Drama Indeed

I feel like I don't have anything to write about most of the time, but there are some reasons behind that. One, I really am quite busy. I joined the play again, and so now I'm at school until six practicing every weekday. And the sophomore schoolwork isn't getting any easier. So it leaves me with very little time.

But I think a second, more interesting reason that I haven't been writing lately is because I've become quite numbed to the day-to-day drama that I used to be able to write about. But now it just doesn't seem interesting. That's not to say that there haven't been interesting things happening. How could I have not told all of you that my parents just got back from a cruise in Alaska, and that they were gone for a week? How could I have not told you about asking a junior out to homecoming and getting turned down (in my defense, she already had a date)? How could I have not told you about writing a song for a biology presentation? How could I not have told you about my older brother Michael, who recently started his own blog so he could write about his studying abroad? How could I not have told you about my uncle Brian's so called "intervention" for existential angst? How people keep putting games on the Bishop Kelly shared drive on my files? Or how I'm still working on Mondays, and just finished typing chapter 7? Or how I've already arranged/wrote two songs for the Bishop Kelly Band (one was Bittersweet Symphony, and the other was a "One Tin Soldier" Cover I wrote myself)? Or how I'm devising plans for another run for school president, involving the revival of the USJ and a musical performance for the speech? How I found (or rather how it found me) a way to save up basically all of my monthly allowance? How I honestly suspect that I've been subject to identity theft this month? How I heard about and found the entrance to Gnome-land (Bishop Kelly students, if you don't get this one, try asking around, you may be surprised)? And how I'm still trying to get together a functional band amidst all the chaos of my day-to-day life?

Shame on me.

You could say I'm taking for granted the randomness of life. I ought to think more about how lucky I am to be so strange and do so many things. By the way I've been posting, you'd think my life was dull.

Dull! Ha!

I laugh at the thought of me having a dull life. I have always tried to make my life exciting. And with a few exceptions in the long stretch of summer, I have always succeeded.

So look forward to some more regular posting from now on. Of course, if you do get bored, you can always switch 2 plan b...

USJ

I have a lot of memories from eighth grade. It was a really great year for me. That may be why I wrote so much at the time.

One of my favorite memories from the eighth grade though, is the USJ. What's that you ask? Well it's the United States of Joe! One day I decided we needed some sort of organization to unify the class. And I knew I was the perfect guy to do it. So the USJ was born!

Right away, I had many loyal subjects: Zack Funke, Andy Harrington, Richie Harrison, and most of the boys in the class all joined right off the bat. With a growing population, I gathered the necessary props - a flag with Latin words on it and a cool emblem, a national anthem, and some incentive for other people to join.

First off was the flag. I had just read House of the Scorpion and I thought that the emblem should be a cool-looking scorpion. So I googled scorpion and found a nice one. As for the words, I used Paint and inserted "USJ" and "LIBERTATOS NOSTRORUM NUMQUAM CAPIENT" which means "the freedom of us shall never be taken." (I was thinking about Braveheart at the time...)

Next up was the anthem, and it was unanimous. We held a vote, and the anthem became "We're Not Gonna Take It!" Before the week had passed, the class would randomly burst out into a chorus of our anthem.

And finally came the incentive. I had saved up $20 for something like this. What do all eighth graders like? Candy! So off to Albertsons. Before you know it, we had a personalized goody bag with four candies in each one and labeled for each citizen of the USJ. The morale of my subjects soared, and I soon had many new citizens.

But of course, this couldn't last forever. Before the nation could live long, we found opposition from a few of the boys. Which wouldn't be a problem if they hadn't been the largest and toughest boys in the school. We soon found ourselves challenged to an airsoft war. But before I could organize one, I came down with appendicitis. My Vice President had to take over, but he was not exactly liked in this new position of power. Morale went down, and when I came back to school, weak as I was, the USJ no longer had the strength to counter the threats that it was receiving from these boys. And so ended the USJ.

But it was one of my great memories from the eighth grade. And it's another perfect example of me taking joy in the randomness of life. It's what I do best. And I will never forget those happy months that I was the president of the USJ...