Broadcasting live from my room.

My room, ma chambre, or however else you want to put it in any other language you know (I only know two) is obviously the best place to hide in the event that multiple future former fifth graders attack my house. Future former fifth graders, by the way, is a term that I took and modified from Freak Show. I like to call them that not because I'm bitter about them but because I love the alliteration. Future former fifth graders. It really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

The child has two friends over for his birthday, which was yesterday. They are downstairs beating each other up with Nerf guns. Have I mentioned my opinion on Nerf guns? Nerf guns suck. They are not toys; they're weapons. Look at one. The child has a Nerf gun that shoots rounds of bullets. You can load ten or fifteen in at once. That thing scares me. Forget violent video games: Nerf guns are exposing our nation's children to violence.

A few days ago, I experienced the joy of the lovely Commie counselors coming to visit me. Yes, me personally. The man's name is John. He reminds me of Strite, and I don't know exactly why. It must be the way he calls people dude or his weird mustache. I forgot the woman's name. You would think this would be important to me, given that she'll be one of my counselors for the next four years, but I forgot anyway.

Commie-counseling was fun. We got to skip The Sherm's class, which was a bonus, and I hung around with Eva Hattie, Lauren, Spiffy, and Patricia. Liss was there, but she hid in a corner and didn't talk to me much. My classes will go something like this: geometry, Intro to Lit (it's required. I want to take Journalism, Women's Lit, and a grammar-type class where I can learn to diagram sentences. I'm really looking forward to English classes!), FOS 1 (also required; it's the weird Commie science program), World Civ & Economics (mandatory), French 2, and band over at Pi High. It's a full schedule which involves many classes I was forced into taking and shuttle-bus-ing myself to and from Pioneer several times a day.

The main thing about Commie schedules that's different from Pi High is forum. Or is it Forum, with a capital F? I don't know. Let's call it forum. Forum is, I gather, like a more fabulous version of homeroom. Instead of sitting around boredly waiting for your next class, you sit around eating...or cooking...or talking about deep and profound things...or running around playing Frisbee. Also, you go on trips on Forum Day.

There are multiple forum leaders, who are pretty much teachers who also have forums. We are encouraged to pick the forum leader who is right for us. For example, if you are a strong and manly athlete who is only here to, say, lick feet, you might not want to pick the man John described as "a geeky nerdy Shakespeare Star Wars geek nerd." On the other end, if you think that description sounds like the teacher you want to have around for the rest of your high school career, you might not want to pick a forum with an athletic focus.

By the way, I did not come up with the feet-licking thing. Liss did. If you thought it was nasty, go bite her head off.

I went through the list with these guidelines.

Bad:

• eccentric
• athletic
• fully actualized

Good:

• English teacher
• unorganized
• food

I ended up picking a woman whose first name was Tracy. I think. I completely forgot. This is an important decision that will matter to me for the next few years, and I forget what I decided. Oh well. I can always switch out if our viewpoints don't connect. Did anyone actually say that? Dear readers, some of you were there. Please tell me what they said.

Last night was our OH MY GOSH OH-SO-EMOTIONAL LAST CONCERT AT SLAUSON EXCLAMATION POINT. Yes, it was quite emotional. That was why I used caps lock. Before I report on it (just the facts, infidels; just the facts) I must bring to your attention a great injustice to band geeks, orch dorks, and choir freaks. On the announcements this morning, they did their usual play-by-play of the sports teams' accomplishments.

"So-and-so scored Slauson's only five points, so we lost the basketball game 30-5! Go so-and-so!  What's-his-name, what's-his-face, and that blonde kid did a really great job defending our hoop, and the rest of the team was pretty fab too!"

Good for them, I say. It's very nice getting your name read out over the announcements, and everything. I'm just bitter that they didn't even mention that we had a concert. I mean, the baseball team plays at least every other week. We have, what, four concerts a year? Less? A little acknowledgement would be nice.

Last concert. I wasn't as sad as I thought I'd be. I was having too much fun to be sad. It was an awesome concert, like a party or something. I stayed to watch the orchestra and choir perform too, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We had three lovely pieces: Amparito Roca, A Song of Hope, and Red Line Express, a jazz piece composed by us. Before you think we're amazing composer types, I must set you straight. It was about three different jazz riffs layered on top of each other. There were also chord changes involved, but our teacher wrote up the entire thing for us.

Amparito Roca is this fantastic piece that everyone can't help humming everywhere. It's pretty fast for us, with a lot of nasty sixteenth notes, but it's fun to play. I didn't do very well, mainly because I don't practice...but I played all the important parts. Sort of.

Red Line Express is fairly boring, but I really enjoyed playing it just because I managed to play at the exact same time as the person next to me. There's something really awesome about being in a group and knowing you're doing the same thing as someone else. It's like dancing (except the macarena. I refuse to do that dance the right way).

A Song of Hope is a really depressing song, in my opinion, but it was cool. It sounds good and stuff. I don't have much to say about it.

After we were done, we wandered over to the doors and stared stalkerishly at the choir as they sang. You have seen nothing until you have seen fifty or so eighth graders in black and white spilling through doors into an auditorium. The guys had this awesome song, Poison Ivy, with the funniest choreography I have ever seen. There was a clap-slap move (I made Sam teach me; clap-right-left-clap-right) and this thing where they did a punch-the-air kind of deal and went "HUNH!" like karate people. All the choir girls in the crowd with me knew the song and choreography, so they sang and danced along.

Orchestra played a very long song, a shorter song that was as hopeful as A Song of Hope, and the James Bond theme song. I can't say much about them. I think I was giggling in my seat half the time and futzing with my glasses the other half. What can I say? I have no excuse. I love band more than I love orchestra.

I used to want to be this woman when I grew up, but now I'm considering being this woman or possibly this woman. I just like putting links in my blog because I have it set up so links turn an attractive shade of purple.

Yeah, that's it. I have exhausted all my creativity for today. Interviewing should really commence soon...I have a list. Do you want to see it? Of course you want to see it.

Interviews:

• Claudia Part Two
• Liss
• some lucky person out there who has yet to say they want to be interviewed!

Remember, I'm very lazy and might not want to interview you when you want to be interviewed. Also, I don't only do Facebook interviews! I can interview you over Gmail or even face-to-face! Don't ask to do Morse code or smoke signal interviews. I'm only down with flag signalling during the Civil War. 121222212212121121122! If you're lucky, that means I love you, infidels! If you're not lucky, it just means ...Infidels!