News From Geniusland

Without further ado, Six Word Saturday:

Thirteen, genius, ecology major. I'm jealous.

And now, further ado:

Is it so wrong to be jealous of this kid? I mean, come on. Prodigies make for humorous subjects of movies and books and other works of fiction, but in real life graduating from Stanford at age 11 is... amazing. Incredible. Improbable. I don't mean to moan, but, yeah, screw it, I'm going to moan. When *I* was 11 I was memorizing state capitals. That's pretty much it. Certainly NOT even dreaming of my college major. I hardly am NOW. He's likely to be a million or some crap before he's 25. And not letting him go to South Africa is "discrimination"? It's pretty basic safety. Sorry dude, the school is not going to be held liable when you get eaten by a Venus flytrap or something. You probably have a high enough IQ to know that there aren't man-eating Venus flytraps in South Africa, but can a school trust that some other accident isn't going to happen? It's risky.

I may be pointlessly whining, but I think he should just be glad to be where he already is. It's possible to keep "moving forward" or whatever, he has his whole life to go everywhere and get PhDs and make money and save the Earth or whatever he plans to do. Sheesh. So, I pose a question, my dear readers:

I am I really just being envious and evil? Does he deserve to go regardless of the consequences?

More Meaningless Moaning About The Weather

My Six Words:



Spring starts tomorrow. Today: snow. WHAT?!!

Other news in brief: I'm making over the blog a bit, trying to find a properly fitting header. Non-blog-life-update: .... reading, essaying, procrastinating and cursing the weather. Have a nice day. (I usually hate that phrase, because it sounds insincere. I'm not going to insist that of course, coming from me it's sincere; but I at least hope your day is more interesting than mine.)

FIPOGI:

Under Construction

If you've seen this blog in the past few days, it's probably really weird looking and hardly readable. I've been toying around with backgrounds, first trying to manipulate my own and then switching to the freebies made by nice internet people with an eye for design. (which I fully admit to not having.) Going through tons of these has made me realize one thing:

I am picky.

Despite having no grounds to be as such.

Anyway, hopefully it will be normal looking by the time I post my 6WS. (later today, hoping to be last again. There's already 60-something entries.)

EDIT: Alright, I'm stopping here for a while. It's very earthy-looking now. The stripes remind me of pajamas or something. This is a good thing, yes? Yes. (European statement endings, no? Why do I slip into these affectations while I'm blogging?) I really don't like changing the entire configuration of my blog constantly, so it might still be changing by the time anyone reads this, but once it's done I probably won't do this again for a while. Thoughts on the current layout, anyone?

And the rest of the day to yourself

The traditional response to "Top of the morning to you." that I guess fewer people know. If someone ever says that to you, you now know how to respond. Even if you already knew that, I like to feel informative.

So it's Saint Patrick's Day. w00t.

Why is St. Patrick's Day (patron saint of Ireland) popular in America?

Two seconds after I asked this semirhetorical question, I've come up with my own nonsemirhetorical answer: Beer and theme colors. It makes sense. BUT, this is not a blog about St. Patrick's Day. *cue point where I stopped blogging for quite a bit to do something marginally more important, so when I came back to this draft that statement wasn't finished... I forgot what this was going to a blog about. So yes, it's going to be a blog about St. Patrick's Day.*

The KGH had "Rueben pizza" as some kind of lunch special. Corned beef, swiss cheese, and sauerkraut. On a pizza. Wow. I'm not going to comment on the sheer absurdity and repulsiveness of even the thought of that, but who thinks of Rueben pizza? Was it dyed green, too? You can dye any random foodstuff green, isn't that enough celebratory faux-Irishness? But the best part of this was after to announcement was made, the announcer had to say some teleprompted line like, "MMMM! That sounds good!" She couldn't do it with a straight face. :-D

Other than that, my St. Pat's Day was rather uneventful. Have the day to yourself and all. You deserve it.

FIPOGI!:

**I've always thought leprechauns were the coolest of the mythical creatures. Devilishly clever, rich and annoying. Terrific qualities not found in the standard werewolf.** (Excepting the latter. Why am I typing this with an Irish accent running through my head? Ah well. If this were spoken, imagine it with an Irish accent, so that my oddity shan't've been in vain.)

Age IN-appropriate crushes

My six words:

Oscar Wilde: YUM. Dead men = attractive.

Hi, my name is Rena and I'm a reverse-cougar.

All: Hi, Rena.

Are there support groups for this? Nearly all of my *celebrity* crushes are (at the very least) double my age. Some triple. Some dead. A list, in no particular order. *Hell, it's getting really long, just scroll to the end and then marvel at the length*: (Don't judge me... it's not like I'm going to stalk the not dead ones, or go after any average, nonfamous grandfatherly-aged dude. Because that would just be scary. Self: Oh, right, like THIS isn't... Self: Why must you talk to me while I'm blogging? When typed it looks even weirder. On with the list!)

Gregory Peck

Steve Martin

Gene Wilder

Stephen Colbert

Stephen Fry

Jon Stewart

Alan Rickman

Any of member of Monty Python

Hugh Laurie

Victor Garber

Gordon Ramsay

Charlie McDonnell (from the Internet.)

Anderson Cooper

Tyler Oakley (also from the Internet)

Helena Bonham Carter

Ryan Stiles

Neil Gaiman

Hank Green

John Green

Tom Felton

Daniel Radcliffe

Ralph Fiennes

Demitri Martin

Neil Patrick Harris

Julie Andrews

Chris Colfer

Anthony Bourdain

John Lennon

British sexy Jesus. I've said this before and I will say it again. BRITISH. JESUS. IS. HOT. It sounds so, so wrong... but so, so attractive.

Matthew Broderick. (Compared to that last one, this seems a bit anticlimactic...)

The Explanation Comes First (A 6WS)

I've been contemplating which direction I could (or should) take these proceeding 6 words in this week. I could just minimize a statement on how I'm really grateful to not have a virus everyone else in my household has, regardless of having to go to school. (because even *I* have limits as to when being sick sucks...) Or maximize a statement on how cold it is right now. Something ludicrous, or thoughtful. Hmm.

Going back through my previous 6WSes, I have a tendency NOT to be thoughtful at all. Topics have ranged from: Christmas, Milanos, band names, the last week in review, my restraint from swearing, breakfast, being last. Mostly I just think of something off the top of my head, because I feel like I shouldn't be wasting people's time with a whole bunch of rambling before I get to the Six Words part. So it usually turns out sounding at least a bit vapid. Not to say that even the thoughts on the bottom of my head (...? What's the opposite of that expression? Oh, this doesn't prove my point, now does it?) are vapid. I hope not.

Actually, the whole premise (of the book anyway) is to describe your ENTIRE LIFE in six words. This requires thought, and the ability to be concise. And presumably to have an interesting life. The latter two I'm still working on. Still alive and looking for my own endings. (Wait, that sounded vaguely suicidal...) Yes, as a plural. Endings to some things that I'm still probably in the middle of that are far off and out of mind, the happy ending everyone (I'm generalizing?) works towards. Endings that lead to beginnings, oh dear god that's so cliche. Not going to edit it now. It's some kind of continuum. A loop of sorts.

In conclusion, there are no conclusions.

(I was going to put that as my last sentence and then leave the six words as something like "I like puppies. They are shiny.", for the sake of irony. But I think that was more fitting, don't you?)

(But I do like puppies. :D)

Spring, pre-Sprung

I know I'm probably jumping to conclusions but:

SPRING IS HERE!!!

(cue angelic choir and adorable baby animals and overuse of pastels and such)

Seriously. It is:

41 degrees

Sunny (ALL of today)

Still light out

Excuse me while I go skip through a meadow while I can, because by Monday it'll probably snow. :P Here's where the equivalent of blog smalltalk would go, some obligatory statement about "Chicago weather" that everyone's already heard, so I present a summary:

If you don't like Chicago weather you either:

a.) Live here and love to complain.

b.) Live somewhere else and are glad you don't live here.

(Actually, by pointing out the obligatorily cliched remark, and wasting space in this blog to ramble on about it, it should be clear by now I have little else worth blogging about...)

School has turned into arts-n-crafts hour, (in between units or something until the end of the quarter, w00t.) really:

-- Testing the velocity and acceleration of paper airplanes.

(Actual activity: Throwing them. That is all. Also on occasion, aiming to get them lodged in the skeleton's eye. No idea why there's a skeleton in an Earth Science/Physics classroom, but it's a good target apparently.)

-- Preparing an "interactive story-hour" for preschoolers. *hypothetical preschoolers, meaning the age group. We're also going to be the ones watching the storyhour and being read to.*

(Actual activity: Building puppets. This means glue, crayons, feathers, googly eyes, glitter, the whole lot. And IT. IS. FUN. Even better when the substitute let us abandon the puppets and just color. Coloring is fun. :D Also, after the presentations we're going to watch Charlotte's Web to kill a few more days with a substitute. No idea why we have a sub so much, but it's awesome. The animated version pwns.)

--Learning this song. Click if you dare, it gets stuck in your head forever. CURSE YOU MEXICAN WIGGLES! Catchy, if designed for the listening pleasure of 5 year olds...

-- Even though it's academic, I'm enjoying Cry Freedom, because it's a movie, and all the white South Africans have gloriously British-y accents. Mmmm.

FIPOGI:

(Because the extra "on" was completely necessary...)