October 2003 Archives

This lovely, chilly evening was one of the final phases of homecoming week: the football game. It was cold, very cold. I think it quickly got to below freezing about the time the game started at 7:00, but I began my work much earlier. At 4:30 I arrived at school to go to Party City to buy decorations for our homecoming float. We managed to build the whole thing in about an hour, although many of our pieces were already made. At halftime there was extreme confusion relating to the class floats, and a change in the point of entry to the stadium made it such that all of our banners were on the wrong side of our float, so we had to have people rip them off and carry them. Nevertheless, despite the failure, our float was better than that of the Freshmen or Juniors. The Seniors, however, somehow got their hands on a gigantic 10 meter-long pirate ship replica-structure-thingy. It was amazing. Amazing is the only word which encompasses the true scale, scope, and grandeur of it.

With that over with, I purchased several cups of hot cider and tried to warm my numb hands (they're still tingly). But before I forget, let me summarize the other highlights of what we in leadership did to make this game quite possibly one of the greatest ever. For the unfamiliar, let me describe the principle of the Wilson-Lincoln rivalry. It is a rivalry between our school and the other high school on the west side of the Willamette River in Portland. I have no idea why we have this rivalry; if you were to ask a student they would merely say that it was because the opposing school "sucks!" In reality both schools are strikingly similar: they are generally considered the best in the district, they both generally perform the best in athletic competitions, and they are both chock full of snobby, wealthy people who don't feel bad about occasionally destroying things (Lincoln slightly more than us, however). This has had the effect of causing rampant spates of vandalism fluctuating between the two schools. To my knowledge, we have typically been vandalized slightly more historically than they have been. In previous years this has led to wide-spread spray-painting and window-breaking, and even the burning of Lincoln's track one year. This year, because Lincoln and Wilson have the two best futbol americanos teams in the league, the tension was especially tight. Last year and this year, the vandalism seems to have died down, but today was certainly no exception. I do not know of anything that has been done to their school thus far, but a tree was planted in the middle of our field, various obscenities (one of which was LHS) were spray-painted in red (the primary Lincoln color) on the giant green W that sits in our stadium, and it is rumored (although I doubt it, based on my own evidence) that a computer virus was unleashed on our network which somehow disabled the connection and displayed some anti-Wilson/pro-Lincoln slogan when one tried to use it. This particular game that was played tonight was the final game of the season. Wilson was 8-0 and Lincoln was 7-1, effectively making this the "championship" game of the season. I personally find the nature of this rivalry very barbaric and distasteful.

Anyway, the first order of business that we arranged for the football game was to have the cheerleaders arrive on a rather large group of Harley-Davidson motorcycles (courtesy of some Harley-Davidson club in the area). I was personally unable to witness this spectacle because I was building the float, but I certainly heard the noise it produced.

At this point, the game was almost 25% complete, and I had turned fanatical, trying to round up the people that I needed for the halftime float. It just so happened that I needed to borrow a wig that a friend of mine (Bret Emerson) was wearing for Halloween. At the quarter break, he said he needed to do something before he could give it to me. I consented due to the fact that I had until the middle of the 2nd quarter before I needed to go for the float. I paused for a moment with Maxwell Fritz and some other random people to watch the game itself, until someone told me what Bret Emerson's "thing that he needed to do" actually was. Within 30 seconds I noticed him running at top speed toward the stands on the opposite side of the stadium (the visitor stands). Before long he was running through the visitor stands (visible only from his blonde, afro-wig), gradually slowing down, until he finally disappeared. Apparently he did actually emerge from the other side of the stands, but not before being tackled numerous times, and having lost the wig and several items of clothing. I needed the wig desperately for my 70s costume, so I ran over to the visitor stands and approached the person now wearing the wig. The general animosity between people toward people from Wilson by the people from Lincoln is extreme, so when he asked if I was from Wilson I tried to convince him that I was from Grant (another school). I spent a little time sweet-talking him about the athletic event, and cheering with the visitor crowd before pushing the wig too much. Once I started asking for the wig my Grant-persona fell through the cracks. I tried bartering for a little while with him and he wouldn't give it up, but finally got him to offer to sell it to me for $1. I really didn't want to spend a dollar, but the number of threatening remarks being issued my way was getting to be alarming, so I paid the dollar and left. Bret reimburst me for the wig bartering, but it was still a rather humerous event.

Halftime commenced with the floats and bit of confusion (but at least there was a halftime). With my responsibilities finished, I watched the game for a little while (while my hands turned completely numb), and 7-7 tie at the half turned into a 25-7 victory for us. That was the championship game, and fireworks were shot off from near the pirate ship.

And as a sidenote, the sophomore class, in all of its glory, won the most homecoming competitions (to the best of my knowledge), therefore making us the winners. This means that according to the rules that the seniors declared at the beginning of homecoming, our homecoming royalty people or whatever it's called, should be king and queen. Not that that really matters, but it just shows the degree to which our class is superior in a great many ways to all the other classes.

Just a depressing fact: the lowest grade that I have in any of my classes is in chemstry, which happens to be my second easiest class. To my knowledge, the highest grade I have is in physics, which isn't hard per se, but it's a heck of a lot harder than chemistry. I think it's because Mr. Wilson bothers to test us on all of this historical junk, and he runs his class a like a math class. I want to know why the cathode ray tube predicts the existance of the electron, not who invented it. We spent days discussing these stupid molar unit conversions which are the easiest things that exist in the entire field of chemistry, and about 2 minutes discussing the strong and electromagnetic forces (not to mention 0 minutes discussing the weak force). We spent about 2 days on nuclear chemistry, and 2 weeks on moles... MOLES!!!! Why are we celebrating national mole day, and why am I wasting my time writing and singing SONGS about MOLES, when we could be talking about sub-atomic particles and nuclear forces!!!!! Moles take about 5 minutes to understand, which means that we have wasted more time than I care to admit.

Note: To be perfectly honest, it depresses me that my blog is consisting mostly of quotations (I got it right: quotation = noun, quote = verb) these days. But it's been busy around. There's not much time to blog except for on the weekends, especially since this week is homecoming week (homecoming teaches mini-nationalism and should be abolished, plus it's a pain due to the amount of work it creates for me and a small group of dedicated students) and I'm sick too and the water main into our house broke... another story for another time. Yet I found this quotation particularly interesting. All I can say is: Colin, you and I have been caught red-handed... again... but certainly we do not dispute that humans are tiny and insignificant creatures (ourselves as much as everybody) and that they are all very closely related to apes (who do not use narcotics, I might add). Contrary to what this may protray, we do not directly condescend individuals, but we do condescend society as a whole, and we do set curves of tests. No one will, however, dispute that we won the homecoming knowledge contest, edging out over the seniors in a tight 9-8-10-0 (seniors-juniors-sophomores-freshman) victory. Recently someone wrote a very interesting and excellent piece which I here reproduce because I have no capacity to produce quality blog at this moment. Cheers.

"i talk like a teenager.

i don't think it's a crime. in fact, i think it's a good thing. sometimes i write like a teenager. i use colloquial terms in order to reflect the view of myself and my peers. colloquial. that's a word with over three syllables. and yes, i do know what it means.

now, many of you probably don't pay attention to how smart i may or may not be. that could be for a number of reasons. 1: you don't give a shit. 2: you don't talk or listen to me for some other reason. or 3: you're too interested in what i'm actually SAYING to notice whether my grammar is correct or my vocabulary particularly extensive. yes, i'm straying from my usual habit of writing in a rather informal, conversational way. bear with me-- i'm doing it to make a point.

it's true that i don't seem to display a particular interest in politics. if you were to simply read my blog and engage in casual everyday conversation with me on a somewhat regular basis, you would probably only notice my emphasis on emotion and the arts in my everyday life. but i do have a mind. and it works fairly well. i don't go out of my way to research politics outside of school, because i don't plan on pursuing a future profession in that field. however, i find the structures of both our past and present societies highly fascinating. this is why i make an effort to contribute to discussions in both my english and us history classes, and why i participate in student government at school. it is believed that our "democratic" government is one of the most important, influential institutions ever created in this world. some of us may demonstrate a particular interest in political science because of this.

others of us are more interested in the factors that shape one's personal sense of right and wrong... one's conscience, if you will.

i feel that any one of my peers who looks down on others simply because of their adolescence and interest in both pop culture and typical social activities on the whole is a hypocrite and also markedly delusional.

we are all teenagers in this high school. for those of you who haven't noticed, the age range in a school such as ours is generally fourteen through eighteen. my friends, and probably yours as well, have an average age of about sixteen. now. we all know that adolescence is a stage that, hopefully, includes much growing, developing, and maturing into adulthood. none of us are fully mature. none of us are any "better" than others. even when we reach full maturity, we will all still be humans. only humans. tiny little specks in the vast expanse of what is only our KNOWN universe. primates, like gorillas.

but i digress.

sixteen is commonly viewed as an age of turmoil. it is my personal belief that every one of us is going through some kind of internal battle during this time, however trivial it may be. in fact, humans in general tend to be caught in a constant state of existential struggle within themselves. we are all wondering. we are all unsure. we are all just making of this world what we can.

the more intellectual among us often choose to express these struggles in an articulate, overly condescending, ostensibly sure-footed way.

but not all of the intellectuals at wilson high school are like this. oh, no. some are sensitive. some are kind. some actually give a shit about the feelings of others and do not tend to share the sentiment that every less intelligent person in this school is a drooling, babbling, crack-smoking ape.

ergo, once again, adam anderson and colin corbett SUCK, and dane wins the prize for coolest person ever."

--Lindsay, taken from 10-28-2003 entry entitled "big words, dude"

I've done a lot of speaking today and yesterday. Yesterday evening I went to a UNA (United Nations Somethingorother) meeting with Ms. Kvitka and spoke on the Model United Nations program. We've got good ideas for things to do for MUN, and we also made some excellent connections with various other education groups. The demographics of the meeting were fascinating; about 60% of the attending people were elderly women. The women who ran the meeting must have been at least 70 years old and had a walker. After talking for quite some time and orchestrating the event, she apologized to us because apparently she wasn't up to her usual par: she had been speaking at some conference in California and had caught some laryngitis (I would have never guessed). I hope I'm like that when I'm 70.

On a more recent note, I spoke today at the quarterly meeting of the board of directors of the Oregon Council for the Humanities. The meeting was held at Catlin-Gable school. Luckily, I only had to go for an hour and a half or so, during which I received lunch. I spoke personally for about 7-10 minutes, as did two other recipients of the grant. We discussed our project and gave suggestions for the council on the program itself. Despite the fact that I initially didn't want to go, I actually enjoyed it. That was fine and dandy, but the most interesting thing occurred as I was leaving. My mom had dropped me off and then left for the duration of the meeting, and then she came to pick me at the end. She arrived at Catlin-Gable right as we were about to start leaving, and she talked to some people as the luncheon was finishing. I hadn't seen her yet, and I was talking to the executive director about Soviet military expenditures and public speaking. Apparently, however, the headmistriss of Catlin-Gable went up to my mom and wanted to know if there was anything they could possibly do to get me to come to their school. Later on, she basically suggested that they would be willing give me a free ride there. For those of you who don't know, admission to Catlin-Gable's "Upper School" (high school) is $17,350 per year. It's probably the best (or at least most prestigous) private school in the area. There's no way I'm going of course. It's a little too far away and is way too small (250 students in the "Upper School"), but the offer was still a little interesting. They're so rich that all of their students get laptop computers, their 50-acre campus has a wifi network throughout, and (according to my knowledge) their campus is either brand new or entirely remodeled. And the new campus is really, really nice.

I predict that within 50 years the word "whom" will be effectively dead. In another 25 to 50 after that, it will be considered archaic usage. Here is just another example of inflection dying. The languages of the future will be almost entirely uninflected.

"think about this.
George W. Bush, the president of the United States of America, has admitted, along with his administration, that there is no tie from Al Qaida, or Osama bin Laden, or the 9/11 attacks to Iraq and saddam hussein. which is pretty much the same as saying.
"I lied about everything, there was no reason to spend those $87 billion dollars."
but its ok right? no biggie.

well thanks to george double u, theres pretty much a 100% chance that when i get to be 60 and retire, there will be no government pension for me, at all.
not one dollar.

i just thought youd like to know.

i dont know what i just felt like talking about that, except that its 87 billion dollars.

$87,000,000,000"

--Dane Gatewood, speaking the truth. Please note that the national debt, as of yesterday is $6,834,787,133,873.25. Track it daily at: http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm

"Every time I walk into an economics class its like dudaduduh dudaduduh dudaduduh dudaduduh ["twighlight zone" theme song] It's like voodoo science or something."

--Patrick Murphy, accelerated US History teacher, sharing his feelings on economics while stating the basic principles of capitalism

According to apple.com, "hell froze over", and indeed it has, for Apple's iTunes is now available for Windows!! The download is rather large (19.6 MB), but it's about time for this to happen. Finally I can abandon the questionable Windows Media Player for some real quality media software. This will be great.

In other software news, Mozilla Firebird recently released version 0.7. It is even smaller than 0.6.1, but I think it still does not have an installer, and it cannot share a GRE installation with other Mozilla programs.

Colin Corbett is a cruel person for breaking my curve breaking score on our US History test. I set the curve at 47 out of 50, and then he reset it at 48 out of 50. There is a reason that he was voted the most diabolically conspiratorial person of our math carpool two years ago.

To be perfectly honest, I should be reading 1984 or doing one of my tasks for National Mole (measure, not animal) Day, but I really wish I was reading Henry VI part 1. And yet, I'm blogging... sort of subtle compromise that accomplishes absolutely nothing productive. It sounds strange that I would be preferring Henry VI to 1984, and well, I think it is too. I just feel in the mood for parsing some Shakespearean English and plodding along those archetypal plots and themes. It's all like a big puzzle that you really have to work at to understand, but I've made some pretty nice improvements in this respect over the last 2 years.

The OCH has again, in its relentlessness, contacted me to give another presentation at their seasonal day-long board meeting. It looks as if I'm one of three people who will be doing this. Despite the fact that I've resented them significantly in the past, I can't help but chuckle that they keep wanting to do things with these projects. First it was to extend them into the school and community, and now it's presentations at their board meetings. Everything strikes me as a little odd.

It's about midterm time, and I am decisively positive that there is a significant amount of distaste toward me among the other class officers. Ever since I opposed having a homecoming float displaying dancing in the 1970s' style of "disco" (and was overruled, I might add), it seems that people may have a certain dislike for me, or at least a dislike for the things that I like and dislike. Things have gotten no better since I started trying to force people to input 250-300 names and phone numbers in a spreadsheet (another failed attempt; I'm ending up doing 1100-1200 myself, although two people did about 250 apiece). I think that there is a major fundamental difference at hand here. I'm not sure what, but I think it has to do with perceptions of aethetics and what is realistic and doable. Apparently disco is "so awesome!" and spending 2 hours typing in a spreadsheet is "holy crap!... impossible!".

"I'm not real good with those mathy words."

--Deborah McFarlane, precalculus and algebra teacher, making the most self-explanatory remarks that I have ever heard in my life (note that she says "mathy words", not "mathematical terms"; clever)

I finished reading "The Sun Also Rises" last night. I know Hemingway is probably the greatest American author to ever exist, but I just don't get it. This is the second book of his that I've read, and all his characters ever do is wander aimlessly while drinking heavy alcohol of every other page. I just don't get it. Maybe I'm missing something, but personally, I'll stick to Steinbeck for my authentic American literature. He's the second greatest of all time anyway, so why bother with Hemingway! :) (I despise the smily face thingys, but sometimes they are necessary to make a point)

I havn't posted for a while, but fear not because I am starting a new regular feature on this blog which will chronical the books that I read. Whenever I finish a literary work, I will make a posting to that extent, and perhaps give my opinion on it.

There is a very cool club at school now called the philosophy club. There are an innumerable number of clubs this year (including my very own Vilsonesperantistsocieto!), and today I joined the philosophy club, which philosophizes. It's going to be very neat. There are about 15 people, including 2 or 3 German exchange students, and we are going to meet at school and various predetermined coffee-houses to discuss numerous topic. Personally, I am most excited about the topic of the perception of time, which surfaced today after someone's watch broke. I can tell this will be good.

Mr. Murphy: "You know how when you go to, say, G.I. Joe's, and there's that little revolving thing?"

Alex Sudalnik: "Oh, yeah... You mean the door?"

Mr. Murphy: "No..."

--Mr. Murphy, on about minute 2 of trying to explain the premise of a turnpike to a very confused student.

"U.S. administrations tend to demonize the nation's adversaries and imbue them with theologically apocalypic characteristics. They become "isms"--communism, socialism, terrorism--whose individual parts become as indistinguishable as the ingredients of cake batter. Lumping diverse threats together, the United States magnifies the overall hazard to its interests. In reality, not all threats are created equal, and the whole is usually less than the sum of its parts."

--Robert Landauer, syndicated columnist for "The Oregonian"

"think of this
think of teh [the] averege intelligence of a human
think of teh [the] fact that 50% of people are dumber than taht [that]"

--Leeor Schweitzer, in an instant messaging coversation

Hodiaŭ, estis la puriĝo de nia lerenejtereno. Estante laŭdire "bona homo", mi iris, kaj ĝi estis interesa sperto. La kvanto de rubo ĉe nia lernejo estas memmalboniĝi... tre memmalboniĝi. Ni kolektis ĉirkaŭ ok sakojn de rubo. Ĉi tiuj homoj estas teruregaj. Neniu ajn povas meti ilian propran rubon en rubujoj. La lernejo estas malgrande pli pura, sed la rubdirektadproblemo bezonas korekti. Mi ne scias kiel korekti ĉi tion.

I'm up absurdly late, again, tonight. I have too many things I want to do and too little time to do them in. But that's okay, because sleep isn't an important activity. It merely facilitates the ability to do things. Other than that, it's useless. In other news, the Esperanto club is "all go", starting in two weeks, at lunch, en la klaso de Fraŭlino Kvitka. I'm sort of on the fence between making it a thing where people teach themselves the language and use the Vilsonesperantistsocieto as a place to practice speaking, or making it a class-like setting where I teach people. I'm kind of leaning toward the latter, because I think that that would be more fun for me, and because people would be guaranteed to learn something then. Anyway, that's a done deal thanks to Ms. Kvitka's being a very nice person.

Speaking of "anyway", today I really embarassed myself today by saying "anyways" instead of the proper "anyway" after I lamented the dropping of the use of "whom" in modern speech. I'm resolving never to say "anyways" again, because it really is a crude bastardization of the word "anyway", perhaps more so than "who" is of "whom". Maybe I should stop using "anyway" all together. At least I'm not one of those people who says "more better", or worst of all, "more funner". Some people quite regularly feel over-zealous in their usage of the superlative.

The campus clean up is tomorrow, and because I'm alleged to be a good citizen, I'm going. It should be fun.

We're reading 1984 in English! Dystopian novels really are superb. So far it measures up to such others as Brave New World (Tengo una pasión por este libro!), and Animal Farm (of which I read several pages of an Esperanto translation). I think someone could make an incredible dystopian novel of present society. From Bushism, to the pathetic inability for society to find morality except in religion, to the general stupidification of society into automatons that live for momentary, temporal pleasure; its like Brave New World realized, except for there isn't the totalitarianism (that point could be debated: we have a form of joint government and corporate totalitarianism, in my opinion). A lot (I think 99.999%, and 99.9999999% of my peers) of people would disagree with me here, but mark my words, social and historical progress isn't necessarily human progress. It could be "counter-progress".

I also feel it necessary to become very angry over the current prevalence of "reality TV" (this is giant media-concocted lie: reality TV more unrealistic than bad sitcoms (which included 99% of sitcoms). I think its a feel-good mechanism to make people think that they're watching sophistocated "realistic" television, and this would make sense considering the consolidation of media companies to include news, reality TV, and normal TV shows). Not only is it the most brain-dead form of entertainment, but it is not realistic. Here, let me cite a show entitled "Fear Factor". On "Fear Factor", contestants compete for cash by doing gruesome feats, such as eating raw pig entrails, being covered in dangerous and/or large and generally despised insects, or performing feats which test fears of heights. One cannot blame the producers for making this show. The creators are merely following an idea in a respectable capitalistic fashion. Capitalism ain't great, but it's the best there is, so that's perfectly fine. The viewers are the true guilty ones. What kind of doped-up maniac would voluntarily watch such a show as "Fear Factor"? Apparently quite a few. People somehow live quite happily off this rampant "bread and circus" entertainment void. It amazes me.

More for next time: California recall race reaches new heights of absurdity! Republican frontrunner is wee bit of a sexual predator, and is favored to win by some!! Sound familiar? Late 1990s, president.... argghhh!!

It just occurred to me that I live several miles away from both the birthplace and childhood home of Linus Pauling.