Bio-enginnered Soldiers

I have recently been alerted to disturbing news. In my e-mail inbox I discovered that Ohio liberals are constructing human animal hybrids! Now they say that this research will cure many currently incurable diseases. Poppycock, say I! When did human animal hybrids ever cure AIDS? Hm? No. Obviously this medicine mumbo jumbo is just a cover for Obama's construction of an army of bio-engineered human animal soldiers to enslave America!! As a small-government man, I demand that Ohionians put an immediate stop to government's meddling! Imagine someday having your throat ripped out by Jaguar Man or being able to adopt a cute little Puppy Man from the local pound! Disgusting!!!!!

Polls

Phew, I certainly am publishing this late in the day. I am just so lazy on the weekends. Doubly so on weekends in the summer. Anyway, Mexican food is the best food. Not too hard to believe since it is the spiciest of all four options. Oh yeah!

Yeah. The new poll is as follows: How many syllables are in the proper name: "Carl." Pretty dumb poll, right? Well that's just your opinion.

Aliens

My eye has mysteriously re-shaped itself during the night. Mom thinks it is bacterial, but I think it is alien's. After all the new tilt makes my eye look like an alien eye from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Therefore, it is only logical to assume that I was abducted by aliens last night in my sleep and had my eye enhanced by alien technology to be as good as theirs. Unfortunately their Mom called them to dinner before they could start enhancing my left eye and they had to drop me back into my bed half-done. How embarrassing.

Tough

I was helping a neighbor with car troubles by driving with her to the car repair shop in a separate car and driving her back. I came in and looked around and suddenly realized I had picked the wrong shirt to wear today. I was wearing my pink shirt that said, among other things, that I am tough enough to wear pink. However the guys in that shop looked like they could snap axles with their fingers and removed faulty transmissions with their teeth. They were all lanky-haired, grizzly, and buff. It made me very uncomfortable proclaiming that I was tough enough to wear pink. I figured I would get beat up if I stayed there too long. Scary.

Filing

My brother David has finished Calculus and has moved on to something more challenging: Physics. He is using my old Physics book and answering the practice questions in the back each day. I decided to help him out (heh heh) I would dig up my old tests and quizzes that I have filed and I would give them to him so he could do them when he finished the appropriate chapters. Therefore I went to my filing cabinet and pulled out my wad of papers. All assignments, tests, etc. from the past two semesters are shuffled together. So much for organization. Well, I found all my tests and quizzes for 104 but I was missing test 1, quiz 1, and quiz 2 for 103. Crazy... thought I. Where could they be? I double-checked the enormous wad. Nothing. I finally figured that I had not gotten into the habit of "filing" until after test 1 when something caught my eye: A file titled "Physics."

What actually happened was that I was organizing all my papers until test 1, when I got bored and started throwing everything together and telling myself I would file it later. It is like that Calvin and Hobbes' comic where Calvin is running all over the house looking in the sofa and under the beds yelling "Where's my coat!? Where's my coat!?" The last panel has Calvin looking inside the closet saying, "Hey! There it is! Who put it in a dumb place like THAT?"

Bug House

You can tell that it is almost summer when there are bugs everywhere. One thing I like about winter is that all the bugs are dead. Anyways, we've had problems with ants everywhere. Last night our kitchen reeked of anti-ant spray. This morning Luke came to Mom and said "Mom! There's a bug in your room!"

"What is it?" Mom asked.

"I dunno," said Luke. "I think it's an ant. It has wings."

Bugs are really annoying.

Pestering

I've been creating a computer game for Luke based on a computer game that he plays ad nausea. However, Luke isn't one for patience. Every time he sees me, he asks me how I am doing. Often he does not do this directly. For example, he has said all of the following at least once:

"Hey Duncan! What are you going to do on your computer?"

"Hey Duncan! I can't wait for the game to be finished! *wiggles eyebrows*"

"Hey Duncan! You know who my favorite character is?"

It is quite flattering. Saturday night I was walking to my bed at 10:00 when he suddenly sat bolt upright. His face showed me that he was in a state of half-sleep, half-coma. However, he was apparently awake enough to say, "Hey Duncan! Did you work on the game?" I wonder what this kid dreams about...

Dark Basic Pro

I was working on a game that I was making for my brother Luke that was experiencing severe difficulties. Since David was in the room, I asked him for some help.

"Hey David, the sync function isn't working. Why is that?" I asked. He stared at my screen for a while.

"I think it is because you aren't using Dark Basic Pro. You're using just regular Dark Basic." He replied. I figured that was his excuse for having no idea what was wrong with my programming. I decided to simply not use the sync function and get on with my life.

"Hey David!" I said later. "This Set Sprite Priority function isn't working!"

"Hmmm." He said after studying it, "maybe it is only a Dark Basic Pro instruction."

I decided to switch to Dark Basic Pro after that. It worked fine with both sync and sprite priority, although for some reason I has a bug in a for-next loop that I couldn't figure out. I switched it to a do-loop loop and it worked fine. Why are programming languages so retarded?

Yum

Alexie made some delicious Chinese food for dinner. Since Dad was off celebrating his partner's 65th birthday with the younger kids, I got to eat all I wanted. Mmmm. Yummy.

Anyway, it inspired me so much I decided to make a poll determining which country's food is the best: Chinese, Mexican, Italian, or American. Most of you will point out that the only food we've actually tasted is American and if we got spaghetti in Italy or tacos in Mexico we would be extremely surprised by what we get. Probably a dead raw octopus or something. Therefore I don't mean Chinese food from China, I mean Chinese food from America, etc.

I think it is more sensitive to call it Chinese-American food and Mexican-American food, or maybe just Food of Color.

P.S. American food consists of burgers, fried chicken, etc. Just because here in America we typically wouldn't say "American Food," you might be confused as to the label. I really only included it because I prefer polls with four labels rather than three

Exit Poll

The results aren't officially counted yet, but the exit polls indicate that brown has already won by a landslide. Green trails 4-1 and white has no votes at all. So as you can see, there has been a definite improvement in our living room with the addition of these couches. That's always good to know.

I'll add a new poll when this poll officially finishes and when I officially come up with a good idea for a new poll.

Aladdin

If any of you have seen Disney's Aladdin, then you'll have a pretty good idea of how Emily looked this morning. She has a vest and a pants that are both red with a cow pattern. Since she always make sure whatever she wears is a set, she put these on. Unfortunately she didn't put on an undershirt and the vest doesn't have buttons. We grabbed her and put a Walk for Life shirt on her underneath the vest. Now she can advertise and wear her matching cow pattern outfit at the same time.

Identity Crisis

This morning I turned on my computer as usual, but something different happened. Instead of the Windows XP symbol that I know and love with the little blue bar signifying its loading progress, it showed a large ugly "DELL" with a red bar slowly filling up and then going back. I went downstairs, ate breakfast, and came back to check on it. It still hadn't loaded. I pressed the ESC key and it went completely white. It stayed like this for as long as I felt like staring at a blank white screen. Then I just turned it off the painful way and reopened it. It functioned fine. It was odd. I wonder what it was.

P.S.: Super Program worked fine. Hooray!

Summer Lethargy

I've been having some serious summer lethargy this season. This is probably because all I've done since finals finished was play computer games. I think my brain has melted. I'm actually pining for when my summer job starts up so that I can have something to do, something to wake up early for. This early-to-bed-late-to-rise gig has me totally bushed. It seems to knock off my entire day so all I can do is play more mind-melting games.

Medical Terminology

I've been reading a book on Medical Terminology so that I can hit the ground running when I hop back into school. It is fascinating stuff. Reading it makes me think that I could probably make up a few words by just adding a few parts together. Also, some of the ways that the roots have been used are very interesting. For example, I was trying to think up a way to remember "-algia," which means "pain." After all, I thought, there are no English words in common use that use that suffix. Then I remembered "Nostalgia." I'm not really sure, but I'm guessing the "Nost-" comes from the Latin word for "Our," which is "Noster," which would mean that "Nostalgia" means "Our pain" which is kind of funny if you consider how it is commonly used.

PS. This isn't a dictionary definition, but I use Nostalgia as looking back fondly on memories of your long past childhood. Just in case you've never heard/used that particular word before.

Camera Woman

Recently we watched old home videos. They were cute and stuff. Hoorah. However, Mom suddenly realized that she hasn't taken footage of any child younger than David. Now she has started randomly walking into rooms and filming whatever kid happens to be there while asking inane questions. We just answer them while looking awkward and wondering how stupid we'll look when we re-watch these 10 years from now. Alas.

Curve Ball

On Friday we had our first restaurant outing for memorizing Scripture. I noticed however that there was one Bible verse that all the kids chose to memorize that messed them all up. Since they were allowed to pick which verses to memorize out of a given set of 18 (I had to memorize all of them, so I didn't care) I wondered why they didn't select one that was a bit easier.

The verse in question was Romans 11:3. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that was is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (ESV) I bolded the part that all the kids messed up. It doesn't look too hard at first glance, which is probably why the kids picked it. However, the stacking of passive construction, participle phrases, and relative clauses really throws the kids for a loop. For example, Luke simplified it to "what we see is made out of invisible things." True, I say, but that's not exactly what the verse says. Try again, Luke.

Couches

Today we got new couches! Woo hoo! It has been kind of awkward in the Living Room because we had one green couch and one white couch. Oh yeah, and Mom absolutely hated the white couch. The general sentiment was: "Hey! Don't jump on the green couch! Jump on the white couch!" Therefore it was time to get new couches.

Mom and Dad went out to eat earlier this week. Immediately afterward they ran over to the store in order to get there before it closed at 7:00. The employees were closing everything when they showed up. Mom ran around asking the price of couches while the employees went about their work closing the store and answering her questions. Then all of a sudden she said, "Alright. We'll take three of these." Suddenly the employees stopped closing shop. That is how Mom bought three couches in three minutes. The couches in question are brown and comfy. David likes their new wood smell. Alexie tells him to enjoy it while it lasts because it won't last long.

Oh yeah, I promised everyone a new poll didn't I? Well, here's a boring one: What color couches are the best?

Results for the Personal Poll

Wow. Coolest Dude Ever had a ninth hour turn around. I thought for sure it was going to be a tie with only one vote for half of the possible selections. That would be depressing. As it is, the number of votes is still beneath the number of choices, meaning the data is pretty useless. Anyways, two people think I'm super cool and one person thinks I'm super smart. Hooray.

I'm using my psychic powers to think up a poll right now. Wait... It's coming... It's coming... Oooo-ooo-oooo. Nothing yet. Come back later today.

Workout Program

For lack of an ARC, I've set up my own workout program involving the free weights Dad keeps in the bonus room closet. Now I'm sure you are all thinking, "Oh man! I thought when you used the word 'Program' you were referring to an actual computer program!" Well you are absolutely right! For lack of drive I have programmed a program that will tell me what exercises I need to do every day. Gone is the day of workout sheets taped to walls! Now is the Future! I haven't yet set up the part where the program tells me I'm working too hard and tells me to break for ice cream.

I'm so lazy that eventually I will program an executable that will do my workout for me. Yay for executables!

Pharisee

Today during devotions I revealed that I had memorized one of the verses in the passage. Dad had me recite it to prove it. Then after that every time he found a notable verse he would ask me if I had memorized it. There were two more that I had done, but one of them I recited incorrectly: God works all thing together for good for those who love him ~and keep his commandments~. That last part is actually supposed to say ~who are called according to his purpose~. I have absolutely no idea how that little legalist phrase snuck in to this otherwise uplifting piece of scripture. I suspect that I mushed it in from another verse that I had memorized somewhere, though I have no idea where. I'm such a Pharisee :(

Aha! I just googled it and it was another one of my verses: Deuteronomy 7:9! The lord keeps steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments. Thanks, Google.

Bribery

This summer my siblings have all been drafted by Mom into the "Resteraunt Club." This means that they have to memorize a certain number of Bible verses and then I will drive them someplace nice to eat. Implied is the fact that I also have to memorize the verses or else I'm just going to have to sit there watching my siblings eat. Oh well, a little Bible memory never hurt anyone. Wish me luck.

Anti-Talent

Recently we had dinner with our old pastor from Florida. He caught us up on all the news of our old friends. One thing Alexie noted afterward was that all our friends from Florida were really really athletic although we were not. Mom then noted that when we moved here we made a lot of musically gifted friends, although we were not. It is kind of weird that we hopped into two cliques that we definitely did not belong in. It got me to wondering... am I worse at athletics or music?

Awed

There are just some words that don't work when you are listening to books being read out loud. Mom is currently reading the third Mysterious Benedict Society book out loud and I have noticed a disgusting overuse of the word "awed." For example: "Wow Constance! You are clearly the smartest person ever!" Sticky said with an awed tone. Not only is this word pretty dull and non-descriptive, it is a homonym for the word "odd." Since both words are adjectives, I always have a double take when I hear this word out loud as I try to figure out what they are saying. Are they saying Sticky is impressed or that he is acting suspicious?

Poll Problems

Frankly, I doubt anyone really cares to read about what I think, especially when most of them know me and anytime there is something really exciting happens we are going to talk about when we next see each other. Therefore I have been scheming up ways to increase blog traffic like some sort of wannabe internet guru or something. I recently told myself that the best way to increase blog traffic was to make a poll at least once a week. However, I have been staring at the screen for five minutes and have still not thought up a decent poll to post on my blog. The thought of a personal poll has occurred to me, like "In all brute honesty, how would you describe me? Coolest Dude Ever, Future President, Mr. Universe, Super Genius" but I have heard that personal polls are unwise, especially when half of your voting population are your little brothers and their friends. Little boys have a tendency to vote with the negative answer, although with this poll I wonder how they would do that?

Shakespeare's Tragedy

Today something unusual happened at Shakespeare practice. One of the kids biking around our driveway rode out into the street and was hit by a car. We called 911 instantly and the ambulance was there really fast. Don't worry, it wasn't that bad... I hope. As far as the emergency team of medics that were on the scene could tell he had a busted lip and a broken leg. They took him in to the hospital to check for concussion. I hope he'll be all right. Anyway, pray for him.

Gilded Cage

Perhaps I've seen one too many bird-in-the-cage analogies on Star Trek. They all have the same plot (and the same scenery). Kirk beams down with a landing party to the beautiful wooded planet and one character, usually either Dr. McCoy or Sulu, say "Gee Jim/Captain, this place must be paradise!" Then they are mind-enslaved and have their every whim catered to by hot space babes. Kirk is then so disgusted that he drags his entire crew back to the ship after shattering the planet's culture and the Prime Directive and flies away.

Me, I suddenly realized that my summer vacation was shaping up pretty much the same way, only with less hot space babes. I got done with finals and was looking down the barrel of three months of nothing but free time. Then I was mind-enslaved by my mother and forced to do all sorts of menial tasks and was given the additional task of "improving the quality of my siblings' lives." This means that I will be driving them to restaurants every week to reward them for memorizing scripture and taking them to places like the aquarium and Lake Winnie, which I will be leaving for in twenty minutes. Yes, I am sure you are all thinking "Being forced to go to amusement parks isn't torture, you drama llama." Alas, it is a gilded cage.

100.63%

A bit overdue, but I just wanted to chronicle my amazing upset victory in Genetics. Contrast this post with my older post 89.984%. Yes, I am sure you are all wondering how my Final managed to bring my total grade up by eleven points. I'll tell you now that the final was worth 150 out of 600 points. I'm sure the more astute of you have already gotten out your calculators and realized that this number combination is impossible. The test simply isn't worth enough.

Well, it turns out that the lowest test grade in Genetics is replaced by your test grade. Since I got an almost perfect score on the Genetics test (159.5/150+10 EC), my lowest grade (80%, ugh) was wiped away like it had never happened! Ha ha ha! It was replaced with an over 100% monstrocity. Pretty cool, right? That's how I got over 100% on my overall grade when my pre-final grade was scraping the underside of an A.

Results

I bet you are all wondering why it took so long to get this post up exclaiming the winner of the last poll. It is because all three losers wanted a recount.

Harry: Wait wait wait. Hold on! Count those again!

Jacob: Yeah, I smell a rat!

Edward: You mean I didn't even get one!?

Yes, so after I counted all seven votes four times, I have concluded that Dr. Sligh is the winner! He is the tweeniest idol of all time! Woo hoo!

I'll make a new poll when I think of one.

Shakespeare Check-ups

I think today I am finally going to get to hear Matthew's lines. I've heard Daniel's lines about a week ago, but Matthew was out of town for a big baseball thing for a week (Yeah, hard to believe anybody would go out of town for a week for baseball, right?) so I didn't get to hear them. It has gotten so far away from the time that I was supposed to do them that I can't even see the e-mail. Sheesh. Anyway, I assume he is going to be terrific, etc. If he didn't know a quarter of his lines by now, he would have to be in big trouble.