As I creeped out of my room this afternoon, I had today's Washington Post shoved in my face by my dad. On page A9 was the news we all secretly knew was going to happen but never wanted to think about: Borders closing.

NEW YORK — In a story on July 19, The Associated Press, relying on a company statement, reported erroneously that Borders was expected to ask a federal bankruptcy court to allow it to be sold to liquidators. Borders plans to ask the court to appoint liquidation firms to conduct going-out-of business sales. They will not buy any assets of Borders.

To me and my friends, Borders was way more than a book store. Every Friday after school we would go and discuss colleges, what happened during the week, new hairstyles we were considering, and just joke around until it closed at 10pm.

As my dad said, bookstores are for books you didn't know you wanted. I doubt I would've bought a book on double standards between men and women or a one where the revolutionary war had been fought with dragons had I been perusing Amazon. And I'm glad I found those books, especially the many college books I looked in at Borders. You can't just look through books in an online store, but at Borders my friends and I would gather them and bring them to our table in the café and point out interesting ones and talk about what we liked about them. When we went through a bridal gown phase, we would get wedding magazines and share the dresses we loved and laughed at the ridiculous looking ones.

After we ate lunch at a restaurant today we walked to the grocery store, passing an empty storefront that used to be a Blockbuster. My dad said people don't use DVD's anymore since they get everything off the internet. Although I admit there have been times when my sister and I or my mom and I have huddled around a monitor to watch a missed episode of Glee, watching things on a TV is just better. One day after a rough week at school, my friend came to my house with a DVD of the seventh Harry Potter movie and microwavable popcorn, which kind of goes along with my ramble in the second paragraph. It's all about sharing. My friends lend their books all the time. I don't know of anybody who would give away their Kindle willingly, but you already know what I think of Kindles.

All in all, I think the situation that's going on is ridiculous, since it seems people would rather stay in their houses than venture out into the world to get a book or a film. It's either that or people aren't reading anymore, which is worse. When my Borders closes, there will be no bookstore in the county. I would have to go to Baltimore to get my fix in the Barnes & Noble (which I hear is going down too).

Steamboatin'

For the past 12 days I was on the Erie Canal in New York on my grandparent's steamboat. I was with my grandparents, my sister Andelle, my cousin Hallie, and my aunt Innes. It took us two days to get to Little Falls, which was the first stop for the Great International Steamboat Flotilla. Little Falls was a cute but dead town, which was what I found in common with Canajoharie and Amsterdam, which were two other towns we stopped in along the way to our destination.

Our final destination was Waterford, where they had a weekend full of activities planned for us. We got there on Wednesday, and Thursday was our chill day. Hallie, Andelle and I noticed that other boats had wooden signs that they had on the dock, either for show or to hold their place. Earlier that week a lockmaster gave us Erie Canal coloring books so Hallie bought crayons in Schenectady and we used the crayons and colored on two by fours that we got off our boat. We made one for our boat and for two other boats whose owners we're friends with. Then we started making them anonymously for boats that didn't have any. Soon people who already had signs gave us some of their wood to make them signs on, and two people said they would varnish theirs.

On Friday we called my mom and told her to go to a website that had a live feed of a camera that pointed towards our boat. We all waved to the camera and even pulled in some other steamboating friends. We also had a "parade", where the boats went a few miles down the river and followed behind an old tugboat called the Urger, which dates back to 1901. When we got back to the docks, we had pizza and wings in the visitor center. My grandmother, Hallie, Andelle and I (my aunt left on a train in Amsterdam) were wearing matching French sailor shirts, which impressed everybody. We also got free t-shirts of the Sayonara, whose captain basically commanded the entire trip. For Saturday we got food vouchers to pay for our meals.

On Saturday there were vendors selling just about anything on the docks. The was a lot of people walking around, checking out the boats. The steamboaters congregated in this one area under a shady tree with small fold up tables and lawn chairs. The adults drank gin and tonic while my cousin, my sister, and I played cards. This one boat was firing a cannon and we got to take turns firing it. At night we sat on the boat and watched the fireworks across the water.

On Sunday there was a farmer's market, where my sister bought berries and a strawberry rhubarb pie with the remaining food vouchers. We steamed down to a lock where we parked the trailer in the pouring rain and we were on our way. Two days later we were home where I am now.

HSAs -> Internet

So this past week was pretty hectic with two HSA's (High School Assessment, a 3 hour test required for graduation) and the fact that teachers put caution tape everywhere, blocking off half of a wing so as not to distract the test takers.

When HSAs roll around, my web design class gets kicked out of the computer lab. I find class enjoyable even when we aren't using the computers because the teacher shows us cool videos about things aren't directly related to our lessons. In the lab we're learning about tools in designing web pages, like Flash or Dreamweaver; but in the random classrooms we're moved to we learn about the future of the internet and what it means for us.

Personally I find the internet astounding. So much knowledge and information that can be utilized almost instantly. It's so helpful too, connecting people around the world. Looking at my stats page, I'm still surprised that 22 people in Iran, 9 people in Ukraine, and 6 people in Indonesia visited my blog in the past month. Donovan Leitch, one of my idols, said that the internet is the new 60's.

"The dream of the ’60s, of me and John Lennon and the others, was: How do we speak to everybody on the planet at the same time? The first answer was via satellite, but that didn’t connect to everyone. Then John would say, ‘How about telepathy?' Then we forgot about it until now we realize that the Internet fulfills that dream of communicating with everyone. I’m not afraid of the Internet because it’s that the dream we had. The Internet is the new ’60s as far as I’m concerned."

The Internet has produced many an amazing thing, like WikiLeaks, the hacking organization known as Anonymous, and Facebook which helped the protesters in Egypt. And god knows I'd be lost without Google (I wouldn't even have a blog!). And lately Chrome, the web browser owned by Google, has been putting out commercials that highlight the many fine qualities of Chrome and other things Google owns (Gmail, YouTube, Picasa)

I use Chrome and I love it. It's super fast and the address bar doubles as a Google search bar. And Gmail is awesome too. I can chat with my friends and add cool labs, like one where I can undo sending a message up to 5 seconds after sending it.

Without the internet we wouldn't have been as connected as we are now in the world. The HSAs would take forever without the internet. When I talked to the admissions counselor at the community college, he said computer science has many areas and you got to find your niche. I think I've found my niche right here, with the internet.

P.S. I'm not writing this just because I'm so happy my internet came back on. I'm writing it because I'm angry I missed my web design class because of HSA testing.

It's amazing what fun you can have without the internet.

Yesterday the internet was gone for the whole evening, and since I had no homework I had nothing to do. When I got home I took a 3 hour long nap and ate a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream with my mom after she woke me up.

I typed up a spreadsheet for my dad and downloaded a bunch of music to my mp3 player. My mom and I tried a "face smoothie" to hydrate our skin. We mixed together a banana, a cup of yogurt, a tablespoon of honey, and two tablespoons of rolled oats in a blender and let it soak our faces for 15 minutes before we rinsed it off. Our skin seemed more irritated than hydrated, but you live and learn.

After I played tetris on my cell phone for what felt like hours, I had an idea to install some floppy disks I found of Richard Scarry's Busytown. Unfortunately they didn't work too well and my mom and I were disappointed. Also, she noticed me scratch a red spot on my arm and said it was poison ivy. I insisted it wasn't since it wasn't itchy anymore, and I even put some poison ivy cream on it. Sure enough, today it is way small, less red, and not itchy at all.

Stats

So I've been looking at my stats for this blog after I discovered I could do that (Thank you Google empire!), and here's what I found:

• The most page views I got in the past year was in January of this year with 204.
• The most viewed post of all time is Adorez with 193 views. Runner up is New Book with 43.
• The biggest referring sites are Lona's blog or Google.
• Most of the page views come from America, but the second amount is from Russia with 89.
• 64% of the viewer's browser is Internet Explorer (for shame, internet users!)
• And of course, 94% use windows.

In other unrelated news, I have taken to the couch again since a spider appeared on my ceiling last night. Armed with anything I could find on my bunk bed, I threw odd projectiles at it, ranging in size from cough drops to college books. I finally gave up the fight and retreated to the living room.

Gauguin

Recently in my French class we learned about Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, so hearing about a crazy lady attacking a Gauguin painting really rustled my jimmies. She called it evil and called the two topless women in the painting homosexuals. Don't even get me started on the whole "radio in her head" thing.

It's acts like this that makes me feel sorry for our country. Blatant acts of homophobia and prudishness that could damage what others would call culture and history are uncalled for. Speak your mind, write a letter to the editor, blog. Don't attack it!

And the women in the painting weren't even doing anything vaguely homosexual. One was carrying a platter. The other one wasn't. It's obviously symbolism. And the way she seems to connect homosexuality with evil is heartbreaking.

Now I'm not surprised at how the news shows reported it. They want viewers like any other show and don't want to deter anybody. What shocked me was what they mentioned about the reactions of the 2004 summer Olympics opening ceremony in Athens, where they displayed bare-breasted statues of Greek goddesses.

First we had to be subjected to the breast of Janet Jackson in the [Super Bowl and] now an even more gratuitous display of pornography an [sic] indecency during what was suppose [sic] to be another family viewing event.

Wait what?

How can people be so disgusted and/or offended by seeing a naked breast? One person just outright said “My children saw an exposed breast during the opening ceremonies” as if they hadn't seen one before.

What these people don't seem to realize is how insulting they are to others and their cultures. At the Olympics, they were displaying artifacts of their great history. In Tahiti I wouldn't think it would be too uncommon to be half-nude. And there are many other French paintings that could be considered more "evil". Manet's Olympia anyone?

Woah

I don't know when my stalker count went from 12 to 34, but boy, does it raise one's self-esteem.

One thing that had happened in those two months that I haven't blogged was course selection for next year. I'm taking AP Language and Composition, AP World History, Chemistry, Physics, Pre-Calc, Web Design II, Java Programming, and French IV. I've planned some college tours for my spring break, where I'll visit University of New Haven, Quinnipiac, Tufts, and WPI. I also took a placement test at CSM so I can take some summer courses there. This should be fun :)