Scholastic Art and Writing results came out today and I'm proud of how I did. At first I was like,
But then I had this conversation:
And then I remembered I had English homework, and was like,
Because reading The Sound and the Fury totally makes me feel like,
And then I thought it might be good to check my grade online, and I was all like,
Then I realized I spend waaaaaaay too much time on iwastesomuchtime.com, and decided to blog, because somehow blogging is a superior way of avoiding homework.
Really. And I've watched a ton of youtube lately (thank you senioritis).
I'm so disappointed Community was benched mid-season and won't be back until the spring. It's a hilarious show. I know I have 30 Rock (though the new season's been disappointing thus far...), The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, and (of course) all the episodes of Firefly on DVD (plus commentary! ....yes, I've watched it all). But when all you want is a hearty dose of Community, nothing else will do. Also, maybe I watch too much T.V.
In further news, I've recently discovered that, like in the video, there are some weird and random things people leap to defend. Especially Muppets. I dare you to say you don't love the Muppets in public.
I'm a bit of a jewelry fanatic. I don't wear it a lot, but I do have a much beloved collection, ranging from coconut husk bracelets to pearl earrings to glass necklaces (one from Venice, one from fake Venice at Disney's EPCOT center). I like pretty things. There's something feminine and empowering and aesthetically pleasing that comes with wearing the perfect piece of jewelry.
I will admit, though, that I may spend a bit too much timing browsing the Tiffany & Co. site when avoiding homework (the first time I wrote that I accidentally typed "Tiffany $ Co." - how appropriate). Occasionally I do so while listening to this, because "Clair de Lune" feels expensive to me. It's like how James Taylor feels nostalgic, and Ke$ha feels cheap.
I have a very difficult time letting go of jewelry. Especially broken jewelry. I don't like broken things - I like things I can fix. And I like to believe I can fix things, even when I can't. Thus, I have an entire two drawers of my old, dorky Target jewelry box filled exclusively with broken jewelry. Some of it dates back to sixth grade. It's all jewelry I once thought was beautiful, or had some sort of sentimental value. But today, I finally began to put it in perspective.
Those lovely pieces of treasured junk? They're broken. And I'm really not going to ever fix them.
Yes, sophomore prom was a night to be remembered for me. Yes, I thought I'd wear that gorgeous necklace on my wedding day. It's the necklace my mother pulled me out of school to buy. Instead of going to math, I sat in the alleyway behind Reams and bid on it at an auction. I won.
Then there's that bracelet - light blue beads and a red, red sun, a gift from my dad for no apparent occasion. It was beautiful. He found it in a shop above the Tea Grotto.
Or the necklace I bought in Tonga at a flea market - the same flea market where a woman with no teeth gave me a grocery bag full of limes, free, because I told her my grandparents were the 'Ulu'aves from Eua. She hugged me tight because she knew them; we're cousins.
But the bracelet isn't the undying symbol of my relationship with my father. My prom accessories will undoubtedly be unfashionable by the time I have an excuse to wear fancy jewelry, and to be quite honest, the other necklace has nothing to do with Tonga. Not once did I wear jewelry there. I accessorized instead with paint flecks and sweat.
And so, looking fondly over the items a last time, I dumped both drawers into a plastic garbage back and hauled it into the garage. Because I've come to realize I can hold onto the memories without holding onto the object.
That, and with all the Tiffany purchases I intend to make, I'm going to need the closet space.
I spent Saturday (ALL of Saturday - 5:30 to 9:30) at a debate tournament, and walked away with a few interesting thoughts.
1. While the debate "midnight madness" sessions are completely necessary, they're in part utterly useless.
I can't tell you how many times I watched this.
I don't know why it's so funny. But it is really really funny. I feel like, if someone were to compose a soundtrack to my life, it wouldn't be the dramatic score usually accompanying a film of note. Instead, it would be a rip off of another franchise, covered by an aspiring (but for the moment failing) flautist.
2. Watching Miss Representation is like putting on a pair of tinted sunglasses (or maybe like taking them off). Everything I saw and heard - everything - somehow became a reflection of what I learned at Friday's screening of Miss Rep. Things that I heard in the hallway, in rounds, in speeches - I was almost shocked. There's definitely an element of "I'm just a silly girl" at debate tournaments, especially in IEs. Girls show up in these ridiculous flowery or supershort or mismatched get ups, and it just kills your ethos. Do not wear a miniskirt at a debate tournament. You want to look like a prosecutor, not a prostitute.
But it's not only how girls present themselves at tournaments - it's how judges perceive us. In a round where I have a similar speaking style to a boy on another team, a judge calls him "confident" and me "passionate". That one drives me up the wall. I don't want to be defined by my emotions in a round - I want to be defined by my competence. If I have another judge tell me, "I appreciate your passion because it's not what you know, it's how you feel," I will kill someone. Because I know stuff too! I feel things, yes. But a Public Forum round is not the place to be judged solely on that. He's confident, I'm passionate. He's assertive, I'm catty. He's aggressive, and I'm a bitch.
The question of course becomes "How do I fix it?" Because getting angrier doesn't work. Getting quiet and meek makes me lose the round. I suppose the happy medium requires channeling a college professor type, where instead of aggressive, I'm just better informed. Instead of getting angry, I get helpful. Let me explain this to you. Let me be polite.
I know altering my ethos is important. I just wish I didn't have to do it for the reasons I sometimes feel I have to do it.
/endrant
3. Sometimes we feel a little...
Thank goodness for the many connoisseurs of bizarre youtube videos in my life.
4. Turns out, even though I'm not terribly talkative in it, I'm taking a ton from my AP English class (a class I am, at the moment, genuinely enjoying). Every one of my impromptu speeches was essentially a one woman show entitled "Scenes from AP English". Ms. Powers would be proud, and perhaps disturbed, to hear the words coming out of her mouth coming out of mine. That said, turns out AP English is a powerful resource for impromptu material. I'm actually proud of the impromptu speeches I gave. I think they were different from the usual Utah Girl's Impromptu Speech. And for the first time since I started impromptu, I got to give a speech compelling enough that the judge wanted to hear it.
Topics I pontificated upon included words, Miss Representation, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, no pants o'clock, Miss Representation, Disneyland, poetry, the Waterford uniform, and Miss Representation.
5. The funniness of a knock knock joke is directly proportional to the number of times it's been retold, as well as the recency of the subject matter.
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Spanish Fork.
Spanish Fork who?
Wait, where?
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Jillian Combs.
Jillian Combs who?
....plastic bag.
6. Debate tournaments give out weird trophies. This year, I have received a Viking helmet, a sword, a wooden block, golden plastic "clappy hands", and now a lei with a medal fastened on. I have an entire ensemble.
I love love love quotes. On occasion I steal them. My favorite book to steal quotes from is Mardy Grothe's viva la repartee, because it is, in short, a book of excellent comebacks.
I also keep a collection of quote books. Most of them are serious: quotes about writing, about religion, quotes from my parents, etc. But my favorite by far is the haphazard collection I keep in my planner. Every day I try to jot down one thing someone said that I want to remember.
It's different from an "important quote book." Important quotes are easy to remember - they're pounded into our culture, our collective psyche, our language.
To be or not to be. I have a dream. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Half a league, half a league, half a league onward. Give me liberty, or give me death. Four score and seven years ago. And thus, with a kiss, I die. So it goes.
Without such quotes on hand, we're virtually illiterate. What good are words if we don't steal them, repeat them, string them into a literary banner to rally around? What meaning can they have if we don't say, "these words have meaning" and believe it?
I love these quotes. I'm a sucker for classic sayings - for the perfect little sentence that sends a shiver down your spine. But at the end of the day, I want more than what others labeled as important. I want to remember what I want to remember. And so, here they are. Some quotes from my planner. They aren't profound, they aren't life-changing, they aren't even that interesting.
But I want to remember them. So there.
10/4 - Sometimes there is no middle ground. You hit a kid with a spear, you hit a kid with a spear.
10/11 - She might have been wishing she were somewhere else.
10/26 - Why don't we rubberize everything?
11/2 - No quote, but Henrikson hit himself in the face with a rubber stopper on a string today.
