Please say a command! *BEEP!*

I like to stay up late. Very late. I usually end up going to sleep at or around 3am, even on school nights. Last Monday night, I stayed up slightly later than that... which I soon found out was a terrible.

When I get really tired... or drunk... the mental wall I have in my head that prevents me from saying everything on my mind slowly fades away. This because especially prevalent when I was in math class.

For the entire semester, my math teacher has bothered me for a number of reasons. She has to have things exactly her way. She has rules for everything... it's a little ridiculous. One of her less outrageous rules is that you can do the corrections on your tests and hand them in to her for up to 5 point back. Now, before I rant about that, let me just clarify that I'm thankful for the opportunity to get points back. On that note, I think if you do test corrections, you should get a percentage back instead of a set amount of points. That way it's far more worth someone's time to redo, lets say, half the test.

So I sit down in math that fateful Tuesday and listened to the teacher announce she'd be handing back our tests at the end of class. I like to occasionally text in class so I turned off the sound and vibration on my phone so I can just set it on my desk. That way, if/when I get a txt, the screen will just light up and it won't distract everyone. I then opened my phone (which sometimes goes to "speaker" mode) so I had easy access to the keyboard. After I got settled, I groggily raised my hand. She called on me, and in a dazed/tired state, this is how the conversation went:

Me: "I just have a question. Why is it that you only give 5 points back on a test if we do the corrections? I just don't think it's very motivating for someone who got a 50 or something to do all those corrections to still not be passing. And they're the ones who need to do the work, not those people who got a 95. You should be encouraging people that need to do the corrections to do so, and to not waste their time."
Her: "Well the corrections are supposed to boost a person half a letter grade and that's what it does. A lot of teachers don't give their students an opportunity to make corrections on their test, and this also allows them to get some points back. It's not necessarily, supposed to give you a ton of points back..."

At this point in any of my teacher's discussions or lectures, she tends to talk in circles and repeat herself in a number of different ways by restating the information in a slightly new manner. So I looked down at my phone and decided it'd be a good idea to check and see if I had recieved any messages while my heart was bursting out of my chest. What I had said was finally starting to sink in. Trying to distract myself from my nerves, I went to hit the clear button on my phone just to illuminate the screen to see if I had anything, but what I didn't realize in my "sleep goggles", was I hit the voice command key instead. For those of you who don't know, this trigger's the voice command mode on your phone, which typically has a female's voice say "Please say a command!" and then beeps... which is exactly what my phone did. I frantically hit a bunch of buttons to get her to stop talking before slamming my phone shut. Thankfully, the teacher was still talking in a never ending cyclone of sentences. She didn't notice, but everyone in the surrounding desks heard it, looked at me, and laughed.

It was really embarrassing. I still feel like I got my point across though. I've had a lot of teachers in my days, and not one of them set a point limit on test corrections. It was always a percentage.

I've dropped the class since. I'm looking forward to taking the class with a teacher next semester that isn't (as) crazy.

On another note, I'm glad I've finally subscribed to some interesting people's blogs. Everyone of them that I've subscribed to is pretty awesome. I don't get around to commenting as many as I'd like to, but I definitely try to read them as often as possible. I have a survey that I have to do that I got tagged for. I'll have to do that =)

Flatbread Sandwiches FTW

I don't know if it was the fact that I got more than 3 hours of sleep last night (it was actually closer to 13), but I had the most amazing day ever. It all started this morning when I woke up.

I was in the shower today and thought to myself, "God! I sure as hell could go for one of those flat bread sandwiches from Dunkin Donuts! That kind with the bacon cheese and turkey! Oh my GOD I want one!" So after I got out of the shower, I called my Dad and asked if he could possibly get one for me before he picked me up, and he reluctantly agreed.

So there I was in my Dad's car eating my flat bread sandwich and sipping my propel. At that point, there could've been a nuclear holocaust that day and it still would've been an amazing day. Those things are amazingly delicious. I may have burned myself a few times trying to eat it (that sucker was hot), but it was sooo worth it.

So then I got to my geology lab, which could've put a damper on anyone's day. It didn't though, cause we did a lab where we had to melt sugar. I'm proud to say that my group was the only group who almost set theirs on fire. It was smoking really bad, but in my defense, when Beth and I asked him what to set the hot plate on, and my geo teacher, that we'll just call "Gibbers" was like, "Oh, definitely 8 or 9 ought to do it. Definitely 8 or 9". So that's what I set it on. 9. And guess what the actual settings were supposed to be? 2 or 3. So that caused a grotesque amount of smoke to emanate from our lab group. It was fine though. To be fair, it smelled really good. I was also able to sneak a bunch of extra sugar cubes from the box and ate like 5 of them. It was delicious.

Also during geology, this girl that I'm not really a huge fan of kept nodding off in class and waking up abruptly. It was pretty funny looking. In any case, I took a video of it so I could remember that moment for years to come. Well, lets face it; only a year. I have a problem with buying new cell phones.

So then, after my lab, instead of having to stick around campus like I would have to during my 2 hour break between that and statistics, Beth and I hung out for a little and ate my FAVORITE type of pizza (Ultimate Pepperoni DiGiorno Pizza) while watching one of my FAVORITE TV shows (Roseanne). It was pretty amazing.

Then when I got back to campus, Beth and I used the computers for a little. I wanted to show an amazing "literal" music video to Beth (link here), and since the computers don't have speakers, I whipped out my headphones so we could listen to the video. Much to my dismay, however, one of the little rubber things that goes on the end of my ear buds had fallen off. I was kinda pissed. They were like, $50 and the only reason I bought them is because the ear buds I had before wound up loosing their little rubber ear piece as well. I checked the floor in the computer lab... nothing. All I found were bits of hair and 50 year old dust. The only other place it could've been was at home when I put my IPod and headphones in my pocket. I'd have to check later.

I got to math, which is extremely boring and irritating no matter what kind of day you're having. Your first son or daughter could be born and you win the lottery all in the same day, and math could be that one bullet in the day that would urge you to shoot yourself in the face. How did I cope with this, you might ask? It's very simple. I sat there for 50 of the hour and fifteen minutes of that class and read a book that I love to hate (The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson. More to come on that in a later blog). I managed to grind out like, 80 pages. Good times.

After math, I went home and read some more, and then watched another one of my favorite shows, Judge Judy. While the cases weren't particularly any good (it was mostly a bunch of alleged loans that people were suing over), I was still happy that I was able to stay awake because of all the sleep I got last night. Usually I end up passing out on the couch when it's on. I didn't today, though!

On a side note, the Olsen twins were on Oprah today, which I shamefully watched. It was nice to see they got their shit together now and they have 2 very successful fashion lines that they completely own and run basically on their own. Good for them. They're not too bad looking now either.

That brings us to about right now. I'm just sitting here and writing this right now, but later tonight I have plans to go to Wendy's (my friend Wendy's house, not the restaurant. Sorry Wendy, but I had to clarify. I hate the restaurant and I don't want people thinking otherwise lol), and she, her husband Patrick, Beth and I are going to watch the Exorcist. Which is a good horror movie, unlike Amityville Horror, which can just go right ahead and bite me. Seriously.

And that concludes my otherwise amazing day. I hope you guys enjoyed reading about it as much as I did living it. Good times.

Do writers write what they know?(An essay for school)

So I have to write a paper for my English class. I have to argue whether or not I agree with the quote, "Scientific romances and science fiction are generally considered to be remote from the author's experience. That can never be the case:; what we are fills the fictions we tell, often without our realizing it. What lurks as figurative in the mind comes out clearly on paper". I figure I might as well write this in a blog to convince myself I'm not actually doing school work... but I am. I'm so tricky.

[It’s tough being a writer. Sometimes you have to toss a story around in your mind for what seems like years. In the introduction to War of the Worlds, Brian Aldiss states, ""Scientific romances and science fiction are generally considered to be remote from the author's experience. That can never be the case; what we are fills the fictions we tell, often without our realizing it. What lurks as figurative in the mind comes out clearly on paper". I sincerely agree with this quote. To me, this quote means that the writer both consciously and subconsciously uses themes and characters that are familiar to him. The writer's personality takes over their writing as a camouflaged facade.

As difficult and as long as it takes to write sometimes, some of the best stories out there are a distorted and altered change of realistic themes and characters that the author has experience with. Without this familiarity, pieces of writing wouldn't be convincing to the reader. Writers can't write a great science fiction piece about alien invasions if the authors themselves haven't felt personally invaded before.

People who try to write about things that they're completely unfamiliar with often come across as unauthentic or they end up having to do a ton of research on the subject. Lets say an author was trying to write about someone that was captured by an alien ship and imprisoned. If that person hasn't personally been confined in a sort of situation like that, or at least felt emotionally arrested, the author would be unable to absolutely relate to the character and make you feel what the character's supposed to be feeling.

Writers often use thoughts and experiences not just change and mask them for the sake of their story, but to evolve from that idea. This evolution is usually a conscious process. Thinking for a moment about why the pencil grip was invented can prove this. Someone looked at their past (or present) situation and thought to themselves, "Damn! I'm trying to write this letter to my lover, but the pencil's too slippery! If only I had something that went around the pencil to help keep it in my hand!" That person used their past experience and evolved that into an idea. Such creative processes go into writing all the time. Someone can take a simple scenario from their past, like tripping over a rock, and totally completely "roll" with the idea in a story. Maybe after they tripped over that rock, they hit their head and went into a fantasyland where air was made of chocolate. Who knows?

Brian Aldiss has to be correct when he says, ""Scientific romances and science fiction are generally considered to be remote from the author's experience. That can never be the case; what we are fills the fictions we tell, often without our realizing it. What lurks as figurative in the mind comes out clearly on paper". Writers need to write what they know in order to come up with any ideas at all. By using "what they know", they're able to creatively twist that thought into something new that readers can relate to. And often times, writers take an idea or scenario and evolve off of that idea and base an entire story off of a personal experience. This paper, for example, was almost entirely written off of personal experience.]




After I write this I thought to myself, "Wait... why is his pencil slippery?"