5hr

I took my 5-hour today! Finally! I had procrastinated for so long. Now I just have to not procrastinate the roadtest part. Anyway, as I'm sure most of you know, that was one of the most horrible experiences ever. I'm so ridiculously tired. I need to go to bed now.

gooooooooooodddddddniiiiiiiiight

Snowday for Miranda!

I woke up this morning, checked the news and was exceptionally excited to go back to sleep for another hour...problem is, HA! oops. Didn't set my alarm. I thought I woke up with enough time to get ready, so I did, then went out to catch the bus buuuuuttttttt it was already gone. So I had no way to get to school today and thhhhhat is why Mrs.Krieger had a better view of Sam today.
I did make dinner for my mommy though; she was happy. And I did my P.I.G. assignment and took some pictures for photography...so it wasn't a completely wasted day.

Sixty-nine

There are 69 days left of school. Who's excited?!?!?! I sure am. I've been going to school for 13 years...I'm so anxious for it to actually be over! No more public school for me! Moving on to...oh, wait...BCC. Not that much of a change, but still, I'm very excited. It's so amazing to think that the is the end of childhood; I've finally fought my way out!



YAYY MEEE.

Cool Blog!

http://www.stumbleupon.com/demo/#url=http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/youcangetarrestedforthat/index.html

I don't know if that link will work for you, buttttttt I tried.
The blog is about 2 men who travel across the country breaking laws. haha it's not as bad as it sounds...they pick the crazy laws, such as "it is illegal to peel oranges in hotel rooms in los angeles." They have put up pictures of them breaking all of these laws. I think that it's a really funny idea and I wish I had thought of it first!

Just in case the link doesn't work, some of the other things they did were "it is illegal to play cards with a native american in globe, arizona," "fishing in your pajamas is illegal in Chicago," and "sleeping on a fridge is illegal in pittsburg."
They have also posted a bunch of random pictures that are really funny.

Flordia!

hooray! My family is going to Flordia for a week in May annnnnnd I get to bring the funnest person in the entire world with me. I'm pretty excited. We rented out a full beachhouse with a pool in the back and everything and we're going to be staying 2 blocks from the beach. It's going to be so awesome.

Apocolypse?

I had the strangest dream this morning. I'm quite sure I was dreaming of the apocolypse. I was stuck in an extremely small pet shop [where I supposedly worked] with two older men who worked there. I don't recall seeing their faces at any point during the dream, but for some reason I am able to describe them...like I am familiar with them. One man was stout and had dark, thick facial hair nd yellowed teeth. His eyes were beady and black. The other was very thin, old, and wrinkled. His hair was grey, as were his eyes. All of the animals in the shop [rats, rabbits, dogs, cats, reptiles] were in cages too small for inhabitance. Also, there was a TV in a cage (all of the cages were metal wire) but the TV wasn't playing normal TV shows...it was flashing through what seemed to be other people's lives and the people acknowledged the fact that the TV was now featuring them.
Outside the shop was complete chaos yet it was completely noiseless. I kept pulling down the blinds on the window to the right of the door and looking up at the moon. Every time I would pull back the blinds, my dream would leap from inside the shop to outside in some random place in our solar system. I was moving around at the speed of light and I could feel the pull in my stomach. The moon would zoom off its orbit [I followed the moon during these times], find the planet closest to the sun and charge at it. The planet would explode or be destroyed in some equally as dramatic way and then I would be transported back to the little pet shop. This happened for all of the planets excluding Pluto [which 'isn't a planet' anymore, anyway] and Earth. I don't remember the exact timeline because it's ridiculously hard to remember dreams correctly but I remember looking at all of the animals and they were all freaking out and I kept telling the two men that it was because they knew the apocolypse was coming. The animals could sense it and we couldn't. To help ease their frantic state I poured woodchips into all of the cages [yeah, I have no idea how that would help anything]. Also, I remember there was a man on the TV who looked like Mr.T and he was sitting in a motel room on a bed. The end of the bed [which he was sitting on] was facing east [as was he] if whatever was recording him was facing north. He kept his head turned looking at the TV screen the entire time he was on the TV. Never blinked, never spoke, never changed expression...just stared into the TV. His hand were doing something in the corner of the screen but I was too transfixed with his staring to move my eyes to see what he was doing. The TV channel changed and I looked out the window again and saw the moon come back into the sky and then I was sucked out to watch it destroy some other planet. After it had finished, I came back and the two men were still in the same place they had been the entire dream. I picked up a sack of potatoes, looked inside and saw that, besides a bunch of potatoes, there were these small black cotton ball looking things. I poured two or three of them into each of the animal's cages and watched the things attack and eat each animal. I was 'saving them.' There were three left. I told the younger man to put his hand in the bag and take out a potato. He did and came out with two of the things on his arm, he flinched when they bit and one of them flung off his arm and hit my arm. I felt the bite and then picked it off and threw it at the older man, who it bit in the neck. Both of the men died and I decided to go outside. When I went out, all the silent chaos regained its noise. I looked up at the moon...it had turned a shade of red, not blood red, but close. Also, it had stolen Saturn's rings when it had done whatever it had done and it had put them on cocked up slightly to the left. I started to walk across the street and then everything went silent again. I was hit by a car and I think it killed me. I'm not sure...that's when I woke up. And you know what's extra weird???? The Doors were playing on my stereo... "This is the End, beautiful friend...the end."

Dreams are so weird. There are so many different theories on what dreams are and there are none that make perfect sense. I really wish I knew if they had a purpose, are derived from anywhere specific or if they are just random bits of imagination trying to claw their way from your subconcious into your concious while you sleep.

What do you think dreams are?

Vacation!

I'm stuck in Endicott for February break. I'm quite sure I haven't been bored yet this week, so I'll venture to say that its been good. If I could be anywhere right now, I would want to visit California. I haven't been there since I lived there for a year when I was two so I don't remember anything. If I were to go, I think I would need more than a week though. I wouldn't want to take a plane because I think traveling nationally via plane is silly! I want to experience all the places in between here and my destination. I think it would be infinite amounts of fun to travel out west...I mean, look at how much fun Peter Fonda had [before he died] in Easy Rider!And what about Jack Kerouac?!?
Also, California's great cause it's got everything...if I'm in the mood for a beach, voila! there's a beach. Then, if I feel like going up into a snowy mountain cap, I can take a 45 minute drive and HEY! LOOK! there I am! And then, say I feel like visiting an awesome forest with giant trees, look at that! Redwood galore!

Dream Job

I posted my blog for yesterday as soon as I woke up, which was before Mrs.Krieger had posted the manditory blog topic soooo I'm posting it today :/ I hope that's not too much of a problem.

My dream job has never really been clear to me...there were things I wanted to do because I liked a certain aspect of it (i.e. money), but never really anything that I passionately wanted to do. Recently, I've figured myself out! hooray! I'm going to school, majoring in Business Marketing and Management and minoring in Entrepeneurship. Yep, I'm opening my own business.
Ever since I learned to think for myself, I've wanted to move to the Netherlands. I would love to live in Europe and the liberal policies of the Netherlands closely match my own opinions. I doubt I will be living in Amsterdam so you all can erase those judgements. ANYWAY, getting to the point. I, and my favorite person, Laura, are opening up a tea shop somewhere in the Netherlands. It's not just going to be a tea shop, but teas will be our focus. Our goal is to attract the Decadent literatis of Europe and have interesting conversations with them...like how a Starbucks is to business men/women. We are going to hold free-to-attend 'dicussions' once a week to feed our craving for debates. I'm excited and I hope it all works out fine.

Oops!

I forgot this blog existed for a while there.

"Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened. "

This is from Nietzsche's 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense'. I have been a fan of Nietzsche since I was introduced to his fantastic cynicism but, I recently came across this essay and it blew my mind. I absolutely love it. This [the quote] is my favorite peice of the essay, I think...I agree with it so much. I am disgusted with the way humans are so concieted and ridiculous. What would ever make one think that humans are the 'supreme beings'? There is a whole universe out there, quite possibly more. We only use 10% of our brains; that looks pretty pathetic to me. For all we know, there could be millions of other highly functional beings in other glaxies, solar systems, universes that use 67.8402% of their brains. Who's supreme now!?
Humans need to be humbled. Not many people think about the fact that, if you go back in time far enough, humans didn't exist. And, as Nietzsche made of the point of, if you go far enough ahead in time we, again, will be absent from existance.
Then to think about reality. Reality is the strangest concept if you think about it enough. What is reality? It's different to everyone, realitive; nothing concrete. And then there are things that are 'real' that we are completely unaware of...like colors. Our eyes/brain can only perceive a small amount of the EM spectrum. In altered states of mind, there have been many instances of people 'seeing' colors that don't exist. That's so interesting! I hate that I can't know all these things.
I guess in the long run, I'm contradicting myself with all of this nonsense; preaching about how humans need to get a reality check and how we are all useless parasites. It all doesn't matter anyway, if we acknowledge the fact, all it will do is create a dull and uninteresting society. Oh well, whatever happens, we all end up the same: dead.



pft! I'm not a pessimest. Why would you think such horrid things!?

Just going to put it out there...

Les Claypool iiiisssss aawwwwwweeesssssssoommmmmmmeeeee. If you like, and you don't already listen to them, you should check out Primus.




Oh, look how nice I am! I will supply you with a sample...this is Mr. Krinkle (& yes, that is a pig playing an upright bass).

EDUCATION:

Oh boy, the education system! Firstly, I think it is more important to teach skills than facts. Come on now, when are we really going to need to know that The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776? I agree that it is important to learn these things because blahblahblah, you know, history repeats itself and whatever but think of how much more prepared high school graduates would be if you taught them communication skills, how to use Microsoft Office and similiar programs, how to manage a checkbook, how to file taxes, even proper etiquette, things that we will use when we leave high school.

Another thing I dislike about the school system is that, in its own way, it's oppressive. It tends to put more stress on your brain capacity rather than your intellect. I've always assosiated school with 'what can you can you remember?' and 'what can you memorize?'. Much less of 'how can you apply this?' or 'how can this be rationalized?'. I think schools need to advocate open-mindedness, controversy and thinking logically...coming to conclusions yourself...not being spoon fed biased facts and then denied credit for work when you deviate from the norm. A fantastic solution to this would be discussion/debate based classes! With grades derived from participation, not test taking. Oh sure, you'll get the quiet kid's parents complaining that you shouldn't put their shy kid on the spot because they can't handle it...well, guess what mommy!?!??! COMMUNICATION IS A PART OF LIFE. You're going to have to talk sometime, little Billy.

Test taking is crazy. It measures almost absolutely nothing important. It doesn't measure how much hard work you put into the class, how well you can reason, how you can influence or manipulate, or anything else that can be a tool for success. Now don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not one to leave circumstances completely unconsidered...yeah, there will be highly successful quiet kids who don't need to work hard all, but I'm talking about the majority of us who aren't going to get lucky and accidentally 'invent' youtube.

Getting down to curriculum specifics, I think history should be more well rounded, math should be more pratical and english should be more creativity-encouraging. I don't like that homeland history is always so much more emphasized when the rest of the world is just as important. I suppose it could instill patriotism but it also can account for a lot of intolerance and ethnocentrism. I'd like to know more about New Zealand, Sweden, Canada...we learn hardly anything about those countries because they have chosen to, for the most part, stay nuetral, so because they don't interfere, they are ignored. Math should be taught in branches, depending on personal choice. It should be manditory to learn some sort of personal finance, but after that, students should chose [according to later plans] whether they want to branch off into accounting, trig, calculus, ect. English should include more creative writing and also more self-concieved interpretations of the works we read.

Alrighty! That's what I think about education.

CENSORSHIP:

"I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man."
One of my favorite quotes! I've borrowed these words from good ol' Tommy J. to assit me in introducing the subject of this blog entry: censorship. Why is something censored in the first place? To protect? That's the only sensical use I can think of. Why do we censor swear words? They are a mode of hightened expression. If it's because they are hurtful or obscene, it is only because we, as a society, have associated vulgarity with that word. The word itself does nothing "vulgar". If the obscenity of words are such a problem than why would society have created and let loose such vicious beasts, anyway?? My, my, what a masochistic society we are.
Now, how about sex? Why does society censor all things sexual? WE ARE ANIMALS; our complex brain functions don't dismiss us from that. Animals are supposed to reproduce, pass on their genes, you know...all that fancy stuff. Why would we censor the creation of life? It makes absolutely no sense. Some people may argue that it makes them "feel uncomfortable," the only reason it would make you uncomfortable is because you were socialized into thinking that sexual acts were something to make you feel as such.
Censoring violence and drug use is also unfounded; ITS REALITY. Ignorance may be bliss but I would much rather be aware of the world that I am residing in than roam around like mindless sheep. If the government is worried its people will be frightened or resort to choatic actions, its part of life, we need to learn to handle ourselves. And hey, perhaps if you're lucky, social darwinism will take care of our population problems! This is the censorship I particularly don't agree with...I mean, if something can be made to happen, than it is nothing to be censored. Reality is what it is, trying to make it out to be some utopian peice of fiction is completely outrageous.


Yep, those are my thoughts...be as critical as you wish; I'm excited to read your opinions.

Mr.Gorbachev,

BRING DOWN THAT WALL.