11th Dimension

I found a song by Julian Casablancas (best known for heading DChen's ultimate favorite garage-rock band The Strokes) that really inspired me. I was surprised by how much deeper it was than most Strokes songs.

"I'll just nod, I've never been so good at shaking hands
I live on the frozen surface of a fireball
Where cities come together to hate each other in the name of sport
America, nothing is ever just anything
I looked up to you, but you thought I would look the other way

And you hear what you want to hear
And they take what they want to take...

Don't be sad, won't ever happen like this anymore
So whens it coming, this last new great movement that I can join?
It won't end here, your faith has got to be greater than your fear

Forgive them, even if they are not sorry
All the vultures, bootleggers at the door waiting
You are looking for your own voice but in others
While it hears you, trapped in another dimension

Drop your guard, you don't have to be smart all of the time
I've got a mind full of blanks, I need to go somewhere new fast
And don't be shy, oh no, at least deliberately - cause no one really cares or wonders why anymore
Oh, I got music, coming out of my hands and feet and kisses...

That is how it once was done
All the dreamers on the run

Forgive them, even if they are not sorry
All the vultures, bootleggers at the door waiting
We're so quick to point out our own flaws in others
Complicated mammals on the wings of robots

If you believe in this world then no one has died in vain
But don't you dare get to the top and not know what to do"

It's nice to hear a song that encourages forgiveness, faith, and individuality, and in this world, it's becoming increasingly rare.

Julian Casablancas-11th Dimension

The vegetarian post

I have been a vegetarian for almost a year and a half now.

I feel that it would lend credibility to my argument if I explained what I was like in the past. Basically, I was a huge carnivore. Double bacon cheeseburgers were my main vice; I could eat a two-pound burger in half an hour, easily, when I was in eighth grade. Yeah, take a moment to think about how disgusting that is. It goes without saying that I ate pulled pork sandwiches like there was no tomorrow, and that I firmly believed the best seasoning for food was bacon bits. That's why I get irritated when people suggest I don't know what I'm missing-trust me, I do.

Why, then, did I become a vegetarian? Well, there were a lot of small factors that added up. For one thing, it dawned on me that if I'm so squeamish of my own muscles and veins, why would I eat others' muscles and veins? From that point on, meat became kind of creepy. After all, it's no fun when you can't think about what you're eating because you're afraid you'll be grossed out by it. Another factor is that I love animals, and it seemed hypocritical to say I was for animal rights and then go eat an animal. The icing on the cake was the documentary "Food, Inc.", which we watched in health class. It documented the way we get meat in America. To be honest, the way meat is produced is disgusting. The animals are kept in squalid conditions, the workers are exploited, it's often unsanitary, it wreaks havoc on the environment, etc.

All in all, I'm happy being a vegetarian. No one in my family took me seriously when I said I wanted to stop eating meat, so I'm proud of myself for sticking with it as long as I have. I feel better about my eating habits. And I don't resent people who eat meat-in fact, I don't really even miss it anymore.

In short, big changes are not as hard to make as you would think.

Babies

It's not that I dislike babies. In fact, I harbor no bad feelings toward them. Congratulations on the new baby. Props to parents. I just wouldn't want one.

People are really disbelieving when I tell them that I honestly wouldn't want a baby. An older adopted child, maybe. But certainly not a wailing alarm clock. People tell me that "deep down, everyone wants a baby" and "you can never feel the same about an adopted child as you can about your own child" (which I believe is utterly untrue). I have never felt that "maternal instinct" toward babies.

Part of it springs from my natural squeamishness. You have to get blood tests and IVs and shots when you're pregnant, all so you can painfully eject a tiny, screaming mass from your body. Then there's the diaper changing, spitting up, and various health problems babies always seem to have. I always perceive them as being extremely fragile, too; whenever I hold one, I freeze up like I'm holding a raw turkey stuffed full of dynamite.

Maybe someday I'll adopt a child. I like kids, just not babies. I just wouldn't want to bring a baby into the world if I wasn't completely enthusiastic about it, or if I felt it would personally hinder me.

Mrs. Hilston would totally understand this.

Does it offend you, yeah?

It seems like people take offense to absolutely everything these days. Offhand remarks are so easily misconstrued, and entertainers and politicians are walking on eggshells trying not to say something politically incorrect. When one of them slips up, he or she is torn apart by the media. And these aren't even Mel Gibson-sized slip ups; many of them have nothing to do with race.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't be sensitve to others and their lifestyles and beliefs. But everyone's human, and everyone says something they regret once in a while. And everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion.

The play's the thing

I just started pit orchestra for the spring musical, and it made me think about all the details and hard work that go into planning something as ephemeral as a school play. For all the times I have been to plays, I have never once taken into consideration the immense effort it took to make that three-hour production happen. I feel kind of guilty about that. I've been in some plays, too, but even then I only thought about the part I was involved with.

Think about it: the actors go through auditions, casting, read-throughs, choreography sessions, music rehearsals, run-throughs, and performances. All of them have to coordinate their schedules around the play. The stage crew has to figure out how to interpret the play and adapt it to the particular stage it will be performed on, then make it a reality. They have to obtain the materials, put them together safely, make it look presentable, make adjustments, go to all the rehearsals, move everything, and manage scores of important props, all while doing their best to stay out of peoples' way. Throw in costuming for sixty people. Every single one of them needs a well-fitting outfit, and some need clothes designed specifically for the play. While all this is going on, the tech crew has to figure out the logistics of lighting and sound, often dealing with irritating actors and choreographers. They also have to know the exact cues for lights, mics, and sound effects. The orchestra has to be assembled and must practice over and over again until they know the parts well enough to be able to play at the drop of a hat. And then all of these elements have to come together and adapt to each other.

In a lot of ways, a play is like a giant animal. Every contributor is like some sort of organ. It's easy to only focus on what you do and not see the forest for the trees. It's an amazingly intricate machine, and all of the parts have to be working in order for it to succeed.

Next time I'm at a play, this is all I will be able to think about.

Old Stuff

Whenever I go to my grandparents' old house (my grandpa died and my grandma has Alzheimer's; we're in the process of cleaning out the place) I make a beeline to an old cabinet in the living room. The top part is filled with antique medicine bottles, which haven't exactly aired out, so it's nausea-inducing to get within three feet of the cabinet. I hold my breath and open the lower part of the cabinet. I always grab a book or two to take home and read.

My grandparents kept a plethora of old books. My grandpa would buy them up at garage sales; he couldn't bear to see them being thrown away. These books are more valuable to me than any inheritance. There are almanacs, photo albums, novels, journals, encyclopedias, newspapers, and letters. Every one of them contains interesting little tidbits of information, and I love reading them. I've kept the majority of them because I don't want to see them get thrown away.

They say that this obsession with history is passed down to the oldest child of every oldest child in my family. It makes sense, then, that I, the oldest child of my father, who is the oldest child of my grandpa, would inherit this love of history.

Maybe I should listen to Beethoven...

I recently stumbled upon an interesting study that compares students' SAT scores with their favorite music. It breaks down the music by genre, and then by specific bands and musicians. I thought it was intriguing because of how stereotypical it seemed-Beethoven listeners racked up the top scores, while Lil Wayne fans were among the lowest. It also showed the range of scores; more popular musicians tended to have much larger score ranges due to their broad reach.

Basically, the study made wonder: do we like certain music because of our intelligence level, or is our intelligence level affected by the music we listen to? Personally, I think the first seems more logical. People tend to gravitate towards music that resonates with them. It would make sense, then, that people with similar intelligence levels would listen to the same type of music. Of course there are outliers, and I know that correlation does not prove causation, but it does seem like a viable theory.

I think that in some ways, the music you listen to can inhibit your intelligence. I mean, studies support the idea that playing Mozart for your baby will make it smarter (though I don't know how much of that is fact and how much is just people who want to brag about how smart their kid is). I know from personal experience that I enjoyed the Beatles's, Ben Folds's, and Regina Spektor's music long before I even knew that they were the ones who had written it. My favorite song when I was little was "Octopus's Garden" and  I only recently found out it was by the Beatles.

In a lot of ways, this study is inconclusive because it doesn't include any information about other factors that go into the type of music people enjoy, such as friends and location. I have to admit, though, that I did a little fist pump when I saw that Sufjan Stevens fans got the second-highest scores.

See the chart

Snow days

I've noticed how every group in our school reacts differently to snow days, or at least the possibility of them. This is basically how it goes:

IB Kids: YES! YES! I can sleep AND spend all day working on homework!

AP Kids: Oh no, a snow day?! But that means we'll have to go even faster than usual to make up for lost time! God, this is awful!

Teachers: If we have a snow day *winkwink* we'll do the test on Monday...

Quiz Bowlers: Can we still go to Quiz Bowl?

Majority of the student body: WOOO! Sleeping in til one in the afternoon!

Politics

So many people are disappointed with Obama these days. People I know who once supported him shake their heads silently when his name is mentioned and talk about how, come 2012, they will be voting Republican.

Personally, I don’t see what Obama could have done differently. Huge problems may only take a few months to create, but they require far longer to correct. I think many people voted for Obama with the expectation that he was a kind of miracle worker who would fix the economy, the war, global warming, in a matter of months. When he failed to make a significant amount of progress, people lost their faith in him.

The problem with this logic is that it is not Obama who is delaying, but Congress.

Our system of politics has moved into the realm of pettiness and spite, a “we will stop your legislation, right or wrong, because we can” mindset that can be found in both parties. And innocent citizens are being hurt in the process. Obama is being given a bad name even though he can do very little to stop the filibustering and animosity between the parties. Once one party makes progress, the other party does something to counteract it. 

I just think people should stick to their guns a bit more, because persistence is the only way we’re going to be able to accomplish anything. 

"You watch weird movies."

My sister is what I like to call a movie racist. She refuses to watch any movie that she doesn’t think she’ll like; in other words, most movies that are not romantic comedies. A few days ago, The Green Mile was on TV and I called Becky in to try and get her to watch it. “This movie looks horrible,” she proclaimed. “Why would you want to watch a movie about, like, violence?” I tried explaining to her that the fight in the beginning is important to characterization and future conflicts, to no avail. She left the room and went to bed at 7:30 (SEVEN-THIRTY. On a Friday night!). “Wait,” I said as she walked up the stairs. “It has a cute mouse in it!”

I will literally try anything to trick my sister into widening her horizons. I told her that Band of Brothers had cute guys in it (actually, that’s my main argument for getting her to watch most movies). I told her that The Godfather features a cute horse and the dad from Elf. These are usually very feeble ploys, considering the fact that they almost never relate to the plot or theme of the movie, but I always try. It’s not as if I don’t take her movie recommendations-I’ve languished through 17 Again, Dear John, and The Proposal, and that’s only recently. 

I’ve tried to tell her that life will not always be Matthew McConaghey handing you a bouquet before going on a quirky-but-romantic first date. Sometimes it will be Jack Nicholson running at you with an axe. In this way, I feel like romantic comedies are perhaps the most misleading movies of all. They usually take place in a realistic setting and have a normal protagonist, and in that they fool people into thinking that they depict what real life is supposed to be like. According to them, if you hate someone, chances are you’re really just in love, and no woman is complete without a wisecracking best friend who will later serve as the love interest to the leading man’s best friend. And people just eat it up and are disappointed when their lives aren’t like that. 

The reason I always try to get her to watch movies that she doesn’t think she’ll like is fairly simple. I just want her to broaden her horizons, because she may end up loving a plethora of the movies she once dismissed. My dad pressured me to watch Band of Brothers despite my squeamishness, and I’m extremely happy he did. It made me realize that gore does not always equal a bad movie. In many ways, it serves to intensify the message. If I hadn’t given that one miniseries a chance, I might have lost out on watching many of the movies I now consider to be my favorites, and I don’t want that to happen to Becky. 

It just irritates me when Becky doesn’t even give good movies a chance.

AGREE WITH ME!

This might seem a bit contradictory to what I said in my last post, but I'll try to explain it well enough that it won't be.

I am very opinionated when it comes to books and movies that I love. My friends know firsthand that I will ferociously berate anyone who dares say a word against Harry Potter, To Kill a Mockingbird, or The Catcher in the Rye. "Why don't you like it? Huh? Answer the question. WHAT ABOUT THE CATCHER IN THE RYE DID YOU NOT FIND RIVETING AND PERFECT?" is my typical response to someone saying, "Meh, I didn't really like it that much." And then I get all passive-aggressive.

I guess I just have problems accepting the fact that the things I love are not as near and dear to others' hearts.

Go With the Flow

I was told recently that I need to grow a backbone. I'm really not a non-confrontational person (as evidenced by the fact that I started arguing with the person who said I needed to get a spine), but I admit that it's usually easier and more beneficial to just sit back and things take their course. I'm not going to argue with a teacher over one point on a test or scream at someone for cutting me off in traffic. Those types of things are so inconsequential that it isn't even worth my time bothering with them.

After all, what use is arguing over things that don't matter? All you're going to do is piss people off. If you know you're right, congratulations. You can now consider yourself morally superior to the other person. After that, just move on.

I am turning to Quiz Bowl to provide an example of my philosophy in action. I was at a tournament recently. During the fifth round, there was a mistake in the answer key to one of the questions. The other team answered correctly, but their answer was counted as wrong because of the typo. One of my teammates did the math and discovered that the other team had been right. We talked to the moderator and they were given their points. Later in the round, our team got an answer wrong because of a typo and the team returned the favor.

Fast forward to the seventh round. The same thing happened to us again, but the moderator initially refused to give us the point, as the other team had answered correctly. One of my teammates began berating the moderator and the other team, much to my chagrin. He ended up getting us the point back, but from then on the attitude towards us of the moderator and the other team was decidedly negative. The other team ended up winning because of it. Obviously, I was pretty mad.

There are some things in life that you need to fight for. So why not concentrate on those things?

Dexter

Despite the fact that the title character spends much his time analyzing blood, I really enjoy the show Dexter. It's about a psychopathic man named Dexter who, knowing he will never be able to curb his need to kill, decides to channel his abilities into finding and killing rapists, murderers, and serial killers.

What gets me the most about this show is the fact that even though Dexter is emotionless and addicted to killing people, you can't help but feel sorry for him. He lives in a world where he will never fit in, and he has to constantly wear a mask in order to fit in. He has a hard time understanding people, but he tries to. Dexter also tries to make the best of his need to kill by only killing those who, in his opinion, need to be brought to justice. He lives by a strict code of ethics: no killing children, animals, bystanders, or the innocent. He does his reasearch incredibly meticulously, sometimes holding off killing someone for months just so he can be sure that it's the right person.

I would say that Dexter is, overall, a good person. J.K. Rowling wrote that it is our choices, far more than our abilities, that define us. Dexter could easily hide out somewhere, killing whomever he pleased and disposing of them neatly and surreptitiously. No one would ever notice. But he doesn't. He works for the police, he brings people to justice, he would do anything for his girlfriend, Rita. He wants to be a good person, and tries to make the best of his situation. It feels really weird saying that about a fictional vigilante serial killer, but there you have it.

"Oh my gawd IB teaches you nothing. AP is so much better." (Shoutout to Ian Kropp)

So there's this one person I know who is so militantly anti-IB that it makes me want to scream. Every single time someone even mentions IB, he goes nuts trying to prove how inferior it is compared to AP. I have nothing against AP; it's just so irritating howthis person feels compelled to butt in to something that has no bearing on his own life. He's never taken a single IB class. It doesn't affect him in any way, yet he constantly goes out of his way to make it sound like it's Satan's own personal way of torturing him or something.

I mean, if he had taken an IB class that left him woefully unprepared for college, or had an IB student beat him up for taking AP courses, that would be one thing. But no, he just inexplicably hates it. I think it's because he thinks it's unfair that we get weighted grades when "IB classes are basically just honors classes regurgitated into two years and they teach you a bunch of liberal bullcrap." For the record, I know people of a myriad of different political affiliations who have taken IB.

I took IB because I thought it seemed like it would be a better match for my persoonal learning style and iinterests. Not because I loathe AP with the intensity of a thousand suns. Not because I detest the people in it. I wouldn't say IB is better than AP. Not in the least. In fact, I liked AP History and did very well in the class. Some of my best friends are going the AP route and I respect that. It's a personal choice, and I think both programs have their strengths and weaknesses. I just hate when people don't understand that and get so uptight and angry.

I always want to say, "Dude. It's not your life. Who cares? Let it go!"

Quote hall of fame:
"Pssh. IB is a waste of time."
"Don't even get me started."
"How did I know that answer? AP BIO!!!!"
"If you learned it in 'IB', why didn't you say it? Too afraid you'll be WRONG?"
"Languages and arts are useless for those of us who actually want to accomplish something with our lives."

Hey you. Yes, you. Read this.

Please don't think I'm a creep...

From time to time, I like to scroll down the list of blogs and read them. I'm sure all of us do sometimes. I feel like our blogs are very secret, though- not necessarily in a bad way, but we never really talk about them. Sometimes I think people feel as if the effort they pit into these blogs is for nothing, and that's not true at all. The whole point of these blogs is to communicate, so I think I'll do just that.

It's interesting for me to be able to see what people have written about and how they approach their subject. Some of you sneak the message in an anecdote, others pick a theme and roll with it. I know all of you to some extent, but with these blogs I'm seeing a whole new side of you. Most of your personal stories have given me a deeper respect for you and made me realize that all people are multifaceted and complex.

It's also made me understand that we are all similar in many ways, yet unique. Everyone is eloquent, whether in their simplicity or complexity. We share many of the same struggles but we all have different ways of going about solving them. These blogs aren't open to the vast majority of our peers, and I think we have that in common, too. The things we write about in our blogs might be things we've never told anyone before; we need to embrace this.

In a word (for each), your blogs are elegant, simple, aware, enthusiastic, observant, analytical, introspective, succinct, descriptive, informative, and wise.

Humans are Weird

"It's so sad to see the world agree/ that they'd rather see their faces filled with flies/ all when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes."

This is a quote by my favorite band, Neutral Milk Hotel, and I think it's really true. Humans, by nature, will never choose peace. We are confrontational by nature, and peace may never work, no matter how hard we try.

It's often said that we are unique in that we have always fought our environment rather than reached stasis with it. It shows that while we are good at changing our environment and figuring out ways around things, we really aren't that good at accepting things for how they are.

After all, you don't see birds ordering pizza, or penguins getting their coats because the water is a little chilly. Wolves don't quarrel over the fact that their neighbor took two chunks of meat while they only got one, and you don't see mice tearing down pieces of grass to clear space for a condo.

To BLEEP a BLEEP

Oh. My. God. This is going to be another rant.

I heard on the radioo the other day that there is a new edition of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn that replaces all "n-words" with "slave". Next up for the printing company (which is headed by an English professor) is Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and possibly several others. The new editions are considered to be more accessible to children and teachers. The man in charge of this said that books that are considered classics need to be rethought if they are going to be read by people during and after Barack Obama's presidency. He also insinuated that books with the n-word-or other profanities- in them were lucky to be considered classics and didn't really deserve that distinction.

I was so mad when I heard this.

In my opinion, censorship is the worst thing that can happen to books. I would rather see Huckleberry Finn banned than see it transformed into a watered-down, "politically correct" version of its former self. Censorship totally invalidates the integrity of books. The message in To Kill a Mockingbird would not be nearly as strong if Harper Lee had not described so vividly the effects of racism in the south. The impact these two books had, respectively, was due to their honest portrayal of life in the time periods they were set in. It sounds shocking to us, maybe, but the fact is that they were extremely realistic situations.

Denying that these words were written is trying to deny our history. We can't just shrug it off and say that Twain and Lee exaggerated for shock value. If they were simply slinging around racial epithets just for the fun of it, and not to illustrate a genuine problem, that might be cause for concern. But we can't erase these problems from our past; doing so would be ignorant and an insult to those who suffered to solve them. These books were not written to demean, they were written to enlighten. It's unfortunate that people are missing that point. It's also sad that they don't realize the fact that censoring them obliviates their significance.

I don't support banning books, either, but at least banned books are left in their original state and are not attempted to be passed off as the real thing. Most classic books-even the Bible-have been banned somewhere, for some reason, and the true mark of being a classic is that they are able to transcend this. They are classics because the message they convey is more important than the words on their pages. It's not just about Tom Robinson-it's about all African-Americans who were enslaved by society's lingering prejudice.

I understand that our nation's history has not always been pretty, and we would often like to forget that certain things ever happened. But to truly be able to be, as a nation, guilt-free, we must first admit that these things happened. Destoying the traces is turning a blind eye to the atrocities of our past, and thereby clearing the way for more in our future.