English Class Never Disappoints

Okay so... the last time I posted an update about english class was when we had our foolish, fun class....

The next class after that, the teacher started talking about a cause and effect essay that we have to write as a requirement for the year. Now, most, actually all other classes will be choosing a novel or a piece of literature and be writing a novel on that. Not with our teacher! We watched the movie "Up", one of her FAVORITE movie... and honestly who doesn't like that movie? It is amazing!

Anyway, we watched up and wrote a cause and effect essay on that. We wrote our essays yesterday.

Today, we talked about visuals! Of course I was excited! We had a grand discussion on everything to do with visuals and more. As always, we talked about things that to others would have seemed off topic (in this case it was play dough, wallpaper, and a few others). At one point, when talking about conveying a certain feeling in visuals, she mentioned graphic design and fonts. Needless to say I had a lot of input on that one and she asked "What kind of fonts do graphic designers like Greg?".

There was actually a point to her question and apparently I didn't disappoint when I said "It depends, there are various ones," and continued, "If I wanted to convey elegance I would use a script font, if one wants to convey a certain era, one would use an old style serif" and there were also other things that I said. The teacher then used that to prove/make the point that font can have a certain emotion or feeling.

Also she told us what a student at an old school said to her when she was pregnant, she said it was one of the best lines ever!

She started telling us what he said and started saying it like he did...

"He said 'Miss, what ya want? a boy or a girl?' I said 'I don't know'. Then he said 'ya wants a boy' I said 'Oh?' then he said 'Yes, miss, ya wants a boy 'cause if ya get a boy ya only gotta worry about one ting, but if ya gets a girl, ya gotta worry about every boys ting!'"

We all lost it with laughter!

That was certainly quite the high point of my day!

Graphic Design

I have been putting my graphic designer's book on typography to good use! Here is an example

If anyone would like me to design a logo of any kind for them, such as a blog or anything, please let me know.

Hilarious Fun Day in English

First, I want to talk about how chapters night went last night. I was there for all four hours! I met up with so many friends and kept rotating between groups. The group of friends I was with most was the one with which I hang out every morning in school. They were manning the kids table so I helped. We had a grand time and some great laughs! The music was AMAZING! As always, of course. :)

While there, I bought an amazing book, I fell in love with it the moment I saw it! "Type Idea Index". It is a book on typography, which is the artistic element of type, and font in graphic design. It is the designer's ultimate tool for using type and font interestingly and creatively.

So I will have a lot of fun experimenting/playing with different elements and creating various designs with typography!!

Next, I will start out with how I ended my day in school today. Last period I had drama class. I was looking forward to having my group (and other groups) perform today. So were all in the classroom at first, as always. Also as always we then were moved to the theatre. Unlike normal, however, there were four or five people on stage. Turns out that they were in rehearsal and the theatre manager had booked them for rehearsal at 2:00 without notifying or discussing it with the drama teacher. We went back to the class, and had a well relaxing class. After he wrote an angry email because he was quite pissed... and SO WAS I!!! In fact, most of us were pissed, we were all looking forward to this, and then moving on to another project.

Now performances won't take place until Wednesday because there is a show in the theatre on Monday and Tuesday....

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Now I will end this post with the most amazing, hilarious English class ever. English was second period, and we had just finished the beautiful, important memoir, Night, because we wrote an essay on it yesterday. Knowing that our AWESOME teacher would have something random and fun planned to just have an extremely funny, awesome day after all of the really "heavy" classes we had.

When we went into the class, she had a bunch of words listed on the board. She sad it was a fun little game to see how people and if people are very good at listening. She told us to pick one of the words on the board, but not to say it. She also told us to stand up when we picked it. She then read a little story and when we heard our word we sat down. She said it is really fun because there are usually people still standing when the story is over, but she said all of the words on the board. No one in my class was left standing, and she was impressed, and got a kick out of that.

The hilariousness really began with the second game! She started talking about how people tend to remember things so much better when put in song. For whatever reason, melody helps people easily remember things. She basically said that to relate it to english because what she was getting us to do is to just be foolish and sing! They ended up being songs like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", and the "Sponge Bob" theme to top it all off!

When she said we would be singing a couple of people groaned as if to say "oh no! I don't wanna do that, I can't do that" etc. Our teacher noticed this. Her reaction is a big example of why she is so funny and awesome! She told them to stop it and that it would be fun.

Then she said "Okay, do you remember what it was like when you were three?".

Knowing that this was going somewhere funny every one was interested. She continued,

"Okay remember what it's like. You are three years old, and you are in the tub. You are singing at the top of your lungs, playing with the bubbles, and just having TONS of fun! Then, the bath is done, and the person bathing you puts up the towel to put it around you, and you say 'nope I'm not wearing that!' and then you jump out of the of the tub and start running around the house, singing. Then you grab the crayons and start drawing on the wall, and yell 'I AM THE BEST NAKED ARTIST WHO CAN SING EVER!'"

At this point we are all bursting out into laughter! It was so funny!

"and now you are sitting in english class and you say 'no, I can't draw and can't sing. I don't wanna do this!? Go back to how you were when you were three!"

It was really fun.

Lastly, she told us that we would be drawing, but it was another listening game. She told us that she was in a teachers workshop one day, and was really bore, so she wasn't paying attention, and then cam up with what we were going to do. It consisted of the letters Y, C, U, and W.

Step 1. Draw a big U in the middle of the page.

step 2. 2 dots near the top of the U for eyes.

step 3. Small Y on the bottom of the U on the inside.

step 4. 2 C's on the side of the U for ears. 1 will look like a C and the other a backwards C.

step 5. Draw a big cloud around the U.

step 6. 2 long, narrow W's below, and touching the bottom of the U for front legs.

step 7. smaller W's inside the longer ones.

step 8. Shade in the bottom of the W's for hooves.

What should have been made was a sheep, but some people messed up the steps and it was HILARIOUS! The teacher looked at everyone's and had a major laugh at the things some people had done, making hilarious comments! Then when she was done, she went to the bored to show how it should have looked (I had it right). She also showed some of the funny ones that some people did. When showing one the the funny mistakes she started laughing and explained it in the funniest way!

"Sheep have very spindly legs, and they are close together, but some of you had very slutty sheep" (she drew a sheep with widely spread legs on the board) "WOO! OPEN FOR BUSINESS!" Again we lost it with laughter!

It was the funniest class ever! :)

Salvador Dali Caricature

Salvador Dali is one of my favorite artists of all time! His surrealism is phenomenal!

I made this caricature of him as a bit of a tribute of his brilliant work a while ago.

Fun Day In Drama!

All I really want to talk about today is drama class.

We are still working on our scenes in our miniature production groups. Performances will happen tomorrow! Today, being the last day, the prof decided to have "dress rehearsals" in the theatre. None of the mini groups have costumes for this, so it meant we would perform it as we normally would. All groups other than mine have 4 people... my group has 5.

The roles in our mini production groups are actors, stage manager, and producer.

Since there are 5 people in my group, myself and one of the girls in my group share the producer duties. Our stage manager wasn't here today, so I acted as the producer, while the other producer acted as the stage manager. She went in the booth and operated the lights, while I stayed backstage.

As always I had to set up the set for the scene before ours started, right after the group before us had finished. After I did that, I went "on headset", which meant I was backstage with the headset on, and the girl operating the lights told me when to send out the actors. It was really cool!

I must have done it well because the teacher asked me to do it for another group because their producer wasn't there.

One last note: Chapters night is tonight and I am so excited! Chapters is a bookstore, and every year my school has a chapters night in which we have live musical entertainment by the students, and others go to watch! Also 15% of the purchase goes to the school if we present the chapters night bookmark.

I am always excited when my school does something like this because we are a bit of an arts school. There is A LOT of amazing talent at my school. In fact, our christmas variety show is so amazing and loved that we have people from other schools choosing to skip the last day before holiday at their school, and go to it!

Yeah, so I'm excited for tonight. :)

Cartoons from English Class

I haven't really had much time to post lately, and I don't have very much time to do so today, so here is a picture of the cartoons I drew in english as promised.

Thank a Tree...

This morning it was the regular off to school deal...

First today was Career... or should I say "Carrière"?

Yes. I take career in french...

Today I had to do a presentation in career, and it was well awful!!

It was not a pleasant experience at all.

Next it was on to english!!

Just like yesterday, we studied the memoir "night" which is a brilliant book, just rather depressing. On the bright side we finished it today, so now we have an exciting photography assignment in the near future! When I say "near future" I mean we will start it sometime next week probably.

Also, in english, I drew a random cartoon on the same piece of paper as I drew other cartoons on yesterday in english.

I WILL TRY TO POST A PICTURE OF THOSE CARTOONS VERY SOON!

Then in was communications technology, which as always was just me and Brittany amusing ourselves by playing on the computer.

After lunch I had earth systems! As always it was great!! The teacher somehow got on the topic of cellular respiration, when talking about the atmosphere. He stopped and asked "did you ever thank a tree?" Of course the response was no, and then he continued, "Oh man! You should, man. I always thank trees. I do it everyday after you guys leave. I say 'thank you, tree for giving me oxygen'"

So yeah, he was up too his amusing, odd antics as usual. :)

Last it was drama!!

It was well interesting! The theater arts class (not us) is putting on a production on friday, so when we went in the theater, the set was set up and everything. The teacher called all producers over to the "box" as everyone else rehearsed.

I am a producer, so obviously I went. It was so cool! He showed us how to operate the lights, and explained how the lighting guy would do it. When he was demonstrating he was changing the lights a lot, and going through them all. The window of the box was open so we heard zach (he is quite the character) call out "Sir, you're having a time with those lights!" That got a laugh out of everyone in the box including the teacher. Than he laughed and called back out to him "Zach, you're a knob!" We were rolling over in laughter!

That was probably the most interesting part of my day.

Bits and pieces: Interesting, fun stuff...

Well first today, I had english first period. I love english class, and I love my teacher!

Although I love the class and my teacher, unfortunately we are currently studying a very serious and dark novel.... So my funny class, and funny teacher, obviously are not so funny because anyone who turns a powerful memoir about the Holocaust, such as night, into a joking matter is... well... a prick.

However the teacher said we will have a "breather" tomorrow! In other words we will be doing something "light".

Next it was earth systems! as always it was a laugh, and also very interesting. The teacher was talking about filtration because we were doing artisan wells, and aquifers, aquicludes etc. He was talking bout how in order to filter water, the aquifer's pore space cannot be too big, or too small. He was giving an example of the pore space being to large, when out of nowhere he made an allusion to Bugs Bunny by singing "the pore space I got for christmas is too big" We were all laughing at that point!

Later, he was giving an example of contamination, and how to identify them and he mentioned the "hout ouse". People giggled a little at that, everyone knowing he was saying "out house". Then he grinned and said "Oh come on! Anyone from the Burin peninsula would have understood that".

Next it was on to drama!

On my way to drama I ran into my friend Emily, who noticed my hair cut that I got Sunday, for the first time. She said that she liked it, but that I should grow it back out to how it was because she loved it. I smiled and laughed "Don't worry, it does and will grow back you know". Then Julia, a friend from my drama class who was also heading to that class said came from behind us and said "YEAH! You should grow it back out, haha" She giggled. I said bye to Emily, and continued talking to Julia.

"You are a nut" I laughed.

"I know." she grinned.

"It's great though!" I said quite honestly!

"I KNOW"

We both laughed as we stepped into Drama class.

The class sat in the classroom for a few minutes, then we moved to the theatre. When in the theatre, we broke off into our groups, and started rehearsing.

In the last 10 minutes of class the teacher called us all to center stage. For the first time he did some voice exercises with us. We started with lip warm ups, then we moved to tongue twisters, then hard and soft sounds. I the hard and soft sounds He could hear some people not distinguishing them enough when we did hard sounds, so he decided to give a prime example to which we could all relate. "Okay, guys. You need to make it more evident. Take the k sound for example. When you are pissed, or frustrated, what do you say? 'fuck!'. You need to hear that sound that you make at the end. 'Fuck!'"

He repeated the example several times, and needless to say, quite a few people were laughing a bit. Then he had everyone laughing when he said. "I was talking about the french word for seal... You know; the french word for seal, phoque? Yeah, that's what I meant"

That was the end to a great morning, and was then time for lunch. At lunch I got some well needed help in math from a friend who is an absolute math wizard.

After lunch I had français and math... NOTHING interesting happened.

After school, as always on Tuesdays, I had skating (figure skating). It was fun as always.

Quick Filler

This is a bit of a filler post, but here you go! Haha!

This is an animation that I made a while ago. :) Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A21V9TLxzfo

Gay 14 Year Old Takes A Stand

Last month, Michigan high school teacher, Jay Mcdowell was Suspended when he sent a student out of class for making hateful comments towards gays.

Many people showed up at a school board meeting to support one. Among these people, was openly gay 14 year old, Graem Taylor. Graem Taylor made a truly inspiring speech to the school board. His words are truly amazing!

A video of his speech can be found here

It is the first video.

This is a must-watch video.

Graem Taylor is truly an inspiration.

Drama! :D

It was only a half day in school today! :D Therefore, we only had the morning classes.

First, I had earth systems, which as usual was great! My teacher is such a laugh! He gets so into his work, and is so passionate about earth science! It is so funny how he lives his life around earth science! For example, he went to Italy over the summer on vacation with his wife because she really wanted to go to Italy, and had dreamed about it for so long because it's so beautiful. My teacher has a map of all of the plate boundaries in the world, and when he goes on vacation he checks it to make sure he doesn't go to a place on a plate boundary.

He is terrified to go to any plate boundary because that is where there are the worst earthquakes, and often volcanos, so it is dangerous more or less. Of course, he was very reluctant but his wife talked him into going. It is so funny! He told us he was absolutely terrified because Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that destroyed Pompeii, was dormant, and according to geological time, it is due be erupt and become, active any minute!

When he was there he felt that he had to tell everyone that lived there who didn't know because they weren't geologists or scientists that it could happen, and basically just tell them "if you stay here you are all going to die"! He also told us that he would be out walking with his wife and say "look honey, that guy is planting flowers, that guy is painting his fence, that guy is renovating. they are wasting their time! What are you doing!? That volcano could erupt any minute and wipe out everything where you live completely! Why fix it up!?"

Hahaha, oh my it was so funny. He said that someone turned to him and said "really beautiful place, isn't it?" and he looked at him at replied "Yeah, it beautiful, but it's going to end"

All of this had us in knots of laughter!

That was just an examplpe of how much his life revolves around earth science. XD

Anyway...

The only other class I want to talk about is drama.

In drama, today, there were not many people there because a lot decided to pip off (skip class/school) that class. However, we are doing group production products, and it just so happened that it worked out to be two groups that were there.

The group production project is where we get into groups of 4, but my group has 5. Each member is a different role/job. One is a stage manager, one is a producer, and there are two actors. In my group since there are 5 people, there are two producers.

Originally we couldn't decide the roles between us, so our drama teacher assigned each of us the job he thought we would be best at doing. He made me and one of the girls in my group the producers. He specifically put me in charge of all artistic aspects of production. This means I will make the poster, props, set, etc. I would also be helping the other producer with everything else, and be taking on all other aspects of being a producer!

Well, today he worked on blocking with my group. Basically he was the director. The stage manager and producer sat next to him, and took notes, and helped him while he directed and worked on blocking with the actors. Our stage manager want there so the other producer acted as stage manager. She takes better notes than our stage manager anyway, so I think she is better suited for the job than he is.

We got a lot done, and it was great, he still needs to work with us more next day because we didn't get it finished.

Anyway during class, all of us had many random discussions, group discussions (including the teacher). If fact it would often be the teacher who started the discussion! XD

There is one in particular that I found interesting.

At one point he asked the class if anyone was a good singer. One person said that one of the people n the class could, and I said "I guess I am... Well, I have been told I am a really good singer by a lot of people, so I guess its true..."

Then he asked me "Can you read music?"

I told him yes, it has been a while, but I'm sure I still can.

"Oh ok,"

Then class continued.

At the end of class I asked him why he asked if anyone was a good singer and if I could read music. He told e it is because they (the school/him) are going to do a musical. When I asked what one, he told me he has it narrowed down to two choices. "God Spell" and "Into the Woods". He said they really needed talented guys for male roles, and that they are hard to find.

I was really interested in the fact that I haven't heard of either of those, so I told him that I haven't.

He told me to look them up and said "you seem like you are a really good researcher"

(he knows that because as producer, I went and found out what our whole play was about, to put the one scene we are doing in context, and help the others understand it)

He noted that there are "a lot of great, male roles in 'Into the Woods'"

So. I am kind of intrigued now! :D

... Even a little excited! :D

That was one of the best parts of my day, so far.

I can't wait to find out what those musicals are about! :D

Random Thought: Drawing Animals

Have you ever noticed the beauty of animals?

All have their own kind of beauty.

Many can even be considered a work of art all on their own!

This is what makes animals so great to draw or paint. It is quite interesting to capture that beauty in a picture!

Here are a some of my drawings of animals:

First Post/Bits and Pieces: GSA

Hey, folks. This is my first blog post!!

Welcome to my blog! :3

This blog will be full of a lot of random thoughts, and bits and pieces of my life.

Let's start with some "highlights" From my week.

On monday, it was same old, same old... In the morning I went to the third floor at school to hang out with my friends with whom I hang out every morning; my "morning group" XD

There is Olivia (Olivia M) who is probably my best friend in that group, Courtney, other Courtney XD, Molly, Another Olivia (other olivia) who I only met this year, but is quickly becoming a great friend, Ashley, and Alex, who is a decent friend but I am not as close to him as I want, and plan on becoming better friends with him.

The reason I want to become better friends with Alex is because he is a great guy for one! :) However, there is another reason... I feel kind of bad for him because I know he is gay, (most others think he is anyway) but he isn't open about it. Just to let you know, I know because I am friends with one of his ex boyfriends. I really feel bad for him, because he is such a great guy, and he can't be very happy hiding part of who he is, and not being able to openly pursue a desired relationship. I am thinking about just hanging out with him more and possibly telling him that I know one of his ex boyfriends and then inquire about it. However, first, I am going to try to get him to join the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA).

SPEAKING OF GSA:

It was just started in my school by a friend of mine, Julia. She is burnt! For those who don't know when I say "burnt" I mean she is a laugh and a half! She is so funny and so awesome! We had our first meeting on Tuesday. it was all the formal stuff so it was kind of "boring" according to her, but she says it will be way more fun! She was so funny though! For example, when the teacher who is our supervisor walked in, she commented on how she liked Julia's hair and laughed and said "IT'S HOT!" Then Julia said "Haha, miss is hitting on me! Be careful miss, Kelsey will fight you... she would win too". Then Kelsey, her girlfriend, jokingly shouted "YEAH! I WILL WIN TOO!" That had EVERYONE laughing!!

Oh one more thing. I love how at least half the people that were there (including myself) are straight! I find this good because it may help the straight homophobes hear the wake up call they so desperately need!

Lastly, nothing really interesting happened today... but on the bright side, I have a half day of school tomorrow and no school on friday, which may lead to fun times! :D

Well, that concludes my first post!

I can't wait to see how this whole blog thing goes... :)