It Was On

And you weren't there, were you? I looked for you; don't think you can say you were standing in the back.
We were victorious tonight, of course, despite your lack of support. Both men and women showed their bear-like ability to float in a proud fashion. A big shout out goes to Edwin Letterman for showing up in Pilot, pink Duke shirt and all. Rock on Edwin, I'm gonna come to one of your basketball games now.

It's On

Oh, it's on now.
Or rather, it will be on tommorow.
It, in this case, is a swim meet between Mount Airy, East Surry, and the formerly dreaded Elkin. It's tommorow at six o'clock at the Armfield Center in Pilot Mountain. You, of course, will be there, right?
Alright, I'm the first to admit that swimming lacks the nuances of the more mainstream sports, but it's still sort of exciting and I'm guessing most of you don't pick up on most nuances anyway. So come on people, come support us! I'll give you three good reasons to come see this meet:
1) High-quality competition
These three teams should be the three best in the conference this year, and that means the swimmers will all be going really really fast. Now I remember watching a swim meet once and thinking to myself that the people really didn't look like they were going very fast at all. Well, as it turns out, it's harder to swim than it is to run, so trust me; though it may not look like things are moving very quickly, they are. Anyway, this meet determines the pecking order in the conference this year, and as all three teams are located within twenty minutes of Pilot, there should be quite a cheering section. You don't want to be left out, do you?
2) Very tight bathing suits
On the swimmers, that is (nobody wants to see some of the spectators in spandex). Now I am the first to admit that the tight male bathing suit is an abomination that should be removed from the face of the earth, and the female form isn't particularly flattered by speedos either, but people look really funny in these suckers. Not quite as funny as the singlets wrestlers don, but still, pretty funny. Come to the meet to laugh, stay to cheer; I don't care, just come.
3) It's the safest you'll ever be around water
You probably haven't thought about this, but it's true. There is no other situation that I know of where, should you fall into a large body of water, you have no fewer than sixty people both willing and capable of rescuing you. So go ahead and eat fifteen minutes or less before you come; if you cramp up, we've got you covered.
Of course, there are more than three reasons to come see the meet tommorow, those are just the first that came to my mind. I don't care why you come tommorow; I just care that you come. I'll give you a cookie if you do.

A Really Random Philosophical Musing

Megan Carriker did a report a while back in history on Carl Jung, a Freud collaborater and pioneer of psychology (she was going to do one on Freud, but I got to him first). Aunt Anne gave me a book by Jung a while back (along with several others of great value to me, which, consequently, I have yet to return to her) and I thought I'd give it to Megan for her to read over. Then it occured to me that I've never read it, so I opened up Modern Man in Search of a Soul tonight and gave it a looksy.
I didn't get into much of the book's stuff (of which there is a great, great deal) but I did enjoy a short passage on the "modern" man. I won't go into the details (maybe because I don't really understand them myself) but I will share an idea that I found interesting, fascinating, terrifying, and exciting all at the same time:
"Now there is the danger that consciousness of the present may lead to an elation based upon illusion: the illusion, namely, that we are the culmination of the history of mankind, the fulfilment and the end-product of countless centuries. If we grant this, we should understand that it is no more than the proud acknowledgement of our destitution: we are also the disappointment of the hopes and expectations of the ages. Think of nearly two thousand years of Christian ideals followed, instead of by the return of the Messiah and the heavenly millenium, by the World War among Christian nations, and its barbed wire and poison gas. What a catastrophe in heaven and earth! In the face of such a picture we may well grow humble again."
I don't know why this struck me so, or whether or not it may be of any use to you whatsoever, but I do know that it has sparked a debate in my head that won't quickly go away. Let me know your thoughts if you'd like to help settle the debate.

Late night food and music

I get hungry around 11:30 at night pretty much every day. Doesn't matter if I had a large dinner, small dinner, or no dinner at all, it's just gonna happen. Tonight I got a tremendous craving for Taco Bell (whether it was the endless ads on tv or the fact that this is the one-week aniversary of a similar craving I had last week in Raleigh, no ones knows), and decided to go get me some tacos.
I got to Taco Bell and ordered my usual meal, only to be informed, "Um, sorry, we're out of meat. What else can I get you?" You're out of meat?! You're a Taco Bell, what else do you serve? When you run out of meat, isn't it pretty much time to close up shop and call it a night?
I drove on and found that McDonald's is now open 24 hours a day. I ordered a burger, which took about ten minutes to make, and opened the box to find that the geniuses who had assembled my sandwich had given me two top halves of a bun. Classic. Nevertheless, I was satisfied, and I returned home. On the way I turned on the radio (having accidentally left my iPod in the house), and suddenly I remembered why I never listen to the radio anymore.
Late night music on the radio is out of control. DJs must lose their minds at about 10:45. Upon leaving my driveway tonight, I was greeted by La Bamba coming from my speakers. Dance With Me followed shortly thereafter, as several stations that I usually enjoy decided to become either oldies or disco stations, or both. The stations that retained their usual genres had even more troubling trends. I heard four songs by Sugar Ray during my ride. Apparently it's against the law to play any song after 11:00 pm without remixing it first. Who Got the Hooch was played after somebody cut everything out of the song except for a drum set and the lead singer. Now THAT's what I call music! Everything, everything has a dance beat at this hour including songs that have no business having one, like Green Day's Wake Me Up When September Ends. Even songs that already have a dance beat, in this case Outkast's The Way You Move, get retooled, even if it means adding a tambourine or a cowbell where it doesn't belong.
People, we can do better. Some songs should be left alone (as in not tampered with, i.e. When September Ends) and others should be really left alone (as in never played on the radio again. I'm looking at you, Mr. McGrath).

Fancy Hotels

My journalism class went to Durham a coupla days ago for an Ethics and Leadership Conference (don't ask), and because Durham is a few hours' drive from Mt Airy, we spent the night in a hotel, namely, the Marriott. Now I know I am not exactly a world traveler, and I might sound yokel-ish to some of you, but I consider this particular hotel to be fancy-schmancy.
Fancy hotels suck. Or at least they suck if you're like me. Consider the "benefits": room service, expensive coffee in your room, possible internet access, fitness centers, and gourmet dining in the lobby. I don't take advantage of any of them. This particular hotel also featured optional internet access on the television screen, complete with a remote controlled keyboard. By all accounts, this place was high class.
And yet it was all wasted on me. The things I like about hotels (people making your bed for you, free towels, etc.) come standard in most any place of lodging. For all its perks, the Marriott didn't even have Comedy Central! A bottle of Evian is placed in every room, but I hate Evian and they charge you four bucks if you drink it. Breakfast downstairs is not, I repeat, NOT complimentary. In fact, the buffet costs ten bucks. This includes omelettes made to order by a cool African dude with a British accent, and I did enjoy talking to the guy, but it was really a waste. I took my eggs scrambled, that's all, and ended up eating little more than I would've gotten from the continental breakfast at Hampton Inn.
I know many people enjoy fine dining and five-star hotels, but I've come to the conclusion that middle-class lodgings suit me better. Much crappier places than the Marriott at least offer HBO. Besides, can the Marriott match Holiday Inn Express, which apparantly inspired some dude in a towel to balance the federal budget? I rest my case. For people like me, anyway, the Hampton Inns of the world are simply superior, or at least cheaper.
The beds were really, really comfy though.

Swimming

So I just got back from my first swim meet of the season and I thought I'd share a few thoughts.
1) Our pool sucks:
It's amazing. Hot, smelly, sandy at the bottom (no word yet on why) and located in the loudest room I've ever been in. We're hosting the conference meet this year; Lord help us.
2) I am freaking slow:
I've always known this, but it kinda hit home tonight. I swam the 500 freestyle only twice last year, never by choice, and I just assumed that, given practice, I'd excel at it. I certainly thought I could beat Gordon, but low and behold he topped me by 14 seconds. He also beat me at the 50 freestyle (an event I was put in by mistake), though by a much, much smaller margin.
3) But not THAT slow:
I'm really getting better, I think. My times are about where they were at the end of last season, which means similar improvement over the course of the season should make me competitive. I have to admit, I got my competitive juices flowing tonight. Too bad most of these were wasted because.....
4) North Surry is a disgrace to humanity:
In almost all capacities, but especially so in swimming. It took about six events for a single NS swimmer to finish ahead of a single MA swimmer, often with about four MA swimmers in each heat. They had three or four people quit mid-race: just up and stopped swimming. They also had issues keeping their caps on. I think I belong on NS's team; I'd be competitive over there.
That's it for now, I've gotta do a coupla other things. Stay tuned for more commentary on a sport which, really, is the single most boring activity to talk about ever.
It's still fun to do, though.

Essays

I hate them. I hate everything about them. I hate their length-too long to be easy to read, too short to actually contain in-depth information. I hate the way they always have this kind of introductory paragraph. I hate the formulaic way they're always constructed.
And yet there's no escaping them. As of this moment, I've written eleven essays in the past six days (twelve if you count the one I'm writing right now). Wake Forest requires seven, count 'em, seven essays for their general admission application alone. Throw in the three catagories of scholarships I'm applying for, and I have fourteen essays to write for that illustrious institution. Davidson is next; I can't wait.
How do you write twelve essays in six days? You don't; you write about three and a half. The rest you just recycle from the essays you've already written, like thus:
Introductory paragraphs are all just generealized restatements of the prompt, so just change the syntax of what they ask you and you're in pretty good shape. Start things off with "Webster's dictionary defines ___ as..."; it's cleary the easiest and cheapest opening of all time. Be sure to throw in your thesis toward the end of that paragraph, with the requisite three subheadings (why is it that every distinguished piece of writing has three, and exactly three, subheadings?), and some kind of awkward transition to the beginning of the body.
The body of the paper is supposed to contain the substance, but substance is all in the eyes of the beholder. Just be sure to never say exactly what you mean; "It is imperative that, through the arrangement of awkward syntactical elements and careful use of diction, you dissuade any would-be interpreters of your prose from seriously attempting the considerable task of diving the ture meaning on the page." Ending deceptive sentences like that one with plain word choices, (i.e. "on the page") will wake up the reader and convince them that you are a sophisticated writer who can also be blunt when needed, rather than a pompous ass that has no real point.
Another excellent technique in writing the body of your paragraph is employing the copy and paste functions on your word processor. For example, I was asked to write an essay with the prompt, "Please give us a brief chapter from your autobiography." I did just that; I copied an actual entry from the autobiography we were required to write in freshman english.
Conclusions are, by their nature, awkward, so keep them brief. This is an excellent time to restate your thesis, pretty much word-for-word, from paragraph 1. By now any sane reader will have lost all cognisence of what's going on, so this is a good time to say things unrelated to the topic like, "Man, I'm hungry," or, "No fat chicks!" All that's left is a statement that, while not technically related in any way to what's going on, sounds deep, insightful and conclusive. Surely this will serve as a guide that, through dilligent use, will prove helpful in the future.

The last couple of days

It's been awhile since last I posted (except for the Colbert/McElreath thing which I wrote earlier), so I thought it might be time to sum up the last few days around here.
First of all, I gave blood wednesday. Bleeding is not very hard for most folks, but for some reason it took me 35 minutes to fill the bag up. My poor nurse kept fidgiting with the needle, assuming she was doing something wrong, but it was no use. I hope this means that any future severing of my arteries and veins will produce similar results. A guy passed out shortly before I finished giving, so the nurses made me promise to eat and drink and sit for fifteen minutes before returning to class. In fact, they gave me an escort, though the girl was approximately 5'2" and couldn't have supported me anyway. I was about six steps out of the chair, almost to the oh-so-appealing snack table, when a woman burst into the gym and screamed, "Everybody out of the building: NOW!"
That's right kiddies: we had a bomb threat. Now I had just been instructed to eat and sit for fifteen minutes, and I was tantilizingly close to the goodies, so it was hard to know exactly which order I should follow. My escort, ever faithful, grabbed a drink and a biscuit and off we went to the football stadium. I learned later that, because I had not finished early enough for my blood to be properly labeled and boxed, my blood was simply thrown away. The joke wasn't funny anymore.
The other significant piece of news is that last night I got my state championship ring. The team received the hardware at halftime of the football game, which I had thought would be exciting until I found out that we were only a warm-up act for the middle school football team, who won the conference this year. It was an excellent reminder of what is considered important in Mount Airy. Despite my reservations, the ring is shiny and mine, and I'm already deciding what I want my NEXT ring to look like.
Cornhuskin' was this weekend at Meredith, and while I was sad to miss Jennie's big night, I was proud of her class' victory. Crystal enjoyed the evening, as far as I can tell anyway, and the freshmen performed well (well, they came in last. But hey, they're freshmen).

Colbert vs McElreath

VS

Stephen Colbert just informed me that he is from Charleston, SC. I had an instructor at GSE this summer from Charleston, and now that I think about it, they look a lot alike. Is it possible that Stephen Colbert is actually just the alterego of the mild mannered social studies teacher Michael McElreath? You be the judge.
Wait a second, Colbert wears glasses. Nevermind.

Clothing Labels

I'm discussing Meredith's upcoming White Iris Ball with Crystal, and we're running into some difficulty. Apparently, the language describing dress at dances is unclear to some of you, so I'll help you out.
There are three types of dress codes for dances
1) Casual- the name implies what you would normally wear, but this is misleading, because the people who make these labels shop exclusively at J Crew. This label means somewhat-nice clothing, like polo shirts and snappy sweaters. Basically, if you were it to church (and it doesn't include a tie), you're good to go.
2) Semi-formal- a step up from casual. For you old-schoolers who wear shirt-and-tie to church, this means church clothes. For the rest of us this means the rarely used clothing-the kind you buy for one occasion and never wear for year so that it no longer fits. In other words, shirt and tie.
3) Formal- the dreaded tuxedo level. Now I'm a big fan of tux style, but not so much on the money required to rent or (Lord forbid) own one. We're talking prom/weddings here.
I hope this will aid you all in your communication issues.