i'll be laughing at your silly little jokes

i make lists all the time. it's probably because i'd forget everything if i didn't write it down. i make lists of things i need to get done for school, things to do before i die, books to read, movies to watch, etc. so it seems appropriate for me to make lists of things on my blog, right?
a list of things i've been thinking about in the past sixty minutes
1) i was researching some intense jazz clarineting on youtube. i found this clarinet solo in the song "beautiful love." the guy playing is pretty talented, and i'm pretty sure he's only in high school.
2)at the moment i'm listening to noah and the whale. i'm a pretty big fan. it's folk, so it's pretty focused on the vocals. they have cute lyrics. and their songs are quite catchy.
3) i need to finish my other homework, too. i had too much homework today to hang out with my friend berniece and play scrabble, which is a shame.
4) i found out i can't go to honduras this summer. i applied to do this internship at an orphanage outside of tegucigalpa. they're having some leadership problems or something, so they're not having an interns. i'm upset about it, but hopefully it'll work out for next summer. now i'm wondering what i'll be doing this summer now that i won't be in honduras for a month.
5) i like daffodils.
6) i'm also wishing i didn't have to take ap exams.
7) seahorses are neat. and apparently they hold tails during courtship, which makes me laugh. they're also used in chinese herbology.
8) i want to have a pet duck someday. that would be really cool.i would name it tilly.
9) it'd be really fun to speak swahili. i've met people who speak it, and it sounds cool. elephant in swahili is tembo or ndovu
11)when i was little i had this picture book by remy charlip called Arm in Arm (A Collection of Connections, Endless Tales, Reiterations, and other Echolalia). it was just a book filled with random pictures and phrases. it made me want to be a picture book writer.
12) i like words that look like their definition. for instance: scofflaw, killjoy, layabout, fussbudget, smellfungus, etc.

a franciscan friar

when you're asking cheesy questions about people, the first one that's usually asked is "what's your favourite colour?" i never know what to say to this. it seems weird to actually prefer one color over all others, because you wouldn't want everything that color. pigs shouldn't be yellow, dirt shouldn't be purple, and no one would want to look at a red sky all the time. also, a lot of the colors i really like aren't well captured in things like fabrics or paints. they can only be enjoyed in person. like the color of clouds right before it's going to rain, and the color of grass in the morning. i especially love that color of clouds. it's not my favorite, but it's definitely great. i've never really liked sunny days. i usually find rain happier, for some reason. it seems like there's a lot more to be happy about when it's raining, for some reason. anyways, i guess i associate gray with happy things. and it kind of bothers me when people think of grey as a sad thing. i looked it up in the dictionary, and even mr. webster disagrees with me. "a: lacking cheer or brightness in mood, outlook, style, or flavor; also: dismal, gloomy b: prosaically ordinary: dull, uninteresting." i don't really understand what's so happy about sunny days.

why i would like to be seven again

1) school isn't very intense when you're seven. i mostly read books during school, and i definitely didn't have to worry about ap exams and colleges and such.
2) you have an excuse for being immature. you can say stupid stuff and do stupid things and get away with it because you're seven and just a little kid.
3) you still have recess.
4) you don't know about all the bad things in the world (well, at least, i didn't know about anything) you can be innocent and optimistic.
5) everyone is friends with everyone when you're little, and people don't worry about cliques and other stupid things.
6) you don't have to think about impressing people
7) boys have cooties, and therefore do not cause distress
8) people don't have high expectations of you, and they're just happy when you brush your hair and can add numbers well.

not a lovely night

so ms. fleer asked me to play bass clarinet in pit for the musical cinderella. i was all excited, because i haven't done pit before, and i thought it'd be interesting. it's interesting, i guess, but not the kind i was expecting. the music is really repetitive, and it gets stuck in my head for hours on end. ten minutes ago i saw youuuuuuuu. the prince is giving a ball! impossible, for a plain country bumpkin and a prince to join in maaaarriage. yeah. and the lyrics aren't even cool. they're cheesy and lame. the only cool part about the musical is that they have a remote control pumpkin (a pumpkin on a remote control car). oh, and the costumes are entertaining to look at. besides these two things, it's pretty terrible. it's weird, because i really love music, and pretty much hate this musical. the characters aren't well-developed, and their dialogue is really predictable. and the prince is a total ditz. in the disney version, the prince doesn't say much, so he doesn't have a chance to seem stupid. oh, and what is the lesson of this musical? pretty people are happier. i'm really glad lots of small children will come and get this pounded in their head. cinderella and the prince don't ever have an actual conversation. so three cheers for people that are attractive and shallow.

a dead bird

i went to chicago on friday. i have to say it was a pretty good time.

so there's a reflective sculpture thingy in millenium park. i can't remember what the real name for it is, but apparently people call it the bean. anyways, we were walking around it, and we noticed these girls screaming. a bird had run into it, and was dead on the ground. i found the whole thing pretty hilarious. i think that might make me a morbid person, but whatever. we went to the art museum after that, and i think that was the fastest i've ever gone through a museum. i'm a really big fan of art museums, so there was a bunch of stuff i wanted to see. we only had twenty minutes after the tour to look at whatever we wanted, so i had to quickly weave my way through the museum to find the paintings. the painting to the right is actually enormous. we have a coffee mug with this painting, so i've always wanted to see the real thing. i also saw some jackson pollock stuff, which was pretty exciting for me. there were a few other paintings i didn't have time to see, so i'd kind of like to go back some day. after the musem we went to this spanish restaurant, which was all right. i was too afraid to eat the octopus. the suction cups were still on the tentacles! we left after the restaurant. the bus ride home was a lot longer than the bus ride to chicago, and i eventually had nothing to do. this caused me to play pokemon for way too long. i guess i still don't understand the appeal of that game. and what kind of name is wigglytank?

paris, je t'aime

shockingly, this movie was called paris je t'aime. (paris, i love you). it was a fantastic movie. all these directors made short films, about five to ten minutes long, and they put them all together to make one movie. you don't really get the feeling that all of the films are connected until the very end. you're left with a satisfying feeling that all is right with the world, and anything that might not be completely right has the chance to get that way. some of the films are funny, some are sad, some are full of hope, and all of them have something good to get out of them.

one of my favorite segments was about a blind guy and girl that fall in love. i suppose i shouldn't say exactly what happens, but it has a montage of how they met, and the progression of their relationship, and there are some really cool shots in it.

one that i found really funny was this mostly silent segment. it's a boy describing how his mime parents met in jail and fell in love. it has a very surrealistic, cartoonish feel to it, which makes it really entertaining.

another one was about a couple walking around in a parisian cemetery. they get really mad at each other, and the guy some how gets knocked out, and the ghost of oscar wilde helps him get back together with the girl. it caught me completely off guard, because most of the other films are semi-realistic.

i need to work on my movie reviewing skills. but this movie was good. go watch it.

some optimism

i love the world. i really do. i mean, i know there are some majorly terrible things in the world, but it has some redeeming qualities.

i heard this quote once from a guy that did a lot of traveling. he was often asked how he made conversation with people in other countries, as they led such different lifestyles than he did. this is what he said: "He may not have a 50 inch plasma screen tv, but we both have a mother." everyone has a mom. brilliant, i know. but seriously, isn't that amazing? you and any one of the other six billion people in the world could talk about your mothers together (assuming you know the same language, but whatever). this guy also said he carried pictures around of his family while he traveled just in case. so the next time you're in another country trying to make small talk, just take out a picture of your mother.

there are a bunch of cheesy quotes about how "laughter is the language everyone knows" or something. i actually hate those kinds of quotes, but this one is true. i've taken care of kids that have only spoken one language, not always english, and i've found this quote to be true. all it takes is a funny face and they laugh. i think it's kind of funny that funny faces are universal, too. everyone thinks it's funny when you cross your eyes.

the moon. everyone in the world looks up to the same moon at night. we may see different stars, but we all see the moon. when i look out my window at night and see the moon, there's something comforting about knowing that at that exact moment there are millions of people (in time zones close to mine) looking up at the same thing.

i think pretty much everyone loves music. i mean, it may not sound the music we're used to, but there's music everywhere. something about it runs through our veins and we can't get enough of it.

i suppose i tend to be more realistic about things, but sometimes i just think about things like that and it makes me happy to be alive.

learning how to die

i went to texas for spring break, mostly because my grandparents live in a retirement home in abilene. the retirement home is filled with old people that love to see young people walking around in it. everyday i walked by to my grandparents apartment, i would see these two small old ladies playing rummikub. they always smiled, and once asked if i wanted to play, but i never had time. finally, the day before we were going to leave, i went and played with them. i had played a couple times before, but i didn't remember many of the rules. whenever i asked a question like "so, what's the goal of this game? how do you win?" they would either not say anything, or laugh and say "oh! haha! it's so much fun!" one of the ladies, lorine, had very thick glasses, and burped through out the whole game. these weren't small, lady-like burps. they were enormous frog-like belches. marie, the other lady, acted like they didn't happen, so i decided to also. marie had a hearing aid that she liked to fiddle with. she would turn a knob, and a very high pitched sound would errupt from her vicinity. apparently neither she nor lorine noticed or were bothered by this, but i had a hard time dealing with the sound. after a few minutes of playing, i decided to ask them some questions. i asked marie "so, have you always lived in texas?" she just answered with a laugh "oh no! haha! i was a gypsy! everywhere was home!" none of their responses gave me straight answers, but it was kind of fun that way. it's not everyday i get to play rummikub with old ladies that give me cryptic answers to questions. if you're not familiar with rummikub, you go around in a circle to take turns. lorine always went when it wasn't her turn, and marie seemed to have a short temper with it. "LORINE! it's NOT your TURN!" lorine would answer with a mumble, and five seconds later, both would be in good spirits once again. i spent most of my time with them laughing. it wasn't mean laughing, just laughing because of how out of the ordinary the experience was for me. i've spent a fair amount of time around old people, but they weren't usually like marie and lorine. at about 9:30, it was their bedtime. we said our goodnights, and they told me we could play the next time i came. it was odd, though. usually when someone tells me something like that, i assume it will happen. i don't usually have to worry about whether or not they're going to die in the next six months or so before we can actually do something. and then i thought, who will marie play rummikub with if lorine dies tomorrow? she'll just sit at that table alone, and she won't even have anyone to yell at and ignore their burps.