Half Full? Half Empty? Who Cares?

Romeo and Juliet- A tragedy

2010-05-27T17:39:00.000-07:00

I recently finished Romeo and Juliet in English a few days ago. The only thing that really stood out to me was how many times Juliet threatens to kill herself. Somewhere around five or six times if I recall. She waves around daggers like playthings, mindlessly drinks mysterious potions that old men give her, and even considers throttling herself with the cords that her lover will use to climb up to her balcony. She's even desperate enough to kiss deceased Romeo in the hope that poison remains on his lips. Eventually she seizes the opportunity at the monument of Capulet when there's no one around to stop her. She evens seems joyful to execute (pun intended) the dark deed. "O happy dagger; let me die!" Not an exact quotation, but I'm sure its close enough to Shakespeare's original to get the point (NO pun intended). Overall, the general theme I received is that when you're in love, you do stupid things. Even if you're lover's dead, he who killed your cousin and murdered your suitor, crashed your party, was banished (excuse me, banish-ED) from his hometown, and illegally bought drugs from an apothecry in Mantua (remind me if he did anything else that was stupid).

I need New Shoes

2010-04-27T21:14:00.000-07:00

Here in Oregon rain had reigned (or rained) constantly for years. Every few months or so the sun comes out and it gets really warm, and my eyes start watering whenever I'm outside. We've just had an unusually long period of sunshine, that just ended today. During that period of time, an unusual amount of horrible things happened to me.
Number One: I got shafted out of going to State in Speech and Debate. After I qualified at districts for my favorite event (Lincoln-Douglass Debate) they went and changed the rules on me. You see, I only barely qualified. There was one girl in the slot above me who had auto-qualified for state, so our district assumed they could send 4 people (including me) to state instead of just three. They told me so. They were wrong. I had just spent about two hours every few days or so perfecting my debate cases (which are now freaking awesome) when my coach finally told me that I wasn't going. I was pretty mad.
Number Two: Musical performances. I have one optimistic thing to say: Opening night was amazing. 600 people. Amazingly reactive crowd. Thespian heaven. Next two shows? Dismally small houses, almost zero reaction, people missed cues, and tons of mess-ups.
Number Three: I recently got my quarterly grade report (and thankfully only my semester grade reports count). I got four A's, three B's, and a C. Another round of parent lectures on the importance of good grades. The explanations I have for these:
Math, the C. I really don't have an excuse. I ace all the tests, but I barely ever do the homework.
Social Studies: My teacher is literally crazy. About three people have an A in her class,and she always marks me down on assignments for ridiculous reasons. Now I can't talk to her about because she recently had her baby, and she's out for the semester, which means I'll probably be stuck with the grade I have, which will pull down my GPA to about a 3.8 all on its own.
Language Arts: Thanks to my being particularly adept in this class, my teacher grades me with a higher standard than everyone else. I've gotten C's on several assignments. One of which was because I got my bibliography in the wrong order.
P.E. 1: I have absolutely no idea why missing two days would bring me down a letter grade.
Number Four: Finally! A chance to relax! One of my friends hosted a get-together at his house yesterday, and we watched Avatar on his Blue-Ray TV. Well, everyone else watched Avatar. About an eighth of the way through the movie, my parents came to pick me up at six, drove me to Kumon, and lectured me about grades. I spent the next two hours doing Kumon assignments.

Things I look forward to: Missing first and second period tomorrow for a musical performance and a math test in fourth period.
Another random note: My shoes, the ones that I have worn since the beginning of seventh grade, are now stained green again. It must be lawn-mowing season. Our old mower finally died on us (its been...what? Five years?) and my dad got a new lawn mower. It runs by itself, so I don't have to hunch over and push it along anymore. It doesn't matter though, it'll soon start dying on us; lawn mowers work well very long.
Anyway, back to my shoes. They're three years old, frayed, dirty no matter how many times I wash them, covered with random words in Spanish (a whole other story: Drama people are weird) and the left shoe has a huge hole in the bottom of the toe and my foot gets wet every morning. I need new shoes. Maybe then my life will change for the better. All a pessimist needs is a good pair of shoes.

No Time

2010-03-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

Here's a usual day in my life. I get up at 7:30, go to school at 8:00, start at 8:30, and end at 3:30. Then I have musical rehearsal from then til six, then I have to go to a math and reading center place called Kumon (I do high-level math stuff there), then dance practice at 6:15-10:00 (including travel time). This day doesn't include Scouts, Speech and Debate, choir concerts, Ballroom Club meetings (of which I am President, but that's another story), and of course, homework. I've recently had to drop evening Ballroom Club meetings for morning ones before school, because musical rehearsals are now every weekday from 3:30-7:00, plus set building on Saturdays. Thankfully, Speech and Debate will be over after this weekend. Districts is this Friday and Saturday, and it's the last tournament (unless I'm lucky, and I win. Then I go to State, and miss two Musical Performances). I'm also doing Poetry Interpretation at districts, which I've never done before and have no idea how to do. My coach is making me do it, even though I'm going to be roasted by those who have been doing it all year for the last three years. Anyway, I have no free time. All of my activities conflict with eachother at some point.
In other news, I have recently developed an affinity for rainbow sherbet ice cream. Strange, you think, for a pessimist to like anything that has to do with rainbows? Think of it like this: as a pessimist, I ruin hope and good things like that. In this instance, I eat rainbows.

Daylight Savings Time (Among other Things)

2010-03-17T17:51:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, the horror known as daylight savings time was enacted. Why is this a horror, you ask? There are several reasons. One, EVERYTHING gets messed up. The bells at my school for example. The late bell for first period didn't ring until halfway through the period. After that the bell schedule hasn't made any sense until today. You know, after about 100 years, shouldn't people kind of...I dunno...anticipate things? Shouldn't they take care of the bell schedule (etc.) before it gets all messed up? The second reason: we lose sleep. now, sleep for a teenager (and pretty much everyone else) is important. Especially if your taking honors or accelerated classes like myself. Sometimes it takes me hours to get through homework due the next day. With my ever-increasing schedule, my time capacity and energy are bursting at the seams. The few hours sleep I get every night have been cut down to four-fifths of what it was.
For Seminary in the month of March, my teacher (Brother Maurer) challenged everyone to give up something. I thought long and hard, and eventually decided to give up on speech and debate for 1 month. so far, casewriting, research, and tournaments have been devouring my life and my weekends. since I just won a tournament I thought "What the heck? A break will be good for me." Two weeks later, I learned that my coach had signed me up for a tournament without asking me about it first. I was pretty mad, but she was furious when I told her I wasn't going (mostly because I gave it up for a month, but partially to make a point; you ask me before you go and decide for me). Now, since none of you know what my coach is like, I'll tell you; she's probably the most-controlling person you will ever meet, and she assumes that whoever does speech and debate will put that above all else. After fifteen minutes of "talking" with her in my 2nd period English, we took it outside and debated for another ten. She then talked to me in my math class the same day in 4th period. After I still said no, the next week was full of speech and debate participants trying to convince me to go to this tournament (oh, I haven't told you what it is yet. It's the National Qualifying tournament, and I was distinctly invited by the NFL [national forensic league], so that's why Mrs. McLain was mad]. Needless to say I got pretty annoyed.
I'm writing all this at speed right before a choir concert at my school. We're singing two songs; and aboriginal folk song called Tungarre, which means "to sing" (see the connection?) and a hebrew piece called Hiney Mahtov. Hee-nay mah-tohv, so you know. My teacher has a fascination with songs sung in a different language, and repeating the same songs every year for the beginning groups. It's kind of funny how his name is made up of two solfege syllables; se and le.
Off to sing.

I don't care what they say...Vengeance is sweet

2010-02-28T18:01:00.000-08:00

I got home at 1:30 today from a three-day super-tiresome speech & debate tournament from Thursday through Saturday. It was at U of O in Eugene. In prelims for Lincoln-Douglass debate I faced two people from Ashland (can you guess who?). That's right, the two guys from Ashland who have beaten me before. One beat me to a quarterfinal round, and one beat me in a final round, both in previous tournaments. I lost to both of them in prelims, and barely scraped up quarterfinals. Needless to say, I was mad. I beat my opponent from Tigard in quarterfinals and moved on to debate in semi-finals. There were three Ashland debaters against me. I faced Nathan, the guy who beat me in finals. I out-debated him since he wasted his last two speeches talking about abuse while I was actually trying to debate. And then, finally, I came up against Alex, a guy who I actually like and is a good debater. It was a good debate, but I pulled ahead with a 2-1 vote, and won Junior LD at U of O. My team was really happy that I had faced down three Ashland debaters (who are infamous for being abusive, debatespeak for cheating). I got a small black brick with gold letters on it as a prize, and a U of O debate t-shirt. Sad prizes, but what they symbolize is the downfall of Ashland monopoly on LD, and vengeance on a once-tyrannical school. I used what I think is my favorite argument I've written so far. (for those who care, the resolution is In the United States, the principle of jury nullification is a just check on government) I argued that since jurors are paid by the government for their services, they are part of the government. Since one branch of the government (in this case the judicial) can't check itself, jury nullification can't be a check on government. None of my opponents could attack that argument effectively, so I won =). Margaret, don't you DARE take that argument.

Rampant Racist Rhetoric

2010-02-14T17:30:00.000-08:00

At a speech and debate tournament last week, I was wronged like none other. For one of my debates, I centered my case around an aspect of the social contract, mainly that governments are only beholden to their own citizens, and they don't need to care about ramifications on citizens other than their own. One of my points was about Africa, and how it has a polarized economy (basically a few people get rich while the others get almost nothing), and also how targeted economic sanctions on Africa would lead to an un-polarized economy. I also brought Africa up in Cross-Examination. According to my judge, since I said that governments don't need to care about any people but their own, and that sanctioning Africa would be good, I was being racist. I lost the round because of that, and got minimum speaker points. Had I not been "racist" I would have gone to semi-finals and then to finals, and probably won (since every one else in my division was horrible). even my opponent, who is supposed to over-exaggerate bad things about my case, didn't think I was being racist. That's a pretty long stretch for a judge. He used those exact words; "rampant racist rhetoric." It was so funny I laughed all the way home on the bus. It's the best alliteration I've ever heard.

Groundhog Day

2010-02-02T20:18:00.001-08:00

Today is February Second, famously known for its title as 'Groundhog Day.' On this day, Punxsutawney Phil (Prognosticator of Prognosticators) felt obligated enough to grace us with his presence, and doom us to another six weeks of winter. Doesn't it ever strike you as odd that we rely on a furry little rodent to tell us what the weather will be for the next few months? I guess it's because he's "cute" that we trust him more than educated, professional weathermen (not that they know what they're doing either). In a few years, probably more people will go to Phil the rodent's funeral than weatherman and famous Asian writer Su Tong. Another thing I wondered about is whether or not the groundhogs in the business of prognostication ever contradict eachother. Do Smith Lake Jake and Punxsutawney Phil get along? I wouldn't imagine so, since they're competing for the same crowd in the same business.
Anyway, glad to see that Phil utilized his pessimistic capabilities.

Musical, Dance, Tests, and Half a dead Cow

2010-01-28T22:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I tried out for the musical at my high school: Once Upon a Mattress. Basically the Princess and the Pea as a musical. Anyway, the auditions went great, and I'm pretty sure I nailed at least callbacks, if not ensemble. The part I really want is the Jester, since he has a solo and two other songs which are all really good.
In other news, we now have a Korean foreign exchange student living in our home. It's kind of weird, since I'm so used to getting myself everywhere and being totally independent; not having to tow anyone around or wait for anybody. I think this is some kind of conspiracy between my parents and the Korean government to get me to be more responsible. Like getting home right after school, leaving for school at the right time, getting to bed earlier, etc. Also, I'm always afraid that I'll offend him in someway. Like if I eat my food holding my fork in my left hand or something. I don't know why, but I always feel like I might insult his honor or somesuch.
Apart from that, dance team is going very well, despite being two weeks from our first performance and we still don't have our choreography finished, and we're still waiting on costumes. The best part of the costume is obviously the fedora, which we get to do cool things with.
On to politics/news: Measures 66 & 67 passed. Sad day, more taxes and pressure on businesses and the middle class. Just what we need, right?
This news article caught my eye for the reason that I wrote an LD debate case on this very subject: compulsory vaccination, and my opponent always brought up this guy, and his link of the MMR vaccine to autism. Check it out here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100128/wl_uk_afp/britainhealthvaccinationchildrensocial. Had I known this I might have been able to crush my opponents more easily, even though I never lost an AFF during that resolution. Basically, this doctor took blood samples from children at his son's birthday party for 5 pounds apiece. Ethical? I think not.
I have never studied for a test in my life. I've last-minute crammed, but not studied, and so far that's worked pretty well for me. Throughout the entire semester I haven't failed one test, and gotten A's on at least 3/4 of them, including pretests. I have a huge semester math test tomorrow, comprising of chapters 1-5, and I haven't studied. Probably not the best idea. On the other hand, I had a stem word test in language arts two days ago, comprising of seventy-five stem words, only half of which I even partially knew the day before. My friend's flash cards, last minute cramming, and my incredible ability to memorize important information very quickly saved my grade, and I'm 100% certain I aced the test. Same thing with my Seminary final, my Social Studies final, my German final, my Chapter Five math test, and many more.
It seems odd that I have only ever written this blog at night, between 7:00 and 12:00. Maybe because it's my weird sleeping schedule. go to bed at 11:00 or later, get to sleep at 12:00 or later, wake up at 7:00 for family scripture-prayer, sleep on the couch for 45 minutes, get up, dress, leave for school at 8:00, and repeat the process. I've only had maybe 1-2 pessimistic thoughts in this post, and now I'll try and make it up. One day during a car ride with my family, about a month or so back, my brother and his wife were talking about Ripley's Believe it Or Not. Specifically the cow with one head and two bodies. My brother asked the question: "How does it decide which body gets food when it eats?" and I replied with "It doesn't. Eventually one body will die and the other will have to drag around its dead counterpart for the remainder of its miserable existence." Silence. Laughter. "That's the most pessimistic thing I've ever heard!" I didn't get it. It made sense to me. What strange people those non-pessimists are.

Words v.s. Pictures

2010-01-11T17:40:00.001-08:00

The person today is Napoleon Bonaparte. I've found alot of quotes so far that are enjoyable to make fun of, such as these:
"A picture is worth a thousand words."-Napoleon Bonaparte.
"A word is worth a thousand Pictures."-Michael Bruner.
Obviously there's some dispute as to the currency exchange between words and pictures. Both of these two men were optimists (Napoleon thought he could conquer Russia in the wintertime, and Michael Bruner writes for FaithInTheWorkplace.com), so maybe a pessimist should take a look at it. A famous painting could sell for a few million dollars, but so could a signature from some famous not-to-be-named golf players. What some people think is that the worth of both pictures and words are different ways of expressing feeling and emotion, in other words (or pictures), they are two different ways of looking at the same apple. I disagree. Obviously the worth of words and pictures are based on the amount of ink used, the colors used, the time-period it was written/drawn/painted/whatever, the value of the Brazilian real, and whoever wrote/drew/painted/whatever it. Here's the mathematical formula:

W=[i(Milliliters)+C]+t+[CWBR]+A
--------------------------
[0.5]t
W=worth
i=ink amount
C=R+B+Y+G+P+O+P+GR+BR+S+BL
colors=(Red=0, Blue=5, yellow=2, green=5, purple=4, white=2, orange=3, pink=-1, gray=3, brown=2, silver=5, black=8)
CWBR=Current worth of Brazilian Real
A=Author/Artist (for those not mentioned: # of characters in name divided by one sixth of the # of charcters. Bob Herman= 1.5
Exceptions:
Einstein=3.141592653...
Leonardo Da Vinci=6 (cubit=6 palms. According to da Vinci, a man's height is 24 palms. Therefore, Napoleon wasn't a man)
t=Time period.
B.C.=15
Dark Ages=1
Renaissance (1300-1599)=8
The New World (1600-1830)=6
Time of the West (1830-1899)=20 (30 if a cowboy said it)
Industrial age (1900-1938)=5
War(1939-1945)=2
Space Age(1946-1990)=10
Now(2000-2010)=6
Post-Apocalyptic=100
September Ninth=101

Yep, nothing good happened from 1990-1999.

New Year, New Week, New Lightbulb

2010-01-11T16:08:00.000-08:00

I've made one New Year's Resolution this year: Beat Ashland at LD debate. That school monopolizes LD at every tournament. It's not exclusively that they're good (which is true in some cases) but that they bring like 10 LDers to every tournament. I've been beaten by two of them. One beat me in finals and took the novice championship, and the other barely beat me to quarterfinals. Also, the same LDer that beat me in finals beat Glencoe's other LDer TJ even though the ashland guy absolutely should have lost. The reasons would take too long to explain to anyone who hasn't been in debate before. Anyway; beat Ashland at debate.
The start of new weeks are bad for one reason only: Kumon. The most elite math and reading center in the world. Every single day of the year you do a worksheet of either a few really hard problems or a ton of moderate ones. It is EXTREMELY annoying, especially when you're doing like five different extra-curricular activities plus homework. Each one takes 30-60 minutes to do, since you have to do it the first time, mark the problems you've gotten wrong, figure out things by yourself (since my mom has no idea what kind of math I'm doing), correct problems...etc. with everything else I have going on, it's just a pain. Also, the people that work there and are supposed to help you are just really annoying and not really helpful.
It was Sunday night and I was going into my room to sit on my bed and read a book, but as soon as I flip the switch...BOOM! There goes the light bulb. We don't have any extras, so I had to fumble around in the dark for about half an hour to get my clothes, my book, etc. So today I went into my brother's empty room (since he's at college) and cannibalized his light bulb into my ceiling's socket. It's the wrong size, but it works (however dimly).

Speech and Debate

2010-01-06T16:18:00.000-08:00

You might think it odd for a pessimist to be in speech and debate, and not in some dark alleyway off of a ghetto street, but I'm actually pretty good at it. For example, whenever my opponent brings up a plan or a suggestion or something like that, I can immediately see everything that's wrong with it. There are some perks to being a pessimist, despite the fact that they're few and far far far between. you might also think it strange that a pessimist would excel at an ethical form of debate. This form is called Lincoln-Douglas, based on the debates between Abe Lincoln and Steve Douglas. Since most of those debates were on the morality of slavery and such, they named a style of debate after them. Anyway, it's my favorite style, and all of your points (or "contentions") have to have ethical impacts. It's freaking awesome. Erm, most of the time. The thing I hate about LD is that people think that anyone can do it. They can't. One guy I debated at my last tournament was just bad, and almost all the others were only fun because I got to tear their case apart before their very eyes (another link between pessimism and debate). I've only ever had two intelligent LD debates. Finals at one, and a hidden finals at another. I lost the former by a slim 2-1 decision from three judges, and won the latter with both of us sporting perfect speaker points and a compliment from the judge; "you guys should be in Senior Division!" I'm a freshman at my high school, and this is my first year debating. It's been mostly epic so far. MOSTLY.

One less good thing in the World

2010-01-05T21:47:00.000-08:00

Day One (Well, Night One, both physically and mentally), Jan. 5th, 2010

Let's start off with something positive , shall we? Three years until the end of the world. No, wait, there's even less . 1079. One-thousand and seventy-nine days left to live, if you can call it living. Well, at least Presbama won't be able to screw up this country a second time. That's enough national politics right there to keep a pessimist happy for weeks. Um, maybe 'happy' isn't the right word. Anyway, personal experience of the day: I dropped half of a chocolate cupcake onto the sidewalk as I was walking home. Those cupcakes are probably one of the last good things in this world, and they were wasted. Number two, play practice was moved to A-days (my school has a block schedule. It's pretty annoying), so I hung around at school for an hour until someone told me that the rehearsals had been moved. Twenty minutes later I dropped that cupcake!
Time for a quote analysis! My favor...Um, whatever.
"Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic."
Well, YOU remember buddy. The Titanic hit an iceberg, barely months after it first left port, and GOD designed the ark. Looks like the 'amateurs' outdid the 'Professionals.' Using logic, we can assume that professionals are amateurs.
“Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.” I'm likin' this guy, even though he's probably stolen thousands of pairs of shoes from innocent victims. Strike the innocent part, it's probably not true.
“Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.” I absolutely agree on one condition: It's never worth it.