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!

"And we can cut off his feet, too! Just for fun!"

We did this project in English class--we were supposed to be doing it, but no one did--where we had to think up handicaps to stop people from doing what they were good at. You know, a la "Harrison Bergeron." Our class was apparently the most violent out of all the hours. Every other answer was something like, "We'll break both her legs permanently so she can't play soccer!" or this conversation, which took place in my group:

"We'll cut her fingers off!"

"Yeah! But what if she tries to write in blood on the walls?"

"Ew! Guys, that's nasty!"

"We'll put her in a room with waterproof walls!"

"La la la, I can't hear you!"

The worst one was definitely the group behind me, who I happened to hear discussing this:

"Oh, well, we can cut off his thumbs so he can't play video games."

"That's a good idea! And we can cut off his feet, too! Just for fun!"

If you give a group of eighth graders a topic, they will think of the most violent things to do with it. This is why I believe we should all read books and write responses on ponies and magical unicorns. How can anyone be violent with ponies and magical unicorns? ...Wait, don't answer that.

Today I wore my very dapper outfit to school in an effort to blend in with my comrades. Along the way, I learned that ties are a rainbow of fun! and that little brothers tend to say things like, "Libby, you look like a girl," just to annoy you. People kept asking the same question over and over: "Libby, why are you wearing a tie?" I came up with several different answers, but I only ended up using two.

"I'm on the men's basketball team now, didn't you know?"

"It's ironic."

"I'm having a gender identity crisis."

"It's a free country."

"What tie?"

People in general have trouble accepting a girl wearing a tie and mens dress shirt, even when those people are her comrades. Goshdarnit, my own comrades don't even accept me. I feel so unloved. Five or so different people did come up to me and tell me how much they loved my clothes, so that was pretty fabulous. I wasn't looking for recognition from all you cripples and random people, though. I was hoping that my own team would care about me. I actually even had a fight with Comrade Colin, during which he became convinced that I was racist.

Halfway through my first hour class, we realized that there was a bat hanging from the ceiling. It was so cute, but my classmates didn't agree. Well, a few of them did. Surprisingly, it was the girls who seemed to be the most grossed out by our furry little friend. My teacher spent a few minutes assuring us that it was nocturnal and wasn't going to attack us. Then he went down to the office and got the custodian to take it away.

Today's important topic: Vacuum cleaners. Vacuum cleaners help you clean, assuming you own a vacuum cleaner. If you don't own one, it's not going to help you. You'll have to clean your house with a broom or a Roomba™, and we all know how horrible that would be. The only problem I can see with vacuum cleaners is the amount of noise they make. It's very distracting to be half-asleep on the floor trying to do nothing and be rudely half-awakened by the sound of a vacuum cleaner turning on downstairs. Many a relaxed evening in my household has been ruined by a vacuum cleaner. Still, vacuum cleaners have one big thing going for them: their name. Vacuum. How fabulous is that? It's almost better than time-space continuum.

I should really practice the clarinet today...my band teacher even wrote down on my report card: Should practice more.  Pshaw, I say. Ought does not imply is. I read that in a book. I think it means that just because something probably should happen doesn't mean it's going to. Like my clarinet skills, which aren't going to improve much because I practice once a week. My band teacher also said I was a fabulous clarinetist (not in those words...) even though I don't practice.

After some deep meditating and stuff during class today, I realized that there is a major problem with life: We don't all look like anime characters. My life would be greatly improved if I had giant eyes, a line for a nose, and hair that stayed almost exactly the same no matter what I did. Flying Spaghetti Monster, up there in the sky, why didn't you make us all anime people when You touched us with Your noodly appendage?