ASMW

Hey, guys. I have a story to tell, and it's all completely true, no exaggeration. While you're reading, listen to this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu71EAdnjQ0&feature=fvw So here goes.

Northampton highschool, having a great academic team, recently went to As Schools Match Wits, the show where schools match wits. My older brother happens to be on the team and is incredibly good at answering the questions given.

So my family and I all went to the studio, or at least that was the initial plan. But as my family pulled up to my school, I reached for a traffic light button to cross across to them. As I pulled away from the button, I realized that what I had thought to be a static shock to the finger had a bug sticking out of it.

A bee.

I wanted to scream, but I couldn't. I could feel the poison entering my body as I squeezed my pinky. Without thinking, I crossed the street, not checking to see if the light was green, or even if I was going the right way. In the end, my older brother came across and picked me up, but by that time my hand was numb.

We were running a little late. My older brother tried to call his friend on the team, but she wasn't answering.

Eventually, when my mother saw that I was clutching my hurt hand in the other, she decided to call my uncle, who was also coming, and tell him to bring some baking soda.

At this point, my older brother had to get dressed, and he realized that he didn't know how to put a tie on. As my mother frantically read the instructions off of MapQuest and wished that we had a GPS, my little brother tried to work out how to make the knot. I reflected on all of those times I had ignored it when Google offered me the instructions and cursed my past self.

A few years back, my father taught me to tie a tie, but I only remembered one step. I took the tie from my little brother, closed my eyes, (No exaggerations--maybe I just knew that I'd be writing about it later.) and carefully twisted. I was almost there--I opened my eyes again--and looked at the knot. It was lopsided, with one loose "string" hanging off to the side. I pondered for a moment and then stuck the loose bit through the tie part. (If you've ever tied a tie, you know what I mean.)

I handed the tie back to my brother and winced as I squeezed my pinky shut.

Suddenly my older brother's phone rang! We all listened for a second, and then he grabbed it and started talking.

"Is that you?" he paused. "Yes! We'll be running a little late. What are you all doing now?"

I heard his friend respond with "Waiting for you guys."

"Ah. Yes, of course." He sighed. "Okay, well we're almost there. Can you guys just tell the people with the TV show that we're almost there?"

"Ten minutes away," my mother said.

"We're ten minutes away!" He paused. "Mhmm... okay... alright, see you then!"

We kept on driving, and that is where the drama ends. We met with the producer, a friendly man named... Rob, I think...

I can't reveal who won, (Even though this blog is completely unread) but I can say that Northampton did their best, and that they either won or lost with honor. The episode airs APRIL 28TH, 2010 AT 7:30

The New One

How to envision an invention in 500 words!

Do your friends constantly tease you for your lack of originality? If you answered yes, then you are most likely a plagiarizing slob. Congratulations! You have completed step one of successfully envisioning an invention!

The process of envisioning an invention starts simply with watching sci fi movies—unpopular ones. These are filled with cool looking inventions that need inventing. “But that’s plagiarism!” you may shout. Okay, so then send the following people to jail:

1. Steve Jobs

2. Bill Gates

3. Tim Berners Lee

4. Michael Dell

5. Mike Lazaridis

6. ETC.

I honestly don’t think any of these people did much except watch sci fi as children, perhaps pausing for the occasional game of D & D or Final Fantasy. So if you’re not okay with plagiarism, then maybe building and marketing just aren’t for you.

Okay, so you have your own idea. Now think about it, improve it in your mind. For example, R2D2 is cool, but—what’s this?—R2D2 with an umbrella! R2D2 just got R2D-Pwnd!

Step three is making the invention more you-esque—take away an aspect of it, like R2D2’s being a robot. Now it’s just a cylinder with an umbrella! Still awesome, still original. Steve Jobs, inventor of the iPad, demonstrated this perfectly, taking away the ability to scan, lock on, connect wirelessly with spaceships, and look awesome when he ripped of the “PADD” from Star Trek. He’s simply a brilliant marketer.

Okay, most of the hard stuff is done. Now you just have to come up with a name. I named my R2D2 “The Umbrella Holder”. Look it up online, it’s there. Just like I promised, it holds umbrellas and it’s a cylinder.

If you want a practical name like Martin Cooper’s “Cell Phone” or my “Umbrella Holder” think about your invention. First you take the Subject and the Predicate (What the invention does to the subject) of the invention and tack “er” on to the end. So if your invention crushes puppies, you’ve made a Puppy Crusher. Feeds parrots? Parrot feeder. A handheld device that calls other people? People Caller, or, alternatively, Cell Phone.

But if you want something cooler, like “iPod touch,” (Would you buy a “Things displayer”? Neither would I.) Steve Jobs brilliantly made the iPod more personal with “i”. I mean i’m in there! I want to buy something with me in it! I made a product called “John Smith”, because so many people would say, “That product has my name in it! Let’s buy it!”

Don’t forget: a product is always cooler if you arbitrarily capitalize a few letters. Ipod becomes iPod, making the hate of grammar fun. Mcnuggets becomes McNuggets, making obesity fun. Essay becomes eSsay, making writing fun.

Try it! And do it to your name, like “McDonald”, or “jOe.

Step five: Dream your whole life long that the product could really exist, and tell your friends about it so that they can crush your dreams.

Happy imagining-only-to-find-out-you’re-just-a-dreamer!

Next week...

I'm going to teach you how to either climb a mountain or to envision an invention. Either way--I'm trembling!

I'm just joking, it's definitely going to be the invention.

Seriously--Check out Jonathancoulton.com!

Here's the new one

Presidential seal draft

The presidential seal. That sounds important, right? Now that you’re old enough to know that it’s not just the president of ice bergs, you’re ready for the mature truth. It has to be some sort of secret thing that only twenty-one-year-olds are allowed to know, right?
Right!
We all know how important mail is to the government is, right? Naturally without it, our lives would be government-less and therefore pointless. (Or the senate would learn to talk to each other face to face .1)
And would it not be a bit awkward if the president had to hand in a veto in person? Irritating questions like “What do you mean you don’t think that you think citizens should be allowed to kill each other?” can be avoided by merely sending your veto in letter form.
But how can you make the president’s letter official? Umm, aside from the signature and witnesses of him or her writing it? That’s where the seal comes in. If it’s at the top off a letter, then you know that that letter was from the president to congress. This way, the president can feel just as important and official as every single six-year-old who makes a symbol for him or herself.
However, some speculate that there’s more to it than that. People might have proof that perhaps maybe Bill Clinton kind of burned or sold the old silverware from the White house and almost replaced it with synthetic sporks and fake forks. If this is kind of true, then maybe the reason nobody minded was because the new simulated spoons were special in some way. Well, what would make them more official, less informal, so that even ambassadors from foreign countries wouldn’t see what was wrong with these not real knives?
Hmmm, I wonder…
Hey, I know! How about… the subject of this essay?
So the president’s job is to make more money for war by selling old furniture and property of the white house, buy new stuff, and make it unique by putting the seal on it.
At least that’s what some believe. The saner of us know the truth about the most important symbol in the world, except for maybe this one: M
In emails, the president copies and pastes the seal into it. Unfortunately, It's too easy to get a hold of on the internet, and is often used for practical jokes. Anyone who comments on this page is subject to one of those.

1HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

First draft

I just completed my first draft on the essay about the presidential seal. Yay!
In other news...
I'm listening to music by perhaps THE GREATEST MUSICIAN EVER, Jonathan Coulton. He writes nerdy, funny, beautiful music and he doesn't pay people to advertise for him.
Much.
I'm just kidding. But really, check out his sight, you can listen to all of his songs for free!
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/store/downloads/
Seriously. Check it out.
My little Brother in kindergarten just got Pneumonia, so we're trying to comfort him. Apparently he was really excited about going to school today (He does math with the second graders and loves it. Six years old and solving for X already--I'm so proud and yet jealous at the same time.)
My older brother (A sophomore in highschool) is going to "As Schools Match Wits" soon, he's on the academic team for Northampton High School. He's also performing live with a quintet to play a piece of music that he wrote himself--I'm talking one of the best pieces of modern classical music that I've ever heard (I know that "Modern Classical Music" is an oxymoron. Just let it go.) All of this on top of his college class and an honors class. Wow.
Thanks for reading my rants, and may the constant milking of old, boring blog jokes (You!!! Are!!! HERE!!!) be with you.

I was looking for gadgets to add to the blog...

When I came across a fun looking RPG flash game. I put it up, and you can see it now, but I'm mainly posting this so that people can tell me to take it off if they want me to. I mainly put it up for my own pleasure, something I'm more than willing to sacrifice.

Next week...

I've decided one my essay for next week: it's going to be about the presidential seal.

Okay, here it is!

Research

A good scholar or student will tell you that “research is but the only way to success,” but I’ve only ever viewed research as a bad thing. People like being right, and often one will write or say something instinctively, something that person will be proud of. Research only makes them feel bad about writing or saying it, because research will so often prove one wrong.
Not doing research is all of the rage these days. Over 10,000 American students are refusing to do research, and that leaves about 300 other students, or at least that’s what the internet doesn’t say. And even in office buildings, research is considered “Overrated” and “Boring”. One organization, Toyota’s owner stated in a personal interview “We think research holds us back from ‘Moving forward.’ We don’t hire somebody based on how well recommended they come, it’s usually about how high they can make the speedometer go. So really, it’s about how high they can count.”
Writers too like to hurry up and not do research. It can be easily seen in modern writing, you must merely open any book marked “fiction”. All of these have a gross pattern of having done a miniscule amount of research. Still, one cannot blame them; writing is hard enough without having to open another book every five minutes.
Perhaps no media knows what they are doing, but I find this unlikely. I don’t believe that the “news” could legally be called that if it didn’t have news in it. I myself have never seen a single television program with any opinion in it, proving the fact that the news does, in fact, use research.
So all this adds up to three questions: is research worth the time or the effort? Do you get a better product from doing research? What counts as “Research”?
Even a genius like myself cannot figure out the answer yet, but step one is to break up each question; for example, the first question and second questions can be figured out by writing this equation: “research = time research takes*effort = outcome” and then the question simply becomes “Is it worth it?” unfortunately, we humans have no good measurement of effort except for how much you make per hour divided by how long the research takes. So if it takes you 5 minutes, and you make 10 dollars per hour, it comes out to “research = 10=outcome.” The lower the number, the worse the outcome will be but the less bored you become.
The third question uses the same equation, but with something extra. You must divide by one of these numbers: by 1 if your source is a book or legal website (C.I.A. files, Wikipedia, ETC.) by 5 if the source is fiction or a blog (Unless you’re doing a book report, in which case divide by 1.), and by 10 if it’s a song. If you didn’t have a source, subtract 5. So the final equation is R = (T($PH÷T))÷S=O.
If the outcome is 5 or above, then your research was worth it! Here’s the equation for this paper:
R = (0(0÷0))-5 = -5. Wow. ~Pact Tieren Dighd

Next essay

I just finished revising the latest essay (It's about research) and I can't wait to release it tomorrow!
I've been sick for a while, so I got some songwriting done over the past week. The latest song is about homeschooling, something I understand pretty well. I could post a video of me playing what I've got so far, but it's going to need quite a bit of revision.

Quick Paradox

This sentence will contradict itself at the end.
You!
Are!
Confused!

Essays

Hi, guys, you may have seen that my last post was a satirical essay on the apocalypse. Well, I have made a decision about this blog.
Often, people start a blog with a clear vision of what's going to happen.
I didn't have any idea about this blog. Honestly, I just missed having a blog. I homeschool, and I need a project.
Well, I've finally got it figured out.
Every Thursday, I'm going to release a new essay about something I read in the news.
I.
Am.
There.

Apocalypse

Apocalypse
An essay

If you watch a dog, a cat, staring into the mirror, you will observe that its face is curled into an expression that can only be described as high self-esteem. This may not sound initially like a bad thing, but has turned our world into what it is today.
Humans used to be like those senseless animals, until they discovered something better: self-pity. A whole world was ahead of us once we saw our chance to fear the future, and what better way to fear the future than to see in it… death?
The Ancient Mayans, who were years ahead of their time, predicted long ago that the world would end in 2012, the start of pity-ology. The Mayans were also contributors to the invention of making excuses for killing people, a favorite of us Pity-ologists.
At some point in the 1900’s, a brilliant mind figured out that the world would end in 2000. This made sense because the number 0 signifies an ending, like in the sequence “5…4…3…2…1… 0!” or “3…2…1… 0!”. So the more zeroes in a number, the better the chances of the Apocalypse, the ultimate end.
The year 2000 came, but when it passed the humans weren’t too disappointed. Cries of “There’s still 2010!” and “There’s still 2012!” and “And if neither of those work out… let’s say… 2050!” could be heard all throughout the land, but the only apocalypse-related event in 2010 was the release of the movie “Quantum Apocalypse”. We tried not to get too downhearted, but it was hard, and after somebody’s theory that 20,000 (it is, after all, a large number with many zeroes in it) would be the year, we started to disperse.
But no longer must we be separated!
I am releasing this as a message to pity-ologists everywhere, for if time won’t take its iron grip on the world, then we must. There are many clear advantages to bringing destruction to the world, listed as follows:
First: honesty. You can never be wrong, ever. We all accepted this oath, so killing everyone would make us honest and good human beings.
Second: religion. God predicted the end, and he would seem quite the fool if he did not get the end. He would thank us all for getting him out of a tight spot.
Third: entertainment. To destroy a building is but one of life’s greatest pleasures, to work a flamethrower in a market is like finding a simile in a field of pedantic writing.
So my friends, let us perform this task of bravery, valor, and obliteration! And may we look back on the past, we may realize—we started as pity-ologists so as to predict and fear the future, but here we are now, anticipating that which we had designed to cause fear, and we, the puppets, have become the puppeteers. ~Pact Tieren Dighd, Pity-ologist