Wow, another weekend of getting nothing done. I guess I did some stuff... Uh, I drove for half an hour (woohoo! only 40 and a half more hours to go!) and I did the lit story. And I opened up my science book and looked at it. No, wait... Yeah, I did look. Gah. It's kind of hard to get myself motivated these days. And, as hard as my parents are trying not to distract me, I end up distracting myself, or getting distracted by them despite their best efforts. On Friday, we went out to dinner and shopped at Borders afterwards. I got no homework done. On Sunday, I played Dark Cloud or watched mom playing it, watched about 4 hours of tv, went out to lunch at Joe's Crab Shack, and got one homework assignment done. Today, we headed off for Golden at eleven to see a play, and didn't get back until six hours later. And then I took a semi-voluntary 4 hour nap. And in between all these things I've been doing useless crap like organizing my winamp playlist by time, and changing the color of my alex winamp skin. And, of course, I've been wasting plenty of time listening to all my new music. Urk. No wonder I'm not getting anything done. Of course, it's my fault for making my parents think I have time for long outings and wasting the free time I do have. I just don't see a change. If there is one, it'll be a pain in the butt to pull off. And then I'll have to do work, which will suck as well. So, to change: I get up off my butt and start doing homework. My natural inertia and loathing of transitions will make this part especially difficult. Then, once I make the change, I have to make sure I don't stray from the "good" path. To not change: I keep sitting on my butt and watch on in horror as my grades go down the tubes. I cry, my parents cry, I resign myself to a lifetime of working in a cubicle doing computations involving integrals. *shudder* ... Eh, there probably aren't that many jobs involving integrals that don't pay well, anyways, so I probably don't need to worry about that. And I know I'm not going to work at a fast food place for the rest of my life, because I'd suck at it and they'd fire me. So that leaves, in all likelihood, jobs that interest me or that I'm good at. And that actually wouldn't be too terrible. It's ok, my mom didn't have a college degree and when she met my dad she was making three times as much as he was.

Not that I'm planning on not going to college. Sadly, I'm not even considering dropping IB. It's too late now, really. I mean, I don't want to waste all the effort I've already put in. Might as well just finish it, then go to Boulder where hopefully it'll be a bit easier. There's no guarantee that it'll be easier but you have to hope. The problem with it all is that life isn't easy, and if you want it to be you never accomplish anything. It's only when you work hard that you do anything worthwile. And as much as I hate working hard, I don't want to be a failure in life, either.

Hmmm... even if I write about things other than me on this blog, I always write my opinion about them. Is this bad? Or does it matter? Does it simply show I'm a self-centered person? Is this unnaturally selfish, or is it merely instinctual? Why am I asking all these rhetorical questions? Should I stop? And go to bed? If sleep is nice, does that make the act of sleeping selfish? What is selfishness? Is it expecting people to keep listening to you when all you do is drone on and on and on and on and on and on and...

current mp3: fascination street - the cure

Still using capitalization. Amazing that it's lasted this long. I don't know though, I might just go back to non-capatalization. Partly because it's a pain in the butt to capitalize every I. Did you know that english is the only language that capitalizes the word "I"? Think about it.... je, yo, ich, eu. Japanese doesn't even have capitalization. Maybe that's why I like Japanese so much. Then again, it has two different alphabets, and it uses chinese kanji. And there are over ten thousand kanji. Yeesh. Skip Japanese, I'll stick to English.

I finished the one-page lit paper we were supposed to write, the one in a Hemingway style. I'm not sure it really fulfills the requirements of the assignment, but I like it, so it stays.

Wow, yet again, it's late and I still haven't gone to bed. What's with this? I'm not even staying up on purpose. I just... do stuff, then I look at the clock and it's two and a half hours later than I expected.

Baylee's right, Stuck by Stacie Orrico is awesome.

I think I've been a little overly music-crazy lately. I ordered Radiohead's Pablo Honey used over the net, and it came yesterday. I've listened to it some, not a lot, and I definitely am glad I got it since it has Creep on it. I love that song. I'm liking some of the other stuff on it too, but since it's still in my mom's car and I'm too lazy to fish it out, I've been listening to other stuff. The two cds I bought yesterday: Parachutes - Coldplay, and Past Masters Vol. 2 - The Beatles. I must admit, I'm liking the coldplay one much better, but that's just because there are only four songs on the past masters cd that I didn't already own. Old Brown Shoe, The Inner Light, You Know My Name (Look Up the Number), and Rain. The one I'm most excited about is Rain. I heard it once on the radio, and fell in love with it, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Which makes sense, because apparently it wasn't released on any album. None of these songs were, and there are 15 of them. Most of them are on Beatles One, though. And, it's not like the other 11 are just crappy songs I already own and don't care about. I think Get Back and Don't Let Me Down are slightly different versions (though I couldn't tell the difference on my first listen), and Revolution is a noticeably different version of Revolution 1 from the White Album. So, not a bad cd. If you have this, and vol. 1 (which I need to get), and the other 13 albums, you have "everything that the Beatles, the most successful artists in the history of recorded sound, commercially issued during their remarkable reign." Trust the jacket to be flowery. Yeah, yeah, we know the Beatles were great. Anyways, I need to see what Beatles albums I'm missing. Here is what I do have:

1. Please Please Me
2. With the Beatles
3. Beatles for Sale
4. A Hard Day's Night
5. Help!
6. Rubber Soul
7. Revolver
8. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
9. The Beatles (The White Album)
10. Magical Mystery Tour
11. Let It Be

So, that's 11 out of 13. I'm missing Abbey Road (I should probably look for that) and probably Yellow Submarine counts as the other one. But, ugh, I don't want to buy either one of those. I know Abbey Road must be around somewhere, and Yellow Submarine either has a bunch of songs I already own (from Sgt. Pepper's and MMT) or it has a bunch of instrumental tracks from the movie's score. Still, I really love Hey Bulldog, so there's a reason to buy it. Anyways, that's not all the cds the Beatles/Apple has released. There's also One (which I have) and the three Beatles Anthologies, and the best of 1962-1966 and 1967-1970, which really have no point, but Uncle Scott had the 1962-1966 one. And don't forget all the songs originally written by the Beatles that were sung by other groups, like World Without Love and I Wanna Be Your Man. And the solo work by John, George, Ringo, and Paul. And all the bootlegs and abandoned recordings, and I think they're doing a new version of Let It Be without the instrumentation. So, for those who really want to own every Beatles song: give up hope now. Or, settle for buying the 13 albums, or the 15 albums including past masters, or just the compilation albums, or just One, or the 15 albums plus the 3 anthologies, or just John's solo stuff, or just a best of solo stuff for John, or whatever. You have to draw a line somewhere, but that's true for anything...

Enough of my random babbling about the Beatles. Hmm, did you know I have a Japanese Beatles poster in my room? It says "Yeah, yeah, yeah" in Japanese katakana. Aargh, no, must stop.

Hmmm, it's been about a half an hour since I started typing this. Probably a bad thing.

Well, I drove with mum for the first time today. I drove to the new smoky hill library. This time it's actually on smoky. It's pretty cool. But, ugh, I was parking and I did a really crappy job, so my mom made me repark. And since I wasn't doing a good enough job she took the wheel and turned for me. Aaargh. Although I'm probably giving my dad an ulcer, I think I prefer driving with him, since he clutches the door and not the steering wheel when I screw up.

Man... Blur is having a concert in New York next Sunday (the 16th), but apparently, minutes after announcing it, it was sold out. Great, just great. They're not even that well known in the US, and their show sells out in minutes. No way I'm getting tickets, even if they DO come anywhere near Colorado. Oh, well, it wouldn't be the same without Graham anyways. Still, I swear I'm going to see Damon in concert someday.

current mp3: suteki da ne - rikki (final fantasy 10)

How'd it get so late? Eh.

Today's highlights:

• The extremely odd vocab test provided to us by Parsons.
• The DBQ in history, which I wasn't able to actually complete any of. It's going to kill me on Monday.
• Ditching tok to do my math homework.
• Taking the math test. I think I actually did ok on it.
• Taking tok during eighth and sitting next to Alex.
• Going out to dinner at Chevy's, then to Borders, where I bought two cds.

Now, off to bed. Since it's a weekend I can actually attempt a decent night's sleep. Hooray.

I think I'm opposed to the war on Iraq. I just don't see any point to it. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that there are lots of wonderful reasons to fight Iraq. But how relevant are they to the situation? Some people say that September 11 is why we need to go to war against Iraq. I do not see a strong enough connection to merit a war. Hunting down Osama is one thing, picking fights with every terrorist in the middle east is another. There's too much generalization. Some people demand a war against Iraq because Saddam is a terrorist like Osama. Some are committing hate crimes against Muslims because those who started the attacks were Islamic. Why? A generalization is a model for behavior, a pattern, with some exceptions. If there are too many exceptions to the generalization, however, it ceases to be useful, and becomes harmful. Yes, there should be some kind of generalization made about the September 11 attacks; if there is no generalization, there is no pattern, no predictability, no hope of defending ourselves in the future. But so far all people have been focusing on is religion, which has so many exceptions that it can't be considered an accurate generalization. So, why are we attacking Iraq? What is the connection between Saddam and September 11? Is it that he fits into the same category as Bin Laden, that of the "powerful, anti-American, Muslim leader"? But, does that really give us enough of a reason to attack his country? I don't think there's a strong enough connection. We're going from "perpetrators of the attacks on the world trade center" to "Osama bin Laden" to "powerful terrorist leaders" to "Saddam Hussein" to "Iraq". With each step, the connection gets weaker, and by the time you get to Iraq, it's not strong enough to merit killing people. What is the point of this war? Is it to defend ourselves against another September 11? If, in order to defend ourselves, we attack Iraq, Iraq will counterattack. We will most likely lose more lives in a "preventive war" than we would in another September 11. So, in order to prevent future terrorist attacks against the U.S. - to prevent more deaths - we have to sacrifice the lives of our soldiers, and cause more deaths? That doesn't make sense to me. I don't see the point in a war against Iraq. I can't think of any reason strong enough to be worth all the horrors of war. If any politician would give anything close to a straight answer as to why a war is necessary, or beneficial, or reasonable, or rational, I'd like to hear it. What are the reasons for war? I need to decide for myself whether I think those reasons are strong enough to merit killing people. There are so many reasons not to go to war. The reasons to go to war had better be worth it.

Well, today was interesting. Mostly for what happened after school, but still.

I've been running late in the mornings lately, but dad's discovered this new route that, although it probably takes the same amount of time, involves much less sitting around and waiting in long lines of cars. And is therefore much less stressful. But, anyway, I got to school at about 7:08, so I just went straight to Parson's mobile. Of course, Nathan was the only one there. I don't know what's up with him, he's always the first one there. Eh, but in lit we took a reading quiz, and I proceeded to get in an argument with Kym, which was somewhat entertaining. In science I turned in both labs and the chapter 23 problems, so hopefully that'll improve my grade. In history, yesterday, I was doodling during the movie, and after class Ginsberg "talked" to me about it. He said he didn't say anything because he didn't want to embarass me. I'm like, oh thanks, so instead you get pissed at me. Oh, well, today I sat up at the front of the room with Sean and watched the movie, and when I promised him I wouldn't doodle again (after some prompting) he said, "Good, and you'll keep on being an A-student." Sounds auspicious. Yeah, but that had stressed me out a little.

In tok, we talked about Helen Keller some more, and I got pretty bored. At one point I spaced out, and I guess Doze must have been talking about the differences between languages, because all of a sudden, Chaffin goes, Hey Jessa, explain the differences between Japanese and English. And the class goes silent. Kind of startling. Kind of fun, though, even though I've never taken any Japanese classes apparently I'm the resident expert on it. Hehe. This is why learning outside of school is good, children. But, yeah. Then math as boring as ever, but it was somewhat fun to fiddle with our calculators. And I've found out that trying to type in a message on a calculator when it's turned upside-down is incredibly confusing. Of course, in comp sci, I did nothing. But poor Eddie and Jason have to finish their dossiers by Friday. That's gonna suck. I haven't even started on section B of mine, and I think it goes up to section H, or something. Spanish was much better than normal, since the teacher's been gone the past three days. I mean, not that I don't LOVE the teacher... Cough, cough. Yeah, and yesterday me and Ali and Danny were reminiscing about the elementary school days. Apparently, Mr. Downing had two more kids. A boy, and another girl. And his first kid, the one he had when we were in his class, is in elementary school herself now. It's odd. It's been 6 years. So, that makes sense, but it still feels so odd. How'd we get so old? I remember when the occasional "old kid" would drop by to say hi to a teacher, and those kids were probably in eighth grade, or below. Gah.

After school, realising I had no reason to actually hurry up and leave the class, I kinda lost my steam. 8th period tends to be incredibly boring nowadays, since everybody who doesn't have tok goes home. So there isn't anyone to talk to when I want to stay after school. But, I ended up going to Chaffin's eighth period class. Now that was interesting. Anyways, I go in and I find out that Kevin takes it too. So, after my computer's mouse decided to die, I just spent the rest of the period talking to Kevin, basically. The bad part: apparently, Garrett has that class too. Urk. And since there's no Srav present to scare him off, I had a bit of trouble with that. Aaargh. But, that class looks so fun. The computers are awesome (although, apparently, they're getting replaced next year), and you get to use Maya! Sweet. I told my mom, and she goes, "Why aren't YOU in that class?" I should be. I don't know, if I end up not taking Japanese next year (a quite likely possibility) I might take that class instead. Since, actually, I've been interested in that class since ninth grade. I remember looking at electives, and going, "Ooo, computer graphics! I wanna take that class!" So, maybe I will next year. And, really, the teacher must be so mellow. Rustam was there, too, and he was watching anime on his computer. And someone went to that one homestar runner site (or whatever it's called) using the teacher's computer, and the whole class could see, and hear, the little skits.

Well, anyways, after that I ended up going into the library - too late, of course, to secure myself a seat - so I just did spanish homework for a while. Ugh. I ended up hanging out at the table for the last 20 minutes anyway. Today, it consisted of Nick, Eddie, Tiffany, and Chaffin. So, I had fun talking to Eddie. And whenever Nick got up to deliver some NHS papers, I stole his seat. But, Eddie apparently likes anime - at least, the stuff on cartoon network. It works. He's collected a whole bunch of songs from Gundam Wing, which he's gonna let me listen to once he finds his missing cds, and he watches DBZ. Heh, he told me the ending of the Buu saga. Mwahaha. Course, I didn't completely understand it, seeing as how I never watched any part of the Buu saga... Ok, then there was Japanese club, and basically, Nikki and I spent the whole time listening to Aharon discuss the differences between anime and manga. And Aharon has this "art of xenosaga" book, which is really cool looking. He says he's been playing it for the last five days, and he really likes it. So, I'll have that to look forward to. Once I get my homework done. So, I'll be expecting to do that after I finish college.