The Domain of Steven

APCS test Friday, preceded by a math test Thursday, preceded by an American Studies test Wednesday. There’s been a lot of studying going on, so I spent the weekend relaxing.

Funny story: my mother was afraid that I would one day crash due to sleep deprivation, so she neglected to wake me up to make my nap a one-hour nap. Instead, it became a 12-hour nap, and I woke up at 6:45 to finish off my prep school homework. I then proceeded to be fully sober even when listening to my writing teacher’s boring rants.

And here I am, nearly done with my homework, with good prospects of being able to watch Jack & Bobby as well as get eight hours of sleep. A good way to start the week following the hellish one I just had.

It’s amazing how the discovery of new pictures can put me back at the starting point. Damn, I was sure that I’d make it past Pennsylvania Avenue.

And I
Just wish that
I didn’t feel
Like there was
Something I missed…

Give it all away
Just to have somewhere
To go to
Give it all away
To have someone
To come home to…

These are my snow covered dreams
This is me pretending
This is all I need…

-My December, by Linkin Park

TactOps88 (9:30:02 PM): there’s a distinct difference between what you feel when you’re giving advice and when you’re on the receiving end
iii THEPOPE iii (9:30:13 PM): yes quite the difference
TactOps88 (9:30:53 PM): but if you understand that your rational mind is being distorted, then you sometimes lessen the impact
TactOps88 (9:31:12 PM): perhaps it’s a skill you get after lots of distortions?

It might have been because I’ve hardly been able to keep myself from procrastinating to death, but they’re becoming less frequent. Yet I say that as I type this, and as I’m staring at it on my watch. Well, at least I’m glad I can touch type. I once read that the door can never fully be closed, no matter what the issue, but I’m wondering how far I can push it closed. The pictures, even the ones not related to her, were the equivalent of 300-pound Bubba geting a natural 20 on his strength check.

However, I’m looking at them again, and I don’t feel as intense about them. They were nice memories, but I should stick to what I said and maintain control. My current situation worries me though, and I’m not even going to think about the decreased chances of anything happening in college.

Why is it the social norm for the guy to take the initiative? It’s something I’ve detested, even more since I realized that one can become completely focused on one person (or a couple people), moving aside similar thoughts for other people. What if one of those people threw the ball to me? Lost in my dreamy gaze, I’d be stunned when the ball came out of the sky to hit me. Not only would I be disoriented, but the relationship I have with the person who just chucked a ball at me would never be the same. Now switch the positions.

And that’s exactly what was running through my mind two-and-a-half years ago. There were, of course, extenuating circumstances that would make for a very long, confusing, “you seriously have no backbone” story. So I’m wondering how it’s usually done. Granted, I don’t expect the pair to make a mutually obvious connection, but it seems that whenever I’m out on the field, the sun is extraordinarily bright. They won’t ever see it coming.

This is one of those times I wish I was the younger brother. I want someone with those five extra years of experience, that’s experienced a whole world ahead of what I’m currently at. Because I’m a coward and a perfectionist when it comes to this, and I don’t want to make the wrong move. It’s easy when I can make a bold move on someone else’s behalf, but this is a purely selfish action, one that even endangers the other. I somehow doubt that chivalry alone can make it work. Perhaps I need a little extra something.

Quick followup on the last post…

Columbus may have condemned all those people to a horrible fate, but the good politician he is, he made all us students happy by giving us a day off. And boy, I needed that extra day off. Three projects for different classes are culminating tomorrow, and I used yesterday to get everything out of my system by watching Shogun Assassin, binging on a shockingly immersive Tribes: Vengeance session, then getting a headache and taking a 14 hour nap-turned-coma. Now the work in the salt mines shall commence.

In case you haven’t been online recently, I’ve changed my screen name to SarcasticSteven, a tribute to my self-created nickname from the CTY ‘03 icebreaker. That’s when I learned the word ‘alliteration’. Though the two terms I avoided using, short and skinny, are coincidentally also alliterations…

Excalibur, *kicks into automatic mode* Stuyvesant’s premier role-playing club, is looking promising this year. We’ve got a good batch of new members, including sophmores who didn’t join last year, so there should be no repeats of last year’s lax attendence. Plus, Roleplaying Tips Weekly gave me the idea of using little Lego people as miniatures and using Lego bricks to form boundaries on the battle map they provide (it’s a grid with 1 inch squares that facilitates combat). I think the Lego people are cool as it is, so I’m psyched. Now all I have to do is learn how to DM without totally fucking up like last year and I’m set.

I never knew that our early American presidents were such dicks.

I’m turning out to be a good Team Handball goalie. Out of around ten shots, only one’s gotten by me. However, I would be a better goalie if I did not:

• Attribute blocked shots to luck and bad shooting. I usually point out that most blocked shots were sent close to me if not at me. There’s only been one blocked shot that I’ve really had to stretch out for, and that one was a slow one. I guess one could counterpoint that everything is relative, and we downplay our achievements so as not to be high and mighty. But it still feels like it’s purely luck.
• Immortalize my failures. No matter how often and consistently we do well, it only takes a single failure to throw everything out of balance. You don’t remember all the great jokes you’ve told your friends, but you certainly remember the joke that flopped, leaving you high and dry.

*ends Psychology 100.000001*

This school year has seen the effects of major budget cuts. People who deserved advanced classes were not given them, and a number of teachers were let go. Among the other changes was a policy that unless all your classes fulfilled a requirement of some sort, you could not have more than 9 out of 10 periods. This means that the term “elective” is practically nonexistent for many of us. I was one of the students who had 10 periods but did not have a reason to have those extra classes, and they decided that they’re going to lay down the law. Forget that it’s already six weeks in, forget that you won’t be able to bring new kids into the class, policy is policy! And so I’m going to have a random free period in the middle of my day, because they’re making me drop a course.

To spite them, I chose to drop Advanced CAD. The class barely over half capacity, nullifying any kind of teacher load lightening. Not to mention it’s conveniently right next to my lunch period. I can now spend an hour and 20 minutes on my lunch, which is obscene even for a slow-eater like me. Here’s to you, CADKEY.

I’ve been entertaining myself with thoughts of my teachers being hit in the face with a flechette round. Especially my physics teacher. Only the flechettes would be half their normal size of an inch, so they wouldn’t pierce his brain, but rather he’d roll around on the floor in agony. I guess the same effect could be had if a fragmentation grenade was used, but that’d cause a lot more property damage than it’s worth.

If more stupid questions like this came up, I could be a Google Researcher too.

Porque lo quiso.

Casablanca is too cool for me to deny having seen it. Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.

And Chobits was great. 24 episodes was a bit of an odd number, and I’m still shocked at the wild turn the emphasis takes on episode 17, but it was great. And the five-minute special was funnily insane, making good use of crazy animation.

195|1 196|1

This past Friday, I broke my decade-long abstinance of Halloween. I originally intended to just wear a cool hat. People would ask me, “Who are you?” and I’d reply, “I don’t know. I just like the hat.” And it is a very cool hat. I’m not sure how to classify it; people said it was a cowboy hat, but my mother classified it as something different. Whatever it’s called, it took 31 dollars (I could’ve bought a game for that much…) and a horrific trip through the women’s beauty department to obtain. I forget the store. Macy’s and JcPenny are identical to me.

I then wondered what else I could wear. It’d have to be easy and makeshift, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to be dishing out any more dough. I was passing by the 99 cent store as I was thinking, and I got the idea of simply draping some black cloth around me to match the hat. They didn’t have black cloth that large, but they did have a black shower curtain. I went home and proceeded to cut it to size and shape, as well as attach two Chinese-school-esque ID badge clips to it as a clasp. And then there was my cloak.

Of course, not all people felt it was a cloak. “Are you a garbage bag?” “No, I’m wearing a shower curtain.” I did, however, get called a variety of other things, the most prevalent being Chinese Zorro. I stuck with that.

As the day went on, I learned that 99 cent shower curtains are not the most durable of materials. The tiny hole I made to attach the clips widened until it was gigantic. Hence, I threw it away after coming home and taking a few pictures. But the hat will live on.
194|1