LOL!

A clip from the Catherine Tate show, from the BBC.

*Tries to do little happy dance in corner...but...can't...because...LEGS ARE TOO STIFF!!*

Which leads me into Remark One:

I recently joined this lane-swimming, endurance-testing, be-fit-or-drown-on-your-sixtieth-lap swimming...thing, which'll be okay, I guess, after I get used to it, but in the meantime is fourty-five minutes of what I'm sure I will later describe to my sister's grandchildren as a string near-death experiences.

Okay. Maybe I'm being whiny and exaggerating a bit for effect I hope turns out to be comedic. I still didn't like it though.

Remark Two:
I got looped into making video-propaganda for our student council's latest spirit day, for which I have many an idea but am procrastinating the shit out of.

Remark Three:
For most of the week I've been physically paralyzed and mentally incapacitated by a cold I've had the perverse pleasure of seeing begin to emerge in others.

Erm...what else.

Remark Four:
Oh, yes, I recently saw this movie called "Shelter", which made me feel warm and fuzzy inside in much the same way that Brokeback Mountain turned me into a heartbroken puddle of tears on the floor.

SO.

We had a little back-to-school assembly today.

Near the end, it got around to the bit where you have to clap at the new teaching staff. The first people announced:

Mr. Saman (pronounced "salmon"), and his intern, Ms. Fishley.

I kid you not.

AN-y-way.

After lunch I was having one of those five-way, hallway-blocking conversations that gets people all annoyed because you're stopping the hallway traffic. One of the participants of which was one of those clever, straight, only-real-character-flaw-is-homophobia people you sometimes bump up against in school

So somebody mentioned the intern from the university that helps the art teacher, and he's all "he's a little bit hispanic (which for all we know he might be, somebody had just mentioned it) and a little bit fruit-ay", and so on and so forth, yada yada yada, blahblahblah couldn't care less if I was unconscious, et cetera, et cetera.

You could just tell he'd been sitting on that one all morning.

The man doesn't dress, speak, or express any opinions in a way that I would find even remotely, stereotypically gay, (which, really, is the only way you'll get noticed as such, especially by people like--well--most of the high school), so I'm thinkin', "How do you know!?!?"

Is it some sort of special homophobia-driven gaydar?
Do you have some deep, insightful knowledge on the nature of sexual orientation of which I know nothing?
Are you just saying that because you can?

Uck, whatever.

There was something else I wanted to talk about, but it has temporarily escaped my mind.

Not after watching this old advertisement for Cadbury's Flake, anyway.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks she...er...likes her chocolate a little too much.

Smut!!! Filth!!! Pornography!!! What a disgrace!!!

Hilarious.

I hope I don't just have a really dirty mind.

In spite of (and excluding) the fact that I woke up wishing I could run away and join the circus (well, one that sleeps in, I guess) to avoid ever having to wake up that early again, I had a pretty good first coupla days of school.

I got to meet up with a bunch of school-friends, which was fun.

The French teacher's new assistant is a university student that speaks more French than she does, and I asked a complicated question which made him look something up in a book, so I either impressed the pants off of him or made him think I was a precocious pinhead. Preferably the former. He's sort of cute.

My locker is way over in the middle-schoolers' end, which I was really looking forward to never having to see again, on account of the people who built it having forgotten to allow for lockers when determining the width of the hallways. Between classes it's total gridlock. It sucks.

On the my way out I attracted the attention of one of the undeniably entertaining and wholly dramatic drama teachers at our school. Our conversation went like this:

"We're having a..."--and she's doing her 'hint-hint' face, here, you know--"..we're having a senior mmuuusical in . Hint hint, wink wink."

"Well, I don't know if I--"

"Of course you do! I am going to twist your arm and make sure you do it and that is that!"

This was not an exaggeration.

Apparently they need a male performer (of which they are desperately short--they always, always are) who can sing for the senior (as in grades nine and up) production of what I've heard from somebody to be musical rendition of "A Christmas Carol".

Not to braaaag or anything (don't be silly, of course I'm bragging!), but I won a drama award (certificate) for a bit I did in the junior Cinderella musical with a rather stunning majority of the votes. Also I don't get dramatic and whiny around the stage makeup. As a result, Mrs. Drama likes me, and really expects me to sign myself up. So do most of my friends.

There's a verb in this wonderful dictionary of made up words called The Meaning of Liff, the definition of which is something like "Allowing yourself to be persuaded to do something and pretending to be reluctant.".

I can't for the life of me remember right now, but I really wish I could, because it's spot on and I'd be using the crap out of it.

The first little thing was that my family and I went camping for about a week, which I suppose was fun, because I brought my headphones and was able to cheerily and aggressively block the world around me whenever we weren't swimming, (which was fun).

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against nature. Just the bugs.

I left the campsite with a satisfied feeling in my gut that me and the electric bug-zapper-tennis-racket had helped make the world a better place.

The second little thing was going to Edmonton with my family to see some old friends, which was a blast. We went to the Ex, stayed up 'til two laughing at people we knew, had a really wonderful time.

Third little thing:

Me and a friend, as a result of the wonderful and rather shocking randomness that just begins when we're in the same room as each other, became (just don't ask. Just...don't.) evil geniuses. We have a race of flying llamas, and convinced another friend into liking cassettes with a brainwashing plunger we stored in our secret lair.

Because, really, who doesn't miss cassettes? If you don't love cassettes just a little bit, you have no soul.

Little thing the fourth:

I watched an illegally procured (well--just illegally downloaded; I don't know why that seems to make it better, but it does) copy of Brokeback Mountain on the computer, and had the first proper cry I've had in a few months. Like, ugly, shuddering, weeping cry. It wasn't pretty. Maybe I'm just emotionally fragile. I sort of like sad movies.

I've had arguments about whether "emotional" movies or "action" movies are better with the same random friend. Whaddyou think?

Little thing No. 5:

I became a shameless Doctor Who addict. I have mentally prepared myself to become the subject of a family intervention any day now.

I reeeeeealy got used to sleeping in, but I've been over the grieving process, and have now accepted the terrible and inevitable fate that is returning to school.

Not really. But comedic hyperbole is one of the things I love in life.

:D

...do not enter journal topic if pregnant, suffering from high blood pressure, have had history of...etc., etc.

SO.

My family was in Wal-Mart, looking for one of those famous high-quality Wal-Mart tents (well, I suppose they don't actually make them--God forfend they ever get into manufacturing--but, you know what I mean, things bought at Wal-Mart always make me feel vaguely uncomfortable), and, and...

*rereads to try to remember what the entry was supposed to be about*...

Oh, yes, my family was in Wal-Mart, looking for one those famous high-quality Wal-Mart tents, when I noticed something playing on one of the many telescreens they had mounted on various bits of the store, called "The Lisa Show". It was this little cartoon they had playing on a loop on every second or third screen. It was first time I ever saw it (first time I ever saw the TVs, too, actually).

Lisa was in a spelling bee.
"Your word..., said a cute yellow speech bubble from the bottom corner of the screen
"..is... (and this is where it zoomed in on the bead of sweat running down Lisa's face)
"antidisestablishmentarianism."

Do you have those DQ commercials wherever you are, with that dad offering a scary looking kid (presumably his) a taste of his whatever-it-is--some sort of ice cream thing--if he can only say "this one little word: antidisestablishmentarianism".

I never really saw anything past that in "The Lisa Show"--presumably it was advertising dictionaries or something. But as I walked away I distincly remember thinking:

"I smell a conspiracy"

*rummages around closet, trying to remember where that tin foil hat is*

"Who"--(and imagine this being sung)--"wants marshemellows?"
"Iiii dooo"
"Why?"
"For toast-iiiiiing"

So goes the only vaguely interesting event that I can remember happening to me between now and whenever it was that interesting things last happened to me, specific dates pertaining to which have slipped my mind right now. If I think hard enough, I might remember them...

*squints into the distance as a despairing look slowly creeping across face*

Um...I'll think it over, but in the meantime, my school did a musical-in-a-box (from whose box I can't really remember...Hal Leonard's, maybe?) version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, which turned out pretty well, for a junior musical. I subtley manipulated a friend so that I could pretend she'd forced me to participate, and I auditioned for the part of the King. It's a big enough role that it's not a complete extra, but small enough that I could take it and run with it to China if I wanted to (no, not China--I've heard the air's like road tar there--Sweden, let's say) without being swooped upon for not taking the whole thing seriously enough.

I think I did rather well. *big grin* We were given little forms to fill out to tell who in the cast did what the best, and most of the cast have been telling me that they've nominated me, *positively glows with self-importance*, me--for best actor! Wheeee!

Oh, also, I found a legally ambiguous website with all the bbc's hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy radio shows for download. :-)

This week I read Feed and Jennifer Government within a day of each other.

Malls now make me very, very uncomfortable.

I've Ludovico technique'd myself against capitalism. 0_0

SO.

I was varnishing in IA, adding extra flare to my project by paper-mache-ing to it classified ads from the newspaper covering the table, and I was feeling sorry for myself. It had been a bad day.

I decided to cheer myself up. I don't do this sort of thing on a regular basis, but I needed something to pass the time until the bell rang and the class ended.

And, thus, I--decisively avoiding the hell out of my surroundings, which had begun to take the tone of a sweatshop--thought about things that made me happy. There's probably more than this. But these stood out.

MY LIST OF THINGS THAT MAKE ME INSANELY HAPPY, AS CONCOCTED UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF VARNISH FUMES:

• The Llama Song
• Any given chapter from the hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy. 42!!!!
• Boy Meets Boy. Seriously. I am floored.
• Old Frasier episodes. Nothing past season eight. After that, they got pathetic
• Anything music-wise that's catchy, and bouncy, and French. There's something odd about French music I like. They either say more, or they say the same things in the same amount, but with different phrasing.
• Being random with random people.
• Being smart with smart people.
• Flying in dreams. It feels like breast stroke. Except, last night, when I tried to fly, when I jumped and flapped my arms and whip-kicked, I fell like a stone. Which is a bad omen, whichever way you spin it.
• Brunches. With eggs. And toast. And sausage. AND it's fun to say. Brunchbrunchbrunchbrunchbrunch....!
• Rain. The smell of rain. The puddles left behind by rain.
• Winter skies, as viewed from beside your fireplace

SO.
Today I felt sorry for a teacher.

A substitute one, that is.

I thought I would end up hating her ("Greg", my classmates had told me, "you're gonna loooove this teacher). Urg. Ominous.

You see, she's that smiley, slightly aged, blonde kind. You know. The one with the absurdly happy voice, that strides in with a bounce; the one that thinks that "you're all awesome". But I don't think this one was faking it; I really think she's like that. Seriously

One thing about our classroom: despite all appearances, it has a very highly evolved sense of irony.
Really. Nobody could stop laughing. There wasn't even anything truly funny, or embarassing, all she was really doing was being there. And here's why I think her personality's a genuine one: we were all giggling our asses off, and for the life of her, she could not figure out why.

Tragic, really.

AAAAAW-kwaaard!

Today I tried and failed, with three different dictionaries, to convince our English teacher that the "b" was pronounced in "subterfuge".

Our. English. Teacher.

Well, she could be worse.
I suppose.
The intern from the local university didn't even know what the stupid word meant until she found it on our middle school spelling list.

Not all the teachers are so bad, though. You have to admire some of them. After all, it really takes guts to do things like apologize for making a test too hard.

Sarcastic? Me? No!

AAAAAAAH!!!!

...

That was. Subtle.

I'm not sure how they can convince people with that, though. They didn't actually take any risks where creativity is concerned.

Isn't it an advertising principle? Eighty percent of your ads go to people with the intention of sustaining the idea of product superiority; the twenty left over for new consumers.

And it's not like, *eye roll*, their consumers require any intellectual effort for convincing....

Is it weird that the only thing I look forward to on Tuesdays is a TV show?

Bleck. Tuesdays are useless.