Huge Chunky Final Blogpost

I've never read a "farewell post," so I'm not really sure what one is supposed to look like. In fact, I'm not even really sure if a "farewell post" a real thing. Well, I'm writing one now, so... if it wasn't a real thing before, it is now. Here goes...

If I wasn't required to blog for my English class this year, I probably would have never started, but now, I'm stuck in the blogosphere. I write, I follow, and I even comment from time to time. It's May, so I'm about to take a nice, relaxing blog-cation, but before I depart, I want to make sure that you know me well as a blogger. So, because it's my favorite thing to do... here are some LISTS:

Five Favorite Blogs (in no particular order)
1. Smitten Kitchen - interesting recipes, and beautiful pictures of food
2. Grilled Cheese Social - Just like Smitten Kitchen, but only grilled cheese sandwiches
(can you tell I'm a huge foodie yet?)
3. The MindBlog - It's neuroscience, but in the most interesting, easy-to-understand way possible.
4. Playbill - OKAY, it's not really a blog, but thanks to Google Reader I always get great little newsflashes or fun facts when I check it.
5. The Disney Blog - 'Nuff said.

Five Most Valuable Blogging Lessons
(greatly in part due to Liz Strauss and her Blogspertise [Blogs. Expertise. Get it?])
1. Links are everybody's friend. A blog that never links to other blogs or sources is a dead end. It has nowhere to go, and will probably not be linked or referenced often because it does nothing for the networked blogging community. Don't be afraid to link often. You'll lose nothing; it can only help you.
2. Cool-looking blogs are cooler in general. I love posts that include photography, pictures, diagrams, etc, and when blogs are visually unique (no templates) and easy to navigate with the eye, they make me want to read them.
3. Make sure your blog represents your voice. If you can picture the blogger physically saying what he or she has posted, it makes the blog so much more readable.
4. When blogs have a clear theme, when all the posts connect to some common interest, such as technology or music or eating or Japan, it ups the "followable" factor incredibly.
5. Talking. Real talking. Yeah, bloggers are real people who communicate with other real people in the real world. They live beyond their blogs. Sometimes, learning about exciting new blogs happens off the computer. This is definitely true for me.


Four Things I Still Need to Work on:
1. Draft more. I tend to crank out a whole post in one sitting, and I probably should proofread or outline a little more (THIS post WAS proofread... yay me)
2. Try to get readers. Usually I never get around to publicizing my posts on REddit or Facebook, but it's reallt not that hard.
3. My theme. If I ever get back into blogging, I need an over-arching idea that holds my posts together, because this time around, it didn't quite happen.
4. Returning the favor. Maybe the reason I don't have more readers is because I have terrible blog karma. I read plenty of posts but rarely comment...

Finally...

Seven Songs I Will Be Listening to All Summer (you should, too):

1. Sweet Pea
2. Someone You'd Admire
3. Sleep the Clock Around
4. Blue Skies
5. This Bed
6. Lux Aurumque
7. Sweet Talk Sweet Talk
...okay one more...

Have a fantastic summer, and thanks for reading!

Silence

Ever heard of Day of Silence? Today, my school honored it, and I participated for my fourth year in a row... and it was great! For the first year ever, nobody demanded me to defend my silence, and nobody started playing see-how-annoying-I-have-to-be-to-get-Melanie-to-talk! The high respect for this year's Day of Silence put me in a really good mood.

Now, it's probably because I had a free period where I spent a good hour "studying" by myself, but I also reflected on why I was silent this year more than I have ever before, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts.

And now, "a few things that I thought about because I had a lot of quiet time to myself because I couldn't hold a real conversation with anyone because I was silent today" or...

"Eight Silent Thoughts"

1. Three other people in my Academy class were silent, and during Social Studies, we all had someone read "statements" giving our reasons for participating in Day of Silence. Their statements were touching and articulate, and I want to give them a shout-out... so, uh... Woohooshoutout!

2. I remembered the people who first asked me to participate in Day of Silence my freshman year. I am so grateful to you for getting me involved.

3. I was wearing my old Day of Silence shirt (from 2008), which does not look like the 2011 edition at all. I would like to acknowledge all the people who asked me, "Why is your shirt different?" and proceeded to wait for a response. You guys are so entertaining...

4. I admired my wonderful friends who have not allowed intolerance or ignorance to inhibit them from being exactly who they were meant to be.

5. I prayed for the people I know who aren't as fearless in the face of prejudice.

6. I won't name names, but my first Day of Silence, a certain someone saw my shirt and said something along the lines of "That's so gay. I bet I can get you to talk." Today, he saw it and reacted with a "You haven't said a word all day? That's really great." Thank you for growing up :)

7. Finally, I reflected on all the hate, stupidity, and homophobia I still see. As much as I like to think that I surround myself with tolerance, I have to admit that there are people I know and love who just don't get that "gay" is not a synonym for "stupid." And, in most cases, I don't want to speak up when I hear someone I'm close with rattle off some unacceptable phrases because I don't want the conflict.

8. #7 is a disgusting truth. I have a choice, so I'm making a resolution to no longer "let it slide."

Song Recommendation: "The Painter" by I'm from Barcelona

Happy Valentine's Day!

I got home an hour ago, and I'm still in Valentine overdrive. Things that have made me smile today:

1. Poems. Not just anyone can crank out a Shakespeare-caliber sonnet, but my friends in AP Statistics can really show their love in sweet couplets:

Snowflakes are white, but slush is just grey.
I hope that you'll be my Valentine today!

Roses are red. Violets are blue.
This class is so hard. I don't have a clue.

Sudafed, Claritin, Crack, Tylenol...
Your love is the drug that I need most of all.

Roses are red. Violets are purple.
Not blue...

Needless to say, this was a productive class today.

2. Food. Baking food. I bake ALL the time. I just made these for a party tomorrow. However, I'm quite partial to blondies, maybe because I'm, well, blonde, but also because they are so easy to make, and so easy that I can make any variations (banana blondies>banana bread). And yesterday I was baking for a while, too (but I can't say WHAT I was baking because that would spoil a surprise for someone who might read this post.)

3. Songs. In honor of it being Valentine's Day, here are some of my favorite LOVE songs:
•Make You Feel My Love. Yes, I know it was originally Bob Dylan's, but Adele sings it soOoOo beautifully
•Whistle for the Choir. It just makes me smile.
•This is what my choir does for Singing Valentines. I was serenaded with it my freshman year, and today I led my group around the school singing to other people :).
•I know the French Edith Piaf version is the classic, but you canNOT tell me this rendition isn't good.

4. My AP Psychology homework. I have to write something nice about each person in my class. Tomorrow everyone gives their compliments (typed on pieces of paper) anonymously.

5. Reading for fun. I'm in Group Interpretation again! This year we're doing Coraline, so I'm reading the book again, even though I know the story, even though I've seen the movie and received the script, because I want to!

6. Recommendations. PLEASE. Give me some poems, songs, recipes, or book titles that have made you smile. Happy Valentine's Day!

Hamlet in Disguise

I really like writing these list-format posts... Anyway, I'm reading Shakespeare's Hamlet for English right now. On Day 1 of this unit, my teacher informed the class of a few instances where this plot has inspired other works of art, so instead of talk about a play you might not have read, I thought it would be fun (yeah, this is what I consider "fun") to find popular movies, songs, or just anything you've probably encountered that are actually based on the famous tragedy.

1. Tchaikovsky wrote an Overture in F minor, called (drumroll, please) Hamlet Fantasy Overture. If you're not a classical music buff, you may have still heard this song if you've ever seen A Christmas Story.

2. More in the vein of classical music... Hamlet is an opera!!! Actually, Wikipedia told me there are seven operas based on Hamlet. In Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet, all of Act 4 is Ophelia's "Mad Scene," and Maria Callas, the queen of opera, sings it incredibly.

3. If you're a Disney fan, or have experienced any sort of childhood at all, you've probably seen The Lion King. Guess what. It's Hamlet! Simba is Hamlet, sans insanity. Scar is Claudius, the evil uncle who kills his brother to take the throne, and then grossly abuses his power and tries to take the queen's hand. Timon and Pumba? They could be Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, encouraging a responsibility-free lifestyle.

4. Then there's Sons of Anarchy, yes, a whole television series based on Hamlet. Clay is Claudius, Gemma is Gertrude, and Jax, who communicates with his dead father, is (you guessed it) Hamlet. This is not speculation... The show's creator, Kurt Sutter, has admitted that there is Shakespearean inspiration at work, and the storyline will probably follow Hamlet until the end of the series. (Oh, spoiler alert... oops...)

5. The Second City explores the possibility that Ophelia's suicide could have been avoided in this short scene.

6. Now for (not even close to) everything that's not based on Hamlet, but just couldn't keep its hands off the play:
• Calvin of the Calvin and Hobbes recites the "to Be or not to Be" soliloquy to a bowl of green mush. Then the mush starts singing and Calvin eats it...
• Legally Blonde the Musical quotes "This above all: to thine own self be true,/And it must follow, as the night the day,/Thou cans't not be false to any man" in its finale (1:30).
• Find the Hamlet quote or reference in these 2 T.S. Eliot poems! "Wasteland" "The Lovesong of Mr. J. Alfred Prufrock"
• An episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus is called "Hamlet."
• Okay I'm getting kinda sick of looking for all these... Last one! Lines from the play are quoted in movies: (500) Days of Summer, Clueless, and Shakespeare in Love, to name a few.

So, what does this mean? Hamlet is everywhere now, even though it's 400 years old. So far I've only read Act I, but this piece is just so influential. I want to do a good job reading it. Have you read Hamlet? Do you have any tips for me that could help me get the most out of reading? Finally, have you found any Hamlets in disguise that I haven't mentioned?

I Like Lists. I Like POV. I Love Music.

Five Different Ways to Look at MUSIC:

1. In Deric Bownd's MindBlog, he discusses the chemical processes that give music the ability to elicit reactions from us.

2. Seth Rudetsky is a Broadway accompanist, performer, and "music deconstructor." He will focus in on the most minute details of someone's performance, analyzing sometimes half a second of a note. I've seen him conducting deconstructions live, and he's both hilarious and very knowledgible. Here's one of my favorites.

3. Music (spoecifically musicals here) is a way to interpret other media. Books, movies, historical events, and even people have served as the inspiration for a full-on stage spectacular. Some stories fit seamlessly into musical format... But then there's Jekyll and Hyde (the ROCK musical), Spiderman: Turn off the Dark ($60 million budget WHAT?), Moby Dick, and soon, an adaptation of American Psycho.

4. Ever heard of aromatherapy? Like, lavender makes you sleepy, grapefruit perks you up, etc... Well there's music therapy, too! I discovered this when I was searching for college majors to pursue. Involvement in music actually can benefit patients! In a sense, music can be considered medicine!

5. How YOU see music. What purpose does music serve to you? Has it helped you?