Sorry. This post will be directed primarily at upperclassmen at Oswego High School.

In "t" minus roughly three hours, I will be cutting Joey Griffins hair. Come to my house after testing if you want to see the spectacle!


Edit! Six hours later!

Joey was a very good boy and held still while I cut his hair. However, the StarvedArtist insisted upon helping, and by "helping" I mean hacking away huge chunks of his hair with absolutely no regard for how it would wind up looking. She wouldn't listen when I told her to stop. I would have stopped her using physical force, but she was holding a pair of scissors.

See pictures of the adventure at http://jumpsturdy.buzznet.com

Once I learn how to just put pictures INTO my posts, you won't have to do that anymore.

posted at 6:40 AM by Alison

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Here are some of my generation's linguistic tendencies which bother me:

The word "aspect." Teenagers use the word "aspect" as if it were going out of style. They also use it as if it were a wild card that they can force into any sentence and make to mean anything they want. Listen, my fellow young adults: the word "aspect" has a very specific meaning. Please treat it as such.

The word "amazing." The problem I have with "amazing" is not the superfluousness of it - if you will look up and to your right, you will see that I am, after all, the Queen of Hyperbole. My problem with "amazing" stems from the fact that the people who use it can't seem to find any synonyms for it. Extraordinary. Remarkable. Grand. Super. All of these would work. But instead they click their tongues effeminately and call everything "amazing" with a wide-eyed earnestness that makes me want to vomit.

The word "fake." Fakeness is not a personality trait. Just about every passing period, I hear at least one girl referring to another girl as a "fake bitch." Is she a mannequin? What the hell do you mean by fake? Basically, words like "fake" and "poser" are words that teenaged girls can use to call other teenaged girls bitches without sounding like bitches themselves.

The word "real." Referring to oneself as "real" requires that you believe in the concept of "fakeness." See above.

Not knowing how to use apostophes. E.G. "Your totally stupid." Anyone who writes the phrase "your stupid" or anything similar should have to pay a fine. Of $1,000. To me.

posted at 6:12 PM by Alison

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I get the Borders e-mail propaganda because I live in the suburbs and Borders is the only decent record store around. I got a 25% off coupon and decided to take it to Borders yesterday to get some CDs because I don't have the attention span to read books. That, incidentally, is also why I blog.

I got two Belle and Sebastian CDs - Storytelling (the only full-length album I didn't already have) and Step Into My Office, Baby.

Both are quality, of course, as they are Belle and Sebastian. Storytelling is actually a movie soundtrack. I've never heard of the movie except in reference to the soundtrack, but apparently it was American and John Goodman was in it. Both CDs include more of a Latin influence than I am used to with B&S (I think that has something to do with a Hispanic character in the movie Storytelling), but it suits them splendidly. It's not like Tito Puente screaming trumpets Latin - more like a lot of easy Bossa Nova kind of grooves. I always pick a few tunes right out the gate that I really like. The ones that have grabbed me are "Love on the March" from Step Into My Office, Baby, "Consuelo," "Fiction Reprise," and "Big John Shaft" from Storytelling.

Remind me to start writing about the CDs I get. It keeps me from blogging about what I ate for breakfast.

posted at 6:44 PM by Alison

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I was tired when I wrote that last post and didn't really say what I meant to say.

What I meant to say was that I'm just extraordinarily lazy. I feel guilty fucking up the whole band thing with my laziness mostly because I respect my directors so much, but if I went into anything else, I would be even worse. I could never force myself to work in sales. I definitely don't have the talent or the work ethic to be a performing musician. I'm too small and require too much mental stimulation to work in manual labor. I could teach English, except I cut more corners in my English classes than I do in music. My point is that I know that I could never be a Mrs. Pappas or a Mrs. Page, so I feel like there's nothing I could do properly. And I know there's no NEED for me to be as good as they are, but I've been so indoctrinated into this whole "shoot for perfection" mindset that I feel there's something downright evil about settling for something less than the best. The one thing I want more than anything else in the world is to have children, which is why I want to teach middle school - middle school teachers go home at 3:00. But the more I talk to Mrs. Pappas (who has no children) the guiltier I feel for not wanting to make my career my life. If family - not work - is going to be my priority, how could I even be so disrespectful as to sully the professional world with my presence?

Anyway.

I've had a busy weekend.


Thurday I went to Shilpa's house to work on our project for Spanish class. She lives in a huge house with no furniture in it. There's one room with nothing in it except a statue of some Hindu god. I've heard this is fairly common - not the Hindu thing, but moderately well-off suburbanites buying big houses and not putting anything in them. Why do people spend so much money on houses they that they can't afford to furnish them? What is the point of having a big house if it isn't attractive or comfortable? Do they really think that people will think more highly of them just because their house is large?

I hate the suburbs.

At any rate, it was a lot of fun watching Kabbi Kutchi Kabbi Gham and making curried rice with Shilpa. And the next morning, I was late to early bird, and it was raining really hard, so I was running up the path to the gym doors and there were trees blossoming on either side of the path and blossoms were scattered all over the sidewalk and I was running through the rain and it was like I was in a Bollywood movie. It was quite pretty.

I saw Braveheart with Jewish Boyfriend on Friday, and I didn't watch most of it because I can't really handle violence. Speaking of Jewish Boyfriend, Passover started last night at sundown. So Happy Passover, everybody. I was going to keep Kosher, but it was mostly just so I could have an opportunity to make good with Jewish Parents and since I'm no longer invited to Sater (sp?) with Jewish Parents, I've decided to say "screw it" and I'm currently eating a vegan ice cream sandwich which is just full of corn syrup.

Yesterday was my audition at U of I. I had the day all planned out. I got directions and put all of my clothes in a garment bag. I had to go down to Champaign for my audition at 11, then leave immediately and go to Plainfield for a Wind Symphony thing, then go straight from Plainfield to Shilpa's parents' anniversary party somewhere near St. Charles. It would be roughly five hours of driving, but for whatever reason I felt confident that I could handle it.

So I go down to Champaign, and I arrived almost a full hour early. An hour! I've never been early for anything in my life. So I bummed around and had a leisurely warm-up and met some of the other players and then did fairly well on the audition and then grabbed some lunch and left Champaign for Plainfield. The way I figured it, I would actually arrive about a half an hour before the rest of the band did. Sweet! I'm totally responsible. So I get to Dwight, and my gas is running a little low, so I stop at a BP. I put my card in and I remove the nozzle and I TRY to begin fueling, but nothing comes out. So I pull around to another pump, and the same thing happens. So I'm really pissed, and I leave to find the next gas station. I stop at a Casey's General Store and the EXACT SAME THING HAPPENS. So I'm super pissed now and I pull into this "24 hour gas" place, but I'd have to pay inside, so I say, "Screw it, I'll just pull into the next station," which was only just across the street. I pull into the Sucoco, and it won't accept my debit card. I pull into the BP NEXT to the Sunoco, and it also won't accept my card. The gas light isn't on yet, so I figure I'll just get on I-55 and keep going until I find another gas station. Now, you see, when I'm driving the shaggin' wagon, I can feel when I'm starting to run out of gas. The response slows down a little, and I can feel that I've only got a couple more miles until I have to get gas. My mom's car, on the other hand, keep going strong until the SECOND it runs out of gas. So I was thinking I still had some time, when suddenly the car just STOPS GOING. I was right by an exit, so I pull off thinking I could just coast into a gas station, but in my panic I failed to notice that it was the exit onto I-80. Fuck. So I park on the side of the ramp, turn the car off, and try to restart it. It won't. Fuck. Shit. I flip open my phone - intending to call someone who could give me a number I could call to get local help so I could still get to Plainfield on time. And what does my phone do? It runs out of batteries. Just then. At the most ideal time. So I get out and start walking to the nearest gas station, when this dude pulls over and offers me a ride/cell phone. I accept the cell phone. I call my mom, and she says that she will bring me gas. Thing is, I'm very far away from home at this point, so it takes her about an hour to get to me. When I ran out of gas, it was about 2:05. I was about twenty minutes away from Plainfield High School, and the rest of the band was going to arrive at 2:30, warm up at 3, and perform at 3:30. My mom didn't get there until about 3:00. So everyone was all prepared to play without me when I burst in JUST at 3:30. I think this might have been during my blogging hiatus, but I did something very similar with a jazz band competition in March. So pretty much everybody in the band department thinks I'm extremely irresponsible. But I played really well. Better than during any of the rehearsals, anyway.

I was really shaken up, though, and I told Shilpa I couldn't come to her party. I felt bad, because it was going to be really cool. Maybe.

See pictures of my adventures at http://jumpsturdy.buzznet.com

posted at 1:37 PM by Alison

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Your Linguistic Profile:

70% General American English

15% Yankee

10% Upper Midwestern

5% Dixie

0% Midwestern

I'm surprised I don't have more Dixie in me. I lived in North Carolina until I was five, you know.

posted at 12:59 PM by Alison

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Don't you dig how I beg for comments and then don't write for three days? I sure do.

I'm going to talk about band for awhile.

Tuesday was the Bandquet celebrating this fantabulous year we've had. I feel bad for what I'm about to say - I know I should be more appreciative - but I hate the band boosters. They fund raise and do all sorts of wonderful things, but they're just obnoxious. They micro-manage to the point of absurdity. They perform tasks that student leaders could easily perform. They have a ridiculously overblown sense of their own importance. Mr. Cound and Mr. Grudzien got up to give speeches at the Bandquet in which they basically verbally fellated each other and it made me want to vomit. They talk as if fundraising were abolutely the most gloriously difficult/important thing they could possibly do. They're on a mission from God.

But then I had this conversation with Pappas today. She admitted to me that she really wasn't all that fond of the way the people involved with the band view it. It's a family - it's fun - it's all rainbows and smiles - and no one really cares about the music all that much. And I realized that I was kind of on their side. I mean, I like music. A lot. I'm very interested in it, but I'm not passionate about it the way she is. I want to become a band director because I think band is fun, not necessarily because I want to make magnificent music. And I really started to think about how that might not be so great. As she talked about how she wants nothing more than to be a great director and how she wants to share her abject love for music with her students, I began to feel guiltier and guiltier. I have never experienced anything like what she's talking about. I just think band is fun. I'm no great musician - and what's more, I don't WANT to be one. I don't care enough to practice for hours every day. I don't care enough to sit listening to recordings of the London Symphony until the wee hours of the morning. I like listening to the same crap I've listened to a thousand times. I'm cool with that. I'm okay with being a decent musician. So I'm sitting here writing complete bullshit on this scholarship essay about how devoted I am to music, and I feel like a complete fraud.

Cute funny stories tomorrow!

posted at 6:24 PM by Alison

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Every now and then, a blogger has to do this.

I know the posts haven't been grand lately, but I'll make you a deal. I'll start writing more interesting stuff if you'll start commenting a little more. I know there have to be way more of you out there than are commenting.

We here at The Fencepost are a family. But you can't really be in the family if you don't comment. If you don't comment, then you're just a creepy silent onlooker.

Don't be a silent onlooker. Join the family. Leave a comment.

posted at 5:55 PM by Alison

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I've shut myself off from the real world. I don't watch the news anymore, I don't read the news paper. It seems that even the blogs that would bring my attention back to the world stage once it strayed have stopped blogging about current events.

I guess, for all my blustering and claims to uniqueness and intellectual/moral superiority, I'm just a typical American teenager. I would much rather watch Queer Eye For The Straight Guy than MSNBC. I would much rather wallow my own wealth and comfort than be reminded that not everyone can. Even things that I claim to care intensely about pale next to an opportunity to go shopping. God I hate my generation. And I hate even more that I'm such a ... part of it.

And to prove to you, reader, just how shallow I truly am, I'm going to post some of my senior pictures on my buzznet.

posted at 11:05 AM by Alison

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You scored as agnosticism. You are an agnostic. Though it is generally taken that agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve in God, it is possible to be a theist or atheist in addition to an agnostic. Agnostics don't believe it is possible to prove the existence of God (nor lack thereof). Agnosticism is a philosophy that God's existence cannot be proven. Some say it is possible to be agnostic and follow a religion; however, one cannot be a devout believer if he or she does not truly believe. agnosticism 88% Paganism 83% Buddhism 67% Hinduism 67% Satanism 50% Islam 50% atheism 46% Judaism 46% Christianity 29% Which religion is the right one for you? (new version) created with QuizFarm.com

posted at 1:42 PM by Alison

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I'm going to a friend's surprise party right now. I figure she won't be reading this anytime in the next half an hour, so I can say that. I've never attended a surprise party before, except for one I threw for my mom's (I think) 48th birthday. I was about ten, and I accidentally invited someone she hated.

posted at 7:27 PM by Alison

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Everyone go to Joy Yee's in Naperville. They have the best fruity drinks in the Fox Valley, I swear. And they serve vegetarian fish, of all things.

posted at 2:00 AM by Alison

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Allow me to clarify something about blogging for those of you who are unaware.

A blog is a publication, of sorts. You are putting it out into the world hoping others will find it interesting and read it. I conceed that my blog isn't always the most interesting in the world, but I still use it as it was intended to be used: I write things I would like people to read.

If you wish to write something you wouldn't like people to read, say something insulting about someone or something for which you would get in trouble with your parents, there's this other new invention which might make a great alternative to a blog. It's called a diary. It's private. No one else reads it. That way, if you're a bad writer, if you're boring, or if you have a penchant for saying offensive things that you don't want getting out, no one will care because no one will read it. Please, fellow high school bloggers (and there are a lot of you out there whom I am addressing), I beg of you: DO NOT PUBLISH WHAT YOU DON'T WANT OTHERS TO READ.

And while you're at it, try publishing something you think someone else might want to read.

That said, I have much more pressing business to attend to.

I love the mall. Case in two points:

1) There are so damn many Indian women there. I don't understand why. I'm not even talking about young Indian women who shop at Abercrombie and try to cover up their accent; I'm talking middle aged to elderly women wearing bindis and speaking Hindi to each other. There are HUNDREDS of them. What the fuck are they all doing there? Last I checked, Hollister doesn't do a whole lot of business in saris. What on earth are they shopping for?

2) I encountered the most biazarre thing ever in K.B. Toys. Apparently, Coca-Cola has a line of beanie-baby style stuffed animals, all holding bottles of Coke. What makes them really bizarre is that rather than being cute little cartoony raccoons and kitties and shit, They are semi-realistic looking exotic beasts, each one representing a different nation of the world, e.g. Waks the Tibetan Yak. They were super funny - plus they were only about a buck - so I bought Duckles, the Mandarin Duck. Duckles has a tiny Coke bottle with Mandarin writing on it affixed to his side (he can't hold it - he doesn't have a opposable thumbs) and a little tag attatched to his wing which reads, "The popular Mandarin Duck represents bustling Taiwan, where the industrious populace has been enjoying Coca-Cola since 1957. Twenty-two million people live in this island country." Isn't it great to know that big corporations like Coca-Cola really do care about educating children about world cultures?

posted at 3:42 AM by Alison

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So I read this article in this health magazine one time about a woman who just slept and slept and slept all the time but never got rested. She fell asleep at work, during dinner, in front of the tv, and she slept ten-twelve hours a night sometimes, but she was just always tired. She went to the doctor, and they monitored her sleep patterns. They discovered that her tongue was too large for her mouth and was 'floppy,' so when she fell asleep her tongue would block her airway and she would wake up just for a split second - just long enough to take a quick gulp of air - just quick enough that she couldn't remember waking up. She did this every couple of minutes, so she never fell into a deep sleep, and she was perpetually tired.

Maybe I have a floppy tongue?

Just after I wrote my last post I went to bed intending to take a nap and wound up sleeping until the next morning. I've been doing things like that a lot. It's getting me a smidgen concerned.

I'm soon off to Emily's. We bought a bunch of men's white undershirts, and we're using stamps and fabric paint in all the colors of the rainbow to write "VOTE ALEX KALEEL (http://akhdarbazzoon.buzznet.com) FOR PROM KING" on them. We may make some that say "prom queen" instead.

posted at 8:32 PM by Alison

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All I want to do anymore is sleep. I've been blowing off one of my favorite activities in the world - blogging- to make more time for excessive sleep.

In fact, I think I'll go take a nap right now.

posted at 7:43 PM by Alison

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Yeah, the Big Guy's dead. I didn't get around to talking about it until just now.

Good God, what will the world ever do without him?

How will we ever get along without that dear, semi-comatose old fart telling us we can't get abortions?

In other news this kid who used to go to my school is home on spring break. He's my age - just turned eighteen - but he graduated early. So for the past year, while I've been sitting at home with my thumb up my ass going to fucking HIGH SCHOOL, he's been living in his own apartment in California attending culinary school. He'll have his bachelor's degree in a year. I probably won't even be weaned off of dorm life for another two or three years. And to make it worse, this guy is the biggest tard you'll ever hope to meet. So he's standing there telling me all of these potentially awesome stories about all these fabulous adventures he's been having, except he's a huge tard so he's totally making the stories ridiculously boring, and all I can think is "THAT SHOULD BE ME!"

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Five more months.

posted at 5:32 PM by Alison

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So on Friday, when I was at the Field Museum, I was standing in front of the Tibetan exhibit, right? Because the Tibetan exhibit is wonderful.

A) It's beautiful. It is stunningly visually beautiful. The walls are all red and the lights are all dim except for these specially-designed-not-to-hurt-the-artifacts lights, and the cases are full of beautiful gold sculptures of gods and vessels for sacrificial water and crap like that, and they're playing Tibetan monk chanting really soft over the speakers. It's awesome.
B) It's really super interesting. All the beautiful artifacts are accompanied with these great little paragraphs written in the plainest of English for the dumbest of Americans explaining all these cool little facts about Tibetan Buddhism. I.E. Around 900 A.D., a Buddhist cleric from India visited Tibet and was so amazed at the purity of the Tibetan water, he dubbed it worthy of the Gods. Ever since, Tibetan monks have made offerings of water to the Gods. Isn't that cool?
c) It holds a lot of sentimental value for me. I didn't have the internet or any fancy-schmancy crap like that when I was little, so my only methods of learning anything worth knowing were reading and visiting museums. The Tibetan exhibit in the Field Museum was my favorite exhibit ever. I visited it whenever I could and stared at all the beautiful things for hours. I was so absolutely taken with Buddhism. It was such a WONDERFUL, beautiful, peaceful religion. Visiting it again on Friday brought back all sorts of happy memories.

So I was standing in front of an altar to Champa, the Buddha of the Future, and there's this little white boy, maybe seven or eight years old, standing next to me. He's about the same age I was when I was first enchanted by the exhibit. I'm filled with joy at the idea that new generations are experiencing the same wonders I did. He's standing in front of a mannequin with Asian features that's dressed in traditional Buddhist monk gear - red robe, yellow brushy hat thing - and he says, "That man's a Buddhist. He worships Buddha. Buddha isn't a real God."

Double - you - tee - eff. Look. When I was a kid, I went to church. I believed unquestioningly in God (at least until I was nine or ten). I considered myself a Christian. But I still held a deep respect for other religions, because it never occurred to me to question the validity of their beliefs. I always just assumed that different people were going to believe different things. Kids don't just automatically belittle other cultures that way. If the FIRST THING OUT OF HIS MOUTH when seeing this stunning display of faith and craftsmanship and RESPECT FOR LIFE is, "Buddha isn't a real God," I have to assume that his parents taught him that. What the hell kind of parent sits their kid down and says, "Look, there are a lot of cultures out there with a lot of different religions. They're all bad. We're right."

That's pretty much tantamount to child abuse, no?

posted at 5:58 PM by Alison

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I'm blogging currently from the STARVEDARTIST'S boudior (sp?). I've been nothing but a whirlwind of idle activity for the past few days, which is why I simply haven't had the time to update.

Yesterday was WAR_SHIP_JESUS's twentieth birthday. I ORDER you all to go over there (the link on the right) and wish him a good belated one.

I went to the Field Museum this morning with mi madre. She was really into the idea of seeing the Jackie Kennedy exhibit, and although I wasn't too excited at the prospect of idolizing some chick who did little more than dress well, I figured that I wasn't really spending enough time with her and consented to go. It wasn't painful; I was able to feign interest, and I got to hang out with my mom (who is way up there as far as moms go - much more fun than most.) She was struck with inspiration by one of the dresses in the exhibit, so now she's going to make me a prom dress modeled after one of Jacke's dresses. Muy dulce.

Oh, yeah. And I got a full ride to University of Illinois.

MoFo-s.

posted at 11:38 PM by Alison

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