7/25/00- Well, I haven't updated in a while. Actually, you could argue that I've been updating everyday because I've been doing just that: nothing. Well, that's not entirely true. For a while I was doing stuff, but being Summer it can only lasts so long. Anyway, a while ago I went to Pensacola and then to Tampa and saw a Devil Rays ball game. The high point was the fight that broke out between a Tampa Bay batter and the New York catcher.
Let's see, what's happening...well, I got the new Everclear album. It's not their best, but it's not bad. I think that it's my third favorite out of the four I have. My friend Jeremy thinks that they've sold out because of their new "pop"-ish sound, but I disagree. I mean, if bands aren't allowed to alter their sound at all for fear of being labeled as sell-outs, then they would just keep on sounding exactly the same over and over again. And I personally hate bands like that. It's just kind of silly, really.
I'm not looking forward to school next year, but I am looking forward to Orientation. I just want to see what classes I have and who I'll have them with, then I want nothing more to do with school. I'm still aching from last year when I quit caring sometime during the third nine weeks but more and more work was being put on us right up until the end of school. That, I can tell you, really sucked.
Well, not much else, I suppose. Just so you know, I'm still alive.
6/13/00- Man, I'm suprised at my Summer so far. It's been better than I expected, and boredom has been kept to a minimum.
To start off with, my friends and I have been playing tag and hide-and-seek and hybrids of the two at the Creative Playground after dark occassionally, which is great fun. I went bowling just yesterday, and I lost a million dollars to my friend John, although he cheated a little bit. He distracted me by holding up a sign that said "Travis's Momma was here" with a down arrow on it. I couldn't bowl after seeing that! But it was all in fun. Oh, yeah, and I'm the Table Hockey Champion. I've beaten pretty much all of my friends at it. It was pretty cool because at the bowling alley they got a jukebox with some really good songs on it. It has crap as well, but that's ok because there is more good than bad. It had some Everclear songs on it, but it was strange because they were from their second album, and they weren't really hits at all. But the jukebox was really cool.
I've been playing basketball pretty much everyday now, either by myself or more often with a group of friends. I even got to play in the school gymnasium because a bunch of my friends who are in band got the band teacher to play a game there. I must say, Veni Vidi Vici. I came, I saw, I conquered. I was doing excellently, making three-pointers left and right. It was great fun, as playing basketball almost always is.
You know what's a great movie to watch? Evil Dead 2. It's so bad that it's hilarious. If you've ever seen Idle Hands, this movie is where they got the hand idea. You really should see it if you haven't. Bruce Campbell is my hero.
Although there have been bad points to Summer as well. Two people in my group of friends have been jackasses as of late. The girl, Andrea, has had a history of pissing me and John off for doing stupid inconsiderate things and getting John into trouble. She's been going out with this kid Mike for a while, and he's a complete jerk. He doesn't belong in our group at all; we're pretty much cool nerds while he's this "tough guy" from Cincinnati. It's annoying, really, he keeps talking about how, for instance, "we don't have fireworks like these back in Cincinnati," and "maybe you tip pizza guys three bucks here in this rich town, but back home we always tipped them a dollar." No joke, those are two actual, real examples. What a jerk. Oh, and he kept saying how he could beat everyone's ass at pool, even though Anwar beat him 6 games to 1 a while back. It's really stupid. I'm sick and tired of both of them, really.
"I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."
-Everclear
5/27/00- Well, it's been another busy week. That's all I've really been having lately. Next week is the last one of school, but that also means exams. Fun, fun. At least I have a three day weekend before hand.
I've been helping my dad put insulation in the attic all week; should be getting some money fairly soon. It's incredibly hot up there, for instance the first time I came down my shirt was soaking wet without a dry spot on it. I also made the mistake of wearing short sleeves. I didn't realize that the insulation itches horribly afterwards. Oh, well.
Last night was fun. John, Anwar, Monique and I all went to McDonald's where we encountered a bunch of pot-heads. We were almost finished and were about to leave when one of them came and sat next to us, listened for a couple of minutes, and then burst out laughing hysterically. I'd never heard of anyone laughing that loudly and for that long. My friends and I just sort of stared at each other, wondering what we should do. I mean, what are you supposed to do in that situation? We hadn't even said anything funny. Anyway, he told us to "keep up that comedy shit up" and then he went outside with his friends. Odd.
Then we went to some basketball courts and played basketball till it got dark, when we went to play hide-and-seek at the Creative Playground. Man, that's fun. My best hiding place was just sitting in the sand with my head through the tire swing. It was really, really obvious, but nobody saw me until we left. It was hilarious.
Not actually that much else to talk about. A busy week, but a boring one, too.
5/13/00- It's been a busy week. For one thing, all my teachers have decided to give everyone a lot more work than usual; I guess that they don't want us all slacking off for the fourth nine-weeks. Anyway, Mr. Gatton screwed my entire class again and my friend Anwar and I hvae made a sheet of all the times he's screwed us that we can remember. It's pretty long. English is fun, though suprisingly so. We did a unit on poetry, so we got to read some poems, along with the usual analyzing involved, and we also got to write our own. Mine is pretty cool, I think, although Brett gave me a hard time about it. He always does, though, and I sure wouldn't put much stock in his opinion anyway. The poem that I analyzed and did a poster on was by Allen Ginsberg, which was awesome because I'm a big beatnik buff.
Also, we're reading Jane Eyre (a boring book), but the project we're doing is pretty cool. We picked five songs to make up a soundtrack for it. I actually put a bunch of effort into that project, and I'm not even finished yet!
Well, prom is this weekend, and I'm not going. Partly because I am only a sophomore, partly because I don't have a girlfriend and partly because I'm broke. Suprisingly, Anwar is going. He's usually in the same boat as me. Man, my friend John has been grounded for a few weeks now for not doing anything. His parents have been getting into arguments and take it out on him because he had a sub-par progress report from school. I think he gets off Monday, though.
Man, I can't wait till school gets out. Then it'll be another couple of weeks and I won't be able to wait till school starts.
4/25/00- Well, it's been a while since I last updated, and a bunch of stuff has happened. First off, I had a good/bad weekend. It was a four day weekend, which was good, and a bunch of us went over to Jeremy's house on Thursday, which was pretty fun. I feel that we kind of overstayed our welcome, though, and I couldn't leave without my friend because he drove me there. Jeremy had already asked us to leave, which is pretty much a sign for the guests to leave, when everyone sort of just stayed inside the front door. I was feeling guilty about it and eventually just told my ride that I had to go soon. But I felt bad about intruding too far.
Then on Saturday I discovered that it was my friend Monique's birthday and that she was having a party. First we went to Chili's, then Matt and I played basketball for a little bit at my house, then everyone headed to Monique's. When Matt and I got there (we were late because we stopped to play basketball) they had the strobe light going and soon there was a huge pillow fight going on. I ended up doing the Worm (which I didn't really know I could do) and got carpet burn, but it was fun. At the very end I finally got my chance to see Mystery Science Theater 3000: the movie. I've seen the show a multitude of times, but I'd never seen the movie. It was hilarious; I really recommend it.
That was the highlight of my weekend, everything else was pretty much boring. Today was another good/bad experience. In chemistry I had to do my demonstration. I really don't see the point, nobody learns anything from it. My teacher just likes to see things explode or light up or spontaneously combust. Honestly. When he found out my demonstration was a simple sugar melting thing, he was disapointed. Not that I care. The first demonstration that I did I thought would be really cool, but it turned out to suck ( I found out it sucked after I spent a couple of hours after school working on it). I mostly picked the sugar one because it was easy to do. And then I got a hard time from two of my friends who kept telling me my demonstration sucked. It was really pissing me off, but those two never know when to stop.
Then I went to weightlifting, where I was maxing out at the bench press when someone comes over and starts telling me how I should be lifting more than I am. Nothing like a good reminder of your flaws, eh what?
Then we went to the gym and things got better. I played basketball with this one kid named Steven who absolutely sucked. That's all right with me, but he kept trash-talking the entire time about how he was better than everyone else. I really beat the pants off him, though, and blew him out of the gym.
In English we're starting a poetry unit, and we were supposed to write down the lyrics to a favorite song. I took it seriously and wrote down every word to my absolute favorite song, the Twistinside by Everclear. When I read it out loud, though, I didn't realize that everyone else had picked humorous ones just to fool around with while I had picked a very deep and touching song. Whoops. That was a little embarassing.
4/15/00- Boy, I sure wish I had graduated from Kindergarden by now. You see, my Spanish teacher gave us this stupid project involving a paper plate and...well, our "creativity". It was due today, and I didn't bother to do it and/or forgot. I'm really not sure which. Anyway, about ten people out of thirty didn't do it, so instead of giving us zeroes, like any sensible person would, she moved the due date back to Tuesday and made it extra credit for anyone who did it today. Now, is it just me, or does this not make any sense? If she starts doing this, we're just going to not bother to do anything in that class (not that I really do anyway) because we'll have a chance to make it up. That's not how you teach.
Another way not to teach is my chemistry teacher's way. I absolutely cannot stand the man, yet somehow the majority of my class loves him. Why do I hate him? Very simple. The man constantly screws me over, time and time again. Examples? Ok. Just a few: for extra credit a while back, we could go on a Friday night to school to look at the sky through a telescope. Two of my friends and I went, and because there were a couple of clouds in the sky, Mr. Gatton didn't show. Not only didn't he show, but he "forgot" to tell us that he wouldn't show, and he didn't give us extra credit for showing up anyway. Screwage #1. Next, and this one's happened a couple of times, we have a test for the day. He starts reviewing material before the test. I figure, hey, if he's cramming it in before the test, it just might be important and actually show up on the test. Boy was I wrong. There was ONE extra credit question on the stuff he went over. Screwage #2. Then, while we're studying for a test, he tells some people that there will be a certain graph they should study that will be on the test. SOME people. The rest of us have no idea about any graph, and accordingly miss the entire page it's on. The people he told: the people who laugh at his horrible, corny jokes. Screwage #3.
Oh, and I'm not done yet. Next up, he has us turn in our notes with some homework. I actually paid attention and took notes while he was talking, which is very difficult when you have a teacher with the voice of Ben Stein but lacking the liveliness. Anyway, I get the assignment back and bam, he marked off from my notes because I only had one example instead of two. Come on! If I only needed one example, why should I get penalized? Screwage #4. Next he gave a test the morning after Spring Break with literally half the class gone on a trip to Hawaii. Those who are even there are not ready to be up, let alone for a test. But he gives it anyway. Accordingly, the majority of us fail. Screwage #5. Also, on the same day, a homework assignment is due. I didn't know about it, but I figured that it was because I wasn't paying attention in class when he assigned it. Wrong. It turns out that the class before Spring Break, he forgot to assign it to us. So he told the period after us to tell us about it. They didn't, so I got a 40 trying to do it in a few minutes before class started that morning. My friends, screwage #5.
And those are only a few of the times he's screwed me and my class. I would write others, but I actually can't remember all of them. Besides the screws, there's his awful sense of humor. Example. He's writing an equation on the board and runs out of room. "Darn, I hate it when I run out of room." (giggles and laughter from class) "I guess I'll just write smaller." So he writes smaller, people laugh, while my friend Steven and I just look at each other and wonder why this is funny. Oh yeah, and another screwage, a bunch of people have broken beakers and test tubes and such throughout the year. Well, I break one, and I have to write my name on a "Breakage Sheet". I figure that maybe it's a new thing and that's why nobody has written their name on it when they've broken stuff in the past. Joey breaks a beaker and doesn't have to write his name on the sheet the next day. Screwage #6. Does this seem fair?
Well, now that that ranting is out of the way, I have nothing left to say.
4/9/00- I just saw Rules of Engagement today. Very good acting, good movie. I suggest it. Let's see, what's new...nothing. Boring weekend. I added a page to my links, the scary lady who lives in your phone told me to tell you to go there. Or something like that.
4/3/00- Well, Spring Break has finally ended. I was so bored! Oh yeah, and I got sick. I wasted two days of my week-long vacation sitting on the couch with a gigantic headache, not able to sit up without feeling faint. But that's ok. I'm not bitter (well, sort of).
There was some relief from the monotomy. My friends John and Brad joined me bowling on, er, some day or another. It's hard to keep track without school. Anyway, whenever John and I go bowling we put a million dollars on the line (technically it's the same million dollars over and over again). I went in the Million Dollar Man and left the Million Dollar Man. It's really quite ridiculous because John is such a better bowler than I could ever be, but for some reason, on the second game (when we put it on the line) I always win. I've never lost the million dollars (well, without counting the original debt when I owed him the million dollars for betting on who would get their head chopped off in the movie the Legend of Sleepy Hollow). Even though my high score is a 142 and I've personally seen John get a 190-something and hit a couple of turkeys.
Anyway, John and I have never bowled with Brad before, and let me tell you, it was an experience. That was the nearest I've come to being kicked out of a bowling alley. OK, when we got there we were put into the far corner, which I could tell would be trouble for them because it's harder to keep an eye on us. But we were sharing the seats with a family, you know, with adults there, so I figured we would just end up bowling regularly. Boy, was I wrong. The funniest thing Brad did was have to go get my bowling ball from the middle of the gutter (he bowled while I was doing so, and my ball ended up stranded). He started out walking, then started running, which John and me knew would be trouble. It turned out he wanted to slide, which he actually did, sliding to a stop right next to the ball. He should have quit while he was ahead right there. His next move was to start to turn to pick up the ball, and somehow he ended up slipping and flying a full yard into the air, on his side. Gravity brought him down with a crash, which everyone around us heard, and everyone started laughing. It was hiliarious.
Another thing I did all week was watch movies. And not just movies, good movies. Last weekend I caught the Firm on TV, then I either rented or saw on TV the following: A Clockwork Orange, the Sixth Sense, the Breakfast Club, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, the Shawshank Redemption, Back to the Future 2, and PCU. I suggest all of them. But except for that Spring Break sucked. And I leave with my newfound favorite saying, "Better get busy living or get busy dying."
