Shopping.

I shouldn't be allowed to have money. I spend wayyy too much. I mean, a lot of teenagers would have already burned up their money if they'd made $2000+ during the summer, so I guess I'm not so bad. I still have over $1000. I think. I'm not quite sure. I should check that... I'm probably around $900 right now.

I bought some books. Two books, actually. I bought Prom Nights from Hell (a collection of "paranormal" prom stories by five famous authors of teenage romance novels, including Stephenie Meyer and Meg Cabot!) and then, since I'm retarded, I bought The Daring Book for Girls. My mom said that it's awesome... if I was twelve. I told her that it's interesting and it teaches me how to make my own quill and cool stuff like that. I even put my hair up with pencils and no ponytails! Of course, the way they said to do it in the book didn't work because I have a massive amount of hair, but it INSPIRED me to do it.

I also bought myself some body butter lotiony cream stuff. As luck has it, it was buy one get one free day at Bath and Body Works. So I have two kinds. They're both awesome.

And then I got a neat little clearance tote from Wal-Mart. And a bucket of scrapbooking stuff. It's fun.

So now I'm updating crap on my Facebook. WOO.

Long story short, I shouldn't spend my money as often as I do, but I still do. Because, like I said, I'm retarded. Yay me!

Cold.

There's no school because it's cold. I'm sorry, but that's probably the most retarded thing I've ever heard of. TONS of schools are canceled. Seven schools in our conference have canceled school for today, so if they had a speech meet, there'd be two or three really pathetic teams there. There are only two schools that have decent speech teams-- my school, and this other school that, really, I despise because their one-acts are always TERRIBLE. So I'm going to assume that they've canceled and not give myself an ulcer.

But we've canceled school because it's cold. It's 5 below... Well, with wind chill, yeah, it's 30 below. But we live in Nebraska. COME ON.

No School.

There's no school tomorrow due to crappy weather, which means there's no conference speech tomorrow (or today, I should say). At least, there's no conference speech for us... But perhaps not for the rest of the schools. And if they don't reschedule conference speech, I will have a stroke and die. I will literally go out and murder people. I have worked too hard not to kick conference humorous prose ASS. I want that beautiful gold medal, 1st place Humorous Prose on the back. I WANT IT! And if I don't get a chance to get it, I will murder people.

I'm getting this icky feeling in my stomach... It's all bubbly, like it's boiling. It may be that my supper was a crappy hot dog, a bag of super salty popcorn, and a melty snickers that I grabbed at the basketball game in desperation because I hadn't been home since 7:17 that morning, when we left late for jazz band (my fault). Oh, and I had a bit of burnt popcorn that our "Harry Beaton" made during Brigadoon practice. And some weird guacamole pringles. And a bottle of water.

I can't possibly fall asleep like this. I'm too buzzed with stress about this. Plus I read a sappy love story-- one of those young adult stories about teenage girls falling in love with their best guy friends; it's "How to be Popular" by Meg Cabot, and it's really good, I'm just not in the best of moods for it right now-- which TOTALLY doesn't help my mood. And now a girl that I used to go to school with started talking to me on MSN. I used to hang out with her a lot. It's not like she lives anywhere different (she lived in a different town, she just goes to that town's school now...), but I haven't talked to her in FOREVER. It's kind of nice to explain all the crap that's been bothering me without having to worry about her telling everyone. I mean, she can kind of blab sometimes, but she's not on good terms with a lot of people from my school, so I think I'm good. She's a nice person, but people don't get along with her. She's a little... extreme, sometimes. But I miss her now and then.

Wallflower.

I think Wallflower (also known as Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge, or Perfect Girl Evolution) is my favorite manga/anime in the ENTIRE WORLD. Better than Naruto... Better than--dare I say it?--YU-GI-OH!

I'm serious. (Yeah, Beth, I know.) I really love Yu-Gi-Oh! so leave me alone. xD

I'm watching subbed versions of the anime on Veoh. :3 I may buy it on DVD some day... Subtitles don't bother me at all, but I like hearing the dubbed versions better, despite the fact that people say it's "not as good" that way. I'm not a diehard Japanese fan, I just like the stories! And because it's a cartoon, it's easier to forgive. It's not like watching Moonchild (Japanese movie about vampires starring JRock stars Gackt and Hyde) or something dubbed. That would be UNBEARABLE. It makes me think of really old karate movies. XP But I've grown up with English-dubbed versions of anime shows, like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon, etc...

Actually, I've only really watched Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon. I've watched a little Inuyasha, Cowboy Bebop, and Yu Yu Hakashu (or whatever the heck it's called) but I didn't like those, and I watched Naruto, but I wasn't very far into the manga and I didn't want to ruin the story for myself, so I stopped.

But enough of that. I'm only on episode 2 (haha, Star Wars! xD) of Wallflower. I gotta keep watching! (Plus, my friend Jordan is trying to talk to me about his research paper and I'm not doing a very good job of responding.)

White Day.

There has been an amazing discovery. Apparently, in Japan there is a holiday called "White Day." On Valentine's Day, it is customary for a woman to give chocolate/gifts to a man. On White Day, the man gives chocolates to the woman who gave him chocolates on Valentine's Day. White Day is March 14, which happens to be my birthday. And "white" is very similar to my name (Whitney).

Too bad I didn't give any boys chocolates or gifts on Valentine's Day. ;_; Then I could get TWICE the presents.

Ah, the things you learn from The Wallflower (aka Perfect Girl Evolution).

Absence.

So, I haven't been writing on here as much as I would have liked to. I've been feeling very... under the weather, both physically and emotionally. It's actually a little unexplainable if you don't know the full extent of what's been going on in my life, but suffice it to say I've had a lot of stressful things going on (like scholarships, musical, speech, a physics paper that I don't want to write, etc.), and combined with some very emotional things (like the death of my baby-- my dog, Cooper), I've been a hair shy of psychotic. I've exploded at my friends for the smallest of reasons, I can't stand to be around my sister, I'm angry with my parents all the time... What makes me more angry is when I tell my mom things that are bothering me and she has to blab to EVERYONE that I'm depressed. If I wasn't depressed then, I am now. Nothing depresses me more than thinking that no one can figure these things out on their own and when I finally tell my mom, she tells everyone, and then I get pity. Pity is not something that I like. It bothers me even more.

Like my friend Jordan. When I didn't go to the last basketball game of the season to play pep band (my last pep band gig... I tried to make it for the halftime part, but I missed it, which I now regret a lot), my mom told my sister and my friend that I was depressed about stuff. My friend called me, forced me to go, and then I ended up making it. Well, I guess Jordan found out that I was upset (though I'm quite sure he didn't find out exactly what was making me upset, because he asked why my sister was crying...) because after the game he got on MSN Messenger and talked to me for the LONGEST time. He never does that. Bless his soul, I know he was just trying to help and I would have never known it was just him trying to save me from depression had he not made some weird comment before he left to take a shower and let his mom take over (I LOVE his mom!), but it just made me think, "Oh. So you wouldn't talk to me on any other occasion. I get it. You're just worried that I'm going to become depressed and suicidal or something. If I wasn't then you wouldn't be talking to me. Okay. Thanks."

Like I said, it was sweet of him to try helping me... But his odd comment made me a little upset. But I don't really want to bring it up with him (he'll probably get my blog unblocked TODAY and read this and this won't even matter) because I've been too mean to him lately. We've all been testy. We're ALL under large amounts of pressure, and I think it's affecting how we all treat each other. My sister says that I'm cranky all the time and holds it against me even when I'm in the best of moods. Then I go back into my "WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE ME?!" mode.

So... conclusion? Stress is the main factor, most definitely. My stomach has been twisted in knots since January, and when I get really upset, I feel like there's a vice grip on my heart (not in a heart attack way...) and I get migraines so bad that no amount of ibuprofen and caffeine will help me. But I think the major contributor to this continuation of so-called "depression" is my sister, in more ways than you can know.

OMGGG.

So I just finished reading Absolute Boyfriend online... AHHHH. SO SAD. ;_; I will now cry myself to sleep.

By the by... Did anyone know that it's extremely hard to type when you have a bandaid over the first knuckle on your middle finger on your right hand??? It's really frustrating. But I don't think it would be as frustrating if it was on a different finger. Hm. Maybe I'll test this theory sometime.

Operations.

So... I read this fantastic fanfiction, and it has inspired me. It wasn't like it was all that well written... It was a Twilight fanfic with very OOC characters and there was no plot, just characters writing notes to each other. But it's a great idea. I'm going to start a story with Marauders where they write notes to each other, but I'm going to make the notes on parchment with "handwriting" fonts and post them on another blog... Oh, it's going to be such a great thing! I think there was an LJ project that did something similar a while back, but I'm not sure. I was to say it was the Shoebox project, but I don't think so. I think I just discovered those two things at around the same time.

So that operation is under way, and so is another operation inspired by this fanfic-- Operation A.T.H.O.O.L., pronounced either by spelling it out or "ah-thool." But I'm not going to say what that is, and I'm not even sure it's going to be put to use.

Haha.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

My Icon Rocks.

So last night I went through all of my pictures on my computer... I found this fantastic icon of Snape. I wanted to use my Cedric/Taco icon, but I guess flash icons don't work for profile pictures. I'll have to put it on here sometime because it's amazing.

So there was a "cabaret show" tonight for our senior high choir. I did well on both my duets (I had a duet with my sister and a duet with my dear friend Lily--I mean, Jordan (he's a goof)), but I actually blanked on the words to my solo, which NEVER happens. But oh well. And my dearest Padfoot tried to console me, but I didn't want a hug. So I was mean to my Paddykins. ;_; But other than that, the night was GREAT. My dad is actually uploading the duet my sister and my friend Justin sang. It's Tear Jerk from "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change." He's like putting it on YouTube or something. I'll have to put a link. He might my duet with Jordan up. That'd be great.

Gosh, I'm pooped. I'm out.

Layout.

Changed layout. Found it on a website, but I had to take off the icky link thing they put on the top... I'll eventually make my own layout, but I liked the color scheme of this one, especially since I'm o an extreme Twilight kick. (: It's kind of Phantom of the Opera as well. And Pirates of the Caribbean. And even Gryffindor... So it's pretty me. Plus I like stars.

Also updated some information on my profile. If you're wondering, yes, I really do enjoy alphabetizing. I'm strange like that. Part of it is just me, but part of it can be blamed on my English teacher. I'm her "teacher's aid" 3rd hour, so I do a lot of stuff for her. One of the things I do for her is alphabetize all of the assignments. I also organize the bookshelves, straighten the desks, etc. etc. Basically, I'm there to help her with every OCD whim that she has. She's an awesome teacher and possibly the greatest speech coach ever. (: But on the other hand, I've always liked organizing things. This isn't so say I'm a neat freak-- far from it-- but I've always enjoyed organizing books according to size or author or title... I'm in charge of the "movie library" in our "movie theater" downstairs.

ANYWAY. I need to stop ranting and get to bed. I've got a full day tomorrow-- gotta clean my room in the morning, then I have musical, then speech showcase, and then there's a cabaret show for the senior high choir tonight. I love being overbooked.

Movie Review - Sweeney Todd.

Here's a movie review I wrote for my journalism class. I was complimented on how well this was written. Actually, he more or less asked my if I had plagiarized the paper. I'm going to assume that he was just pleasantly surprised at the quality of my review (my last review was on Sydney White-- great movie, but I was not motivated in the least with that article) and take into account the fact that he never gives out compliments (he also teaches upper level math). So yeah.

Oh, and if you were wondering, no, I did not plagiarize this. It's all from my own mind (although I've read some reviews since and there are similar descriptions over aspects of the movie, to which I say that great minds think alike). Enjoy!

---

Horror film fanatics and musical theater aficionados can now unite under one new, award-winning movie—Tim Burton’s version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, based on the Stephen Sondheim musical of the same name.

The story, set in 19th century London, centers around a barber named Benjamin Barker, falsely accused of a crime and banished from England by Judge Turpin and his henchman, Beadle Bamford. With the help of young sailor Anthony Hope, he finds his way back to London under a different name—Sweeney Todd.

Once there, he goes back to his old lodgings on Fleet Street, just above Mrs. Lovett’s Pie Shop. Mrs. Lovett tells Todd that his beloved wife Lucy had committed suicide after he left and that his daughter Johanna was now the ward of the very same judge who had sent him away.

Todd starts up his old barbershop in hopes of finding a way to avenge his wife’s death. But when competing barber Alfredo Pirelli tries to blackmail Todd, he kills the con artist and starts his throat-slitting rampage. Mrs. Lovett, not one to waste, uses the corpses in the filling of her meat pies.

The movie includes an all-star cast with Johnny Depp in the title role, Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin, Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford and Sacha Baron Cohen as Alfredo Pirelli. Several new but talented faces also appear in the roles of Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), Johanna (Jayne Wisener), Toby (Ed Sanders), and the beggar woman (Laura Michelle Kelly).

Musicals have been making their way back to the silver screen the past few years. Popular Broadway musicals like Chicago, Phantom of the Opera and Hairspray have graced the local movie theaters in the past few years. With its two Tony Award-winning appearances on Broadway—the first starring Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou and the second starring Patti LuPone and Michael Cervis—it was only a matter of time before Sweeney Todd was made into a motion picture

Diehard fans of the musical may leave the movie theater disappointed. Much of the music and dialogue has been cut, and several of the actors’ voices aren’t really “Broadway” material, but I found this easy to forgive because the actors portray the characters so well.

Anyone with a queasy stomach may want to stay away because this R-rated movie isn’t your family-friendly Julie Andrews musical. The movie creates a haunting picture, with extremely vivid, fake blood splashed against the desolate gray of London. The way Todd slices throats without a care, letting the blood spray everywhere, will make everyone squirm in their seats. And the way the bodies are disposed of is even worse, being dumped head first in a chute, landing in the cellar with a sickening crunch.

Sweeney Todd is definitely a must-see for all fans of Broadway, horror flicks, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp.

Randomness.

I need to change this layout. It's bothering me. Hm. I'll have to create one sometime...

Stumbled across an amazing artist on dA yesterday. Totally going to steal ideas from her. Hey, stealing is the sincerest form of flattery when it comes to stuff like this, isn't it? I just want to doodle some of this stuff in my random notebook. Yeah.

Saw Phantom of the Opera at the Orpheum tonight. It was amazing. I LOVELOVELOVED Christine's voice. The Phantom was... okay. But there was some stuff that was plain freakin' hilarious. Gosh. I have pictures of my friends and I reenacting the funny stuff. (:

But now to bed! I am tired, and I still have school tomorrow. Curses!

Insomnia.

So my original plan sort of backfired. I meant to just dink around on the internet and then BAM! be drooling on my pillow for the next few hours. Instead, I stared at the ceiling for a while, then I got back on the computer, looked at art on deviantART (and found a picture that I'm TOTALLY going to do in watercolors sometime... if I have time... it's just beautiful!), and then I decided to take a shower. Now, some make think it odd to take a shower at 1:oo in the morning, but reason with me here. I take a shower in the middle of the night because I can't fall asleep. Therefore, when I DO fall asleep, I will be able to stay in bed longer because I am already showered. I think it's a pretty smart plan.

So anyway, I showered, and then I opened the internet. My homepage is my iGoogle page, and I have an RSS feed from StephenieMeyer.com, and it had the best news in the entire universe-- BREAKING DAWN IS GOING TO BE RELEASED ON AUGUST 2, 2008! OH MY GOSH. I want to have a Twilight party RIGHT NOW to celebrate, but, lamentably, everyone I know is either asleep or SHOULD be asleep (*cough*Beth, stop reading fanfiction in the middle of the night*cough*).

And then I stared at myself in the mirror. Strange, I know. But I was just thinking about what I like about myself... Like my shoulders. I love my shoulders. They're really rounded, which my old art teacher Ms. Meese used to always say was a bad thing. She made me redo a portrait in 5th grade because the girl's shoulders weren't square enough (or as I like to say, "They weren't butch"). But I like my shoulders, especially because I have long hair. I like my hair, too, except I'm upset with the color changes that its undergone. THAT all started around my sophomore year when I flirted with the SunIn bottle and ended up with orangey-blonde hair, and then I got really lazy so I let it grow out, which looked really bad because my natural hair color is this sort of ashy blonde color. Being the ditz that I am, I decided to get highlights and lowlights to even my hair out. Did that, like, twice. Then I just got it highlighted. Then I let it grow out again because I'm a lazy person. By then I was a junior and my hair looked pretty crappy (though I still got compliments all the time because it doesn't matter what my hair looks like, people just love it). Soooo the beginning of my senior year, I took my sister to me with the salon and I dyed it DARK. It was this reddish brown color, and I liked it because it actually matched my eyebrows. But I got daring and wanted to try red. My roots had grown out far, so I had super red hair and then a really nice auburn, with a very visible line between the two. We got that fixed, but now my hair is growing out again and fading, so I have faded coppery-brown hair with about a half an inch of ashy blonde hair, which looks like gray against the dyed portion. And my mom was so upset with what happened the LAST time I got my hair done that she's afraid of letting me get my hair done again.

Gosh, I hope I can fall asleep soon. I'm not even tired right now! I googled "ways to fall asleep" and all it came up with was a list of things to do-- kick the caffeine (yeah right, at least I'm not drinking a Diet Dr. Pepper right now!), don't drink (don't do that anyway), etc. etc. I think my insomnia has been indirectly caused by my staying up to watch Juno on Movie6.net the other night. I stayed up until 1:00 in the morning. I was really tired in the morning, but thankfully we got out of school early due to the crappy weather. I vegged out and watched Batman Forever and then I took a nap. I ended up staying up late that night too because we had a late start the next day (today). So I not only stayed up late, but I slept in. I already said what happened tonight. I'm thinking it's all related, but hey, that's just me.

Well, I should probably TRY to fall asleep now. I've gotta be all ready for tomorrow-- we're going to see Phantom of the Opera! I think I've got my outfit picked out for tomorrow (I'm debating whether I should wear my navy blue 60's Jackie O. dress, my pink/crazy color plaid "West Side Story" dress, or my black dress with white polka dots... I'll have to put pictures of these things up some time). I'll probably go with the blue dress because I'm wearing my polka dot dress on Saturday for our high school choir "Cabaret Show." No matter what dress I wear, I'm going to wear my black opaque tights, my black round-toe heels with the little bow on them, and my black cardigan sweater thingy.

But now I'm off to pour myself a glass of milk because the internet gods say that it has tryptophan in it. I'll probably regret it in the morning when I have awful breath.

First Post

So... I used to have a blogspot a loooong time ago (when I was, like 14). It had to do with hobbits, I swear it. But it has disappeared long since, and I'm fed up with GreatestJournal and LiveJournal and all the crap they're doing. LiveJournal was cool at first, but I didn't really like it after a while. Then GreatestJournal came around, and I was like "AWESOME! 1000 userpics! Yayyyy!" And I had several accounts for RP characters and life was good... until they knocked it down to 100 pics... then a measly 10 pics (I had 16 pics on one LJ account because I got some deal that upgraded my account). I don't like posting about my woes on Myspace or Facebook because people tend to read those more and sometimes there are things that I want to say that I don't necessarily want everyone to read.

So now where am I? Back where it all started. Pretty cool, huh? Oh, I'm going to get a blog on my own website soon, but I'm about 80% sure that you can transfer this bad boy to another domain or something crazy like that. Just like I'm about 80% sure that the rest of my family had something with kielbasa and potatoes for supper. The smell has taken over the upstairs, but that's all I have to go on as far as leads because I was in bed at 6:30 p.m. I know, I'm lame. But I was angry; I didn't want to deal with anyone, so I ate supper at 5:30, stewed for about half an hour, talked to my friend for about 10 minutes on MSN, and then I stared at pictures on deviantART for another 20 minutes before I decided to sleep. And now I'm wide awake at 11:30. You could say my plan backfired slightly, but whatever. I'll probably fall asleep easily after I finish messing around with my blog and sleep all night and STILL be late to jazz band practice in the morning. But that's just because I'm awesome like that.