The Tragedy in Connecticut

Today is December 14, 2012, and today a gunman walked into an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut and kill 27 people, most of whom were kindergartners.

I really hope that this tragic event will bring forth that we need to have gun control in this country. Right now I feel like if anyone is against banning guns in this country, someone should shoot their 5 year old child and see if that changes their opinion.

It's very much hurting me. I have a cousin that's in kindergarten and just keep thinking what if it were him? He doesn't live in Connecticut, he lives in Illinois, but a shooting can happen anywhere. I just keep picturing what if he would've died and it's breaking my heart. We're just cousins and just the thought of that is breaking my heart. I'm so thankful right now simply for the fact that none of the children in my family were killed in a school shooting today, and I'm devastated for the ones whose children were killed in the school shooting today.

R.I.P. little ones. You'll be missed. 

My lyric of the day are going to be fitting, but it's a whole song. It's possibly one of the saddest songs that I've ever come across. Should anyone listen to this, keep in mind the little ones in your life.

Happy birthday, Edward

You see that man right there. That is my love King Edward VI. Today is his 475th birthday. Edward was born on October 12, 1537. Unfortunately, he died when he was only 15 when he died on July 6, 1553.

I cannot tell you how much I love him. I mean, you really can't understand it. I wish I were alive at the same time as he was. I know a lot about him. I feel like a loser.

And I have no idea why I'm so excited for his birthday this year.

King Tut

I’m here today to talk about this very passionate obsession I’ve had since, oh…December of 2010. And that obsession is with King Tutankhamun.
I cannot give any insight as to why I am so obsessed, but I can tell you right now, I know I am.
It goes in certain patterns, I’ll be obsessed with him to the point where all I can think about is ancient Egypt and then a week or so later I’m back to normal.
It seems like all someone has to do is make a slight mention of his name and I fall right back into my obsessive tendencies. This particular bout of obsession was brought on by Dictionary.com’s Word Dynamo about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. One of those wonders just happens to be the Pyramids of Giza.
I just want to learn as much as I can about him, but I don’t think there’s much else for me to learn. I feel like I already know as much as I can about him and it’s strange. It makes me feel like a dork.
It upsets me whenever I become deeply obsessed with something, like I am with this certain subject, because it seems like all my family does is tease me about it. It’s the same with my odd obsession with King Edward VI who is probably one of the least important kings in all of history, and no one cares about him except for me. It’s the same with him as well, I can’t learn anything more about him because I already know it all.
Maybe this is how King Tut’s curse is going to affect me. I’m just going to be fervently obsessed with him for the rest of my life. Well, that’s not actually why I think I’m obsessed with him, but if I told you the real reason, you’d probably send me to mental treatment so I can become normal once more. Yes, I do believe that it would be very strange sounding to most people.
*sigh* Oh, Tutankhamun, how I do love you very much.
Lyrics of the day: “Everyone knows about it. From the Queen of England to the hounds of Hell.” ~White Stripes – Seven Nation Army

Crisis

So, here I am, 4 days away from my 16th birthday, and the world decides that now is the perfect time to be a bitch to me.

1. I lost my permit. I have no idea where it could be. My mom says it's not in the car and it's not in the living room/kitchen. I haven't seen that thing in weeks. I was just off at camp having fun, you think I remember when I sat that thing down at the beginning of July? No. My mom probably threw it away because she's a moron.

2. No one knows where my social security card is. My mom doesn't have it. My dad doesn't have it. Apparently it's been lost for "years." Well, why in the hell didn't you get a new one sooner?! And my grandparents were bitching at me as if I was the one that lost it. I've never seen the damn thing in my life. I have never looked at my social security card and I don't even know the number. How in the hell could I have lost something that I've never laid eyes on before.

Of course all this shit has to happen right before my birthday. It couldn't've happened in January, oh no. That would just be a minor inconvenience. It has to happen now as I'm about to get my license so it can become a major inconvenience that involves a lot of crying on my end.
I hate my life. I cannot even begin to tell you how badly this makes me want to bash my head into a wall until I lose consciousness.

Lyrics of the day: “Mirror, mirror on the wall. True hope lies beyond the coast. You’re a damned kind can’t you see that tomorrow bears insanity.” ~Mirror, Mirror – Blind Guardian

Loud neighbors

So, I live next door to these people. And one of the people living there is an 18 year old boy and at least once a week, he has all of his friends over and they rap and drink beer and smoke pot and are obnoxiously loud about it.

But that’s not what I’m here to complain about. Yesterday, they had people come over and slowly cut down their tree with a chainsaw at 8 a.m. meaning I only got 5 hours of sleep last night. YAY!

Now today, they’ve been having some sort of party. As far as I know it started around 2 o’clock or earlier. It' is 3 a.m. and I have not heard them stop talking for 13 hours. Right now they’re having a bon fire and it’s like the mom and her friends and you can tell that they’re drunk because they’re talking and singing unnecessarily loud.

God. Do my neighbors not realize that they live in town and that there’s people everywhere? Apparently not. I’m sorry, but being outside having a 13+ hour long party is really disrespectful.

Lyrics of the day: “War it’s now or never. We shall stand together. One by one this world is sacred” ~ Sacred Worlds – Blind Guardian

Rant on Wattpad

So there’s this site called Wattpad. It’s a site where you publish stories that you’ve written, which is great for someone like me who's been writing stories since I was little. Well, now that I’m older, I put a lot of time and thought into my stories to make them be good. I’m not going to make them perfect for Wattpad, but when I publish them as books, I will certainly make them to the best of my ability. My writing skills have increased dramatically over the past year or so, so while they’re not as well written as they could be, they’re pretty well written to compared to the majority of stories on Wattpad.

So you’re probably thinking, what’s the big deal? Well, I’ve been on Wattpad for a year and a half and I have 10 fans (most of which don’t even look at my stuff anymore) and the story I have that has the most reads on is the one that needs the most revision. I have three other stories written on it. One story in particular that I’ve basically finished with and hope to publish sometime either right after I finish high school or right before, I struggle to get any reads at all.

Part of it’s my fault because I wouldn’t advertise it because I’m having trouble deciding on a title.

The advertising portion of Wattpad where you put your stories in a forum so they can be read by more people is the most messed up thing ever. I will give you a quote directly from the Share Your Story forum’s guildlines:

“Trading Services:

Simply put, we do not allow vote for vote or click for click type of discussions. The reason trading services is not permitted is because it gives an unfair advantage to users who are going about the appropriate channels to get their story into the community.

Asking users to read or comment on stories is perfectly acceptable, but when users begin to negotiate for reads, we reserve the right to close the thread.”

To put it more simply, if you say you’ll only read someone else’s story if they read theirs is not allowed. Every post in that god damn forum violates that rule. Here’s an example of the threads you see in this particular forum.

I want to be perfectly clear, that these are actual threads that can be found in this forum and I am not making this up:

Read for Read? (:

I WILL BE A DEDICATER READER
Inside thread: “As it says I'll be a dedicated reader for your story but only if you do it for mine.”

My Daughter Audrey (Read for Read, Vote for Vote)

R4R

It goes on and on and on. It never ends.

You want to know what kind of stories they want you to read? The same teenage love story over and over and over again. I swear to god. It’s always some ungrateful little wench and her struggles with her friends and the guy she likes.

Are you kidding me?

Or it’s a story about some dirt poor girl. Or a story about a girl that hates her parents. Or a story about some weird ghost happening. What ever happened to originality. And I could get past all of this most of the stories weren’t complete shit.

Seriously, there people write one page chapters in which they write little to no detail other than someone’s movement or what kind of clothes their wearing. Then they end every chapter off with “Vote and Comment and Fan (: !!!”

And then I have to fake that I actually like these stories because a lot of the people are refusing to review and stories if you say something bad about their stories. God forbid that someone tell them that their stories aren’t the little masterpieces that they think they are.

See there’s a difference between me and them. I know my stories need work. I know this. I accept criticism because I know I’m not going to get any better if I never have my flaws pointed out. If someone wants to tell me that my story is the shittiest piece of literature that they have ever read in their lives. Great. Good. That’s good. That’s not going to deter me from writing. It’s going to give me reason to strive to make my writing better.

It’s just ridiculous. I actually take time to think of good, interesting characters and I’m met with nothing. For once I would like someone to read my stories and tell me what they think without me having to read some crappy love story.

Rant over

Lyrics of the day: “This is for the ones who stood their ground.” ~ It’s My Life – Bon Jovi

Hunger Games

Yes, the latest craze sweeping the nation. I've decided to put off my Hunger Games review until I finished all three books.

I’ll try to keep to not reveal and spoilers, but it may contain a few minor ones. So if you haven’t read the books, be wary.

Hunger Games

The first book was very good. Some parts of the plot were kind of not what I was expecting. But it’s very obvious from the very start that Katniss is going to win the Hunger Games. I loved Haymitch. He was my favorite character.

Catching Fire

I honestly liked this book the best, which, I know I’m like the resistance because everyone says that they hated Catching Fire. I read it in six days, which is the fastest I had read any of the books. At first I really didn’t like it because it was just Katniss whining, then once they got into the Quarter Quell it was like crack. I didn’t want to stop reading. And honestly, the ending was no as predictable as I thought it was going to be. I was pleasantly surprised.

Mockingjay

I hated this book. Again, I feel like the resistance because everyone loves that book. It just was so boring. Katniss really didn’t do any fighting or doing anything to survive. She was being protected and told every thing she had to do. It was long and drawn out and I hated the ending. Though, I was shocked by what Katniss did in the end, I was just really upset by the situation she was put in afterwards. I feel like that would be a terrible way to live out the rest of your life.

Thoughts overall

It was a good series, one I would definitely recommend. The only real complaint I have overall is that I think writing it in first person was a poor choice, because it’s very obvious that at least Katniss is going to survive in the end if she’s the one telling the story. How could she tell the story if she were dead?

Lyrics of the day: “When the battle is lost and the slain ones are chosen, valkyries will guide us home.” ~ Valkyries – Blind Guardian

Leap Day!

Today is leap day. February 29th has become my favorite day because it only happens once every 4 years. I’m going to give you some random facts about leap day.

• People born on leap day are Pisces
• Leap years only occur in years divisible by 4 (this include the turn of the century ex: 1900 technically should’ve been a leap year but since it’s not divisible by four it wasn’t")
• The movie Leap Year isn’t not fictional. Back in the day, you waited until you were married to have sex, and in Ireland there was a bunch of horny women that wanted some…y’know. So St. Patrick said that on a leap day, a female was allowed to propose to her male counterpart but that’s the only day they were ever allowed to do so.
• Ancient Egyptians were the ones that figured out that there needed to be a leap day every few years.
• There are only 4 million people in the world that have a birthday on leap day.
• Julius Caesar was the one that officially came up with leap day being February 29th
• There has been a February 30th because of miscalculations with the Julian calendar to the Georgian calendar

That’s all I can think of.

Lyrics of the day: “You tried your best and you knew it wouldn’t last. These were the words that she placed on her casket.” ~  This Is Who We Are – Hawthorne Heights

Two Weeks of Summer Camp

I go to this summer camp every year called Frogwarts and it’s 6 days long. Well, this year because everyone was begging, they’re thinking about making it two weeks long. Nice to know that last year was my last year of going because my family cannot afford $770 just to send me to summer camp. They’re going to have to put me through college, I want to get a nose job that will cost no less than $3000 dollars. They said they’re making an option of only going one week, but that’s unrealistic. No one is going to want to go for one week if they have the option to go more, everyone loves that camp.

I’m legitimately on the verge of tears right now. There are some kids that have to pay out of their own pocket. What are they supposed to do? It’s also gonna deter new campers away. They’re going to see the price and go no way.

There are some years better than others and what if the year is really terrible and it’s hot, then it’s going to seem like a long 2 weeks. Two weeks is a long time to be away from your family.

I don’t know what to do. Because a bunch of 12 year olds are going to get their way and then people like me and the ones that have to pay with their own money are going to be sulking at home with nothing to do.

Song lyrics of the day: “I compare to you a kiss from a rose on the gray.” ~Kiss From A Rose ~ Seal

Happy birthday

Today is a fictional character’s birthday. Now, this character started out as someone that wasn’t very significant and over the past couple years, his story has changed so much, he is now one of my favorite characters I have ever created. His name is Jiro Takahashi aka, Jakobe Lexington.

Because of him and his story, he helped me create one a book trilogy that I have come to love (not about him).

Jiro was born on 2/22/1966 at 1:22 a.m. in Tokyo, Japan. So happy, 46th birthday, Jiro. You are an amazing character. I love you as if you were real. And even if everyone reading this goes, “Oh my God. This girl’s a freak. She’s wishing happy birthday to a fictional character!” Just so everyone knows, Jiro is an amazing person ever, and I hope someday, you can all come to love him as much as I have.

Lyrics of the day: “I want it to break. I want it to burn. I wanna bury you until it hurts. And I take. I don’t ask. This breath will be your last. Do you feel the collapse?” ~The Collapse – Adelitas Way

One person standing ovation

I haven’t written a lot recently and that makes me sad.

Yesterday I was forced to go to a basketball game. It was okay. I couldn’t really see much because I couldn’t out my contact in because my grandpa was waiting for me. My favorite part of the game was definitely the one person standing ovation from the person in the opposing team’s bleachers. It was the end of the third quarter and he stood up like “Yes! Good work team!”
I took a picture of it, but since my phone’s cock it wouldn’t send the damn picture to the online album so I could use it.

After the game, I went to the new Subway that was built in my backyard. I ordered banana peppers on my sandwich and I couldn’t even taste them. It made me sad because I like banana peppers.

Also, when I went to Wal Mart today, there was a guy standing outside that had flip-flops on. It’s like 20 degrees out, sir, please put some actual shoes on before you get frost bite. I mean, I know there’s no snow on the ground, but still.

Lyrics of the day: “She used to have a carefree mind of her own with a devilish look in her eyes
Sayin’ you can call me anything you’d like, but my name is Veronica.” ~Veronica – Elvis Costello

Super Bowl

I’m actually like super glad that nobody around here is really into the Super Bowl this year. I could care less about the Super Bowl or football in general. It’s the Giants vs. The Patriots. Everyone from where I live was like “This is going to be boring Super Bowl ever” or “I’m only going to watch it for the commercials” I’m so glad for this. Oh my God, I'm so glad that my Facebook feed isn’t being spammed with updates about the Super Bowl this year. And by the way, Last year, the Steelers really one according to the people where I live. People were such cry babies over the Packers winning that everyone wore their Steelers jerseys and stuff. What are we six? C’mon people it’s a stupid game. Unless you’ve got like a shitton of money riding on a certain team winning, sit back, eat some chips, drink beer, and STFU

Lyrics of the day: “Maybe I’m the one, maybe I’m the one who is the schizophrenic psycho.” ~Psycho – Puddle of Mudd

Upstate

Today I participated in something called the Upsate Illini band. From 9:30 until 6, I played my flute only having 2 hours of break. I was first chair 2nd flute, which is severely incorrect because I did terrible. The girl sitting next to me was like death glaring at me the whole time. When my flute dripped spit all over my chair I freaked out and when I told her what happened she was like giving me this look like “Oh my god, what a disgusting freak.” Like your flute didn’t drip some spit.

My favorite moment during the concert was when all my music fell off my stand right as we were about to play. That was a fun time.

Sigh. It was kind of fun, though. I didn’t have to go to school and I got to see some very interesting people I’ve never seen before.

Song lyrics of the day: “It don’t matter to me ‘cause all I want is to be a million miles from here, somewhere more familiar” ~Oh My God – Kaiser Chiefs

Finals

So this week is finals week. I’ve taken all of me A day finals (my school is weird. We have 4 classes a day and it  alternates between A days and B days). I got a 97% on my chemistry final and a 109% on my world civ final. I’m just beast like that.

I didn’t do too well on my English final. For part of the final, we had to give a speech about our research paper and my English teacher cut me off at 5 minutes. It made me sad. So I got an 80% on the speech part (that’s a low B- at my school).

I forgot to write about it yesterday, but yesterday was a horrible day. One of the reasons was because of my friends, but since I’ve mentally promised to keep my blog drama free I will not tell about what happened. That’s what my journal is for. And besides, last time I wrote something negative about people in my class, someone found it. Luckily this person wasn’t a rat and didn’t tell everybody, but I deleted the post anyways. So, I won’t say anything about that.

The second reason was for the speech thing and I got a 70% on my research paper. At my school, that is one percentage point about a D. Apparently I am a terribly writer. It was annoying. I read over that thing like five times before I turned it in to make sure that it all made sense. I hate it. My topic was gay adoption which is not an easy topic to write a research paper on.

Thirdly was because when I walked out of my room, I accidentally locked my door with my hand. We don’t have a key to the doors in our house, so my mom had to open it with a screwdriver. She probably thought I was a complete idiot.

I went to see this counselor today. I’ve been going to see her since October. We talked together along with my dad and I cried. The situation with my dad is hard. I really really really don’t like my step-mom. My heart race increases and my stomach tenses up even if I see her. I want to try to go over to his house, but the thing is, I can’t change how I feel about my step-mom. I’ve disliked her since I was nine. I won’t say some of the things she’s done or said (she hasn’t abused me or anything like that), but she has seriously hurt me in the past. My dad keeps telling me I need to move past it, but I can’t. It isn’t that simple.

So I don’t know what to do. I’m very stressed out and upset lately. Yesterday was a terrible day, my friends are back to picking apart every thing I say, and then I had to deal with that stuff with my dad. I almost don’t even want to hear anything about my dad, but I know the problem will not just go away if I continue to sit there and do nothing.

Lyrics of the day: “She tied you to the kitchen chair. She broke your throne. She cut your hair and from your lips she drew the hallelujah.” ~Hallelujah – Rufus Wainwright (the original version of Hallelujah is by Leonard Cohen)

First Academic Team Meet

So, I’m on academic team and we had our first meet to day in Fulton. It was against their Christian school and there were bibles and crosses everywhere. We lost the first match and won the second. On the way back, there was a huge full moon and when it rose, it was orange, but now it’s back to being white. It was like a Harvest moon, even though, the first full moon in January is called a Wolf Moon.

 

Lyrics of the day: “Take me to the magic of the moment on a glory night where the children of tomorrow dream away in the wind of change” ~Wind of Change – Scorpions

Lotsa Driving

So, today I was hoping to sit around and do nothing, but around 1, my grandpa came over and wanted to go driving with me. We picked up my grandma and we drove to Milledgeville (IL) to get something then we drove to Clinton (IA) to look at eagles…and there were none. I drove for a good 2 and a half hours…

Lyrics of the day: “Try to find out what makes you tick as I lie down sore and sick. Would you like that? Would you like that?” ~Diary of Jane – Breaking Benjamin

21 Day Challenge

I found out about this thing called the 21 Day Challenge or something like that from Nerimon on YouTube. It’s when you wear a bracelet and for 21 days you go without doing something. Usually it’s something you don’t like about yourself. I have many things that I hope to change with this. I’m going to start out by trying to be more be more positive so I’m going to start out small and try to go 21 days without making more than 3 complaints. If you screw up, then you take the bracelet off and put it on the other wrist and you have to start your count over again. Today was day 1 and tomorrow will be day 1 as well (I blew it today). It’ll be worth it in the end though. I think it’ll make my friends happier.

There are some things that I do not consider to be complaints:

1. “I’m hungry”
2. “I’m thirsty”
3. “I’m cold”
4. “I’m hot”
5. “I don’t feel well” (this one only works to an extent. If I’m being obnoxious then I’d consider that grounds for starting over)

I want to tell my friends, but I’m afraid they’ll tell me every thing I say is a complaint.

Once I’m done with this, I plan on doing it for all of my other bad habits.

In other news, I auditioned for the spring play and by the looks of it, it sounds like I’m going to be "Thief #13” Thief #13 has a really long monologue and if I get that part, I’ll have to post it.

I also turned my research paper in, and odds are it won’t be good enough.

Lyrics of the day: “But my dreams they aren't as empty as my conscience seems to be.
I have hours, only lonely. My love is vengeance that's never free.” ~ Behind Blue Eyes – Limp Bizkit/The Who

The Magic of Smudged Hands

Today is my Aunt Kristy’s birthday, so Happy birthday to you!
Today we played review Jeopardy in Chemistry and for the first time, I was on the losing team. It kind of made me sad, to be honest, especially because I’m not too confident that I’m going to well on the next test. We play review Jeopardy for extra credit. I guess I’m still going to get 5 points extra, Hopefully it’ll be enough (By the way, I’d consider failing to be a C or less. All throughout high school I’ve gotten A’s and B’s and I intend to keep it that way)
During band, I felt this weird lump thinggy on my leg so I when to the bathroom to check it out and there was a huge bump that was about the size of a 50 cent piece and it was very firm and it hurt. I probably was bitten by some sort of insect in my sleep, lovely.
And in World Civ, brings you the title of today’s post. I was working on a poster with my group and the stuff right next to where I was writing was written in dark pencil and it smudged all over my hand really bad.

There’s the loveliness itself. It was a lot darker before this picture was taken. The purple stuff is from English, not from World Civ.
I went and told Amber about it (my friend Amber is left-handed and we always joke about her smudging everywhere) and it was pretty amazing.
So that’s what happened today. I must say, the camera on my iPod takes higher quality pictures than my camera. Damn.
I’m off to learn some Japanese. I’m trying to teach myself Japanese.

Lyrics of the day: "But it doesn't matter 'cause I'm packin' plastic and that's what makes my life so fucking fantastic." ~The Fear - Lily Allen

First Post

Hello, there. My name is Kayla. I'm a sophomore in high school. This blog will be here to tell about the stuff that goes on in my life, my aspirations, opinions, fun stuff I've learned. The first post is always really generic. What do you expect?

Song lyrics of the day: "Why, why does fate make us suffer? There's a curse between us, between me and you." ~What Have You Done - Within Temptation