It Builds Character.

Reading: Geisha by Liza Dalby
Listening to: "Don't Trust Me" by 3OH!3
Drinking: Spiced Apple Cider
What I'm doing right now: Trying to keep my eyes open.

Apparently, sleep and lack of association with my best friend build character. And also white blood cells. Therefore I'm doomed to isolation and hibernation for the duration of my weekend vacation. Alas, the anguish.

And for the time being, that gives me nothing better to do than homework(ugh), wasting away on the web, quibbling with siblings(and mothers), drinking spiced apple cider from a cow-speckled mug, and reading novels in a cozy corner.

Which reminds me. I was thinking about picking up my old habit of writing stories again, except this time I want to actually finish them. Possibly. I just need the proper motivation. So I'm going to be posting any interesting writings I might have here on my blog for your critiquing pleasure. Please be brutally honest<3

I thought I'd mention one of my lifelong inspirations: Calvin and Hobbes. One day I found this amazing comic on the wall-sized bookshelf in my living room and I've been addicted ever since. I found out Bill Watterson, the creator of the series, made collections of the comics, and I also figured out that they were all in our local public library system.
Therefore I have read every single Calvin & Hobbes comic ever made.
Crazy, huh?
Me and my friend over at Comedic Life are huge C&H nerds. She even dressed up as Calvin once and made a Hobbes toy. It was pretty adorable.

I wonder if it really does. I think if I tried it my mom would blow a blood vessel in her brain. Haha. The thought makes me laugh. Hmm. Maybe I'll put in a random Calvin and Hobbes comic every time I post now. Not every time. But something to make you guys giggle. :D

Ciao, kids!
~Joanna

WE MADE IT TO STATE!!!! :D

HELL YES.

The One Acts Competition was amazingggg. Our competition play, Mother Hicks, won the most awards out of all the schools competing. Our play won Star Actress--everyone picked for star actor/actress would have been the cast if the sponsors made a play(the girl who played Alma), Best Leading Dramatic Actress(Mother Hicks), Best Supporting Dramatic Actor/Actress(Tuck and Girl), Best Tech Crew, and we made it to State Competition! We made not one mistake during our performance, and everyone was hugging each other as soon as we made it offstage. Ironic that everyone was shaking with nerves just before. Haha.

Okay, let's backtrack just a bit. One Acts was 2 days long at a university campus theatre, and I got to skip school to basically watch a bunch of plays. :) There were good and bad plays, but the funnest part was all of the drama kids. They're so crazy! It's fantastic. Each school had 2 minutes to set up the set and/or props, and then 40 minutes to perform one act of their play. In the 20 minutes or more between each production the sound crew played 80's music and dance beats and alternative hits and of course, show tunes. Drama kids, being drama kids, get up to sing and dance with every ounce of their souls. One of my friend Gina's friends Nick from her school had brought the tiniest ukulele you ever did see. Us and two others waited outside the doors for the awards ceremony to start and he started to play some funny tunes like the Sponge Bob Fun Song and Tiny Bubbles and what have you. Soon he was attracting an entire crowd and was completely at ease making up random lyrics to his invented little chord progression. Soon everyone was taking turns saying random things to the beat and cheering him on. What cracked me up was that the kids who normally were the popular ones were now trying to fit in to the new "in" crowd. And they were too embarrassed to even make up lyrics.

It was unbelievable how many great people and plays there were, though. Some schools didn't take it as seriously and some made a bunch of sexual innuendos in their plays just to get laughs, or used the sympathy trick. But there were enough good plays to keep my attention.

From the first day, I really liked the kid from A Midnight Summer's Dream. He was friggin' hilarious. He had this sort of stupid swagger that deservedly won him the Best Comic Actor. My friend CJ from How to Eat Like a Child was hilarious too, and he won Best Supporting Comic Actor. This adorable little boy with amazing black hair from Cyrk was pretty cool too. There were a bunch of kids with awesome hair and cool personalities, too many to count. The only downside was that the majority of them were gay. So basically, almost no flirting involved. :(

The other three plays that made State were How to Eat Like a Child, Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know, and Cyrk. Hands down, even over our play, my favorite was Cyrk. It was a play written by the actual drama teacher at their school. It's very similar to Cirque de Soleil, with incredible visuals and choreography. It was black and white and red all over, and it had a very gothic-lolita look to it, with the casts faces painted all white with black clowny markings and dark outfits. It was based on the circus fires of the early 1900s. It was dark and creepy and fantastic.

That's all for now. Toodles!
~Joanna

Ugh.
The entire course of my day today was spent rehearsing for Mother Hicks. I am sooooooooooo tiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeddd..... =_=

But enough of that for now. Mostly I wanted to post today because I just went digging through some old stuff on my comp and found this poem:



I dunno if you can read that.... If you can't, just right-click on the picture and open it in new window. I wrote this poem ages ago and found the pic randomly on the web.... Thought it was pretty cool. :D I almost never write poetry because I only pop out a really good one about once a year. Literally. And that's probably because I never write... heheh... it's an endless cycle.

Well, that's all for now.

Peace out, kids~
~Joanna

Random <3

Hello random reader of my blog. Yes you.
Yay! Another post. Although I can't quite think of anything interesting to say.

Right now I am dead tired and stressed out because I just got back from rehearsals for our school's competition play, Mother Hicks, by Susan Zeder. The play is set in Depression-era Illinois in a place called Ware, Egypt. It is narrated by the deaf character Tuck who signs while a cast member translates. The main character, Girl, was abandoned by her mother as a baby and is constantly passed from one family to another. Therefore she's a bit of a wild child and decides to "become" a witch. She is found by Tuck and taken in by Mother Hicks, who is an ex-midwife that is constantly accused of being a witch when things go wrong in town. The constant line repeated by everyone in the play is "Mother Hicks is a witch, people say. And she lives all alone at the top of Dugg Hill. Mother Hicks is a witch... people say." Mother Hicks is considered to be Susan Zeder's best play. I'm on the ensemble, and we get to do a tone of cool sound effects and choreography. I make the best owl sound. //smug grin//

Drat. I forgot what else I was going to talk about... All I can really think of is how tired I am. Tomorrow I have to get up at 5am...

Oh yes. Now I remember. I just finished reading Breaking Dawn, the last book of the Twilight series. It was A M A Z I N GGGG . Sorry to all you Twilight haterz out there... I didn't like the series much either, at least not the first two, but the last one was FRIGGIN' AWESOME. *SPOILER IN THE NEXT SENTENCE* I'm just angry that I got cheated out of a battle scene at the end... at least no one important died.

....But yeah. Go read it. 'Nuff said.

Finishing here. My eyelids are threatening to collapse and crush my irises. Ciao~
~Joanna

Incredible.

As I sit here typing the words you see on this screen, I am in awe of the possibilities.
Here is an indefinite space where I can rant and muse to my heart's desire, or until I pass out.
YES.
Not only can I discuss random topics, but I can experiment with html code and make this obscure little blog a tad more appealing to the eye.
Like
.

Now, you may be wondering about the meaning of my url, elysian-helix.
Elysian can mean blissful or delightful, and it can also refer to the Greek "Elysian pedion" or "elysian field," which was where heroes and the virtuous lived after death.
A helix is a spiral form or structure, which is my favorite kind.
So you can conclude that my url means "blissful spiral".
Other than that I can only tell that any hidden meaning you find was made completely by accident. There were very few original or imaginative urls left on the web, and so I asked my best pal dictionary.com to help out. I suppose now that I think back on it, I could say that since in my mind I always feel in free flight and that impulsive acts are my inspiration, I could be blissfully spiraling into the sky... but that would be a feeble fib.

A bit about me.
I'm currently a student in high school, and I can't wait for it to be over. I enjoy whimsical turns of phrase and interesting ideas. I like to be crazy but I also enjoy peaceful solitude. I've had an interest in the Japanese language since late middle school, but I haven't studied it in a while since I've had to focus on Spanish for school. My current dream is to go to Japan one day soon. I've been thinking about moving to a foreign country and teaching English there, or possibly becoming a translator, as I also speak fluent German. I want to go to a very creative university with superb programs in Art, Creative Writing, and Japanese, as well as a good study abroad program and a diverse population of students.
I also LOVE music and couldn't live without it. I'm not getting a degree in it but I most definitely want to study it as a hobby for the rest of my life. I also love the theatre and drama. Basically, I love the arts. All of them. Therefore I'm a bit confused as to what direction my life will take, but I still have some time to decide.

As for why I'm writing this blog, I really couldn't tell you. I don't even know. I suppose some of it is that I want to practice my few html skills and see how far I can get with this. It'd be pretty amazing if people started showing an interest in my writings. I guess I'm also writing this as sort of a self-discovery thing. I really don't know who I am or what I'm going to do yet, so my next entry may have a completely different tone than this one. I tend to not stick with one personality or way of doing things.

Well, I think I'm going to finish here. One last thing. I wanted to mention an amazing blog for you Japan and/or fashion fanatics out there: sushi-cat.net. This girl's got a fabulous layout and a hilarious writing style, and she posts magazine cut-outs and pictures from Japan on a regular basis. Enjoy!

~Joanna