And I would Fly 500 Miles...

So it's been a while. Hi! I'm not dead. I'm down four wisdom teeth and almost moved out for college, but other than that not too much is different. I'm still me, you're still you, right? Right.

So last week I traveled alongside my aunt and mother to one of the greatest cities in the world, Chicago Illinois. I know what you're thinking: the midwest? Why? I'll tell you why: THE BEAN.

Okay, I'm kidding, we didn't fly a third of the way across the country just to see a bean, even if it is a majestic stainless steel sculpture of awesome. We did a heck of a lot of cool stuff in not a lot of time. That Wednesday morning we flew out from Pittsburgh International and landed at Midway around 7:00 AM Central. Time travelling (or traversing time zones to be more accurate) is an amazingly cool and disorienting thing. Especially when your wristwatch refuses to get with the program and change from EDT to CDT, but that's a whole other rant.

We took the Orange line into the Loop, which in hindsight is about the size of Downtown Pittsburgh. Plus: it's walkable and flat Minus: you walk way more than you realize and are exhausted by the end of it. But oh well.

That first day we went to Millennium Park (Home of the Bean), the Art Institute of Chicago (Home of a friendly cashier who made me realize I have a weird accent when it comes to saying the word "pin" versus "pen" as well as home to American Gothic and other famous art such), Giordano's Pizza (home of amazing deep dish pizza), the Briar Street Theater (home of the Blue Man Group), and then the Club Quarters hotel (temporary home of us). We got up around 4 AM Eastern to fly out, which is 3 AM central and finally got to the hotel to sleep around midnight central, or 1 AM Eastern. It was an exhausting but amazing day.

Day two was just as busy. I had amazing french toast at Wildberry Pancakes and Cafe on East Randolph. We took an architecture boat ride through the city of Chicago along the Chicago River. We also stumbled upon, and longtime followers of my blog will appreciate this, THE 2015 CHICAGO RUBBER DUCKY DERBY! They had a giant (not really) rubber duck and launched THOUSANDS of them off of a drawbridge and it was amazing and seriously the ONE time I go to Chicago we just so happen to find a ducky derby. (Confused yet? Click Here...). I took a detour to the Chicago Cultural Center (home of a GAR hall with an awesome dome and another hall with another awesome dome), another pilgrimage to the bean because THE BEAN! and that evening we travelled north to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs take on the Giants.

I'm not a Cubs fan, and I'm not a Giants fan. I am a self-diagnosed stubborn Pirates fan. So it's really weird going into a ballyard you don't know to see two teams you A) don't really care about and B) don't know really at all to watch them play. But it's Wrigley Field so you have to. So what are you to do, root against the home team? If you ask the random sea of Giants Fans around us yes you do. Or you could just cheer for everyone without worry because it doesn't matter.

Unless of course you're worried about the Buccos' Wild Card Chances. Which, after seeing the Cards series I suddenly am...

Three years ago I read a great book about Chicago and the 1892 World Fair. It's called "Devil in the White City" by Erik Larsen. Good Swedish name, though I doubt he's Swedish. Anyway, the worlds fair took place on the same plane longitudinally as Midway Airport (Midway = Midway Plaissance).. Most of buildings from the amazing worlds fair that debuted Tesla's Alternating Current and, you know, the Ferris Wheel, have burned to the ground. They all have, except for the Palace of Fine Arts. It was fireproof (a marvel of its time) and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry. So on the third day we trekked south in search of the Worlds Fair. I didn't realize how freaking huge this place was until I got there. It was overwhelming and amazing (both in architecture and size and the cool exhibits they had there - I sat in a combine harvester!) and so I wandered about a bit, and before catching the Metra north ran all the way around the building (which, much to MSI's credit, they've kept intact from the 1893 detailing) to look out over Jackson Park, a place I must explore next time I'm in Chicago. Because it's beautiful and haunting. Exactly as I hoped it would be. The world nowadays has no real place for worlds fairs - innovations are debuted on large stages and in keynote addresses by men in turtlenecks, but it's important to realize that there was a time where you had to travel to see the new. It wasn't just beamed at you or around you, you had to get your ticket, hitch up a wagon or train to see the impressive marvels of technology.

The rest of our last day in Chicago was spent wandering about the Navy Pier, which jettisons out into Lake Michigan complete with (of course) a ferris wheel, and some interesting oddities including the studios of WBEZ (this American Life, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and most other awesome things to come from Public Radio) and a museum dedicated to stained glass from Tiffany & Co.

Standing at the edge of the Navy Pier overlooking Lake Michigan is nowhere near as inspiring as looking out over the Atlantic Ocean from Bethany Beach, Delaware. But much like the rest of the marvel that is Chicago it forces you to compare and to examine. The city was planned after a fire, and has three layers, so the top layer - what us tourists see and the wayward streetgoers do - is always clean and pristine. Below is the through traffic, and below that is trash collection world and the trains. Chicago as a whole is planned to the T, and is a constant experiment of pushing higher (inventing the skyscraper) and more practically than you could think possible.

In conclusion, I love it there. It's too dang flat for me to even begin to compare it to my beloved Pittsburgh, but at the same time there is something to be said for flying in and seeing the city far beyond a sunrise summer haze over Midway.

Chicago is an inspiring place that forces you to think about human possibility. How the hell do you eat this gigantic deep dish pizza? Why do so many people flock to the bean? How did a city known for slaughterhouses and fire rise from its bloodied messy past and become an awesome and clean metropolis? It's a wonder of its own, and I've never experienced anything quite like it.

I give all credit to my amazing Aunt and Uncle who made this possible. For my tolerant mother for letting us drag her around Chicago, and even to a baseball game (I love it, she hates it) and to the giant rubber duck, to which we owe credit for all awesome and dorky things.

You just knew I'd find some way to circle it back to the Giant Duck....

If you'd like to see any of the pictures I took of this trip, I made an album on Flickr like usual: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexanderpopichak/albums/72157656832984110

And I Can't Fight All Your Battles for You

Those are from the lyrics of "Away Frm U" by a group called Oberhofer that was in an Expedia commercial or something. Interesting little song...

So this week I (finally) started the physical work on the Eagle Project. Sent out the call to arms, and 10 people answered Monday night, and we began by taking out the old:

It was a beautiful night to start...

A Concrete Capstone in Mid-Air!

So we took out the Redwood Sign to reveal...

Yet another sign!

So that's what it looks like right now - caution taped, moldy, and very much de-constructed. The plan was to get the electrical work in and then get it capped Saturday

This is Andrew Smith - Eagle Scout, Amazing Electrician, and friend. He's gone above and beyond, you can contact him at smithwiring.com

Wednesday I took the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

And Thursday I got sick. At noon I drove Matt to band practice, came home and sat on the couch with a fever and chills for two hours, picked him up, and grounded myself for the night. And then I slept 13 hours. And so anything I had planned for this weekend went out the window as I've been sidelined.

Last weekend my brother had the same thing, for about four days, and self-diagnosed it as hand, foot and mouth disease. Following this trend, I should be back Sunday. I hope. But until then I'm on the mend. It's really frustrating because it takes away my depth perception (so I'm sort of wobbling around) and so I can't do much except for type here and wait until it passes.

The Windowpane Makes a Show of Rain

That's from the chorus of the song "Reply" by the Spring Standards.

Last Friday I was again at a Riverhounds game and last Saturday I was again at a house concert to again see the AMAZING Spring Standards. I try and not be bitter about terms and conditions, but to save my own ranting/you having to deal with that I will not comment about the Riverhounds game except to say we won, and took a selfie with a camera guy (because we're nerds).

I can, however, talk about the Spring Standards. Basically, we were invited again by my aunt and uncle to listen to the Spring Standards live and acoustic. They were great as always and I have more music now after acquiring two CDs from them.

So this week was about squaring away summer work, Eagle project stuff, and some other miscellaneous things that came along the way. I have a date set for the Demolition work on the sign, Monday. Stay tuned, and I should be able to share more on it, but as for now I know that Monday we're removing stuff and smashing some stuff... this should be interesting.

I'm taking this as a lesson in brevity as I can't think of anything more really and cutting it off here. I start senior year in about two and a half weeks and quite frankly I'm nervous. I'm more nervous about getting summer work and this eagle project done before the first day than I am for senior year itself. I don't know.

After Four Years and 14,000 Pageviews I Still Can't Consistently Title Stuff

Usually I am listening to some music while I write these, but I'm in a library so I don't posses that luxury. That music becomes the title, which I usually relate back to whatever I'm writing about. Unlike what Jamie just told me, I usually title first.

I'm at that point in the school year where everything is moving at hyper speed but the school day. As a result, you've begun to despise everyone around you while simultaneously the workload quadruples. If I miss a Friday (as I did last week... I don't usually skip whole weeks but I couldn't get a draft off the ground), I apologize, but that's why.

I'm also in the middle of planning for my Eagle Project. You'd think that redoing an outdoor sign would be a simple planning process and the challenges would stem from my inability lack of experience to do any sort of construction. Turns out it's the opposite. The goal is that by June I have something in stone and we start work.

And it's at this point the bell rings.

After this, and about a gap of ten hours, I'm back at it; typing away. I want to acknowledge that this site hit the 14,000 mark within the last week or two. I have to stop looking at these numbers. I spent a day working the numbers and if all goes on the track that it has been, I'll be at 23,000 or so by June of 2015. So that's cool. But really, why do I care?

I changed my across-the-emails signature recently. I noticed that a bunch of teachers and professionals I email have some deep and profound quote dotting the bottom of their signature. I've had this quote at the bottom of mine for a while now:

"I can't imagine a person becoming a success who doesn't give this game of life everything he's got" – Walter Cronkite

I haven't really talked about success here, and I think there are two reasons for that: 1) I don't know that I truly understand what success is and 2) with all of the metacognition I've been toying with, the question usually goes into a why does society put such an emphasis on success? So I've decided to think about it for once. Webster is interesting with how it defines it. It first reads "the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame" and then "the correct or desired result of an attempt".

Why do I say interesting? If you recall from the latest installment of me gushing over F. Money Bojangles' Gatsby, I talked about a sense of superficial sense of authority. The rich have power merely because they have a wealth of resources. If success is measured by wealth or fame (which in a capitalist society makes the most sense) then we're all doomed. The rich merely get richer and the famous breed fame, leaving success to those who we respect and beyond that an oligarchy of sorts. Which I personally think is a bunch of baloney.

I prefer that second definition, or at least the inclusion of "desired result". Success is something defined by someone actively striving for something. What is the desired result of me writing here week after week? That's for me to define. Honestly, at this point it's to become a better writer, not necessarily to gain a following or gain accolades (in the past three weeks alone I've been added to four or five lists on twitter of "top bloggers" or "top designers". WHAT DOES IT MEAN?).

So again, thanks for following along, and joining me. Nothing personal, I'm just not sure why you're there. Nevertheless, I'm thankful you're there (a 60+/week readership is a great motivator).

One week from now I'll be in the audience of Carlynton's The Wizard of Oz. This is a show which, depending on the next two days, I might be assisting in the lighting design. Because you know I can't stay away from these things.

Now There’s Green Light in My Eyes

So last week I finished F. Scott Fitzgerald's (affectionately known to some of our English class as F. Money Bojangles) The Great Gatsby. Generally, I don't like classics until long after I've read them, but Gatsby struck me as endlessly intriguing. I know I'm not of the bourgeoisie but I was still able to identify with Gatsby in the simplistic analysis of the American Dream - or rather, as I've come to understand through a study on the wealth gap, meeting with Occupy Pittsburgh** and others is the American Fairy Tale.

What I think I identify most with is the idea of invented social inequality, and Nick Carraway's fantastically broad pronouncements. We have to take his word on everything because he is the first person narrator, but I find it interesting that for once I can look at a narrator as attempting to be objectively transfixed with everything.

I'm (obviously) no literary genius, and I don't pretend to be but I think this piece is a great conversation starter on the topics of the wealth gap, lust, and built up personas. One of the lines that particularly stuck out (there are so many, but this one is the one I can quote off the top of my head):

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, and the tired.

This applies to love, wealth, success, and I'd go on but the beauty of this statement is that it can be applied to pretty much anything. It's a basic observation about human existence, and for some reason I'm fascinated by this.

I really like this book for that reason: nuggets of things that may not actually be that profound (I'm 16, not some time-honored critic*) but make you say "hmm..." after you read them. Within and Without.

At this point though, I'm feeling quite tired. Have a nice week.

*Another theme of this novel, and prevalent throughout many of Fitzgerald's pieces is the emphasis we put upon superficial authorities: celebrities, scholars, etc. to the point where they are no longer a person but rather an idea. We only allow time-tested authorities to sound off on certain things. We are only allowed a choice of certain giants to stand upon the back of, it seems. The best example of this objectification/idealization is the Petrarchian lover. You fall victim to being in love with the idea of being in love or the idea  of the other person to the point where they are idolized, they are no longer a person but an idea of perfection.***

**No idea what I'm talking about? Here: http://2015blogger.blogspot.com/2011/12/visiting-with-occupiers-and-education.html and here: http://2015blogger.blogspot.com/2012/10/occupy-one-year-later.html

***JayScribble's book Paper Towns contains one of my favorite quotes: "What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person". A person is only a person [that is the extent to which I'll comment on the whole Alex Day thing, and I felt it fit with this post. Anyway, yeah, Gatsby.]

But Hold on to What you Believe in the Light

Earlier today I was in my fifth period study hall reading through old post titles. It struck me just how much over the past year I've titled posts with music lyrics. Just a thought.

A note before the post starts: This is the week before midterms. I don't think I'm sane, but then again, when I am like this I can sometimes do my best work.

What I want to talk about is two things that may or may not be words: hypotheticality and intentions. Take that, for example. I wrote that non-word (my editor is giving me the magic red squiggles) in my weekly planner as a potential blog post. It seems anymore that we need something to strive for, or to have some path in place before we justify a destination.

It seems to me that spontaneity has gone from a desirable trait to something construed as irresponsible. Why does it seem this way to me? I live in a relatively self-contained bubble: my goals are set forth by some mythical curriculum committee of wizards or whatever for me to figure out in a calculated way. I understand how you arrive at an answer or destination or milestone or what have you is important. But does it lose its importance when it's carefully plotted out? When everything is expected, when everything is painstakingly explained, or planned?

I think it does. I think above the destination and above the specific route one takes to wherever they're going is what happens to stop that route.

I have four favorite photographers (they may argue with me, but I call them photographers) as of now who are: Dan Winter (Winner of ReimagiNATION 2013's Art Division), Brad Knabel (Carlynton Marching Band Resident Photographer), Dave DiCello (Pittsburgh Photographer; master of HDR) and Kate Kinley (really hard to describe. She does a lot of conceptual photography, and has a flickr and blog, both of which you should check out). The common thread between all four of them is that they take pictures of spontaneous life.

Life consists of those moments that aren't posed, that aren't the ones that you want to put in a resume, or on a college application. It's the stories of how you heard about that scholarship, or the parking ticket you got outside of that school, or that girl whose books you helped pick up in the hallway on the way to some class that make life move. I've never been fond of portrait photographers for this reason exactly. Life is more like an instagram picture than a school portrait.

I ask people (mainly at school, but elsewhere too) all the time what it is they plan on doing, where they are going, and more often than not do I get the response "someplace else". This troubles me a bit because they appear to think they have explored everything that is here (here being Pittsburgh). And I don't think that's true either. I want to explore things, and when I can't, I want to reexamine what I already know. I don't know, random thoughts.

If you are interested in checking out any of the photographers I mentioned above, here you go:

• Dan Winter: Flickr & Tumblog
• Brad Knabel: Flickr
• Dave DiCello: Flickr & Photography Site
• Kate Kinley: Flickr & Photography Site & Blog

If you are one of the people I mentioned above and want me to delete the link, please let me know, like now. I don't want you to sue me or whatever, just email me at alex dot popichak at gmail dot com.

Oh, and the Spring Standards are playing Mr. Smalls (of Tally Hall adventure fame) April First. This is not a drill.

Quack.

EDIT 10/2/13: The pictures are up on my Flickr page... Check out the set here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexanderpopichak/sets/72157635984422503/.

So Yesterday was fun. I had school as usual, but from there I came home and my mother took me to downtown Pittsburgh. One of the things I love so much about being so close to the city is that anytime something happens there, it's a 15-30 minute drive (depending on traffic) pretty much anywhere downtown. Our mission was to go on a duck hunt.

So there's this project where Dutch Artist Florintijn (spelling?) Hofman makes a giant inflatable duck, and well, yeah. That's about it. And there's a giant duck now floating on the Allegheny River. But they boated it up yesterday, and I was a part of the greeting party.

I came straight from school and my mother and I set up at Point State Park. I brought my camera and we hung out around the fountain until about 5 oclock, when the media appeared. To my right was a gentleman from the Associated Press, David Highfield of KDKA, some WPXI people, and yes - they were all here to see a 40-foot tall duck float up the river.

Then, around 5:05 we saw the head poking out from around the bend. Eventually that head gave way to a body, and then, GIANT DUCK!

It's hard to describe how ridiculously excited I was to see this thing, and that was shared by the mass of people that had joined us in Point State Park. The artist was there, and his mission - at least the one he states on his website - was accomplished. He brought smiles and joy to the faces of those around him. And Pittsburgh now has a duck floating until October the 20th.

I didn't add pictures at the time of posting, but I will soon, and it all will be available on my flickr page (www.flickr.com/AlexanderPopichak).

Summer Reading Adventure 2013 Part I: The Awakening

So one of the things that I'm required to do to keep in my honors level courses is read a book. Well, actually for English I need to read two books, write two rhetorical precis, two outlines, and two personal responses (one in each category due by July 15). For Social Studies I need to read a book, then read the first four chapters in my textbook and answer some questions.

So I test-drove the idea of book reviews last year with Withering Away Heights and I think I'm going to do it again. This contains plot spoilers, and may very well ruin the book for you. Sorry, but I am warning you now.

The first book I've read this summer was The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Where the heck do I start with this plot? It's about this woman who decides she is unhappy with her life as a married woman with children, and didn't marry for love, and wah.

It's set 19th century New Orleans and the whole aim of the piece is to highlight the lack of choices women had in the way of self expression, and what happens when they bow to social conventions and have to follow strict class expectations et cetera. 

The plotline follows Edna Pontellier experiencing a personal awakening that she didn't marry for love, and falls in love with a lovely younger gentleman named Robert. But, again: She is married to a guy already, and has two children. He loves her back, so he moves away to remove himself out of the equation.

I want to take a moment to appreciate the fact that her sons names are Étienne and Raoul. 

Anyway, she decides that she also wants to be an artist. Her husband is the breadwinner and she is expected by social conventions to serve as homemaker and loyal wife and downright dull stock character. So she sends her kids to her homeland of Kentucky, her husband off to make money in New York. And she moves out. And Robert comes back. 

And what Robert essentially tells her is: Lady, I love you, but I can't be with you because, you know, adultery and stuff. So what is the logical thing to do at this point. You guessed it - she commits suicide. The end. Because that 

Okay, so I get that class culture is something important here. So are gender roles, because together they essentially drive this Edna chick insane and she kills herself. But these are social constructs of the 1890s. 

I understand that gender gaps are still a thing. In fact, a much better (and expanded) argument can be viewed here: http://tiltingsilver.tumblr.com/post/51872916055. So we have a long way to go, but I am not sure I am getting out of this what I should. 

I saw gender roles, and Edna's struggle to be an artist to a world not kind to women wanting to be artists, not some tragic love story of a woman wanting what she cannot have. 

I think we've come a bit further than having to resort to suicide because your on the side lover wants to preserve the sacrament of the existing marriage. And I'm also trying to figure out its relevance to me personally. I guess it's cultural awareness of gender roles, but in the context of a 1890s tragedy. 

Honestly, I didn't like the book. I liked what I interpreted as the message, which really was only made clear through reading criticism. It was quite Dickens-y with the whole 'let's describe every detail of the dresses at parties' thing, but it's a short (200ish page) read. Wouldn't recommend it, but I would recommend this criticism on it. Which, I guess requires reading the book: http://www.gvsd.org/cms/lib02/PA01001045/Centricity/ModuleInstance/3232/Critical_Essay-The_Awakening-A_Refusal_to_Compromise.pdf

</rant>

So this week I celebrated four years since the first post in 2009. I got bored and played with my image editor, and this happened (left)

But seriously, Thanks. No matter how long you've been reading, or if this is like the future and I'm in year like five or whatever, thanks for reading my nonsense week after week, despite how rambly these things get. 

Thanks for reading, because honestly, without people reading this, I would've stopped a long while back. 

Stay tuned for more (slightly comical, I hope) book reviews. Meh.

TEDxGrandviewAve, Ideas, Pittsburgh

Okay, so a while back I had read about this TED talk spinoff called TEDxGrandviewAve. For those of you who don't know what the TED talks are, they are essentially a bunch of mini-lectures and talks on "Ideas Worth Spreading", and have been around since 1984ish. The TEDx Talks are kind of like TED talks, only independently organized events. TEDxGrandviewAve is the Pittsburgh version of it.

So I emailed the guy that helps run the Re(imagine) Media program about it. He liked the idea of the group of us coming to watch. Unfortunately, by this point the 100 slots had already filled for the physical event. Thus, the event we would attend would be a webcast party (one of the three official ones) at a place called StartUptown in the Uptown section of Pittsburgh.

Flash-forward to today: I go to StartUptown, and eventually meet up with the Re(imagine)rs and my friend Dave Wovchko at StartUptown. So what exactly is StartUptown? Well, I arrived first and had the chance to talk to Dale, the gentleman who founded StartUptown

"THE VISION is to build a community-connected campus of entrepreneurial activity in the eastern half of the Uptown neighborhood — and to retain companies as they grow upwards of 20-50 employees." -StartUptown.org

The StartUptown Space

So anyway, we visit the space, get a tour, and settle down into the area where we are to watch the TEDx Livestream. However, as with most things, it didn't happen that way.

The Livestream didn't work. The audio didn't match the video, and it kept jerking around. We really could have stopped there, the 10 or so of us who were there. But we didn't. We decided to open up a new window and watch some of the talks from TED.com, the main events.

What happened was interesting. Someone would suggest a video, and we'd watch it. Then something strange would happen - we'd start talking about something related to that video, and talk for a good 20 minutes or so before someone suggests another and it repeats.

So why is this so interesting? Well, the room ranged in age from 15 year old me to 64 year old Dale. These were adults and 20somethings and high schoolers all talking about the world around them, and the ideas that shape that world.

We took some breaks in between there, mainly to meander about the space, and Dave and I collaborated on a logo that may soon be a logo for one of the companies there. They had these door-sized dry erase boards in each of the spaces. I found this fascinating that the whole space was very much a space for creativity, and couldn't help but start sketching on the one.

Nevertheless it brought back into focus what I enjoy - listening to what people have to say, and being able to think and learn with and around other people in a setting that embraces creativity.

I feel like I was a part of something, even though we didn't see what actually happened at TEDxGrandviewAve, we learned about something. Something bigger than ourselves in a learning community.

And I think in a broader sense that's where everyone learns- not in the same age clumps, or in specialized hallways or whatever, but by interacting and creating with other people AND with yourself.

On Writing Stuff.

So I've been writing a lot lately, but with no particular aim. I've found that I can snap into three modes with writing: The one where I write deep and profound prose and the sort, The one where I basically regurgitate facts, and The freeform stuff.

They are independent modes and if I try mixing two, it ends poorly. Unfortunately I'm forced to from time to time to write essays. Now I'm pretty sure this blog has posts from all of the categories... and I'm fine with it.

Apparently some people at my school read last week's post about the antiquated lighting system at the elementary school, and were motivated to at least try to do something. This both excites and scares me. It excites me that someone is willing to take action about things that are important to them. It scares me that people read what I write.

I mean, I want people to read what I write, but there's something about the knowledge that someone is reading something you wrote that sort of scares me. This especially applies to printing out something, and having someone read it next to you. As the person who spent hours working on such a piece, you are constantly wondering what they think, where the plot or essay or whatever the medium is should go next.

So when I read that my site hit 8,000 views I came to a realization that if each post had equal representation, there are like 46 hits per each post. Which means that someone other than I and my parents and friends and the sort are reading this thing.

So I guess what the answer here is to not base my drive or success on numbers (I hate math to start with) but rather on the quality of the content, or at least in this case the frequency.

I realize this was a movement on YouTube in December with Charlie McDonnell's "I'm Scared" movement and what JayScribble was talking about with Becoming YouTube, that content creators get scared of their audiences, but I think (selfish as it may seem) the thing to worry about is the content itself, and whether it's doing good.

This may just be some rant that I stayed up until 11 on a Friday night to write, but it might be something profound. I don't know. Maybe you do? Je ne sais pas.

Schools Out, Forever (or at least next week)

(It's a play on song lyrics... If you haven't heard the song, then I don' know what to tell you)
So yeah, it's winter break. I think I'm going to blog about a few things, but I'll name them as subheadings: It's the End of The World As We Know it (and I Feel Fine), and OMG It's Snowing In Carnegie.

It's The End Of The World As We Know it (And I Feel Fine)
I have some bad news for you conspiracy theorists: I procrastinated on my Friday blog post, and we're all alive.

But Friday marked the last day we had before this lovely little break, as well as the annual CHS Variety Show. I was informed the day before that the WCHS Morning Crew (Consisting of Me, Clay Bodnar of JSVH fame, and Aidan K of AK Productions Fame) were to host the variety show. Now, I had emceed events before, notably the Talent show of like 2009 or something but my counterparts had only done the AM announcements with me.

It's strange to be on this end of the spectrum when a year back I ran lights for the same event. I got the call from the people running the lights that it was time to go, and instead of hitting the button for a spot, I led Aidan and Clay into darkness with nothing but a spotlight glaring upon us. For me, it was very strange.

We then talked about the end of the world as the opening, doing a custom-tailored version of REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know it (And I Feel Fine)" that we had learned a mere 9 minutes before curtain. It was complete with jumbled lyrics and an ancient Mayan dance, which consisted of Aidan doing the "start the lawnmower" and sprinkler.

Somehow, we managed to host the show with limited injury. We almost lost a Kozy cutout, and were nearly booed for our jokes, but hey, so are the pros! There were a few tech and performance snafus, but I think we managed well enough on our end.

I was asked when I went up to my grandparents house this weekend if our grades were checked, or if we needed to be in scholars or honors classes to do the announcements. Quite plainly, no. We're a group of volunteers that just want to do this for the heck of it. We get no bonus points, magic pats on the back, and I don't think we need it. Our announcements crew (not the tech crew... that is another story entirely) is a dysfunctional family that gets stuff done in a wacky way.

OMG It's Snowing In Carnegie
(Kudos to the CHS band for inspiring the title)
So there were two trends inspiring a lot of the tweets among local teens, or at least the people that I follow on twitter. The first was the end of the world, and the second is that it's snowing.

What a shocker that the first day of winter (northern hemisphere) contains snow. Yet the local news, and twitterers alike took to their proverbial pulpits preaching that it had indeed snowed.

On a final note, these events inspired this gem of a tweet from the great Lana Meyer responding to the great Marin Exler:

No school means hopefully more time to blog. Look for something on Boxing day and MAYBE on Friday for once. 

Happy Western Christmas, Chanukah, Boxing Day, Festivus, and New Years everyone!

This Crazy Thing We Call Life

So today Facebook asked the following question of its users:

The usual placeholder text reads "What's on your mind?" as a friendly demand to get more content. Nevertheless, here in the United States we celebrated the holiday of Thanksgiving. I'm going to try and answer two bits here: What is Thanksgiving and What am I Thankful For?

What is Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving is a holiday in the United States, and Canada that is traditionally associated with the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. The story goes, they landed there accidentally and many died when they tried getting civilization off the ground there. Enter Squanto and his band of the Friendly Indians who help save the Englishmen by teaching them how to farm (because they obviously weren't scouts) and cause the most plentiful harvest the Englishmen had ever seen. Thus ensued a party, and that party is repeated yearly.

Thanksgiving is the giving of thanks to someone or a higher power, normally for something good.

But wait, aren't Pilgrims on a religious journey by definition? YES. They were fleeing the Church of England and its insanity, in their opinion. This is the part we kind of ignore because of Political Correctness, but nevertheless, the party thanked the Indians and God.

Squanto? If you don't know him, stop reading this nonsense and grab a history book, Open it. Click this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squanto

The Friendly Indians? There's a brilliant documentary about them on Youtube.

What am I Thankful For?
I've realized that over the past few years I have been extremely lucky. I've been able to take advantage of the ability to meet people, and the fact that I'm not in control. I'm thankful above all for my family and the other amazing people who make my version of this crazy thing we call life mine.

I am thankful for my many families; my actual family, my parish family, my WYEP family, and those friends who you think you could get away with calling them family.

Education, the Election, and a Third Thing

Update: I Helped Write And Narrate An Audio Piece Using This Blog Post. Wanna Hear The Final Product? Check it out here: http://reimaginemedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/election-perspective-2012.html

I've been mulling around my mind as to how to write this post, but I decided this is the way to do it. One of the things that I've been passionately involved in is the education system. I rant about certain things just because I am lazy sometimes for things I just don't want to do. However, I also tend to do this thing where I challenge the line of the realities of things, and usually end up getting in trouble for it.

What am I talking about? I am a victim of the education system in the United States in 2012. I say victim because I believe that the system is broken and flawed. I mentioned about a year ago this video featuring a discussion by Sir Ken Robinson pertaining to the particular issues of the whole system (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U).

The only issue I see is that this, much like my rants, just challenge the system. It doesn't propose any obvious solution except for changing the line of thinking and/or stop medicating the children for standardized tests. However, I've found a gentleman from England (CGPGrey) who proposed a solution after a conference on education in California attended by the likes of Sir Robinson, Hank Green (jayscribble's brother) and many other YouTubers including ViHart. Anyway, Grey put together a brilliant video discussing the topic which you can see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vsCAM17O-M&feature=plcp

So why am I ranting about education without giving specifics? Probably because I've mentioned specifics before. Nevertheless, I bring to mind the recent election. I was on the ground on the South Side interviewing people under the banner of Re(imagine) about the election process. You can quote me on my findings if you want, but basically I learned two things:

1. The People are afraid of The Media (Come on, I'm not partisan media, I'm 15 and just a guy with a field recorder) [I can understand shyness, just not the disgust]
2. The people I was able to talk to were very set in their ways and were proud of their side.

The twitter reactions were interesting to say the least. I follow people for one of two reasons: 1) I know them and/or 2)their tweets are interesting. I saw a bunch of "why does it matter" tweets which I wasn't surprised. It's just a commentary on the state of contemporary thinking.

I'll answer why it matters: In three or so years, you are going to be plunged into the real world. This real world doesn't care whether you're drunk, high, or cute. You'll inherit a cruel world that you'll be expected to take care of, and understand. It matters because before you know it, you will be electing someone to lead you.

I grouped these things together for a few reasons. The first is that this education system is being driven by the current world with the knowledge of the outside distractions we have now, yet we are amazed with the results it produces? We shouldn't be. They aren't as unrelated as they're made out to be. The older generation has a grasp on reality, and I want to call on my own generation to take the iPod earbuds out and listen.

On a lighter note, this election was the first election I've ever covered, and when R(i) completes the piece on the election, I'll add a link to the "noted works" page (I've been keeping that as a clearing house for a portfolio until I can get a site set up for it), and probably post it to their blog. I'm thrilled to be starting off a journalism career here in Pittsburgh, and with such an awesome group. 

Over the past year, I've gotten a chance to experience the real world and the ability to work with like-minded media makers. Thanks to Alexa from WYEP and Mrs. Veri for showing me this in the first place.

Occupy: One Year Later

So those of you that followed my adventure to downtown Pittsburgh last December may remember that I visited with members of the Occupy Movement. I'll tell you what I saw.

The following is from my post "Visiting the Occupiers..."

After wandering around the encampment around this large bulletin-board style fence around a fountain, it was quite clear that this group was angry with what was happening with America, and were willing to stay indefinitely. It kind of reminded me of a boy scout tenting excursion. So we decided to walk up to a guy and identify ourselves as media people from WYEP. He had a lot to talk about. He was a man who had taken odd jobs: moving boxes, a registered massage therapist, before joining this movement.
When asked if he thought that this movement would help any job prospects when I (or in this case, the girl asking the questions) graduate college, he laughed. He said that he wished that he could say so, but he was being a realist. He thinks that change will come out of this, but nothing immediate.
We also asked what the reactions the encampment had gotten. He said it was mainly positive. He mentioned a time (as did two other protesters) where there had been a few people about four weeks ago that had screamed "GET A JOB" out the window by passing at a high rate of speed, to suggest that they might have been drunk. Others said that they'd join, but they had to work. To be honest, some of the protesters do have jobs (See Below).
Two other protesters talked to us about their thoughts. The one man described himself as "Underemployed." They mainly shared the same views as the first man, but had an interesting perspective coming back and forth from a job (I think the one said he was laid off, but I am not sure).

So the movement celebrated one year. Granted, those of you that know the history of the Pittsburgh movement know that later on they were kicked out of Mellon Green and essentially disbanded.

I asked point-blank what their plan for if they do get kicked out, what would they do. They answered that they would maybe move and Occupy the Point. He joked that if you controlled the point (speaking historically) you can be more successful. They never moved to the point.

A year later, I am able to step back and realize a few things: As Alex Zukoff said, this was one of the first major movements toward socialism. Upon further research, I saw it could be, but I saw that it might have been doomed from the start by being just protesters  They were protesting a system that failed them, but could cite nothing but

THE ONE PERCENT! WE ARE THE 99%.

Okay, that's concentration of wealth. It's been an issue since currency was invented, really.

If we wanted to kickstart a real revolution, or another Occupy, someone would need to step up with a platform of somesort. If it really is a move for social reform, someone should have the foresight to put that as their mission.

I'm not saying Occupy is dead, because in essence, Occupy is an idea. I'm just saying that if the gentleman's idea of "eventual results" is going to happen, there needs to be some form of organization in ways of platform, and exactly who/what they are fighting. You just can't redistribute wealth, you have to work out a plan of a system.

The Declaration of Independence details that if a government isn't properly working for the people, they need to have the right to fix it... Occupy was an attempt, it just wasn't that great of an attempt.

So on this anniversary of the Pittsburgh movement, I have to wonder: what have we learned, and what is there to work on at this point?

Lights Will Guide You Home: Quoting Songs for Blog Titles

Why Hello There! My guess is that you forgot I existed, due to my recent absence. Strangely enough, I have been experiencing somewhat of a writers block.

I guess I should start by explaining how I get the ideas that become these blog posts, and for that matter, all of my adventures and projects. I usually just decide "hey, it's Friday (or Thursday), why not blog" and immediately all of my thoughts flood into my fingers and as a result, the page in front of me. I am an idea person, I come up with about 100 ideas for a post per week, and only ever use one because I rarely finish a thought. I have had four draft posts in my queue to finish writing, but I almost never finish those in favour of creating a completely new one.

On an unrelated note, I have been out and about recently with my not-as-footprinted-on-the-internet friend Greg. He informed me about six months about this thing called Geocaching. It's basically a worldwide treasure hunt that requires a GPS (Which he has).

If you are interested in the trend, check out Geocaching.com. If you get a membership, check out my personal profile here: http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=436ec95d-027c-41a0-9351-8c0ad2776d88. I am, unoriginally, The2015Blogger.

Railroad Trestle: Built Circa 1901...
Taken with an Android Phone.

So we went on an adventure through the backwoods of Crafton on our adventure this past Monday. We were off to find a cache that required climbing like a 20% grade up this crazy hill and into an old coal quarry. However, we did get to see this awesome railroad trestle on our way back. 

Anyway, it quickly got dark as we walked through the woods and the entire 1.8 mile stretch all the way back to his house.

I guess a good question to ask is Why? I think I fell victim to that human urge to explore outside of what we know. I think that in the end, we are all bonded by this curiousity as to what lies on top of a hill. Without this geocache, I would never had seen this trestle, and never been able to see what Chartiers Creek looks like from a MUCH higher elevation.

Curious? The Cache is Called "You'll Find More Than Coal" and you can check out its listing here: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=e1d513cd-b61e-4f82-8304-f9b5c3a01b07
Tell them The2015Blogger sent you!

Vacation From God?

So, my father decided to join the blogosphere temporarily last week and wrote a Pastoral Reflection for UOCofUSA.org. It is a cool little reflection, so I've decided to rewrite it below.

See it online at: http://uocofusa.org/news_120711_2.html

UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH OF THE USA
Pastoral Reflections

"Vacation From God?"

By Rev. Fr. Robert Popichak

Ah, summertime! Each of us looks forward to the time of year where we get a break from our daily work and school routine.

In the United States, we call it vacation. Other countries call it holiday. Irrelevant of the name, it brings images of leisure time, travel, friends, family, and sometimes adventure.

Whether it is a trip to the shore, a cabin in the mountains, a tent in a park, a luxury hotel, or a cruise on the open seas, we all need a break from our normal routine to recharge our personal batteries. As each of us is different, we all have our own idea of what constitutes the best use of our time away from the office or the classroom.

As I write this, my family is preparing to go to a beach on the east coast for several days—our first true long vacation since our sons were born. Planning, sorting, arranging, packing—all of these take time and preparation. Maps are reviewed, online searches are made for attractions and sites of interest, arrangements to stop mail and newspaper delivery are made…all in the name of an orderly change. The destination is finalized, GPS loaded with our destination address, a temporary home is set for our Dachshund, and the car is packed…now what?

We spend a great deal of our lives looking forward to a break from the norm—whether it’s the typical long summer vacation from school or the ever-so-short week or two away from our jobs, it seems that planning for that getaway obsesses us for many weeks before the actual event.

Time away…from what? We never seem to give much thought about our spiritual lives when we plan a vacation…it’s just a Sunday or two missing church—God will understand! There are 50 other Sundays and other holy days to visit with Him…and of course, since He loves us, we don’t have to worry about Him! He’ll be right there when we get back…and if we need Him on our trip, He’ll be there as well!

Sometimes, we fail to plan for the most important part of our vacations—the spiritual recharge. My most restful, peaceful, relaxing, and recharging vacation was nearly twenty years ago. Pressures from my work were immense—the personalities were grinding my nerves to nothing—all was NOT WELL! I NEEDED a vacation!

For some reason, unknown to me at the time, I decided to visit a friend in Northeastern Pennsylvania—in the Pocono Mountains. Since their family worked as well, I would spend a weekend with them, then do something I had never thought of before—spend a week at a monastery! Arrangements were made and I arrived at the Orthodox Monastery of Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk in South Canaan, Pennsylvania. I was shown to my room, met my mentor for the week, Hieromonk Juvenaly—the monastery librarian, then was given the schedule of services…beginning with compline, vespers, and dinner. Church services were nice—quiet, peaceful, NO PEWS! Dinner was quiet as well…and my night’s sleep as restful as I had ever experienced.

At 4 AM, the alarm went off, I got dressed, then up the hill in the dark to the chapel for Matins and Liturgy…which began at 5 AM! I went up the road in the dark—no hint yet of the sunrise. The church was empty except for a monk lighting candles…and the smell! Beeswax candles were burning throughout the church—it truly smelled heavenly. The silence filled everything as I stood in the back, just letting it permeate every cell in my body, until the arrival of other monks and laity. Matins and Liturgy were just a bit more special, the words a little clearer, the hymns a little easier to sing, the prayers ever so much more REAL.

At the end of the Liturgy, when I went forward to kiss the cross and receive the Antidoron, I truly did not want it to end. I had truly been transported away from every care and concern…to be with God for those few hours in His house. Throughout the days, it seemed that there were not enough services, so I spent extra time in the church, just breathing in the scent of the candles, looking at the light on the icons, and thinking about what I was doing there. I even thought about a monastic vocation! Father Juvenaly told me that the life of an Orthodox monk was not for me—I must say I was crushed emotionally…but he said not to worry, God had definite plans for my life!

Now, two decades later, I can honestly say His plans for my life were nothing close to mine. I have loved every moment of my priesthood, but still fondly travel back to my week with God. Just the thought of it makes me smile…to truly vacation with Him, on His terms, in His house! I can take a microvacation just by thinking back to the first morning Liturgy.

As we travel to our family vacation spot, I will still think of that week. Each of us has been given the opportunity to experience God’s love and creation every day of our lives. Do not pass up the chance to see Him in everything around you—trees, hills, water, birds, animals, clouds, rain, storms—all are His creation!

On your vacation, take a few minutes to thank Him for everything He has given you—your health, family friends, and all good things come from Him. Visit an Orthodox church where you find yourself—go in and look around, breathe in the smells, experience a slightly different view of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Recharge your batteries…and save those memories for when the snow flies!

May God grant you a safe journey, no matter where you roam, a safe return to home and family, and His Love and Protection along the way!

Originally Posted on July 11, 2012 at  http://uocofusa.org/news_120711_2.html The Article was written by Fr. Robert Popichak for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the United States of America's
"Pastoral Reflections" Series. 

This entry appears here with permission from the author

Re(ImagiNATION) (a Two-Parter)

This part two of a two part post... see the one right before this to know what you missed (I doubt you missed much)

SO I wanted to reserve a separate post for my final thoughts on the first Re(ImagiNATION).

For those of you who don't know what that was, it was a high school band competition that my group at WYEP (Re(Imagine) Media) held back on May 5th 2012 at Schenley Plaza. I, as well as Neil, Mark, Ally, Alyssa, Sammie, Molly, Gabriela, Meg, and the rest of Re(Imagine) Media crew emceed the event introducing bands as well as putting into words what we do every other Saturday. Now you should be able to follow the rest.

Packing the Plaza

I got there about two hours before the start, and I am immediately handed this V-Neck t-shirt to wear as uniform for the event. Armed with this new-found (rather low-cut tshirt for my taste) uniform and some energy, I teamed up with one my friends to help publicize the event on the street with Frisbees. It was interesting, to say the least, explaining our event to people, however we packed the little gazebo-esque thing that is Schenley Plaza and began a freaking-awesome band competition.

T-B: Ripe For Theft,
Samj ft. Chuck Deze
Mos Lov, Jordan Montgomery, and
Jupiter Sampson
Hat Co.
Mount Royal

We kicked off with this group called Ripe For Theft with member Alex Zukoff (A friend of mine from WYEP as well as other places) and just like that all five acts flew by. We were entertained by a duo Samj ft. Chuck Deze whom I got to meet beforehand backstage. Chuck was a really nice guy, who gave me insight into his stage name. He had told me that in football, his nickname was "Chuck Diesel." One day, the gentleman who started it shortened it to just "Deze" and Chuck Deze was born.

We also met a group called Mount Royal (also quite nice) as well as rappers Jupiter Sampson and Jordan Montgomery and DJ MosLov. We met a school group called Hat Co from Hope Academy.

As all of this band awesomeness was going on, there were activities such as sidewalk chalk drawing, spray-painting a community canvas (Shoutout to Sammie for coming up with that one!) oh and there was a green room.

WYEP is a place that instead of being built of like bricks and stuff, is built of pure awesome. They built us a little WYEP tent to use at the plaza as a freaking GREEN ROOM! Essentially, us emcees got to hang out with the bands performing (did I mention these were bands that our group picked as a top 5 to play at this event to start with‽‽‽). To say the least, I was psyched.

The event's actual winnings was judged by professionals, and the winner receives a press kit, studio time to record a three song ep, and the title of first winner of the first-ever Re(ImagiNATION).

Mount Royal came out on top. However, each of the bands received a mentorship with a local artist.

I took turns co-emceeing with the fabulous Gabriela Latta as well as the always-bubbly and uplifting Ally Bair and overall, the event went very well.

The only way we were able to do this was through the generosity of WYEP, its listeners, and the amazing staff we have worked with since October-ish. I can't wait to see what's next from this group of people.

L-R: Alexa Belejac, Brett Bridges, Matt Spangler
Photo Taken By: Alex Popichak

Curious about the Bands? Check out the event page here.
To See more pictures of the event, click here.

Qualifications, Kony, and Other Stuffs

So recently I have been working on too many projects. This usually leads to my temporary insanity as well as increased tiredness. Bottom line, if the below lines in this blogpost seem murky, that's because I am on limited sleep and a tad distracted.

Apparently in order to have an opinion, one now needs to be "qualified" to do so. All to often does the phrase at my lunch table get thrown out that "YOU CAN'T SAY THAT!" Which leads me to the question of what, exactly is qualified, and who Can say that.

Qualified as far as designing a corporation website (or at least helping) means having an incorporation myself or the three letters LLC (What does that mean?) tacked on to your name (Oh yeah, from now on I am calling myself "Alexander Popichak and Associates Web Firm, LLC") and did I mention you apparently needed to charge an arm and a leg?

Due to moral and practicality issues, I cannot charge much (So far I have never had a paying customer - YET; I have mainly been doing volunteer work) for a website design job. I do some talking in a prospective client meeting session, some fancy work on the part of my image editing programs, and coming up with something that looks pretty cool.

I work on the idea that the content builds the website, the images draw the users in. Basically, if you don't care about what you are putting out there as far as content outreach goes, no amount of flashy imagery can fix that. It WILL shine through.

Qualified as far as CPR goes is having a magical little card, and taking a course. Does that necessarily mean that you need to have an EMS or CPR certification to save a life? Heck, no! That's what the scouts are for!!!

Qualified for being an SPL on paper is a Star rank (yeah, I have one of those). As for in reality, one would need character, a sense of adventure (IM GOING TO JAMBO!) and a real belief in the people he leads.

Qualified as far as tech goes, well, you got me.

As for what I can and cannot say can be debated, and I welcome any feedback.

So one of the internet trends that made news this week was #KONY2012. You can Google all 900,000 different opinions on it but here is what I learned by watching CBS's take it. Basically, the firm pushing this ad campaign took in about $17 million last year, and of that only $3.3 million went to aid. The "charity" is pushing itself as a wonderful cause that is worthy of your patronage. Please please please look into any charity before donating anything! I am not saying that the KONY guy is not bad (in fact he is just plain terrible), I am just saying that these "action kits" that they are selling are not going to be as effective to direct aid as would be calling your congressman, and urging your neighbors to do so also.

I rarely plug my own things, but my WYEP teen group is sponsoring a band competition for high school students and we will be accepting submissions from MARCH 12 2012 UNTIL APRIL 14TH 2012.  If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact me at alex.popichak@gmail.com with the subject Re(imagiNATION) Contest.

As for the Re(Imagine) Media website project, it is still a work in progress, but I do have this awesome animation thing that I can't post here due to issues with my incompetence at 10PM with HTML coding.

Other than that, I'll give a shoutout to my secret sister Mikaela as I hope she is doing well.

#Hashtagging, Texting, and Explaining JayScribble

So I was watching NCIS on CBS (No, they don't pay me to say it, its just what is always on at my house for some reason...) and in the bottom left I saw during like the first two minutes of the show "#NCIS" which to anyone who is unfamiliar with the internet or Twittering (Tweeting? Tweetering?) doesn't know what this means.

Anyway, about Julyish my friend Dave introduced me to this idea of kind of "Tagging" things in facebook, twitter, etc. posts. The idea was, you place a Pound Sign (#) before whatever you wanted to tag the post with, and then people could search the tag and see how many other people had the same tag.

Here a few months ago, I find that I was only a small part of this idea, and that it's on Twitter (Yeah, I'm on twitter, feel free to follow me @AlexPopichak). I also found out that if you go to the web version of twitter, you can click on a hashtag and it'll take you to a thing where you see the Hashtag's search page. I don't think there's anything yet for #The2015Blogger. Hmm...

So on an unrelated note, I have been texting like crazy for the past few weeks. I have found that I am quite good at texting, albeit almost never in a timely manner. It helps a lot that I have a keyboard cellphone, though.

Anyway, my teacher claimed that text communication and internet communication are a step backward as far as communication goes. I have to say I disagree with that. At first we only had talking. The only way to reach someone was to think of something, then form it with your mouth, and then hope they interpret what you really mean. Then we had this thing called writing, with the same aim, only using physical characters instead of words. This made it easier to get a point across, because you didn't need to rely on the telephone (the game, not the instrument) method or be everywhere at once. Now we have texting.

In my opinion, texting is the closest thing we can get to telepathy. It combines the ideas of writing with the words coming straight from the mind. I might be going out on a limb, but I believe I have some form of a point here.

So the next best thing to telepathy or actually being in a place in person (and I hope you'll agree with me on this one) is appearing via video. Jay Scribble and his brother do this once a week.

Anyway, JayScribble did this series in his Vlogbrothers videos back in 2010 regarding the French Revolution. I enjoyed it personally (although he talks really fast) because it got all of the information in your head in a memorable way with visual aid.

So we were studying the French Revolution in class, and I asked my teacher (She prefaced class with "we're watching a video today") if she was talking about some dry half-hour video with a video sheet. She was. So I introduced her to JayScribble and his French Revolution series. I just asked her to take a look at it.

My American Cultures teacher prefaced her class the following day with "We're watching a video series today that Alex found." And then for the next half hour we covered the entire French Revolution a la John Green. At the end of the series she made the comment that she feels that she talks REALLY SLOW in comparison to JayScribble.

I find it ironic that about a month before that, he had created a World History series on a separate channel. You can check that out online at YouTube.com/CrashCourse.

The English Language, WYEP, and School Boards

Again I feel the need to apologize for posting a day late.

So yesterday I took two tests. The first being an American Cultures test which is semi-irrelevant to this post, and the second being an English test. It was a reading/vocab quiz (WHY VOCAB‽‽‽) on the first act of Shakespeare's Masterpiece, Romeo and Juliet which he stole, but that's irrelevant to the point here. There is always an essay to these things; some way for the teacher to pick inside your head, and call your train of thought wrong, or right.

Anyway, he wrote up on the board something along the lines of "What type of literary devices did Shakespeare use to build suspense in the first act of Romeo & Juliet?" I immediately saw room for creativity (along the lines of my before-mentioned toaster story) in citing a bunch of different things, for I would make it my mission as blogger extraordinaire to somehow make literary devices half-exciting.

He then did the predictable move, and decided to come up with a "better" questions. Predictably, he switched it to something along the lines of "Explain how Shakespeare uses dramatic irony to create suspense in the first act of Romeo and Juliet."  This, of course ties into our study of irony which, may I add, we have been studying since the first week of school. I, needless to say, was quite sad, so in answer wrote this lovely simile about how Shakespeare's suspense kind of is like standing in a line at like Kennywood or some theme park to ride this crazy roller-coaster and seeing the loops and stuff beforehand, inevitably having to ride it, as you're already in line, and asking yourself "Why did I do this again?" and the rest of the story is the actual riding of this roller coaster, and the worst part in this tragedy is the fact that you know what's coming.

Today I was at WYEP for their "Teen Center" Now known as Re(imagine) media. I was working alongside yet another gentleman who I've come to know being named, of course, Alex. We were finalizing this news-esque story about the Occupy Pittsburgh movement.

Well, thanks to technology, we aren't done yet. However, we did get together with the rest of the WYEP crew to start work on this crazy "Battle-of-the-Bands"-esque thingy yet to be named. Bottom line, the idea is to take a bunch of local teen-created bands and have them judged and chiseled down to a top 5. These top 5 will perform live and be judged, who will chisel them further into a top 1. Look for more posts on this later... We are also talking about starting a website where we'll host videos, podcasts, and various other stuffs from the Re(image) media project. I will probably be working on this website project, but once again, details will come later.

So this past Thursday I had to fill in for the guy that usually films the School Board meetings. This was incredibly convenient since I needed to attend a school board meeting anyway for a requirement for a merit badge. In the meeting, they talked about various stuff, mainly Stage Curtains, fill in front of the Carnegie Elementary building, and then they got to my favourite part - The Open Forum.

Since the Public didn't want to talk about anything, the board discussed some headlines involving textbooks coming to the evil Apple devices. It was interesting how the board wasn't overly sure what this was about; but wanted to look into trying to do this anyway. I talked afterward with a board member about my thoughts on the topic, being the student that would be on the receiving end of this. I talked to him about how I preferred actual paper textbooks for certain applications, and how it'd be beneficial for history (1984 references) class to have paper textbooks, while technology would be beneficial for certain applications like science class models and things.

He was fascinated that A) I came up to him and B) my position on this. He pulled over like two or three board members (one being the Vice president, the other being the wife of a gentleman who owns a technology company). It just goes to show that if you know how to talk to people, you're opinion can be heard.