Political Activism

So today at church the topic of the sermon was marriage. It is the first of three weeks of covering topics with political consequences that we normally try to avoid out loud because society has taught us to keep our beliefs to ourselves, for the most part. The three main threats to marriage are divorce, cohabitation, and same-sex marriage.

For the first one, 49% of American marriages end in it. That is half. Both the adults and the childrens who are affected by a divorce are worse off.

For the second, there was a key point with blanks. Move ______ or make a _______. I knew the first one was "out," but I figured the second one was "baby." It was actually "commitment."

On same-sex marriages, they played a video of street interviews of people on the gay-marriage amendment in California. Most of the people said it should be allowed since it is their lives and we have no right to keep them from marrying. So then the question was that if two men could marry, should three men be allowed to? They all said no. Same for marrying relatives. I just thought it was really funny the double standard we have going there.

I got my mom to buy a "Yes on Amendment 2" sign to put in our front yard, even if we're not supposed to. I'm starting to think the passage of this simple amendment stating only that marriage is defined as between one man and one woman (doesn't take away domestic partnership benefits, so calm down) is the most important thing to be voted on November 4.

Then when I was walking to the car after lunch, I noticed a group of about ten people standing around the back of a van led by some old guy with really long hair, and I saw at least one sign. I knew it was for Obama because no hippie-looking old dude would ever vote for McCain. Whatever they were doing was cool with me, anyway. Except then I saw the guy's shirt. It was a giant picture of Obama. That's just a bit too creepy for me.

I got to play Rock Band 2 yesterday. Awesome! I also want to host a Rock Band party thing, but I don't know when or if I will actually go through with it this time...

Tampa Bay's Epic Fail

The Red Sox had only seven outs left to work with.

Tampa Bay were sweeping the Red Sox. The Rays were on the edge of sweeping Boston at Fenway Park. In fact, it wasn't sweeping. It was destruction. The Rays won by eight runs in back-to-back games all the way up north in Massachusetts. If the Rays won this, they were off to the World Series.

And they should've been. They kept piling on runs. In the sixth inning, the broadcasters mentioned that Boston had not been shut out at Fenway in the postseason since 1918 in the World Series against the Cubs, which was, ironically, still the last year they won it all until 2004. It was 7-0. To score seven runs in a single inning would mean every person on the team would bat at least once. There was no way the team could pull through, 2 outs already in the bottom of the seventh and utterly demoralized.

Two men somehow get on base after this and Dustin Pedroia is up. RBI single. At least it won't be a shutout. And nobody likes running up the score.

David Ortiz comes up to bat with men on first and third. He is having a horrible slump, with only one hit in the ALCS in five games now. Where was the Big Papi we thought we knew, the one who hit game-changing home runs when the Sox were down and out against all - wait, there he is. Three run-homer to right. Maybe there is hope. It's only 7-4 now.

Tampa Bay goes down without much resistance. Bay gets walked on four straight balls, but not intentionally. J.D. Drew hits a homer to right. It's 7-6!

Two outs, and Boston still needs to at least score a run now or in the bottom of the ninth. Better now. Kotsay hits a double. Speedy. I keep saying all Coco Crisp has to do is single to right. Just single to right. Full count. Foul ball. Foul ball. Foul ball. Foul ball. Foul ball. Single to right. Kotsay scores. It is 7-7.

Rays get men on first and second with only one out in the top of the ninth. Carlos Pena, the scariest guy in their lineup, is up. They show his clip of his game-winning 14th inning home run against Boston last month over the Green Monster. And he... grounds to second. Double play!

No pressure, guys. Wait, that doesn't mean give up! Two outs, so it's all down to Youk or we will have to endure extra innings. Looks like Coco's at bat again, with a full count and several fouls. And he grounds to third. Darn. He looks like he will be just short on beating the throw to first. And, what do you know... The first baseman misses? He tips the ball into the bleachers. Youk gets to second on an error. Certainly Tampa won't let this be the reason they lose. They intentionally walk Bay. Men on second and first. J.D. Drew is back up. Three straight balls. I don't think I could handle having to deal with bases loaded at this point in the game. Then a strike. 3-1. It still favors the batter.

He hits it. It's not gone, but it's got distance. And over the rightfielder it goes, and everyone knows it's over. Just for good measure, the ball bounces in front of the notoriously short rightfield wall and goes over. Ground-rule double with a man on second means a run scores. 8-7.

Turns out they only needed six.

Ruining It for the Rest of Us

I really hate it when people that aren't good at a subject don't even make the slightest effort in it. There are people that have difficulties but study and do the homework, and there are people like me who, not meaning to toot my own horn, are just academically gifted and can dominate (or at least pass) tests even without doing the homework.

In APUSH, there are people simply not doing the study guides or looking at the book before a quiz and getting appalling grades on the test. When you know you don't the subject and do nothing about it, then you're bringing the rest of us down. Ms. Thomas is scolding our class for this kind of thing, and I fear she is going to assign notes or something like that on every chapter from the book to make sure we are reading (instead of just making our study guides due earlier) for a grade. I would if I were teaching APUSH. But I'm a student, and I sure as heck don't want to have to do that.

I also hate how the stock market is ruining it for the rest of us. If I was born three, maybe even two, years earlier, I would have gotten off to college just before the bottoming out that began last month (and had been leading up to that for some months before that). Now, suddenly, I have a whole lot of other things to worry about. In fact, we all pretty much do, which makes it tougher. I know scholarships mean that much more, which is why I really need to have a repeat performance of last year on the PSAT on Wednesday. And I still need to take the SAT sometime soon so I will have my results in time to dual enroll in calculus at FSU. And I need a job for money to buy a car and insurance and then start saving for the rough future. I've heard it could take more than a decade for the economy to fully recover. A decade ago, I was in first grade. I was short and small and didn't have glasses and could one day be anything I wanted. Now I have to think serious and practical. I would've still had to do some of those even if Americans weren't so stupid, but it's even more important now.

I hear "Barracuda" by Heart on the radio all the time now. I probably like Heart and Sarah Palin more than the average guy, but you're starting to make the song get annoying.

Top 50 Songs

I believe you can tell a lot about a person by the music they listen to. This is my list of my top 50 most listened to songs on iTunes, which is coincidentally exactly how many could fit in the window.


(The picture would not fit in this at a readable size so I uploaded it to Imageshack. URL is below.)


http://img401.imageshack.us/my.php?image=top50onitunesli1.jpg

Flashing Lights and Sirens

Friday night, well, actually, early Saturday morning, about a half an hour after midnight I heard a wreck from the road next to those apartments that connects to Thomasville. The flashing lights and sirens from the police kept me up for a while after I came back inside. Coming home from school earlier that afternoon, I saw the scene of a wreck on Kerry Forest, too.

Please stop wrecking, people.

October 1, 2008

So I've decided that today has earned the title of "Best Day of 2008 (So Far)," by no means in attempt to belittle it since 2008 has sucked. It is because of the tiniest, simplest things and the tiniest, simplest difficulties I've had to overcome to be here as pleased as I am right now.

Everything should've gone wrong. When I went to bed at midnight, my mom was sleeping in the living room since my dad had a headache and had already gone to bed. This is annoying, restricting my freedom of movement I gain during the night since no one is awake or out in the open to call my name for some minor thing. I set my alarm clock for 5:06AM, actually willing to wake up an hour early to catch the bus since it meant I could at least listen to my iPod on a relaxing trip in the dark across the area since I had just downloaded 36 Anberlin songs the previous day. You see, I always set my alarm clock for times ending in ":06" for some unknown reason. This would have major impacts on the rest of my day.

I awoke before my alarm went off, though it took me a minute to assess this. I knew I could fall asleep in less than a second once I went to, but I checked the clock first, hoping it was still before 3:30AM so that I could fall back asleep long enough so that I did not fall back asleep to wake up feeling horrible. It turns out it was actually 5:03AM; three minutes after the average person would have set it, but three minutes before I did. Waking up on my own was NOT an option, so I set my alarm clock for 5:20 before switching to my normal 6:06 since it made more sense to me at the time.

I was even more tired than usual, something I really didn't need since I had fallen asleep in just about everyone of my classes over the previous two days. To top it off, I was out of body wash, forcing me to use soap, which makes my skin feel all dry and tight and just plain icky. My hair's prospects weren't too badly affected since I stole a bottle of shampoo. I drifted off a couple of times while getting ready for school, so my mom actually beat me for once at being ready to leave. I was going to get to school at 7:40-7:45AM, giving me a short time to do my first real Latin homework assignment of the year. I stayed sitting in the band hall finishing it three minutes after the bell rang, before hurrying up to the 900 building. Luckily, none of my teachers seem to care anymore if a student is tardy; in fact, I don't think any of them do in the least bit. Yates talked longer than usual, putting me in a bad spot to pretty much do all of my APUSH timeline due the next period. Uh oh, maybe this day just wasn't meant to be.

His assignment for the rest of the class at 8:25 was to study. I whipped out my timeline and textbook and did nearly the whole thing. I managed to finish it in Thomas' class, which I think she saw me doing, though that didn't matter; crisis averted. We got to watch a video, and it was at about this time that I realized that I was NOT tired. The video went over stuff I had learned years ago, probably in American History in 7th grade, at the latest. During it, I pulled out a cookie to eat since it was the thing extra I could eat then and still have an actual lunch.

It all started to get better in calculus. I had bordered on the edge of sleep (I don't think I 100% did, meaning calculus is now the only class I haven't fallen asleep in yet this year, mainly since MJ said very seriously last year that I couldn't do that in BC) the previous day, so when I asked William how to do something about the section we were on, he explained it using stuff I didn't know. It took us a minute to realize that I didn't know anything about implicit differentiation at all, explaining why I never understood his great teaching. Anyway, by the end of class, I was ecstatic about math for the first time all school year since I could apply dy/dx implicitly skillfully (except not really).

Knoll took thirty minutes to finish finding out who did their homework, and I have absolutely no clue how she got stalled that long. Normally, we're lucky to hold her for fifteen, but half the class is just crazy. During the period, I did my AP Lang essay, even though it wasn't due until sixth period. Why? I didn't want to do it at lunch; I wanted to do calculus at lunch. I'm ashamed of that, but at least it was homework I chose to do instead of homework I had to do in a matter of minutes. A lot of people that eat on the hill were gone, meaning I could sit at the table and do the math homework like I wanted. I was sort of getting ahead on my studies!

It was in chemistry that I put together my enthusiasm for calculus and my ability to stay completely awake and focused as a sign that this was one of the greatest days ever. It hit me with Ewart announced that I had gooten an 87 on the chem test, about 87 points higher than I thought I would get after failing the test. I guess the only question I got wrong was the basic reaction one that I didn't remember how to do so I just left an electron floating around in there. Not to revel in their misfortune, but people got significantly lower grades than me, meaning that I actually may have understood the chapter a good bit better than my classmates; and these guys are the best of the best.

I had actually done the AP Lang homework, so the class was a breeze. The best part? No homework due the next day! The time flew by incredibly fast in piano, and I was awake the whole way through. For the first time in probably a year, I managed to stay awake the whole day!

When I got home, I found out that Jeff Gordon will be unveiling his new paint scheme tomorrow, the #24 team's first change since 2001. I cannot wait to see it, and bid farewell to the flames scheme he continued to dominate with over the last eight years, the only of which I still have merchandise for that I can wear (I did have Jeff Gordon rainbow paint scheme T-shirts until he changed after 2000, when I was eight, and maybe a little shorter and skinnier than I am now). However, tomorrow, for fan day, I will show my pride for Hendrick's newest current driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The only way this day can get any better is if the Red Sox win tonight, since it will be still be today over there in Los Angeles when it ends, even though it will already be tomorrow here. Peace out.