On Homecoming

It's homecoming week at our school.

I didn't participate in the medallion hunt, go to the football game, dress up on pajama day, and I'm certainly not going to the dance.

Now, I have nothing against school spirit. I actually really like my school. But I think homecoming is an exercise in futility.

The football game was wet and rainy; it was too cold to wear pajamas; the medallion hunt's grand prize was $10, which can buy you one ticket for the dance. (You'll have $1 left over if you bring hand sanitizer!)

And the dance? Girls are expected to purchase a new dress every year (or swap with other girls, which seems a bit disgusting to me). It's in the commons, which is crowded, stuffy, and hot when 2500 people are packed into it at once. They're expecting us to bring hand sanitizer so that the whole school doesn't get sick (too late).

I don't know. It seems a bit overrated to me.

Some Weird Things and Questions

Weird thing #1: Nobody appears to be reading this, even when my posts actually start to mean something.
Question #1: If the universe is expanding, what's it expanding into?
Weird thing #2: I haven't been on MuseBlog for a while.
Weird thing #3: Language is arbitrary. It only have meaning because we say it has meaning.
Question #2: Could millions of people be wrong about the creation of the universe?
Question #3: Why do people fight wars if you're not going to change the other person's point of view anyway?
Weird thing #4: Money is arbitrary as well. It only has value because we say so.

On Touchy Stuff

To start this off, I am Asian. I am not prejudiced against Caucasians, Africans, Native Americans, or what have you.

Whenever people find out I'm Asian, they ask 'what kind' of Asian I am. To put this into perspective, they're asking if I'm Chinese, Japanese, etc. Let me ask you this:
Would you ask this to any other ethnicity?
Seriously. Would you go up to a white person and say "Hey, what kind of European are you? French, Scandinavian...?"
No, of course not. That's rude. But somehow it's okay for Asians, even though I'm American. I was born in the United States and I've lived here for nine years. So, in a case like that, I'll reply "What? I'm American." It makes them feel awkward, which, of course, is my job.

This is just to get you thinking, you know. I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad, which is easy to do when discussing sketchy topics like race.

On Colorguard

Recently, I was sent this:

Let me say a few things about this.

First of all, thanks, whoever sent this to me. You lied and told the truth at the same time. (We are hot, aren't we?)

Here's the lie: Colorguard is not like cheerleading at all. The only similarity is they both perform on football fields, and they're both mostly made up of females.

What colorguard is, basically, is the visual aspect of the marching band show. What we are, basically, is a dance team (that's cooler than the dance team, because we have flags).

Cheerleading, on the other hand, raises the mood of the audience and the football team by cheering them on. Does the colorguard do this? Not at all. We perform, not scream "We can do it!"

So there. All in all, we're more respectable than the cheerleading squad. (If you're a cheerleader, I was just joking. If you're not, I wasn't.)

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

I'm currently reading Blink. It's quite fascinating, actually. It's about making decisions and judgments in a blink (hence the title) of an eye. For example, you'd think a marriage would be a very difficult and complex thing to judge, right? It would need careful observation and effort. Well, using thin-slicing - a method that uses examples to make decisions quickly - researchers can judge the success marriage in about an hour of conversation. The success rate is around 90%, and is judged based on if the researcher accurately predicted whether the couple would still be together 15 years later. It's really interesting, and I suggest you read it.

Other titles by Malcolm Gladwell include The Tipping Point and Outliers, both of which I want to read. They are all about very interesting topics.

Of the Recent Deaths

First of all, R.I.P. Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett.

But there's something I really don't get.

Why is everybody fixating on Michael Jackson? It's not like Farrah Fawcett was any less important, or influential, or famous. And I may be a bit too young to know who they really are, but I know when people are left out.

I think it's sad Jackson is receiving all of the press, and from what I've heard of Farrah Fawcett, she deserves just as much publicity/sadness.

Epiphany Time!

A ton of my earlier, one-line posts are really stupid.

Oh, well.

Anyway, now I've joined Colorguard, which is basically twirling of flags to accompany a marching band. This allows me to go to band camp without actually being in band. Neat, huh?

Another thing I've just realized is that I have two mosquito bites on one foot that are less than one inch apart from one another. They're really, really itchy.

Summer has finally come. Now I can go to the waterpark, which I shall do. Eventually.