Christmas and a Joke

I'm gonna take a break from my cruise story for a week. First, I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Next, I have a joke that I heard from my uncle. My brother didn't get it when I told him, and it took like five minutes for him to get it. Well, here it goes...

An old man owes the IRS a couple thousand dollars. He decides to take his lawyer with him to have a meeting with an IRS agent. The three of them meet and start talking. Once the meeting was under way, the old man makes a bet with the agent. He bets $1,000 that he can bite his own eyeball. Not thinking that this was possible, the agent takes the bet. So the old man proceeds and takes out his glass eye, bites it, and pops it back in. The old man, wanting to make a little more money, bets the agent double or nothing he can bite his other eye. The agent, believing that he would be blind if he bit both eyes, accepted the bet. So the old man pops out his dentures and bites his good eye with them. Now the IRS agent is a little upset. The old man makes one more bet. He bets the agent double or nothing that he can stand up on the lawyers desk, pee across the room into a garbage can, and not miss a single drop. The agent, really wanting his money back, accepts the bet. So the old man stands up on the table and starts peeing. He misses, and it goes everywhere. Now, the IRS agent is ecstatic because he's just won all his money back. But then he notices that the old man's lawyer is practically in tears. The agent asks whats wrong, and the old man says, "I bet my lawyer $25,000 that I could walk into your office, pee all over everything, and you would be happy about it."

The first time I heard it I thought that it was hysterical! So I thought it was pretty funny. But I still need 100 more words... So I'm going to just summarize my break I guess. :P

My winter break has been pretty boring. I've mostly stayed home. The first week I guess I went out a bit to be with family. We went over to my grandparents, and then they came and slept over at our house. Christmas was fun, I got an iPod Touch (even though so many of you wrongly refer to it as an iTouch! Geez learn what it's called!) and I'm really excited about that! And that's really the only big thing I got. But after that I hung out with some friends a couple nights, celebrated new years, stayed home, and that brings us to today. So it wasn't really very exciting, but it's always nice to be able to have time off from school. But it's starting back up again in two days, so I have to go back to reality. :/ Oh well... Well that's it for me today. See yall later!

Cruises (Part II)

Alright! I am back for Part II of my cruises story! I believe I left off last time at the amazing dinners you get...

So after dinner there is always a show at night. They have performers like comedians, acrobats, magicians, singers, and dancers. The show after dinner is always one of the best parts of the night. I liked it best when they had comedians. There were these two comedians (and I can't remember their names right now) that were so dang funny! I just couldn't stop laughing! They started out just telling some typical cruise jokes (like about how small the "cabins" are), but once they were on their normal act, it was hilarious! They chose someone out of the audience and kept making comments about what she was doing every once in a while, and by the end of the show they had written a song about it! And it wasn't just like a cheesy song, it actually sounded good, and it was funny! I couldn't believe it!

On each ship, they have a cruise director. What that person does is basically make sure there are good activities for everyone and just make sure everything's running smooth. Our cruise director, Richard Spacey, was the best cruise director I've ever had! He was amazing at his job! He was great at the shows every night, he made sure everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing for that day on the cruise, and he was funny on top of that! The whole ship knew who he was and they loved him! I don't know if any of you have ever seen the Evolution of Dance video on YouTube (if you haven't, I posted it at the bottom), but on the last night our cruise director did his own version of it, and he nailed it! It was so funny! (I've also posted his version below the original).

So after you've had a show and gotten to know who Richard Spacey is, you head back to your room to get ready for the night. When you get to your room, you find that your beds are made, a towel animal hanging on your ceiling, and a piece of mint chocolate on your pillow. You feel like a king! So after you get changed out of your dinner clothes, you decide to try and get to know the ship a little bit more. What better place to start than the Royal Promenade? The Royal Promenade is like a minimall on the ship. There's a gift shop, coffee shop, ice cream parlor, and even a barbor shop! You are still amazed by everything! Next, you go exploring the floors to see what's there. You find an Egyptian theater, fitness center, spa, the kids' place, the skating rink, and lots more! But that's not even the best part, you go explore outside next...

And that's where I'm going to cut off for this week! I'll continue with Part III next week!

This is the original version by Judson Laipply.



This is Richard Spacey's version.

Cruises (Part I)

I've been looking at some pictures from my cruise this summer, and I've made a decision: cruises are the best! Once you've been on a cruise, it's really hard to think about traveling any other way again. They're just so flippin' fun!

The first day isn't the best day of the cruise. You have to go check in before you get on the ship. This includes things like getting your boarding pass (which is also your room key), loading luggage onto the ship, and going through customs. Once you've gotten all of that out of the way, you get to go find your room. At first you're pretty excited to go see your room. You expect it to be really elaborate like on the movie Titanic. Much to your disappointment, it is MUCH smaller. And I'm not talking like hotel room small. I'm talking like hotel bathroom small. The rooms (or "cabins" as they refer to them) are TINY! But you'll get over it pretty quickly, because the only time you're really in your cabin is to sleep and get ready.

So after you've been to your cabin, the whole ship has to have a mustering drill. This is just a safety test so that you know what to do if the ship starts sinking. That isn't really to fun, but after that you can go tour the ship and try to get to know it. Usually my family heads to the Windjammer Cafe to get a quick bite to eat before the ship starts moving. After that we head out to the front of the ship to see it start to set sail. It sounds more exciting than it really is though. It starts out moving extremely slow and doesn't really pick up speed until the night. After that its almost dinner time.

Dinner is probably my favorite part of the whole cruise. You have an assigned table with an assigned waiter or waitress that you sit at every night. When you walk in and take your seats, the waiter (in our case) is waiting for you to sit down. Once you are in your seat, he places the folded napkin in front of you on your lap and brings a basket of rolls to get you started. Our waiter was one of my favorite people on the ship. He knew everything there was to know about the menu, the ship, and the ports-of-call The first night at dinner he learned everyone's names at our table and didn't have trouble remembering them for the rest of the cruise. He also learned our favorite drinks, and made sure to have them waiting there for us when we came down for dinner. He was amazing! So once you've gotten rolls and drinks, he brings out the menu. It all looks really expensive, but you really couldn't care less. Everything on the menu is absolutely FREE! And I mean totally and completely free! It's not like you can only have one of something, you can have as much as you want of whatever there is on the menu that night! My cousin Wil, who is about 7 years old, ate four lobster tails one night! My brother Blake was having trouble deciding what he wanted one night, so our waiter brought out both of them at no cost! It was wonderful! Not only was the price amazing, but the food was unbelievably delicious! I tried a bunch of different meats including duck, lamb, and snail! That's right, I ate snails! I didn't expect them to be that great (in fact, I was a little reluctant to eat them, because they're snails for cryin' out loud!), but they turned out to be really good! So once you had stuffed yourself full of snails, you get the desert menu. It was all DELICIOUS! Royal Caribbean really knows food, because everything that I ate on the cruise was just delicious. Especially the desert. Well, that's all I'm going to say for this week! I'll continue my cruise story next week...

Guitar Hero and More Band Woes

I have been playing Guitar Hero quite a bit this week, so I decided my opinion about would be a good blog post for this week. First of all, I think it can be a really fun video game (and I am pretty anti-video games) as long as you don't devote your life to playing it. Then, to me, it's in the same category as all the other video games. But I like it because I play guitar, and I just think it's cool that you can play guitar as a video game now. However, it is nowhere near the same as playing real guitar.

I don't think you should play Guitar Hero for hours everyday. This just makes you miss out on tons of other things you could be doing. One reason I don't really care if I'm really great at it or not is because I play the real guitar, which in my opinion is a lot more fun. Something Rivers Cuomo (lead singer for Weezer) said really got to me. He said that with all the time some people play Guitar Hero, they could use that time to learn a real instrument which would be a lot better for them later in life. That is actually very logical. That is why I take more pride in playing the real guitar than Guitar Hero.

And that would be my opinion on Guitar Hero...now for more band woes...

The new band teacher keeps on doing things that are not right. For the past month we have been practicing nothing but pep band music during class when not everyone is going. Actually, I would say that hardly anyone is going anymore. Anyways, that's all that we have been practicing. We just barely got our music for the Christmas concert. It's in two weeks. The teacher thinks that we will pull it off, but most of us know better. One of the pieces of music we got, Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson, was given to us in Symphonic Band last year. We practiced it for a month and we never got it good enough to be able to perform. And remember, that was Symphonic Band from last year...when we still had an amazing band teacher and were the best band in the district (maybe even state). We are now (probably) the worst band in the district, with less time to practice, and we are comitted to play it! Does something not add up to you? Because this is kind of scaring me... I won't go more into it than that. But if you do go to our concert, don't expect much. If you do, you'll be sadly surprised.

Guitar Experts?

First of all, don't forget to enter my contest! There are still no entries, so you could still win!

Ok, I don't know if any of you are guitar experts, but I'm looking to get a new electric guitar. I'm torn between two guitars, and I really don't know which one I want more. I'm looking for some suggestions from people, so if you have any opinions on either of these guitars, they would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Gibson Les Paul Standard

Gibson SG Standard

Qualities that drive me crazy!

Are there certain things people do that drive you absolutely crazy? I know there are for me, so I just thought I'd list a few of them.

The thing that bugs me the most is when people are hypocrites: they say something and do the exact opposite. I can't explain how bad this frustrates me. There is this kid I know that does nothing but play video games in his spare time. Any time I go over to his house, his mom answers the door and sends me to the basement where he's sitting on a bean bag playing Wii or Gamecube. His life is devoted to video games. So one day, I'm hanging out with him, and a little group of us go up to my other friend's house. It was his birthday a few days before, and he got the new Guitar Hero World Tour. Guitar Hero is one of the only video games I really like, so I wanted to play it. We did for a little while, until my video game obsessed friend suggests we stop playing it. Normally, all he wants to do is video games (and that has made me really dislike most of them because that's all he ever does). But right now, when he's actually got me here playing them, he wants to stop. And, I am not kidding, he said, "I hate just sitting in one spot for a long time, I like being outside better!" When he said that, I just really didn't know what to say. I can't stand when people are hypocrites!

Another thing that bugs me is when people are so full of themselves. They think they are so much better than you at something. Even though sometimes they may be, they shouldn't be bragging it up. There is one kid I know, and he has it in his head that he is so good at everything he does and that he is sooo much smarter than everyone else. We play football over at our church field every once in a while. We try to make the teams fair, and he thinks he can choose teams the best. He'll try to stack his team. If he thinks the teams are unfair, he'll just mope around, not play, and try to get the teams stacked to work out for him. And another about that that bugs me is that he makes judgments on how good he thinks someone is. I know I am not the best there is at football, and I'm fine with saying that. But what he does is say that two people are better than everyone else when we're making teams, and I think it makes other people feel bad about how they're playing when he does that. Of course, he always puts himself higher than other people. He's really no where near as good as he thinks he is. In a lot of ways, he is actually a disadvantage to the team he plays on. He does more bad than good. He does all this thinking he knows what's right, but doesn't.

The last thing I'm going to mention is people who try to be funny all the time, but really they're not. It bugs me so bad when you have someone talking to you, constantly telling lame jokes that you have to force a laugh at so you don't make them feel bad. I'm not going to get into this farther, but I thought it was something worth mentioning.

Well, once again thanks for reading!

My Mythology Project

Oh man... I have been working on my mythology report (for those of you who have Mr. T) for about an hour now. I decided to take a little break, and just vent my feelings about it right now on my blog. I just can't seem to make the words sound right on the page. Does that ever happen to you? I know what I want to say, and I can think to myself what I want to say, but when I try to put it on paper, it just doesn't sound like I want it! Ugh this is driving me crazy! I know what I need to put in it, and it really shouldn't be this complicated. I can get it all in there, and I'll think it is good, but when I try to read it, it just doesn't flow. So I go rewrite some parts, hoping that it is going to sound decent and still meet the requirements, but I fail once again. I can get it sounding nice, but missing a few things (like a topic sentence for example) or it will have everything, but just sound like a whole bunch of words that don't belong together. I figured maybe if I don't read it for about ten minutes or so, it will just hit me. I'll have an epiphany and just know what I have to do to make it work. I'm hoping so. I really am. Normally I wouldn't be to worried about this, but this is going to be 600 points on our grade, so I really want to make this good. Ok, I think that's been long enough. I'm off to read it!

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Yes! I think it's working! I just went through the first two paragraphs and I think they are sounding pretty good! I thought I'd take just another short break to make sure I'm at the top of my game! Well, back to writing now!

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Well I did it! I think I got it pretty good now. I'm having my dad read over it, and he's going to give me a few pointers. I guess that's it for me tonight. Thanks for reading!

Achilles: The Not-So-Noble Hero

To all those taking the time to read my Blog, this is my mythology research paper for Mr. T's class. I am posting it on here for some constructive criticism. Any comments would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

Achilles: The Not-So-Noble Hero

In what ways don’t we see the personality or influence of Achilles in current wars?

You are the General of the U.S. Army and you have just killed Osama bin Laden. This is a great feat, as he is almost at the top of the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Once you have killed him, you tie his corpse to the back of your Humvee and drive him around Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul three times everyday. At first your country praises you for killing him, but once they find out what you are doing to his dead body, they aren’t so pleased. It is disgraceful, and sick in a way what you are doing. However, back when Achilles was a Greek war hero, you would have been praised for this sort of thing. Achilles was the leader of the Greek army in the Trojan War. He was feared by all of the Trojans. One day during the war, King Agamemnon made Briseis, Achilles’s sweetheart, a slave. He refused to fight after that. Agamemnon begged and begged for Achilles to come back and fight again, but he was too depressed. Eventually Achilles sent his friend Patroclus to fight for him with his own armor. King Hector killed Patroclus and this made Achilles realize he needs to fight. He leads his troops to Troy and kills Hector. After that Achilles drags Hector’s corpse around Troy three times every morning. Achilles eventually gives the corpse to Hector’s father in exchange for his weight in gold. If Achilles, or any other war heroes from back then did some of the things they did back then today, most people would not think that they were such great heroes.

Back in the times of the Trojan War, you would have been praised for a lot of the things Achilles did. However, today it would not be the same. If you were to drag the corpse of a dead soldier around their home city three times every morning after you had just killed them in these days, you would not be praised like Achilles was. Back then killing someone and putting them to disgrace was a heroic act, but today it is just plain wrong. The same goes with when Achilles demanded a ransom for Hector’s body. You just couldn’t do that today without being put to shame. The noble thing today would be to just turn the body over to the family. Achilles wasn’t the only Greek hero to ever do something like this though.

Theseus is another example of a Greek hero that you could say wouldn’t have been so noble. Theseus took the law into his own hands. Instead of catching a murderer and turning them over to the proper authorities, he would kill the criminal in a way that they had killed other people. If you went around killing people by flinging them with pine trees (in Sinis’s case) that is how Theseus would take care of you. When he made it to Athens, he had killed many bandits in this action, including Sciron and Procrustes. He was praised for this because the people didn’t have to deal with these criminals anymore. However, if this happened today, Thesesus would not have been praised the same as he was back then. People probably would have been happy that the bandits had been caught, but he would also have been sentenced to prison as a murderer. In Greek mythology, heroes weren’t the only ones to commit these kind of acts. The King of the Gods also did some not-so-noble things as well.

Zeus was known as the King of Olympus, but still had a problem: he cheated on his wife. He was the ruler of all the Gods. He was known for his wisdom, and earned being called the "noblest one of all". Thus being said, he did some pretty bad things for his title. He cheated on his wife, Rhea, with many other mortals and Goddesses. He was never punished personally for his actions, like he would be in today’s society. However, the kids he had with the other women were punished by Rhea. An example of this would be Hercules. Rhea was upset with Zeus for cheating on her, so he constantly tormented Hercules. This later drove him insane, and he killed his family. Hercules was punished and had to complete the twelve Labors. So as you can see, not even the head honcho of the Greek Gods would be considered so noble or great today.

Although there were Greek Gods and Heroes who were looked upon as great or noble, many of the things that they did today would not be the same. Achilles was a great war hero, but did some things that would be considered wrong today to earn that title. Theseus was also a hero to the Greeks, but today would just be considered a criminal with all the people he killed. Zeus, ruler of the Gods, cheated on his wife, which is a very dishonorable act in most parts of the world today. There are many, many things that are the same about today’s society and ancient Greece’s society, but there are still many things that have changed. As you can see, standards to be considered noble or a hero are one thing that have changed quite a bit.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to enter my contest!

This Term So Far

Before you read, don't forget to enter my contest!

Well, so far this term has been going great! Mostly... there are still a few classes I am not likin'.

Science isn't really hard, I've never had to many complaints about that class...

But then there's Band... Oh my goodness, that class just isn't getting any better. At the beginning of the term the teacher was going to require pep band. None of my friends wanted to do it so we were all freaking out about it. Luckily we got out of it though. Turns out he can't require us to stay after school for a grade. So now if you do it, its just extra credit. Still, it is going to be a joke. The teacher can't control the class, so nothing ever gets done. He has all these big ideas, like pep band for example, and I swear he will never get them done! Pep band will not last long in my opinion. There are a few things that I can see happening... Scenario A: People quit showing up for pep band just because of the mediocrity of the thing. Scenario B: The basketball coach kicks them out for disrupting the players. Scenario C: The refs have had it with them and get kicked out. I can't see it lasting too long. We've already got cheerleaders to do all the cheering, we don't need a whole other group for that. Plus, he's planning on have SOO many people, I'm not sure they're all going to fit. Ugh...I'll be done on that topic for today.

Seminary is great though! By far one of my favorite classes. We just got our sort of term projects yesterday, and it looks pretty fun! It has 101 small acts of service we have to do before Christmas, and it just looks really fun!

Then there's math... It's getting better. Assignments aren't taking as long as they used to, so I can't really complain about that class!

Geography is going pretty good, nothing to hard there. We are learing about the Caribbean right now, so I'm enjoying it since I just went on a cruise there last summer. It's really interesting learning about their cultures and what not.

Then I have english with Mr. T! Definitely one of my more liked classes! We're learning about mythology right now, so its pretty cool.

Seventh is student government. It's pretty fun most of the time. If there's nothing to do we just sit and talk... Or have battles...

And lost but not least, Honors English! Well, I am doing pretty good so far. I've got the two books to read, but I am sad to say that I am not very far in the one I have to have done by midterms. I think I should probably get going on it! But I also have the writing assignments. Those don't usually take me long though, so I'm not to worried about that!

Well, thanks for reading my whole thing... You must have a lot of spare time on your hands if you've read all my blabber so far! So until next time, may God be with you 'til we meet again! :)

Contest 2

Wow! It took long enough for someone to finally notice my contest section! Good job Super Skier! You would be in second because you pass the person who's in second place. To pull ahead into first place, you would have to pass the person in first place.

Here's the next question:

There are 45 apples. If you pick up 3 apples, how many apples are there?

Good luck!

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I've been doing some heavy editing on my blog today, and I had an idea. I'm going to do some contests on here just for fun. I'll post a question, and once someone gets it right I'll post a new one. I know you're probably wondering if there will be prizes, and yes, of course there will be! What kind of person would I be if I didn't offer prizes?! The person who gets it right wins the honor of being placed on my Contest Winners List! Pretty sweet eh?!

Anyways, here's the first question:

You are third place in a race. You pass the person that's in second. What place are you in now?

Good luck everyone!

Contest Winners List

Congratulations to the winners of all my contests!

Contest 1: Super Skier
Contest 2:

Weird Traditions

If you really think about it, a lot of traditions that people have are pretty weird. A lot of holiday traditions, what we wear, and so forth. I just thought I'd mention a few of them and see what everyone else thinks.

Ties. I had never really thought about this before, but I was at church last Sunday and it just occurred to me that ties are a very interesting article of clothing. They have numerous different styles of them: there are ties with stripes, ties with repeating designs, and ties that express something with a picture. A lot of my favorite ties have pictures on them, whether its my guitar one or my golfing Santa tie that sings (which I wear off and on over summer) I like to express something on them. But anyways, that's not what I find weird about them... What is a tie? It is a piece of fabric that we hang from our neck on special occasions. Does that seem a little strange to anyone else?

Easter. Easter is a great holiday, you remember the resurrection of Christ and its a day to be with family. But if you think about it, the things we do on that day are pretty weird... For the resurrection of Christ you decorate eggs, and a bunny hides them for you to find. It may be just me, but this doesn't have a whole lot do to with Christ coming back from the dead...

Christmas. This one isn't as bad as some of the other ones, but it is still pretty good. For Christmas, we go chop down a pine tree, bring it in our living room, decorate it, and then Santa Claus brings presents to good little girls and boys and leaves them in socks on the fire place and under the tree. But it is also a great time to spend with family, so it's not as bad as some of the others.

Thanksgiving. This one is my favorite. When people were deciding what to do for Thanksgiving, they must have run out of ideas. They were scrambling, because eggs and chopping down trees and taking them to your living room are already taken for Easter and Christmas. They finally decided on just eating a lot. Really not that creative, but still a fun holiday!

Fourth of July. This is also a great one. The Fourth of July was the day that the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence freeing us from England. So what do we do to celebrate? We go to Wyoming to get illegal fireworks and blow things up. This probably wasn't what the founding fathers would have wanted when they signed that declaration.

Birthdays. This is the last one I'm gonna do for today. Birthdays are a funny thing. You go a whole year without dieing, and get presents from family and friends for doing this. Plus you can invite all your friends to a party, and then they all have to bring a present for you.

So yes, we have some pretty wacky traditions, but they're all fun! So I'm not complaining about these, just kinds pointing them out. ;)

Week In Review: The Band Concert, The End of the Term, Halloween, and Cloverfield

Wow, this has been a crazy week, and I am just glad to be over with it!

First of all was the Band Concert... Wow that was a frekin joke man! There are so many things that went wrong, and our teacher is totally oblivious to any of it. First of all he tells us to get there at 6:30, he doesn't even show up until 6:40. When we went down to the gym to play, there was no order. I had no idea what I was even supposed to do. While the other bands weren't playing, he had no control over them. One of the assistant principals had to come over and calm everyone down. Beginning Band sounded better than concert band. He had all the instruments in beginning percussion, which NO ONE was ready for. Beginning band was playing WAY to hard of music. The percussion ensemble was a joke. Symphonic band was the best out of everyone, but still, no where near where we were last year. At the end, our teacher didn't have the students helped clean up chairs, he just stood there and eventually parents and the assistant principal were cleaning up. So yeah... Had the old teacher been there, it would have gone a LOT better.

Next item on the agenda, end of term! This is what I am the most excited about! I was worried about my grades in a couple classes, but I ended up pulling it all off with a 4.0! I was nervous for English, because I was worried about my AR points. I had 23, and just needed 7 more. All I needed to do was pass the Count of Monte Cristo test and I was good! Well I did so the A was secured in that class! Then there was Math...I was on the verge, but I got an A on a test, along with extra credit I had saved up over the term, and I got the A in that class! And that was really all I was worried about.

Next up, Halloween! It actually turned out better than I was hoping! This kid in my ward was having a party, and I was really hesitant on going, because all he does is play video games, and I find that so boring! He invited some of my other friends, so I went. It actually turned out pretty fun! We played football for a while, then went and had pizza at his house. After that, my other friend has hot chocolate at his house every Halloween, so we went up there and picked up our other friend! Then we went and just threw a football around in the street. After that, we watched Cloverfield, which is item number 4...

I don't know about anyone else, but I thought Cloverfield was LAME! Oh, and if your reading this, and you still want to see Cloverfield, don't read, because I will be giving away some of the plot. But I thought it was stupid! It starts out with the guy with a video camera just filming, and then all of a sudden theres a big explosion, the Statue of Liberty's head falls off, and there's a big monster in Manhattan. They're running away from it the whole movie, everyone dies by the end, and you find out NOTHING about the monster! You don't know where it came from, if it dies, lives, nothing! I hated it, but that's just my opinion.

Well, that's pretty much my week! Hope you enjoyed reading it! :)

End of the term

As you all know, the end of the term is coming up fast. Are you ready for it? I know I sure am! It's been hard, but as of right now I have A's in all my classes which I am so happy about! So far, 9th grade has been a LOT harder than 8th or 7th grade, for me at least. There are two classes that are really making it hard... One, is Math! I am taking Algebra 2 this year, and let me tell you... Getting an A in that class is so dang hard! There is on average an hour of homework every night, with tests and quizzes on top of that that are extremely hard. But also, Honors English is gettin' me pretty bogged down to! Not the Blog or the Falcon Forum, but reading the Count of Monte Cristo. I know I have already ranted about that book before, so I'm not going to again, but it just takes soo long to read! Now that I have gotten closer to the end, it is getting better, but I still have the AR test on it... Once I can pass that, It'll be smooth sailin' the rest of the term!

The New Band Teacher...

I don't know about anyone else, but I am taking band this year. As most of you know, our old teacher left us, and now we have a new band teacher. I can summarize my opinion of him in one word, unorganized. Every little thing that he does drives me crazy. He is one of the most unorganized people I know (he could give Cosmo Kramer a run for his money), expects way to much of us, and has big ideas that he will never (and when I say that, I mean never) accomplish. Last year, I started liking the old band teacher less and less... He was just getting annoying. But with our new teacher, oh boy... Out with the new, in with the old!

The one thing that drives me the most crazy is how unorganized the guy is! I mean he's nice and all, but this just isn't for him. On the first day of school, he had nothing ready. He told us his life story. The teacher before him was prepared the first day. He had lockers assigned, folders assigned (they also sheet music and scales in them), and we were playing music by the second day. The new band just barely finished getting everything we need. For the first month of school he kept telling us he would be getting us these "amazing" books, and that they were going to be here soon. Well, we finally got them last week. Do you want to know what was in them? Well, let's just say the old teacher had it all in our folders the first day. You don't need a whole book for it. I could go on more and more, but I'll just leave his organizational skills there for now.

The new band teacher expects WAY to much of us. Not only that, but he gives us no incentive to work for it. To get an A in his class, all you have to do is practice (although I'm not sure what there is to be practicing) and show up. That's it. You don't have to be good, you don't have to try. Just practice, and show up. But, what he expects is for us to be ready for a concert on Wednesday, with pieces that the band isn't even close to being ready for. In the mean time, he thinks that we are going to be a pep band (which in and of itself is one of his dumbest ideas) and play at all the basketball games. He takes on WAY to much. The old teacher had experience for who knows how many years, and was good at what he did. He demanded perfection, and gave you a reason to work for it.

Big ideas... Big ideas are what he has, and big ideas are what he will never finish. At the beginning of the year, he told us that we would play at the musical, play at games, and other things which he dreamed up. Musical... Wow, if he can pull that off, I'll have a little more respect for him. He won't though. There's no way our band will be able to play it and practice it with all the other stuff he is having us do. Among those, pep band. I luckily found a way out of it, but I feel bad for the people who have to do it. No other junior high in the district has a pep band. An amature teacher like himself will butcher it. He plans on, and I'm not kidding, heckling the refs, messing up the cheer leaders, and annoying everyone around... Am I the only one who thinks he is going to get booted from the gym? Ugh... He also thinks he is going to write a school fight song. All I have to say to that is good luck.

Well, I think I have stated my strong opinion about the guy. I decided I would give him a chance at the beginning of the year. He blew it time, and time again. I could go on and on, but I'll just leave it at there for tonight.

UEA

Oh man... I don't know about anyone else, but my UEA has been so boring! Thursday, I made a video for the Reflections contest (which by the way, I thought turned out really cool! I'm gonna try and figure out how I can post it on here, but for now, I'll just keep you all waiting!) and went to guitar lessons. Friday, it was my sister's birthday, so we had a party then went to dinner. That brings us to today... I feel like it's been a total waste so far! Today I've just done nothing pretty much... I caught up on emails, played Guitar Hero... There's the Regional Dance tonight I'm going to, so that should be pretty fun! Oh! I know something I did! It's not that exciting, but I found a website that's pretty cool! It's called Tonzr, and you can get 100% free ringtones! Just thought I'd share that for anyone who wants some ringtones. Well, I think that's it for me today. Oh!! Just kidding! THE RED SOX WON ON THURSDAY!!! It was awesome! They were losing the whole game, and at one point were down 7-0. Somehow they came back and won the game 7-8! I was so excited! My other team that I was rooting for (the Dodgers) just lost to the Phillies, so they're out of the World Series... But the Red Sox have a chance now! And hopefully, that comeback gives them more confidence so they can come back to win tonight! Oh man, if they lose, and it's the Phillies and Devil Rays that make it to the World Series, I'm gonna be so mad... The Dodgers and Red Sox both deserve it more. Well, maybe not the Dodgers so much... After their last game with who knows how many errors... But the Red Sox with a come back like that totally deserve it more than the Devil Rays! Well, I guess that's really it for me today! Peace out!

World Series

Ok, I don't know if anyone else has been following baseball the last couple weeks, but if you have, you would know that it is down to the top four teams right now. They are the Dodgers, the Red Sox, the Phillies, and the Devil Rays. I am rooting for the Dodgers and Red Sox, but mostly the Dodgers! I don't know if anyone follows the players, but if you did, you would know that Manny Ramirez just got traded from the Red Sox to the Dodgers a couple months ago. There is something that I really hope happens, since I am a Dodgers fan. Wouldn't it be great if the Dodgers and Red Sox (my two favorite teams!) made it to the World Series, and then the Dodgers beat the Red Sox right after trading (in my oppinion) their best player to the Dodgers? I just think the Red Sox would be hitting themselves so hard! Well I can dream, because I don't think that either of them are making it to the series... The Dodgers are down in their series 3-1, and the Red Sox are down 2-1, soon to be 3-1 since they are losing right now 13-4... Oh well, a kid can dream can't he?

Pet Peeves!

Aren't there some things out there that just drive you absolutely crazy?! Or, in other words, a pet peeve? I know there are a lot of things out there that just get under my skin, so I thought I would write about a couple of them for this weeks blog post! Ok, here we go... The one things that gets on my nerves the most is people misspelling iPod! There is no dash, and the first letter is not capital! I absolutely HATE when people spell it in any of the following ways: IPod, Ipod, I-Pod, or I-pod. It is spelled iPod! I don't know why, but I it bugs the crap outta me when people spell it wrong... Also, I hate it when people spell/say iPod Touch wrong. It is NOT an iTouch! It is an iPod Touch! I don't know who came up with the word iTouch, but whoever did is WRONG! Ok, now that I have THAT pet peeve out of my way, here goes number two! I really really don't like when people swear... It is just so easy to use a different word instead of the one you choose to use. That's all I'm going to say on that. Well, I know I have more that I could say, but I can't really think of any more right now, so I guess that's it for me tonight! I'll see you cats on the flip-flop later!

New York

So this summer, my family and I went on a trip to New York. It was one of the best weeks of my life! New York is such a cool place. Everything there is big. The buildings, the streets, everything! It's amazing! When we went there, we rented out the floor of an apartment from the Joneses. They were really nice people. They had a son named Davis, and that kid was awesome! Davis's room was really cool, it had a huge TV with surround sound! The rest of the Joneses' apartment was really cool, too. But that was just part of the trip... I still need to tell you about the rest of the city! We went to a bunch of places. There was Ground Zero, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, and of course my favoritem, the Rockefeller Center! It is the headquarters for NBC, and a lot of my favorite shows are on that network. We got there early one morning and were on the Today Show! My little sister had a cast on, and one of the people there signed her cast! We also got to do a tour of the NBC Studios. We got to see where they filmed some of the national news and Saturday Night Live! The set was so cool. Everything from the show was there, even its own Grand Central Station look-alike! After the tour, we went to the top of the Rockefeller Building. Its view was amazing! The buildings' roofs were all so shiny, and you could see Central Park! Everything you could see was just stunning... We did a lot of other things there besides hang around NBC though! We went to a few musicals as well. We saw Grease, Legally Blonde: The Musical, and Hairspray. All the singer's voices were amazing! It was so cool! It was to bad we couldn't make it to some of the other musicals though... I would've wanted to see so many more! Every night when we would get back to the apartment, Davis would want to show me one of his CDs that he thought I would like, and my sister would show him some of hers. Most of my sister's were just children's music, so he didn't really like any of them. There was a lot more that we did in New York, I just don't have time to put it all in here! So that's it for me this week, I'll try and write down some more of the stuff later. But for now, I will see you cats on the flip-flop later!


Mr. T: I bolded all the stuff for the apostraphe quiz to make it a little easier for you! ;)

Topics!

Man, I am having a hard time coming up with topics to write about for my Blog! I guess I'll just write about Count of Monte Cristo... No offense to anyone, but I am really not liking it so far... Am I the only one? I have a really hard time reading the Old English style, and trying to keep up with all the characters whose names I can't even pronounce! All the types of money are confusing me too... There's like a bunch of different types, so I'm never sure if it's like a ton of money or not! Plus it is going sooo sloooow! Man, I have been reading a ton yesterday and today, and I am only on page 180! It's gonna take a miracle to finish it by the end of the term, let along pass the AR test... Plus, it seems that it is very condensed which kind of confused me a little... One page Edmond was in prison, and then the next page he was like talking about how he'd been there for four years... I had to go back and reread that last page... Four years?! That was just one page, and four years pass just like that?! Man... Well, I guess I'll be finished with my ranting for now... I got other homework, so I will see all yall later!

For Honors English People...

Are you tired of having to use two separate email accounts, one for Honors English, and one for personal use? If you are using Gmail for your personal one, I have a solution for you! What I will tell you how to do is forward the emails from your Honors account to your personal account. Once they are there, you will be able to reply to them from your Honors email address! Ok here we go... First of all, log on to your Honors email account in Gmail and go to the "Settings" tab in the upper right corner. Once there, go the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab. In the box that says forwarding, click the circle that says "Forward a copy of incoming mail to" and then type your personal email address that you want to use. From there you choose either to keep a copy in your Honors inbox, archive it (which basically saves it, it's just not in your inbox anymore), or delete it from your Honors account. I chose to simply archive it. Now, whenenver an email goes to your Honors account, you will get a copy in your personal account as well! Now you can stop there, but I went a little farther. That last part will work with any email provider, but this next one I have only figured out on Gmail. Log out of your Honors email account and log into your personal Gmail account. Go to the "Settings" tab again, but this time go to the "Accounts" tab next. In the "Send mail as:" box, click "Add another email address". Type in your Honors English account name and email address. A confirmation email will be sent to your Honors account to make sure that it is really you that sent it, so your going to have to log out and log back in to your Honors account and click the confirmation link. Congratulations! You are now able to recieve and send Honors email from your personal Gmail account! Don't worry, you can still send as your personal account. There is a tab that says "From" when you are composing mail, and you can choose which email address to send from! Hope that helps some people save the effort of having to check two email accounts!

Forward Messages...Ah!

Am I the only person who HATES forward email/text messages?! They drive me CRAZY! I can't stand some of the ones I get. Send this on to 15 people or crazed mammoths are going to eat your babies favorite doll when she grows up. Once you forward this, your true loves name will pop up on the screen, because this one is true, not like all of those other fake forward messages out there... Do you hear what I'm saying?! Why do people believe some of the ones they get? If it is funny, and has a point, I will send it on... But if its like one of the ones I got today, which said (and I'm NOT making this up!) "...or you will turn ugly in six years..." who is going to believe them? So in summary, if the forward is funny, be my guest and send it on! But if you are going to add something stupid like if I don't forward this my dog's friend's owner will get rabies and then go crazy and kill everyone he knows, then please, I don't want it.

Viva La Vida

Ok, for the lost little while, I have been searching around the internet, trying to find the meaning of the song Viva La Vida by Coldplay. I have looked at a few sites that were guessing at it, and everyone seems to be coming up with different answers. So I checked out Wikipedia, and there was something Chris Martin (the lead singer) had quoted to a magazine, and I think I have figured it out... He said that the line "I know St. Peter won't call my name" refers to going to heaven. Before you get in, St. Peter has to call your name. When Chris was young, he said he made some bad choices, so I think that's what that is referring to. In the first stanza, he sings:
I used to rule the world,
Seas would rise when I gave the word.
Now in the morning I sleep along,
I sweep the streets I used to own.
My guess for the meaning of this part is that he used to be bad, and "rule the world". Then something happened, and he realized that acting like that was getting him nowhere, and now he "sweeps the streets [he] used to own". The rest of the song is pretty much giving the same message. That is just my idea of the meaning behind it... I may be way off, so if you have any other opinions about it, please feel free to tell me!

Better continue writing... I think I missed a week...

Alright, I'm not really sure what to write about today... Oh! I've got it! I'll tell about my friend in Haiti! Ok, so me, my family, and our cousins went on a cruise this last summer. It was a blast! We went to the Caribbean, and one of our stops was in Labadee, Haiti. It was our first stop, so I was new to the whole being a new country thing. We spent most of the day on the beach, where my cousin got stung by a jellyfish... She was ok, but she said it hurt a ton! The girls went and got their hair braided, and after that we had lunch. It was pretty good, because Royal Caribbean provided it for us! So after that we were heading back to the ship, but the girls just HAD to go to the shops. Now remember, this was our first shop, so I was still getting used to the way that the people selling stuff work. There was a building that had a bunch of islanders selling things. They ranged from guitars, to magnets, to wooden flutes. We get the the outside of the long, narrow building, and one of the islanders tells me he wants to show me something that I will like. So being new at this, I followed him. He started showing me a wooden flute, and a box that said Haiti on it. He kept pressuring me to buy them and I had no intention of buying either of them. So he kept telling me he was my friend, and asked me what my name was. I saw no harm in telling him my first name, so I told him. What he did next caught me off guard. He grabbed a chisel and started carving my name into the flute! So twenty bucks later, I'm stuck with a flute that doesn't even work... When my uncle heard what happened, he just laughed... And now that it's all over, I do too! My cousins and I now have a joke that if someone is a good friend, they are not like my friend from Haiti!

My REAL First Blog Post! Woot!

Hey everyone! As you probably all know, this is my blog for Honors English. I'll start out by giving a background to my name and blog's name... The Soup Nazi is a famous episode of Seinfeld, where the main characters find a new soup kitchen. It is supposedly the best soup in the city, and people line up for almost a block to get soup there! The only catch is that the owner is temperamental. He has a certain ordering procedure that must be followed, or he gets mad and yells "No soup for you!". This has earned him the nickname "The Soup Nazi". One of the characters (Elaine) doesn't order right, and she gets banned for a year. She ends up acquiring all of his recipes and runs him out of business. The Soup Nazi moves to Argentina at the end of the episode, which upsets his normal customers. It's one of my favorite episodes of Seinfeld, and I thought it would be clever to name my blog after it! Does anyone else have anything special that they named their blog after? Or is it just a name you came up with on the spot? Please share!

Blog Post #1

Hello world!

Ok, I am just putting this here as a change to count for the topic this week on the Honors English Discussion!