"You know what?" Say my thousands of adoring fans as they turn on their computers. "I hope she wrote a thanksgiving post, and took a break from her usual pretentious ramblings on literature and her life to list all of the things she's thankful for in this world."
Actually, that was precisely what I was about to do.
-I'm thankful for the vacuum cleaner, because I can turn it on to drown out the sound of my relatives watching Yo Gabba Gabba on the couch next to be.
-I'm thankful for used bookstores, which make me feel incredibly classy.
-I'm thankful for Holden Caulfield, because of how he's given me a great idea for an English essay, and the fact that he makes me look like a great person by comparison.
-I'm thankful for the 1980s in general, because they gave us Toto, Phil Collins, Dexy's Midnight Runners, and tons of other awesome musicians.
-I'm thankful for the Muppet Movie, which was the single best film of the year. Period.
-I'm thankful for Billy Joel, whose songs remind me a lot of of a book that I've read. They make nice background music for my life.
-I'm thankful for my growing collection of peruvian hats, which both keep my head warm and make me look pretty awesome.
-Lastly, I'm thankful for key lime pie. There is literally no better tasting pie in all of the world.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Sometimes I Worry About Myself
The following is a very accurate transcript of my thoughts as I was writing a proposal for my new English writing project:
"I definitely want to do another short story... lets see... and I want to use Great Gatsby as my book, so it should take place around that era. I'll use dialect as one of my goals for improvement. Now what to write about... hmm... I want to make a scathing commentary on early 1900s society. Clearly this is going to have to be historical fiction. Oh perfect, she said to work outside your comfort zone. This is going well! I am so cool! Chip... (eats chip) now where was I? Ahh yes. 1900s scathing societal commentary. Wait for it... wait for it... wait fo- OOOH! The titanic! I can use the levels of the ship as a symbol (improvement goal number 2) for social hierarchy! So its going to be a story taking place on the Titanic, and I can have 2 people from upper and lower class meet each other! Wow! What a great idea! Oh crap, she told our class it can't involve death this quarter... I wonder why? Can't have been my fault. (see 2 posts ago.) Oh well. Moving on, I guess I'll just have to have one survive. Maybe the other can die if I make them enough of a secondary character. Cool, I'll write this down on the proposal now. What a great, original, idea this is!"
(8 seconds and 2 sentences later)
"Wait a second...."
Even though my "original" plot idea sounds a lot like the movie Titanic, it will be different! For one thing, this story will be about 5 pages. Not 5 hours. Also, it will not be featuring the talents of Leonardo DiCaprio, much to my resentment.
In all seriousness though, I'm going to make it very different. It's going to be entirely about society, not romance. And my characters are going to be very different people than Jack and Rose; far less stereotypical. But most importantly, it's not going to be a love story, because me writing a love story would be the literary equivalent of George Orwell writing an educational picture book for babies to chew on. It simply won't work.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Octopi, Coffee Houses and Emily Dickinson
Now that the first quarter of the school year has ended, I am now officially 5/8 of the way to being half way done with high school. How time flies.
To celebrate my father's recent chronological advancement and the long weekend, we decided to go to Philadelphia for a couple of days. I'm sitting in the hotel waiting for my parents to come back with coffee, and writing this on my dad's laptop, which just autocorrected my incorrect spelling of Philadelphia to 'pedophilia.' Should I be concerned, Apple?
Anyway, I'm going to take this opportunity to tell you about my adventures here in Pedophilia thus far.
Upon arrival, we went to a place called Reading (pronounced Red-ing) Terminal Market, which was basically too many restaurants in too little floor space. But it smelled excellent nonetheless. We wandered around looking for unusual things (we found chocolate shaped like various internal organs and fried octopus) and then we came across a little non sequitur used bookstore in the corner. The shelves were in the shape of a sideways E, and a sign in the middle of the "fiction" shelf informed us "Clerk Sometimes Here; Ring Bell." They had everything from Walt Whitman's collected works to manuals on how to read your dog's mind to a little old lady who looked and spoke exactly like Mrs. Costanza from Seinfeld. When a man pulled The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo off the shelf she told him "That was an unpleasant book. I didn't care for it. Might I suggest Nora Roberts instead?"
Sometimes I think the universe wants me to think I live in a sitcom.
Anyway, after a delicious lunch at a quaint little Amish diner, we headed out to an independent bookstore my dad had heard about. Thankfully, this one was much less creepy than it's predecessor. The smell of ink and paper filled the little room, and there wasn't an inch of space to spare. Yet somehow it worked. I could have spent hours just wandering through the shelves, but to sum it up, I bought The Catcher in the Rye and a book of Emily Dickinson poems, both of which I've been wanting to read. After that we went to a little hipster coffee house, with strange paintings on the wall, table tops that looked like faberge eggs, and no menu whatsoever. In other words, a coffee snob's paradise.
I sat at a table in the corner with a foamy mug of coffee my dad had to order for me (I'm not quite up to his level of coffee snobbery, but I'm getting there) reading my Emily Dickinson poems and feeling an interesting mixture of cultured and content.
Before I venture out again into my newfound hipster paradise, I'll leave you with an Emily Dickinson quote:
The bee doth court the flower, the flower his suit receives,
And they make marry wedding, whose guests are a hundred leaves,
The wind doth woo the branches, the branches they are won,
And the father fond demandeth the maiden for his son
To celebrate my father's recent chronological advancement and the long weekend, we decided to go to Philadelphia for a couple of days. I'm sitting in the hotel waiting for my parents to come back with coffee, and writing this on my dad's laptop, which just autocorrected my incorrect spelling of Philadelphia to 'pedophilia.' Should I be concerned, Apple?
Anyway, I'm going to take this opportunity to tell you about my adventures here in Pedophilia thus far.
Upon arrival, we went to a place called Reading (pronounced Red-ing) Terminal Market, which was basically too many restaurants in too little floor space. But it smelled excellent nonetheless. We wandered around looking for unusual things (we found chocolate shaped like various internal organs and fried octopus) and then we came across a little non sequitur used bookstore in the corner. The shelves were in the shape of a sideways E, and a sign in the middle of the "fiction" shelf informed us "Clerk Sometimes Here; Ring Bell." They had everything from Walt Whitman's collected works to manuals on how to read your dog's mind to a little old lady who looked and spoke exactly like Mrs. Costanza from Seinfeld. When a man pulled The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo off the shelf she told him "That was an unpleasant book. I didn't care for it. Might I suggest Nora Roberts instead?"
Sometimes I think the universe wants me to think I live in a sitcom.
Anyway, after a delicious lunch at a quaint little Amish diner, we headed out to an independent bookstore my dad had heard about. Thankfully, this one was much less creepy than it's predecessor. The smell of ink and paper filled the little room, and there wasn't an inch of space to spare. Yet somehow it worked. I could have spent hours just wandering through the shelves, but to sum it up, I bought The Catcher in the Rye and a book of Emily Dickinson poems, both of which I've been wanting to read. After that we went to a little hipster coffee house, with strange paintings on the wall, table tops that looked like faberge eggs, and no menu whatsoever. In other words, a coffee snob's paradise.
I sat at a table in the corner with a foamy mug of coffee my dad had to order for me (I'm not quite up to his level of coffee snobbery, but I'm getting there) reading my Emily Dickinson poems and feeling an interesting mixture of cultured and content.
Before I venture out again into my newfound hipster paradise, I'll leave you with an Emily Dickinson quote:
The bee doth court the flower, the flower his suit receives,
And they make marry wedding, whose guests are a hundred leaves,
The wind doth woo the branches, the branches they are won,
And the father fond demandeth the maiden for his son
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