Pre-November Doom and Gloom

Math class free periods are pretty dull when there's nobody to talk to. And I quote:

why the hell why can't you all just never always
I'm not well acquainted with this cheery cheerful banter
banter is a closed door. I ramble and wander through the hallways looking for a way out of this goddamned bastard house there has to be a way something out there there has to
some people I think maybe have found it
but they're not telling. lots of reasons.
why why why and the hands my hand isn't there or not yet all pushing helping lifting reaching and music the music
November has truth more pure and fine and cold. August has memories.
ow ow ow my arm fucker shut it hurts
no way this can last forever but can any thing
your eyes your eyes -- veiled but I feel them faintly
it knows too much and I know too little
damn

you're a walker or a mocker

can I be both and neither?

I never want to leave this love

but I do want to leave this world

I guess that makes me pretty stupid not knowing after all my hair is everywhere

dandelion haloes

Oh, and if my recurring bursts of enthusiasm for Chopin nocturnes has led you to wonder what exactly I've been going on about, you might like to check out the one I'm playing this year at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MzrAGZHDvo.

The hands will be back.

I am eyebrow retarded.

Looks like the Sparrow here's gone and got herself something new to talk about. World take caution, because Alicia has very kindly offered to try to teach me how to draw.

I figured I'd let you guys in on the training process (seeing as about 25% of you guys is already part of the training process) by posting periodic updates on my training. So here, without needing to abandon my last shred of self-respect because that shred has long since been lost, is the product of the first lesson. Click for bigger.

All right, so I won't be joining the ranks of the great romantic I mean impressionist masters anytime soon, but I think even this is a step above my customary doodles and wing people. It's obviously not finished yet, but already it could use a fair amount of cleaning up: the nose is rather wider and more bulbous than a human's ought to be, the face remains disconcertingly androgynous (recognizable as female, but only just), and the chin and cheeks look like the subject needs to bathe once in awhile.

However, let us examine the compelling evidence for this lesson having helped me: it's fucking shaded. For me, a pencil has always been something you sharpened after you broke it crossing out the last three paragraphs of your work, and only after you broke it crossing out the last three paragraphs of your work. Now here I am learning that the side of the pencil can be useful too. Whoodathunk.

In other news: My brother's guppy Diana gave birth to twenty little fry on Sunday. We wondered for awhile whether the one that we'd found was going to be an only child, then we found three more, and then it all went 101 Dalmatians. All I've got to say is that we better be careful we don't wind up with guppies in jars all over the house, like in that story we read in primary school.

And yes, she is named after the moon and fertility goddess (Roman equivalent of Artemis). The other three are Athena, Venus and Poseidon.

Too much too much.

Drug notebook time!

I love those drug awareness books. They're the perfect size for note-taking in science, brain-bleeding in math, and ripping pages out of to turn into WWI letters for english. Plus they have really cool high school kids on the front so we can really relate to the message.

This year, I made sure to get the one with the guy on it. An attractive specimen, as you can see:

Nevertheless, I feel he owes me a huge debt, as my slight alterations to his costume have made him about 1000 times cooler:

From possibly-toxic teenager to SUPER AWESOME SPACE PILOT in just a few easy steps. Amazing what a couple of Sharpies can do in the capable hands of a nerd girl.

I can't think of anything clever.

Cereal Battles

There are too many freaking towns in England. All I need is one largish town-like-agglomeration for my WWI letter, and I'm just far too overwhelmed by the possibilities to choose one. My dad's old road atlas of the islands has not helped at all; the maps look like paintings by Jackson Pollock.

(Click for close-up. Not that it'll help.)

It escapes me why anyone would turn to this book for reference. It also escapes me how so many people manage to fit into Europe, and still have room for fields and forests and the like. I gave up after twenty minutes of poring over the incomprehensible atlas, an exercise that only served to reinforce one of my core tenets: I am getting off this planet as soon as possible.

I suppose that's why reincarnation has never particularly appealed to me as an idea. I really don't want to be here forever.

We'll let my absurdly itchy feel alone for awhile, as I turn to the reason I started writing this: my cereal issues. Not too much depresses me more than the idea of being born again as a dog, but cereal is definitely one of those few things. The reason, my friends, is that I am very, very easily bored, especially with food.

But maybe you've been there. You know when you get a new box of cereal, and maybe you've tried it before and maybe you haven't, but the point is you get it and you open it up and for the first few days everything is great. Then, after three or four mornings of eating it, you start to get really tired of it, but to the point where even the thought of it makes you feel nauseous. Fucking honey bunches of oats, I hate you.

And here's the thing: no amount of different types of cereal in the house will solve the problem. We have about fifteen different types of cereal in the house right now, counting hot porridge and the Froot Loops that we keep buying despite the fact that none of us has ever successfully consumed a complete bowl. It doesn't matter. Every morning is a stressful battle of wills between me and a couple of artificially-preserved grain mixes.

No, I can't just eat toast. Cereal is so much more convenient.

By the way, I don't know if any of you have met my latest favourite:

I had some aspirations for this post, but I realize it's all lost now. I'll just finish up with a quote about my favourite composer. Again.

...We must conceive of music, then, as always going on in this pleasant household, and of the fond parents violently distressed when they saw that their infant son reacted with floods of tears to the sound of music. They thought he hated it, and it was only when he began to pick out tunes on the piano that they realized he had been crying for joy. They had a hysteric on their hands, not a music hater.

-"Frédéric-François Chopin", Men of Music, Brockway and Weinstock

EDIT: I forgot to mention my brother's latest injuries! After having his right hand stepped on a week ago and displacing a tendon or something, he was tackled during a game of touch football last Thursday and wound up breaking his left clavicle! Word on the street is he's resolved to stay together and quit getting hurt, but some are skeptical about his promises.

And speaking of promises, elections are tomorrow, and I hope all you registered voters reading this have been thinking long and hard and intelligently about all the candidates. Personally, I have to confess a certain bias in favour of the old Rhinoceros Party. They really should have won a seat or two. There's also a monty python sketch about elections that the rhino party probably lifted some ideas from but I promised myself I'd stop bringing that stuff up on my blog.

NEW EDIT: I just thought you should know that I drew the saddest little wing guy ever on my desk in English last week. Bye.

Stupid hat.

Black, White, Rainbow

Alex: Yeah, I have to see a doctor about these migraines.
Me: I think it's all in your head.

This is why mathematicians should generally not write books.

Find the interval for which the distance that twice a number is from seven is always less than or equal to eleven.

Ridiculous. Instead of attempting to decode the problem, I elected to make a list of stuff I want in my Drug Awareness notebook. Here's a sample:

-white top hat
-white dress pants
-long white gloves
-rainbow trench coat

I suppose some of these merit explanation. For as long as I can remember, I've wanted one of those ridiculous long black trench coats that are neither warm enough nor cool enough and serve mainly to hide things under (watching The Matrix in English last year did not help this in the slightest). However, I really don't think that black is the creepiest colour someone can wear; white wins by a landslide.

In the last year, I've managed to pick up two very important additions to my monochromatic wardrobe. I bought a white blazer (blazer-like thing, really) in France and a black coat in July. And, apparently being blessed with the kind of good fortune a Scot should appreciate, I paid about $30 for each.

Several complications arose out of this. One, I swiftly realized that the best (creepiest?) thing to wear with a white blazer is white pants. Two, Kelsey had actually already (something like half a year before) purchased a (nicer) black coat, and you know it's unthinkable that two people in a group should be wearing black coats (no, but really. it would be a little odd). Three, I figured that the only thing neater than a black top hat is a white top hat.

Unfortunately, rainbow trench coats do not seem to exist. It's really too bad: just think of all the symbols something like that would combine.

Later in math, I was given back the notorious questionnaire in which I compared zero to the forces of darkness and the portal to a parallel world of emptiness.

Q. Why does zero matter when solving equations?
A. How can there be something without nothing? Once you begin to count, to understand the concept of 'some', you must follow that up with an understanding of the concept of 'none'. Zero is this concept.

made you look!