Blogging again.

So I've decided to try this thing where I write a thousand words a day. Kind of like NaNo, I guess, but not necessarily about the same thing. Anyway, NaNo was more like one thousand, six hundred sixty-seven words a day until you started getting behind, and then you ended up with three thousand words a day for a week...

Good times.

The cat is sitting on my bed. She's not touching me; that would be too much for her little kitty brain to handle. She's just sitting a safe distance away and twitching like the twitchy meeper she is. I swear, she is the weirdest cat ever, and all cats are weird.

I've started to say "meep" all the time. It's just terrible, I tell you. I go through phases of saying random words whenever I can. Meep. Squish. Sometimes I wish I could just talk like a normal person and not have to meep at people.

I was getting off the bus a few days ago, and I caught my bag between my leg and one of the seats. I made a "meep!" noise, because of course that makes sense. John (our bus driver looks remarkably like a young John McCain, so I call him John) said, "You're welcome."

Me: Meep!

John: You're welcome!

Erin: LOLWUT.

No, really. I think she said that.

Oh my gosh, that just reminded me of how while I was standing around in the snow feeling like a pimp today, this guy walked by and told his friend about how something "made him lol." I was like, "Go away, dude."

Oh, now the cat is actually sitting TOUCHING ME and PURRING. I can't believe it. I will treasure this for the rest of my life. This kind of thing happens once in a lifetime, or maybe just once a month, but not very often nonetheless. I'm so proud of her. This is like a step to becoming normal.

!

Do you know what song I keep listening to? Of course you don't, unless you're some kind of mind-reader. Please don't tell me you're a mind-reader. I would be seriously freaked out if someone turned out to be reading my mind. Sometimes in class I do that thing I saw on MLIA, where you think very loudly, "If you can hear me, cough," and then I feel really, really relieved when no one coughs.

Anyway, song.

It's "Paparazzi." By, you know, that Lady Gaga woman. (I wanted to say "that Lady Gaga lady," but that would be a major visit to the Department of Redundancy Department. Wow, I keep getting sidetracked today. My mind is, like, not staying focused.&)

ANYWAY. Seriously this time. You can tell I'm serious because I used CAPS LOCK.

I keep singing it in my head and stuff, except I replace the word "paparazzi" with "stalkerazzi." Seriously, if you've heard the song, it makes perfect sense. I'm your biggest fan/ I'll follow you until you love me...

Why am I listening to this? Someone hit me, or something.

Have you noticed that I keep sending you to links? It's to distract you from the way I'm too lazy to write anything of substance. Look! A turtle eating a strawberry! The cover of "Going Bovine!" Purple water!

...Yeah. I should just stop right now.

In case you haven't noticed, the ninja ampersand is hiding somewhere on this page. The exclamation point is also somewhere, but it's a little more conspicuous. Okay, a lot more conspicuous.

By the way, this was 596 words. 404 to go...and homework, of course.

My house is under attack.

As stated above, my house is under attack. I had to say it twice, just to make sure it would sink in. Robby's friendie who moved off to Kentucky or somewhere equally pointless just came back for a visit. I am, of course, not amused. Well, I was pretty amused while pretending to hide the garlic and rubbing the cat with the little bits of garlic that fell off while the child tried to wrestle it away from me, but Mother spoiled my fun by taking the garlic away.

Grace just walked by, read my sign (unattended children will be sold to gypsies) out loud, then began laughing hysterically. Ever heard the expression "peals of laughter?" That's how she laughs. "Very funny, Libby," she said. Oh dear. I think Mother told her I'm hiding here with the kimchi kitty. Cassee doesn't really like people, so I let her in my room and she's been sitting here ever since. It's nice and quiet in here. The cat is sitting on the get 'em while they're hot (guys) Girl Scout cookie poster from fifth grade. I'm questioning her choices of where to sit.

A motivational speaker came to my place of learning today to speak motivationally to us. I was certainly motivated, as I mentioned to Spiffy. She didn't seem to be motivated, however. "He's just pimping his product" was her opinion on Mr. Gold (was that his name?). He was telling us about this website he made up for all of us younglings. It's called What Kids Are Saying. My initial reaction was: a lot of what kids are saying isn't exactly fit to print. I went to the website, and there I had yet another reaction. I'm reacting like a science project here.

There is not enough forking room to type anything on Mr. Gold's website. This is apparently because all entries are proofread first, but I don't care. There is no room. The word limit is five hundred or something. That's okay if you want to write a poem, but a short story in five hundred words? That's not a short story. That's flash fiction. That's a vignette. I looked at two, and they had no plot or anything. Also, they were both about chicks crushing on dudes.

I am so jealous of authors, I really am. Am I the only person who can barely look at a piece of Flair or little icon-thing with a quote or joke from a book without thinking, I wish it was my book being quoted. This random jealousy of people who are published has to be pretty common. All kinds of people wish quotes from their books would make their way across the Internet, right? I'm not alone. Please tell me I'm not alone.

I turned in an assignment for English about four of the books I've read in the past two months or so. This was a very difficult assignment, as I hardly read books at all. It might as well be blank paper filling up my two bookshelves—sorry, blank paper–shelves. I finally managed to find a few to write about (read: nine) and polished off a fantastic piece of writing. The only problem is that I think my teachers will assume I didn't like any of the books I read, only because I wrote sort of sarcastically about all of them. Examples:

Blood, violence, and an adorable, somewhat incestuous couple. What more does a book need?

The plot was pretty much that the main character, who decided to name herself "Poison" for some reason, got her sister kidnapped by the Phaerie Lord and felt the need to run off on a quest and get her back.

Liss assures me that writing like that is "just your way, Libby." Strangely enough, Mother says a lot of things are just my way. Mother and Liss may be sharing some kind of telekinetic mind connection, but I hope not.

Dictionary dot com changed its layout. This is awful. It'll take me at least a week to get over it, and then I'll probably complain about it every now and then just for kicks.

Last Sunday (yes, four days ago; I didn't feel like writing about it then) was a lovely musical event for our schools known as Bands in Review. The title is fairly obvious, but I'll explain it, just in case anyone needs me to spell things out for them. B-A-N-D-S I-N R-E-V-I-E-W. Yes. That is where the parents and extended family of students in bands in our city review the bands. It's a fabulous event for fabulous people, and I've been nervous about performing at it since it was announced to me that I was stuck with doing it.

Sure, all of our rehearsals up until then went fine, but what if someone spontaneously combusted? What would we do then? I realize that was also my excuse for not wanting to do my audition for Mr. Bloodsucking-parasitic-bug-thing (his last name is leach, probably spelled some way that lessens its resemblance to a nasty bug-thing): "But...but...what if I'm playing a scale and BAM! spontaneous human combustion? There's at least a one in five billion chance! It could happen!"

"If he's on fire, Libby, put him out."

"But what if he spontaneously combusts too fast?"

"Well, he'll probably be, um, spontaneously combusting because you played so well."

Anyway, it was the morning of the big concert. I had just woken up from a dream about being late to the concert and then realized that I had only five hours left before someone was going to drag me onstage. Ahh, eek, and various other noises people who are extremely afraid make. Fortunately, I had already decided that this was the day to purchase City of Glass as a pre-concert gift. Pre-concert gift as in: I know I'll do fabulously at this thing, so I think I'll buy myself a book ahead of time.

Stuff happened. I bought my book and read the first chapter. Two-thirty loomed ever closer. It definitely loomed.

Suddenly, it was time to put on my band shirt, a very stylish black shirt with Concert Band or something on it. I tried tucking it in, but tucking shirts into dress pants reminds me of the time I dressed as a member of the guys' basketball team and makes me giggle a lot. I ended up using a hairband to tie it up in the back. You know how that works; I shouldn't have to explain it.

Mother walked me down to the school even though it's a block from my house. I was desirous of her company. I also wanted someone to talk to, given my habit of talking a lot about useless subjects when nervous. "What if I can't find my people? They say, 'Look for the people in black,' but I'm color-blind!"

"Libby, you're not color-blind."

"...You know, I've always wondered why stop signs are green."

Mother was not amused, as her father happens to be color-blind.

Eventually, I found my people. We were all sitting around chatting in a practice room, complaining about our shirts and how ugly they were. I know I said they were stylish a couple of paragraphs ago, but I was lying. Just before we left for another practice room (I don't know why, either), our teachers told us to tuck in our shirts. There was a definite groan around the room. I felt like being rebellious and didn't tuck in my shirt. No one noticed.

We had what felt like five minutes to warm up and tune before we had to line up so we could go onstage. I had to be near the front of the line, near the flutes. Flautists. The stage is a lot smaller when you're up there performing, by the way. It's like the audience and the stage switch sizes when you move between them. I think we played all right on our first piece, Circus Bee, but I played too hard and I was doing badly when we started The Great Locomotive Chase.

I know I have no details about what it was like onstage, but it's not my fault. It's always hard to describe that part of a concert, which may or may not actually be the most important part. My theory is that the stage lights release something that makes us all forget everything that happens onstage.

After performing, we filed down and sat in our section: the awesome section. Yes, we're so awesome that our awesomeness filled the section. Everyone just chatted between songs. I spent half the time trying to convince Anna that the girl wearing sunglasses onstage was somehow related to Cyclops from the X-Men, and that she had to wear the sunglasses or else her laser eye-blasts would vaporize the audience. It didn't go over well with her, given that she didn't know who Cyclops was.

I'm going to venture out of my room to see if there's any food. Wish me luck, dear readers.

Kornerupine.

I don't know what it is, either.

Today I sold Girl Scout cookies. This is because I am a Girl Scout. It would be more than a little strange if I wasn't a Girl Scout but I was selling their cookies. Our cookie booth was really not that exciting. We sold about four cases, which is forty-something boxes, and we ran out of a couple kinds. We also had to keep explaining to people about how we switched bakers and that's why the names are different and everything tastes nasty. At least there weren't rival scouts at Kroger again. Last time there were these random other chicks who actually had signs and uniforms. Unlike us; we had a sign Zoe and I made in five minutes and none of us have uniforms.

Liss was wearing shorts and flip-flops like she hadn't noticed it's still March. Or mars, as they say in la belle France. As we were walking to the store, Mother said, "There's a wrongness to that." She meant Liss's outfit.

After selling, we partied in my basement and then went to a writing workshop. I was kind of nervous about going. I mean, I wasn't too worried about the writing part of it. Obviously I write, and obviously I write stuff that other people read. It was the whole there are going to be people I've never met and possibly people I have met thing that worried me. I am not a people person. I am a what are these people doing in my bubble? person.

The person-in-charge had us stand in a circle and introduce ourselves. Then, after stating our name and business ("I am Libby. I am at this place because I am.") we told a melodramatic story about something that had happened that week. I talked about my freezing up in front of the entire class, sadly, not very melodramatically. I'm not repeating that story because I wrote it all down two days ago. Also, it's such a scarring memory that I prefer not to bring it up. Okay, no.

She told us all about what melodrama is. It seems to be pretty much a style of drama where there's a damsel in distress, a slimy-looking villain (sometimes with a hunchbacked, idiot henchman), and a heroic hero (sometimes with an idiot best friend for comic relief). It makes no sense at all, and the characters all talk funny. I did not sign up for this class, by the way. I wanted to do the journalism one.

She warned us (in a whisper, I have no idea why) that it can be kind of sexist, and also that since we were all girls, some of us would end up acting out male roles. Liss said (not in a whisper) that I was a man.

Do you know how many times a day I have to tell people that I'm not a man? At least once. They all find it incredibly amusing to call me a man. It's not, people. I am not a man! I don't even look like a man. I really don't.

We ended up writing and performing a short sketch. I ended up playing a man. But I was a very fabulous man named Bivouac de Blacktop, and I totally didn't get stage fright and puke in the corner. I barely even entertained the possibility for more than a minute. You can go read our script on Liss's blog, which I think I have a link to in the corner. I will just mention that we ended with a unison "FOR ENGLAND!" and put our fists in the air, for absolutely no reason. It was my idea.

Our cat, Cassee, doesn't like to eat people food. We've (my family, trying to find food she likes to eat) tried feeding her cream cheese, cooked eggs, milk, cheese, tuna, and chicken, but she won't eat it. I've ( me being an idiot) tried feeding her veggie sausage, cereal, string, cookies, and ice cream. She won't eat those, either. I was wandering the house with a half-eaten, cold pancake dangling out of my mouth, and I suddenly decided to feed it to the cat. I broke off a little piece, put it on my hand, and held it out to her.

She ate it. I have a pancake-eating cat. I'm so happy!

Two days ago, I said that I suspect the child is a rebel sympathizer. I now have proof, even more than just his refusal to disclose the location of the rebel base. He wouldn't let me have the good sword (there are two foam swords in the house, one that sucks and one that doesn't). I asked how I was supposed to crush rebels without a sword. He said he didn't want me to defeat rebels. Rebel sympathizer! His friend, the vamp, didn't believe me, but it's true.

The lottery for Commie High is tomorrow. Commie High is really called Community High, but I like to affectionately call it Commie. Liss was very surprised that I wanted to go there, as I had spent all of math class once making fun of it. It's the funky school here. Only a quarter of the people who want to go there get to because it's so small, so they have a random lottery system. I really, really want to get in, but I might not. So. Panic central. Oh well. My life will go on if I don't get to go to school with the commies.

Maybe.

I will live a sad, miserable existance, but I will live. I am strong!

Except not really.

Darn you! Read my forkin' blog!

Spiffy, for some reason, thinks I have no phone skills. I don't know where she got that idea...

This is a normal ride-home-from-school phone call to Mother:

"Darn you! Darrrrrrnnnn yoooooou! Pick up the forkin' phone! Darn you! Oh, hello, this is John S.  McCain speaking. Ha ha ha, no, it's me, Libby, your daughter. Not your son, 'cause I'm not a man. No, I'm not! Gosh! Anyway, I'm in the car with, like, five people and Pascale's mom is driving me home because it would be weird if she didn't. But then Pascale had this idea, she was like, 'Oh my gosh!' and we were like 'Oh your gosh what?' and she was like, 'Y'all should hang with me!' and we were like, 'That's rockin', dude!' Yeah, that was how it went. So can I? Hang with Pascale and people?"

See, that's perfectly normal.

I had my Girl Scouts over last night. And the cousin. She's not one of my girl scouts, but she's a girl scout and she's my cousin, so it works. She and Liss informed me that they always keep a tab up on their computers with my blog on it, which I find a little creepy. If I was going to say who my biggest fans are, it would be you guys. I'm basking in your slightly stalkerish adoration over here.

Both of them (Liss and Audrey) told me no less than five times that I was "Hitler incarnate." They also accused me of wanting to "kill all non-Aryans" and told me that "you should start in America because we have a lot of people who aren't blonde and blue-eyed." Since I know you have a tab up and are reading this, I'm going to talk to you two. Everyone else who isn't either of them, look away now and don't look back until I tell you to. This paragraph does not concern you.

To Audrey and Liss: I have told you several times to stop it. I find it extremely offensive that you would even compare me to Hitler. I am the person who cried so hard she had to leave the room when our teacher taught about the Holocaust. There is a difference between liking blonde hair and wanting to kill people who aren't blonde. I have no problem with any hair color; I just like blonde more. Hitler was a horrible person. The Holocaust was a horrible thing. I don't even like bringing it up in conversation, much less being accused of wanting to do something like that. End of rant. Please, shut up.

You can look now. I should probably have written this on my list yesterday (I told you it would grow!):

• Blondes

I spent about ten minutes this morning cleaning up after all y'all. More than half of that was spent sorting the game cards into six equal piles and making sure they were all facing the same way. I'm not OCD! Kimchi Kat kept getting in the way by sitting in the box and rubbing her little kitty face on the cards while I was trying to sort them. I still love her very much, though. She was creeped out by everyone sleeping in the basement. The poor kitty had no idea what to do.

Also last night, I allowed Liss to braid my hair into ten different little braids. She was laughing at me because I divided my hair into sections before I brushed it. It's not my fault I have a lot of hair. It comes naturally. I slept with it like that and they called me Medusa all night long...I'm crying here. Show some sympathy. And then when I took it out, it was all funky. Yes, that's how it was. All funky. I am not going to describe what that means.

We tried to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but certain people laughing their heads off on Facebook caused Liss to pause every few seconds. Then she started saying "I luv ya, man!" every time Harry was in the vicinity of a male character, just because she could really imagine him saying that. Half an hour into the movie, after everyone had finally migrated over in front of the television, it skipped back to the beginning.

Our movie-viewing was obviously doomed from the start.

I could probably think of a few more things to write about, but I don't feel like it.

I really don't want to go back to school tomorrow. I haven't done much over break, and I like it that way. I'd almost rather have the knowledge that I could do something than actually do it. Plus, school is so...educational. I'm not looking forward to homework, classes, or the Walk of Shame every morning. Oh, or band...I haven't practiced since I left the house Friday last week. Fork.

Break really is a break, you know? Like someone hit the pause button on my life and let me have a while to sleep it off, but they're going to hit play again tomorrow and expect me to me ready. I don't want to play...

I'm using a lot of ellipses and also not making sense to myself.

"Did you learn nothing from Willy Wonka?"

Well? Did you?

That was part of a conversation I heard in the hallway today, and I promised I'd use it for the title of my post today.

This post is the Libby is too lazy to really write a blog post post. Deal with it.

Quotes That I Am Reading Off This Website And Find Amusing:

• People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children. -Bill Watterson
• If your parents never had children, chances are you won't either. -Dick Cavett
• Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. -Oscar Wilde
• Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to? -Clarence Darrow
• If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur. -Doug Larson
• Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. -Oscar Wilde
• One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you. -Larry Gelbart
• We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true. -Robert Wilensky
• The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution. -Hannah Arendt
• Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain. -Lily Tomlin
• Don't accept rides from strange men, and remember that all men are strange. -Robin Morgan
• Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. -G. K. Chesterton
• War is not nice. -Barbara Bush
• Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try. -Fran Lebowitz

Wasn't that exewwww3333333333333335624444444444

Sorry; the cat walked over the keyboard as I was trying to write that. Wasn't that exciting? Yes, yes it was.

I am the proud(?) owner of a blog.

This feels like a really important step in my life, for some reason. I can't imagine why. It's only a bunch of words that I'm sending out all over the Internet. People who I've never met aren't able to read this or anything.

I've never written a blog before, but I've read books about it, which gives me all the information I need to know. They all started out with describing themselves, but I don't really feel like doing that. I think there's a little box in the corner I can put important information in. You can all read that when I get around to putting stuff in it. Until then, hang on my every word hoping for some oh-so-exciting details about my personal life.

I decided to call this blog Pseudocurses because I forking can. It's a free country, et cetera. There were two major things, other than my freedom of speech and so on, that factored into this decision.  A. I'm one of those people who can be heard saying "Heck!" as a curse. Yup, we exist. We're not just like ghosts, fairy tales you weren't sure were real. I don't swear. Much. I prefer saying, you know, "forking heck." B. All the other names I liked were taken. Also, "pseudo" is an awesome word.

I don't care if that's three reasons. This is my blog. I can do what I want. Right now, what I want to do is finish writing this post and get the cat off the table again. Poor kitty. Even though she, too, lives in a country of freedom, the tyrannical reign of certain people in this household keeps her on the floor. How will she ever grow into an empowered cat if we're taking away her natural rights? I should hold a peaceful demonstration in front of the refrigerator.

Maybe I should talk about my life on this blog. What a novel idea. Today, I plan to go shopping. I love shopping almost as much as I love bowling and curling irons. In my opinion, they are like methane gas slowly filling my lungs. However, this shopping excursion might be fun. Fun. While shopping. Can you imagine? I need to buy a dress shirt so I can pretend to be on the boys basketball team at my fine learning establishment. They all wear fancy clothes on game days. Apparently, this helps them bond as a team. I'm not exactly sure how that works. Team bonding or no team bonding, I have wanted to pretend to be on the team ever since Spiffy told me I couldn't sneak onto the bus because I'm not on the team. My comrades will be pleasantly surprised when I show up dressed like them.

Well, I'm glad that's over. Don't expect too many fireworks here. I'll blog once a month, if you're lucky. If you're not lucky, I'll leave this to rot and die on the Internet. And we wouldn't want that to happen, would we? (That was a rhetorical question, by the way.)