I have such an idea for a Pixar movie....

There’s this kid, a colorful boy about 10, and he lives in a world where everyone’s imagination is visible. When you’re imagination is working, it shows above your head in swirls and swirls of bright colors. This boy has such an active imagination; it grows and grows until it fills the entire room.
The movie opens in a classroom. He’s sitting at his desk, writing down a story, dreaming of a Western. Above his head, shapes form and react with one another, and it gets brighter and more colorful, and pure red horses are galloping around the classroom while outlaws are trying to escape out the window - until he’s reprimanded by the teacher.
            The swirls of color fade, and we see what the teacher sees. The classroom is wrecked, and the children are running wild, the boy’s imagination the catalyst for the destruction and chaos. The teacher looks frustrated and angry as she writes something down. The boy’s head falls, and the scene fades.
            We now see the boy’s home, only in dark colors, angular silhouettes and shadows. We see the boy shamefully handing his parents a note that has been pinned to his jacket. His parents (who are just deep purple silhouettes, as angular and flat as the rest of the house) look very worried. His father puts his arm around his mother as their shadows grow, and the scene fades to black.
            Next shot is the boy looking out a car window. You can tell he’s puzzled as the car pulls into an unhappy looking parking lot. All angles in this parking lot are blunted, like a rectangle that has had the corners cut off, and the cars reflected in the window as they pass by are dull and similar to one another. They park and his mother (off screen) takes his hand and leads him out of the car, and into a big grey building. The boy looks up at the sky as they walk, but the sun and blue sky are obscured as he is pulled into the building.
            Here, his imagination is strangely inactive. It struggles to bloom, but it is still clearly more active than anyone else there. All the other people have dull, or grey, or just totally gone imaginations. This frightens him. Pulled into a white room by his mother, the door locks as he sits down.
            It’s a typical doctor’s office, with the plain white walls and uncomfortable sterility. Here, his imagination is slightly more active than in the grey waiting room, and you can see it beginning to form a pirate ship scene on the blank walls of the room. The colors become brighter and he is about to be taken completely into his imagination, but just as the ship begins to move on the now-filled walls, the doctor walks in. His mother covers her eyes in shame.
            The boy’s mother is sent out of the room, and she reluctantly heads out, and the door is quietly shut behind her by the doctor. The boy turns from his pirate ship scene and looks at the doctor. You can tell he’s frightened, and the scene fades from the wall. The screen goes dark as the doctor’s shadow falls over the boys face. From this point forward, each time we see the boy, he looks a little less colorful, a little more grayscale.
            The boy is at school now. Everyone’s imaginations are blooming and swirling as normal, but the boy’s…..the boy’s is missing. He looks listless, depressed. Like he hasn’t been sleeping or smiling in days. He is sent home with a new note, this one praising his improvement in class. His parents look happy, if a bit worried as well. The boy slogs up to his room and the scene ends.
            In his room, we see it now has the same blunted angle look as the parking lot, color drained out of everything, a small metal box sitting on his bedside table. The boy sits on the edge of his bed, doing nothing until he reaches over and grabs the box, bringing it into his lap. This box is the only sharp-cornered thing in the room, has one small keyhole, and, aside from one small dent in the side, is just as sickeningly medical and pristine as the doctor’s office was. The boy tries in vain to open it, but soon gives up and places it back on the table before curling up to sleep.
            The next bit is a sequence of the boy finding his way back to the office with his box via walking, waiting, and bus, until he’s finally standing in front of a door in the office that looms over him, an ugly tan color with frosted glass in the window. The boy pushes open the door and walks in.
            In here there are thousands of keys, in rows and rows and rows, and he simply sits down, methodically trying one key after the next in his little box. The pile beside him grows and grows, until finally, we hear a “click” and the lid to the box opens. He opens the box, and finds a thick layer of colorful dust, barely glowing in the dim light of the office.
            As he stares down at the remainders of his imagination, he hears the door squeak open and turns around, terrified it’s the doctor. But in the doorway is a little girl, maybe five or six years old, clutching a teddy bear and sporting an imagination as bright as his once was. She looks scared and lost, but notices his lack of imagination. She comes over to the boy and with her thumb shyly in her mouth, holds out her teddy bear.
            The boy takes the bear in his hand and a small smile spreads across his face. In the glow of the girl’s imagination, he looks more colorful, more like he did at the beginning. We zoom backward from the scene, further into the shelves of keys, and as we leave the boy and girl, we see him kneel down and hand the teddy bear back, small spurts of color swirling around his head.
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On Vices and Virtues (Panic! At The Disco's new album)

I feel like they really let go of a lot of the stuff that made Panic! so uniquely interesting to me.

I thought that they were bringing it back, judging by The Ballad of Mona Lisa, which sounded like a healthy mix of AFYCSO and Pretty. Odd. but now that I’m listening to the album…

I wanna cry a bit, actually.

I am so let down, and I know it’s so different from everyone else’s reactions, but I really missed the AFYCSO-esque sound, and after Mona Lisa, I was really expecting it to be back and….

Wow, I didn’t realize I could actually be this let down over an album.

Maybe my expectations were too high, but this is just too much for me. I’ve been freaking out for over a month, almost peeing my pants waiting for this album, and it comes out and sounds less and less like the Panic! I knew and loved.

I don’t know what to do.
I feel like someone just cancelled my birthday.

On the plus side, Always and Nearly Witches aren’t all bad, and do sound a lot more like what I was expecting. The Calendar is pretty good too. They’re just not AFYCSO, I guess.

I was reading reviews of the album on here, and someone summed it up perfectly for me. What really makes Panic!, Panic! is Brendon’s voice, and this album just had so much going on musically that it overpowered his voice, and I think that’s what makes me mad. 

The instruments don’t mesh like they did in AFYCSO. I think otherwise, it wouldn’t be that bad of an album.
They just tried to stuff so much into it that it ended up falling apart.

I’m thinking Trade Mistakes is growing on me (probably because of the strings at the end that remind me of Build God, The We’ll Talk) but for first impressions, I liked The Calendar best (aside from Mona Lisa, which I loved obviously).

I just wish that the sound was cohesive with Mona Lisa.

I mean, it seems like someone picked it up off of AFYCSO and accidentally dropped it on this album.

This album…sounds more like a mix of old Panic! at times and, like, All Time Low or something in that vein


I suppose I’ll have to wait for the bonus pre-order tracks and pray that they sound more like what I was hoping for.

Dear God, let me learn to love this album. I want to love it so much. Please.
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An open letter to college recruiting people that send out what may be best described as junk mail

Dear college recruiting people that send out what may be best described as junk mail,
I am sick and tired of you sending me letters that only contain links to awful quizzes and unnecessary facts about when your were established. This tells me nothing about the type of student that goes there. Every single letter I get talks about how your students are challenged, hard-working, and oh-so-successful. Well I’m calling bull.
I want a letter that grabs my attention, and drags me out of this pit of cookie-cutter college honors and campus-describing adjectives. Want my attention? Tell me something worthwhile. Catch my eye with some humor for God’s sake! You have been so far removed from the mentality of a college-seeking teenager for such a long time, that you no longer remember how tedious and strenuous the search can be! Make me laugh, and you automatically have my interest.
I want to go somewhere that focuses on helping me develop as a person just as much as it focuses on helping me develop intellectually, and none of what you are sending me is helping me in the least. You are dehumanizing yourselves with the quizzes and honors and rhetorical questions that no student actually wants to answer “yes” to. It’s going to cost you.
So don’t send us what our parents want to hear, because (for most of us), we’re the ones who make the decision. Tell us who you are as a college, because that’s one thing none of you have done, and that’s the most important thing to consider.
Sincerely,
Nobody
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Eh.

I now have a Tumblr
chroniclesofateenagenobody.tumblr.com
That's probably where I'll be posting most of my stuff now.
-N
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Israel- A Personal Essay

******************Essay I needed to write for Governor's School. I actually ended up quite liking it. Lemme know what you think!************************


                The idea of a homeland for the Jewish people has influenced me profoundly. Israel came about in a macabre way, taking the blood of six million Jews to sign its declaration, and 20,093 more to keep it alive. Yet the nation still stands. What it has had to do to survive is more drastic than any nation still in existence today and Israel is a mere 62 years old. But its existence has forced me to think. It has created a dynamic tension within me, being Jewish, as I try to reconcile my views of what a Jewish nation should do and the facts of what it has done.
                Over the span of its existence, Israel has been involved in seven wars and is constantly in the news for its skirmishes with Palestine. When I hear nothing but bad things about Israel from all sides; TV newscasters, newspapers, acquaintances and opponents of my homeland, it forces me to research. As Israel is my homeland, it is an extension of me, and I have a knee-jerk reaction to defend it, no matter what they’ve done. But when I hear that the Israeli army bulldozed an entire refugee camp, I begin to wonder. I have to think, “Do I still support what they’re doing? Can I defend a country when I don’t agree with their military policies?” and I have to search for both sides of the story, and I have to search for objectivity within myself.
                I cannot afford, as a modern Jewish teenager, to look at Israel through an emotion-tinted glass, and yet, as a modern Jewish teenager, I cannot help but to be emotionally involved. I am grilled more than any other person that I know about my views on Israel, simply because it as seen as an extension of the Jewish people, and in a way they are right. I feel that our homeland should create policies and employ military tactics and engage in foreign relations all in line with Jewish principles. When it seems to me that they do not do so, I get conflicted. Why have a Jewish homeland when it will not act in accordance with what is best for its people and the people around it? What should Judaism say on the matter? Are they in the right or wrong? Is there a gray area? All these questions swirl around my mind, and when I dig deeper, all I find are harder questions. In questioning Israel’s policies, I am questioning my faith. In one breath, the Torah says “Thou shall not kill”, and in the very next it instructs us to wipe out every inhabitant of the land that opposes us. As I wrestle with these questions, I realize that my faith is just as conflicted as I am, and that there are no answers; only better questions.
                The idea of a Jewish homeland has affected me on many levels, from my daily conversations, to my thoughts before I go to bed, to a continuing inner monologue pondering the facets of right and wrong and self defense and slaughter. It has taught me to think critically, even when my heart screams to do otherwise. But most of all, the idea of a Jewish homeland has forced me to question, and I think that is the best thing that we can ever hope to ask of an idea.
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A Model

 Katrina stepped out of the shower with a towel wound tightly around her form. She took her time drying each and every droplet from her flawless skin. She surveyed herself in the mirror, and took in each detail with beautiful amber eyes. Her skin was the color of freshly made coffee, with just a dollop of milk mixed in. Her high cheekbones and wide-set, large eyes cast an aura of mystique around her willowy figure. With onyx hair hanging to just below her chin, she was beautiful.
                With cat-like grace, she turned from the mirror to sit on the edge of her bathtub, her long legs folding into her body with ease. She rested her cheek on her knees, her arms hugging her legs into a tight bundle.
                Katrina sat this way for a while, staring at the skylight that cut a hole in her vaulted ceiling, watching light flood the luxurious bathroom as the shadows crept further and further away from her curled body.
                Her phone buzzed on the vanity, and she was startled back to reality. She slowly uncurled and stood up, allowing the towel to drop as she walked over to check her phone. A text message from her agent. Of course. Today’s a big day! Don’t forget, you need to be at the plaza by eleven. Bring those gold shoes of yours, the strappy ones, not the heels. –Samantha.
                Katrina closed her eyes and delicately trailed her fingertips across her face. She snapped her phone shut and leaned against the vanity, staring at her feet.    
                Her hand shot out and closed around the bottle of vanilla scented lotion to her left, and she delicately unscrewed the top and dribbled the lotion into her palm. She turned her attention to her right leg first. Slowly she ran her lithe fingers down her perfectly sculpted thigh, rubbing in the balm as she went. “I hate you” she whispered. Her fingers trailed down to trace her calf. “I hate you, too.” 
                Her hand moved over to her left thigh, and repeated the process. “Why can’t you be thinner?” she said to her flawless skin as it absorbed the last of the lotion. She poured some more into her hands, and slowly worked her way up her stomach. “I hate you”. Katrina reached her left shoulder and paused, her hand cupped gently around her smooth skin. She closed her eyes and tilted her head until it rested lightly on her cupped hand. She envisioned herself shrinking smaller and smaller until she could run on nothing but air and the sunlight streaming in from the skylight in her vaulted bathroom ceiling.  She curled in on herself further, and continued her hand’s journey down her sapling arm.  “Be smaller” she whispered to her shoulder.
                Katrina finished applying the lotion and stepped into her carefully pressed clothes, tightening her artfully crafted belt to the last hole. As she walked out the door, she glanced once again at the full-length mirror glinting in the sunlight from the skylight in her vaulted bathroom ceiling.
                Without a word, she smashed it and stepped out the door.



-N
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Interesting.

This may offend you.

http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/study-gay-parents-more-likely-to-have-gay-kids/19668089?ncid=webmail

Personally, I find it interesting.

A lot of people violently oppose gay marriage, stating in their arguments that gay parents will turn out gay kids. Before now, this statement has been shot down almost as soon as the words exited their mouth. But with this study (and yes, it has been extensively researched, read the article), that may no longer be a lie.

Personally, I'm fine with the idea that gay parents can produce more gay kids. It makes sense if you think about it; the idea isn't condemned in their household, and they are inherently more open-minded. You would have NO trouble coming out to gay parents, whereas if you live in a household where you're not sure how your parents would take it, or if they would vehemently object, you may never come out.

I don't think that gay and lesbian couples produce more homosexual children, only that they allow their kids to be who they are without fear.

Leave your comments and opinions below, I'd love to discuss this more.

-N
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