Ultimate Battle: Neil Patrick Harris vs. the Milk Carton of Doom

This happened about two weeks ago, but I forgot to post it, so here's a fun story.

First, during Creative Writing, we did something called "found" poems, in which we cut words out of magazines and glued them together to make poems.  I was cutting up a People magazine when I found a lovely picture of Darren Criss singing to me.  My friend then found a random picture of Neil Patrick Harris holding a chicken (no, I don't know why).  We cut them out and I saved them.  

Next period, for our AP World test, I gave Darren Criss to my friend as a good luck charm, and then gave NPH to another friend during lunch.  After lunch, we wander down to the office and find a hole in the wall, as though someone had taken a 2 by 3 by 4 inch block out of the wall.  We stood there for a while, pondering why there was a hole in the wall.

We never found out why, but my friend had a great idea to put Neil Patrick Harris (and his chicken) into the hole, just to see how long it lasted, and if anyone would notice.  We propped him up and said goodbye.

Meanwhile, Darren Criss got taped to his own special page in my friend's history notebook, labeled with the caption "This is what supermegafoxyawesomehot looks like."

Two days later, we went to check on Neil Patrick Harris.  He was gone, and the hole instead had a milk carton in it.  Strange.

Moral?  In a fight between Neil Patrick Harris (+ chicken) and a milk carton, bet on the milk carton.

Just going on a tangent (pun intended)

Since when do they even give you projects in math?  I think my last one was in 8th grade, but that wasn't a project.  We had to make a kite (my group won Best Design: it was an Escher lizard tessellation).

But basically, we have a Pre-Calc Project.  We have to choose an island, find its tide information, and graph it as a sine or cosine wave.  Then, do this stuff involving slope and wheelchair ramps and other things that I won't get into.

I have a group of three.

Theoretically.

In reality, it's a group of me, except there will be three names on the final project that we hand in.

Happy Alaska Young Day!

This message brought to you from 6th Period Marketing class.  Just to let you know that I am awesome.  You must admit, it's an important fact to note.

Happy Alaska Young Day!  If you don't know who that is, go straight to your local library and check out "Looking for Alaska" (in your pants) by John Green.

Do you know how I'm going to celebrate Alaska Young Day?  That's right, I'm going to meet John and Hank Green!

You have no idea how difficult it is for me to stay coherent at this moment, and not dissolve into a fit of babbling.

You see, for those non-Nerdfighters amongst you, today is not only Alaska Young Day, but the release date of John Green's new novel, "The Fault in Our Stars."  And I, flyergirl13, will be attending the first stop on John's book tour, the Tour De Nerdfighting, which is right here in Massachusetts in about 5 hours.

Yes, you are all very, very jealous.  

Whoops, class is almost over.  Have fun with your mundane evening plans!  DFTBA, yo.


UPDATE:
I'm sorry if you didn't understand that, I was slightly crazed with excitement when I wrote it.  John Green is one of my favorite authors, and I went to the book signing for the release of his new book, The Fault in Our Stars (which I already finished and is absolutely incredible.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.)
What I liked best about the event was, obviously, John and Hank, but also all the other people there. Imagine an auditorium of over 800 people, and you could (and we did) walk up to ANYONE (literally) and start a conversation, and become friends.  And don't get me started on the vast number of awesome, infinitely nerdy t-shirts present.
This is getting to be a long update, so I won't go into the details (you know, Hank in a tutu, TFiOS waving, all that jazz) so peace out, dudes.

Making my very own hipster photos

I wanted to try it out...here's what I came up with.

1) Start with a crappy picture of a person in a random pose.  (Yes, I took that...a while ago)

2) Now, first I opened it up in the Microsoft equivalent of Photoshop.  Crank up the contrast and down the brightness.

3) Already looking pretty hipster, isn't it?  Next, I blurred the whole thing a bit.

4) Now, I scrolled through the filters until I found one that made it look old and stuff.  Choose your own and apply.

5) Not done yet!  Next, Rotate and crop the image to make it artsy.

6) Note the artsy tilt of the horizon.  Finally, our final step is to add an angsty, nonsensical statement about the meaning of life or lost love in white helvetica text.  I didn't have helvetica (gasp!) so I used the most hipsterish font I could find.

And you're done!  Are you proud?  Now post it on your tumblr and be proud of your obscure photography style.  You are so not mainstream.

(Parentheses)[Brackets]{Squiggly Brackets that I don't know the official name of but look cool}

When making a list, I almost always write my numbers like this 1) with parentheses, not like this 1. with a period.

Why?  I only recently came to the realization of this habit, and I spent much time pondering exactly why I do this.  OCD?  Maybe, but I don't know.

After a great deal of consideration, I came to the conclusion that I think it has something to do with my fear for my numbers' safety.  See, if my words were to attack the poor numbers standing at the end of the lines, the numbers wouldn't be able to do much to protect themselves.  They're greatly outnumbered (pun intended), one number for every line of many words.  If the words chose to attack, the numbers would be goners.

So, to prepare my numbers in the case of potential word rebellion, I give them parentheses.  It could act as a sort of shield, right?  At least more so than a useless period.  If a parentheses is a shield, a period would be a rock.  Oh, like throwing at rock at some words will do much.  It might take out a few letters, but you'd still be left with lots of them coming at you.

Lesson to be learned from this?

Rocks are not sufficient defense against a horde of angry words.

Buy your very own hipster, only $58

My sister got her very own hipster for Christmas!

Seriously, Vera Bradley makes a kind of purse called a hipster. My sister got one for Christmas.  All night, my brother and I were making hipster jokes.

"She's going to wear it ironically."

"She wore hipsters before it was cool."

"Normal purses are too mainstream."

And things of that nature.  I kind of want my own, just so I can tell people I have my very own personal hipster.  It stays by my side and carries my things for me.

The only problem is, Vera Bradley doesn't offer "vintage" or "ironic" patterns.

Luck of the Jeans

So I have a pair of Lucky brand jeans.  I love them because they're comfy.  However, there is one other reason I love them as well.  They have a sense of humor!

I see you staring at me, whispering to your friends.  "Haha, she thinks her jeans have a sense of humor...know any good mental institutions nearby?"

I swear I'm not crazy, just mildly wacky.  But that's okay.  Weirdness is in direct proportion with awesomeness.

My jeans have a sense of humor.  If you're wearing jeans, look down at your crotch  (this is an awkward command).

You know that little flap of fabric behind the zipper?  Looks like this:

Pretty normal-looking flap of fabric, right?  Nothing particularly noteworthy.  However, my Lucky jeans took it a step further.  Because what's the first thing you see when you unzip the pants?  That fabric flap.  So...

It makes me laugh every time I take off my jeans.

New favorite Greek letter

It used to be pi, because it was cool and you could memorize it and all, but pi ain't got nothin' on phi.

No, not because it is the golden ratio (1.61803399...) or anything.  For something far more exciting than that (at least to me.)

Consider the following:
See that thingy over to the side there?  That's phi.  It's nice and Greek-looking, correct?  Well, it's better than what your first glance may let on...

In physics, we used phi to represent angle measure (for when we have multiple angles and theta is already taken).  So, please note the fantastic things that can be done with phi:

Phi, plus the crappy triangle (I'm not very good with straight lines).

What does this equal?  No, not phi-delta.  It equals....drumroll...

I hope my teacher doesn't mind that I replaced all the phis on my quiz with Deathly Hallow symbols...

The problem with feminism

I'm all for women's rights.  But the hard-core feminists both annoy me and confuse me.  Consider the following:
(yes, you did just say that like the voice from Bill Nye videos, didn't you?)

Girl: I'm making my boyfriend a sandwich!
Feminist: OH MY GOODNESS.  Do you see what you're doing?  You're sending the feminist movement right back into the 1950s!  You're making your boyfriend a sandwich?  Why is it your job?  Can't your boyfriend make himself a sandwich?  Does he have total control over you?  You're a disgrace to the female gender!

OR

Girl: My boyfriend is making me a sandwich!
Feminist: OH MY GOODNESS.  Do you see what you're doing?  You're sending the feminist movement right back into the 1950s!  You're letting your boyfriend make you a sandwich?  Why is it his job?  Can't you make yourself a sandwich?  Does he have total control over you?  You're a disgrace to the female gender!

My friends, do we see a flaw here?  Niceness is has apparently become sexist.  How about, instead of thinking about how horrible making sandwiches for the opposite gender is, we think about solving global problems?

One last thought that I found really cool (It's actually a quote (by that I mean paraphrase) from a Muslim philosopher, how about that?)
"God didn't take Eve from Adam's feet, or his head.  God took her from his rib.  That's because God didn't want Eve to kneel at his feet, or be superior, but for them to stand side by side as equals."

Girl Scout Cookie season is upon us

I'm a Girl Scout, and the only decent cookies out there are the Caramel deLites/Samoas.

Gasp!  Go ahead, cart me off to Girl Scout prison, where they keep the cookie-dissenters, the refusers-to-wear-the-vest, and the most frightful criminal of all, the Girl-Scout-who-won't-sing-camp-songs.

In all seriousness, I love Girl Scouts.  The cookie sales are a little dubious, that's all.

They make it seem like selling cookies goes like this:

But actually, cookie selling goes more like this:

It's a very difficult trade.  They try to bribe you (If you sell 2400 boxes, you get an iPad) but it's unreasonable to expect anyone with half a life to sell many.  And if you think you're supporting that cute little girl on your stoop when you buy her cookies?  Wrong - more than 80% of the money goes to the council: troops only get 60 cents per box.

Want to actually help Girl Scouts?  Just give a donation.  I know it's hard, but can you resist those delicious, processed, mass-produced cookies?  

WINNING

It's like losing, except more fun.

I have 50,003 words, but my novel isn't quite down yet.  I'll probably need another thousand or so to wrap things up.  But regardless, I WON.

I can write fifty freaking thousand words in a month.  Friends, I do believe I am invincible.
Go ahead, shoot me, the bullet will bounce off because vampires have an extra chromosome and because Edward loves Bella and because I have my 50,000 word novel to use as a shield.

Out of random curiousity, now that I'm on the subject of novels protecting against bullets, how many sheets of paper could stop a bullet from going through?

I suddenly really want to know this.  Google, here I come.

Google is conflicted on the answer.  Apparently depends on type of paper, type of gun, type of bullet, and so on.  I just want to KNOW, Google!  How could you fail me?  *headkeyboard* sdfhnkjKsdhn

Someone, please test this for me and discover the answer.

Coloring Books are EVVVIILLLL (not really)

"Evil" spelled backwards is "live" and coloring books are life.

I purchased a coloring book this weekend.  My mind went something in this procession:
I see a shelf of coloring books!
They're 50% off!
I must look for a Harry Potter one.
They don't have any.
Look!  A Lion King coloring book!
Must have!
Purchases.

After all the multiple Black Friday discounts, it cost a grand total of 50 cents.  Ouch.
I don't get how all the store manage to get into the black on this day if all they do is price all their products way lower than usual?

Anyways, I was extremely proud of my coloring book, until I realized I have no crayons.
Then, life was very sad.

We also got our Christmas tree today.  It took forever, due to the discrepancies in opinion between family members.  I had fun comparing trees to math.  "That tree trunk looks like a cubic function.  That one looks like a tan line."

I visited Niagara Falls, and stood on the shoulders of giants (just like Newton!).  Only one giant, Nikola Tesla*.  Then, my mom yelled at me and told me to stop climbing on statues.

*In case you don't know who he is, he's the namesake of the Tesla Roadster and Tesla coils.  Did cool stuff with electricity, including Niagara hydropower.

Over and out, dudes.  Have fun with all that leftover turkey.  (Hint: Turkey pancakes.  Not as bad of an idea as you'd think.)

MIT is surprisingly surprising

Taking classes at MIT is fun, but roaming around campus for a while, exploring?  Even better.

First, my friend and I climbed every abstract/modern art sculpture we could find.  Yeah, there were a lot.

Next, we climbed a wall outside a building and, using the foor-wide edge along the windows, around twenty feet off the ground, walked around the entire building peering into window and freaking out the students.

Yes, Mr. Professor, I was looking in your twenty-foot high office window and watching you on Facebook.

That sounds extremely creepy.  But it was fun when the teachers were facing away from the window, so the students saw us and pointed, and when the teachers turned, we were gone.  Good times to be had.

Next, we tried to find a way onto the roof from one of the inside staircases, but all the doors were locked.  Bummer.

Next, we found a staircase that led into the "secret" tunnel system between buildings, and had good fun poking around.  I kept count, and ended up with 16 doors marked with a sign that read something along the lines of "DANGER: Radioactive materials.  You will likely die if you open this door."

Finally, I'd like the summarize the awesomeness of MIT by simply listing three acapella group names I found on flyers:

• Logarhythms
• Chorollaries
• Asymptones

And, last of all, one completely unrelated image that I felt like sharing:

Abundance of Covers

You may or may not know that John Green is holding a design contest for the cover of the newest edition of An Abundance of Katherines.

I've never really tried designing things before, so I tried it out and this is what I came up with.  I was hoping you could all tell me what I can do to make it better.

One concern I had was the background color - I wasn't sure which to choose.  Any ideas?
Also, does the little bit of letters next to his name look weird?  Should I cut them out and just put the name across the whole width of the bottom?

COPYRIGHT 2011

The weird circle is my attempt at one of those annoying watermarks, so people can't steal the cover design.  PEOPLE.  It is illegal to steal this cover!

Solver Extraordinaire: ME

I  now understand why people carry around Rubik's Cubes.  Because when you solve the, you feel so freaking epic you just want to keep doing it forever.

I learned how to solve a Rubik's Cube today.

I still need to look at this one long algorithm, but I have all the others memorized, and I just feel awesome.  I can't stop doing it, as though if I'm not sure if it was just chance and I have to do it again to prove I can.

My best time is 3:47, which compared to most people is terrible, but I'm super proud of.  Considering I've known how to do this for about 5 hours.

Imagine what you could do in 3 minutes 47 seconds.  You could brush our teeth.  Write around 125 NaNo words.  If you're Bill Gates, you earn around $5000.  You could get around 300 points in Fruit Ninja, depending how good you are.  You could do your pre-calc homework.
Or you could solve Rubik's Cube.

Well, at least I've crossed this item off my bucket list.

Snippet of my Bucket List


312. Go skydiving
313. Swim with dolphins

314. Solve a Rubik's Cube

315. Watch every Vlogbrothers video

Sorry I have no hand-drawn pictures, but here's an awesome prank related to Rubik's Cubes.

I can't run a 5K but I can write 50K. What now?

We lost power for about two days due to snow in freaking October.  Global warming?  What global warming?

My friends and I have this theory called Global Freezing.  The idea is that "global warming" is just a natural heating of the Earth.  But because we are making such a big deal over it, our efforts to cool down the Earth will go overboard and result in another Ice Age.  We will present this theory to America in a book called "A Convenient Truth" and make millions.

In other news, NaNoWriMo started yesterday!  I'm up to about 4000 words so far, due to the convenient truth that school has been canceled for the past three days due to power outages.  A five-day weekend has left me feeling significantly less stressed over homework and tests coming up.  This is good.

I propose a new system of schooling in which, instead of five days on, two days off, we get two days of school, two days off, repeatedly, ignoring what day of the week it is.  Anyone got any suggestions on how to propose this to the superintendent?

I have a fancy brand-new computer.  It's fancy.  However, this means that I have not yet copied all my programs over to this computer.  Which means...sad face...the program I use to illustrate is not available.  So I used some random online thing that I found when I Googled "drawing."

UPDATE:  My life sucks because I somehow deleted the entire first chapter of my novel.  AHHHHHHHH.  I will just keep writing and go back at the end to re-write it, because I don't have time to start at the beginning.  This sucks.

I don't know what "Leibster" means, but it sounds fancy

UPDATE:

This is the second post in a row that has been up for a day or two with no title.  I generally title posts after I write them, and now I'm forgetting to go back and title them.  If I forget again, you have permission to virtual-slap me in the comments.

It would appear as though I have been awarded an award, which is a rewarding feeling, and since this award was awarded to me by Gabi who I don't think is creepy. I think I should be awarded another award for the award-winning usage of some form of the word "award" in these few award-winning sentences.

Onto the blog award.  Basically, it means I have to tell you 7 things about me then tag 7 people with under 100 followers.  Let us commence the battle of wits!

*Though not really a battle since, considering I'm the one writing all this anyways, it's a bit biased, but hey, who said it was a fair Battle of Wits?  If it was fair, Westley would not be immune to iocane powder, and where would that leave us?  Being thrown off the Cliffs of Insanity, most likely.

1) I am more than slightly obsessed with The Princess Bride, and if you have not seen/read it, I shall strike you with an ax.

II) I just learned that "ax" is not spelled "axe" even though I always thought it was.  I guess "Axe" is just how they spell the deodorant.

c) Thee may be surprised to learneth that, upon occasion, I may enjoy to speaketh in a style which dost be similar to that of the Olde English.  Tis a most pleasant merriment.

iv) My hair has been dyed pink on and off for the last six months, but I didn't bleach my hair first so you couldn't really see it.

cinq) I can't roll my tongue or touch my nose or have a hitchhiker's thumb or anything cool like that.

6) I know over 100 digits of pi.

G) I refuse to number things in a normal fashion.

AND....drumroll...to the tagging!
Umm....

•  Ohmygoodnessgraciousgosh because I think it's funny how I started saying the blog title in normal conversation.
• Randomly Yakking, though I can't find the follower count (I'm likely blind), if I'm wrong we can just pretend you have less than 100.
• Defenestrated Feet who shares my fascination with shoes.
• Irrefutable Rules of Teenage Life because she's a Sparkler (we gotta stick together) and her URL has velociraptors in it.
• [I Am Unimaginative] because she's awesome.  DFTBA.
• Color it Awesomesauce because she appreciates the awesomeness of "awesome"
• Chronicles of Beck because she's quite funny and needs some followers, peeps.

Hope I didn't leave anyone out.  If you're reading this and being offended because I forgot to tag you, I apologize and place the blame on my press secretary, my pet rock, Westley.  Any complaints should be sent to him.

Finally, I have to leave you with this picture my friend showed me.  Maybe I'm just slow and everyone's seen it, but I cracked up.  Pretend like you think it's hilarious too so I don't feel bad.

It's "A Dell Rolling in the Deep"!!!

I forgot to title this. Fail. VELOCIRAPTORS!

My physics teacher is epic.  In addition to making 7th period the most hilarious and memorable ever, showing us amazing things about picking up chairs, his leaky car, and the trick about ripping a tablecloth out from under a dinner setup.

And this quote from yesterday:

"In math, there's a word for two lines that are perpendicular to each other.

[gives us a moment to let us think]

...and that word is 'perpendicular'"

It may sound stupid but it was hilarious.

And I leave you with this picture.  Because I guess today's theme is lines?

I'm Not Sure Whether to be Honored or Offended

Next week is Spirit Week at school.  Cast your eyes upon the theme for next Tuesday:

I mean, I'm a bit speechless.  My nerd friends and I are certainly honored by this kind of recognition?  I mean, having people dress like us for a full day?  Wow.  Then again, why do we need a special "Nerd Day?"  Every day is Nerd Day in my world!

Should I be honored that our elected student representatives are taking us nerds into account?

Or insulted that everyone will dress weird make a mockery of true nerdom?  Nerdom is not wearing large glasses, knee-high socks and collared shirts, as the sports teams seem to believe.  Umm, you're thinking of hipsters.

The only way to fully dress for Nerd Day is to come to school made of awesome. Which I doubt the majority of my school will be able to do.  Oh, well.  It shall be fun, regardless.

What happens when you put tomatoes in a blender?

You get a smoothie.  Tomatoes are a fruit, and fruit in a blender makes smoothies.

I would display lovely pictures of me attempting to make a tomato smoothie, but a) I don't like tomatoes, b) Our blender is broken, and c) Wouldn't it just be tomato sauce?

This doesn't have anything to do with anything except a way to transition into blathering excuses.  Basically, the reason I haven't posted in a while is sort of like putting tomatoes in a blender.

(Pauses a few seconds to let that sink in.)

My head is a blender.  This year I've thrown a good many more activities, classes, and general things that now my tomatoes are spewing out the top (tomatoes in this analogy is my brain.  The first to go will be my cerebral cortex.  Then the bottom will split open and spill out my cerebellum.  We're studying the brain in AP Psych).

Basically, I have no free time.

Told in a roundabout way involving tomatoes.

This is a picture of my head exploding (I'm not sure why I look so happy.)

Anyways, this is why I won't be posting as regularly as before.  I'm sorry if that makes you cry.

ANYWAYS

Updates:

I spent the weekend visiting colleges and riding roller coasters.  Guess which one I liked better?

Then I met a famous clown.

Then I went to a math meet (I did pretty well - 11 out of 18 points!).

Then I got a new John Green book.

Then I made an egg carrier.

Then I procrastinated.

And  that's all folks, unless, in the time it takes me to finish this sentence, I think of something else to say.

...Didn't happen.

Over and out.

NO, WAIT!  DON'T GO!

I remembered something whilst creating labels.

So in physics, we're doing projectile motion and that kind of thing, with degree launches, which require usage of sin, cos, and tan.  We're investigating the amazing idea that sin/cos = tan (I never knew that.  I mean, it makes total sense, but still).  So one person says, "I get the whole sin/cos thing, but what does this have to do with solving the problem?"  And my physics teacher replies, "I'm sorry, I was going off on a tangent."

We cracked up for about a full minute.

Nerd jokes <3