I’m a person with a weird sense of humor. I enjoy dry wit and making mockeries of things.

So, of course, when it came time at school to elect the “Most Likely To Succeed”, I was ready to be funny. I think that “Most Likely To Succeed” things are stupid, because most of the time the winner winds up living in a trailer park, taking care of 13 kids and smoking 7 packs a day.

The day of the results, I was ready to play my pranks. Mr. or Ms. Successful would receive a handshake and many compliments from me, along with a request for an autograph. I would bow to them. I would treat them like royalty, and then rub it in their face 20 years from now at the high school reunion.

The plan was ready. But when the winners were announced, there was just one little problem.

I had been voted “Most Likely To Succeed”.

When my name was called, I sat for a few seconds, thinking. I couldn’t just let this go by without a laugh. Unacceptable!

My mind was working fast. I had to do something funny, but yet I was… happy at winning. Not just happy - elated. Thrilled. Liberated.

I had to be funny, though. So I decided to go out of character. Normally I’m pretty calm and serious. So I jumped to my feet and leaped into the air, throwing my fists into the air. I was yelling and cheering. This went on for about half a minute before I sat down to survey the damage.

I had caused the entire school - teachers and all - to burst into laughter. A couple of people asked me if I was aiming to win the coveted title of “Class Clown” as well.

So I was able to be funny after all. Shame my old plan didn’t work, though. I suppose I’ll save it for next year.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Have you ever been voted “Most Successful”, “Class Clown”, or the like? Were you expecting it or not?

So last week I took a day trip to Honolulu. It took getting on the return flight and looking out the window at the shrinking city to make me remember how much I loved traveling and seeing the world.

When I returned, I went to sleep. But the day after that, I began thinking of places I wanted to see.

The list went from New York to Hungary, from Toronto to Milan, from Melbourne to Moscow, and most places in between. It was a very large list. So I began thinking of places I would be able to see in the near future.

The list was very short. Honolulu. Kona. North Carolina. Washington, DC. My chances of visiting those last two are based on luck - I would go there for school functions and I would have to apply. If I were to scrounge for money (or get a job - ha), I could go back to Honolulu for a day and see what I could. And I could catch the bus to Kona any old weekend, but there’s not too much over there.

It sucks, wanting to see the world but not being able to. I can’t move away until I’m 18 - not even for college. I can’t get a job at my age, so I can’t afford to travel very far. I can apply for school trips, but those are for school, so I wouldn’t really be able to see much of wherever I would go.

So for now I’m stuck in this tiny little town, out in the boonies with naught but a bike with a flat tire. You haven’t felt stuck until you’ve been me.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: If you could go anywhere in the universe, where would you want to go? Sure, you could confine yourself to Earth, but you could also go to the moon, to Mars, or to Uranus. No limitations.

I have extremely large feet.

When I was 10, I could wear a US women’s size 8 and a half. My classmates would make fun of me by stepping on my toes and then saying, “Sorry, but it was unavoidable”. I hated my feet. They were enormous.

Oh, who the hell am I kidding, “were enormous”? They still are. I’m 15 now and I can wear a US men’s size 12. I don’t have any gripes about the shoe selection - I prefer tennis shoes to strappy sandals, so my large feet mean nothing in terms of sacrificing style.

Unfortunately, I’m due in court in two weeks for a mock trial competition (I’m an attorney). That means no jeans, no men’s shirts, no Yankees hat, and no tennis shoes. I have to put my hair up, wear a pantsuit, and heels. Now, I never put my hair up, but I could probably live with doing so. I’ve never worn a pantsuit, but I could probably live with wearing one. But heels… yikes.

The facts are these: I have large feet, I have to wear men’s shoes, soon I will have to wear heels, and they don’t make men’s heels. Yesterday, when I went to Ross to buy my suit, I took a glance at the heels. They had a section for women’s sizes 10 and up. Yeah, 10 and up… sure. Half of the shoes in that aisle were baby shoes that somebody probably threw in there as a joke. Most of those remaining wouldn’t go with my suit. They had a few heels that fit my feet, but they cost more than I could afford.

In the end, I just got boots. I hate that word, boots. It reminds me of being 4 and wearing rubber rain booties around the kindergarten campus. But I guess that’s what they’re called, boots. So I’ll just say boots. The boots come halfway up my calves and have like a 3 inch heel. I have never worn heels voluntarily. I do not know how to walk in heels. Thank goodness I’ll be sitting down in court most of the time.

In an attempt to get used to walking in heels, I’ve started wearing them wherever I go. Today I got my heel stuck in a crack on the porch, I rolled across some gravel, and I sunk 2 inches into the grass. I suppose eventually I’ll get used to heels, but I will always prefer men’s tennis shoes.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: What’s your shoe size? What style of shoe do you like wearing the most?

Today is Monday. That means it’s crappy sitcom night in the U.S. It seems like these days anybody can make a TV show out of a completely stupid premise. The way I see it, “anybody” could refer to Jay Leno, George Bush, Johnnie Cochrain, Ozzy Osbourne, or me. The key word in there is “me”. So here’s my sitcom pitch.

Oh Nose
Starring:
Tom Cruise as the Protagonist
Angelina Jolie as the Ditzy Girlfriend
Randy Newman as the voice of the nostrils

Concept: Our protagonist awakes one morning to a horrible realization: Somehow, in the middle of the night, his nostrils gained the ability to talk! To make matters worse, each nostril has a completely different personality. Stunned and scared, our hero spends an entire episode running around and yelling.
The left nostril is the cool one. He plays basketball (basketbooger?), wears custom-designed Nikes, loves video games like Halo, constantly wears sunglasses, and says the word “dude” at the end of every sentence.
The right nostril is the nerdy one. He wears glasses and braces, has a lisp, has memorized pi to seven hundred places, prides himself on his pocket protector collection, loves video games like Mario, can recite the entire dictionary start-to-finish, and loves the word “antidisestablishmentarianism”.
Because the nostrils live right next to each other, they fight a lot. They also constantly annoy our hero. He tries to chat up girls, but the nostrils interrupt! Which nostril will he pick as his mentor, and which will be his shoulder devil? Only next week’s episode will tell!

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Would you watch my sitcom, “Oh Nose”? Why?

By that, of course, I mean it’s time for a new layout.

Over the past few days I’ve been working on a new design and I think I’ve finally gotten it working properly. I’d like some opinions before putting it up. So far I’ve only gotten a few opinions and it’s only been viewed in two browsers.

You can view it here: New Layout

Do not click on the navigation links - they won’t lead anywhere but a 404 error because I haven’t got any pages set up over there.

Known issues:

• In IE7, the navigation is positioned slightly higher up than it should be. It cuts slightly into the header, but not enough to make a major difference. This is due to IE constantly mis-rendering positions.
• Comments are not the prettiest things ever. I can’t seem to come up with anything attractive for the comments. If you have any suggestions, please tell me.

I’d like to take this time to thank Nellie for reviewing my site. It’s greatly appreciated, and she had some good suggestions for the site.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Can you name a single animated Disney movie that DOESN’T involve talking animals? I can’t.

We all remember kindergarten. The indian-style sitting arrangements, the class rabbit, and the teachers telling you “Keep your hands to yourself!”. Mostly we’d listen to this advice, out of fear of cooties or something of the sort (I remember this one neat-freak kid who insisted that it was because of possible bacteria infections that she wouldn’t touch anybody). But there was always that one kid who would not listen - the one who would just sit there poking people and shoving people and causing the girls to scream “Ewww, Mathew touched meee!!!!” to the teacher.

But for the most part, we were obedient little 4 year olds. We kept our hands to ourselves.

Alas, the rule is not really in place in high school. Obviously if you beat someone up you’re going to get in trouble, but other than that it’s an equal-touch-opportunity policy they’ve got. So maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that when you’re walking with your boyfriend in school, some girl is going to come up and grab his ass like it’s a stress ball.

But it does. Sucks to be that girl. Both of them, actually. And the guy. The guy gets his ass grabbed by a random girl, the random girl gets slapped in the face, and the other girl (yeah, me) has to watch this.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Ever had an awkward moment like mine, where you’re with your significant other/crush and somebody else comes up and and does something to him/her right in front of you?

I’ve slowly been making changes around the site. I’ve cleaned out stuff I don’t like anymore from the Writing and Art sections. I’ve redesigned the Me index so that you don’t see the list of links but instead the contents of the basics page. I’ve redone the Music page so it’s not as lengthy, and I’ve gotten rid of some old Me subpages so it’s neater now. Go check it out and tell me what you think.

While I’ve gotten work done online, in real life I’ve been so lethargic. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so listless in my life. I haven’t had the energy to do anything except put my head down and fall asleep during a science exam (no wonder I got a C!). I chose a really bad time to be tired - it was exam time. I had four exams in the last two weeks. I completely aced my Civics exam (95 out of 90 points), I almost aced my algebra exam (96 out of 100 points), I did kind of crap on my science exam (78 out of 100 points), and I failed my Hawaiian exam (12 out of 22 points). In October I have my PSATs too, so unless I drink 10 coffees a day from now on I’m in trouble.

But whatever. I still did way awesome on my Civics exam. I helped organize the test, so I got 5 extra points on it, but I would’ve aced it even without the points. I like Civics better than the other classes I have. Especially Hawaiian.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Will you be going anywhere this November/December? And where?
I’m going to Denver, Colorado in early November. It’s gonna be snowing. I haven’t seen snow since I was 2. It’s been a long time, but soon I shall see it again.

I want to be a rapper when I grow up.

It seems like it’d be fun, doesn’t it? You get paid big bucks for writing lyrics about what you did last night (ate mac n cheese, studied for a history exam, watched sitcoms, that kind of thing) and setting them to repetitive beats (bongo drums, anyone?). It seems like the life, because you’re not really doing much, are you?

I’ll be a rapper-turned-teacher. I’ll give grammar lessons in verse (put a period at the end of the sentence/lowercase I’s will get you a death sentence/if you fail the test all you’ll see is an F/swearing ain’t good, please no “what the f”) and wear a big clock like Flavor Flav (You have THIS MUCH TIME till recess!). That would be fun.

I’ll have a mansion somewhere in Florida - maybe on Star Island with my fellow millionaires - and arrive at school in a flashy monster truck with diamond-studded rims. My students will have braces and I’ll have a grill. As an accomplished musician, I’d have a music class where students learn to operate the DJ booth and experiment in drum techniques (drumsticks are so ‘06, use your head instead for a rockin’ cymbal bit).

Principal don’t like my styles? Fine, bitch, I’m a millionaire rapper! I’ll write a rap about how the principal’s got a lobster up her ass and such.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Given the opportunity, would you become a rapper? Obviously I would. Obviously.

I went to Borders on Friday and picked up a book. It’s called “The Ultimate Book Of Useless Information”. As a lover of all things obscure, useless, and stupid, I had to purchase it. It’s here in my lap right now, and so I’m makin’ like Barney and sharin’. ‘Cause sharin’ is carin’.

• New Zealand is the only country that contains every type of climate in the world.
• In Pontedassio, Italy, there is a HISTORICAL MUSEUM OF SPAGHETTI!!!
• The oldest recipe in existence is a recipe for beer.
• Almonds are a member of the peach family.
• In Japan, on Christmas Eve you traditionally eat fried chicken, not turkey.
• There is a lawsuit every 30 seconds in the U.S.
• 83 percent of people who are hit by lightning are men.
• 12 percent of the British population is left-handed.
• 30,000 Americans are injured by toilets every year.
• The average iceberg weighs 20 million tons.
• In the TV series “Batman”, the Batmobile got 4 miles to the gallon.
• Half the world’s population has seen at least one James Bond movie.
• More than a thousand birds die every year from smashing into windows.
• Twenty of these deaths occur at my house.
• Ostriches pee on their legs to keep cool.
• If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer it will explode.
• Duck quacks don’t echo.
• Orcas kill sharks by ramming into their stomachs from below, causing the sharks to explode.
• In Alaska, it’s illegal to give a moose alcohol.
• City dogs live around 3 years longer than country dogs.
• Cat piss glows in black light.
• Banging your head against a wall burns 150 calories an hour.
• When you sneeze, all bodily functions stop.
• It takes only 7 pounds of pressure to rip off your ear (don’t try this at home, I did already and it hurt like hell even though I still have my ear).
• If your stomach does not produce new mucus every two weeks, it will digest itself.

My late cousin-in-law, George Wallace, is in this book. He ran for president and one of his stupid quotes made it into the book. I knew this guy was an idiot, but check this out:

“I’ve read about foreign policy and studied - I know the number of continents.”

Dude, George, I didn’t think you could get any stupider than I thought you were.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever done to your parents?

I wrote “Balls” on my dad’s forehead after seeing Bart do it to Homer on The Simpsons. As far as my mom goes, when I was 3 I hid in the fridge behind a bunch of stuff, and when my mom came to close the fridge I threw a pickle jar at her foot. And hot dog buns. And a head of lettuce.

Earlier today my mp3 player died, so I decided to flip the radio on. There’s around 5 radio stations here - hip-hop, oldies, disco, Hawaiian, and top 40/hits of the 80’s and 90’s. Hip-hop has always been a bit of a pet peeve of mine, oldies was playing a Rolling Stones (can’t stand em) marathon, and Hawaiian is too bland for me. Now, normally I’m pretty fly with disco. Rhiannon introduced me to the Pet Shop Boys, and ever since then I’ve had a soft spot for the genre, but today I’ve had no patience for disco. That left the top 40 station. Reluctantly, I flipped it on.

Surprise - they’re playing something good! They’re playing Jack’s Mannequin. Excellent. After that they play some Duran Duran. That’s cool. And then this… thing comes on. I’m not sure if it was a guy or a girl even after hearing it all the way through. It sounded like a… bee. A fat bee with a deep buzz attempting to sing about not wanting to go to rehab. (After Googling it just now, it turns out it was a girl singing. Amy Winehouse or something.)

After that, it seemed like it was song after crappy-ass song. I heard junk from a “Daughtry”, Pink, “Hinder”, and lots more “top artists”. I can’t call half this stuff art, and if it is art, it’s one of those anatomically-incorrect Paint anime drawings you see on 12-year-olds’ DeviantART accounts. Which is about all this stuff can really appeal to.

On the topic of music, it really pisses me off when people call themselves fans of Green Day and then spell the band’s name “Greenday”. It’s not one word. A fan should know this. It’s not a hard concept to grasp. There is a space in their name. Now, I could understand a typo or a technical error - sometimes my spacebar freezes up mid-sentence. But it’s like every other teenybopper spells it ‘Greenday”. If there’s one thing that pisses me off, it’s hypocrites. Most of these teenyboppers go “OMG theres a ! in Panic! at the Disco!!!1!!! oh btw I like greenday”. OMG, there’s a hole in your brain. Get that fixed, please.

I have had a very short temper. This explains the rants here. But now it’s your turn to rant.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: What is your least favorite band? Any band, as long as you hate it. I personally hate hate HATE Hinder. Fad band if ever there was one. The singer sounds like a rhino, the instruments all blend together into a mess reminiscent of my paintbrush rinsing water after I finish a painting, and the lyrics are hideous to look at AND listen to. I’m interested to hear what kind of crap y’alls hate.