New Blog

So, kiddies, I have made myself a new a blog. I find myself disenchanted with the name and purpose of this blog. You can still expect updates from here, but I’ll be concentrating more on my new one. You can find it at aginganinja.wordpress.com*I just realized this could be read “a ginga ninja” or “aging a ninja” weird*  (or conversely aginjaninja.wordpress.com; either works) It’s not discriminatory because I’m a ginger. I’ll post anything I find of interest: articles, ramblings, recipes, patterns, etc.
So check it out.

So check it out, and see if you like it.

Letters to my Home Appliances

Dear air conditioner,
Why did you cease cooling air today, when it’s the hottest day we’ve had in a week? That’s just inordinately cruel. If you’re going on strike, please report your complaints to the union before discontinuing work, so that all complaints can be formally dealt with before taking extreme action. But really, though, What do you want? More money? Better hours? An upgraded fan? I will consider all your demands if you please return to a working state, before I die of heat stroke.
Sincerely dying of heat,
Michelle

Dear laptop,
My sweetest, loving laptop. You know how much I love you, how much time I spend with you. How I appreciate you and keep you virus free. Remember the times when we watched TV shows online and laughed together? Remember how I cleaned your keyboard everyday?  Why then do you betray our relationship by turning yourself into a branding iron? Are you have you found another? Are you with the air conditioner and have decided to punish me for something that I did? I can assure you know that turning yourself into some kind of scorching space heater will not help you in anyway. I do not particularly enjoy having the skin on my legs melt while I check my email nor did I like having my fingers blistered when I touch your battery. Don’t hold whatever I did against me ,and, please, let the union know of your protests. I will deal with them after I have dealt the air conditioner’s issues.
Sincerely missing the times when I could use you without getting 3rd degree burns,
Michelle

Dear toaster,

I sincerely appreciate all the work that you do in this house, but I must ask that you cease burning my toast, even when I set you to the lowest setting. If you have an issue with your working environment, please file a formal complaint with the union. As there is a current influx of filed discrepancies, there may be a one to three week waiting period in dealing with your complaint. I ask that you continue to work as usual until the issue has been dealt with.

Sincerely tired of burnt toast,

Michelle

Dear Box Fan,

While I realize that the attic may not be the happiest or homiest place to live most of the year, I implore you to cease and desist your protests. I refuse to place you in another area of the house.  If you believe that you will break my spirit by not working while the air conditioner is having a hissy fit, than you will be sadly disappointed.

Sincerely hoping you realize your mistake,

Michelle

Dear Refrigerator,

Thank you for being what appears to be the only appliance in the house that continues to work as usual.  And also, thanks for allowing me to use you as a replacement for the fan.

Sincerely grateful for your breath of cool air,

Michelle

Dear General Electric,

As much as I hate to bother hardworking and busy people like you, I must admit I am having issues with some of my appliances.  They appear to be rebelling. I believe that the refrigerator is the only one on my side (prehaps because it’s an Energy Star product?). As you are the experts in appliances, I was wondering if you had any time proven methods on how to deal with such rebellion.  Do I punish my appliances? And, if so, should I reward my refrigerator like the government rewarded West Virginia after the Civil War? Will I need some kind of patrol to watch over the appliances once the rebellion has been crushed?

Sincerely worried about potential hostile take overs,

Michelle

Na-na-na-na-na-naaaa, Combat Plan (and akon-in’)

Hello dearies, it’s Michelle, again.

I’m in a really good mood today, despite the fact I start finals tomorrow. Why is that you may be wondering.

It’s because a) I have a plan and b) I spent the past two days playing away at a convention!.

Part a) The Plan:

So, I’ve begun planning two things: The Great Debate in ‘08 and my final reviews. Of course, only one is interesting, but I won’t be telling you guys about any of my debate plans until later.

Part b): Conventions!!!!

Well, I visited, for the third year in a row, my favorite convention. I had an absolute blast. I saw the cosplay competition and skits, got some famous people to sign my stuff, bought some really awesome crap, purchased some over priced food, took pictures of hot guys, argued with complete strangers about TV shows, was hit on by a man in a dress, and went a masquerade ball and concert. Yes, it was fairly amazing. The only thing missing, of course, was meeting a decent guy (Every year I go with hopes that I’ll meet someone decent, and every year I am sadly disappointed)

So that’s my weekend update.

Finals this week, so no posts until Friday. And, Katie, expect the Great Debate to begin this weekend, because I’m bored.

Well, as long as I do it before I die, I should be OK

I’m stealing this from a post Katie did a while ago about a girl who asked us what we’d regret if we died tomorrow. Our lists kind of overlap, so deal with me while I reference her post (or you could check it out yourself):

1. Love
I feel like I’ve missed out on this a lot, mostly because my personality makes it very hard for me to express love and similar feelings to the people whom I love. I feel like (especially with my parents) I find myself turning it into something I avoid because I can’t deal with that kind of strong emotion. Hate, loathing, and jealousy are so easy  for me to cope with, but love is a hard one (maybe that says something about our culture or me in general). So I guess I regret not learning how to deal with the love both that I have and that people try to give me. That and I’ve never really had a romantic love in my life (-cough- never had a boyfriend -cough-)

2. Lust
“My apologies for the prudes out there. But it would be a shame to die without good sex.” – or any sex at all.

3. Travel
If I wasn’t hypothetically dead already, I would kill myself for never making it to Asia. It’s my dream; I want to see the world that I saw on the travel channel in reality. One trip to every continent (minus Antarctica) should do it.

4. Maturity
And I don’t mean that I haven’t grown up. I have. I’m just not done growing. I don’t want to die not knowing what I would have become, had I had time to develop. As my mom have said I’m not “finished blooming into a beautiful flower”.

5. Happiness:
That’s not to say I’m not happy right now (though finals are kind of sucking the happiness right out of my life), but I don’t feel that I’ve had a moment of absolute happiness in my life and that saddens me. My life has been good, but I can’t remember any time when I was purely happy. Maybe I’m looking for something that doesn’t exist, but I want it before I kick the bucket.

So these are things I want to do before I make my grand exit (and it will be grand). I don’t think they’re too unreasonable, but I do think they’ll take some time. I’m kind of glad that someone mentioned regret; it gave me plenty of time to get these things done.

Also, I just realized that my list makes me look a bit selfish (or totally selfish) and shallow…. I guess since I didn’t wish for world peace, I must not have the selflessness required to be Miss America or  Mother Teresa.  Is it bad that I’m totally okay with being a bad, selfish person?

On your mark, get set… debate thingy!

So, you probably don’t know, but my good friend Katie (thiscrackeddarkness) and I have been planning some sort of online debate for about a week.  I’ve outlined some rules for us and a little bit of an intro for those of you who have no idea what we’re talking about:

Intro – This debate thingy – soon to have a better name – is something in which Katie and I shall debate (duh) topics of our (or the readers/viewers) choosing.  Half the debate shall be video, the other half shall be written.  That’s basically the intro.

Rules -the rules of our debate thingy:
1. no video Michelle makes shall be longer than than 4 and 1/2 minutes.
2. no response Katie authors shall be longer than 1 essay, 5 paragraphs, or whatever length is approximately 4-5 minutes when read aloud.
3. we shall take turns picking and starting the debate.
4. the responder has 3 days to write/video something in response to the topic.
5. Michelle reserves the right to revert to writing if i run out of time
6. Katie reserves the right to make a video if she wants to.
7. Each post must link back to other post made by the other person.

Things that Katie and I still need to address:

1. the name

2. limtation of topics

3. who (and how) we’ll involve.

And that’s it for today.

Exactly 10 days late…

I’d like to wish a very star very close to my heart a happy birthday.  This man is a creative, unique singer-song writer, writer, and vlogger.  That’s right, Hank Green. I’d like to wish him the best in a new year of… erm… being older, and a congratulations (10 days late) on being expelled from his mother’s body!

And here’s the card I made him:

That's right. I drew him a picture of his own face on his card.

If you don’t know who he is, you should go search the vlogbrothers on youtube.  There’s some pure gold out there.

I wrote a novel today!

Albeit a very short novel. Of unrelated topics. That looked very suspiciously like essays for a Language class test.
That’s right two hours and 11 and a half pages later, I have completed my last for-credits-you’re-probably-going-to-make-up-anyway test. And I’m unhappy.
It’s not because I felt that I did poorly (which I might have, thanks to that lovely lawn mower outside driving me insane). No, the reason I’m upset is because of the test itself.
I’m personally against standardized testing in general as a way to “show” how much a person a knows; it’s proven that you can beat that system easily, but even that’s not what’s pissing me off. No, I’m angry because they made me write three essays in two hours. And then grade all of those essays on a scale for which it is impossible for anyone to very well on all three essays, evening out the score so the maximum feasible percent grade on each essay is about 75%. I don’t know about you people, but I’m not sure how this is supposed to show my preparedness to skip classes and gain credits I don’t really deserve. I think a well planned and written out-of-class essay on a topic of their choosing with many revisions and edits would better show whether or not I was prepared to skip a class. Because, as a far as I know, the major papers you turn in for classes aren’t written in 40 minutes without spell check on lined sheets of paper in chicken scratch handwriting (which makes me feel particularly sorry for the people reading my tests, since I have both dyslexia and terrible handwriting)

So that’s my gripe for today. I’m cutting it off so I don’t bore you.

You too? Or Youtube…

So I made a youtube account, posted a video about/ranting about teaching Latin in schools.  I don’t think that anyone has actually seen it, but it felt liberating.  I wasn’t going to post any more videos after that, but, really, it was kind of fun.  Now I understand why vloging is so popular.  It’s very easy to get wrapped up the in the narcissism of a video all about you, your ideas and opinions without an objection from anyone.  It’s addicting.   It’s also really unsatisfying.  Only a small handful of people actually have people look at their videos.

That I guess that’s my story today.   Maybe I’ll take the video down, but I thought I’d try it after my brother suggested it.

If you want to see said video:  it’s on this youtube account – insidiousplan.

——

On to the subject of Latin class in schools.  Since my school is phasing out Latin, I’ve suddenly become aware of how much I support Latin.  I realize that it saves money and that it’s “useless”, but I really think it does serve a purpose (and not just an easy foreign language credit).  Latin is still used in professions that are considered legitimate; science, medicine, and law all use Latin terms.  Taking Latin improves vocabulary and grammar.  It improves test scores.  It makes learning other langauges easier.  And it’s historically important.

What do you guys think?

Things I should be doing (but aren’t)

Today there are several thousand things I should be doing (but aren’t). Studying for a huge exam that covers approximately 8000 years of history, writing a 6 page paper on a topic I don’t really understand, spending time with my brother recently returned from school, studying Spanish grammar, just to name a few. I am, however, not doing any of these things. Instead, I’m online. Doing nothing.

I’ve always thought that the internet was a great invention, a perfect and natural growth of what we already had in technology. Sometimes, though, I doubt whether or not we have really benefited from it. Think, if all the money, time, and effort that went into youtube videos (and just youtube videos) was put to a cause of say, finding another way to giving malnourished people vitamins. I think we would have no more malnourished people. Think that if, just for a moment, it was much harder to cheat on homework questions and you were actually forced to learn. Think if I didn’t waste all my time giving myself carpal tunnel and ruining my eye sight reading and typing all day on the computer. Think of all the life I would get back. Think of all the life YOU would get back. Think of how much healthier we’d look if we left the house more! Think of what better grammar we’d write with! Think of a time when no one used the phrase LOL in real life! Think of the greatness!

Well, any way. I guess all great things have their dark sides. Luke Skywalker, Danny Crane, Ben Franklin, John Green… all great people, but all had dark sides.

I guess I should get going on that studying, but right now I hear google calling me…

The Zombies are Upon Us!

Actually, it’s just zombie swine flu, but, heck, it seems pretty interesting.
http://bouncewith.me.uk/europe/8027043.htm

Hell, yes. If only it were true.  A horror movie in real life. Soon everyone would be infected and we’d all be zombies.
Or it could  have been just a mutation that would have lasted a few weeks before being totally getting killed off by drugs and doctors and proper hygiene.
One of the two.

So enjoy your swine flu and keep yourselves away from the dead bodies, children.  No good can come from rotting corpses.