Wildlife Humor

Me: I'm filling out weird application forms. Would you rather be certified in small craft safety or wetland education?

Him: Who educates wetlands?

Me: Me, I guess. If I get certified. Otherwise I'll be instructing small crafts on how to be safe.

Him: That's useful, I think. Small crafts need to be protected from evil crafts.

Me: Oh, there's also wilderness first aid. I can apply first aid to the wilderness?

Him: Oh no! The wilderness is bleeding! Quick! Get the wilderness-aid!


Sachi

You Never Know What Will Happen in New York

I was walking by Rockefeller Center today, looking at the Christmas tree and all of the decorations, when I felt something slap against my shoulder. I ignored it and walked on. It slapped me again. This time I looked, and saw that a girl had just slapped me with her scarf. She looked at me expectantly, as if she thought I knew her. I just smiled and then lost myself in the crowd. Strange things happen in New York.

-Philip

The Bread Bowl....

I don't remember whether we ever mentioned the Bread Bowl concept, but if we did, this is Bread Bowl Redux.

So, a couple weeks (months?) ago, Derek was eating a bread bowl during lunch, and he happened to comment on using a bread bowl as a metaphor for society and how we're eating society or something. Today, Derek abandoned our lunch table (which has moved over apparently) to sell tickets for Frosh Cab. However, Rebecca was eating a bread bowl, and she asked Anita, Becca, and me about the bread bowl metaphor. Anita, having only joined the debate, wondered why we would be eating up society, what do we do once the bread bowl has been emptied, is the soup the people and the bread itself the remnants of society? Rebecca and I had no idea what the answers were. Derek's metaphor could use some explaining; I don't think Ms. Carillo would accept it as an appropriate comparison.

Well, as lunch began to end, I was walking to my locker when I came upon Derek selling tickets. On the podium thing in front of him was, yes, a half empty bread bowl.

Happy Birthday (*cough*), Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Festivus (is that the correct term?), and I hope 2009 is good =)

~'Cilla

Photonesses

Yet again, I was drafted to participate in a photography project.

I subsequently spent the whole day in Boston in a faerie costume.

yep...they think i dont see them.

But yknow what, whatever. Stare away!

Skewered Sachis

Today I was on my way to class as I rounded a corner in green when a finger shot out towards me. I stumbled back to avoid getting skewered. "No model UN tonight!" A voice boomed. I stabilized myself and looked up at the person. It was Ben, an undersecretary general in model UN.

"Oh..." I said, still frightened after being almost skewered on his finger. "Alright."

He grinned at me. "Tell everyone you see."

"Just like you did, with the booming voice and all?" I asked. He nodded.

So for the rest of the day I went around trying to scare people like that. Unfortunately I never managed to catch people rounding corners, so it was not as effective. However, I did manage to get 'cilla in orchestra.


Sachi

Christmas Carols

Today in chorus we were singing holiday songs, including winter songs, Christmas carols, and Hanukka songs. At one point we were singing frosty the snowman. The music only did the main part, but one boy continued on with the "thumpety thump thump" part. It took him a second to realize that he was the only one singing, and he quickly stopped.

Soon later, somebody mentioned that "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" was not in the packet of songs. The chorus teacher had been trying to explain something, and so she ignored this comment and tried again. However, before she could get very far, someone started humming "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Soon the entire chorus was singing. When they were done, she tried to explain it again, and the chorus burst into "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer" (The next song on the sheet).

-Marianne

To Be or Not To Be?

It was long block English. We are reading Hamlet, and my English teacher has us read it out loud in class. Today I was supposed to read the part of Hamlet himself. We began reading Act III, when I noticed that my copy of Hamlet was missing a page. Worse, the next page had Hamlet talking on it and so far Hamlet wasn't on stage, so I knew that Hamlet would come in on the missing page. I raised my hand. My teacher, who was busy talking about what the king had just said, ignored me for awhile and then said, "I'll get to you later." She then kept talking and forgot about me. When she finished, she motioned toward me and said, "And now..."

"My book is missing a page," I replied. "That's what I was trying to tell you."

"Oh, no," she said, "this is a key page. Why don't you borrow hers?"

I traded books with a girl sitting behind me and looked at the page. "To be, or not to be: that is the question..." Of all the pages to be missing! I could hardly contain my laughter.

-Philip

A Comoros Future

The past four days I've been at Harvard Model United Nations, a simulation of the United Nations, in which students represent delegations from different UN countries in the different assemblies of the UN. I represented Iran in Special Political and Decolonization, where we were debating missile defense systems. Many many amusing and interesting things happen, so I'll try and get to telling a few stories, but here's one for starters.

There are two parts of the conference, that which goes on in the committee room, and that which goes on outside of it. Inside, people make speeches, spar verbally, vote and follow parliamentary procedure. Outside, working papers and resolutions are written, delegates network and form alliances.

I'll share with you my favorite semi-serious speech, made by Comoros:

"Fellow delegates: In this dangerous world, I live in fear every day that someone will show up at my doorstep with nuclear missiles. But I hope one day I can wake up in a peaceful world, in a safe world. A Comoros world."

More to come when I am not so exhausted, I hope this will last you until then.


Sachi

There's Nothing Like an Emergency to Wake You Up in the Morning

It's taken me a while to actually find time to write this, so this story takes place a few days ago:

It was Tuesday morning, and I was tired. I went to my first class, gym, knowing that we were doing yoga. That can't be too bad for a day when I'm feeling tired, I thought. In gym class, we learned a sequence of yoga positions called the Sun Salutation. First you stand with your hands together, then reach your arms over your head. Then you bend down and touch the ground, bending your knees if you have to. Breathe 5 times, and with each exhale, straigten your knees out more. Then you put one foot backwards into a lunge, then the other foor into plank position... you go through a few more positions until it goes back to the head to knees position and the arms over head and back to where you started.

First we did it with the right leg back, then the left leg back, always for some reason repeating the middle section multiple times. Eventually my hamstrings began to get sore from being stretched and my triceps (I think they're my triceps) were tiring from downward-facing dog position. Between each major section of yoga-ing, we rested for maybe thirty seconds in child's pose. My gym teacher taught us another position called pigeon, which is like a split but with the front leg bent. Then we added this into the middle of the sequece, and repeated the sequece a few more times. I was thinking about how this could be called torture in yoga form. :)

By the end of the class I was practically collapsing with exhastion. I plodded along the hall, flopped into a chair in my homeroom, and stared straight ahead. Eventually I had enough energy to at least talk a little bit to people in my homeroom. Then suddenly, everyone in the class started crowding around the door as I heard someone say, "Why is that locker smoking?!" I rushed over and sure enough there were billows of smoke comming out of a locker. I considered whether maybe someone had put a piece of dry ice in the locker, but soon teachers began to herd us back into the room and direct us out the room's back door as the fire alarm went off.

We went outside, trying to find the place where our homeroom was supposed to meet, but we couldn't find it. When it was time to re-enter the building, we saw on the ground our room number, right around where we had been wandering. We were in the right place all along!!!!!

What with all the excitment and cold outside, I realized I was feeling much more awake. The rest of the day was pretty much normal--except for one event. It was lunch, and I was sitting at a table with only two other people because everyone else who usually has lunch with us was mysteriously not there. ('cilla from this blog was there. I feel like I must give her due credit.) Anyway, Ms. S, the housemaster for our grade walked over. If you didn't already know, she is infamous for making strange conversation with students involving lunch. So, Ms. S came over and said, "French fries and mozzarella sticks! Who would of thunk it!"

We all stared in shock for a moment. Eventually, one of us thought of something to say. "Um...yeah, I guess we don't usually think of it as strange because it's been a common school lunch since middle school."

"Yeah," Ms. S said, "But the lunches are supposed to be healthy and yet we have french fries and fried mozzarella sticks. I asked, 'what goes with the mozzarella sticks' and they told me, 'the french fries' !"

I babbled something about how we're used to the school lunches so we never really thought about it that way, and eventually she left. I mean, if she's trying to start conversation, it's certainly a weird method to say something that leaves everyone speachless!

-Rebecca

It's Fractacular!

From a DVD on the Mandelbrot Set.

We're thinking we need to have a fractal party. Everyone would dress as their favorite function.

-Sachi

Don't Ignore Red Warning Lights

Yesterday I was driving to piano lessons. It was the gray 1996 Ford Taurus, an old car that occasionally has things go wrong with it. Suddenly I noticed a flashing red light that looked like a battery on the dashboard. Then it stopped flashing; it was solid red. I mentioned it to Rebecca who was also in the car. We decided that it probably meant that the car's battery was charging, and Rebecca commented that it was misleading to make the light red, since that gave the illusion that there was a serious problem. So I drove on, forgetting about the light. Then, when I was parking, I heard a strange clicking sound. I wonder what that is, I thought to myself. Maybe I just never noticed it before. Later that day, my parents were out using the car when they called to say that the car had stopped working. It had run out of battery, the lights all went out, and it stopped moving. They were on an onramp to 128, and they had to carefully steer onto the side of the road and call AAA to tow them home. They thought that some kind of belt had broken that charges the battery. Suddenly, I remembered the red light. "Oh," I said, "when I was driving I saw a red light shaped like a battery. That must have been why. And I heard a strange sound--that must have been the broken belt. I'm sorry; I forgot to tell you."

-Philip

God? Juliet? Subjunctive? Confused?

Confused?

If you aren't confused by the end of this blog entry, then I am impressed. What I am about to write is a brief summary of a highly confusing conversation that I had today at what would have been a DSI Tuesday, had enough people shown up (cough). It started when Sachi, Rebecca, and I recalled that a few months ago we had decided that on the first day of a month, before talking to someone you would have to say that person's name and then that person would say yours. For example (assuming that I am Person A and you are Person B)

I: Person B
You: Person A
I: This is quite a confusing way to talk, isn't it?

Since we forgot to do it yesterday, we decided to do it today. But eventually things got out of hand. Sachi said a tautology (I don't remember what she actually said) and then said that she was playing my role (for some reason, I often accidentally talk in tautologies). So then, if she was Philip, who was I? Apparently, I was God, for that is what people started calling me (again, I don't remember quite how it happened). We discussed the fact that the name "Sachi" must have been anihilated when suddenly, lo and behold, Rebecca ended up renamed Sachi. The conversation went this way until someone, commenting on the rapidly changing names, said, "Rebecca."
"Philip"
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." And suddenly, someone was named Juliet. Whoever it was, it eventually switched to someone else. Then a Sorry got into the mix somewhere, and a Not Sorry, and I became Confused. Or was I Subjunctive at that time? But we ended up so confused that we decided to revert to the more fun part when Sachi was Philip and I was God. "Philip."
"God."
"That was the Golden Age."
"God."
"Philip."
"You stole the phrase right out of my mind."
"God."
"Sachi."
"Am I named Rebecca or Sachi in the Golden Age?"
"Sachi."
"God."
"It depends on whether we are talking about the Early Golden Age or the High Golden Age."
"God."
"Philip."
"Again, you stole the phrase out of my mind."
"Philip."
"God."
"As they say, great minds think alike."

-Philip

Argh....

I have been a very bad person and not blogged until now. In my defense, it was NANOWRIMO and that was very stressful.
In hindsight, I should've blogged about nano at the beginning of the month instead of at the end.

Anways....NANOWRIMO is an annual "competition" in which aspiring writers attempt to write 50,000 words in the month of November. More info here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/

I "won" on Wednesday, but I was busy with other stuff until yesterday (when I crashed). Like last year, it was blood, sweat, and tears. This time, I was wiser and actually planned out what I was going to write, which made it easier-ish. Still, I'm glad it's over. It's fun, but it's insane. I plan to do it next year.


Christine wants me to make this funnier.
Well, laugh at my misery. I usually go to bed pretty early, but I ended up staying up every night frantically writing to make word count. For the first couple weeks, I tried to churn out 2000 words and then write my hw, but then I realized just how stupid that was. I think grades are more important; I can't be sure though. So I ended up doing my hw (and procrastinating...oops...) and then typing away. Every day, Jared, Bing, Kati, and I would compare word counts. Kati was ahead until the second week. Bing tried to murder me when she heard what my word count was. Fortunately, I'm still alive, and she finished as well.
It got to the point when I had to drag myself up every morning because I was so sleep deprived that I wanted to just collaspe.
In the words of a very dear friend, "Nanowrimo is the closest thing I came to having a life"
Dang, I suck at descriptions. Nanowrimo withdrawl. *Twitches*

~'Cilla

Don't Panic!

In the wise words of Douglas Adams: don't panic! This is possibly the only thing that saved me from being stranded in Copley without any money and no way of getting to a dentist appointment that was scheduled for that day. You see, my mother had scheduled a dentist appointment for 11:15 that day, but thought that she had as per usual scheduled it for 8:15, not realizing that they hadn't any appointments available at that time. She also had several meetings, and couldn't drive me to the dentist. So instead she brought me to work with her, and I was to take the T to the dentist. (If I took the T from home it would have required going all the way into Boston and all the way back out, because it is on the wrong line of the green line.)

So she goes into her meeting, and around 10:00 I set off to the T stop that I only have vague directions to, in an area I do not know well. Halfway there I realize she didn't give me any money, and I had not thought to bring my T pass. Oops. So I headed back and scrounged through her coat, digging up about a dollar fifty. Well, it costs two dollars to get on the T, so I asked one of her coworkers for fifty cents and then set off on my way. I managed to find the T stop without getting lost, which was good since I was already a bit behind schedule.

So I got on the T, and headed inbound, because I was on the wrong line of the green line, a few stops to Copley, where all the green line lines meet up. I get off at Copley, hoping to transfer to an outbound C train. Across from me I can see the outbound trains going the other way. Except, there is no way to get over to that side of the track without exiting, crossing the street, and re-entering. I'll admit, I did panic a little bit. I had no money to get out and back in. How on earth was I supposed to get to the dentist? But, the one thing I did do was suppress my immediate panic instinct to go out and attempt to get on the other side, knowing that if I did that I'd never be able to get back in.

Instead, I rationally got back on the next train going inbound and switched at Park. All in all it took me five or so more stops than I was expecting, but I made it to the dentist on time. The moral of this story is don't panic and never go anywhere without a CharlieCard.


Sachi

The Mysterious Beeping Noise

This morning I woke up and realized that an alarm had been going off for a while. It stopped, and a while later, started again. It sounded kind of like the carbon monoxide alarms that just go off by accident sometimes in my house. I looked at my clock: it was around 5:30. I heard out in the hall my mom saying something about carbon monoxide, and I'm thinking that perhaps the alarm (which has stopped by now) is one of our carbon monoxide alarms.

The funny thing is that instead of just going "meep! meep! meep!" like our carbon monoxide alarm, it's doing a "dee-dee! dee-dee! dee-dee!" as if there are two alarms slightly offset from each other. Now why would it be that both our carbon monoxide alarms would go crazy at the same time, unless there really was carbon monoxide in the house?

However, I knew that if there really was a problem, my parents would have woken us up and gotten us out of the house. Still, I wanted to just go downstairs and ask my mom what was going on so I could sleep in peace. But I was so tired, plus getting out of bed now would make me even more tired when it was actually time to get up. Meanwhile, the alarms were starting and stopping.

I thought about what I had learned in chemistry class about how carbon monoxide kills you: it's shape is similar to oxygen so the things that cary oxygen to your cells pick it up. But your cells refuse to take it and you can't pick up more oxygen because you can't get rid of the carbon monoxide and you have no oxygen!!!!!!!

Deciding I was too tired to get up, I thought about how I already knew that if I went downstairs and asked my mom what was going on she would have some reasonable answer. I decided to just pretend I knew what that reasonable answer was and just go to sleep.

Unfortunately for me, my subconcious is not so good at being rational. As I drifted into sleep I had a dream in which I went downstairs to find that my parents were neglecting the fact that our house was filling up with carbon monoxide. I woke up and realized that was silly. Then I went back to sleep and had another dream of the same nature. This time I went outside to breathe the fresh air. Outside was a wierd Dr Seuss combined with Teletubbies world with almost neon green grass and small yellow houses with roofs that looked like submarines.

I woke up, and before I was finished waking up I felt like I couldn't breathe properly because I was in that wierd stage where I was only partly aware of myself. Naturally, I jolted awake with the fear that I was breating carbon monoxide!

At this point I felt there was no way to get a good rest-of-my-sleep unless I found out the truth. So, I went downstairs and asked my mom what the alarm was. She told me it was three connected smoke-detectors in the basement that were detecting dust inside them, but that they were fixed now. This turned out to be wrong--they beeped one last time that morning before I finally fell asleep.

-Rebecca

What are those things that you listen to called again? (Another substitute teacher story)

My history teacher is away this week (or I guess I should say last week by now), and a week is enough time to merit a "long-term" sub.

Let substitute teacher = Ms. A.

As class started, Ms. A asked us if someone who knew their way around the school could help her find the stuff so we could watch our movie. They returned eventually with a box, and she looked in it and said, "This isn't the right stuff." They quickly realized that though it had said her last name on it, it wasn't refering to her. So, off on another expedition around the school to find the movie.

Eventually they gave up, and someone in the class decided to read Macbeth aloud in different accents as a source of amusement. (It was amusing, unlike other times when kids have taken it upon themselves to amuse a class.)

After a while, Ms. A realized that the movie had been in the classroom all along, so we started watching it.

A funny thing about Ms. A is that every time she saw someone listening to an ipod, she would look at them and make a gesture like she was pulling something out of her ear. The first time she did it, I had no idea what she meant. Then she just said, "unplug! unlplug!" while doing that motion and I realized she meant "take out your headphones". The weird thing was that she didn't seem to know any word for headphones or earphones or ipod, and she would just say, "Take out your--" and then make her motion and say "unplug!" as if we were turning into robots by plugging ourselves into electrical outlets.

You know how people used to say if you make an ugly face for too long your features will get stuck in that position? Maybe someday adults will scare kids out of listening to ipods too much by telling them that having wires in your ears for too much time will cause you to fuse into the ipod and become a machine. :D

-Rebecca

Middle School has Substitues - Unfortunately

"My name is Mrs. Winika. As you all know, I am substituting for this class because your teacher's wife is going to have a baby. My name is Mrs. Winika." That is how a class of eager seventh grade students was introduced to their long-term substitute teacher, Mrs. Winika. It wasn't exactly an amazing first impression.

She went on to collect our homework. Every once in a while her glasses would fall down and out of position, and she would swing her head so that her glasses would get into the right position again. However, this swinging of the head was not very subtle, and as she was checking my homework, she swung her head so violently her glasses actually flew off, and she was forced to turn around, bend down, and get them. As she was lecturing the class on the election, I couldn't help thinking that she sounded like Sarah Palin, and when she said "You bet I would," I almost started laughing out loud.

The next day when our class was entering, she said, "Welcome, Monday and Friday extention number one. Come and sit down in your chairs." She had mistaken the schedule. I don't know, but I thought it was funny. She proceded to ask if anybody had trouble with any part of the homework. Nobody raised their hands. "I know some people had trouble with question number six," she said, staring at me.

I don't remember the context of this, but at one point she said in an overly sweet voice, "that's what we do when we learn!"

At one point we were reading from a textbook and somebody had a question. She called on him to read. "Actually, I was going to ask a question," he said. She told him to read. "But I don't want to read," he complained. She called on somebody else to read. "What about the question?" he asked.

"What's your question," she said, slightly angrily.

"Does modern day egypt take up this whole area?" he asked, gesturing to a map on the page that showed egypt and most of Sudan in order to show the Nile River.

"No, it doesn't," she responded. "The Red Sea technically isn't part of Egypt - it's water."

I hate being smarter than the teacher.

-Marianne

I'm More Interesting than the Real Squirrel!

As usual, my Fringes of Chaos class at MIT with Zandra was full of amusing surprises and lots of craziness. But today's class was surprising and crazy even for Zandra's standards. I will focus this account on one episode, but keep in mind that this is just a glimpse into the absurdity that is a class with Zandra.

Zandra was talking about binary and information theory. In the middle of her lecture, someone peered out the window and said, "Look at the squirrel."

"What," said Zandra, insulted. "Is the squirrel really more interesting than me?" Soon she decided to act like a squirrel in the hopes of diverting attention away from the real squirrel. She also pushed a button, and the windowshades came down. Zandra held her arms in to her chest with her hands hanging squirrelishly, and said, "If I hop, it means 'yes.' If I don't hop it means 'no.'" So the binary and information theory lecture went on that way. I could hardly hold in my laughter as Zandra hopped around the room. Someone pointed out that not hopping is ambiguous because it is unclear whether she simply hadn't hopped yet, or if she wasn't going to hop. He suggested that she raise her tail for "no" instead. Zandra looked at herself and noticed that she didn't have a tail. "Oh, no," she said, "why did you have to point out that I don't have a tail? Now I'm embarrassed." And she stood against the wall, hiding her lack of tail.

Later she was the squirrel again, and she kept asking people if she could have their nuts. She would then steal their pencils and hide them in a cart in the corner of the room. When she got to me, I grabbed my pencil and held it tightly to my body. Squirrel Zandra just looked at me with big, sad eyes. I resisted for some time before I decided that it would be to everyone's advantage if I would just give her the "nut" and let class resume. So I did, and she took it and hid it with the rest.

When it was the end of the alotted time for class, Zandra had no intention of ending. At about fifteen minutes after class should have ended, a man burst into the room and said, "This is getting to be a habit, isn't it?"

Zandra responded: "Get out of my class." He didn't. "I'll give you three seconds," she warned. "One...two...three..." And then she started throwing chalk at him. He took some chalk and started throwing it at her. What a perfect distraction, I thought, hoping to retrieve the "nuts". So while Zandra was busy fighting the man, I ran over to the cart and took out the pencils. I then distributed them around the room to their rightful owners. When Zandra successfully expelled the intruder, she noticed that we had taken the "nuts" back. "It was all him," someone said, pointing at me.

Class resumed. Then, while Zandra was talking, there was a loud boom from outside of the classroom. We tried to ignore it, but a second, louder boom caused enough disturbance to disrupt the class slightly. "Oh no, they have a battering ram," someone said. "Pay no attention to the sounds from outside," said Zandra. Next came periodic clapping sounds, and then a pause of silence. When we finally finished and I exited the class, I saw to my surprise that nobody was there. I went back in and told Zandra, "It appears that your next class has mysteriously disappeared."

I later found out that they were all hiding, and that the sounds were part of their diabolical plan to disrupt the class. Apparently, they thought that they had had no effect at all. Then they decided to pretend to sleep, and eventually decided to hide on a stairwell.

-Philip

Two English Classes in a Row

When my History class was cancelled today, I joined Marena's English class. It's not a long story but I don't feel like telling it now. Anyway, the teacher was talking about how hard writing is, and he said, "What do most writers do?"
"Give up" guessed a student.
"Become alcoholics," answered the teacher. "What do all the best writers do?" he continued.
"Drugs!" said a student.
"Commit suicide," said the teacher.

I don't know--I thought it was kind of funny. :)

After that, I went to my real English class. I sat down, got ready, and looked to the front of the classroom where I saw someone who was not my English teacher writing "D-block Agenda" on the blackboard. Do we have a substitue teacher? I was thinking. That would be strange, since the school doesn't have any substitues anymore. Then my English teacher walked in. She looked at the front of the classroom and a confused expression came over her face. After a few seconds, it cleared into a smile and she mouthed to the class. "Oh--student teacher!" The entire class started laughing a little bit as the student teacher, unaware of these goings-on, finished preparing for her lesson.

-Rebecca

Wait...what's your name again?

My name's Marena.
It has an 'E', but you say it like an 'A'.
I don't know, don't ask. Blame my parents.
My name has often caused confusion, as it's spelled how Marina, a much more common name, is pronounced.
At the beginning of freshman year, I decided I had grown tired of correcting pronunciation. Additionally, with my stutter worse than ever, I stumble over it anyways.
I decided it would make everyone's life easier if I just let it go. People eventually catch on when they hear my friends talk to me. Unfortunately, in the microcosm that is The Newtonite, I don't really have any preexisting friends.
One day, one of the guys was looking at the schedule of when we're assigned to be in shop.
"Marina, is your name spelled with an 'i' or an 'e'"?
"An E."
"So then it's...Mar-ay-nuh."
"Yeah."
"Wait, is that actually how you pronounce it?"
"Yep."
I leave to go to the bathroom. When I return, more people have come into the shop.
"It's Mar-ay-nuh??"
"yea...."
"WHY DIDN'T YOU CORRECT US!!"

One day, one of the guys was listing why every member of The Newtonite is strange.
"And Marena's....name is MARENA."
Another girl: "Can't we just call her Marina. That's just what we call her. I don't care."


So yes. Call me....whatever.

Insane People Used to Sit at My Desk

My desk in chemistry had these exact words written on it: (different fonts represent different handwriting, if you didn't already assume that)

The cake is a lie!
The cake is a spy!
And if you eat it
You will die! Uh, no.

The cake is actually
NOT a spy!
It's a yummy food thtupid!!!

My living will and testament!

~ ~ ~
(Yes, I actually took the time to write that down.)

-Rebecca

Yeah, Well Your Face has Zero Entropy!

This is a real conversation I had today. Warning: This will probably not be funny to anyone who hasn't studied astronomy, physics, or fractals.

Him: Fire is alive and zebras are plants. And there's no such thing as quantum physics. La la la la la. Determinism works on very small scales and silk fiber-optics are the future.

Me: STOP you're breaking physics!

Him: And eventually everyone's brains will merge and Ray Kurzweil will change gender without anyone noticing

Me: *attempts to glue back together*

Him: The US economy isn't collapsing and one is two for large values of one. Alright, alright, I'll stop.

Me: It's already broken!

Him: An object spouting crap tends to continue doing so. Until... er... well, it doesn't stop. It's a free energy machine! Heehee.

Me: Ahhhhhh! Now you've done it! It violates entropy!

Him: Releasing copious amounts of methane and breaking physics.

Me: You've broken physics into Cantor dust. It's so broken it has a fractal dimension of 1.2.

Him: Your mom's Haussdorff dimension is greater than her topological dimension.

Me: Oooh well your face's topological dimension is imaginary!

Him: Your grandmother's face is a PMS star!

Me: You're a visual representation of an iterated function on the complex plane!

Him: Your dog's face exceeds 10 billion solar masses, the maximum weight for a black hole!

Me: Your sister's cat exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit!

Him: That's planck-length-scale compared to your uncle's monkey.

Me: Yeah well that's because it's a collapsed superposition of your father's worm.

Him: Collapsed superposition? *loses*


Sachi

We Can't Do That

Last Friday, I thought I was all on schedule for applying with early action to the University of Chicago. Then, I noticed an old paper in a stack on my desk. I glanced at it, and saw to my horror that I was supposed to have turned in a request for senior packet form (the senior packet is the transcript plus a lot of unnecessary stuff), along with an unusually shaped envelope, three dollars, and a secondary school report form, to the records office two weeks before the application deadline. That was the previous Friday! Well, there was nothing that I could do at that point, but prepare all of those things (it was not easy to find the kind of envelope that they asked for) and bring them in on Monday. This morning before school started, I walked into the records office with my forms and envelope and money, and asked the woman behind the desk if they could process my request for senior packet in less than one week. I told her that it was due on October 17.

She was shocked. "No, we can't do that," she replied with a look of disgust. I persisted, and she asked me whether I had given my other things to my counselor, such as my senior information sheet. I told her that I had, and she said that she could say that there was a rush, but that it was nevertheless impossible to process my forms with such little notice. In the end, she asked for my form, which I handed to her.

"Wait," she said, "this says that the deadline is November 1."

"Yes," I responded. "But the deadline for the records office was two weeks earlier than the college deadline."

"Oh," she said, "I thought you meant that the college deadline was October 17. That's no problem. By all means, we can process your forms." So my strange encounter ended in relief.


-Philip

I F-ing Hate Facebook... which almost alliterates!

So I'm doing a photo project on girls and the loss of innocence, which is actually way less sketchy than it sounds. I need a bunch of teenage girls looking confused or dressing sluttily for it. Shouldn't be a problem considering I'm a teenage girl with friends (I hope) right? Wrong. Apparently, high school sucks and teachers pile on way too much work. Nonetheless, I sent out several desperate messages via Facebook hoping somebody, anybody, would take pity on me.

And then I get a Facebook notification. I was all hoping it was somebody replying to my desperate pleas for help. Instead, it says "Your desiribility rating has changed again on Sparkey! Click to see how desirable you are now!"

Why me?

<3 Helen

Does Anybody Have Serious Objections?

Ah, the SFA, the province of so many strange people like myself (yes, Sachi, I am aware that I am using your first sentence template). The SFA consists of twelve students, ten teachers, a housemaster, and a department head all sitting around a large table in the library early in the morning. The principal is there, so is a Newtonite reporter, a secretary, and other people watching from the sidelines. The leader of the SFA remarked that we should try to start as close to 7:00 as possible. "We could discuss start times and end times in the future if we want..." First comes the Principal's Report. The principal apologized for not being present at the first meeting last week: "The truth is that I completely forgot about it. That's all I can say...It was a real embarrassment." I didn't mind, because I had been unaware that that meeting existed until I read about it in the Newtonite two days later. The Principal's Report was about the state of the building project. The state of the building project was strong. "I'm sure you are all impressed by the progress of the building rising from the ashes," the principal said, "or maybe I should say, rising from the asbestos." Nobody laughed. The SFA is a very serious place. Someone suggested that we discuss the problem of the lack of freshman representatives. Ideas were proposed. People also questioned the constitutionality of special elections. Yes, there is an official SFA constitution (we wound up discussing its validity later in the meeting, and about revising it and ratifying it, all with official formal procedure, of course). Jared suggested making a poster to publicize the SFA to ignorant freshman. Someone else suggested making Wednesday announcements about it. A teacher said that he was sure that spending more time in SOS would solve the problem. Since I hate SOS, I thought it would be best to avoid using it as a solution. I proposed creating a bulletin board that would tell what was happening in the SFA on a weekly basis to attract interest. "Would anyone like to organize this poster?" asked the head teacher representative. Jared and I raised our hands.

At some point the main teacher representative said something about formally deciding not to have to formally decide things. Hmmm. Sounds appealing.

"Perhaps we should discuss possible topics to be addressed in future meetings," someone proposed. A boy near me suggested rethinking the weighted GPA. Someone raised his hand. "I propose that we break into the subcommittees that we created last year." There was some discussion about this. The general consensus was that the subcommittees were a good idea.

Later that morning, I had to go to an orthodontist appointment which was preparation for my braces to be removed. An assistant with a Spanish accent was plying some braces off of my teeth when suddenly she came upon a tooth that didn't obey. I felt pliers grabbing and pulling and grabbing and pulling my tooth this way and that. "Dr. M-----!" she called out, "I need help!" At some point, they had to make molds of my teeth. The assistant came messy with blue stuff all over her gloves, mask, and face. "Open," she said, and plopped a glob of sticky blue stuff into my mouth. "Stick your tongue," she said in her accent, "Stick your tongue. Stick, stick, stick." Oh, I realized, she wanted me to stick out my tongue. I tried. Still, she continued saying, "Stick your tongue." I suppose my tongue must not be flexible enough for her liking. When this was done, she tied all kinds of wires around my teeth. Meanwhile, a man came into the room and began to set up a camera. The orthodontist came over to me when I was about ready to leave and said, "If you stay longer, you can be on TV! Ha, ha, ha..." No, I do not want to stay longer, and no, I do not want to be on TV, I thought.

-Philip

Fun with Economics

I kind of live at MIT on the weekends. They offer classes for high schoolers through a bunch of different programs. On Sundays I take AP Economics at Delve, their AP program. My microeconomics teacher is one of the directors of the program. We started to talk about public and private goods.

"A public good is one that is non-rival; it doesn't cost anything to let another person use a road. Public goods are also non-exclusive. Like national defense. You can't protect everyone but one person in the middle of the country. Don't attack us, just him!" My teacher/the director explains.

"What about non-profits?" A student asks.

"Non-profits. I don't know. I actually hate non-profits. They just don't work. They're so inefficient. They don't have any competition so they can just overpay their bureaucracy and spend money unwisely and still survive," the teacher/director rants.

"Isn't Delve a non-profit?" Someone points out.

"Well...yeah." She admits.

Later on we were talking about the 'free rider problem' which is where people benefit from other people doing/paying for something without having to pay for it themselves. Like, it helps me if most other people get a flu shot, and then I don't even have to pay for it. Pointing out other examples, the micro teacher says, "If every other house on your street has an alarm system, a robber couldn't guess which houses don't, so it might not be worth it to rob the street, and a bunch of people are getting free rides."

I comment, "Unless it was literally every other house. Then you could just go down the street robbing every other one."

Another student responds, "Yeah, but you'd be pretty easy to catch."

I respond, "Well you wouldn't just go 1, 3, 5, 7...you'd have to go 1, 27, 7, 11..."

At the end of class we switched to macroeconomics. The macro teacher was talking about the Fed.

"The Fed. Isn't that such a cool name?" I half tune out as he is talking. All of a sudden I hear, "The Fed sells bombs."

"What?!" I exclaim, looking at my micro teacher.

"Wait, what?" My micro teacher asks the macro teacher.

"The Fed sells bombs," my macro teacher says.

"Oooh," my micro teacher says. She looks at me. "He said the Fed sells bonds, not bombs," she says and fingerspells bonds.


Sachi

When parents get together....

So my parents had a meeting/dinner/get together thing tonight. And a bunch of us teens/kids ended up in my study either doing homework or procrastinating on homework. After dinner, the homework sort of died, and one of my friends (who's a few years younger than me) told us a little anecdote about how the boys in her school buy Five gum (Fire king I think?) and peel off the shiny part and....
Stick it on their fingers! Like nail polish! Except not...

Well, I thought it was funny....

(Btw, tklalmighty, you went to this school)

~'Cilla

Envelopes, envelopes everywhere

Applying to college requires a lot of work--especially paperwork.  Luckily, with modern conveniences like the internet, much of that paperwork is no longer on paper, and with an amazing invention called the Common Application, you can apply to member colleges with the same application, all on the internet.  But even in this age of conveniences, sometimes we still have to take out a pen and write on paper.  Yesterday I was preparing teacher recommendation forms and the envelopes for them to be sent in, and I soon found the work to be tedious.  It was a beautiful afternoon, and I was sitting on the porch with Rebecca and Sachi, who were researching astronomy for their astrobiology class.  Seeing me writing my teacher's name and the school's address repeatedly on the envelopes with so many more to do, Sachi pittied my situation and offered to do some for me.  I consented.  But perhaps this was not such a good idea.  At one point, Sachi misspelled the teacher's name.  We discussed using white-out, but ended up with the decision to tape a piece of paper on top and re-write it there.  Sachi scolded me for talking to her while she was writing, and for awhile after that we wrote in silence.  At some point, I was talking, and then I noticed that I had misspelled the name.  Luckily, this one was easy to fix just by writing over it.  Soon the work was done, and I put the envelopes on my desk and enjoyed the afternoon.  But later, when I was writing the college's addresses on the envelopes, I noticed that something was wrong: Sachi had written one of the return addresses upside-down!  Harumph.  Some people just don't know how to write return addresses.  (Don't worry, I'm not actually angry at you, Sachi, and I thank you for your help).  I don't think a college would be very impressed by someone who writes upside down, so I got another envelope and did it again.  

-Philip

How many licks does it take to get to the center of Mars?

On weekends, Rebecca and I take an astrobiology course at MIT, with one of my favorite people teaching it, Zandra. We always manage to have a blast and say completely ridiculous things.

Last class we started off by reviewing the processes in a cell, and watching a realtime youtube video of a simulation—unfortunately, we didn't have any speakers and no one could hear it. "Will you do sound effects?" someone asked. "Thhht, thhht, thhht," Zandra starts off making the clicking sound for unraveling the DNA. "Thht, tht,tht, th....FWOOM! ch-ch-ch-ch-ch....wait I want to save that one for later! Shoooooooooom....shhhhhshhhshhhhshhh, kapaka FWIT! FDOOM"....All the while we are laughing hysterically. "I better stop before I embarrass myself," Zandra says after it was too late.

Then we moved on to astronomy slides. "If for some reason you've never heard of Mars, it's the fourth planet from the sun," Zandra begins...then goes into complex chemistry. "I thought Mars was made of aluminum oxide," one student asks. "If Mars is made of aluminum oxide, then by just adding iron you could get thermite!" I say excitedly, thinking of an entire planet of thermite. "Thermite burns at a temperature of over 2,000 degrees celsius and drips molten iron." Of course, after that no one wanted to let me near Mars.

As we continue we hear a strange noise from outside. As we theorize what it is, someone pipes up, "It's a robot dog laughing at your theories." Another student hypothesizes, "It's the delayed sound effects for the bio video."

Zandra then introduces our projects to design a solar system. "Pick a star and name it. You can name it after some real star, or you could name it Schmeed. I always wanted a star named Schmeed." She calls on someone to read a slide. "I choose..." she says, thinking. "Pikachu!" someone exclaims.

Then Zandra goes into more math about luminosity. "The energy at infinity is zero....and I'm so sorry I just said that." Moving on from this very strange statement, she talks about how we need to "Calculate the velocicery....I mean the necessary velocity." I think we should coin the word velocicery, personally, it's a very useful hybrid.

Finally, we conclude with a video. Zandra's laptop is always almost out of battery. Today, we once again warn her. "Your battery is out." "It's not gone, yet," she protests. "It had a little x over it," a student points out. "That doesn't mean it's out, it just means it doesn't like me," Zandra argues. Two seconds later the screen says 'Preparing to hibernate,' then goes black. Mhm.

And that's how many strange things can happen in less than two hours. :)


Sachi

Harvard Sq: Land of Tourists and Creepsters

So, yeah, I haven't blogged in awhile. I totally meant to, but then school and well, life, got in the way. Whee, didn't I just sound so deep?

So anyway, I saw a movie tonight with a few friends (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist- totally funny and worth watching!) Pretty harmless and awkward-free, right? Apparently not when you're us.

After the movie, we waited for about half and hour for my friend's mom to pick us up. At night. In Harvard Sq. With sketchy people. We were a bit hyper, ok, a lot hyper, and doing some seriously strange things. One time we were doing this little dance/boppy thing, and this random middle-aged guy goes "Dancing is good! Keep on dancing!" Then later, another guy stops and goes "That's not allowed here," and we look at each other a little worried that he's serious, when he continues "No laughing here!" Creep.

Then this car of older guys (collegeish) drove by and asked how old we were. So naturally, I bluntly stated we were *15* and told him to move on. =D

<3 Helen

I Don't Have a Cat

I take sign language with Sachi at school. It's very fun, but like any language, it's easy to get confused when you're a beginner. Today, we were asking questions off index cards to each other and answering them, in sign of course. One girl in the class asked another "Do you have a cat?" and the answerer responded "no". Then the teacher started to ask the cat-less girl something else, but I didn't really catch what, because the girl knew a lot of signs already so they were talking in vocabulary too advanced for me. We were just watching their conversation and not understanding most of it, when suddenly the teacher leans backwards with her hands in a claw shape and makes a cat-like hissing sound. "Oh my god!" exclaimed one person in the class, voicing all of our surprise. She, Sachi, and I looked at each other. "I totally missed what that was," said Sachi. Finally, they ended the conversation as the teacher says, "Kiki! That's a cute name for a fish!"

"Wait, I thought they were talking about cats!"

-Rebecca

-A != A-

One thing I've noticed about English teachers is that they usually hate math. They hated it when they took it in school, and have never used it since. Which is fine, I guess, if you're teaching English, but when they start to calculate students' grades it becomes evident. I think they should teach a class Math for Grading 101. I would volunteer to teach, actually.

A few days ago in English we had to write 'seven carat diamond paragraphs', which is a paragraph where you have a simple sentence, then a compound, then complex, then compound complex, then complex, then compound, then simple. We were writing these paragraphs about a story in the book, but I was mostly focused on the grammar and not what I was writing.

When she handed the paragraphs back today, I noted with surprise I had gotten a 54. Looking over the paper, I realized she had deducted 2 points for every past tense verb I used (since we are not supposed to write about books in the past tense). I had put the entire thing in the past tense. I conferred with my friend—my friend had written more verbs, and put all of them in the past tense, so she had received a 34. This made no sense, and was really a lottery of how many verbs you had written. If one was doing it sensibly, it would be a certain amount of points for speaking in all past tense, and half those points for using past tense half the time, etc.

Now this was just the beginning of the strange grading—she had made her grading system such that one could receive negative points on the assignment! I was so tempted to hand in the rewrite written in a fashion that would earn me a negative value, and thus pointing out the ridiculousness of the grading system. She had graded them by first saying how many of the seven sentences you had done grammatically correct—I had 6/7, giving me an 86, then taken whatever other points you lose off that number, so she took 32 points off for my 16 past tense verbs. If I had just made all of the sentences wrong, I could have gotten
-32 points!

I wonder what letter grade you get when you get negative points. Perhaps grades work on a modular scale—if you go below an F you get an A, but undershoot too much and you get a B. Or if you get over a hundred you get an F. That would be amusing. (Also, if you get the title reference, kudos to you.)


Sachi

Interesting Observation of the Debate....

So I decided to watch parts of the Vice President that is going on...right now in fact. It's very interesting.
But politics aside, my dad and I noticed a curious thing while Palin and Biden were talking:

(On average of like a minute or something) Palin blinks roughly once a second while Biden blinks only once every 2.3 seconds.
Whatever it stands for, it was rather fun counting how many times they blinked.

~'Cilla

Eating the Elephant

We had senior seminars last week, in which we listen to our counselors talk about all of the exciting steps in the process of applying to college.  You know how counselors like to use cliche metaphors to give their students advice.  My counselor asked, "How do you eat an elephant?"  Someone muttered, "Bite by bite."  "Yes," my counselor said, "You eat an elephant one bite at a time."  I thought to myself, is there anything that you don't eat one bite at a time?  

Counselor meetings can get boring, even for an attentive student like me.  I found my eyes wandering around the room, which by the way, was shaped like a tall slice of pie.  I happened to discover a bookcase, which held books presumably used by the counselor.  They had titles like Normal Adolescence, Parent and Teenager, Families of Today, The Art of Child Discipline, or something like that.  I suppose those books might come in handy if the counselor ever had a severe case to settle.

Speaking of elephants, I would like to tell some stories about my really strange gym class.  At the beginning of the school year, I had no gym class.  My counselor then put me into a class called Personal and Group Awareness (PGA), which was the only gym class that could fit into my schedule.  The activities have ranged from the standard team-building activities (like the human knot) to the absurd and highly awkward.  For example, we have an activity called polar response.  To do this, the teacher draws a line on the blackboard (this is in M19, in case you hadn't figured it out) with opposite answers on the ends.  In the middle is a big X.  Then, he will tell a scenario.  Depending on how he/she would respond, each student goes up to the board and writes his/her initials somewhere on the continuum.  The only rule is that you can't put your initials in the middle (the X)--you have to pick a side.  Here are some of the scenarios that we have had: suppose you would be given one million dollars if you don't shower, brush you teeth, or clean yourself in any way for six months.  Would you do it?  If you could make a person cease to exist just by thinking "bye bye" and the person's name, would you use the power?  If you saw someone pulling a fire alarm, would you report it?  Through these activities, I have come up with one conclusion: the world is full of level-one people.  If you don't know what that means, look up Dabrowski, or ask Sachi about it.  Basically, it means that you're self-centered.

Another amusing aspect of PGA is people who arrive late.  The class is in A block, and there are bound to be some late-comers.  My gym teacher makes a big deal about how it is important for the Group that everyone arrive on time.  So when class begins, he shouts, "I'm locking up!" and locks the door.  Anyone who comes late has to knock, making a big disruption to the class, and answer the teacher's questions: "Why are you late?"  "I was sleeping."  "That's not a good excuse.  Class, should we let her in?"

Now, for the elephants that I alluded to before, and then forgot to tell about.  Today, the teacher said "You find yourself on an island....You are being chased by ravenous, wild, rabid elephants....You have to find a way off of the island."  Apparently, the way off of the island was to find your way to the other side of a cave.  A boy sitting near me mused, "how do you get off of an island through a cave?"

-Philip

Fierce!

As of late, I have been participating in a variety of photo projects that my friends have been conducting.
Today, I helped my lovely friend complete her project in Boston's own Copley Square.
Her project's theme was the Eightfold Path. I was the subject for all of the photos, and in each one she placed a sign with an aspect of the path written on it, such as 'right action', 'right mindfullness', etc. etc.
As I journeyed up the path, I had to strip off another piece of my clothing, to show my discarding of worries as I approached nirvana. Artsy, eh?
Eventually, I ended up in an athletic bra and short shots. We took all of the photos on stairs, and so we were taking this last shot on a set of stairs facing the street.
I stood at the top of the stairs, and embodied 'right speech', covering my mouth with my hands.
Unfortunately, her camera is broken, so sometimes he had to press the button several times before it would take the picture.
As I was standing there, a large duck tour drove by, but got stuck in a red light directly in front of us.
Laughter boomed and I was bombarded with a series of camera flashes.
Even the construction guys turned to stare!
Mortified, I turned to my friend for some sort of assistance. "Let's hide!" she said, and we hid behind one of the pillars of the church we were shooting on.
The duck tour drove off, cackles of laughter drifting off with it.
I hope damn well she gets an A.

Marena

I am a Strange Attractor

The other weekend I went into Boston to work on a photo project—the plan was to ask strangers to act out different types of walking in order to create a visual dictionary of walking. Little did I know what I was getting into.

First I go to meet Helen by the T stop—on my way there a man comes up to me speaking rapidly in a language that was definitely not English. He slowed down with each confused look I gave him, and I figured out he was speaking Spanish. "I'm sorry, I don't understand," I say. He keeps trying, despite my repeated confused looks and I just wish he would go ask someone else. Finally, we hit an understanding. "Gasoline," he says. "Cigarilles?" Ooh, he wants cigarettes! I look around and to my relief see a gas station. I point to it. "Gasoline. Cigarettes." I repeat this several times until he heads that way.

I walk the other way, and find a space on a bench. And of course, another person approaches me. "Got a light?" She asks. Um, no! I don't understand why I, a fifteen year old girl who dresses in a rather normal manner, seem to be the target of all smokers needing something today. "No, I don't, sorry." I say. "Damn it. Nobody in this goddamn town has a light..." She goes off mumbling. Um..alright.

Finally, Helen arrives and we head into Boston. But my day with random strangers has just begun—most of them are pretty nice. We met a two guys who really got into the walking idea and offered to do my entire list as we headed from Harvard Sq. to the Boston Common. In the common we ran into Hempfest, a protest/party in support of legalizing marijuana. It was a great place to recruit people for my project, even if some of the folk were a bit strange.

For example, everyone smelled like marijuana. There were police everywhere, though, so most people weren't smoking it there. I'm not sure how this is legal but there were people walking around with rings of marijuana around their wrist/neck. So, I was recruiting people, and asked a man who seemed interested to walk. As he came closer I realized he was drunk. Not just like buzzed, but drunk, just not drunk enough to be completely stumbling obvious. "What is this? I don't do this stuff," he says looking at my list, and then walks off, to my relief. I think I attract strange people.


Sachi

Maybe all Teachers are a Little Bit Crazy # 2

My English teacher had shown us two paragraphs with all the same information, but with different sentence structures. The first had short sentences. They were also choppy. It didn't sound good. Especially because my English teacher was reading it in a very annoying voice. I don't think she knew she was doing it. The second paragraph, on the other hand, had long and often compound and complex sentences, combining two or three of the short, choppy ones. My English teacher was talking about the difference. She tapped a boy on the shoulder while saying, "What we have here is not good at all." It took me a few minutes to realize she was talking about the paragraph, not the boy. Later in that same English class, my English teacher was talking about how a question could be used with many books. I missed what the actual question was, and she wouldn't repeat what the question was, even though somebody asked. I don't think anybody in the class heard what she said in the first place. Anyway, she was trying to get the class to think of a word to describe the question, but failing miserably. Finally, she went up to a student and mouthed the word "essential." "Essential?" he guessed. My English teacher congratulated him and said that if he could get it, the rest of us should be able to too.

The computer lab instructor person, Ms. C, was doing a dance when my math class entered the computer lab. First she would jut her hands into the air, then turn around and free dance a bit, then jut her hands into the air again... My guess was that she had solved a seemingly unsolvable problem with a computer.

The class was talking, trying to figure out where to sit and which computer to use. Suddenly Ms. C yelled, "Everybody laser eyes on me!" She proceeded to say that even the people who were looking at her didn't have laser eyes on her, and that only one person in the class was burning lasers into her flesh.

She then explained what we were supposed to do. First we had to connect to a server. Then we had to go to finder, find that server, click on it, find documents, click on that, find "Family Feud," click on that, click on section two, and then open something. I was doing so with my computer when suddenly finder closed. I opened it again, and, to my surprise, I found documents to be missing. From the looks of surprise on other people's faces, I assumed they had the same problem. Someone raised their hand and exclaimed, "Documents disappeared!" Following this was about five minutes of frantically looking for documents. Someone at a computer next to me opened the trash and looked to see whether it was there. Her partner said, "Throwing away documents - bad idea." Suddenly two others stood up and said that they found it, and that it was in the Library section. Everybody immediately checked to see if it could really be true - documents was found! But it was gone. It turned out that Ms. C had moved it out before anyone got to look at it.

While we were working, computers kept having problems. One computer ejected the server every time it was supposed to save, and others had unique problems of there own. Whenever Ms. C solved a problem, she got really excited and said, "You can stay at that computer!" But she didn't dance, surprisingly

When class was about half way through, Ms. C called everybody's attention and instructed them to close whatever they were doing (after saving, of course) and to open family_feud.ppt. But instead of saying "PPT" she accidentally said "PPP" and started laughing hysterically. In the words of one girl in my class, like a drunk hyena.

- Marianne

Those Troublesome Squirrels

Yesterday, I believe, my physics teacher was talking about a problem involving a car accelerating at just the right rate to stop before hitting a wall.  He mentioned that he thought that this was a dangerous thing to do, for a variety of reasons: what if the brakes didn't work properly, or you ran over a squirrel, which changed the coefficient of friction....  During lunch today, some people were discussing possible T-shirts to be created at the end of the year for AP classes (people sometimes do this).  Someone said that the AP physics shirt should have a picture of a squirrel saying, "Don't run me over!  I could change the coefficient of friction."

-Philip

Stories from School

In math class we were solving math problems full of funny names, like Butch Err the butcher and the Pikkitt Lock Company. Suddenly, a student emerged from the alternate door to the classroom; the one that connects it to the neighboring room. "The door was locked," he explained. "I was standing there knocking on the door for a while, and then I just decided to come around this way." As he sat down at his desk, the doorknob turned and a student entered through the main door. She sat down, bewildered as to why the class was laughing hysterically. "Maria must have a special key," my math teacher said. "Or she shops at Pikkitt Lock Company," said a student.

"And then you turn it on," directed my chemistry teacher. "Something about turning this thing on is that it tends to work better if you plug it in," he said, as he plugged in the scale. 
"Is that a general property of things you turn on?" asked a student. "Well," said the teacher, "I'm not sure I should make such a broad generalization at this point..." He pushed the "on" button and a light lit up. "Oooh, light!" he said.
"Well, we assume it's light..." said a student. :)

-Rebecca

Tic Toc

It was the middle of calculus class.  My teacher was talking about mathematics when suddenly, she said to a student holding a cell phone, "Are you texting?"  He replied, "No, I'm just checking the time."  "Oh," she said.  "On that clock over there, you have to add two hours and eight minutes."  I looked over at the clock.  Under it, there was a large sign that said "Add 2 Hours and 8 Minutes".  

-Philip

New Schedule Woes

High schoolers aren't the only ones with schedule problems. As you might or might not know, our public middle schools all got new schedules, which were supposed to simplify the schedule by changing it from a six-day cycle to a standard five-day schedule. Unfortunately for this idea, the reason behind the six-day cycle was to make it simpler. For example, there are six normal classes and six normal periods, so with six days each class can be in each period once. That doesn't work with a five-day cycle. Also, six is divisible by two and three, allowing one to have one elective two days of the cycle, one another two days, and one on the last two days. Five is a prime number

And there are six days anyway, just one of them is called Friday 2. Beginning to notice a pattern? Exactly. An attempt to make things simpler has really made them more complicated.

To add on, with a new system many people's schedules weren't put together right. Middle school should have arena scheduling. At least it's an improvement on trying to fight your way through a crowd to your guidance councilor who is much to busy and sends you away because your problem isn't big enough, especially when your councilor also has to take on a quarter of the sixth grade because the sixth grade councilor is only working part time at your school and part time at another school due to the override not being passed and not having enough money to hire two councilors instead of one.

Luckily, I had a perfectly normal schedule, as most people did. But I saw plenty of people who had troubles. Here are a few:

"Who's class are you in?" Mr. P, a gym teacher, asked.
"I don't know," the student responded. "Today I'm in yours, but on Wednesdays I'm in Ms. Myers."
"Have you talked to your councilor?"
"She says you should know and that she has no time."
Mr. P left and took some papers and shuffled through them. "You're on my list," he finally said. "But I'll check in with Ms. Myers. My list has a lot of mistakes." So Mr. P goes over to the other gym teacher, talks to her, and comes back puzzled. "Your on both of our lists," he told the student.

One of my friends looked at their schedule on the first day of school, scanned it, and was completely bewildered. "Why are Friday 1 and Friday 2 exactly the same?" she asked. It turned out that they had printed one Friday twice.

Several people had blanks on their schedules. One I found particularly funny was somebody who had no lunches, since every lunch was blank.

-Marianne

Qué Qué Qué?

Spanish is always fun. Especially for other people that see you brain freeze. Sadly for the aforementioned other people, they manage to suffer a fair amount of pure embarassment themsleves.

For sophomore year, Spanish class, however, is no longer Spanglish Class, it's 100% uninterrupted quickfire Spanish (with a very heavy Madrid lisp nonetheless!), which is a good thing for those fluent, but for the rest of us, we'll be lost for a few weeks. However, my class includes a few kids who should be in AP, but due to the rather inflexible nature of school officials, they're stuck in sophomore year Spanish, but our teacher wastes no time using them as test subjects for our language abilities. One such girl, we'll call her Breana, was being used for that purpose, as we had to ask her questions about her vacation to Poland, Paris and Italy. I was getting all pumped up to ask the ideal question, "Did you have fun?" -- with correct grammar, (there were much worse ones, notably "Did they food had enjoyed?" or "Paris were bought, no?") but sadly, a friend of mine who I had been sitting next to me obviously had been reading my mind. Unfortunately, Mister Madrid decided to pinpoint me next, and I stopped dead in my thought tracks.

...

I gobbled out "Did you go shopping?" to Breana, and she responded thankfully. The worst was over for me, but not for an other certain classmate, who we'll call Steff. I was surprised that Steff was in our class in the first place, with her orange-and-black soccer get-up and seemingly jock ditz attitude, but oh well. Mister Madrid calls her next, and her brain freeze makes me look like a teacher's pet.
"Qué?" responds Steff. (translation: What?)
"Tienes una pregunta para 'Breana'"? (translation: Do you have a question for 'Breana'?)
"Qué?"
"Tienes una pregunta?"
"Qué? Qué?"
The kiddo next to her, obviously a friend, tried to help her out, "Una pregunta!"
"Qué? No tengo? Qué" (translation: What? I don't have? What?")

Oh well. At least I'll learn something.

-Jar Jar

First Day of School--No Shortage of Amusement

I'm sorry if I have been writing too much on this blog, but I think that some of these stories from the first day of school are blog-worthy. Feel free to write about your own experiences as comments or posts.

My English teacher and my Spanish teacher are the same person. I just hope I don't speak the worng language in the wrong class.

My AP Physics teacher was talking about the class. "You may be able to succeed in biology with just brute force, you know, by working really hard. But physics is like kayaking (I like kayaking) down rapids. If you don't know how to get over the bump, or land safely, YOU WILL DIE!" The boy sitting next to me said, "Is that a threat?" My teacher continued talking, about how AP physics was like varsity physics, and that we have to practice to get good at it. "You don't just learn in theory how to do a forward pass, and then go out there and play..." At this point, a meek voice emerged from the back of the room. "I'm a freshman, and I thought this was supposed to be introductory physics." The teacher looked at her schedule and said, "I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?" She chose bad news first. "The bad news is that you are supposed to be here at the end of the day." (Simple mistake--she looked at the Monday schedule and didn't realize that we were in E block, rather than G block) The quick-witted boy beside me then remarked, "Is the good news that now she has to take this class?"

Of course, my schedule has problems despite my efforts to correct them in June. There just was no P.E. class written on my schedule. I happened upon my counselor between some lockers in Green, and told him that I had a problem. "Oh, yes," he said, "you don't have enough English credits. All you have to do is pick a second semester elective..." I told him that my problem was with P.E., not English (I hope I don't have problems with both). "No, look. You're in World Games." "No, I'm not." "Hmm, I will look into this. Come back to see me tomorrow."

Later, I found out that Sachi, who was recently switched to my counselor, had to obtain a form to change math classes. I ended up running around the school with Sachi, looking for the counselor. He was nowhere to be found. In the end, Rebecca stole a form from the Freshman Arena Scheduling. Perhaps she can tell more details about this adventure. I, for one, am relieved to be back at home now.

-Philip

Put that Down!

Today, as you all know, is the last day of the summer vacation, and my sisters and I have a tradition of making the last day of the summer one of the best. Every year on the day before the first day of school, we celebrate what we call Baseball Day. That doesn't mean that we have to spend the day playing baseball, although we always do some in the morning, but it really is just a day on which to have lots of fun and forget about the fact that school starts the next day. We spent the day with Sachi, and did many fun things. At one point, Sachi and Rebecca created a plush galaxy and named it Zwicky. After that, we walked over to Cabot Park and sat on some monkey bars, and talked, enjoying the late afternoon. There were also many dogs running around the field. Suddenly, a dog ran by Sachi's bag and picked something out, running away with it. The dog's owner was saying, "Put that down! It's not yours." The dog had taken Zwicky! Marianne said, "Oh, no." We watched for awhile, grins forming across our faces. It was so funny. Soon, the owner got Zwicky and returned it to us, appologizing. We just laughed. It turned out that Zwicky was not damaged, although it had some dog saliva on it and a few pieces of dirt.
-Philip

More Stories From Camp

Alarm Clocks

At camp, Sachi and I were LITs (Leaders in Traning). There were three girls and one boy of the LITs, and we had a male and a female counselor. The first time our female counselor had her day off, she set her alarm clock for us and left us to go to bed and get up on our own. However, somehow we had actually set two alarm clocks without realizing. So the first one goes off and we all wake up. Melanie climbs out of bed and turns it off. Then we all started changing in our sleeping bags, when suddenly, another alarm clock starts ringing. AHHHHH! We were all changing and none of us wanted to go turn it off. Eventually, Melanie got up and turned it off.

So the next week, our counselor had another day off. "We've got to set the alarm clock," someone noted, but no one actually did it. When we were about to go to sleep, Sachi asked, "Did anyone set the alarm clock?" None of us noticed her say that, so we didn't respond and she assumed it was set. We all went to sleep. Suddenly I wake up to the sound of the 9 and 10 year olds (whose living area the LITs share) getting ready to go down to breakfast. I look at my watch: 7:30! We were supposed to be up by 7:15. Normally they wouldn't be going to breakfast until later, but today it was this unit's duty to do K.P. (setting up the dining hall for meals), meaning we were supposed to go early. So anyway, I woke the other LIT girls and we quickly got ready, condensing about 15 minutes of preperation into about 7. We rushed down to the dining hall in time to help KP, and our counselors never knew about our little problem with the alarm clock.

Oops...

One of our favorite things to complain about was how the LITs had the job of cleaning the ort buckets after every meal. Ort is the remaining food people leave on their plates, and at camp we all dump our ort into a bucket and weigh it to see how little we can get. So every meal, we have to take the emptied ort buckets to a spot between the dining hall and the mini bathroom where there's a hose. We turn on the water, the pick up the end of the hose and squeaze the "trigger" (only word I can think of to describe it) and water shoots at high speed into the bucket, washing to remaining bits of food off. Then we have to throw the water, a difficult and amusing task that unfortunately is not the topic of this story. So one day, I had to go to the bathroom durring lunch. I walk over to the bathroom thingy next to the dining hall, to find that the space between it and the dining hall is flooded with a huge puddle! What is that! I wonder. Suddenly, a thought occurs to me and I check the hose. It wasn't spraying water, but it was steadily dripping. Since the water doesn't come out unless you push the trigger, I had forgotten to turn off the water. However, although it doesn't spray water without pulling the trigger, it drips. The dripping had accumulated enough to become nothing less than a giant puddle!

A few minutes later, I heard one of our counselors walk by and say to himself, "Where did that giant puddle come from?!"

-Rebecca

P.S. After that occasion, sometimes that same spot was flooded from the rain. Every time I walked by a rain-induced puddle I would get scared and think, "Did I remember to turn off the hose?"

Double Meanings

Rebecca and I were off at nature camp for a few weeks, and one of the things they taught us to do is canoeing. At the end, we went on a three day canoeing trip. One thing about canoes is that every name of a part of the boat, paddle, or stroke has a double meaning, thus a good way to make puns—or unsuspecting weird statements. (I can make canoe puns, canoe?) For example, the first rule of canoeing is to 'always keep your butt covered'. This is because the end of the paddle is called the 'butt'. If it gets scratched, it'll hurt your palm.

The paddle parts also have a song, "Butt, neck, throat, shaft, flare blade tip, flare blade tip, flare blade tip" sung twice, then "These are the paddle parts". It fits nicely to 'London Bridge' but there's also a Bob Dylan version that I personally prefer.

One night we were out canoeing, and Rebecca and I were sharing a boat. We were having fun making physics demonstrations of the doppler effect and sonic boom, when I complained, "My palm hurts."

"Oh," Rebecca says. "I'm sorry. Is your butt scratched?"


Sachi

Anecdotes From Camp #1

We were absolutely surrounded by mosquitos; one would land on my shoulder, and I'd slap it away. Then one would land on my arm, and I'd brush it off. Then I'd spot one on my side, and I'd brush it away. We couldn't get a moment's peace! The four of us were slaping at mosquitos here and there. "I should do the Macarena!" someone said. "Hey, I bet the Macarena was invented by someone trying to keep away mosquitos" said someone else. We realized how much sense this made: you keep moving so they can't land as well, and you slap your shoulders, hips, head, etc. to get rid of the mosquitos. "But you never slap your back," someone noted. "Oh, but that's why you turn around each time!"

* * *

I had thought of another story to tell, but by the time I was writing this post I forgot what it was, so I'll just leave other noteworthy moments from camp for other posts. :)

-Rebecca

The Marines Recruiters' Latest Weapon...the Telephone

I just finished an awkward telephone conversation with a Marines recruiter. Or, I shouldn't say 'finished' because I ended it abruptly. I hated doing it, but what other option did I have? I did not want to join the Marines, but I also didn't want to be disrespectful. The conversation went something like this:
(my mom answers the telephone, then says something about "Philip?" and soon gives it to me. She warns me that it is the Marines trying to recruit me and that I should say "thank you, I'm not interested" and hang up)
"Hello, is this Philip?"
"Yes."
"How are you today?"
"Fine."
"What do you know about what the Marines do?"
"They go on navy ships and do land-based operations on other continents."
The recruiter was impressed, and answered excitedly, "Yes, that's right." At this point, I realized that maybe I was going too far with the polite conversation.
The recruiter continued: "What do you intend to do after high school?"
Intent on crushing his hopes, I answered swiftly, "liberal arts college."
The recruiter began to ask me more about my supposed liberal arts interests. I found myself mentioning that I was also interested in science and engineering. He was quick to get back to the Marines recruitment: "Do you know how you can apply science and engineering skills in the Marines?"
I didn't know what to say. I wound up saying, "What?" He repeated. I decided that I had to do what I hate doing--abruptly cutting off a telephone conversation. But I had to. So I said, as rapidly as I could, "Thank you, but I'm not interested. Goodbye." And hung up. Oh my goodness gracious. Please don't make me do that again.


-Philip

How Not to Communicate

Communication is a very important thing. For example, if you want a staff member to attend orientation, you should tell her about it before the summer begins. Except the place where I am working didn't, and I just found out two days beforehand. Relevant to this, today we had a workshop on communication. I am always skeptical about these kind of workshops—the theories are shaky at best and often ridiculous, or worse, just plain stupid. This particular theory was called 'Non-violent Communication'. It had two mascots of sorts—the giraffe and the jackal—that were used to symbol speaking kindly and violently respectively. The giraffe, it turns out, was chosen because it had the biggest heart proportionally to its body. Talk about non-scientific.

At one point in the workshop we were filling out a worksheet. The first question went:

Bill and Joe were in an ocean. A big wave splashes over them. Bill laughs because he needs ____________. Joe is crying and frightened because he needs ____________. We started to answer. Suggestions for Bill were 'thrill', 'excitement', etc. The presenter explains that we need to go into more deeper needs, and suggests 'stimulation'. OK... Next, Joe. Someone suggested 'his head above the water' and I laughed, agreeing. 'Air to breathe', 'not to drown' were other suggestions. The presenter is trying unsuccessfully to get people to suggest 'understanding' or 'appreciation', for some reason. Right.

My favorite question went like this:

Jack and Michael speak to their father about their problems and he gives them the same advice. Jack is thankful because he needs _________. Michael is annoyed because he needs ___________. Jack is thankful because he needs advice, I suggested, obviously. Other people suggested guidance and help. The presenter suggested 'support and nurturing'. Then we got to Michael. 'Individual attention', 'autonomy', 'recognition', the suggestions went. The presenter agreed, saying something ridiculously deep. I muttered quietly, "Michael is annoyed because he needs different advice." The person next to me laughed. Oh how complicated this presenter had made such simple things.

Now if this weren't enough, we had to practice phrasing sentences in the, "I feel ____ and ____ because I need ________" format. After half an hour of working with these emotion and needs cards to say things like, "I feel irritated and impatient because I need rest and relaxation" instead of "You are too loud" or, as a joke, "I feel stimulated and fulfilled because I need appreciation and nurturing" instead of "You're just like my mother", we began to make fun of each other and the program in the phrases. "How are you feeling?" "Hungry." "That must mean you're feeling pretty irritated and impatient." "What do you need?" "I need lunch." "So you're telling me you need growth, health, and safety?" Oh dear. I think someone would get strangled if they tried to communicate like this.


Sachi

Indesireable Reflexes

So, over the past few weeks I have managed to embarrass myself with several less-than-enjoyable reflexes of mine.

Prod-Me Marena!
Most likely many of you know (and hopefully some of you haven't yet discovered) that I'm extremely ticklish. If I'm poked in the right place on either side of my waist, I will double-over and make a very high-pitched squeak.
Most undignified.
When people discover this, it's usually the source of much amusement for a least a minute or two. At a cast party, my friend took up sport of prodding me and listening in to the cacophony of squeals that I made.
Another one of my friends decided to join in on the fun. Unfortunately, (or rather, fortunately for me), it only works if I'm poked in the precise spot. My friend was unable to find it, and just ended up poking me several times in the stomach in search, while I looked up at his utter dismay.
Sucker. I'll never tell!

Raiding Woes
To you all, I might be Marena, high school geek extraordinaire, but I must inform you all that the geekiness does not end there.
Oh no, my friends!
I must confess to my alter-ego, Estar, level 70 night elf druid and expert raid healer, from the far off land of Azeroth in the game World of Warcraft!
Yep, I've been a WoWhead for four years, and currently my main character, Estar, is a healer for large group raids. Basically, for you non-gamers out there, 10 of us go in and fight monsters. When the people doing lots of damage take a lot of damage themselves, I heal them. Pretty simple, right?
Not quite. Unfortunately, there's a lot of pressure on the healers to keep everyone alive, and I was the worse of 3 healers in this 10 man, so I was a little high strung. To make matters worse, I was going along with my friend's group, which I didn't know, and didn't know me, and therefore would find it easier to get mad at me if I screwed everything up.
To save everyone a lot of time in one part, we were all to get killed, and then be brought back to life by a healer on the other side of a big gap, to save us all half an hour of getting to the other side.
So we're all standing there, waiting for one of the guys to bring over some monsters to kill us all.
We waited for a while, and being a space cadet and all, I soon forgot what we were all doing.
Then the monsters came.
People taking damage everywhere! My brain just started doing what I had trained it to do for so long: heal as fast as possible. I ran around a bit behind them all, healing myself as I went.
"Estar, what are you DOING?" I start to hear over voice chat.
Oh darn. Oh darn. I just healed, didn 't I. Oh darn. I am SUCH AN IDIOT!
"Estie, were you...." I recognized that confused baritone as my closest in-game friend. "Estie, were you just...healing?? Ahahahahhahahha...."
Hmmph. Some in-game best friend/fiancee! (Just a joke, don't y'all go getting your panties in a bunch!)
The next voice was that of the raid's main healer. "Estar...why are you over there...you'll be real lucky if I can reach you."
Oh dear lord. If he can't reach my body, as I ran too far away from him in my terror, I'll have to run all the way back through the dungeon to where the group is, while they WAIT FOR ME FOR LIKE, 5 MINUTES.
I could never live that down.
To my utter relief, the main healer's voice came back on again. "You are so lucky, Estar."
The little window opened for me to accept resurrection.
I accepted it, hands shaking.
And people wonder why I don't raid more often.

Marena

Airplane!

Most people can agree that air travel is a generally unpleasant experience. All that rushing to get somewhere, then waiting for sometimes hours once you get there... (O'Hara airport anyone?) Today, I had to take three different flights to get to Vancouver, which meant three times the chances for awkwardness.

I'm Chinese, completely and totally. There's some family history crap about this random ancestoral island I'm supposed to belong to... (I never really paid attention when my dad mentioned it, so I can't tell you more than that.) But anyway, for some reason, random people seem to think I'm Japanese. To the point where a flight attendant kept saying phrases to me to Japanese as I boarded the plane.

There's probably more for me to write, but honestly I'm dead tired from sleeping four hours the night before, and jetlagish stuffs. >.<

<3 Helen

Our Automated World

Today, my dad and I went to the Super Stop and Shop in Dedham to buy various things. The Super Stop and Shop is an amazing supermarket that we sometimes go to on weekends to buy supplies that can't be found easily in any other one place. I like to do the driving, because the route is nice and it is good practice. Another thing I get practice with there is using the automated check-out counter--the wave of the future! Soon everyone will be using them, so the sooner one learns to use them, the better. For the most part, the automated check-out is extremely convenient. You just go there, push buttons on the touch-screen, swipe your items over the laser beam, and put them in bags at the end of the conveyor belt. Then you pay by puting the money through a slot. No other humans are needed, and it is very nice. But today, we must have bought more than we usually do, because the machine wanted a signature. It started talking: "Please use the electronic pen to sign your name on the signature tablet," it said in that female-ish computer voice, "after signing, press the 'signature complete' button on the monitor screen." We could not find the signature tablet, and kept trying to write on different places, none of which worked. Meanwhile, the computer kept repeating its instructions over and over again, as if saying them many times would help us figure out what to do. It must have said it at least thirty times, because we stood there for several minutes, trying to figure out what to do. At one point, I thought it got louder, as if it thought we were deaf. Maybe I was imagining things. Eventually, I noticed a button that said: Need help/cancel sale. We tried pushing it, and the voice said, "Please stand by. Help is on the way." "Oh no," I moaned. "Now they must be sending a person to help us." We desperately tried to figure out what to do, still in vain. Soon another customer came up behind us. Seeing our trouble, he pointed to a little screen on the counter and said that it was the place on which to sign. My dad signed there, but still the computer repeated, "Please use the electronic pen..." Then we realized that it wanted us to press the "signature complete" button. We did, and all was well. "Don't forget to take the receipt," the computer reminded us. I took it, and we left as quickly as we could.

-Philip

Chocolate, chocolate everywhere....

Recently, I found a bar of Cadbury's Milk Chocolate in my house, and I opened it. I don't know whether you've ever had Cadbury's before, but it's an English chocolate by this dude named George Cadbury (I think anyways....it's been away). Eating English chocolate has reminded of a lot of English (well, British) candy that are non-existant here in the States.

I've come to the odd conclusion that American candy just can't match up with British sweets.
Um...meaning no offense of course, I mean, I'll accept Hershey's and Reese's as much as any other person, but there's something about Cadbury's....maybe it's because there's so many different varieties out there.

~'Cilla =)

Attack of the Killer Lightbulbs

During the last month and a half, we have been having a mysterious leak in our house only when it rains especially heavily.  This would make it difficult to find the source, except that this summer we have had more than our share of really heavy rain.  Some construction workers (the same ones who tore down our railings only to realize that they didn't remember how to rebuild them) have been looking for the leak, making holes in the ceiling in different places.  They found the source yesterday, but that is beside the point.  The place where the leak comes out is next to a light bulb, so they had to make a hole around the lightbulb, with the lightbulb just hanging out.  This morning, I was sitting on the couch, having just gotten out of my bed, when suddenly I heard a loud CRASH!  I looked behind me and quickly ducked out of the way; the lightbulb had fallen farther out of the ceiling and was swinging on its wires.  I had almost been hit by a rogue lightbulb.  

-Philip

Of Car Keys and Nervous Breakdowns

Yesterday, as you probably know, Rebecca and Sachi went to camp. My mom drove Rebecca there, and I went along. My dad, meanwhile, was driving Marianne to visit relatives on Long Island, New York. Sachi and Jesse, who was also going to the same camp, were driven by Jesse's parents. When we arrived, a counselor told us to park tightly because many cars would be coming. We happened to be among the early people to arrive, so there was a lot of room, but we did what we were told and parked tightly next to a pick-up truck. We then took Rebecca into the camp, gave them the forms, and stood around for awhile, talking to people and looking at the camp. Eventually, Sachi and Jesse arrived, and soon after that we left. We got into the car and put it into reverse, only to realize that now there was no way to get out! The parking lot was parked so tightly that there was no room for manoeuvring. We tried and tried, but alas, it was in vain. It was getting hot in the car, so we got out and walked around in the woods for awhile. At some point, we met Jesse's parents coming back along the trail from the camp, and warned them that they might have trouble getting out. They looked and came to the conclusion that we were the only people parked in such a way that we couldn't escape. But being the nice people that they are, they decided to try to manoeuvre our car out anyway. Ray took our car keys and got it, backed up and just missed hitting another car by two inches, drove back in and tried turning the other way. She then came to the same conclusion that we came to long before--there was no way out. We thanked her for trying, and said goodbye, as they went to their car to leave. Just as we started to walk back to our car, Ray called out, "Here, take your car keys! Wouldn't that have been a nice development, if we drove off with your keys?" I can only wonder what would have happened if they had driven away with our keys. Since my dad was in New York, there was no way to call for him to pick us up. I suggested that we could walk to a nearby bed and breakfast inn that I knew of, but my mom said that you can't get a hotel room without car keys. I guess we could have begged the camp to give us a bunk bed to sleep in that night.

For those of you who don't know, I am close to finishing my work in the lab at MIT, and have to write a paper and make a poster to present to the other BU research people on Friday. Today I decided to come home early to work on my paper. I got a nice seat on the Riverside train because it wasn't rush hour, and I went zooming along. It seemed as though things were going well. But then, something strange happened. At the Reservoir stop, a man got in and sat next to me. He was talking loudly to nobody in sight, and I thought that was strange. I wondered if he had one of those cell phone things that you wear on your head, but I didn't see one. And he was saying the strangest things. Shouting to the rest of the train about idiot jerks at Harvard: "Go watch your water polo, idiot jerks!..." At one point he mentioned a girl in high school who if she was angry at someone, would refuse to talk to the person: "Just four-letter words. That's all she said, four-letter words all the time...She should have gone to Wellesley...she was a good writer. She could have gone to Wellesley and become a poet...that's what the girls do at Wellesley...But no, (name) was going to Wellesely, so she couldn't go there! They don't do good poetry at Princeton..." He mentioned his mother: "My mother has no respect for me. Nobody has any respect for me, not even my mother!" Then he went on to talk about how he would have had a good job, but no, his mother ruined everything! He also kept referring to someone named Victor. I don't know if he thought he was talking to me, or if he had just gone crazy. I think he was having a nervous breakdown. I saw other passengers looking at each other with strange expressions, so it was evident that they had similar thoughts. I was glad when I got off the train at Newton Center.

-Philip