Why I Don't Listen to the Radio often...

Welcome to another "Beyond Rodney and Jim".

Okay, everyone who listens to the radio on the drive to work, RAISE YOUR HAND!

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All right, here's another question: Do any of the hosts on whatever radio show you listen to in the morning make you want to GO INTO THEIR RECORDING STUDIO AND PUSH THEM OUT A THIRD-STORY WINDOW?!!!

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Okay, just checking. See, I wake up to the radio in the morning, to the same song: "Girls in LA" by the Rockin' Horses. No, really, EVERY MORNING I hear that song. Then, I hear someone who sounds like an exhausted Santa Claus start talking:

Uh, heh heh, hullo there, Banama. It's 5:45 AM, and boy, er, what a lovely day it is, huh? Heh heh... yes sirree is it a nice day. Doh, anyway, for this lovely morning (isn't it though?), we're talking with Margaret Simms, age 85. Yep, this lady's getting old ain't she? Well, here she is...

So Santa-Claus-Man talks with this woman, who you barely hear talking. She wheezes and sneezes and coughs throughout the whole thing, and the host is completely clueless:

So, you getting along fine with Porgenia?

It's (wheeze) PROGERIA YOU MORO-(coughcoughwheezecoughchoke...THUMP)

Hullo? Hullllllllo? Oh, it looks like she hung up. Well, once again, beautiful morning, eh? Next up is our weather today, and then more Rockin' Horses, followed by...

This is why there's so many idiots out in the world today. Good thing I'm not one of...

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Hey, wait a second, what did you just call me?

Cellular, Modular, Interactivodular...

Up until a few days ago, I was the only one in my family without a cell phone.





BUT NOW...





I HAVE MYSELF A PHONE!

Yes sir, I have joined the crowd of cell-phone-owning teens. I am El Magnifico! I am Spartacus! I am RODNEY REDHART, CELL PHONE OWNER!

...

But who can I call?

16 in three months

Welcome to another "Beyond Rodney and Jim".

Well, my 16th birthday is in a couple of months. You're probably all thinking "Wow, Rodney, way to go!". I was highly anticipating my Sweet 16... until I found out about all the wonderful things that came with it:

1. Driving: For a long time, ever since I was 10, my scooter was my best friend (Jim, don't take that the wrong way, now it's my second best). I rode that thing EVERYWHERE. Then, one night I came home from Jim's, and Dad broke the ice...

I had NO idea that I was already that close to being behind the wheel of a car. I can't believe I'll have to drive myself everywhere! I thought for a second that I could chicken out, but Dad wouldn't let that fly, so it looks like by this time next year, I'll be a licensed driver (and that's if I don't fail my driving test...)

2. Donating blood: Both my parents have been donating blood for years, and every couple of months I see Dad or Mom come home with a bandage around their arm. I went with them a few months ago, and it was quite a sight to see. Now, I got some of my blood taken as a sample once, and even though I'm not too big on shots, this procedure was almost as painful as getting tetanus vaccine. So when I found out these people did it to kids when they turned 16, I felt a little queasy...

So now I'm a little less hyped about it, but still can't wait to see what my parents think up for my birthday this year...

That's all for now!

NOT AGAIN!

Welcome to another "Beyond Rodney and Jim"







Okay, so in biology, we've been dealing with termites. These things are tiny, and you can often try to manipulate them. We drew a pattern like this on our paper:






Then we put a termite on the pattern, and watched what it did. If it went a direction we didn't want it, we put a cotton swab in it's path to make it go another way. We did this experiment twice, too.

But what's with today's title? Well, our third experiment was to make our own experiment using termites. Me and Jim did a lab write-up, and this is what it looks like:

Title: Can Termites Read?

Question: Can a termite read an important message and not kill himself?

Hypothesis: Probably not.

Procedure:

1. On the piece of paper, write:

"Step on the X and you will die."

2. Draw a really big "X" near it.

3. If the termite steps on the "X", take a hammer and smash it's guts out.

Observations: He got smashed.

Conclusion: I was right. Termites can't read.

Well, my teacher didn't approve, and gave me an "F-Minus-Minus-Minus-Minus-Minus..."

Darn it, another FAIL! This time, Dad was angry, and took my video games away for a week. But why oh why did my teacher give me an "F"? Isn't anyone interested in whether termites can read or not?

THE WORLD MAY NEVER KNOW.

That's it for this episode.

100 PERCENT, BABY!

If you read my post describing my schedule, you'll see that I didn't get the point of World Cultures. I STILL don't get the point, but I have to give it credit for making my day. On a geography quiz we did last Friday, I got a 100%. A-plus. PERFECT SCORE!

A as in AWESOME. A as in AMAZING. A as in APPLE.

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Uh, I think that's about it. That's all for now!

Dad IS the Better Chef!

Welcome to another "Beyond Rodney and Jim".

If the "Cooking with Rodney" episode didn't tip you off, my Mom is a terrible cook. My Dad actually cooks pretty well, but he's usually busy with something, so Mom cooks more often. Here's a pie chart:

That means 328.5 days out of the year, dinner is just next to disaster. Luckily, I often go over to Jim's for the afternoon to get out of eating it. Tina caught on to my plan, and has gone over to one of her friend's houses for one afternoon a week. She has like 5 friends, so every five weeks they pull straws to see who can keep her over first, second, third, etc.

It wouldn't be so bad if she didn't cook nasty stuff like spinach casserole (don't ask), geogia pudding (it's got black topping and gray filling), and even spam sandwiches (she often forgets to take it out of the can).

Okay, it's Blogger Participation time! Anyone who reads this post needs to tell about ONE, maybe TWO memorable disasters in the kitchen. As for me, this is Rodney Redhart signing out. That's all folks!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Welcome to yet another episode of "Beyond Rodney and Jim", which goes behind the scenes of yet another strip.

Okay, so in Sophomore English, my teacher, Mr. Dingle, is a total jerk. Well, to me anyway. It seems like he gives everyone else the respect they deserve, and then he comes to me and he gets a signal, saying, "Redhead on monitor. Will make life miserable!". That's when he changes his facial expression and does what the signal told him to.

Today, however, was our first graded assignment, and something bad happened. Not just bad, REALLY REALLY BAD. This image from an upcoming strip should explain everything:

Yep, just when it seems like old Mr. Dingle can't get any worse, look what happens. Oh, and if you think that I was upset, you should've seen Dad. Man, he hit the roof when he saw my first graded paper for Sophomore English. He then came to his senses and calmed down. He let me off the hook, but said that I need to be studying a lot more... but hey, that's WAY better than what he did when I broke his camera on accident (let's not talk about that, okay?).

As for Mr. Dingle, he better be prepared, because Rodney Redhart has one big bone to pick with him tomorrow afternoon...

That's it for this episode!

Phobias!, part two

Welcome back to BRJ. Today, I'm continuing on yesterday's post.

Last night, I had Jim over, and we all sat down and watched a movie we rented.

Which movie? See for yourself:

I'm sorry, but any movie that revolves around a hugging robot rampaging through a city on some distant planet is probably going to suck. And it did, too. 82 minutes of big-time hugging action. Yeah, right.

In fact, I would've gotten up and left if it wasn't for Jim being there. See, this brings me back on the subject of unusual phobias. I couldn't even keep my eyes on the screen, so I was watching Jim, who was right next to me. I expected him to probably love it, but I guessed wrong. His eyes were huge, and he was shaking really bad. I almost didn't think it could be for real at first, but I found that there was no other explanation...

Jim had Hugbotphobia.

For those who don't speak phobia language, let me put it in english: Jim was afraid of Hugbot. Every time he appeared on screen he got tense. I then got a brilliant idea: put on a Hugbot costume and scare the living crud out of Jim at school tomorrow! I didn't get to do it yesterday, so tomorrow is the big moment...

Stay tuned!

Phobias!

Welcome to another episode of "Rodney and Jim".



Acousticophobia, Chlorophobia, Graphaphobia, and good ol' Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. What do they all have in common? Read on!


Yesterday, I was doing some schoolwork, when a scream pierced the calm air. It sounded like my mom! I thought she was getting attacked, so I ran downstairs to see what the problem was, and found... a spider.


I watched the tiny little thing move around on the wall, and my mom was SHAKING. It was like she was looking at Bigfoot, but it was only a spider! I squashed and killed the thing with NO PROBLEM AT ALL, and my mom called me her hero.


Okay, WTC? It was a tiny little spider for pie's sake! However, if you think that's odd (unless you have the same problem), you should see the other billion similar cases.


I introduce to you: PHOBIAS!


Those four long words up at the top are all fears of strange things, such as dancing, handwriting, and long words (guess which phobia out of the four that is). I'll share a few of my personal favorites with you here:

Arachibutyrophobia: Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.

Peladophobia: Fear of bald people.

Xenoglossophobia: Fear of foreign languages.

Arithmophobia: Fear of numbers.

See what I mean? Now, about that last one: there are two particular number phobias that have ridiculously long names:

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia: Fear of the number 666 (number of the beast), and

Triskaidekaphobia: Fear of the number 13.

Yeah, and you thought being afraid of spiders or snakes was crazy.

That wraps up another episode. See ya tomorrow!

My Schedule

Welcome to another episode. You probably remember yesterday when I told everyone about that typing I had to do. Well, today, I'll tell about the other 5 classes I have at Banama High School this year...

Period 2:
GEOMETRY

Everyone knows this one well. Protractors, the value of Pi, the Pythagoreum Theorum, and all that junk. However, we haven't actually started geometry yet, and have been reviewing Algebra 2 all week. If you didn't know, I HATE ALGEBRA 2!!! Not to say I was a big fan of Algebra 1, but part 2 was a serious pain in the rear. Everything from Polynomials to absolute value to radicals (what's so "radical" about these I may never know). Anyway, I ended up with a pretty lousy grade last year, but if you tried Algebra 2, you'd probably see why.

Period 3:
WORLD CULTURES

Ahhh, World Cultures. A chance to learn about all the different countries around the world and their traditions. About what rules are laid down in these far-off places. Of course, I'm not entirely sure why we'd need to learn about all these different countries anyway. I mean, are we required to live in some country for a long period of time after choosing which one from studying? Finally, why would we want to leave the great freedom of the United States anyway? I'M PERFECTLY FINE LIVING HERE!!!

Period 4:
HEALTH

Ironically, after filling my body with vital nutrients and all other stuff by eating lunch, I go to a class where I learn about that kind of stuff. Besides being a bit slow, this class has no real cons. Good work, Mrs. Young (my teacher).

Period 5:
ENGLISH

It's our main language, we've been speaking it since we were 5, and it's got over 250,000 words, over half of which make no sense whatsoever. Ladies and gentlemen, it's ENGLISH!

Ironically, we don't seem to be learning the language in this class, and spend more time writing essays and reading long, boring novels. Why not call it "Reading and Writing", or something fancy, like "Creativity"? Ah, who knows.

Oh, next week, we're reading a book called "To Kill a Mockingbird". Okay, why would we want to read something about killing birds? Is that even legal? Maybe we're going on a hunting trip later this semester and they're preparing us for it...

Period 6:
BIOLOGY

What's the best way to end the school day? Science, of course, and that's just OK!

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What? I couldn't think of anything else that rhymed!
Okay, so I guess this year we're doing something that gives me the creeps: examining single-celled organisms. So simple, so fragile. After that, we move into an even scarier part: playing with chemicals. Test tubes, beakers, and acid, OH MY! I hear that if any of those chemicals get all over you, you need to get under the safety shower. Wait, these chemicals aren't safe? What evil, diabolical plot is this, making kids use harmful chemicals? Well, maybe they think we need to be more careful...

That's my schedule for this semester, and here wraps up another episode of Beyond Rodney and Jim. See you next time!

And thus, School began...

Yeah, I haven't really posted for a while, but I've been busy with other stuff. You see, Jim and I have once again had polarized opinions about this first week. Oh, and remember the food fight idea, Jim had a while ago? Well, it finally came around...

Yeah, that was my first day. Oh, and I have varying feelings about my classes as well...

My first class is something called "Digital Communication Tools". Apparently, this class requires a lot of computer use, which I'm already used to, so it should be a blast, right? RIGHT?

Well, it would be if we didn't have to learn to type! Seriously, have you ever used those learn-to-type programs they have out today? Well, if you haven't, let me elaborate: ANNOYING AS HECK!

In the program we use, we learned how to use the numeral keypad on the keyboard. We basically copied numbers for one row, pressed enter, then copied the next row of numbers. We had to do it as quick as possible, too, or we couldn't move on! We also had to do the same thing about five times in a row, too: 141, 161, 151, 717, 858, 740 (breathe) 141, 161, 151, 717...

So you can see that getting old pretty quickly. I'll get to talking about my other classes in my next post, but for now, I've got homework (yeah, on the fifth day of school, HOMEWORK) to do. See you next time on Beyond Rodney and Jim!