Brandon Notices

April Fool's Day is tomorrow. I like April Fool's Day! Some people apostrophize (I checked; that's really a word!) "April Fools Day" differently. I guess it depends on who you interpret is the fool. Myself, I put the apostrophe after fool because I see it as a holiday when you "fool" people... day to fool, fool's day. Isn't "fool" a weird word? "FOOOOOOL." Say it. Encarta defines FOOL as several things, including a person who behaves comically or entertains...that's how I see the word "fool" in "April Fool's Day".

Probably one weakness I have when fooling people is that I never get around to saying "April Fool!" I mean, the opportunity never arises. For example, and here's a weak example, I say, "Whoops, I forgot my lunch!" knowing well that I have not forgotten my lunch. Then somebody will say "Oh, that's too bad" or something. Then what? That's not an appropriate time to say "April Fool!" I don't know, maybe it's a bad example or something, but saying "April Fool!" right then would be awkward and would feel out of place. Hey, isn't "awkward" also a weird word? Think about it. Think about how weird all words are.

Oh, don't think about poking me on the right shoulder from behind when you're standing on my left. I never fall for that one. Besides, I probably won't be turning my back on anyone tomorrow anyway (I wouldn't want a "Kick me!" sign taped (or worse, glued!) on the back of my shirt).

I wonder if anybody has an April Fool's Day prank planned where they bring a gun to school. I hope nobody's planning a joke like that, because it probably won't end up being very funny.

There are several types of April Fool's Day pranks. I'll list a few:

1. Spoken Pranks
   These usually take the least amount of preparation, and when done correctly, can usually make people laugh or make other people laugh at the prankee. Here are a few examples of Spoken Pranks:
   • "My dog Freddy died."
   • "I told the teacher you were cheating, even though you probably weren't."
   • "I'm the one who pulled the fire alarm."
   • "I need to raise $50 to bail my dads out of jail."
   • "I liked my trip to Renton."



2. Gestural Pranks
   These are really simple, subtle pranks that only involve movement of a body part or gazing in one direction. Here are a few examples of Gestural Pranks:
   • If you're talking to somebody whose back is to a door, look around him as if somebody is entering the room. He'll turn around to see who's entering.
   • Say "You've got something on your face," and touch somewhere on your own face. The prankee will frantically try to rub something off his face.
   • Look up, and people will look up to see what you're looking at.
   • Stand behind somebody to the right, and tap his left shoulder. He will look over his left shoulder, and will be surprised to see that nobody's standing there!



3. Physical Pranks
   These are much more involved than Gestural Pranks, and usually get more attention as well. It's likely that you will get the attention of a lot of people, so if you try to pull one of these off, make sure it is a good one. If the prank doesn't work, you'll feel embarassed. Here are a few examples of Physical Pranks:
   • Pretend like you're about to trip right into somebody.
   • Stick your foot out right in front of somebody walking, and trip him. Works great if he's carrying a bunch of books!



4. Prop Pranks
   These pranks require some preparation because the props have to be gathered or constructed ahead of time. Here are a few examples of Prop Pranks:
   • He bites into the donut and is surprised that instead of jelly filling, it has mustard filling!
   • Poke holes in the side of somebody's straw while they're away. When they try to drink with the straw, it'll be difficult to suck the beverage up!
   • Give somebody a mylar balloon that says "It's A Girl!" in front of a bunch of people.
   • Slip a few sardines into somebody's sandwich.
   • Tape a "Kick Me" sign on somebody's back.
   • Tape a "Kill Me" sign on an enemy's back.

In elementary school, my teachers seemed to love April Fool's Day. They'd play a prank on us. I remember falling for a trick Mrs. Engle played on us once in 2nd grade when she told us that school lasted an hour later, and we were going to get rid of third recess. I was like, Nooooooooo! Actually, though, they did get rid of third recess a few years later.

Elementary school teachers like pranking little kids, but in high school, none of the teachers seem to like playing tricks. Hmmm... but this year, I have a bunch of good teachers. Ms. Hudemann, Mr. Worster, and Ms. Shaw are three likely teachers to try to prank us. Mr. Singh and Ms. Dixon are probably too serious, and it would be too confusing for Ms. Brinkley to try to fool us, so...I don't know.

Ahhh... tomorrow, I have to go to school early tomorrow during Tutorial to catch up in my classes. Maybe, instead of telling my teachers I was sick, I could tell them something more serious, like maybe I fell down the stairs or I had symptoms of a heart attack or something. I bet a few of my teachers are going to try to fool me into thinking I missed something serious or something difficult to make up. Then I'd probably ask them, "Are you foolin' me?" and they'd say no, even though they probably were or something. It's hard to tell.

Pay close attention to this. If you try to fool somebody, and they ask you if you're trying to fool them, just say you are. It's annoying if you say, "No, I'm not fooling you," but later, you say you were fooling. I mean, the person already probably figured out you were fooling them but you said you weren't.... yadda yadda....... I call it a "fool loop". It's too confusing to talk about it in detail. I'm only making my headache worse.

I don't know how much my friends like April Fool's Day. I don't remember from last year what they did, or how they reacted to my foolings. I guess we'll see (unless I'm sick, but I can't miss school on April Fool's Day!)

Oh, if you skipped all of the above paragraphs to read this conclusion, shame on you! Go back and reread it all.

Today was Math Day. It was a field trip to the University of Washington. Before it all got started, we were all seated in a huge auditorium in Meany Hall. Aaron and I thought about what presentations to view later, and we thought that Hyperbolic Geometry would be fun, and so would Aeronautics and Astronautics. However, A&A required a "ticket", and neither Mr. Worster nor any of the other teachers had tickets for that. So instead, Mr. Worster gave us two tickets to Applied Physics, and said to try to trade those for tickets to Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Everybody had to watch the plenary presentation, whether they wanted to or not. Everyone was gathered in the auditorium in Meany Hall to watch some guy give a presentation about securely transferring data (like credit card numbers, etc.) over the Internet. I thought it was pretty interesting, but word is that a lot of people found it to be "boring" and "stupid". Ah well, I guess not everything can please everybody.

So afterwards, Aaron and I went to the ticket trading booth, where people set down tickets they wanted in exchange for tickets they didn't want. Aaron, who is much taller than me, could see that there were no A&A tickets there. One guy had one A&A ticket, and didn't want it, but refused to give it to us because he wanted it to exchange for something better.

We went to the hyperbolic geometry presentation, which was actually called Images of Hyperbolic Geometry. Aaron was disappointed that he only skimmed the surface of hyperbolas, mostly only showing pictures. He also complained that the idiot had no idea what he was talking about, but to be fair, he wasn't a professor, despite the fact that I kept calling him "the professor" (it wasn't until later that I found out he wasn't one). But still, to be fair, the pictures were interesting and neat!

Since we couldn't get tickets to A&A, we went to Trial by Mathematics, which didn't require a ticket (the presentations didn't require tickets, only the "field trips" and hands-on things). It was interesting because she mentioned that most people only identify other people by their hair and eyes, the most common things mentioned were higher on the body. She discussed how math has been used in several trials, many of them using probability ("it's a 1 in 12 million chance this couple did it...").

Lunch was next, and since it was an hour, we went and played with those little logic thinking sliding puzzle things that you see in gift and puzzle stores and such. Then we all boarded the buses, and one girl was missing. But they found her and we left.

My favorite part was that the auditorium was called Meany Hall.

Since the girls' basketball team lost yesterday, they played a consolation match today, and once again, most of the student body was gone to see it.

I walked into Chemistry class this morning, and instead of seeing a classroom full of people leaving from Tutorial, there were only a few people. Weird, I thought. In all, only 7 out of 30ish people were in Chemistry today. It was nice and quiet. Except for when Hailey, Brian, and I talked briefly to each other, it was the quietest the class had ever been. Mr. Singh didn't lecture or anything today—what can you do when most of your class is absent? He just gave us free time. First, I worked on stories for my Creative Writing class, then I read my book for a while, then I fiddled with my calculator. It felt like a long class.

Then was History. Again, only about a third of the class was there. The figure I guessed was about two-thirds of the school went to that game. The rest of us had to work on our history project. Most of the people didn't have their partners for the project, but fortunately, my partner was there. We went to the library to do working. We got to use the computers! The printer only printed in black and white. I mean, it only printed in black (there's no white ink—the paper's already white anyway).

Right before lunch, they announced the results of the girls' basketball game. Awww, the "Lady Mavs" lost! Again! So now they're out of the tournament. And too bad, too. They lost the first game too.

The weather is getting nicer and nicer. We actually ate lunch outside today. I hope it'll get warmer before it gets colder.

Then after History, we had Creative Writing! Ms. Shaw had us push all the tables together into one big table so it seemed like we were at private school (there were only 12 of us). We talked about poems based off of the blackbird poem briefly, then left us to ourselves to work on our portfolios. Dinah seemed to like my Stones poem. Then, R.C. (doesn't stand for remote-controlled) was showing us a website on the screen. Then, somebody else popped up a website of something funny. Then, I thought I'd pop up my website for everyone to enjoy. Ms. Shaw really seemed to like my "How to Write an F Paper" essay, especially about the part about microwaving the paper, and she was surprised when I told her that I wrote that. She asked R.C., who was holding the mouse, to bookmark my website! So now I have to stop talking bad about my teachers in case she finds this blog through the Links in my website.

It's officially spring now—I can hear the ice cream truck outside! It's playing Yankee Doodle.

The school was nearly empty today.

The girls' basketball team went to state competitions far, far away, and most of the student body went with them, just to watch. So everybody else stayed at school. I was one of those people.

Right before English class, everybody boarded the rooter buses. So English class, typically, was pretty empty. There were only like 10 out of 30 or so people in class. However, Ms. Hudemann refused to let this ruin her class. We continued watching The Great Gatzby, and the rest of the class will just have to rent the movie if they want to catch up.

ASL was a lot more fun. There were only like 7 out of 26-ish people there. Most of us were over on the same side of the classroom, so it was cool to have the other side of the class practically empty. First we had a practice test, and I did pretty well (except I wrote down 25 when she signed 15). Ms. Brinkley had nothing else planned—we could choose to watch a movie or read for over an hour, and knowing the movies she chooses, we chose to read. However, it didn't take long for us to stop reading and just start doing other stuff. I played dots 'n' curves on the board with Rachel, Alex, and Steve.

Lunch was pretty normal, but Calculus was way off! Out of our class of 18-ish, there were only 5 of us, excluding Conner, who was taking a test outside of the classroom. We watched a video about integrals that Mr. Worster thought would be fun to watch, but it really wasn't very good—he wanted to test it on us to see how fun it was, I guess. It wasn't. I waved the tissue in the air like a surrender flag, and he laughed at that and stopped the movie. Then we went over the test. I didn't do too well on it... I asked about one problem and I entered the equation incorrectly into my calculator but Mr. Worster reawarded me with those points because it was a strange mistake involving the way the calculator handles complicated exponents, but I got the math totally correct.

The girls' basketball team lost today—that means that they play tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM. Which means that I bet a bunch of the school will go to that game too. If the "Lady Mavs" had won, they would have played tomorrow at 3:30 PM, and students would not be able to miss school tomorrow. I bet a lot of people are happy that they lost the game.

ASB elections were today. One of the candidates for Vice President took off his shirt and pants to reveal a white tanktop with something illegibly written on it, and a pair of hot pink short shorts. His point was that he would do anything for our school. Weird. I voted for Leah, who had chosen to sing a song she had written. Nathan was running unopposed for President, so he just wasted the time for his speech, making up a song along the lines of the Oscar Meyer song, "My baloney has a first name...".

Later right before Calculus, I asked Audrey, who is the current ASB president, if the elections were rigged. I was joking. She gasped, and said, "No!" Then, right before class ended, they announced the winners. Then school was dismissed. As we all walked down the stairs, I asked Audrey if she already knew who the winners were before the election. "Yeah, we counted them during third period—oh, before the election? No, I didn't know. The election wasn't rigged, Brandon."

Oh, something else that happened in Calculus. Since the candidates gave their speeches today, the bell schedule was rearranged. Usually when this happens, the bells don't ring for some reason. Before Calculus, Mr. Worster asked if the bell had rung. It was late to ring. He said something about the bells always being late, then I said that "it was a good thing the bell rang, or else we'd all be in perpetual passing time". That comment was a big hit. Then Mr. Worster suddenly starting talking about those drugs like Viagra, and how the commercials warn you about erections lasting over 24 hours and how weird those commercials were.