Gabriel the Opinionistic's blog Tri-Daily Whatnot 

When I arrived back at school in august I expected fun, exitement. Just like 6th grade. But…

Oh Boy!

This was not going to be my year.

I had some good teachers (who gave lots of homework), and I hade a few bad teachers (who gave LOTS of homework). In late August I was swimming in homework, when September came around I was drowning in it (paper! Cuts!), by October my life was a living– what’s a work worse than nightmare?– homework. An utter flurry of no sleep, late grades, and stress, all tornadoing around me. My entire existence was gyrating and whirling out of control and…

And the I stopped.

I stopped caring.

My life was infinitely better. As I halted my insane nit-picking about perfection I got closer to it. When I began to leave some of my load for the morning I began getting better sleep. When I spent less time on each problem I started getting less 85’s and more 95’s from less over-exhaustion. When I chill out, I do far better.

However despite my bleak early seventh grade existence, I learned a lot. I learned to manage my time (I said I learned it not applied it). I learned how to say “he sniffs the donkey” in Latin. And most importantly I learned that the Pythagorean Theorem states that the two legs of a right triangle squared and added together equals the length of the hypotenuse squared not

I am so HAPPY to leave here seventh grade has been an enormous parasite sucking my life and happiness from my husk of a raisin-ified shell and spewing homework and Black Death in its place. And now I’m rid of it. God bless next years sixth graders.

A checklist for next years sixth graders:

1)A light but large backpack

2) organizational skills and a will to use them

3) a dump bucket so you can find “that one” homework assignment a full semester later

4) a good outlook, nothing keeps stress away like denying anything is worth worrying about

The gigantic black beast came shooting down the kitchen at my mother, doing ordinary housework, and crashed into her with all it’s might. Then it went at the broom chasing it in circles like a deranged cow-dog would a cow,and proceeded to drag it around the floor.

But how did this all begin…

Last Saturday my mother began volunteering at the Austin Pets Alive shelter on Ceasar Chavez. The next day we when there to participate in the “walk a dog program” where you either walk or run one of their shelter dogs around Town Lake. Thirty minutes later we were looking around the shelter and saw a two month old black lab puppy named Cora . In another hour and a half I was walking to the car with “Cora” in my arms (despite my earlier claim that “we aren’t getting a dog today.” )

The first time that we used the broom in the kitchen she was at it. She pounced at it over and over like it was a large rodent. She mangled the bristles, she bit the handle, she slammed the t-bar. But only when some one is using it.

Even now the broom is her favorite play rough toy because it runs away like her rope and it’s big and it’s “furry”. She likes tearing after it and watching it stay just in front of her. She likes a challenge. My dog loves her broom.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

That was my favorite poem called Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. I like Jabberwocky because it makes no sense. It’s silly and lighthearted and very thradikkus in its absurquity. It was read to me by my dad at a young age, and due to that I’ve always like best the part where the victorious young warrior is bought home to his father who is very proud of him.

Dinosaurs

When I was just four my entire world was consumed by that of another one, a more interesting one… One of dinosaurs and danger. This primeval universe of the dead and gone filled my life, waking and asleep, but not one dinosaur more than Razor the T-Rex.

Razor the T-Rex was my first dinosaur toy and my favorite object in the whole wide world. My dad and I used to get on my carpeted floor and “play dinosaurs” until we had to eat breakfast. He was always Tank the Triceratops and I was Razor the T-Rex. We would pretend that the food was all gone and that the Evil King Raider the Allosaurus was hoarding it all for himself in his castle (on the bed). Razor, being the thoughtful chieftain of predators, would go with his friend Tank and bring back the food (making friends with Raider on the way), and save all of the dinosaurs of Peaceful Valley. They would worship Razor’s red and blue striped hide along with his mighty roar.

Razor was my life and my greatest companion when I was young. He brought me closer to my dad than I would have ever been without his help. I owe a lot to that little hunk of wires and plastic. So that is why he is my favorite childhood memory. Because he IS my childhood.

This video is a tribute to how much fun another kid and his dad can have with a few dinosaurs.

5) My fifth favorite app is FaceTime I don’t use it a lot (or at all), but when I do it’s really nice to talk with my half-asleep friends about whatever comes to mind.

4) second is Terraria. I used to play it a lot but it’s lost its fervor for me. It’s pretty much one of my only rec’ apps and so it has to go somewhere. For old times sake

3)After that… Here comes flappy! But not the well known Flappy Bird. oh no! This is flappy GOLF. I never cared for Flappy Bird or Super Stick Man Golf, but this is a new breed of awesome! You must flap your way through the courses of SSG2 with a winged ball, dodging and weaving and soaring the skies.

2)Next is my runner up. Messages. I know it sounds dumb but I don’t have a phone so it’s the only way my friends and I can communicate. Everyone knows that face to face is soooo last year!

Messages is how we talk to, connect with, bounce ideas off of, annoy, and sometimes even console each other. Now that I’ve poured my heart out let’s get to THE game.

1) Lastly my favorite app is an amazing RPG game called HonorBound where you are a great warrior awakened form your slumber only to find a world in turmoil– bandits are raiding and the great HonorBound Naema has betrayed you in order to be on the “winning side”

HonorBound is my favorite app because it’s exiting, and frankly because it’s one of my five recreational apps (not a lot of choices)

what is unique about hippo milk?

answer if you dare! (in the comments)

Good screen, great sound, better movies, and dinner to boot! The Alamo Draft House- The Village is my favorite place in Texas!

The Alamo Draft House is my favorite place because it is so fun to go to!  Other theaters pepper you with adds and long  intros. Not my Alamo!  Others would have us suffer through long winded adds, Where as The Alamo gives us old movie trivia, black-and-white cartoons, and random foreign commercials.

Not to mention the food! It is so much more convenient than having to go out before or after a movie, In fact I probably couldn’t even go to movies if we had to do both (what with all of the blogging I’m forced to do!)

They also do special nights as well. Such as ninja turtle night, which I loved when I was eight, where there was: all of the pizza you could have eaten, a ninja turtle pop-quiz, and the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie.  Also an old Japanese sci-fi to laugh at movie night *imagine super-dubbed baf-acting English*

Old inventor: what if I said that I could give you “Thunder-bolt Fists!”

Ultraman: I could have such a thing?!!?!?

To encompass all of the above I would have to say that I like The Alamo Draft House because it gives me time to enjoy all of my weird nerdy desires on the big screen.

Down.

Down is the worst direction.  Winding deeper, deeper, deeper onto the ever winding stairs.
But no matter… Down I creep into the dungeon– Is it a dungeon for him or me? With my hand still at the level of my eyes, I reach the bottom of the staircase… And before me is a sorry sight…

A deep brown and red rug lays along the room, stained, shredded, and stepped on. The world down here is hollow, two dimensional, and shallow: all made of props and scenery from operas long since performed– behind which is green/gray stone bricks. Near the “window” is a poorly done painting of me, riddled with knives, needles, forks, and apparently anything remotely sharp to be found around his death trap lair. There is a swoosh– then a thunk. And I realize that a meat cleaver, still covered in rotting offal, is stuck deep between my eyes. Maniacal laughter fills the Palace of Doom–
no
— maniacal isn’t the right word–
it’s too heart broken for that, it’s mournful, haunting, evil…

A trail if dark red leads to the source:
The Phantom’s self-cut arms ooze half-coagulated blood to the floor underneath his rickety three legged stool.

Ten feet from the stool, and another five from the pipe organ, was a frightful still scene. two mannequins, dressed as the Phantom and Christine, slow danced under another mannequin, dressed as myself, being hanged from the uppermost part of the Phantoms abode.

Padapadapadapada, a rat chitters chillingly across the accursed floor. The Phantom notices– and right when it is within his grasp he leaps– with insane hostility– and bites the poor thing’s head off! He then discards it with a loud “crunch!”

I can bear it no more!

I drop my knife, the fire in my soul extinguished by pity, I could never kill this disgusting, insane, misused creature. It would break my heart in two! But the hanged mannequin is telling me something! I run back up the stairs at breakneck speed to tell my wife to continue practicing her lead in the opera, “I have a plan to save the Opera Ghost, Christine!”

1) don’t be afraid to rewind, the Doctor speaks very fast (and most of it is timey-whimy-wibbley-whobbley-gibberish)

2) the Doctor is the last of an alien race known as the Time-Lords who, when they die reincarnate into a new version: new personality, new style, new sidekicks.

3) Rose is the best you get. Don’t expect a better companion because none beat Rose, Mickey, and Jackie.

4) don’t skip Eccleston you’ll get some hate about him but you need to start right after the time war. Also you’ve gotta meet rose from the beginning.

5) the time war. The time war was fought between the Daleks and the Time-Lords throughout time and space

6) The Daleks are the Doctor’s age old enemy. They are a species that was so destroyed by radiation that they have to live in shells made of Dalekanium.

7) Don’t be nit-picky about good special effects, because the budget is very low. The story lines are worth it though.

8) Normal logic doesn’t work on the Doctor, so most things that are story holes to those ignorant and judgmental among us are just things that don’t apply to humans to the smart ones.

Blazing through the universe at the speed of a TARDIS, they travel on the tweed jacket of the greatest warrior ever known. Bow ties are cool!

First off bow ties are the symbol of dapperizm (dapperness?) across the universe. Think of a man in a tux and top hat with a neck tie, now think of him with a bow tie. Truly the man would be nearly four hundred per-cent as dapper. Likely the man in the neck tie could be described as dapper-in-the-way-that-a-rotting-squirrel-carcass-is-if-you-gave-it-a-hat (yum). Truly no gentleman has ever come forth with (I shudder to think) a bolo tie or something as hideously non-dapper as that.

Most importantly of all The Doctor thinks they are cool. I shouldn’t need to go on but for the terribly unenlightened souls not yet touched by the doctors old eyes and quirky demeanor. The doctor is the time traveling, “fantastic!” saying, fez wearing, sontaran clubbing, screwdriver blasting, “RUN!” yelling, cyberman lecturing super-Time Lord of the BBC, and gosh darn it if he says bow ties are cool they are COOL!!!

Bow ties have become the symbol of the 11th reincarnation of The Doctor throughout his time as The Doctor. There is no other way to say it, bow ties are cool.

(If you haven’t guessed I’m a Whovian) Sorry for writing this terrible post, bye