CmyA

In regards to previous two blogs:

Author's note-there are cool homeschooled kids out there. I invite you to comment now to make your presence known. Also, I am a master of the tongue-in-cheek comedy artform (I hope).

ROCK OUT CHRISTMAS!

Gettinga Slurpee is not a legitimate field trip...PART TWO!!!!

So if you read my last blog, you know that homeschoolers in America are in quite a predicament. The forecast for 2006 does NOT look good. I know you've been waiting for bated breath to know how to help homeschoolers. People of America, I have an answer for you.

We need to get an apparel line strictly for HOMESCHOOLERS!!!

Think about it people. What unites high school campuses? What brings students together? What is it that bonds all people in a given school together in unity, despite what ethnic, religious, social, economic backgrounds they come from? The mere fact that students attend the same school bonds them together and gives them group identity. And nowhere is this most prominently displayed than when students sport apparel made for their school.

When I was in high school, you couldn't walk 15 feet without seeing someone with a Butler High School somethingorother T-Shirt, Sweatshirt, Hat, Smock, Socks, Letterman Jacket, etc. Even when people didn't like each other they all had unity in the fact that they, along with 1200 other students, were members of the same high school. It's a great unity builder! That unity is sorely lacking in homeschool students.

When you think about it, homeschoolers are a dislocated student body. THey belong in a high school, but they have been removed from that environment. THey crave peer interaction (at leat I hope they do), but have no outlet for peer interaction that doesn't center around either youth group or volunteering in a hospital. Homeschoolers need to find a way to bond together, to have a mutual understanding of one another. They need to find camraderie with their peers, and not so much with their parents. I propose that if homeschoolers bond together, they can make unique apparel that signifies a bond that transcends regions, states, and even countries. Below I will propose some items that I believe homeschoolers should don in order to signify that they are different from other high schoolers (as if social retardation itself wasn't a big enough signal...pfff), yet unified!!

HOMESCHOOL GEAR 2005!!

The Standard "Home High" TShirt:
This standard Tshirt sends a message. It says "I'm unified, I'm different". I think homeschoolers should mass produce Tshirts with the words "HOME HIGH" on them. Never mind that the Smith home is different from the Jones home is different from the Williams home...ALL HOMES can be SCHOOLS if you want to SHELTER your kid. So in that vein, I give you "Home High" Tshirts (as an aside, I think the Home High tshirts would be a hige hit with parts of the drug subculture. An unanticipated profit that could be made by telling kids to stay home and do drugs could be amazing! Just something to consider).

The Home High Button Down Short Sleeve Shirt:
Nothing says class and cool like a short sleeve button down dress shirt. Not only does wearing a button down short sleeve make you look ridiculous, it also reinforces stereotypes about your social maturity...I mean, enhances your unity with other homeschoolers! If Jilly Homeschooler is walking down the street in her button down short sleeve shirt with the Home High patch on the sleeve, and she sees Jimmy Homeschooler with a similar shirt, they will instantly strike up conversation. Peer to peer conversation is paramount in building unity.

The Home High Jumper:
Now I know some of you are saying, "Woa woah wooaahhh...I went to private school and girls had to wear jumpers. Why would you voluntarily make a Home High jumper for homeschoolers?" That's a valid question, and it has an easy answer: because we cater to our niche market. Homeschooled students have been spotted donning many fashion 'fuax pas'-esque clothing items of their own free will. If students are willingly wearing jumpers, why not make a jumper that tells the world "I'm homeschooled and I love it!!"? Exactly. So if we make a jumper with two big overlapping H's on them, I think it would be a great idea. Jumpers are great for reading, frolicking, riding bikes, and going on field trips to your church. When we take this necessary fashion item and make it accessible as Home School High apparel, we again reinforce unity amongst homeschoolers.

The Home High Denim Dress
In what may be called "The Staple of the Homeschool Revolution", i.e. the denim dress, we present the pinnacle of the HH collection. You know you've seen homeschoolers wearing these dresses. You know you've commented on them. But NOW we're turning another homeschooler fashion statement into a homeschool UNITY statement. This item is also great because mothers, and even grandmothers can wear these dresses, thus setting up their children for what might be some of the most cripplingly akward social situations ever (and they won't even know it! hee hee).

Regular Girl: My mom is so sweet, she got me a Ralph Lauren sweater for Christmas
Homeschooled Girl: That's so materialistic
Regular Girl: Huh? Materia-what?
Homeschooled Girl: My mother purchased me a homeschool high denim dress...
Regular Girl: That sounds vomitocious
Homeschooled Girl:...AND she got herself one too. We are going to be mommy daughter twins!
Regular Girl: That sounds like the stupidest present ever, and I bet it looks horrible
Homeschooled Girl: Définir vous par votre vêtement est si peu profond.
Regular Girl: Whatdidyoujustsay?
Homeschooled Girl: That's right, I speak French, and 5 other languages. Hmmpphh.

SEE! That girl feels empowered by her new apparel!!

Home High Ties
I see you guys sitting over there, all green with envy that the ladies get the lions share of the hip clothing. Well pay attention!! As a homeschooler you can also get a Home High Tie (it rhymes). When you show up for your college interview in your HH short sleeve button down shirt and HH tie, you're sure to be a knockout. But the tie isn't just for impressing admissions counselors (...no comment...), it's also for impressing...the ladies. When you're homeschooled, you gotta look fly and be unified with other homeschoolers at the same time. When you swagger down the street in your HH ties, everyone knows that you've got confidence out the wazoo (albeit misplaced) and charisma to boot. Don't be caught dead without one of these bad boys.



So as you can see, homeschooled students need to be unified. Whereas people may have different homeschool styles, they all share a common school...their own house. You want to try to boost confidence amongst homeschoolers? You want to improve feelings of unity amongst homeschoolers? You want to bring down those stereotypes about homeschooling your kids? Go out and get some Home High apparel. You'll be glad that you did, kids.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Getting a Slurpee is not a legitimate field trip...part 1

When I was younger, there were two things that I absolutely despized: 1) lima beans and 2) going to school. I don't mind school so much now, but when I was young I absolutely despised going to school. There were times in elementary school when I would actually wake up in the morning, spin around in cirlces in my room before my mom came to wake me up, and then when she came in I would inform her that 'I felt nauseous, dizzy, and my face was burning up!' For some reasons mom never bought my ridiculous schemes, but it tells you how much I hated school I used to sit in class and dream of what it would be like to go to school...but at my own house! I could sleep in, wear PJ's all day, eat lunch whenever I wanted, or even watch TV when the stresses of Mathematics were too much to bear. You name it, if I went to school in my own house, the world would be MY oyster! Heck, I could even get mom to take me to 7-11 to get a Slurpee as a form of field trip. Yep...life would be good if I could just take classes in the living room.

This revolutionary thinking continued well into my high school years. But upon my high school graduation, and thereafter my entrance into college, I made a profound discovery: THERE WERE PEOPLE WHO TOOK CLASSES IN THEIR LIVING ROOM... AND SOMEHOW THIS WAS A LEGITIMATE FORM OF EDUCATION!!!! This rare breed of individual was called (oddly enough) a home schooler , and their entire schooling was done by their mother and father. I couldn't believe my ears! How on earth could someone spend their entire pre-college schooling career in the living room and have it be recognized as a legitimate form of education? Well, ladies and gentlemen, it turns our that homeschooling isn't all that it's cracked up to be, and actually has a number of serious risks. Some of these risks are as follows:

1) Risk of, what I like to call, prolonged mammo-obsessive behavior (don't try to look it up on wikipedia.com, it's not there).
2) Risk of, what I like to call, doucheyism
3) Risk of, what I like to call, academic barbarianism
4) Risk of, what the French like to call, la jupe longue de jean, or le jeans effilé. This is a very serious condition.
5) Risk of, what I like to call, pseudolegimatizing semiacademic pursuits.

Let me explain some of the pitfalls of homeschooling, then propose a solution (which will have to be continued next article) to correct some of these downfalls.

Let's take a look at prolonged mammo-obsessive behavior first. PMOB is behavior that, while appropriate for infants and young toddlers, is not appropriate for adolescents and teenagers. PMOB most directly stems from the fact that homeschoolers most often interact with their mommies (hey, it's true)...not real people. I feel that this close interaction, NAY coddling, of the young child with an overly protective or jealous mother makes some home schooled kids crazy! In many instances, this uber dependency on mother stunts the emergence of complex behavioral schemata like: dressing oneself, feeding oneself, getting hair cuts, interacting with peers, interacting with men, picking up sticks and pretending that they are guns, etc. I've seen many a homeschooled young man crippled by an inability to engage in meaningful conversation with me, even though I'm their peer and I'm also very easy to talk to (and I'm also very handsome...just as an aside). So sometimes this mammo-obsessive behavior stunts the growth of young homeschoolers.

We're going to skip over douchyism for now (take a stab about what douchyism is...it's a new word that I just made up, but chances are you can figure out what it means). Academic Barbarianism is sadly not a phrase that I made up, but one that a very smart man who is not me made up. Picture in your mind a picture of Conan the Barbarian ...or just click on the link and look at a picture. Now imagine that you possessed all of that power and might and strength...but only in your brain. That's kind of what an academic barbarian is like. They have crushing intellects, but terrible social and emotional coping skills. They are like the severed head...they look though but all their toughness is in their head. AB's are wicked smart, but socially retarded. Ok go!

The french stuff...go here , clik on French to English, and you should see what I'm talking about. Ha ha haaaaa it's funny because it's true.

Pseudolegitimizing semiacademic pursuits...what does that mean? It means going to 7-11 to get a Slurpee as a 'field trip'. I see this kind of crap all the time with homeschoolers. They make up names for their school (for their kitchen tables, essentially), for their activities (doll making is not a legitimate social club), their sports (no there's no such thing as One-Person-Soccer as a varsity sport), their interests (who has heard of political campaining anyway? Not THIS kid!). Home schooled kids are great at making up stuff that sounds important, but really isn't. They make up classes to take, they make up math problems to solve, they make up transcipts, they make elf languages (true story, I met a kid doing this). If you go out and ask any homeschooler what interests them, chances are it's something that is fake or made up. Trust me.

SO! This is the plight of the homeschooler: they eschew conentional education, but long for social acceptance and for a society to think their educational system is legitimate. What I once thought was a dream is actually a nightmare, in need of a PR facelift. What is to be done? What can be done to help these hapless, denim-jumper-loving little creatures?

Homeschoolers need acceptance into the mainstream...they need to feel connected to mainstreak academia without embracing mainstream academia. How can we help these people?


I'll tell you how...one sweatshirt at a time!!!!!!!


to be continued!

mi espanol es muy malo!!!

ANOTHER BLOG IN THE SAME DAY!!!!??? GET OUT!!

Author's Note: Seriously people I'm on fire. I know that by the time you get halfway through this gem of internet pedantry, you're going to want to light your head on fire. But bear with me, this will be fun.

Many of you know I'm a native of Miami, Florida (hush Carly, I am still a native ok??). Many of you may also know that when people say the word 'Miami', it is synonymous with 'Cuba'. Lots of people speakeh the spanish down there, but I never learnt the language well enough. SO! In an effort to better myself, I'm trying to improve my Spanish skills by reading articles from El Nuevo Herald . Below, you will find part of an article that I myself transcribed from Spanish into English. Keep in mind...I have no idea what I'm doing.

An interpretation of an article from the Dec. 13 edition of El Nuevo Herald:

"Miss Island, Unnur Birna Vihjalmsdottir (that's actually her name), a brown haired gal of 21 years who studies anthropology was crowned yesterday as the most beautiful girl in the world on the Chinese island of Hainan, in the sunrises of the representatives of Mexico and Puerto Rico, that won first and second finalists.

The New Queen of the world ball received the crown of hands of the Peruvian Maria Julia Mantilla Garcia, who won the certificated in the 2004.

The triumphant of this edition, who rang with such force and during the summer worked with police in an airport, completed a family dream already by her mother, Unnur Steinsson, who won in the 5th finalist 22 years ago, in 1983.

...

'It's Marvellous, so marvellous! An incredible night. I didn't think I'd win, it's a grand surprise' declared the islander with a brown hair and 1.73 meters in height! The new queen is impassioned of dance and piano and considers that in the life of every person is the result of what it is"


That's about all I got for your right now. I promise that I'll try to read more Spanish articles and tell you all about them in broken Spanish. But until then, buene suerte leyendo mis bloggos en espanol!! MUUWAHAHAH!

It's the little things that count

I know everyone has heard this phrase at some point in their life. But honestly little things that you do for people, or that people do for you can make a big impact on how your day goes. Take today for example. I've been awake for roughly an hour and 15 minutes as of right now (8:15AM). For most of that one hour and 15 minutes, I've been thinking about how great it would be to go back to bed. But when push comes to shove, I can't go back to bed because I'm an adult now, and I'm responsible and blah blah etc. However one great alternative to going back to bed is having a nice, warm cup of coffee.

Mmmmmmm coffee.





When I get to work every morning, I love to throw a pot of coffee on for the office. Usually only Courtney and Katherine, and maybe Becca have a cup of coffee...so that means that there's more for me!! Anyway coming to work and making coffee isn't too much of a hassle and all told it usually takes only about 2 minutes to get that pot o' joe started. But today, upon entering the office, Courtney comes bounding out (ok that's a lie, if there's anyone who 'bounds' less than I do in the morning...it's Courtney) of her office with a freshly brewed pot of Starbucks (TM) coffee that she brought from her own house! It may seem like already having a pot of fresh coffee at the office when you walk in (as opposed to having a fresh pot 10 minutes after you walk in) isn't that big of a deal. But because of how I was dragging this morning, the already brewed coffee was a godsend.

It's not like Courtney did anything extreme or over the top, but opening the office door and seeing that shiny Starbucks (TM) pot o' goodness definitely made my morning a little brighter. You should go try make someone's day a little brighter, people. Just do it with the little things.

Get your Wednesday on!

I'm not going to lie to you, people, I don't have a whole lot to talk about (this is rare for me). So I was sitting in my office talking out loud to myself, trying to elicit some semi interesting conversation out of the depths of my mind. As I was musing to myelf, Katherine blurts out across this office, "Do a blog on Wednesdays!!!!" I of course was taken aback, because Wednesdays aren't inherently interesting.

That is, they aren't interesting until I TAKE THE HELM AND TELL YOU ABOUT WEEEDDDNNNESSDDAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!!

Here are some Wednesday facts:

1) El Miercoles, Mercredi, 星期三, and В среду

2) Courtney used to work with a girl who would sing about Wednesday. If you know Courtney, I would ask her to sing the song for you. I guarantee you that after you hear it, you won't look at the word 'wednesday' without singing the song under your breath. I know I do!

3) There are roughly 52 weeks in a year. Within a week there are 7 days, one of which is Wednesday. Therefore in any given year, you experience about 52 Wednesdays (give or take one). Therefore, since my birth, I have experienced 1,248 Wednesdays (give or take 10). That may seem a little preposterous. Also take into consideration that 1,248 Wednesdays is also equivalent to about 3.42 years worth of Wednesdays. That means about roughly 14.1% of my life is Wednesday. If you think about it for 2 seconds you know that there's no revoltionary concepts there. But how often do you think of your life in terms of Wednesdays gone by? Not often.

4) Wednesday? or Weeeeheeheeheeednesdayyyyy!

5) You didn't think Wednesday could help you cook did you? Well cheer up my friends, if Wednesday can cook, so can you!

6) Popular Wednesday aphorisms:
-Wednesday is hump day (usually said by an unsuspecting elementary school teacher to a chorus of chuckling little boys)
-Wednesday's child is full of woe (I think I was born on Tuesday, in case you were wondering)
-Anything can happen day (thanks to the Mickey Mouse Club)
-'Spy Wednesday' is a name given to the Wednesday post-Easter, as an allusion to the betrayal of Jesus by Judas. I have no idea why they came up with the name SPY Wednesday as opposed to BETRAYAL Wednesday.

7) The popular Nursery Rhyme by mother goose that goes "Rain, rain, go away! Come again another day" was origincally written to say "Rain, rain go away! Come again on Wed-nes-day!'*

8) This fact should have come first, but here is a brief history of Wednesday (as adapted from Wikipedia.com):

"Wednesday is considered either the third or the fourth day of the week, between Tuesday and Thursday. The name comes from the Old English Wodnesdæg meaning the day of the Germanic god Woden who was a god of the Anglo-Saxons in England until about the 7th C. AD....

...Quakers traditionally refer to Wednesday as "Fourth Day", eschewing the "pagan" origin of the name "Wednesday". Most eastern languages also use a name with this meaning, for much the same reason. Faithful Orthodox Christians observe a vegetarian / fish-only fast on Wednesdays (and Fridays) in some countries."

Those dang Quakers, they are so righteous. So those are some facts about Wednesday. I hope you all enjoy being over the hump, and I'll talk to you all MIERCOLES!!!



*author's note: I can't verify this statement.