So's your mom!

While on my ever-continuing quest to create analogies suiting the student body at DA, I came up with a good one.

You see, this past Tuesday was a pep band practice. Said pep band is comprised of me on trombone, a teacher on trumpet, and another sophomore on trumpet. Since we had played through a bunch of songs that we already had music for, I brought some new sheet music I got off the interweb. Among several popular TV and movie themes, I thought I’d throw in the Super Mario Bros. theme song. I picked this out of several much more obscure video game songs, because I thought, well, its fun to play, and a lot of people know it, right?

Here comes pure Dakar Academy disappointment. While the teacher, about 25 years old, loved it, yet my fellow high schooler thought it was stupid. So here we are in a 2-on-1, video games V.S. not video games argument.

I’ve been brooding over this particular incident for a few days now, and I’ve come up with a perfect analogy for this student, as well as every other Dakar Academy student I’ve met so far. DA students are like moms.

(I realize that these things do not always apply to every mom, and do not mean to insult your mom or my mom)

DA students are like moms because:

1. Moms hate video games
2. Moms can be incredibly passive-aggressive
3. Moms “know what you’re going through”
4. Moms always want you to go outside
5. Moms want you to make new friends, but don’t really help the process
6. Moms rate all kinds of media by how many swears or references it has in it
7. Moms only make friends with other moms
8. Moms (pretend to) enjoy healthy food-it makes them look more responsible
9. Moms don’t understand why you don’t want to be their friend on facebook
10. Never, ever, EVER kiss a mom

-Will



"I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once."

The Computers Know Everything

Today my e-mail gave me a very abrasive command: "Will, get in shape"

Of course, it was from Nintendo, about Wii Fit, but as you can imagine I was pretty taken aback. I don't like it when my technology tells me to do things. Especially things that imply me to exercise and eat healthier.

But after my initial reaction, I thought of some of my better emails from those signup newsletters. Sure, there's the annoying, weekly, iTunes new music Tuesdays emails, and the occasional iTunes reciept, and the monthly Wii and DS newsletters (also from Nintendo), but I remember one or two that I got from them that were awesome. One, for a Mystery Case Files game, came with a subject line "Top Secret Information regarding Phil." Sure, I didn't really care about Phil, but for a breif moment I felt like someone actually sent me something important to this unknown man's future, and possibly his massive fortune as well. The subject said so, right?

My favorite though, was right before the launch of Super Paper Mario, in which Bowser and Princess Peach get married (I know, it was weird.) The subject line said something like "You are invited to a royal occasion. Already good. I don't break out my red cummerbund nearly as often as I'd like to. After I clicked on it, though, I was greeted by Bowser and Peach's smiling faces (Peach was brainwashed), in full wedding get-up, atop two white pillars and the middle invited me to their wedding. It was still weird that the two were getting married, sure, but I'm telling you, if there had been a location, no matter what hemisphere, I would have seriously thought about going. Curse you again, expensive airline tickets!

So, the moral of the story is, computers are human, and if you hurt them they will insult your bodyweight.

-Will


"I will shoot you. And I know robot karate!"

America Day

Well, I was thinking the other day (I find this to be entertaining sometimes). I thought, "Hey, I almost always get my blog on when I have a really crappy day. Maybe one of these times I should work my typing magic when I have an abnormally good day, just to screw with everyone." And here we are.

Somewhere along the line, my (brilliant) parents came up with a special day and dubbed it "America day." I didn't even name it, they did. Mom and pop came up with that. I know, it sounds like a name I'd give it. But moving on, school was the same. So that didn't change. But then, there's always after school. I think that's when the red, white, and blue started to kick in.

So, as you may or may not know, there's no concert band at DA. Me and a friend and a teacher (both trumpet players, I'm on T-bone) decided to remedy this by forming a rag-tag pep band to play at basketball games and such. I'm proud to announce that Wednesday, Day of America, was the bands inaugural performance at a varsity basketball game.



Now that you're done clapping and "huzzah"ing, I can say that it went very well, and we received many comments and look forward to a great many moons of gracing otherwise DA dull sporting events with our presence. But hey, it was band! That's pretty darn American. We did invent trombones after all. And yes, I know we didn't really invent trombones. But you better believe we perfected them.

So then we got home, and waiting for us were a tray of delicious french fries and chicken nuggets. Normal, right? Incorrect! You know all those animals they think are extinct but then they find some like 20 years later in some random forest they'd never think to look in? Chicken nuggets are like that here. So, what was normal in America becomes an exquisite dining experience in Senegal. I can't even imagine what'd I have to say about having root beer regularly. It boggles the mind, huh?

And, as if chicken nuggets and band wasn't enough, the sundae was topped with a cake. A delicious, sci-fi cake. We got a package from our friends the Negros (that's their last name) containing all kinds of pure awesome. And when I say awesome, I mean Iron Man, Independance Day, and I,Robot DVDs. That's what I'm talking about.

But I'm really trying to say two things. First, thank you to Mom and Dad, and really thank you Michael, Matthew, Rebecca, and Mr. and Mrs. Negro for really makin' a good day a great day. Second, I'd just like to make sure anyone reading this realizes that, every once in a blue moon, i do have a good day, which this and the last post can attest to. So not everything is terrible here.


-Will



"I'm not a big fat panda. I'm the big fat panda."

Snap into a...

SLIM JIM.

Shown above: Utter. Bliss.

Today we returned home after a long day of school and found not one, not two, or even three, but SEVEN packages waiting for us to open. 10 minutes, one pair of scissors, and 3 dropped jaws later, we found ourselves in the midst of a great sea of beef jerky, gum, and candy.

That was a few days ago, and it's taken me this long to be able to type out coherent words to aptly describe my appreciation and excitement. The shock was intense, and the taste of Slim Jims were intenser. To cousins Sarah, Kate, and Grandma, thank you SO MUCH for everything. The whole Martin family is in your debt, if you ever need gum and slim jims to keep you going in a foreign country deprived of such things, you let us know.
:D



-Will


"Don't gamble your dictionaries!"



P.S. As a completely irrelevant-to-the-post surprise, I found these pictures on the same memory card as the ones above.

We're halfway there.

Here lie the ruins of a once-great hair civilization.
You were a good man, hair.