Snakes

I'm sitting in the computer lab right now during AP Lang, and Robert is sitting next to me looking up pictures of huge ass snakes, so I think I'll talk about that.

For anyone that doesn't know me that well, I have a phobia of snakes. I'm not sure what that's called so I'll look it up now. Ophidiophobia is what it's called. I don't know why I'm afraid of snakes, but it's almost more of a recent thing. Snakes used to just creep me out and I didn't like them. But as I got older, I watched Indiana Jones more and other action movies filled with snake pits, snake bites, and other scary images. Now,just the thought of them make me cringe, and when snake shows come on, I start squirming in my seat.

One time I stepped on a snake, and yelled ran away. There's my snake story. Very anticlimactic, I know. Here are some sights that scare the shit out of me.

Well that was extremely painful for me so I hope you enjoy it.

You Creepin Creeper

If there is one word that is the most overused word in the English language by teenage girls, it has to be the word creeper. Yes it even surpasses "like". Now this in itself doesn't bother me, and I could easily look past it if it wasn't for the context it was used.

Now here are some definitions from urban dictionary to know what a creeper really is.

A person who does weird things, like stares at you while you sleep, or looks at you for hours through a window. usually a close friend or relative. you know right away if that person is a creeper or does creeper things. it is not hard to spot the creeper.

Someone who views your profile (multiple times) without saying anything.

A person and or creature who stalks/ creeps around/follows/ eavesdrops/ harasses/ lurks/ peeps/slinks/ sneaks/prowls/ hangs about/ skulks etc.

You get the jist. It's a stalker essentially. Now if this word were used in the correct way, it wouldn't even get used a quarter of how much it does today. Want to know the reason? Girls have gradually gotten more naive, and are now trained to perceive flirting as creeping.

Now here is the definition of flirting: a form of human interaction whereby one person subtlety indicates a romantic and/or sexual interest towards another. It can consist of conversation, body language, or brief physical contact. It may be one-sided or reciprocated (encouraged).

Now clearly these are very different and are heading in two completely different directions. But in case that was too dificult to understand, let me try to make this simple for you. When a guy likes you, he talks to you and tries to show his interest and see if you feel the same way. And when he's saying stuff you think is creeperish, it's NOT because he's stalking you and planning on raping you.

This rant wasn't triggered because a girl recently accused me of creeping. It's just been a buildup of annoyance of several girls constantly complaining about a creeper that's bothering them, or naming practically every guy a creeper. It just kind of pisses me off because being a creeper is not a good image, and especially sucks when it's not true.

The funny part, is that most girls that accuse guys of creepin, are the biggest flirts in the world. They draw them in, show them their (fake) interest, then talk about how stalkerish they are. Kind of a bitch thing to do if you ask me.

Draft TIme

The NFL Draft was this weekend and it was pretty interesting. I only really care about Hawkeye players that were drafted, and players the Vikings picked up, so that's all I'm gonna write about.

I was a little surprised about how some of the players went. Shonn was the first pick in the third round to the Jets, and Bradley Fletcher was the pick after him to the Rams. Then Olsen went in the fourth round to the Broncos and Brandon Myers in the sixth I think to the Raiders. That left King and Kroul undrafted. This kind of blew me away. Everything else generally went how I thought exept Myers who definitely surprised me going that high. But I thought King was for sure, and Kroul was a probably. Kroule ended up signing as a free agent with the Jets, but as of now, King is still not signed with anyone which is pretty disappointing.

The Vikings got five players from the draft. Their first round selection was a wide reciever named Percy Harvin from Florida, and is supposed to be a great reciever. They also got an awesome Lineman from Oklahoma to fill the gap at Ritht Tackle, and a speedy corner from Georgia. The last two selections were a Linebacker and Safety, and I don't know anything about them. But seeing as the Vikings have the best Linebacking unit in the League, I'm not sure why they picked up the linebacker.

Vids

I've seen a few videos lately that have shocked the hell out of me. All of them had to do with talents of people. Two of them were from Britains Got Talent, and one was just a random video from Yahoo! that I saw.

The first two were from Britains Got Talent, but YouTube won't let me post them for some reason, so I'll do my best to explain them. The first one I saw is a huge sensation and you have most likely seen it. Her name is Susan Boyle and she is a very intersting character. She looks like the typical crazy cat lady, and looks about sixty even though she's 47. But then she sang and captivated everyone in the audience. She had a very surprising voice for how she looked. Then the next episode a 12 year old kid came on and completely dominated the competition. His first song was a song by Amy Winehouse or however you spell it, but then Simon stopped him and said picked a very bad song and let him sing a Michael Jackson song. The moment he begins singing, everyones jaw dropped, including mine. He is definitely the best singer I have ever seen at 12 years old.


This is the other one. It's a band named Recess and the lead singer is 9 years old, the guitarist is 11, keyboard player is 13, the drummer is 11, and the bass player is 12.

CUBBIES

It is now baseball season and obviously with that, comes the cubs. They happen to be my favorite baseball team, so I will blog about them.

So they're doing pretty good. They are 5-3 and are off to a good start again. They didn't have a good preseason, but that doesn't really matter with baseball.

They went 2-1 against Houston, 2-1 against Milwaukee, and 1-1 against Colorado. Now they have a series against St. Louis which they need to win to pull ahead of them in the central division.

Rated R for Retarded

So Spencer said he was going to blog about this, but I have yet to see it posted. So i will go ahead and do a post about it.

A few weeks ago I went to I Love You Man with a group of friends. It is a very good/funny movie, and I strongly recommend it. I'm even going to go far enough to say it is one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time (which isn't saying much considering I haven't seen many funny movies in a while). But anyway, coming back to the story, one of the people in this group happened to be a 16 year old. We'll just call him..... Sam. And this is a R rated flick. So he just bought a ticket to another movie, then slipped in with us when it was time for us to go in. Well obviously someone noticed that Sam was with us, but had a ticket to a different movie. So they added the two up and came to the realization that he was planning on sneaking in....Genius!

So about a half hour into the movie, two people, one of which was a manager, came up to us and asked to see our ticket. The first four of us all showed her our tickets with no problem, but Sam had no ticket to this movie to show her. So he said that he threw his ticket away, but then she asked for his ID. She saw he was sixteen and he told her that his mom bought him a ticket, and she said that was impossible since she would have had to come in with him. Well as you can probably guess, this led to him getting kicked out, and they forced him to go to the movie that he bought a ticket to. Well Spencer would have none of this and promptly got up to go fetch him. To my surprise, in ten minutes I saw them both reappear, but this time Sam wearing a different shirt. Spencer sat in our section, and Sam went a few rows up from us to remain out of sight. Or so he thought. In about five minutes the same lady came back and made a beeline for him. I don't know how they saw him. I wouldn't have. But somehow psychic psycho lady knew and she escorted him out of the whole theater this time. Sam later texted us saying he was leaving because she had called the cops on him. THE COPS.

This pissed me, and didn't really make sense to me for a few reasons. The first was that while this lady was busy kicking out my sixteen year old friend, she was leaning over a six year old watching the same movie. This just doesn't make much sense to me. I mean this kid is hearing stuff WAY to inappropriate for him, but it's okay for him to watch? Yet Sam who understands all of this stuff and is not being harmed in any way by watching at, needs to be kicked out and have the cops called on him? What also pisses me off is... Why do they care? He's a few months away from being seventeen, so what danger does he cause this theater? Especially this one. I mean I can see some other theaters doing this, but for Wehrenberg to do it is just hypocritical. I mean for a theater who has employees and managers that do drugs while working, it's a little pathetic that they care that much and would go far enough to call the cops on him. So they can do very illegal acts while on the job, but can't turn the other way for a sixteen year old who is just slightly breaking the rules? Hmmmmmm.............

Vids

So I saw a couple of videos lately that I wanted to comment on. Both have to do with music in public and both would be pretty tight to see. This one would definitely be crazy to see. It's obviously pre choreographed and was planned, but if you were a spectator, it would be insane. A bunch of random people breaking out into dance? That's intense. Especially since it was pretty well done.



I want this flight attendent. He can rap, he's fun, and I don't even know what else, but he would obviously make your flight a party.

Basketball Woes

So anyone that's been paying attention to Iowa Basketball knows the problem that has presented itself a few weeks ago. The Iowa basketball team lost four players. And not just any four. Jake Kelly, Jeff Peterson, Jermain Davis, and David Palmer are all transferring to different schools. Thats almost a third of the team, and some of them were key members.

Jeff Peterson and Jake Kelly were key members of the team and led the offense. Both were point gaurds and switched off starting. Toward the end of the season, Jake Kelly became the leading scorer and had several games with twenty points or more. He led the offense to several wins and is a huge loss. Jermain Davis was also a good backup player. Palmer isn't that big of a deal because he didn't play that much, but he also could have been a good backup. Now we need to make up some of our losses and get some good recruits, in good numbers.

Cirque Dreams: Jungle Fantasy

Scenes like the one above are common in Cirque Dreams: Jungle Fantasy. It is a show that was seen on Broadway, and then diffused to other cities around the country, including St. Louis which is where I happened to see it over Spring Break. It's kind of a rip off of Cirque Du Soleil, and not as good. But that doesn't mean it wasn't impressive, because I'm not saying that at all.

It started out with kind a funny beginning, much like Cirque Du Soleil shows do. Two plants went up on stage, and it was kind of obvious to tell they were from their build. The guy looked very athletic, had huge arms, and had an interesting outfit on. The girl that went up just had a perfect body and had to be a dancer or gymnast. Sure enough after the little stint they did, she ran backstage and the guy stayed up there.

The show wasn't as good for a few reasons. One, some of the acts were a little messy, such as the first one which was a jump roping act. They messed up a LOT in it and it didn't look very good at all. Second, the stage they were on was not as good as Cirque Du Soleil stages. Their stages are designed for their show and give you a much better look at it and help the feel. This was just a regular theater, and although it was an amazing theater, it still wasn't a theater for that type of production.

What did strike me about the show though, was how certain people did much more than one thing. The main guy for instance, was in several acts as a main guy, whether it was jump roping, doing crazy acrobatics, or spinning big wire cubes (which you have to trust me, it was really cool).

What impressed me most though was when three guys that had to weigh 250 pounds each came on stage. They had the same role as the three guys in the picture above did. I saw one of the biggest guys get down into a squatting position, then another big guy stand on his knees. A guy come up from behind the guy standing and grabs his hand over the guys shoulder and lifts himself off the ground, with one hand. He then pulls himself onto the guys shoulder to stand there. That's two, 250 guys standing on one guys knees while doing a squat. It was crazy.

So it wasn't Cirque Du Soleil, but it was still amazing, and if you have the chance, I recommend watching it.

Nashville- Vacation

Okay now on to the actual trip which was a drastic change from the competition. Unlike that rigged, political, biased competition, the trip was great. Yeah the bus ride was long, but it was well worth it. We got to our hotel after a twelve hour ride and my first impression was definitely a good impression. I first saw the hotel and mistook it for a mall. A mall the size of Mall of America. The place is huge. We walked in, and i could see that in the middle of the hotel was a garden/rain forest area and it was so cool. We then visited our room which was also one of the coolest rooms I've been in. It was complete with a comfortable modern looking bed, nice furniture, and a high def T.V. After admiring the room we head out to the main section. We later learned that it was actually three sections. The scenery was incredible with waterfalls, fountains and animals in the place. All three were rain forest sections with different restaurants and stores in them. There were probably 5 or 6 restaurants in the place, including a Jack Daniels, Haagen Daaz, an amazing sushi place, and more.


After the preliminary round, we got to go the mall right next to the Grand Ole Opry. While there we went to the oxygen bar which was a huge waste of twenty dollars, even though it was relaxing. We also went to an extremely impressive Bose demonstration and I got some nice Oakley swim trunks. I was about to buy some expensive glasses since they were all on sale but I figured if I did my parents would castrate me. I also went to forever 21 with some people which I felt gay for going into. That is until I got to the small men's section where they had some really cool shirts, and I ended up buying two. The highlight of the day was definitely going to Dave & Buster's though. We had a descent chicken meal there, and then got going on the games which was a blast. We all had a 10 dollar game card to go crazy with. We started out by playing some shooting and racing games, then got started on trying to get as many tickets as possible. We ended up getting about 1,000, before we realized that we really didn't want or need them. So we began our search through the place looking for the best candidate to give our tickets to. We spotted a young kid of about five or six years old and decided he was worthy of our charity. We asked if he wanted the tickets and his dad very enthusiastically said yes. I think he was more excited than the kid was, but we felt good about our charity none the less. When we got back to the hotel, a kid down the hall decided to have a rave and he set up a strobe light, pumped up the techno, turned the lights off, and we went crazy. This lasted for about a half hour with about 3o kids in a small, hot room, before everyone called it quits for the night.

After finals the next day we went to The Wild Horse Saloon, which I thought would be fun, but maybe a little awkward. But that was before I knew what they had scheduled. They ended up having a local band play for us, and they were nothing short of amazing. They did a bunch of country stuff at first which I wasn't too excited about, but it was still pretty fun for country. That's when they broke into Jessie's girl and the crowd erupted. I was right up at the front of the stage and it was a blast. The lead singer then showed his vocal skills when he went into a few Journey songs, and sounded exactly like Steve Perry. He could even sing as high as him which is very impressive for anyone to do. After a few more country songs, they finished the set with Don't Stop Believing, which was pretty much perfect. I think that was probably the highlight of the trip. The only other thing that could compete with that was just hanging out with everyone else in the group. The trip was really fun mainly because everybody got along and became friends over the trip, and that made for some good times.

Nashville- Show Choir

Over spring break Happiness went to Nashville, Tennessee to compete. I'm going to make this a two part blog, first about the competition, then about the trip. This one, as you could probably guess from the title, this one is going to be about the competition.

So we got there pretty excited and ready to compete. We were all psyched and felt good about competing. The first night we got there we went to the Grand Ole Opry where the competetion was taking place, and watched Buffalo Grove and were pretty impressed. We also watched a middle school that one their division, and were nothing short of amazed. They could have probably beaten our prep groups.

The next day, before we competed we watched about three of four more groups. No one was really that impressed with any of them and that psyched us up even more. Our warm up went okay and the same with our performance. It wasn't anything amazing, but it was still pretty good. We had some intonation problems in the ballad as always, but not that bad. We easily got into finals and then went back to our hotel to learn the scores. When there we got good news, and bad news. The bad news was that we were in fifth. The good news was that if they had judged it the way they were going to in finals, we would be in second. That psyched us up a lot and we learned we were several points behind because of intonation, and there we made a decision. We decided the bass would come in earlier on the ballad, which would almost fix it completely.

The next day, before we headed back Ziegler told us that he listened to the judge tapes, and the biggest complaints, were easy fixes. We got the changes down in the warm up, and everyone felt great. We walked onto the stage and did our show. The best we had ever done it. We nailed it and the bass in the ballad helped dramatically. We felt on top of the world. We went back into the theater to watch the other groups go, and surprisingly they all got worse. Mt. Zion was absolutely terrible and their choregraphy was so off. Buffalo Grove was still really good, but not as good as they had been Thursday. So when awards came around, we were expecting a pretty high placing. Sixth place....... Danville. Fifth place....... Kennedy.



We were all pretty speechless at what had just been announced. We had done a killer show, and at least three of the groups that beat us, we are clearly better than, and they even had a worse show than their preliminary. With that judging system we moved down from second to fifth, after improving and the groups around us getting worse. Make sense to you? Cause it makes none to me.