Apologies

Sorry about not writing a post for what, over two weeks?

First there was a vacation to our Canuck neighbors to the north, of which a post is currently being written.

However, that aforementioned post cannot be completed because I have been getting all traces of my video game abstinence from the last school quarter out of my system.

After that, there's summer school. Never in my life have I seen so much homework from summer school. I'm taking Development of Western Civilization Honors. This class is designed by administrators in order to trap Asian students looking for more "Honors" classes. First off, it's not really an honors class. It's only "an honors class for departmental purposes", whatever that's supposed to mean. Then it's the easiest honors class to get into. As long as your pass the measly requirements, you're in - no questions asked. But the work disproportional. 92 makes an A. 91 makes a B. There is a quiz or test every single day, and we have to do these five-hour long optional notes for 1% of extra credit at the end of the term. We also have these seminars everyday where we have pretend to be knowledgeable and discuss things while sitting in a circle.

But that's not the end of it. There's some violin recital thing coming up, and I'm screwed. I can't even play my solo correctly and when I combined it the piano accompaniment, well, I wouldn't exactly call it glass shattering but it's far from decent. And I hate rests, by the way. I'm always either too early or too late, and I never seemed able to count up to four properly, even when using my fingers.


Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major by W.A. Mozart - my piece.
I wish I could play like that.

Finally, my computer crashed. It has been getting the Blue Screen of Death quite a lot lately. The failures occur more and more quickly than the last times it happened until finally, I cannot even finish reformatting my computer without getting BSoD. Of course, this could be blessing in disguise, because it may possibly get me a new computer. =]

So, please accept my apologies. And have a happy Fourth of July.
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No Greener Side

People say it's always greener on the other side. Not really. It's just as yellow over there as it is over here. My life is either moderately miserable or very miserable. In fact, it's miserable so much that I'm happy when it's only a little bit miserable. Which is why it's hard for me to feel down for any length of time. If I fail a test, I mope, I weep, I fume, I blog. In another day or so, I'm perfectly back to status quo: plain old miserable.

School is ending. Most people should feel some kind of elation. I don't, because I'll be as miserable as I am now, only for a different reason.

When I'm at school, I hate the work and I want school to end. School ends. I go on vacation, and I hate the picture taking and walking and what to come home. I come home, and summer becomes quite boring, and I want school to start so I can see what little "friends" I have. School starts, I tire of the "friends", and I want school to end. Rinse and repeat.

But don't let my chronic misrableness get to you. It's bad for the health. Go and do something fun that you want to have go on forever. School's out!!!

P.S.: I will be going on a miserable vacation to Canada. Hopefully, the dollar doesn't get any smaller when I get there. Don't expect any new blogs for the next week or so, but feel free to stop by and reread some stale ones.

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A Different Kind of Graduation

It's the end of the Chinese school year, and what's more fitting than a giant, time-wasting ceremony to top it off?

We had to arrive thirty minutes earlier usual supposedly to get our seats. Well, I grumbled and mumbled and showed up at 8:30 in the rather early morning. We went into the auditorium and plopped down somewhere in the middle. And sat. And sat. Until 9:00, finally things started happening.

First on the agenda was the pathetic excuse for a symphony orchestra. Let's start with the conductor. He listens to some piece of music, which is probably copyrighted by the way, and then writes out the notes. Then he does a little arranging with the final result leaving the second violins with the melody. And finally, when he conducts, he sings along! The rest of the orchestra is composed of whoever is gullible enough to participate, although there was a half decent first chair violinist, but he still needed to work on his shifts. The last first violin was a bit too timid, the second violin's bowing out of sync, and the trumpet made some odd noises usually associated with flatulence. Their performance thankfully ended with the loud death of a bovine.

Following the orchestra was some video of the Chinese school's university somewhere out there. The idiot manning the spotlight decided to let the beam rest on the screen, making it nearly impossible to discern what was happening. Then another idiot controlling the sound system either muted the audio and created some very inharmonious feedback.

Then came the graduates, complete in their shiny metallic ponchos that passed for a graduation robe. Pieces of paper, probably diplomas for what they're worth, and pollen-leaking flowers were handed out to the leaving students.

When the graduates left, a special ed group of students dressed in bathrobes came on stage and began can be best described as when teacher's pets begin experiencing a lack of drama in their lives and must thus dramatize everything. A glazed look comes over their eyes and they move in awkward, lumbering movements. When they speak, they somehow butcher the words and must move their entire heads back and forth. They are also quite gullible. One of them will shout "Look!" and point into some point above our heads and the rest of them will follow. Haha, made you look!

Then we have more awards and a slide show of a bunch of adults with their mug shots. Every so often, some of them will have their picture of Buddha. I assume that this indicates that the individual has gone to a better place where they sit on lotuses and deform their earlobes. An award was passed out for Best Improvement, which can quite easily be won by failing all your tests first semester and then "suddenly improve" in the second semester.

There was also a time when we saw the karate students strut their stuff. They did some very simple kicks and made noises that made me wonder if they didn't practice while squatting on top of a toilet. After the constipation example, some other students showed some fighting moves which involve the enemy grunting and then standing still. I don't want to see choreographed combat! I want to see some blood gladiator style! Finally, there was some board kicking. When the ceremony had ended, I got a chance to examine the boards. They were broken with the grain, and there was evidence of the gluing of boards together. The fracture lines were rather clean, too. Suspicious.

Then the ceremony was ended by much barbaric voodoo dancing among other things, during which the aforementioned special ed people demonstrated their lack of situational awareness. Despite having in their hand the object known as a microphone, the proceeded to shout at the top of their lungs to make themselves heard, and when they were done screaming, laid the still active microphone on the stage. And when the stage happens to contain a bunch of shuffling munchkins about to perform some silly dance, well, lets just say that it wasn't very quiet nor pleasant.

And the end.

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OCB Banquet

Well, today was the annual Orchestra - Colorguard - and Band Banquet. I must say that this wasn't the most fabulous party of all time.

The horror of it all begins earlier that day with my orchestra direction instructing us that the event was "dressy casual." Dressy casual, eh? I went to school believing that I had dressed "dressy casual." Apparently, I hadn't, so I had to drive home and put on a polo.

Upon arriving at school, I met a girl who exclaimed, "You're going in that!?!" Whoops, not so good. She explained that it was "semi-formal." There's a world of difference between "dressy casual" and "semi-formal"; to me, they mean "casual" but not crap and dress shirt and pants, respectively. So I escorted her to the band restroom (which despite being music students isn't as clean as normal restrooms) so that she could change into some sparkly pink dress while calling my dad to bring me my orchestra outfit seeing as I had no other "semi-formal" outfit. He wasn't too happy - looks like this banquet was going to cost three dollars in gas.

Having decked out in the proper attire, I made my grand entrance to the banquet. Sadly, there were no trumpeters from the band to announce my presence. Oh well. Following a wait in a fairly long line, I began to near the buffet. There seemed to be some kind of pasta, a couple rolls, a salad, and some semi-melted desserts. I began to worry, for I saw no evidence of meat.

Some lady piled some weird cheese pasta onto my dish. Suspicions confirmed: no meat. Ironically, a guy farther down the line was calling out, "Vegetarian here!" That's kind of pointless. Isn't the whole meal vegan?

I ate my meal, picking apart the vegan mess while complaining to any who cared to listen about the lack of meat. I paid eight United States greenbacks for this! Maybe if they spent less on the DJ and more on the food we could have some meat. I need my meat three times a day+, seven days a week, twelve months a year. And that's just the bare minimum or else m hands start shaking and my vision goes double. Then I saw some sort of wrinkly mass on my plate. Could it be? I speared it with my fork. It sure looked like chicken. I placed it in my mouth and immediately burst into tears. Meat! There was actually some sort of meat! Chicken ain't all that great, but it's better than nothing. After my little euphoria had subsided however, I continued to wander around and spread my sad tale of a meatless dinner.

Then it was the awards ceremony. Blah blah blah, some guy in front of us was quite the obnoxious. Kept screaming and hugging his buddies and conceitedly complimenting himself on how he made band fun, although to his credit he actually started more than one round of applauses. Simultaneously, there was some guy from percussion clapping rather loudly. It was like he was trying to make one hand go through the other or something. What was a percussionist doing here anyways? I remember quite clearly that this was an OCB Banquet; not OCBP.

On a final note, I must say that band enjoys overkilling their tradition. They have to pass down binders and unread books, give necklaces (who knows where it's been), and so on. On the other hand, orchestra sure enjoys making ties. We have co-presidents, co-seceretaries, co-treasurers, and co-historians. Heck, we even have co-teachers.

But above all, I've had a wonderful time with orchestra, band, and colorguard. Just try to get more meat in the banquet next time.

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ShakespeareanTragedy

For all my blog writing, I cannot seem to write an analytical paragraph in English Honors for moufflets.

We had ten paragraphs to write about Romeo and Juliet. Each was out of fifty points.

Paragraph #1: 37/50 - C
Oh well. I'll do better next time.

Paragraph #2: 37/50 - C
Hmm. This stinks. Third time will be the charm.

Paragraph #3: 37/50 - C
Okay. This isn't funny.

Paragraph #4: N/A
This was a rather good one, but apparently I forgot to turn it in to Turnitin.com. O I am Fortune's fool. Oh well. At least I improved, right?

Paragraph #5: 37/50 - C
What the hey! I didn't improve at all! You're kidding me! What the bloody hey do you mean by analyzed? What's there to analyze! And it's not speculating. It's flipping obvious. Anyone with the tiniest shred of common sense would be able to tell! Are you so stupid that I have to explain!

Paragraph #6: 40/50 - B
Well that's a change. Maybe I'll get an A next time. B's aren't good enough for me.

Paragraph #7: 37/50 - C
This is getting really discouraging. I tried really, really hard not to speculate and analyzed and explained everything, or so I thought. Maybe the teacher has something against me. Everyone else is doing better. Maybe I really am a failure.

Paragraph #8: 39/50 - C
We wrote this one in class, and the teacher graded easier. Some people said a lot easier. Well, gee that makes me feel a lot better. On the other hand, I did write something that usually takes over a day in less than an hour. We have to self analyze this. It's probably officially hopeless now. No way of pulling off an A this semester. And to think I actually went against my motto of being efficient for these stupid things. More depression...woe is me...

Paragraph #9: 41/50 - B
I have come across a very important discovery. English paragraphs do not follow the laws of physics!. The Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy is neither created nor destroyed. When doing work, the energy you put into it is turned into a state of energy known as a grade. The more energy applied the greater the grade. However, where English is concerned, even if you put a very large amount of energy into a paragraph, you still end up with a rather low grade. I spent a quarter of an Earth rotation only to get a B minus!

Paragraph #10: 40/50 - B
Conclusive evidence that English defy physics. I stayed up until twelve o'clock in order to write 356 words, and I only get an eighty percent!?! This is ridiculous!

Bet even Shakespeare himself couldn't write a story of more woe than the one I'm facing right now. On the other hand, he did cause my piteous overthrows.

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Fineritis

Shortly after being diagnosed with Selective Memory Loss, I discovered I had fineritis.

What is Fineritis?
Fineritis (fin-ne-RY-tis) is a disease related to senioritis. It's nomenclature includes the Greek root fin, which means end. Accordingly, fineritis a condition that afflicts people towards the end of things, such as the end of a school year, causing them to be rather lazy and carefree. Although not as serious as senioritis, fineritis can still be quite hazardous to one's grade, especially before the finals.

What Causes Fineritis?
The causes of fineritis is psychological. There are neurologicists out there trying to delve deeper into the mystery of fineritis, but upon nearing the completion of their research, have acquired the disease itself and now feel a disinclination to publish their studies. Although fineritis can occur at anytime of the year and for any number of reasons, there seems to be some kind of change right around the first half of June that creates a sudden burst of fineritis cases. Fineritis is highly contagious, but for it's benigness the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has yet to issue orders for quarantine of fineritis victims.

Symptoms & Diagnosis
The first signs of fineritis are very hard to detect as it is just being a little more lazy than usual. Then it develops into a feeling of being jaded, and finally a very high unwillingness to do anything at all. Fineritis reaches its worst stage when the procrastination takes up more than 50% of work time.

Fineritis, like Selective Memory Loss, can be treated by consumption of meat and by staying away from foods containing soy. Comfort foods such as ice cream and chocolate will help as well. Self-discipline is also effective.

Prognosis
Fineritis is nonlethal, and when the factor inducing fineritis has passed, then the symptoms will fade.

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Political Ignorance

Today, my friends were talking about politics and stuff.

Well, I must confess that I have more or less been living in a box.

I don't watch that box of flickering lights people call TV, nor do I listen to the radio. In fact, I do read the news. Reuter's Oddly Enough articles. It's my only link to the world outside of the not so accurate gossip network.

So I was more or less left confounded while my friends rambled on about politics and Clinton or something of which I had little knowledge of. So, like Finny of A Separate Peace, I put on an expression of thoughtfulness and threw in a couple understanding nods and "Yea's" and attempted to not seem out of the loop.

I don't really see a point in catching on until I'm eighteen, a good three years from now. In fact, I found it almost annoying how people would battle it out over whether Obama, McCain, or Clinton is winning. To me, it's just some far off place; as far as the battlefields of Iraq or the playing fields of Trojans vs. Bruins that has nothing to do with me. Come to think of it, I don't really care who becomes President in my own school's Associated Student Body. It seems that no matter who we elect, nothing changes. Absolutely nothing. The only big thing itself is the election; to see who's the most popular; who's the greatest liar.

But maybe it is time to come out of the little hole I've been sticking my head in. Perhaps who we elect does make a difference - differences that are unnoticeable by me for lack of information.

At the very least, I can try to accidentally stray on to the more practical pages of Reuter's and maybe, just maybe, become a little less ignorant about politics, if only to save my pride. But don't ever expect me to care if USC or UCLA's football teams are better. That's pushing it.

Budget Cuts

So our economy is in a recession. Which leads to budget cuts. Which lead to teachers getting asked not to return. Which leads to a totally new set of computers. Wait. What? New set of computers? That doesn't seem typical of what happens during budget cuts.

But believe it or not, they're here. Yup. Last Friday, I walked into the library expecting to find the old but decent black Dell desktops. While at the front entrance, I saw a flash of silver. I thought, oh, new screens, which in itself was a waste of money.

Then, as I walked closer, I realized that the computers were also silver. This was a surprise. What was even more surprising was that the new hardware was Hewlett Packard. Whatever happened to those contracts with Dell I thought you had?



But that's not the end of the surprises. These computers were better than mine! Not that my computer is top of the line, or anything, but a school computer outclassing a private one? That's unheard of! These things had 2.33 GHz Core Duo's and 2 GB's of RAM. Crazy. What does a school computer need that much power for, anyways? It's not like they're needed to play Crysis or anything.



Not that I have a problem with using really fast computers (once you've used one you never want to go back to your piece of junk), but I remember that there were budget cuts. Why the new computers? You could have kept the teachers you sacked for another year with the money*. Or you could have kept the Academic Decathlon as a class. The school has to get its priorities straight sometimes.

*My friend once noted that instead of cutting teachers, we should cut the deans. Who needs them, anyways? All they do is drive around wasting energy with their fancy little flame-decaled golf carts.

Selective Memory Loss

Many people claim they suffer from Short Term Memory Loss, which is rather hard to cure. One of the few known effective methods is to hang out with a small, orange and white fish known as Nemo and repeating, "P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney!". However, one cannot spend their entire life living in an anem-anem-anemenemone, nor are there enough Nemo's to help everyone suffering from Short Term Memory Loss.

Once upon a time, my teachers believed I suffered from Short Term Memory Loss. But thanks to a recent self-diagnostic, I discovered that I suffer from Selective Memory Loss.

What is Selective Memory Loss?
Selective Memory Loss (SML) is type of memory loss. However, the only memories the afflicted person loses are the one he or she chooses to forget.

Causes
No one is really sure what causes Selective Memory Loss, although we do know that SML afflicts both the right and left temporal lobes of the brain, creating a manner that bears resemblance to a smiley face, as depicted by the electroencephalogram below.



Studies have shown that SML is spontaneous and that every person is capable of developing SML, although lazy people are more prone to it than others. SML is not contagious. SML cannot be transmitted through bodily contact, contact with fluids from an SML afflicted person, or even sexual intercourse. However, conversations about the disorder can induce SML with those involved. In fact, by reading this article, it is quite possible that you will suddenly discover that you have the disorder yourself.

Symptoms
The symptoms of Selective Memory Loss cannot be easily seen from the outside, unlike Short Term Memory Loss. A person with Short Term Memory Loss will suddenly turn around and go, "Who are you? Why are you stalking me?". However, someone with SML is much more subtle.

To find out whether or not you have Selective Memory Loss, try to remember something you don't want to remember. If you can remember it, then you do not have SML. However, it is quite hard to do this self-test mentally, because in order to ask yourself, you must somehow remember the event and figure out if you remember it, but if you know the event you don't want to know, then you don't have it. It is quite paradoxical. It is therefore recommended to have a list of forgotten events handy.

Is Selective Memory Loss bad? How will it affect me?
Unlike Short Term Meomry Loss, SML is not necessarily a bad gift to have. It is quite useful as an excuse for students who make mistakes more than once. All one with SML needs to say is, "I'm sorry, but I have SML. Apparently, I seemed to have forgotten that I made a mistake before, so it's technically only my first time making the mistake. It won't happen again, I promise" - and then promptly forgot that they made that promised. But, who can blame them? It's not their fault they have SML.

SML can also keep a person happy, as all the down sides of life can be forgotten.

However, SML can be used for malevolent purposes. A liar can simply forget that he is lying, and therefore will only be able to express genuine disbelief if their construed lie catches up to them.

Diagnosis & Treatment
There is no known cure for Selective Memory Loss. However, a simple will to remember everything will be enough to negate the effects of it. Clinical studies have also shown that eating meat and avoiding soy products may help.

Prognosis
Selective Memory Loss is not a terminal disease. However, if one chooses to forget life saving information, such as looking both ways when crossing the street, or never to eat a Mentos and drink Coke at the same time, then Selective Memory Loss could quite possibly be indirectly lethal.

NOTE: The type of Selective Memory Loss is solely the product of the imagination of the author and is not related to other forms of SML in any way whatsoever. All information regarding SML may retain certain shreds of truth, but is entirely fictional. Moufflets is not responsible for any action taken as a result of this post.

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