Battle: LA

I just spent a week in Monroe, Louisiana.

I don't have the time nor the motivation to blog about every facet of the trip in one sitting, I'll get to that later. Expect many future blogs about the Pelican state. Here are my general observations:

-I'd heard of Southern hospitality, but I'd never seen it in practice. Apparently, it involves a lot of really good food. Not only will these kind and generous people invite you to dinner, they'll always pick up the tab at resturants. My family is going to have to get better at one-upping people and paying before they can reach the bill, because we seriously owe some people now. :)
-Almost nobody is politically correct in Louisiana. If you say 'gay' or 'retarded' anywhere in the Boulder area, you'll get jumped in twenty directions. In Louisiana, even the teachers drop an occasional 'that's so gay'. I freaked out the first time I heard it, wondering how badly the kid would be beaten for his comment, but nobody batted an eye. Also, this was a high school, so slack must be cut.
-THE BUGS. Not only are there a freakin' lot more bugs in Louisiana, they're also substantially bigger. I spent an hour and a half outside, all the while worshipping at the church of Off spray, and I got about twenty mosquito bites. Definitely not looking forward to that part of Girl's Camp.
-Everything is really green there. On the first day, I could swear that all the grass I saw was Photoshopped, because no grass is really that green. They have a lot of flowering bushes and trees currently flowering, which all in all makes it a gorgeous place to wander around whilst househunting.

More on LA, especially the schools, later.

I'm a Ravenclaw.

I decided to follow in the tradition of Moriah and Tyler and explain my house affiliations. Little seven year-old me decided I was a Ravenclaw, because I liked the color scheme and thinking that I was smarter than everyone else floated my boat. Recently, I put greater thought to the matter.

I'm not nearly brave enough for Gryffindor, nor affable enough for Hufflepuff. The houses of the lion and the badger were the first to get ruled out. I really got caught between Ravenclaw and Slytherin.

I can be prejudiced, sarcastic, rude, and generally ill-humored (on my good days). A line from a wizard rock song "I'm a Slytherin, the house of the snake, come get in my way and get tossed in the lake," really struck me. I'm pretty ambitious, and I'd like to think of myself as cunning and sly, though I'm not. Sure, Slytherins have more flaws than most redheads have freckles, but I thought this house was calling my name.

But there was still Ravenclaw. In church, they say knowledge is the only thing you can take with you from this life. Though I have a hoard of unrealistic goals, they all involve schooling, study, and knowledge: the business of getting smarter. The thing that most makes me mad is willful ignorance. I think the best advice is "Don't be stupid." Not just book smarts, but wisdom, cleverness, street smarts, and basic common sense. Wit beyond measure truly is man's greatest treasure.

As I don my blue and bronze and move into Ravenclaw tower, I realize little me was right all along.

Song Recommendation: "How Could you Want Him (When you Know you could Have me)" by Spindoctors

Bugs on my windshield.

-Realizing that my soon-to-be hometown shows up on the map not because it's a big city, but because it's the biggest city around for two hundred miles in any direction.
-Group presentations in English. I know kids my age aren't the best at fact checking, but it really goes too far when people say Vergil was an avid Christian who lived in 70 BC.
-The fact that I don't even have a learner's permit and I'm developing arthritis. Plus knowing that it's my own stinking fault.
-Being petty enough to care about a PSAT score freshman year. Mostly that I don't have it yet.
-How debate cases never seem to write themselves.

I shall fix a steely glare on the entire world, and get over my bad self. In other, less angsty news...

I went to a dance last Saturday. Awkwardest three hours of my life. Luckily, I have enough sadism in me that they were also the funniest. Plus crepes, so good times.

I can't decide if I want to savage the first draft of my Nanowrimo and trim the fat before starting on draft two. I'm worried that it will leave with about 15,000 words and I'll have to start all over again. Comments? Questions? Want to invent some crazy loophole to get free products out of this corporation? Call 112-358-1321.

Song recommendation: "Sweetest Lie" by Goo Goo Dolls
Nerdism of the day: look closely at the fake phone number.

Morning Incoherence.

It's a new day, a new week, a new year. I should be at the rec center right now. Instead, I'm sitting at a computer, eating Dove chocolate and smoothing out the wrappers to make them look pretty. This is why I don't make New Year's Resolutions.

When I wake up of my own devices (only on weekends), I often wake up with a song stuck in my head. Today it was Jason Mraz's "Wordplay." I've had worse.

I feel like I should explain the blog's title and URL a little further. Failanx is a play of words on phalanx, a battle formation in Ancient Greece that has come to mean a number of things in close array. Thus, a failanx is a successive string of fails in close array. The URL, phalanxofpubescence, is from a Dead Poet's Society quote: "Move, you insufferable phalanx of pubescents!" Once again, it's a play on words and ties in with the theme rather nicely.

I hope you enjoyed the first random-day-rambling post. The Washington Post Crossword is calling my name.

Bienvenidos.

This blog exists out of a promise to my college-bound sister and a lingering delusion that people care. She's starting the blogging experiment in 2011 and convinced me to follow in her footsteps by playing the college-bound nostalgia card. I haven't had a blog since sixth grade. When I asked her who would read my blog, she could come up with four people. That's my biggest audience ever!

A few things about myself:

-I have a weakness for puns, as evidenced by the title of this blog.
-Because I am young and ignorant, I have a lot of failures. This blog will be a record of my screw-ups (and maybe a few triumphs, too?).
-Because I do debate, I am culturally conditioned to think I'm smarter than you. Please correct my viewpoint frequently.
-Despite my heavy use of irony, I am un-ironically enthusiastic about geography, bad young adult fiction, math, and etymology. You may hear about each of those in turn.
-I also write stuff. On a particularly off-day, I might poison you with my personal desecrations of the English language.

On this blog, I am probably going to be very frank about my impending move to Louisiana. If you're a member of my family or my ward, no big deal. If I meet you in Louisiana, I apologize in advance for any and all tactless comments about your state. If you go to my school, SURPRISE!

I hope beyond hope you find something more interesting to read than the preliminary post of a new blog. Adieu.