7.5 Labyrinth

Dear Diary,  I don't know what to do.   There's more rumours about HAM then there was just five months ago 

Dan has to go away to Miltary Lawyer camp because he solved some kind of special exam. So the night before he had to leave we (HAM, Dan and I) decided to try to find the centre of the maze.  HAM and I got lost in the labyrinth but Dan being the smart person he is.. found the centre 

*Some time later* 

HAM was home sick on the Tuesday and Mom didn't want me potential spreading germs around. I hadn't seen her in a couple of days but her hair was cut short 

HAM then tried to speak to me after breakfast basically breaking down in front of me

But Madeline texting me asking where I was and why I was late for the group project meeting. I had to tell her that I couldn't make it because of HAM being sick and Mom not wanting me to spread germs.

And I basically told HAM that I didn't really care about her anymore 

A couple of days latter  we were back at school.    I came out of class again only to find out my friends Madaline, Charlene, and Susana  were gossiping behind HAM again.   I then asked if they had seen the last episode of the Queen B episode which was the previous night.     Madeline asked "Do you think the Professor is going to have to quit his job because of his interest in the main character?" and after we talked about the episode we then went on a smoking break

When I got home I looked up the newest rumour it was started by Susana and it's nasty. 

All this rumours going out of control making me think of the play School of Scandal.. Here's my review of School of Scandal 

 

School of Scandal

This is a play about some rich nobility of the 1700s. A older lady who was the gossiped about in her youth has turned into the Queenbee of Society who is trying to trap two nephews (Joseph and Charles) of someone she is found of. Sir Oliver the uncle of the two boys above doesn't know about their moral characteristics and chaos ensure with what happens next.  A scene near the end reminds me of an Opera setting from Phantom of the Opera because the character(s) involve have to hide behind a dressing screen.

 Speaking of rumours that makes me think of the maze that the characters in the School of Scandal are trapped in because of rumours old and new.   And Mazes make me think of David Bowie's Labyrinth movie 

Labyrinth 

Be careful with what you say..everything might not be what its seen

Sara (Jennifer Connelly), a teen, who still plays with childish stuff  is asked to look after her half-brother,Toby, one night.  That night because she was tired of always baby-sitting her half-brother  foolishly asks for the Goblin King (David Bowie) to take Toby away. She regrets her decision and asks Jareth, the Goblin King,  to return her brother.  Jareth is "generous" and tells her that she has 13 hours to get to the Castle beyond the Goblin City through the labyrinth, if she doesn't Toby will become a goblin forever. The normal rules of fairytales and fantasy stories are turned on its head in this interesting story.  The step-mother  the brief time we see her seems to be a decent person, and the  nice "prince" person is the villain. Instead of being offered fruit by a stranger or the villain, its offered to Sara  by a friend. I do wonder if  Crouch Sr's weird names for Percy in Harry Potter might have been inspired in part by both Sara and Jareth calling the goblin, Hoggle, the wrong names (hogwarts/hedgewart/hogglehead) in this movie. Hoggle is one of the many friends that Sara makes through out the movie,  along with Ludo and Sir Didymus (two of the three are Muppets are from Jim Henson company) and his dog Ambrosius, who looks very much like Sara's dog, Merlin  in real life. There's a very strange staircase closer to the end of the movie puts you in mind of  M.C. Escher.  It's an interesting take on your normal fantasy stories

And speaking of Laybrniths it brings me back to the Laybrnith of Life- like the one that Alaska seemed to be trapped in  John Green's book Looking for Alaska 

Looking for Alaska by John Greene

What is the Labyrinth?

16 year old Miles "Pudge" Halter a teen who is obsessed with last words of famous people, starts a private school in Alabama to search for the "Great Perhaps". This is where he meets Chip "The Colonel" Martin and a beautiful, emotionally unstable prank-loving Alaska Young, whom he starts to have a crush on, among others in their in-circle. Their circle is those stereotypical "bad" teen group with illegal smoking and drinking. At the halfway point after an interesting (though drunken) half-night- tragedy strikes leaving "The Colonel" and Pudge to obsess over cryptic clues about who Alaska really is outside of their perceived versions of her. There's a rival group called the Weekday Warriors which hate Pudge's group because last year Pudge's group had  someone from them expelled.  Near the end of the book there's  a very interesting prank that Alaska had previously thought of, where Pudge's group without Alaska has to team up with their rival group the Weekday Warriors to pull it off.   This and a later book Turtles All the Way Down are the closest to John Green's life then the other  two books.

_______________________________________

Back to real life

I was spending some time with some of Wade's friends.  One of them, Rocco is dating my friend Charlene.  Rocco and I like playing Foosball together, 

and  Ralph and I like to be able to play Don't Wake the Llama game 

and Victor and I like to wind down listening to music at a table

7.4. Mean Girls Again

Dear diary,  I'm don't know what I'm going to do with the rumours starting to swirl around HAM. But because I'm in Plastics I have to wear a kind of mask to pretend that rumours don't bother me espcially around Madeline,  Charlene, and Susana but I can be angry in the diary it's my way of unmasking of how I really feel

In English class we're studying Paper Towns and it's quite interesting with the symbolism of broken vessels and us being interconnected pieces of leaves and strings 

After lunch  I went to the bathroom and saw my friends standing around gossiping about HAM.  I got them away by asking if they had seen the  latest episode of "Royal Romance" TV show.   Susana said she missed the previous night's episode so we told her about it.  We then went out for a smoke.. Charlene's father gets her our smokes

After I got home  I looked at the facebook and apparently Charlene was sharing something she heard. 

All this talk about broken vessels and strings and leaves of grass makes me think of Paper Towns.  So I wrote a review of it on my Nerdfighter Voyager

Paper Towns by John Green

After Nine Year olds Quentin and Margo find a “broken vessel” of a body in the nearby park they drift away from each other. Seven years later Margo enlists Quentin’s  help into pulling pranks on people who betrayed her. Quentin thinks after this that their friendship might be returning but the next day she’s not at school and is nowhere to be found.  This makes Quentin obsess over cryptic clues he thinks were left by Margo for him  to try to find her.  

I then went to bed and I had weird dreams of one of my alter egos

*some time later*

On another topic.   King James,  Mom's ex-boyfriend and Aunt Leah's  husband had been putting on Seasonal balls for the young women in the various provinces that make up SimNation.     Some time after I found out about my friends gossiping about HAM that it was HAM and my turn into debuting. 

As we entered the ballroom from the stairs HAM acted really surprised and try to run away from the stairs when she saw Ralph Red on the other side of the ball room. I wonder what is up with that? 

Once I got to the dance floor  Baroness Wade introduced me to her son,  The Honorable  Kendal Wade.  He seems like a great guy. 

Everyone danced and then 

we switched partners 

Some days after the ball - Wade invited me out on a date at a restaurant 

It was great until Wade started to criticize I was too fat and I shouldn't be eating BLT

I forgave him for that and when we left the restaurant I caressed his cheek 

Two days later I was at the library and I had to climb a ladder after I got the book  something happened with the ladder and I started to fall off it.   Luckily Henry was nearby to catch me

Interlude 7.1 Nerdfighter Voyager

 
Dear Diary,  I'm so love with someone whose username is LiterallyOwlMutt89  she writes a blog called Nerdfighter Voyager. .  My Username is SparrowPudgeQ88 

THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE by Audrey  Niffenegger  

What would you do if you met your husband before he met you?

 

That's the premise of this romantic but heart-breaking story about a wife, Clare, who like Odysseus' Penelope is always waiting for her husband Henry to return home. Henry has a  gene disorder,Chrono-Displacement Disorder,, which makes him basically an epileptic time-traveler when he is under stress (for example their wedding when he's 31 but an older version had to stand in). Clare first meets him when he's 36 (and already dating her/married to her) but Clare's is only 6. Henry, on the other hand, doesn't meet Clare for the first time until he's 28 and Clare is 20 in 1991. Clare has many off-and-on visits from (the older) Henry throughout her childhood and adolescence until she was 18. After getting married, they try to have a baby but they have some problems and eventually have one child, a daughter Alba. There were parts of the story which are a bit too gory for me.  It does get confusing at times when one chapter Henry with a young Clare and  the Clare who is left behind knows what's going to happen since it already happen to her.  There is a lot of supporting characters but I would love to mention Mrs.Kim,  the feisty Korean Lady who is Henry's dad's landlord and also Henry's semi-caretaker when he's miserable.

 I asked the reviewer what they thought about the scene in the book regarding a Pre-teen Alba vs. the same scene in the movie.   LiterallyOwMuttl89 responded  "I bloody hate that scene!!. I mean the book implies that by the time Alba is a pre-teen there are MORE people with CDD and the movie, not to mention it.. not to mention the fact Movie!Alba literally runs off with her father who traveled from the past (his present) vs. Book!Alba actually informs the teacher about the Dad

That night I want to bed and I had lovely dreams about what I pictured that LiterallyOwlMutt might look like