YouTube Tutorials Are Not Good For Everything

So our AP English teacher has been out sick all week, and today's sub had instructions to let us see our essays and vocab quizzes, which are locked in a filing cabinet. Ms. P (the teacher) said that Mr. B (the sub) should go get the key with the smiley face sticker on it.

But no one could find the teacher who has the key, so some of the girls decided instead to watch a YouTube video on picking locks and then try it themselves. Couldn't hurt, right?

The drama unfolded before my eyes.

They clustered around the filing cabinet, trying to wiggle a paperclip into the lock. I'm not sure exactly what they were trying to do, but it was fairly amusing to watch.

Then the paperclip got stuck.

It didn't break, but they couldn't get it out of the lock! Google yielded up no sufficient answers for "how to get a paper clip unstuck from a lock" (although according to one of those "ask questions here" sites, we're not the first people to do it. One person recommended taking the door off its hinges, which would be fine if we weren't talking about a filing cabinet). The paperclip remained stuck.

I'd like to point out that you don't often see a group of students trying to pick the lock on a filing cabinet for the sole purpose of looking at old essays and vocab quizzes. I love my school. :D

Anyway, things got worse when the paperclip actually broke off inside the lock. My friend Felix (who works with jewelry) says we'll need pliers to get it out.

One of the maintenance people is now using pliers to extract the paperclip from the lock. It doesn't look like it's going well. We may need dynamite next.

Now he's using a Swiss army knife.

He just left and came back with a different pair of pliers, which he is attempting to...ooh, I think he might have gotten it!

Nope. Now he's leaving again.

Okay, he got it! The cabinet is now fixed! Yay! And the teacher with the key just showed up too!

UPDATE: Turns out they were picking the wrong lock. The essays weren't there! And since there was only ten minutes of class left, no one wanted to look at the vocab quizzes.

UPDATE AGAIN: Apparently the Physics class had an interesting block too. While we were trying to get the paper clip out of the lock on the filing cabinet, they were getting busted for going off campus to do experiments (with their teacher, of course). Then they got back and discovered the gas leak in the building.

It's that time of the year again...

You know the time I mean. The time you dread all year long. The time that haunts your deepest, darkest nightmares. The time that, were you a wizard, would manifest itself as your boggart.

That's right. Next week is Finals Week.

Oh joy.

I know a lot of schools already had their finals before break, but we have ours afterwards. And it SUCKS. Because then you're studying and dreading it all through Christmas and New Year's and all the studying just ruins it.

So have some Christmas art I did before Christmas.

It's called The Angel and the Elf, and it just came from me wanting to draw a random Christmas angel hanging out with one of Santa's elves. There's not really a story. They don't even have names. It was for this Christmas card charity thing I did. 

Here's the other side of the card. 

So yeah. That was fun. Yay. And yes, I realize that it's completely irrelevant now, but what the heck. It was fun to draw.

THE COCKROACH. Or: My thrilling bout with the flu

So a funny thing happened to me at the doctor's office yesterday...

I better back up and tell you why I was at the doctor's office first, though.

Let's just say that this has not been the best Christmas ever.

I got the flu on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve. Thanks, Santa, but could I get a refund for that one? I felt tired all day (especially since I had been gallivanting about till 2 a.m. and then slept past 11 a.m., which is very weird for me). By that night I was nauseous (no throwing up, thank goodness) and generally miserable. I spent Christmas Day mostly lying around feeling to ill to do much. My Christmas candy is as yet untouched. I had a pretty nasty fever too. The day seemed to drag on for a week.

Then yesterday I woke up to the worst neck cramps of my life. You know how sometimes you sleep on your neck wrong and it aches a bit when you wake up? Try that times, like, a million. It was AGONY. I couldn't turn my head, couldn't bend over, couldn't even sit up for very long. I couldn't get comfortable either, and I tried like five different pillows in various combinations.

Worse yet, it meant that I wasn't going to get to hang out with my friends this break! They go to different schools now, but we were going to get together at Izzy's cabin. Well, Izzy and Alkira are up at the cabin right now and I'm stuck back here, still with (I think) a slight fever. Am I bitter about this? Oh heck yes. Did I mention that I haven't seen either of them in over a month?

Anyway, back to the neck cramps...

Mom decided to take me to the doctor, just to make sure I didn't have meningitis or mono or something. So we get there and I am totally miserable. Try a thirty-minute car ride when you can't move your neck.

Anyway, I'm sitting on the medical table. Dr. Chapman and Mom and I chat for a few minutes, she asks me about symptoms and stuff. Then Dr. Chapman comes at me with a tongue depressor and a light thingy.

As she leaned towards me, I noticed that she was wearing some very pretty jewelry. Two necklaces, one of which was a golden chain with a green pendant. There seemed to be a big amber beetle-shaped brooch attached to it too.

And then the brooch stuck out a barbed leg and crawled onto her sweater.

I let out a shriek and jerked away. Dr. Chapman looked confused. (She thought I was scared of the tongue depressor.)

"THERE'S A HUGE BUG ON YOU!!!" I screamed.

The thing was enormous! Seriously, it must have been two or three inches long--at least!

Almost life size!

Then Dr. Chapman shrieked, dropped the tongue depressor and the light thingy, and started trying to get the bug (which she still hadn't seen) off. She accidentally got her necklace instead, which exploded, sending gold chain links everywhere. A couple of them landed on me, but I thought they were little pieces of bug and I screamed again.

She calmed down a bit, thinking it was gone.

I screamed again. "IT'S STILL THERE!" I yelled, scooching away. The thing had crawled onto her back!

Then Mom saw it (she thought I was hallucinating for a minute there). Showing incredible bravery, she grabbed the thing--with her bare hands-- and deposited it in the trash.

"It's going to get out!" I said.

Mom glanced into the trash can. "Should I kill it?" she asked. (It was a rather pretty bug.)

"YES!!!" screamed Dr. Chapman, so Mom squished it with the trash can liner.

We all spent the rest of the appointment recovering from that. On the bright side, it distracted me from my neck for a few minutes, if only by way of sheer terror. Have I mentioned that the bug was freaking huge?!

(The building was undergoing repairs, which is probably how the bug got it. If you were wondering. Oh, and I don't have meningitis or mono--just a random virus.)

So that was my wonderful Christmas. Hope yours was better :/ I'm on the mend now--my neck only hurts when I turn it. It's a lot better than yesterday.

Oh, and I was in a video, put together by the wonderful and utterly amazing Derek Landy!

Watch it AND part 2 here: http://dereklandy.blogspot.com/

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas, People!

Let's see, what have I been up to lately?

Well, I got a new haircut. Totally changed my hairstyle too. It's extremely short and it stands straight up in the mornings.

I can now pull off the mad scientist look. Yay.
(Yes, that's a bathrobe.)

The last couple weeks of school were insane. Seriously, I can't even function. I have sooo much AP English homework to do over break. O.O

I went to see Frozen on Thursday with my friend! (We got out on Thursday and had Friday off.) It was awesome! It's now quite possibly my favorite Disney movie ever.

My immediate reactions to it:

FINALLY!! A Disney movie that points out that you can't marry a guy you met that day! THANK YOU, DISNEY! 

The music was awesome, the animation (especially the snow) was beautiful, and aside from one or two cliched moments, I really liked the story.

So yeah. That happened.

I finally figured out how to do the spells on Pottermore. Yay!

Oh, and I went to a party last night. That was fun, but I ate too much too late and felt awful this morning. Good food, though.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving! Well, it was a week ago, anyway...

It has been brought to my attention that I only update my blog about once a month.

Sorry about that. It's because I'm in high school and I have homework to do and YouTube videos to watch and stories to write and books to read and random stuff to draw. And also I can be kind of lazy on the writing front.

I'm setting a goal, as of right now, that I am going to do a blog post at LEAST every two weeks! If not every week! I am going to do this! It is a thing that I am going to do! Yay!

(Yeah, that'll totally happen...*can't keep a straight face*)

Although I will say that I'm doing all right so far. It's been slightly over a year since I started this blog. To be precise, it's been 378 days. I think. Ish? The first post was on November 23, 2012, so...378-ish days. And I have 38 posts published so far (this being the 38th), so that's actually a bit over one a month. Yay!

My Thanksgiving this year was decent. I got a few funny stories out of it, so here they are.

My dad's brother, Gregg, and his wife Coral came down from Sacramento and stayed in a hotel near us for a week. I was gone the first two days they were here, actually, on a retreat with my junior class. Ooh, maybe I should blog about that...it was pretty spectacular. It was an awesome overnight.

Anyway, on Thanksgiving my family piled into two cars to head up to my dad's cousin Paula's, just like last year. Only this time we had Gregg and Coral, so Dad and Gregg were in one car and Mom and Coral and I were in the other.

Mom and Coral and I got there fine. We got there at about the time we'd expected to get there (1:00-ish, if you were wondering). It turned out we were the first ones there. Dad and Gregg hadn't arrived yet, and neither had Ruth and Stewart, Paula's parents.

Well, Ruth and Stewart showed up pretty soon after that. Mom and I helped Paula with the mashed potatoes while Coral talked to them.

Half an hour later, we started wondering what had happened to Dad and Gregg. We knew they wouldn't starve, because they had the gluten-free dressing in their car, but I kept picturing the vultures circling a dusty Toyota parked next to a cactus in the desert.

Ten minutes after that, Mom's phone went off. It was Dad. He knew they were lost because the whole trip was supposed to be about 130 miles, and the odometer said 130 miles but they hadn't reached the exit yet.

Mom tried to give them directions, then gave up and handed them to Paula. Paula seemed to have a hard time figuring out exactly what had happened, but she eventually told them where to go and how to get there and hung up.

"They're halfway to Arizona,"she told us, shaking her head in despair. Apparently they missed the turnoff and wound up somewhere in the mountains. Brilliantly done, Dad. Brilliantly done. *Applause*

Dad and Gregg got there eventually, about an hour after they'd planned to. Just in time for lunch, actually. As we sat down at the table, I looked around and realized something.

I was literally the only person in the room without a subscription to AARP magazine.

Yay.

It was kind of a loud dinner. Not because there were a lot of people, but because Ruth and Stewart couldn't hear well and everything had to be repeated, twice, with gradually increasing volume. I said pretty much nothing and just let the adults talk. But the food was tasty and overall it was pleasant enough.

After lunch Paula dragged me over and gave me rather a lot of jewelry. She's been cleaning out her jewelry box for a while now, and since I like wearing interesting earrings and she wants to get rid of them, the arrangement works well. She sent me lots of stuff last Christmas too, including my all-time favorite pair of earrings ever. They're petrified wood and they look a bit like Nausicaa's in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. 

That movie has the best flying machines ever.

We drove back at around five and I fell asleep in the car. I was listening to that U2 album The Joshua Tree, because there were actual joshua trees all over the place and I just couldn't not listen to it. One minute the opening chords of "Red Hill Mining Town" are playing and the next I open my eyes and think, "What the heck happened to the song?" I looked at my iPod. For some reason it had gone back to the list of all the songs. Then I looked at the clock on the dashboard. I'd been out cold for an hour!

It was pretty uneventful after that. We just went home and had a light supper and then went to bed. We stayed inside for all of Black Friday, too. As someone who hates crowds and lines, Black Friday sounds quite a lot like the eleventh circle of Hell to me.


So now it's the holiday season and my school is beautiful. I love the giant Christmas tree.

Happy belated Thanksgiving/Hanukkah, and happy whatever-the-heck-you-celebrate-in-December!

(I will totally update again before Christmas...)

More Norse Mythology, Yaaay! Also, THOR 2 IS AWESOME!

So, I went to see Thor: The Dark World with my friend today.

AND I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT. XD

I liked it even better than the first one, actually. The storyline was a little hard to follow at points, but I kept up all right and caught a few subtle mythology references to boot!

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! THIS IS FOR BOTH THOR AND THOR 2

So in the first Thor movie, Marvel pretty much pulled a few things from the myths, threw out the rest, and created their own storyworld, which I enjoyed immensely. I do have a mental list of the stuff they got wrong.

#1, and this really is the most important, Thor and Loki are NOT brothers. I know I said this in my last post, but it  bears repeating. A long time ago, before Odin became king/chief/All-Father, he was wandering around in Jotunheim when he met a half-Jotun, half-Asa (god) named Loki. They took to each other so much that they let their blood run together and swore an oath to always be brothers, to fight side by side and that one would never accept a favour unless it was also offered to the other. (The oath got broken later, though.)

But Thor and Loki do have lots of adventures, so I can see why Marvel did that.

#2. They left out the story behind Odin losing an eye.

I really understand them leaving this out, because it's kind of a long story and totally unnecessary to the plot of the movies, but still. Odin's missing eye is pretty much the reason he's qualified to lead Asgard.

A while after he'd met Loki, Odin decided that he needed to acquire wisdom. He took out his eye, threw it into Mimir's Well*, and hung himself off of Yggdrasil** for nine nights and nine days. When the nine days were over, the runes of wisdom fell from the tree and Odin became the All-Father.

*Mimir's Well is a very special place in Jotunheim. It's a well guarded by the talking, decapitated head of a very wise Jotun called Mimir. Long story.

**Yggdrasil is the world tree, which branches through all nine realms. It's the center of Norse mythology: everything revolves around it, in a way.

#3: I'm not sure if I should mention this, but Thor's friends are almost all people Marvel made up. I say this because it would have been fairly easy to pull a few names out of the Norse canon, but they didn't.

I actually like how they did the Bifrost Bridge and Asgard--it looks really cool! And they got Heimdall more or less right--he's the guardian of the bridge who sees and hears everything.

#4, and this is really just nitpicking: They got Sif's hair colour wrong! I mean, yeah, it's a minor detail, but come on, guys. There's an entire myth about it. *facepalm*

In the myths, Sif is actually Thor's wife (which would explain why she doesn't like Jane Foster). There's one story wherein Loki sneaks up on Sif while she's asleep and cuts off her hair. Sif had very beautiful golden hair, the most beautiful of any goddess, so she and Thor were pretty ticked off. Loki promised to make amends by getting Sif new hair. He runs off to the world of the dwarves and gets the Sons of Ivaldi to make hair out of real gold, which he then brings back to Sif along with some other goodies for the Aesir.

Then Loki makes a rather stupid bet with a dwarf named Brokk. Loki says that the Sons of Ivaldi are the best smiths in the world and there's no way Brokk's brother Sindri could make anything better than they could. Brokk takes him up on this. The loser loses his head.

Despite some interference from Loki, Sindri makes some pretty cool stuff: a collapsable ship that can hold all the Aesir but still fold up and fit into a purse, a flying golden boar for Frey, god of fertility and sunlight, and, best of all, Mjolnir.

Yep, that's where Mjolnir came from. Odin really doesn't have any control over it.

The gods say that Brokk won the bet, but just before he cuts Loki's head off Loki says, "WAIT A MINUTE! I said you could have my head, but you're NOT allowed to touch my neck."

And that's how Loki escaped death on a technicality! But he didn't get away totally scot-free. Brokk got a leather thong and stitched his mouth shut, which sounds quite painful and kept Loki quiet for a little while.

I've noticed that Norse stories tend to lead to digression in a way that Greek myths often don't. Or maybe that's just me.

One more thing that I just remembered!

#5: I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as "Odinsleep." That was just a plot device to take Odin out of action in the first movie.

And now moving on to the second movie!

The one additional thing they changed that wasn't changed in the first movie was Loki's punishment. Compared to what they did to him in the myths, being locked in a cushy cell was shockingly lenient! I mean, he kills 80 people and they just throw him in jail?! In the myths he kills one person (Baldur) and yeah, okay, he does do some other bad stuff too, but not mass murder.

After the Lokasenna, wherein Loki crashes a feast and viciously insults almost everyone, the gods hunt him down, drag him to a cave in Niflheim, tie him to three sharp rocks with the entrails of his own son, whom they murder right in front of him, and as if that wasn't enough Skadi (goddess of the mountains) hangs a serpent over him so that it can drip poison on his face.

I mean, geez. I didn't even find out about the entrails thing until recently and I was like, WHOA. *Shudder* That seems like overkill.

Moving on...

They referenced some actual myths! And this made me very, very happy! :D

There's this one scene where people are walking around Asgard and some of the gods are out in a courtyard training falcons, and then this raven swoops down and lands on Odin's arm and caws kind of like it's talking to him.

Well, guess what? It is! Odin has two ravens, Hugin and Munin, who fly around the world to bring him news, and that was definitely one of them.

Also, there's a myth where Thor actually fights a giant made out of clay! Granted, he doesn't actually smash it--it just kind of falls over on him. But I'm pretty sure they referenced it in the movie!

Skip to 2:13 in the above trailer and you'll see it.

That scene made me very happy. Yay!

Oh, and there's a scene with Yggdrasil in it! They don't mention it by name, but it's a beautiful image of a giant tree with the nine realms in its branches.

So yeah, it was a good movie and I really enjoyed it. Lots of stuff blew up. There were some wonderful funny moments. I recommend it, for all its flaws. Marvel really just has its own storyworld, and I like that a lot.

Doesn't stop me imagining Myth Loki's reaction to the movie, though...:D

Fun Facts About Norse Mythology

Hey guys!

Sorry I haven't updated in so long (it's been what, a month?). I'm touched that this blog gets so many pageviews! Feel free to comment on any post, by the way.

For the past week or so I've been obsessed with Norse mythology.

Actually, it's more like I've become re-obsessed. I first came to love Norse mythology in 4th grade, since it was part of the curriculum. For some reason I like it better than Greek mythology, which is more widely known.

My re-obsession commenced when we got an assignment in Creative Writing instructing us to take a god of our choice and write about them in modern day setting. I think whoever wrote the assignment was thinking Greek, but that's been done a lot (*coughPercyJacksoncough*)

So I did Norse.

The problem with trying to update Norse mythology is Ragnarok.

Ragnarok is the end of the world, where the gods and the jotuns (giants) have a big apocalyptic battle. Most depressing chapter in my Norse Myths book, because almost everyone dies. Odin, Thor, Loki, Heimdall, Frey...there are maybe seven survivors total, mostly minor characters (although I think Baldur comes back from the dead, so that's good).

It's pretty unusual for a mythology to include the destruction of all its own gods, and I read somewhere that Ragnarok may have been invented to allow Norse myths to coexists with incoming Christianity. The fact that in some versions two humans survive Ragnarok to re-populate the earth supports this.

Or maybe it just got consolidated with the Book of Revelations. *shrugs*

When I was younger my favorite god was Thor, but these days it's Loki.

Note: Unlike in the Marvel universe, in traditional mythology Thor and Loki are NOT brothers. I'm learning to tolerate Marvel, but this still bugs me. Loki and ODIN are blood brothers, but not brothers by birth. Back before Odin lost an eye and gained wisdom ('nother story) he met Loki. (D'Aulares Book of Norse Myths, my main source, says that Loki was some kind of mutant jotun, but I read elsewhere that he's 1/2 jotun and 1/2 god. I think that makes more sense, since he's supposed to be a pretty handsome guy and he's also a shapeshifter.)

Anyway, Loki and Odin got along so well that they cut their wrists and let their blood flow together. They vowed to always fight side by side, to honour each other as brothers and never to accept a favour unless it was also offered to the other. I'm pretty sure all of these promises got broken by both of them.

So that makes Loki something like Thor's adopted uncle.

Although to be honest, Thor and Loki really do behave more like brothers. They go on quite a few adventures together, and although Loki ticks Thor off a few times, he also gets the thunder god out of some sticky situations.

I've had fun with the modern-day story and maybe I'll post it here later. It's seven pages long with extensive footnotes and mainly revolves around a dialog between Loki and Sif (Thor's wife). Also, Thor's in jail. XD

Anyway, coming back to this post after about a week, I saw Thor the other night! And I actually really enjoyed it. They did change a lot, but it was fun to watch and I got really into it.

But I was kind of annoyed at the Loki-Odin relationship...see above rant.

The other thing that bugged me a little was that Loki was so serious. I always pictured him as being really funny, even a little goofy sometimes. I guess I'll just have to write him myself. :)

Oh, and have some art.

Drawn with pencil and pen, coloured in Sumo. Not quite finished yet though...

It's a drawing of two of Loki's lesser-known children, Narfi and Nari. (Or Nari and Vali, depending on where you look, but there's a different god called Vali, so I went with Narfi.) They have a fairly gruesome fate which I recently found out about. :P They're really very minor characters...

I will definitely be posting more about Norse mythology later!

Here's another Sumo picture for you.

Igor O'Malley, who was drawn quite a long time ago.