jsreed5's Xanga

Yay

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:46:51 GMT

This is a short entry, just to describe the music video dream I had for "Everybody Pass Me By" a few nights ago. I didn't do this when I did the music videos for "The Ride" and "Thru the Motion," but I decided to just go ahead and do it just to see what I came up with. And not surprisingly, the song was based completely on the movie version of Holes. So much so, in fact, that Mr. Sir was the one who was singing the words in the song.

The music video starts out showing a shot of the D-Tent boys digging holes in the iddle of Camp Green Lake, and all you can hear is the sound of then digging. It's the middle of the day and the sun is almost straight up in the sky. The camera begins panning over to the right, and the song starts up. It's then that the water truck can be seen starting up its engine. The lead kid in the other music videos, the kdi with the dark pink shirt and giant guitar, is sitting in the bed of the truck, leaning on the water tank and playing the main guitar riff in the song. The truck soon roars off away from the holes. The D-Tent boys see this and shout for the truck to wait and come back, but to no avail.

The truck drives across the desert back to the camp compound and Mr. Sir gets out of it, immediately turning and walking to the mess hall. At this point the guitar riffs end and the lyrics start, with Mr. Sir singing them as he enters the mess hall and confronts the various chefs.

About 3/4 of the way through the first lyrics section, the Warden comes in and kicks him out of the hall. The second guitar section begins as Mr, Sir is walking through the compound, breaking up various sorts of roughhousing between groups of boys before heading back to the water truck again. All of this occurs with a few moment-long shots of the lead kid playing the guitar again, and as before, the kid hops into the bed of the truck as it's driving away.

At this point, the second lyrical section begins, and this time, there are different shots of the truck driving along and shots of Mr. Sir singing the lyrics as he drives the truck. In the shots of Mr. Sir himself singing, the camera is hinged just below the rear-view mirror on the outside of the driver side, and the effect is that as the truck bounces across the desert, the view of Mr. Sir is stationary while the rest of the world is shaking. This time, there are shots of the lead kid playing the bass of the song as the truck is driving, which didn't occur in the first lyrical part.

This lyrical part ends just as the truck reaches the group of holes where D-Tent is digging. During the intermediary part of the song, the boys get out of their holes and refill their canteens in slow motion, and the different guitar notes fading in and out correspond to the water spigot being turned on and off. The final 6 notes of this part are played by the kid, who jumps off the bed of the truck and joins the boys.

The last guitar riff section starts. The kid is standing out in the sunlight, which is lowering, playing the guitar riffs while the boys dig. One by one, the boys finish up their digging and leave their holes as the organ accomaniment to the guitar riffs starts, and by the end, the kid is all alone, standing in the middle of the group of holes. He plays the last riff as the sun visibly moves down the horizon behind him, and walks off as the last cymbal fades away.

This music video dream was actually really cool. I'm glad that I took the time to do it because I liked the way it turned out. Maybe this one I'll make into a real music video someday. Now if only I can somehow contact Shia LeBouf and Jon Voight...

Dreams again!

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:35:06 GMT

I KNOW I never finished the last entry, so here's the condensed version:

Writer's Workshop Final, SMNW's graduation, English and History finals, tree climbing, my birthday, PTP meeting, TJ's graduation, Memorial Day, Roman's party, dinner at Roman's house, the remaining four finals.

A lot to pack into a seven-day span, once I expand it out. I'll do that some other time.

But first, I HAVE to write my dreams from last night before I forget them.

If I didn't at first believe that what we do in real life affects our dreams, I believe it now. And what I was doing yesterday was watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, looking at random 4chan stuff, and going onto the Harry Potter wiki site to look up information on Tonks and the Lestrange Vault break-in at Gringotts. And then I had some weird dreams.

The first one was that I was at home. That sounds really boring, but I'll get into the interesting part later. This deram related to a dream that I had a VERY long time ago but had forgotten by the time I had woken up, in which there was a girl of extreme importance staying at our house. I'm not sure who exactly the girl was, but I have an idea of her essence, if that makes any sense at all. I know she resembled a cross between Tonks, Hermione disguised as Bellatrix (in the film version of Deathly Hallows), and Vera Venus (if you can imagine that). She was a beautiful girl, and kind and outgoing on the outside, but on the inside she was smart, clever, and cunning; in short, she might be a good match for Artemis Fowl, but she was lightyears beyond any league I imagined myself to be in.

There was no reference to that in any part of the actual dream; this was just stuff I recalled from the earlier dream, which I could only remember while I was in this dream. And now that I think about it, if my memory is correct, when I first had that dream I wondered where the combination of girl had come from; now I know.

Anyway, by the time the dream started, she had already left our house and moved on to whatever else life had to throw at her. Though I was in no way in the same league as her, she had befriended me nonetheless, as her outgoing attitude prevented anything else from transpiring. So as she had stayed at our house, we had become good friends, and I have to admit that while she was there I had fallen in love with her. (Of course, who couldn't fall in love with a stunningly beautiful girl only a year or two older than you that's smart, clever, and cunning, and at the same time kind and outgoing? She was almost the perfect girl!) Obviously, since she was so far out of my league, she didn't share the same feelings for me, but she didn't alienate me when she found about my feelings. But now that I say that, maybe I didn't tell her... Either way, she never stopped being my friend, even after she left. That was another thing about her; she truly liked the people she befriended. She didn't grudgingly befriend people for mutual advantage or sympathy for another's lower status (like myself) - she actually enjoyed being my friend. (I wonder if the paparazzi or whatever gave her hell about her and me. Though I don't think so, because of her personality. Of course, there's the possibility that she wasn't the type of important paparazzi went after anyway...)

Wow, I got WAAAAY sidetracked by all that.

The point is, it was a few days after she had left, and I was in the laundry room loading the washing machine, when my phone vibrated. I knew it meant I got a text message, so I took out my phone with my free hand to see what it read. Sure enough, it was a text message from the girl, saying that she had friended me on a web site (I assumed it was a web site at any rate) that I had never heard of. Something like "Sum In" or "Sum It" or something like that, but definitely something I had never heard of. I could figure out, though, that you didn't have to be on it for someone to list you as a friend, but I guess you could access the person easier if you got an account and you were a friend of theirs. But now that I think about it, how would you prove that you are who you say you are...?

Anyway, I had no idea how to access the site, or even if it was a site. What if it was some different technology that was REALLY expensive? But I at least decided to go online and see if I couldn't find the place.

I went onto google and tried about 40 different combinations of different words I thought might lead me to the site, but to no avail. It got me really annoyed, and I think I was about to text the girl back to see if she could tell me what was going on, but then the dream ended.

To Vera Venus: HOW IN THE WORLD DID YOU SNEAK INTO MY DREAM!? Well, at leats you gave that girl the edge that really attracted me to her. Thanks for that.

Though now that I say that out loud, it must be the fact that I was on the Artemis Fowl site fora while last night. In fact, I'm sure that's what it was. The only difference is that Mary Sue's aren't allowed on the AF Fanfiction site, but this girl definitely was a Mary Sue, even though I realy don't like that description of a perfect female character.

Whatever. Let's move on to the next dream.

This time I was at SMNW. This time, the school was a cross between it and TJ, in that the architectural layout of the building itself was exactly the same as the original SMNW, but the style was reminiscent of TJ. There were 2 stires and 3 main hallways in each story, but the floor was carpeted with the TJ carpet instead of tiled and the lockers were the ones at TJ that didn't have locks. And the classrooms were alll furnished in the TJ style, with separated chairs and desks and other things TJ does which I can't think of right now.

So I was there, and various people from TJ, SMNW, and Carthage high school were there. It was obviously after school, because in the normal TJ style people were hanging around, sititng and talking, some of them playing Magic the Gathering or Game Boy games. Some people I knew to be there were Palmer, Alexis, and Ax, but I know there were others (a TON of others) I can't think of.

Anyway, I was hanging with people and I got bored, so I decided that like Roman did at the party last year, I would run down the hallways and do crazy jumps and stuff. So I ran down the hallway and pushed myself up off the ground using the TJ-esque lockers. I would seemingly float in the air for a while, then run on the groud even more, then run on the walls for a while. I did that a few times, until I realized that I was defying the lays of gravity every time I was doing that. Then I started jumping up and staying up, letting myself float in the air. The only problem with this was that I had to keep propelling myself forward by pulling on the top of the lockers, as once my speed dropped to below a certain level, I started floarting down to the ground.

I did that for a while, until some people began to take notice that I was flying, and they asked to see it some more. One girl came up (who was NOTHING like the girl in my previous dream) and asked if I could show her how I did it. I dhowed her what I did to fly, but I never stopped to see if she had actually flown; that time I flew the longest distance of any point in the entire dream.

In that jump I flew literally from one end of the hall to the other, floating over to where Ax and a few other people were sitting and playing a card game of some sort. Just as I passed over Ax, I lost enough speed that I began to float down. I panicked and pushed upward instead of forward, and I ended up landing on the flor just behind Ax.

Coming so close to disaster, I decided not to fly anymore, so I went into one of the classrooms and found Alexis there, and her mom in the far corner. When I walked in, she was writing something on a Kindle with a touch screen (which I don't know if Kindles have touch screens or not), so I decided to join her and watch what she was doing. I sat down next to her and put my arm around her shoulder, and asked how much the Kindle cost, since I've been wanting one to take on the Europe trip. She thought for a moment, and finally said that it had cost $500. I whistled quietly and commented on how my parents were unwilling to buy me anything more than $100 for my birthday. Alexis didn't believe me when I said that, and she eventually laughed.

I was annoyed that she was laughing, but in the end I was just glad to be in her company, so I stayed with her and hung out. I can't remember if anything romantic resulted from her comany; I think something might have, because her mother didn't ever interfere with anything we did while I was there.

So there was one more dream, but I don't have time to write it, so I'll summarize.

4chan apparently existed in the 1970's, and they were playing a prank on this guy who was working at a universioty, so they came and pasted all these random posters on his building. The guy walked around with a camera, filming the damage 4chan had done, then other stuff in the city he was living in. Then I joined him and we befriended this GIANT group of kids (because the guy apparently loves your kids) and we went to this abandoned building where the guy apparently worked.

We discovered that the city was a totalitarianistic society where everything looked like it was normal but there was a VERY specific order to things that could not be broken under any circumstances. So we decided that we would break te order and "free" the people from the society. So we rioted, and this cleaning lady got really mad at us. Then all o the floors disappeared in the 14-story-tall building, and we had been on the top floor, so we had to somehow get down.

Then the dreams were over.

Weird, huh?

I like the first two dreams. A cross between Tonks, Hermione as Bellatrix, and Vera Venus? That would be by default the coolest girl on Earth. Still light years out of my league, but I would probably idolize her. And if she befriended me, I think that would really fall under the awkward chart I mentioned in the last entry.

And if I can't be with a girl like that, I would certainly enjoy spending time in Alexis' company. It's really stupid that I should get comfort from a dream, but just the thought of being (essentially) alone with Alexis like that and being able to hug her and be next to her and things along those lines... It makes me SO HAPPY on the inside. And I SO WISH I could do that in real life.

But whatever. Hopefully I'll see her in the summer a little bit. Maybe I could skip a day next year so that I could see her at TJ...

Oh and btw, you guys don't know how close I came to making this dream entry private, if only for the extended involvent of Alexis in the second dream.

Okay, I'm done. I SWEAR.

(8/9/09: Gah. Even though I know who's essence was all in that girl from the first dream, I can't get the image of Niko from the Runaways out of my mind. Maybe that's because that's what I imagine Veran Venus to look like. In fact, now that I think about it, Niko probably contributed the greatest percentage to her looks, and Vera Venus probably contributed the most to her workings on the inside. I'm not sure where her personality came from, but she was kindest, most outgoing, friendliest, most cunning, cleverest, sharpest, smartest, and most genuinely caring person I have ever known, as far as dreams go.)

I Don't Like It

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:22:33 GMT

Art Foundations, that is.

And that's because of the format of the class.

I'm not saying that I have some sort of resistance. I am getting SO TIRED of hearing that word! The problem with Hunt is that he's positive that he's got it all figured out, when no-one knows the entire truth about everything. The best anyone can do is make assumptions based on repeating patterns that come up. But that doesn't work all the time.

Take me, for example. I think that I have a fairly good amount of artistic talent. In fact, the fact that I could create a combination of a bird and a rabbit out of clay that would actually look halfway good, I think, is proof that there is some spark of creativity firing in my neurons.

Here's the thing, though: I am a SLOW worker. a VERY SLOW worker. Hunt expects us to create something that looks like a "high school" level work, whatever that means. And I can do that. I can do it easily. But it just takes me a long time. Here's the problem, though: I am a slow enough worker that usually, I need a few extensions to get the project done. That's a problem, because with clay, Hunt won't grant extensions because he had to put them into the kiln. Which means that all the other projects are in the kiln now, and mine is still only halfway done.

I could work at the pace I do, and do some very high-quality stuff, but it will be only halfway done by the deadline. Then I only get half-credit, which is still failing. Or I can work fast enought o actually met the deadline, and then I make a sloppy animal that gets put into the kiln just to have it explode. Either way I don't win. And since I don't make any of the deadlines I think Hunt is starting to think that I just don't care about the class. Which is TOTALLY not true.

I just hate it when you are required to take this class, this class, and this class, and then all of those teachers treat you as though you have to put their class before all of your other classes if you want to even have a chance to pass. And sometimes you have something to do that takes up the time of your regular routine, and you have to cut back SOMEWHERE. Usually you can make it up later, but sometimes you can't. And then your teackers say, "Well, if you can't keep up, why did you take the class?" and they give you NO MERCY. Well, it's not that I CHOSE to take those classes out of my own free will; I had to take Art Foundations to graduate, Calculus for my major, Latin because I'd be even more inconvenienced to try to take annother language, Physics for my major, and History to graduate.

So, maybe that's why I feel like I should either be really mad or really depressed right now, but somehow am not. It's really weird.

Maybe it's also the fact that I have (except for two obvious A's) STRAIGHT C'S. In fact, now that I think about it, I should be doing my homework right now...

Another reason is that I have a staph (is that how it's spelled?) infection. I got some sort of pimple-type bump on my arm. I don't think it was a pimple, because you just don't get pimples on your arm. I think it might have been a bug bite, but the doctor said it was morelikely some sort of puncture wound. Anyway, I didn't even break it or anything. But soon, it was a giany green bump on my arm surrounded by red, irritated skin.

So we went to the urgent care place. The doctor took one lookat ti and immediately took a scalpel and scraped off the top. A HUGE amount of puss then sat on my arm, extremely thick and disgusting. He took some on a cue tip and said that they would get a culture form it to make sure that it was staph. But in the meantime, he gave me no less than 3 prescriptions (on TOP of my two asthma mediactions).

Two of them are giant horse pills, and the third is an ointment. The pills I have to take twice a day, swallow whole, and eat on a full stomach. They leave me EXTREMELY thirsty, and I have diarrhea!

Yeah, this is the life.

Theories

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 04:50:06 GMT

I've begun to construct theories as to why I've never really found acceptance in any group ever, in my entire life, which is the case. It seems to me that no matter who it is, no-one I know or have ever known as truly accepted me 100% for who I am. (Ruling God out, of course.) Not that this particularly bothers me, but I;d like to know what to do in the future to be able to integrate myself into a group so that I would be accepted for who I am. I think I've also identified a root cause for the problem.

I think that for one to be integrated into a group, 3 things have to happen:

1. The other members of the group have to understand and acknowledge the interests of the one.
2. The other members of the group have to share the same interests as the one actively and know basic facts about the one.
3. The other members of the group have to acknowledge, accept, and enjoy the presence and the input of the one in particular.

I think the main reason as to why I've been as happy as I am is that I've found all 3 of these things, but spread out into different groups. For example, in Carthage, people enjoyed my particular presence and input, and understood and acknowledged my interests, but they didn't share the same interests. (At TJ they didn't even enjoy my presence.) Here, my friends understand and acknowldge my interests, and most of them they pursue actively as well, but I'm not sure that they enjoy my presence in particular. (I'm not sure about that, though. I think some of them do, but definitely not ll of them.) In my scout troop up here, too, they only acknowldge my interests; they don't pursue them themselves, and they don't care if I show up or not.

You may notice that in all of these cases, the interests are always acknowledged. That, I think, is the easiest step in getting oneself integrated into a group. In my opinion, it's also the first step needed. That's because awkward silences only happen when people don't know what to talk about.

On that note, here's the process (as I view it) for one to get integrated into a group.

1. The one meets someone else in the group. You obviously can't know anybody if you don't meet anybody.
2. The one and the other learn each other's interests and basic facts about each other. This provides a basis for something to talk about.
3. Either person researches an interest of the other. This way, talkinga bout the subject loosens considerably.
4. Discussions become more informal and relaxed as the one and the other become more familiar with each other.
5. The other begine to acknowledge and enjoy the presence and the input of the one in particular. This way the one feels a desire to come back and visit the other again.
6a. The other, having already integrated themselves into the group, provides a segway for the one to meet the other members of the group.
6b. If the group is too large, the one might be forced to remain in a relatively small clique that share interests actively and enjoy each other's presence and input.

I've never been through this entire process. Not once. Ever. Unfortunately.

I think I know why, too. My interests run wild. It's like my interests in the drawing arts: it's totally OCD. As a result, I have a vast number of interests, all vastly different from each other. Because I have so many, I've never invested myself enough in one particular interest enough to make it worthwhile to incorporate myself into a group that focuses on a particular field of interest as its primary purpose. Not even my intense interest in puzzles is immune to these effects; it's been dilated enough my other interests that I haven't been as invested in the TwistyPuzzles forum as I want to be.

This seems to ring true everywhere, no matter what the goal for investing in them in the first place. My interest in scouting was never as much as my mom, and now that I have my Eagle (as we moved), my interest has reduced drastically. I never learned enought about aircraft to become a proper plane enthusiast. I like anime to the point that I watch it and buy merchandise when I can afford it, but I've never been one to make a cosplay or create a fan character. I've never been invested enough in Jazz Jackrabbit to do my own programming, create a worthwhile remix, or finish a fanfic about it. My interest in Chip's Challenge only extended to creating levels, which almost completely stopped after completing the DanM1 levelset. My interest in programming was only for hacking, which I only considered half-seriously in the first place. Video games have dropped off now that the attnetion has turned to the Wii, PS3, and X-Box 360, none of which I own. I've only been invested in physice for the math part, and I haven't been pursuing that as seriously as I should for someone who wants to go to NMT.

I think the closest I've ever gotten to being a total fan of something was Artemis Fowl, which dropped off fast after the Lost Colony came out. That's because I'm not a fan of Artemis being a modern-day Robin Hood, which is totally unoriginal; the major appeal of Artemis, for me, was that he WAS a protagonist who was also a bad guy. In any other situation, that would be a complete oxymoron and Eoin Colfer was the only person I knew who could actually pull it off. And he pulled it off damn well, if you'll pardon my French. Also, he HAS to be an only child, because then he has no-one his age to model off of, and he doesn't have to be a role moel himself. Being an only child just makes him... freeer. But then the time jump happened. Stupid lost colony.

Long story short, Artemis Fowl has dropped off too.

So that leaves me as a person who only consumes things and doesn't really do ANYthing activey anymore. What I really need to do is find stuf that I can knock off the list altogether, or at least limit the time I spend on them severely. The only problem with that is that I like all these things too much to cut them off completely, or even limit myself on them more than I already am. (Except for Artemis. If you don't turrn him bad again, Eoin, I SWAER on my life I will...)

Yeah.

I mad a note on Facebook about things that people do when I'm solving the Rubik's Cube that get on my nerves. It's VERY LONG.

I want to buy another Eastsheen 4x4x4 and get my first V-Cube 5. Then I might be able to actively pursue 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 solving again. I've been wanting to do tat for SO LONG...

By the way, I've noticed a trend about my puzzle knowledge: I know a lot about mathematical aspects of puzzles (i.e. edges compared to corners, permutation, parities, commutators, cycles, orientation, etc.), but when it comes to pysical aspects (i.e. history, manufaturing process, exact mechanism, mech design, 3D printing, casting, etc.), I really suck. That's one reason as to why I don't fir into the TwistyPuzzles group very well.

Bye.

(Update EXACTLY 2 months later: I know now that the group I hang out with at school is definitely the closest I've gotten to have a group that totally accepts me. But even though they've come EXTREMEY close, I still don't think I've found one yet.)

(7/20/09: I don't know what I was on when I wrote this. But my group of friends, both from the Europe trip and school have met all 3 of my criteria of acceptance, not with Rubik's Cubes, but with a combination of anime (surprisingly) and personal experiences. That's mainly because my interest has started to shift from cosmology and theoretical physics to broader mathematics in general, and I'm thinking of changing my prospective major. As a result, my specific interest in Rubik's Cubes has begun to spread out, and it's no longer as high. And after attending 5 1/2 cons (in re-kon counts as a convention), my interest in anime is skyrocketing. And now that I say that, I realize the reason I have now completed the process is that my interests are finally focusing on a few fast-developing categories. And that's why I can relate to certain people so well: instead of having basic knowledge of many, many topics, I have advanced knowledge on two or three.)

SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:19:03 GMT

Let me start by saying that I talked to Mom and Dad about all the problems I've been having.

And they understand.

And that's good.

My faith has morphed over the last year. I no longer consider the prime purpose of my life here to worship God by attending church, tithing, and praying. Instead my failth has become more action-oriented. In fact, I don't see any real point to religion (that's not selfish) other than to benefit everyone you possible can, whether you love them or hate them. So in that regard, it seems to me that the only way to serve any diety that's not in a selfish way (when it really boils down to it) is to serve others. And that has become my primary goal in life.

That's not to say that I don't try to show people God through my thoughts, words, and actions. I jus hopw that if they don't they at least come to the same conclusions I have.

And I know that the order to put things in your life is first God, THEN others, then you. But what would motivate you to put God first in your life? Is it a selfish motivation (i.e. I don't want to go to Hell, I want to spend eternity with God), or is it a people-driven motivation (i.e. How can I help others get into Heaven? Is there a way to make sure someone else doesn't get sent to Hell?)? And that's the entire point I'm trying to get to: If you're not placing God first for the sake of others, you're putting him there for your sake, which is selfish. And doesn't selfishness fall under the sin of pride, which is the worst of the 7 Deadly Sins?

So anyway, enough of my rant. I believe that there is a diety that knows more than we ever will, so maybe all of our interpretations, including mine, are wrong.

Let me skip now to a crzy dream I had last night:

The weirdness started when Mom, Lizzy, and I all decided to go to Carthage. It was either a week or so before Christmas, or the day after - I wasn't sure. But we wanted to go down there and see what had changed, what was gone, what was new, and what was happening.

So we hopped in the van, sped down to Carthage, and drove down Garrison for a while. Then we saw that there was a novelty/antique-type store near where the Salvation Army store is in real life (about 5 buildings down was that roundabout that has the 3 banks, the Wendy's and the Iggy's).

Inside was G'Daddy and a bunch of other older men from FUMC. I think the Herbsts were there too, but if they were, I didn't talk to them at all. Lizzy and I immediately went to the back of the store where all the old videos and toys were kept. I think they had a few Bucky O'Hare videos, but I wasn't all that interested in them. I saw that they had a smaller version of the Gordian's Knot, so I took it apart and tried to put it back together again. The shape of the pieces was slightly different, though. That, combined with the fact that I had suddenly forgotten how to put one back together, meant that I had to leave it disassembled on the shelf. The shelf was the type that Book Barn used to have (the type where it's made out of wire and so there are spaces on the shelf through which things can fall), so within seconds a few of the pieces had landed on the floor where no-one except for me knew they were there.

I started looking around the rest of the store, trying not to draw attention to myself for what I had done. Then I noticed that there were a lot of LEGO modelsscattered around different stands in the store. I wanted to buy one, but I realized that they disassembled them before they gave them to you, and there were no instructions on how to put them back together.

So then the vantage point suddenly changed, and I found myself dropping heavy crystal balls on the LEGO models and laughing as parts flew every which way. That only lasted for about 5 esconds, though.

Suddenly, the entire dream changed. I think the old one ended and a new one began entirely.

Anyway, I was at a snowboarding place. It wasn't like the classical ski place where there was a giant hill and you boarded on that. It was more like a gianthalf-pipe that had a bunch of twists in it, and it had a definite starting and stopping place. There was also a giant swimming pool and a place to simulate surfing. It seemed like a giant skate-snowboard-swim-surf place that was designed for that particular purpose. I think one of the TJ kids was having a party there, though it was up here, where I live now.

When the dream actually started, I was sitting at the top of the end (or was it the beginning?) of the snow-boarding halfpipe. There was a big ramp going down, then a bend, then a place where the pipe was flat just for a few inches, then another drop and the acual half-pipe. The entire pipe, from the flat point to the top of the ramp was covered in square about six inxhes on a side, and inside of each square was a number. The numbers were all different colors of the rainbow, as were the sqaures on which they were printed.

A bunch or nerds (for lack of a better word) has set up computer all along the ramp, many of them inside the ramp itself. They were all asking themselves the same question: What if Jesus were snowboarding up the ramp? Randumb, I know. But play along here.

I found myself in the pipe within seconds, trying to help in any way I could. I didn't know what aspect of Jesus' snowbaording they were testing for, but I tried to help. Many times over I saw the squares and teh numbers diasspear from the ground of the ramp, only to see a holographic Jesus board up the ramp and down again, with a trail of squares and numbers forming behind him, covering where his board had actually touched the ramp and every point directly below that.

I still couldn't figure out what they were testing for, and I never found out through the entire sequence of dreaming. But later on, I moved on from the ramp and went to where the pool and surfing area were, though from a distance it still looked like part of the ramp.

We were sitting in a garden area around a table, enjoying some snacks. I was sitting at the table so that to my left was the rest of the park-type area. To my front and to the left, about 150 feet off, was the swimming pool and surfing area, and directly behind that (from my vantage point) was a breezeway that marked the real entrance to the snowboarding half-pipe. The half-pipe itself resembled not a semicircle but a parabola, not really reaching vertical at any point.

Anyway, I was sitting in the garden area with Alexis, Lizzy, and a few others (I don't remember who they were). There was a girl who resembled Kaitlin Hoff (but definitely was NOT her), who was obsessing over all the other girls who were there. Though no-one explicitly stated it in the dream, I could infer that she was a lesbian. While we were sitting there eating, Alexis looked over and saw that girl wouldn't stop looking at her, and this bothered her.

This was all supposedly taking place on Saturday, Valentine's Day. Being the day it was, I presented to Alexis some flowers. I might have also had a box of chocolates, but I don't think so. Anyway, I presented all this to her and wished her a happy Valentine's Day. Flattered, she gave me a kiss on the cheek.

I was thrown off guard by this, and it left me almost stupefied. When she asked me what was wrong, I told her that I had never been kissed by a girl in my life. (I meant by this that I had never been kissed by a girl outside of my family.) She couldn't believe this and asked if I was serious. I affirmed that I was dead serious. At this news, she laughed in a shocked and sad kind of way and began kissing me repeatedly (almost like snogging), and soon we were kissing each other on the lips. To this, everyone else said the usual "Awww..." and smiled to each other.

So apparently, this was a dream within my dream. Which made me really sad. But I "woke up" from this dream, but I was still at the same place, with all the same people. This time was early evening. I found Alexis quickly and told her about the dream, which was rather stupid now that I think about it. At the end of my recollection, she smiled, and kissed me on the lips "for real."

So by now the place had morphed, and where there had been a swimming pool and a surfing area before, there was now a large lake with a giant fountain in the middle. In the same way, where there had been the half-pipe, there was a large building, fancy in nature. It was in this very building that everyone there was going to participate in a dance very soon. And the good news was that the seniors weren't going to run it this time - we had a real DJ.

There was a very small island, maybe 100 square feet total, that was about 40 feet out from the corner of the squarish-shaped lake. On this island was a large sign announcing that there would be a dance in the building. When Alexis and I passed it (we were now suddenly in our dance clothes, she in a dress and I in a suit), we saw a couple standing in front of the sign, ready to get their picture taken. I don't remember who the girl was. Alex Bowman stands out in my memory, but I know it wasn't her. But the guy was one of the Thespians from SMNW, whose name I've never known but who looks a lot like Rowe Hessler. I didn't really understand even in my dream why a kid from Northwest who had never even been to TJ was at a TJ dance, but I didn't question it too much, since I didn't go to TJ at that time either.

I don't remember too much about the actual dance. What I do know was that the chemistry between Alexis and I was perfect, and I couldn't have pulled off a better dance with her. I knew we were truly in love with each other by the time we left. Even if I hadn't been sure myself, I could tell by the fact that Alexis and I wouldn't let go of each other.

Then that dream ended, and the next dream started with me in the waiting room of an hospital. Alexis had been involved in an accident, and she had apparently died or something like that. I saw two nurses walking out of the hall, and heard them conversing about the details of the accident. I had not heard the story yet, and I can't remember what the story actually was, though I know it was pretty fantastic. As I heard them talking, my head fell into my hands and I began crying uncontrollably.

I was led out of the room, back to our car. I turned around one last time to look at the hospital at which Alexis had met her end, and when I did, I saw her walking out of the front doors!

I broke out of the grip of whoever was pushing me to the car and almost literally tackled her, I was so happy to see her. She was very happy to see me, but mostly glad that she was still alive. She didn't even seem to have any major injuries. So we hugged each other tightly, and I parctically carried her to the car that was waiting for us.

Weird dream, huh? I don't even know where half of this came from.

But anyway, a few days ago I made my first 911 call ever. There was an accident on the highway that we saw when we were driving to Carthage last weekend. There were two cars that were right in the middle of the road, blocking alot of the lanes. So we called 911, but before we could even tell them what had happened, they triangulated our location and figured out why we were calling. (Apparently it wasn't the first call that had come in.) So I thanked them and hung up. When I closed my phone, my hands were shaking.

And that's pretty much it. Except for that I've started learning how to play the guitar and I've gotten back into the habit of climbing trees. And Chris Matthews broke one of my 4x4x4's by throeing it against a wall at school. It was a particularly crappy 4x4x4 and it didn't even turn anymore. Oh yeah, and I have VERY bad grades right now because I missed a lot of information over two days where I was really sick.

That's it. I swear.

(Update on 5/25/09: I just now realized that the way in which Alexis was kissing me in the deam I mentioned here is the exact way Roman and Charlotte kiss each other nowadays. Does that now officially mean that my dreams predict the future? It's happened enough, in indrect ways, that I think it's totally possible...)

(10/15/09: I found out the name of the kid who was dating Alex Bowman in my dream: Miles Wirth.)

Public vs Private

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 04:33:15 GMT

Now that I go to a public school and am surrounded by thousands of teens instead of a few dozen, I now truly realize how isolated people at TJ really are.

It also makes me realize that I sould be very thankful for what I have. It seems that literally every single last person that attends sminoowuh, including Lizzy has gone through some terrible experience of one nature or another. I'm almost (or maybe literally) the last person in the Emo corner that hasn't had some sort of really bad experience.

Maybe that's why I have such a connection with Alexis nowadays. She's had to go through stuff like that, and I can't directly relate, but since I spend all my time with people that have had to experience such things, I have a pretty god idea of what it's like. At least, I hope so.

I've been sick the last few days. I crashed on Tuesday night and didn't get up for almost 14 hours. I tried getting through school today and barely made it. So now I have to miss Jamnestyn at the school, while ALL (every single one) of my friends are jamming away to Farewell to False Love, who's going to hethere LIVE. I know I got to see them at the mall already without Lizzy, but I'm still REALLY MAD. After all, there's no guarantee that they'll be there next year, and Logan, Roman, and a lot of other people in the Emo corner really like their music.

Yeah, that's about it.

(Update at 11:08 same night: I went to Jamnesty after all when Mom and Lizzy came back to the house to pick up the second disco ball and they brought me with them.

When I got there, I was attacked by everyone that saw me, even though I was still sick. Then we went into the cafeteria and mosh-pitted to a metal band I don't remember the name of. Then we went and did random stuff, and then we came back to listen to Farewell to False Love.

After that, I bought a CD of theirs and had them sign it, and all my friends signed the back (well, not ALL of them, but you get the idea). We then went to Room 9, where NAHS was holding a small dance party of their own. We danced there, and then went home.

That's the extremely condensed version. I'll write out the full version sometime when my head doesn't hurt so much.)

Cat

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:23:41 GMT

Well, first, if you remember the dream that I had that I was afraid might be a precursor to the dance with Alexis, I'm glad to say that that fear was only half-fulfilled. The bad thing was that any part of it was fulfilled at all.

As always, the problem is that I find that I can't bring myself to be serious with Alexis. That may be because no matter what I do, we're almost NEVER alone together.

I guess that that wasn't the real problem, though. The problem was that neither of us really enjoyed the dance. That was because even though this was a homecoming, there wasn't a real DJ. Instead, the senior chass, the one Lizzy used to be in, were being stupid, so two girls who aren't related but might as well be conjoined twins ran the dance. The iPod they played the music from obviously belonged to someone who didn't know that there were genres of music other than rap. They only played two songs that weren't rap: "All the Small Things" and some slow dance song I had never heard before. I wanted to slow-dance with Alexis, but she had blisters, and by the time she got it all fixed up, the song was over, and they didn't play another one. Alxis doesn't really like rap, either, so neither of us had a good time.

I didn't go crazy and do a dance in good step until I dropped her, but this dance certainly didn't bring us any closer together. At least, on the way to Steak and Shake, she and I were squished togerther in the back of Amanda Almic's bug. And I was able to get close to her then.

It occurred to me that if I had a girlfriend, I could never see myself doing anything but snuggling with her, as in sitting together holding each other close. But of course, I really didn't get the chance to do that, as there were no less than 13 or 14 other girls with us. STILL THE ONLY GUY!

You're probably wonering what this has to do with the title of this entry, which, obviously enough, is "Cat." Well, here's what happened.

It started in Writer's Workshop, where I barely got my character sketch done in time, hurriedly paraphrasing stuff I had written in my previous "Timothy Yolu" stories (as in stuff aout cubes, meatball sub, Erik Akkersdijk, solving, competitions, and the like). Then I struggled through the rest of the day as usual, almost sleeping through Physics and panicking when I realized that I had almost not done my Latin.

The only other interesting thing was in Physics, someone mentioned that there was a cat in the basement, and that it had been there for a few weks, and that the workers had been keeing it there and feeding it. I would later find most of this out to be a lie.

All right, skip to after school. I went downstairs and waited at the intersection of the hallway that contained the library and the Mall, where I now wait after school. At first, no-one was showingup, so I waited until Roman, then Chris, then Kyle, then Nathan, and finally Kenney showed up. But at first, those were the only people, so I wondered where the others were.

After a second, it occurred to me that the other peeps might have gone to GSA. But then I talked to Fran, and she said that there was no GSA after school. I figured that I'd wait for Lizzy in the library, since I hadn't played chess in such a long time. Matt and I therefore went to the library and played two games, in both of which the changing of on emove affected the entire outcome of the game dramatically. To this effect, we each won technically once, but in reality, it was twice for each of us, even though we played only two games. It wasn't until 3:45 that it occured to me that Lizzy would be in the special Tuesday Science Olympiad meeting. I went up there and saw Lizzy and Ryan Doughty working on a project focused on building a bridge.

I didn't really help with that, to be honest. Instead I screwed aeound with my phone until Ryan and Lizzy said that they needed to go downstairs to get a CAD program so that they could work on their bridge. With that, I joined the two in walking downstairs into the basement to get to the design room.

I didn't know this until today, but not only did Robotics meet today, but they met in the very room we were working in. We continued to work, even though Tyler was bothering us a little and we didn't really know what we were doing. After a long time, Ryan Thomas came down and joined us. Matt also did for a short time, then ran home to drop off some of his stuff.

Lizzy went to get something. I don't really remember what it was. Either that, or she didn't tell me. Either wayWhen she came back, she had a weird expression on her face. "There's a cat on the other side of the dry wall."

The auditorium in our school has been effectively ripped apart while construction in the art and design wing has been going on. There used to be back entrances into the auditorium, but with the work, they had to put dry wall over these to keep students from screwing around with their stuff.

We stepped outside to look at the blue-painted dry-wall. We could hear a young cat yowling very loudly in the other side. We couldn't see it, but we could hear it.

The work space on the other side looke, for the most part, like a sealed-off concrete bunker, with a lot of construction stuff laying around. We tried to figure out how the cat got in there in the first place. Then Chris came jogging up (he was jogging instead of going to wrestling practice because his arm was injured), and looked outside to see a sunken area through which we were sure the cat had wormed its way in.

We had to get the cat out somehow. Lizzy and Ryan Thomas went outside to tell the workers outside that here was a cat in there, but they only laughed and dismissed them. So we figured that we had to take matters into our own hands. Chris offered to kick in the dry-wall and get the cat out that way, but since it was only held in place by screws in the first place, Tyler ran back into the Robotics room to look for a screwdriver.

When he returned with one, Ryan Thomas, Lizzy, and I all lost our courage when we realized that Tyler was really going to take off a section of the dry wall. But after the first few screws, Chris cam running back up, and then I went up with him to where TYler was so that we all could get the cat once it ran out. Once Lizzy and Ryan thomas saw what we were doing, they came up too.

We had to remove almost all of the scres on the panel before we could pull it away from the wall enough to get the cat out. Finally, though we did.

The cat was orange and had yellow eyes, like Tigger. It seemed frightened by us humans, but it also semed glad that it was finally free, so it put up with us. Chris picked it up, and we showed it to Ryan Doughty before taking it upstairs into Pisani's room. Pisani (the Environmental Ed teacher) had said that he wanted to see the cat if it got out, so we took it up there and immediately put it in a carrier we found in the back room.

Ryan Kirkendall (geez, there are too many Ryan's arent there?) and his girlfriend, Maddie, joined us, and Ryan Thomas went back to join Ryan Doughty at Science Olympiad. We looked for ways for it to get food, because as Maddie pointed out, it was half-starved to death.

With no other choice, I called Mom so that she could take me by our house so that we could steal some of our cats' food to give to the cat, whom we had nicknamed "Cougar" because the situation he found himself in. I grabbed the bag of dry food and three cans of wet food.

When I got back, we fed him and went home.

That's it.

Christmas and... stuff...

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:54:33 GMT

So I had a good Christmas.

I got an external hard drive. 500 *BILLION BYTES,* not 500 gigs as they claim on the box. But that's still about 465 gigs. More than I know what to do with, at any rate.

I also got another Gordian's Knot (so I can show someone else how to solve it now!), a Flip Side, a copy of The Audacity of Hope, a new pair of pants, a new sweater, a portablle chess set, The Polar Express in 3D on DVD, and Volume I of Innocent Venus. Oh yeah, and some mulah for my European trip, which I'm definitely going on.

And if all goes well, I moght get a new phone too.

(7/19/09: Just shy of 7 months and I've already used 142 gigs.)

(8/6/09: That's a fill-up rate of 20 gigs a month, but it's been another month and I'm still at 142 gigs.)

LONG Day.

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:41:32 GMT

That's because I've been in the immediate area around the school for just over 14 hours.

It started this morning when I walked out to the car at 7:05 am and I suddenly remembered that today was club picture-taking day.

We had a lot of mixups and had to let the ice melt off of our car, so it was actually around 7:12 or so before we left. At any rate, when we finally got to school, it was about 7:25. Interestingly, when we walked inside, our friend Kyle was the only one there. But others soon showed up and the normal morning routine was followed at double pace, so that it felt like we were there the whole morning and it just went by fast.

I also talked to little Andrew. To give an example of how long this day has been, I can't remember whether he talked to me today or yesterday. And given the nature of the question, you'd expect me to remember that sort of thing. Anyway, we gave each other hugs, just as I do with practically everyone there (except for most of the girls, since I don't want to appear creepy... you'd understand if you were there). Then he stopped and asked me, "Are you straight?"

Well, to be honest, I don't know. I've only had one love so far, so I can't tell if I'm exclusively for one gender. I know I can't be truly gay, though, because my love is a girl. I personally think it might be possible that I'm "10 percent" homosexual, in the sense that I really like being around guys, but my love interests are all girls. Truthfully, I'm not afraid to be intimate with guys, though not in a sexual way. (Basically... if I see Andrew Martinique in the hallway, that makes me really happy, but if I see Alexis, that makes me happier than seeing Andrew.)

I didn't want to lie to little Andrew, so I said simply, "You know, I'm totally sure." He simply responded by pulling me into a tight hug and proclaiming, "I'm bisexual." Then he left.

Anyway, when the bell rang, I walked to English class, where we took a test over A Lesson Before Dying. But before the bell rang to officialy begin class, Dylan and Twiggs (I finally know the correct spelling of his name!) walked in. Twiggs was carrying a lightsaber and taking gentle slashes at Tyler and me. I simple looked at him and said, "I see you replenished your supply of epic sauce." (Yesterday we took Twiggs home, and all the way there, we talked about losing the game, ways to win the game, epic, burn, fail, awesome, awesome thread, awesome sauce, and finally epic sauce.

Twiggs looked at me and said, "Yeah, I have some more now. And you know what? The game."

Shoot. I just lost the game.

Dylan gave Twiggs a weird look, and Twiggs said to him, "Man, we had a WEIRD conversation on the way home yesterday." Dylan left it at that, and the bell rang, signalling Twiggs to leave.

We began the test, and I found out I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was. I wasn't able to get a whole lot of them right (I don't think), but all in all, I was happy.

At 7:55, I left for my first picture of the day, Anime Club. That wasn't anything too unusual, and all went well. So I went back to the English room, finished the test, and got my ALBD writing assignment.

Most of the outline of the assignment I got done in seminar. My seminar was very boring, but Lizzy's was much more interesting, but not in a good way:

Because of the club pictures today, Lizzy didn't go to Broadmoor. Instead she had her seminar with Forbes (the same Forbes that was my Psychology teacher). Lizzy immediately got her pass and left to a seminar that Megan had invited her and I guess Steph too. They were together, and apparently Miza told them blatantly that she was skipping her seminar to go to this one.

Lizzy stepped outside for a moment and found several SRO officers searching around the school for Misa. There had apparently been an e-mail sent out to all the faculty of the school telling them to look out for Misa, because she was supposedly in a special seminar because she has had problems with seizures.

Apparently Kinkaid (whose seminar Lizzy, Megan, Misa, and Steph were in) asked in Misa went to Broadmoor, and thinking that Kinkaid was referring to Kizzy (my sister), both she and Megan said that she did go to Broadmoor. They later attempted to clarify that my sister Lizzy went to Broadmoor, and Misa didn't go at all. They thought Kinkaid had heard because she was saying "Okay" and stuff like that, so they left it there.

During that seminar, Lizzy (my sister) had a picture to go to, so she went there. When she got back Misa was gone and Megan had gotten yelled at. Lizzy says that Kinkaid smiled at her in the way a lot of emotionless teaches do when you're in a lot of trouble, and simply told her to gather her belongings and go to the office.

Lizzy never actually got yelled at, or even in trouble at all, but she's pretty sure that Misa's in deep doodoo and Kinkaid will never trust Megan OR Lizzy again.

So anyway, I didn't have any pictures during Seminar, so that wasn't interesting at all.

I went to Econ next. Wolfe and I went downstairs to start inventory of our shirts, so I went down to do that. After I counted the money (which I'm absolutely positive is 2 dollars short) and Wolfe counted the shirts, we agreed to slash the price from $10 to $5.

Just as we were discussing our break-even point, another teacher of whom I don't know the name came up to us, and we discussed the differences between our shirts and the Econ 2nd hour shirts. We all agreed that we like the front of our shirt better than Econ 2nd hour's shirt, and we liked their back better than ours. Wolfe commented that if we could somehow combine our shirts, they'd probably all be gone by now.

Wolfe said he would talk to the uy a little more before going upstairs, and that he would tell Falmer legend (the student teacher) about our shirt condition. So I waited in the Social Studies office for about 5 minutes. After considering how much time I was wating down there and not in class, I decided to go back up there ahead of Wolfe. So I quietly slipped out the door and hopped upstairs.

When I reached the room, Wolfe was standing at the forst table. He looked at me with an I-knew-you-wouldn't-think-of-everything look and said, "What took you so long?"

I was surprised into stuttering. "I thought you were still talking."

So after that, I helped Matt and Paco wrap gifts until lunch, during which I ate two peanut butter sandwiches and solved the Pyraminx Crystal. Then we went straight from lunch to MaGuire's room to talk about the party we'll be having tomorrow. After that we went back upstairs and did a worksheet. Not too much interesting happened during that hour.

Finally, it was Physics. I didn't go straight to the class, because I had a Video Game Club picture right as the bell was supposed to ring, signalling the beginning of the hour. Since Matt's class was right down the hallway that my classroom was situated at the end of, we went to the gym together to get the picture taken.

There, we saw Owen Martin, along with Matt Borger. Owen asked if he could join us in our picture, and Matt said sure. He needed a pass, though. As it turned out, Twiggs never showed up for the picture, so Owen signed up under his name. I'm pretty darn sure that that means that he will be labelle din the yearbook as Twiggs because of that.

Anyway, not much interesting happened in Physics until 1:55, when I had to leave for the Latin Club picture. I went down there on time, but there were so many people in the choir that we ran very late. Also, we were combined with the Math Club, so getting us all organized was a little tricky. We were supposed to take our picture at 2 - we actually took it around 2:13.

I thought we were taking our GSA pictures at 2:20 when we were really taking them at 2:25. That means we were supposed to be dismissed from class at 2:20, but I thought it was 2:15. So I ended up running (REALLY against the rules) to get my pass and run back down, just to find out I'm 5 minutes early.

Fran was waiting in the Mall, so I walked up to her and said, "Fran, I'm 5 minutes early. What should I do?"

She asked in it was the GSA picture I had come down for, and I confirmed it. SO she said that it was okay if I just stayed there for a few minutes, so until 2:20, I got to wander around the Mall doing nothing and essentially skipping my Physics class. Awesome. The Best part of it was that I wasn't even breaking the rules. Not really.

Anyway, we got through the picture, and then Ryan, James, Jaden, and I all decided that we were going to walk back to class very slowly.

(7/6/09: Just as I predicted, Owen was labelled in the yearbook as Twiggs. Fail, Owen. Fail.)

Amazin' Weekin'!

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 05:42:06 GMT

I'm having a great weekend right now.

It started yesterday after the news. Lizzy told me that were going to watch Twilight. I wasn't particularly excited that we were going to see it, because I hacen't read the books yet, and all the Edward Cullen (is that how it's spelled?) hype is getting on my nerves. It's kinda like:

Fan girl: I will bear your babies.

Edward: I will eat your babies.

Get it?

So Roman (who felt the exact same way as me) and I went and watched it with everyone... an we found it pretty good. Good enough, in fact, that I'd probably watch it again, if only to catch the things I missed because of the fan girls shouting. SHUT UP!

The ticket guy never cheecked my ticket. I could have snuck into the movie had I wanted to. That was pretty cool. He didn't rip off the one part and give me back the stub. He didn't even make sure that I had a ticket in the first place. Awesome.

As soon as the movie was over, Roman, Lizzy, and I all walked over to a gas station. There we bought snacks and waited for our parents to take us to the bowling alley so that we could celebrate Matt's birthday.

There was no smoking in the place, and we didn't have to pay to get in. We just had to tell the front counter that we were woth the Osbournes, and they gave us our shoe sizes. Of course, I'm 10 and a half, and they didn't have 10s or 11s, so I was stuck with 12s which didn't fit me at all. I ended up bowling with just socks, like Matt.

I bowled somewhere around 4 and 7 games. I started out really terrible, not hitting any pins at all for the first 3 rounds or so. Soon I got back into the rhythm, and then I couldn't stop. I ended up spending my whole time there doing nothing but bowling. At the end, I was consistently getting either strikes, spares, or 9s. I didn't have very good aim, thought I was able to sometimes put a good spin on the ball, something I've never done before.

We did that until