Sunday, December 23, 2012

Pickles and pidgins and random droppings...

So Fam, we are all familiar with this here Christmas ornament -->
 This here pickle has several origin stories. However, a particular story behind it is quite gruesome.
Three boys were the unfortunate victims of an evil, child-hating shop owner who murdered them. Chopped up into little pieces with the man's ax, their remains were stuffed into pickle barrels/were pickled.
St. Nicholas came along, prayed, and raised the three boys from the dead.
Perhaps not as entertaining as the story where St. Nick punched Arius, but intriguing.


What to read the Nativity story? Try reading the Hawai'i Pidgin translation of the Bible story here.

Speaking of pidgins and angels coming down, you should read The Birds for Christmas by Mark Richard. It's both humorous and depressing. It has become a bit of a tradition to my class and a few others to hear this story read at school before Christmas break.

Senior pictures were yesterday. My class dressed classy and had pictures taken downtown. We then dressed not so classy in all white/mostly white at the beach and proceeded to fling paint at each other. Very fun, until paint starting searing your eyeballs, and you had to wash off in the freezing water.

I think holidays tend to carry along with them an allergic reaction. I'm sick and my sleep schedule has been thrown off since the day we got off for break. I can tell I won't be nearly as productive as I planned....

But tomorrow is Christmas Eve, which means the tree will get decorated (I almost seriously petitioned to decorate it early this year) and I will hang the pickle without much sibling competition but with morbid mental images.....

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Christmas Caroling: Fainting Goat Edition

Imagine this scenario: A group of students are singing Christmas carols to the residents at a very warm nursing home. Three people black out and two throw up. Who are these victims? The elderly people for sure....well no, wrong. 
Our school's annual caroling trip to nursing homes has a history of such incidents-students feeling faint, throwing up, etc. But yesterday was the record. Locked knees and the inability to acclimatize to warm facilities have always been the main causes. Shortly after singing, ".....glory to the new born King!" *thud* I spot a little hole form to my left as students spread out around a passed out 4th grader. Uh oh, little Timmy locked his knees. Worried moms help him to a chair and start fanning him. The elderly are a bit confused, albeit amused at the same time. 
No sooner does one of our teachers give us the typical, "Don't lock your knees" speech and we start another song, than *THUD* a 5th grader falls straight back, green-faced. An older gentleman starts gesticulating wildly in alarm. The girl is quickly ushered off.
Needless to say, our singing was a bit more shaky and off beat after all the confusion. You'd think we had come to minister, not be admitted to the care facility. 
I came to learn that another two students had blacked out and/or thrown up in the bathroom. 
However, I believe the old residents were happy we came. I just wished the powers at be put more common, "secular" Christmas carols into the program. I don't think the old people were very entertained with the obscure hymns we threw in to fill up our 30 minute time slot. Though they don't have any deep teaching about the Incarnation, I believe the residents would have enjoyed "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" or "Frosty the Snowman." 

Sunday, December 9, 2012

What am I watching? (a better question is why)

You can tell you're watching way to many shows when you can make a huge blog post about it, but unfortunately, there isn't much else to talk about. So here's a rundown of what's been killing my brain cells.

Revolution---
Plot: all electricity, gas motors, etc. go out mysteriously. Several years later, girl sets out on mission with stoic uncle to get her sickly brother back from evil militia  Why do I get the hunch she's destined to turn the power back on?
It's an okay show. However, every episode goes as follows: 1. Everybody gets in an inescapable, sure-to-die situation, mainly due to the girl, Charlie. 2. Superman uncle saves the day.

Wash and repeat for every...single....episode. But it's still an adventure flick with lots of sword fighting, so it's entertaining. However, the script is weak, and I sometimes find myself more ticked off at the good guys than at the villains. For instance, the facial expressions (see image) of the characters never change, and they always dump some pseudo-Barney platitude about family that is quite out of place in a where roughly five people are stabbed each episode.


The Office---
Well, it's not quite dead yet. This last season has been pretty funny, perhaps better than the last. However, Andy is just plain annoying as regional manager, unlike Michael (whose antics were actually funny).
Random things still happen as usual, but the final season is showing a clearer plot line and direction. Jim's setting up a new job, and the documentary crew has actually been mentioned by the characters a few times.
The situations are actually funny again and not simply depressing (my favorite: Angela hiring a hit man to bash Oscar's knee caps with a metal pipe) so I'm looking forward to the rest of the season.















Downton Abbey---
Yes, I watch this show. No, I am not proud for it.
Moving on,

The X-Factor---
I don't watch this show in its entirety, but watch hulu clips of the live performances.

Psych---
I'm just waiting till February for the next season. I really like this show, consistently funny. It's on its last season, and I shall miss it when it's over.







Parks and Recreation---

The crowning jewel of my t.v. indulgences. From the creators of the office, this show is amazing. Once you get past the first season, the show blooms into comedic perfection. Unlike the office, you actually start to care about the characters, and their lives aren't actually that depressing. There are so many running gags that never get old and each character is hilarious and quotable. If you haven't given it a try, do. There really isn't much else to say.











Friday, December 7, 2012

Sorry Bieber....

It's old news that "Gangnam Style" by Psy has become the #1 Youtube video ever, ousting Justin Bieber's "Baby". Not only does it warm my heart when a face that's plastered to every other girl's wall is dethroned by an eccentric, slightly chunky Korean "weird al", but the numbers are pretty crazy. Bieber's video has 809,271,898 views, while Gangnam Style has 903,119,259. Because of someone else's creativity, I discovered something very baffling.....let's do some math:
Gangnam Style is a video that's 4:13 minutes long......
(903,119,259 views) x (4.2167 mins.) = 3,808,152,875 minutes spent watching this video.....
3,808,152,875/60 = 63,469,214.59 hours spent watching this video......
63,469,214.59/24 = 2,644,550.608 entire days spent watching this video......
2,644,550.608/365 = 7,245.344131 years spent watching this video.......

So roughly 7,245 years worth of time has been spent watching a video of a man ride an imaginary horse.....
Granted, the math is very inaccurate (many sensible people probably didn't watch the video in its entirety). 
Imagine art history from Renaissance to modern day -- about 1350-2012. It 662 years for art to go from the Renaissance through however many art movements to what we have today. The time spent watching Gangnam style (one piece of "art") is almost enough to repeat the time from the Renaissance to present day 11 times.....

Anyway, this conspiracy arithmetic could be applied to just about any youtube video for practically the same baffling results, but I presume people don't think about it much. If you're still willing to watch it after the above, here it is:



Thursday, December 6, 2012

Oh, physical education.....

It really is an accurate description when people call sports a substitution for war. Today it struck me when we were playing kickball in P.E. Friends turn against friends as every single play, call, or hiccup is challenged and used as an excuse for saying the other team had an unfair advantage. Sounding petty is no concern to any boy or girl as we verbally duke it out tooth and nail: "That's a bunt! They've been bunting the entire time when we were told that bunting wasn't allowed!" "Bobby! You just slide tackled Sally to get to third base! Wait, why are you still running? She's on the ground clutching her ankle!" Also, any years of taking rhetoric go down the mental drain as any eloquence leaves our speech. Reminiscent of third grade and below, good argument doesn't get what you want, but yelling louder than anyone else does.
I really think that this video portrays a much more mature way of handling P.E. conflicts....

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Senior Quotes

Ye old yearbook staff has required us to have our personal senior quote submitted by Friday (each senior gets their own page in the yearbook).
I've chosen mine from C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves, a book I'm using extensively for my thesis.
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” 

And for our class quote we've chosen:
“Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received-- only what you have given.” ~St. Francis of Assisi