Get these subjects out of my learning!

-Note: I realize this blog is a little hard to read here, so I'm cross-posting it here as well, with the caveat that much of the stuff around that blog doesn't really apply anymore.-

At the beginning of this summer, I took on an odd project. I was beginning to explore the idea of homeschooling and decided to try eclectic homeschooling on myself. I made myself a list of things I "wanted" to know (read: things I thought I "should" know) and a daily schedule in which to study those things. That list is here. I gave myself the timetable of "till the end of August" to "finish" this project.

Midsummer, though, I discovered radical unschooling. With great timing too - right when the Radical Unschoolers' Network was started, and right before Learn Nothing Day. I decided to try unschooling for a week, and never went back to the old schedule. Unschooling is way too much fun. And I kept right on learning, of course, I thought it'd be interesting to look over that "curriculum outline" from the beginning of summer and see if, by coincidence, I'd learned any of the same stuff by unschooling.

Looking over it, I realized I only learned a few of these areas, but I learned SO MUCH MORE about them than I would have on the plan I'd made. And I learned about them in ways that were real and fun and relevant and intertwined with each other. The way I'd been learning before was so shallow and detached, and this is better. Here's some highlights:

Subject: German
Original plan: Daily workbook assignments in a dry textbook designed mostly for travelers. Flash cards. Language software. I learned only very basic words in a very rigid order, without jumping ahead or looping back.
Unschooling: I listened to Rammstein and Kraftwerk and Rosenstolz, looked up the song translations online and listened to the songs again to see what words I now recognized. I noticed different accents among the singers and looked up where they were from to learn about regional differences in pronunciation. I found German versions of David Bowie and Peter Gabriel songs that I could compare back and forth to the English versions. I got excited when I realized I understood the meaning of the Simpsons episode title "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk". I played a game with friends where one person would put a phrase in Babelfish, translate it into German and tell the rest of us, and we'd all try to guess what the original phrase was. (This meant my friends learned some German too, even though they hadn't planned to study it.) I bought a German magnet poetry kit. I watched the film Bach in Auschwitz. A friend noticed my interest and lent me Run Lola Run, which I haven't watched yet, but it's there when I'm ready for it. I watched Youtube videos of Old English and Middle English, which gave me a better understanding of both English and German. And, I still used that language software, but I jumped around and did whatever lessons I was ready for instead of going in a prescribed order. I did these things because they were fun and interesting to me, and they all felt like play.

Subject: Literature (a subject I totally loathed in school)
Original plan: Read classic books off a reading list.
Unschooling: I've learned about Jekyll and Hyde from a show on History International, and from an Arthur cartoon. I learned about Oscar Wilde from the Venture Bros. I read Watership Down because my friends all said they loved it, and I really loved it too. From that one book I learned an enormous amount about various political systems, nature, and the value of different personality types. I also read the first half of A Clockwork Orange because I always wanted to read it (didn't finish because I ran out of renews at the library), from which I learned an uncountable number of things about morality and even picked up a few words of Russian. I played a complicated game involving shuffling through your iPod and pulling lines out of different songs to make a poem, and then trying to interpret what that poem might be about. (It's eerie how often they come together in a way that can make sense!) I've driven myself mad trying to figure out what certain song lyrics are about, and quoted others to express my own feelings. I've written and read tons and tons of blog posts (many of which could easily be called "essays", if you wanted to suck the fun out of them.) I've listened to rock operas straight through and followed their plots with ease, even though I used to refuse any form of fiction that wasn't a 30-minute sitcom or cartoon. I learned about HP Lovecraft through playing Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.


Subject: Social studies and current events. This one is HUGE. I'd say the bulk of my learning right now, if forced into a "traditional" school category, falls here. Which is impressive since I hate, hate, hated social studies in school. Now I find all these things interesting (and of course, most of them ooze nicely over the edges of "social studies" and into other areas, in ways school would probably never allow).
Original plan: Read books about specific topics like Native Americans and the Middle East. Study Islam. Draw maps. Study the Russian Revolution and WWI. Force myself to read three news articles each day (regardless of what they were about or if I truly understood them.) Listen (probably halfheartedly) to some samples of world music from a curriculum CD.
Unschooling:
1. I play Civilization II. To do this I have to carefully craft each empire, making meticulous decisions every step of the way about what form of government to use, what improvements will help each city grow, what kinds of military units I need, whether it is wise to go to war (and I've found it rarely is), and which scientific advancements to pursue. I've discovered certain advances developed in a certain order, and wondered why, and looked that up on Wikipedia. For example, the game makes you learn polytheism before monotheism; when I looked this up I learned about the very first religions and how they were polytheistic and why. I played as various different civilizations and learned the names of their major cities and most important leaders. I learned about the differences between despotism, fundamentalism and other forms of government I wouldn't have ever "studied" in a curriculum. I learned about the value of mining, farming and trade.

2. The German music I mentioned above sparked an unexpected interest in Peter Gabriel, who has worked hard to give world music a wider audience. Through his songs I've been exposed to many languages, including little-known African ones like Xhosa and Wolof, and learned about Apartheid and the murder of Steven Biko. Because both Gabriel and my other favorite artist, Queen, performed there I watched the 46664 concert for Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday, where I learned about Mandela's life, struggles and achievements. I was exposed to African artists like Youssou N'Dour and Geoffrey Oryema through Gabriel's collaborations with them. I went to a music store and looked at African drums. I learned the rough locations of different countries in Africa and read about the controversy surrounding Zimbabwe's elections. Africa was not on my list of "subjects" to cover and never would have been, but I took interest in it all because of very western, English rock music.

3. I read liberal blogs that have gone into deep, thoughtful discussions about privilege and the different prejudices that impact people of various races, classes, genders, religions, and so on. I thought long and hard about my own unconscious prejudices and worked on getting over them. I developed the courage to stand up when someone is being offensive, and the tact to realize when they didn't mean to be offensive, and to explain it in a non-accusatory manner. These are skills no curriculum will ever cover. All I've ever learned in formal classes was how to squabble and make enemies.

4. I've followed the developments of this year's presidential campaign closely, and had long, deep, thought-provoking discussions with friends about the significance of each choice the candidates make. This has included trying to predict how the general public will respond to each new development, and analyzing how the media often puts a biased or misleading spin on information.

5. I've taken an unexpected interest in the History International channel, mostly sparked by Civ II. I've watched, among other things: several episodes of The Naked Archaeologist, shows about Victorian England, a documentary about the Dark Ages, and a show about the city that inspired the story of Jekyll and Hyde. When I was in school, you had to drag me kicking and screaming to a history book. I surely would never have watched a channel with the "history" label for fun.

6. I memorized the "Yakko's World" song from Animaniacs, just for fun. I looked up which countries he missed and which ones he named that no longer exist.

7. I visited an anime convention in Miami with some friends. Because it was anime, I was exposed to Japanese culture. Because it was Miami, I was exposed to Latino culture (and had quite a culture shock when I realized almost no one spoke English in the part of town we were staying in!). I shared a hotel room with a friend from India who now lives in Singapore. (That friend is also Muslim, and I took note of how difficult it is to get halal/kosher food when going out to eat.) My friends and I ate lunch in a cafeteria that had flags from many countries on display, and we tried to identify them all. I asked my mom if a particular mall I went to had been there when she lived in Miami, and learned that they didn't have malls in the 70s.


Subject: Practical skills
Original plan: Learn, through specific, carefully planned lessons, how to sew, cook, and take care of a car. Force myself to clean house and exercise on a regular schedule.
Unschooling: I experimented with cooking, joyfully preparing meals without a recipe, while blasting music and dancing and singing and not taking it a bit seriously. I helped my mom with trips to the grocery store. I discovered I could move just two pieces of furniture in my room (out of like seven major ones - it's a big room) to give me optimal space and convenience. I learned how to wash my hair with baking soda and apple cider vinegar instead of shampoo. I thought long and hard about career choices and where I want to live someday. I applied for jobs. I drove six hours to Miami by myself. I carefully budgeted the last bit of my money so that I can take another trip to south Florida for my birthday. I made a list of things I want to buy when I get a job, and compared their prices from various stores, Ebay, etc. I played DDR and jumped on the trampoline and danced around like a lunatic. I happily fed the cats a few times (usually my mom gets to it first) without being asked - not because it was "a chore" but because they were hungry. I didn't sew or change the oil in the car - the oil doesn't need changing right now and I don't even own a sewing machine. If I ever come up with a project I really need sewing for, I'll learn it then.


And there's plenty more learning I've done this summer! This blog would just drag on forever if I named it all, and it was so natural I can't remember it all anyway But those are some of the biggest, most exciting, most surprising things I learned, things I never expected to take interest in. And comparing it all to how I was learning - well, I don't think I need to point out which way is better :)

Friday Fill-In

1. When I'm sick I'm a huge, whiny baby who needs constant cartoons and Gatorade and heating pads and a big fluffy blankie.

2. When I take a walk, I think about how sandy the dirt on our road is.

3. Money can't buy happiness but it can buy you a plane ticket to go see people who make you happy.

4. Cotton makes me nice and comfy and leather makes me sweat until I die.

5. The strangest person/character I've had lewd thoughts about was I guess my ex, when we were together. He was pretty strange

6. My favorite color these days is purple because it's sort of dark and mysterious, but still part of the rainbow.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to dancing around my room like an idiot, tomorrow my plans include being a lazy bum and Sunday, I want to continue to be a lazy bum!

Things I Need

I've been feeling something missing in my life the last few weeks. I should preface this with updates on my deschooling and de-food-ing (?) progress. (Long post alert! Of course I always feel everything I write is important, but if you're having a serious tl;dr attack, just skip down to the list of nifty bolded thingies.)

A few months ago I started eating what I want, when I want. Lately, I've been noticing that food never "looks good" the way it used to. I open the fridge or a cabinet hoping to see some forbidden luxury food that will give me a sense of... fulfillment? Indulgence? I don't know, but food doesn't do that for me anymore. It's just food. Which is good, because that's what food is supposed to be: just food! But it also means I have to learn how to actually deal with my emotional needs, especially since I'm also giving up the false approval of school. I never realized how much I based my self-image on the approval of teachers; it's a bit disturbing to think about, really.

So, I guess the first stage (with both food and deschooling) was gorging on freedom, and now I'm in the second stage which is realizing something is still missing, grasping for whatever was filling the space before, and going "huh?" when it isn't there. I realized I was in this stage when I started whining constantly to my friends that I was bored, even when I actually had fun things to do. I think sometimes "I'm lonely and want to have an engaging conversation" and "I need something but I don't know what it is" come out as "I'm bored". Usually with kids who are unschooling, their parents are (or should be) ready at this point to jump in and help them find things they need. I don't have this help; my mom cares, but her world is limited and my knowledge of the great big world out there exceeded hers at least ten years ago. Luckily I have pretty good intrapersonal intelligence (more on this in another post), so I can look inside myself and figure out pretty well what I need. Here's a list of ideas I made, hoping to move into a third stage of going out and finding new things to *actually* fulfill me.

A job. I need a job for income to buy new fun things, and to take classes and go places, and to save money so maybe we can eventually move, and to do the other stuff on this list. I also need a job because it will get me out of the house every day. I'm not 100% sure what I want to do, but I'm thinking something in retail. An office job would pay better but I'd rather have something where I get to stand up and move around and interact with people. There's a few hippie-ish stores around; I'd love to work at one of those but they tend to be very small businesses that don't hire very often. But basically for now I want a simple job so I can take my time deciding what I want to do long-term.

Music lessons. At Yasumicon a few weeks ago I learned a new reason why guitars are a fun instrument to play: they're portable. There was a teenage boy there, maybe 15 or so, who randomly climbed a tree and started playing guitar there. I thought that was so cool - I'd love to be able to just carry music wherever I go. Sure you can do that with a clarinet or flute or something, but it just doesn't have the same "wandering minstrel" feel. Also you can't play Pink Floyd on them. (Well you can, but...) So I want guitar lessons, and maybe piano too. I'd like to get better at that.

A chance to meet creative people. Not that the people I know aren't creative! But I feel like most of my friends are more passionate about visual art or drama, and I need to be around music-lovers. I'm talking about people who practically pee themselves over a good song, like I do. This is one I may have covered; I answered a musician ad on Craigslist for someone who basically wants to gather other weird, artsy people to maybe work on projects or bounce ideas off each other. So that should be good.

Possibly some kind of gaming thingy. That is totally the technical term for it. Seriously though, I have an old Dungeons and Dragons guide laying around and was paging through it and thinking I might like to actually play again. This should be pretty easy to find since a lot of my friends are gamer geeks, I can just ask if they know anybody running a good D&D campaign. (If you're one of my gamer friends and you read this, no I do not want to play Vampire the Masquerade/Requiem/whatever. I like sitting around somebody's apartment rolling dice kind of gaming, not LARPing. Although that weird old west game might be interesting...)

Some kind of spiritual group. Maybe pagan, maybe new age, maybe... I don't know. I'll check into the CUUPS (Unitarian pagans) group at church, maybe.

An art or jewelry making class. Or maybe just some really good, well-illustrated books on the subject.

And that's what I've come up with so far. It feels really good to step back and acknowledge that while my friends are awesome, they cannot be everything I need all the time. Sometimes I'm going to get interested in things none of them care about, and instead of being whiny and resentful I just need to get off my ass and go find people who like what I like. I used to feel like that was somehow disloyal, but really it's a LOT more fair to my friends than expecting them to take interest in whatever strange whim I have at any given time.

Now, if I can just find a job, I can actually afford to get started on the other stuff.

Dream I had

I had a peculiar dream last night. I was back in middle school, which was one of the schools I enjoyed somewhat. It was like one of my high school years where I'd decided to drop out but hadn't withdrawn, so I decided to go back on the last day to visit everyone one last time. I went through all my classes but before band I realized I didn't have my clarinet, and that I'd left it somewhere on campus months before. It wasn't in the instrument room, so I went wandering around the school looking for it. Eventually I found it tucked away in a room that was like a small warehouse. But before I found *my* clarinet, I found a bunch of other instruments and kept checking to see if they were mine. At one point I thought I found mine and carried it for awhile, but when I opened the case it had a flute inside. There was also a point where I found a pile of clothes I thought were mine, but when I tried them on they didn't fit and had someone else's name written on the tags.

This school was strange because it had little wings like that where people just hung out all day; maybe by this point in the dream the school had morphed into a college or something, I don't know. Anyway I found my clarinet and wandered outside - where I was now, somehow, on a city street. I stood in the middle of a square and there were various musicians there, all of them better than me, but I decided to start playing anyway. And I realized, then and there, that I didn't need school after all. I had long missed my class by this point, but what did it matter? I didn't need it. I could start my life right there, playing my clarinet in the square.

Eventually I realized it was nearly time to go, so I ran back to the band room where students were lining up to wait for the buses. By this point most of them were gone, but I did find my main group of school friends and we all hugged and said we'd be friends forever or some other thing teenage girls say when they say goodbye. I walked away realizing I hadn't visited my gifted class even though I'd meant to, but it was a nonchalant feeling, like "Oh, darn. Oh well." Then I woke up.

I should note here that the friends in the dream are people who I don't ever see anymore unless it's by chance, although we do always stop and hug and talk when we run into each other. But as far as having people to hang out with, I lost their friendship when I left school. And that was okay, because they were school friends. I had other friends by then, a more diverse group of people I had more in common with. And I've kept those friends for years, because our friendship didn't depend on the forced social environment of school.

I like this dream a lot because it's a series of really beautiful metaphors for what I've been going through internally lately. Spending months not going to school and then at the last minute panicking and going "shit, better visit one more time" is pretty typical of my later experiences in school. Then I realized school hadn't provided me with a tool I needed so I had to go off on a search for it. That search took me away from the school building and into a real place where people really lived their lives; I couldn't find the tool I needed without going into a place (the warehouse) that school had led me to believe was dark, scary and forbidden. On the way I kept trying other things that looked right for me, but realized they were only right for someone else. Once I found the tool I needed, the whole wide world opened up. Then I realized there was still an aspect of school I liked, so I grasped at it one last time, but found it easy to say goodbye. With a final nod to the one place in school where I always felt safe and accepted, I bounced off into the world to soak up life, knowing I'd never go back again.

Moods

Yesterday, for some reason, I was in a funk. I get in funks pretty often, but this was a rare kind; it was just complete and total ennui. Everything was boring. Music was boring - I kept flipping through my playlists hoping for a good song, but nothing sounded good. Food was boring - I'd look into the fridge, the freezer, the cabinets, but nothing looked good. Games seemed like chores. Usually food, music and games are the three things that can always cheer me up if I'm alone. When my friends got online even that wasn't fun. Even in lieu of fun, I couldn't find anything *interesting* either. My emotions were just switched off. "Comfortably Numb" comes to mind (although even that song, which I love, didn't sound good yesterday). It was like there was something I needed and was desperately searching for what it was, but couldn't find it. It almost felt like being sick, when you try and try to find something that makes you feel better but ultimately just have to wait it out. The ennui finally broke a little when Spiffy, Terry and Buncy all decided to join me in a Literati game.

Today was better. Today I'm actually in a great mood. Every song on my playlist is taking me to that higher level that great art should take you to. I just ate a piece of cheese danish that was like what gold would taste like if you could eat it. Showers are soothing, pillows are comfy, jokes are funny, games are fun. It's nice to have feelings back, but what's weird is that I don't know what the difference is between yesterday and today. Maybe I slept better or ate better, or maybe it's a chemical thing. Maybe it's a spiritual thing. It's really hard to tease apart all the factors in a "mood". It'd be nice if moods were like the Sims, where you just have to eat food and go to the bathroom and have comfortable chairs to be happy. But real moods have an intangible mystery element. Doctors seem to have decided that element is serotonin and have tried to bottle things that let you use more of it. But there has to be more to it than that.

When I was a teenager, I had depression. Some of it was circumstantial, "I'm a teenager and people don't understand me and my life sucks" depression, but there was a real chemical thing going on too, and I had to be medicated. The medication gave me a kick start, but it was fake happiness. Really it was more like a jolt of energy, which I needed, but energy didn't solve the problem. The only thing that did was to grow up and not be stuck being a teenager anymore. Maybe the problem could've been solved sooner if I'd been taken more seriously, but teenagers almost never are.

I have a lot of friends who have (or have had) depression, and one or two with its poorly-understood cousin, bipolar disorder. Not being inside their heads, I don't know if their problems are more chemical or more circumstantial, or a combination of both, or maybe existential or spiritual or Frith knows what else. I think in either case it's disrespectful to symbolically lobotomize a person and declare their experiences to be just a chemical thing. But I think it's interesting that there's this kind of pattern in the people I feel drawn to. I also think it's interesting how many of the world's great artists, poets, writers and musicians have struggled with their moods. I think it's a matter of depth. Maybe experiencing dark, confusing moods gives you depth and insight. Or maybe it's the other way around and having depth and insight allows you to see the problems in the world and that can be depressing. Maybe one feeds the other. In any case, maybe it's that depth that draws me to people - both friends and artists, and indeed most of my friends are amateur artists of some type or another. Or maybe it's just that depression runs in my family and those are the kinds of people I'm most comfortable being around.

I think maybe there's a tendency, in recent years, to want to force happiness on everyone. Certainly everyone wants to enjoy their lives, and I want the people I love to be happy. But happy doesn't look the same for everyone. There's a tendency to think happiness looks like summer and love stories and perkiness and a big grin on your face. Personally, that's never been me. I love winter, and rain, and night, and music in a minor key. I like purple instead of bright blue, silver instead of gold, black instead of white. I hate stories about romance. I love stories about ghosts and strange diseases and people who went mad. I like Van Gogh and Goethe and Poe and Pink Floyd and Rammstein, and Jack Nicholson before he started making "feel-good movies of the year". I love small, dark spaces. But these things don't make me feel gloomy and sad. They make me feel deeply, spiritually happy.

Back when I was still letting society tell me, to some extent, who to be, I shied away from dark things, fearing they'd make me feel darker. I surrounded myself with neon colors and glitter and upbeat music, hoping it would make me happy. In truth, it had the same effect as the Zoloft I took in high school: it pumped me full of energy, made me hyperactive, but really didn't fill me up inside. Now I seek out whatever I think is interesting. Sometimes those things are lighter, to be sure, but much of the time they're on the darker side. And that's fine by me. What I ultimately found out is that when I gave myself permission to be gloomy, I got a whole lot happier.

The point I'm working towards here is that there shouldn't be a false standard of wanting people to be outwardly happy. Maybe when you see someone frowning, maybe they're still feeling pretty good inside. We could all learn a lesson from Ren and Stimpy's "Happy Helmet", which forced Ren to smile and bounce around a lot, but was so contrary to his nature that he smashed it with a hammer as soon as he got it off. If you're truly depressed and can't enjoy life - if you have crushing pain inside, or no hope, or that horrible ennui I felt yesterday - that's different. That requires help. But if you're just a darker sort of person, embrace it! And if you're not, try to be more understanding toward those of us who are. Don't accuse us of "bringing you down". If you need to be around other sunny people to be happy, surround yourself with them. But when you meet one of us moony, rainy, wintery people, try and give us a second glance. We're probably happier than we look.

My iPod

I have a 2gig iPod Nano, which only holds about 400 songs. (For me, that's not very many.) So I have to update the contents fairly often, and today I did a pretty big update on it. I was curious as to how much of each artist I have, so I made a list :) These are the artists where I had five songs or more:

Queen - 40
Peter Gabriel - 23
Pink Floyd - 22
David Bowie - 18
Pet Shop Boys - 17
The Beatles - 16
Rammstein - 14
Erasure - 13
Depeche Mode - 12
The Cure - 10
Genesis - 9
Michael Jackson - 9
The Whitlams - 6
Prince - 6
Tears for Fears - 5
Stevie Wonder - 5
Kraftwerk - 5
Home Video - 5
E Nomine - 5
Cyndi Lauper - 5

That's just a small sample of my taste in music right now. I was surprised I didn't have more Depeche Mode, and I didn't know I had that much of The Cure, but everything else is about where I thought it would be. And the proportions are pretty much exactly in the order of how much I've been listening to each band lately (with the exception that I listen to Genesis an awful lot and Erasure not that much, but I *used* to listen to Erasure almost constantly.) I find it oddly satisfying when I see that the numbers match the little meter in my head of "I listen to this less than this, but more than this other thing". I guess that's another quirk for the list.

Quirks!

Got this from Sandra's blog.

-Mention six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about yourself. Tag six other bloggers by linking to them. Go to each person's blog and leave a comment that lets them know they've been tagged. If you participate, let the person who tagged you know you've posted your quirks!-

I personally never think quirks are boring, but I've tried to come up with some that involve fairly mundane things, anyway.

1. I absolutely cannot stand peaches. Even when I was a baby I wouldn't touch them, and the smell makes me gag. (This is true more of canned peaches than fresh ones, though I won't eat those either.) This is the only food I am completely averse to purely for flavor reasons (as opposed to indigestion, ethics, etc.) According to my mom she ate tons and tons of peaches when she was pregnant with me. I don't know if there's any connection there, but it's interesting to think about.

2. I'm fascinated by people's living spaces. I particularly love seeing the rooms and apartments of people around my age, since their interests are often prominently displayed through posters, CDs and DVDs in plain view, etc. I like to see how people organize (or don't organize) their belongings, how they arrange their furniture, what sorts of things they own, and so on. I think you can tell a lot about a person by their living space and what kind of stuff they keep in it.

3. I've always loved small spaces. When I was a kid I used to play with my dolls in my grandma's closet, and I always wished I had an attic bedroom or even one of those Dutch cupboard beds. I think it'd be neat to go to Japan and stay in a capsule hotel. My house has an attic that we've never explored because it's basically just a crawlspace with no floor and there's no ladder, but I occasionally have dreams that there's a whole second floor up there we just haven't discovered, full of neat old furniture and unopened trunks and the like.

4. I absolutely love that overwhelming lumber smell you get when you walk into Home Depot. My grandfather and my dad used to do a lot of building projects around our property when I was very little, so I think there's a nostalgia element there. It smells very familiar and exciting to me.

5. I hate the color blue. I like off-shades of blue, like aqua and indigo. But pure blue just looks garish and ugly to me. To me it seems overused, and is like a default color that's waiting to be turned into something else. The page I am writing this on has a lot of blue on it, and it's making me edgy.

6. I can't sleep without music on. If for some reason it goes off during the night, I wake up immediately. I have two Pandora stations devoted entirely to music that helps me sleep (mostly stuff like Enya, George Winston, Libera, etc.) When I stay at other people's houses I have to play my iPod until I'm almost asleep and then turn it off, and then I don't sleep well because it wasn't on all night.

And I tag... anyone who wants to do it! :)

Test poast

This is a test post blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

s-a-t-u-r, d-a-y, NIGHT

I'd like to be, under the sea, in an octopus's garden in the shade

desu desu desu

Hello, my name is DRA! CU! LA!

Flash, I love you! But we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!

mmm floor pie

I AAAAAM THE ONE AND ONLY

I knooow something about opening windoooows and doors

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOSAKA!!!

Craaaaazy, over the rainbow I am craaaaazy

It smells like gunpowder throwup poopoo eggs!