It was a lot of snap decisions...

Dwight: I don't understand, why would you buy a policy?


Michael: It's just the cost of a cup of coffee an hour.


Andy: You were man enough to back down Michael, I'm proud of you.


Michael: I had to make a snap decision Dwight.




Dwight: It wasn't a snap decision, you were sitting there for an hour.

A Quote

This is a quote by James Garfield. Just to warn you, it is very likely that this will be used in some sort of speech next year during school... It is one of my all-time favorite quotes. Also, I made this graphic (-yay me, I know).

A Nice Blog

So... as I am sitting here trying to figure out what to blog about, my thoughts turn to Monday and Tuesday -- our last two full days of school as Juniors.

What will these two days bring? Hmm... There is this show in Terre Haute that I want to go to on Monday. I don't quite know how to get there though.... Maybe I will drive around the Haute for an hour while trying to find Ash Street.. Yeah, it would be nice to miss the first hour of the show. OH! And then I could go to Subway with the wonderful Jenna Jackley. (Maybe that would be ackward.) Yes! Perhaps, Rachel could call me right as I am talking with Jenna Jackley. It's not as though I'm hanging with the most awesome person in the world... Oh well.. you never know.

Then on Tuesday, it would be awesome if my great friend Rachel graded my blog. Yes, this does need grading. Hmm.. Yes..

And then on to finals... x_x

Mayfete 2010

So, I would just like to share one of the most amazing experiences of my life with you. For one thing, May Fete is the most amazing/ weirdest tradition ever. I had the awesome privilege of singing the dedication song to the senior girls. I put a lot of work into it: picking the song, organizing practices, learning my part, making it cool... But, I still feel like I did nothing compared to how much all of the dancers and crew worked.

Anyway, It was hard not to let it slip. I took several precautions against letting them know anything about it: not telling Maureen when she straight up asked me, continuously coming up with rediculous info. and telling all of the seniors constantly, posting fake songs on facebook, pretending I wasn't busy Thursday night, going to classes on Friday.... etc., etc.

The look on the senior girls' faces was priceless and made me feel so amazing. It made me feel so happy and I am still kind of riding on that high.. And isn't this a cool pic.? XD [peace]

Grammar Police - Donald Trump Edition

So, the celebrity apprentice...... I watched a couple episodes but, after my former governor Blagojevich got fired, I lost interest. (People said they couldn't believe how dumb he was, but I thought he was really funny.)

Anyway, I watched just the boardroom last week and now, I am going to stop talking about the show and start talking about grammar. Cyndi Lauper said that she couldn't say who to fire from the other team because she felt bad. To which Donald replied, "badly". And Cyndi is all like, "oh yeah, badly. I feel badly."

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! DONALD!

"Badly" is like qualitative or something. (I'm still young on my journey of grammar policism.) If you feel badly, you are bad at feeling -- kind of like being bad at golf. You say, "I feel awful", not "I feel awfully". Maybe you feel awfully bad. (?) Likewise, it's "horrible" not "horribly".

Mr. Trump, please stick to business and leave grammar alone. Ease up, you know, "girls just wanna have fun."

Good Ideas - Volume 1

So, I like to start new features in my blog all the time. This one is called 'good ideas' where I will post fun, positive, spontaneous ideas that I think are.... good.

The Twister Binder

I think that my amazing graphic design skills say it all. Do you have an old twister board lying around? Poke a hole in a binder, shove the board into the plastic covering, insert spinny-thing and.... Voila! You have a twister binder. When faced with a dull moment (such as an awkward silence) simply spin the spinner and whatever color it lands on, everyone around you has to touch something that color! INSTANT FUN!!!

DJ Roomba

This one comes to us from an awesomely funny TV show, Parks and Recreation. Also pretty simple: put an iHome on a roomba and then it's like a robot cleans your house for you while blasting out the jams of the Black Eyed Peas. If I had roomba or an iHome, I would totally do this. I think it could catch on...

If we didn't have this committe, we couldn't come up with good ideas like Jim's.

Charles Miner: What is a two way petting zoo?

Jim: You pet the animals, they pet you back.

Micheal Scott: It's a great idea.

t3xtng =]

(>'-')><('-'<) (>'-')><('-'<)(>'-')><('-'<)(>'-')><('-'<)(>'-')><('-'<)(>'-')><('-'<)

So, some quick thoughts on texting. I'm going to: (1) try to be brief, (2) try to make sense, and (3) try to provoke some serious itrospection and such.

Does texting make you feel more connected to people?

Have you ever considered how your relationships are different with or without texting?
-- How deep, interesting, fun they are/were?

When was the last time you spent an evening with someone? Just one person?
When there are five people eating together and someone is texting someone who is 200 miles away, is that person more connected or less?

I think that it is important for people to be connected to each other, yeah, but it is also important for people to be alone sometimes.
Balance? Contrast?


I'll maybe go more into detail about this l8r. (: I know that this philosophy pretty much works for me. I forget my phone in different places all the time. Sometimes, it's nice. (My phone also has a pretty sweet 'hackey sack' function, but that's another story.) I'm interested to know your thoughts. I'll go into detail,I guess, in the comments.

A note to Juniors....

So, for starters, I'd like to say that I really should (and probably will) repost this blog next year sometime. I (Drew Harper) want to talk to you (my fellow Juniors) about drama next year.

I suppose I will try and cut to the main point and that is *drumroll* that this year's play (Once Upon a Mattress) was extrordinarily awesome. Everything came together (a lot quicker than last year), everyone did their best, sets were awesome, music was awesome, leads were awesome, understudies were awesome, everyone else was awesome. It wasn't perfect, but it was awesome.

I think that, next year, it will be hard to beat this year's play. But I want to try. I want us all to put our best out there and throw just a little effort into it.

One of the things Mr. Lynch told us about why he thought this year's was so good was that there was virtually no drama over who-got-what-part. The seniors supported each other... and I thought the casting was great. We need to eliminate casting drama next year. This will help everything go a lot smoother.

Lastly, senior leadership does not and never has meant "yell at kids that are talking". We all know how annoying this is. I think that it is awesome for an underclassmen to pay $5o to be in play,hardly ever get to be on stage, and still put up with the rediculous, time-consuming practices. When there is tons of dead space in practices because things haven't been planned well, I don't think it is appropriate to yell at people. That is not leadership. Lead by example. Be quiet when you need to be and calmly tell people to be quiet when they need to be. Yelling wastes more time and causes more drama.

So yeah, those are my thoughts. Next year will rock.

New York -- more thoughts from sociology.

So I am planning on blogging more about my great grandmother. Hopefully blogs on most of my family will come. Anyway, my great-grandma currently lives in a nursing home. She has told me all kinds of stories about how life was in Paris many years ago...


My grandma began high school when she was 11 in 1930 and graduated when she was 15. Once when eating with her at the nursing home, she told me about a man she knows who lives in the same nursing home. He, his wife, another married couple, and my great-grandma carpooled to New York city together when my grandma was 17. At least I think that's what I remember her saying. The man in the nursing home now has no idea who my grandma is.



Now, for some sociology: do you ever think that people in old pictures look older than they should be? I mean, looking through old yearbooks, don't you think that people appear older? Did they act older? Was it just because of how they dressed and cared for themselves? Did their more difficut lives force them to grow up quickly?. .



I am the same age that my grandma was when she took a road trip to New York eighty-three years ago. She split the cost of the trip with her friends and the entire, one-week trip cost her $19. This summer I am going to New York with over fifty of my friends. The trip is carefully fund-raised, carefully planned, and carefully supervised. I am paying much more than $19 to go too.



Would my parents let me drive to New York with five of my friends? Would yours? hmm... When I go to New York this summer, I will be thinking about how times have changed. I will also take my grandma's advice: "You can't work all the time. Make sure you have some fun."

CD review: Almost Alice

Ok. I did it. I bought the soundtrack to Alice in Wonderland.

So, for this review, let's start with packaging. The cover features the Mad Hatter who is arguably the movie's most interesting character. So at least I have a cool picture of Johnny Depp. And the script on the hat just 'almost' fits with the picture. Hastily done maybe??
The pictures on the inside of the booklet are pretty cool. A lot of retro 'Alice' stuff and other than that, just band pictures taken from old shoots. Cool? yes. Original? no. Rushed? probably.

Packaging - 2.5/5

Then there's the music. I picked this up mainly for two reasons: (1) the intensely awesome Avril Lavigne song "Alice" that plays at the end of the movie, and (2) the star-filled line-up of musicians featured including Owl City, 3Oh!3, Plain White Tees, Metro Station, and Shinedown. This is where I got disappointed. The first track "Alice" does stand out as a truly amazing song. The second track, All-American Rejects' "Poison", begins well but then b-sections in to a completely different, not-so-good song. I was hopeful for Owl City, but their song was a re-release from a previous album. Most of the other songs are Alice-themed throw togethers that seem to have little depth.

Music - 3/5

Verdict - Listen and judge for yourself online. Download "Alice" but leave the Mad Hatter on the shelf.

What do we do that is longer than life?

You have, no doubt, heard the phrase, "life is short."

Maybe, you have questioned whether or not this is true, maybe, you haven't.

You might wonder what is out there that lasts longer than life.

So, I will try to give a few simple answers.

One thing that is very obvious to me is tradition. Counless traditions date back far before most of us were born. When my great-grandma was moving out of her house, I found some of her high school yearbooks and looked through them. It was amazing to see Paris High School in the 1930s. There were three sports (football, basketball, and track), school plays, a relatively new building(lol), and May Fete. The picture at the beginning of this blog is actually an eary May-Fete celebration. (Although not from Paris.) My great-grandma tells me the story of how when she was giving birth to my grandpa, her little sister was mad because she had to miss her senior May Fete.

Take a second to think about how the things that you do in school were done years ago by people your age who are now dead.

It's strange isn't it?

Another thing that lasts longer than life is architecture. This past summer I helped my grandpa build on to his new house. I learned a lot from this experience and I know that the house I built will stand on this earth longer than I will. It really is something to think about. Or, maybe I am just an architecture freak...

And a more abstract answer, (but not really): Faith, hope, and love. Anything that you do in this life that involves faith, hope, or love will not be lost. Your influence on others travels much farther than you ever will.

And now, these three remain.

A Random Story

^^Your unrelated caption for this post^^

So, I used to be friends with this girl who decided to make up her own dialect. She insisted upon pronouncing every "ag" sound -- like in "agriculture" -- as "ig" -- as in "big". For her, this transformed the word "bag" into "big", "flag" into "flig" and "dragon" into "drigon". I will never forget when she was trying to understand 'see you at the pole'. After explaining to her what it was, she said, "oh, the flig pole." She also believed that since some people pronounce "wash" as "worsh", then every water-related word should also be pronounced this way. Worter. The worter fountain. The worshing machine. George Worshington. Worter bottle.

She was crazy, loud, random, air-head-ish, and she fell a lot.

Now, she is a Junior in High School who almost already has sophomore status in college. Moral: don't underestimate people; don't misjudge. You never know who will end up to be what. Believe in yourself. Don't let people tell you that the things you say are weird.

Featured Artist - Johannah Swank

Johannah Swank is one of my all time favorite indie artists. I have seen her live at the Lifehouse twice. (Hopefully, I will see her more.) She plays thougthful, acoustic songs that are usually very short. Her super high voice instantly grabs your attention and her amazing voice control and head voice will provide instant goose-bumps. Johannah Swank is very likable on stage also. Making a minor mistake she will comment, "I don't do many shows, I just play in my room." I ordered her 17 track CD called "Songs from School". It arrived wrapped in a brown paper lunch bag with no album art and a hand-written track listing. You can check her out here:http://www.myspace.com/johannahswank. Peace.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Jim Halpert: Question. What kind of bear is best?

Dwight Schrute: That's a ridiculous question.

Jim Halpert: False. Black bear.

Dwight Schrute: That's debatable. There are basically two schools of thought--

Jim Halpert: Fact. Bears eat beets. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.

Dwight Schrute: Bears do not... What is going on?! What are you doing?!

The three words that describe Dwight's life.

These are some of the coolest people that I know.

So here's my Winter Carnival group. It's not everyone because some people were shoe shopping or whatever in other places. I think it's about half maybe.. Anyway, we ate it up at the food court. -- A bunch of people stared at us because we were all dressed up, but that's okay with me because my friends and I --you know-- we turn heads.

Did you know that you aren't supposed to walk around in the mall in groups of more than five??

And in Macy's, you aren't allowed to take pictures. What's the deal with that???

Oh well good times, good times. I am so thankful for all of my friends, no matter who you are.

I also really like to dance. Peace out, keep it real, and dance or die.

Grief Therepy

“When my mother was pregnant with me, they did an ultrasound and found she was having twins. When they did another ultrasound a few weeks later, they discovered that I had reabsorbed the other fetus. Do I regret this? No, I believe his tissue has made me stronger. I now have the strength of a grown man and a little baby.”

Math, blogging and scholastic bowl.

For the record, this caption has nothing to do with the picture. Neither does it have anything to do with this blog.



Most of the time when I blog, I do it about something that really just comes to me. I feel like if I have to think about it and force an idea out, then it is not worth writing. This one has been in the back of my head for about a year. It started with Mr. Thomas' algebra II class.



When I started his class, he had just been to some seminar about teaching methods. His class was a wild ride between optional homework(eventually ended), getting an 'A' if you got an 'A' on every test, getting tardies for not doing homework, tardies for sleeping in class -- just a random mess of stuff. The rules changed a lot and most of the algebra we learned, I learned in Algabra I....

This brings me to my next point -- scholastic bowl. In scholastic bowl there are a bunch of math questions. Algebra, Geometry, Trig. -- you name it. There was a time when I was good at math, advanced, one might say. But that time is no more. I have to force myself not to try at math questions on scholastic bowl. You have to actually know how to do math for scholastic bowl. That is something that my last 2 years of math classes haven't taught me. I just do what I can to get by. (:

I am not really complaining, though. I don't really want to learn math. I pretty much know what I am going to do in college and, math is not a big part of my future. I even dropped college algebra/trig. for my senior year. It has been nicely replaced with theater I and II. (:

It would, however, be nice to do well in scholastic bowl.

... and another diet cola.

I know that you were all wondering what my theme song was!

(other than the one Jorgi made for me)

Anyway, here's one of them.

Ok now, isn't it awesome???!

I first heard this song on a Dr. Demento collection CD. It is by a band called Jim's Big Ego. The video that goes with it is not an official music vid. It's some blah youtube video made with clips from some anime series. (Cowboy Bebop) Musically, it's awesome. I would say definately, it's a well-put-together ska song with a sort of rap feel. Awesome, awesome awesome. xD

The lyrics pretty much describe one of my main philosophies. "I'm addicted to stress, that's the way that I get things done and if I'm not under pressure, then I sleep too long." I mean, why else would I be in like a trillion different clubs/organizations, trying to deal with conflicting schedules and personalities? Did you hear in the song where it says,"everybody's thinkin' 'bout me"? Now, I'm not that conceited but, doesn't it feel that way sometimes? Like everyone is trying to have a piece of your time. Like every teacher/sponsor/coach thinks that their activity should be the only thing on your mind?

Yeah!

My name is Drew Harper and I'm a stress addict. I've been sober for about 30 minutes. Yesterday, I wasted so much time on the internet that I started my sociology paper at 11:30 pm and got to bed at 2:00 am. "If I'm not under pressure, then I sleep too long!" Anyway, it all makes sense to me....

Also, I used to be all about drinking diet soda. During this school year, however, I am not drinking pop. I drink a load of McDonald's sweet tea and my share of coffee though. Caffiene is the worst drug I do (:

There is a benefit to all this stress, you know. You get things done.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Thoughts from Sociology.

There are so many stories I could tell from Sociology. It's an awesome class.

Here's one that might fall under the "serious" category.-- o.O -- Prepare yourself.

Mr. V asked students at random what they're philosophies were. What are the guiding beliefs that determine you're actions? Most students were like, "I don't know", "huh?"

However, after much prodding, several of my classmates were able to come up with something along the lines of, "Live a good life so that you can get to heaven." There were variations, but Mr.V's point was made that in a small town, there is a lot of conformity and people have the same general philosophy.... blah blah blah.

But I wouldn't say that I share those exact same beliefs. See, I think that too many people view heaven as the goal of their lives. When really, it is not a goal at all, but rather a gift.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

A goal implies something that needs to be worked for, -- something that can either be won or not won. Goals aren't always met. A gift, on the other hand, is not negotiable. It is yours, free of charge -- dependent only upon acceptance.

"Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die." -- That is why God doesn't just give us heaven, he gives us life.

Music. Comedy. Funny Accents.

A musical transaction - For those of you who don't know me, two of my favorite things are music, and late-night comedy. Music is by far one of the most awesome things in the world. Enough said. Late night comedy has for a long time been my way of ending the day and comedy in general is an interest of mine. Not unfrequently are the two mixed -- with varying results. I see a lot of bands do Saturday Night Live. Some are good; some aren't. But, the Ting Tings (January 16, 2010) did the best live show I've heard in a while.

The Ting Tings are an indie rock duo from the UK . You probably know them from their song "That's Not My Name". Unlike many popular artists (Rihanna, Taylor Swift), the Ting Tings chose not to perfom on SNL with an accompanying band. The music that the two of them couldn't do live on stage was tracked and probably controlled by the drummer. On top of heavy beats and sweet British punk vocals the loop keeps growing and growing and what is left is overwhelming musical power. So overwhelming that you wouldn't think it came from just two people with some instruments, some computers, and a ton of raw talent. They take it one step further and honor a great SNL sketch on their first (hopefully not last) performance. You won't find "more cowbell" on their cd or any mp3 -- just live.

Post Number One

This is my first post on this blog. I made this blog for my English class. Right now, I am sitting next to Allie Caldwell.
This is us at homecoming. I'm very sweaty.