An Abundance of Quotes Part 14

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull." - W. C. Fields


"Don't be a hater-- you'll just end up like Darth Vader." - Alex Carpenter


Which I am posting just because the Star Wars reference made me laugh.


"Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another." - John Dewey


"The history that lies inert in unread books does no work in the word." - Carl Becker, 1932


"Right and wrong is just a matter of perception. The only way you can be wrong is if you believe you're wrong. Or if I say so." - Lord Voldemort's Twitter feed

Also, the funniest "your mom" joke I've heard in a long time, courtesy of one of the people I eat lunch with: "Your mom's so fat that her patronus is a cake."  (Did you guys know that in Latin, "expecto patronum" means "I await my godfather"? Talk about subtle foreshadowing. **worships J.K. Rowling**)

Also Also Also (and this is being added several days after I started adding quotes to this, so I'm sorry it is similar to the Voldemort one): "I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong." - Craig Benzine. I want that on a T-shirt. And I want my mom (specifically her) to buy me said T-shirt, because she (and I) would think it funny for her to buy it for me.

Community Service Mini-Informal Essay Thing

This is another queued post, because I have no life and therefore spend a heck of a lot of time thinking about blog-worthy things yet I don't want to post more than once per day. You'd think I'd have better things to do than contemplate the assumptions, trends, and connotations associated with the word "liberal." Well guess what: Either I don't, or I just multi-task rather well. Or both.


(Paragraph of Self-Deprecation Has Achieved Completion)


Anyways. I was actually working on my Civics & Economics (we're in the Civics portion now) homework and realized the mini-informal-essay I was writing might be of interest to you guys, since it's about my involvement with my old elementary school's writing club, which I talk about on here from time to time. (I can't help but feel that my teacher's judging me, though. I write my Economics book report on For The Win by Cory Doctorow, interview Alan Lastufka for the Economics powerpoint, and now I'm confessing that I write novels in my free time for Civics. Nerd pride, you guys. DFTBA.)


At any rate, here is the essay:

I volunteer as a mentor in the writing club at my old elementary school, and have been doing so for over a year. This club is comprised of 4th and 5th graders, and meets on a bi-weekly basis.

In June 2010, the teacher-sponsor of the club announced she was leaving to take a job at a different school, so in the fall, my best friend (the other mentor) and I were the ones to take the initiative in finding another teacher to keep the club going.

Our job main job is to circulate among the students throughout the hour, answering their questions, proof-reading their stories, and keeping them on-task. Sometimes we lead small groups in which the students read their stories aloud before listening to feedback given by the others. In November, I organized participation in National Novel Writing Month’s Young Writer’s Program, the adult version of which I have now completed two years in a row. This involved helping the kids to set a reasonable word-count goal for themselves and to then meet it by the end of the month. The majority of them completed and even exceeded their goals, and several of the same kids are now in the midst of NaNoWriMo’s sister program, Script Frenzy.

Being a high school mentor for these kids is a unique experience, because I don’t hold the status of at teacher, nor do I view them as being strictly under my authority despite that I do expect them to listen. There is a relationship of mutual respect and understanding, which has done wonders when it comes to them listening to my writing advice. I’m close enough in age that I’m not in the “I’ll never be that old” unreachable category, but I’m also in talks with a literary agent to get my one completed novel published. This allows them to believe that I give them suggestions based on experience rather than curriculum or “this is just the way I want you to do it,” as is sometimes the belief regarding teachers.

I find volunteering with this club to be very fulfilling. It’s exactly the kind of club I wish the school had had when I was there, so I’m glad to be a part of making it possible for the kids like me who are there right now.

Trends in Political Party

Today (or rather yesterday, since I'm going to queue this up to post tomorrow) in Civics I was sitting at my desk working on some stuff for chemistry (yes, I see the discontinuity. It's true.) and these two people who sit near me (one of whom I have known for nearly five years and the other I've just known of) were mock-arguing and saying they were going to have a fight and such.
So the girl (the one I've known of) says "Olivia'd back me up, right?" and the guy says "No. I've known her for ages. She wouldn't fight. Right, Olivia?"
And I smiled and said "Mhm."
And the girl said "Why not?"
And the guy said "Because she's a pacifist." (at which point some conversation of which I don't remember the exact words happened with someone else who basically also said she wouldn't fight)
And then they guy said "It's because you're both Democrats."
And I smiled again and said "Yep."
And he, being the Republican that he is, laughed.


(I also wanted to say "Just remember that I've been grading your papers for five years. I might not want to fight you, but I'm boss at non-violent protest." Except I didn't.)


Which of course made me think "there is a blog post in this."


Now most of my friends have very liberal political views, and most of my friends are generally pacifists, but is there such a strong connection to really say that Democrat = Pacifist? (and Democrat and liberal aren't even always the same, since Democrat is a party and liberal is a perspective.) I don't actually know.


The joke, of course, is that "liberal" is synonymous with "awesome." But while that's fun to say with your liberal friends, we all know there are plenty of exceptions on both ends (and if you're a non-liberal, the people that fit this rule ARE the exceptions- ha).


So I guess what I'm wondering if how much of the correlations we joke about are actually true. Like my best friend once observed "People who are Team Edward tend to be Republicans, and people who are Team Jacob tend to be Democrats." (guess where she falls when she bothers to care either way.)


What does being a Democrat or having liberal views actually mean? I can give you an issue and you can tell me what the people of each side tend to think about that issue.


But how much of all the other similarities is coincidence, and how much actually comes with the description?
Like how most nerdfighters are Harry Potter fans. It's not required to like Harry Potter. It's just that the vast, vast majority of us do.


So, More-Politically-Knowledgeable-Than-I-Am Readers Of Mine, discuss.

The Origin of the Internet

My grandma sent this to me yesterday. I don't know who wrote it, but it isn't mine, and I'm not making any money off of it so please don't sue me and whatnot. And please enjoy.


In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot.

And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she was often called Amazon Dot Com.

And she said unto Abraham, her husband: "Why dost thou travel so far from town to town with thy goods when thou canst trade without ever leaving thy tent?"

And Abraham did look at her - as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said: "How, dear?"

And Dot replied: "I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale, and they will reply telling you who hath the best price.

And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah's Pony Stable (UPS)."

Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. And the drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever having to move from his tent.

To prevent neighbouring countries from overhearing what the drums were saying, Dot devised a system that only she and the drummers knew. It was called Must Send Drum OverSound (MSDOS), and she also developed a language to transmit ideas and pictures - Hebrew To The People (HTTP)

But this success did arouse envy. A man named Maccabia did secrete himself inside Abraham's drum and began to siphon off some of Abraham's business. But he was soon discovered, arrested and prosecuted - for insider trading.

And the young men did take to Dot Com's trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung.

They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Sybarites, or NERDS.

And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were going to that enterprising drum dealer, Brother William of Gates, who bought off every drum maker in the land. And indeed did insist on drums to be made that would work only with Brother Gates' drumheads and drumsticks.

And Dot did say: "Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others."

And Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel, or eBay as it came to be known. He said: "We need a name that reflects what we are."

And Dot replied: "Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators." "YAHOO," said Abraham. And because it was Dot's idea, they named it YAHOO Dot Com.

Abraham's cousin, Joshua, being the young Gregarious Energetic Educated Kid (GEEK) that he was, soon started using Dot's drums to locate things around the countryside. It soon became known as God's Own Official Guide to Locating Everything (GOOGLE)

And that is how it all began. 

I May Or May Not Be Either Correct Or Incorrect

I was listening to an episode of this NPR podcast called Pop Culture Happy Hour walking to my grandma's from school today, and they were discussing things they had originally either loved or hated, and had later changed their minds about (Buffy The Vampire Slayer being one of the things discussed, which I seriously loved for a few reasons, one of which being that the episode that changed the guy's mind was the last one I watched. Just finished Season 3, people. I'm getting there).

So, as a joke, one of them mentioned that he "had been wrong."

Now in terms of Buffy, I would argue that there is a right and wrong as to whether or not it's a good show, but that's just my bias and general love for all of the media that stems from Joss Whedon's brain, with the exception of the things such as Doll House which are excepted just because I have yet to watch them.

But in general...

If something is truly just an opinion on a piece of pop culture or an aesthetic effect or whatever, can you be right or wrong about it, even if you disagree with your past self?

Or what if I don't like something because of its inherent quality? What if I like "World of Warcraft Ruined My Life," for instance, just because I used to play WoW? Am I wrong? What counts when it comes to the validity of an opinion?

Just because something appeals to you doesn't mean it's well-made, or well-done. It just means that it has...appeal. But does that mean that it did its job well, if it made people want to buy it?

See, I tend to view music and television and literature and such as art rather than as products, so I would not call "Friday" or Disney Channel or Twilight "good," but all of those (except for "Friday," I think , since it seems to be universally hated) fill their niches very, very well. They excel at what they were intended to be.

So if I say they're bad, I'm wrong by one definition. If I say they're good, I'm still wrong, but by the other definition. And both definitions are perfectly valid. And that's not even getting into the matter of personal taste.

What does that mean? 

Well, it means we get to argue. A lot.

Why I Read

A few days ago I was half-asked exactly why I read. 

A few minutes ago I was putting together a new Abundance of Quotes post and was looking through my Writings on Writing quote book, and two of the quotes I found described the answer-I-never-gave to that question fairly comprehensively, so I thought I'd make them into a post of their own.

"The man who adds the life of books to the actual life of everyday lives the life of the whole race. The man without books lives only the life of one individual." - Jessie Lee Bennett, 1923

Which pretty much sums up why I read. When I was first learning way back in the Time Before My Memory Begins (or close enough to it), I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about it. Then my dad said to me something like "Books allow you to explore whole new worlds." -- and I was hooked.

And here are the other reasons: "The book is the thing. Literature was meant to give pleasure, to excite interest, to banish solitude, to make the fireside more attractive than the tavern, to give joy to those who are still capable of joy, and--why should we not admit it?-- to drug sorrow and divert thought." - Augustine Birrell, 1896

The only other reason would be the exposure to ideas-- books make me think about things I otherwise would not and/or present new perspectives, which I suppose could be sorted under the first quote.

So there you have it: exploration/thought, escapism, and pleasure.

I'll Take Your Word For It. Except Not Really.

“Caring about stuff binds us to the other people who care about that stuff and that creates the communities that make life worth living.” - John Green


In other words, fandom is awesome because you get to geek out over stuff with people. 


"Everything has been figured out, except how to live." - Jean-Paul Sartre


Now on that I would have to disagree. There's a fair amount of science-y stuff we don't know, and the phenomenon of love (of any and all kinds) is way too complicated and multi-faceted and such to have been really figured out as a whole, which brings me to today's topic: taking people's word for things.


When it comes to books or movies or tv shows or music, it's pretty safe to take people's word. If you and Person X like a lot of the same things, and Person X likes Thing A, chances are you'll like it too. Obvious and boring. Moving on.


What's less easy to trust people on is the future. Here's a quote from Hank Green that I've been thinking about rather a lot lately: "Do not trust anyone who is telling you the way the world is going to be for you."


Because there have been a lot of things that have happened this year that don't match up with any of the stereotypes, or assumptions, or stories, or predictions with which I have been presented.
Humanity as a whole is far too diverse (and complicated, and multi-faceted, to quote myself from above) for everything to be the same for everyone.


We can only tell others the way things were/are for us. We can only say "this is a possibility, and this how it played out." Which, don't get me wrong, is a useful thing to be told. It gives us something on which to base ourselves and our interactions, as well as helping us to keep realistic expectations. But people are people, and people are different.
The trick, I think, is to find the balance between treating everyone the same, and treating everyone as an entirely different type of life form. Neither extreme is a good idea, obviously, but where in the middle is it best to go?
You have to assume some things, but if you assume too many, things don't always turn out as well as they might have otherwise (and no, I don't have anything particular in mind when I say that, so you don't have to try and read in-between the lines).


But Hank isn't saying to never trust anyone who tells you anything about the world. He's saying that life is full of surprises: "I majored in biochemistry, and now I'm a professional Internet moron."


So like all good Ravenclaws, we need to "cum grano salis," which is rough Latin for "take it with a grain of salt." 
(And no, I don't actually know that much Latin. I just googled the phrase to make sure it meant what I thought it meant, and the Wikipedia article happened to have the Latin for it, so I thought I'd sound all sophisticated and such.)


Comment Question: What Hogwarts house are you? It occurs to me this is something Harry Potter fans should exchange, particularly about those of you I know IRL.

Everybody Is Shy

"April Fool's Day, like love, is about having the carpet pulled out from under you at the last moment and making you feel like a complete moron." - Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast
How true is that? (Hint: the answer is 'very.')


I've sort of been challenged (meaning that I decided to take it as a challenge even though it wasn't intended to be) to prove the statement that everyone is inherently shy.


First let's have an agreed-upon definition so as to eliminate arguments over semantics.
From Dictionary.com: "Shy: a manner that shows discomfort or lack of confidence in association with others."
That'll be the basic definition I work off of. If you want something more in-depth, you can read this article, which you should read anyway because it's pretty interesting, even though it is a bit scary to think that something genetic can have such an enormous influence over personality.


So in regards to shyness, there are a few different types of people.


1.The Shy People Who Know And Act Like It


These are the easy ones, and this is the group to which I belong. There really isn't much to say here, because we exhibit standard shyness and it's obvious. We work on overcoming it; sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

2. The Shy People Who Are Good At Covering It Up

These are the ones who know they're shy, but it isn't always easy for other people to tell. They pay attention to how people interact, and then they apply what they see to themselves in a (usually) successful manner. I suppose this group would also experience the most self-doubt, since people would tend to see them differently than they see themselves, which is, of course, a source of anxiety.

3. The Shy People Who Don't Know It

And here's where I make my argument, although it's going to involve rather a lot of bias, so I'm sorry about that. I know a lot of you will disagree, and I might even disagree, but it's my challenge to support it, so that's what I'm going to do.

Me in my introverted shy ways assumes that everyone is shy, and those who don't think they are simply haven't done enough introspection and reflection and thinking to realize that Other People are rather scary. Because you know, that's just a Fact of Life that is completely indisputable. Scary is usually an opinion. Not when it comes to Others. (I am, of course, being  jokingly arrogant and half-jokingly serious.)

Or perhaps these people aren't as good at imagining others complexly. Simple people are by definition easy to predict, so there isn't nearly as much stress involved. But the more complex you suspect the person is, the less you can be sure of, so the scarier they are.

The only cure for this, really, is to get to know him/her better. 

Group 3 people don't have to deal with this anxiety for some reason. They discover the complexity of a person as they get to know him/her, instead of assuming it from the beginning. But they would be shy if they thought about it. Or perhaps they do think about it and are simply very, very confident or very, very optimistic.

So there is my Very Biased and Probably Inaccurate defense of the inherent shyness of humanity. Clearly I like Group 1 people best. WE ARE TRUE TO OUR INNER NATURES. The rest of you are a bunch of phonies, as Holden Caulfield would say. ;)

Welcome To April

"In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration." - Ansel Adams. I love that.


Back in December I wrote a post that was rather cruel towards the spirit of Christmas. I regretted this post hours after I put it up, and possibly took it down afterwards. However, I meant what I said at the time, and I wasn't happy.


But the feelings depicted in that post are nothing compared to the hatred I have for April 1st, and I hate it for a few reasons.

1. There is usually a span of 30 seconds where I fall for a given joke/prank/lie, during which I am either very excited, very angry, very confused, or any combination of the above. Then I remember the date and just feel kind of stupid. This is not fun.
2. It's the one day of the year when it's considered perfectly acceptable to tell lies just to see other people's reactions. This is usually considered manipulative and other derogatory adjectives I would rather not use. But for some reason it's considered to be okay today. I tend not to think that some socially-frowned-on things should be suddenly accepted just because everyone's doing it at once. Halloween doesn't count, because you just leave your lights off if you don't want kids asking for candy so hopefully no one will bother you.
3. You can't trust anything anyone says. If it's a personal thing ("I'm pregnant!") chances are it's a lie (and if it's not, they just have to learn to pick better days to announce such things), but when it comes to news they're reporting ("Warner Brothers pushed back the Harry Potter date AGAIN!") there's really no knowing, and then you have to go look it up before saying anything (yes, Hannah, I had to do this.) You figure it's most likely a joke, but if Person In Question is reacting just the way they would if it were true...you don't know.

But today is also a couple other things. It's the start of Script Frenzy, for one. So, readers: are you participating in that, what's your script about, and how's it coming?


Today is also the first day of BEDA (Blog Every Day in April). I'm not officially participating in this event either, mainly because it isn't that impressive of a feat for me since I blog almost every day anyway, so I'm not going to bother committing to it. However, I'm glad some people do, because it means there are lots more lovely posts waiting for me in my Google Reader every day.


And speaking of BEDA, and my last post, and the interview with Alan Lastufka...here's the link to Alan's first BEDA post which is basically his take on the same thing Kenny and I have been talking about, although I don't think he reads either of us.

In Which I Am A Wave Rather Than A Particle

"People, even adults, rarely do what they are told to do if they don't actually want to do the right thing. And many of our thoughts and emotions that are going on in parallel are in complete conflict with each other and we just hope through repeated training that the right ones win out and suppress the other ones." - My dad


"People alive are better than people not alive." -Craig Benzine


Note: This post is tagged "just ignore me." Please feel free to do so. :)


Here's a cool site my grandma sent me the link for. It simply gives you a new, interesting word every day. Today's is "waithood" - the period after college in which things are put on hold until a job and therefore also money can be obtained. Word Spy is somewhere between Urban Dictionary and Webster's in terms of content.


This morning I wrote the beginning of a song, conjugated a bunch of Latin verbs, finished early which then enabled me to send the song off to rock4ever95 and to read Kenny's most recent blogpost, all before 9 a.m. That is what I call a productive morning. That's also what I call utilizing the stagnant minutes during 1st period to the max.


Upon reading aforementioned post, I started to laugh, because it's a much more general, eloquent version of what I meant to write about on here today. So I will take that (which you should go read, unless you are Kenny, in which case you should continue) and run.


He talks about how the self is in a constant state of flux, and speculates on whether or not we can be held accountable for something a past version of us did if we are now totally different people who don't condone the action at all. Personally, I very much hope we can't be held accountable, because I've done some things that I'm rather ashamed of/wish I hadn't. But I suppose that's normal.


I've written on here before about how I don't want to suddenly become an adult, completely separate from my teenage self. I don't want to perpetuate the "no one understands me" stereotype. I want to remember what it's like.


But that makes it sound like I want to remain completely the same, which isn't true either. Hopefully I will become a better person. Hopefully I will do less things that I'll later regret, and learn from those that I do without dwelling on them too much. Hopefully the person I will become will be more awesome than the person I am now, etc. etc. etc.


But the thing is, I am this person right now, and I rather value this identity, because if I'm not me, then I'm some form of dead (since I would consider being someone else the demise of that which is "me."). It's a paradox: I want to change and become better, but I want to hold onto that which is currently me, mainly because fundamental change is freaking scary.


So how do I attempt to solve this? I blog, and I journal, and I write, and I save keepsakes and other items simply to trigger memories. (Yet I hate having my picture taken-- why is that?)
And that's partially why I'm as open as I am on here, even though it sometimes worries me-- those archives on the right hold 374 ever so slightly different versions of me.
Weird thought, yes?


Which brings me to less of me rambling about what I want to talk about, and more of me talking to you:


Hi. Pleased to meet you. Reading a blog like this, I think and hope, is a unique experience to watch a journey. Maybe it's an interesting one, and maybe I'm boring and overly-verbose and you just haven't bothered to un-follow, but hey. This is a different kind of story than the ones people tend to read and write in novels. It's certainly not one that would ever be classified as "narrative," but it's a story nonetheless.