I thought I was so fucked last Tuesday, the day of my Computer Science AP exam — I oh-so-foolhardily indicated on my Student Pack that I would be taking the AB exam, when our course only teaches the material in the A subset. I was confident in my Java abilities and thought I could learn it all on my own… haha, well, BIG FUCKING MISTAKE. Turns out, there were many more topics than I thought, and I ended up making a desperate cram attempt several nights before the exam. Try learning lists, stacks, queues, maps, trees, hash codes, and GridWorld grid implementations all by yourself in two or three nights. Yeah, it’s just not gonna work.

But by some errant fluke of fortune, when I arrived at my testing location on Tuesday morning, I discovered that someone had neglected to order the AB version for me, so I gleefully took the regular A version instead. Which was easy-peasy, by the way.

So… in short, SAVED BY SOMEONE’S FORGETFULNESS. But I still have all this crap about key sets and TreeNodes floating around my head like discarded trash…

Tangent: Note to self: Kill S-chan and/or Yachi.

I took a three-hour nap right after school today. That in itself isn’t very unusual (I usually average three to four nowadays). However, for the first time in memory, my nap exceeded the length of time I spent sleeping last night… which was two hours.

Nap > sleepy time = not good.

We had an annoying English assignment where we had to develop a character in a two-page piece of fiction. My friends, like the n00bs that they deny they are, spent the entire day asking one another in a tone of atrocious presumption, “So what did you write about in your short story?” And then waited for a response like someone waiting for a butler to serve them breakfast. Which was infinitely irritating. So I rejoined with varying hedges, alternating between the likes of “A hamster that ate a mutation-inducing marshmallow” and “A magical watermelon which endows the bearer with powers of flight.” My story really isn’t so horrible as to warrant concealment, but to tell the truth, there are a small number of little “problems” I keep finding in the manuscript… like factual inaccuracies, clichéd descriptions, oversimplistic characterizations. I almost want to cover my draft with little snide comments. Like, in the masterfully produced sci-fi action film Ultraviolet (this is relevant… just wait and see), the protagonist lives in a country controlled by a totalitarian government, and in the beginning when she’s infiltrating some government facility, she addresses some guy (whose ass she later kicks) as “Comrade Doctor.” Even though, as I privately ruminated later, the government is not communist. So when writing that piece of dreamlike shit, I tried to emulate a different, otherworldly setting by having everyone address each other as “Comrade.” But the location was based on stuff I’ve seen in our suburban town in our oh-so-capitalistic nation, so I’m not so sure whether my depiction was valid…

This is the first post I’ve written since my WordPress 2.5 upgrade, by the way. I really like what they did with the admin interface.

Musical update: We now bid adieu to the aristocratic Versailles and welcome a lesser-known indie band, a visual kei anomaly consisting entirely of females. Say hello to exist†trace and their most recent mini-album, Annunciation -the heretic elegy- (accessible through the “Currently Playing” link above).

Unfortunately, there aren’t many high-resolution promotional photos of exist†trace, and the group shot I obtained for this rotation is unpleasantly grainy… although I did my best to touch it up with despeckle filters.

And hey, there’s a week left before spring break…*

I am spending way too much time at the public library.

Homework… must work…

Haha, this is pretty sad.

Note: The aesthetically flawless WordPress theme before you was designed completely by myself. On the downside… I think I just reduced my lifespan by five years.

* Actually, that’s more like, “GODDAMMIT!!!!! THERE’S STILL AN ENTIRE WEEK LEFT!!!!!!!!”

“Life Cereal, made with whole grain Quaker oats, tastes good and is a nutritious choice for you and your family!”

Unfortunately, it tastes so fucking good that I usually consume half the bag at one sitting… and I think it ceased to be nutritious a long time ago…

Rehabilitation…? Yes, that would be nice…

Quiet, stupid shoulder demon!!!

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Hey, did anyone happen to catch NBC Nightly News (with Brian Williams) last night? He was reporting from Cleveland, Ohio, and right before he signed off, he mentioned something about Northeast Ohioans expecting eight to ten inches of snow later in the evening. (Tim White and Romona Robinson of the local Channel 3 News later refuted that claim, forecasting a meager one to three inches instead: “Eight to ten inches? What was that all about? He obviously didn’t listen to our Betsy Kling!”)

Haha… well, it certainly wasn’t eight to ten inches, but for all intents and purposes, Brian Williams was right.

Which is sort of tragically funny at the same time, since I was earnestly planning to play hooky today.

Daddy: Hey, Jenny, you don’t want to go to school today? The high school’s closed!
Fa: … what? GODDAMMIT. *thoughts turn to the local school district* Wusses!

At which I threw open the window blinds, and realized that there actually was quite a lot of snow outside.

I devoured half a bag of Life cereal later that day.

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In other news, the last Democratic debate of our national primary season is TONIGHT!

Cleveland State University is hosting the event at 9:00 pm this evening, and both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be in attendance. Moderators will be Brian Williams and Tim Russert of NBC News.

Reportedly, since there was so much interest in volunteering at the debate, two separate lotteries were held to divvy up the slots!

Americans and Earthlings, prepare yourselves! History is in the making!

I’m doomed. I told myself I wouldn’t take until 5:00 pm at the library, but now it’s past 6:30. I have midterm exams tomorrow, and holy shit! I don’t think I’ll pass either of my Honors English or PDM tests…

On the bright side, get a load of these guys:

Yeah, you can see I’m trying to spruce up my writing here… generate some more interest in my hopelessly desolate blog… Anyway, just who are those corset-clad beauties? They’re the Japanese visual kei band Versailles, and the musical genres listed on their Wikipedia page (symphonic metal, power metal, neo-classical metal) are all unanimously to my liking. I think I’ll look into them some more… after I study, that is.

Music reviews… for Play, 愛‧歌姬 (Love · Diva), and Jay Chou on the Run…? Those will be arriving soon, after my exams (or while I stall in my usual vain attempt to delay preparing for my chemistry test)…