caffeine highs, coffee shops, shades of grey

the sounds of silence...they speak to me

sooo.....summer is officially on. haven't posted in awhile. i've actually been quite busy.

thursday. i graduated from high school. that was pretty neat.

thrusday late/early friday morning: project grad. interesting. not fab, but amusing. got home at 4:30. was back up at the school to pick up the diploma at 10:30. whoot. talked to mrs. eyer for about half an hour. i think that was the first time i was ever truly sad about graduating, because i don't think i'm ever going to see her again because she's moving to south carolina. and she was one of my favorite teachers. everybody else (my family, friends, langford, salyer, scheffer, mcgahey, miss eyer, etc.) i know i'll see them/talk to them again on breaks, online, on the phone, and so on. they aren't gone from my life forever. she is. that was upsetting.

friday/saturday was state solo and ensemble. emotional because i'll probably never get to go to blue velvet again. sigh. i love that store. we got a 2 on our quartet. probably better than we deserved. good girl talk friday night (taylor and heath) and saturday afternoon (jordan and clarissa..ahh those crazy choir girls). good times. headache aquired on the ride home and then came home, went to bed at 9:30 and woke up sunday at 10:30. that was nice as the past few night i had slept an average of 4 hours a night. me=person who doesn't function well without sleep, so it was nice to catch up.

sunday....not too much happened. oh wait. molly's grad party. fun. good food, good people, good movie (tina fey, i worship the ground you walk on). monday....random stuff around the house and errands. oh. got a new cell phone (the old one was officially dying) and went shoppin at gap. ok, gap used to suck, but they now rock my socks off. i need to go back sometime this week to get some more speghetti straps because they are neato. and fun colors. and i need some fun summer/college clothes. i am so bagging a boyfriend by this time next year. i have decided. i have also decided that i am going to become TCU's valedictorian of 2009. because i am smart. and can. so psha. or....at least top ten people. lets not too much pressure on ourselves here.
anyway, need to get good grades and a boyfriend. and of course party like its 1985. because i guess that was a fun year.

tring rehersal today went fairly well. i've found i have massive support for my idea to play music from phantom of the opera and we get to play the incredibles (super hot). and that mr. bach is not happy about me missing rehersal for academic orientation. oh well. he shall have to get over it because there is nothing i can do about it. tragic i know.

lalalala. tomorrow i shall lay out to lessen the albinoness. i will probably get burned. because i have red hair. and thats what happens to me. but its okay. because my hair is hot.

btw matt...when i say "hot" i spell it h-o-t NOT h-o-t-t. and its unfortunate that you've been hanging around me too much :) and the more i think about what i said on the bus the more i am convinced that i am so right. you should think about it...i think you'll agree....

do what makes you happy, not what other people say.

posted by kellyisdelightful @ 9:42 PM 6 comments

i would like to dedicate this post to howard zinn

one of my favorite authors and historians and social activists. he's an amazinf person. i read this speech and i was in awe. i love his work and the fact that he has the guts to say something like this. i hope one day i will be able to speak as honestly and knowledgeably as he has/does. the following is a speech he gave at a college graduation a few weeks ago. genius. btw...how do you like the color scheming? i thought i was quite appropriate considering the ideas in this speech and post....:)


In 1963, historian Howard Zinn was fired from Spelman College, where he was chair of the History Department, because of his civil rights activities. This year, he was invited back to give the commencement address. Here is the text of that speech, given on May 15, 2005.
I am deeply honored to be invited back to Spelman after forty-two years. I would like to thank the faculty and trustees who voted to invite me, and especially your president, Dr. Beverly Tatum. And it is a special privilege to be here with Diahann Carroll and Virginia Davis Floyd.
But this is your day - the students graduating today. It's a happy day for you and your families. I know you have your own hopes for the future, so it may be a little presumptuous for me to tell you what hopes I have for you, but they are exactly the same ones that I have for my grandchildren.
My first hope is that you will not be too discouraged by the way the world looks at this moment. It is easy to be discouraged, because our nation is at war - still another war, war after war - and our government seems determined to expand its empire even if it costs the lives of tens of thousands of human beings. There is poverty in this country, and homelessness, and people without health care, and crowded classrooms, but our government, which has trillions of dollars to spend, is spending its wealth on war. There are a billion people in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East who need clean water and medicine to deal with malaria and tuberculosis and AIDS, but our government, which has thousands of nuclear weapons, is experimenting with even more deadly nuclear weapons. Yes, it is easy to be discouraged by all that.
But let me tell you why, in spite of what I have just described, you must not be discouraged.
I want to remind you that, fifty years ago, racial segregation here in the South was entrenched as tightly as was apartheid in South Africa. The national government, even with liberal presidents like Kennedy and Johnson in office, was looking the other way while black people were beaten and killed and denied the opportunity to vote. So black people in the South decided they had to do something by themselves. They boycotted and sat in and picketed and demonstrated, and were beaten and jailed, and some were killed, but their cries for freedom were soon heard all over the nation and around the world, and the President and Congress finally did what they had previously failed to do - enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Many people had said: The South will never change. But it did change. It changed because ordinary people organized and took risks and challenged the system and would not give up. That's when democracy came alive.
I want to remind you also that when the war in Vietnam was going on, and young Americans were dying and coming home paralyzed, and our government was bombing the villages of Vietnam - bombing schools and hospitals and killing ordinary people in huge numbers - it looked hopeless to try to stop the war. But just as in the Southern movement, people began to protest and soon it caught on. It was a national movement. Soldiers were coming back and denouncing the war, and young people were refusing to join the military, and the war had to end.
The lesson of that history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change. The government may try to deceive the people, and the newspapers and television may do the same, but the truth has a way of coming out. The truth has a power greater than a hundred lies. I know you have practical things to do - to get jobs and get married and have children. You may become prosperous and be considered a success in the way our society defines success, by wealth and standing and prestige. But that is not enough for a good life.
Remember Tolstoy's story, "The Death of Ivan Illych." A man on his deathbed reflects on his life, how he has done everything right, obeyed the rules, become a judge, married, had children, and is looked upon as a success. Yet, in his last hours, he wonders why he feels a failure. After becoming a famous novelist, Tolstoy himself had decided that this was not enough, that he must speak out against the treatment of the Russian peasants, that he must write against war and militarism.
My hope is that whatever you do to make a good life for yourself - whether you become a teacher, or social worker, or business person, or lawyer, or poet, or scientist - you will devote part of your life to making this a better world for your children, for all children. My hope is that your generation will demand an end to war, that your generation will do something that has not yet been done in history and wipe out the national boundaries that separate us from other human beings on this earth.
Recently I saw a photo on the front page of the New York Times which I cannot get out of my mind. It showed ordinary Americans sitting on chairs on the southern border of Arizona, facing Mexico. They were holding guns and they were looking for Mexicans who might be trying to cross the border into the United States. This was horrifying to me - the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call "civilization," we have carved up what we claim is one world into two hundred artificially created entities we call "nations" and are ready to kill anyone who crosses a boundary.
Is not nationalism - that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary, so fierce it leads to murder - one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking, cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on, have been useful to those in power, deadly for those out of power.
Here in the United States, we are brought up to believe that our nation is different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral; that we expand into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy. But if you know some history you know that's not true. If you know some history, you know we massacred Indians on this continent, invaded Mexico, sent armies into Cuba, and the Philippines. We killed huge numbers of people, and we did not bring them democracy or liberty. We did not go into Vietnam to bring democracy; we did not invade Panama to stop the drug trade; we did not invade Afghanistan and Iraq to stop terrorism. Our aims were the aims of all the other empires of world history - more profit for corporations, more power for politicians.
The poets and artists among us seem to have a clearer understanding of the disease of nationalism. Perhaps the black poets especially are less enthralled with the virtues of American "liberty" and "democracy," their people having enjoyed so little of it. The great African-American poet Langston Hughes addressed his country as follows:
You really haven't been a virgin for so long.
It's ludicrous to keep up the pretext...

You've slept with all the big powers
In military uniforms,
And you've taken the sweet life
Of all the little brown fellows...

Being one of the world's big vampires,
Why don't you come on out and say so
Like Japan, and England, and France,
And all the other nymphomaniacs of power.

I am a veteran of the Second World War. That was considered a "good war," but I have come to the conclusion that war solves no fundamental problems and only leads to more wars. War poisons the minds of soldiers, leads them to kill and torture, and poisons the soul of the nation.
My hope is that your generation will demand that your children be brought up in a world without war. It we want a world in which the people of all countries are brothers and sisters, if the children all over the world are considered as our children, then war - in which children are always the greatest casualties - cannot be accepted as a way of solving problems.
I was on the faculty of Spelman College for seven years, from 1956 to 1963. It was a heartwarming time, because the friends we made in those years have remained our friends all these years. My wife Roslyn and I and our two children lived on campus. Sometimes when we went into town, white people would ask: How is it to be living in the black community? It was hard to explain. But we knew this - that in downtown Atlanta, we felt as if we were in alien territory, and when we came back to the Spelman campus, we felt that we were at home.
Those years at Spelman were the most exciting of my life, the most educational certainly. I learned more from my students than they learned from me. Those were the years of the great movement in the South against racial segregation, and I became involved in that in Atlanta, in Albany, Georgia, in Selma, Alabama, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Greenwood and Itta Bena and Jackson. I learned something about democracy: that it does not come from the government, from on high, it comes from people getting together and struggling for justice. I learned about race. I learned something that any intelligent person realizes at a certain point - that race is a manufactured thing, an artificial thing, and while race does matter (as Cornel West has written), it only matters because certain people want it to matter, just as nationalism is something artificial. I learned that what really matters is that all of us - of whatever so-called race and so-called nationality - are human beings and should cherish one another.
I was lucky to be at Spelman at a time when I could watch a marvelous transformation in my students, who were so polite, so quiet, and then suddenly they were leaving the campus and going into town, and sitting in, and being arrested, and then coming out of jail full of fire and rebellion. You can read all about that in Harry Lefever's book Undaunted by the Fight. One day Marian Wright (now Marian Wright Edelman), who was my student at Spelman, and was one of the first arrested in the Atlanta sit-ins, came to our house on campus to show us a petition she was about to put on the bulletin board of her dormitory. The heading on the petition epitomized the transformation taking place at Spelman College. Marian had written on top of the petition: "Young Ladies Who Can Picket, Please Sign Below."
My hope is that you will not be content just to be successful in the way that our society measures success; that you will not obey the rules, when the rules are unjust; that you will act out the courage that I know is in you. There are wonderful people, black and white, who are models. I don't mean African- Americans like Condoleezza Rice, or Colin Powell, or Clarence Thomas, who have become servants of the rich and powerful. I mean W.E.B. DuBois and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Marian Wright Edelman, and James Baldwin and Josephine Baker and good white folk, too, who defied the Establishment to work for peace and justice.
Another of my students at Spelman, Alice Walker, who, like Marian, has remained our friend all these years, came from a tenant farmer's family in Eatonton, Georgia, and became a famous writer. In one of her first published poems, she wrote:
It is true --
I've always loved
the daring
ones
Like the black young
man
Who tried
to crash
All barriers
at once,
wanted to
swim
At a white
beach (in Alabama)
Nude.
I am not suggesting you go that far, but you can help to break down barriers, of race certainly, but also of nationalism; that you do what you can - you don't have to do something heroic, just something, to join with millions of others who will just do something, because all of those somethings, at certain points in history, come together, and make the world better.
That marvelous African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston, who wouldn't do what white people wanted her to do, who wouldn't do what black people wanted her to do, who insisted on being herself, said that her mother advised her: Leap for the sun - you may not reach it, but at least you will get off the ground.
By being here today, you are already standing on your toes, ready to leap. My hope for you is a good life.

posted by kellyisdelightful @ 8:04 PM 4 comments

its over....wheee!

wow. so today was my first official day of summer, as in first day where i didn't have to go to school. scary thats its finally over. in august i thought this day would never get here and now it seems like only yesterday that we were rehersing the marching show and teaching new freshmen how to march; that i was struggling to figure out limits and kinematics; that i was still unsure where i would be applying and attending college. wow. juniors...cherish next year. dont waste a single day because it goes by too fast.

enough sentimental stuff. no more high school! graduation on thursday! hanging with heath and taylor tonight, super exciting its been a long time. yay.

so im writing a play. im not really very far yet, but i will be.

everybody should see phantom of the opera. omg its better than cleopatra and i am so obsessed with it. the music is amazing. the story is amazing. the singing and acting are amazing as well. omg omg i love this movie.

not much to report. when something interesting happens, i'll post it.

tring is coming!!! woo! and GREEN DAY CONCERT AUGUST 20! im psyched for that one.

so yeah, not much else to day. ok bye.

posted by kellyisdelightful @ 4:20 PM 3 comments

"she wears skirts often/she yells whenever she needs to/her name is miss eyer"

wow its been awhile. been very busy. finished all my AP tests last thursday. i got at least a 4 on everything i think so that was good. i wanted all 5's but eh. do you like the title/haiku poem for miss eyer written by on of her students? it was my favorite. hilarious.

senior picnic today was funners. band banquet on friday was uhmazing. drove with the pam, pictures in the lobby, sat with lauren and mal and the pam and matt and allie etc. at dinner. wierd food. dance started out slow, had some good dances with james, billy, christopher, mal, and the pam (mal, dance southlake, go!). good times. a fun way to end the band career. will have a more sentimental post about graduation later.

last weekend, dress shopping with ma mere, senior presentation stuff, laziness.

monday...nothing of any importance.

today, tring rehersal (mal is today's winner of the gold star for being flute section leader 05-06), joe's for govt project (pam as pregnant mrs. richard nixon's mother and than later drunk richard nixon, lauren as the baby being born, complete with screaming and facial expressions, and me missing it for a damn luncheon. i want a tape).

don't get me wrong. i'm excited for the luncheon, the scholarship, the missing of the school etc. but i want to see that skit. it twill be fabulous.

oh and also my brother's band concert tonight good music (prince of egypt net score: 817,212,372,345,731,465,945,913,459,348,512,384 points. it wins).

hmm...awards ceremony tomorrow night. the chaunce says i'm getting 2 scholarships so sweet knads for that (pam that last remark was for you).

mal, i plan on yoyu visiting me and me visiting you next year. which reminds me: this friday. you. me. the prado. after school. 2:40 you, 3ish me. be there or be trapezoidal.

ten million kool points to anyone who can tell me the correct pronunciation of the word "knights" (heather you better get this one).

hooray for the beatles white album:

creme tangerine!


and monteliment
a ginger sling with pineabpple heart
a coffee desser- yes you know its good news

actually beats thriller (shocker i know).

OC SEASON FINALE ON THURDAY! and STAR WARS ON FRIDAY! exciting exciting. what's gonna happen, i dont know we will find out hooray. oh and

NEW HARRY POTTER IN JUNE! AHHHHHHHHHH!!! YAY!

hmmmm bored and run plum out of random thoughts. off to listen to "Savoy truffle" (creme tangerine!) and read some of Man's Search for Meaning. then sleep. possibly. ok bye.

posted by kellyisdelightful @ 9:41 PM 3 comments

thriller!!!!

well two tests down. i think i got at least a 4 on both calc and english. which is good. unlike history, my tests this year are rather unpredictable. hopefully physics will be as easy as some of the practice tests we've had. hopefully i'll be able to bs my way through the government test. and econ will be as easy as the practice tests.

sr presentation dress shopping tomorrow with pam and anna. super fun. went to get my hot black toga dress fixed for band banquet (they said they could just put a hook in to fix the boob showage so yay). i could actually go barefoot with that dress. or with black flip flops. its toga like so i think that would go better than my 4 inch heels...yes. will look into that.

i got the postal service CD. i didn't originally like them, but then i heard them some more and they grew on me and than i had to get the CD and now i love it. i also got the Michael Jackson Number One CD. so amazing. i don't care if he's a child molester, his music rocks.

had a pop calculus test today. sort of. our test was scheduled for tues which is not do-able (how do you spell that anyway) cus of AP tests and he was like just take it sometime between now and graduation and the genius child was taking hers and i am currently still retaining stuff cus of the AP test so i figured i'd take it today so i wouldn't forget everything. it was really easy. props to scheffer for that one. only one problem i had no clue how to do. and i think i may have gotten some partial credit on it, so yay.

billie jean is not my lover
she's just a girl who says that i am the one
but the kid is not my son

ahh the eighties. love them.

ok so the postal service has this great song called "nothing better" and i was listening to it in the car and got a creative idea. music video. see its a song with a guy singing to a girl to not leave him and her singing back that shes leaving anyway. and i got this idea from the tring site with pictures of eric the monkey. i say we take a picture of behrends and pull a rocky horror lips thing and put them together so it looks like he's singing to the monkey and than have the monkey sing back and stuff. and then send it to the tring people. and call it the love ballad of ronnie and eric. oh yes. so brilliant. pam and matt, we are so going to do that.

you try to scream
but terror takes the sound before you make it
you start to freeze and someone looks you right between the eye
and you're paralyzed
cus this is
THRILLER!
thriller night
and no one's going to save you from the beast about to strike
you know its
THRILLER!
thriller night
you're fighting for your life inside a thriller, killer tonight!


kind of bored. hey people, be cool and fill out this survey i stole from mark that he stole from someone else.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF:
1. I died from natural causes:
2. I kissed you:
3. I lived next door to you:
4. I started smoking
5. I stole something
6. I was hospitalized:
7. I ran away from home:
8. I got into a fight and you weren't there?

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MY:
9. Personality:
10. Eyes:
11. Hair:
12. Family:

WOULD YOU:
13. Be my friend?:
14. Keep a secret if I told you one?:
15. Hold my hand?
16. Take a bullet for me?
17. Keep in touch?:
18. Try and solve my problems?:
19. Love me?:
20. Date me?:

HAVE YOU EVER:
21. Lied to make me feel better?:
22. Wanted to kiss me?:
23. Wanted to kill me?:
24. Broke my heart?:
25. Kept something important from me?:
26. Thought I was unbearably annoying?

AND MORE:
27. Who are you?
28. Are we friends?
29. When and how did we meet?
30. Describe me in one word:
31. What was your first impression?
32. Do you still think that way about me now?
33. What reminds you of me?
34. If you could give me anything what would it be?
35. How well do you know me?
36. When's the last time you saw me?
37. Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?
38. Are you gonna put this on yours to see what I say about you?

posted by kellyisdelightful @ 5:19 PM 5 comments

SO IT BEGINS

tomorrow it starts. the first of 5 AP tests. im nervous, excited, confident, and yet calm all at the same time. i know i know the material for calc. its just a matter of figuring out what to apply and how to apply it each question. i can do this. i can do this. i did fine on my practice test yesterday (71% right on multiple choice) and i finished with like 20 minutes left. there were only 3 i skipped and i later figured out that i was just doing som little tiny thing wrong. and out of the ones i missed, i missed like 75%+ because of arithmetic/algerbra errors. so i can do this. (deep breath). be the tree. be the tree. you are the tree. you can do this. you can do this.

i am going to kick this test's ass back to last wednesday.

posted by kellyisdelightful @ 7:48 PM 4 comments