The King of Cheese

They say that the early bird gets the worm...but doesn't the second mouse always get the cheese?
oh well, it doesn't really matter because I don't eat worms anymore and I ate the last of the cheese yesterday. :) I grated it. Don't you just love grated cheese? It's so much more fun to eat, and it makes a whole lot more cheese. (logically, I know this is not true, because if you have one piece of cheese and you cut it in half you DO have two pieces of cheese but it's still the same AMOUNT of cheese, but really, theoretically, it LOOKS like more cheese, so just go with it.)

What kind of cheese do you like?

I really only like cheddar, though I have been known to eat swiss or smoked cheddar (food-gasm, just saying) and some other kind of cheese with green flecks...asparagus? green beans? I don't know. But I only like those cheeses with something else because, let's face it, green bean cheese by itself? GUH! The only cheese I can eat by itself is cheddar.

Cheddar cheese is so much more godly and glorious by itself anyways. I mean, the king of all cheeses doesn't need to go with a cracker, or a sandwich, or a burger. It can just chill by itself and get grated or sliced and just plain eaten. But then the beauty of cheddar is that it can ALSO be with those things. You know? It's like a little multi-tasker. Multi-racel. No food is too un-cool for cheddar cheese! he'll be their pal!

It can even go on LLAMA!!!



The only thing better than grated cheddar cheese is macaroni and cheese.

Actually, they're about equal.

...except if the macaroni's overdone, or underdone, or the sauce is too runny, or too chunky...

It's gotta be perfect, you know?

And cheddar cheese IS!

Potter-Holic, Please Rescue Me From Myself

Harry Potter.

Sit back. Recline in your easy chair.

Close your eyes. Kick off your shoes.

Grab a snack. Heck, pull out your pipe and light that sucker!

Just relax for a moment, take a deep breath, and think.

Harry Potter.

Two words that every person on the planet has probably heard at least once. Every person knows who he is, whether they've read the books, seen the movies, or not. Harry Potter is like Shakespeare, or Milton, or Poe; everyone knows who he is. Everyone knows what you're talking about when you mention Hogwarts, or Voldemort, or Expelliarmus. It's just one of those cultural things, I suppose - or maybe it's more. Maybe, it's WOLRD DOMINATION!!!



Avada Cadavra...and stuff...


I'm just kidding...well, mostly.

Harry Potter kind of HAS taken over the world, even if he is just a fictional character in seven huge books. But he's more than that, isn't he? There are posters, keychains, Disney Land rides, fake wands, brooms, action figures. He's everywhere, and everyone knows him.

Isn't that close enough to be considered world domination?

I'm only bringing this up because yesterday I watched the final Harry Potter movie's trailer. Okay...well, technically I watched 3 different trailers...and then I watched each of them about 5 times...but that's unimportant. :) The point is, is that I watched the trailer(s) and then I cried. Then I read the whole seventh book in approximately 5 hours (okay, so I skipped parts in the middle...but, really? is all that camping stuff REALLY essential? No.) And then I cried.

To be completely honest, the final "installment" kind of freaks me out a little. I mean, Harry Potter has been being written/filmed for most of my life. It's one of those things that's always there: "Oh, I wonder when the next movie is coming out." "Oh, I just went down to the store and bought the next HP book, isn't that exciting?!" And now it's ENDING?!! NOOOO!

So, like any eccentric super-duper-mega-fan would do, I spent the last 4 hours googling all that is Harry Potter. My google conquest started with looking up spells. I read through all of them (omg there are A LOT) and from there clicked on different links to different things, like from Patronus Charm I went to Lethifolds (which are deadly creatures living in tropical areas that look like floating cloaks; therefore, "lethal" and "folds" like the folds of a cloak.) The Patronus is the only spell that can conceivably destroy/fend off a Lethifold, just in case you were curious.

From Lethifolds (the Magical Creatures page) I went to character's patronuses. I scrolled through all of the known patronuses (wow...who knew that Flavius Belby's patronus was "something with horns"? (he used it to defeat a Lethifold.) who even knew who Flavius Belby was?) From there I started looking at Ms. Luna Lovegood because I love her so much, and was shocked because her page had a "later life" portion and it was here that I found the juicy details. J.K.Rowling apparently devised complicated life stories for each main character. omg!!! so excited! Apparently Luna married a fellow eccentric "magizoologist" named Rolf Scamander (whom she met when searching for a Crumple-Horned Snorkack) and together they had twin boys named Lorcan and Lysander.

From Luna's page, I, of course, investigated her children because they weren't mentioned in the book and I was curious. They each have their own page and actually have some background too. :D from there I went to Harry/Ginny's offspring, and read more about their children (their daughter Lily's middle name is Luna, after Luna Lovegood) and then went to Ron/Hermione's offspring (anyone else notice that Rose and Hugo are R and H like their parents? O_O). From there I of course went to visit Mr. Draco Malfoy's child Scorpius. I'm a little obsessed with this child, for some unknown reason. His full name is Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy and his mother is Astoria Greengrass.

When I got to Scorpius I got a little interested in the names, so I googled for Harry Potter name meanings and found a website where people actually discuss this sort of stuff (I need to go sign up) and it was crazy what stuff they came up with. For instance, one fanatic researched Xenophilius Lovegood. his name Xenophilius is like Xenophily which is the extreme love of unusual places, things, or people. AHHH! J.K.Rowling is a GENIUS! all her names fit so perfectly!!! like Voldemort, in french (Vol de mort) it means Theif of Death.
Anyways, I looked up other stuff, like how relationships affect people's patronuses (Lily and Sev's both are a Doe because Sev loves Lily; Lily's is a doe and she married James who's is a Stag (and whom is also a stag); Harry thought his patronus was a horse at first, and then he married Ginny who's is a horse; Hermione's is an otter and she married Ron who lived in Otterly).

So, now I'm so obsessed with Harry Potter that I looked up the family trees and former teachers (is it not amazing that she invented all these characters that aren't even in the books?!) and...ah! I'll stop now because this blog is getting long and you're all probably getting bored.

I really need to get a good hobby, or discover some other wonderful books because this is just getting ridiculous...I'm like a druggy. I need to go to HPFA - Harry Potter Fanatics Anonymous - for help.

I can't wait!!!

Anyways....

The message I'm trying to get across, though, is that you should all READ HARRY POTTER if you haven't because they are amazing books, and it's not "witchcraft" okay? I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous! Harry Potter is not even ABOUT that kind of stuff, well, not in that sense anyway, and everyone should be able to read them/watch them because they're, for lack of a better phrase, "wicked!".

Harry Potter is taking over the world, are you going to sit by and let that happen without your knowledge? Or are you going to be A PART OF IT?!! xD

There's A Philanthropist In The Cockpit

When I was young people were always asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I never really knew what I wanted to be. I would say "veterinarian" or "teacher" or "rockstar" because that's what everyone else said. And, honestly, what 5 year old girl doesn't want to be a vet; all those cute kitties and puppies. You just want to help them ALL! I also claimed I wanted to be a farmer (come on, all those cute sheep and pigs and cows!!!), a doctor, and a philanthropist (I still have no idea what that is...but it sounds cool and intelligent).

The one thing I never wanted to be was an astronaut. Space scares the crap out of me! Seriously? Who wants to go up in the sky in a tiny little rocket? Then you almost catch on fire leaving the atmosphere, and then you're just stranded up there, floating... O_O not to mention the minor NO-OXYGEN issue (what if you ran out?!) or, Oh!, the minute problem of WHAT IF YOU GOT EJECTED FROM THE TEENY-TINY ROCKET AND WENT SPINNING OUT INTO SPACE WHERE THERE IS NO GRAVITY AND YOU PRETTY MUCH ARE SCREWED?! Oh yeah...AND THEN YOU DIE!!!!!

I think I have the opposite of clausterphobia...it's what I like to call: toomuchopenspaceaphobia. Would agoraphobia cover that? The fear of open or public places in which escape would be difficult? very open...no escape...maybe not so public (oh yeah...I forget to mention the whole ALIEN thing!).

Definitely content to stay on THIS planet for the rest of my life. thank you very much, someone suicidal can go up in the little rocket and meet E.T.

Anyways, I'm only bringing this up because today was the last day of 10th grade, which means next year I'm going to be a JUNIOR!!! so, I need to figure out what the heck I'm going to do with my life. EEEEP!!!

So, since I am now semi-grown up, I will share with you my updated list of  Future Plans/Career Ideas...thingy...

1.)Writer. I want to write something life-changing...or maybe just funny.
2.)Musician. I looooove music. I want to compose it and sell it on a CD...or maybe just play it in the park on the weekends.
3.)Editer. I correct people's grammar ALL the time! so I guess I'm good at it.
4.)Psychologist/Psychiatrist. I never can discern between the two, no matter how many times I google them...but I want to help people who have disorders and problems and stuff.
5.)Actor. Theatre is the bomb and I want to continue to become someone else and speak in iambic pantameter.

Although some of these things DO go together, they don't exactly WORK together. At the moment, the one I'm leaning toward is writer. I love writing (as you can tell) and, I don't know, I just want to write something and see it there on a shelf, and think "I did something with my life. look, there it is, for hundreds of generations to read or maybe not read." I want to write out poetry and have people analyze it in english class. I want to write lyrics that people can sing along to during long trips. I want to fill empty, blank pages with meaning and make people question their lives. I want to change the world, or maybe just one person; a tiny piece.

And that's all any of us really want, isn't it? To change a little piece of this world. To leave our thumbprint on something. To be able to sit back when death knocks at our window and say to ourselves "I did something. I gave back. I accomplished something. I left a mark and the world will never be the same again, whether for good or bad."

I just don't want to end up living my life based on other people's dreams. I don't want to blink and find myself teaching a bunch of teenagers who aren't even listening. I don't want to blink and realize that I'm majoring in philanthropy and suddenly wonder "what is that?" I don't want to wake up inside the cockpit of a tiny rocket floating through outer space. I don't want to live someone else's life.

I've seen a veterinarian at work, and it's not all cute kitties and puppies.

I want to be me.

Scribble, Scribble, Stab

Just sitting here, chilling, "trimming the fat" off my research paper for English class. We had to pick someone to write a 4-page essay on, and I chose...OSCAR WILDE!! I love him so much! I'm so obsessed with him now, it's not even funny. I have his play The Importance of Being Earnest (which I saw in theatre class) in book form, I have his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and I have a 1000 page biography on him (for my research of course, but still interesting).

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde is my IDOL! (yes, that is his real name...yes, I have it memorized...)

So yeah, back to my paper.

I seem to have this terrible, terrible, horrible curse that is called "You write too much". Yes. While most of my classmates are struggling with getting more "meat" in their paragraphs, I am sitting here trying to emaciate my paper in the hopes that it will no longer be 50 pages. (just kidding...it's about 7)

Anyways, I started out trying to combine sentences and/or taking unimportant things out, but now I've gotten to the point where I just take my magnificent pen of destruction and sweep it across an entire section and re-write the whole thing. Other times, I scribble out lines or sections of sentences and then glue the little pieces back together using a complicated, messy web of arrows and lines and astrixes*. At this point, I'm not sure if my essay is getting longer or shorter...but it's better, at least. Yay?

My english teacher is really cool, but sometimes she bugs me. She keeps confusing my friends and I about the whole citing your sources thing...it seems like every time we think we get it, she changes it. ugh! I think I've got it this time, but still...mreh. least favorite part EVER! But yeah, I stayed after class to ask her one more time how to do it and she started going through my whole paper (terror face) and marking things with her purple-pen-of-awesome-and-sometimes-non-awesome. I like being critqued, trust me, because it helps me grow and all that jazz, but really...so much purple...

But it's all fixed now, so it's okay.

Anyhoo, back to work!

P.S. the worst part of this whole thing, is that I'm cutting it all down so I can add more info. yeah, that's right, I'm not even halfway done writing my essay, and it's already too long. PONY-TOAST!!!

A Collage of Problems

So every once in a while I think to myself, you should do (insert task here).
And, like any well-meaning human being, I rub my hands together (with some spit to make me look awesome, of course) and embark on my epic journey of completing (insert task here).
Well, I find myself doing this more and more often as time goes on, which is really stupid because as the months pass I get farther and farther into the school year and, therefore, have more and more studying/homework to do. This in turn makes it even more and more impossible to finish whatever I've started.
Sound familiar?
I think everyone does this at some point, whether they will admit it or not. But, honestly, do other people - besides me - do this every day? Every week? I seem to have a million things to do ALL THE TIME and no time to do/complete them.
Not only do I have a crap-load of homework to finish EVERY DAY, but I also seem to have all these other things I have to do along with it. Mowing the lawn, pulling weeds, writing, practicing my instrument, helping with the school play, going joggin with my friends...The list goes on and on.
Yes, these may seem like frivolous things to worry about - like, "Wow, you have it SO hard, you poor thing" - but, honestly, if you think about how many hours there are in a day, and subtract from that the amount of time I'm in school, the number is pretty small afterwards. And it's not even just the lack of time in my days, it's the stress of it all as well.
And what makes it worse is that even with all this stuff I have to do, I still feel like I'm a failure of a human being. Aren't I supposed to be saving the world, or helping the homeless, or feeding the starving people of the world by now? Shouldn't I have accomplished something in these past 16 years? Something to make me feel accomplished or special or AWESOME?! I feel like I've wasted so much time just sitting around complaining (like now) and I should be out doing something with my life.

This is where I end up starting something and then never getting around to finish it. I'll start a recycling strike and go a little crazy about people throwing away paper or cans. This'll last maybe a week or so, and then I'll get busy and think to myself: let someone else do it, I'm too busy, I'll start again after I write this paper. BUT THEN I NEVER GET AROUND TO IT!!!
See my problem?
And it just gets worse and worse. I have a million little projects littering my bedroom to prove it. I have a wall half-covered in cut-outs from magazines - from when I wanted to make a collage. I've got nearly 20 stories started that I half-developed in my mind or on paper, and then just lost interest or forgot about them.

Anyways, I should probably stop ranting and go start my english paper, or maybe I'll start another story or something. :)
Hope to blog more often after this (but I wouldn't hold my breath...I might get too busy for blogging)

Body Language and Phone-Phobias

I've recently realized that maybe life isn't what I always thought it was. Maybe life doesn't completely suck after all...or maybe it's worse! Maybe we're all just little marbles in an alien's bag! (<---sorry, just watched MIB) Maybe we're all just fooling ourselves, or maybe life is fooling US!!! Maybe...maybe life isn't really throwing lemons...maybe it's throwing blueberries!!!!


OMB!!!


These are some of the things I think about on a regular basis, hence my never paying attention to anything of importance. I zone out a lot in class and...well...life, I've realized. My teacher actually threw a dry-erase marker at my head one time because he'd called my name about 10 times and I was just sitting there, slouching in my chair, going all O______o  The worst part is that I usually end up staring into space right at someone's face, so they think I'm oggling them or something (yes! I used oggling in a sentence!). Then they get all huffy and annoyed and I have to sit there trying to explain while they yell at me. :(


Another thing I've observed about myself is that I really have no idea what I'm doing most of the time. I discovered this just now when I was trying to do a lab write-up for my biology class. I read the question through about 5 times (each time it made less and less sense), and I finally wrote a squiggle and a happy face for the answer. I'm pretty sure that the answer is something obvious like "the DNA strand is a copy" or "the weak hydrogen bonds link the nitrogenous bases together" (which is actually probably the answer). Even though I feel like a failure at this point...I'm kind of wondering how many points my teacher will give me for my well-thought-out answer.


Another example of my obliviousness is a story of 15 minutes ago. So I'm sitting at the computer, typing away on this blog, and Queen comes on (my music library is on shuffle). It's the song Don't Stop Me Now; which just happens to be my favourite Queen song - a fact that should hint right away that something bad is about to happen. Anyways, so like any other teenager in a quiet house (who forgets that her mom is sleeping in the other room), I immediately start singing along in a loud, obnoxious voice. I don't hit any bad notes or anything, but I get so into it that within 2 minutes I'm out of my seat and jumping around my room with a hair brush in one hand and an air guitar in the other. I replayed the song about 4 times. Yeah...I'm pretty sure some poor, unsuspecting country is receiving an earthquake warning at this moment because of my earth shattering leaping. But anyways, I don't know how I didn't wake up my mom (she actually just woke up now) or bring the neighbors running to save us from burglars or whatever, and honestly, I don't know what this story was supposed to prove. Um...but yeah, I realized that I get a little weird and wired sometimes, and maybe that's a bad thing?


So...I had an interesting day today. Theatre class was epic as usual. My friends Kara and Tristan and I are all "veterans" because we already took the class last semester, so I always feel like a pro...kind of. :) Anyways, we were doing this improv thing and Tristan and I were together (ugh lol) and he ended up picking me up (yet again) and carrying me across the stage. Yes, it was funny for everyone else, but for little 'ol me, it was terrifying. Suddenly I was 3 feet taller and moving at lightning speed with my feet not touching the floor. grr, Tristan, grr. but anyways...my teacher said that I was "the best person he knew at looking sad" (for those of you who know me, I do a very awesome frowny face ---> :[  yes, like that.) anyways, it was fun. and apparently I show body language very well (hence the title), which I found funny. I guess it's not very hard to act awkward and terrified of someone when they're slinging you over one shoulder and running around the stage. :)


On the subject of body language...Have you ever noticed how much body language is a part of our every day lives? Like conversations and everything...without it, it would be pretty hard to convey things, especially hidden feelings, you know? I just thought of this because I've actually been talking on the phone quite a bit this last week (shocked face). I talked to two of my friends and some other people, but that's inconsequencial. The main point is that, (I don't know if this is body language necessarily) I talk with my hands a lot and raise my eyebrows and nod a lot in normal conversation, and this makes it very hard for me to talk on the phone because, obviously, the other person can't see any of that. So I'll be standing there, nodding my assent, and then pause and look at the phone and realize "oh yeah, they can't see that." and then I have to utter this awkward "yeah..." haha! Plus, you can't read the other person's body language so sometimes you can't tell if someone's being sarcastic or joking or being serious because you just CAN'T SEE ANY OF THAT!!!


Hence my phone-phobia.


I've always had this aversion to phones, but I guess I'm getting over it. It's just so...un-personal (is that a word?) I mean, what if some stalker kid from school calls you (having magically acquired your number from an anonymous source, of course [that rhymes!]) and is hitting on you. You can't give him a look or turn away or cross your arms over your chest menacingly because HE CAN'T SEE YOU (which is probably good, but still...)!!! so then you have to actually say "dude, you make me uncomfortable...GO AWAY!) And that's just wasted effort. That's what body language is for!


Body language saves time!!!


Anyways, that's pretty much it. except for....I GOT NEW SHOES!!! just an hour or so ago. I got some gray converse (with sparkles!!!) and a pair of other shoes that have stripes or something. pretty exciting. I'm excited. I'm ready to go out into the world again tomorrow and use some of my epic body language on those creepers.


Ready, set, Go!
You can't stop me now!!!