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One thing that always depresses me are deflating helium balloons. They're a happy symbol of the party you've just attended, until you wake up the next morning to find your smooth-skinned, energetic friend, who only yesterday strained into the skylights, is now half-heartedly hovering six inches above the carpet. I haven't taken one home from anywhere in years.

Before school, I spend twenty minutes taping pictures into the locker I share with Evil A of all the things I love (polka dots, Alexis, Orlando Bloom, Shelby, tropical flowers, Moulin Rouge, Marilyn Monroe, Sam, Gwen Stefani, and if I can find any more room Starburst and Coldplay). I drink my first of two smoothies today and come downstairs to find that Brittany's gone all-out and asked French Boy if he has a girlfriend. According to her, he said something like, "Uh... yeah. Yeah I do." This may be because Brittany is about seven hundred percent obviously not his type, but oh well. Also, while the comic appeal of a nerdy drawing class listening to Rammstein is high, my Coldplay-dominated mix CD has really got to return.

At lunch, the table where Necker and co. always sit had vanished. He and one of the other guys sit at the end of our table, where, while he certainly sees me, he never acknowledges me. That same period, I lose my second mechanical pencil this month and all the information about clubs I'd just written with it. Actually, I spend most of lunch being punched by Cucumber and Sean/Shawn/whoever he is with the one sexy earring. Despite comments like, "What would be worse, the bad clothes or her without them?", they're surprisingly nice guys to hang out with. They may have no idea how to give a compliment, but a girl gets a lot of attention.

Actually, Pretty Funny

Feel like a day out of school has prevented filling your usual idiocy quota? Not the sort to go to the other school's homecoming tonight? Well, ha ha. How about some subtle dramaticism? Just to prod you into checking out the freshly updated Cast List, I'm going to recommend checking out the Ex-Guy's girl/boy/whateverfriend's imitation of the Fug Girls.

So, take aim at the sidebar and scroll your way down to click on "the Ex-Guyfriend". I wish he'd put comments back up. I don't have a red color filter, I have a red wall and a little bit of contrast shift. Anyone who has not come to terms with her nose would not dare put up a profile shot that's in profile. And dude, what couture? My armsocks were once kneesocks from Journeys, and I've had that beret since the fifth grade. One strap of that cami is mended with a saftey pin.

Really, just listen to Spencer, who discovered that one of the Ex-Guy's arrogant, taken-in-the-mirror pictures is filenamed "hot": "The fact that he has a pink-themed blog makes me wonder how on earth he manages to find something to make fun of about other people."

Digital Love

Sam accused me of "subtle dramaticism". I thought he was off with that, the subtle bit especially, but more and more I'm thinking he was right on the mark. Like a post no one understands (will someone please tell me they've gotten the "totally unrelated fruit company" part?), some things just spark replies.

Evil A, for example, who said, "I don't really like talking in front of lots of people." No, really?

Then there's pink-belt boy. Conner told me his name was Zack (or, perhaps I hope, Zac), but his prominate feature and the off chance that I've got a chance have earned him the nickname Necker. Our stupid second encounter few days ago gleaned nothing useful except that he's a sophomore, not a junior, and ended with Bollywood's pronoucement of, "Awww, I think he's got a girl" as he walked off with one. I considered myself embarassed and quite finished in that area, until lunch Friday.

Friday was noteable primarily for being one of those useless half-days, stocked with fascinating mini-lessons like "how to blend a quote". Lunch, since no one had one, was spent alternating between running away from someone Bollywood doesn't like very much and sitting outside eating cookies. Near the end of the half-period, she'd just bought each of us Krispy Kremes and was looking for some other people to give the third to. We're standing, eating and looking, when Necker walks up to us. I can't quite believe this happened: "The other day... that girl I went off with was my sister."

Had I been in an intelligent mood, I would have said, "Indeed? Why do you tell me this?" Instead, I started laughing, and nearly choked on my doughnut. Bollywood offered him the third doughnut, which he turned down. I wouldn't have wanted to start acting like us, either. Well, well, well.

"I wonder why he told you that," Bollywood says, when he'd walked away. "Maybe he likes you."

"Maybe nobody else likes him."

"You're so mean!"

My newest favorite person is Hannah, she of the very similar name having both uncommonly excellent taste in music and a house really close to mine. She's in my gym class, which spent yesterday sitting on the floor. I eagerly beckoned her over, told her the story, and went through her green mini. She mentioned that she didn't know the proper title of Daft Punk song she'd called "Dream". On the hope my newest favorite person might have my newest favorite song, "Digital Love", I took a listen. And of course I was left singing, "In this dream I'm dancing right beside you" for the rest of the morning.

The dreams I really had Friday morning involved a very nice hotel, a very scary elevator, a very large party, and French Boy as a poet. My conscious morning idealy would have involved hanging in the hallway, and vanishing into the classroom when French Boy came down the hallway. Brittany, possessing a none-too-sutble drama, called a big, cheery, "Hi, Jo(h)n!", followed up with a, "She's too shy to talk to you."

At the moment, I suspected strongly he thought us a pair of dumb freshmen and, without seeing his face, escaped inside our classroom. Brittany reported he'd smiled and waved at her. I'm awaiting the surely impending reply with something approaching amusement.

Don't stop, come a little closer,
As we jam, the rythmn gets stronger,
There's nothing wrong, with just a little little fun,
We were dancing, all night long
- Daft Punk, "Digital Love"

Monkey Business

Monkeys are passionate about bananas, you know? Every monkey's had a banana, and almost every monkey has a favorite banana or two. Bananas aren't cheap, but it'd be a pretty sad life to just sit around and watch all the other monkeys enjoy them.

Now, kiwi. (Those monkeys in Eurojungle call 'em kiwifruit.) Kiwi are just as good as bananas, and much more available. Kiwi don't come with all the fun packaging a banana's got, but bananas can be pretty tough to unpeel sometimes. Kiwi are somewhat more likely to be rotten, but kiwi are free.

Introducing the Fruit Industry Association of Amerijungle. The old furballs at the FIAA, from the pygmy marmosets all the way up to the great apes, hate kiwi. Kiwi means that the fruit-craving monkey can take a quick swing through the jungle and pick any variety he wants. Kiwi means they'll have to cut into their tasty banana profits, already heading down the vines.

The FIAA's businessmonkeys are in a panic. They try getting fruit growers to urge the monkulence in the right direction, but what self-regarding simian is going to be fooled by a thinly-disguised plea from Big Fruit? They make the front leaf cracking down on a few kiwi dealers, but still, nobody's scared.

When the clever little monkeys at some totally unrelated fruit company came out with banana-kiwi hybrids, the deepest corners of the FIAA monkeys' minds hopefully realized they're screwed. Everybody's got kiwi, and there's more being grown every day.

Your average adolescent monkey doesn't have a group of monkeys to stand at the base of the FIAA's national treequarters and holler things like, "This shit is bananas!" But the great uncombed realizes that the FIAA'd and the whole government of Amerijungle would have to start acting like old Furry Munkastro down south to eradicate kiwi. That trying to regulate the trade of small, furry brown objects would quash the innocent industries responsible for hampsters and toupees.

That, after working so hard on evolving, the FIAA ought to realize that monkey business is for the fittest, too. Adapt, or you're a dinosaur.

I Love Your Friends, They're All So Arty

Eating Babybel at lunch today, I noticed that save for Jackie and Susan, all the names of all the girls who regularly sit at our table begin with A. Aditi, Alison, Adrienne, Ashley, Anusha, Annie, and Anna. Hmm.

I finish eating, snitch curly fries from Conner, try to stop Shots from doing some very nerdy dancing, and watch French Boy on the other side of the windows. Aditi offers to wander outside with me to look at him. We do so, then wander back in, buy Aditi a replacement heart-rate monitor strap, and stroll back to the cafeteria.

This whole while, and every day this week, at the table horizontally over from ours, there's a been a trio of punkish juniors (probably). The first, smooth-faced with slick, raven hair; another with long, yellow hair and zits; the third with short blonde hair, flighty eyes, and a slim, apprehensive, somehow European apperance. Number one's wearing a tight black emo sweater a smidgen short in the sleeves; two's got on a t-shirt; and number three's wearing somewhat skinny jeans, a dark jade button-up shirt, a blue-and-white striped necktie, red-orange Chuck Taylors, and a pink belt.

The inner future designer occupies herself idly pondering. Would dark plaid pants have been a better choice? Is the tie too short? Are Chucks a cliché now? Has he got on an appropriate color of socks?

The hopeless romantic is wishing her much-mended heart out that she was the sort of person who could get up, walk across the aisle, and tell him just how cool he looks.

When Aditi asks if I'll come along to get her heart-rate strap, I tell her I'll do it if she comes along to support me while I compliment pink-belt guy. I want her there, but mostly I want to make myself do it.

So I do. I crouch down next to his seat on the end so I'm looking up at him, Aditi standing behind me, holding her new strap. I probably utter the word "awesome" three times in four sentences. Raven guy, seated just beyond my object of attention, is giving me a strange look. Said object is watching me with an attitude suggesting he's been rather knocked off his feet, but found it not unpleasent. "...Thanks."

As Aditi and I walk off laughing, I can see pink-belt boy slapping high-fives with his grinning friends. Aditi offers a high-five for me and I feel like I've done a good job smiling today.

Smile More

Did you see the guy walking around with the acoustic guitar during passing periods today? I saw him three times, and it just made me smile. Not only because he was dressed just like French Boy (except the guitarist's t-shirt was Let It Be Naked and French Boy's was ordinary Let It Be), but because life needs a soundtrack. You know, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" when French Boy flipped his fingers at me, and "My Doorbell" for when Ballex and S-B M turned up unannounced on the front step.

In reality, the musical highlight of today were the several tracks of Daft Punk as "something to listen to while crosshatching" that thoroughly convinced my entire drawing class I'm crazy. That led Brittany into making some kind of comment about how I'm the kind of person who couldn't care less, which she probably didn't realize how much I appreciated.

Right now, the only thing upsetting me is that "Lyla" would be an even better song if it hadn't been changed from "Smiler". Apparently a former band of one of the guys in Oasis had a song called "Smiler". So? I don't know anybody named Lyla. But everybody knows a smiler. There was one in my kindergarden class, with a ton of curly, bright orange hair and freckles. She walked with leg braces and canes, but she was always wearing a huge grin.

Today deserves a resolution: Smile more. Not just because, as we've all learned from other people's t-shirts, "It confuses people." A smile, even a forced one, makes you feel better. A smile induces the joke that brings on a laugh. A smile gets you out of trouble where a sulk wouldn't. It intimidates snobby, controlling people, and it's something kind people appreciate.

So whatcha say, smiler?

The world around us makes me feel so
Small, Lyla
If you can't hear me call,
Then I can't say, Lyla
Heaven help you catch me if I fall
- Oasis, "Lyla"

Twenty-Four

The very first thing today, at 5:22 AM, is inexplicably thinking, Kurt Cobain!, and hitting the snooze button. The second thing also involves the snooze button, and the third too. The fourth almost involved the snooze, but is actually getting up, showering, and putting together today's outfit: The Sixties. Rediculously flared pants, authentic "LOVE" ribbon as a belt, Beatles shirt because there was some kind of plan hatched in Ancient History for several people to wear them together.

Fifth thing is running out the door, sixth is "Good Day Sunshine" and "Morning Glory" waiting for the bus. Seventh is realizing all three girls at our stop have missed it. Eighth is being driven to school in my neighbor's car. Ninth is a parking-lot meeting with G, who missed the same bus while hair-straightening. Ten is rediscovering there's an assembly second period, and I needn't take most of what I usually carry to first hour.

Eleven is hatching and crosshatching in drawing; twelve is learning French Boy has his first-hour class just up the hall, and thirteen is the socially unflappable Brittany striking up a very real and very articulate conversation between us. Thirteen is being so distracted I walked away from the auditorium and felt like an idiot.

Fourteen is an assembly about how sex must come after love, trust, honor, respect, and marriage, as punishable by AIDS; fourteen and a half is Hanting practically cuddling, which is minorly lesbian but mostly cuddly. Fifteen is being EP class recorder, and writing more than the last three weeks' worth of recorders combined.

Sixteen and seventeen don't count by reason of being freshman mentoring and softball, respectively.

Eighteen is my awesome chemistry teacher sticking a green glowstick in a lead-lined case marked Caution: Radioactive Materials to freak us out. Eighteen and a quarter is watching him Geiger-counter decades-old boxes of various elements; eighteen and three-quarters is the fact that the broken red Fiestaware was by far emitting the most beta, and that the lead-lined box was leaky.

Nineteen is my accidental suggestion, during an off-topic session about kidney stones and HIV in history, that a former student was incestuous. Twenty is realizing that I'll probably do very well on my functions test tomorrow, and that the next unit involves nothing more fanged than systems of equations. Twenty-one is going home and doing easy systems of equations while listening to the John Roberts hearings. Twenty-two is curly fries at dinner; twenty-three is the BBC reporter on The World who pronounced the "Baton" in "Baton Rouge" like "batone".

Twenty-four was going to be buying myself a copy of the new Franz Ferdinand song from iTunes, but I think I'll save it for a day when I actually need the pick-me-up. So twenty-four is for you: it's twenty-four things about my desk, which is more a display case than a work space, partly because the chair is always hung over with half-developed, half-baked outfits.

You're Standing On My Neck!

In the past twenty-four hours, I have:

• Stayed up too late
• Slept for ten hours
• Realized my neck still really hurts from my seventy-eight sit-ups three days ago
• Slept for three hours
• Read the Weekend Journal
• Listened to Crazy Frog, French music, NPR
• Discovered, my third time around learning them, that functions aren't too bad
• Learned that Sly S was eating steak, potatoes, and cheesecake for her dinner
• Ate mushroom pizza and cheesecake for my dinner
• Got a cell phone! from that mysteriously ginormous corporation, Virgin
• Vacuumed
• Listened to NPR podcasts
• Stayed up too late

Loquacious

Boy-in-French update. His name's John (or, perhaps I hope, Jon). He volunteered to speak French for fifteen seconds in front of the class for candy.

Mme Z: Qu'est-ce que professur tu préfères? «Which teacher do you prefer?»
J: Je préfère... Mme Z. Elle est trés intéressente et... ahh, nice, nice... «I prefer... Mme Z. She's very interesting and...»
Mme Z: Gentile. Bonbon. Sympa - sympathique. «Kind. Sweet. Nice.»
J: Ahh, yeah, elle est sympa. «Yeah, she's nice.»

For the complimentary disposition he got a second piece of candy, and put the speakers from before and after in a begging mood.

Now, leaving French. I'm waiting outside the door for that girl whose name I think is Colleen, to tell her I like her sneakers. Swimmerette, in the hallway, calls out my name. I turn my head, find her, turn back around, and realize I've missed Colleen, who's now going the other way. After a completely pointless hey-hey kind of interaction with Swimmerette, I head up to the third floor. Who's gotten in the crowded stairwell six inches behind me but John (Jon)?

Apparently he's got a collection of Beatles shirts, because he's got another one on. (Definitely one of the better trends right now. Can't be worn very well with boho, and near poseur-proof. Who's never heard a Beatles song?) The moment seemed right to initate another conversation, in English this time.

"Another shirt?"

"Wha?"

"Another Beatles shirt."

"Mm? - oh. Yeah."

"You're going to spoil the whole class, we'll all want two pieces of candy now."

"Ah... heh."

Well, I know that writes like a total flop, but I don't think it was. Jo(h)n split with a, "See you," at the second floor landing and I contiuned up on my own, musing on the conversation, being glad I hadn't lost a flip-flop, let my salvaged emo satchel slip off my shoulder, or otherwise done something stupid (à la Brittany passing period previous, saying "hey" to her name-yet-unknown boy prospect, and banging into a pole).

After lunch, I learn from Colleen that J was in her French class last year, and that he hardly ever says much. Tomorrow, I suspect, I'll have to find out what else she knows about him.

Le Weekend

Monday watched in amazment as I actually got out of bed. By 11:59 PM, Tuesday was so impressed by my still being alive that it gave up and turned into Wednesday. Wednesday saw a miraculously speedy 9:40 mile; Thursday hosted another amazing jogging performance. Friday, despite the ensuing three-day weekend, was overall a gloomy, distracted, and lonely day. Enriched Patterns was characteristically dumb; I could have taught my chem class better myself; I'd seen the movie shown in history before; I did probably not too well on a real algebra test, and learned I'd gotten a 59% on the homework quiz. (If not for one 2x=20 that should have been a 2x=40, I'd've had a B+.)

Friday, really, peaked around 9 AM, in my second-hour French class. After doing a most lovingly easy quiz, I got a chance to talk to the sulky, minorly cute punk sort. He entered the class a day late; I think he's a sophmore. He'd be more striking if he dropped the shrunken jean jacket with the Ramones pin-on label, but nevertheless I will take what I can see. Ventredi, he apparently couldn't decide to strike up une dialogue with me or the bleached-blonde guy standing beside me.

After an uncomfortably drawn-out session of wondering if I should make presumptions and turn towards him or whether he was going to turn to me, he finally did: "Ehh... uh... I... je... I have no idea what to... Est'ce que tu... eh, veux... parler avec moi?"

"Je veux bien" escaping me, I said, "Ah... bien sûr!" His shirt was gray, featuring the Beatles. Maybe he's more classic and fun than I would have thought. "J'aime ta chemise." And dialogue time was up, and Friday went on being awful.

But today - yesterday now, really - has been swell. I slept until noon, then ate cereal and barbecue chips while reading the Wall Street Journal. An hours-long shopping trip with my father proved to be much more enjoyable than it would have been with my mother. Shopping for clothes, he stands and holds the jeans I've picked out while I try on more. At Target, he leaves me by the cosmetics and looks at garden hoses.

We did have to buy beef jerkey and a hammer handle at Menards inbetween, but I was spared anyone laughing about my choice of garments until my mother caught me after dinner: