sheer potentiality

Graduation: 23 days

Porn and Smokes (18th Birthday): 75 days

College: 96 days

I guess it’s been a week since I last posted. Well, I’ll try and post daily now. I’ve been out of it since last Wednesday though. Thursday I went to see The Matrix Reloaded, which I’ll talk about below. Friday, I got into a car accident. I’d rather not explain, except to say that my car was totaled. That car meant a lot to me. Over the weekend and on Monday, I just didn’t get around to blogging. I had other things to do. I also had to make up for missing school on Wednesday, Friday, and Monday due to an AP test, the car accident, and a field trip, respectively. And yesterday was scholarship night at the high school. I went and found that I was awarded a $500 scholarship. That might pay for a class.

All right. First things first: The Matrix Reloaded was awesome. I had to see it twice to begin to really understand it, but they did a superb job with it. The action scenes are excellent. There’s a bit of humor, with a couple visual jokes and a performance by Hugo Weaving as an rather funny Smith. (I’m gonna reveal some stuff here mostly unrelated to the ending but still related to the movie, so feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph.) Smith has the capability to replicate himself by comandeering any other person in the Matrix. Of course, any agent can do this, but Smith can have more than one of himself at a time. In one scene, an agent discovers him, and says something along the lines of, “It’s you!” Smith replies, “Me, me, me,” while replicating himself onto the agent. Then the second Smith says, “Me too.” In another scene, Smith replicates himself and adjusts the tie of the replicated Smith. If this doesn’t seem particularly funny to you, it’s Weaving’s delivery that makes it so funny. And the fight scenes (the Oracle’s bodyguard, the Burly Brawl, and the lobby scene being the most prevalent) and the car chase are extraordinarily good.

At our local theater there’s a sign on the door at the entrance that says, and I quote, “NO OUTSIDE FOO OR BEVERAGES.” I wonder if Mr. T works there. “No outside foo!”

Blog to you all later!

My comrade Quint Chastain is living in a sitcom. I saw him today, chasing a girl down, and chasing her into the girls’ bathroom, where he tried putting his hands up her shirt. This seems odd and strange until you realize she had stolen his lunch, and he was attempting to recover it. Then it still seems odd and strange, but at least explicable.

So I have this big thing I have to do for English, right? Retrieval charts. Basically, I have to write five page reports on books and stuff we read, going into detail about themes and irony and all those literary issues. And I have to do several of these. The class before mine was horrifed by them, and now I’m horrified…

I’m also tutoring this sophomore for algebra and trig. It’s not that bad, money is money, but it’s not as much money as it used to be, I’m doing less hours. But it’s all right. Time is money.

I own a Starfleet uniform. You know, from Star Trek. It’s a First Contact/late DS9 style, command version. I’m tempted to wear it to school. I think I will, late in the year, on a relaxed kind of day. Near the end of the year. Close to graduation. Or maybe the Friday before Spring Break. Yeah, that’ll be cool.

I’m starting Hamlet in English. Which I’m rather happy about, because I like Shakespeare. We just finished Great Expectations by Charles Dickens in that class. Dickens is fine, but it seemed to me that Great Expectations has good characterization and very little of anything else. There was a plot, and it was clever, but not too interesting. The theme seemed to be the silly class warfare stuff that was written in 19th century England and ought to stay there. Shakespeare is good, though. Stephanie thinks so too. She doesn’t always have good taste, particularly in music, but she likes Shakespeare, so I guess she’s all right. (Incidentally, she likes Shakespeare more than I do. She also acts. People who act tend to like Shakespeare.)

Okay, I’ll relate to you an experience I had today at school.

My current schedule looks like this:

1. German III-IV

2. AP Contemporary Issues

3. AP English

4. Honors Chemistry

5. Astronomy

6. Math Analysis

I want my schedule to look like this:

1. Math Analysis

2. AP Contemporary Issues

3. AP English

4. Honors Chemistry

5. Astronomy

6. German III-IV

Now you think it’d be a simple thing, right? Same courses, just two of them in a different order. Right? Right?

Wrong. Rat-Tail Wishik (my guidance counselor) informs me that if I want to change this now, and not in February, I have to get the OK of the principal. So I take my note down there, signed by both teachers involved. You’d think she’s nod and sign off. Right? Right?

Wrong! She tells me I have to get the green form from Rat-Tail Wishik. So I go back, and Rat-Tail Wishik says that I probably shouldn’t need it, but guess who’s in charge. Right, the principal. So the green form stands.

So now I have to get the signatures of both department chairpersons, one of my parents, Rat-Tail Wishik, and the principal. All these important procedures in place to make sure of what? What? That students don’t change from class to class frivolously.

But hey! I’m not changing my classes at all! No! Only what period I’m taking the classes I already have. Same teachers, same classes, just different periods.

So, yes. If I’m ever the principal of a high school, I’ll write a specific rule for this situation. And until then, I’ll vent on my blog about the administration.

Here I am in my second period class, posting to my blog. Here’s some remarks from some friends.

Kellen: Nheh.

Tim: Thank goodness it’s Friday.

Kurt: “To believe in something and not to live it is dishonest.”-Mahatma Gandhi

Jessie: No comment.

Mr. Moseley: I don’t know if that’s an appropriate use of the computer.