Judas-Juda-Ah-Ahs! Gaga!

I don’t care what anybody else says, I like this song a lot. It’s got such a fun beat, you know? And the tune is cool. And it’s not exactly the same as “Bad Romance”. Okay, similar, fine. But not the same. “I’m in love with Ju-da-us! Judas!”

Anyway, tonight’s the last night of May, which means that–finally–I don’t have to write these damn stories every day anymore. I’m sorry, I know that if it was bugging me so much (and it’s no secret that it was, I complain every day about it!), I should have just quit earlier. It’s not like anybody’s making me do it, I know, I know… It’s just what I’ve been saying to everyone who points that out: I want to be someone, someday. I mean, I can’t be satisfied with an average life, just working a normal job, waking up at six and going to bed around ten or eleven.

I need to be a neurotic writer, god dammit! I need a little bit of chaos, you know? I want to just wake up when I want and stay up as late as I want and just write all day. Except that I think if I worked from home full-time I’d probably have no motivation to, like, brush my hair or eat breath mints or keep my clothes in good condition… Yeah, if there was no reason that I had to leave home every day, I wouldn’t, and I would just become a total mess.

Agh. These little thoughts are the ones that scare me.

Anyways, it’s very nearly time for me to take a shower, so I want to get started on my story a day. You know, instead of watching Lady Gaga interviews on Youtube. My god, she’s so funny.

–

My eyes bounced back and forth as I followed the ping-pong match going on in front of me. “So… guys…” I said quietly.

They were in the zone, though. Their eyes were glued to the ball, and they wouldn’t be moved to do anything else, it looked like.

I sighed and looked back at my graph-paper notebook. It had all the information we needed to put together a good slideshow presentation for our final project in Algebra. I even had some of the stupid jokes we had brainstormed during class written down, and I was sure that the guys would be able to supply more, if necessary.

That is, if they ever decided that the project was more important than taking advantage of the game room.

“Hey!” I heard a hoarse voice shout from the doorway. I winced, and both boys dropped their ping-pong paddles. The ball bounced quietly on the table.

“Hi, Sarah,” Craig–who had been winning the ping-pong game–said uncomfortably. “Jake, I told you we needed to get back to work.”

Jake rolled his eyes. “Um, I believe it was Jasmine who bet you couldn’t beat me at ping-pong. So really, it’s her fault.”

“I never said that…”

Sarah, pushed the plastic box of sugar cookies into my hands. “Alright, guys, enough goofing off. Jazzy, you’ve got the notes?” I nodded at her. “Great,” she said. “Craig, boot up your laptop already. Jake, be a dear, would you, and unfold a card table so we can work.”

Jake grabbed one of the folded up tables and quickly got it set up. He ran to get chairs and I set down the cookies and notes.

“Thanks, Sarah,” I said.

“Not a problem, Jazzy. Be more assertive.” I nodded awkwardly, then followed Jake’s path to help carry the chairs.

“Oh, hey, Jazz. Thanks, but I’ve got this,” he said when I offered to help.

“Oh, okay,” I said.

“By the way,” he interrupted as I was turning back towards the game room door. I looked at him curiously. “By the way, if it’s worth anything, I think you’re perfectly fine, all unassertive and stuff.”

I nodded and smiled. “Well, okay, then! Um… thanks?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I’m serious. I think it’s nice.”

“Well. Okay.”

Then it got awkward. I didn’t mean for it to, but there we were–Jake standing across from me, looking all cool, leaning on a folded up metal chair, and me, smiling uncomfortably at him, my lower body already turned towards the door but my torso facing him.

“Guys!”

Leave it to Craig and Sarah to break our little moment of discomfort with their presence.

“Hey, I want to sit sometime today, can you please bring the chairs back?” This was Craig. Only he would be so unfocused on the project itself that he was more worried about the chairs than he was about actually getting the work done.

“We’ve got a PowerPoint to make, okay? It shouldn’t be hard,” Sarah said in her gentlest voice–which was probably still harsher than my harshest voice, but that’s just Sarah.

I always admired Sarah for her abrasiveness, even despite Jake’s friendly little comment. I wanted to be assertive. I just didn’t know how to be.

It’s Not What it Looks Like

I know that it seems like I missed two days, but I didn’t. I only missed one. I didn’t write anything yesterday.

However.

On Saturday, I did write something. Funny story about that. Okay, so I was tired, right? Because I’d been monotonously gluing layers of paper on top of each other all evening. That’s even less interesting than it sounds, let me tell you. I cut up a bunch of paper lunch bags and just glued them, layer by layer. It was a pain in the ass.

Anyways, so I was dead tired and I finally just told my BFFFFFF that I had to write my story and go to sleep, because we’d been talking on the phone for a little while. So, I wrote something. I’m afraid that, for my life, I cannot remember what that something was about, but I know that I wrote it directly into WordPress and when I finished, I read it, and I liked it. I was tired and hazy at the time, so I could be wrong, but I seem to recall thinking, “Man, this is the best short story I’ve written all month!”

Anyway, a couple misstrokes of the keyboard later, and wouldn’t you do know it? The tab was X’d out, and I was mad and disappointed and I decided that I didn’t have the energy to rewrite that little gem–whatever it was. So, I went to bed.

As for yesterday, I have no excuse. I just didn’t do it. Sorry?

Well, I’ve only got about half an hour or so, maybe 45 minutes, because I have to be at a banquet by 4:30. The banquet’s at a teacher’s house. It’s going to be a party.

I oughta get writing now, so, you know. Here it goes!

–

“Is that World of Warcraft?” I asked conversationally, peering over the shoulders of my friends to see the computer screen. It looked sort of like it, but it was different somehow, so I wasn’t sure.

A guy laughed. “Yeah, yeah, it’s World of Warcraft,” he said. I didn’t see what was so funny about it.

“Dude, no it’s not, it’s–” another boy started before the first said, “Nah, man, just let her keep believing it is.”

“Ohhhh,” I said in understanding. “So this is that other one… Um… Star-something or another? It’s not Minecraft, but it’s, like… Um…”

The boy guffawed. “Minecraft? This is not Minecraft.”

“It’s Starcraft,” someone supplied nicely.

“Oh.”

I pouted and sat down in a comfy chair, playing with the hem of my tulle-layered skirt. My sister was holding hands with her boyfriend, both of them cheering on the gamers who were crowded around the desktop computer. “Some party…” I mumbled.

“C’mon, Eun!” I heard my sister cry. “Show ’em!” She was cheering for the girl who was presently at the keyboard, an Asian with her long hair bleached orangeish. Her eyes were focused intently on the screen as she clicked her way through who-knows-what.

“Lousy gamers…” I said under my breath. I got up and left the cramped little bedroom that all of the party-goers were smashed into, and I went outside for some air and a bit of soda.

“Hey, Ellie,” said a voice from behind me. I saw another girl my age standing by the screen door. She had long and wiry black hair with a few grays mixed in, despite her only being fifteen. “Six AP classes’ll do that to you,” she once told me.

“Hey, you,” I said. “Pop?” I offered her the bottle of Dr. Pepper, which she received without hesitation and took a big swig of it.

“Wanna turn on some music?” she asked.

“Anything that’s totally mainstream would be nice.”

We were in the garage, where the party was supposed to be taking place, and she sat at the workbench where there was a laptop and some speakers. A few keystrokes brought the dulcet tones of Katy Perry to our ears.

“I’m tired of them being so antisocial…” she told me.

“Yeah, I’m getting a little annoyed, too. I mean, they spend all their time gaming…” I said, nodding in agreement.

“I know, right? I mean, I like myself some WoW–that is, when they let me play on their server without trying to kill me–but it’s irritating that even at a party, this is all they want to do!”

I sighed. She couldn’t be more right. We talked the evening away like this, completely undisturbed by the other “party-goers”.

Can Kibbutzim Work?

Ah, a pertinent question! Yet it begs the follow-up inquiry, “What the hell is kibbutzim?”

Kibbutzim is the plural form of kibbutz. And a kibbutz is–as far as I understand from looking over the Wikipedia article, anyways–a small community group that functions on basic socialist principles. Kibbutzim exist in Israel, where there are–as of a count made last year–about 270 kibbutzim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

Read that, it’s really interesting.

Now, you’ll see that they talk a lot about this thing called Zionism, and from what I’m getting, it’s basically just the idea that Jews deserve to keep Israel to themselves. Pretty much, they say that they deserve to repopulate their “ancestral homeland”.

Now, allow me to explain to you why you need to know about some little agricultural societies way the hell away in Israel.

So, today, I was in the car with my step-dad, on the half-hour drive home from school. We started talking about the end of the school-year fast approaching, and that led us to talking about my senior friends who are graduating, which led to talk of college, which inevitably led to my being asked, “Have you decided what you want to do, where you want to go, what you want to study?”

Which led to me groaning out an answer, “No…”

And that got us talking about my insatiable need to write. And then I explained why I can’t just write whatever I want and make money that way; I have to get a Real Person Job. Because there’s a saying that goes, “What’s the difference between a writer and a park bench? A park bench can support a family.” And, all right, I don’t have a family to support, but I have myself, and I’m just as much a family within myself as anybody else.

That sounds dumb, but I’ll stick with it. Anyways, I keep telling people and nobody really seems to get it: I can’t just write. There are people who can make writing their bread and butter, but it’s so much more difficult with stories and novels. I mean, there’s no real due dates, there’s no day-to-day thing, with time allocated for this and that so you eventually get your work done. It’s just writing in your spare time and then eventually you send it off and hope for the best. My idol, Meg Cabot, is a very successful woman and I’m pretty sure that her whole life now is writing–that’s her job. When she’s not writing, she’s touring for a book or just for general publicity. And that’s just what she does.

She has over fifty books in print.

That’s not exactly a short road getting there! That’s the thing that people don’t realize! Yeah, there’s a couple really good or successful authors out there, a few J.K. Rowlings and Meg Cabots who have climbed there ways up to the very top and are now making a living on it. But if you look around a book store you’re going to see there are more than two authors around. A lot of them suck. I mean, not everyone is super successful, especially not right away.

I want to get to the point where I have nothing to do everyday but wake up and write stories and books. But unless I manage to get that book deal I’ve been talking about, the mystical book deal that somehow happens before I’m even an adult–before I’ve even written anything, at this point–I’m not likely to just be whisked away into the world of publishing.

Anyways, all this got around to me talking about a story I’m currently working on, the one about the apocalypse and the conflicting view points and such. You remember, Riko. And yeah, I’m going to go ahead and address my one and only viewer right now, because–ha!–nobody else is going to see it.

Riko, when I was telling my step-dad about my story, he told me that the society I was coming up with sounded a lot like a Kibbutz. I was thinking of changing the title from “Picking Up Where We Left Off” to “Kibbutz Costco”. Thoughts?

Anyways, it’s 3 AM and I still haven’t written today’s–well, yesterday’s–story. So here it goes.

–

I yawned, and then before I could even finish yawning, I yawned again, and then one more time. I checked the clock. 11:20. I groaned.

I splashed water on my face, flickered the lights on and off, ran around the block, twice, and when I came back, it hadn’t even been ten minutes.

I stuffed my head into a pillow and groaned. “Why can’t I stay up? Raaaaaaaaugh.”

I paced my room, constantly checking the time. All the lights were on. I was drinking my third Monster that day. 11:35. Just a little while now. I ran down stairs. I ran back up. The carpet was soft on my cold feet. I went to the kitchen. I made a sandwich. 11:40.

The sandwich was good, so I made another. Then I ate a Twinkie. Then I felt fat. So I ate a carrot. And another carrot. To cancel out both sandwiches.

11:45.

Almost there.

It was so dark out my window. I saw the faint orange glow of the street lamp, and the little cuticle that was the moon. I could see almost no stars.

11:50. Soon.

I turned my computer on; it took a while to boot up. I logged into Facebook, and I checked my boyfriend’s profile. Nobody. Yet.

Good.

11:55.

I typed it out. “Happy birthday, baby! I love you! Way to be seventeen!”

Post!

Road Rage, Among Other Things

I’ll cover the “other things” initially, because I’m happy to say that I managed to correctly spell “modicum” yesterday in my story. Today, I was thinking about the word, and I realized that I wrote it at some point yesterday, and all of the sudden I couldn’t remember if it had a “d” or a “t” in it. I asked, and my friends all told me it was a “d”.

I was worried that I’d misspelled it.

It’s been eating at me all day.

That said, I’m quite proud of myself now! Another other thing is that I have a pair of really painful canker sores at the bottom of my gum, and my boyfriend told me that I should rinse my mouth out with mouthwash, because the alcohol in it would help my little gums. So, I did. I don’t usually use mouth wash, except if I’m going into a dentist appointment, because I know that it tastes like–what else?–alcohol. However, I was determined to fix my stupid mouth so I could go back to making funny faces without hurting myself. I poured a little mouthwash out and dumped it into my mouth. It wasn’t so bad at first, but then I actually tasted it.

I kind of had to force myself to keep the stupid alcohol in my mouth, chanting in my head, “You’re going to get better! You’re going to get better!” After a while, though, it was a bit too much, so I spat it out and sat in front of the sink, gagging a little bit because the taste was kind of lingering on the tip of my tongue.

It wasn’t a fun experience, let me tell you. I don’t even care if all my teeth fall out, I can’t stand mouthwash!

Okay, it’s been almost 40 minutes since I started writing this post, and that’s because I got distracted by a blog I found on the Freshly Pressed page. I need to stop getting distracted, but it really is oh so much fun. Like, this one right here? It’s titled, “Cancer. LOL.” http://decath10n.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/cancer-lol/

Tell me how I’m supposed to not click that. Tell me. I dare you.

Although I have trouble seeing cancer as the type of thing one might laugh out loud about–especially on account of my boyfriend’s mom having recently died of cancer, the first person I ever met who died–I think it’s morbidly interesting to see someone’s more chill perspective on the subject. Come on. “Yup. I got cancer, yo.” Tell me that’s not wonderfully funny of him to say.

Anyways, my point is that I need to move along so I can actually get some sleep tonight. It’s a crazy goal, I know. My dad thinks it’s weird and unhealthy and bad that I take so many naps during the day, like after school or on the weekends, and he asked me, “Do you have trouble falling asleep at night because you try to sleep so much during the day?” He’s always trying to make it out to be a bad thing that I want to sleep a lot. It’s not, I’m just tired! My circadian rhythms, evidently, have yet to mature alongside those of my classmates. But I don’t really mind, because I like sleeping.

Ah, off-topic again. Okay, okay, it’s story time.

–

I was staring intently down at a book but I felt the car suddenly slow down and I looked around, confused.

“Look at that,” my mom said, starting to sound put-out. “Those two trucks up ahead are going the exact same speed right next to each other, so now nobody can get ahead of them.”

My mind started to play with her words, as my mind tended to do, and I wondered, if everyone is supposed to be going the same speed, wouldn’t that always be a problem? Or would we never be right next to each other? Actually, there would be no need to get ahead of anybody, because we’d all be going the same speed, so no car would be going faster than another and need to get around other ones.

My mom interrupted my thoughts by swerving rather dangerously around the few cars between ours and the two trucks ahead, quickly closing the distance. I saw that the car in our lane was a huge semi, a furniture mover. The other truck was just an oversize pick-up, but was just as impossible to maneuver around as the semi. “Asshole!” my mom said through gritted teeth.

She honked, and I wondered when the sustained note would ever end. It was at least half a minute before she released the horn. I was shocked, and my ears were ringing a little, and I felt my heart start thumping away in overtime.

I turned toward the window and looked at one wispy cloud that flitted over the lake beneath the bridge. God, I began hesitantly. Um, my mom’s a reckless driver, and I’m a little worried. My sister and I have yet to finish our adolescent lives. I haven’t even lived one entire year of high school, okay? Could you maybe, you know, keep us all, um, here on Earth? Because I really would like to see the rest of my life.

That’s pretty much how all of my little chats with God went, but they were few and far between, and I always figured that the Big Guy would have a nice sense of humor and see my side of things.

Meanwhile, my mom swore over the Indie-Rock that was playing through the cars speakers. Mom turned the radio off, to the surprise and annoyance of my sister, and she grabbed a receipt off the dashboard.

“Do you have a pencil?” my mom demanded of me.

“Uh, yeah…” I looked through my backpack and found one. She thrust the scrap paper behind her, into my hands, and dictated the license plate and phone number of the moving truck.

“Wait, wait,” I said, putting the receipt on my binder and trying to write. I couldn’t make the numbers out clearly, though, because between the bumpy highway and my mother’s erratic driving, I had very little control over my hands motions. “So… That’s… X, six, four?”

“Yes,” my mom replied curtly as she tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “The number. One, eight hundred…”

I copied as well as I could, though most of my zeros turned out like sixes. She took the paper back and drove us away from the trucks, onto the off-ramp.

My heart was still blasting. Hey, God, thanks. Keep up the good work, bro.

It’s Towel Day!

Today is May 25, which is when we celebrate the esteemed author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the late Douglas Adams. You’re supposed to carry a towel around, but I didn’t actually remember that it was Towel Day (also known as 42 Day), so I don’t have my towel.

By the way. I am aware that if you look at the WordPress homepage today, under “Freshly Pressed”, you will find a post that very clearly states that today is Towel Day. So just to, you know, not seem like a total biter, I just want to tell you that, although that’s what reminded me to write this post, I did already know it was 42 Day. My sister told me. So there.

As usual, I’m sorry for not posting last night, but the band banquet didn’t end until after nine, so by time I got home, I was tired and not in the mood to type. I just kind of went to bed and fell asleep faster than I thought I could. That’s my excuse. Real sorry!

Anyway, I’ve got today’s story all planned out; it’s just a funny little tale from when I was in seventh grade and my sister was in eighth, and here it is.

–

I reached for the jar of tomato sauce, plastic spoon in hand. I was about to slather my half-bagel with the sauce when someone snatched the jar and kept it for herself.

I sighed patiently and waited for the sauce to come back my way, so I could make my little pizza bagel and eat my first morsel of food in hours. Honestly, I would have been happy just to eat the pepperonis right out of the bag, but I was pretty sure that the after-school-program staff wouldn’t like that because it was “unsanitary” to stick your hand in a bag of food that other people wanted to eat.

I looked around the table and saw unfamiliar faces–sixth graders who I didn’t know; I knew very few sixth graders because I tended to shy away from people who were younger than me. They had a habit of annoying me to the verge of yelling, and that wasn’t something I liked to do, so I just avoided them whenever possible.

One eager girl, however, wouldn’t let me do that. She was sitting across from me and next to my sister, with whom I was talking while we tried to wrestle the pizza fixings out of the grimy hands of our peers.

“Are you two sisters?” the girl asked me. I didn’t like this girl at all. She was mean to my friends and always acted like she was above everyone else. Total snob. I wouldn’t wish her upon anyone.

My sister and I exchanged a look. We knew that we didn’t look alike at all–she was tall and curvy, with thick and long brown hair and light brown eyes, and sun-tanned skin all over. I, however, was a little on the shorter side, with a bony body, fair skin, gray-green eyes, and short, thin, dirty-blond hair.

I saw the gleam in her eyes. I knew what she was doing. I was hungry, impatient, and quickly getting bored of the situation, so I decided to play along.

“No,” we said in unison.

The girl looked between us, surprised. “Really? What are you?”

“…Friends?” I tried, confused.

“No, like… what are you? Um… like…”

“What race?” my sister suggested.

“Uh, yeah.” This class of sixth graders, I noticed, was particularly touchy with the subject of race.  They didn’t like the word race, didn’t like the names of the races–they were uncomfortable calling people “Asian” or “black”, instead stumbling around with other more surreptitious descriptions, which most of the upperclassmen seemed amused at.

I looked at my sister, and I knew exactly what she was thinking. “Dutch,” I said.

“Japanese,” was her response.

There was a modicum of truth to these answers. She was Japanese–our paternal grandmother is from Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, and she has darkly tanned skin, not unlike my sister. And it was true–as far as I knew, anyway–that I was Dutch, because our mom is from Wisconsin, and she told me that most people there are Dutch. Although I had never certainly confirmed our Dutch origin, I was sure enough to say it.

The girl looked at us. “Really?”

My eyes were still on my sister. I felt my mouth twitch into a smile. She burst out laughing.

“What, what’s funny?” the girl asked in a panic.

“Oh, nothing,” I laughed. I saw our step-dad’s car out in the parking lot. “Oh, there’s our ride. C’mon, let’s go.”

My sister and I got up and grabbed our backpacks. The girl looked at us in confusion. “So… wait, you are sisters?”

“Yes!” our friends chimed in.

We left, laughing. That was the first time I was ever actually happy because of a sixth grader, and I relished our harmless and dumb little prank.

Getting Too Comfortable

The first time I let myself skip a day of Story a Day May, I knew exactly what would happen. I knew that I would get lenient. I realized that if I allowed myself to slack, if I allowed myself to be convinced that it’s not THAT important, I would be willing to do it again.

It’s like stealing. You do it once, and then you start thinking it’s okay. Except that I’m not a thief.

Or am I? I’m stealing from myself. I’m not a very good person.

The great Universe would be disappointed.

Moving on from that, I basically have my story in mind for today. It’s based on a little anecdote–not really long or detailed enough to be a “story” within itself–that my English teacher told the class. The girl is named after a girl in my Public Speaking class–she’s such a nice girl, a senior who’s a really talented gymnast. And she loves children. She’s just so sweet!

–

出る杭は打たれる。

The nail that sticks out will be hammered back down.

~Japanese adage

I shuffled quietly into the class, head down, earbuds in tightly, hands in the pockets of my cheap khakis. I was surrounded by other students who were talking and laughing together, gradually settling into their desk-chairs.

I sat down and put my iPod away. A boy tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, Kaho! How’s things?”

“Um, fine,” I reacted. “How are things with you, Ron?”

“Excellent!” The freckled boy gave me a thumbs up and I returned it. The history teacher came into the class from her office. Everyone sat down and she chatted with the teaching assistant–a friendly African American senior who had a tendency to do a bad job grading tests.

I admired our teacher history, Ms. Cuffe. She was really tall and smiley and wore pretty skirts. She listened to punk rock sometimes, which I knew because I often visited her class during lunch or her prep period to talk to her about various assignments. I struggled with U.S. history enough as it was, and they thought they could put me in the AP class. It was torture.

Ms. Cuffe whirled around the second the bell rang and her bright red hair–of which I was also admiring–flew with her. “Kaho Fujiame!” she said forcefully, pointing a finger at me while her other hand rested on her hip. “Did you watch the news last night on channel ten?”

I nodded. My family always watched the news after dinner.

“What is your opinion on the United States’ presence in Egypt?”

I looked around for answers. Ron stared at the ceiling. I knew he knew the answer. He always had those “opinions” that she was looking for.

“Um…”

The room was deafeningly silent. Pin-dropping.

I looked to my right, hoping the girl with the glasses might have an answer. I whispered, “What is it?” to her, but she just sort of shrugged and looked at me with sympathy.

I didn’t need sympathy! I needed an answer to her stupid question!

“Kaaaaho…” the teacher chided jokingly.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t know,” was all I could say.

“You don’t know your own opinion?” she wondered. “There’s no right or wrong answer, Kaho. You know that, right? I just want to know what you think. And if you can back yourself up on it. Do you know what’s going on in Egypt?”

I knew. Of course I knew. I hated this stupid AP crap, with all of its stupid “opinions” and “critical thinking”. Facts, I could handle. Equations? Fine. I wasn’t that good in math, but I could at least memorize stuff.

Opinions, though? I had nothing! There wasn’t anything to say on the subject. “Does my opinion actually matter?” I asked, probably for the hundredth time, to the chagrin of my poor instructor.

“Yes, Kaho, your opinion matters very much. You guys are the future of America, and I really can’t stress that enough. You’re educated kids, alright? You’re taking advanced classes, and you’re going to get into college and be successful. You need to care, and have opinions!”

I sighed and slumped into my seat. “Okay,” I managed.

“Kaho, do you care about what’s going on in Egypt?” she asked.

“Um…” I didn’t know what to say. “Not really?”

“Why not?” she asked, ignoring the sparse gasping of my classmates.

“Because it doesn’t really matter to me.”

“Well, then. I’ll tell you why it matters. But thank you for having an opinion.”

Hammered down yet again.

Still Alive.

It looks like I’m a sinner. Which is odd, because I’m pretty sure I don’t drink.

Oh, but you know what? I do use naughty language. So that’s probably it. I guess we’ll know on October 24th, when I get sent to Hell or something.  Huh. Won’t that be fun? I mean, it seems like most of the cool people end up in Hell… But suicides get to go to Purgatory, right? Damn. I always wanted to meet Ernest Hemingway.

A little note: In my English class, we call Ernest Hemingway “Uncle Ernie” due to the fact that there is a boy in our class who is of the Hemingway bloodline; Ernie is his great-great uncle or something like that, so he says that his family calls him Uncle Ernie, and it kind of carried over, I guess.

Well, I’m getting tired, so it’s about time I write my stupid story for tonight and go to bed… I’m really bad at staying up late. I’m just not a very good teenager. Oh, well…

–

I ground the toe of my boot into the ground as I watched my friends clamber up the gate and hop over. They bumped their leather-gloved fists when they landed, and then looked through the wrought-iron bars at me.

“C’mon,” said Lizzie, the mother of this awful idea. “You can climb a freaking gate.”

“Can is one thing,” remarked the other girl, Emma, who never quite liked me and whom I never quite liked. “But will she?” She had a challenging smirk on her face, because she knew what Lizzie refused to believe: I was a total coward. Even though Lizzie and I had been best friends since sixth grade–four years, now–I just was never as adventurous as she was. And she never quite accepted that. She always dragged me along on her little exploits, but I usually just chickened out found some excuse to avoid it.

“Um, well, you know–” I started.

“I knew it,” Emma said while I was grasping for a plausible excuse. I was thinking maybe something like how it’s hard to climb in bell-bottoms or sneak around an ancient condemned house in heeled boots, but it didn’t look like Emma was going to let me out of this one with my dignity in tact. “Zie, c’mon, this one’s no fun. Just let the kiddie go back home and cuddle up with, what was it? Alice in Wonderland? Just go home and snuggle up with your little fantasy stories and live your life vicariously through your dusty old book. You can leave the real world to people like me and Lizzie, okay?”

“Hey,” Lizzie said in protest. “Not okay, Emma. Be sweet.”

That was Lizzie’s little mantra–“Be sweet.” She used it all the time, and I think she thought that it might actually work some day. And even though I, apparently, wasn’t living in the “real world” that she and Emma did, I was apparently jaded enough to know that telling someone to be sweet–especially a bitch like Emma–wasn’t going to just make it so.

Emma rolled her kohl-lined eyes and looked at Lizzie like, Are you kidding me? “Liz, let’s be serious here. This girl isn’t with us. She’s not with you. And she’s sure as anything not with me.”

“Emma… Why are you so difficult?” Lizzie asked in frustration.

“Hey, hey,” I interrupted, because I didn’t want to mess up their stupid little friendship. “Don’t worry ’bout it, Liz, I’m just going to go home. I have to work on my painting for the art fair and, you know, stuff.”

Emma smirked. “Mkay, go enjoy your little painting. Come on, Zie, are you in or out?”

I watched Lizzie’s eyes flit between Emma and me, so I smiled as reassuringly as an unassured person can smile. She gave me a little half-smile and turned around. I watched her black-capped head turn around and disappear into the dark with Emma. That was it. Just a fleeting smile and then, “Bye-bye.”

That was okay, though. I walked home in the dark, my heavy exhaling visible in the yellowish streetlights. It was okay because I had my painting, and my Lewis Carroll…

…and my cat.

Oh, God, I was so lonely.

I Can Do This

I know it doesn’t really seem like I can, considering that this is the second time I’ve missed my Story A Day, but I swear, I can do it.

It isn’t as though I didn’t write at all yesterday… I’m just really uncomfortable writing stories by hand, and all I had with me were my diary and pencil box. I mean, I suppose I had access to my mom’s iPad (she’s so tech-savvy), but I didn’t want to use it because then she might have asked why I needed it, and then I might have told her that I have this blog, and I don’t want her to know that, because I don’t want anybody I know (except for you, and you know who you are) to know I have this blog. If people I knew could potentially read this blog–and trust me when I say that I’ve been there, done that, and really don’t want to go back–I would be very self-conscious, because then people might bring it up to me, and gosh, wouldn’t that just be embarrassing as all hell?

So, you understand my situation.

Wait, I just reread that paragraph, and that actually has nothing to do with my situation. Wow. Way to go, brah. God, I’m just brilliant…

Anyways, so the point I was trying to make was that, although I haven’t technically been keeping up with “story a day”, I’ve at least been writing every day. However, since I pretty much do that anyways, it’s hardly an accomplishment to say that. But you know… little victories and all that.

Okay, so I’m tired right now, and I sort of feel like going to bed as soon as I can. That might not be easy, since my sister is playing World of Warcraft in our room right now, and she’s not very good about giving that up for the sake of my comfort.

Even if I don’t get much sleep, I’m sure I’ll be fine, since I don’t think I’m doing much tomorrow, so I can probably sleep during the day… I’m going to a party tomorrow night, and–judging by the Facebook event page for it–I think it’s going to be pretty cool, so I don’t really want to be tired for it. Some of my friends’ bands are going to be playing, which is probably going to be fun. One of my friends says that his band is going to play the song he wrote about the Greek philosopher, Socrates. Something about how Socrates is a “sexy beast”? Anyway, it’s a party worth looking forward to.

–

I closed my eyes and braced myself for the worst. “The worst”, I knew, wasn’t actually coming. The only thing that was actually coming was the damp, slow, shniiiiip of the serrated metal scissors, too close to my head for comfort.

I don’t like getting haircuts. I never have. I mean, I enjoy getting my hair washed by some stranger with fancy rubber gloves, but the razor-sharp scissors right next to my head always sort of got to me.

This was the first time I allowed my hair to be cut in years; it had gotten pretty long, too–it was a few inches past my shoulder blades now.

And it was all going to go.

I needed to change. I winced with every cut and pull, but I didn’t care. I wanted new hair, to match my new Everything Else. I had a new driver’s license to go with my new car, and a new wardrobe full of new shoes, and a brand spankin’ new waist, with at least a few inches off it than a few months ago.

Now, all that was left was to change my hair.

“So, how short do you want it?”

I thought. “Well,” I said, “I was thinking maybe… earlobe-length?”

She spun the chair around. “That’s a lot of hair,” she warned me.

I nodded. “I know.”

She looked at me skeptically. “Are you sure?”

Again, I nodded. “I’m looking for a change.”

She smiled knowingly now. “Ohhhh. Well, a change, I can do.”

She spun me around again and got back to her rapid clipping. “And would you like to donate your hair to make wigs for children undergoing chemotherapy for various cancers?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“Oh, your hair is going to be wonderful…” she mumbled. “And you said something about dyeing…?”

Dying? Oh, dyeing. “Yeah, I was thinking black?” I suggested.

“Does ‘Midnight Ebony’ sound good?”

“Absolutely.”

It was a while before I felt the blow drier hit my neck–my suddenly very bare neck–and I realized that we were almost done. The lingering chemical smell of Midnight Ebony assailed my senses, but I embraced it, because I knew that I was going to be a whole new person because of it. A skinny person, who has a car, and pretty black hair. That’s who I was going to be.

I glanced at the floor and saw the long blond locks that were strewn around the base of my chair. I almost gasped in shock and fear. What if it didn’t look as good as I thought it was going to? What if looked stupid, and people thought I was a wannabe? That wouldn’t be fun.

A few strands of inky black hair were blown into my eyes, which closed reflexively, and I realized that, yeah, this was a good choice. I was going to look good. This hair would work.

After all the pep-talking it took for me to convince myself to go though with this change, you can see why I might have burst into tears when I was turned around and saw the horror that was my reflexion.

Concert Tomorrow!

Time for me to get out that little black dress! And tights. And shoes. Jewelery, too, maybe.

Our last concert of the year is tomorrow night. It’s our “Pops” concert, which means we get to play cool songs, like the Beatles and Earth, Wind, and Fire (so funky!). Also, a really super sad song from a really super sad movie–(the theme from) “Schindler’s List”. Nobody actually likes that song except for my boyfriend, because he has a really awesome solo for pretty much the entire song through. So there’s always that… Oh, and our fourth song is “Star Trek”, so, you know…

Band geeks Trekking out. That’s just what we need.

Well, I’m hopefully going to get a little more sleep than usual tonight, because otherwise, I’ll fall asleep during the onslaught of rest-measures I get in “Schindler’s List”, and that just won’t look very good at all. Besides, drum major tryouts are after school on Friday, so I need to get a head start on this whole sleeping thing (since we won’t be getting home tomorrow night till around nine or so).

That said, I’ll just start writing my story-a-day now.

–

End of Days Is Approaching!

Judgement Day is the 21st of May!

Are YOU ready to be judged???

I like going on walks by the local Catholic school. I have a lot of friends who go there, so I usually stop by on my way home and I wait for them outside the gate. Sometimes, though, I walk by just to look at all the signs they have posted around.

The world-ending thing seemed to really be getting them down. I leaned against the gate and checked my watch. It was about ten minutes until the Academy of Albinus of York let out, so I pulled Darwin’s Origin of Species out of my backpack.

I wasn’t reading it just to be contrary, I swear. It was a school assignment.

Okay, maybe I was just trying to be contrary. I liked the book, and people from the AoAoY gasped in shock at my blasphemous reading choice, which I found really funny. Fine; I was just trying to get a rise out of some poor, faithful people. I’m not a good person, I guess.

I looked up from my book and saw a poster that said, “$ex Ha$ It$ Price: A play presented by the Catholic Youth of Carmel-by-the-Sea theater group”. I couldn’t help but think that they were trying to encourage prostitution. After all,do you know how many hundreds of concubines Solomon allegedly had?

I was distracted from my thoughts when a shadow fell over me and I looked away from the poster to see a guy in a tie looking down at me.

“Well, hey, miss. What are you doing out of class?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t go to this school.” I nudged by book at him, thinking that it would prove just how much I didn’t go to this school.

“Oh.” He read the cover. “Oh.”

I smiled a purse-lipped smile at him and went back to reading.

“Hey,” he said again. “You still have time to repent,… It’s only three days until the twenty-first, you know.”

I smiled again. “Gee, thanks, but no thanks. I just remembered that I have some important stuff to do, so bye now!”

I left without another word, just one more tight little smile.

I Learned Something Wonderful

It’s called “sentence looping”. We’re supposed to use it for some freewriting in English–finding the theme of the book by letting our thoughts out onto paper without any inhibition, stumbling across brilliant theses when we let our minds wander freely…

My English teacher is a 29-year-old surfer. Everyday, he wears a belt with a big blue buckle. His only pair of shoes seems to be some beat up steel-toed combat boots. But I think he wears them ironically. He’s a total hippie, okay? He talks to our class about individualism and classical music and the punk rock movement and how to avoid taking a Breathalyzer test.

So yeah, he’s all about us stumbling across brilliant theses when we let our minds wander freely.

Anyway, sentence looping. What you do is, you look at a random sentence, pick a word, and then start writing about that word–all the thoughts that come to your mind, just write ’em. Then, you take a look at that paragraph and pick a word and do it again. When you figure that you’re all done, you can pick a word from the very last paragraph and try to use it to connect with the first sentence.

Hence–a loop.

Anyway, that ought’a make it a little easier to come up with story-a-day ideas, you know? I mean, if I just go on a little tangent, I can probably think of something to write about. So, hey, if I’m ever out of stuff to write about, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.

So that’s what I’m going to do now. Let’s see here… I just need something to go off of. Okay. I’m going to just start with the word, tanorexic, which is–according to Merriam-Webster.com–a new slang term that means “given to excessive tanning”. I’m going to bold-face the word that I’m going off of in the next paragraph, okay?

–

Tanning, I know, can be a dangerous habit. Bed tanning and sun tanning are both well-known causes of skin cancer. Frankly, I think spray-tanning is just silly. Maybe that’s just coming from a SoCal native, but I just think it’s silly that you would bother intentionally changing your skin-tone to an orangey tint. It’s sort of… appalling. To me, at least. It seems like such an unnecessary length to go to. I put on sun-screen when I remember to, usually only when I go to the beach or something, and aside from that, I just let myself tan naturally.

Being local is something I value a lot… I like where I live. I love it here. The people, the place–there are a lot of people I know who say they hate the city, they want to move somewhere small and more remote so they can avoid the stress of living somewhere so noisy and busy. Me, though? I love it here. I can’t imagine living out of a city. I love the city. It’s busy and exciting. Crowded and dirty as hell, loud and interesting, bright and beautiful. I live for this. I love going downtown. I love to see all the culture. Little local areas with their special ways of living. Craft fairs. All of it. I love it.

A lot of people nowadays are getting into the whole “throw money at the problem so it goes away” thing. It’s weird. That’s not what I learned when I was little… I wanted to solve problems. Sometimes, I wonder if it would be easier if we could just spend money and make things all better. But what if everybody did that? Then, nobody would actually do anything. Sure, we can pay people to do this or that, but eventually, there’s not going to be anybody left to do the stuff we need to get done. Who’s going to fight our wars? Who’s going to help the people in Africa who can’t get clean water? Sure, fine, you can donate some money and hopefully, that money turns into water. Write it off on your taxes. Okay, great. What about the rest of the world’s water crisis? The Earth doesn’t care how much cash you have. That’s not going to take salt out of the ocean. We need to actually do. Not donate. Doooo.

We need more people to start caring. Not enough people do that. You think you get it, and you don’t. You say you get it. But you don’t, do you? No. You say you know what’s wrong, but you’re not doing anything about it. You’re just going to pass that duty onto the next person. Well, he’s doing it, too. Everyone knows what’s wrong. We just need a couple people to care–to REALLY care–about it. We need to get something done.

What happens next, anyways? What’s going to happen in a few days? Years? God, I need to be ready for tomorrow. And all the crap afterwards. I can’t just get skin cancer like ~45% of the population does by age 65. (see that genius little tie-in?) I have to keep going and live for tomorrow! In The Princess Bride, Westley said something about promising to outlive each other so that they could live forever… Sound like a plan?

–

That’s enough writing for one night. Okay, it wasn’t a story. That’s fine. Good night, sweet chickedies.