Well, One Of Us Must Be Haunted

Somehow, through some bizarre (or, ok, mildly coincidental) twist of fate, spent pretty much my entire life within earshot of a bell tower (think church steeple meets rooster), all of which insist upon playing the same tune at every hour or half thereof. I suppose thats what you get for living the prep school life (grew up a one, went to high school at one, will go to preppy college). If you think that years of this would mean I'm used to it, you're wrong. The combination of an uncomfortable couch, an easterly facing window of no small size, and, you guessed it, 8am bells made sleeping in this morning quite difficult. I think that morning people. who can easily conspire against the rest of us by having early morning meetings (and of course would because they're annoying) have built these bells just to bug those of us who sleep in more. It wouldn't surprise me, morning people always seem jealous and mean (though this may be due to the fact that many of them are old, and we all know old people are bitter and mean-spirited by nature).

The only the thing worse than living under the shadow of evil mechanical roosters erected by morning people is dating one. When out of school, I think 10am is early, especially after late nights (which are the only pleasant way to see five 'clock). This does not sit well with people who wake up at seven every morning without the aid of 120 decibel alarms, the threat of imminent death, or specially trained wake-up dogs. Apparently morning people don't realize that waking up takes a fairly long period of time unless aided by loads of caffine that induces a heart attack, forcing someone to zap you with those paddles, thereby waking you up. I think I'm going to slip sleeping pills into her food next time I see her...

I Won't Be Ignored

I spent chemistry class today surfing YouTube for videos about blowing stuff up with fairly common chemicals. What I found were a host of videos of home-made bomb instructions (not serious ones, but fairly legit), apparently all made by white suburban guys between 16 and 22. Hm. Oh, and they were all set to Linkin Park and System of a Down music. Screamo mexican terrorists (one video had all its instructions in spanish, so we can only assume). I'm not sure which is more disturbing; the obviously large demo out there making these or the fact that now I really want to...

Check it out for yourself.

I Just Got My Liscence In The Mail

Well, it's official: I'm a whore. I've turned this blog into a shameless enterprise to make money and I'm already .3% of the way there (to where exactly I'm not sure, they wouldn't tell me how much I'll make). You can see the evidence of my prostitution (do not quote this out of context anyone) right below the vaunted "Hall of Fame" where is says "Ads by Google". That's right, I signed up to host silly google ads because, frankly, I need the money (even if is a mere pittance) and it makes me feel important. I got off lucky though, it's not nearly as glaring as I'd expected and blends in quite well, so I don't have to be too ashamed of this. I just hope I don't get arrested for tax fraud if I don't end up paying taxes on what little I make...

Since the above doesn't really constitute a ligitimate post, I bring you this (another sign of whore-like activities): condoms. See, if you go to prep school as I do, you run into a lot of used condoms (in case you thought we were sheltered compared to public school kids, at least they do drugs and have sex off-campus). The problem with people who are popular enough to get any is they're not too bright and apparently can't think of any classy way to dispose of condoms. So you find them lying around behind the old, seedy gym and by the track (three words: high jump pit). I can understand no one wanting to go through the hassle of carrying them to a trash can or anything, but what I don't understand is some of the places they get. Sure, the high jump pit is secluded and comfortable, but how does your prophylactic end up in the middle a field, 30 yards away from it? We even get them in the middle of fields, no where near anything padded. Is that what happens when the high jump pit is occupied? You go out in the middle of a field? Dirty.

Acid Rain

I love Senior Spring. You knew school could be so relaxing? Turns out all we ahd to do was stop working...There's really only one guy who still cares about grades or scores or anything: the Man. The Man won't let it go, so the Man keeps making us take silly standardized tests. It won't be for too long though, last week I sent off a scantron(r) with "SEND HELP" bubbled in.

What I'm trying to say is that we all still have to sit for AP exams even though the scores don't matter, which not only gets us out of all our classes for the day, but also affords us the oppurtunity to put some pretty ridiculous responses. Here's some from the chemistry exam I took earlier today:

Calcium carbonate plus aqueous sulfuric acid yields: [insert my incorrectly completed reaction here]
Explain why granite (aka calcium carbonate) statues degrade outdoors:
"Tiny metieroite collisions" (the correct answer was acid rain)

Silver ions are an oxidizing agent, Iron (II) ions are a reducing agent. Solutions of the two are added together, what is the product?
"Sunshine!!!"

A solution of Iron (II) is titrated with permanganate. Explain why the color changes when the end point is met.
"Color is carried by a variety of subatomic particles called 'clown bosons'. When iron (II) is oxidized, purple clown bosons are produced that annihilate with the invisible blue clown bosons on hydronium. Therefore there is no color change until the blue bosons are depleted, at which point the purple ones start reacting with the atmosphere, producing a massive, catastophic chain reaction."

What happens when too much permanganate titrant is added?
"A starving kid in Africa doesn't have enough titrant"

Explain how the pressure ration of PO2/PO3 changes as the reaction takes place.
"No, trixs are for kids!"

How would that ratio change is a catalyst were added?
"Ibid"

I Don't Even Know What A "Reciprocity" Is

I've been lucky enough in the past couple days to feel fairly good about myself (it's my nature to not do this, I maintain that it's justified). Yesterday was a rare Sunday that I actually spent doing contructive, which is, of course, gratifying. I never do anything on Sundays (because I'm lazy), and recently I havn't done anything at all because the Man is still making me go to school even though I've long since stopped caring.

Today I got to feel all intellectual, despite not attending any classes and potentially spelling "intellectual" wrong. See, I had some time to kill in the early evening and another creative writing assignment hanging over my head, so I decided to scoot down to a local park and get in touch with my muse. The sky was blue (well, violet technicaly speaking, but whatever) and the woods were exceedingly green and springy (go figure), both conditions ideal for my muse. Intoxication might be another one, but I havn't tried it yet. Check back with me shortly after -but not too shortly after- graduation. Anyways, I turned my radio on and lay on the hood of my car with Stephen Dunn's "Riffs and Reciporcities", a book of prose pairs, for inspiration. (I could write a whole post on the connection between different parts of my car -and I don't mean the carborator- and self esteem, but I won't).

At some point the bugs starting...irking me and I'd finished the poem I wanted to get done, so I left and drove around aimlessly for a while wondering if the radio is has ESP and finds songs that match the stuff I'm thinking about in weird ways. When I finaly got out, it shocked me. My car, bless its soul, has taken to giving me a nasty static shock every time I close the door for reasons I can't understand. I don't think it does this to anyone else, nor do I think I'm wearing particularly static-inducing pants (who would even make those?). Because I talk to inanimate things when I'm in weird moods (I blame my muse), this exchange followed:

Me: "Ow, fuck! Why always with the shocking?"
(At this point I get shocked again as I close the trunk)
Me: "Fuck! Why do you keep doing this?"
(silence)
Me: "Seriously, I don't abuse you. I like you. Why do you have to keep doing that? Ow!" (there was really no reason to say this considering I managed to walk across the parking lot without hurting myself, apparently I was reliving the ordeal)
(no response from the car)
Me: "Fucker" (apparently I was also quite mad)

St. George's Day

Ok, so it was yesterday (right?), who cares. It's a miracle I'm updating this dusty old blog even if it is a day late. Sadly, a combination of online RPG obsessions and a creative writing class that eats up all the prose floating around in my head has...um...slightly decreased the frequency of my posting. But that's not what St. George' day is about; it's about some guy who road around slaying dragons and founding England or some such. But that's what this post is about; it's about how I'm a total geek.

I'm that guy who actually gets excited by discussions about light cones (true story, it made my day) and reads "Science News" with breakfast. So when my physics teacher explained the phenomenon of gravity with cheerios, I got excited. He said "it's like when you've almost finished a bowl of cheerios, and the last few always end up together in the middle". Initialy, I thought he meant that the cheerio's gravity pulled them together through low friction milk and, while that was very cool, I was skeptical. So I went to my father (who's also a physics teacher: nerd is apparently genetic) who assured me it was ridiculous. I let it go, figuring that my teacher isn't terribly bright and often hungry. But as it turns out, a cheerio in milk causes a slight depression in the surface of the liquid, which pulls other floating cheerios towards it, just like Einsteinian gravity curves 4th-dimensional space-time so that objects moving in a straight line in the 4th dimension appear to be curved in 3 dimentions (or something like that). How cool is that? Big words and advanced physics contained in a bowl of cereal (kinda like how I ate captain crunch while reading about phosphonium borate this morning, there's a poem in there somewhere).

(bftsob)

I'm Like an "Uh-Oh Oreo"

So after long deliberation the judges have reached a decision:

No bra with that blouse? So nescesary. (This requires that the bitty in question is hot, and the blouse is sufficiently tight. Regardless of that, we agree with the spirit of the statement.)

No panties with jeans? Not so much. (It was deemed far more unsanitary than it is attractive.)

I also promise that at some point I will write about something not Jay-Z, no promises on when though (and yeah, these are Jay-Z lyrics, I'm not just being chauvanistic.)