Dawson vs. Friendswood (Weekend: Part 2)

Dawson High School is our big rival in practically everything. Let me rephrase that: we are Dawson's big rival in practically everything. Because frankly, we don't really care about Dawson... but Dawson dedicates a whole page of their school paper to what we do.

Friday night, we played Dawson on our turf. We won. It was awesome. However, Dawson has way more school spirit than we do--their version of the Blue Crew is super interactive with the fans, the student body never sits down, and their boys are practically naked. I kinda wish Friendswood was more like that.

My best good friend smuggled in a couple Dawson kids to our student body, and we subsequently infiltrated the visitor side. After a few minutes, we walked away, feeling guilty and ashamed because of their school spirit.

Pictures?

Why doesn't our mascot stand on its head?

Why don't we have garbage can drummers?

The Dawson kids that we smuggled onto our side. They're pretty cool.

Good sportsmanship!

Our remarkably less spirited Blue Crew. No offense, but...

Interact picked up trash after the game. Sports fans are seriously disgusting.

This is about half of the trash from the game. Lovely, eh?

Physics Pizza Partayyy (Weekend: Part 1)

I've had a super busy weekend, and I've been wanting to blog about it every minute. So prepare to be bombarded by blog posts.

We have pizza parties in Physics. It's a super productive class.

Is this real life?

There's a group of guys at my school (mainly in band) that coordinate outfits every so often. Masculine, I know. Last week, the came to school as old men (although they looked more like tacky tourists), and today they dressed up as frat boys. I'll try to get pictures next time.

Anyway, when they dressed up as frat boys, they wore two polo shirts, plaid shorts, visors, and sunglasses. A kid that's in my Choir, Economics, and Physics classes brought AXE and applied it liberally throughout the day.

I'll elaborate--he brought a one ounce can and used the entire thing by the end of our 7th period economics class. I don't have a major problem the smell of AXE, but being exposed to that large of a quantity kinda gets you high. I'm not kidding. I had a major headache, couldn't focus on the teacher was saying, and could hardly comprehend the text. It was incredibly frustrating. One of the kids that sat right by the AXE kid was cringing, so he moved to the other side of the room. My teacher told the AXE kid that he wasn't allowed to wear obnoxious scents to her class again.

Today is a good day.

I was typing up my essay, finishing my Georgia Tech app, when I realized that the September ACT scores are released today. So, I opened up a new tab, logged into my ACT account: lo and behold, I got a 35 composite on the ACT. I'm pretty sure I'm still asleep. Last time I took it, I misbubbled and got a 35 on Math, a 34 on English, a 23 on Reading, and a 31 on Science, with a 31 English/Writing composite. This time, I got a 35 on Math, a 34 on English, a 34 on Reading,and a 35 on science.

Sorry for gloating... I'm kinda pleased right now.

Anyway, here is my second college essay. Once again, if you plagiarize this, I'll probably eat you.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams

Cliff Mabry set me on the path to enlightenment. He was my semi-Buddhist freshman Humanities teacher with an extreme case of ADHD, who spoke with incredibly slurred speech patterns and had arguably the most cryptic handwriting in existence. He “forgot” to censor the nudity in Romeo and Juliet, explained to us that green M&Ms are aphrodisiacs, and advised us to try snuff. I matured substantially that year. In spite of the questionable example that he set, Mr. Mabry taught our class so much—he taught us to live life to the fullest, and breathe in every small detail that life has to offer. That lesson, the lesson of passion, has remained with me longer than any property of Calculus or law of Physics. Most people don’t get it, though. Saints and poets maybe… they do some.

His class opened my eyes in so many ways—An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge reiterated how transient life is, and how little people appreciate it. Mr. Mabry showed us the brief film as a method of supporting the philosophy of his mantra, The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Willams. And no piece could reinforce it better. When the ticking of the watch became loud and ominous, when each individual blade of grass became visible, life became infinitely more transient. The idea that people only consider how precious life is when they no longer have it struck a chord with me. What good is life if you only appreciate it when it’s gone?

Personally, the fact that so few people pay attention to the beauty of life arouses as much emotion within me as life itself. Take, for example, stars. So many people see stars as pretty flecks of light, but so few stop and admire the beauty of the infinite universe. That kills me. Part of the issue may lie in technology: man has made everything that anyone could possibly want to know or see readily available at the touch of a button. Thus, people are hardly ever forced to look away from their cell phones and computer monitors to see true beauty. Technology also increases the pace of life: people adopt more jobs as technology progresses, gradually morphing into workaholic busybodies. They have to do something, they have to go somewhere, they simply don’t have time to look at how beautiful the moon is or how strange that bird is. But eventually, they’ll regret it. According to Erik Erikson’s eight stages of life, people spend the majority of their life preparing for the productive phase of their life, middle adulthood. Afterward, people are either proud of their experiences or regret them—at this point, most people wonder “if the trip was worth it” and realize that ultimately, the pursuit of success is of little importance, as practically everybody that lives to the stage of late adulthood ends up in a wheelchair, contemplating their life and playing bingo.

Of course, my opinion on the subject is probably biased—I was dragged into late adulthood as a freshman in high school by my crazy English teacher. Don’t get me wrong, the pursuit of success is as much a part of life as regret is; however, in the end, the time spent “smelling the roses” along the way matters more than the time spent accumulating meaningless monetary wealth. After all, so much depends upon a red wheel barrow.

Make 'Em Laugh!

This morning, I had an audition for district choir, which is why I was awake at 5:00 am on a Saturday. I got back home from the audition at about 5:00 pm, at which point, I tutored a pal of mine in Calculus, went to Comedy Cabaret, than watched the Saturday Night Live season 36 premeire.

For those who don't know, Comedy Cabaret is the annual improv show that the high school theater department puts on. It's kinda like Who's Line is it Anyway?. Generally, it's pretty hilarious, though it does have its dull moments. Still, it was funnier than Saturday Night Live today. Sorry, I'm a critic.

Speaking of SNL, that was weak. Seriously. The hat sketch and Actor II Actor were moderately funny, but the rest of it was either bland, revolting, lewd, or a combination of all three. Don't let me down! (But I do love it when they sneak previous cast members onto the show...)

Anyway, here are a couple pictures of ComCab:

I'm going looney.

On Wednesday, the moon was the brightest it has been for over twenty years because Autumnal Equinox coincided with the full moon. And it was crazy bright--you couldn't even make out a distinct shape. If you didn't catch it, it's okay... there will be another one in 2029.



In Calculus, my table is making it our personal mission to sample the strangest foods in existence. Typically, our class vegan brings us various meat substitutes and I supply the craisins, hummus, and assorted vegetables.

On Thursday, we were talking about the super harvest moon, and Winston, the Chinese kid, brought up that his family eats moon cakes on the autumnal equinox. I replied that I didn't know what they were.

And so today, four of the five champs at our table (excluding the vegan, as there is a giant egg yolk in the middle) sampled a moon cake. Delicious. I recommend.

Little Orphan Antigone

After we finished Oedipus, we began reading Antigone, the third tragedy in the Oedipus trilogy. Because my class is so boring when they play emotional characters, I volunteered to read for Antigone. I love this play. Antigone is crazy passionate, and a total reb--she's basically the coolest person ever. My English teacher said that the part suits me well.

A large part of the play is intended to be sung, so I channeled my inner Sinead O'Connor. This was really funny, because another character sang his lines in a jazzy-bluegrass style. The contrast was absolutely perfect, although I couldn't focus on what was actually being said. I'll try to get it on video and post it later--hope fully we'll sing again.

I was oddly not nervous, and I have just about the worst nerves in existence. However, I do sit in the front row, so I didn't dwell on the fact that there were 38 other people in the room, some of whom I know sing far better than I do.

So... Many... Projects...

I have a ridiculous amount of long-term projects. I have to build a trebuchet and write a "historical reference guide" about its history (I fully intend doing so in children's book format), research the economic structure of Papua New Guinea, and am officially in charge of the Choir's (Curious George-themed) homecoming float. In addition, I still have to finish applying to eight schools, Air Force ROTC, Army ROTC, blog, and get cracking on my duct tape prom dress.

Did I forget to mention that? I've decided to make my prom dress out of duct tape this year for a scholarship competition. This is my general idea:

Based on Blair Waldorf's prom dress from Gossip Girl, by Marchesa. Except this one isn't as awkwardly assymmetrical, will have feathering all around, is red, black, beige, and yellow, and is made of duct tape.

I want it to be crazy-detailed, so I'll probably cover the entire dress in the feather pattern. Right now, I'm playing with textures, and I've managed to crochet duct tape. I'll probably put pictures of that up eventually.

Oh, and I'd like to give a shout-out to my super crazy awesome AP Economics teacher, Ms. Berryhill. I gave her the web address to the blog, and I really hope she's reading this. She told me to write her a letter about myself at the beginning of the year, so I drew this comic strip. Click on it to see a larger picture. Go ahead, click.

Page 1

Page 2

My AP Econ buddy, Allison, is supposed to start blogging today, and I'm excited. Allison Carlin, I'll be stalking following you. I promise.

Death in the Great Hall from the Odyssey (Zombie-fied)

My brother and two other procrastinators were assigned to work together on a project for their freshman humanities class. I ended up filming and doing most of the editing. I'm kinda proud of myself.

It's probably really hard to follow unless you've read the Odyssey. I don't feel like explaining, so I'll leave it in its ambiguity. No, zombies are not part of the original work.

I've Got School Spirit, How 'Bout You?

I made this video. It's pretty good. I'm pretty much the best fan ever.