Dedications

This may well be my last post before I leave. So theres today, during which I'm packing, theres tomorrow during which I'm hanging out, theres Saturday during which I panic, and then I go poof off the face of America. YAY! But before I leave, I really want to say thanks to all the people who have influenced me in the good 'ol state of Colorado (or influenced me when I happened to be elsewhere). Friends, family...what am I going to do without you guys? Find some new ones, I guess, and try to hold on where I can. I'm not a big fan of holding on to the past, but this is one of those cases, as I'm about to leave, where I'm having a hard time looking forward. It's just going to be so new and different, somehow its easier to look back. I see everything I'll be leaving behind, both the good and bad. There are some friendships that will be greatly changed by leaving and others that it won't really have any effect on. You probably know which category you fall into. Regardless, I don't want to lose any friends as a result of it.

Before I leave, there are three guys and three girls that I particularly want to send a shout-out to, as I know I won't be seeing you where I'm going (and if I do, well, it wasn't in my plans).
First, to my brother. The day you left, I was setting the table and put out four plates, then nearly cried remembering that you won't be back for a long time.
Second, to my best friend. I don't know if I've ever told you that you are my best friend, and I don't really know if you know that you are...but I've known you for nine years (as of the start of this school year, you should know who you are now) and I've been through more with you than with anyone else. We've had our issues, but are all the closer for it. I don't really know what I'm going to do without you.
Third, to the one I ran to in middle school. We've never been super-super-super close, but you've always been there for me. You are one of the few who will listen to me, no matter what I have to say or complain or rant about, and I do the same for you. I'm going to miss you extremely, because email just doesn't work as well for talking. You rock my neon socks off. You know who you are.
Fourth to an Outward Bound instructor who changed me more than I would ever have guessed was possible.
Fifth, to my other true friend. I guess I've known you for a while but its only over the past two years that we've gotten close. We've definitely had our ups and downs, but they don't seem to matter in the long run. You probably think you should be on this list but can't really figure out which one you are.
Sixth, to a person who taught me how to live, love, and love living. I love you.

And then of course, there are my parents. I owe them so much. My DI team. Girl Scout Destinations. The two teachers (4th/5th grade, Soph. English) who have really helped me grow not just academically but in my thinking and how I view the world. My skis (thank goodness I don't have to leave them behind!) and previous ski instructors and ski buddies. My flute and flute teacher. But most especially my FRIENDS. I don't know where I'd be without you, but I certainly wouldn't be about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. So here I am, about to say just about the saddest two words in the English Language: Good Bye. Fare Well. Au Revoir. Adios, Amigos. I'll be back.

Love,
Sarah

The Times They Are A Changin'

The times aren't the only things changing. My hair for example. Its all gone now, just in case you wanted to know (ok, not ALL gone. Theres still some left. I decided I wanted to share the bottom ten inches with some poor cancerous child, and giving that away didn't leave me with much. check out www.locksoflove.org if you want to lose your hair too!). My hair isn't the only thing thats gone. My brother is too. For four whole months... And in a week I will be too. Well, gone from here, but not GONE.

The Kite Runner

Of all the books I've read for school over the past few years, there haven't been many that I've really enjoyed. In thirty years am I really still going to be touched by the Great Wrath of Gatsby's Grapes? Or is it the Great Grapes of Gatsby's Wrath? I can't even keep it straight. When I found out I was going to school overseas, I was THRILLED I wouldn't have to read Dante's Inferno for summer reading. Instead, I was assigned The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, which is one of the most powerful, moving, haunting, and thought evoking and books I've ever read. So, sure, you could analyze the heck out of something like the Great Gatsby, which in my opinion is little more than a soap opera with a boat-load of symbolism, or The Old Man and the Sea, which is just the boat-load of symbolism without the soap opera...but just because it makes for good literary discussion doen't make it REAL. The Kite Runner is one of those really, truly REAL books, a novel that perfectly paints modern Afghanistan, shows the contrast between old and new, love and hate, peace and war, happiness and fear, and a whole bunch of other conceptual noun pairs. Not only that, but its littered with brutally honest quotes, like "A land mine. Is there a more Afghan way to die?" Why can't more of our required reading be books like that, ones that really give us a better understanding of the world while still having symbolism that you COULD analyze? Well, except that there are so many better things to discuss regarding this book, I don't really see why you'd want to look at the literary qualities (symbolism, themes, blah, blah, blah) so much as the quality of the story and characters and ideas behind it. . . .

Today I found out that they made a film of The Kite Runner, which is scheduled to come out in November (do yourself a favor and read the book before you see it!!) My first thought was, "Oh $h!t!! they're going to screw it up so badly!" I mean, how many books have been spoiled by their movies? There's Harry Potter, just to name 5, soon to be 7, that Hollywood has murdered. So I started poking around, checking out the trailers (don't watch unless you've read the book, they sort of give a really good part of the book away)...and then I stumbled across www.kiterunner.org and was shocked. The actors are real Afghani boys, who were taken to China to shoot the film, and now live back in war-torn Afghanistan...and they are terrified. Unless you've read the book, you won't really understand, but theres no way to make this movie and NOT toe the line at least a little. It's controversial not in America, but it certainly will be in the Middle East, and the actors and their families have every right to be terrified of what the consequences and burdens their associations with this film will cost them. Their friends, their social standing, their freedoms... So, read the book, check out www.kiterunner.org, and let me know what you think!!

P.S. I know people have been reading my blog so if you are one of them then I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a comment (or email if you don't want everyone to see it) and let me know what you think of me, my writing, my ideas, my blog, whatever.

Disease

Disease. I just LOVE being sick. My dearest thanks go out to my friends and family who gave me such a nice, lovely gift. I've gotten to spend the past day and I'll probably spend the next two or three at home in bed with it, savoring every last minute during which I'm not wasting my time online. Now see, during the school year, I might be celebrating, especially if I so conveniently happened to fall ill on a major test or the day something I neglected to finish is due. Either that or panick because it means makeup work. WAIT!! Why am I talking about school? I still have eleven days before I officially sell my soul to the Devil (aka IB). My regrets go out to everyone at LHS who only have seven more glorious days to spend with their souls before they get locked in Ms. Tucker's office for two years. For those of you who decided to be IB drop outs and not have your soul locked in hell, well, lucky you. The rest of us will have a party to pity those cowards. (sorry, I really do love you guys, whether you stuck it through or not or never were in in the first place...)
Anyway. ELEVEN days until I get on that airplane. YAY! I am so ready to get out of here.

Realizations from 3am

There is something strangely exhilarating about being online at 3 in the morning DURING THE SUMMER when you have absolutely every right to go to bed as soon as your non-existent homework is finished. Yay for non-existent homework during the summer. See, during the school year, if you are up at 3am, you either have a procrastination problem or you procrastinated. Either that or you don't have a life. Some people (me included) do these things called extra-curricular activities, which, when added to homework, make the student ridiculously exhausted and want to go to bed immediately upon completing one's homework. Even if thats at 9:30...which it rarely is for me because I have a procrastination problem. Sucks for me, doesn't it? So anyway, back to the point. What am I doing up at 3am during the summer when I could just as easily (actually, more easily, because I wouldn't have to find things with which to amuse myself) have gone to bed six hours ago?
Here are some possible answers.
a). Its the peak of the Perseid Meteor shower so people who love shooting stars stay up late to watch little bits of cosmic dust convert their matter into energy while entering the atmosphere, giving off lots of light. I don't really know WHY watching the incineration of bits of dust left behind by a comet is so amusing, but it is. Shooting stars (aka meteors) rock my world.
b). I have a friend over. What's lamer than NOT staying up till odd hours of the morning talking about random stuff?
c). I enjoy reminiscing about long-forgotten elementary school friends.
d). All of the above.
People who think they know me would probably pick answer A. People who don't know me would probably pick answer B. So I chose answer D just to prove all those sorry suckers wrong.
But the truth is, its now almost 3:15, and I am getting sort of tired. The last time I stayed up this late was reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the night it came out. The time before that I was writing an English essay. And procrastinating, talking online with three of my friends who were actually supposed to be writing their essays too. I think I was probably on paragraph 2. I still got an A. So anyway, I'm not used to being up this late because I have no life. I wouldn't even have a blog if I had a life with which to otherwise occupy myself. So once again, Sarah has proved that staying up till 3am is a strange, strange occurrence, and the next time it happens her friends should refuse to speak to her unless convincing her to actually do her homework or go to sleep. Oops...back to third person. That didn't last long.

On Day Two...

On day two, Sarah decided she was bored and got angry at her blog because its connected to her Google account. Don't get me wrong, I love my Google stuff, but I have two accounts. So I can only be logged into one at a time, otherwise use two browsers and IE makes me angry...So Sarah figured out how to attach BOTH Google accounts to this blog. In other words, Sarah now has an alter ego. Which is great, because then she can act like Gollum and argue with herself (like she doesn't anyway). And then Sarah decided that third person was confusing and she made a mental note only to use it on special occasions.
So last night, I couldn't get to sleep, and I started thinking about Harry Potter, which I had just finished reading for the bazillionth time, and at the same time I was thinking about Lord of the Rings which I had just watched for the bazillionth time (I have an alter ego, so the two halves of my brain can be thinking totally different things at the same time...) and then whaddayaknow! I got confused. Suddenly Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter were merged and it dawned on me how much J.K. Rowling stole from J.R.R. Tolkein, (I will post a somewhat complete-ish list at some point). So I started thinking and used that big black void inside my cranium and pulled out some random bits of information that I picked up somewhere and started thinking about how much both of them stole from Greek and Norse and Roman and other mythologies. But then I realized the things JKR stole from Tolkein weren't the things that both of them got out of myths. So then I convinced myself that JKR was a thief. And if JKR, who is undoubtedly one of the most creative authors of all time, is a thief, then there must not be any such thing as creativity. I know, DI blasphemy. But really, hasn't almost everything been thought of before? OK, so there are things like technology that keep getting better, but better rarely turns into new. And when it does, it takes people like Einstein who just happen to divide one equation by another and come up with the speed of light, and then from which create the theory of relativity. Or something like that. I don't really know what Einstein was doing. I can pretend. Its called BS. Thank God IB taught me that skill. Anyway, its sort of like sheer dumb luck combined with a high IQ. Eventually we have to stumble across something new. So, human brains have no such thing as creativity. I mean, evolutionarily we don't need creativity. Yeah, back when we were cavemen it might have been a little more useful. But really, I think we're just good at stumbling across those little nifty tricks that nature threw at us. None of it depends on brain power. Sometimes it takes and IQ above 100 to recognize those tricks...but thats besides the point. And what this has to do with J.K. Rowling being a thief I don't know.

The beginning of the end

In the beginning, there was light. Then there was a power outage and God had forgotten to save his program and all was lost, so then he had to rewrite it. Sad day. Or however millions of years writing that program took. So God tried again.
In the beginning, there was light. Then there was Sarah floating along in her happy little bubble, until it smacked into reality. Wait, glitch! Reality hasn't been created yet. So once again, God rebooted his computer, edited his program to fix the error and hit run one more time. This time there was a big BANG and his computer exploded, killing him in the blast and spewing out all sorts of radioactive matter that eventually turned into stars and planets and big macs. Somewhere between that tragic point 13.6 billion years ago and today, the lovely Earth came into being. And sometime within the Earths past three revolutions around the sun, Sarah's happy little bubble smacked into reality again and she realized it was time to get out of bed and go see the world. Of course, God hired Gilderoy Lockhart (where he came from only J.K. Rowling knows) to use the Obliviate charm to modify Sarah's memory, so she has no memory of smacking into that wall of reality the first time, or what the universe was like when it was just her and her happy little bubble bobbing along in the light. Maybe one day Voldemort will come along and torture her and she'll finally remember, like he did to Bertha Jorkins, but something's telling me Sarah would rather not know what life was like way back then.
So anyway, now the universe in all its vastness has a planet earth and a sun and a Sarah and her happy little bubble, which has popped at the base of the wall of reality. Still seems kind of small and pathetic, huh? How about, just for fun, we throw in some friends and good books and other things to do, maybe some mountains and an ocean and a moon. Just for the sake of watching people wreak havoc on each other, lets give Sarah and all her friends and acquaintances and the other 6 billion people on earth that she has never met some food and water and politicians. Oops, bad move. Now we've suddenly got war and peace, love and hate, and a whole bunch of other conceptual noun pairs to play with. Add some verbs, some heavy elements, and give humans brains with which they can't figure out what to do, and you've got a pretty amusing planet to laugh at. Lets just hope that theres some other planet on the other side of the galaxy that DIDN'T have so many errors in the program so they can take over our solar system once we have successfully eradicated ourselves.
Anyway, now that Sarah and all her friends and the internet exist, along with a whole bunch of other things unworthy of mention, she can start writing her blog and see how long it takes to successfully bore each and every one of her friends and readers that intentionally or accidentally stumbles across this page.
WARNING: In case you hadn't already figured it out, this blog is subject to a fair amount of politically incorrect ramblings, pointless rants, and maybe if we're lucky some deep philosophical thoughts about the number 42 (if you don't get it, go read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy instead of this blog). If you don't like me, don't know me, or don't even want to know me, you may be better off clicking that little red X up in the top right hand corner of your screen. Of course, if you've made it this far, you probably do know me or find what I have to say at least somewhat amusing or interesting, in which case I take no responsibility for addling with your mind, driving you insane, or otherwise damaging you by means of this blog. Nuph said.