T-Minus Four Hours

Tomorrow is the first of April. Do you know what that means?

That means that at midnight tonight - just over four hours from now - Script Frenzy (also known as "Screnzy") begins. 100 pages of script (in my case, screenplay), 30 days. Can it be done?

The answer is yes. Yes it can. But I'll spare you the details of last year's six-day screenplay and three-week second screenplay, with over 200 pages of script written by April 24th. Instead, I'll tell you about this year.

This year, I'm not writing about spies (*gasp*), nor am I writing a fantasy/science fiction (*more gasp*). Instead, I'm writing something sort of spy-ish but not really. Teenage assassins....yeah, okay, it's pretty spy-like. But not really...right?

I'm determined to write something that my friends and I can actually film this summer. It won't be anything professional, I'm sure, but it'll be the best we can do with our limited cast, crew, and production equipment.

Last April, I fell in love with Courier New. Since then I've gone back to Times New Roman, but I'm really looking forward to going back to Courier. Dialogue tags, sluglines, and dear screenwriting font, how I have missed thee!

...*ahem.* Sorry about that.

Have you noticed that I'm really excited about Screnzy? If not, you may want to get your literacy checked, because I've kind of been blabbering on about it, but anyway. If you are not familiar with Script Frenzy, I suggest you check out the website and join the fun!

Off to work on my lit review some more before the big deadline and mentor meeting tomorrow! Farewell for now, interwebs.

Love,
Bex

Heist Society

Note to self: If you have a good book, you should probably give it to your mother until your homework is done, because otherwise, the homework will not get done.

I read (and fell in love with) Ally Carter's newest book, HEIST SOCIETY, this afternoon. The writing style is quite different from her (equally awesome) Gallagher Girls series; it's in third person, not first, and while the Gallagher Girls audience would certainly appreciate it just as much, I feel like it's aimed at and appeals to a wider and maybe a little bit older audience.

HEIST SOCIETY follows the story of Katarina "Kat" Bishop, a fifteen-year-old girl who comes from a family of thieves. She's been helping her dad with heists for as long as she can remember, but now, Kat is walking away from a life of crime. She's conned her way into one of the country's best boarding schools, and she's done with thievery. At least, that's what she thought.

When five valuable paintings go missing, Kat's dad is the entire suspect list. Interpol is watching him closely...and so is the man who the paintings belonged to, Arturo Taccone. Taccone is even more dangerous than Interpol, and if Kat is going to save her dad's life, she's going to have to do the craziest thing she's ever done. With a little help from her friends, she's going to have to steal the paintings back.

Kat is a wonderful character - as are Hale, Gabrielle, and the rest. (Hale may have a place in the lineup of Amazing Fictional Guys now. More on that later.) All of them are so real, the story is just so engaging, bits and pieces are laugh-out-loud funny and other bits have you sitting on the edge of your seat thinking "AHH!" I would definitely recommend this book to anyone. You should check it out. You can also find out more about the author, Ally Carter, at her website.

So, yes. HEIST SOCIETY = amazingness book. Readreadread.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go do the AP Lang homework that was left untouched while I was reading. Because it would probably not be good if I failed to turn that in.

Love to all,
Bex

A Vague Post on an Abstract Concept

Choices.

From LOST to Harry Potter, there's all sorts of stuff out there about choice versus fate, free will versus destiny. I'm on the side of choice. Everyone has choices.

Sometimes people make bad choices. Sometimes they make good choices. Sometimes choices are just choices, and "bad" and "good" are just opinions anyway.

Sometimes people really want to make a choice they know is a bad choice, even when they don't know why. Sometimes people really want to make a good choice, but it's really hard to do. And sometimes, choices are the only things people have. Sometimes there is no right choice. Sometimes there is no easy way out.

Everyone makes the wrong choice sometimes. And everyone makes right choices that seem like wrong choices, too. Sometimes it just takes a while to figure out whether a choice was good or bad.

But everyone makes choices. All the time. And really, they can't do much else.

Pardon me for being so philosophical. Just some musings. In Tigger's words, TTFN! Ta ta for now!

Love,
Bex

Fang

I don't know if you're familiar with James Patterson's Maximum Ride series or not, but they're quite awesome. It's a science fiction series about these six kids who have been genetically engineered to have bird DNA, so they have wings. The narrative style (it's mostly first-person from Max's perspective) is humorous and action-packed and it keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time, and they are just wonderful. Readreadread. The first book is called THE ANGEL EXPERIMENT, if you haven't read them. I think you'd like them. (Even you, CH, even though you don't read.)

Anyway, book six is called FANG. It's a relatively new release -- by which I mean around March 15 -- and I had the good fortune to borrow a copy from a good friend of mine. It was the large print version, which was kind of annoying since I felt like I was reading a children's book, but the story. Ohhhmygosh.

Basically, without giving too much away here, Angel makes a prediction that Fang will be the first to die, and soon. Meanwhile, a new birdkid, Dylan, shows up; he's been designed to be Max's perfect other half. So there's all sorts of action as she's trying to save Fang and tension between Dylan and Fang and meanwhile Dr. I-Don't-Even-Remember-What-It-Actually-Is (Max calls him Dr. God) is trying to do additional genetic experiments on the Flock and it was quite fantastic.

My thoughts right now, having read it, are "butbutbut that's not even okay!" and "I would really like to dropkick Angel out a window." More than that, I cannot say. But this series is amazing, and there was one part of the book where I cried (not gonna tell you where or why), and you should go read them. Likenow. And you can check out the website here. Also you should know that (even before this book came out) Fang is on that list of Amazing Fictional Guys.

(Saying "Fictional" is really kind of redundant. Most of the "Amazing" guys I've come across have been fictional. Unfortunately, even the fictional ones are taken. Actually, especially the fictional ones. End rant. More on the list of Amazing Fictional Guys later.)

Gotta go now. Catch ya later!

Love,
Bex

High School Landmarks

Last night was my high school's Prom. So, of course, several of my friends (AF, KD, CJ, and ES) and I spent a couple of hours getting ready and getting ready and taking pictures together, and then we headed off to a long evening of dancing, less-than-spectacular (read: mostly horrible) music, shouting to hear each other, and general insanity.

Of course, that's not to say that we didn't have any fun. I do believe we had quite a bit of fun. Of course, it wouldn't have been a school dance if there weren't any drama to go around; a certain freshman probably has a good buttkicking coming to him on Monday, because nobody hurts our JD like that and gets away with it. But I promised not to post any sort of angst on the blog, and on the whole I think we had a good time (although AF will disagree with me, but, then again, she's ridiculous ♥).

But it kind of got me thinking.

We went by ourselves. Five girls, and we met up with NG there, so six girls -- sans dates, because only one of us has a boyfriend and he lives several states away -- going to the Junior/Senior Prom together (even though one of us is a sophomore), and our afterparty consisted of changing out of our dresses, crashing on my living room floor, and then reading Dr. Seuss books all morning. Also STOP THAT BALL, which is a rhyming children's book by...um....somebody who is not Dr. Seuss. When you look at it all, it's really pretty atypical. We didn't even have friend dates, we spent more time wandering around on the porch than dancing, we didn't recognize more than 2 or 3 of the songs they played, and we did not get totally drunk/high or have sex before, during, or after prom.

Therefore, I would like to announce to the world that YES, people who are not stereotypical teenagers DO exist. Contrary to what the creepy old man from the bank seems to think. (Long story; basically, a creepy old man had some problems with AF and me being friends.)

Not, of course, that anyone was directionally questioning this. But really? This whole "teenage experience" thing is really not all it's cracked up to be. Seriously, where is the fun in getting so trashed you don't know what's going on? And having everyone assume that as a teenager, you're a part of it? Not even worth the trouble. And all the smash-my-body-so-close-against-yours-that-we-might-actually-be-one-person dancing and rented hotel rooms and whatever? Ick. In my (admittedly limited) experience, boys cause more trouble than they're worth. I think I'll wait until they're (/I'm) a bit more grown up.

End rant.

Apologies. That got a little rantier than it was supposed to. But there you go. Guess I'm a stereotypical teenager after all: three cheers for moodiness?

Okay, that wasn't coherent. Chalk it up to lack of sleep.

Meanwhile, today was absolutely the best Saturday I've had in a long while. Many thanks to AF and KD especially, as they were here for most of the day, but also to CJ and ES. I ♥ you all! Also, the first two episodes of Season 5 of LOST have caused me to completely and totally change my mind about Season 4. Season 4 was not weird. Season 5 is weird. AF was right. Also also, remind me to rant about FANG tomorrow. Because it was an amaaaazing book. Even if it did make me cry. And now, tis bedtime pour moi.

Much love,
Bex

OCD People with Messy Rooms

I think it's funny that two of the most obsessive-compulsively organized people I know - AF and myself - have the messiest rooms out of our group of friends.

We'll freak out if you put a book on our bookshelves in the wrong place (alphabetical by author's last name, for me). If things (books, games, etc.) are stacked, the corners must be lined up or something tragic will happen. Lines must be straight, everything has to be perfectly centered, stuff that's colored in must be colored in completely, and so on. Things all over the place are lined up in height order or color order or some sort of order that is inherently right, and if you mess with it, bad things will happen to you.

But if you take a look at my bedroom (or hers), you would never know it. Except from the bookshelf, that is. Because there is junk all over the floor, school crap and those little tubes of toothpaste from the dentist and a slinky that was in my Christmas stocking three years ago and ballpoint pens (tons of them) and letters from colleges and two gift bags, just to name a few, and it looks like a paper mill threw up in here. Seriously, there is paper everywhere. Poems and story scraps and to do lists and random doodles. Notebook paper and inserts from the church bulletin and handouts from school and sticky notes and notepads. I mean there is paper everywhere.

I find it slightly ironic, the mix of OCD and organized chaos.

However, I've spent most of this afternoon cleaning. The carpet? Yeah, I found out that it actually does still exist! My room almost looks organized...provided you ignore the closet and the small radius around the desk. But it's definitely an improvement.

Course, I also spent some of that time singing/dancing to my iPod. I have the song "Summer Nights" from the musical Grease stuck in my head....and I've sung it at least...um...lots of times today. If you don't know the song, you should listen to it. It's quite good, although I wasn't a huge fan of Grease on the whole because I didn't like the ending.

Also: You know you're a nerd when you have a ten-minute conversation with your dad and two of your classmates about the appropriate adverb form of the word "manly." I'm reasonably certain that it is not "manfully," but HC and FH might tell you otherwise.

Back to cleaning now. Love,
Bex

You Know You're A Nerd When... Round 2

...you don't pay attention in chemistry class, because you're too busy talking about chemistry. (SP, yes we are that awesome.)

...you and your friends find nothing at all strange about singing Disney songs or the theme songs of PBS kids shows in the hallways between classes, at lunch, or even during math class.

...you are planning to make a video of chemistry jokes and hoping to get extra credit if your teacher is amused, but you want to make the video with or without extra credit points.

...you can have an entire conversation about words that require the letters C, D, E, and F.

...you do not get tired of discussing your fictional molecular relationship advice column.

...the floor of your bedroom is a mess because you've been cleaning out and everything ended up in the middle of the room, but your bookshelf is still pristine and everything is in alphabetical order by author's last name.

...you are kind of freakishly excited about the visual aids for the oral presentation you have to give tomorrow. (Even if you're not ready at all for public speaking.)

...you have a strange fascination with sticky notes because they're so useful for storyboarding.

...the idea of wearing mascara to prom this coming Friday is kind of a big deal, because you don't even own mascara.

...you can recite, in its entirety, the Quagmires' poem from THE VILE VILLAGE. (Looking at SP again XD)

...you get really, really bothered when you can't remember one line halfway through Hamlet's "to be or not to be" monologue, because you know the rest of it and the gap is driving you crazy.

...you go out of your way to look for more things that could accurately complete the sentence "You know you're a nerd when..." so that it will describe you.

Love,
Bex