Classroom Commentary

Currently, I am sitting at my desk watching Landon present his AP Psych movie. He doesn't seem very enthused about it. I'm glad that I was able to watch What About Bob? That was a good movie. My presentation ran very short. I hope that I don't get docked points. The thing is that I can't judge a quick presentation very well. I heard three minutes and thought that I needed to rush through shit and be really brief. Fuck. All of these presentations are way longer than mine, I really hope I don't get docked now. Okay, I don't intend this to be mean but this girl has a really bland voice. It's kind of miserable to listen to and I hope that somebody with more voice inflection goes next to balance this shit out. So I was walking in with Gibbs today and he was acting more normal than I was. Maybe it's because I dominated the conversation and maybe it was because I've only had three or four hours of sleep in the last two to three days. Okay seriously how long is she going to present for, these people are making me look like a ditz. A downright ditz. Dag, yo, this is a really horrible blog post. Actually I haven't had a completely worthless post this month or actually trimester so, ya know what, I think I deserve one and what better timing than for my 27th blog. Okay for real this presentation is going way too long but on the bright side maybe Mrs. Melone will appreciate the fact that I got to the point. Echhh, I just want an A-. Hopefully this project bumps me up. If not, who the hell cares. It's over, YAY:) Alright let's see who our next victim is. Alright thats mean, I'm not picking on anybody but this next girl's voice is not much more enthusiastic than the first, although it is better. HAHAHAHA the grampa in her movie was addicted to meth and committed suicide. That's fucking great. Grampa doin' meth. Who the hell ever decides that meth is a good life choice? Stupid people that's who. Let's do a quick word check. Alright, just under four hundred. So this girl's presentation is on Stranger Than Fiction. I remember going to see that for Alosha's birthday party. I had to sit on the floor and drink a blue slushy. I was really sore afterward. I think that put a damper on the mood because the second time I watched it in my bedroom I enjoyed it a whole lot more. Although it makes no difference to you, I just took about an hour break from writing because my teacher had me put the laptop away and I took a final in my 2nd hour. Welp, I'm outa here.

guitar bro

I've been somewhat musically inclined for most of my life. Although that statement sounds very uncertain, it holds true for me. I wouldn't imagine that I make myself out to be some musical prodigy or virtuoso but I do have some talent in that area. When I was about six years old I learned how to play the piano. I was taught to sight read and I got progressively better at it, as I do with most things that I practice for a number of years, but that fell out when I quit lessons sometime in middle school. However, when I got to middle school, after a brief and futile effort attempting to play trombone in the band, I took vocal music, or choir, and participated in show choir. I did well in both of those but quit show choir my eight grade year and stopped singing in high school when it was no longer required. So here I stand, today, with a new guitar and ukulele and the desire to master at least one of the two by the time summer comes to an end.

So, my inspiration for this random surge of musical motivation, or whatever the hell we can call it, has really stemmed from the ukulele my aunt and uncle bought me for my birthday. It was a kind of random gift and they went out on a limb hoping that I would like it. Well, the limb held and I loved it. Immediately I took it home and YouTube searched "how to play somewhere over the rainbow on ukulele" and within a half hour I had that down. Ukulele is pretty darn easy instrument to play because there are only four strings and almost every song is the same basic chords, with a little variation in strum pattern here and there.

After I had realized how easy the ukulele was, I decided to move on to the guitar. Now, a few years back, on another birthday, perhaps my eighth, I had received an acoustic guitar from my great-step-grandfather twice removed and three times divorced (I really don't know how to explain my relation to him but nevertheless it's a complicated one). The guitar was nothing over the top, just a relatively cheap, beginners guitar and a few picks. After locating it, I picked it up and YouTube searched "how to play casimir paluski day on guitar." A beautiful songs that, as it turns out, isn't too complicated to play. No bar chords, just a D, C, Am, and G with a few hammer ons and pull offs. Regardless, I ended up wasting around five hours playing guitar that night instead of studying.

I don't have motivation to play guitar/ukulele for any other reason except for the fact that it is just god damn addictive. I mean seriously, every time I sit down to play, I can't stop! I think it's because I love music so much that being able to play it myself just gives me this incredible rush that I can't explain. Maybe not a rush, but there's this feeling of euphoria that I get when I'm able to strum out a song that I've loved forever and am now just being able to play.

TEACHERZ, Y U NO GIVE US A BREAK??!?!!

This is a rant blog. It's not too often that I complain, but when I do it seems like I tend to express it through a blog in one way or another. Today I will, once again, be complaining about school. It happens that every year, in varying levels of magnitude, I become overwhelmed with end-of-the-year projects. Some I am aware of months, even trimesters, ahead of time and others I am given only a few weeks to prepare for. Regardless the amount of time I am given, they are always all done the night/nights before they are due. I don't really know how legitimate my argument is, odds are that it's not very, but I would like to throw a fit anyways because it's something to do.

As this school year winds down, I watch my senior friends finish their last days at Kennedy and try to enjoy the end of my time here as a junior. Unfortunately, all of these damn end of the year projects keep on getting in the way of my enjoyment. There's just no end to them!! With a final project and presentation and movie poster board due in AP Psychology, a final presentation over the Beatles in U.S. History, a portfolio and radio essay due in AP Language and Composition, and an oral final to present in Spanish III there are just too many damn things to do! I tell you, there is hardly any learning to be had with any of these projects. What they all really amount to is a "culmination" of our learning. Honestly, the teachers just want you to realize all that you've learned so that you look at this project and then look back on the year and say, "Hey, check out all the things I know!" Don't get me wrong, it's great and all to see what you've accomplished but when all of your teachers decide to assign projects at the same time, instead of coming up with one fabulous essay/project/presentation all of them get rushed and jumbled and come out either half assed or thrown together at the last minute. Fortunately, I believe mine to have survived the toil that can often ruin some final projects, although, coincidentally, since I am writing my AP Lang blog, my radio essay may be a little raunchy for a school project because Andrew and I got lazy and basically said, "Fuck it." We improved a lot of our radio essay, which isn't to say that it wasn't good because we did know what we were doing and the type of person we were trying to portray, it's just that we didn't care to sensor ourselves at all and I may have mentioned swinging my dick around at one point.

I may have gotten off track a little, but the point remains that if our teachers are to schedule final projects, they need to be conscientious of the fact that every other teacher is doing the same thing at the same time. Whether this means smaller projects or staggered due dates, I don't know, but something needs to be done because summer is coming up faster and faster and we are loosing the attention span of many at a rate exponential to that of the days remaining before summer is officially here.

Shitty Motions to Other Drivers

So, I'm heading out of AP exams and the whole place is congested beyond belief (with traffic). A couple hundred students all just exited the same building at the same time and inevitably there is a huge cluster-fuck of cars out in the parking lot. Attempting to exit this massive jam, I am constantly giving the right of way and accepting it from other drivers. That experience brought to light something that I had never really thought about or really had to deal with much before. That thing, or rather action, is the act of motioning to other drivers. Whether it be giving them the right of way or... okay that's the only one I can think of but it's also by far the most common. What I had never realized was how much of a dick I looked like giving people the right of way. It could have been because I was restless but people kept on giving me this look like "SORRY SORRY SORRY, I'll get out of your way!!" or "Oh, thank you Lord Heskje for allowing me to pass by your highness." I really felt awful, but I didn't even mean to give off such a negative vibe!

Maybe I can explain what I was doing. So, when I imagine giving someone the right of way, I think of it as you kind of scooting them along like "there ya go, bud. Keeeeeep goin'." So I lift up my hand and do just a couple short, staccato movements like I'm nudging them, you know? That's something that I don't think anybody has a problem with but where I believe my problem lies is at the point that my facial expression doesn't change. I can do the nicest gesture in the world but with that plain Jane, monotone expression (what I imagine myself having while I drive because driving is no trip *pun intended*) it'll come off real snotty.

I think that for future reference, if I can remember to change my expression, I'll be golden. Although, with this new addition, there will be a probational period and some experimentation so that I can see which face will work the best and give off the attitude and persona that I would like. You see, if I smile too much it looks like I'm trying too hard and I'll end up with a situation more awkward than when I was straight faced where as the straight face look pisses people off. Somewhere in the middle, with a little smile and a touch of urgency, I believe that my future driver to driver encounters will vastly improve.

Summertime Ambitions Part 3

Lastly, I want this summer to be the summer of love. No, I don't want to have tons of premarital sex with anonymous partners, but I would like to spend as much time as I can with my friends. There are tons of things that I want to do with my friends, but it is all, for the most part, centered around the core group of improvers (plus Mohammad) that I'd like to spend time with.

Branching off of this final subcategory, I'd like to introduce the improv bonfire. I will make these subcategories short, sweet and to the point so basically we have had either one or two improv bonfires so far and both, or just the one, have/has been fantastic. We had the fire pit where we all talked and then went inside to eat, converse, play some hide and go seek and just have a jolly old time. I want to have more of these so that I can continue fostering my friendships and to hopefully spend as much time with Shane as I can before he goes to Iowa (the University of, we're already in the state).

Road trips. I think a couple of road trips sound like a solid plan for the summer. I don't know where I'd go, although Mohammad has suggested some eateries outside of Cedar Rapids that sound phenomenal, but road trips are the perfect summertime activity. Just for a day, to hop in the van with a couple of pals and just drive sounds fun even excluding our potential destination. Popeye's chicken is definitely on the list but I'll have to work on this summer's road trip plan further.

Neo-Hippie movement. Not sure if I already posted this or if it's still a draft but I'll briefly touch on it anyways. Basically I want to lay in a field with my friends, or a lady friend, and listen to music. that's it. Sounds pretty rad, am I right? This summer I really want to take time to relax and enjoy life which is why I've actually even considered meditation as a goal this summer, but we'll see where I go with that.

Through whatever activity it is that I'm doing this summer, I want to be doing it with a friend or friends. I've realized that they are the most important part of high school and one of the most central parts of life and I would have it no other way than to spend time with them. I aspire to come out of this summer, into my senior year, with the best group of pals that any Jack or Jill on the block would be jealous of.

Summertime Ambitions Part 2

Moving on from my manly, wood shop ambitions, let's talk about something less masculine. And that thing is reading. Okay, I don't want to put a bad light on reading, but it's not necessarily macho. In fact, I would say it's simply a gender neutral scholarly pursuit. Now that we've got all the politics out of the way, I'd like to discuss what I want to read and why. Just recently I started reading due to a couple reasons. One is that I need to as a requirement for AP Lang and the other was that it was nice outside and I needed a book to help me enjoy the weather. So I took that advice of a friend and picked out a book by Kurt Vonnegut. The book was "A Man Without A Country" which turns out to be one of his last works. A compilation of his essays, "A Man Without A Country" is full of these wonderful writings that incorporate his contemporary ideas with a very old fashioned diction. One of my favorite quotes from the book is as follows: "I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." That statement was the driving point of a little anecdote about going to the post office rather than sending an email. Vonnegut has this hilarious way of saying everything, even his most liberal agendas, in the most old-fashioned tone. He sounds like an angry old man, which is entertaining in itself, and because of his subject matter the writing is even more enjoyable. Sorry that I went on for so long about Vonnegut but he really is great and I highly recommend him. Anywho, I realized when I was reading that good books are actually worth reading. Taking Vonnegut as an example one last time, his book was actually engaging and fun to read and because of that I forgot that I was technically still reading for school. I think it's because we are so often "required" or "forced" to read by our teachers that we loose interest in it and deem reading as just another thing we have to do for academics and forget that it can actually be enjoyable. I'm not going to say that I love reading everything because reading Great Expectations was easily the most miserable experience of my life. It was fucking awful. But, I'm now trying to find good authors and interesting subjects to read about so that I can enjoy reading once again and maybe learn something over this summer (forgot we were still on that subject, didn't you?).

Looks like we'll need another post to finish this one up, see ya next time!

Summertime Ambitions Part 1

In the summer time, when the weather is high

You can stretch right up and touch the sky

When the weather's fine

You got women, you got women on your mind

Have a drink, have a drive

Go out and see what you can find

Those are lyrics from the song "In The Summertime" by Mungo Jerry. A fantastic song that has gotten me in the mood for summer. No school, few responsibilities, and plenty of time to do what ever the hell I want. Being an American teenager between the months of June and August has to be the epitome of freedom. There's hardly a thing I can't do and I have a good deal of things that I'd like to... do. Let's talk about 'em!

Well for one, I'd like to learn how to play guitar, ukulele, and whatever instrument that catches my eye. I already have a blog about playing the guitar or ukulele, or at least I have a draft about it that I'm going to post, so I won't cover that in this post. However, a good friend of mine, Jack, and I have a couple of musical ambitions for the summer that we're planning on pursuing. We want to build a couple instruments of our own. One, Jack's idea, is the cajon. From my understanding, a cajon is a percussion instrument composed of a wooden box used to make different beats and/or sounds. The other, my contribution, is a cigar-box guitar. It's basically a guitar made from a cigar box that you attach a neck and strings to. How fucking awesome is that. I'm sorry, but this shit excites me. Apparently, people in the south are known for having done this as it shows up in a lot of blues and country, or so I believe. Anyway, we're planning on building our instruments in the wood shop of a neighbor and close friend to my aunt and uncle. For the cajons specifically, we're thinking about asking my aunt, who's a great artist, to possibly paint the wood with some kind of design. We'll have to look into the benefits of a paint job because I suspect that it's better for the sound to leave the wood natural so the vibrations are more free and can resound better. It sounds like a fun project and something out of the ordinary because I haven't heard of many teenagers building their own instruments on their free time in the summer. Great, now that I have unnecessarily recapped this whole paragraph I'm going to stop this paragraph. I'm one redundant son of a bitch.

I see now that I have quite a bit to say about my summer so I will be making this a mini blog series of sorts. Stay tuned for more things I'd like to do this summer!

Taking the ACT

To begin with, I registered for the April 14th ACT and then I gone done took it. The results just came back and I'm pretty satisfied with my score. My strategy for the ACT is to take it a minimum of two times and the first time I wanted to take it without studying so that I could see what I needed to work on and give myself a good base. So my first score was a 32 and I think that's a great place to start. Some of my friends give me shit for wanting to take it again, but honestly, if I got a 32 the first time with no preparation, imagine what I could get with a little studying on the areas that I most need it.

So, I've found that it's really hard not to sound like a douche when telling people that I got a 32. Even writing that last sentence makes me sound like a douche so you can see how to perpetual douche cycle can keep on going. I started off telling people like it was NBD and that was clearly the wrong way to go about it. I don't know that people really thought I was a douche but they were definitely way too impressed. So now I just down play it if it ever comes up in conversation, which I try to avoid in the first place. Instead of saying it like a fact, I make it seem like I'm not even sure if that was what I got by trailing off like, "Thirty twwooo...??.." If you know what I mean.

To sum this up and re-instill the belief that I'm a tool, the ACT really isn't all that hard. For the English section, if you know what a normal sentence should sound like, you can do pretty well. For the math section... well you just have to be kinda good at math. There's really no other way around that one. As for reading, time is everything. It isn't overly hard but it was my lowest score, a 30, because I was rushing to get done. Although, I do have to say, after taking my AP Lang exam, I have found that drinking coffee is a really good way to make my brain work faster. I suggest you drink some before the ACT. Science is kind of a bitch all around. Somehow I still did pretty well on it, but I think the best way to improve your score is to just plain get used to it. It takes a long time due to the fact that every problem requires a certain amount of decoding so that you can understand what, exactly, it is asking. I don't even think that it takes a whole lot of intelligence to do well on the ACT, a good memory will serve you just as well if you can remember all the shit they taught you in school.

May Day

It's kind of funny to think that May Day, a holiday where people seemingly arbitrarily hand out cups of candy to their neighbors out of the kindness of their hearts, has such strong ties to communism. This May Day, myself and two friends put together twenty some May Day baskets for our friends, ourselves and our mothers. It started with Mohammad tweeting out and asking if anybody wanted some and after several people requested them we got together and decided to do this thing for real. The best thing about it was just the feeling that I was doing this small, kind gesture for people that I didn't really even know (most of our recipients were friends of Mohammad that I had absolutely no relations with). It made me want to do this sort of thing all the time, just nice little gestures and such.

I should probably discuss our selection process for the May Day baskets. It was actually a half hour long process with lots of decisions to be made. We made it clear that we wanted a good balance of sweet and savory in our baskets and so there was much deliberation between which candies to choose. We knew that we needed two fruit based candies and two chocolates. After some thought, we decided to go with Lifesavers gummies and Starbursts for our fruit flavored candies. A large bag of chocolate stars would compensate for the lack a diversity in the chocolate spectrum. Now we needed a filler. Something to take up the majority of the volume of our May Day baskets because a basket with sheer candy is just too expensive to provide. For the filler, we chose Chex Mix. We bought two bags just to be safe, and mixed all of the ingredients together. We thought that Chex Mix would be a good change of pace filler because most May Day baskets have popcorn which is really boring and expected in May Day baskets. I believe that our choice of Chex Mix was superior because it was not only more diversified but it is a universally known fact that Chex Mix is in every way possible more delicious than popcorn.

When we were all done with our baskets, we gave them to Mohammad so that he could pass them out the next day at school. In the end, they were a hit. Everybody loved them and I think it was our conscientious decision making process that really made the difference between our baskets and your every-day, run-of-the-mill popcorn-filled May Day disgraces. I plan on participating in May Day for many years to come because making the baskets and handing them out are equally as fun and rewarding.