Some videos

A bike and boredom

Today I woke up and tried to quietly get out of my room without my dad taking me on a bike ride. I fail. Miserably. About ten minutes after I woke up I was on a bike. At first I kept having flashbacks to my accident but after 10 or so miles I started to get back into it. Pretty soon I was speeding down hills and having a good time. Christa was coming at 1130 so I really pushed myself so I would be able to get home in time. When I got home I cleaned up quickly and |Christa came.
We sat around talking and playing cards. She is so good at spit that I cant win even when I am trying as hard as I can and she is barely paying attention. At 3 my mom held a party for a graduate student of hers who just got her PHD.
She is an incredibly nice person and also a nun. My mom did probably the cheapest thing you could do for a gift and got her a bag “with our loving thoughts in it”.
After a while Christa left and the party dissipated. The last time we had a party my mom was sure I was high. This time I decided to really flip her out so I kindof did my whole stoned person impression and watched Cheech and Chong. This probably means tomorrow she will shout at me about it.
As if my Sunday wasn’t exciting enough already I decided to do a bunch of homework so I wouldn’t have to do it on Thursday or over the weekend during the Ithaca festival.
3 hours later you have me here. I am completely sapped of any creative writing and feel like I need to go to sleep.
Peace and love.

Short boring post

Hello. Today was rather uneventful so for the sake of you, the reader, I have decided to cut the length of today’s post to ½ a page instead of the normal page.

I woke up this morning and went for a jog. This was the first time I have actually gone on a run by myself. When I was in 4th grade I had a series of dreams about abduction and later that year at Kmart 2 men came up to me and tried to talk to me in a creepy way. When my mom appeared they ran off. This left me with a strong fear of all public places. I think it has taken until now, 5 years later for me to overcome this fear.

After my run Christa came over and we went for a walk in Sapsucker Wood with Tavi, my dog who we let off the lease. It was a nice walk and when we got back we hung around my house for a bit.

Then I got my dad to take me to the mall and I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: the worlds end. I believe the movie did exactly what most movies are supposed to do, entertain. There was only one moment in the movie that I found thought provoking and that was a scene at the very beginning where a corrupt British official was reading off a list of emergency changes. It sounded surprisingly like the patriot act with a list that blocked free assembly, haduis corpus and other things like that.

After the movie I came home, ate dinner and spent some time fooling around on ebaums world, which is kind of embarrassing. After that I decided to write this post and go to sleep.

Sweet dreams intrawebs.

A straight forward day

Today I woke up to the blasting of Yoshima Battles the Pink Robots by the Flaming lips from my iPod alarm I had hooked up with my speakers. This defiantly woke me up but also woke my family up as well. In my defense waking up at 7 is a good time to wake up.

After waking up I did the morning stuff and blasted Shpongle until I had to leave for school (if you want to listen to some Shpongle I have a small clip from their song Divine Moments of Truth at the bottom of this post). For first and second period we had this massively bitchy substitute teacher who basically told us all that she was smarter and better than all of us because she was older. Somehow her old age wasn’t very conductive to classroom control.

Second period was elections and JT decided to run them for our class. They were true American democracy style elections. This of course means I voted 3 times along with the rest of my class. Our sub was flipping out all class which made it all the more fun.

At lunch JT broke JiWon’s Nalgene bottle and got shouted at by the almost legendary fat security guard Boone. JiWon was rather upbeat about it all and didn’t really complain that JT broke her Nalgene bottle.

After school I went downtown with Christa. I got some coffee for me and peppermint tea for Christa. The lady at Gimmie was very nice and gave me the peppermint tea for free but still stamped my card for two drinks.

After Christa was picked up by her dad the clouds burst on me. Instead of being all depressed by rain I decided to listen to the song Dancing For Rain by Rise Against very loudly and that made being in the rain a lot of fun. I was actually having so much fun and was saddened when it stopped raining.

In the car home I decided to mess with my mom a little bit. I did the partially closed eyelids thing and attempted to slur my speech. By the end of the ride she was flipping out asking me if I was okay and the like. I think the scariest part for her was when I stopped doing it and seemed to miraculously sober up.

At home my dad started bitching at me about my decision not to take the SAT II for bio seriously. In an attempt to show him I would do badly on it I did a practice test. I ended up getting a 710 which is a really good grade so I am going to spend memorial weekend having fun AND practicing for the SAT.

I must end my post a little short today because I am off to go walk my dog Tavi and do some quality sleeping.

Peace and love and Shpongle Below.

A walk in Sapsucker Woods

Today I went to school and did that whole thing. For some strange reason both yesterday and today at lunch I didn’t eat anything. It wasn’t anorexia or anything, it was more just forgetting about it. Maybe it was because the weather was so nice (85-90 degrees and sunny!).

In Global I had a test that I finished really fast and then listened to some Shpongle. While I was listening to it I got incredibly into it and started rocking back and fourth to the beat (or at least what I thought the beat was, me and rhythm are kind of opposites unfortunately). Someone in the class noticed I was doing it and they started to make fun of me by doing it to. It was incredibly funny. Shpongle has an ability to transport me to an entirely different world while I listen to it with headphones on.

After school I walked downtown with Christa and we watched the birds in Dewitt Park and I supported the evil institution of capitalism and free market economy by buying with my gift certificate a Alkaline Trio CD at Volume Records. On the upside I was supporting the local economy so I guess it really isn’t that bad.

I got picked up by my mom and driven home. It was such a nice day out that I decided to take JiWon’s bike back to her house and go for a walk. As I biked over there I listened to Eight Episodes, a science fiction short story and Hugo nominee, on my science fiction podcast Escape Pod.

The story was about a small TV show in the future about an Alien invasion that gets cancelled. But after it is cancelled many of the things that were shown in the TV show as science fiction turn out to be factual. This leads people to the realization that the TV show is actually a communication from Aliens to planet earth. The episode was very escapist and provoked some thoughts. I would be sure to check it out either on iTunes or at the bottom of this page in the little flash player I stole from the Escape Pod Website.

As I listened to the story I walked through an area by JiWon’s house that is the part of sapsucker woods that will be cut down if Briarwood II goes in. It surprised me how expansive it was and at one point I almost got lost. Being in woods makes me incredibly happy and makes me want to fight for them even more.

To get rid of them would be one of the biggest mistakes Ithaca could make. It is part of the woods that are famous for ornithology and the drainage problems created by destroying the woods would be an expense to the town that wont go away. Also, Ithaca is a leftist town, we pass resolutions that say we will save the environment. If we don’t act on what we say we are the biggest hypocrites. I believe that Ithaca will roll over to the big developer Lucentee instead of listening to the people who elected them. There is however a group of people who are trying to Save Sapsucker Woods.

After I left the woods I walked home listening to Shpongle very loudly. I laid on my bridge listening to them for a while and then came in and started this post.

Goodnight to both of you who read this far and be sure to listen to the story Eight Episodes by Robert Reed from Escape Pod below.

some ranting and a few links

Hello. In English class we are reading the book First They Killed My Father. It is an incredibly sobering book about the massacres that occurred under Pol Pot. The protagonist is a little girl and it makes the whole story all that more painful as you see the girl put through so much. What really struck me though was how this story is much like the stories you hear coming from Africa, whether it be the children soldiers in Sierra Lione (as shown in the magnificent movie blood diamonds which you can see the trailer for at the bottom of this post.) or in Darfur.
It is horrible how people are willing to send soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan to protect oil but we aren’t willing to send soldiers to places to protect the world’s most valuable non-renewable resource, Human lives. The idea that our country is so apathetic and oblivious to our fellow humans plight is really worrying to me. It also seems that no matter what course people pursue to change this doesn’t work.
For example, our democracy that is supposed to be an inspiration to the rest of the world is failing. People have demanded that the US intervene in Sudan but our government has refused to do anything. The examples of the peoples voices not being heard are many, Most people want an end to the war, Most people want universal health care, and most people believe in decriminalization of certain drugs. I think that it is time for our country to come up for the review Thomas Jefferson almost wrote into the constitution. We have the right to hold a peoples vote of no confidence and really start running our country.
On a similar note I have heard more about rising tide in Ithaca and it is very possible that it will happen. As for a student part of it I think it would be a really cool idea but I am not sure if we would be able to get enough students involved.
Yesterday I mentioned that I was looking at videos of tree sits. During my searching I found the website Insurgent Photos which has lots of artsy cool pictures of, believe it or not, protests and leftist things.
Enough with my not so informed general disgust ranting. Today was a normal day for me. I had a Loomis quiz which I used a quiz card when I didn’t really need to. I continued reverse engineering my pencil sharpener in DDP and had a lunch where I attempted to be a mediator but ended up telling someone they were retarded.
After school I went to my psychologist and talked about feelings and various things like that. He mentioned that if I ever wrote anything about how I felt when I feel crappy I should show him. I suddenly was hit by the urge to write at some point an emo poem about depression. The only problem with this is that when I am depressed I don’t feel much like writing. It makes me really admire the works of poets who spent their lives bitching about there life. Being emo can be hard I guess.
This evening I felt really weird. I think it was a strange combination of heat stroke, caffeine withdrawal and tiredness. In the end I felt disoriented and disassociate. Who needs drugs when they have a brain like mine?
Finally if you have read this far there is a high chance you read this blog earlier (Yes I am talking to you Jeremy Aaron and JT) . You then will have noticed that I have been slightly fiddling with small blog stuff. It is my plan to make my blog look a lot nicer (with help from everyone’s favorite graphic artist, JT) and maybe even get it hosted.
Everyone should be sure to check out the guest editor on YouTube because he is my friend Trevor.
As promised, The trailer for Blood Diamonds:



Goodnight and good luck!

An attempt at somewhat intellegent writing

Today, after entering first period, I was assaulted by a sizeable number of readers of this blog. (Consisting of my two friends Jeremy and JT) Between Ms. Loomis bitching at us and the whole senior class, they explained to me that I would be more productive if I wrote a good half page instead of a long drawn out full page. I decided to meet them in the middle, from now on I will attempt no to have eco apocalypse rants that go on for half a page, or me basically repeating how tired I am for pages and pages. I will write one page a day still but it will be good.
With that said I should get back to the post. I am going to try to avoid in all my posts a long boring drawn out description of my day.
Today when I got the mail (after coming home from being downtown with Christa) I found my membership to the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club, for those of you who don’t know, is a grassroots environmental organization. John Muir, a man who was influential in saving trees by making national parks in the late 1900’s, founded it. John Muir also played an early part in trying to save the redwood trees in the book I am reading right now, A good forest for dying (or something like that).
It had a section about the Sierra Student Coalition, which is basically a student organization. It seems like something that I should look into. It might not be nearly as extreme or effective as a more radical group but I think it could reach more students and serve as a launching board for a more radical student group.
After that I sat down and did a very dedicated session of homework listening to Evan Greer, who I think greatly shocked even my left wing parents. I think partly due to his music they all left the house and almost forgot to take me to Tae Kwon Do. When I got there the class was incredibly easy for the most part until the end when we did pushups. After 99 pushups (15,14 to 6) my arms went all weak and I was barely able to get up. This of course got the notice of my Teacher. He stood over me and counted as I did them and by the end I was to weak to go back up.
I got home and went on YouTube to find out that Trevor was the guest editor. YouTube Home Page He has some incredibly cool videos featured and I would be sure to check them out before they all vanish tomorrow or whenever videos vanish.
While on YouTube I looked up some videos of treesits and found the ones that are talked about in my book (okay, this post did turn into an eco-rant, sorry). There was one disturbing one that showed non-deputized climbers working for Pacific lumber doing what amounts to torture to peaceful, nonviolent protestors.
It is really disturbing to think that in a country where freedom of speech and expression is so protected on one would do anything when people are being put through this. I think it shows that Americans really aren’t equal or, like George Orwell would say, some are more equal than others. I think Americans think what human rights do a dirty, pot smoking, tree hugging hippie need. What they don’t remember is that revolutionaries founded our country. They love to say that the founding fathers would believe in this or that. But one thing they did do is fight for a cause.
This means that even if we disagree with a cause we should at least be civil and peaceful while removing people who are peaceful in return.
Goodnight and good luck-
Sam