Crazy People

People are crazy. You just can't deny it. Especially today. I don't know why today, as opposed to any other day. I guess today was just a crazy day for some reason. So here's today's weirdness list of things people did:

• Throwing things in the hallway when a security guard was passing by.
• Leaving a classroom a complete mess. (I don't even know who did this or how. It wasn't like there was a party or anything in that room).
• Dragging someone across the ground. 
• Breaking a bottle for no reason whatsoever.

What is it about these things that makes them fun for some people. What makes people want to do this?

Why would you do something crazy that could get you in trouble when you could do something that's actually fun and doesn't get you in trouble?

If you think I just do boring things like study all day, you're wrong. There are some things you can do that are fun, but aren't completely crazy. It just makes no sense to me why all of those things on the weirdness list happened, just like quadratic equations don't make sense to some people.

I guess that's just life. You don't understand the things that other people do, and they don't understand what you do.

Really Real

It's near the beginning of the school year. Probably around October. I walk through the door into the humanities room over to my seat on the other side of the room. I look at the board and see the strangest freewrite question ever. It's something like this:

FREEWRITE:

Is the world around us real?

I don't think this was the exact wording but that was the general idea. When I saw this question, I was thinking "What? Of course the world is real. How could it not be real?" So I wrote about it for a while in my notebook, having no idea what it would lead to. And what did it lead to? (drumroll)

The allegory of the cave. A weird little allegory by Greek philosopher Plato, whose name sounds like Play Doh. If you're unfamiliar with this allegory, it's basically about some prisoners in a cave. All they can see are shadows on the wall, so they think the shadows are real objects. One day, one of the prisoners is relased. When he steps outside and sees the real world, he's amazed, so he goes back to tell the other prisoners. But when he tells them, they don't believe him.

This is supposed to symbolize how the world we're in isn't completely real. There's something beyond this world, just like there's something beyond the shadows on the wall. Do I believe this? I don't know. I don't think this world is fake but I do think there is so much to be discovered in the universe. Things that we could never imagine.

For example, if someone went back in time to the 1800s and told people about cell phones, TVs and computers, they wouldn't believe it. And if someone from 200 years in the future came to us now, we wouldn't believe the new technology they had.

Anyone can discover something new, something formerly unimaginable. And I think everyone helps these discoveries in some way. Even just some random thing you say could give someone an idea which could inspire someone else to talk to someone about a thought which causes them to come up with the next great invention. One tiny thing can set off a chain reaction of ideas, thoughts and actions which can change the world. 

!@#$%^&*()_+ (Bad Words)

Question of the day: How did certain words become curse words? Why isn't stupid or idiotic a curse word? Who came up with it?

I'm imagining some conference room full of guys in business suits. They're having a conversation that goes like this:

"So, what words should we consider bad?"
"I don't know"
"Don't you have any ideas"
"How about idiot? Calling someone an idiot could be the next worst insult!"
"No, that wouldn't work."
"How about tyuiop?"
"What does that mean?"
"It means 'worst person in the whole entire world'"
"I'm sorry but tyuiop is not in the dictionary."
"I know, that's because I just made it up."
"We should probably use a word that already exists..."

And on and on and on until they finally come up with the curse words we use today.

Computer Doom

It was 2:45 PM and it was my last period class. Two students had just brought the computer cart in and everyone was trying to get to the computers. It seemed like a typical day...

BUT IT WASN'T!!!!

I got a computer and opened it up. I pressed the Safari button. Then suddenly...

A giant green llama appeared on the screen!

AAAAAAAAHHHH!

Okay. So it wasn't scary. At all. Still, what's up with walama? I've seen it before. It seems to be something that people look at when they don't want to do their work on the computer. It's pretty funny, even though it really doesn't look like a llama.

Enough of that though, here's walama:

http://hristu.net/

3:12 PM

That's when I started writing this. 3:12 PM. I would have started earlier except that computers malfunctioned. And I didn't know what to write about. And there were problems like that. There are always problems. According to Buddhist beliefs, which we are learning about in class, "life is suffering." How nice.

But pretty accurate. The thing is life wouldn't be as good without suffering because if there were no problems, the fun things wouldn't be as fun. Because everything would be fun. So how could you distinguish fun from not fun?

Yeah. It's weird.

Lots of Numbers

In school, grades are important. The other day, the school guidance counselor came into our class and talked about how the grades we're getting now are important to get into a good college. We saw some example transcripts and talked about how many credits each class was worth and things like that.

School is all about numbers. Every piece of work you do in every class gets a grade, a number. And everyone wants to get high numbers because high numbers are good. It's all facts and figures and the goal is to get the highest numbers possible.

But what about outside of school. What about "the real world"? Do any of these silly little numbers really matter?

I think yes, they do. Maybe not those particular numbers but other ones. If you have a high number of friends, that's good. If you spend a lot of fun time with friends, that's also good. If you think about it, it's really very similar to school. Every interaction you make helps those social numbers go up or down. Everyone wants the high numbers, just like in school.  You just don't get a report card. Instead, you get fun and feeling good about yourself.

And if you fail with a friendship, it's even worse than failing a test.

But if you succeed, the rewards are great. You have people to talk to, people to relate to, people to joke with and have fun with.

Some people are very good at getting high social numbers but not as good with school numbers. Some people are the other way around. But here and now, it seems like the line is beginning to blur. Class discussions, for example, combine school and social skills. You have to talk, but you also have to think about things like symbolism or interpretations. Things like this are making everyone better at everything and making the whole school a better place.

Baby It's Creepy Outside

Christmas is a creepy holiday in general. An old fat guy climbs down people's chimneys and leaves wrapped packages. He can see you when you're sleeping! We can all agree: Santa is a creepy stalker.

But even some supposedly nice holiday songs have a creepy side, as I learned in class today.

If you've ever heard the song "Baby It's Cold Outside" you may think it's a nice romantic Christmas song. But my humanities teacher thinks differently. Today in humanities class, she gave us all copies of the lyrics of the song and played it for us. She told us that if we really paid attention to those lyrics we might interpret it in a completely different way than we did before.

So my class read the lyrics, and suddenly, almost everyone is talking about how creepy the guy in the song is, saying things like "gosh, your lips look delicious." And how the girl says "what's in this drink?" when he gives her a drink as if he was drugging her or something.

Of course there were also some people who still thought the song was just another happy Christmas song. And even with all of that creepiness going on, I agree with them. I don't think the person who wrote the song meant it to be a scary holiday story about a guy forcing a girl to stay with him. But who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe everyone's wrong and songwriter had a completely different interpretation!

The Beginning

This is the blog I have to write for my enrichment (class in school). But it will still be good! Hopefully...

Soooooooooo, yeah. I'm entering the blogosphere yet again to tell some true stories about my life. And this is the post that starts it all!