The Wonderful World of BS

Hello,

My world has been running almost entirely off of bullshit lately. I wrote a few days ago about a girl with whom I'm in a fight at the moment. The problem at the heart of the matter is not my fault, it was the fault of the school server and her leaving the project until the last minute, but she's decided that it's all my fault. So: I wrote an apology in which I claimed full responsibility and begged her forgiveness. I added some sincerity in saying that I didn't want our friendship to end this way, but that was the only grain of truth in the thing. If it gets me unignored, it was worth it.

I had to do a similar thing with my father a week ago. He decided that because my marks are falling (due, in no small part, to me trying to keep up with IB and not having enough time to perfect anything) that I am going to fail out of University before Christmas IF I even get accepted. So I bullshitted the answer I knew he wanted to hear and now he's trying to play the good role model card. It's not ideal, I'd just like to be left alone to figure this nonsense out on my own, which I'm swinging quite well since I can focus on IB and not split my attention between IB and Alberta, but it gets him off of yelling at me every night.

As much as I cringe to use the word, I know that manipulating people is horrible of me and that I'm gaining hell points by the minute, but it's keeping the world turning and everybody gets what they want. The girl at school thinks she's got me grovelling at her almighty feet, my dad thinks he's helping his unable daughter, and I get people to stop kicking me while I'm down. If I need to negotiate with God later, so be it. I have my whole life in which I can repent. Assuming this IB thing doesn't kill me first...

That's all for today, I'm going to watch some YouTube stuff before I go to sleep.

Tschüs!
~Alexandra

Fun, Fun, Fun

Hello.

I want to attempt to keep this short, 'cause I'm really tired.

So. Archery practice today and we had a High Performance class meeting to discuss how we can revamp the programme next year, as today was our last class. We ended up deciding to elect a Captain for the compound archers and a Captain for the recurve archers. Apparently the club has faith in my family; my brother was elected to be compound Captain and I was elected to be recurve Captain. Also, I'm working on some plans to get leaderboards running, possibly online and possibly province-wide instead of just for the High Performance Calgary class. I'm also trying to get more team training done, so we learn how to shoot in teams of two and three.

Other than that, I did homework all day, watched the beginning of the Oscars and played some World at War with my friend.

It's shaping up to be the best and worst year of my life. It's the worst because of IB and all its related stress, and it's the best because of all the awesome things I get to do! I'm going to Europe with the languages programme at my school at the end of March and then I'm going to Edmonton for the Rammstein concert in May. I'm turning 18 in April, and I graduate in June. I both look forward to all this and dread it all at the same time.

Anyway, I really need to sleep, so I'll do a more in depth entry tomorrow.

Tschüs!
~Alexandra

Time

Hello,

So this post is for the 26th of February, because time got away from me a little bit. Too much CoD :P

Anyway... what did I do today?

I woke up at 12:30 and went out and got a birthday present for my friend. I bought him CoD World at War, because he told me on Live how his disc got wrecked, so I got it for him and now we can play Nazi Zombies together!! He's my favourite wingman for a 2 player team, we do really well together. I was going to get him Black Ops but it's, like, sold out everywhere :/ Well, that's not exactly true, there were no used copies and I didn't have 60 bucks lying around to grab a new copy, so WaW it was. Either that or MW2, and that's... no. Just no.

Speaking of which, Modern Warfare 3 is coming out around October 10th (according to buypoe.com) and I'm not sure how I feel about this. I kind of liked MW2... kind of. The campaign was iffy, for the portion I played at least, and the multiplayer was not bad. Granted, the only multiplayer I actually played was 4 people on my console, because I didn't actually have XBOX Live at that point. The only thing I like better about MW2's split screen multiplayer is that you actually have to level up to get stuff, not like on Black Ops where everything is open to everyone. That's MW2's only redeeming feature for me, aside from that one map in the airport... I REALLY like that map. So, MW3... I'm gonna rent it from Blockbuster to begin with, I think, and if it's as good as Black Ops I'll consider actually spending money on buying it. If it's the same quality as MW2... no. Then again, my brother will probably buy it, so I can just borrow from him as usual.

Anyway, I then went out to lunch with my friends for the one guy's birthday. Aside from WaW he hauled in $60, 2 sets of Magic cards and a Smith&Wesson S.W.A.T. knife. He had a good day. Then I came home to do homework and they all took advantage of the fact that he's 18 now and went got alcohol. My very small friend decided to down a Mike's Hard in 5 minutes and felt sick for hours. Serves her right, if I may be so bold. I don't understand why people are so in love with the idea of consuming alcohol. Forgetting everything you've done and waking up with a hangover is not my idea of fun. But in the immortal words of my grandfather: "Whatever turns 'em on." To be honest, I'm worried about turning 18 and being allowed to buy liquor. I have this overwhelming feeling that I might turn into a binge drinker... A very good reason for me never to live alone.

So, I think that's all for today. I'm going to go figure out pre-writing, then go to sleep, because I have archery practice tomorrow morning. It's the last class of the '10-'11 year so it'll be fun.

Tschüs!
~Alexandra

Grad Dress

Hello,

The day started off slowly. My alarm rang, as usual, at 6:30. I rolled over, looked it, said "screw you" and went back to sleep for an hour. I then put zero effort into my appearance today and ended up going to school in cargo pants and a hoodie with zero makeup on. It was attractive.

The school part was slow... we went through the latest portion of reading for "Oryx and Crake" which was fun. I really enjoy this book. Other than that, did two French tests and studied the effects of recreational drugs on the brain in Biology via an application called "Mouse Party". If you're into Bio, want to know how drugs work, or just want to see animated stoned mice I suggest you Google it. It's the first thing that comes up.

My aunt came over for a while today and she ended up giving me the address and phone number of a dress maker in town that can make my grad dress for me! This is very exciting because the one I wanted can't be brought in for 3-4 months, which is way too late. I've already figured out my hair for it, I just need to figure out what I'm doing with my makeup... I'll be doing both my makeup and my best friend's makeup. We've got a really good idea of what we're doing for her's, and now I just need to figure mine out. I'm thinking some kind of purple smokey eye, or a silver/grey smokey eye. It all depends on how the embellishments turn out.

I entered a makeup contest today, for MakeupGeek's weekly challange with the theme of Arabic culture. I went for a toned down red, gold and brown eye.

I'm actually quite proud of this look, I've had it in mind for a few weeks. I've been dying to use as much of this red as I can, because I just love the colour so much! It's MAC's Spectacle of Yourself from the Peacocky collection. The gold is from Gosh cosmetics, and the brown and the black are from Kat Von D's Beethoven palette.

I'm a bit of a makeup nerd... I love it!! It is one of humankind's basic instincts to adorn the body and I love the artistic freedom that can be had with that. I love using makeup because you can take it off at night and make something completely new the next morning! It's a wonderful thing.

Anyway, that is all for tonight, I'm trying to work on the pre-writing for "The 24th" but it's not going anywhere fast... I'm still not sure how pre-writing works, so I'm just kind of winging it and seeing what I come up with that I actually like.

Tschüs!
~Alexandra

Nuncle

Hello,

Went to see King Lear at the U of C today. It was a really good production, with a mix of student and professional actors. The acting was really good and the experience of watching a play was nice. The only change I would have made would be flipping the actresses that played Goneril and Regan around. Every time I looked at one I thought of the other. Also Kent and the Fool were women. Kent was pulled off wonderfully, I have now decided that Kent can be unisex, and the Fool was meant to be a woman! The character made so much more sense as a woman.

Other than that... I'm dealing with this girl at school who's decided that something that was equally our faults was entirely mine, and is treating me like I killed her dog. She's being very unreasonable about it, and she's throwing away a friendship I really valued, but I suppose I can deal with that. That's life. What I can't deal with, is the fact that she's in my group for our Theory of Knowledge presentation and she's pretending I don't exist. If we can't work together, at least civilly if nothing else, I don't know how this project is going to work out. I'm really worried about it. As much I hate to do it, I may have to use the third girl in our group as a liaison to see where we stand on this, because this girl isn't going to give in that easily. I know her well enough to know that's not going to happen.

I apparently have my French IB oral final to look forward to in 3 weeks' time. I need to talk for two and a half to three minutes about a picture they give me and then spend an equal amount of time answering questions. I'm getting a lot better at the pictures and conversational French is relatively easy, it's just that I've been failing all my presentations because they're so... artificial. It's like: talk for two and half minutes about 'x'. Go. Um... okay, sure. No problem. In any case, I think I'll do well on the oral final.

Then, in 30 days' time, I'm heading off to Europe! I'm going with a group of students from the languages classes at my school to Europe for 12 days. We're going to Paris first, doing stuff in and around there, going to Toulouse, then down to Barcelona and onward to Madrid. Since I'm in the French program, I get to do a lot of talking in France and a lot of learning. I'm getting better at comprehending what I hear lately, so this should go relatively well. Although in Spain... I'm going to be pretending I'm mute. I'm sure the listening will go alright, cognates and all, but I can't speak a word other than "gracias". Which I will be using. A lot.

That's it for today, I've been trying to get something creative out, but there's simply no time.

Good night!
~Alexandra

P.S. Read more of "Oryx and Crake". Very good book, I'm really enjoying it. Easily one of the better ones we've read for school.

School

Hello,

I definitely didn't post anything yesterday. I got my diploma marks back and, to be honest, theyre atrocious. I'll be retaking two of them, one because I need to pull the grade up and the other because I'm dead set that I can do better. And I'm currently .75% under the minimum acceptance for University now. Epic. So, I either haul my Alberta grades up for get at least a score of 24 in IB and I'll be good to go.

The reason my Alberta grades are so low is because I've been focusing so much on the IB aspect of my schooling that I kind of just let the Alberta stuff slip... I thought I could handle shirking those duties, and I apparently I couldn't. So, the socks need to be pulled up, I need to get registered to take two more exams and I need to get IB done with, because now it really is priority one.

If I can manage to get my ass out of the gutter I'll be going to the University of Calgary to a Bachelor of Arts with a major in English. I plan on doing a focus in creative writing starting second year, assuming I can get accepted into that programme. I haven't decided whether or not I want to a minor yet, but if I do it will be in Ancient Greek and Roman studies.

Other than that, I've been working on homework all evening (after my two hour stint on Black Ops, she says after complaining about her grades...). I had to set up my Bio 35 IB Internal Assessment lab, in which I'm observing pea seeds undergoing germination. I'm testing the affect of sugar in the water on germination rates. I've discovered that its affects are negative, slowing or ceasing the germination process.

Aside from that, I read 40ish pages of Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood) for my English class and attempted my Calculus homework. However, we're doing something right now (I haven't the foggiest what it's called) and we seem to need to know formulas for area of a circle, area of a triangle, volume of a sphere and so forth, and I was purely too lazy to go look for them all so I gave up on that for this evening.

Tomorrow I'm off to the U of C with the two IB English classes to see King Lear at one of the theatres. It should be pretty good, they've got some good talent at the university.

I'm hoping my mom's company disperses soon, so I can go to sleep. They talk very loudly, they always have, and I can't sleep with the random outbursts of overzealous laughter.

No creativity happened over the last two days. I apologize.

À demain,
~Alexandra

Evil Revisions

Hello Citizens,

I'd love to say that I made brilliant headway in some wonderfully creative piece today, the last day of the Family Day long weekend, but the truth is I did not. I spent the better portion of the day doing revisions on my IB Extended Essay. The upper limit is 4,000 words and I had 4,301, so I had to pare down 301 words. I ended up with 3,998.

Revisions are the bane of my existence. I hate it worse than I hate French homework. Mind, I only hate revising my own stuff, if I have to do a beta for a friend, that's another story completely. But today... ugh.

I ended up playing 3 hours of Black Ops to calm myself down. I leveled up twice and finally got my greedy hands on the Spas-12. And I pimped out my Galil, so it's kinda awesome now, too. The servers were jam packed with trolls this evening, though, it was a less than enjoyable experience. Better than revisions.

I'm not quite tired yet, so I think I'm going to go and try to figure out some stuff for a work I'm trying to get started on Figment, the cover page has been sitting on a blank book for 2 months now, and I just have to get the damn story mapped out; I know everything about it, I just need to get a play-by-play worked out and then I can roll from there. At some point I'll post something about my pre-writing methods, such as they are.

I'm going back to school tomorrow, so I don't know how much creative stuff I'll get done tomorrow, but I'll let you know what comes up.

Tschüs!
~Alexandra

Welcome to Klashiva

Good morning world.

It's 2:10 a.m. and I've finally got this thing up and running. I've been tossing around the idea for a halfway decent blog for a while now, and the only thing that was stopping me before was the lack of a name for the blog. Which was kind of when it hit me: the blog should come from the same place the rest of my writing does, this wonderful brain child of mine called Klashiva.

So, what is Klashiva? And, more importantly, who am I?

My name is Alexandra, I'm a developing writer in my last semester of high school. I've been accepted to the English program at my university and I'll be doing my Bachelors of English specializing in creative writing over the next 4 years. From there... only time will tell. I've been in love with writing since I figured out how to draw letters with crayons on the living room wall, and I've been making up stories for longer. It seems like a logical progression of events that I should become a writer to satisfy the child in my heart that has not quite faded from me yet.

Other than being a self-absorbed writer, I'm in the full International Baccalaureate programme at school. I just finished my Extended Essay earlier today, and my exams are in May 2011.

I'm also compete on a provincial level in archery, I shoot a Hoyt recurve bow. One day I'll rant about that... it could go on for miles.

The arts are my passions, writing being the forefront of my addiction, and I experiment with several types of visual arts including henna tattoo art as well as SFX and costume makeup. I love doing makeup for photography and film; I'm very passionate about the art behind production, which is why one day I'll likely end up working in the production industry on some level or other, likely in screen writing or directing.

It's my passion for elaborate production that drives everything I write. My writing reflects the weirder regions of my mind, hauling together bits and pieces of everything I've come to learn about the world in my short time on earth and creating unique worlds and situations that, more often than not, take on lives of their own and develop into an entity with endless possibilities.

Which brings me to Klashiva. Klashiva is my most recent brainchild; an ultramodern dystopian world. I'd love to tell you more about it, but I don't know where it's going from there. This project is what I want to build, hopefully into a serial.

I made this blog for several reasons. I want to document my efforts as a developing writer, I want to get some writing done every day, which doesn't happen with writer's block that easily, and I also want to connect with an audience, so that I can develop some kind of internet following that could transfer into my career should I ever become a published author.

That's all I have to share with you in the way of introductions. I'll try to post something interesting next time, so don't give up on me yet!

~Alexandra