One last standing ovation

After I got home from church today, I got this message from my favorite Colombian:

Vie Bizarre: Casey, post your speech from yesterday in your blog

So, because Laura told me to, here’s the speech I gave last night at IB Senior Celebration:

Fellow students, teachers, parents, friends, Mr. McGonegal:

It’s been a crazy four years: sleepless nights, endless lectures, perpetual work, and bottomless cups of coffee. And now we’re growing up, about to venture out into a world where we have to do all of this grown-up stuff: get jobs, pay taxes, … get jobs. It almost seems impossible that these past four years have sneaked up on us so quickly. But, I will remind you that in the time since we entered the hallowed halls of PHUHS, so much has happened that we may have once deemed impossible. The Buccaneers won the Super Bowl, the Red Sox won the World Series, J-Lo and Ben broke up. So, maybe our progression into a big people school was inevitable.

But still, we’re all human. And humans will remember. Humans will reminisce. Humans will think back on the years we’ve spent roaming the hallways of PHU and remember them fondly. What will you remember? Will you remember how no matter where you sat, Señora Gleason feng suied you without fail? Will you remember Mr. Valdez’s unhealthy obsession with Julia Roberts? Or maybe it’ll be the way Pete Just would keep his desk absolutely barren (like his head).

Personally, I’ll remember all of the stuff I didn’t quite understand. Like matrices (sorry, Math Department…). Like who actually killed William Robinson. Like Mr. Coffman’s grading system. And like how in the world I am expected to eat a whole elephant.

To the parents here tonight: thank you for supporting your child through these last four years. Without your support, they wouldn’t be here. And if they weren’t here, I would have no friends. So, thank you. I’m sure they’ll thank you too, as it’ll make college that much easier. That is, they’ll thank you right after they get done screaming, “WHY?! WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO ME!?”

To the faculty and staff here tonight: Henceforth, you will be referred to as officers, Mr. Burkett and Ms. Lowry as marshals, and Dr. Brown as warden. You run a tight ship (especially you, Mrs. Kolhoff), but in the end we know that it’s for our betterment. Palm Harbor is the single best place we could be spending our young and malleable years. Thank you for training us to be responsible young people. And while I use the word “responsible” loosely, I’m sure that you know how much you have impacted our lives.

And finally, to the 40% of you who are NOT going to UF: It’s been a pleasure to have known you. I speak on behalf of everyone who is moving two and a half hours up the Interstate (two if you drive like we do) when I say that we will miss you dearly. The bonds we have formed on this campus are too strong to break, so make sure you keep in touch with us, wherever you go. And yes, that does mean “Facebook me!”

Folks, this is so surreal. Unlike the bouncy-bouncy of the moon landings and the chippy-chippy of the Great Pyramids, this is actually happening. You see the movie Grease and you think that a Danny Zuko-like graduation will never happen to you. But, short of a magic red convertible flying into the sky, it’s here. And it’s happening. Now we know that what once seemed so impossible, so far off in the distance, is truly possible. Now, it’s up to us to make the best of our own futures.

Thank you, Palm Harbor University High School. And thank you, everyone. We’re all in this together.

See you in Gainesville!

CAS is over!

To complete my mandated CAS hours for IB, I worked my tail off during these past two weeks at the Hospice Thrift Shop in Clearwater. I tell you, nothing beats multiple 8-hour days with the grumpiest, oldest people on God’s green Earth. Except maybe Root Canal Thursdays.

Anyhow, every radio in this little dirty store is constantly tuned into 105.5 (WDUV), which is apparently my choice for easy favorites. You know, old peopley stuff like Herb Alpert and Neil Diamond and Anne Murray. Now, I’m not saying that all of this music is bad. Heck, in fact, I love the majority of the songs they play (minus Anne Murray, of course). I’m a bland and uninteresting guy who is about as clueless to pop culture as people from Alabama are oblivious to the fact that the South lost the civil war. No, folks, the South will not rise again. Get over it.

But I digress. Like I said, I’m down with most of the songs on 105.5. But, folks, once you’ve stopped yourself from singing along to the same Peter Cetera song more than two times during the same shift, you know that you’ve been volunteering way too much.

Boy, am I glad to be done.

Without purpose or direction

Not having work to do thoroughly baffles me. Every day, I’m assaulted with endless harassment from six teachers, not including the quazi-professing entity in Dr. Yarborough, Theory of Knowledge “teacher” extraordinaire.

So tonight, with no homework to do for the day following, I was lost; never before on a week night of this school year had I been blessed with this glorious confusion. What was I supposed to do with my time? I am a creature of habit that demands a mandate for any action taken.

So, I took advantage of my incurable boredom by wandering aimlessly around this twelve-by-twelve room in hopes of finding something worthwhile. And that’s what I surmise I’ll be doing for the next week.

What a beautiful, beautiful, set of circumstances.

Something's Fishy, Redux

After experimenting with 13 small fish for the IBO’s silly little Group IV Project, 9 died. So, sue us. If they didn’t want to die, they would have stopped peeing a long time ago.

Being the humanitarian I am, I put the remaining four into clean water to live out the rest of their days happily, not asphyxiating on their own urine. The other night, I put four in a new bowl and went to bed. The next morning, I got up and fed three fish.

Wait, what?

It appears one escaped! I looked all around – on the floor, behind the bowl, under the table on which their tank sat – to no avail. I surmised that one must have been so depressed to be a part of our cruel, cruel experiment he jumped from the bowl to its own death and decided that I would find it later.

That evening, I fed the three fish and went to bed. The next morning, I got up and fed two fish.

Wait, what?

Another one was gone by the wayside. Disgruntled, I continued with my daily life and looked again tonight for the remains of the fish. I only found one, which leaves the other that escaped available to murder me with a butcher knife while I sleep. I couldn’t take that risk any further, so I did what any self-respecting fish owner would do with the remaining fish and flushed them.

Bring it on, PETA. Bring it on.

Something’s fishy

Today I went to lunch with some folks from my alma mater, John F. Kennedy Middle School. Ying organized it so that we could eat at Chili’s with my eighth grade Spanish teacher, Señora Segovia, and see the kid she left us for half of a year to have. I got to meet her mom, too. Nice folks – they sent pictures, too (though by the time Lucia’s grandmother took them, Kyle G, Caitlin, and Lauren had left).

On another note, I started the IB-required Group 4 Project today with Kyle B, Doug, and Zach. We were initially going to catch fish and put them into containers of varying population densities, but when the fish that we caught were about the same size as the food pellets that we bought, we decided that it would probably be best if we just bought the fish.

We went to the pet store and met the smartest fish man on God’s green earth. He told us what to do and how to get started and then rambled on into a fifteen minute speech about nitrates and nitrogen gas and ammonium and this and that to the point where I just stood there and said, “yeah” and “uh huh” for lack of a better, more educated response. I couldn’t put together my answers to his oration because I was so taken aback from his outrageous knowledge of everything to do with aquatic life. I think if there were an Olympic event in the subject, he would win the gold, silver, and bronze without any sort of contest.

Thank you, fish man. I will never forget you.

Unlisted Numbers

And now, I present to the masses a list of unrelated thoughts to compensate for my week of debloggification:

1. Sometimes I forget to turn the knob before walking through doors. I understand that without such a crucial action, the whole process is doomed; I just have other things on my mind when walking through doors. I can only assume it’s because I like to think about what I will do when I get to the other side of the door and force the inner monologue of actually getting out to the back burner of my mind.

2. Frozen pizza is better than hot pizza. I think that when I’m old and living in a Miamian condominium, I’ll just order an extra large pie and refrigerate it for lunch every day of the ensuing week. Then I can save my money for more important things, like my senior’s coffee at McDonald’s for 65 cents.

3. I should probably start my Higher Level History paper comparing and contrasting the Mexican Independence Movement and the Haitian Revolution. Or perhaps I could hire a Mexican to write it for me. Either that or a Haitian. If they cooperated, I’d have an outstandingly accurate paper – what better primary source than an immigrant who’s Great Grandpappy Randolfo actually participated in the bloodshed? Either way, it has to be in Burton’s hand in a little over two weeks.

4. Whoever decided to paint the school while classes are in session should be severely punished. I’ve seen many a damsel in distress with paint on her because of unmarked wet paint. It’s like a severely misapplied case of the Scarlet Letter. Except it’s paint, not scarlet. And more of a blob of blue than a letter. And to receive this letter, you don’t have to be as kinky. On second thought, it’s nothing like the Scarlet Letter.

5. I met these two girls in the courtyard during lunch the other day. From afar, I spotted one of them accidentally drop some spare change. So I sprung into action and dashed the forty feet to their midst and dove to pick up the coins for them, as they had their hands full and were wearing garb that would not be flattering to bend over in. I retrieved the three coins and gave them to one of the young ladies saying, “Here’s your sixty cents,” and ran away again, out of sight. That’s the last I’ve seen of them.

6. Potato turbate would be more appetizing if they changed the name. No one wants to eat turbate.

Cruel and Unusual

This being the last week of summer, I thought I’d go out with a bang.

But then I realized that I have homework due in less than a week. So, for lack of more exciting activities, I’m stuck reading the notes for All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren.

And you know what? I’m quitting after only seven chapters. The Sparknotes even make me want to gouge my eyeballs out with a used spork. When does summer ’05 start?

Glaciers are Buzz Saws

Extreme FCAT action for the past two days. Learned about how glaciers cut off tops of mountains further away from the equator or something. It’s all so silly anyways.

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Today before testing I traded shirts with Taryn because hers said “International Baccalaureate” on it and I guess she found my orange yearbook camp t-shirt to be cooler. The first IMs we sent to each other said exactly the same thing: “You smelled good during FCAT!”

Hm.

Punishment

Okay, okay. Joke time. And trust me, this one is good.

The year is 2200, and there is an intergalactic war going on between two feuding groups of people: the Federation (from the planet Xzorba) and the Revolt, a militant terrorist group that sprung up for the first time in the year 2185 with the leader Bork LimFlanderflot, a radical revolutionary from the planet Untorplation. Both sides feud over the much debated sector 567-G.b, a region four million miles from the star Alpha-Centauri containing numerous deposits of the element Tungsten, necessary for the future of both the Federation and the Revolt.

For about a decade the war goes on without an end in sight. Both groups are losing galactic cruisers and troops faster than the universe expands, and the growing generation of each planet is pushed into intergalactic military service long before they morally equipped to make a decision as to their stance on the issue. Things are going from bad to worse when, out of the small planet Intorbi rises a group of beings against the war that has oppressed the universe for so long. Led by commander Lief Rootinbarque, this group of peaceful revolutionaries calls themselves the Resistance. In efforts of stopping the war, they too become involved, determined to either bring the quarrelling sides to a peaceful agreement or to kill off each army and instigate a peace through death.

Something you must understand about war in the year 2200 is that each legion of soldiers is measured in units called “tiles,” a unit coined by Dr. Simon Vondrittle of the planet Earth in the year 2194. The more troops, battleships, artillery, and weapons a military possesses, the more tiles said military earns. Such an army is “multi-tile.”

The Resistance announces they join the war on November 30, 2211, and at the daily staff briefing of the Federation, the commander, Jollip Deetroot asks his chief of war, Mr. Kindrio Yakamasuki (an intern from Japan) to assess the Resistance’s power.

Yakamasuki replies, “Sir, I’m going to be honest: they have one tenth the battleship cruisers we have, they have less than one thousand men, and their weapon systems are about 200 years old. Sir, the resistance is few tile.”

GET IT?! Few tile?! Futile?! Mr. Dull’s C¾ class really enjoyed that one at break today.

Sometimes I disappoint even myself.

Valentine's Day

Today I wrote on a post-it note and got Sarah Jones to slap it on Angus’ back. It’s a “kick me” haiku which is now proudly displayed below Hodgkinson’s white board.

I just want to say
That I want you to kick me
In haiku format.

Valentine’s Day is such a load of crap. It’s the universal “Americans are deep in debt up to their ears from Christmas so why not spend thirty bucks on a bunch of flowers that’ll die in about a week” day. Lord knows it’s exactly what we need, that coupled with chocolate that (admittedly) I don’t like all that much. I’m convinced this Saint Valentine fella is the spawn of Satan.

Yeah, I said it – wanna fight about it?