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Friday, October 24, 2008

My hatred of the twilight series

Although most teenage girls are huge fans of Stephanie Meyer's book I can't stand them. The only one I found passably entertaining was The Host, which everyone else hated. I don't know who is the weird one, me or all the other girls. I mean romances are all well and good but her book is...ugh!! Bella, the main charater is soooo shallow. The plot is Stupid. The characters are indesisive, I mean Ed you either stay or leave, which is it gonna be?? At least in The host the book has an underlying plot, whereas in Twilight the only thing that underlies the story is how much Bella and Edward want to get into bed with each other. I mean for god's sake she MARRIED him just to sleep with him!!!!!!! Is that stupid or what?? As of this moment I am publically proclaiming my extreme hatred for The Twilight Series and Bella.

I plan on posting an elaborate list of reasons the twilight series is inferior to all others..thats how annoying this subject is to me.

Ever yours ~

The Know-it-all

Saturday, October 18, 2008

My class ring

Okay, so the other day at school, they pulled us out of our classes and into the auditorium. Surprise Surprise, we're getting our class rings in advance. The school picked out this (apparently, since i have no expertise in this matter I asked my classmates) awful, overpriced, shitty company to do our rings. So the girls took matters into their own hands and ordered from this other company (much better than afore-mentioned shitty company) By the name of Jostens, So I am now ordering my ring online ( a new experience since my parents don't trust monetary transfers online) instead of through the school as originally planned, their rings turned out to be way better than the ones the school was offering so I got the website off of one of the other girls. By the way if anyone wants to see the website is Jostens.com, their creativity shines through doesn't it?

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

A Treatise on Magic and the Occult

Here's the "Treatise" I promised..I know that my writing can sometimes be positively boring but I'm hoping that this is an exception:

Magic, the paranormal, that which cannot be explained. During the 90's interest in magic and the occult flourished. While it had been viewed as a sadistic and harmful interest previously, it now became the most popular hobby to have. This sudden change in society’s view of magic is, in my opinion, due to a great number of factors which appeared at the time.

Books and other written materials were one of the greatest factors to affect the idea of magic. This was when J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series came out and when the T.V. show “Sabrina the teenage witch” became very popular. The publishing of the Harry Potter series and other magic related books increased interest in magic and wizardry. In my opinion this was the pivotal point in time after which interest in magic became more acceptable in society.

People interested in magic began forming groups or cults and when no one objected they kept growing in numbers and strength. Today, more and more magic practicing cults are around and still very few people notice or care whereas in the pre-90’s a single event would have been all over the news. Nowadays it is common knowledge that groups of self-proclaimed witches, ghost-whisperers and fortune tellers are around, taking advantage of those who actually believe them for charging for “services rendered.”

Since magic was first introduced over a thousand years ago, all religious organizations were very opposed to it. In all religions, the Christian church, the Muslim mosque, or the Jewish synagogue would be the place in which the most resistance towards magic could be found. This is because in most religions magic, both in practice or knowledge of it, is seen as a sin and while that fact remains unchanged, less people care – they are interested in it anyways.If you look backa couple of hundred years ago and compare the way they found and treated people interested in magic to the way they are treated today you would see a very big difference. One of the most famous incidents involving magic in the old days is the Salem Witch Trials. A lot of people they charged were just mistrusted or suspected and yet they were convicted and killed nonetheless. Nowadays people who practice magic are everywhere and are usually quite public about their abnormal activities and yet, while sme may think that they are weird and avoid them, no real action is taken.

Magic is something that is becoming more and more acceptable in society and while it is not considered a very good thing it is considered a very small, if at all existent, threat. |Magic is a curious thing, it is the embodiment of one of the biggest temptations of mankind, the ability to control the uncontrollable, effortless influence. If you think about it, magic takes advantage of mankind’s Achilles heel, our greatest weakness: the thirst for power.

I know i tend to drone on a bit..hope it wasn't too bad though. I get so absorbed in the subject, especially when i get to choose, I get all excited and don't notice when it starts to all blur together.

Ever yours ~

The Know-it-all

Monday, October 13, 2008

Picture Day

Picture Day is tomorrow at my school..wish me luck will you? I absoloutely hate picture days, I am one of those people whose picture always looks horrible, every single year. Since the first grade I have to have at least one thing wrong with my photo..ugh. The School is forcing all the girls to do the PSAT on the day after picture day which just makes tomorrow suck even more. I am still working on the girls school thing I am also planning on posting my english essay entitled "A Treatise on Magic and the occult" Its pretty interesting..more later

Ever yours ~

The Know-it-all

Monday, October 6, 2008

The Mother

My mom can sometimes be unexpectedly evil.

Of course when I try to get sombody to believe me about it they go "Oh yeah right, I bet MY parents are way worse than your sweet little mother!!"
Well anyways the latest torture she has organized for me is not being allowed to use the computer or the internet. Today though the internet is on and the house is free of my mother so I'm taking advantage of this chance to tell you all of the latest addition to my site. My friend is going to join me as the author of the blog, at least till I get computer priviledges again. So I'm still gonna be posting stuff, but in the voice of my friend so, that is coming soon, just to let everyone know that I'm not abandoning my blog, at least not completely. I have also decided to start writing a sort of treatise of behavior in girls-only private schools. It is proving to be interesting enough, I hope you all will like it. Thats all for now.. more soon..hopefully.

Ever yours ~

The Know-it-all

Friday, September 19, 2008

Big Boned

I just finished reading Big Boned. I usually love any of Meg Cabot's creations and I was pretty much expecting the same from Big Boned. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. I mean it's a great book and all but there were too many flaws in the story.

Blurb from Goodreads.com:

Life is reasonably rosy for plus-size ex-pop star turned Assistant Dormitory Director and sometime sleuth Heather Wells. Her freeloading ex-con dad is finally moving out. She still yearns for her hot landlord, Cooper Cartwright, but her relationship with "rebound beau," vigorous vegan math professor Tad Tocco, is more than satisfactory. Best of all, nobody has died lately in "Death Dorm," the aptly nicknamed student residence that Heather assistant-directs. Of course every silver lining ultimately has some black cloud attached. And when the latest murdered corpse to clutter up her jurisdiction turns out to be her exceedingly unlovable boss, Heather finds herself on the shortlist of prime suspects, along with the rabble-rousing boyfriend of her high-strung student assistant and an indecently handsome young campus minister who's been accused of taking liberties with certain girls' choir members.

With fame beckoning her back into show business (as the star of a new kids' show!) it's a really bad time to get wrapped up in another homicide. Plus Tad's been working himself up to ask her a Big Question, which Heather's not sure she has an answer for . . .

Quick Summary of the Series:

Heather Wells, former teen pop sensation has changed a lot since her fall from fame. Her mom and her agent ran away together, stealing all of her money and leaving her to fend for herself. She moves in with her ex-boyfriends hottie brother Cooper Cartwright, gets a job as an assistant resident hall director at Fischer Hall of New York College. Fischer Hall is known to most of the students as "Death Dorm" because of the number of murders and mysterious deaths that happen there, and Heather is the one who solves them, usually making a mess of things at one point and requiring the aid of knight-in-shining-armor Cooper. Very funny series, worth every minute, a few gory scenes describing the murder victims, but not too gruesome.

The Summary:

The heroine of the book, Heather Wells, former teen pop star who now works as assistant residence hall director at Fischer Hall of New york College a.k.a Death Dorm. When Heather's stick-in-the-mud boss Owen Veatch is shot in the head while at work Heather can't help but try to find out who did it. The book is great but only to a certain point. The book ended too soon and quite abruptly, the ending reeked of being rushed as a result of a speedily approaching deadline. The ending came before it should have, you know? I mean there were dozens of unresolved issues hanging around. I sincerely hope that she's planning a fourth book (edit: she isn't ): )to clear up all those loose ends because the series is way too good to end now and so inadequately.

The Verdict:

My final verdict is that the book was great but the ending, yeah, not so much. To anyone who was planning on reading the book I say go ahead but don't put your hopes up for a masterpiece, this one has flaws. The end was too rushed and leaves you wanting an epilogue of some sort, just to tie everything together and finish properly. Otherwise, its another one of Meg Cabots amazing books.

Ever yours ~

The Know-it-all

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The Devil wears Jeans.

This isn't particularly useful or , just me wondering why some people go out of their way to be bitchy...

My old english teacher was a real pain in the you-know-where so everyone in the whole school used to call her devil-spawn. She's a really "save-the-whales" kind of person, generally I have nothing against saving whales and you know feeding people in Zimbabwe but its not something you talk about everyday right? Once she failed this girl on a pop-quiz on "Comparisons using "as" and "like" (actual title of the pop-quiz) The girl answered a question in what the teacher dubbed a racist comment. I would totally understand if it was Ms.Devils race we're talking about and she was insulted, the thing is that the girl wasn't saying anything degrading, actually she was comparing the beauty of something or other to the beauty of a japanese eye. Our teacher isn't Japanese, or even asian. The poor girl was just trying to get through the pop-quiz and technically her grammar was spot on in the sentence she used but that doesn't matter to devil-spawn...

Schools have rules about appropriate and inappropriate comments and behavior, most teachers follow these rules in their classrooms and manage to still be considered a nice teacher, a teacher who doesn't go out of their way to count the seconds after the bell rings just to hand out tardies to everyone. Then there are the teachers that are considered evil, the ones everyone knows wont give you a second chance, who is supremely strict and make the exam longer just because you complain that 18 pages is too long. There are also chameleon teachers, those who morph from one to the other as easily as changing clothes. They practically change personalities in front of your eyes. I have met two of these teachers so far, and one of them simply morphed from a regular strict teacher (to the tenth graders) into a friendly chatty doesnt-require-any-work-whatsoever to us! It wasn't a bad change from where i was sitting so i'm not complaining. But isnt it just the slightest bit weird for them to do that? Switch from being strict and a stickler for the rules to being about as strict as a substitute? I suppose you get used to it, depending on the faces you see and the attitudes that go with them. I'm not really concerned her because a) Its an elective class and b) She's going from bad to good so thats a pro for me. No complaints here.

The other teacher with what i've decided to call the teacher chameleon syndrome wasn't quite as harmless as the previous one. This teacher taught me both this year and the last. Last year she was a new teacher, she had taught all over the world and told us that in her other schools she didn't give tests because she was allowed to forgo them and because she "doesn't believe in tests." Our school has a minimum number of tests, quizzes and chapters we have to cover each quarter, so she couldn't do whatever she wanted about testing without permission from the principal (which was not granted by the way) So instead of canceling tests altogether she gave us the answers beforehand so the test was more like a worksheet than a test. This was her way of "getting back at the system" and teaching in her own unique way. I'm not one of those students who try to steal the exam or buy it, but i'm no rat either. I wasn't complaining about the circumstances but i can't say i've ever been through that before and to be completely honest I wouldn't want to repeat the experience. We went through the entire year like this, including the final exam without the principal or anyone else realizing anything was off. This past year however, she turned over a completely new leaf, apparently she now fears the system too much to be normal. I mean she didn't just stop being a give-away-the-answers teacher, she became a full-on monster, she had a timer on her desk for tardies and would take every opportunity to chop off a bit of your grade that she could, complete about-face! To say that we were all shocked would be an understatement. This went on all year, with her getting stricter and stricter...i just dont get how someone who is giving away answers one minute can flip 360 degrees so easily!

Ever yours ~

The Know-it-all

My Newest books

Ok, so I was browsing the racks the other day and I found a couple of books that I liked so I'm posting the details up here:




Ok this one is called "The blue girl" by Charles de Lint






Another one I really liked was "Big Boned" which is the third book in Meg Cabot's Series "Heather Wells Mysteries" Heres the Cover:












Yet another one is "Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters" by Rick Riordan it is the second in the series.







I know, I know. This book is like for sixth graders but hey! I really like it. I mean the plot is great and Riordans way of writing is both humorous and very interesting. So heres the cover:









The Separate Reviews are coming up in a couple of days, I'm halfway through Big Boned now and am hoping to be able to put up my review this weekend.


Ever yours ~

The Know-it-all

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Learn to tie your shoes!















I know, I know when was the last time you heard that being said to you? In KG or the first grade? That was my initial reaction to getting an email of the same title but boy did that change quickly when I saw how cute the pics actually were, so I'm posting 'em up here for all who want to learn how to tie their shoes! My fave styles are Lattice and checkerboard.

Ever yours ~

The Know-it-all

Sunday, September 14, 2008

New Kid on the Block...Yet Again.

Today was my first day at my new school.

All I have to say is: Oh My God!! I mean the girls are scary! I know two of them from my school in sixth grade, they moved here in grade eight and one of them turned scary! It amazes me, the girl was one of those cheerleader types who is constantly cheerful and really diplomatic about the way she talks even though you can totally tell that she hates your guts. She totally ignored me even though I could sooo tell that she recognized me, my other friend, on the other hand, came over and hugged me right away.

It was the worst first day I have ever had.

The teachers are so damn LAX! The girls were just ignoring the teacher and chatting for the whole hour. I understand the fact that you don't pay attention to the teacher, it's like an unspoken rule, but that was too much! Then this other teacher gave us TWENTY-FIVE minutes of free time!! I haven't had twenty-five minutes of free time since the fourth grade!!! And what did the girls do during that time??? The were talking so seriously about the properties of..wait guess...Redbull!!!!!! One of them was like Redbull gives you more energy when its hot not cold, another one said that Redbull light had more flavor than normal Redbull. And yet another girl claimed that Blue Redbull gave more energy than all the rest AND had the best taste. I mean they fit the bill completely for those airheaded girls who can think of nothing but clothes and parties! They're against everything I believe in. Those who were not discussing the virtues of Redbull light were sleeping of the desks! I concluded that all the girls were either extremely stupid, extremely bored or extremely good actresses.

I don't know how I'm going to get through next year. The only good thing about the school is that they have pretty good electives, not what I wanted per se but good, the counselor says she might let me change...I am doubtful.

Ever yours ~

The Know-it-all

Saturday, September 13, 2008

RPGs

I just love RPGs (role playing games) I play them wherever I can find them. Usually my number one criterium for a good RPG is the gameplay but some games have such great plots that no matter how boring the gameplay is I go through them just for the sake of the story. They're like reading a book but better because you have a part in it. Some of my favorite RPG's have the suckiest graphics I have ever seen but I love 'em because of the story. I have been to hell and back trying to find RPG's that are worth my time so I want to give dedicated gamers like myself a list of games I found to be the best:

PC RPGs
-Aveyond 1
-Aveyond 2 (Aveyond 3 coming soon. Aveyond Rocks!!)
-Geneforge
-Geneforge 2
-Avernum 4
-Warcraft
-Age of Empires
-Age of Mythology
-CSI hard evidence

PSP RPGs
-Monster hunter
-Monster hunter 2
-Loco Roco
-Daxter
-The Sims 2 (my favorite!)

PS 1 and 2 RPGs
-Kingdom Hearts 1
-Kingdom Hearts 2 (I love this game!)
-Mana World
-The Sims
-The Sims 2
-The Sims Pets
-Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (I like this one the best out of the Harry Potters)

If you know anymore please tell me!!

Ever yours ~

The Know-it-all

Friday, September 12, 2008

A beginning

I have written loads of "About-me" essays and short paragraphs for school,( since I am usually the new girl I get that as an assignment more often than others) but I decided to just tell you about me without all the flowery writing so here goes!

I think that it is obvious from the name of my blog that I love to read. What is not obvious is that I love to write, both stories and poetry. I am going to the eleventh grade. I have had what my mother calls an "obsession" with reading since the age of three when I first learned to read. I love most genres of books (I even manage to make it through some of those stuffy unabriged books by Jane Austen) although my absoloute favorite books are fantasy or anything to do with magic. I have moved schools a total of six times in the last six years and (whether or not this is true) consider myself an expert at it. I am not an American and I hate it when people simply assume that I am (I'm not Canadian either although I was raised there but that assumption happens less often). I am moving to another new school this year and I hope that I'll make it through the first day without embarrassing myself.

Abby