Submarine etc.

Last night, I finally got around to watching Submarine. It came out some time ago, and I bought it on DVD during one of my many visits to HMVs around England over the summer. It is a pseudo-quirky film founded on gimicks; a British sitcom star as director, a sountrack written by the singer in a popular band, a plot line that at first glance would make your stomach churn. Also, I know almost nothing about movies, and very rarely do I give myself the time to just sit down and watching a anything more than a couple of episodes of a TV show from start to finish. So, all things considred, it makes it all the more astonishing when I say I really, really liked this film. Like, wow, what an amazing little thing it is. everyone needs to go and see it as soon as possible. It's just wonderful, and for the first time since my Lord of the Rings obsession some decade ago, I intend to just watch a movie over and over and over again until I know it inside out.

Beyond the above and finally organizing my CDs, I haven't done anything terribly productive recently. Speaking of CDs, the new Kasabian record is a fine edition to my collection. I've been listening even more to the most recent Bon Iver, also Radiohead, Nirvana, Bjork, and the National. I'm almost done with the Thick of It. It's a tough show to get into and a tough show to watch even after the honeymoon period, which explains the three week period of watching all of it, but it is brilliant nonetheless. If I could be bothered to do anything other than watch TV and listen to music all day, then things like "organize my room", "read a lot", and, most importantly "plan for nanowrimo" would be on here, but unfortunately none of that is the case.

On Friday, in English class, we were each--at last--presented with a copy of Gatsby, and then given the whole period to read the first chapter. I was very tired, but it was absolutely wonderful. My teacher was out for three days, and we just got to watch videos about the 20s the entire time. I'm surprised by how vast the school's video collection about the 20s is. Then one of the days we were put into groups and told to find specific information about the time period in the library--a waste of a period, certainly, but one that involved looking through encyclopedias the entire time, so there were interesting moments here and there. In between time, we're still continually put into groups and forced to produce something creative before the class is over; I'm with the same two girls, I seem to have become something of a novelty to them. It's a wallflower thing; it happened last year, with these two girls in my gym and study, and it got very irritating very quickly. I hope the class will get slightly less, you know, middle school-like, as we read Gatsby. However, the chance of us drawing pictures of drunken parties and writing poems in groups where each one is entitled "the Green Light" seems high. We've been promised "a fun, unique activity" on Monday, and we've been told to bring in magazines in preparation. Bringing magazines in for an activity is so rarely a good sign of things to come. The only good news to come out of this class is my getting a 100 on my first proper essay.

I should have something like a 98 in algebra, but my teacher doesn't understand computers, so has given me full marks on everything. It's...a conflicting situation. Is it better to tell her? The answer is yes. But will I? I'll hold out for a little while longer. Dishonesty: improving my grades, once more! I really am a vile product of a terrible education system. I'm afraid it could be a while before my morals catch up with my inherently destructive desire to prove myself through grades.

Despite switching tables in 20th century, the people I’m like are hardly better than those I was with before. And now, I don’t have easy visible access to the clock. We’ve done one debate and it was horrific. I got put on the side I vehemently disagreed with, and then I was a lazy fuck when we were arranging things, and only said one sentence(in the introduction) during the real thing! It was a tedious class, debating taxes. A handful of interesting points were raised, amidst the pseudo-politicized horrors that occupied most of the period. At one point, my teacher declares that the next ten minutes are only for the quiet people of the class. Luckily I’d been sitting next to two or three of my fellow “quiet people”, which helped to play up the ‘looking-bashful’ thing. But did I speak? Nope. This is one of the reasons I hate debates like this, because it was fundamentally about talking, except no one is in that class of their own accord, unlike in a debate club or real political debate. No, they’re here because they don’t really have any other options. And so, with debates, the talking is forced. Only one or two people in the class have put any thought or conviction behind what they’re saying, but for everyone else, it’s just about looking good for the teacher. And I know it sounds like whining, emotional fluff, but my god do I hate forced talking, cause it’s just empty sound. I consider it especially important to, y’know, make a point of not talking even though the class was almost silent, because I need to show that just cause I’m shy & an introvert, doesn’t mean I’m completely aloof or wishy-washy about things. Down with our extroverted society etc. etc. etc. This is a more prominent theme than any of this Great Depression, foreign policy, economy stuff we’ve been learning about so far this year. We had a test on Friday, and spent all of Thursday reviewing in that favorite of lazy teacher formats; Jeopardy. I hate Jeopardy. I’m not going to get wound up right now about how much I hate Jeopardy, but nonetheless, I really do hate it. We were in groups of three, so I didn’t really have to contribute for most of it, but one of the questions—specifically, “Who was Martin Friedman?” came up, and I was the only one who knew the answer. I tried to tell someone else what to say, but they didn’t want to, and next thing I know someone’s like “Go on, talk!” and I turn around and all my group members have their most strained encouraging(read: patronizing) expressions on. And then this girl next to me—who you might remember as the one who thinks global warming is a lie made up by scientists in order to make money for the government—shouts “Everyone, be quiet, a quiet person’s talking!”. A quiet person. Jesus Christ almighty. I may be quiet, but I’m still a fucking person with, you know, a name, as it is customary to be given to people, loud or quiet or whatever. I was so pissed off I actually scowled at her. She wasn’t deterred. The answer I have to the question was short and, after studying stuff later again, I realized largely wrong, so I was frustrated that the teacher thought it fitting to call it correct anyway because I don’t talk in class or what have you and therefore need encouragement and different standards. The combination of that and the way that by the end of the class the subject matter of questions had deteriorated to Harry Potter trivia, and the way everyone around me was so enthralled in declaring how nerdy they were, left me in a very bad mood for a long time after. Oh, and then there was the moment after I hand my test in, and I’m wearing a Manchester Orchestra t-shirt, and my teacher’s asking if I’m from Manchester, and he asks all these inane questions about England because of it. Incidentally, Manchester Orchestra are actually from Atlanta. But anyway, his questioning was different from usual, because he already knew I was English, he just never said, and most people jump dive first into an interrogation the moment they hear my accent. Questions like this are always awkward, especially the all-too-common “where did you live? Oh a village? Tell me anyway”(why do you wanna know the name of a village you definitely will not have heard of?) and “which country do you prefer?”(Where my honest, if slightly rude, answer woud be England, but only because I’m more used to it and nothing else). I seem surlier than I really am with these questions, and he was pissed off by my short answers. But I got full marks on his test, so I’m hoping he won’t be too irritated by our first real interchange. God, long paragraph. This is the most eventful class.

In bio we’re talking about organic chemistry. It’s a mixed bag of stuff. It varies from really quite intense chemistry at a molecular level, to articles and videos about obesity, made by people who essentially think their obviously incredibly high value to society increases exponentially the longer they go without eating chips or something. That part is wearing. We got a tour around a school cafeteria, and I found out they’re getting rid of the iced coffee machines next year! It was a good moment to be an arrogant non-coffee drinker! I spent much of my week frantically working on a project about ovalbumin, which is a molecule found in eggs. The only information I could find was in journals, and god knows I couldn’t make sense of those. The overall result was mediocre, with my usual I-didn’t-quite-follow-the-directions-properly spin. The fun bit was spending two hours stringing 386 amino acid balls into a specific order on a chain. I had all these colored pom-pom balls arranged in order on the living room floor. I take weird pleasure in unnecessary organization. Beyond that, it was just researching something almost no one knows anything about and sticking it on a poster. Somehow, the presentation wasn’t the train wreck most of my presentations are. Well, it was, but less so than usual. People in that class heard my accent for the first time, though, so now that’s out of the way for pretty much all of my classes, thank god.

I’m free of homework for the moment, so will continue to spend the long weekend watching the same movie over and over until I’m forced to do anything else.

Night.