Health was quite interesting on Friday. You see, we had a substitute, a very interesting substitute. This is how the class began: “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. EXCUSE ME, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Payne. Payne. That’s P-A-Y-N-E.” He spent the period telling students off for slurring, when you could barely make out his own mumbling. It was funny at first when I didn’t realize he was being serious about his name. I originally thought he was trying to be intimidating - “My name in Pain.” But alas, he spelled it out for us.

Theatre CHS 2004-2005 is over! No! Ubu is gone. West Side Story is gone. Dessert Theatre is gone. The Conference is gone. 1/4 of my acting time at CHS is gone, and it will never come back. The Conference went surprising well however - I thought it was going to be terrible, but no one forgot their lines, the lights worked, and it was even a good audience. Acting is going to be fun next year though. Plus, everyone is probably going to be in one class and we won’t have to spend time arguing about which Intro period in worse. The plays are going to be so weird without Tim, Jesse, Chris, etc.

I would like to complain about the “pranks” that occurred yesterday. First - to the guy that ran across the balcony in his underwear: Thanks for making them ring the bell ten minutes early and make me miss my drink! I depend on those last ten minutes so I can drink with leisure, and you took that away from me! Next - to whoever rang the fire alarm… twice: I was about to finish my brilliant, almost magical, presentation about titration in Chemistry when you destroyed my 5th period. Hello, we were going to tie-dye yesterday! *mumble* selfish idiots.

Goodbye Evans, Alex, Colin, Jesse, Tim, Sarah, Chris, Paul, Maxx, Hannah. And with that, I end my depressing blogging for the moment.

Yesterday, we happened to watch a movie on nuclear fusion in Chemistry. Ok, that’s fine and all, but you see this movie must have been about 30 years old, and expressed some interesting viewpoints. First off, it called the journalists that worked on the 3 Mile Island story irresponsible and wrong for spreading fear over nuclear power. Let’s see, journalists are wrong for alerting the public to an incident that could quite possibly have been disastrous? Oh, yeah, seems right to me (and I’m sure it sounded right in line to be accepted into the public school system). Another one - “we will not let the Soviets infest the West with Communism”. “And that’s why it’s so important for us to stay ahead of the Soviets in the technology race”. Furthermore, it said that the risk of any nuclear incident with a nuclear power plant was almost impossible. It spoke of building a fusion reactor in the future which would provide a controlled release of energy. “The chance of a meltdown is virtually impossible, and any incident would be completely controlled by the reactor walls”.

Let me paraphrase: “There’s no need to worry about nuclear power. Despite the close calls we just described, as long as everything works the way the want it to, no danger will come to you. The immature journalists that are trying to present the side of the story we don’t tell you are being disrespectful to our American Empire. Besides, if we don’t produce it, the Soviets will, and we can’t let them win.”

Words for next week-
Titration, Tie-Dye, Renaissance, Imperfect, Oh oh oh, Explication, Exam Review, Miyazaki Hype, “Culminating Activity”.

Well, after two months, Dessert Theatre is finally over. It was so depressing yesterday - all of the seniors were leaving and that was their last production at CHS. I felt so bad for Tim, Jesse, and Sarah, they looked so sad. At least the last performance that we did on Saturday was the best one we’d ever done. Best part of the show: when Mark bit off several stuffed animal’s tails and sent stuffing flying everywhere. A more unpleasant part was when I decided to take a bit (well, more like three) out of a banana that we had been using for over a week as a prop and was by that point quite brown, on stage. I could still taste it when I got home at 12:30.

I’m sorry, but my health teacher really cannot be forgiven any longer. Yesterday she showed us her knowledge of health insurance by talking about how IBM and Proctor and Gamble will make you pay less for insurance if you don’t smoke. Wait a minute, IBM is going to do what? A few weeks ago we were instructed to read a section in our health books. Point of interest: a “Myth/Fact” table which listed muscle turning into fat in an inactive person as a myth. Now I quote from that same day, “And that’s why it’s so important to exercise regularly - that muscle’s going to turn into fat”. “But Ms. Midolo, our book said it didn’t!”. “No, no, it really does turn into fat”.

The school year is winding down, and I started that weeks ago. Worst case scenario, I’m out of there in 11 actual days. But all of the seniors are leaving! This can’t happen, don’t make them go! Besides, what do I have to look forward to this summer? Summer English journals, summer PE, summer heat, summer crap! The way I see it, summer is like the weekend. Regardless of whether you’ve done your homework or not, you still have school very soon. Thursday however is a wonderful day. Intro and health are tomorrow, so there is rarely much homework to do, so it’s like a weekend without the impending school week. But the year can’t be over, it must not end! It must not end…

I’m finally done with my book cover for English! I did it of course of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (what else?), and because it was a graphic novel, I had to draw the cover imitating Miyazaki’s style (well, Mr. Evans didn’t say the exactly, but that’s how I interpreted it). Thing took way too long - I stopped counting after about 15 hours (I’m serious - and this isn’t even worth a large part of our grade I think). But, I sent it Kinko’s today and hopefully I can pick it up tomorrow.

In other news, I got a DVD burner! I’ve wanted one for years, but back then they cost upwards of $400, so yeah. It really is a wonderful thing though - if you buy a new hard drive, it costs you about $1 for every gigabite. DVD’s on the other hand, you can buy for about 40 cents each. I warn anyone who has a Dell 2400 however - do not buy a Pioneer DVD burner! The tray is so large that you have to file off the cover plate on the computer so that you can open it. Well, that’s what happens I guess when you buy the cheapest one.

I’ve been really stretched for post ideas lately - the year’s winding down and so is my attention span. I’ve been getting slightly paranoid recently though. It seems like everyone else has tons of projects and reports and whatnot that are keeping them busy, but I don’t. This could either be because I have different classes than other people, but it could also be from me completely forgetting some big English paper or something. At any rate, less than 15 school days left! Then comes the summer. Short days full of English reading, summer PE, and long hours in the July Virginia weather cutting the grass. Sometimes, I wish the last few weeks of school could last forever (that is, assuming that I haven’t forgotten some project).

#m

So just in case none of you noticed that my blog was missing for a few weeks, I should now tell you that I accidentally deleted my blog. It was the stupidest thing I’ve done in a while, and I will tell you now that the first thing I did when Graham of Blogger Support emailed me back was make - not one, but two - backups! Arg, I navigate around my keyboard way too quickly for my own good. Blogger, I thank you (again) for your wonderful work, and I swear I shall never desert thee to TypePad.

What’s happened to me in the void? Basically a whole lot of nothing. Unless you would call learning that I have a two line solo in Dessert Theatre traumatic, otherwise you’re fine. Speaking of desserts, I have found two spiders in my lunch in the past two weeks. One was over a centimeter long, and the other was quite small, but I’m beginning to wonder how many insects I have eaten in my life.

I just had dinner at Miyako, a wonderful Japanese Restaurant on the downtown mall. The best sushi, teriyaki chicken, and steamed rice I’ve ever had. Quite expensive though, so I think this may be a very, very, very, rare treat for me.

#m (a.k.a. Gustave le Chatueur)