Apparently today was something called the “AMC 10″. Being the clueless person that I am, I asked around to find out what it was. And basically it’s a math test.

Yeah. A math test.

That you take on your spare time.

Leave it to Asian people to think of this.

So the whole idea of the AMC is that you take a test. And then if you pass it, you can qualify to take another test. And if you pass that, then you take another test. And once you take that test… wait for it… YOU GET TO TAKE ANOTHER TEST! WOW!!! HOW GODDAMN EXCITING!

Once you take about fifty kajillion tests you get chosen to be part of the National (Asian)-American Math-Taker Team. And then you go to this national convention with a bunch of other Asian teams from all over the world, so you can (you guessed it) take another test. And probably get your ass beat by some 5-year-old from Korea.

What the TJ admissions officer will see is a fairly generic SIS with a bunch of cheesy stuff ripped right out of the pamphlet. Like every other Asian.

What they won’t see are the obnoxiously long periods of time I spent staring at a blank Microsoft Word screen, lacking inspiration. What they won’t see are all the hours I spent up at 2 in the morning toiling over just eight short paragraphs, considering the choice of just one word over another and the placement of one (1) comma. What they won’t see are all the tears, blood, and all the back pain. (Mrs. Lohman, if you’re reading this, that explains my crappy Pacer grade.)

And now I’ve turned it in, and all I can do is wait. That’s it. Wait. I’ve done everything I can. Nothing more will help or hurt me. All there is to do is just wait my ass off. And it’s killing me.

They mail decisions in March, and until then, it’s nothing but a month of hell. All you can think off is if you’re going to get in or not. You try to hide it but you can’t. You just look at any Asian in the room and you can tell they’re thinking of it too. It’s terrible.

And now I’m starting to get massive TJ headaches. When I can’t work and all I can do is just put my head on my desk and try not to think about TJ. But of course I can’t. I almost fall asleep every fourth period. No kidding.

Which is yet another confirmation of my theory that TJ exists just to make life suck harder than a black hole. First they make you study your ass off for the test, then they make you get no sleep at all over the SIS, then they make you purposely suck up to your teachers for the recommendations. And now this. The excruciating pain of not knowing what lies ahead. It sucks. That’s all I can really say about it.

And that goes double for the people who actually want to get in.

Here’s the form. It’s completely anonymous, so be as honest as you’d like!

So this is just a thank-you to all of our readers out there for encouraging us to procrastinate just a little bit longer and keep on making content for you guys. Without you, I probably woulda shut down the site way back in seventh grade. But we’re still here, and we’re still awesome, and we’re gonna stay that way, all thanks to you guys.

Here, you all earned a virtual cookie for being such awesome readers.

…that is all.

Goddamnit, I got accepted. I’m a semifinalist.

For all of you non-Asians out there, you basically have three things to do once you’re a semifinalist. The first thing, and I’m fairly certain this is a requirement, is to laugh at the people who are pissed that they didn’t make it in and rub it in so they slide into depression, requiring heavy medication. If you didn’t make it, HA HA HA HA HA YOU SUCK. There. That takes care of that.

The second requirement is to fill out an SIS, which stands for “Student Information Sheet”. It’s basically where you answer some questions and make yourself sound amazing and wonderful. Here’s an example from mine so you can see what kind of BS people write:

My greatest accomplishment over the past two years has been running my blog. I started it on a whim with a friend early in 7^th grade. I began regularly posting commentary about my school experiences. Over time it has grown to include more than 50 regular readers and over 10,000 views. I feel like I have exposed a different side of my school’s opinions; around administrators I have noticed that many people tend to be “yes-men” in saying exactly what the administrator would like to hear. By blogging, I can freely express my opinions, and in turn cause others to feel like they can do the same. In eighth grade I even recruited two more of my friends to serve as guest writers. I have been blogging for two years now, and I do not plan to stop anytime soon.

See what I mean? It’s basically a bunch of fluff that sounds fantastic but really doesn’t say crap. Kind of like every speech ever made by Obama.

Note especially the part in bold. I added that in because it made it sound like this site is more important than it actually is. I mean, when’s the last time you’ve noticed a change in your thinking because you read some crappy blog by an Asian eighth-grader? As far as I know, most people come so they can procrastinate. Which, in my opinion, is much more important.

The third step is the worst. You have to get two teachers to fill out a teacher recommendation form. Which is not that hard in theory, but you have to consider  that I’m only one of about a hundred other students trying to get a teacher to write recommendations. So what they end up doing is writing up little “questionnaires”. That’s what they call them, but really they’re just extra SIS’s in the hopes of discouraging kids from asking them to do more work. So I wrote my two “questionnaires” and gave one to Mrs. Sky and one to Mr. Shah. Mr. Shah must’ve gotten a whole truckload of requests, because he had to take an entire damn day off just to get them all knocked out. Ouch.

I propose we make it easier for our teachers by making a Mad Libs for them. Here’s what I came up with:

(student name) is a (synonym for “good”) student because (he/she) is (adjective), (adjective), and perhaps most importantly, (adjective). Every day without fail (name) is always a (euphemism for “suck-up”) and displays a positive attitude and passion for learning.  The academics at (school name) are most (synonym for “hard”), and (name) fulfilled all the requirements with the added challenge of (something challenging). (name) is an (synonym for good) (skill that TJ just eats up). (He/she) has won many awards on the (Asian club), and qualified for national tournaments. Success in these interscholastic activities requires extensive (grab some random words from the TJ site) . (name) also holds the (award name), as a member of (other Asian club). Simply put, (name) is a (synonym for “good”), and I believe TJ offers (him/her) the best chance of continuing her education and not working at McDonald’s.

Teachers, if you’re reading this, you’re welcome.

If you’d like, fill in my Mad Libs with the most dirty, inappropriate, nasty, you-gonna-get-yo-ass-suspended things you can think of and you could get featured in my next post about TJ!

So today I have some semi-exciting news. Remember way back when I tried to make holiday sweaters for all the teachers but the site got taken down? Well, it got put back up, so now I am pleased to bring you these:

(see if you can guess who the sweaters are for. tell me in the comments!)

(Hint: The last one is a reference to a really crappy post of mine I made earlier in the year. Bonus points if you find it.)

See, auditioning isn’t that bad.

• Sky
  • Wearing jeans
  • Wearing slippers/sneakers
  • Our class procedure will be strictly to stamp homework then check homework, copy down notes, stack chairs and leave.
• Buchholz
  • Says “if ya don’t have permission to talk, ya don’t have permission to talk”
  • Walks up to somebody to listen to what they said
• Adams
  • Says “Belly Up”
• Clifford
  • Has a powerpoint animation
  • Uses hand gestures
• Wright
  • Has a Starbucks/Coke
• Fratalli
  • Is wearing a blue shirt
• Dombro
  • Wearing jeans
• Hanna
  • Also wearing jeans
• Shah
  • Plaid shirt
  • Starbucks tea
• Roach
  • Carson shirt/polo shirt

So this is some serious business here, so I’ll try my best to keep it funny.

As you may have heard, we’ve got a new bill in Congress called SOPA. If you haven’t heard of it, read up:

If passed by Congress, [SOPA] would allow the government to curb public access to websites that have “no significant use” other than infringing copyright, enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. It would also make unauthorized media streaming an act of felony and hold the web publishers and hosting services responsible for curbing their users from posting copyright-infringed content.

In a nutshell, if we get caught posting copyrighted stuff, we could get blocked all North-Korea style.

Now, the guy who’s responsible for this monstrosity is named Lamar Smith (surprisingly, he’s white), and if you’re reading this, I’d like to say just one thing:

WHAT THE HELL KINDA CRACK ARE YOU SMOKING?!?!?!?!

Obviously, this has to be stopped. So here’s what we’ve done:

1. Our official Over8d policy towards SOPA is now “If you support SOPA, and you know who you are, please call a taxi and take yourself to the nearest mental institution.”
2. We have a new header. Apparently this is the day where everyone’s blacking out everything to protest SOPA. It’s pretty awesome, and it’s also why I can’t read the Wikipedia article on papayas that I feel like reading now. But anyway, I couldn’t figure out how to black out this site, so the new header is the best I can do. Don’t worry, it’ll be back tomorrow.
3. I sent an email to Congress asking them to vote against SOPA. It’s the best I can do to get straight to Washington and make my voice heard. And you can too. If we all do it, we can make some real changes. Do it for us, okay? Go to americancensorship.org. Shoot them an email. Sign the petition. Tell them we sent you. Together we are more powerful than the corporations’ money. Time to whoop some Congress ass!

…and that, my friends, is the most thoughtful post you will ever get. We return to Booger Journalism tomorrow.

I still said no, so they threatened to take it out of my civics grade.

So that’s why I stayed after school today to participate in the geo bee and encourage and inspire my fellow classmates to achieve and excel in extracurricular activities and be the best they can be. And after all this, you better start achieving and excelling or I’m gonna be pretty pissed.

Basically I went to Mrs. Donovan’s room with the nine other winners from the other nine pods. And she read us questions and we answered them. I mostly made educated guesses. Sometimes I just guessed without the educated part. Like how was I supposed to know that the first synagogue in New England was in Rhode Island? I had a total brain fart and all I could think of from New England was Rhode Island, so I pretty much lucked out and made it to the championship round.

One girl was really dumb. I won’t name names, but you know who you are. The question was “Which US state is Santa Fe in?” and she said AUSTRALIA. Exactly how did she make it to the geo bee in the first place? I’m surprised she’s even in eighth grade.

The championship round was just the same thing with two people, me and this sevvie who actually studied. So here he is drawing on his expansive knowledge of the world and I’m making more educated guesses. So of course he wins. The last question was one of those where Mrs. Donovan had to read off this insanely long and hard name like Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (Google it). Of course she messes up the pronunciation in that special teacher-ly way, and he guesses right, and I guess wrong, and he wins, and I get second place. Not bad.

The sevvie got a medal, and this is what I got for second place:

Nah. I’m just screwing with you guys. I won nothing, apart from a warm fuzzy feeling inside and a possible mention on the morning news tomorrow. But oh well. I wouldn’t have gotten that far with educated guesses anyway. I’ll let the sevvie get away with it this time. But you wait until we get the award for “Best Blog Ever In The Goddamn Universe”.