, as I do, insisted on biking to school. I'd lost my gloves recently, but luckily my dad had some soon after I lost them. If I hadn't worn gloves, I would not have hands with which to type this. Even through the gloves, it seemed like someone was spraying a steady stream of liquid nitrogen at me. I noticed a prnguin on the sidewalk across the street. And he looked cold, too.
-That's why this may have been the first time ever I was glad to be in band.
-I had a heck of a creekwalk last Saturday. Here's how it went:
-Micah and I and (cringe) his friend Brian walked off down our street at about 1330. We were wearing backpacks and thick coats and we were in the spirit for adventure. At the end of North Hill Lane, we strode off a large hill into Congress Run, which was only the conduit to what we were going to do today. Slogging through plenty wet mud, we came to a pipe out of which the creek flows and climbed up a pile of rocks and stuff nearby. We came out behind a roofing company. Then we crossed over North Bend Road and found the beginning of our second creek. It was about eight inches wide. That would change.
-After a dog briefly chased Micah, we were on our way. The creek ran unassumingly to the right of Stephanie Hummer Memorial Park, which we could see vaguely through some trees. Then we were plunged into a huge forest, fairly abruptly. The creek ran a little faster, and Brian noticed a deer on the other side of it. I took ap icture. THis was the best creekwalk I'd been on so far. It was so peaceful and it was so awesome. The forest was one of the better ones I've been in. But the going wasn't simple.
-Creekwalking isn't a sport for the meek. It involves climbing over logs, scrambling up steep inclines, and not losing your footing in thick mud. We had plenty of thick mud, because of the recent rains. We trudged through it to all kinds of places we hadn't seen yet. There was a dam. There was also a big ruined bridge. And finally, after such a long trek, we came to Waterfall Canyon: a huge gorge that rises about thirty feet above your head and has rapid waterfalls running all through it. After a minute we realized we wouldn't be able to walk inside the canyon and we had to climb up its walls to walk on the bank. I had to do something like in one of those cheesy movie scenes and tell Micah and Brian, "Take my hand!" to pull them up.
-We walked along the top of Waterfall Canyon a little ways and came to where the creek triples: The Confluence. Here our creek and two other creeks join up down a steep hill coated with two feet of mud and form an enormous swell that's probably twenty feet deep. It looked like something at the bottom of Niagara Falls, but without the falls. I would not want to fall in there. With some difficulty, we crossed all three smaller creeks (to avoid having to cross the big one) and climbed up the steep hill (it was two steps forward, one step back in that mud, let me tell you). We found ourselves across a fence from a horse stable. Wll, we came out the stabulary's driveway and were near an auto parts store of some sort, and also a place called "Seymour Preserve (Cincinnati Park Board)". The dominating feature of this preserve was a towering power pylon, shooting several hundred feet above us. I discovered then that the path marked on my map that I couldn't figure out what it was, was a power line. But Micah and brian wanted to go home, so we did.
-By now, the bell has rung out and I've gone home once and it's the next day--I did this in two days. I think this is plenty of update for this week.
-The big story so far today (it's only 0842) is that it was perhaps three degrees outside today, and I, as I do, insisted on biking to school. I'd lost my gloves recently, but luckily my dad had some soon after I lost them. If I hadn't worn gloves, I would not have hands with which to type this. Even through the gloves, it seemed like someone was spraying a steady stream of liquid nitrogen at me. I noticed a prnguin on the sidewalk across the street. And he looked cold, too.
-That's why this may have been the first time ever I was glad to be in band.
-I had a heck of a creekwalk last Saturday. Here's how it went:
-Micah and I and (cringe) his friend Brian walked off down our street at about 1330. We were wearing backpacks and thick coats and we were in the spirit for adventure. At the end of North Hill Lane, we strode off a large hill into Congress Run, which was only the conduit to what we were going to do today. Slogging through plenty wet mud, we came to a pipe out of which the creek flows and climbed up a pile of rocks and stuff nearby. We came out behind a roofing company. Then we crossed over North Bend Road and found the beginning of our second creek. It was about eight inches wide. That would change.
-After a dog briefly chased Micah, we were on our way. The creek ran unassumingly to the right of Stephanie Hummer Memorial Park, which we could see vaguely through some trees. Then we were plunged into a huge forest, fairly abruptly. The creek ran a little faster, and Brian noticed a deer on the other side of it. I took ap icture. THis was the best creekwalk I'd been on so far. It was so peaceful and it was so awesome. The forest was one of the better ones I've been in. But the going wasn't simple.
-Creekwalking isn't a sport for the meek. It involves climbing over logs, scrambling up steep inclines, and not losing your footing in thick mud. We had plenty of thick mud, because of the recent rains. We trudged through it to all kinds of places we hadn't seen yet. There was a dam. There was also a big ruined bridge. And finally, after such a long trek, we came to Waterfall Canyon: a huge gorge that rises about thirty feet above your head and has rapid waterfalls running all through it. After a minute we realized we wouldn't be able to walk inside the canyon and we had to climb up its walls to walk on the bank. I had to do something like in one of those cheesy movie scenes and tell Micah and Brian, "Take my hand!" to pull them up.
-We walked along the top of Waterfall Canyon a little ways and came to where the creek triples: The Confluence. Here our creek and two other creeks join up down a steep hill coated with two feet of mud and form an enormous swell that's probably twenty feet deep. It looked like something at the bottom of Niagara Falls, but without the falls. I would not want to fall in there. With some difficulty, we crossed all three smaller creeks (to avoid having to cross the big one) and climbed up the steep hill (it was two steps forward, one step back in that mud, let me tell you). We found ourselves across a fence from a horse stable. Wll, we came out the stabulary's driveway and were near an auto parts store of some sort, and also a place called "Seymour Preserve (Cincinnati Park Board)". The dominating feature of this preserve was a towering power pylon, shooting several hundred feet above us. I discovered then that the path marked on my map that I couldn't figure out what it was, was a power line. But Micah and brian wanted to go home, so we did.
-By now, the bell has rung out and I've gone home once and it's the next day--I did this in two days. I think this is plenty of update for this week.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
All Sorts Of Stuff!
Well, that title is a little overambitious. But some things did happen since last post. It's just they weren't very memorable.
-One thing that happened was that the entire haul of snow melted. All of it. Every last flake. That's because, after a short burst of manly temperatures somewhere below 20 degrees, we were hit with this wussy stuff that's been at least 50 degrees FOR THE LOW for over a week. During all this, though, we got rainfall after rainfall. It rained every day for over a week. Thus, the Ohio river is violently flooding over, though it was worse a few days ago. Winton Lake also flooded, fairly spectacularly. The entire lower footpath/bank is completely submerged under several feet of water. When I went to take pictures of it today, Dad got his drysuit out of the trunk and went swimming where normally you would walk. He got quite an audience doing this, I might add. But we didn't see the lake at its greatest. A woman there said she was there also last Saturday, and the water was all the way up to THE PAVILION. This is about twenty feet above normal water level, past two very high walls and submerging practically all the parking anywhere. I don't even know if the park was accessible--the main entrance might've been underwater. This has been an impressive amount of water.
-But now it's time for some snow. Unfortunately, this isn't due to happen until approximately Wednesday. But at least we're going to get a nice frigid reprieve from this sissy 60-degree stuff starting on Friday. The highs for Thursday are forecast at 61. The highs for Friday are forecast at 20. Now that's something.
-I said "All sorts of stuff", but I've as yet covered only one sort of stuff--the rain. I guess I could talk to you about midterms. Midterms are not fun, but their absence can be very fun indeed. In my school, if you get an A first and second quarter in a class, and it's a semester class (or two-semester class; don't ask me what the distinction is betweent that and a yearlong class), you're officially immune to the midterm exam. I got out of three classes: accounting (I got to wake up at 1100 on Tuesday(, and English and Woodshop (I don't have to go to school at all tomorrow). I'm so glad I'm smart.
-Another, sadder event is that our laptop died. This is compounded by the fact that my font, which I've spent at least 50 full hours working on, was on it. however, my dad has a friend who has a friend who's working (very slowly) on recovering our data. I wish he'd hurry up. I want my data! Now!
-New years' was fun, but not really fun. Now I just have to remember to put "2005" on everything. I'm doing surprisingly well. I sucked at doing "2004" last year.
Well, here's to colder weather.
Chuck
-One thing that happened was that the entire haul of snow melted. All of it. Every last flake. That's because, after a short burst of manly temperatures somewhere below 20 degrees, we were hit with this wussy stuff that's been at least 50 degrees FOR THE LOW for over a week. During all this, though, we got rainfall after rainfall. It rained every day for over a week. Thus, the Ohio river is violently flooding over, though it was worse a few days ago. Winton Lake also flooded, fairly spectacularly. The entire lower footpath/bank is completely submerged under several feet of water. When I went to take pictures of it today, Dad got his drysuit out of the trunk and went swimming where normally you would walk. He got quite an audience doing this, I might add. But we didn't see the lake at its greatest. A woman there said she was there also last Saturday, and the water was all the way up to THE PAVILION. This is about twenty feet above normal water level, past two very high walls and submerging practically all the parking anywhere. I don't even know if the park was accessible--the main entrance might've been underwater. This has been an impressive amount of water.
-But now it's time for some snow. Unfortunately, this isn't due to happen until approximately Wednesday. But at least we're going to get a nice frigid reprieve from this sissy 60-degree stuff starting on Friday. The highs for Thursday are forecast at 61. The highs for Friday are forecast at 20. Now that's something.
-I said "All sorts of stuff", but I've as yet covered only one sort of stuff--the rain. I guess I could talk to you about midterms. Midterms are not fun, but their absence can be very fun indeed. In my school, if you get an A first and second quarter in a class, and it's a semester class (or two-semester class; don't ask me what the distinction is betweent that and a yearlong class), you're officially immune to the midterm exam. I got out of three classes: accounting (I got to wake up at 1100 on Tuesday(, and English and Woodshop (I don't have to go to school at all tomorrow). I'm so glad I'm smart.
-Another, sadder event is that our laptop died. This is compounded by the fact that my font, which I've spent at least 50 full hours working on, was on it. however, my dad has a friend who has a friend who's working (very slowly) on recovering our data. I wish he'd hurry up. I want my data! Now!
-New years' was fun, but not really fun. Now I just have to remember to put "2005" on everything. I'm doing surprisingly well. I sucked at doing "2004" last year.
Well, here's to colder weather.
Chuck
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Snow, and also Christmas
I knew there was some sort of snowstorm going to happen, but I didn't know what kind until I checked out the forecasts. And the forecasts predicted: 6-10"+. I was overjoyed. I could hardly sleep.
-I woke up at about 0930 the next day and it had already snowed about two inches, with more steadily tumbling down. I went back to sleep, wke up later, and there was more like six inches. It just kept getting better. Except for the cars. The cars didn't have such a great time with the snowstorm. In fact, our street didn't get plowed until the next day. Both of our cars have been stuck in this snow. But I don't drive a car, so it doesn't affect me! Except when there are groceries involved that can't be gotten.
-I didn't do much with the snow on the day it arrived because it was too deep to sled in aand not wet enough for packing. Come to think of it, those conditions haven't changed yet. But another condition did change by the next day: my brother was more willing to go for a creekwalk. I think I;m going to put creekwalking as my primary hobby whenever something asks for hobbies. Creekwalking is my favorite thing to do, I've discovered, because it's so invigorating, and because you can see so much stuff, and because sometimes, if you haven't been this way before, there's an element of intrigue in that you never know where you'll end up. The nine inches of snow we finally ended up with just compounded the fun. I might be the only person I know of who would frequently like nothing better than to go and slog over a mile in nine inches of snow.
-I had never been behind the houses across the street from us until a few days ago, but now they're my preferred entrance to Warder Park. It turns out I can walk right behind the neighborhood and end up where I want to be. My brother Micah and I took the leftern of the two forks on the day after the snowstorm. It was no piece of cake. Even wearing my thick coat, heavy boots, and snow pants, I got a little cold (possibly owing to the times I sat down in the snow to take a break). But it was all worth it, because, creekwalking, you get a sense of seclusion that you don't see often these days, especially in the city. I could look 360 degrees around me and not see a single thing that had a footprint on it except for my own and Micah's. I'm trying to describe this here, but really there's no way to describe it other than actually taking the person you're describing it to on a creekwalk. I'm kind of floundering in my footsteps, like I was when I trudged upstream through the snowpack, but in this I can't really get anywhere, whereas with creekwalking I could.
-I made it home, and it was so great. In addition, I got $30 from a lady whose driveway I shoveled on the way back.
-For Christmas, I went to my grandparents' house. My whole family did. We all got tons of presents. I, personally, got a wooden puzzle from Hungary, a backwards clock, a shortwave radio, and more. All of it is awesome. We had some real great family time together too, but unfortunately a lot of the family had to leave a little while in to go back home. I slept over last night, which brings me to today, because we actually opened our presents on Christmas Eve. I took another creekwalk today, at the country club, but today's was significantly different because there are well nigh two feet of snow here in Oxford, and because I took my grandmother (she's rugged) with me. Also, I lacked my snow pants, so I had to dry off for a while afterwards. Right now, I'm missing some good pool in the basement, so I'll sign off and let you get back to what you were doing.
-I woke up at about 0930 the next day and it had already snowed about two inches, with more steadily tumbling down. I went back to sleep, wke up later, and there was more like six inches. It just kept getting better. Except for the cars. The cars didn't have such a great time with the snowstorm. In fact, our street didn't get plowed until the next day. Both of our cars have been stuck in this snow. But I don't drive a car, so it doesn't affect me! Except when there are groceries involved that can't be gotten.
-I didn't do much with the snow on the day it arrived because it was too deep to sled in aand not wet enough for packing. Come to think of it, those conditions haven't changed yet. But another condition did change by the next day: my brother was more willing to go for a creekwalk. I think I;m going to put creekwalking as my primary hobby whenever something asks for hobbies. Creekwalking is my favorite thing to do, I've discovered, because it's so invigorating, and because you can see so much stuff, and because sometimes, if you haven't been this way before, there's an element of intrigue in that you never know where you'll end up. The nine inches of snow we finally ended up with just compounded the fun. I might be the only person I know of who would frequently like nothing better than to go and slog over a mile in nine inches of snow.
-I had never been behind the houses across the street from us until a few days ago, but now they're my preferred entrance to Warder Park. It turns out I can walk right behind the neighborhood and end up where I want to be. My brother Micah and I took the leftern of the two forks on the day after the snowstorm. It was no piece of cake. Even wearing my thick coat, heavy boots, and snow pants, I got a little cold (possibly owing to the times I sat down in the snow to take a break). But it was all worth it, because, creekwalking, you get a sense of seclusion that you don't see often these days, especially in the city. I could look 360 degrees around me and not see a single thing that had a footprint on it except for my own and Micah's. I'm trying to describe this here, but really there's no way to describe it other than actually taking the person you're describing it to on a creekwalk. I'm kind of floundering in my footsteps, like I was when I trudged upstream through the snowpack, but in this I can't really get anywhere, whereas with creekwalking I could.
-I made it home, and it was so great. In addition, I got $30 from a lady whose driveway I shoveled on the way back.
-For Christmas, I went to my grandparents' house. My whole family did. We all got tons of presents. I, personally, got a wooden puzzle from Hungary, a backwards clock, a shortwave radio, and more. All of it is awesome. We had some real great family time together too, but unfortunately a lot of the family had to leave a little while in to go back home. I slept over last night, which brings me to today, because we actually opened our presents on Christmas Eve. I took another creekwalk today, at the country club, but today's was significantly different because there are well nigh two feet of snow here in Oxford, and because I took my grandmother (she's rugged) with me. Also, I lacked my snow pants, so I had to dry off for a while afterwards. Right now, I'm missing some good pool in the basement, so I'll sign off and let you get back to what you were doing.
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Yeah, okay, I'll start again.
I suppose I just decided to leave my 'blog alone. This upset a lot of people. I needed a month's vacation, I suppose. Well, now I'm back. I think I'll keep with it. Probably.
-I've been to all sorts of places. Like, West Virginia, and West Fork Dam. The thing is, if I tried to write down everything I've done since last time I posted, I'd have at least five pages, and I don't have the patience to write all that down. So I think I'll just talk about the trip to West Fork. In fact, I'm going to copy it down straight out of my journal. Let me go get it.
"I toook off after oiling my bike with motor oil (that didn't really work). While riding there I considered turning back after my front derailleur broke into pieces, but I decided I could get away with it. The bike was a little bit louder, but it got me through the confusing jumble of streets that took me to the service lane for the dam. The service lane was kind of poorly paved and had broad lawns surrounding it that looked as though they'd been imported from a factory. A sign by a gate warned me that only service vehicles were allowed past it, but I wasn't about to let that stop me.
-The tower stuck up from the water's edge at the bottom of a steep, grass-covered slope that came down for a hundred feet below the street I was on. It was made of concrete and there was a bridge leading across the gap to it. It was so awesome. You could see so much of the lake. There was an island standing alone in the middle of it. There was a huge forest on the other side. So help me, it reminded me of Crowduck. It was breathtaking to look out over the lake from the top of a hundred-foot slope.
-But it still wasn't quite as cool as the other side. On the other side, the land sloped down just as steeply and fell into a creek instead of a lake. This was the west fork of the Mill Creek. What made it so special was that on the bank of the creek was a huge steep wall of rock. Maybe fifty feet high. Too bad it was fenced in.
-I went to the end of the road I was on and found a fence. I followed it to the left, away from the lake, and found that on the other side was an even bigger wall of rock walling in a creek at the bottom of a hundred-foot sheer drop. It was stilling. I was amazed that there was anything that cool in Cincinnati. I knew Micah would want to see it."
That wasn't my best writing ever, but it was okay, and you get the idea.
I'll keep you posted.
-I've been to all sorts of places. Like, West Virginia, and West Fork Dam. The thing is, if I tried to write down everything I've done since last time I posted, I'd have at least five pages, and I don't have the patience to write all that down. So I think I'll just talk about the trip to West Fork. In fact, I'm going to copy it down straight out of my journal. Let me go get it.
"I toook off after oiling my bike with motor oil (that didn't really work). While riding there I considered turning back after my front derailleur broke into pieces, but I decided I could get away with it. The bike was a little bit louder, but it got me through the confusing jumble of streets that took me to the service lane for the dam. The service lane was kind of poorly paved and had broad lawns surrounding it that looked as though they'd been imported from a factory. A sign by a gate warned me that only service vehicles were allowed past it, but I wasn't about to let that stop me.
-The tower stuck up from the water's edge at the bottom of a steep, grass-covered slope that came down for a hundred feet below the street I was on. It was made of concrete and there was a bridge leading across the gap to it. It was so awesome. You could see so much of the lake. There was an island standing alone in the middle of it. There was a huge forest on the other side. So help me, it reminded me of Crowduck. It was breathtaking to look out over the lake from the top of a hundred-foot slope.
-But it still wasn't quite as cool as the other side. On the other side, the land sloped down just as steeply and fell into a creek instead of a lake. This was the west fork of the Mill Creek. What made it so special was that on the bank of the creek was a huge steep wall of rock. Maybe fifty feet high. Too bad it was fenced in.
-I went to the end of the road I was on and found a fence. I followed it to the left, away from the lake, and found that on the other side was an even bigger wall of rock walling in a creek at the bottom of a hundred-foot sheer drop. It was stilling. I was amazed that there was anything that cool in Cincinnati. I knew Micah would want to see it."
That wasn't my best writing ever, but it was okay, and you get the idea.
I'll keep you posted.
Saturday, November 13, 2004
Crimonitly
I've been realizing for the last few days that I needed to do another post, not having done one for about a week and a half. So here it is. I don't know exactly why I waited so long, but I do know that I've always liked to procrastinate, so that might have something to do with it.
-The main thing that happened over the last week and a half is that the band went to State. This in and of itself is remarkable, because we've never done this before. The Finneytown Marching Band has never gone to state. Okay. So we went to state this year, a two-hour drive. Here's where it gets interesting.
-It was a knd of cold evening, but not too cold, and the stadium lights were shining bright on the band that was on before us. They did some swing music. While we waited for them to finish, we were getting adrenaline rushes like nothing before. We'd been training for this for over four months, and this was the culmination of our entire marching band season. The other band marched off the field, and we marched on.
-If we thought we had a lot of adrenaline before, it was nothing compared to what we got as we marched out of preset. Preset is the most intimidating part of a show, in my opinion. I don't know why, but there's something about it that starts your heart pumping like Hoover Dam. All the rest of the show, I can handle. And, in fact, I did. I did it pretty well, too. I always screw up just minimally during the opener and then correct it all during the last three songs. That's what happened there. It was tense the whole time, though. Imagine the feeling you get when you're riding your bike across a street and a big van comes out from behind a truck, braking with a screech and a honk about five inches from you. Then imagine that feeling for eight straight minutes. That's the show, boiled down to its raw elements.
-I was certainly glad to march off the field and change into my civilian clothes. From the buses where we did that, I went to the stadium and met Dad, who gave me $five to buy a shirt about the competition; then I watched a few more bands from on the bleachers (which were several stories high) while sitting with Kimber and Matt and Krystal. Kimber likes horses; Matt likes computers and stuff; Krystal is deranged. I gave them my personal play-by-play on how the bands out were doing. Then, when it was time for the awards ceremony, we realized we were on the exact opposite side of the field from where we were supposed to be, and while we were on our way to the other bleachers they called out the scores. We got a I.
-A I is the highest rating possible. It was nearly unfathomable that Finneytown could come out of nowhere and then get a I, but we still did it. As we found later, we were one of only five class "B" bands out of 22 to get a I. The buses were hard pressed to stay together all the way home.
-Besides that, not much happened. Really not very much whatsoever. I'm going to go now. ,Bye'
-The main thing that happened over the last week and a half is that the band went to State. This in and of itself is remarkable, because we've never done this before. The Finneytown Marching Band has never gone to state. Okay. So we went to state this year, a two-hour drive. Here's where it gets interesting.
-It was a knd of cold evening, but not too cold, and the stadium lights were shining bright on the band that was on before us. They did some swing music. While we waited for them to finish, we were getting adrenaline rushes like nothing before. We'd been training for this for over four months, and this was the culmination of our entire marching band season. The other band marched off the field, and we marched on.
-If we thought we had a lot of adrenaline before, it was nothing compared to what we got as we marched out of preset. Preset is the most intimidating part of a show, in my opinion. I don't know why, but there's something about it that starts your heart pumping like Hoover Dam. All the rest of the show, I can handle. And, in fact, I did. I did it pretty well, too. I always screw up just minimally during the opener and then correct it all during the last three songs. That's what happened there. It was tense the whole time, though. Imagine the feeling you get when you're riding your bike across a street and a big van comes out from behind a truck, braking with a screech and a honk about five inches from you. Then imagine that feeling for eight straight minutes. That's the show, boiled down to its raw elements.
-I was certainly glad to march off the field and change into my civilian clothes. From the buses where we did that, I went to the stadium and met Dad, who gave me $five to buy a shirt about the competition; then I watched a few more bands from on the bleachers (which were several stories high) while sitting with Kimber and Matt and Krystal. Kimber likes horses; Matt likes computers and stuff; Krystal is deranged. I gave them my personal play-by-play on how the bands out were doing. Then, when it was time for the awards ceremony, we realized we were on the exact opposite side of the field from where we were supposed to be, and while we were on our way to the other bleachers they called out the scores. We got a I.
-A I is the highest rating possible. It was nearly unfathomable that Finneytown could come out of nowhere and then get a I, but we still did it. As we found later, we were one of only five class "B" bands out of 22 to get a I. The buses were hard pressed to stay together all the way home.
-Besides that, not much happened. Really not very much whatsoever. I'm going to go now. ,Bye'
Friday, October 29, 2004
Here, you can have this one
Last week has been a fairly typical school week. I did all the regular school stuff--went to school, was tired, ... you know the drill.
-My letter to the Springfield Board of Recreation has gotten an incredible response--two out of my total of six readers! It makes me wish I'd done a little more back-checking before I wrote it. Once I was done writing it, I went back to the site with all the plans and checked out the master plans, which I hadn't seen before because they were taking too long to load. When I saw it, I realized that the plans they have aren't as bad as I made them out to be. I'd still rather prefer them not to do any renovations, because, really, Warder is just fine as it is. It seems pretty moronic to me to renovate an entire park just so you can make a little money. It's particularly moronic, though, when you remember the cost they've projected for the project. Nine million dollars. They're going to spend nine million dollars to make... a few thousand, maybe?
-I went to the school newspaper meeting on Thursday, and before I knew it Matt had commissioned me to do an article on Warder Park. So I guess I will. I think I'll also circulate a petition to keep the Board from progressing with their plans. I just think we should leave well enough alone. That's my campaign slogan for this issue.
-In other news, band has gotten steadily more time-consuming. I don't like it at all. And also, uh,...I don't really have anything else. I guess I'll end this post on that rather lame note. Sorry.
-Oh yeah! I was going to tell Matt in this post: I know you've left more comments, but I only read them when I couldn't respond to them. I'll respond to your question of earlier: the other animation I was talking about to you on the bus was "Sehventain Years" (Or "Year-es"...search for both of them), which is based on a prank call that Group X made. There are two different versions of it, made by two different people, and they're both about equally good. That's the one I was talking about on the bus.
-My letter to the Springfield Board of Recreation has gotten an incredible response--two out of my total of six readers! It makes me wish I'd done a little more back-checking before I wrote it. Once I was done writing it, I went back to the site with all the plans and checked out the master plans, which I hadn't seen before because they were taking too long to load. When I saw it, I realized that the plans they have aren't as bad as I made them out to be. I'd still rather prefer them not to do any renovations, because, really, Warder is just fine as it is. It seems pretty moronic to me to renovate an entire park just so you can make a little money. It's particularly moronic, though, when you remember the cost they've projected for the project. Nine million dollars. They're going to spend nine million dollars to make... a few thousand, maybe?
-I went to the school newspaper meeting on Thursday, and before I knew it Matt had commissioned me to do an article on Warder Park. So I guess I will. I think I'll also circulate a petition to keep the Board from progressing with their plans. I just think we should leave well enough alone. That's my campaign slogan for this issue.
-In other news, band has gotten steadily more time-consuming. I don't like it at all. And also, uh,...I don't really have anything else. I guess I'll end this post on that rather lame note. Sorry.
-Oh yeah! I was going to tell Matt in this post: I know you've left more comments, but I only read them when I couldn't respond to them. I'll respond to your question of earlier: the other animation I was talking about to you on the bus was "Sehventain Years" (Or "Year-es"...search for both of them), which is based on a prank call that Group X made. There are two different versions of it, made by two different people, and they're both about equally good. That's the one I was talking about on the bus.
Sunday, October 24, 2004
Letter I wrote to the Springfield Township Board of Recreation
My name is [withheld]. I live on Finney Trail. I visit Warder Park all the time, and when I idly searched for references to it on the Internet, your plan was the first thing I found.
-First I looked at the maps on the front pages. I love maps. In fact, I plan to someday get a detailed map of Finneytown, as soon as I can find one. After I saw the maps I moved on to the next page. It horrified me.
-You plan to completely raze Warder Park and rebuild it totally different. I couldn't believe it. Warder Park is untamed, and it takes all of its greatness as a park from this wildness. Unlike, say, Winton Woods or Hummer Park, it hasn't been built over to accommodate everyone and his brother coming in. That means that there are no docks on Burke's Pond, there are no basketball courts just off the main trail, and there is no amphitheatre in the middle of the grounds. It's one of the last places in Cincinnati that's like this. While all the other parks have been "fully modernized", Warder stays mysterious and wild.
-So I ask you: do we really need another tennis court, or another swimming pool? Aren't there enough already? What we need is a park that retains an air of the unknown. I have no idea what's in a lot of the entire park, and I can't tell you how much I enjoy the process of finding out new things. Just today I bushwhacked back and found a brand new creek that I had never even suspected existed. There are very few things that give me as much of a thrill as discovering completely new places and seeing things I've never seen.
-But if the new plan you have here to change the face of Warder is instituted, there will be nothing surprising. Everything will be mapped out in an exact way, and every time you go in you'll see the same exact trails, the same exact skateboard ramp. Nothing will have changed. Nothing.
-Do the taxpayers need to pay nine million dollars to have a park that maybe a hundred people will know about, that will be interchangeable with the almost adjacent Hummer Park, and that won't be even a tenth of the size or excitement of Winton Woods? What else could we be spending these nine million dollars on? My school, Finneytown High, has recently had its budget slashed violently. All of the Finneytown School District has, in fact. There are kids who could be learning more, cops who could be patrolling more, roads that could be paved better, and countless dozens of other things that are so much more important to everyone than another new park. I don't understand why we need to pave over a sanctuary for everyone in the town, at a huge cost, to provide something we already have. I say we nix the Warder Park plans and leave well enough alone.
-Thanks for reading,
[withheld]
-First I looked at the maps on the front pages. I love maps. In fact, I plan to someday get a detailed map of Finneytown, as soon as I can find one. After I saw the maps I moved on to the next page. It horrified me.
-You plan to completely raze Warder Park and rebuild it totally different. I couldn't believe it. Warder Park is untamed, and it takes all of its greatness as a park from this wildness. Unlike, say, Winton Woods or Hummer Park, it hasn't been built over to accommodate everyone and his brother coming in. That means that there are no docks on Burke's Pond, there are no basketball courts just off the main trail, and there is no amphitheatre in the middle of the grounds. It's one of the last places in Cincinnati that's like this. While all the other parks have been "fully modernized", Warder stays mysterious and wild.
-So I ask you: do we really need another tennis court, or another swimming pool? Aren't there enough already? What we need is a park that retains an air of the unknown. I have no idea what's in a lot of the entire park, and I can't tell you how much I enjoy the process of finding out new things. Just today I bushwhacked back and found a brand new creek that I had never even suspected existed. There are very few things that give me as much of a thrill as discovering completely new places and seeing things I've never seen.
-But if the new plan you have here to change the face of Warder is instituted, there will be nothing surprising. Everything will be mapped out in an exact way, and every time you go in you'll see the same exact trails, the same exact skateboard ramp. Nothing will have changed. Nothing.
-Do the taxpayers need to pay nine million dollars to have a park that maybe a hundred people will know about, that will be interchangeable with the almost adjacent Hummer Park, and that won't be even a tenth of the size or excitement of Winton Woods? What else could we be spending these nine million dollars on? My school, Finneytown High, has recently had its budget slashed violently. All of the Finneytown School District has, in fact. There are kids who could be learning more, cops who could be patrolling more, roads that could be paved better, and countless dozens of other things that are so much more important to everyone than another new park. I don't understand why we need to pave over a sanctuary for everyone in the town, at a huge cost, to provide something we already have. I say we nix the Warder Park plans and leave well enough alone.
-Thanks for reading,
[withheld]
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Once a week?
I think I'm leaning towards posting once a week here. I'd do it more often, but band is such a huge load of work, and I'm kind of forgetful too, and plus I don't really want to. Maybe in the summer, if I don't get the Crowduck job. Which reminds me: I need to get working on that letter to Bill.
-Not a whole lot, as I've said before, has happened. Once you actually get into the school year, you're kind of in a rut. The only thing that spices the action up is the occasional weekend or day off or season change. It's completely fall now, by the way, and my back way behind the school is in top form. Someday I'm going to go into that forest and see what kind of good creekwalking is there to be had. I'll check more thoroughly at Topozone first, though.
-Well, my 'blog doesn't show up on Google. I just thought I'd mention that. I suppose Google only updates its site count every so often, and I haven't snuck in yet. You'd think I would have, what with being around for at least a couple months.
-I've found several good movies. One of them is under "that" in a previous post, and you've all probably seen it. The second one is probably even funnier to people who have played Mario Brothers, or Twins, or whatever, than it is to me. It's located at. Enjoy. And there are more of them at Group X's website, but the one "Bang Bang Bang" is just dumb. Of course, you're now going to look at it all the more attentively because I condemned it, but you'll agree with me. Oh, and it has sexual content. Viewer discretion is advised. The other cartoons are good, though. I especially like "Dat Cereal Bawx". It's my goal to someday do a transcript of "Mario Twins".
-No, I'm not an Internet cartoon connoisseur. These are pretty much the only cartoons I watch, over and over again. Shut up. Got game.
-I think I'll leave you there for now. I might post a transcript today, though. In fact, I'm pretty sure I will.
-Not a whole lot, as I've said before, has happened. Once you actually get into the school year, you're kind of in a rut. The only thing that spices the action up is the occasional weekend or day off or season change. It's completely fall now, by the way, and my back way behind the school is in top form. Someday I'm going to go into that forest and see what kind of good creekwalking is there to be had. I'll check more thoroughly at Topozone first, though.
-Well, my 'blog doesn't show up on Google. I just thought I'd mention that. I suppose Google only updates its site count every so often, and I haven't snuck in yet. You'd think I would have, what with being around for at least a couple months.
-I've found several good movies. One of them is under "that" in a previous post, and you've all probably seen it. The second one is probably even funnier to people who have played Mario Brothers, or Twins, or whatever, than it is to me. It's located at. Enjoy. And there are more of them at Group X's website, but the one "Bang Bang Bang" is just dumb. Of course, you're now going to look at it all the more attentively because I condemned it, but you'll agree with me. Oh, and it has sexual content. Viewer discretion is advised. The other cartoons are good, though. I especially like "Dat Cereal Bawx". It's my goal to someday do a transcript of "Mario Twins".
-No, I'm not an Internet cartoon connoisseur. These are pretty much the only cartoons I watch, over and over again. Shut up. Got game.
-I think I'll leave you there for now. I might post a transcript today, though. In fact, I'm pretty sure I will.
Marios Transcript
-Hey Splade!
-Shiggity shiggity shwa...
-Guess what idioht?
-What you did today?
-Uhhh..
-Wraung!
-Hey!
-I got a new super eighty-H system.
-You did nahht.
-Swear to God, I got it at Chunky's for two dollareys.
-Oh yeah, lemme see it. ...Wau. Th, that's gouh--
-Yeah, you like that, idihit!
-I do--
-I got it, you don't. Shut up. Got game. Hey guess what?
-What?--
-It has new game.
-What gam--
-I want to play it! It's called Mairio Twins. They look the same!
-Wauu!
-Gouhd gauu... they look so dhe same like dhe same person. I would say to them, "You want ice cream cone?" both of them say yehs. How in thi hehll!?--
-That's --they're twins, bohth of them--
-Hey, let's play it, reahdy?
-All right.
-Do it!
-Khhk gghhg There't goes.
(Group X does three weird songs, which I think are supposed to be the music to the Mario Twins game. They're all very heavy on guys going "Doodoodoodoo duuuu, dooo, doodoot...". All throughout these songs, a Mario is going through the game and defeating all the stuff Marios defeat... mushroom guys, plants, turtles, gravity wells.... And the second song is a "potty break" song. Just after Mario jumps over Bowser in the third song and finds that guy Toad, the dialog starts back up very suddenly.)
-Hey Splade, Splade! Uh oh, you found the princess! Reahhnk: she's in another haus, go away.
-What in the hhehll she's doing? Hey- crapp on this: let's go play Super Mairios Punchoff.
-All right, let's quit this game.
-Dooht
-Shiggity shiggity shwa...
-Guess what idioht?
-What you did today?
-Uhhh..
-Wraung!
-Hey!
-I got a new super eighty-H system.
-You did nahht.
-Swear to God, I got it at Chunky's for two dollareys.
-Oh yeah, lemme see it. ...Wau. Th, that's gouh--
-Yeah, you like that, idihit!
-I do--
-I got it, you don't. Shut up. Got game. Hey guess what?
-What?--
-It has new game.
-What gam--
-I want to play it! It's called Mairio Twins. They look the same!
-Wauu!
-Gouhd gauu... they look so dhe same like dhe same person. I would say to them, "You want ice cream cone?" both of them say yehs. How in thi hehll!?--
-That's --they're twins, bohth of them--
-Hey, let's play it, reahdy?
-All right.
-Do it!
-Khhk gghhg There't goes.
(Group X does three weird songs, which I think are supposed to be the music to the Mario Twins game. They're all very heavy on guys going "Doodoodoodoo duuuu, dooo, doodoot...". All throughout these songs, a Mario is going through the game and defeating all the stuff Marios defeat... mushroom guys, plants, turtles, gravity wells.... And the second song is a "potty break" song. Just after Mario jumps over Bowser in the third song and finds that guy Toad, the dialog starts back up very suddenly.)
-Hey Splade, Splade! Uh oh, you found the princess! Reahhnk: she's in another haus, go away.
-What in the hhehll she's doing? Hey- crapp on this: let's go play Super Mairios Punchoff.
-All right, let's quit this game.
-Dooht
Friday, October 8, 2004
Nova Esperanta Nokto
Mi rigardas ke mi ne blogumis marde post mi komencis ĉi tion blogon. Mi faris unu mardan blogumon. Kaj mardoj estas Esperantaj Noktoj? Nu mi bezonis fari alian. MalgraŠhodiaŠesti dimanĉo, ĉi tiu nokto estas Esperanta Nokto.
-Mi frue vekiĝis ĉi tiun matenon, samkiel ĉiutage. Mi malamas vekiĝi frue. Mi vekiĝas je 0620! Sufica plendado, kvankam. En Muzikistaro, ni marŝis multe, samkiel ĉiutage. En Financo, ni faris financadon komputile. En Matematiko, en Historio, en la Hispana... Nenio, vere. Ne eĉ lunĉo estis ekscita. La resto de la tago estis malekscita. Nu. Mi vere ne havis ekscitan tagon, ĝis la matĉo.
-La matĉo estis inter Finneytown kaj Mariemont. Äśi ankaĹ estis la hejmvena matĉo. AntaĹ kelkaj tagoj, oni kreis multajn negraj ĉemizojn, kiuj havis bildon de nia reprezentaaaĵouulo....okej, "mascot" (mi bezonas trovi pli kompletan vortaron ie) ...--la SovaÄťkato, vestata en Usonfutbalaj ropoj (stranga, mi scias), kaj la leÄťindaĵon "Mansignu adiaĹon al la Militistoj" (Warriors, la teamo de Mariemont). Äśi estis granda afero.
-Ni poentis tre frue--dum la unuaj 30 sekondoj. Estis, ludu la batalkanton, ni tuĹťpoentas, reludu la batalkanton. PreskaĹ Äťena.
-La matĉo interbalancis dum la tuta tempo. Ni poentus, kaj ili poentus reciproke, kaj tiam denove. Ekscita, vere. Mi priskribus ĉi tiun matĉon kun pli da entuziasmo, sed mi estas laca. Tamen, estis ekscita.
Je duontempo ni liniis en kurbon kaj ludis la temkanto de Forrest Gump, kinaĵo pri ia stultulo. Mi sentis ke ĝi estis bona komento je la hejmvenaj kandidatoj.
-Post duontempo, aĵoj subiris. Ni poentis malpli. Eventuale ili poentis nur kvar minutoj antaŠla fino. Neniel ni povis fari poenton. Kaj ni ne faris ĝin. Ni fuŝis ĝin. Diable. Sekvafoje.
-Mi frue vekiĝis ĉi tiun matenon, samkiel ĉiutage. Mi malamas vekiĝi frue. Mi vekiĝas je 0620! Sufica plendado, kvankam. En Muzikistaro, ni marŝis multe, samkiel ĉiutage. En Financo, ni faris financadon komputile. En Matematiko, en Historio, en la Hispana... Nenio, vere. Ne eĉ lunĉo estis ekscita. La resto de la tago estis malekscita. Nu. Mi vere ne havis ekscitan tagon, ĝis la matĉo.
-La matĉo estis inter Finneytown kaj Mariemont. Äśi ankaĹ estis la hejmvena matĉo. AntaĹ kelkaj tagoj, oni kreis multajn negraj ĉemizojn, kiuj havis bildon de nia reprezentaaaĵouulo....okej, "mascot" (mi bezonas trovi pli kompletan vortaron ie) ...--la SovaÄťkato, vestata en Usonfutbalaj ropoj (stranga, mi scias), kaj la leÄťindaĵon "Mansignu adiaĹon al la Militistoj" (Warriors, la teamo de Mariemont). Äśi estis granda afero.
-Ni poentis tre frue--dum la unuaj 30 sekondoj. Estis, ludu la batalkanton, ni tuĹťpoentas, reludu la batalkanton. PreskaĹ Äťena.
-La matĉo interbalancis dum la tuta tempo. Ni poentus, kaj ili poentus reciproke, kaj tiam denove. Ekscita, vere. Mi priskribus ĉi tiun matĉon kun pli da entuziasmo, sed mi estas laca. Tamen, estis ekscita.
Je duontempo ni liniis en kurbon kaj ludis la temkanto de Forrest Gump, kinaĵo pri ia stultulo. Mi sentis ke ĝi estis bona komento je la hejmvenaj kandidatoj.
-Post duontempo, aĵoj subiris. Ni poentis malpli. Eventuale ili poentis nur kvar minutoj antaŠla fino. Neniel ni povis fari poenton. Kaj ni ne faris ĝin. Ni fuŝis ĝin. Diable. Sekvafoje.
Saturday, October 2, 2004
You thought there were no more but guess what there's another one!
Dag. I've been away too long. If pretty much all of the readership of this 'blog didn't consist of people I see every day at school, some people might actually have been worrying about me up until today.
-Well, here's what's happened recently: band. Band has happened. And it has continued to happen. By tomorrow I will have been at a band function eight times in the last two weeks. Doesn't that seem like a bit much to you? We have practices for two and a half hours on Mondays and Thursdays and we have a game every Friday (except last Friday, but it was rescheduled to the even less convenient Saturday). In addition, there was a contest last Saturday and there will be one the Saturday that is technically today. Games take about four hours; contests, eight. (Really.) Band is eating my life, week by week.
-It wasn't all bad. Last Saturday we had our contest at the Hamilton High School Band-O-Rama (that's really what it's called) and we didn't think we did so well. As it turned out, we got second place in the entire contest. Of course, there were only about six bands at the contest, but we still got second. And we also qualified for State competition. This is a big thing, because our school has never done that before. Never. We're the first chapter of the band to make it this far. State is on November 5th or 9th at either Dayton or Columbus, I think.
-I definitely want to work at Crowduck this summer. I'm writing a letter to proprietor Bill Kolansky sometime either today or tomorrow. I've got to get away from band and Finneytown. Just for the summer next summer.
-You'd think that, what with not having written a post for about a week, I'd have more to write about. Well, the fact is I don't. I just have this one last thing before I go do something else:
-My 6th bell is woodshop. My 7th bell is chemistry. Those two rooms are almost the farthest two rooms from each other in the entire school. I used to have to walk all the way down the long path, into the school, out of the school, down some stairs, and back into a different wing of the school. But the other day I found a far superior alternate route. I just go out the door near the woodshop and walk around the entire school. This path has the added advantage that it overlooks a deep green forest on the side of the grounds. The green is turning to yellow and red and orange recently as fall sets on--it's kind of like fireworks. What I know is that it's so massively better than the other path that even after the semester ends and I start taking health class (which I've heard sucks tremendously), which is very much closer to chemistry, I'm still going to go out of my way to walk the long way. I can't wait to see it in winter.
-Well, here's what's happened recently: band. Band has happened. And it has continued to happen. By tomorrow I will have been at a band function eight times in the last two weeks. Doesn't that seem like a bit much to you? We have practices for two and a half hours on Mondays and Thursdays and we have a game every Friday (except last Friday, but it was rescheduled to the even less convenient Saturday). In addition, there was a contest last Saturday and there will be one the Saturday that is technically today. Games take about four hours; contests, eight. (Really.) Band is eating my life, week by week.
-It wasn't all bad. Last Saturday we had our contest at the Hamilton High School Band-O-Rama (that's really what it's called) and we didn't think we did so well. As it turned out, we got second place in the entire contest. Of course, there were only about six bands at the contest, but we still got second. And we also qualified for State competition. This is a big thing, because our school has never done that before. Never. We're the first chapter of the band to make it this far. State is on November 5th or 9th at either Dayton or Columbus, I think.
-I definitely want to work at Crowduck this summer. I'm writing a letter to proprietor Bill Kolansky sometime either today or tomorrow. I've got to get away from band and Finneytown. Just for the summer next summer.
-You'd think that, what with not having written a post for about a week, I'd have more to write about. Well, the fact is I don't. I just have this one last thing before I go do something else:
-My 6th bell is woodshop. My 7th bell is chemistry. Those two rooms are almost the farthest two rooms from each other in the entire school. I used to have to walk all the way down the long path, into the school, out of the school, down some stairs, and back into a different wing of the school. But the other day I found a far superior alternate route. I just go out the door near the woodshop and walk around the entire school. This path has the added advantage that it overlooks a deep green forest on the side of the grounds. The green is turning to yellow and red and orange recently as fall sets on--it's kind of like fireworks. What I know is that it's so massively better than the other path that even after the semester ends and I start taking health class (which I've heard sucks tremendously), which is very much closer to chemistry, I'm still going to go out of my way to walk the long way. I can't wait to see it in winter.
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.
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