Captain's Log, Stardate 11012.30

What a lot of people may not realize about me is that, deep down where no one dares to look for fear of losing any and all sanity belonging to them by accidentally glimpsing the dark mass of chaos commonly referred to as my "soul," I have a unintentionally secret love for Star Trek. As far as I'm concerned, I grew up watching TNG and Voyager in much the same way that my mom grew up on the original Star Trek series - in fact, assuming she started watching sometime in the first or second season, we started watching Star Trek at roughly the same age - despite the fact that we didn't even have cable/satellite TV until I was at least eight. Though, it's entirely possible that I didn't actually start watching Star Trek until I was a few years older, given that the majority of my life before I entered high school all seems to have bled together to create one big "what the fuck is this?" memory.

My fondness for the series shows through in a small dose whenever the topic of why our parents chose our names comes up. I pretend to be vaguely embarrassed by it when I claim that I was named after a Star Trek character. This is a lie in two senses: (a) I'm not really named after Deanna Troi according to my mother, apparently she simply liked the name, and (b) I'm not really  embarrassed about it. On the bright side, the show's been around long enough to make my lie completely plausible. 

Perhaps it was Star Trek's influence on my childhood that eventually led to the dream of a post-apocalyptic world where Martians are seeking refuge on Earth only to be turned away when the humans admit that Earth isn't habitable for those present, let alone 3 million more individuals, which leads to the two races banding together and sending crew out to space in search of a new home for both peoples? Said dream, which occurred at least a year past, led to a story idea that I'd abandoned for a long time. But I picked it up again yesterday, because I- I don't even know why, really - and I have been tweaking it to make it better ever since. 

So, I was doing research for this story. Research for me, generally, consists of having random thoughts like, "I wonder which scene of Romeo and Juliet the internet thinks would be the best one to crash a UFO during?" or, "Is there an official sound for the noise the doors in Star Trek make when the open/close?" Neither of these questions were answered by Google, and only served to distract me in the long run. 

I realize today's post is severely lacking in humor. That's because I'm currently failing at humor as a result of my immense anticipation of watching the first episode of Voyager in approximately thirty seconds. Also, I've no patience for Grammar, Spelling, or Punctuation at the moment.

Vampires Suck

My father and I have never had the greatest of relationships. It's always been less of a father/daughter thing and more of a brother-sister/sister-brother thing. That is to say: my fifty-four-year-old father acts, at times, alarmingly like (1) a thirteen-year-old girl and (b) an eight-year-old boy, and I tend to alternate between (a) generic teenaged tomboy and (2) unamused older sibling, depending on his proximity and how he's acting. Obviously I love him enough to tolerate him and make an attempt to be less than openly hostile when he's invaded my room for the third time in the last hour or woken me before noon to tell me which movie he rented because it's oh so imperative that I know immediately. I definitely love him enough to feel less than bad when he buys me things because buying me a Christmas gift when we've decided to skip Christmas is definitely going to earn him a permanent place in my good graces. 

Often enough he has the gall to invade my territory (my room) and harass me under the guise of wanting to know what I'm watching or no guise at all. I tend to think he comes to harass my cat, but I sometimes think he does it to get at both of us, like a vindictive little brother. I try to be quiet and make subtle hints when he does this. For example, if Squeaker, my fat cat (who harbors an intolerance for males, particularly him), is in the room and is yelling at him, obviously telling him to get the fuck out so she can sleep, I'll be all like, "I think she's telling you to go away. :/" When she's not there, I put up with him as best I can: monosyllabic answers and pretending to be greatly preoccupied with whatever I'm doing. 

"Oh, what are you playing?" "Final Fantasy Ten." Awkward silence while I put on a face that says, "I'm focused on this ba-. Fuck it's over. Okay, this one is the one I'm focused on. Go away." "Okay, well, I'm going to go watch <insert movie that I obviously do not want to watch here>, want to come?" "No." "Okay." And he makes a retreat, leaving me with the satisfaction of having won and knowing what the words "sweet freedom" truly mean.*

This morning he woke me up to tell me that he'd rented Vampires Suck and the new Resident Evil movie. It was before noon, about an hour before it to be exact, and I was a little annoyed, despite the fact that I'd already been awake for several minutes trying to get back to sleep and pretend that Christmas Vacation isn't swiftly coming to an end. Nonetheless, I was up. 

About ten minutes later, I go out into the kitchen is search of food - a task which, as of late, seems to be a contest of wills between me, my stomach, and the fridge - and he comes in proclaiming that he cannot watch Vampires Suck. I talk him into finishing it, and even seal the deal by committing myself to watching it with him, despite the fact that I wanted to get in some prime time with Final Fantasy X (which I'm replaying, because I never did manage to kick Tidus's dad's ass) before lunch time. I really have no problem with the task, as I enjoyed that movie the first time I saw it, and expected to catch any of the funny things I missed. I even half-expected him to enjoy it; I mean, he's seen Twilight and it's sequels, and there should have been plenty of things that he could laugh at. 

Alas, I can't have a cool dad who looks at Twilight and says, "What is this shit? That's not even a vampire." No, I have to have the one that cries at sappy movie endings, watches movies like Bandslam twenty or more times, and openly declares Twilight to be one of his favorites. Yup. I suppose I should just be happy that he (a) doesn't participate in the Teams (I'm Team Van, by the way) and really has no idea what they are and (b) doesn't want his own Edward/Jacob. At least, I hope the latter is true, because otherwise everything I've ever known will be rendered a lie, and my sanity will shatter into a thousand million tiny pieces never to be returned to its original state again. Or I'll change my name and move to a remote region of Africa to prove myself and get accepted into a tribe where no one knows of Twilight or my father. 

*Yes, that was a horrible, horrible abuse of conventions, and I apologize profusely, but not soprofusely as to give you the impression that I actually regret anything.

The Scariest Hour Of My Life

Certain people in this world come pre-programmed to endure certain varieties of horror without batting an eyelash. I've always considered myself to be one of them, with few exceptions. After nearly a decade of watching scary movies ( Cujo, the original The Shining, It, Rose Red, House on Haunted Hill, Jeepers Creepers 1 and 2, Thirteenth Ghost, etc) and absorbing the gore that comes with them, I have long since reached the point where blood, dismemberment, maiming, and horrific deaths of all kinds simply do not bother me when I see them in a movie. I'm almost tempted to say that, if someone were to be killed horrifically in front of me, I'd scream only because the chances of my being next would then be raised by a large percentage.

At least, I used to think that.

Yesterday started relatively normally, aside from the fact that I left the house ten minutes early under the impression that I was late only to arrive to a school full of near-empty hallways, which only served to further convince me that I was late beyond all reasonable doubt. I was so late, that even the chronically tardy stragglers were in class before me, and I'd be thrown into a furnace for it. Instead of curling into a ball and crying, like a less mature me might have done, I sought out one of the teachers involved in my first class. She wasn't available, but I did find Suzie in the Junior/Senior Lounge Study Center, and she assured me that I was not, in fact, late.

I was almost looking forward to PE that day. This year, for whatever reason, I found Volleyball vaguely enjoyable, and I was looking forward to teaming up with Steven to get our asses kicked by the other team, again. What can I say? It's not whether you win or lose, its whether you actually get to hit the ball before the other team scores or not.

Instead of volleyball, however, we were informed that we would be playing dodge-ball with the other P.E. class. Now, given that the other class is, on the average, 235% more buff than our class, had an advantage in numbers, and our class is mostly girls, I should have been more worried than I was. Instead, my mind went back to elementary school, where dodge-ball was fun, and getting hit in the face was against the rules. Back to when the idea that dodge-ball was too violent for school was simply preposterous.

So I took off my shoes with the rest of my class and climbed the stairs to the mat room, where dodge-ball games are customarily held. Only now do I see the symbolism in the removal of the shoes; its bears an undeniable link to the fact that those in Hitler's internment camps were deprived of their shoes shortly before being gassed, or furnaced, or shot. Yes, we, the puny, weak, fairly intelligent class, were being prepared for our mass funeral. The jocks and various other muscle-heads of the opposing class had planned our genocide to a T.

We entered the mat room, and, because there were balls flying around already, we all huddled in the corner - except me, who went to the far edge near a wall instinctively - and waited for the teachers to tell us what we were doing. Five seconds passed. The words, "One Step," entered my ears, approximately half a second before the word, "Go!"

My entire class was still huddled in the corner. Balls were flying everywhere at speeds exceeding mach 5, which should be impossible for a dodge-ball. Faces intercepted balls with no fouls. Students who complained were told to, "suck it up," and be a man about it. I cowered against the wall, wishing to be hit so I could sit down and protect my face properly, but fearing the inevitable falcon-punch of a ball that would make me regret having been born.

They were merciless, cold-hearted bastards. There were a few who would throw balls as hard as possible at the wall to scare the rest of us, as though we were rabbits and they were trying to kill us without harming our soft, white fur so they could skin us and sell our furs for cheap, blood-stained profits. I thought, This is exactly like war. And if it had continued much longer, or, if I'd actually bee nailed in the face, like I was afraid I would be, I honest to god would have crawled into a corner and cried until it stopped.

They weren't trying to hurt us; they were trying to break us. They weren't just stabbing us with pencils; no, they were shoving pencils into our chest cavities and leaving them there.

I may have dramatized this a little, but it was, honest to god, the scariest hour of my life. 

I Hate My Life

It will be the last day before winter break in approximately fourteen hours; at some point between now and then, I fully expect my entire being to explode into a million billion bloody pieces, preferably as I'm walking into my first class of the day, so I can at least have the pleasure of knowing that my last moments of existence made a huge mess all over all the people in that class that I enjoy being around, scarring them for life and, possibly, setting off a chain reaction of spontaneous student explosions through out the school, as they go to their next classes and subsequently self-destruct. 

Why would I do this, you ask? Well, that's simple. They're called the senior project and the media project. One is so I can graduate. If someone says, "Senior Project," and you don't immediately want to cry, your school isn't doing it right. The media project is a huge part of my writing 121 grade, not as big as the final, but still important. If someone says media project, and you don't immediately want to cry, you probably didn't choose a topic that you remember almost nothing about. I want to cry whenever either is mentioned, as well as when I'm reminded that all my friends (well, the ones that have yet to graduate) and I will graduate and it's entirely possible I'll never see some of the more amusing ones again. Collegeland is vast, and once you get separated from your party there, your chances of finding them again are generally low. Therefore, saying, "I have to do my media project, and I have to do my senior project so I can graduate," is a sure-fire way to make me spontaneously combust.

As you recall, I was forced to go to the job fair on Tuesday. Now, I know I dreaded the event like a dog dreads the vet. In fact, the entire bus ride I couldn't shut up, because I felt that if I turned the talking switch off for even a second it'd be stuck that way. I kept expecting myself to explode, or faint, or curl into a ball and die. None of these happened. In fact, after the "inspirational" speech, which I found to be rather stupid, and trick-or-treating at the college booth set up for the career fair thing, I found myself inexplicably calm. I was still freaked, and if I hadn't had Mason, who looked quite dashing in his job fair attire, Ben, who looked less dashing, Kayren, who looked like Kayren, and, occassionally, Steven and Lucas, who both looked relatively attractive that day, around to keep me calm and entertained, I probably would have found a way to die in a horrible accident before they could force me to do an interview. 

The strangest part was when I was in line for the interview, and a slot opened up, and I threw on my confidence face and walked calmly over and aced the interview. My interviewer said I did very well and that he had issues coming up with constructive criticism. And suddenly it was over, and I was like, "What just happened?" And got in line again so I could do my second interview. I was looking forward to it, because for all I knew the first one was a fluke, and I wanted to make sure it wasn't. But I never got the chance. Suddenly, I was insulted that they weren't letting me do my friggin' interview. FUCK this. So I ate the candy I obtained from the career fair and stole Mason's tie. Because I was angry, and wanted to look spiffy like him.

According to some of my guy friends, I was actually acting somewhat like a girl and it was scaring them. Win.

I'm on a roll

Third post this weekend. Who's on a roll? Me, that's who.

Today is Sunday. Normally that would mean that I have to do all of my homework, RIGHT NOW, because I have class tomorrow, and that means I have homework to do because I've been putting it off all weekend in favor of the internet and video games. But I'm going to be missing the last half of my day, the half for which all my homework exists, tomorrow so I can go observe an elementary school classroom. I get to go to school for three classes, two of which I hate, and then I get to go observe a teacher teaching her  fifth-graders. I will get recess. 

Then, on Tuesday, I will be forced to go to the job fair, as I've stated before. I imagine my morning will go something like this:

I woke up this morning and pulled on nicer, businesslike clothing, I'm not sure why, I just did. Then I went to school early and talked with my Warrior 104 teacher in the lunch room. She gave me a folder and told me to go to the auditorium and wait for instructions. In spite of my curiosity, I had a feeling that opening the folder was a very, very bad idea, so I left it unopened and sat down in the fourth row, third chair in from the aisle, my usual spot.

Eventually a teacher came and told us to go out to the buses, which were waiting for us, and get on the one with our advisor's name on it. It was at this time that the seed of panic in my digestive tract - I knew I shouldn't have eaten that panicfruit on Sunday night! - sprouted. I felt and uncomfortable pressure building in my tummy.

I didn't remember why I was being loaded on to a bus, but chances were it wasn't good. My class wasn't doing so well in terms of being ready to graduate halfway through the year. Yes, we had to do our senior projects in the first semester so that we wouldn't have to waste our time on a daily basis all over again next term. But we weren't doing so great on this front. Almost all of us had a C or lower in the class. I knew the teachers wouldn't want to go through all this all over again. So that could only mean one thing: they were loading us on these buses so that they could take us to an off-site location to kill every last one of us. In fact, the bus drivers were cancer patients who'd signed up specifically for this job, because their job was to find a cliff and drive every one of us over it.

But I said nothing, for fear of alarming the other students. And maybe because I was afraid that if I caused a scene they're sedate me or, worse, shoot me. No, I had to be strong so that my classmates could at least die happy. Not that any of them looked happy, but I didn't notice that.

Twenty minutes of driving and exactly zero 'accidents' later, we arrived at the community college. It was on break, so their plan must have been to file us into a large room and trap us there so we'd all starve to death while no one was there to find us. With that in mind, I planned to bolt as soon as they opened the bus doors. If I could just make it to my aunt's house and tell her their plans before they caught me, everyone would be alright.

My teacher stood up to give us a run-through of their horrible plot. "Okay, guys, this is what's going to happen. We're going to go sit through a lecture, and you have to take at least a half page of notes. Then we're going to go see the fair part. I recommend you grab something from every college. Then we'll do the interviews. You're guaranteed two, but we hope you'll be able to get three in."

FUCK MY LIFE. I was going to be forced to shake hands with, talk to, and by judged by complete strangers, not necessarily in that order. I would greatly have preferred by driven over a cliff against my will or being left to starve in a secluded room in the temporarily abandoned college.

---

I've been told before that I tend to choose weird topics for my essays for Writing 121, which is my seventh period class. And maybe the girl who told me this is right. My last essay, which I was pleased to find had received a perfect score, was titled, "Concerning Demons," and was about the demons in my novel. I wrote it exactly like one might write a research paper, and my teacher even had to ask if it was all fictional or if I needed citations, which I didn't. I even included a seemingly reliable source, Alfred Von Lichtenstein, a prominent demon scholar, to attempt to explain some of the concepts that demons don't know for sure. 

I asked Mrs. Williams to read my paper aloud, because if there's one thing I don't want to do, it's butcher my own paper with my lamentably inability to translate the words on the page to words from my mouth. I couldn't stop smiling self-consciously and hiding my mouth in my hand, because I love sharing my writing. But I don't get the chance to do so as often as I would like because I find my reading aloud skills to be lacking.  So, she read the first three and half pages (it was four and a third pages long) of paper to the class - it was a sharing day, and I bogarted

No one else wanted to share after me. 

I realize that last post wasn't very funny...

You can hardly blame me, I mean, it was three a.m., and I needed sleep.  So, let's try this again, shall we?

In my family, Christmas is greeted with one of two reactions: (1) "OMGEEFREETHINGS," and, (2) "Fuck. I have to fork over money for useless things again." Being eighteen, I've obviously outgrown the first reaction. Oh, wait. No I haven't.

Now, don't get me wrong, we don't actually celebrate Christmas as anything more than a way to pretend to be a normal, functional family for a few hours before we all retreat to our secluded corners of the house, connected only to the world by the internet. In this way, we're much like the spiders that like to nest in the siding of our house from August to November - we have our web connecting us to the outside world, and sometimes we like to go outside, but if anyone gets too close, we just run right back to our lair and cry ourselves to sleep.

That said, we also don't observe the ancient ritual of waiting until 8:04:15 in the morning on December 25th to open presents. We used to, and let me tell you, my parents have never been slower to make themselves a cup of coffee and sit down in the living room than they are at 8:03:21 on Christmas morning. But we don't now, at least, not this year. This year, I got to open my present the minute it arrived, which was at some point last week, I think.

Now, it is important to note that I was tired that day, if my memories are correct, and they probably are(n't) as I proceed.

So, I open the box, and lovingly tug my Zlive out of its box. I pull the Styrofoam protectors, that make it fit the box perfectly, off tenderly, cherishing every moment. But what's this? the cord is wrapped up separately, but still attached, because it's wrapped in the same plastic. Well, it's just going to get in my way if I don't grab the scissors and cut it off right this second. This is simply unacceptable.  About halfway through the plastic umbilical cord keeping the power cord attached to the rest of the system, I note that this plastic is very difficult to cut through, and that I really need to do more work strengthening my hands, because I really shouldn't be having problem with this, as the scissors are quite sharp.

My thirteen-for-forty-first-time father is standing not far off, watching passively. From his view, I imagine the look of confusion on my face, as I discovered the three to five inch stretch of cord, terminating in a suspicious way that seemed almost as though some moron had cut through it with scissors, sticking out of the back of my brand new, $45 Zlive, must have been priceless. The look of realization, and the mental facepalm that shortly followed, upon my discovery that the cord I'd just freed also terminated in a suspicious manner, was likely amusing by its own merit, but my utterance, "Fuck my life," really made it a special, failblog worthy moment.

He, of course, doesn't know what failblog is, but he found it hilarious nonetheless.

I didn't know what to do. They weren't just going to buy me another one! There went adjusting the volume to the perfect level from my bed. And not having to worry about my computers hard drive letting its magical smoke run free at last. There was no way it could be fix-. "Don't worry," he tells me through his laughter, in the infuriating manner that only my father possesses.

For once, I found his interjection into my affairs to be a wanted thing. YES. PLEASE DO SGASDKHAS:DGLKJH, I think, complete with incomprehensible key-board mashing, nodding pathetically at him and offering to go finish what he was doing if he'd fix it that minute.  And he did. My day went from awesome, to mortifying and completely worth dying over, to pretty okay in the span of twenty minutes, as I peeled eggs while he stripped the wires and reunited  my Zlive and its lifeline. And I've been trying to be nice him ever since.

---

Because I suffer from Pride, among a few of the other deadly sins, I feel the need to clarify that I am not a complete ignoramus on the topic of wires and connecting them.  I once had to put a new end on an ethernet cable - dear god, that was horrible - and I have wired motors to motor controls to batteries and so on. However, that was for robotics, which is a place where the magical properties of the cord that connects my TV to the wall, without which said TV doesn't work, are replaced by physics and the knowledge that it's electricity doing this, and that inside the insulation there are, in fact wires. I was in home mode  and quite upset with myself at the time, and, maybe, eventually I would have thought, What the hell? I could just strip the wires, add some connectors, and smother it all in electricians' tape and everything would be perfectly okay. But that likely would have been long after I'd thrown it out, unused, and moved on with my horrible life. 

Guitar Hero Friday

See? Look at that, I've managed to forget about my blog almost completely for, like two weeks. I'm horrible at this, really. I even went so far as to set it as one of my dials on my web browser, but no. I've done nothing about it. If it wasn't 3 a.m. on a Friday night following a Guitar-Hero-athon, there wouldn't even be an update now.

Senior year at my high school is a walk in the park. Except you're being chased by a pack of rabid dogs into a tangled wood with the only hope of escape being to climb up a sheer cliff-face with nothing but your fingernails to keep your grip on the smooth rock. And it's raining. A lot.

According to some (my teachers), I'm exaggerating a little. They're liars. I know it. And now you do too.

I have a little under a month before I'm going to be forced to go against my survival instincts, all of which are screaming at me to get the fuck out now, and place myself in front of three, potential strangers, and talk about what I want to do with my life after I've graduated from the last mandatory stage of America's fascist brain washing system. Because my plans to go to a community college then transfer to a university are something I want to share with anyone and everyone who asks.

Worse than the presentation itself, I'd say, is the project said presentation is based on. At least, for someone who aspires to be a teacher - like me - it is. Other students get to choose their projects, and do something they actually want to do. No. Not us aspiring educators; we have special requirements that have to be met, like teaching for at least two hours in each school level (primary, middle, secondary) and teaching a lesson to students in two of those levels. I understand the reasoning behind the requirements, but I refuse to think that it's okay to let everyone else do whatever the heck they want when we can't.

I have a week before winter break starts, bringing with it a huge lack of school, and, therefore, an inability to work on the physical aspects of my project (observing teachers). Meaning I have a week to finish up the observing AND teach a lesson to the ninth graders. And I'm stuck going to the job fair on Tuesday, because Oregon apparently has an incredible dislike for anyone that doesn't own anything particularly dressy or doesn't make a habit of talking to complete strangers and telling them a little about themselves. By that logic, Oregon hates me. I'm not surprised, and Oregon should know that, for the next two or three months, I hate it back a lot more that it hated me to begin with.

If you hadn't noticed by now, I'm very very stressed out by all this senior project and job fair business. So I thought playing Guitar Hero for a while would be more fun than watching Kingdom Of Heaven, which is what I was attempting to do at four this afternoon. So I put in Guitar Hero: Metallica (because Metallica is one of my favorite bands). Eleven hours later, after playing through half the game on medium (and being extremely proud of myself as a result) and making rockstars of four more of the characters from my novel (I now have five in total) complete with personalized guitars, I'm (a) not tired, like I ought to be, and (b) possibly more stressed than before, because I now only have around seventy-six hours until the job fair, twenty-three of which I have estimated that I will spend sleeping. Thanks to a video-game-induced trance, during which the passage of time and the needs of my body went unnoticed to me, I have lost ten hours of my weekend that could have been spent working on my novel. And I don't want to go to bed, because I don't know what happened to the last ten hours.

I will admit, thought, that video-game-induced trances have their upsides. In the case of guitar hero, I tend to more more than I normally do when I'm on the computer. And the lack of awareness of the world moving around me allows me to go a really long time without feeling the need to find food, which is a major plus. And if I'm at home playing video games, I'm not out getting hit by a car or something.