I woke up really early this morning and tried to get back to sleep, but for some reason I never managed to get comfortable enough to sleep again. When I came out in the morning, my parents told me that there had been a shooting and that school had been canceled. News about a shooting where 2 people died and 6 were wounded has been on TV all morning. Being the skeptical person that I am, I did believe that the shooting had happened, but I wasn't convinced that school was really canceled. Even though my parents showed me several phone messages and an email that said students should be kept home today, I wasn't really sure because I heard something on TV about the schools in Cupertino still being open. I thought maybe there were people conspiring with the criminal who thought, "Hey, let's have the kids stay in their houses today so we can go around the neighborhood and shoot everybody", but of course my parents dismissed that as my usual paranoia. However, the kids at the elementary and middle schools are apparently being asked to go to school (they just said that again on TV) so I'm not sure why my school district thinks we should stay home... So now here I am at home, simultaneously afraid, bored, and somewhat excited.

I feel like a really selfish person because I didn't really think long about the fact that people are dead (probably because I've never actually known someone who died, so I guess I don't know how it feels to lose a loved one)...I mostly only thought about "What am I going to do all day? I should be going to class!" and "Are they going to make us go to school for one more day this school year to make up for the day we lost?" But now I'm also really worried because my parents left for work...The shooter hasn't been caught, so what if he happens to be going the same way as my parents and...? I don't want to think about this anymore.

I have one complaint right now, and that's the fact that neither my school district's website nor my school's website says anything about school being closed today. They haven't even updated the lists of teachers since last year, so the teachers and classes that they're teaching this year are not accurate on the website. Can't they at least put a message on the home page telling us to stay home because it's not safe? How hard is that to do?! (But I guess since they called us and sent emails, they think that's a better way than using the school website...)

Labels: cupertino, danger, news, school, shooting

image by LeChat

Before I begin, I want to give a big shout-out to Shiroihime and MoonRadience for the birthday gifts. Shiroihime drew me a lovely picture of Miku, which I would post except for that I'd have to cover up our real names on it first. :p MoonRadience also made me a drawing and sent me a Durarara happy birthday song. Thanks so much to both you, I really do appreciate it. :)

This is going to be a pretty short post (compared to usual, and compared to the one I'm currently writing :p), and maybe you noticed that I've stopped putting the diamond symbol before the post and NOT capitalizing what should be capitalized. XD From now on I will be properly capitalizing my post titles and not putting the diamond anymore...not that either of those changes is particularly notable.

What I mean by Black Rock Shooter being back is that an anime is going to be made for it! (I heard about it here) Sure, there was already the OVA, but honestly I didn't like that very much. I hope that the anime's going to be like what I expected, with lots of blue flames and gunshots and whatnot. Well, if the world does end in 2012, I can die happy as long as the BRS anime doesn't disappoint.

I am a pretty big fan of the Black Rock Shooter song, which I found out about due to my Vocaloid music obsession. I did attempt to sing the song once as an audition for a chorus on Youtube, but I'm afraid I couldn't sing it well (can't really sing most songs that have high notes..and my idea of high is lower than most females, too, which is even more pitiful) so I had to give up on that.

Anyways, I'm also fond of the character herself; I'd say I like her more than the design of the Hatsune Miku. That's probably because of the weapons, and of course the blue flames (which remind me of Ao no Exorcist, one of my other major shippings!).





By the way, going off tangent a little bit here...Has anyone read the Ao no Exorcist manga? If so, what do you think of it? I've recently been hearing folks say that (such as the manga is better than the anime), and that the anime isn't following the manga's storyline anymore...? Is that true?

Labels: anime, ao no exorcist, black rock shooter, Black★Rock Shooter, brs, character, crossover, design, miku, news, ova, song, vocaloid

I was set to thinking lately about the news on television and such because I've been reading a book called Scoop by Gene Gutteridge. It's the first book in the series called the Occupational Hazards. The second book is called Skid, which I accidentally read first, because I didn't even know it was a series. (It says The Occupational Hazards on the book, but it's partially covered by the labels the library put on the book) Scoop is a novel about a news station, Channel 7 News. (I don't think it's about the real Channel 7, but who knows) Skid, on the other hand, is about an air plane flight. I expect there will be more books in the series. Each book seems to feature one Hazard. (There is a family called the Hazards who is in each book) I think there are still several Hazards that haven't been covered yet.

It seemed to me that news was rougher business than I thought. To some reporters, it was just work, and it just mattered whether you got the news that was the most interesting to the viewers, rather than showing news that was meaningful, that could really make a difference. It seems like people want to see how many people die in a crash, not how many people survive. And news stations have to compete with each other to have the best information. It's pretty vicious business. I wonder if newspapers are like this too or if it's only the news stations.

Speaking of news, I probably haven't watched the weather much, because I was surprised to see that they seem to be using tablets now. I could tell because when they were showing the direction of wind or something, I saw a red arrow being drawn. I noticed there was a small cursor which looked like a pencil moving around. It was just like what my teachers had previously used. In 6th grade, my language arts/history teacher tried out the tablet for doing our daily grammar/spelling/etc. exercises, but it didn't work that well since most folks, including the teacher, couldn't draw that well using the tablet. Then the next year, in math class, my math teacher (who was, incidentally, the wife of my 6th grade language arts/history teacher) used the tablet to show us the lesson in math. Eventually, though, she switched to a document camera.

I remember I first was aware of them when my language arts teacher in 7th grade showed off her spiffy new document camera. Some of the teachers have them now too. My current science teacher uses it a lot...My French teacher has been using it, but it's not working out too well. I wish she'd go back to the projector. I wonder if they're wasting the donations of families on buying things that aren't even that easy to use. I wish they would spend the money on something else like replacing the chairs that are cracked and things like that.

Today, my father and I were planting tulips bulbs. We bought 50 of them once, and planted 25 last year. Most of them bloomed, but not all...We were digging up the dirt today and found some parts of tulip bulbs. I've always been wondering where the bulbs come from. Do tulips make bulbs after they die, or do two of them create bulbs and then you find them later? Or are bulbs plants which grow larger over time? It's confusing.

My dad thinks that the bulbs are dead since they look kind of dried up. I heard that seeds always have some stored food and other resources in them so they'll live long enough to find a place to settle down. I wonder if it really could last a whole year, though...Maybe not. But I hope so, because if they're still alive, there will be beautiful flowers in the springtime.

I dug up some other things. I found an acorn, which is odd, because we don't have those in my backyard. Perhaps a squirrel buried it there. I also dug up an earthworm by accident. I was really surprised by it. I put it on the sidewalk and watched it wiggle. It slowly moved its front, then seemed to start moving different parts, gradually. It sure takes a long time, though. Worms are really slow. It's like this joke... "A snail was mugged by two turtles. When asked about it, he said, "I don't know! It all happened so fast." " (I think it was a snail and turtles...I'm not exactly sure)

Labels: acorn, bulb, dehydration, document camera, earthworm, gene gutteridge, joke, money, news, scoop, tablet, teacher, television, the occupational hazards, tulips

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