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 =)

I've Been Discovered and Have an Album Coming Out!

And pigs fly!!! Well... demon pigs might at least. Anyway...

Many people sing in the privacy of their own home. Deny it all you want, but everyone does it. Who doesn't love cranking their MP3 player and just singing until they're blue in the face? No one. The especially spiffy people, like myself, dance along to it. The even spiffier people are good at their secluded dancing. I'm not that spiffy, yet.

In any case, last night I was listening to this band called Sherwood at like, 2am. As you might've guessed, I was having my own little concert in my room. No dancing though, just full out singing. There I was, slowly spinning in my computer chair, singing:

Would you wait if I wrote you a perfect song tonight?
To make your heart stand still and make your chest grow tight
But I'll never write a perfect line
And I don't even know why I waste my time and try, whoa

And for the longest time
I couldn't love her to save my life
Never a moment of peace in my mind, yeah
Cause in the longest line
The front and the back are the same sometimes
And taking a number has taken my time, whoa

and I was having such an amazing time. You don't even understand. I've listened to their CD about 8 times now, so I've almost got all of the lyrics down pat.

In any case, apparently my singing wasn't so private. Not only was I heard by someone else who would probably hold it over my head for a really long time (my Mom, if you hadn't figured it out), but I was actually preventing them from sleeping. I'm not sure if I feel more embarrassed or sorry for keeping her up. Probably more embarrassed considering I was listening to the music on my headphones, so all she could hear was me.

I'm starting to decide that I'm more embarrassed though. To be fair, she could've txted me (yes, she txts), and told me to shut the hell up, but she didn't. She even told me that she was going to, but was too lazy/tired to get up to tell me to be quiet.

Holy crap. I'm slowly remembering everything I was singing last night. It could have been the Sherwood CD, but there's a very good probability she heard me singing to the myspace karaoke thing that recently came out. It's this thing that allows you to read the lyrics to a song and sing along to it while you record yourself to hear how retarded and awful you sound. If you're feeling like making a total and complete fool of yourself, you can even post it online. I thought about doing it, but I didn't. Apparently subconsciously I knew I was already making a big enough fool of myself.

I hope she didn't hear that. I was singing some pretty "Toxic" songs. Hahahaha

Oh God, I'm never singing again.

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.

The PERFECT Thermos (Illustrated Blog! Kind of, anyway)

Ok, for YEARS now, at least 3, I've wanted to buy a nice coffee thermos. Honest to God, I would walk by them in the store and stop and look at them. I'd pick them up, turn them around and look at the sides, the handle, the lid, and other stuff like that. Now, I don't drink coffee. I actually really think it's pretty disgusting. It smells GREAT... but kind of tastes like dirt.

It all started when I worked at Auntie Anne's in the summer of 2005. It was there that I first really made an attempt to be addicted to coffee. Call me crazy, but I definitely thought it was cool to drink coffee back then. Everyone else in high school was downing liquor like it was going out of style. I wanted to drink coffee... I must've been sooo popular in high school.

Needless to say, the coffee thing didn't work out for me. I couldn't really get past the taste, no matter how many packets of sugar or creamers I put in it. Plus, I feel like that when people look at other people drinking any kind of hot beverage, they think to themselves, "Wow, look at that person drinking that coffee or whatever. He looks pretty cool!" I've come to realize that makes as much sense as the theory that smoking makes you look cool. But honestly, if anything in the entire world were going to actually have an effect on your level of "coolness", it'd be coffee.

So why do I want a coffee thermos, you might ask? Well, it's very simple. I like hot chocolate, and there's no rule that says I can't drink hot chocolate out of a damn coffee thermos. So after 3 years of contemplating coffee, I've decided that I will most likely always be a hot chocolate fan. I have hot chocolate pockets and stuff at home, sure, but I don't have anything substantial to drink it out of. I have a tiny coffee mug I got at Universal Studios that has "Phil" on the side of it. It's kinds dorky (which normally I'd love), but it's also really tiny. I always use 2 packets of the hot chocolate mix instead of 2, and it's difficult to mix 2 packets of the stuff with the water in a mug that's that tiny.

On a recent trip to the Borders Cafe', however, I found exactly what I was looking for. THE PERFECT THERMOS! Now before you go off and say "Duh Phil! Check the fucking coffee place for a coffee thermos!"... I did. Quite a few times. I didn't really like what I saw much before that. It had to be seriously perfect. In retrospect, it was probably there the whole time, I just had to fall in love with it, which I did.

Anyway, the whole thermos thing didn't work out as well as I had liked. Since the thermos was substantially bigger than my coffee mug, I figured I would add a third packet of sugar. I realized the next morning, however, that that was a terrible idea. I got SO sick, it was ridiculous. Never again, will I add 3 packets of anything to anything.

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?"

I have a foggy memory.

So, I was in the maternity store recently talking to my good friend Johnna about her halloween party. We were discussing the things she needs for her party, like decorations and stuff. Apparently, she also needs a fog machine. I then said she could use my fog machine, when it hit me... why in the hell do I own a fog machine?

I'll be the first to admit I'm not very good with money. I buy comics every week, a new cell phone at least once every year, and all kinds of X-Men crap on ebay, but I can not for the life of me remember why I bought that fog machine. Usually when I buy frivolous things, I at least have some sort of "legit" reason (or at least I think so) to buy it. I have no clue why I would ever want, much less buy, a fog machine. I vaguely remember playing with it awhile ago. I remember I used to play with a laser pointer with it, because if the room's foggy, you can actually see the laser beam in the room (and it's pretty fucking sweet). I know I didn't buy it just for that, though.

Maybe I was planning on having a Halloween party one year. I've tried that before... that didn't go well. I think that was the year I realized I hate large groups of people. I remember I ended up getting mad at everyone (I get a little irritable in factions of people).

It couldn't have happened on a better night though. Maybe they just thought I was in the murderous Halloween spirit...

Probably not.

Pics of my hiking trip and my favorite recipe!

Not really. But a lot of people like to talk about that kind of stuff on this website it seems. I think my main issue is that I'm jealous. I'm usually pretty ecstatic if I'm going to the mall, much less going on a hiking trip or something awesome. And lets face it. I can't cook for beans. I couldn't even make beans if I tried.

Anyway, so I've been meaning to write a blog about this for awhile, so here it is.

Lately my Mom has been going on walks every single night. When she started doing it, she probably thought, "Wow I'm being so fit and healthy! I think I'm going to ask Philip to go with me! That way we can talk for an hour about his life and I can be his best friend!"

I had other plans... like not going for walks. She kept asking and I kept turning her down. I feel much more productive laying on the couch and watching Judge Judy. HEY! Don't judge me... that's her job.

So anyway, one day she and I are watching TV in the mid afternoon just, ya know, kind of lounging around. Then when it got really quiet, I was like, "Hey Mom, wanna go for a walk?" and her face lit up like a child getting a lollypop. Then she was like "Really?!" I paused for a moment, then was like, "NOT!"

Now, I know that makes me sound like a terrible person, but I assure you, it was hilarious. She's known me for, what, 19 years now? (obviously)

She gets my humor.