Tired To The Point of Passing Out + Birthday Stuff + School

Lucky it's been a fairly manageable couple of days back at school so far. Only a few minor upsets, and that's just the usual stuff. The birthday(15. gosh) was absolutely wonderful of course and I'm happy with all the stuff I got.

Run through time, no?


I got the expected group of CDs, with a couple of them still in the mail, most of them people at V. Hurts(Happiness), KT Tunstall(Tiger Still), Rihanna(Loud), Eminem(Recovery), The Kills(Blood Pressures), Kele(Boxer), Elbow(Build A Rocket Buys! finally!) Courteeners(St. Jude), Primal Scream(Screamadelica), PJ Harvey(Let England Shake), The Script(Science & faith), and the Submarine soundtrack. Seeing as I've been a tad preoccupied with Manchester Orchestra(listen to the new song, Virgin, it's great) and Cage the Elephant and such, I've only listened to Hurts so far...but let me just say, that album is so good. I'd describe it as the 'perfect pop record' if I didn't take to doing that with a different album every fortnight or so. Better Than Love is beyond catchy, it drives me crazy...and the intro song, it's surprisingly dark, for a pop song. Hurts are interesting, because they're both very 80s and very modern pop, it's strange. It's all Pet Shop Boys synth, with Depeche Mode darkness, plus dub step influences, dance influences, and (heterosexual) sex appeal. It's fuuuuun. I thought I'd drive my parents crazy with the record but, luckily, they really like it too. They're definitely a 'love them or hate them' sort of band...as for me, now that I'm more familiar with them, I'm very excited to see them in August. Also, I got piano versions for Sweeney Todd and Star Wars, like I kept going on about. they're both pretty easy but I can only play easy stuff, so it works well. Unfortunately, no No Place Like London(my favorite ST song after Johanna Reprise), but it has all the other popular ones so it's all good. I got an awful lot of DVDs, not exactly sure why! I got Peep Show Series 7 on DVD(love.) and I've consequentially been reminded of how utterly brilliant all of Peep Show is. It's better to watch them on DVD, because the series are so short it almost seems like they don't flow together when you're just watching them as debuts. I really liked the episodes when re-watching them now. The rest of the family seemed to like them, also, so now I can probably get away with watching them every single day until Series 8 in November...which I'm totally excited for. I'm really worried about Dobby moving in with Mark, though, simply because I adore Dobby and I'll be heartbroken when Mark&Dobby inevitably break up in the next series. Also, in series eight, I need to see more of Sophie(as much as I dislike her), and also I'd like a return of either Elana or, better yet, Nancy. Or Zhara! Zhara's character is so brilliant.

Also got Deathly Hallows Part 1 on DVD. Also, a few months ago, I suddenly remembered Doogle and the Blue Cat...which was my favorite movie when I was, um, eight. if you went through your childhood without Doogle and the Blue Cat, you are missing out on so much. Basically, it's a French kids from from the early 1970s which was (as all good kids films are) probably made on hallucinatory drugs. It's great because the English version is dubbed with a completely different storyline to the original French one, goodness knows why. I'd, um, recommend it if you're into trippy kids stuff. Also, I got the much sought-after original theatrical versions of Star Wars IV, V, and VI. Not only does the nerdiness in me revel in that, but laughing at the crappy special affects in itself is a very fun event. I got the Clangers(haha, love) on DVD as a sort of joke, but also a whole array of old Disney movies...I have them on VHS, not DVD, and I no longer have a VHS player, so re-buying them was good.

Weekend was good. Bought magazines on Sunday and working until 12:30 AM on Monday morning for a science project, no big deal there. But the crux of my weekend is, of course, the new episode of my beloved Doctor Who. So, thoughts--1. I want loads of clothes in Tardis Blue. 2. This episode is...so confusing. 3. What was the point of the whole 'Doctor, I'm pregnant' thing? 4. The orphanage scene was AMAZING to the max, but really creepy even by Doctor Who standards. 5. The guy at the orphanage is my new favorite person, I think. 6. Matt Smith with a beard...like, woah. mind blown. 7. I've just realized, now, how brilliant/terrifying the Silence are. 8. the ending was kind of fast and difficult to follow, but good nonetheless. 9. The bit with the girl at the end...takes 'mind blown' to a whole new extreme. Damn you, Moffat, you Doctor Who writing genius! 10. And, most importantly, the kiss! I wasn't expecting it this early to be honest, but I'm just glad the kiss wasn't with Amy(growl.)...and as It's River's last kiss with him, it's also quite sad. Overall, good episode, I really like it...and I totally just love River.

World Civ is a big nightmare. We finished our projects on civilizations on Tuesday. On Tuesday through Thursday, all the groups put up their posters around the room and we were told to take notes on them. However, it wasn't usual 'take notes' type stuff, we were taking notes on six specific questions that were completely irrelevent to the posters. If nothing else, it was slightly frustrating to think that I did that massive timeline for nothing. He gave us like twnrty minutes on each country, though in reality those notes only too about five. And we spent all of yesterrday doing the shitty essay I have to write tonight, and then watched 9/11 videos. Stayed up to 11:30 last night doing a supremely irritating essay, and did decently on the test today. Time to move out of the middle ages, please.

health was watching the embarassing English puberty vid in one day, and then a crappy TV movie about HIV. Ugh. And I have to do a term project for this silly class--I'm choosing Bi-Bolar. On the one hand, yes, bi polar has been done to death but on the other, remarkably, most people seem to know very little about it still. I'm tired of hearing teenagers talk about how they were so happy one day and then so sad the next and how they're 'totally Bi-polar' and such, so I want to shed a little light on how fucking stupid these people are. Also, today we had symbolic unprotected sex, by exchanging index cards. I got symbolic AIDs. Ah, health class.

I finally finshed my picture in art--we're onto some geometric thing that requires creativity, of which I have little. Mostly I do homework and sit through stupid conversations. (Someone at my table asked today 'Can you die from Aspergers?' The amount of time it took for the others to resolve this girl's question was, um, troubling). Doctor Who has been on my mind too much and a fellow Whovian suggested I do a Doctor Who theme for the next project, but I'm not sure I could make it work. Sigh.

Classifacation of animals in science...going thyrough all the domains and kingdoms and classes and I want to cry with how boring they are, also the teacher continues to bring in skins for no reason...last week she brought in a bear skin, and continued to spend a half hour talking about bears. She called finding wild bears 'summer fun'. Time-waster or what? We went out at the beginning of the week to our environmental site. As per usual, we rushed through our tests in fifteen minutes and then the guys in our group started breaking sticks of increasing sizes with their hands and feet and faces. But, at least its got warm as of late o going outside is far less torturous. Present my awful(really, honestly awful) poster yesterday, to much stress. It's a test grade. I have a quiz next week--always a cause for minor mental breakdowns, as any reader of my blog will know--and then I have to do an organism report on some sort of reed. Fun, no?

Lastly, English hasn't benn too great so far this last week and a half. We've started Tale of Two Cities, hoorah! I guess I'm liking the book so far. My reading comprehension isn't very good so sometimes it's a struggle, but overall it seems to be good. (Apart from Lucie. I mean, what the hell, Dickens? Aren't you supposed to be about over-the-top people and good characterization? Explain yourself.). Unfortunately, my uber pretentious literature-snob of a teacher decided to be particularly irritating about 'one of her favorite books'. We've been put into reading groups. I'm with one girl who I'm pretty sure hates me, another quiet girl who also doesn't seem to like me, and two guys with no interest in doing any work whatsoever. Most of the time she just sits us down with this vast packets, all about analyzing the text, even when I'm pretty sure there is very little that needs to be analyzed. Last week that and vocab(not fun, either) was all we did, even on Friday afternoon. Just packets. Just when I thought things in that class could not got any worse, the teacher announced we would do a graded fishbowl activity. Graded. Basically, we have a four-person discussion going on about one question in the packet and you get a point for every time that you contribute something. Probably is, it creates the most vapid discussions imaginable, because people aren't looking to build off what other people have said, all they care about is saying loads and loads of things. That in itself is something I don't like, but grading it? Scandalous! I didn't contribute for all of the first day, but then the second day I was sitting next to this girl who, while being certainly less shy than I am, didn't want to participate either. Moving onto another question, we just decided to go together. And then, turns out we get the most ridiculous, irritating question in the entire packet to answer, one that I remember not 48 hours beforehand, ranting to my mother about due to its stupidity. It's all like "Defarge talks about the troubles with the French government at the time. Can you draw any parallels to today's world?" WELL, DUH. Anyone above the age of seven could answer yes to that, no? But you want me to draw parallels? Oh yay, you've totally just given a bunch of teenagers a chance to talk about shit they no nothing about! Then everyone else is all like "So, there's corruption...and Africa...and Libra, and, like, world hunger..." and all that jazz that these people seem to think is interrelated, even when it's not. And I'm there thinking, well, um, what do I say? Then we're told to discuss "how does this theme transcend place and time?" and I'm thinking...ugh, again? Cause it's universal? Y'know, bad shit that happens? Does this really need an explanation? Then the question ends and we go back to our seats and I've got a 0 for a participation grade.

The teacher pulled me and the other girl aside at the end of the lesson. The other girl was absent the day before so 'she had an excuse' but I did not. She did say she wanted us to contribute because we were 'two of the most articule people in the class'(which is both innacurate and very flattering) but 'it's no good if you can't voice these opinions to others'. So, shit, guys, I've got to start pretending I've got opinions...quite a feat, right? I did actually wanna say something about Miss Pross at one point, but I was too scared to stand up and sit down at the discussion table, so I didn't, and I regret that.

New Antlers album, ahhh, so good. Not Hospice level goodness, though Hospice is my all time favorite album, so beating that would be quite something. But really quite good.

Sorry it's been too long...I feel like I look unenthusiastic and dull here, which is sad because I had so much to say. Sorry. It has beena good week, really, I've liked it! It's just I'm forgetting what happened a week ago and I'm tired to the point of passing out right now.

So, night!

March 12th.

This guy is awesome. It doesn't get much better than that.

This weekend is going to be hell. I have a science test monday, which covers everything from the beginning of the semester(6 weeks ago) onwards, I have a science project due Monday that I haven't started, and I have a health project due Thursday that I haven't started. Add this to liberal amounts of La Roux and Star Wars and I'm in for a busy weekend.

The science test is going to be a massive disaster, because you know when you get a 99% on a quiz the following test is going to be catastrophically awful, thatt's just the way these things work. I'm going/being forced to go to the library Sunday to study with the girl who sits next to me. I never quite understood this mutual studying thing but hey, every little helps**. The health project is pretty basic--write a three page paper about myself, answer some questions, decorate + fill a paper bag with ten things that summarize me. Needless to say writing three pages all about me will be a walk in the park, sad how I could do that any day. The value statements are just about what makes me happy/sad and where I wanna be in five years time, all that usual Health stuff. (do you know how much bs I'm gonna have to stuff into this project? D'you think I could answer this stuff honestly? pfft, as if. Don't the teachers know that half the stuff we write in All About You projects is completely made up?). The paper bag element is more problematic. What does symbolize me, anyway?

(This week was the week of private school acceptance letters. The madness of this, which I despise and like to rant about at every oppurtunity, makes me feel so fucking Holden Caulfield it makes me sick. That's who I am, isn't it? I'm him. I'm the very stereotype I wish to avoid. I spend so much time going on about how kids are forced to know their career choices before they want to and how we're forced into privaye schools and looking good for collages, that my CV's literally just gonna read "catcher of small children before they fall over a cliff". SIGH.) I don't know why the last paragrapjh led to this, but it did. Private schools aren't even worth that much. If you're smart you're smart, wherever you go, and you'll get into a good college. Public schools suck, but private schools are just expensive, elitist, overrated public schools. I don't see the big deal. The ordeal makes me sad.

The science project is worst of all. My three partners need to keep their egos in check. Yesterday we were planning to meet up in the science room before school. The male person in our group was all too fast to declare that he'd have NO problem WHATSOEVER with showing up before school. So I show up and there are the other towo people. Okay. He never shows up. Is he such a narcissist that he literally thinks he's too good for the person he was yesterday? Is that the extent of his arrogance? Because it's pathetic. The other two girls in my group got to cleaning out their turtle tank which flooded and was then having a sort of lettuce overload, and thenpone of their boyfriends came(who is perfectly boring. I'd never seen him in real life before). Mornings on G days are usually reserved for sitting alone in the health room listening to music that I'm too embarassed to listen to at times when I'm with people who might hear and recognise the song. It's a valuable part of the day. And I lost that because of someone else's overly high self esteem. I was not very happy. And I'm not very happy with writing about glaciers for hours upon hours this weekend.

I really despise homework-heavy weekends. It always feels like I never left school and I have school for a whole fortnight which is awful. I look half-dead right now even though this week wasn't terribly bad.


The snow is melting here really fast. We had an amazing sunset today and I was able to go outside in a sweatshirt to take crappy photos and I wasn't even cold. It was an amazing moment. I cannot wait for spring...I miss wearing shorts even though I shouldn't. and spring music--the Kooks, yeah I'm gonna sink that low. Although Naive is a nice little song in my opinion. But I like Razorlight more. Don't kill me!

I'm not doing Lent but in health I have to give up something for a week. Yeah, like they're really gonna control my life that much. A friend suggested I give up coffee, because I don't drink coffee in the first place. So that's what I'm doing. Health isn't too bad actually, for health, you don't do anything. Health is good because it's not art--any project which is "limited only by your imagination" instantly gets my heart racing. I'm not a creative person. And don't all your artists start telling me that everyone's creative, because that's crap and I know it even if you don't. We're doing op art. I would've thought I could handle this because when I doodle everything's really geometic, I must draw like a hundred triangles every day for no reason to the point of hating triangles. But alas my brain can't even wake up enough for that I so opted for the People Who Aren't Artists choice, which is basically writing my name loads of times and stuff. It's awful, but there we go. I have art three times next week and I really, really don't want to go to school because of it. worst. class. of the day. not joking.

We watched a video about Marco Polo in World Civ for like two days and we didn't even finish it. Crappy movie but lovely timewaster, And Kublai Khan was white in this? Even though every other Asian person was portrayed by an Asian actor? That was really quite strange. Today we started talking about Feudalism--proud to say I don't care and don't know everything about it, though my class expected me to be a master. I wish people would know how much I don't like the royal family. Why do people assume I give my absolte obedience to them? I don't! If you think this then you're just ignorant, and yet this view 'round here is so, so common that it's scary. They don't know anything about the UK. We have real politics and stuff too, guys...it's not all earls and barrons(I don't even know what those are) and such. People in this country seem to be incapable of grasping the completel insignificance of the royal family in the UK. When the stuff about the royal wedding came out, all these womens magazines were gushing over it and I was like "wait, what? who's getting married?". I can give you a pretty good list of the history of the UK's monarchs off the top of my head, but that's my nerdy party trick, that doesn't mean I actually know about the royal family or feudalism or anything like that, god. People think we live in the middle ages, dead serious, and it's pathetic. It's good that my world civ teacher mentioned how the Family are just for ceremonial purposes, but still, some people think we're so backwater. Don't talk to me about your fucking democracy, cause it all comes from English stuff.(which comes from Greek stuff. BUT MY POINT REMAINS.) We're not so oldfashioned. Our political system's fucked up, but any American would tell me in a heartbeat that theirs is too. So just because we were once imperalists and we still have knights, doesn't mean we're behind. it's working okay for us, as it is for Belgium, Denmark, Luzemborg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the other reaosnably developed constitutional monarchies, mkay? we're in the same boat whther you'd admit it or not. And also I don't pledge random allegience to my country.


AND while I'm into this orgy of ignorant anti-Americanism, there's this Facebook group that says "Japan gave us sushi, Germany gave us cars, Americans gave us the light bulb, and England...well, England gave us something to laugh at". Fuck you. Don't you know the rest of the world is laughing at you? And I'm sorry for the many decent Americans(and yes, there are many, many of them out there) for having to deal with these ignorant double digit IQ conservative wankers. Surely, you cannot look at what most people see as your culture, and think you come off well? Fast food, crappy TV, religious maniacs, the jury's still out on abortion, the death sentence is okay, homophobia, racism, sexism, gun-owning, ignorance, sensationalism? And that's totally okay, right? That's not totally laughable? We're far, far from perfect in about a billion ways, but this Brit is not claiming to hate an entire country. Not even this hell hole.

(PS, an Englishman invented the lightswitch. Good luck turning your lightbulb on without it, you dick).

(PPS, whenever Germany comes up in conversation for whatever reason, the word Nazi is fast to follow it. I've heard some seriously erroneous beleifs on Germany and Nazi-occupied Germany, and for some reason people seem to hate the country, and yet now they've decided they're awesome for this FB group.)

(PPPS, speaking of Japan, I saw a blog post the other day with these artsy pictures followed by "My heart is with Japan today". Fuck you too, you used a tragedy as an excuse to post Tumblr pictures to your blog, that's vile. Sad thing is, you're not the only one. I'm not claiming to go rushing out there right now to save everyone, or indeed to be taking any action at all. Call me cruel, but you're exactly the same, only difference being I'm honest about it.)

Where did that all come from? Jesus.

English was a nightmare this week--grammar test Wednesday, vocab test thursday, short story test Friday. what planet does my teacher live on? The first two were stresful but basically okay, whereas yesterday's was not a fun experience. It was pretty predictable, but the essay, oh the essay, was something else. First off, we read a story and we're given six literary devices and asked to explain three of them in relation to the story and it's theme. Dull stuff, but to be expected. But the last part, describe how these devices 'place this story in the short story genre'. Okay, hang on, last time I checked, there are two qualifacations to become a short story. One, you must be a story. Two, you must be short. WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO THAT? It has nothing to do with characterization, duh! God. Now she's gonna give me a C because she rambles on and on about how if we miss out a part of the prompt that the world is literally gonna explode, or something, but what was I supposed to write to that? All the other classes are reading Tale of Two Cities and stuff, ugh.

Oh yeah, my cousin's visiting next weekend. He's moved to Chicago in september. It'll be awkward but I don't see my family much, tiny as we are.

I'm being perfectly boring, but all I wanna do is sleep and watch TV and listen to Yann Tiersen. I apologize. But...goodnight.


**Speaking of that, someone in the cagereria the other day had a plastic Tescos bag. A PLASTIC TESCOS BAG. My mind was blown.