And since I’d like to get to sleep so I can actually remain awake during my computer lecture tomorrow, I’m going to have to give you a run-down of my day instead of some other interesting topic.

Only one class today, due to certain classes not running yet. Sounds like an awesome day, except I couldn’t decide what to do. I have a ton of projects still on the go, but they’re all at boring stages. Starting projects is fun, finishing projects is fun, but the middle part sucks.

Oh, wait, wait, something better to talk about: SingStar. Another video game. Like Rock Band, but, umm, just singing. And I totally want it. It’s got David Lee Roth and The Monkees on it. And the Spice Girls. “I Wanna Be Sedated”, “(I Would Walk) 500 Miles”, “Heart of Glass”, “Cherry Pie”, “We Built This City”, “We Didn’t Start The Fire”, “Never Gonna Give You Up”, “Steal My Sunshine”, “Boogie Wonderland” — a lot of seriously fun songs to sing.

Unfortunately, I’m really confused about how to get into it. PS2 or PS3? It seems like they just released a PS3 version last year, and I don’t know what the compatibility is with old versions. There are a ton of different volumes, but a lot of crappy ones with new pop songs.

But there’s a solution — one volume where I knew nearly all the songs. Another thing I should mention that looks great about this game is two people can play, ie. myself and my mom, since we’re the only ones who’ll touch the microphone. And this volume is good for both of us. Dun dun dun… Disney Singalong! Hell yes, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, oh yeah! We would have a ball singing all these songs.

And then if we buy that one, I don’t have to buy a crappy version with songs I don’t know/like and then I can just download all the ones I do. How FREAKING awesome is that?!?

Problem. Of course. The Disney one is only available for UK PAL PlayStations. There’s a possibility they might release it for Canada/US NTSC, but who knows if and when that’ll happen?

Sigh.

I might just get the “Legends” pack, since of all the US ones, it has the best songs. Plus it has Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” which isn’t available to be downloaded and this is one song I *need*. You see, apparently, so I’m told, the one time my mom has heard my dad sing was when he was drunk one night and sang that very song. And if we could somehow convince him to recreate that scene, it would certainly be… hilarious.

Things have been going good for me lately. Yesterday, not so much, because yesterday consisted of mostly ands and ors and unions and intersections and complements and for everys. But I woke up about thirty minutes ago, got ready, dropped off the math assignment, and ate breakfast, and now I’m on yet another productive thing. Today’s gone pretty well. I also finished my computer assignment yesterday while taking a “break” from math, so I just have to look over that and comment the code and what not, and I’ll be free. Of course, then I have my linguistics test on Friday, and French class which is also a hassle.

But besides all that, life has been good to me so far.

On Halloween, I went with Kayce and two of her friends, Candace and Dave, to do this “trick or can” thing with the school’s Christian club, where we would go around like trick-or-treaters, but ask for canned goods instead. At first, I was a little unsure of it, because everyone from our floor was supposedly going, and no one else really showed up. I’ve met Candace before, but she’s really Kayce’s friend, and I didn’t know Dave at all. So after we were given our assigned part of the neighbourhood and Kayce suggested we split up… well, I don’t need to be a math major to know that chances were I was going to end up with someone I didn’t know. But, as it seemed, probability was against me, and Kayce asked if I’d like to go with her. Of course I would!

When we were dropped off in the van by one of the women in charge (since we were supposedly going to have a big group of seven people, but some others came and then copped out at the last minute, and since we were one of the only groups without someone with a car in their group), it just so happened that Candace and I ended up on one side of the street and Kayce and Dave on the other. And so, there were the groups, as if it had happened by fate. Candace was nice, we talked a bit in between houses. She wanted to just say “trick or can”, but I figured that wouldn’t go over well and we’d just be met by blank stares. So, I came up with a little script and said it at pretty much every house for the rest of the night:

if(openDoor()) {
       say("Hi, we're students from Brock and we're collecting canned goods for a community food drive.");

       if(blankStare())
              say("Do you... have anything you'd like to donate...?");

       if(hasCannedGoods()) {
              wait();
              receiveCannedGoods();
              say("Thank you very much. Have a good night.");
       }
       else
              say("Okay, thanks anyway. Have a good night.");
}
else
       leave();

Okay, sorry, kinda got carried away there.

Anyway, we did pretty well. I’m not sure when we started, six maybe? We ended at eight, and our group had about nine (environmentally friendly) grocery bags full. Plus the other fifteen or so groups elsewhere, I’d say we did pretty good.

About a quarter of the way through, we switched partners and I ended up going with Dave for the rest of the night. Ah, my good old friend probability. Will nothing stop you? Anyway, this was a interesting little study in psychology or sociology or some other kind of silly little program. Carrying around canned goods can get tiring (luckily, that’s what the van was for — to go around and pick up our cans every half hour or so). If a big tall guy and a little girl with a Gilligan hat came to your door asking to lug these things around for the night, who are you going to give them to?

For one, splitting up the group was an amazing idea. Pretty much everyone gave us at least two cans, so that we’d both have something. If we went as four people, I don’t know if that would have been the case. It would also be kind of intimidating. Plus, we covered much more ground.

But the interesting thing is — well, not so much interesting as expected — that the heavier cans often went to, surprise surprise, Dave. I think only once someone gave him two cans and me none, but it was a young guy, and young guys are like that. If I was a feminist, I could go into some big tirade here, but I’m not, so I won’t. Plus, sexism wasn’t really even that evident this Halloween, at least as far as I could tell.

But back to my initial thought; something really really terrible is going to happen. Halloween went surprisingly good for being around people (if only because I decided at the last minute to forgo the “Ghoul Ball” afterwards; and there’s really no way I can say this without it sounding dirty, but balls just aren’t my thing) and last weekend, I came home to find our house looking like we’d won the lottery. New flatscreen TV, new HD channels, new Blu-ray/PS3. Umm… what?

My parents do this every so often. My dad, mostly. They go out and buy a bunch of nice new fun things that we don’t really need, and then the next day tell me I need to go to summer school to get a better scholarship. Okay, okay, so not quite like that. But when I came inside and went “what the hell is all this?!” my brother went “well, the bad news is, today was your last day at university”.

Sometimes I think they’re crazy for doing this. But then I realize that my family isn’t like other families. We are certainly not rich, but if there’s something we want, we buy it. We’re living for today, not for some distant future that may never come. There was no RESP for me to go to university, whereas a lot of other kids did have that. We don’t save up stuff for the future, we get what we need now and worry about the future when we get there.

So, after the initial “you guys are crazy” reaction, it was pretty sweet. While I certainly don’t see what the fuss is about HD (the pixel compression is crazy and you get big boxy pixels in the sky and grass and anything that moves — it’s not supposed to be like that, is it? HD is supposed to be a step forward, there should be nothing about it that’s a step back), the PS3 is quite charming. The only game we had was “Call of Duty 4″ which my chauvinistic brother insisted I “wouldn’t like”. But nevertheless, I played it, and I played it most of Saturday.

At first, I wasn’t big on the “first person shooter” concept. I know I’ve played games like that before, but I realized I really didn’t like the camera view. Now that I think about it though, it’s not that big of a deal; it just takes some getting used to. The game started to get old when my brother would win against the rest of us every single time. Kind of unfair, that he has all week to practice and I can only play on weekends. There, that will be my excuse.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it, but for the past few weekends, I’ve spent most of my time working on a website for my dad. He offered to buy me something for doing it, an iPod or whatnot, but I couldn’t really think of anything I needed. Now that we have a PS3, however, that has changed, and so I approached my dear papa and said “Rock Band?” and he said “aye” and went off to Fortino’s and came home with Rock Band.

My brother at first seemed skeptical; that’s a pretty dinky looking guitar. But we started into “Gimme Shelter” and he realized, hey, this is actually really fun!

I, of course, played drums, and found that it is exactly like real drums. Except, one tom just doesn’t cut it; you need two at the very least. Anyway, I seemed to be doing alright up until “Mississippi Queen” when I failed out and my brother didn’t know how to get the guitar into overdrive. I didn’t quite understand why it had happened; it seemed to only be giving me snare notes every once in awhile… am I supposed to fill in the rest myself?

We went onto “Creep” and “Here It Goes Again” and “Maps” and I realized… hey, those orange bars aren’t for measuring time. Those are the bass drum! And I’m not just supposed to play the bass when that little circle pops up, I’m supposed to be playing it all along! Just like regular drums! I knew something was wrong! And, armed with my newfound knowledge, I started increasing my score to the 90s and getting even longer streaks.

Long long ago, I was afraid of “Rock Band”. What if I’m not a good drummer? Then I’ll know I suck! And while this game is certainly stingy on the timing, which can completely mess you up for an entire verse, I still somehow managed to get rather high streaks without even playing one of the drums. And I was certainly proud of my “Most Energy” awards, following in the footsteps of my drum hero, Keith Moon. It’ll be pretty awesome when I finally get to play WGFA, but unfortunately, it looks like there aren’t any Van Halen or Led Zeppelin songs on there, which are also always fun.

Now, the problem with this whole thing was that my dad came home with “Rock Band” at about four o’clock on Sunday night. Sunday nights are pretty busy; I’ve got to have a shower, have dinner, and be out the door, back to school for another week. And so, I only ended up playing the game for about an hour, while my brother gets to come home every day and play it himself, without me… needless to say, this week has been going extremely slow.

But! Back to my initial thought. Nothing terrible has happened for awhile. That’s not to say that terrible is a regularity in my life, but it’s just not always up like this. Something’s going to happen, and I fear it’s going to happen soon. I’d quite like for whatever crisis it is to just pass me by this month, and maybe next month as well, seeing as it’s exams and all. Anyway, it’s quite time for me to continue with my once productive day and start doing something.

I ended up getting a little lost looking for the room for my class, which was French by the way. Fortunately, they have little maps throughout the building which have helpful “you are here” signs, and when I noticed the sticker had moved farther away from the room I was supposed to be going to, I went back and started again. I got to the hallway to the room, which had another map outside, looked at it, and thought I was still not there yet, so I wandered away, and wandered back and decided it would be a good idea to ask all the girls sitting on the floor what class they were waiting for. Turned out to be a good idea.

We got into the classroom which once again surprised me. For one, it had desks, which was not surprising, but these desks had computers. And of course I decided to bring my laptop with me that day. Great. Even more surprising was the fact that there were only thirty seats. Quite a shock to have a first year class with that few students, especially after Astronomy with five hundred.

The teacher came in, and unshockingly, started speaking entirely in French. What was shocking was that I could hardly understand him. I’ve always been pretty good at French, always one of the top of my class (which wasn’t hard, considering there are usually less than ten people), but apparently my level of French is hardly “intermediate”. I thought for sure everyone else would go “huh?” and not understand a thing, but there were several girls in the class who managed to carry on conversations with him in French. Luckily, I was sitting near one of these girls, who explained to me and another girl what the homework was (writing five sentences summarizing a movie we watched, which I will get to).

After class, I was a little more reassured I was not the only one feeling this way when I overheard some girls saying basically that they understood most of what he said, but that it was hard to understand. I’ve forgotten the exact words since then, but it made me feel better.

I couldn’t give you an even close estimate of the percentage of what I understood, but I could pick out a few words here and there and get the gist of what he was talking about. But it’s basically like when your teacher is going over an assignment: I would know that there is an assignment and that it is probably about that thing we were just doing and it needs to be done on Monday. But I don’t know that it should be about Hamlet’s Oedipus complex, four pages long, in Times New Roman, with a cover page, with a title and your student number, or else you get zero. I’d end up talking about Hamlet’s struggle with existence for one page in Garamond (which non-fontaholics would probably mistake for New Roman anyway) and failing.

My mom suggested that I get a tape recorder, but I really don’t see the point. I’m not going to want to listen to an hour and a half lecture all over again and not understand it all over again twice a week for the next three months.

Some people might think “well, you’re obviously not at the level you thought you were. So drop it”. I don’t think I’m going to do that. It occurred to me once but then I realized that I really want to take French. I really want to learn. And this is going to force me to learn. Going into a beginner’s class, which will be much too easy, will not force me to learn. In this class, I’m going to have to learn fast or I’m screwed. I don’t like being screwed, so I’m going to learn fast.

The class mostly consisted of him reading the (luckily) English syllabus (which is just a silly English teacher type word for “course outline”) in French, which I understood mostly, if only because the thing was in front of me. He also made a comment about forgetting people’s names, which I smiled at because it was appropriate and the smart French girls were doing it, and to show that I remember what “oublier” means.

After that was all done, we watched a movie that apparently has an episode for each chapter in our book, “Bien Vu, Bien Dit”. It goes without saying the entire thing was in French, and again, I got the general gist of what happened, and I understood that the end was a freaky cliff hanger.

Unfortunately, we got to a scene with these people filming a television show and I was distracted by the male host. He looked exactly like an actor named James Read, who I know from the eighties mini-series “North and South” from my mom’s collection of Patrick Swayze movies. I don’t know so much if it was the way he looked or his voice; he sounded even more like what I would imagine James Read would sound like if he were French. However, I must conclude that it was not him, because he is much too old now and this movie is clearly a recent one. I also looked him up and he’s from New York, which doesn’t seem like a very French place to me. I can’t find any mention of the actors in the movie (“Le chemin de retourner” I think?), so I guess I’ll have to pay attention to the credits during the next episode. So yeah, that turned out to not be good, because I kept trying to figure out if it was him or not and stopped paying attention to what was happening.

My next class was math, which made me so unbelievably happy after that freaky French class. “Math? Pfft, I can handle that!”. Which, you know, I wouldn’t be saying back in June, when I was being told to go to summer school. Or back when I was in grade 12 and freaking out over Calculus every night. But now? Math is just fine with me.

And luckily enough, I didn’t jinx this class by thinking so. It turned out to be my favourite class so far, but then again, I’m still waiting for computers. There is no required text for this class, which is awesome. The professor seems a little, mm, confused. There’s a lot of people I know like him, who try to explain something and then partway through the explanation, they realize they don’t know where they were going with it and end with “uh… yeah…” and then go on to something else, which is really annoying. What we’ve done so far was really easy though: propositions, which are exactly what they sound like. It’s a statement that’s either true or false. “It is raining” is a proposition; “Go away” is not. “the earth is flat” is a proposition; “la la la la la” is not.

He showed us a slide (by the way, nearly all of the teachers use Power Point presentations, which is really cool) that had a list of statements and we had to decide whether they were propositions or not. We decided that yes, 1+2=3 is a proposition, but 1+2 is not. Then came x+1=2, which I knew was the one tricky one that would throw everyone. Most people seemed to say no, it’s not a proposition, but a few said yes. I was with the latter group.

The professor tried to steer us in the right direction by going a little abstract: “well, let’s say that there’s… uh… let’s say… I don’t want to use the actual word… umm, let’s say that there is this ‘God’ that exists, we will say that he exists, and then he knows everything…” which, in itself, this was all rather funny, just the way he was attempting to not offend anyone but still explain. So then he goes on “well, if this ‘God’ knows everything, can he know whether or not ‘x+1=2′ is true or false?”. And everyone goes “umm… no”. And then just as I was about to raise my hand to say the exact same thing, a guy in the back goes “well, if God knows everything, then he knows what x is!”.

That was basically the awesomest thing I’ve ever witnessed in a classroom in my life.

Next up was Linguistics, which could hardly live up to that awesomeness. The teacher seems nice, but she referred to herself as “doctor” rather than “professor” and I kind of got the sense that she’s a researcher first and a professor second. And I mean, we’re paying all this money to go here and learn this stuff, you would think the people teaching us would be putting some effort into, you know? I could be mistaken though, it was just a first impression. She seems nice otherwise, but the lecture is two hours and I think it could get kind of boring. Some of the material seems interesting (like this video we saw about how bees communicate), but two hours sitting and writing notes on a Friday afternoon is not going to be fun any way you slice it.

Shortly after classes were done, it was time to go to the International Student barbeque with Kayce, Natalie, and Hailey, even though 75% of us aren’t international. We had to take the bus all by ourselves down to the downtown terminal and then to the beach, which was kind of scary, because I thought we were all going as a group and I had no idea where we were going. We did kind of end up going as a group, and so I got to experience two nice long bus rides standing up in a crowded bus, trying not to fall over onto the people sitting down.

The food itself was a little disappointing because I went to the barbeque thinking hot dogs and hamburgers. Instead, there was salad, corn-on-the-cob, bread, chicken balls (I think?), and some weird meaty sloppy stuff. I opted for the former three, and when I sat down Hailey commented “vegetarian?”. Me? HA HA HA.

After that, we walked down to the beach for awhile, which Kayce really liked because it had sand. Apparently the beaches in Britain don’t have sand! Hailey and I also walked down the pier, hoping to see Toronto, but it was much too cloudy. We later stood in front of a goose that was pure white and looked angry because it had like a black eyebrow or something for five minutes. We joined Kayce later playing a game with a bunch of the other kids playing a game called “Larry, Curly, and Moe”. They would call out a name and the person would have to crawl through their team members’ legs, run around the circle, back to their team, run in the middle, and grab a ball and get back to their spot, and whoever didn’t get something was out. The first time, they had forgotten to take out one item, so everyone was still in. The second time, they called Larry, which was me, so I crawled through the other two girls’ legs and started off running… right into everyone else, who was running in the opposite direction. Smack I went, right into two other people, and down I went. “Sorry!” I cried. “Are you okay?” everyone asked. “Yeah!” I yelled and went running. We managed to stay in that round, but lost the next round, when Hailey got tackled grabbing for the last item. Afterwards, the back of my head was pounding and I woke up this morning with a terrible aching left hip, but it didn’t really hurt all that much, surprisingly enough.

After all was done and it was raining and pretty miserable out, we headed up to a bar for the next few hours. Kayce and a couple of other international students are of drinking age, since most of them are in upper years, so they ordered drinks, but I of course had none. I sat and watched Hailey and Kayce playing pool and a bit of poker on television.

There was this one older guy (I’m terrible at guessing ages, but I would say probably in his forties?) who came up to us and talked with us for a bit. I don’t remember what all he said, he asked me if I played pool and I said no and he said why not and I said I’d be terrible and he said do you know geometry and I said a little and he said it’s all angles. Most of what else he said was just commenting on their silly moves and rules (“what was that?”, “is that a British rule?”) and whatnot, but it was a little weird. I couldn’t quite place it, but he looked a lot like some actor. I wanted to say Kiefer Sutherland, but then thought Kevin Costner, and now I’m thinking Dennis Quaid, but with longer hair and scruffier looking and shorter. After the girls played two games, he wandered back to the table and offered to play partners with another international girl named Jenny versus the other two girls.

Afterwards, the other girls were discussing the creepy factor and how they thought he was just trying to look down their shirts and things, but I didn’t really sense any of that and I didn’t hear him tell them to “get down lower”. Maybe I’m just naive. I’m have a very pessimistic attitude towards life, but not towards people. I assume people are good, which I’ve been told is a very stupid thing to do. I don’t trust people blindly, but I assume they don’t have bad intentions unless they give me reason to believe otherwise. And besides, what is so wrong with that? So he’s looking down your shirt. He’s not touching you, so I don’t really see a problem with that. Sorry feminists, you guys (oh, I’m sorry, people) just complain too much about things that really don’t matter all that much. Why don’t you get us equal pay first, and then you can start complaining about horny old men.

It wasn’t actually all that late when we left, but it felt like it was. A whole big group of us left at the same time, since buses stop coming so much when it gets later. We tried to figure out what bus stop to wait at and kept going back and forth in the rain until some helpful people at the bar across the street pointed us to the right one, by the ice cream shop.

Kayce went into the shop and came back and asked us what a “pita” was. We explained and she was like “ohhh, you mean a ‘pit-uh‘!”. After determining that we were speaking of the same thing, a p-i-t-a, a flat bread concoction, and that it was just a pronunciation difference, she said “oh! I thought they were offering me a piece of a guy named Petah! I was like, no, I don’t want that!” (It’s their accent, she’s British, you know? Ha ha ha?)

Onto the bus we went, and I tell you, I’ve never heard a whole bus spontaneously burst out singing “Alouette”. (That was the French people, of course). There was also a discussion about the “backwards peace sign”, which North Americans apparently all think still means peace, which the UK people all found hilarious. I set them straight and showed that at least some of us know that it’s rude (and some of us do understand what “fanny” and “fit” and “taking the piss” (which I always heard as “taking the mick(ey)”) mean).

So, all-in-all, Friday was nice and eventful, as was today, but I’ll get to that tomorrow, because I’m planning on sleeping and overall, not doing much then.

Anyway, I have this thing. A fantasy, maybe. That one day, in my lifetime, time travel will be possible. Although, it probably won’t be for a long long while. And so, even if a common person like moi would be able to time travel, I would be an old lady and going back to the sixties would be no fun because I’d be like “hey, look, it’s Jim Morrison, let’s hang out!” and he’d be like “no way, man, you’re a square” and it just wouldn’t work out.

I was watching “Daydream Believers” the other day because somehow I found out that this guy in “Paradise Falls” who seemed vaguely familiar was in it. Then the other day I was dreaming and was like “he plays the guy in the first scene — ‘you’re sure this has never been done before?’ ‘no, never’”. So then I woke up and was like “whoa, did I dream that, or did I just suddenly remember that last night when I was falling asleep? No matter, I shall watch the movie today!” and then I did and then I was right.

So I ended up watching like half of the movie before I realized I wasn’t planning on watching any of it except for the first scene, but then you have the next scene with Van who always has the best clothes and I’m like saying every word along with it, and it just kind of went from there.

But what I realized, during the “Last Train to Clarksville” scene was that they did really good on the fonts. The sign plastered on the train was in Hobo, which is the font used for the THE in the logo. And there were a couple other nicely chosen fonts.

But what I actually realized was that The Monkees were like in their twenties and all these little thirteen year old girls are screaming at them and wanting to tear their clothes off and they can’t even, you know, do anything about that, even if they wanted to. Umm. Yeah. I’m rather fond of my mind, because it thinks of things like that randomly.

Like, yesterday I went to my friend Kristen’s house, who I haven’t seen for like two years, but we were like really good friends since forever, because she was the first person I met when I moved here and my grade three teacher was like “Kristen, Rebecca, why don’t you show Jenny around?”. So yeah, we watched “Sweeney Todd” which (spoilers, I guess) is about a barber who kills people and a pie maker who bakes them into pies. And I was randomly like “hmm, I wonder how many pies would one body make?”. (/spoilers) And then she played some songs on her guitar and sang, and it amazes me every time I hear her, she always gets better and better. And then we played “Guitar Hero” and I didn’t totally suck except when I tried “Message in a Bottle” on medium and only got 14% of the notes and was booed off in like 30 seconds. But other than that, I got 80s and 90s on easy mode and mostly 70s in medium, which was way better than I expected.

But then when I was watching the movie, I realized, god, *I* would have been one of those screaming thirteen year old girls. Well, minus the screaming. And I’m like, how terrible was that for them? I mean, sure, The Monkees had an older young audience as well, but the vast majority were just little girls! I kind of understand the frustration of being in The Monkees a little more now that I’m older.

So it’s just the same. The Monkees don’t want to hang out with little girls, nor do they want to hang out with old ladies. And so, that is why my future old lady time-traveling-able self will one day travel back in time, not to the sixties, but to the 00s, and take the young me, who can properly enjoy myself, back to the sixties with her. And then the seventies and eighties, and what the heck, even the nineties. We’re going to be busy.

But the thing is, she hasn’t come yet. And so, that makes it kind of difficult to go back in time.

But I figure, well, she’ll have lived through my entire life, and she’ll know when the best time to come and pick me up is. I guess now isn’t the right time. And sure, I can dig that. When I was thirteen, I thought that was the right time, but I obviously know now it wasn’t. And while I think, yeah, I’m ready to go now, I’m probably wrong.

Of course, then there’s the whole, well, if I’m going off time traveling, I’ll need to leave at a time that I can actually disappear for awhile without anyone noticing. And when could that be? I don’t know the exact properties of time travel, like does time here stop while I’m time traveling? If so, then I could just kidnap myself while I’m at school one day and go gallivant around in the last century then come back and go to class and no one would be any wiser.

It’s a kind of “Bill and Ted” thing, the way I view time travel. I intend to bring myself back in time, so it must happen, I just have to remember to do it in the future. Like, right now, I want an ice cream. If in the future, I remember this exact date and time and where I am right now, and I travel back in time to the present and put an ice cream in front of me, then I should theoretically be eating an ice cream right now.

But of course, I don’t really want an ice cream, and even if I did, I wouldn’t travel back in time just to give myself an ice cream. Time traveling might take a lot of energy and stuff, and I’m not gonna waste it for a dairy dessert.

But basically, what it all led zeppelin up to was that yeah, we’re free. We have our freedom. We have freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of whatever. We have freedom of choice, but we’re made to think that we don’t. Of course, they don’t tell us that. While we technically, legally, on paper, have freedom to choose anything, they make it seem like we only have one choice. One right choice. They tell us what to choose, and we usually do.

One example I can think of is the whole school uniforms thing. They sent out a brochure, showing why uniforms are so great. Did they ever tell us why we should choose not to have uniforms? No, of course not. And while technically, we were able to choose whether we wanted them or not, they told us what to choose.

And I don’t just mean they, the school. I mean the government, the boss, the parents, TEH MAN! They all do it! Hell, if *I* were in a position of power, so would I, because it works. And you know, good for them. They’re getting what they want, we would all do the same. Well, I only speak for myself, but I believe most other people would. There are some people we call “good people” who have a “conscience” but ahh, I don’t like those kinds of people. I’ve also realized I don’t like positive people. “Think good thoughts, and it will happen!”, “be good to people and people will be good to you!”.

So okay. Maybe it does work. Whenever my Pokeman’s confused, I always picture it saying “GYARADOS is confused / GYARADOS used SURF!” rather than “GYARADOS is confused / It hurt itself in its confusion” and it really does work. But playing the slots in Goldenrod? Well, I just can’t get that triple 7, even with the Golem’s help.

Anyway, I shall leave you with my poem I wrote for Creative Writing. This class can actually be fun if you let it.

I see life and death and
everything in between
happen before my eyes.
Feelings not imagined
I find stirred up inside.

Is it love? Am I sick?
Is that all? Is this it?
Many questions answered,
but even more to come.
Where do we go from here?

Telling so many lies
we’re going to explode;
it’s nearing nine o’clock.
Just take my hand, brother;
your secret’s under lock.

Somewhat funny to think
and maybe even sad,
but it has only been
two hours in front of
my television screen.

“Lost” season finale:
Thursday, May twenty-ninth.

BTW, if any Creative Writing teacher of mine or poetry professor is reading this after you searched Google to find where I ripped off this amazing piece of work, then umm… go away?

Yearbook class is slacking class. Nobody does much of anything anymore. Well, no one did much of anything in the first place, but even less so now that school is almost over. Yesterday, Ryan was explaining 1337 speak to our teacher, who then said he was going to write the exam entirely in 1337 speak. Someone remarked that probably 80% of our class would still be able to understand it. Pretty good estimate, if you aren’t counting the people who won’t bother to show up for the exam (I, sadly, am in the majority here).

Anyway, what I mean to say is, we’re a big bunch of nerds. Nerds like to game, and in these days of high technology, gaming is portable, and what better to do in Yearbook class than game? There are usually four or so kids sitting around the table, playing and battling and yelling “zeta slow!”. I started to feel left out with all these people around me playing their Nintendo DS’s, so I did something about it. I brought my GameBoy Color.

I never did manage to catch ‘em all on “Pokemon Crystal”, so now I’m determined to do just that (104 and counting! Yesss!). It’s become such a part of me that now, not only am I playing during study halls and during lunch and during Yearbook (I never realized how much wasted time there is at school), but I come home and start playing again! It was supposed to just be something to do when there is nothing to do, but now I’m doing it for fun!

And when I’m not playing, I’m on Bulbapedia, trying to figure out which Pokemon I should use as my six and which moves I should teach them and where to find all those items I never picked up.

It’s also been surprising educational. I’m terrible with wikis; I’ve fallen into the trap of Wikipedia and Lostpedia many a time, so obviously I wasn’t immune to this one. Turns out MissingNo. was real, and turns out there actually were glitches that would allow you to catch Mew! And it turns out that many of those “go here, talk to this person 99 times, then walk here, then press this…” stories I used to read about actually were true. I always thought those long processes were ridiculous, because why would they make you do all those crazy things to get a Pokemon/item/whatever? I didn’t know anything about programming (and apparently still don’t know anything about programming glitches), so none of that seemed reasonable.

But now, reading about how the Old Man trick works, I can see the logic in it. Another neat programming thing I read was about how Pokemon retain their “shininess” or alternate colouring when traded back and forth between the old Red/Blue/Yellow version and the newer Gold/Silver/Crystal versions, when RBY didn’t have this feature. A Pokemon is shiny if its stats (attack, defense, etc) match a certain number. So basically:

if(speed = 10 && defense == 10 && special == 10 && attack == 10)
     shiny = true;

I thought that was pretty cool. I’d much rather be playing Pokemon right now, but I will finish this post and will work on my Creative Writing poem.

Which brings me to my next topic: Creative Writing. Ahhh. So, remember the old poem analysis assignment on a poem and author that turn up no results in Google? As suspected, I did do the assignment on my own, but that was no big deal.

What was a big deal was the day after that post, I approached the teacher for help. I explained my situation (there’s nothing on the poem, there’s multiple people who could have written it) and asked if she had any information on the poem or author or knew what I could do. So what did she tell me? “Just look deeper and you’ll find it”.

Translation: “I don’t know either”. If you don’t know something, just admit it. Seriously!

Luckily, her lack of knowledge on the subject she’s teaching came in handy for me. There were two people who may have written the poem, one was a translator, the other a comic book writer. It was probably the translator. But on a whim, I decided it was the comic book writer. That’s a much more exciting profession, don’t you think? It also makes for a much more interesting analysis.

This poem, like I said, was very short, very non-specific. “Poetry is all about your interpretation”, the teacher had said, so I went and took this as far as I possibly could. This poem, which talks about birds and trees and wind and poems, I spun around into an extended metaphor, comparing writing a poem to creating a superhero. “Lighter than air” the poem read. I read this as “faster than a speeding bullet!” (hey, they both use “than”!). There were two lines that were nearly identical, talking about a bird, then a tree, and then the third line changed it up and talked about a poem. I took this to mean “it’s a bird, it’s a plane… it’s Superman!”.

All this, I stood in front of the class today and said with a straight face.

And the best part? She accepted it! And possibly even — dare I say? — believed it. When I was done, she asked me a question about the author’s background, and I summarized the opening paragraph of his page on Wikipedia, which was all the research I did when I learned there was nothing more to learn. That seemed to be enough. She asked what I learned from the poem and I just restated the bit about it being an extended metaphor in different words. “Well, comic books are seen as like, not very… mature… and poems are more, like… deep and stuff…” I said. Deep… and stuff. Very concise, Jenny.

But no. You hang around by the “Guitar Hero” set up, watching them, waiting for them to stop playing. And they never ever do.

Also, if what I saw was right, they have the drum tabs all messed up for “Rock Band”. Seriously, why would the snare be at the bottom? That makes nooo sense whatsoever. The bottom is the bass drum. I mean, that would even make sense to non-drummers. Plus, the kids who were playing it so didn’t know how to actually play drums. Pfft, amateurs. They looked ridiculous. I’da shown them… if only I had the chance…

Of course, as soon as I spent a whole weekend installing all the games and organizing my downloads for it, I started getting homework and projects again. Of course.

Now, March Break, my days are spent working on Communications projects while my parents are at work, and watching “Lost” the rest of the time.

I can’t watch “Lost” again until we get the second season and I’ve had enough of Communications, so I decided to take a break and make some new sims. Of course, there aren’t any sufficiently wacky outfits for my David Lee Roth sim, so I have to go download some. And then I see… “The Sims 3″.

What.

WHAT?

Okay, so, mixed reaction. Cool, yes, it’s a new “Sims”. Not cool, I’ve just done all this stuff for my “Sims 2″ stuff! And for nothing? Oh well. That’s my life. Doing things for nothing.

So I get to reading about this new “Sims”. “Jenny is hungry. Click here to feed her.” And that’s it? No making the food, no eating it? No going to the bathroom? What the hell is the point, then?

I’ve never really thought about it, but yeah, if I was to explain how I play “The Sims” to someone, it would be something like “I tell them to wake up, go pee, take a shower, make breakfast, eat breakfast, go to work, press fast forward, wait, come home, go pee, get something to eat, press fast forward, read a book, wait, press fast forward, go to sleep, wait, repeat”. How fun is that? Most of the time is just in fast forward. Need to make another friend for that promotion? “Talk > Chat, Talk > Chat, Entertain > Joke, Talk > Chat”, click fast forward, wait. Everything is just queue something up, then wait. That’s not fun at all, is it?

I don’t know, this is gonna be crazy.

I’m also confused about how controlling the sims is going to work. Apparently everything is happening at once, as your sims grow old, so do their neighbours. It’s not like now, how I have to play my family of sims for a couple of days, then switch over to the son who’s in university so that his age is proportional to his siblings’ ages. Cool, right? But most people have a ton of different families in their neighbourhood. How do we control these hundred (or whatever) people all at once?

My first thought actually was… how is my computer going to handle this? Rendering the entire neighbourhood at once?! Crazy!

I’m obviously going to try it out when it comes out, but there’s nothing that’s convinced me yet that it’s going to be awesome. I just… I don’t know. It’s seems really foreign.

So what do I want from “The Sims 3″? I know, it’s a little late for a wish list, but I’ve been inspired by others I’ve seen in my research. Someone mentioned changing the height of the sims, which may be in the game, since I know you can change their weight. I want my Davy Jones sim to be short and my Mike Nesmith sim to be tall!

And my Keith Moon sim, he’s reached the top of the musician career and is now a Rock God. I don’t want his neighbours to still look at him the same way. He’s famous! People should act like he’s famous!

Less weirdo outfits. How many people actually use the gorilla suit or astronaut outfit?

More long hair for male sims. And more hair for females with bangs! I know, I know, these I can still download myself, but it would be nice to have it included, yannow?

Pre-teen sims and middle age adults. The jump from child to teen is too big. Plus, I don’t really want Cindy and Bobby Brady to be toddlers and Greg and Marcia to be teens. Their ages were much closer than that. I’ve seen other people mention how the adults are all young and good looking, but in real life, you don’t jump from that straight to elder. There needs to be something in between. Some people say another one in between toddler and child, but I don’t usually play sims that age, so I don’t care much.

And clothing should be available across multiple ages. Teens should be able to wear children’s clothing and adults clothing. Adults should be able to wear teen clothing and elder clothing. And elders, who have shit clothing normally, should be to wear adult clothing.

I’ve seen people mention things like teen pregnancy, menstruation, murders, and going to church. These aren’t going to happen, plain and simple. Too touchy subjects. But, I know you can download mods to make your sims do at least half of these things.

Basements. Now, I thought this was in “The Sims 2″, but it didn’t completely work. You can’t quite get down to basement level with your camera, and there’s still a gap in the earth around the basement.

Also, I want to put my drum set in my room. Apparently it doesn’t fit in four tiles with walls on three sides. Baloney.

There also needs to be other “University”, “Pets”, and “Seasons” expansion packs. “Nightlife”, “Open For Business” and “Bon Voyage” were kind of eh for me, I’m not really interested in those ones.

Someone suggested a “Superhero” expansion pack, which I wouldn’t normally want to use, but it actually could be kind of cool.

And young adults living in normal neighbourhoods! How will I have my Charles in Charge family? Charles can’t be a teen, Jamie and Sarah are teens! And if they could live at home and still go to university? Awesome.

The video editor in me commends the maker of the video, for although there are quite a few mistakes, overall they show promise, and most people don’t even have that.

Long long ago I heard there was to be a movie about “The Sims”. I know, WTF, right? Everyone on the IMDB board for this movie is already bashing it without knowing a thing about it. “How in the bloody hell could this possibly work?”, they ask. Well, honestly, I don’t know, but damn, do I ever want it to. A movie like this, being ridiculed years in advance… it would be incredibly kickass if this movie was, well, kickass! And I say that is a certain possibility, though mostly unlikely.

Weh weh whoa wee whoa, weh weh whoa whoa whoa.

Bon Jovi. Country? No thanks.

Seriously. What the fuck, man. Yesterday after I finished writing nothing, I thought of everything. And now again, I’m sitting here, with nothing. And I suspect when I finish writing this, I’ll think of anything, but then not feel like writing.