A Temporary Title

Based on an argument Sky and I are having:


Which is a better date movie?
a) Love Actually
b) Fight Club

Which is a gayer movie?
a) Brokeback Mountain
b) Fight Club

Which movie has more dogs?
a) Must Love Dogs
b) Fight Club

Which movie has less Brad Pitt?
a) Spy Kids 2
b) Fight Club

Which movie has more testosterone?
a) Reservoir Dogs
b) Fight Club


Vote away, dear sporadic readers.

(By the way, if your answers to all of the above were "b", then you win a pony.)

Thank you so much, David! You're the awesomest!

Okay, I went camping this week. I scaled mountains and cliffs and swam in icy-cold rivers and sat around campfires playing guitar. I will write more about the camping aspect when I get my pictures together, because I have stories to tell. However, at the moment I feel a more pressing urge to recount this year's International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Out of the entire camp (70 or so people, not counting camp staff) I was one of two people who had heard of International Talk Like A Pirate Day. This lent itself to a small, perfect moment during breakfast.

I was not having a good morning. I had arrived at the mess hall too late and thus had to sit at a table with people whom I did not know and converse awkwardly with said people. Upon getting out of bed I greeted my cabin-mates with "Avast, ye scurvy bilgerats!", and with every person who gave me a strange look or said "Did you just say 'yarr'?" I slowly realized that my schoolmates are terribly unenlightened. As I stood in line for breakfast, the drama teacher drifted past, quietly singing "We massacre Indians and kill little boys..."

In retrospect, it wasn't that funny. Still, it made me happy. The hike that day KILLED ME. DEAD. So dead, in fact, that I used proper English for the rest of the day. Ah, well.

Here's a bit of history from the dorm in which I now live.

I got back from Comic-Con a few hours ago. I'm composing a report; I was actually planning to blog but the hotel we were staying at did not have any Internet access whatsoever and the novelty of wardriving was wearing off for Dad and Kai. Anyway, I'm exhausted and I need to sleep. Here's Joss Whedon.

Wardriving around San Diego Old Town. I am INTOXICATED WITH THE GLORY and surrounded by a rosy glow. I love life.

Okay, this post was supposed to be finished yesterday but I was up until the wee hours of the morning dyeing my hair. There's my excuse. Here's my post.

( In which I go to Disneyland with the McClouds, the Jacobs-Hinrichers and their exchange students, the Jonokuchis, Crystal, and Matt. )

( In which Sky and I dive teethfirst into the weird world of vegan cooking )

[Writing this on the new MacBook, which is almost blindingly shiny and pretty.]

So, we went to Disneyland on Monday. On Sunday we drove out to Anaheim and went to the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum, which was dark, crowded, and loud. (The earthquake simulator was cool, though!) Then we went back to the hotel, argued about which movie to watch, and decided to read Coraline instead.

On Monday we got up bright and early to go to Disneyland, where we met relatives who were visiting from Hawaii for a soccer tournament. The new submarine ride was opening, but this momentous event didn't seem to have any particular effect on the volume of the crowds there, except for the huge number of people who were standing in front of a rock in Tomorrowland on which a bunch of very official-looking news cameras were set up. I found out that only Splash Mountain does single-rider passes, which made me rather sad as I love single-rider passes. Nevertheless, I ended up spending an hour and a half in the Splash Mountain line with five eight-year-olds who ceaselessly demanded to know the exact number of bumps and drops in each ride, only to end up thoroughly soaked and very, very cold. Oh, and I also discovered the wonder of a Space Mountain Fastpass. Yay for Space Mountain Fastpasses.

I fell asleep on the way home and dreamt of singing snakes and slightly menacing ostriches*. Dad was listening to a Bob Dylan tape and I must have rearranged the lyrics in my sleep because I woke up wondering why he had stopped singing about seatbelts. Disney withdrawal tends to be extremely unsettling.


*they might have been ducks, but either way, oh god I may never ride Splash Mountain again

Hastily taken so as to not raise the suspicions of others at the toy store, though the fact that I was giggling incessantly probably didn't help.

Thacher: rejected. (I have a feeling that it was the crappy essays. Also, the admissions officer seemed iffy during the interview when I mentioned that I skipped seventh grade.)


Cate: accepted. (YAY!)


Whew. At least I don't have to choose.

Hey, I'm [EDIT 3-13-07: a 12-year-old with a fast clock] now!

I am finished with the applications! All of them! They're in the mail and I don't have to worry about them until March. Yay!



(16 days until I turn 13...)

notevenjonny has a very cool photoset. A scenic garden, me at my dorkiest*, and Diet Coke & Mentos, all at five frames per second.

*Well, you try getting a bunch of Mentos from a wide paper tube to a narrow bottle all at the same time, in the rain, while being yelled at from across the lawn! I can think of numerous ways that I could have done so more efficiently now. Oh well.

So, I was planning to fence today, but the Allergies From Hell are back and they are making me miserable.


On the other hand, I have found that when I'm sick, my singing voice sounds not entirely unlike Kim Deal's.

(I wrote some of this post on the plane and most of it right now, because I have been tired and insanely busy. [Insanely busy, that is, in a boring, too-many-essays-to-write sort of way.])
(I forgot to post this to mccloudtour, so here it is!)

We were at Disney World for five days. On the first day we went to Animal Kingdom. On the second day (I think) we went to the Magic Kingdom with Sara and Kennan. On the third day we went to MGM Studios, and the fourth and fifth days were Epcot. I was very proud of myself on Sunday, because I went on the Tower of Terror twice without going into shock. The last time I rode it, I was ten and not a Twilight Zone fan and completely unprepared for the ride, and I ended up screaming hysterically throughout the entire ride, then not being able to talk for two hours.
The only attraction that I actually disliked was the Imagination pavilion at Epcot. Yes, the one starring Eric Idle and the obnoxious purple dragon-y thing. The Tiki Room was also sort of terrible in an over-the-top, annoyingly self-referential way. I very much prefer the original at Disneyland. I loved most of the other attractions, though, for their differences and similarities to Disneyland and the fact that some are lifted straight from the California parks. (For example: Soarin’ Over California. Except in World, it’s called Soarin’, and the announcer’s mouth moves a little bit after he says “Soarin’” right where “Over California” should go, and the ride is exactly the same. The dinosaur dark ride at Animal Kingdom was apparently exactly the same as Indiana Jones in California, which explains why it was so dark.) Mission: Space was extremely suspenseful (though most of the suspense was caused by the pre-show saying things like “Closing your eyes will disorient you and cause you to throw up, and you may feel nauseous for several weeks afterwards, and if you find that your vision is permanently blurred after the ride it’s not our fault, and if all your bones snap like twigs it’s not our fault, and if you have a heart attack and die it’s not our fault, for you are a voluntary occupant of our experimental human centrifuge even though you’re completely strapped in now and there’s no way out.”), it’s a small world was bizarre and nightmarish (this was actually the first time I’d noticed that it is bizarre and nightmarish—I have a tendency to take the bizarre for granted), the ride/show starring Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Nye was just bizarre, and Everest (one of the new rides at Animal Kingdom) was like a cross between the Matterhorn and Splash Mountain (without furry singing animatronics).

I know there is more about Disney World that I forgot to add, but I need to start sleeping regularly because the lack of sleep is starting to catch up to me. So, to the McLeods, thanks for taking me to Disney World and letting me join the tour and stuff and everything! I also have a legitimate reason to visit again soon: Sky’s Sims2 CD is still in my CD drive.


P.S. Winter is the cutest living creature on the planet. Really.

P.P.S. POST, SKY, POST!

P.P.P.S. This post shall be edited, polished, and fleshed out tomorrow. I shall also post a photoset to Flickr in the not-too-distant future.

For the sake of my sanity, I am going to assume from now on that the entire twisted, hypocritical, irrational epic that is Pat Robertson is merely a vast Dadaist conspiracy concocted by a team of guerilla artists who pass the project on to their children as they themselves grow old. And Pat Robertson himself is a sock puppet.

Oh, the world seems so much brighter now.

Lately I have been unusually devoid of actual Holiday Spirit. I first started to notice the Holiday Spirit's gradual dissipation around 2004, and by now most of the Seasonal Corporate Bonanza known as Christmas fails to elicit any warm, fuzzy feelings. Pity. I do enjoy Christmas lights and apple cider, though. And presents!

Fun stuff arrived in the mail today--new issues of Wired and Utne Reader, and the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy TV series from Netflix. Headline from the cover of the Utne Reader: "Want To Connect? Crush Your BlackBerry". YES!

I am off to go be analog now. If you choose to stay digital for now, read this and prepare yourself for next year. Onward, Culture Warriors!