Moneynuts

I saw Moneyball the other day, and it was very good. As Rotten Tomatoes said, truly worthy of baseball lore. The A's have to be my second favorite baseball team, seeing as they're just across the bay from the Giants. The disappointing part is that since 2002, the A's haven't made it to the World Series.

It was much funnier than I expected, and it got 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, so...

7/10 stars. Go see it along with Contagion.

Okay, technically that's a basketball. But whatever. It's a ball. It has money on it.

Our old spanish teacher is gone, meaning I now may say whatever I want about her. Here we go: She was a COMPLETE @#$%^&*. Yeah, I just called her an @#$%^&*. On the first day, she started telling us how we need to take spanish this year so that we get into advanced spanish in high school, and I QUOTE-- 'So that your high school teachers make more money'.

On the second day, she informed us that she had taken a class to see when people were lying, and that therefore, we shouldn't 'pull anything' on her. By looking into her eyes, I could tell she was lying.

She would take people out of the class for turning their heads in a way that made her think they were talking. She accused half the class of chewing gum (no one was). As a result, half the class quit after week two.

Here's my favorite quote of hers: "It doesn't matter who's wrong, it just matters that I'm right."

So hopefully this new teacher will be better, and she seems to be. Then again, the bar isn't set too high.

Bye!

It's The End of the World as we Know it (And I Feel Fine)

It is a sad, sad day indeed.

REM has officially disbanded. The third-best band I have EVER heard is gone from the face of the Earth (after, of course, The Beatles and Greenday).

All is not lost, though. For my birthday in November, I'm going to a Weird Al concert, where the man himself will be promoting his new CD, Alpocalypse. Here are the best Weird Al songs ever:

1) Amish Paradise

2) White & Nerdy

3) eBay

4) Eat it

5) Everything You Know is Wrong

These are fantastic songs, so good that even the originals don't come close.

Sigh... REM...

But on to happier topics. Uh... there aren't any.

School is back. Qadaffi is alive. Republicans are being complete and utter morons. What else is new?

A lot, actually, because I have OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCED MY CANDIDACY FOR THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!! WOOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!! I DID... something.

Really, at the end of the day, that doesn't mean much. I am polling at exactly 0%, tied with Rick Santorum (Google his name!). The funny thing is that my cat, P-nut, led the polls at 24%. Fortunately, there's a poll error margin of roughly 4%, so P-nut could be at 20 with me at 4! There ya go, peoples! I've made my impact on the American political system!

Now to retire.

Bye!

The Teacher From the Black Lagoon

Everything bad that has ever happened is Orlando Cabrera's fault.

He is the worst player on the Giants. He caused 9/11. He went back in time and fathered Hitler. He orchestrated the Cuban Missile Crisis. He is pure evil.

As you may have guessed, the Giants traded for him recently, and he is awful. I have heard of him hitting a home run only once. And what's worse is that he used to play for the Cleveland Indians (see above), and apparently even THEY found him unacceptable. When he was born, buildings crumbled and whole cities turned to ash. He is the most demonic spawn of satan.

On a lighter note, Back to School Night was last night, meaning that I got two hours of free time while my parents messed around at my school. I ate two containers of Tic-Tacs and watched The Dark Knight.

And on an even lighter note, one of the worst teachers I've ever had is leaving the school after only three weeks at White Hill. See, we had a fantastic set of teachers last year, but nearly all of them are gone. And our spanish teacher left over the summer, just letting us know in a random e-mail. And you can tell they were really scraping the bottom of the barrel when they found THIS person. Now, I'm not going to delve any deeper into the situation at this time, because if the spanish teacher were to find this blog, it would be bad, as my grade still depends on her. But as soon as she's gone...

... you will know the full story.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Not-So-Funny Times

Yesterday was the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, the day that for the life of me I can't remember. In my defense, I was only four. I made this Funny Times cartoon to commemorate the tragedy.

That is an ACTUAL QUOTE. Look it up.

The most frightening part about ANY 9/11 anniversary is that I'll come to school and say 'Well, it's been 10 years', and someone will say 'Since what?' There are actually people who don't know about 9/11. But I'm not surprised-- we have people who think King George I was one of the founding fathers and that Central America is used to describe Nebraska. If you haven't already guessed, my school is not very exclusive.

On a lighter note, I got a new bike (my knees were hitting the handlebars on the old one). It's somewhat difficult to find good bikes for me, because I'm the only 6' 1'' thirteen-year-old I know of. But this one is totally awesome-- the previous owner was in the air force and he got the bike in Okinawa, Japan.

Oh, and yes, we got the bike off of Craigslist-- see my old post Secondhand for the full story.

Bye!

Highly Contagious

Because I haven't blogged for so long, and since I'm trying to get back in the groove, today will be a double-blog day. Also, it's about time for another G-FORCE MOVIE REVIEW Sponsored by Vertco®.

Today's topic is, of course, Contagion, the latest pandemic thriller to be burped up by Hollywood. It was in no way a bad movie, it just was a very average one. It was extraordinarily predictable (it started with day two of the epidemic, I knew it would end with day one within the first five minutes), and it had a bit of a tacked-on ending. On the other hand, however, it had a great cast and stood out a bit from the usual epidemic story by having so many independent plotlines.

There's Matt Damon (whose wife is patient zero), his daughter, several WHO representatives, a freelance blogger who reminded me of Julian Assange, a Chinese village which was the first to contract the disease, a doctor working with the government to find the cure, his girlfriend, two of his subordinates, a french WHO official who ends up as a hostage in the Chinese village, and one of the doctor's subordinate's dad, who contracted the disease.

Unlike in Cowboys and Aliens, Contagion did a great job of giving every character some background and depth--- in just an hour and 46 minutes!

So, after much thought, the final score for Contagion is...

Drumroll, please...

7/10 stars! Falling right in the 'See it, don't buy it' realm. Go see this thing ASAP, and don't worry--- it's not TOO graphic.

Bye!

Too Much MindCrap

Oh, hiya, peoples. First, I have to say, I KNOW I haven't blogged for what must seem like an eternity, but school's back, and there are some scheduling issues. Also, I've become increasingly absorbed in an amazing game called Minecraft.

Basically, it's a free, downloadable game where everything is made out of cubes (dirt, stone, trees, etc). To survive in this randomly generated world, you need to build houses by mining with picks and shovels, kill sheep to get wool for a bed, and even make a creepy purple portal through which you can access 'The Nether', the game's version of hell. Here's a pic:

The farther you get into the game, the more amazing things you can build, which is sometimes helped along by a mod called 'TOOMANYITEMS'. All it does is give you unlimited everything. All you do is click on 'Solid Diamond Blocks', and it gives you 64 blocks of diamond.

Ever since I got TOOMANYITEMS, I have spend countless hours on Minecraft, earning it the affectionate nickname given by my dad, MindCrap. I have built a massive mansion, skyscrapers, a city of solid diamond in the clouds called 'The City of Gods', and even the Vertco World Headquarters.

As you can probably tell, I'm a little obsessed with it. But download it and you'll understand; it is the single most addicting game I've ever played. And really, it's not so much a game as it is just random building.

And it's pretty intense.

Bye!