Recently in Latin, we learned about defixiones, or curse tablets. Apparently, people made a lot of them back in the day. Basically, you wrote down, in dedication to some god/goddess/evil spirit, what you wanted to happen to a person who you were angry at. This person could be anyone from a lover who jilted you, to an unknown thief who stole your precious cloak. (There was one defixio about a stolen cloak.) One angry defixio is crazily intense in its vengeance against some girl: May burning fever seize all her limbs, kill her soul and her heart. O Gods of the Underworld, break and smash her bones, choke her, let her body be twisted and shattered - phrix, phrox. The two words at the end are nonsense, "magic" words like "abracadabra" to give the defixio more evil magic power. o.o Other things that gave a defixio more power: writing it backwards; including an illustration; putting a nail through it, throwing it down a well, or both; starting at someone's head and describing all the bad things you want to happen to them, from there downwards.

Aaaaanyway, we have to make a defixio as an assignment in class, which feels sorta creepy in a "we're doing crazy Roman voodoo in Latin!" kind of way, but I guess it's fun. Unfortunately, our limited vocabulary, combined with the requirement that we include genitive phrases, gives us phrases such as "sim caput Vilbiae plenus murum," or, "may Vilbia's head fill with mice." ...yeah.

( if you'd prefer to skip the Latin info dump, the photos are below here )

Today was the Latin convivium where we all got to eat peculiar Roman food and get our awards from the National Latin Exam. A TON of students got awards. It was simultaneously ridiculous and amazing. Mostly it was awesome, because it shows how good of a Latin class our school has. Out of all the Latin students, only three people got the highest award, the gold medal, and of those three, I was the only freshman. *glows* The other two were seniors. I am such a geek, but I am so proud of myself for it. If I can do this well senior year I can apply for a scholarship for it. Yaaaay.

Hm, that doesn't have enough emotion. YAY! :D

Also, the six Latin classes, a total of a bit more than 100 kids, were raising money for cancer. Mr. H figured we could raise $1000 in the two weeks. He said if we did, he would shave his head. (He assumed we'd fall just a tad short.) How much did we raise? Not $1000, not $1500, but over $2100. In just ten days. *glows again*

Sometimes school does make me smile.

Why look, a video! The more things in it you recognize, the geekier and more awesome you are.



Not much else to say. I'm going to do some indulgence writing, I think.

aut viam inveniam, aut faciam! That is my current favorite Latin phrase. Either I'll find a way, or I'll make one.

Seventeen days left of school. I just might make it. Geometry project is done, history project is fully researched, as for the LAtin project... time to get cracking.

My posts will regain a point very soon. (Actually, it would be full of Israeli-Palistinian conflict rants, but in the end that subject is so... well, I can't even manage to rant about it. So, I write these posts instead.)

I finished my one-page research paper on Boudica today. You'd think a one-page research paper would be really easy, but it's actually astoundingly hard to get started, knowing that you mustn't waste time with filler that you can normally put into an introduction paragraph. In the end, it is not really the finest sample of my writing, but it has all the key points, and it isn't plagiarism, so it'll have to do.

Also, while trying to track down the origin of Dandie in the Underworld, I uncovered an album called Dandy in the Underworld by T.Rex, which turns out to be a great band. Also, while on the topic of bands I've been discovering lately, there is Girlschool and Dolly Mixture. (Actually, I discovered Dolly Mixture a while ago. And I'm not really discovering any of these bands, seeing as they're all from the 70s or somewhere there abouts.) I feel like I'd listen to many, many more old rock, punk, folk, indie, etc. bands if not for the fact that the REALLY OBNOXIOUS kids in my grade like that music. I mean, I can still like the music, but I feel like if I ever said I liked it, I'd be labeled a poser in five seconds flat. That doesn't really bother, me, though, so I suppose I might as well just like the music, even if it does mean having something in common with people I really dislike. That being said... anyone got any old bands to suggest?

Speaking of posers, what makes someone that, anyway? Teenagers are all obsessed with not being a poser, or with fitting into a certain social clique, but isn't trying to fit in with a clique what makes you a poser? Or not? Bwuh? I dunno. Really, I think teens just make contradictory statements too much. For example, when a teenage girl says "I hate drama," she will often proceed to detail to you all the drama that is currently taking place in her life. While she says she hates it, she seems to enjoy the subject. Also, any teen will say they hate labels, but they won't fail to call themselves "punk" or "goth" or "prep" or what have you. It's so silly.

Tin Can Space Man by ~Amanen on deviantART

That's what happens when I listen to "Space Oddity" too many times. I have three tests tomorrow, two of which I don't think I'm ready for. It's actually kind of funny, because one of the tests is geometry, and we've been using sine (and cosine and tangent), and another test is in Latin, and one of our vocab words is "sine." Since sine means "without" in Latin, it makes sense for math, because I suppose a sine wave is without end... Actually, I don't really know much of anything about sine or cosine or tangent.

I'm going to sleep now.

Happy ides of March everyone! Though I suppose that's not the kinda thing you wish someone a "happy" of. And wow, that sentence just there made no grammatical sense. Pretend it never happened. o.o

I remember my sixth grade teacher made a big deal of the ides of March. Well, she made a big deal of all of ancient Roman (and Greek) history. I still remember a lot of the specific stuff she taught us. It helped be me out on the National Latin exam, actually. Anyhow, she had said that of all the things she taught us, she wanted us to ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS remember the ides of March, what and when it was. So, I shall NEVAR FORGET. (Not that she'd know if I did.) Another thing she taught our class was the phrase "Veni, vidi, vici," which she pronounced "veh-nii, vidii, viichii," and which Mr. Howell pronounces "wenii, wiidii, wiikii." Traditional Latin sounds so weird. But, since I'm learning it like that, church Latin is starting to sound funny. Until yesterday, I had no idea how a string of three verbs could possibly signify a phrase like, "I came, I saw, I conquered," but just yesterday we covered first person perfect tense, and it turns out that the ending of the verb can change a word like "videt," which simply means "see," to "vidi," which means all of "I saw." So, the subject isn't necessary after all. IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW! :D

While today is the ides of March, yesterday was Pi Day! A bunch of the math classes (but not mine) had been assigned this project for Pi Day which, for whatever reason, involved cookies instead of pie. I guess cookies are easier to share with a class than a pie. Anyway, each student had to make one giant cookie and write a pie graph of ingredients on it, and then enough small cookies to share with the class. So, while I was proofing trapezoids and stuff, they were having a cookie swap. But I'm not jealous at all. Nope. Toootally not jealous. Actually, I'm really not jealous, because a bunch of people handed out cookies which they didn't want. I think I ate at least a hundred cookies yesterday... One of them tasted like soap, though. For serious. But all the other cookies were great. And the best part was that I had chorus study yesterday, so I got to spend an entire class period playing FFR and eating cookies. And wow, it was pretty amazing.

It's not my family, in your head, in your head, they are fighting...
- "Zombie" by the Cranberries

That quote has nothing to do with this post but I really like that song. For anyone who's heard that song and the song "Sing" by the Dresdon Dolls, I ask you this: Is it just me, or does the very beginning of the two songs sound similar?

Anyway... Today in Latin, Mr. H told us about Emperor Nero and his mother. o.O; My question is, if Emperor Nero made a giant statue of himself as sun god Apollo, and he wasn't smited, then why would they put any stock into their religion? But, then again, isn't it that they didn't really believe their myths at all (so did they not believe their own religion)?　Whatever, I'm so vague on the topic of ancient Rome these days. I haven't studied it in a good number of years. Moving on...

Last weekend, we got the new guinea pig called Dixie. She seems to be doing just fine, and she definitely has made Jewel more friendly. He was always an anti-social guinea pig, but since she showed up, he's been all bouncy and social and he lets you pet him and he squeaks a lot. It almost sounds like a sitcom, his life, or maybe a Hollywood movie. I mean, switch out "guinea pig" for "person" and "guinea pig cage" for "apartment" and it's perfect. Can't you imagine it? The movie trailer'd say some cheesy thing about Jewel never having been social, and then there'd be some sound clip of him telling someone something about how Caramel died, and then the narrator of the movie trailer would say "But then along came Dixie." Then inspirational music would play and there'd be a montage and a bunch of clips of them talking and stuff. Hm... Change the names, write up a script, and I could be a famous movie director in no time!

Maybe not, but oh well.

And!! Britt got the manga of Spiral!! I've been wanting to read this since I saw the anime two years ago! YAYAYAYAYAY!

Yesterday was onee-chan's birthday!! That was ultra fun. Probably the most amusing present she got was this "Lexicon of Stupidity," with all these stupid things people have said or typed. On the cover it has a quote from Winona Ryder: "I feel my best when I'm happy." Lots of good stuff like that in there. Also, quote from a law maker, "That's phoney, with a capital F!" Also, a US ambassador, "You mean there are TWO Koreas?" Also, some other person, "The meeting was held in secret because it concerns the public so much." Just wow.

Today in English long block we didn't do any real work; we just made posters about respect. Usually that means you're being punished for being disrespectful, but in this case it was because of a discussion we got in a while ago about the lack of respect for minority groups. I don't think random quotes will help much, but whatever. I liked our quote, at least, "Never take a person's dignity: It is worth nothing to you and everything to them." Of course, Shakespeare said that first in Othello, only he phrased it differently.

Let's see. Not much else interesting has been happening in life lately. We had band study today, so I came up with this thingy. You know Ockham's razor? Since it brings the easiest, most simple solution, I decided someone should invent Ockham's lazor, which would turn everything into something with no solution - a paradox. You could shoot Ockham's lazor at a cat and it would suddenly be in a box and you wouldn't know if it was alive or dead. Thanks to Ockham's lazor, you'd get logic like this: If a = b and b = c, then a is divisible by zero.

Oh! And we're watching an amusing movie in Latin, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Much fun, but I'll have to have more on that later because I need to walk the dog.

Am I the first one to notice that PARTIES and PANTIES are only one letter apart? I mean, imagine how awkward it would be if you meant to write in an email or something, "I went shopping for some parties," as in, for party supplies, but typed, "I went shopping for some panties"? I guess it's extremely unlikely that you'd do that, seeing as the R and the N key are really far apart but STILL!!

Moving right along to something relevant...

We're starting some work on the French Revolution, and Ms. C said it was going to be Serious Business, writing essays and everything. She's one of my favorite teachers this year by far, but, I don't want to write essays in class. T~T On the plus, no homework this week, but still, I get horribly cramps in my hand when I write, which is why I much prefer typing. It's kind of sad when you can type faster than you can write (or at least as fast as you can write), but that is the state I'm at by now. I'm so familiar with a keyboard that I don't even need to have the physical object their to imagine how the word is typed. That's really, really, really sad. >.>;

I talked to the band director today (who's also a Ms. C, but a different one, go figure), and she said that it wasn't too late to turn in District forms, so I can still do that. I'm thinking I'll try out for orchestra like I have the past two years, but I may as well throw in chorus, too. I don't think I'll make it into that, though... There are about a million sopranos in the world. It'd be much harder to get in on that than it would be to get in on trombone. Still, it'd be an experience, so I may as well give it a shot, right? I was really happy, too, because when I said I wasn't sure I wanted to try out on trombone because of how hard the audition piece is, she said, "Nah, I think you'd be fine. You should go for it." Yay encouragement.

On the worse side, we had a quiz in Latin today which I was absolutely unaware of. @__@ And I already know I got at least one wrong. @_________@ Apparently, since "est" pluralizes to "sunt," "adest" pluralizes to "adsunt," not "adesunt." Grrr, grr, grr, but such is life, I suppose. I couldn't have done too badly on the rest of it.