SH-SH-SHAKIN’! Saturday, September 27, 2008
Posted by noni in music, random.Tags: michael from the princess diaries, robert schwartzman, rooney
1 comment so far
“THE LEAD SINGER OF ROONEY PLAYED MICHAEL IN THE FIRST PRINCESS DIARIES MOVIE, WHAAAAT?!?!?!?!?!”
Yeah, that ^ was me, reacting to that important little tidbit just now when I was stalking Robert Schwartzman’s IMDb page. GAHH!! I can’t believe I had no idea that they were the same person! *facepalm* See, I had a total girlhood crush on the character of Michael from the Princess Diaries (both in the book and the movie) and I’m addicted to Rooney’s sound (their music is reminiscent of the Beatles but with a slightly modern twist to it), so I almost fell out of my chair when I saw that ROBERT SCHWARTZMAN is MICHAEL, AHH!!!
*fangirl screaming!*
But yeah, anyway, if you guys don’t know what I’m talking about, perhaps these will joggle your memory:
Clips of Michael & Mia from the Princess Diaries (Song: “When Did Your Heart Go Missing?” by Rooney)
Aw, this SUCKS! I can’t put up their music videos from Youtube because it’s not embedded!! In the meantime, visit their Myspace for songs or their website for videos!
SAY IT WITH ME: NANOWRIMO! Friday, September 26, 2008
Posted by noni in random.Tags: nanowrimo, november, writing a novel
1 comment so far
What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time.
Who: You! We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.
Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.
When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.
For those of you who don’t know, this November I’ll be participating in National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo). Basically, in a month, I have to write a 50,000-word novel (thats like 175 pages and about the length of The Great Gatsby) and hone my edit-obsessed mind into thinking only of output and not of quality. The whole point of participating is not to end up with a perfectly written novel but more to create something totally crappy, which I’ll be able to trudge through after November to find the diamonds in the rough. And it’s not like I’ll be doing this all alone; people all over the world participate in NaNo every year and create a real community of writers who support each other.
I haven’t posted up an entry about NaNoWriMo before now since I was unsure whether or not I’d still be interested in doing it once November comes around. HOWEVERRR, it’s the end of September with only a bit more than a month left to go before NaNo, and my fingers are already itching to pound out the novel in my head. Since August when I first heard about NaNo, I’ve switched story ideas a few times, but I think I’ve come across a premise that have actually stuck, and that I think I’ll enjoy writing. It’s a bizarre feeling, knowing that I’m going to write this NaNovel for my own benefit more than anybody else’s. I’m the sort of writer who compares her own writing to those of other, more venerable authors, which is probably the reason why I’ve never actually finished something I’m working on. I always cop out towards the middle, because I would have already butchered what I have of my story to death and realize it’s a piece of cow dung. So I guess doing NaNo (where the backspace key is taboo to use) will be one heck of an experience that I hope will turn me into a better writer. A more mature writer who writes without being plagued by insecurities, because that has definitely gotten me nowhere.
Anyway, throughout the month of November, I’ll be posting up my NaNoWriMo progress on this blog perhaps twice a week or so. Not only do I want you guys to feel as if you’re doing the journey with me, but I also want to see how neurotic I’ll get during November, so that I can look back on it and laugh my butt off. There will be times when I’ll surely want to quit and throw my manuscript file into the virtual garbage can, so I’m asking for your support and encouragement when it does feel like I’m about to nip the thing in the bud. I mean, it’s all nice and good that strangers on the NaNoWriMo forum will be there to support me, but I think knowing that people I actually know–friends and family who can actually smack me upside the head if I don’t reach my 50,000-word goal by the end of November–will only spur me to keep on writing even when I hit a bump in the road.
Now if some of you are interested in doing NaNoWriMo with me this year, come join me and hop on the loony writers bandwagon!!! I think it’s definitely less daunting to go through the process with someone you already know and who will sympathize with you on your 2 a.m. frenzied caffeine vigils during that last stretch before the deadline. Or you know, if you’re a complete stranger who’ve just stumbled across my blog, then by all means let me know how you’re doing, and we’ll totally keep track of each other on NaNoWriMo’s forum or through each other’s blogs!
One thing to keep in mind, though, is that NaNoWriMo is not supposed to be a horribly serious writing endeavor for very serious writers. I mean, it’s darn near impossible to come up with a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in a month, so this is more just for fun than anything else. You’re not supposed to kill yourself over it or anything. ( O_O!! ) If anything, I view NaNo as the first step in the really extensive novel-making process. But the first really important thing is to at least get that novel in your head down on paper (or on Microsoft Word), because without something to work with, how can a writer expect to reach that publishing stage? It’s like an artist chipping away at a piece of marble to create a beautiful statue; if you don’t have the marble, how are you going to make a work of art out of it?
End pedantic rant.
ANYWAYYY, REMEMBER, GUYS!! PLEASE HELP KEEP ME ACCOUNTABLE! Much appreciated.<3
GOOD RIDDANCE! Friday, September 26, 2008
Posted by noni in school.Tags: applied calculus, college, dropping a class, math
add a comment
I can’t believe I haven’t updated in almost two months! TWO MONTHS!! Wowww…time certainly flies by, doesn’t it? I told myself that I wasn’t going to abandon this blog (err…’cept I tell myself that every time I make a blog but that’s not the point), so I knew I was eventually going to have to update. But I guess I wanted to write an entry when I actually feel like doing it and not just because I feel obliged to write one, y’know what I mean? In any case, I’ve tried a few times to whip up a post during one of my breaks, but my mind either blanks out completely or I spend so much time berating my muse that I’ve frittered away my break time. For some reason, writing about how college is going seems so hard–almost pointless because college has been so similar to high school for me…
UNTIL NOW, CHYEAHH!!!
Today (well, yesterday if you want to get technical) I finally feel like I’m a college student. Seriously, I’ll remember yesterday forever, because on September 25th, I took things into my own hands and sawed myself free from the shackles of The Evil and Dastardly Pre-Calculus and Elements of Calculus Applied to Business, Economics, and Finance (yeah, repeat that 20x and 10x faster).
Now before some of you start chastising me about dropping a class and how I’m going to need to take a math class anyway and blahdiddlyblahblah, dropping this math course has been something that I’ve thought long and hard about. True, it’s common knowledge that I complain all the time about my mathematically-challenged brain (formulas boggle me), I honestly thought (as recently as last week) that I was going to put up with this class for this semester and really work hard at it. Even though I bombed the first quiz, I figured miracles could happen, and I would be able to do moderately well in the class. I figured that even though my teacher is like Thumper personified (that rabbit from Bambi who is adorable as a cartoon but definitely annoying and just plain ridiculous as a math professor), I’d be able to rely on the textbook.
I blame my delusional, prideful thoughts for not filing a pass/fail application last week. Grr.
See, there’s a difference between having confidence in my ability and just plain telling myself lies. When my teacher told us that we’ll have to start doing our homework on WebWork because he doesn’t trust us to do the textbook homework (25% of my class passed the first quiz–definitely pathetic), I began to panic. I scanned through the syllabus and felt my throat tighten at words like “matrices” and “Gauss-Jordan reduction” and “derivatives.” I remembered those words. I first heard them from Mr. Pieratti in junior year, (the year I inevitably failed pre-calculus by the way). Then when I realized that I was perhaps the only student in my class who haven’t taken a prior course in business and therefore didn’t understand any of the business applications discussed, I felt like bolting from that classroom and saying adios. As week after week passed, my class went from perhaps twenty students to a measly fifteen or ten students. I should have known some of those people weren’t absent; they were just smarter than me and dropped the class early on.
Luckily, I realized what I had to do when I was lamenting to Kaitlin about my predicament over lunch on Tuesday. She was right; an “F” in my college transcript would be like an ugly, fat monster who would scare off any potential universities I’d like to transfer to. This wasn’t high school; no one is really forcing me to take this class. Yes, I need to have a math credit under my belt, but there are plenty of easier math classes available for people like me (which I found out in detail about today in the advisor’s office; math classes especially designed for “liberal arts students.” YAY!). So if I were to stay in that class and failed, it would be no one’s fault but my own not to file for a neutral “W” and save my GPA.
After I left the advisement center yesterday, I was so happy that I felt like skipping down the street! (Which of course, I did not. Mmhmm, wouldn’t you like to see that?) I won’t have to stay in school until 5:25 on Mondays and Wednesdays anymore, and I won’t have to waste time at night poring over my applied calculus textbook, trying to understand the dense instructions that seemed more difficult to read than hieroglyphics. Strangely enough, I’m more motivated than ever to study for my other courses at the moment, because I’ll definitely have more time to read the material now that math is out of the picture for this semester! It’s truly wonderful. I don’t think I’ve ever been exempt from a math class in all my years of education…
Well, I’m certainly not going to miss it.
Note to self: Go to the bookstore or Shakespeare and Co. to try and sell Applied Calculus textbook back. Or if that doesn’t work, maybe Facebook. Oh, and don’t forget to sell brand-new TI-89 graphing calculator, too. (If anyone’s interested or knows someone who’s interested in buying either one of those things, let me know! The calculator has only been used once, and the book is still shiny and new!) <– shameless advertising.
