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?