INTP

This guy is called frezned. Well, actually, he's called Tom McLean, but on the Internet he's frezned. Why? I don't know. Before I started watching his videos I thought his name was Ned. It's not. He could have at least called himself freztom or something. He's just confusing everyone.

Anyway.

He is Australian, and you don't really have to watch the video to understand this post but you should watch the video anyway because frezned is HILARIOUS. Almost as hilarious as me.***

Anyway, the test he is talking about is here. There you go, just click on the word 'here'. Nicely done. You've grown up so much. I'm so proud of your clicking abilities. (Psst! I'm really not.)

As you can tell from the title, I am an INTP, which means "Introverted (I)Ntuitive Thinking Perceiving" and sorry, but I am probably not going to talk about your type (unless you are also an INTP). Because this is my blog, okay?

The description page for an INTP describes me in a very uncomfortable way. I guess it's what I would be were I being honest with myself. Except it says I'm 'familiar with the dark side' and I'm not quite sure what that means. I'm Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader? Or I am prone to doing things that are wrong? I am in touch with the bad things in life? I am slightly self-destructive and can relate to why people do bad things? Hmm...

Nope. I'm pretty sure it means I'm Anakin Skywalker. That would make sense. Yeah.

Some things it says that are sadly true about me: I don't like happy people, I don't think I am weird but others do (I mean, I know I'm weird. It's just that I am even weirder than I think I am. Apparently. Talking to other humans lets me know this is true), not punctual and frequently loses things (*sighs, shakes head sadly*).

Anyway, quite a bit of this is true about me. So I looked up what the polar opposite of an Introverted Intuitive Thinking Perceiving is, and it is an Extroverted Sensing Feeling Judging. And that one makes me sad. Almost nothing on that personality box is true for me.

And the moral of this story is: Um, all I really wanted to do was watch old frezned videos, but instead I wrote a post. So when you want to do something fun, instead do something fun that involves more work than the first fun thing. Yeah. Wait, that's a rubbish moral. Maybe I should stop now.

***Far, far, far more hilarious than me. Also more Australian than me, which makes him better than me in every way. EVERY. WAY. He also makes quantum physics jokes that I don't understand and does fancy computer stuff for fun. This makes him so much better than me that after I finish this post I will cease to exist.

Quote for Monday, May 30, 2011:

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

-Francis Bacon

(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon)

Muse for Today:

This thing. I suppose it's really the opposite of a Muse, because instead of making me think or making me curious, it is WIPING ALL THOUGHT FROM MY HEAD. I keep listening to the Supa Dance Mix over and over and over and over and over and over and over ad infinitum.

LOOK, QUESTA. LOOK AT WHAT YOU'VE DONE. YOU'VE CREATED A MONSTER.

Heavy Heaviness is Heavy

I should really just make "Things I Don't Like" a thing (is it already a thing? What constitutes something being a thing?) because the main reasons that I got on Blogger were because of TWO things I don't like:

1. School
2. Adults--specifically, adults who talk about you when YOU'RE RIGHT BLOODY THERE. Thank you, Mother, but I have a rudimentary enough understanding of Hindi to know that you're talking about me. Honestly. Exactly how stupid am I supposed to be?

I have heavy things on my mind, not in the literal sense (heh) but yesterday was weird and dense enough, and now that I seem to be out of my rut of bad blogging (although, depending on your opinion, I might have always been a bad blogger and my rut might just be permanent), let's talk about lighter things.

Like the future.

Because that's not heavy at all.

When you're me, that is pretty heavy (why have I used the word 'heavy' so many times? Am I from the eighties? What is going on?), especially when you've no blooming idea what you want to be. See, I have a vague idea, but the...practicality...is not entirely there. I don't much want to think about what I'm going to be, because I am trying to get through my life now, and that seems hard enough. Sometimes now is enough to deal with.

But things that are not so heavy (since I am going with that word now) or actually may be heavy but pique my interest:

• People who make drawings for me, especially when they surpass what little skill I possess
• People who defy my expectations
• The Dexter Morgan Series. I looked on Wikipedia, and the last book in the series (Dexter is Delicious) has influences of cannibalism. CANNIBALISM? Dear Jeff Lindsay, Dexter's ALREADY a supernatural crazy serial killer! HOW MUCH FURTHER DO YOU NEED TO GO? Even though I am now scared to proceed any further with this series, and I am myself a vegetarian, I am wondering how an author even begins to work something as tabooed and unconventional as cannibalism into a book. *shudders* Looks like I'll continue these. *gingerly picks up Darkly Dreaming Dexter*
• That 'How Stuff Works' has a page on sarcasm, and it's not sarcastic. It's genuine, and pretty interesting.
• All-American Rejects. It's funny how I can listen to 'Move Along' after four years of running to it and still like the song. Also, in the Performance Version of 'Gives You Hell' (I like it better than the Narrative Version), Tyson looks crazy and/or drunk, and either he can't dance/he is Jack Sparrow/he was drunk. Hmm?
• S'mores. I'm having some over AN ACTUAL FIREPIT later tonight, and that will be the first time I've ever done that!
• Charlie McDonnell. Still amazing. I've been watching his vlogs for almost a year!
• David Tennant, because he is still the best Doctor in the entire world, even though some people *coughs at someone who is not reading this* think Matt Smith is better.

Quote for Saturday, May 28, 2011:

"Good evening. Tonight on 'Is There' we examine the question, 'Is there a life after death?' And here to discuss it are three dead people."

-(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Flying_Circus#E._Henry_

Thripshaw.27s_Disease_.5B3.10.5D)

Muse for a Day:

"How about 'Hello, sweetie!'? You should put that as your quote."

"No, that's dumb. I hate River Song, and I hate everything she says, and I hate that quote. And not everyone will understand it, anyway."

"But it's good! Please!"

"Shut up. You get your own blog, and then you can have a Quote of the Day, and you can put that rubbish quote. And even then, you would have gotten the idea from me."

"I'll get a blog. But I won't have a Quote of the Day! I'll have a Quote of the Week! I might even have a Quote...of All Quotes!"

*long pause*

"What are you even saying? Idiot."

"Even then, Marshmallow People will still come first."

"Idiot."

Far from Perfect

I don't think you realize how many drafts I've gone through since Wednesday, trying to get a post up. I mean, this time last month I had twenty-seven blooming posts and now I'm struggling to produce five. There's even a chance that this will end up deleted like the others, because I am simply being rubbish at writing. If you're reading this, erm, hi. Obviously I didn't fail this time.

I work a volunteer job sometimes, and I came back from it an hour ago. It was busy in sporadic bursts, so there was a bit of downtime where I was splitting my time between reading a book called Darkly Dreaming Dexter (it's not a bad book, really. A few years ago I tried writing a character named Vinnialia. Remember her? Maybe not?) and in some ways, Dexter is what I might have dreamed of Vinnialia to be if I had started her now. I think he's amazing. He's so angry, but a twisty-good person. and reading Hayley G. Hoover's blog.

This next bit connects to the rest, I promise, so bear with me.

I've been feeling pressured lately, like I'm not good enough at anything I try, and if I'm not the best, then what is the bloody point in trying? Like there is really no point to me as a person, because I am going nowhere anyway. And that people are going to leave, and I hope that some of them leave nothing but tissue-paper memories that I can promptly set on fire and then dance around, and I hope that some of them take me with them when they leave, and I wish some didn't ever have to leave at all. I miss so many people, and it's not my last chance for the ones I worry about, but it might be. It always might be. Because people will change, and then what do I do?

These kinds of thoughts set my head into a fizz, and I feel like a soda can is all shaken up in my head and ready to explode, spraying orange bubbles all over everything I think. Imperfection. I strive for perfection, but I never do anything perfectly. Humans can't do anything right. And slowly, lately, I've been finding it hard to appreciate anything. I listen for the high note that cracks instead of the rest of the song, I look for the one horrid feature someone's got no matter how pretty he/she is, and I am finding firsthand the simple truth that I learned years ago:

Heroes die hard, because heroes are human. Heroes do idiot things sometimes. They let you down, they act unlike the hero you've come to imagine in your head--because the hero in your head is not the same as the hero out here. People screw up, I've always known that. I've even perpetuated that notion. But it seems like the ugliness of the situation takes over everything, and I forget that there's anything pretty at all. I forget that I have turned a human into an idea, into something that I want instead of something that is. Maybe I just need an idea. A perfect idea, something gorgeous.

That looks like my customary brand of something. I'll publish this one, hmm?

Too Lazy to Put A Title. There.

I have three posts in drafts but I really just wanted to take this video from YouTube and put it here instead of putting anything that I wrote myself.

Why? Because I'm bloody original, that's why. Oh, YEAH.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy6wo2wpT2k&feature=player_detailpage#t=140s

I first saw this movie in the fifth grade, and this is one of my favorite songs in West Side Story.

(Sorry, but the Jets win favorite song with this. I mean:

"Gee, Officer Krupke- krup you!"

and their rushing around and stupid voices are completely but appealingly insane.

"Hey, I got a social disease!"

Even a ten year old can appreciate that.)

I love it mostly because of Anita's singing. "You forget I'm in America!" and the way her voice deepens on "Everyone there will have moved here!"

Also, it is a fun song, but the material of it isn't entirely just fun.

Gods, I love old musicals. The acting is cheesy, but the music is usually better.

A Post by Itself

***I was going to put this little RageRant in my last post while I was editing it a bit, but then I realized that I would be interrupting the flow of the post even more than I usually do, by talking about hating school, then ranting about the administration, what a perfect example of inertia/stereotypically fat Americanism I am when I'm tired, Movie Thoughts, and weird weirdness. So I stuck my administrative rant here because I really wanted to put this on this bloggery blog that I attempt to maintain. If you like me, think of this as a bonus of me! If you don't like me, get out! We don't like you anyway. Right, guys? Guys?

Did you know my school lacks any sort of central cooling? This school. Is so freaking hot. ALL THE TIME BECAUSE THEY CANNOT FIND IT IN THEIR ADMINISTRATIVE HEARTS TO FIX THE SYSTEM. Yeah. They were going to fix it, but they spent the money on new turf for the soccer and football [that's American football, chaps] fields instead.

Why this is stupid: TURF affects people who play soccer and football. AND NO ONE ELSE. Absolutely no one else gives a damn about the turf except for people who play on it, and maybe the coaches. And that is about three teams (boys'/girls' soccer, boys' football), so maybe sixty, seventy people out of a thousand schoolgoers care about the turf.

While a central cooling system affects EVERYONE in the school. All melty, crabby, boiling one-thousand of us, including the sports teams. THEY also think it's too hot in the school, and I know some of them would be perfectly happy to be temperately comfortable during the school day at the sake of some new turf...next year.

This was a stupid decision.

As you can tell, I don't play sports. No. I am clumsy and vaguely uncoordinated, and I can hold my own in tennis, but in basically everything else, I am a mess. I'm not a Bella Swan, who can't even get out of her truck in the morning without almost being hit by a car, but let's suffice it to say I'm not athletic.

But I sing. I'm in the choir, and I love to sing, and I would do anything to keep singing and improving my voice enough to do more challenging music. I will do anything to keep at this, and these kinds of episodes with the turf tick me off.

Schools are cutting funding to the arts everywhere. Last year, when I was at a different school, our band/choir program was reduced to almost nothing. It very nearly got cut out completely, and it took major battling, pleading, compromising to keep it. This year, half the Drama Club couldn't go downstate to see a guy from our own school perform AT STATE (this is a bit of a big deal) on opening night.

Okay, granted, it was the week before finals, but the other school in our district (we synchronize almost everything with this school), that has finals at the same time was going- and they didn't even have a person performing! And if the football team made it to state the week before finals, would you let them go?

I am not dissing sports. I have tried out for sports teams (and not made them because of how awkwardly uncoordinated I am- SHAME) and I see how hard my more-athletic friends practice, how much time they give, how much they care. But why, why, why are athletics more important than the arts? What is so hard to understand about why people sing, play an instrument, act? What about people like me? I can't bloody well turn to volleyball if they cut music funding! This is what I have-singing. Why do some people feel like it is better to make us all fear dying of heatstroke in math class, or depriving us of something creative, than letting the sports team run on not-new turf for a year?

Another note: This is not strictly pertaining to my school. My school isn't bad about the music thing- we had new choir robes this year! But it does happen in places where I am not, and it's not good.

But the turf and the air conditioning.... that is strictly pertaining to my school. And I still don't agree with it. Rubbish.

Things I Do When I'm Tired

So yesterday, which was Friday (the 13th! AAAAAH) I was exhausted. This year has reminded me exactly how much I hate school. Also, it was just too bloody hot outside this whole week. It was my birthday on Wednesday! It was nice. But I would rather I hadn't gone to school at all this whole week, because I hate people and my school and being in school when it's hot.

I like that school is preparing me for later life, but apart from my World Studies class, I feel like I learn more from random Google searches about topics I'm actually interested in. I hate Trig, I learn nothing, basically at this point I am simply trying to keep out of summer school. Why do I have to learn something that is both useless for any sort of practical use and involves a lot of work that I am unwilling to undertake? WHAT IS THE POINT? Sometimes I just can't take it. I am so tired of 'learning' stuff I don't want to learn. AAARGH.

So I was tired. Clearly. And what did I do when I was tired? I ate an entire bag of pretzels and watched two and a quarter movies in a row. I saw Nowhere Boy and Flipped and part of The King's Speech, but despite my love for Helena Bonham Carter, by that time I started that film the time was almost midnight and I was part-zombie.

Nowhere Boy, if you don't know, is a film about John Lennon and the most important women of his childhood- his Aunt Mimi and his mother Julia. I was watching it partially for Thomas Brodie Sangster, who plays Paul McCartney (Thomas Sangster and Paul McCartney in one? Excellence) and because I like the Beatles.

I forgot, though, that this isn't a movie about the Beatles- it's about John. So the film cut off right before they left for Hamburg, when they really started becoming a bigger sensation, and I didn't get all the music I so unwisely anticipated. I'm glad they didn't put anything after Hamburg in there, though. It would have lost the focus of the film. What made me quite like this movie was the mannerisms of the actors. John's evil, shaming sarcasm, the defiant way he holds his mouth, and the way Paul looks up through his eyelashes while he played guitar all reminded me of the old footage of the actual Beatles. They actors didn't really look a lot like them- they were like them.

Flipped was a lovely book. I liked that book a whole lot, and what was nice about the movie is that they took some of the diologue straight from the book. And they did the film in voiceover, telling the same story from both Bryce and Juli's perspectives. All they left out was a bit of character development, but the characters didn't look like I pictured them. I felt it was a good move to place the movie in the sixties, though. That sweet story might not have survived in the era of texting and Facebook. But it was worthwhile.

I haven't yet finished The King's Speech, but I reached the part where he swears dozens of the time, and I just thought it was funny. He's a prince, and he's trying so hard to keep his dignity with this commoner, and he just goes off. It's fairly hilarious.

Also, weird weirdness is weird: Just last week, one of my oldest friends (meaning I've known her for a long time. She's only a month older than me, so not agewise oldest) was reading Gone with the Wind. And then she asked me about Catcher in the Rye. I wrote about both of those in the space of a month. Coincidence? I don't even tell anyone I keep a blog.

Quote for Saturday, May 14, 2011:

Is nowhere full of geniuses, sir? Because then I probably do belong there.

-Nowhere Boy (2010)

(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1266029/quotes)

Muse for Today:

I didn't always hate school.

This is grea- no! It makes no sense!

I am ashamed to admit it, but I really like clothes. I like books and music plenty, but shopping for clothes gives you an immediate magic.

"The reason consumerism is alive and well in America is because of people like you, FRAS."

-Everyone who has ever heard me talk about buying things

It's an instant kind of judgement that isn't quite imitable, shopping for clothes. Shopping for books is calm, organized, systematic. Shopping for music is a drawn-out process where I end up buying nothing because I cannot commit to anything. Shopping for food is one where I just feel tempted to toss some pudding and fifteen packets of gum into the cart and call it a week. (I wonder why I don't do the shopping at my house...) Shopping for shoes is basically a wimpy battle: 1) I want these shoes. 2) Walk out of the store buying shoes that are infinitely cheaper but ultimately worse than the shoes I wanted. Shopping for clothes is the calmest frenzy. It's an organized tornado of efficient but looping shoppery.

Did you know that this was the very first music video ever shown on MTV when it launched back on August 1 of 1981?

• Look how far music videos have come in 20 years, as far as technology is concerned! (I mean, plastic tube? Odd bodysuit woman? Shaky camera work? [I'm not really sure if the shaky camera work was intentional or not, actually.]) Look at how MTV has destroyed itself by not playing music anymore and instead inflating the egos of tanned morons who don't have talent but want to be famous anyway? Ha! I am so full of whimsy!
• I find it funny that a song called Video Killed the Radio Star was the first music video on a channel about music videos. Killing the radio star, one music video at a time. And MTV had to rub it in everyone's faces. Good job, MTV. You used to have a sense of irony.
• Also, I enjoy the "Oh-wha-oh-wa" women in the background. I always pretend to be them.
• It strikes me that this song actually makes no sense on its own, and the video clears up nothing.
• Why did you meet the children? What were you doing in an abandoned studio with the Radio Star? How in the name of alfalfa do you even know this Radio Star? It's not like you ran into her shopping for bread. Even if you did, you wouldn't recognize the Radio Star. The Radio Star didn't go on video. And you were the first/last WHAT? Dear Buggles, what are you trying to tell me?
• And in the video, I assumed the blond kid was you. I assumed the Radio Star was the woman in a bodysuit. So why did the blond kid morph into the Radio Star?
• Heh. Turns out I hate this song.

Quote for Saturday, May 7, 2011:

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

-Oscar Wilde

(http://thinkexist.com/quotation/quotation_is_a_serviceable_substitute_for/180217.html)

And so it is.

Muse for a Day:

Songs that tell stories.

Not songs that are about a girl, or a goat, or a garbage truck (while I do love a good toe-tapping garbage truck song), but songs that go through a little plotline in a melodic way. Such as the album Tommy by The Who, which tells a whole dysfunctional story about a boy named Tommy who unwittingly makes himself deaf, dumb, and blind but becomes such a master at pinball that he manages to start his own cult. Freaky, but interesting. Or Catsongs by Tom Milsom, three songs all about a cat named Livia who dies and how the family deals with it. (Also, Catsongs is hilarious in its own right. Catsongs III, when Livia responds, makes me laugh even now.)

What BEDA Taught Me

Even though there were two days when I didn't post, I found that doing BEDA helped me. Usually, I'm pretty resistant to blogging. I feel like there's nothing to say, and I don't care, so why am I doing this for myself? And then I end up on a hiatus from November to March, when I never was much of a poster (meaning person who posts- I never was a poster on a wall, to my knowledge. I could be, somewhere, maybe. I could also be in the background of some person's picture. I could be in hundreds of pictures, and I would never know it. And they would never know me) in the first place.

Although it doesn't seem like it, BEDA got easier as April dawdled along. I grew to actually like posting stuff, and starting to think about what I should write about. It became a ritual. It actually became fun, and if I want to pursue some kind of a career in writing, I need to become better at it, and more dedicated to writing quality on a regular basis.

So BEDA is practice, and I'll try to write like I did during BEDA (minus the "God life is so boring this is stupid I hate everything it's hot outside ooh, ice cream" posts that cropped up all too frequently...) the rest of the year. And depending on what my life is like in a couple of months, I might even try BEDAugust.

But now we're onto May! School is drawing to a close, my birthday is coming up, and it's utterly gorgeous outside. Life has potential.

Quote for Sunday, May 1, 2011:

It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic.

-Winston Churchill

(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Churchill,_Winston)

Muse for Today:

Bow ties. And not just because there was Doctor Who last night.