Yam Kippur (At least, that's how I think you spell it)

Today, my Physics teacher was noticeably absent. He was replaced by a lady who sounded Russian, but could have been from anywhere from the Soviet Union. My old Physics teacher being a Jew, I am naturally suspicious when he goes missing and the only person's word I have that he is safe is his Russian substitute, but nevermind. Anyway, she isn't a very good teacher. I hardly understood a thing she said. It was kind of cool when she said "Very good," in her Russian accent but other than that the class was a bust. There were several people who walked out half way through (which was ironic because I was talking about people walking out of class at lunch that morning.) Anyways, happy Yam Kippur, or however it is you spell it.

Slave of Justice

Yes, that's me. The new parking ticket appeals person. My new boss is named "Brittany Justice" which is kind of ironic and kind of creepy, no? So here are some tips of what not to do when appealing a parking ticket: (Alright! Now I'm John Tash!)

1. Don't say "I'm a new student and didn't know the parking regulations." Ignorance is no excuse. We denied many appeals with that weak excuse.

2. "I saw other people doing it so I figured it was OK." If it is a college student doing it, it is always a bad idea. Don't copy them. We got this excuse a lot too.

3. "I didn't see a sign/I couldn't see any white lines." Alright people, you've just been fined for parking in an unmarked space and you have the gall to say it wasn't marked well enough!? The reason it is an unmarked space is because it isn't marked! And the reason you couldn't see any white lines was because there weren't any! Duh!

So now you know. If you are ever misparked on campus you will have to taste my iron fist. I am now a slave of Justice!

Flu Shots

Just the other day, Grace had to go get a flu shot to keep from getting the French Flu when she goes to Paris. I guess all the frenchies are swine or something, who knows? Anyways she was absolutely terrified, and predictably she overreacted and said that she didn't want to go to Paris anymore because she hated learning French and getting shots.

How learning French was brought into it, I don't know, but by now Grace should be smart enough to realize that even if she wasn't going to France she'd be learning French.

But, being the theologically minded guy that I am, I thought to myself that Grace's hyperventilation is exactly what we sound like to God when we start speculating about heaven. You know when you start to ask how you could possibly enjoy heaven if we didn't have our unchristian friends and families with us or if we were in stasis? (reference to an UTC professor whose lecture Lexie had to endure since she takes humanities.)

I mean, the answer is "Just chill. Paris' going to be great and there is no use saying that you don't want to go just because it doesn't sound perfect. You'll love it, I assure you." Same goes for Heaven. Just think of self-sacrifice as a Heaven Shot.

Stern Letter

Alright, this is the last straw. When I asked Lexie what she was doing what she was doing with the Latin people before lunch she answered, "Oh, we were preparing our skit for Latin." Hey! I don't do skits in Latin class! I feel ripped off! I have sent Dr. Davies a VERY STERN LETTER politely asking him why our class doesn't do any of the fun things Lexie's class is doing. We'll see what comes of this...

5:00 Blog Post

The trouble with having to wake up early to go help Angel Food is that you have to get up at 5:00. I was having a fairly pleasant dream when my alarm rang. I quickly sat up and hit the snooze button. At about 5:05 I realized that sitting there staring at the clock and wishing I could go back to sleep would not help me at all so I hopped up and came down. Then I realized there were 30 minutes until I actually had to leave and the parents were out of town. So, logical conclusion: Make a blog post. There's not much to blog about at the moment since my brain is still alternating between off and on, so I decided to blog about why I blogged. Pretty boring.

Picture Day

Today is picture day for the McPherson's. We're going to go take a family portrait somewhere. Hopefully it will replace that picture in the living room that has become somewhat outdated (est. 5 years.) I mean, it's great that I didn't have a single family picture of me during my angsty ugly teenage years, but it is kind of distressing that the newest family portrait of me has me when I'm twelve years old. I mean, I've even changed my hair since then! (This is saying something, really. Boys only change their hairstyle once every twelve years or so. I combed my hair forward every day for thirteen and some years, and then it became too rowdy so I began combing it backward every day. I have Mom's word for it that it helps.) Anyways, hopefully I won't be slanted, blinking, grinning like the joker, have my eyes as wide as deer in the headlights, look dumb, blah, blah, blah. It always falls out that two or three children are sacrificed for the good of the picture. (Meaning: We let them look dumb because the baby was smiling. Although, without a baby...) I just hope it isn't me.

OH NO SCHOOLWORK!

Grumble. It appears that everything has gotten harder. My Physics class is still a breeze, but my Physics Lab is killing me. I got my first paper back and it was an F!!! I know what you're all thinking: Wait a minute! Duncan is way too smart to get an F! I thought so too. Apparently I was wrong. What happened was I summarized our experiment it when he said to analyze it. There were three "discussion questions" he wanted answered which I totally overlooked. Minus 10! Minus 10! Minus 10! Minus 10 for some other stuff! etc! etc! etc! AAAAH!

Anyways, I am allowed to drop my lowest lab grade. This will DEFINITELY be it. I'm going to make A's on everything else.

This dropping a grade has really helped me in past semesters. There was one time that I totally spaced and showed up to lab an hour late. Ugh.

The results are in!

The results for the happy birthday poem contest of all time/September 09 are in! And it was A COMPLETE UPSET VICTORY!! Here's first place:

Torchics are red
Mudkips are sexy
Happy birthday to
David and Lexie
--Duncan McPherson

And the judges decided that this haiku deserved an honorable mention:

MUDKIP MUDKIP MUD
KIP MUDKIP MUDKIP MUDKIP
WE WANT MOAR MUDKIPS
--Luke McPherson

Conflicting messages

Yesterday we had a really good sermon at our church on 1 Samuel 16. I think it was 16, anyway. It was the chapter where David is anointed. Anyways, the main idea of the sermon was that 1 Samuel was not a self-help manual. If you are asking the question "Am I a David person or a Saul person?" you are asking the wrong question. God's plan is bigger than you. It's for you, but it's not about you and it fortunately does not depend on you. 1 Samuel points more to the king we need rather than the people we should be. Really good sermon. Agreed completely. Anyways, my kid brother got back from Sunday School and naturally our parents asked him what he learned in Sunday School. Andrew said that his teacher wanted the class to find something in David to emulate every week. (Although in 1 Samuel 16 the only traits of David that are shown were that he was ruddy and handsome.) Wait a minute! Wasn't that the question our pastor told us not to ask? And this was Senior High Sunday School! I think this was probably due to a communication failure between the pastor and the youth pastor. It'll probably be cleared up by next week. Hopefully.

Bible Bee is DONE~!

Ta-da! Bible bee is finally finished. I jammed through the written test and pretty much skipped the oral segment. I had to pass on every single verse because I hadn't studied them. Anyway this is neat: If you count up the number of verses I had memorized and the number of verses there were and then factor in the number of verses on the test, there was only a 47.2% chance that I would know at least one of the verses on the test. Pretty low odds. Anyways, it means I'm probably not going to nationals but WHATEVER!! At least I don't have to study any more. Phew. Although studying bible verses has been so much fun that I've been thinking of learning bible verses in a freelance manner now. Of course, with my motivational drive powers, I doubt it will ever amount to anything.

Corpora

Today I had a Latin quiz. Dr. Davies told us about it via email last night, so it wasn't a pop quiz, though I had no idea it was coming. Anyway, I got all the answers right except one: What is the accusative plural of the latin word for "body." Since it was third declension I ran through it in my mind and got "Corpores," but that isn't right because it's a neuter word and therefore its nominative and accusative plural are "Corpora." Got that? Good. Anyways, it means I no longer have an 100% in Latin. Boo boo schmoo boo.

Birthday Blues

Boo hoo. None of my friends remora'd their way to my brother's birthday party. I am so sad. So I got them back by listening to their moms talk about them behind their back. Ha ha ha! There's some motivation for you: If you don't show up, I'm going to sit with your moms and listen to embarassing childhood anecdotes! That'll teach you not to go to classes when you could be spending time with me!

P.S. He he. Just kidding. I understand how much more important classes are than friendship.

Ode to David

Today is David's birthday! Hooray for David! This calls for a song! This calls for poetry! This calls for dancing! This calls for a party! This is the most fantastic day of this half of the week! (The most fantastic day of the week was Lexie's birthday. Sorry David. Better luck next year. Maybe your birthdays won't be so close.)

Anyways, so now begins the poetry contest. Write a poem about how great David is (or if you can't think of any admirable traits for David, you can write it about Lexie since her birthday was earlier this week. Even better yet, write one about mudkips.)

So here's the winning entry:

David is awesome!
He's swinging and hip!
He's rad, sweet, and cherry,
and cool as Mudkip!

--Duncan McP.

Judging will begin sometime next week.

Yes/100

Yesterday I got my Political Science test back. I had to answer five essay questions of varying lengths and point amounts. When I got it back it said "A" on the top and had a checkmark next to each essay. So on the first essay, out of fifty possible points I got "check" and then on my next essay worth 40 points I got a "check" and on the 30 pointer, and on the 20 pointer, and the ten pointer, and the two extra credit 20 pointers, check, check, check, check, check. So after he summed up all the 'checks' the total came to A/100 possible points. Makes sense I guess.

P.S. The guy next to me complained about not knowing how many checks he could afford not to get on the next test. This made me realize that the only reason you would need to know your score was if you were planning to fail the next test.

Nausea-induced starvation

I've always wondered why Ariel always refuses to take the food I offer her, even though it was always free and I'm only giving it to her because I selfishly took too much and can't eat it. Well I finally figured it out. Yesterday, Dad took me aside when I was at home massaging my aching legs and said "Hey Duncan. I didn't want to say anything, but your table manners are disgusting. Your mouth was open as you chewed. It made me feel sick."

So now I figured out why my friends don't eat while I'm eating. They feel ill. Now I'm going to have to do some actual work and fix these sordid table manners of mine. Grumble grumble grumble. Otherwise, my friends might die of low blood sugar caused by nausea-induced starvation.

Plant Army

If all the plants of the world decided to rebel against the establishment and overthrow the animals, the movement would be centered in our yard. We have the meanest and cruelest plants under the heavens, although we keep them for the most part under check.

Like our Morning Glories. Every fall we take them off our mailbox and discover that the plants have yet again snapped the mailbox off of its post. The only reason it stayed up all summer was because the plants were so thick that they were holding it there.

And Dad expressed worries about whether our daisies would survive in their new habitat. Well, I won't be surprised if by Friday those daisies have replaced all living organisms in the area. They multipy like rabbits. Soon, Choices will be manned by daisies. It will be seriously scary.

Replay Value

Isn't it amazing how quickly games lose their replay value? Like Quelf. It is amazing how many times cards you saw last game pop up. I think Quelf just printed three cards a thousand times to make it look like they were selling you a full deck of embarrassing things to watch your friends do. What a bunch of sneaks. Also, I can't play cranium without seeing the same cards over and over. I can recall figuring out "March of the Penguins" as soon as the person who was about to start acting it out lowered their head. It's troublesome. Albeit, I could get up on pop culture and then all the cards we skip could be used but... too much trouble...

Anyways, the way we fix Cranium is that we pick a topic and then write our own cards. Since we've played Cranium so much we have a very firm handle on what type of words are used. When I was playing Quelf and thinking how absolutely bizarre the cards were, I figured we could do the same thing there. It would be fun to write Quelf cards. Heh heh.

Ann Coulter is SELLING OUT!

All right, so admittedly Ann Coulter can't sell out because it is a free event, but just this morning I got an UTC-MEMO stating that because interest has been booming, they need people to send in an e-mail stating that they will be there. One e-mail per person so that the secretary can just count the e-mails or something. If you are going, make sure to send in your e-mail to sarah-gard@utc.edu!

Strength

Alright, confession time. I'm no good at fencing. My form is awful, my point control is garbage, my footwork is sloppy, I'm not really fast, my power is low, though I am agressive (which isn't really a strength in all honesty), my reflexes are pretty poor, my disengages are too wide, my feints are too obvious, I never fully extend my arm, not to mention how often I pull it back, my back foot always comes up when I lunge, my hand still instinctively covers target area, otherwise I let it hang by my side like a dead animal, I hunch over while I fence, I lean in to my attacks making me totally vulnerable, but not quite as vulnerable I am when I jump, which I do with lots of regularity because I am stupid, I lose my balance when I attack and just barely manage to catch myself, I lose focus as the duel progresses, I am neither gifted nor hard-working, I don't exercise or practice often, in total I only fence an average of two hours a week.

I do have one strength however! Winning. For some inexplicable reason I win a lot. I think the reason is because I don't do what people expect me to do (which pretty much sums up my life.) In short, I don't do the right thing, therefore I win. It's a pretty sweet deal. In actuality, when the rubber hits the road, I don't really care whether I'm a good fencer or not. I only re-started fencing so I could see my friends often and I don't really have any desire to excel competitively. It would eat up my time, my life, and my money, all of which I value more than excelling in competitive fencing. As long as I have enough skill to enjoy it, I'm content.

Garlic Breath!

Today, I dined with Methodists with a bunch of my friends. I actually received an e-mail from Megan that told me that they would NOT meet at the Methodist center. Fortunately, I ignored it. I met them at the door. Well, the Methodists gave us some yummy lasagna that I ate a whole lot of (Ariel couldn't finish hers, ha.) and garlic bread that left you tasting garlic for the rest of the day.

Fortunately, this did not stop me from being a complete GENIUS in Physics class. I did the first quiz and got a 15/10 for a score. And he handed me back the extra credit today. I was the ONLY PERSON who actually did it. So my scores are through the roof in Physics. And I haven't even had my first test yet. Hooray!

First Test

Oh boy, oh boy. First test of the season is tonight. I get to show my wowwy dowwy pizzazz know how of politics to the world. He's told us what two of the huge essay questions will be. See how hard you think they are:

1) Explain how the Declaration of Independence was cribbed off of John Locke.

2) Is America a Republic or a Democracy? Explain the differences.

Well, luckily I said "rabbit rabbit" first thing this morning, so luck will be on my side. Yay!