Presentation: Success.

Such a huge adrenaline rush today. I finally presented the idea of starting up a project on depression/suicide/self-injury awareness at my school to the health director. This was something that was supposed to happen two weeks ago but got cancelled because of huge flooding going on in my town. I was absolutely nerve-wracked, because me going in there and saying, "So, we still on this idea?" is a really unprofessional thing to do given that I clearly got shut down by another member of the health department a few months ago. However, I walked in much more confidently than I did the previous time, because he was all for it then and I know that because I have the backing of one of my town's most respected citizens (my psych) it would be very difficult for director-guy to say no.
Not only did I manage to wear him down to a "yes" in a matter of minutes, but I have him now trying to convince the health teachers for me to do this (as they were the ones who shut me down the last time), I have much more paths open for me that I managed to smash out of him.
Because my original intention was to just have an assembly at my school and I let that get demoted to talking in health classes, he imagined I would keep it that way. However, I managed to argue him into the possibility of having an assembly, talking to health classes, AND talking to parents at an after-school event! That took some considerable skill and connections to pull that off. I'm proud of myself.

Not only that, but yesterday I was in Chinese class when my teacher M.L. came up to me and asked if I'm still presenting about Finland today. About a week ago, she attacked my class about presenting a culture we know to other classes because this week is Foreign Language Week. I hesitantly said that I could do Finland, because my stepmom's from Finland so may as well make the foreign language department happy. Fast forward six days, I'm now flabbergasted because I don't know what to do for the stupid Finland presentation. I eventually settle with having people ask questions about Finland while some Finnish music is playing (Darude, Nightwish, etc.)
I walk into my designated class in a panic at 9:20. It turns out to be all freshmen, and the teacher is out. I proceed to spend the next half hour talking on and on about Finland, everyone's asking questions, it's very open and happy. I feel relaxed throughout the entire time! I walk into my next class just as confidently. It sucked. The class is really reserved because the teacher is there and she is asking so many boring questions like what my favourite food is and what reindeer are like. However, people seemed to enjoy it. I guess mainly because I was myself, which is prone to raunchiness (First class, "Why don't you change your name to Bananas?" "...I change my name to Bananas... So whenever people say that they like Bananas... Think about it for a couple seconds..." Second class, "So this is how you swear in Finnish! Everyone say Kyrpa! 8D"). All in all, I think this day went pretty well.

So in recognition of presenting to a bunch of radically different classes about Finland, I have the song of the day be a video of the day: How to Swear in Finnish!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1PjDNWFOAc

BMEzine

A few days ago I read Explosm's article where they pranked a kid who asked them to do a comic about Da Vinci's code. On one page of their prank they include a cartoon of Da Vinci cutting his dick in half and calling it BME. I'm disgusted by this because it just has to be an exaggeration (given that this is Explosm we're talking about), so I google up BME. Turns out, that's the short-hand name for bmezine.com, a site dedicated towards the body modification subculture! Curiosity gets the best of me so I go onto the site. I've never encountered the total body modification culture so I don't know what to expect, and even with my mind as open as it possibly can about this I get shocked by what I see. I'm not saying that in a disgusted way, just that I was surprised by what I saw. In this website there was suspensions, eye sewing, tattoos, and so much more. I can't help but be a little horrified from my lack of experience in this world, but I'm also a little fascinated how people can break past the limits of pain to do this kind of stuff.
Is it an underground culture? More underground than anything I've encountered, yet. Is it terrifying? To me, anyways. Is it a place to look at whether you ever will get into it? I would say so. I'm planning on getting a tattoo sometime later in life as a symbol of what I believe in, but I wouldn't necessarily consider it a BMEzine-able thing. After looking at this site, I might do a suspension just to see what it's like.
So something I'm not planning to tell my family.


Because I've had this stuck in my head for the past two days, the song of the day is:
Nothing Suits Me Like A Suit from How I Met Your Mother

Stop Telephonin' Me!

My project is underway!

Right now, I'm restarting my project from the beginning of the school year, which involves speaking to my school about depression, suicide, and self-injury. Because it was shut down by my yoga teacher in November, I let it fall down into the underground works for a few months. For past few months I took my time collecting information and statistics so when I go up again there's going to be no way anyone can refuse my proposal without looking unprofessional. This past couple weeks I decided to start going out getting support from multiple professionals in nursing, public speaking and psychology. As of right now, I have the support of a well-respected psychologist in my town and a couple social workers at my school. I'm aiming for a couple nurses and a local organization for depression. It's a lengthy process but with hope I will be able to go up to the board of health in my school district and whip out a proposal so good that they cannot refuse, and even if they did I can absolutely trash them publicly for refusing it.

Last week was my best friend K.V.'s Grease show! A bunch of the actors lacked professionalism, but the show in itself was pretty good! I went with my other best friend E.J. and her friend from South Korea and we spent most of the show critiquing all of the actors. While this was a total asshole thing to do, it was so fun. I greatly enjoyed watching my friends K.V., A.D. and J.B. onstage! I had no idea that A.D. or J.B. can act so them coming up was pretty awesome. During intermission I ran backstage and spent time with K.V. despite the fact she had to get ready for the next act. It was so worth going back there though because we were constantly hugging each other and giggling like idiots. I think it scared the director as well.

Here's a demonstration of how oblivious I am in class for you all. In all of my academic classes this semester, because I already know everything and at a level above everyone when it comes to thinking deep (my academics, with the exception of Chinese, rely heavily on philosophy), I tend to space out most of the class because I can. Because of that, I somehow managed to not look at most of my classmates because I'm in a trance-like state nearly all classtime unless I have to present something. When I present, I tend to ramble because I tend to forget what I'm saying mid-sentence, so I guess being in a trance-like state nearly all the time is a bad thing. But I digress: This past week I decided to start actually paying attention because my classes are picking up in pace so the teachers can get what they want done before the seniors leave. So now I'm looking around at the class during spare time and I realized something: most of the guys in my classes are really hot! I'm surprised I didn't notice this before, but the more I look around the more hotness I see! I'm not sure whether it's from G.R. constantly trying to turn me on or if it's just because I'm on some crazy exaggerated hormone cycle, but I'm flabbergasted by the hotness! In Chinese I decided to sit on the opposite end of the room from where I used to sit nearby J.A. so I have people to talk to and it gives me such a wide view of the good-looking guys. I feel like a little whore, but who cares. Chances are that I won't have a boyfriend for another couple years, anyways. Nothing wrong with looking.

So right now I'm in my dad's house preparing to go an hour north to some country store. Saturday tends to be our shopping trip day, so I get to whip out my awesome new debit card and go shopping for a little while. Will I actually buy anything? Doubt it. As long as I get to zone out most of this weekend I'm all set.

On Thursday I was home alone for a few hours because that's my mom's day to go to her boyfriend's house until midnight. Out of boredom, I remembered that Lady Gaga has released a new music video called Telephone and that people say it's really weird. So I decided to watch it to kill some time, given that the entire video is around 10 minutes. My final verdict: it's something that people into girls would want to see if they're in a really weird lesbian porn kinda mood. Everyone else would like it just from the weirdness factor. I'm starting to think that Lady Gaga has a thing for people forcibly undressing her and leaving her half-naked. Especially the part when she's virtually entirely naked and climbing the prison bars. There was no decency there, and I'm not sure whether to respect the fact she has no problem showing her body for all to see or to be scared that she has no problem showing her body for all to see, including little children.

TECHNOLOGY IS THE DEVIL!!!

My ceramics teacher is kinda out there, if not old dated. Her crusade seems to be destroying all form of modern communication technology and living in caves. Every ceramics class she comes in saying something along the lines of, "Teenagers have way too much screen time. Did you know the average teenager gets about 7 hours of screen time every day? That can be a part-time job!" Every. Single. Class. Then she goes around the room doing a survey of how often we text, hang out online, watch tv, or something of that ilk. It actually keeps us from working on our ceramics projects, it's that bad! Her latest art project is some head thing demonstrating the "evils of television." It's kinda sad.

In other news, yesterday in Humanities instead of working on Othello and the character development within it, C.L. T.D. and I were sitting around talking about how we act in school. While this could be an interesting sociology conversation, we were more talking along the lines of educational masochism. You see, our super-intendant is an idiot and doesn't realize when we need to close school for external emergencies. An example would be yesterday when it was pouring buckets, the locker rooms were flooded, and flood warnings in the region were going off like crazy. We all came to the conclusion that she's trying to teach us to take delight in misfortune. For example, if we have a massive blizzard that shuts down the school for a week and cuts off all power to the town which will lead to our certain demise, everyone will be happy because we have no school for once. We also came to the conclusion that the school could blow up and we'll still have school because she's such an idiot.
We have the day off today because of the flooding that's going on around the town. We're very happy.

Due to a short post today, the song of the day is Phantom Ki by Kemic-Al, which is darkpsy. I consider darkpsy to be kinda like the death metal of techno, because it's very dark and very intense trance music. Not for the people just experiencing techno.

Lolwut?

Now, it's common knowledge among my friends that I have little performing talents, as most of my talents tend to be lodged in my mind or practical side of my body. Unless you consider rock climbing to be a performing talent, anyways...
So I'm in chorus and have to do this performance called Cabaret next Friday. My friend K.B. and I are doing this duet that no one knows about, and we were called on Thursday to work on our song during lunch. For some reason, my friends A.H. K.K. and I.G. decided to come along, which puts huge pressure on me because I'm not comfortable at all singing. I've never been good at singing and my elementary school music teacher has crushed any sense of me being any good at music, so I'm now terrified. I sing the first two lines of the song and my chorus teacher interrupts me. We try matching pitches with me and the piano for a few minutes, but it doesn't work out because he's playing notes that I have to go into falsetto to sing, something I've never truly done before. He eventually gives up and says that I'm doing terribly and if I keep at the rate I'm at I will bomb the performance in front of everyone. The thing is, I'm used to singing the part of a bass because it's such a strain to sing the part of a tenor, which is what my song is based for. He's now giving me until Monday to learn how to match pitches from a piano to my voice.
I'm absolutely freaking because I've never had a professional voice teacher in my life, which he doesn't seem to get. I've had A voice teacher, but that was my then-boyfriend who'd give lessons that would get quickly forgotten as we then begin to cuddle and/or make out. I don't consider them real lessons. K.B. was rooting me on this entire time saying that I'm singing well and I'll work it, so when we get out of the chorus room I lashed out at her for rooting me on because it lulls me into a false sense of security. I now feel terrible for it, because that wasn't fair of me to do that. I plan on apologizing with a bunch of pocky on Monday.
That aside, I've had a pretty decent week. Yesterday was course selection day so our normal day was sliced in half, the remaining half of the school day was us running through all of our classes from last semester. It was fairly interesting, actually. I skipped my yoga class to wander around the school and hang out with K.K. and the other classes were spent yabbering with half a million people. I got all of my course selections done in a remarkably short amount of time, I'm pretty proud of myself.
AND I'M SO EXCITED! I'm going to J.B., A.D., K.V.'s performance of Grease tonight and it's going to be incredible! I'm bringing D.J. along so we're bound to have fun times!

Because I'm in a omg-kinda mood right now, the song of the day is Aquarius by Within Temptation! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ46JJ0aLNo

Time off

I haven't felt this relaxed in a long while. Since the show's been done I've had very little to do. The process has been go to school, go home, sit around listlessly for a while, start doing homework and get attacked by some overly hormonal guy who can't really deal with the fact that I have better things to do than give into my carnal instincts every day of my life. Pretty much every day he's trying to turn me on, and nearly every day it doesn't work. As of right now I've put him on my ignore list on Facebook just to not deal with him anymore because he was getting really awkward.
For example: E.C. is a pretty good looking kid. Like if he finally decides to come out of the closet (Many of us agree that he likes men and maybe women), I would go out with him. The creepy hormonal guy G.R. is currently crazed over him despite the fact he's like three years older than E.C. As a result, G.R. starts badgering me to ask E.C. if he's bi and everything. I'm getting sick of it so I just pulled the plug on G.R.
Other than that, really nothing's been happening, so this is a relatively short post for now.
So the song of the day would have to be Beloved by VNV Nation!

Showtime! Continued

I didn't bother writing too much in depth last night as I was absolutely wiped and wanted to just curl in bed and fall into a coma. Yesterday was craaaaaaaaaaaazy. Like there's crazy where you have a lot on your plate. Then there's crazy where you have a lot on your plate, a million things are popping up at once, everyone around you also has that going on and you're all trying to help each other out into a gigantic mess of logistics and chaos. I don't know where to start with the show, so let's start a few hours beforehand.

I woke up Saturday morning in a really surreal state. This was the day of the show; no re-do's, no more rehearsals, no more shows to do. This is it! However, before anything else I have to do something for my Chinese class: go to a show on Chinese folk art at the same place as my show. I go there with my mom and her boyfriend, and it all goes pretty well. I see some people from my class, avoid a few other people, etc. It starts off with a really intense drum routine with the guys screaming and using just about every single part of the drum I can imagine. Then a bunch of happy dance routines including the lion and dragon. The lion dance was so improvised because you see in the background the person in the front of the lion suit jumping onto the knees of the person in back and proceeding to "make out" with the other lion. As in taking the heads, opening the mouths, and smashing the heads together. It was odd. The dragon dance was awesome though. It started with all lights on stage off, then the dragon and the pearl come out lit up by LEDs. It was really awesome just because of that effect, and they did the same for the yoyo routine. I was pretty impressed.

Now come an hour before the show. By this time we are getting all of our acts down as far as we possibly can, people are calling and texting us and whatever to say "Good luck!", getting into all of our first outfits, and meetings are going on throughout the whole cast. I probably got at least 10 texts saying "Good luck!" or something of that ilk. Given that most of my friends for some reason don't have cells and/or the capacity to text, I imagine the other contestants got many more. Come the whole cast meeting, our director was apologizing for being an asshole to us and we were all like "You were a total asshole. Bitch." It was amusing. Now come ten minutes before the show, I'm dancing like crazy to keep from having a massive breakdown because you can hear the audience screaming from between multiple rooms. The contestants finally go onto the risers and have a group hug, I assure the hostess that she's going to work it. I'm on the verge of crawling in a little hole screaming when the curtains finally open revealing our silhouettes. The music starts playing and when the spotlight comes on me I hear an entire shower of screams from throughout the entire audience. I grin and strike a pose, the entire right side of my face twitching like crazy from nervousness.

Come sportswear! I do a massive joke on bodybuilders and heroic muscle men by acting like a total flamer. I think they mainly were laughing at the end when my sponsor A.H. drags me offstage and falls in the attempt to pick me up. I should've warned her I'm 20 pounds heavier since the last time she picked me up. Everyone gets a huge amount of laughs at each act, we're all very confident. Most of my acts involve huge amounts of audience participation, I end up talking to the people on stage during my dream date and try to get people during my talent.

Skipping a few scenes, we finally get to the last act: Q&A. The contestants have absolutely no idea what they're going to ask, so I'm terrified because I don't know what to expect. Before we go onstage, though, we have to get into tuxes. The entire deal with tuxes was a bitch enough because the person lending them to us decided to throw us through a million hoops. We finally finish the dream date when the host and hostess completely forget to stall the audience for us to get into tuxes. I'm all set because I wore a tux before and know how to put them all and because there's five scenes after mine in the dream date act. However, the other guys forgot to budget their time and come spilling into the dressing rooms after C.S1's scene. I'm nearly done and have to help everyone else. The director is running in to help, people are flying around with bags, sponsors are trying to help. It just looked like a total blur to me now because of how much screaming "HOW DO I PUT THIS ON?!" and people were climbing on top of each other. I barely manage to fully finish before they tell us to go onstage. Four more guys are still lagging so I try to help as much as I can before the director shoves me out.

I walk onstage with my sponsor when they ask me a question, "You walk out of your home and encounter a massive fire-breathing dragon. What do you do?" I space out for a minute contemplating my answer with a few people in my fan club screaming things at me. Most of my thoughts were either, "Turn up my gayness and out-flame him." or "Splash a bucket of water on it." but I finally say "Turn into a Na'vi and do that weird bonding thing they do." before internally face-palming. Creative? Relatively. Nerdy? Oh, hell yes. In retrospect, I should've said, "RuPaul, queen of drag, I choose you!" or something like that.

In the end, I didn't win. I imagined as such because everyone else is way more mainstream and know how to make most people laugh. I have a relatively obscure humor so some people didn't get my jokes. However, we're all happy that it's over and head off to E.C.'s house for a rager. As far as they said anyways.

However, by the time I get there it's nearly midnight and some people were about to leave because of their parents. I hang out in the hot tub for a while which was an absolutely jam-packed area. I'm squished up against J.C. for most of the time and nearly in a fetal position because the hot tub is designed for 7 people. We have about 15 people in there at any one time. After some people leave, E.C. decides to sit on me for a seat. I have no idea why so I'm really confused, but I'm not really complaining because this kid is pretty damn hot and I haven't had any guy sit on me for a long time. I kinda just lean to the side as cooly as I can- against my natural instincts to wrap my arms around his torso and just relax. More room clears up and he snags a seat behind me. I shuffle over to another edge to give him some room because as far as I know he's saying that he's straight. Some other guy who I completely go crazy for, J.S. pops up and decides to jump in the hot tub. So I'm now in a hot tub with three of the hottest guys in my grade and trying to decide what to do. Eventually, come 1 in the morning. Nearly everyone's left and it's really just degenerated into E.C., C.Q., C.S1, J.S., a couple of their friends and I just sitting by a fire talking about games I have no clue what to talk about. I eventually text my mom's boyfriend and go home. I stay up for another hour and go into a comatose state for 9 hours, which is about the most sleep I've had in a month.

Showtime!

Tonight was the night: I was finally a competitor in a massive school production. In this show, there's 7 guys who compete for the title of Mr. (school) in three different areas: Sportswear, Talent, and Dream Date. We each have one female sponsor who helps us out with any piece we need. Obviously, we need them for Dream Date and we have to introduce them during Sportswear. Talent, however, is entirely up to us because we write the scripts and everything.

So, up until about an hour before the show I was entirely calm and repeating to everyone that it's all going to work. Naturally, stage fright kicked in once the curtains opened revealing us. However, I got people laughing and cheering throughout the entire show. I also managed to engage the audience more than once! I have to say I've had one of the two largest fan clubs in the show, the other one being for E.C. It was pretty awesome, at the end of the show a swarm of people came flooding into the backstage to hug me.

Come after the show, E.C. says that there's going to be a party at his house. Everyone's all pumped and we all arrive there at like 11 after breaking down the set. Nearly everyone leaves at midnight or shortly thereafter. I'm still there but being the only person there that doesn't really play video games, by the time J.C. left all they were talking about was Call of Duty. I barely even know that game exists so I was sitting there in a bathing suit and a towel by the fire listening quietly. Eventually, I just felt awkward and left. And here I am!

Rehearsal

This week has been...insane. I really have no idea how to describe it except for insane. At the very least we've been staying in school rehearsing until 6pm every night this week, most of which is involving our director yelling at us. Yesterday was the worst, though. I didn't get home until about 10pm, the director was full-on screaming at us for the most ridiculous reasons. By the time we were finished my mom picked me up and we went out to a Japanese restaurant just to relax and calm down because my stress level was through the roof. All of us are exhausted now because very few of us have gotten any kind of sleep. As I type I'm yawning and starting to space out. It's pretty bad.

Today has been possibly the best one, though! I'm so happy about it and so thankful to the gods for today because yesterday was just ghastly. Our angry director was off at some meeting all day so our nice director started to take over again. All of the acts went smoothly, everyone was happy, and we got out at like 6:45 for an entire runthrough! That includes all of us going and a few breaks in between. Few breaks being about 15 minutes each. So for us starting at 3:30 with at least 45 minutes cumulative breaktime, that is really solid for a hell week rehearsal. I'm very happy about it.

Our director today told us that our shirts for the dance routine are in the gym during a break, so all of the contestants and the hosts and some sponsors did a mass-field trip over there. Of course, the shirts weren't there but we had a lot of fun just running around together as we went on a treasure hunt throughout the P.E. department. After a while we gave up, whereupon I mention that I have dinner in my locker that my mom was great enough to give to me this morning. The entire horde immediately ran to my locker and the second I pulled out the bag I was besieged by a mob of hungry contestants and a hostess. It looked like something out of Mean Girls when Cady imagines all the people acting like animals. I was greatly amused. A few minutes later, all of us are sitting in the lobby of the auditorium having a picnic of lunchables and goldfish. It was a great bonding experience and I'm very happy for today going so well.

A fairly atypical day

Today has been...interesting to say the least. Not like I would ever post something mundane on a blog, but relatively today has been off-kilter in many respects.

I needed to get all of my props in for my mock beauty pageant today, so I had my mom drive me to school. I go into the school carrying a chair with a white sheet draped over it tied with a black ribbon (A couch) and a box packed with stuffed animals to bring into E.W.'s room given that she's the director and could keep my props in her room. Come ten minutes of wandering the school looking for her because the door is locked, I find out that she isn't even in the school nor will be today! I finally dunk everything down in the auditorium with C.Q. and go off for breakfast.

Come Global Religions, we get the entire lab today because of a massive storm on Thursday night causing school to be cancelled on Friday. While this couldn't be better, I finished my project for Global Religions on Wednesday because I know the religion I'm doing so well. I go into Chinese and absolutely own the entire class because it's just answering a bunch of random questions about jobs and banks. Come Chorus class, I was off in singing but I really didn't care.

One of my friends K.B. and I are deciding to do a duet for a Cabaret show in a few weeks and to surprise our friends by doing one of the group's favourite songs together. The problem is that I'm a bass and have to sing the part of a tenor for the song. I'm planning on knocking all of my notes down an octave so I can actually sing the song without straining myself. Finally comes Humanities. We get the lab again for the entire block for the same reason as Global Religions!

So come mock beauty pageant rehearsal. I had to create a dance routine for the talent portion that I really dislike because the song is one that I've heard my entire life and E.W. has managed to badger me into doing it compared to bellydancing. I go onstage not knowing the dance because it was just created and a minute into the dance I get screamed off for not knowing the stupid thing and told to go print out the routine and practice. A half hour later filled with trying various computers across the school, I give up and go back to rehearsal. We're now on dream date, which my partner and I totally rocked if it weren't for E.W. interrupting us every other line to ask us about every little piece to it without waiting for the answer to her question like two lines later. A.H. my partner and I are kind of frustrated but now we have the scene down really well.

Along this entire rehearsal, A.H. and I are busy talking in the back of the auditorium about the people there. We've came to a consensus that the other director D.M. is flamboyantly gay and one of my cast members E.C. is extremely bisexual. If we use a scale of 1 to 6, 1 being extremely straight 6 being extremely gay D.M. would be a screaming 6, I would be about a 4.75 and E.C. would be a solid 3. It really amuses me especially because I see all of the other male cast members always touching each other and joking about it while considering themselves straight while I'm the only person there who's openly gay and refuses to touch any of the guys without any solid reason. You'd imagine all of these guys would be less... obnoxious and climbing all over each other because that would be portrayed as incredibly gay but no, they just bounce around smacking each other around while I'm sitting with a couple girls laughing my ass off at all of them.

I finally go home after a three and a half hour rehearsal covering two of the major scenes (most of it being the directors yelling at us for the questions being answered two lines later) extremely wiped. Good news is that I got a haircut which looks awesome and I have hair dye for tomorrow's escapade! I'm really excited for it and can't wait to see everyone looking at me this week where I come into school with something new added on every day!