Hello, Winter!

After four months of highschool, winter break has officially freed the trapped souls of adolescence with two whole weeks of happiness! All the tension surrounding grades, tests, and future educations melted away with the 3:15 bell last Friday.
Could things GET any better?? :)

...Of course they could! I personally don't have to work during break! I was expecting about three days off of work during my winter break. Instead, I was happily surprised with eight! I only have to work on the weekends, thank goodness. I had no idea what was going on with my boss, but hey - I wasn't going to argue!

Now, I've spent the last two days waking up anywhere from 10-12 in the morning, and thoroughly enjoying it.

Happy Holidays!!

School Spirit

A unique thing about my highschool is that we don't have a football team, or cheerleaders. That makes it a little difficult to have a sucessful pep rally and really get the spirit flowin' in school... (See "Check it out!" link on sidebar for a look at what DOES happen after pep rallies :))
But for some reason, my personal school spirit is quite easily triggered. I find myself quite hyper, prone to screaming, and very positive when attending activities that require or produce school spirit.
...Just goes to show how you don't needs Jocks to get you revved up. :P

I AM AMERICA (AND SO CAN YOU)

I AM AMERICA (AND SO CAN YOU) is a marvelous piece of literature by Stephen Colbert.
If you know anything about Mr. Colbert, you could probably figure out how cool his book would be, but for all of you who don't, I SERIOUSLY recommend you look into it.
It's hilarious.

Check it out at your local bookstore. :D

Fractals

So I'm no fan of math - never was. Sure, it's super applicable, and surrounds us everywhere we go, but c'mon - those tests are brutal!

...Well... at least that's what I used to think. Now I'm not sure... I'm much more interested. To me, it was a given that math can be applied to everyday life. People have told me this several times, and I believed it so blindly (for I had seen the easy connections) that I personally had forgotten about it until now. But thanks to a video I watched in math class, I rediscovered the reason why people still study math in school and make a living from it.

I now understand how people could go crazy with math - and love it!

Check out the video we watched: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fractals/program.html
...Totally opened my eyes.

"The Ugly Truth About Beauty"

In English class we had to write a Rhetorical Precis for "The Ugly Truth About Beauty", an essay by Dave Barry:
http://blackboard.sduhsd.net/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_140_1
(Click on "OUR TEXTS" in the left-hand column, then select "Dave Barry's Essay" twice...
VERY FUNNY - yet a bit biased, I think...)

Check out mine:

Dave Barry, a humor columnist and downright funny guy, wrote "The Ugly Truth About Beauty" (1998), an essay highlighting the fact that women do not think of their looks in the same way men do. Mr. Barry uses his first paragraph to give advice to men who are asked by a woman, "How do I look?", then continues on to give historical, economical, personal, and overall hilarious arguments and facts as to why women care (and continue to) about their looks so much more than men, including: the fact that most men form their opinions early and stick to that one for the rest of their life, that the Barbie Doll has influenced little girls to grow up to be perfect like her (impossible), the fact that a multi-million dollar company exists to help women try to grow up to be perfect like Barbie, and the example of a Cindy Crawford show where women put on makeup live...plus the fact that men would never dream of doing such a thing...they'd rather prefer perfecting their lawn and ignoring at least 97% of the beauty efforts women actually accomplish. This wonderful work of genius (Barrys' Essay), however, doesn't seem to have a direct point...the main purpose is most easily assumed to be to poke fun at the human way - which is, in my opinion, the funniest thing a writer (or a world-renowned columnist) could ever hope to write about. "The Ugly Truth About Beauty" is intended to educate and entertain newspaper-readers, other wise known as: regular people with nothing better to do.
by Cage Cluff

...it was very fun to write....I like my english class...We get time to read* there...

Enter!...If you dare!!

I made it. It seems impossible, but I did!
I, Cage Cluff, have officially made it into Canyon Crest Academy - my high school.
Sure, on the outside it simply looks like a bigger version of my middle school (because of course they hired the same architect to design both!...the cheepskates...), but on the inside there are wonderful teachers, waiting to bestow their inconceivable* knowledge onto unsuspecting, hormone-brimming, acne-strewn teenagers.
Why they ever signed up for this terrible task, I'll never know.
However - I am everlastingly thankful for them...for they are truly awesome.
And in the everlasting words of Jack Black himself, "There is no price for awesomeness or attractiveness." The latter shall be covered in another post.