International Book Week

It's International Book Week. The rules: Grab the book closest to you, turn to page 52, and post the 5th sentence as your status [or blog post, as I decided right now]. Don't mention the title. Copy the rules as part of your status.

"Is he married?"

CHARACTER STUDY (II)

[I'm writing in first person now, since that's what everyone else is doing and I'm easily influenced like that]

I looked in the mirror and did a final once-over. Favorite black t-shirt: check. Gladiator sandals: check. 90's cargo pants that I swear are making a comeback: check. Necklace of keys that would be really cool if they opened something: check, check, check, check, and check.

Preparations complete, I stepped into my shiny new Mazda Kiyora that I just downloaded off the Internet (in the magical world of imagination, anything is possible...!), checked to make sure my suitcase was in the back, flipped on some drum'n'bass, and started driving. I was meeting Daniel, Jake, Ashley, and Bianca (the hitchhiker that Ashley texted me about) at the Santa Barbara Zoo to begin our journey... to Lithuania! With a myriad of stops along the way, I knew it would be an amazing road trip-- I just hoped my illness wouldn't hold me back.

After about an hour of driving, I reached Santa Barbara. I got off the freeway a few exits early so I could take some surface streets-- just for the hell of it. I passed by Cottage Hospital with mixed emotions, thinking of pills, MRI machines, and the blood lab. My mood brightened considerably when I drove by Paseo Nuevo. Good times.

Finally, I reached the Santa Barbara Zoo. I decided to put on some G-Dragon to surprise Ashley. Her timing was impeccable: she arrived just as the song reached the chorus, the only part I knew.

"Geu saekkiboda naega motan ge mwoya... oops!" I laughed. "Pardon my Korean." Ashley smiled, but her hitchhiker Bianca looked unimpressed. Well, I thought to myself, this is gonna be interesting.

CANTERBURY TALES (I)

There are supposed to be 29 characters besides the narrator, right? WELL, I numbered them all in my notes and I got 30. I'm so confused.

I'm surprised that Chaucer doesn't really introduce the second nun or the three priests at all.

I'm wondering about the "Wife of Bath" -- why did she have 5 husbands? What happened to them? Did she marry, change her mind, divorce, and repeat? Or did she do the Mrs. Peacock thing and marry each for their money, only to have them *mysteriously* die shorthly afterwards? Her story is the one I'm most interested in reading, to find out more about her.

Also (this will probably only display on Windows because I don't know the non-Windows equivalents of Cambria Math) what's up with this symbol ⨗ in the Key & Peele video? (if it doesn't display, you can see it here)

WHAT A CHARACTER

This summer I finally got around to watching Death Note, which has been on my To-Watch list since freshman year. To compress the premise into the smallest space possible, Death Note is about a high school senior named Light Yagami who finds a mysterious book called the Death Note. According to the instructions, any person whose name is written in the Death Note will die. Light uses it to kill criminals, envisioning himself as the god of the crime-free utopia he'll create.

At the beginning of the show, I immediately identified with Light: like me (or, more accurately, me during freshman year before I was sick/alternate-universe me who was never sick in the first place), he is a high school senior at the top of his class with occasional narcissistic tendencies. Light's almost immediate (i.e. within 20 minutes of airtime) sanity slippage made it so I couldn't identify with him as much anymore, but I was intrigued by his character. To be honest, I'm even more intrigued in hindsight when I reflect on how my opinion of Light changed over the course of the show. The rest of this post contains spoilers, so here's my cue for a jump break.

LITERATURE ANALYSIS #1

Here is my first Literature Analysis, on George Orwell's famous novel, 1984.

That Netvibes thing I'm supposed to write a post about

Well, I made a Netvibes dashboard (I totally spelled that dashbored the first time-- can you tell I'm writing this after midnight??) but I didn't find it all that useful for me. The one thing I liked the most was the ability to embed other webpages within the dashboard, but it made the controls all derp. Like, in order to scroll down on the dashboard you have to make sure you're not mousing over any of the webpages 'cause then it scrolls that instead. Y'know. Besides, I'm actually already very systematic about keeping my stuff organized (an absolute necessity for someone with my attendance record)-- I've been dutifully keeping an assignment book since 7th grade, and over the years I've developed a rather elaborate system of symbols/codes for organizing it which I'll gladly explain to anyone but don't particularly want to type out. Y'know. Anyway, I'm linear, I like lists, but dashboards are cool if you're a dashboard-y person like that.

CHARACTER STUDY (I)

"Dude. How much of this crap do I need?" muttered Lisa, contemplating her fistful of small white pills. She hated taking the medicine, but knew her life would be much, much worse without it. Maybe that's why she hated it.

"Whatever," she concluded, pouring them back into their container and throwing the entire bottle into her bag. Looking up, she caught sight of herself in the mirror: blonde hair held back with a headband from a pale face (paler than usual, she noted) and hazel eyes, looking a little dead. Lisa sighed. Can I do this? she thought to herself. I can barely make it to class half the time, let alone keep up with everyone on this journey to who-knows-where. Should I just stay home...? She shook her head, trying to find her resolve. No, I've missed out on too much because of this. It can't keep ruining my life! In desperation, she grabbed a handful of coffee beans to eat raw, hiccuped once, and continued packing.

VOCABULARY #6

Heyyyyyy guys, I know you totally want to read my Fionna and Cake fanfiction with 41 vocabulary words in it!!

DECLARATION OF LEARNING INDEPENDENCE

Life isn't fair. I know this. You know this. Everyone knows this. But (as yet another installment in my series of Big Questions) could there be ways to make life a little more fair to those of us who have it a little less fair than others? This is my Declaration of Learning Independence. I will use SMART goals to work more efficiently in this class, other classes, and in life, so that I can triumph over my disability; and more importantly, I will use Collaborative Working Groups (such as Club 504 and Random Absence Mentoring, which I believe are now the official names) as a resource to improve my life, as well as the lives of others who are suffering from an illness/disability like I am. This is important to me.

VOCABULARY #5

We have 21 words this week whaaaaat Dr. Preston why would you do that????

(uneccessarily overreacting FTW)

[also tautology FTW]

{see I'm using vocab words even before the jump break 'cause I'm just cool like that}

!@#$I'm really out of symbols to use as parentheses%^&*

ALL OF THE ABOVE

So I feel really good about myself, having my 1987 AP test already corrected (and color coded!).

I got 83% of the questions right, which is pretty good for an AP test, so I'm happy with how I did. I didn't expect to get them ALL right, but I expected to get most, so the test basically went exactly how I thought it would. Most of the questions I got wrong were just because of incorrectly interpreting ambiguous parts of the passages, although a couple were just facepalm stupid mistakes and one was because of obscure poetic terminology that we never learned (yeah I'm talking to you, "heroic couplets"... mutter mutter...).

VOCABULARY #4

Yup. Vocab Number Four. And I finally got around to writing a story for this one! It's about Flame Princess, and she's evil!

Beowulf Essay

Yeah... I finally wrote this thing.... you should read it..... It's about Mario (nerd and proud) ^_^

WILL STUDY FOR FOOD

When anyone asks me what colleges I'm considering, I always answer, "Davis, Berkeley, or maybe Stanford if I can scrounge up enough scholarship money." Not to blow myself up, but I think I have a decent chance of getting into Stanford if I applied, but Stanford's tuition is stupid expensive. I actually got to talk to a guy who goes to Stanford (literally walked up to a guy in a San Francisco coffee shop who had a Stanford Tree sticker on his laptop... proud of myself for that) and he said that the school actually gives a ton of financial aid to students every year. However, even with financial aid, Stanford is still reeeally expensive compared to Davis and Berkeley. Actually college is just expensive period. Therefore, scholarships are a good thing! The amount of scholarship money I earn will determine how much student loan debt I'll have to pay off, and may even influence my college choice. So, I intend to earn as much as I can.

About an hour ago I signed up for Fastweb, because the College Board scholarship search isn't all that great. At Fastweb, I found something called the Digital Innovation Scholarship, asking for "a 500 - word essay describing your personal experience with internet entrepreneurship, or the importance of new ideas in the digital realm. Topics could include user experience, visual design, or any other aspect of digital information you find interesting." I happen to know a lot about typography, so I'll write my essay about the importance of typography in websites, and specifically how the introduction of web fonts has changed the face of Internet typography. This will probably be one of my more interesting essay topics!

VOCABULARY #3

This is it! Tonight, the epic story that began week one and continued week two reaches its stunning conclusion! You don't want to miss this one folks!

WHY THIS BOOK?

For my first literature analysis, I chose 1984 by George Orwell. I've always been intrigued by dystopian novels, ever since reading the contemporary Uglies trilogy and the more classic Brave New World. Freshman year, I enjoyed reading Animal Farm (also by George Orwell) so I knew I liked the author, too. I was also interested in learning the story behind the many allusions to the book that have become very common (especially "Big Brother") so all in all it was a pretty clear choice.