It's no Lai!

I have survived!

I have survived!

So I’ve spent the better part of a week finishing up my college applications, my entire winter break worrying about college applications, and the last few months in a very deep state of denial about my future. But now that I’m done I feel I can speak rather knowledgeably on the topic (or throw out generalized assumptions haphazardly enough that people think I know what I’m talking about! It is how teenagers work).

And I believe I’ve come up with a [completely original, and not in any way stolen from the stages of grief] process which all high school seniors can relate to as this year comes to a close.

Except for you, Tina.

1. Denial and Isolation

2. Anger

Sometimes I misplace my frustration. And then this is what happens to my friends.

3. Bargaining

Here is what happened the first few days of winter break every time I used the computer.
- Check email
- Spend 1-2 hours on Facebook
- Watch episodes of my favorite shows on Hulu
- Check email again
- Decide that I have spent the previously-decided three hours of Internet on leisurely activities, and that now it is time to begin working on apps, like I told myself I would.
- Type “www.commonapp.o” into the address bar
- Erase “www.commonapp.o” from the address bar
- Read the College Confidential forums neurotically for three hours, begin to believe I am never going to college.

4. Depression

I felt a rather great deal of remorse after turning in my applications.
It actually gets pretty grotesque.

5. Acceptance

Not so much the “from college” kind of acceptance, just the acceptance that I can’t do anything about my applications now. But I haven’t been letting my brain atrophy, oh no! I’ve been keeping it quite active… reading. Reading what, exactly? Oh, you know, nothing much. Polished off a fourth of “Amusing Ourselves to Death” today at Borders.

…also reading and having these kinds of discussions about Harry Potter fanfiction:

…and playing FarmVille.

JUST LET ME BE.

Photoshopping under the influence

Two weeks ago (not timely, I know! I apologize), I had my wisdom teeth removed. The dentist thankfully knocked me out completely, so all I remember is having the mask put on my face and waking up around 20 minutes later.

But in addition to the entire operation, there were a couple of things I missed in between falling asleep and becoming fully conscious:

1) I called my friend Steve (of the hamster cheeks) with a very sad, urgent message about bubblegum.
2) I then texted my friends repeatedly, with literary gems such as, “lock doors,”*  “threw away teeth walk feeling like clown,”** and my favorite: “apple sauce is now”***
3) About an hour later, when my gums began searing with pain, I allegedly told my friend over AIM, “now I am going to Photoshop the pain away. I think I will make my friend into a tumbleweed.”

Now let me explain what’s been going on for the past few weeks. I’ve had Photoshop on my computer for a while, but I haven’t done too much with it. Sure, I’ve thrown my cropped pictures of my friends into embarassing situations/outer space/odd hairstyles, but I’d rarely used the program for much else. Then one day I realized I needed to take a headshot for broadcast, and since the backgrounds in my house are pretty awkward, I cropped myself out and tried to find a suitable replacement background, and… well. This is what resulted.

Steve, always with an eye for improvement, suggested that I Photoshop him into a cowboy hat as well, to publicize for our school’s annual Western Day, this year titled, “Guilty.”

So I Photoshopped him. Then my friend Lauren. Then my acquaintance Celina and then it just snowballed into an activity that was taking large chunks out of my time.
But there’s actually something quite soothing about carefully cropping out my friends’ heads and rotating and resizing them to fit onto various bodies/inanimate objects. Which led me to create this monstrosity on the day of my operation:

But this would not be the end of my drug-influenced artistic creations. This week is Red Ribbon Week, and I’ve now learned how to create animated GIFs! Click the thumbnails to see them move.

I probably need to find a hobby.

*My dad was driving us through a shady part of town and I felt it was very important that my friend Lauren be aware of the importance of car safety.
**Steve had asked me for my wisdom teeth prior to the surgery (we value puns highly in our friendship) but when I asked the dentist for my teeth, he’d already thrown them away. I was very disappointed. I also had trouble walking straight, and instead of saying “can’t walk straight,” I decided to go for the movie reference. How hip and cultured am I! (about 70 years too late, is how cultured I am)
***I have no idea

Senior square, part two

Read the first part of the senior square story.

We’ve begun painting!

But we’re only painting it white for now, so that we have a clean canvas to work with for the design.

And as with paint scraping, there are a few methods for blanketing the area in white:

The Paint Roller – Sofia

I’d also like to point out that she later used that pole for support but nobody called HER a dirty pole dancer!

The Paintbrush – Sonya

The Bad Back – Jimmy

The Granny – Crystal

The Listen to Music to Drown out the Fatigue – Erin

The Cabinet Meeting – Celina and Jeanyoung

The Shameless Promotion – Teresa

The Result
Uhh I didn’t quite get a good picture of senior square, but here’s basically what it looks like right now:

We WILL finish it by the first day of school, really!

Credibility

We covered several fake press conferences at CSPA, and for this assignment, we were instructed to involve the multimedia aspect of the news. I posted my videos of the press conferences on YouTube:

And though my peers who wrote Facebook and Twitter updates on the story almost instantly received feedback from their friends (“Where are you getting this information?” was a popular one, as man has certainly not landed on Mars recently), my videos didn’t receive a single comment until yesterday.

“Yea this is an announcement at a building that is not even recogniceable. LOL cut me a break. THere are no cameras and were are the Nasa representetives?”

And though I laughed this off at first, after I thought about it for a couple minutes, this comment is scary, for two reasons.

1) Somebody actually believed that this shaky footage of an unrecognizable scene could possibly be real, and substantiated his accusations with proof, as if I was going to defend it. This is frightening because I realized that there are quite a few YouTube users out there who would defend completely untrue statements.

2) In the highly hostile realm that is YouTube commenting, only 1 out of 30 viewers left an antagonistic comment telling me, in essence, that I’m a stupid idiot who is posting up videos that are clearly not real NASA announcements.

I’m pretty sure that many of the viewers are other CSPA students or friends who know what’s up, but there have to be a couple of people who watched the video, unaware it was an exercise for a journalism workshop, who didn’t bother to tell me off for falsifying information in my video’s title and info box.

Credibility is a huge deal as news comes quicker and quicker at us every day, but it seems as if that issue doesn’t really matter to those 29 other people watching a fake story about a Mars landing hoax.

That, or “cut me a break” guy was the only non-CSPA person who watched the video.

I really gotta start tagging things.

(Gonna be gone from Monday through Wednesday, so no new blog updates until later this week!)

Confucius say

that I have no need to worry about tests this year!

My brother returned from Taiwan last night, and I found this on my nightstand:

But then I asked the question that’s been on my mind for months, and my brother told me: “I don’t think you can pass a college app.”

Ah. I’ll take what I can get!

Not in a crowded theatre

It’s strange how I can’t even feel the heat.

Yet another edifice is set ablaze right before my eyes, and I can’t feel a thing, save for that warm feeling from my chest, the soaring sensation that comes with knowing that it was hand that caused that, my fingers, pulsing with energy, that pushed the button for destruction.

But it’s not enough. I need to do more, witness as more symbols of corporate conformity are swallowed in flame. I need chaos, and lighter fluid. For some reason there’s a bottle right in front of me, but I don’t question its presence as I run over in what seems to be suspended motion – my motions are quick, but I’m moving centimeter by centimeter. I need the fluid. Or else it’s game over.

Why? Some would say this was caused by a social landscape in which we are desensitized to violence. The fact that capital punishment is legal in 38 states might be brought up, or the suggestion that I’ve been given a poor upbringing may be made. But I, as so many teenage hooligans growing up in suburbia have done, cite boredom and accessibility as my catalysts. When it becomes this easy to achieve anarchy – literally at my fingertips! – the question becomes “Why not?”

The task is complete. My heart stops momentarily as I wait for the long sought-after positive affirmation of my work.

“EXCELLENT!” screams the electronic voice from my speakers.

I turn off the computer and stumble over to my bed for another night of fitful dreams.

Click here to play Streets of Fire, another mind-numbing, time-consuming game I play as I silently despair about personal statements. Oh, and it’s definitely not as realistic as I described. I just wanted to freak you all out!

DISCLAIMER: I’ve never committed (or even thought about committing) arson! This was all about the game, and I apologize if I wasn’t clear enough in getting that point across. But really now. I’m entirely too clumsy to get away with a felony.

Hoarding up for a hungry day

Meliza was feeding her hamster Jorge today when I came to a startling conclusion.

Mesmerized by the ever-expanding cheeks of the terrible beast (it’s bitten me six times!), I realized that our friend Steve is eerily similar to the small rodent.

Let’s do a little search-and-replace:

From allexperts.com – “Steve, and all rodents, stuff their cheeks as a way of moving food. Steve is from a German word meaning ‘to hoard.’ Steve enjoys hoarding his food, which means making a large, hidden stockpile of food. Steve do[es] it to ensure even when no food is to be found, Steve still has enough in his hoard not to starve. Steve in captivity stuffs his cheeks to transport the food from the bowl to its hoard, usually the sleeping place.”

I’m just saying, if you’ve ever gone out to eat with him….

Worse than watching paint dry

My school is small. We don’t have too many students, so it’s not as if we desperately need more space, but it’s still small.

This is probably one of the reasons we find senior square so important. It’s not only a lunch area for seniors, but it represents the (very little, and pretty much nonexistent) authority the oldest students at our school wield over the underclassmen. Yeah, our school isn’t that big. But we’ve still managed to claim a spot all to ourselves, and you’re not allowed to be here.

The 20 x 20 area is painted every year, too. Since it’s summer, the time has come for us to start designing our own quadrilateral of intimidation. But first we had to do something about last year’s design:

For the past seven years or so, senior classes have been painting on top of the previous years’ designs. But on the day we applied primer, small areas began peeling, and it was decided that we remove all seven years of paint from the concrete.

So we’ve spent two weeks trying to get all the paint off. And though I’ve participated in only six hours of the paint removal, two hours of slightly concentrated work is all it really takes for me to consider myself an expert on anything. Here are the many methods of destroying old memories, presented by Teresa:

The Putty Knife – Alma

The Putty Knife and Hammer – Elizabeth

The Knife – Trisha

However, it’s important to note that The Knife also frequently leads to this:

The Power Saw – Jeanyoung

The Spiderman – Raymond

The Food Run – Raymond and Erin

Although I suppose I’m in no position to say anything, since my particular paint-removing method was as follows:

The Sit in Defeat and Hydrate – Teresa

The result:

Sabotage?!

It’s not a good feeling when you realize you’re in competition with your closest friends.

But it’s something we’ve all been slapped in the face with these past few weeks, as many of us come close to entering senior year and have to make many very big decisions.

And we’re probably going to have to get used to this feeling for a few more months.

By now, I think it’s become abundantly clear what I’m talking about.

Happy Farm.

I started playing the game (which is a Facebook application – click here for the application page) a week ago. The planting and harvesting of crops is perhaps enough to amuse you for the first half hour, but things really get interesting when you start interacting with your friends. They can help you – water your dry patches of land, kill pests, destroy weeds.

Or they can hurt you by stealing your crop. Which is infinitely more fun than being a helpful neighbor, and is really the appeal of the game to me. But there’s so much more to be said about the art of online farming.

Here’s my Happy Farm activity from today:

4:58 a.m. After four hours of sleep, I (rank #13 of my Happy Farm friends) force myself out of bed, regretting my decision to go with Steve (#3) to LAX to pick up our friend Christina (#1, but I’ve decided that’s because she lives in Alaska, where she has nothing to do). I check my Facebook. First notifcation of the day, at 5 in the morning: “Steve Shim stole the fruits of your labor in Happy Farm. Remember to feed your dog so it can catch thieves. Check your farm now!”

Farming requires dedication.

8:03 a.m. Christina is at my house and wants desperately to check her farm. I do so for her – on my account. Her tomatos have ripened. I steal several. She laughs and playfully hits me, but her eyes show nothing but fury.

Farming knows nothing of friendship.

1:11 p.m. After working at school for two hours, I come back to find that my friends have been working at my farm, helping me out. Helping out friends on Happy Farm is a tricky deal – on the one hand, friends are helping you when they kill the pests that could potentially destroy the crop. But on the other, they’re gaining experience points, points which could have gone to you had you killed the pests or watered the land.

Farming is intensely competitive.

4:16 p.m. I wake up from a very long nap (5 a.m. is entirely too early a time to wake up, ever!) to find that Tiffany S. (#12) has stolen one sweet pea from me. I curse myself for taking a nap when I knew my peas were ripening in an hour, while simultaneously appreciating the realistic feel of the game – although many facets of Happy Farm are entirely unrealistic (I don’t think daisies can fully grow in one day), I am totally the kind of person who, in real life, would take a nap and get her crops stolen.

Farming waits for no one.

6:34 p.m. Aprwil (#6) has fully matured eggplants on her farm. I attempt to steal one but get caught by her dog, and lose 26 coins in the process of running away.

Farming is dangerous.

9:09 p.m. I return from Tea Station, where I hung out with Tiffany L. (#2) and Steve. I vow to improve until I catch up to these Happy Farm masters, who spent a large portion of our time together discussing Happy Farm.

Farming is a conversation piece.

11:09 p.m. My blog entry on Happy Farm is finished. I realize I have spent the majority of my day thinking about a Facebook game.

Farming is depressing.

Just follow the… red-dotted road

In our second week at CSPA, we were assigned a multimedia project. My group decided to create a survival guide to CSPA:

And though it’s funnier than it is informative, and though we went well over the suggested three-to-five minute time limit, I thought we did pretty well.

Especially since we had to cut out many of our original ideas, namely our “How to get around Cal Poly SLO” segment. We’d started with big ambitions: we were going to use Google Maps and Jing (some fancy program that we couldn’t learn in the 30 minutes we left ourselves to edit the project) to construct a virtual tour, complete with voiceovers and onscreen cues pointing out shortcuts.

But as time began slipping through our fingers, we compromised more and more, until we were left with this masterpiece:

Notice how the routes are helpfully marked by red dots.

I’ve been struggling to explain to my friends at home exactly why CSPA was so wonderful. Maybe this post will serve to clear things up a little bit.