Showing posts with label nostalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nostalgia. Show all posts

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Picture Imperfect

This is something that Kat and I found earlier today. It's one of our old high-school satiric rants that I've copied pretty much verbatim.
Picture Imperfect:
Student IDs are Gone But Not Forgotten
From now on, students at DCHS will no longer need to have pictures taken of them. This landmark decision was started after a large-scale student protest broke out last week. The protest originated from students receiving their ID's, which many thought were unflattering. "Everybody knows the school pictures look terrible. That's why I get mine done professionally," said Bethany Cilantro, grade 11. Several students also thought that being forced to take pictures year after year is religiously offensive. These students believe that part of their soul is taken away with every picture. "It's very traumatic to watch a light flash in your eyes and know that an important part of your spirit has been stolen. And for what? Some picture that doesn't even look good," Cassandra Kateri Tekakwitha, grade 10, said. Whether the pictures are soul stealing or not, the fact remains that all students hate their pictures. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, picture day is known world-wide as Bad Hair Day. This day is actually celebrated as a holiday in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Of course, there is no actual celebration, because that would mean that individuals would have to leave their houses.
Also, it is a scientific fact that the night before picture day, every student will get a gigantic zit somewhere on their face. This is caused by the tremendous amount of stress that every student experiences before picture day. The stress causes oils and sweat to excrete from glands. The oil then leaks onto the face which closes the pores, and creates the bane of all adolescents, the zit. So, from now on, we no longer have to have pictures taken. But what about the yearbook, you may ask? The yearbook will give each student a 1"x1.5" space (the size their picture would have been). This space can be filled with whatever the student desires. Personally, I will be writing a 1,000 word essay on how the logging industry dramatically shortens the life of the tiger salamander, Ambystoma tigrinum. (Bring your magnifying glasses people!) The administration is freeing students from the tyranny of having to take bad pictures by eliminating them. And of course, because getting a better photographer would cost too much.
Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, airlines and many government corporations have tightened their security, and so proved there are much better means of identifying a person than their picture. So in replacement of ID pictures will be fingerprint impressions, which will fit to the grooves of each individual student's middle finger. The new security system at DCHS will learn to identifying all faculty and students, excluding, of course, the new freshmen, by their cornea scans, DNA structure, (All students will be required to give a minimum of one pint of blood at the beginning of each school year for analysis), vocal patterns and dental records. We are pleased to inform you that this automated security will only raise tuition by $2,000 per student this year. Cornea scans will be necessary to enter the building as well as each individual classroom. A DNA scan will be administered before entering the main office. The library's new computers will be accessed through voice recognition. Finally, to enter or exit any restroom, dental records must be activated by our highly advanced security system, taking as a little as thirty minutes. These security measures include all faculty members, with the exception of our principal. We applaud our administration for taking these drastic steps to respect the student body's opinion, ensure our safety and eliminate imperfection throughout our fine school.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Daydreams of the Ugly Duckling

I saw the movie Enchanted today. It was cute, and I was amused by it, even though all of my friends that have seen it thought it was idiotic. (I'm immature, what can I say?) But because the movie was all about fairy tales, it unearthed the part of me that's still 6 years old. I grew up with beautiful books and stories, but from a young age, I always preferred fairy tales. Not just the Disney ones, although of course I grew up watching Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and many, many others, countless times, (my favorite movie with a "princess" in it was Beauty and the Beast: Belle loved to read and she was a brunette; for a 5 year old that's a huge deal), but also the real fairy tales: the (somewhat) unsanitized tales of princes that fight gigantic ogres with terrifyingly bad breath, the beautiful princesses who were sometimes in league with witches and demons, the youngest sons of farmers or woodcutters who were somehow the bravest and the strongest and the kindest in the land who always win in the end, the mythical creatures in the equally mythical and mysterious, dangerous, dark forests, and the entire magical world. I adored fairy tales. I read everyone I could find. The library of my elementary school, had the entire collection of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books (The Blue Book, The Red Book, The Green Book, The Yellow Book, the Violet Book, The Chartruese Book, The Salmon Book, etc. ...) and I read all of them at least two times. (I also read and reread and reread and reread Hans Christian Anderson and the children's version of the Brother's Grimm.) Back then (and, alright, now) fairy tales were my only means of escape from a cruel and inhospitible world, and they very quickly became my reality. There are no divorces in fairy tales. Young girls who have sad and lonely childhoods grow up to be the most beautiful women in the world, whom everyone adores. The ugly duckling always becomes the swan. She has to; that's the way it's written. I began to see the world in terms of good and evil, with the strictest ethics that I learned from my books. But at the same time, they taught me that even the lowliest was capable of the greatest good; that even I was capable of good. Fairy tales have their own view of justice: the evil die or are horribly punished, while the good get their happily-ever-afters. I saw that in my books, and I dreamed that it would somehow get applied to the real world. I guess I still do. But more so then the justice, and the safety, I retreated into stories for the wonders they possessed. In fairy tales, the mundane and supernatural walk together like twin brothers. And just like twins, sometimes you don't know which is which. The supernatural becomes mundane and the mundane becomes something supernatural. In fairy tales wonderful, beautiful, magical, miraculous events take place every day. I don't regret my reclusion into fantasy; it gave me so much more that reality never could. It awakened in me a great sense of wonder, for somewhere, everywhere, there was something fantastic happening, even if I couldn't see it. They made me search my back yard and the nearby park for leprechauns. Fairy tales allowed me to see the magic that I desperately needed; and they taught me to cherish every living thing, for life has a magic of its own, far more powerful than any spell. They made me into the idiotically optimistic person I am today. For a time I recanted my beliefs in fairy tales: those years were the hardest and saddest in my life. I've grown older and become this strange girl-woman hybrid, and now I can see the beauty and the truth in my old daydreams. Crutch for reality they may be, but fairy tales only add hope, wonder and magic to this world: things we need more than we know.
"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. "-G.K. Chesterton
Kathleen, the (ex?) Disney Princess