When Pigs Fly...

A whole post on colloquialism. Lucky you! Have you ever noticed the stupid things we say? Not we as in my friends and I, we as in the human race. The whole human race, that is. Not just Americans. Not just Spaniards. Not just people from Norway. Everyone! In no way am I deprecating this behavior (nor do I aim to terminate this all but surreptitious behavior). I am merely noting its overt presence in our busy lives.Ponder for a moment why we might use these expressions...They're usually extremely colorful or imaginative. They paint a picture that. They half-satiate a unquenchable craving, an instinct almost, for adventure. It's simply blissful perfidy in a cruel world...

Some colloquial expressions you have probably heard in everyday speech:

I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!

Could you now? Really? A horse? For breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? Do tell.

I'm just pulling your leg.

In Spanish, this phrase is "I'm just taking your hair." Go figure.

This comes from old crime-ridden London where criminals used to trip victims with a wire that pulled on the victim's leg so they could steal from the person while he was on the floor.

Not the sharpest crayon in the box, are we now?

I have yet to say this to someone...I love this expression though

Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.

The most polite way of saying you're wasting my food. And the very opposite of "you're fat."

You eat like a bird.

My sister gets this a lot. Me, not so much...

Hold your horses!

What's with the horses?

You're driving me up a wall!

I got this from my mom a lot when I was younger.

He's lost his marbles.

...and where have they gone?

What's the matter, cat got your tongue?

Ouch. That sounds painful.

Just like two peas in a pod.

You can be eaten? Oh, never mind.

Look what the cat dragged in.

Dude, I think she just called you a mouse!

and to end it off...

Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite!

This one actually came from the 1800s when beds were made out of hay and little insects called bed bugs crawled around in the hay and sucked people's blood when they slept. Hope your not reading this before bed!

Anyway, to fix this dilemma and force the human race to cede this cryptic language, I prescribe a large dose of do-absolutely-nothing. Why suggest a moratorium on something that makes our day-to-day life more ebullient? Don't you think they add a little zest to our monotonous routines? I mean, heck, they make us happy as clams! (By the way, clams spend their whole life under sandy muck only to be dug up by human beings and boiled alive. Remind me, if you will,

why clams are so happy?)

**websites used in this post:

http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/phrase-finder/phrase66

Would you rather...

Hot or cold? Soup or ice cream? Heat or AC?

There's always a choice between winter or summer where we live. But what about places that are one season practically all

year round? And what about those cynical people who claim they would be happiest if they lived in Florida or Vermont?

How dare they say such a thing!! Don't they know how many people would love to live in a place with more than one season? Nevertheless, four seasons?! How do they know they won't get tired of the same weather day after day after day?! Be gone with them!

I'm totally kidding, folks, I am one of those people. Were you credulous enough to believe I would discriminate against people who have a predilection for one season over the others? Do you really think that would be of paramount importance to me? That I would want to eradicate those who love one season in particular?

Call me aloof if you will but personally I know I would be happier if it snowed almost every day of the year. I prefer winter. Although I'm always castigated by summer-lovers, I am stoic in front of nay-sayers. Avoiding superciliousness, I make my arguments clear to people who dismiss me as unhinged. Wary of cajoling summer-lovers, I stand by my quixotic belief that I would be in a complete state of bliss...in Alaska.

My preference for winter primarily stems from my infatuation with snow. Yes. Infatuation. I. Love.

Snow. I can't get enough of it! The way the trees look right after the snow falls, the way each snowflake is different from every other snowflake, the crisp, fresh smell of the air right after it snows, the noiseless sound of a gentle snowfall. I love everything about it.

But that's not all.

Even when it isn't snowing, I still love winter. Meandering through the park on a cold Sunday in January really clears the inane, superfluous thoughts from my head. Although spring might provide the opportune weather for a bike ride and fall the ideal time for pumpkin picking, nothing beats a cold walk in the park with the dog.

Besides snow and weather and the obvious aspects associated with winter, there's one more thing that makes winter special. Holidays.

Christmas, Hanukah, kwanzaa, ramadan, winter solstice, whatever it may be, holidays are the best winter events. Forget the winter Olympics, ignore the snow tubing, and put aside the hot cocoa (although that stuff's heartwarming too). Winter holidays bring together families and let's remember what's important here: friends and family and celebrating all the good times in life, whether they be big or small. Winter holidays, no matter which one(s) you celebrate, bring family and friends together in the warmest of environments (double entendre intended).

So whether you are convinced I am a behemoth for loving winter, you've heard my reasons and probably found my argumentative flaws.

Now, I leave you to decide: winter? Summer? Vermont? Florida? Or plain ol' Jersey?

A Short One

A sycophant, according to Dictionary.com, is a self-seeking, servile flatterer; fawning parasite. Sycophants can be found guilty of brown-nosing and being a goody-two shoes. But can we really blame them? We all have needs and we all have wants so why deride those who try to go get what they want? After all, in order to exonerate sycophants of their many crimes (yes, we forgive them or else the world would cease to turn), we have to realize that all humans are born with a selfish instinct! This doesn't make us capricious, mind you, just sycophants...
And technically, if we're all born selfish and evil, aren't we all sycophants? Some may be flamboyant ones, and others may be closet sycophants but we are certainly all sycophants.
Hey, Mrs. Abrams, you look quite nice today!

Turkeys

Yes. I said turkeys. My neighbor has a turkey and it's quite a remarkable animal. The ethereal birds have beguiling prominence and charm anyone who dares to keep them as pets (even if they can be quite more capricious than a more normal pet, let's say a rabbit...). Here's the story:

My neighbors, whom my family is very close with, love animals. They have had anything from fish and rabbits to snakes and degus! [Please don't excoriate this family, they are really wonderfully normal people]. Anyway, as you can see, they are extremely outdoorsy and love to go camping.
One fine day, while they were out at their lake house in New York (I believe), they found a small saturnine poult (baby turkey). As soon as they went to pick it up, the turkey became distressed--it started to cluck and gobble! Implacable as it may have seemed when they picked it up, they eventually calmed it down and looked everywhere for the mother but the mother was nowhere to be found...
Poor turkey; it must have reached the nadir of its life, it lost its mama! So what did my neighbors do?
By golly, they took it home! They have been taking care of it for many months now and it doesn't seem to have any social stigmas. In fact, just the opposite: the turkey is quite personable!
And I don't mean to allay any qualms about this little unconventional act, but I think it's just fine to have a turkey for a pet!

Tumblr

Almost everyone at PV has one. Or at least everyone in the class of 2011 has one. A tumblr. Similar to blogger, Tumblr is a blogging website that is simple to use and, when used correctly, can make certain people socially burgeon. Most people use Tumblr because it is unblocked on school computers. However, some people who are normally extremely social in the "real world" become hermits when it comes to Tumblr. Most coalesce their social "real life" and their social "Tumblr life" but a select few become engrossed in their ephemeral social life (because, after all, a Tumblr can be deleted.

Sometimes, the most garrulous people make the best Tumblr posts but other times they make the most invidious posts. However, no matter the quality of the Tumblr, their blog gets them talking about their most passionate ideas and thoughts. Even the most amorphous people seem to adapt to the social animal called Tumblr!

So my question is, when will it stop? When it come to a point where PV computer police (aka Pico) will notice our little ruse of "blogging" and usurp Tumblr? Does our Tumblr sortie post a significant danger to the socially advanced (or, for that matter, the socially inept)? Will it ever come to that point? I'm sure PV hopes otherwise. Will PV students succumb to the powers of the administration or will we merely shake off the allegations that Tumblr is detrimental to our health?! WILL WE REBEL.

Anyway, whoever is following me, leave comments...

...

Work for home, work for school, work for home, work for school...

Ugh. Homework. I know, I know, everyone has too much homework. But this week has been especially busy. And, consequently, this blog has been in temporary abeyance. So much work, in fact, that it has precluded my ability to blog! Oh me oh my. Anyhoo. This brings me to the topic today: Homework or no homework? [That is the question]...

So as I ignore my qualmish feeling (I'm not sure how my English teacher will react to this blog post), I shall continue. As a High School Student, I spend seven hours in school, working my donkey off--let's keep this PG, folks--and then return home (after a minimum of two hours extra curricular events) to do what now? MORE WORK. And, as most of you have already figured out, junior year is especially bad.

Between the standardized tests and the homework, I'm surprised some of us (cough cough Caylin) haven't dropped out of school! I'm not sure if the teachers assume everyone has a complacent demeanor but I think we should rebel!

[on second thought, this post is getting graded by my English teacher, soooo...just kidding!]

Well, I'm getting sidetracked. Anyhoo, I believe that seven hours of school is sufficient enough. And I also think homework should be optional. Yes, optional. Honestly, I'm quite chary of this three to four hour homework ordeal. Every night, day after day, night after night. And unless the teachers have somehow commandeered every student of theirs, making them part of a giant minion, teachers don't have control over us! And I could be very wrong, but I DO NOT think giving more homework makes certain teachers far more gregarious than others, correct?

IF--and I mean a capital IF--we didn't have to do homework, not only would our overall mood improve, we would be more focused as well. We would get more sleep and be more focused in class. Not only that, but our character would improve. I, for one, haven't had time to play guitar on a weeknight for about two months now. And that dates back to...the day school started!

If we're supposed to go through the labyrinth of life without a hobby, what life are we living? Shouldn't we all be PV's eminent students by being focused and well-rounded? Are we being complete antipodes of well-rounded students by only doing homework after school? Isn't that they're teaching us kids nowadays? If not, I will assume the educational system hasn't evolved since the narrow-minded approach of learning trades and joining guilds...

And here's the final question: Homework or no homework?

PSAT: palpably stupid [and] abnormally tasteless

The PSATs. Possibly the least halcyon test of our teenage youth (next to the SATs, of course). Although I don't mean to exhort an inordinate amount of complaints from the students of PV, I don't understand why we must take this test. It only exacerbates the stress thrown upon the students in this school. And, although I don't mean to impede on the grand educational strategy of this government, the PSATs only serve to emulate the SATs. Therefore, why take both? Students can practice on their own time with their own tutors. This raises another concern; if this test really holds some sort of implicit message (hinting at the fact that to do well on the test, students must be tutored), is the SAT really a test?

^This is probably what you look like right now.

...well, not exactly, but...

Bear with me for a moment. The definition of a test, one would say, is "a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something, esp. before it is taken into widespread use" (as stated by the standard dictionary on the Apple MacBook laptops). This being true, isn't this test supposed to analyze how well a student will perform in the real world? I suddenly feel imbued with a revelation...

This being said, I believe wholeheartedly that this SAT, the mother of all tests, [and the PSAT] should do just that: analyze how well a student will perform in the real world. Maybe it should test street smarts as well as school skills--the point being that the SATs should not test how well one takes a test. This is a common criticism of the SATs).
Forgive me if I appear to be lacking any chauvinism for the educational standards but I believe, along with many others, that these tests should not test how one takes a test. And although I may not have known what enigmatic word halcyon meant when I took the PSATs, I sure do now, but not because of living in the "real" world. Rather, I know what halcyon means because of a test. Because, apparently, according to the SAT makers and the folks at collegeboard, halcyon is a common word used in everyday speech...are you a halycon person?