2/9/12: Subject Delta

In honor of the two year anniversary of BioShock 2.

Today was a much-needed day off. It seemed that as soon as the bright sunshine had left and everything was dark and gloomy again, school went back to its normal dreadful self. Math was confusing again, CJ had a lot of busywork and a difficult amendment, and Anatomy was the same as it usually was.

In CJ we started talking about the Second Amendment. Right to bear arms. One of my books quoted another author who basically said that the Second Amendment was one of the worst written in history, and many arguments are about whether it has stood the test of time. I don't really have an opinion on it, though I wish there was more middle ground. I understand owning a gun for protection of your home and family, but what if your kid gets a hold of it? And if there's too much protection, how will we defend ourselves? I just don't really like the subject and a lot of the laws and issues surrounding it are confusing and hard to follow. Heck, up until 2008, the Supreme Court never even touched a case involving gun control. And the right to own a gun for protection only passed by a 5-4 margin. That's pretty crazy. We'll be debating on it tomorrow, and I'm on the "Yes" side as to whether people should be allowed to own guns for protection. For once I think it'll be a real debate as, like I said, gun control is obviously something people are really split on so there'll be a lot of differing opinions.

In Math, we're back to doing story problems. I hate this book, hate it. Why does it feel the need to have a story problem chapter every section? When you're dealing with complex equations, math doesn't totally match up with words! The stories are also so out there and convoluted. To make matters worse, this chapter, for some reason, decided to introduce some geometry into the mix. I haven't done geometry since tenth grade! This chapter was just ridiculous and everyone was stuck on it. The teacher kinda lectured us about how because none of us understood what to do we would be losing a day to go over it again. Then he decided to make it due Friday to make sure we actually did it. As of this entry I haven't finished it, but I've done what I can. I'm tempted to get some tutoring after school, but the parts I'm stuck on are the geometry questions and I can't see the teacher testing us on that.

At the beginning of class, when he was reminding us that Thursday was a day off, I told him that no one was going to be at school on Friday due to wanting a four day weekend and he suddenly realized that himself and told the class it was vital we showed up on Friday. Hence why he made the assignment due then rather than before the next quiz. He also told us there would be extra credit in it for us, and jokingly added that there would also be cookies. Someone in the back row actually volunteered to bring cookies. So, I guess I have a reason to go to Math tomorrow even though I was planning to go anyways.

I stayed up late last night and goofed around a little, enjoying the fact I had a day off the next day.

Sadly, when the day off rolled around, I woke up to discover that my nose was badly plugged and that my sister had also decided to take the day off. So much for being alone and well. As the day progressed, my sniffles got worse until I was outright having sneezing fits. Really sucked. I'm still not sure if it was just hay fever or the beginning of a cold, but I guess I'll see when I wake up tomorrow.

I didn't do much today, just hung out. I had a pretty heavy session of Assassin's Creed then spent the rest of my time working on homework and messing around with my sister. Towards the end of the day my mom had mail for me, which I was honestly surprised about. It said it came from California and it felt like candy so I assumed my grandma had sent it to me like she does sometimes during her travels. But lo and behold, it was an Axel chakram necklace! And it was completely awesome. I guessed it had been from Crim as he mentioned an "early birthday prsent" but when he showed me a video of him singing Ignorance is Bliss I just assumed that was what he meant. This was an incredibly pleasant surprise! I had intended to get a Kingdom Hearts necklace of my own, but aside from the Roxas emblem that I sent Crim, a lot of them seemed a little girly to wear. Cool if you know what the necklaces are representing, but to a normal person a guy wearing a key might look... strange. The Heartless one was the one I had wanted a little, but for the same reason before I really wasn't sure. I didn't even know there was an Axel one! I put it on immediately as soon as I got it open and intend to wear it from now on. Thanks Crim!

Fun fact, I used to wear a ring held by a chain back in my early high school days. I found the ring one day in the locker room and kept it as a sort of good luck charm. I know, someone may have been looking for it, but karma got me back later when, one day towards the end of my Freshman year, I forgot to get it from either my PE locker or one of my desks and it was gone when I went back to check. I really liked wearing it too and I really did consider it to be lucky, so I figured that with it gone I had used up the luck it had granted me and moved on to someone else. Yeah, I was a funny kid.

I think I mentioned Assassin's Creed before, right? Yeah, I did. Well, the game is going well. I'm playing similarly to how I played in Brotherhood in that I'm renovating all the shops around as soon as the bank gets more money ready for me. That's every 20 minutes in real time. You pretty much have to play that way otherwise there'll be a lot of waiting around at the end of the game and not a whole lot of money circulating. I think it's an interesting system, though I don't really like that renovating places raises your notoriety with the Templars in this game. Wasn't like that in Brotherhood and it's rather annoying. Now I'm constantly visiting heralds and bribing them to lower notoriety. Also, the wanted posters you could yank down in the previous games are gone in this one for some reason. Sad.

There's a new part of the game where you relive one of the main characters' pasts through an odd Portal-esque minigame. Basically, you're in first-person view and place gravity defying blocks around to walk on. You can stack them to make stairs or just make a pathway through a gap. It's rather unique. For some reason it also reminds me of one of the old Windows screen savers where the screen goes through a brick maze. Anyone remember that or am I showing my age?

Anyways, I think I hit all the important points from the last couple of days. I wish it wasn't raining, though it feels different. It's hard to explain, but it reminds me of early spring and the prospect of school nearing its end just around the corner. A melancholic sense of finality.

Lightning's Theme ~ Blinded by Light - Final Fantasy XIII Piano Collections