French Things, The African Children's Choir, Boston, etc.

Hello, my Muggle friends! How are you on this wonderfully sunny Memorial Day weekend? I am quite good. We only have seven more days of school, which is a delightfully small number. It feels like summer already, and it kills me to think that I have to put together my final French presentation AND study for finals.
I quite like French things, but the French language is not one of them. I like baguettes, wine, French ice cream, crepes, and I like going to France, but I don't actually like the study of the language. I'm dropping it next year so that I can continue with Latin and also take Ancient Greek. (That's what nerds do.) Maybe someday, like in college, I'll take French again. 

Since this week is the Week for Awesome, I am going to tell you about one of my favourite charities, the African Children's Choir. They are truly awesome. Basically, the African Children's Choir improves people's lives through music, "a magic beyond all what we do here (Hogwarts)." They hold auditions in some of the most poverty-stricken regions of Africa, and then a group of kids are chosen to be in the choir. These kids' lives are automatically turned around. Most of them have lost at least one parent to HIV/AIDs, often two, and they don't have much of a chance for an education or a future. After touring with the Choir for a year, the children go home where their entire education - through university, in some cases. The basic goal behind the organization is helping Africa's most vulnerable children today, so that they can help Africa tomorrow. You can visit their lovely website here and buy their songs on iTunes. 
  
GREAT SCOTT! (pun intended) I JUST FINISHED THE NECROMANCER IT'S SO AMAZING YOU ALL HAVE TO READ IT AHHH!!!
I'm not going to give anything away, but let me just say that it was totally unexpected. And amazing. I was wrong about who the Necromancer was, but I was right about who Machiavelli's Elder master is, and you'd NEVER guess where Joan, Scatty, Palamedes, Saint-Germain, and Will are. I can't wait for Book Five.

THE CELTICS ARE GOIN TO THE FINALS!! I'm so pumped. The game last night against Orlando was epic. Kevin Garnett is such a beast in every possible meaning of the word, and Rajon Rondo is apparently going to be my new brother-in-law. Yayy. The Celtics play so well - like, really as a team, not just individual players trying to rack up their own statistics. That's probably do to better-than-Brown coaching. Okay, I know most of the other curly fries don't care  much about professional sports, so I'm going to stop now.

Um... what else was I going to post about? Have I told you that my brain turns to mush when it's hot outside?

Here are some questions for you guys, because I guess that's the new thing. Answer them wisely.
1) What excactly is the proper use of a rubber duck?
2) Are you the imprint of a departed soul?
3) What is your Patronus?
4) What is a Horcrux?
5) What is foreshadowing?
6) Harry/Ginny, Harry/Hermione, or Harry/Luna?
7) How do you feel about summer vacation? (Personally, I just can't wait to get back to Hogwarts.)
8) Regardless of Harry being born or not being born, do you prefer James/Lily or Sev/Lily?

Shorter post today to make up for the long one last week. :)

DFTBA,
PDBAZ,
Peace, love, and otters,

Virgil

Bottle Rockets Go "FWOOOOSSHHH" ^_^

"In headaches and in worry/Vaguely life leaks away,/And Time will have his fancy/To-morrow or to-day." —As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Auden

(^Hah! I remembered a title this time ^_^ [A few hours later: Frick, frick, frick... forgot tags, didn't I.... >.< )

First and foremost, I would like to tell you about the charity that I will be supporting on this lovely, happy, sunny May afternoon.  This charity, SOS Children's Villages (http://www.sos-usa.org), is pretty awesome, which is why I chose it to support for my Week of Awesome charity.  What SOS does is help orphaned children, abandoned children, and children whose families are unable to care for them around the world.  SOS helps them grow up in a good and healthy environment where the children can interact with other children their age.  They are raised based on four principles, my favourite of which are numbers one and four. (1: Each child needs a mother; 4: Each child grows up within a supportive village environment.)  My favourite thing about this charity is that they do not try to isolate the villages from the communities surrounding them; they let the children interact and play with people outside of the villages just as you would do in your own neighbourhood.  If you want any more information, it is available at their site, which I have linked above.

And now I am going to ask a few questions ^_^ (Even though I'm not the youngest and it's not Passover....)
1) Where is the dividing line between funny and sad?  I ask this because today in class, a few kids were discussing funny/ironic ways to die.  (One example: A man is *really* drunk and wants to go bungee jumping, so he climbs up to the top of a cell phone tower.  However, he didn't bother to correctly measure out his rope, so he jumps, plummets, and splats rather impressively.)  It was odd to see how the entire group of six kids would laugh at some stories, but would then be silent after hearing others.
2) Who likes sock puppets? ^_^
3) What is your favourite movie you watched when you were a child? (*Cough* Hello Kitty or Lion King *Cough*)
4) What are the rules for wishing at 11:11/any other time when the digits all match nice and lovely, on a birthday cake's candle(s), or/and on a star? (Like, things such as if you can change your wish, if you can tell people a hint/vague subject about your wish [but not the actual context], etc.)

Today, we were shooting off bottle rockets in science.  It was totally wicked ^_^ (We made these rockets by cutting up two 2-litre bottles, putting nose cones and fins and things on them, filling up the bottom half with water, pumping air into the bottle, then quickly letting the air and water escape, causing the bottle to shoot up impressively or not-so impressively into the air.)  There was a bus parked rather close to the field we were shooting the bottle rockets up from, and whenever a rocket would fly close to the bus, we would all start kinda hoping for the bottle rocket to crash fantastically into the bus ^_^ (Alas, none of them did, though one girl's got stuck on the roof of one of the nearby wings.)

We [Carrie, Momo, Virgil, and I {Lynda and xiy take French}] took the second half of our Latin finals today.  *Crosses fingers* Hopefully, we did well ^_^

Today, I learned that long hugs > short hugs.  (I know we are not required anymore to say something we have learned, but I still kinda like it.  Though asking questions is fun ^_^)

I do hope your day went well.

With all due respect,
House

(from xiy: heehee, I do like the English spellings. They're so much cooler than American spellings. XD)

xoxoxoxo

6LCF

Since Everyone Is Making Their Titles Long, I'll Make Mine Long Too

Well, well, well! You've come back to the lovely day of Thursday! I know that you can't resist today (who cares if it's not up to you if there is a Thursday or not, I'm happy with this mandatory day), so let's get started! <--that phrase, it reminds me to one day actually get up really early, so I'll be able to say "Good Morning!" I suppose I'll have ta wait til summer break....which, is in...14 days!!! School's almost over! *clears throat* well, this day count is if you count weekends, and the last day of school. Now, this week's theme is the "Week of Awesome" where we pick our favorite charities, and go berserk about it! My favorite charity is (the one I just Googled...er, is that a word?) Soldier's Angels. I particularly like their motto, "May No Soldier Go Unloved". I've always cried when there's a movie with soldiers that die, and then there's inspirational sad music *cough cough Glory cough cough* (I loved Colonel Shaw and Major Forbes!) So, this is the reason why I chose a charity for soldiers and their families. The URL is http://www.soldiersangels.org/%20so go there if you wish to donate anything, or even if you just one to check it out. Since I would suck at describing it, I won't, and I'll just leave you to see the website on your own time, kapeesh?

~:~*~:~

Today, I wish to go on about something that bugged me the whole entire day. This is something that Virgil knows about. Xibalba AHH XIBALBA ...Look familiar? If not, this is how you say it: sih-ball-bah, or for you crazies that actually understand the phonetic language (you can tell I can't by teh way I say "crazies"), /ʃɨˈbɒlbə/. Now, this is the underworld. This is part of Maya mythology. The world translates roughly into "Place of Fear". Sound fun? It's ruled by a Mr. Hun-Came (One Death) and Mr. Vucub-Came (Seven Death). However, Mr. One Death is much more senior/powerful. There are several other "rulers" who are basically demons that are responsible for one gruesome thing or another. I'll list it below. For the squeamish folks, please ignore the picture and the list below.

1. Xiquiripat (Flying Scab) and Cuchumaquic (Gathered Blood) who sicken people's blood 

2.Ahalpuh (Pus Demon) and Ahalgana (Jaundice Demon) who cause people's bodies to swell up

3. Chamiabac (Bone Staff) and Chamiaholom (Skull Staff) who turn dead bodies into skeletons

4. Ahalmez (Sweepings Demon) and Ahaltocob (Stabbing Demon) who hide in the unswept areas of people houses and stabbed them to death

5. Xic (Wing)* and Patan (Packstrap) who caused people to die coughing up blood while out walking on a road.

Now that I'm done with this, I'll explain why I wanted to blog about this. You see, Virgil, darling that she is, was reading...THE NECROMANCER during math class! OMIGOSHOMIGOSHOMIGOSHOMIGOSH!! THAT IS SO FREAKIN' AWESOME!!!! ...Anyways, she comes upon the word, "xibalba". It sounds familiar, so she asks me if I've heard it before, which I have. I was reading a book on mythology...*pause current subject* I need to pause so that I can go on about my theory that Dee, in The Necromancer, is going to get the necromancer to go to Xibalba and get dead people. That would be so COOL!!!*restart subject*...and so I came upon the word. Of course, I don't remember until 9th period, which means that that one word was annoying the heck out of me. Thank goodness it's almost the end of school; I don't have to pay too much attention. I would have said, "Xibalba" to the question "How does Scout's opinion of her father change in To Kill A Mockingbird?"(Um, Virgil, there is underlining) Ok.

~:~*~:~

Onto the next matter of business. The Question of the Day. (This is just a little tidbit of info. I had the same science teacher as xiy, so I also know about QOTWs) My questions are...

Why doesn't McDonald's sell hotdogs?
At a movie theater which arm rest is yours?  

Why is there a disclaimer on the Allstate Auto Insurance commercials that says "Not available in all states"?
If you dug a hole through the center of the earth and jumped in, would you stay at the center because of gravity?

Do they bury people with their braces on?  

What's the difference between normal ketchup and fancy ketchup? 

If ghosts can walk through walls and glide down stairs, why don't they fall through the floor?  

If a bald person works as a chef at a restaurant, do they have to wear a hairnet? 

I have a whole bunch of strange questions like these, but I don't want to bore y'all. That's it for today! Tomorrow's House's turn to post, and she's probably going to, already did, is doing so right now...edit this post. Happy 2 days until the Six Little Curly Fries' one-month anniversary!!! (Imagine, we make such a fuss over one month, wait til the one year anniversary!!!)

Luv, Lynda

P.S. I've noticed that everyone has their own specific closing abbreviations.. Is suppose mine is just the alliteration of the "Luv, Lynda" *sigh* I feel so diminutive!

*I find it creepy that this dude's name is one letter apart from xiy's. At least we know that xiy's an awesome person, and would never do whatever he does! :) <3

Today There Will Be a Linkity-Link-Link in the Bloggity-Blog-Blog. Teehee!! ^.^

Evening, Chap! Wow. Is it really the last Wednesday of May 2010? [Rhetorical question] Welcome to today's addition to the Week of Awesome. The charity I chose to tell you about today is World Food Programme (WFP) http://www.wfp.org/ <--- linkity-link-link numero uno (should be unus because of Latin power) but you can also help out and/ or get to it through http://freerice.com/ <--- linkity-link-link numero duo

Anywho...about WFP: (I'm on the website right now. You should be, too!) Some of their goals include reducing chronic hunger worldwide and responding to emergencies fast. To help prevent hunger in the future, WFP sets up programmes that use food as a way to build aspects, spread knowledge about nutrition, and help keep communities strong and dynamic. WFP also makes sure to help with school food programmes in developing countries and those in poverty. But they don't only help with the fight against hunger, WFP also believes in good nutrition for those with HIV/AIDs. They mainly help out in the more developing countries/ areas like Africa, South America, Asia and the Middle East. They also are working hard in Haiti, helping out with food drives and such (:

Freerice is also an amazing website that works with WFP. Basically you don't need to sign up or send anything, all you have to do is pick an academic topic and answer questions (about vocabulary and mathematics and such) at whatever level you want. With each question you answer correctly, they donate 10 grains of rice to countries in poverty. Within five minutes, you can donate about an entire bowl of rice.

Now either you can go save a life or read the rest of my post. (I would suggest the linkity-link-links; I might just ramble from here.)

Actually, I'd like to share a piece of my writings with you guys. :D It's not too recent... I'll probably save more recent stuff for later on.

*clears throat* Here we go. Enjoy!

[Untitled]

Feeling alive. Being able to breathe air. Feeling the pulse of ink. The ink that runs through these veins. No use for blood. Why live like a normal human? Rather to live as a poet. To suffer from writer's block and insomnia. Find peace in lovely landscapes and inspiration. Why live like a normal human? Live for the moment. Feel the ink that runs through the veins. Suffer from heartbreaks, while finding love in synonyms and antecedents. Escape from paper. Listen to the notes, Experiment with colour. Hear whatever isn't there. Colour your own world. Paint the blue sky purple. Listen to English in Japanese. Fall in  love with everything. Remember what wasn't there. Cherish all that was. Apologize for nothing. Hear what you see. Taste what you feel. Feel the ink that runs through the veins, Nothing's going to stop me now. Why live like a normal human?***

Yes, well 'tis all. -[^.^]- <(good-bye, all!)

DFTBA! Now make like a superhero and go save the world. ♥

Smiles, hugs, and lots of love,

Carrie

*I know and like the kind of thing you want to go for with the huge block of simple sentences, but you probably want to have a few complex/compound-complex ones in there, too, so it doesn't get choppy or boring sounding after a bit.  Even compound will do.  But I like the main idea of the passage, yeah.
 **It's a poem! The point is to be like that, not grammatically correct (see e.e.cummings). Poetry has no guidelines (except that it must be awesome).

I Cannot Think Of A Title At The Moment, So This Will Have to Do

'Lo, you guys. This is the last Tuesday of May! :o It's funny how fast time flies when you've got such a regular time-marker such as a blog updated every day. It's nice, too, that there are six people working on this blog; Six Little Curly Fries is pretty much guaranteed to stay updated daily, since we'd need at least a majority vote to discontinue this blog. So, loyal readers, the 6LCF are gonna stick around for a while (*knocks on wood*).

The Tower is floating somewhere in the Orion Nebula at this point, so unfortunately there will be no squishy chairs to sit in. But Archie and I have set up some refreshment pavilions, so go help yourselves. 
As Momo's post probably told you guys, this week shall be known as the Week of Awesome. Therefore, I will be telling you about a very cool organization called Doctors Without Borders, or Medicins Sans Frontieres (I dunno how to add accents onto the letters), aka MSF. Their website is www.doctorswithoutborders.org, which has a lot of information on what they are and what they do. But basically, MSF is a humanitarian organization that works in around 60 countries around the world; they mostly give medical help, though while doing so they also try to help people get better living conditions and so on. They are quite awesome, really. Go check out the website; I didn't do a terribly good job of explaining this. 

Ahhhh! The one-month anniversary of 6CLF is coming up! :D :D I can't disclose any more information than Momo already has (top secret, remember), but I will reiterate the fact that involves sock puppets (in fact, I've got another 6LCF drawing with sock puppets as the subject); I will also say that we will probably post something really really cool on Sunday, as well as our semi-usual Sunday post (see, we don't post on Sundays unless there's something cool and interesting happening, or we just have to say something. That's why the last two Sundays have been mysteriously devoid of posts).

I've been reading Night Watch by Terry Pratchett for the past couple of days, and there's a few quotes I just had to post:

The Rust family had produced great soldiers, by the undemanding standards of "Deduct Your Own Casualties From Those Of The Enemy, And If The Answer Is A Positive Sum, It Was a Glorious Victory" school of applied warfare.

~*~*~

[Doctor] Lawn stared...in his other hand he was holding the world's biggest syringe. [Vimes] saw the huge instrument in [Lawn's] hand. "What in the hell were you going to do with that?"

"Baste a turkey, in fact."

~*~*~ 

Havelock sighed, but inwardly, since he respected his aunt. He just wished she was a bit more sensible about cats. He felt instinctively that if you were going to fondle a cat while talking about matters of intrigue, then it should be a long-haired white one. It shouldn't be an elderly street tom with irregular bouts of flatulence.

~*~*~
People are content to wait a long time for salvation, but prefer dinner to turn up inside an hour.

Oh, yes. The Question of the Day*. Hrm. Lemme think of a good question.
*pause*
Alright, I've got three.
WHAT is your name?
WHAT is your quest?
WHAT is the capital of Assyria?**
[Thank you loads, Monty Python--we love you!] 


So, yeah. That's basically it for this last Tuesday of May. See you guys in June!
-xiy

*In fifth grade, my teacher had a Question of the Week, which he called QOTWs (pronounced "kwaht-wuhs")...This reminds me of that, for some reason. But it'd be a "kwaht-duh." Somehow, that doesn't sound nearly as cool.

**This question can be replaced with:
1) WHAT is your favorite color?
2) WHAT is the air-speed velocity of an unladen [European/African; the questioner should make sure to specify, lest said questioner fall into a Misty Pit of Doom] swallow?
3) a "WHAT" question of your choice

Theme Week #2 Begins!

Before I get into the writing of my actual post, I would like to end theme week #1. And with a bang..ish. I was thinking about Blue Laws (or silly laws) that I could write about, but I couldn't choose one particular place. So instead, I looked up the top 100 dumbest laws in America. I chose a site that had them all in order already, but I didn't think I should copy and paste all 100. Instead, I will tell y'all of the top 20. *Dims the lights*. This is...The Top 20 Count Down!

1. It is illegal to drink beer out of a bucket while sitting on the curb-Illinois
2. It is illegal to fish in your pajamas-Illinois
3. It is illegal to hunt from an aircraft-Iowa
4. It is illegal to hunt whales-Kansas (it's funny because I doubt there are many whales in Kansas!)
5. It is illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your pocket-Kentucky
6. it is illegal for children to attend school with their breath smelling of wild onions-West Virginia
7. You can't kill a hedgehog you have as a pet with a green colored dagger-Vermont
8. It is considered an offense to push a live moose out of a moving airplane-Alaska (I know we already had this one!)
9. It is illegal to set a mouse trap without a hunting license-California
10. It is illegal to pile horse manure more than six feet high on a street corner-California
11. It is illegal to walk across the street on your hands-Connecticut
12. It is illegal to fart in a public place after 6:00 pm on Thursdays-Florida
13. It is illegal to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp-Georgia (gosh darnit! We already had that too!)
14. It is illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box of candy weighing less than fifty pounds-Idaho
15. It is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless her husband is waving a flag in front of it-Louisiana
16. It is illegal to take a lion to the movies-Maryland
17. It is illegal to deface a milk carton and is punishable by a $10 fine-Massachusetts
18. It is illegal to provide beer or other intoxicants to elephants-Missouri
19. It is illegal to slurp soup-New Jersey
20. It is illegal to greet each other by putting one's thumb on the nose and wiggling the fingers-New York

Haha. That was funny. Okay, and now theme week #2 starts. Goodness! Okey dokey then. I'm not  exactly sure what I'm supposed to do with this, but today we are starting our second theme week...like I already said. We will be having the Week of Awesome (this was proposed by Virgil). This means that each curly fry must choose a charity of choice (that's redundant, I know) and tell the others why it is so awesome. The charity of my choice that I have chosen to choose is called Compassion® or Releasing children from poverty Compassion in Jesus' Name. <--And no, there are no commas. I'm not allowed to get into the specifics with religion, so if you don't believe in Jesus, just ignore the "in Jesus' name" part. What this charity is is a  Christian organization that gives families a child to sponsor. My family's child's name is Sheuly. She is from northwest Bangladesh and her family only makes about $32 a month. Each month my family sends $17. This small amount of money allows her to go to school with real books, get more quality food, better quality buildings in the village, and, of course, the introduction of Christianity. Along with this, we send her letters every once in a while and she sends letters back. It is a great charity and I think more families should join to help the millions of children in poverty.

Today I am not feeling as chatty as normal. Especially since it is so purty outside and I don't feel like sitting in front of this computer any longer. Besides, there isn't much to write about anyway, so this is about it.

News Section:

• Starting today, instead of having what we learned today, we will be having the question of the day. I suppose you could choose one or the other depending on what is on your mind. The questions can be rhetorical like "What is the meaning of life?" or meant to be answered like "What is 1+1?" in which case they would be answered in the comments.
• This week (for realz this time) we will be having the official one-month anniversary of the 6LCF. This special anniversary post will be very special...and secret... All I can say is that it involves sock puppets.

My question for the day is not rhetorical. It is quite a good question I think, and that is:
Should a boy, even if he is going out with a girl already, not ask her to the school dance that just happens to be next week because they decided (over email or something) that they will go (they said "I guess" though) together, or should he still ask?

The End

P.S. I just noticed (when I wrote "The End") that I had written this entire post on the wrong blog...so I had to copy and paste all of it here.