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5 Things I Learned in High School that I actually HAVE used later

November 30th, 2010 by pladd

So, in preface, I went to an IB highschool, which was fun and also kind of a lot of work. On the plus side, the English classes were probably more rigorous than every English class I took at Rice except one: Literature and the Environment, senior year. I distinctly remember thinking, “Wow, I haven’t worked this hard at writing a paper/reading a book for class since high school.” On the downside, 2:1 girl to guy ratio so, you know, so few guys that I never, ever had a date, but enough guys that I could still feel like it was 100% my fault.1. Here are five things that I learned in high school that have actually come up again later in life:

1. Math
Yes, it is one of my life regrets that I took higher level IB math instead of higher level IB French in high school. I would have aced that French exam, or at least failed less embarrassingly than in math. “Oh well,” 18-year-old Patricia thought. “It’s not like I’ll ever really need this again.” WRONG. Not only did 20-year-old-Patricia decide that Math 101 would be a great, easy way to get some D3 credit out of the way (it was), but grad school Patricia finally got a job because she was a double threat of English AND Math tutoring skillz. Also, the research methods class I’m in now is like made of statistics, or is trying to be. Maybe it’s just because no one’s awake that early in the morning, but a lot of us don’t seem up to the questionable challenge. The professor has had to remind us that y=mx+b multiple times so far and a lot of times just tells us how to get the stat pack to spit out numbers and says “… and don’t worry about how this happened.” I assume the rumors I’ve heard about this exam being hard are because all of the English BAs in this library program have forgotten what a square root is.

It looks like this, just fyi.

2. Grammar Rules
My senior year I had an English teacher who was obsessive about grammar. Every time we turned in our 4 essays on whatever book (“journals” as they were called, but that makes it sound fun and reflective when it wasn’t), she would mark all of our grammar mistakes with a highlighter and a system of abbreviations of her own devising. Then we would have to correct all of them and turn them in again, a process that seemed way more laborious while doing it than it takes to describe. My first journal corrections (don’t ask me why I saved these), I had 19 (mostly dangling modifiers). By the end I was only getting one or two (mostly word choice), so clearly I was improving. And, yes, I can see the appeal of being able to write mistake-free, but what’s the point of obeying some of these more obscure grammar rules that my supervisors won’t know about or follow? See above about the tutoring job; I’m pretty sure half the reason I got it was using the words “dangling modifier” in an appropriate way.
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You’d think I’d get tired of reading Twilight

November 26th, 2010 by pladd

Considering how much I complained about it, and all. And yet, I always get kind of excited when I can review a book based on my 13 Signs the Book You’re Reading Might be Twilight. I wrote the list exclusively for my review of Firelight, but reading over it again it still holds pretty true for Beautiful Creatures.

by Kami Gracia and Margaret Stohl

That’s right, it took TWICE the authors so this is 563 pages of TWICE the Twilight action.

Here is the deal:

Ethan hates his small Southern town, until beautiful and mysterious and captivating and amazing Lena shows up, niece to Macon Ravenwood, town recluse. All the popular girls hate her. Ethan is madly in love. Then, after a series of supposedly dramatic encounters and confusing events, she confesses that she is from an ancient family of Casters, meaning she has magical powers. But oh no! Her family is also cursed to be Claimed by either Light or Dark magic on their sixteenth birthday and they don’t get to choose and YOU SHOULD STAY AWAY FROM ME, ETHAN, I’ll just end up hurting you. Most of the book is spent ineffectually trying to find a way to save her from possibly “going dark” while the surrounding adults are all “Stay away from each other!” Also, they are possibly reincarnated from their ancestors, a Confederate deserter and a high-class Southern Caster lady.

Thirteen Signs that the Book you are reading is, in fact, Twilight
1. Secret Mythical Creature: Check, Lena and her family are Casters, each with various magical powers, like one of them can heal and another can see different times. Except Lena is something called a “Natural”, which means she has ALL POWERS. Also, her uncle is an incubus!
2. Secret Mythical Creature Kind of Lamer than usual and given weird sparkly attributes: Yeah, the incubus just eats dreams. Lame. Also, Lena’s powers mostly manifest as the weather matching her emotions.
3. Love at first sight: One-upped! Before Lena even moves in, Ethan starts having dreams about her. On page five, he literally describes it as “love before first sight”
4. Star-crossed lovers: A Caster and a Mortal? SCANDAL! Also, one-upped by implying their ancestors were ALSO star-crossed lovers.
5. Over-described hot guy: One-upped! Since this book is from Ethan’s point of view, it’s an over-described hot GIRL. At first I was unsure if the male perspective would appeal to teen girls, BUT then I realized it’s perfect, because it allows him to talk pretty much constantly about how beautiful and mysterious and unique she is, which would seem kind of arrogant and weird if she was the narrator. Bonus points for her being “not like the other girls” and for no one being able to REALIZE her beauty but him. Of course middle school Patricia would have been all over that.
6. Guy who is “too dangerous” and tells girl to stay away from him repeatedly: Like #5, this is now gender reversed. Even though from the time they meet they inexplicably have telepathic powers with each other, Lena is constantly saying things like “Stay away from me before I hurt you!”, a sentiment echoed by her uncle, Ethan’s housekeeper/mom surrogate, and everyone else in town.
7. Weird Culty Family: Yep. Lena’s whole family are casters–some light and some dark–complete with weird holidays, traditions, and private library under the town. Plus there’s that whole curse thing, caused by Lena’s previous incarnation/ancestor. Also, they don’t find out their real names until after they turn 16. They sort of forgot this at the end, since Lena never gets renamed?
8. Obligatory Human Friend the Protagonist Uses But Mostly Ignores: His nickname is “Link” and he kind of sticks by Ethan even when the whole town/school is all “Why are you dating that non-blonde freak?” He gets slightly more face time in the book than your typical non-magic friend, mostly because Lena’s dark cousin uses him to get to Ethan/Lena, for MONTHS. Ethan knows about it, but does nothing besides once saying something like, “She’s bad news… or whatever.”
9. Having to hold yourself back while making out for fear that Morality will manifest as real life danger: Ethan constantly feels electric shocks while they kiss, and one time has like a mini heart attack. It turns out, it’s IMPOSSIBLE for Casters and Mortals to be together physically because the Mortal would die of like MAGIC OVERDOSE or something. They find out from Lena’s Super Evil Dark Caster mom at the end, a fact which is never really resolved and I assume is what the sequel is all about.
10. Everything that looks like action turns out to be boring: There’s a confrontation at the end that’s okay, but it still seems kind of “eh” maybe because I had to slog through 500 pages to get to it. Most of the book milks the dynamic of “I’m madly in love with you/but I CAN’T be with you”.
11. No Plot until the last 50 pages: I’m pretty sure the authors thought this book was like made of suspense. Unfortunately, the “mystery” aspects were either easy to figure out, impossible to figure out, or kind of irrelevant. Sure, there was tension before the last 50 pages, mostly in that you don’t know what will happen on Lena’s birthday, but you are so bashed over the head with it, that I really stopped caring.
12. Controlling, abusive relationships: I wouldn’t say their relationship is controlling or abusive, so points for that. I would say it’s weirdly co-dependent. Given the whole telepathy thing, they are thinking each other’s thoughts most of the time, and Ethan pretty much thinks/talks about NOTHING except Lena and how mysteriously beautiful she is the entire 563 pages.
13. Writing style: 7th grade fanfiction: I actually had few problems with the actual style and sentence construction that I usually find with Twilight and its copycats.

Twilight score: 10/13

Another aspect of this book that I’m not sure how I feel about, is that it’s set in a small Southern town and the authors feel a desperate need to Explain The South to you pretty much every chapter. It was weird for me reading it, since I already understand the South, thanks, so I always felt like the book must be pretty much written for people who live in New England or California. And it will pretty much only reinforce their stereotypes about the South, something I find kind of sad. I much prefer how The Splendor Falls handled this. Also set in a small Southern town, it had some characters acting like stereotypes some of the time, not every one all the time. Then again, that novel also had well-rounded, well-developed characters in general, as opposed to cardboard cut outs of TEENS IN LOVE+DISAPPROVING ADULTS+IGNORANT SOUTHERN HICKS so I don’t know why I’m surprised.

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Thanksgiving Reborn! Like a tasty Phoenix!

November 23rd, 2010 by pladd

I suspect there are more people than you’d think who dislike most or all traditional Thanksgiving food. My personal opinions are:

Turkey: Bland and uninteresting
Gravy: Incredibly suspect and not to be trusted
Cranberry Sauce: Just give up and be JELLO already
Mashed potatoes: Acceptable
Stuffing/Dressing: Good. Or, I guess I should say, the variation of it my family makes is good. The kind that comes from a box that Steven likes tastes like eating instant grits before cooking them.
Green bean casserole: Why would you want to adulterate perfectly good green beans?
Sweet potato casserole: Too sweet unless it is literally just marshmallows on top of a sweet potato. None of this brown sugar/melted butter nonsense.

And the thing is, I don’t think I’m the only one that thinks most Thanksgiving food is just kind of eh, at best. And still almost everyone eats the same thing every year, just because it’s “tradition”. Lame.

If you’ve ever heard me rant about weddings at all (and anyone who asks me anything like “Have you set a date yet?”, hears my entire speech of righteousness), you know that I hate doing things just for tradition’s sake. Somehow as a child I got the impression that once I became an adult, no one was going to tell me what to do ever again. Obviously, this is untrue, and I admit that I need to follow orders at work and school. But I’m not going to let society push me around if I don’t have to. Which is why I have always vowed that once I became master of my own Thanksgiving, things would change. The menu would be replaced with my six favorite foods, the things I was thankful for. That menu would look like this:

Spaghetti
Homemade bread
Chicken Noodle Casserole
Fried Rice
Broccoli and cheese
Chocolate mousse

And it would be the BEST Thanksgiving ever! For me. This year, I realized that this dream could become a REALITY. Even though I am not having Thanksgiving alone, I realized I could become master of my own Thanksgiving by being on the ball and forcing everyone to agree to make their one favorite food instead of the usual nonsense. And it worked! So far the menu looks like this:

Spaghetti (Me)
Chicken fingers (Steven)
Meatloaf (Thomas)
Some kind of pie (Mom Ladd)
Some kind of vegetable thing (Dad)

Don’t look now, Charlie Brown, but it’s going to be the best Thanksgiving ever, because I’m going to willingly eat every dish on the table!

What foods would you bring to Thanksgiving 2.0?

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Because Caitlin wants to feel bad about herself

November 19th, 2010 by pladd

And I had nothing to update with today since I spent a good part of the morning being at Harry Potter midnight showing/sleeping ridic late.

“Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety; Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read an excerpt.”

So it looks like I’ve read: 61/100. A lot of them in Scotland, since I had like no money, and only an academic library at my disposal. Plus only two days of class a week. So that’s a lot of wandering around in the woods and reading vaguely academic literature.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen The hottest thing about Mr. Darcy is his mansion.
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien So many names I can’t pronounce
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte gonna lock up my mixed race wife in the attic.
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling Can cure illnesses, true science fact
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee Surviving attempted murder while wearing a ham costume!
6 The Bible And someone begat someone else… etc ed nauseum. That is the chapter where I stopped.
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte Anger issues=romantic
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell started editing my own Newspeak dictionary for like four months after reading this book
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman Trying to tell my middle school friend that her daemon would totally be a woodchuck without causing offense
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens Crazy Left at the Alter Miss Havisham+CATCHING ON FIRE=the only part of this book I liked
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott Once wrote a paper arguing that this book was basically a giant in-joke/money making scheme and that Alcott really was more about her sensationalist fiction like A Long Fatal Love Chase
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy Don’t be a ho; not even a little bit.
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare Sex jokes are funnier in Olde Timey English
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien You can still be a hero even if you’re a whiny complainer (good news for me)
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell You should get married for: spite, money, boredom in that order. Also, have children and then sort of forget about them. Sorry, Wade.
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald Having a fancy gold car is cool, but it will lead to your ruin
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens This one time, in highschool, I decided it would be a good idea to read ALL OF DICKENS. Now they all kind of run together in my head, especially this one and Our Mutual Friend for some reason. I mostly remember Esther rambling about how awful she is.
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams read it, seen it, bought the towel
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh Alcoholism is fun, but leads to dying of liver failure in Africa
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll There’s a fine line between imagination and drug trip
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame Forest creatures can also have turn of the century adventures
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens Semi-autobiographical whining. SO MUCH semi-autobiographical whining.
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis Everything is a symbol for Jesus
34 Emma – Jane Austen This is my fav Jane Austen novel because it’s so different from type. Normally her works go “I’m poor but worthy! I will negotiate society to find a rich husband!” but Emma is all “I’m filthy rich and oblivious to the real world! I will wreck my friends’ lives!” Awesome.
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen See above, with a side of “too bad that loser I rejected on prom night is rich and cute now!”
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis Turkish delight=not that great. I was misled.
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres Pretty much my least favorite Louis de Bernieres book; the Latin American trilogy is hilarious and amazing and Birds Without Wings is also so good.
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden If you have to be a ho, be the BEST ho
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne Pooh Sticks: best game ever
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell Pigs are the most devious of all farm animals
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown Everyone loves a good scandal, esp if it’s about Jesus!
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez This one time, it rained for like FORTY YEARS
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving So your best friend is a midget who SPEAKS IN ALL CAPS…
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins The best book I’ve ever read for free online while working nights at the library
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery Why was Anne so annoyed about having red hair? Whenever I blew out candles from ages six to ten, I would wish for red hair. Kind of bitter that Anne took hers for granted.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood I read this in one sitting in a pub in Stirling
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding Children are bitches
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan NEVER TRUST THE NARRATOR
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen See above about Jane Austen, with a side of “Damn, my sister is crazy” Although that applies to a lot of Jane Austen novels
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens Learned how to knit because of this book. Yeah, Mme Defarge was my fav.
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley GIVING BIRTH? Crazy!
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez Either I’m in love, or I have a deadly disease. Symptoms are the same, so I can’t be sure
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt Classics Majors are CRAZY, Steven
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas Revenge is a dish best served incredibly intricately, after a ridiculously many years
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding Even annoying people with faces that are shiny and might be made of plastic can marry Colin Firth. (I actually did read this book, but since it was after I saw the movie, I had a hard time picturing the characters as anything other than the actors who played them)
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens Asking for more gruel can make you famous
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker If a woman’s acting sexual, SHE MUST BE A DEMON
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett Nature can cure your sickness
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson Cultural differences are hilarious
75 Ulysses – James Joyce James Joyce: A Crazy Person
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray Sometimes, after hundreds of pages, you can get what you want and still be miserable. Also, hating most of your own characters makes for a surprisingly funny book
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens And Dickens wanted to be remembered for Martin Chuzzlewit lol
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell Is it a story within a story within a story within a story? Or is it REAL LIFE reflected through a series of mirrors?
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro Butlers are shy and therefore sad.
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert Irresponsible women will be the downfall of us all
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White Whatever, I still say Orville is a better name for a pig.
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Cocaine can make you a better detective
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery Sometimes hats are actually elephants that have been eaten by snakes
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams Still terrified of rabbits
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas You can be holy and try to pick up women at the same time in France.
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare If you don’t know how to end your play, just kill EVERYONE
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl Oompa Loompas are the best source of comical cheap labor
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

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Strange Library Sightings: “Naked Rampage”

November 12th, 2010 by pladd

One of my coworkers who goes to NC State showed me this news report today at work about, as she put it “some guy running through the library (voice drops to a whisper) IN THE BUFF”. The headline “Naked Rampage” confused me at first until I saw the video and how he was wildly throwing books off the shelves. So maybe it should be retitled “Naked Book Rampage”, which sounds like a fun time.

But maybe that’s just because I, too, am really stressed about finals. I feel your pain, Seth Pace.

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Adding to the List of Things I Quit

November 10th, 2010 by pladd

List of Things I’ve Quit: And reasons

Ice-skating: Moved to Florida. Bummer.
Karate: Sick of getting punched in the face.
Jazz dancing: No rhythm. Also, cannot understand jazz music.
Horseback riding: Allergic to horses. Surprise!
Playing piano: No rhythm. Also, teacher maybe died?
Writing fanfiction: Shame.
Playing guitar: No rhythm. Also, teacher mostly just told stories about armadillos and bands I’d never heard of.
Babysitting: Vow to never let some kid ride on my back and pretend I’m a horse again.
Singing in any kind of public setting: someone at a library Halloween Caroling event told me I should “never sing again ever”. Middle School Girls have fragile feelings.
Going to math competitions: Realized enthusiasm is not the same as actual math skills.
Writing novels: ???
A history class about somewhere in Europe in the 1200s: Could not understand professor at all.
Biking in Beer Bike: Traumatized the year before by having to chug at Beer Run
That English class about art: Prof=sweatiest person I’ve ever seen; plus, know nothing about art.
Road Trip: Really needed to do laundry; tired of eating fast food.
Math Tutoring: Pretty much just sick of driving to Cary
NaNoWriMo 2010: Decide to spend time instead on 10-12 page research papers suddenly do in every class. This was not part of the deal.
Volunteering at the library in November 2010: See above. At least with this one I can guarantee that the quitting is only temporary.

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It’s the little things

November 8th, 2010 by pladd

November is the worst month. Ever. It’s cold. It’s close enough to the end of the semester that I suddenly become all about writing research papers. Everyone has Christmas stuff out already, so that I get annoyed by December 1st. I dislike turkey. NaNoWriMo is making me crazy. Whenever anyone asks me how I am, I can’t even muster the strength to blandly lie and just go “Bleeeeeeh”.

So, here are some little things:

1) Ever since I got my netbook (after my laptop decided to fulfill its lifelong dream of being a refrigerator by keeping its fan on at all times) I have been using Steven’s computer when he’s not home to be able to a) see everything on a freakishly huge screen and b) use Microsoft Office products. This has the added benefit of getting to fill his Pandora gadget with Lady Gaga to break up all that LOTR1-themed Euro pop/metal. You’re welcome, Steven.

2) Compiling course evaluations in my head. Some classes, thinking about writing that 15 minute evaluation, no matter how inconsequential it will actually be to the Powers of UNC, is all that gets me through.

3) The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex. I am a little more than halfway through this book, and it is AWESOME. Basically, aliens called The Boov conquer Earth. They oppress us, but it’s hilarious! Observe:

Gratuity Tucci, sassy eleven-year-old, is having none of that. Then she makes friends with an outcast Boov who has decided his “human name” is J.Lo. If that doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will. Best alien invasion ever. I can’t wait to see how it ends.

4) Coloring. And being happy that wordpress is not as temperamental as Tumblr.

5) Doing impressions of animals that are pretty much overlooked in the impressions world. Like the walrus. Or the sandpiper. Complete with exciting sound effects. The best part is leaping into Steven’s office and shouting “GUESS WHAT ANIMAL I AM!!!” I was surprised he got the walrus.

  • 1You’ll note that I’m nerdy enough to use the abbreviation LOTR but not nerdy enough to listen to German metal bands sing at least an entire freaking album about it. It can be a fine line.↑

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    Yessssss (I’m an unmotivated snake)

    November 7th, 2010 by pladd

    And watching this is a great way to procrastinate. And feel happy inside.

    (I saw this first on Bookshelves of Doom)

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