This is why I really can't complain about my school:
So perhaps you have heard of this new indie band Vampire Weekend. Ridiculous name aside, they are quite talented and also darlings of the "blogosphere," if you will (I can't believe I just used that bloody word.) Pitchfork Media, a respected yet pretentious and hipsterish music review site, gave their debut album (which came out 2 or 3 days ago) an 8.8 out of 10. The band in question is a group of four Columbia-educated preppies who play clean pop music backed by African rhythms (I'm not going to bother to parse out the theoretical implications of that stylistic choice. Get all postcolonial up in this bitch on your own time.
Man, I am using a lot of parenthetical expressions tonight.)
Well, it turns out that not only did one of the band members-- Rostam Batmanglij, the keyboardist and recording engineer, among several other things-- attend Potomac, but he happens to be the cousin of one of my debate chums. The best part is that, on the strength of their first single, I bought 2 tickets so my friend Mimi and I could see their DC show not only before
a) their full album dropped, but also before
b) the hype got ridiculous (Jesus, their website says the album is at #5 on iTunes AND Amazon right now. In the internet age, that means a lot), and
c) we found out that Yar and the keyboardist were cousins. Now don't I feel smart. We'll practically be with the band.
Potomac produced a semi-rock star. That would seem to count in its favor.
This is why I'm going to complain anyway, despite an utter lack of any reasonable justification:
For the past week, we'd been hearing that we were going to have a "mystery speaker" at today's assembly. As one of my homeroom compadres pointed out, the "mystery person" silhouette on the posters looked just like Captain Planet, but that is a moot (though exciting) point. We'd spent a good part of the past seven days dissecting verbal cues from student counsel members for any hint as to who the guest might be. The only thing we'd gotten out of anyone so far was that it was "a recent alumni [sic]" who "some of the girls will like."
As I was listening to Vampire Weekend's album for the first time last night, I had an overwhelming feeling that the "speaker" would actually be Yar's cousin, and possibly the rest of the band, and that all four of them perhaps might be singing and playing instruments. I was so sure, I almost called several people to inform them of my miraculous brain wave. The only thing holding me back was what I perceived as an extremely slim possibility that I might humiliate myself by being wrong.
That was the only wise thing I did last night (in addition to irrationally assuming that Yar's cousin would be the speaker, I blew off my homework, watched the election returns, and spent 3 hours lying on the floor of my bedroom and staring at the ceiling in a catatonic state because I was too lazy to brush my teeth and crawl into bed.) The "speaker" actually did turn out to be a male musician complete with singing and instrumentation. And he was pretty good-- his guitar work was actually quite impressive. But he wasn't, you know, Vampire Weekend. That sort of hurt.
I might get over it. Babies are starving in Burundi. And I still have the tickets for the Feb. 6 show.
Anyway, this is one of my favorite songs off the new album. Clearly, it is live. I'm mildly embarrassed to be posting a video of a band that's been on MTV, but it appears to be from British MTV, so that's slightly less dorky, maybe.
Look at Yar's cousin plinking away back there. He's tired, maybe even a bit bored, but he's being recorded for broadcast, so he's got to make it to the end of the song. After that he can sack out. Now that is a Potomac Student. Go Panthers!
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
Caffeinated at 11:23 PM. Did you expect it to make sense?
The gates of Hell are red. Well, reddish-orange.
When I enter those doors, that is, if I make it that far through the snow and ice of a Colorado winter, Satan manifests himself (herself, itself?) as an ominous black bubble camera recording my every movement, paranoid memorandums sent from an insecure principal to oppressed and underpaid teachers, and petty jockism.
You have to visualize these halls. Dank and gray. Actually they're white, with gray and red stripes. The point is, the atmosphere is dank and gray. The ceiling tiles help this effect; about half of them are disintegrating, becoming living organisms, probably some strange bio-terror science project of some mad scientist (Dr. Strangelove?) who is really running my school from the basement that none of us students knows exists (ah, the War Room). Another of his schemes is to test brainwave activity under freezing-cold conditions. I wear my huge pink ski jacket out of necessity, roaming the halls as a deformed pink marshmallow. Perhaps my disturbed scientist's real experiment is one in the psyche of high school students; how low will self-esteem levels get when students are subjected to extreme embarrassment, forced to galumph (I love that this is actually a word) through the halls?
Today I had a revelation. My school, is not a school. It might be cleverly, or not so cleverly, disguised as a learning institution, but it's not.
There is this class, a "Relationships" class, which seems to be very popular at Centauri High School this season. Let me explain. I walked into the bathroom one day and there was a girl wrapping something up in a blanket on the floor. Well, I was glad it was a girl because that meant I had entered the right restroom. Then I wondered what she was wrapping up. (okay, well my first reaction was curiosity for what might be in the blanket, I just added the other part in hindsight). Then I realized, she had killed a baby and was wrapping it up on the floor of the bathroom! Strange first conclusion, but it might be explained by the fact that babies aren't (or weren't, until recently) a common sight at my high school. But no, she had not killed the baby. The baby had never been alive. It was a doll. A demonic doll, one that cries and tries very hard to imitate a real baby and fails miserably. In part of the "Relationships" teacher's ploy to teach abstinence without actually, I think, telling girls about sex at all, she has managed to pass out these dolls to almost every girl in the school, except for me, of course. I doubt the babies are a very effective tool in teaching abstinence, because, much to my horror, most of the girls enjoy them very much. They are very good at annoying anyone at school who might actually want to learn anything without the elevator music of a baby's scream in the background.
So, I have concluded, my school is run by a Big Brother who is trying to control his pawns, the teachers, forcing them to become Thought Police. But what my school really is, beyond all this censorship and control, is a day care center.
Sorry for the length of this post. If anyone managed to read to the end of the rantings of this frustrated senior, here is your reward, a calculus pick-up line:
"I wish I was your derivative, so I could lie tangent to your curves."
When I enter those doors, that is, if I make it that far through the snow and ice of a Colorado winter, Satan manifests himself (herself, itself?) as an ominous black bubble camera recording my every movement, paranoid memorandums sent from an insecure principal to oppressed and underpaid teachers, and petty jockism.
You have to visualize these halls. Dank and gray. Actually they're white, with gray and red stripes. The point is, the atmosphere is dank and gray. The ceiling tiles help this effect; about half of them are disintegrating, becoming living organisms, probably some strange bio-terror science project of some mad scientist (Dr. Strangelove?) who is really running my school from the basement that none of us students knows exists (ah, the War Room). Another of his schemes is to test brainwave activity under freezing-cold conditions. I wear my huge pink ski jacket out of necessity, roaming the halls as a deformed pink marshmallow. Perhaps my disturbed scientist's real experiment is one in the psyche of high school students; how low will self-esteem levels get when students are subjected to extreme embarrassment, forced to galumph (I love that this is actually a word) through the halls?
Today I had a revelation. My school, is not a school. It might be cleverly, or not so cleverly, disguised as a learning institution, but it's not.
There is this class, a "Relationships" class, which seems to be very popular at Centauri High School this season. Let me explain. I walked into the bathroom one day and there was a girl wrapping something up in a blanket on the floor. Well, I was glad it was a girl because that meant I had entered the right restroom. Then I wondered what she was wrapping up. (okay, well my first reaction was curiosity for what might be in the blanket, I just added the other part in hindsight). Then I realized, she had killed a baby and was wrapping it up on the floor of the bathroom! Strange first conclusion, but it might be explained by the fact that babies aren't (or weren't, until recently) a common sight at my high school. But no, she had not killed the baby. The baby had never been alive. It was a doll. A demonic doll, one that cries and tries very hard to imitate a real baby and fails miserably. In part of the "Relationships" teacher's ploy to teach abstinence without actually, I think, telling girls about sex at all, she has managed to pass out these dolls to almost every girl in the school, except for me, of course. I doubt the babies are a very effective tool in teaching abstinence, because, much to my horror, most of the girls enjoy them very much. They are very good at annoying anyone at school who might actually want to learn anything without the elevator music of a baby's scream in the background.
So, I have concluded, my school is run by a Big Brother who is trying to control his pawns, the teachers, forcing them to become Thought Police. But what my school really is, beyond all this censorship and control, is a day care center.
Sorry for the length of this post. If anyone managed to read to the end of the rantings of this frustrated senior, here is your reward, a calculus pick-up line:
"I wish I was your derivative, so I could lie tangent to your curves."
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Reihan Salam: Conservative Blogger and...TASPer(?)
What he said...
At least we didn't have to deal with this:
Love to you all,
Valentin
At least we didn't have to deal with this:
(I can’t explain how intimidating a 40 page research paper sounded to me at that age. The other seminar at my TASP assigned an even more ungodly amount of work.)This post reminds me so much of our stay at the house.
Love to you all,
Valentin
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Today was Fun Trivia Day at the Library
I don't know if you guys knew.
I didn't, until today, and I live here. In Missouri. Where things are so weird.
I remember back in fifth grade or so, there was a big deal because our governor got killed in a plane crash. His name was Mel Carnahan. Apparently it was a really really really big deal, because he was running for Senator at the time, and it was just maybe three weeks before the election. I didn't know any of this, because I didn't care about politics when I was ten.
So the Lieutenant Governor was the new Governor for the next few months. Since it was so close to the election, there was no time to remove Carnahan's name from the ballot. So the Democrats said, "Okay, we'll just have his widow, Jean, be the unofficial candidate. If Mel Carnahan wins, we'll appoint her to the Senate, and that'll be great." They used the campaign slogan "I'm Still with Mel."
He was running against the Republican incumbent. In Missouri.
And you guys, he won. My state elected a dead Senator. A Democrat, too, over a Republican. Jean Carnahan filled the office for two years, until Jim Talent won (barely) in a special election.
And the former incumbent, John Ashcroft, got appointed Attorney General by Bush. So he still had a job, until 2005, at least. Then he retired, and now he's a consultant and lobbyist and stuff.
I didn't, until today, and I live here. In Missouri. Where things are so weird.
I remember back in fifth grade or so, there was a big deal because our governor got killed in a plane crash. His name was Mel Carnahan. Apparently it was a really really really big deal, because he was running for Senator at the time, and it was just maybe three weeks before the election. I didn't know any of this, because I didn't care about politics when I was ten.
So the Lieutenant Governor was the new Governor for the next few months. Since it was so close to the election, there was no time to remove Carnahan's name from the ballot. So the Democrats said, "Okay, we'll just have his widow, Jean, be the unofficial candidate. If Mel Carnahan wins, we'll appoint her to the Senate, and that'll be great." They used the campaign slogan "I'm Still with Mel."
He was running against the Republican incumbent. In Missouri.
And you guys, he won. My state elected a dead Senator. A Democrat, too, over a Republican. Jean Carnahan filled the office for two years, until Jim Talent won (barely) in a special election.
And the former incumbent, John Ashcroft, got appointed Attorney General by Bush. So he still had a job, until 2005, at least. Then he retired, and now he's a consultant and lobbyist and stuff.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
A Love Letter (If you don't want to waste your time, skip this one)
As a general rule, I don't write unless someone tells me I should. Not that I have any particular aversion to writing, but it just doesn't ever really come to mind. But. Of late, time has begun the inevitable long draw that passes somewhere after the climactic moment of the last episode, and somewhere before the beginning of the next.
You see, my We the People team (yes, it's an unfortunately ironic name, I agree) just won our state competition, which means I'm going to go visit Emily and Aditya in early May. This is a good thing to be sure, but most of you probably don't care, so I don't quite know why I'm telling you all this. Except that I feel somehow obligated to explain how I got into my present introspective predicament, and perhaps to provide some perspective.
When I am left with far too much time on my hands, as now, I confess I indulge rather excessively in personal reflection. I'm a very self-centered person as you can probably tell, so this should come as no surprise. At any rate, I am finally coming to the reason I decided to write this post: I think too much for my own good. There is a point at which the overwrought imagination of a hermetic youth turns into the angst-y quasi-philosophy of someone who never goes outside. I like to think this is what happened to Descartes. Why this matters to me, and more importantly, to you, is that this time I have decided to avail myself of the written word, and the resources of the most diverse, thoughtful pool of judges I could find. I will pretend that this exercise in futility will be somehow cathartic, and not, as I suspect, mournfully concupiscent with my ever-deepening spiral into the emo-crazy.
Once upon a time at TASP (and yes, Laura, this will sound familiar), I was asked the rather complex question, "What is love?" Seeing as how I had approximately a minute to respond (I get the sneaking suspicion that Aditya was playing tricks with the hands of the timer), I naturally chose to discuss 'surprise sex' and the implications thereof. This began a period of several months wherein the question remained lodged somewhere in my brain (I want to say medulla oblongata, because it sounds cool, but I really know nothing about neurology).
The next time it was brought to the forefront of my consciousness was during the TASPian New Year Extravaganza, when Gili, Laura and I watched Love Actually. It was the first time I had seen the movie, and I still can't decide if it's shockingly commercial, or adorably romantic, or possibly both. Again, totally pointless, but again, also to illustrate a point. Which is as follows: Love actually is all around.
So how do we determine which love is more legitimate than another, or if unconditional love is so unconditional, or if there is such a thing as love at all? I have no idea, really. I think perhaps my view is warped. Laura agrees with me. And here I resort to the opinions of mankind--or at least the opinions of my fellow TASPers, whose opinions are really the only ones I give a damn about. That was awful syntax, and I'm sure completely inappropriate for the English language, but I don't really care.
There are all kinds of love: a mother's love for her child, a child's love for its mother/father, a brother's love for his brother (or a sister's for her sister, and all the subsequent combinations), an individual's love for humanity, a lecherous old man's love for a little girl, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Most significant for me, why can love for a friend not be just as unconditional as that of a mother's love for a child? This truly bothers me. Even if friendship only lasts as long as two people live in the same county, how can the memories of that friendship be any less lasting than those of family? I think perhaps it is because I am and adopted child, filial and fraternal ties are considerably more insubstantial than those of friendship. It is not the family you came from, but the one you make, or something like that.
Love is supposed to be unconditional, but what the hell does that mean? If you were not who you are, I wouldn't love you? That makes no sense at all. I wouldn't be friends with any of you TASPers if it weren't for your amazing talents, but I wouldn't be my mother's child if she hadn't wanted kids so badly she went to Korea to find them. It seems to me that a person in love asks only that the beloved give everything of themselves to being loved. If that makes any sense at all. A mother desperately needs her child to be a child; otherwise, she couldn't be a mother.
I think what I'm trying to say is just that I really like having friends, even if only for a little while. Memories of love are more important than the real thing anyway. Reality is so bleak in comparison.
This all seems so terribly cliché and horribly foppish. I think I just spent a good hour or so (and wasted a whole bunch of your time, too, if you bothered to read this), writing a love letter to my TASPers. I just realized how horrifyingly long this post is, and how tremendously selfish it is of me to expect any of you to even want to read this. But I've already written it, and it's too late to turn back now. So please, comment if you want, call me a prat, tell me to stfu, or just ignore me. I just felt like having my say.
You see, my We the People team (yes, it's an unfortunately ironic name, I agree) just won our state competition, which means I'm going to go visit Emily and Aditya in early May. This is a good thing to be sure, but most of you probably don't care, so I don't quite know why I'm telling you all this. Except that I feel somehow obligated to explain how I got into my present introspective predicament, and perhaps to provide some perspective.
When I am left with far too much time on my hands, as now, I confess I indulge rather excessively in personal reflection. I'm a very self-centered person as you can probably tell, so this should come as no surprise. At any rate, I am finally coming to the reason I decided to write this post: I think too much for my own good. There is a point at which the overwrought imagination of a hermetic youth turns into the angst-y quasi-philosophy of someone who never goes outside. I like to think this is what happened to Descartes. Why this matters to me, and more importantly, to you, is that this time I have decided to avail myself of the written word, and the resources of the most diverse, thoughtful pool of judges I could find. I will pretend that this exercise in futility will be somehow cathartic, and not, as I suspect, mournfully concupiscent with my ever-deepening spiral into the emo-crazy.
Once upon a time at TASP (and yes, Laura, this will sound familiar), I was asked the rather complex question, "What is love?" Seeing as how I had approximately a minute to respond (I get the sneaking suspicion that Aditya was playing tricks with the hands of the timer), I naturally chose to discuss 'surprise sex' and the implications thereof. This began a period of several months wherein the question remained lodged somewhere in my brain (I want to say medulla oblongata, because it sounds cool, but I really know nothing about neurology).
The next time it was brought to the forefront of my consciousness was during the TASPian New Year Extravaganza, when Gili, Laura and I watched Love Actually. It was the first time I had seen the movie, and I still can't decide if it's shockingly commercial, or adorably romantic, or possibly both. Again, totally pointless, but again, also to illustrate a point. Which is as follows: Love actually is all around.
So how do we determine which love is more legitimate than another, or if unconditional love is so unconditional, or if there is such a thing as love at all? I have no idea, really. I think perhaps my view is warped. Laura agrees with me. And here I resort to the opinions of mankind--or at least the opinions of my fellow TASPers, whose opinions are really the only ones I give a damn about. That was awful syntax, and I'm sure completely inappropriate for the English language, but I don't really care.
There are all kinds of love: a mother's love for her child, a child's love for its mother/father, a brother's love for his brother (or a sister's for her sister, and all the subsequent combinations), an individual's love for humanity, a lecherous old man's love for a little girl, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Most significant for me, why can love for a friend not be just as unconditional as that of a mother's love for a child? This truly bothers me. Even if friendship only lasts as long as two people live in the same county, how can the memories of that friendship be any less lasting than those of family? I think perhaps it is because I am and adopted child, filial and fraternal ties are considerably more insubstantial than those of friendship. It is not the family you came from, but the one you make, or something like that.
Love is supposed to be unconditional, but what the hell does that mean? If you were not who you are, I wouldn't love you? That makes no sense at all. I wouldn't be friends with any of you TASPers if it weren't for your amazing talents, but I wouldn't be my mother's child if she hadn't wanted kids so badly she went to Korea to find them. It seems to me that a person in love asks only that the beloved give everything of themselves to being loved. If that makes any sense at all. A mother desperately needs her child to be a child; otherwise, she couldn't be a mother.
I think what I'm trying to say is just that I really like having friends, even if only for a little while. Memories of love are more important than the real thing anyway. Reality is so bleak in comparison.
This all seems so terribly cliché and horribly foppish. I think I just spent a good hour or so (and wasted a whole bunch of your time, too, if you bothered to read this), writing a love letter to my TASPers. I just realized how horrifyingly long this post is, and how tremendously selfish it is of me to expect any of you to even want to read this. But I've already written it, and it's too late to turn back now. So please, comment if you want, call me a prat, tell me to stfu, or just ignore me. I just felt like having my say.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Jabberwocky.
Alina Hasanain decides to end her relative silence w.r.t. this blog...
It's nearly 1 AM and I should be finishing my essay(s) for homework. Instead, I'm trying to fight jet lag after a thirty-six hour trip by YouTubing (of course).
Apparently, this video was shown in my AP Biology class while I was gone. I'm sure many of you have seen it, but I think it will enhance the beauty of our blog just as much as a certain German's outrageous campaign ad does. So Nietzche has an awesome mustache (I've always preferred "moustache," actually. Friedrich seems like he has a "moustache," not a "mustache"). So what. Protein synthesis is cooler, anyway.
If you want to skip the intro, go to 3:20.
Beware the...Ribosomereleasingfactor...
Interpretive dance is so TASP. Methinks we should reenact this video at our next reunion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9dhO0iCLww
It's nearly 1 AM and I should be finishing my essay(s) for homework. Instead, I'm trying to fight jet lag after a thirty-six hour trip by YouTubing (of course).
Apparently, this video was shown in my AP Biology class while I was gone. I'm sure many of you have seen it, but I think it will enhance the beauty of our blog just as much as a certain German's outrageous campaign ad does. So Nietzche has an awesome mustache (I've always preferred "moustache," actually. Friedrich seems like he has a "moustache," not a "mustache"). So what. Protein synthesis is cooler, anyway.
If you want to skip the intro, go to 3:20.
Beware the...Ribosomereleasingfactor...
Interpretive dance is so TASP. Methinks we should reenact this video at our next reunion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9dhO0iCLww
Sunday, January 13, 2008
A Post-Modern critique of intellectualism...the opinions expressed do not represent the actual views of the author.
Remember that article I wrote about the self? Well, the newspaper staff thought that it was complete nonsense. Here is the article I wrote for the next issue. I guess that it is as I say "somewhat of an apology," for me being too "philosophical." I guess I condescended, perhaps a little too much...
I think that I should write about something serious. I’ve been fooling around for way too long, and I want to present something to the students of
I really like the Roslyn Crown Players. Seeing AIDA was the highlight of my High School existence (most of my four years here have been spent in a surreal haze of European History classes, Philosophy Club petitions, and Beck albums). I didn’t see Ragtime because I respect E.L. Doctorow (no offense RCP). But I should have seen Fiddler on the Roof, Rumors, and Urinetown (the t-shirts were very clever for Urinetown). The reason that I didn’t see those RCP productions was that I was vehemently against musicals for most of my High School existence (honestly, I was dragged to AIDA by my mother). I was a pretentious fool who was too elitist to just to sit back and enjoy a musical.
However, Mr. Cabat’s Film and Literature class has metamorphosed my Beck, Elliot Smith, and Nietzsche loving pretentious self into a musical obsessed freak. After I watched Singing in the Rain, the boundaries between high culture and low culture completely disintegrated. I found myself not only enjoying dance numbers like “Moses Supposes,” and “Good Morning,” but also realizing that there are messages to be found in them. In “Make ‘Em Laugh,” character Cosmo Brown goes into a dancing freak-out, in which he bounces off walls and tries to seduce a dummy. It may be a stretch, but I feel as if I can take away from the dance number that life is about sometimes acting a little crazy, having fun, and making people laugh. Sadly, in all of my philosophical inquiries, I haven’t come across better advice than what Singing in the Rain has given me. Maybe from now on, I’ll watch Gene Kelley musicals instead of reading Plato.
I am not satisfied, though.
Watching musicals is fun and purposeful. I get it, but I want to act in plays. I don’t like to sing and dance, and there is no venue for real stage acting at
I guess I’m trying to teach you something,
Alright, I’ll stop the nonsense.
RCP just remember that the offer is always on the table. Also, students of
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