Ginger

     So, I think that I have concluded why people in South East Asia are so good at keeping their cool and being hardened to violence and such, and it's not due to the near-constant conflict for the last 70 years. It's because of their candy!

     So,  I'm not sure if you've ever eaten pure ginger, I hope you have, because it's pretty tasty. That said, it is more spicy than most hot sauces I come in contact with. (Dave's Insanity Excluded) It is really hot if you eat it straight. Now, think about replacing your snickers with Ginger. I realize that there are hot tamales, but they haven't got jack on pure ginger. This stuff is coated with confectioner's sugar, but is just ginger, and it is intense. And it's a whole lot better, albeit less filling, than your snickers bar.

     Also it makes for a superb cure for nausea and colds!

Finished!

Here's some pictures, for lack of better words. Although I am a bit disappointed that I didn't take a picture of it before, for comparison.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

     Today was super fantastic! I was initially going to post some nonsense about my opinions and ruminations about names, but today sure took that plan and smashed it into a rock!

     After school today, I took the bus back to my house, and was able to hang out, since I did my homework for tonight last night! (Wacky Huh!) This put me in a situation where I was hanging out with my friend Hunter. We were walking around the neighborhood, when we saw a massive pile of trash. And us, being the gutter-children we are, went to check it out. And it wasn't nasty food garbage or anything! It was the contents of someone's basement, thrown out in cardboard boxes on the absence of a curb. We began to dig through it, but it was mostly the stuff that one would find in their grandmother's living room, minus the candy of course. There were old books, sewing thread, and tiny bottles of perfume. But, as we moved on, the stuff got more interesting, if only a little bit. There was a VHS chest, a lamp, doorknobs, antique hairdryers, and more, then I saw the corner of a guitar! I nearly threw the box on top of it into the street and pulled the guitar out. It was beautiful, a blonde finish acoustic guitar with dark brown fretboard and a maroon pick guard, but it was in two pieces. The neck wasn't attached to the body where it should've been at all. The only thing that held it to the body was the six rusted strings and a black nylon strap. I carried it home in one hand, holding the neck and the sound hole to each other, trying to avoid running the strap along the ground.
      I got home, and destrung the guitar, finally separating the neck and the body. I looked over it meticulously, and got an idea of the shape it was in. The fretboard was coming off, a huge crack ran through the neck, and the body panels were popping out in a few places, but none of that is beyond my ability, I hope. I took the neck to my basement, and poured wood glue into the cracks, and clamped it with all the Qwik-Clamps I could find, and a few slow clamps. Then, while in clamps, I got a toothbrush, put some 3 in 1 Oil on it, and started scrubbing away at the tuning pegs, which were clad in rust. Rust gone, I took that toothbrush and scrubbed the fretboard clean, then put some walnut stain on. The stain and the glue are drying, and the body is full of rosemary because it smelled funny. Tomorrow, I'll work on the body, and Friday, I will reunite the two.
     So if you come by and see a sad-looking guitar in my room, keep in mind its a rescue.

Not only did I wake up earlier than I do on weekdays, but I woke up to Patti Smith's "Wave", which was honestly one of the most terrifying moments of my life.

Maybe the man who blacks out New York just wanted to see the stars.

Going to sleep listening to John Willliam's greatest hits. Needless to say, my Star Wars/Indiana Jones/Jurassic Park/etc. Dreams will be the best of all time.

Time is a Fickle Temptress

     Well, first off, some horrible, good-for noting asshole drew a pirate ship battle on the Biology desks. I mean, what kind of careless person would so willingly deface school property like that? My goodness. Oh, wait...






Anyway, time is a slippery thing. It's a fundamental unit of daily life, that not only we constructed ways to measure, but also proved to be relative. And there's always too much when you don't need it, and never enough when you do. Every day I spend all of first and second periods counting the minutes until lunch, then fourth and fifth counting down until the end of the day, but lunch and my afternoon both disappear in the blink of an eye. Not just school either, I'm counting the days, with a fervor usually reserved for the end of a prison sentence, until this weekend, where there will be not just one, but two dances! But I know that those dances will be excruciatingly short, just like the last one I was at (complicated by the fact that y watch stopped an hour in.). But I suppose that you've just got to embrace the good times and enjoy them to their full extent, and take the tedious ones with a grain of salt, and continue looking for a good middle ground.

And that's why I wear a smiley face watch.