Senior Year

Ah, 3 years of high school down, 1 to go. Just finished 1st quarter a week or two ago, so time is flying by. Hopefully I find a college to accept me. The counselor says that I should have sent all my college applications by now. Oops.

Anyways, there's not too much left to do scholastically now that marching band is over. I'll probably work on some reading now that research papers are finished too(*gasp* a teenager reading for fun?!?!?). Hopefully I can keep my grades up, so I can continue to cruise through the school year. Things tend to go faster when you aren't worried about grades. The sooner the better: I'm not exactly thrilled with the direction my school is heading. 14 years in the same school and you start to notice things' changing. Ah well, I'll be well on my way by the time it all falls apart.

I'm certainly glad I picked what classes I did. Psychology gives me time to sleep or do homework for AP Government/Politics, which is next. Senior English finishes up my morning classes which really just requires some paying attention to ace. I have a study hall next with the band director, so I can sleep in there and then get to lunch early. After lunch, AP Statistics confuses the heck out of me, followed by Honors Defense of the Faith. Gotta love Christian schools. I enjoy my DotF class because it doesn't require a huge amount of work, but it still doesn't require that I must sit with idiots, like my standard classes. Finally, I finish up the day with my daily dosage of band. We'll start concert band Monday, so I haven't a clue how different it will be this year. Can't wait until the end of the year, but I think I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

A Standard School Day

So...I have a school story. This'll make up for missing yesterday's post. Ok, so I'm walking through the commons room on my way to the band room this morning. I notice a girl sitting all by herself (queue the "awwww"). That doesn't make her a loner at my school... just an idiot trying to hide the fact that she's on her phone. Anyways, I hear some of her side of the conversation..apparently, fleeing to the fine arts hall is good for privacy. Now, it's Halloween today. But my school, being supposedly Christian and all, doesn't recognize that officially as a holiday, so no costumes allowed (sounds reasonable enough). However, that doesn't stop people from wearing some cute little cat headbands and orange and black finger nail polish. Anyways, (I'm gettin' off topic a lot) so this is what I hear:
"Ohmigaw, I found this headband in my closet, so, like, I wore it today"...
"Like, no, we can't wear that...like just uniforms today"...
"Like, I painted my nails, how do you like them?"...
"Oh! Right! I forgot"...
"Okay, bye"...*she flips the phone closed*

Now...I know it's a bit early (if you call 7:00 AM early). And daddy's little princess might not have gotten her espresso frappuccino latte with ginger hand-picked by slave workers in a Columbian countryside. But to forget that people can't actually see you on a phone...that's just...how can you...why would...aye...I'm surprised she remembers to breathe on a regular basis...she's probably got a tutor paid for that.

Bleach

I just caught myself up on the Bleach manga. I used to check the websites daily to see when new chapters were released, but I got a bit lax over the summer. I checked few nights ago and found I had several waiting for me to read. Great fun. They recently stopped releasing new episodes on Adult Swim, not that I really watched the anime in English so much, so I can't really talk to many of my friends about things that have happened recently. I'm not a jerk that reveals spoilers against people's wills...mostly. I heard they left off where Ichigo gets his bankai in a killer battle scene. That's unfortunate. I would recommend watching the subbed episodes which go much farther, however some people just don't like the whole "reading what they are hearing" deal. I would also recommend reading the manga which goes even farther than the episodes...but no one wants to put any effort into reading. Am I so strange for enjoying hearing the gibberish with a translation?

Anyways, it's an excellent manga/anime with epic fights, nifty weapons, humorous...humor, but not a one of the main characters uses an axe...wah. Ah well, it's still terrific and it's quite popular, so it's probably all over the YouTube. And because of its popularity, there are several good AMVs floating about. I look forward to more chapters being released in the future.

Rating: A

Band Update

So I'm in a high school band of 17 wind players and 5 or 6 percussion. I currently play trumpet for marching, yet I'm usually a euphonium/baritone player. At the end of last school year, I offered my services of adaptability and said that I wouldn't mind switching to trumpet from baritone...but just for marching balance purposes (there would have only been one trumpet, so I thought it would be nice to take one for the team). I hadn't played trumpet for 5 years, but I wasn't about to let something as trivial as the passage of time, lack of experience, or the possession of a fading middle school treble clef knowledge stop me. Oops...within around 2 days of playing, I was able to play the entire first-chair part of our marching show for next year. I knew that the other trumpet player would be getting his braces off soon, so his sound and volume would improve as well. So I figured the switch wouldn't be so bad, and it was just for marching season, right?

Wrong. I just got told today that I am expected and "needed" to stay on trumpet for concert season. Now, I enjoy marching and all that, but concert season is what I look forward to in band all year long. And I was expecting to play my beloved Bartholomew (yes...I name my instruments) and getting to play my loud, low, repetitive, rhythmic parts of concert band. Allow me to put this in terms that are more easily related to the general audience: Imagine happily sitting on a couch and watching some TV. Your wife is in the chair adjacent to you, and she is shivering. Now, you're a nice guy, so you walk over, turn up the thermostat, and get her a blanket. Problem solved. A sacrifice was made, a long-term solution was applied for when you aren't there, and a short-term solution was applied because you were there that time. Now I'm being asked to stand there away from the TV, ready to cover the band with a blanket even though the heat is on. Meh...hope this doesn't interfere with the baritone auditions that I've have to do.

On the bright side, trumpet parts are always more exciting, and the band director is talking of taking us seniors for more challenging things while he works with the underclassmen.

Research Paper

Sigh...it's finally Friday. Took long enough to get here.

So I'm in school and I got the final piece of my research paper graded before the final turn-in Monday. I was told I need 3 more sources, and one of those must be an interview. I'm trying to figure that one out. The other two I can just get off the internet, so I ain't too worried. Other than that, I just need to double the length of my paper. Sounds like a joyous time I've got ahead of me. A girl in my class told me that her paper is on an 150 line poem...I got friggin' Ivanhoe. It's a 400 page novel! In my school's library (which is all we had access to on "research days"), there was only one author who wrote two or three of the critical essays that I'm using as sources...and my teacher wants more "variety" to my quotes. I also have to double the length of my paper without turning it into a book report (which is what half my class has done). The glories of the internet: I should have this done with two or three hours of work; as opposed to the week I spent reading books filled with critical essays of 19th century European literature that only had snippets of anything Ivanhoe related. My compliments to Paul de Gategno. He's helped me by writing relevant materials about nothing except Ivanhoe...but my teacher won't let me use his book as my only source.

The awful timings of the step-by-step due dates were terrific also. I'm so glad that our school library is open all the time...oh wait, it's bloody not. By the time I get out of band in the afternoon, that library is more closed than a buffet to a fat guy. So I had to make due with the limited notes I had...which weren't enough. Ah well, at least it's over. But wait, it's not! My teacher just handed us a sheet on an "Oral Report" based on our findings of our primary source (that would be Ivanhoe for me), so I get to stand in front of my class and tell them all what Ivanhoe has done for me (queue the lightning and solar eclipse). Luckily, I'm pretty good at the whole -summarizing incredibly long and detailed things into 3-4 minutes of nonsense with no preparation while shaking because of my hatred for public speaking- thing.

So...wish me luck, I'll be having fun I'm sure. Peace Out!
Grade: TBA

Death Note

Mmmmbuddy, Death Note has come to Adult Swim on Saturday nights. It's a pretty complex little mystery anime, and it's not so much action-packed, yet it is extremely well written and intelligent. I own all the manga in English and watch the anime in Japanese as it was coming out. I'm pretty stoked that it is now in English on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. It's replacing new episodes of Bleach...which ran out of English dubbed episodes apparently, ah well.
Anyways, Death Note is a mystery anime for the most part- like I said. It's about an extremely smart high schooler who finds a notebook with the power to kill anyone that he has seen the face of and whose name he has written down. He decides to use this newfound power to cleanse the world of evil and become the deity of his new world. Unfortunately, the police are after him and even the genius detective, L, has developed interest in taking down this unknown invisible serial killer. I highly recommend checkin' it out. The animation and music is terrific, and while there aren't any fight scenes, it's definitely got terrific intellectual duels between two conflicting sides of justice.
Rating: A

Take Off!

Hallllllrighty! Guess I'll start this puppy off by introducing my loser self. I'm just a southern guy in the band in my school. I'll be talkin' about everything from anime to video games to school, and I might even talk about myself every now and then (the humanity!!!). Wish me luck and leave me a comment if you deem this blog worthy.