THE FANDOM HIGHTIMES: Volume 4, First Edition!

[the_merriest]

RIKKU SPEAKS:

Welcome back to another year at Fandom High! By now we've all settled into our classes, and even the newbies are starting to figure things out. Tip #1: this place is weird. If you hadn't realized that much yet, there might be no hope for you.

Except maybe there are newbies out there who are from worlds that are so crazy that they'd make Fandom look like a day in the park. In that case, the editor kindly requests that you let the staff know all about your home world, so that we can write it up for a really fascinating article here in the paper. And so we can make sure to stay far, far away.

You know, maybe we all gripe too much. Maybe we wouldn't bond half so much in a school that wasn't aggressively, outrageously abnormal. Maybe Fandom's bouts of the crazy form a common bond for us, something we can all point to and shrug and laugh over in the common rooms. It certainly gives you something to break the ice.

At least Fandom's never boring. Although after this last weekend, I'm betting some of us would pick 'boring' in a heartbeat.







Homecoming 2008: Ride 'Em Cowboy!
by Lee Adama

Homecoming only happens once a year. It's a chance for our alumni to come back into town and see old friends, a chance for our teachers to take a break from teaching and a chance for the students to enjoy themselves. Of course, students enjoying themselves is an everyday occurrence but go with me here. Homecoming 2008 has come and gone but I'm sure it's left us all with many last memories, both good and bad. Personally, I hope all of your memories were good ones. I know mine were.

The events began with the annual carnival in the park early Friday morning. Rides such as the tilt a whirl, ferris wheel, and a tunnel of love. Games also dotted the park's landscape, bringing us such booths as the whack a gremlin booth, the beanbag toss booth and the target practice booth. On a personal note, if almost every single person in Fandom didn't take a turn at the target practice booth, I'll be so upset. Who knew that a mild mannered event could give us a chance to practice for the next time some random thing decides to invade the island? Not that I'm hoping that happens, of course.

Ahem.

The carnival also included the now infamous kissing booths where people coughed up some cash and got to kiss the person of their choice. Both male and female booths were heavily populated but it was all PG content. I swear. I hope. I don't know, I'm spoken for so there wasn't any way I was even going over there. The dunk tanks and pie tossing booth gave people who didn't want to pucker up a chance to go soak someone with water or soak them with pie. My personal choice would have been pie but, again, I wasn't over there. No need to get all pied up before the night of the dance. I had big plans, after all. Not that anyone cares.

The carnival, of course, led up to the night's big event, the Homecoming Dance. I was...a little late but I got there and walked into the Old West. Yes, that's right, the Student Council decided to go with the Western theme for the night's events so town hall was decked out in bales of straw, wagons and wagon wheels, cutouts of oxen and horses and suggestions on how to avoid dying of dysentery. Helpful, that.

As the doors opened, students, teachers, alumni and townspeople flooded in to dance, snack, talk, and maybe do some other things that aren't suitable for this article. If you were one of the ones that did not, you should be ashamed of yourself. Naughty, naughty. The theme, while very western, did not dictate what music was played at the dance. Music ranged from fast paced to slow paced and everything in between. There were also dark corners for those that wanted to get away from the hectic areas of the dance or who wanted to have a quiet, dark spot for those previously mentioned naughty things.

The Homecoming Court announcements were also made! Blysse and Andrew Wiggin were crowned freshmen princess and prince respectively, Ino Yamanaka, Cal Stephanides and Liir Thropp were crowned sophomore princess and princes respectively, Angela Montenegro and Hannibal King were crowed junior princess and prince respectively and Toby Moraitis, Lee Adama, Teddy Altman were the senior kings while Brooke Davis and our mighty, mighty editor, Rikku, were the senior queens. Congratulations to the entire Homecoming court and I'd like to say that I make a damn fine king. After the announcements, the required dance was had. Or attempted, at least. We tried!

And, while the dance may have ended, the weekend was just getting started. The alumni were in town, the students and teachers had the next week off and there was fun to be had. Of course, I don't know if fun was quite what happened this past weekend but that's a story for a different article.



The 'Oh, Jonathan,' she gasped as his fingers trailed along the silky trail of her back, 'I can't believe you were my brother all along!' edition
by Cal Stephanides

Wedding bells. Baby bumps. Untimely deaths and more theatrics than the Boards could put out on a good day. Hell, listening to the radio reports of this past weekend puts anything that could ever air on daytime television to shame. Even if you weren't struck by something specific this weekend (sudden blindness, multiple personalities; I myself discovered that I was my own grandfather, despite the fact that I have a genetic disorder that render me unable to ever reproduce), we were all mostly filled with over dramatics and melodramatics; we were over amorous, overly strung, overly passionate.

But...wait.

We're teenagers. By nature, we're over dramatic, melodramatic, over amorous, and really, really hormonal. We're prone to depression, to falling in love, to falling (especially) into lust. Can we honestly call the events of homecoming weekend really all that strange? Allow me to present to you that, no, actually, it wasn't. The only thing that separated it from any other, normal weekend before it was an utter lack of one word. No, not animals. Inhibition.

Let's observe:

The average Fandom High student cannot truly ever be called average. The fact that they are even here automatically raises them out of the range of mediocrity and into the exception. In fact, more often than not, it is because of their extraordinary, exceptional situations that they are here at all. Amazing things. Dramatic things. Unbelievable things. At Fandom High, actual ninjas sit in class beside people who have traveled to different planets, people from different worlds, from the future and the past. Two of my best friends could kill me with probably a single, split second move. My girlfriend is a beauty queen who narrowly escaped death by blown-up trailer and blown-up swan. I even had to depend on my genetic disorder to make my 'I am my own grandfather' story sound implausible, because I was born in 1960, a clear victim of time travel already. What's more unlikely in that story is that my brother could actually build a time machine at all.

In fact, let's just consider the fact that I have a genetic disease that makes it impossible for me to have children. Oh, and my father, by the way, was actually killed in a high-speed car chase with a priest (here's looking at you, Father Ned). Who would honestly be that surprised to find out that someone really did have an evil twin sibling, or secrets of their pasts that are buried deep within either their subconsciousness or their hearts? Have had things in their past shake them into the person they are today? Have things awaiting them at home so that, whenever they come back from a trip there, the only way they can cope is by beating it into a punching bag?

Someone once declared that truth is stranger than fiction.

There's a bit more to it, though.

Truth is strange. Fiction is strange. It's just that truth has a certain sense of subtly that we all seemed to have misplaced this weekend.


by Warren Peace

You know, there's something to be said for personal space.

What's the world coming to when a person can't so much as sit in a tree or walk down the street without having to worry about their personal bubble being invaded against their will? I happen to know of at least a few people who could certainly handle getting through their day without worrying about who may be coming up from behind, who might be lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike. Myself included.

And yet, they're everywhere. Those people who insist on popping that personal bubble of space that you've got all set up for yourself. Those individuals who make it their personal goal to seek out the boundaries of your comfort zone and then, by any means possible, they strive to get themselves inside of it, possibly never to let you go. Some of you might already know what I'm talking about. Others might be what I'm talking about. I imagine if any of the latter are reading this, they know who they are, because they've already taken pains to invade that bubble of mine on more than one occasion.

Of course, I'm talking about Serial Huggers.

Is there a society of you people out there? Some sort of underground cult where the lot of you meet to plot your next incident involving squeezing the crap out of somebody who simply doesn't like to be touched? Is there a hit-list that you're keeping a secret from the rest of us? Because, if I'm on it, I would like to be taken off. And if I'm not taken off of it, then I will find your little club, and I will take your little list, and I will burn it. I had to bargain hug-immunity with the editor of the paper during newspaper meetings in order to be able to get this article written in the first place.

It is an epidemic. And it must be stopped.

And for now, I'll just shut my flaming trap.





Libra
September 24 - October 23
Good news, Librans: Life really is all about you. If the stars are right and you've been looking for love (or at least sex) in all the wrong places, try the bar. Beer goggles make everyone prettier.

Scorpio
October 24 - November 22
Stop sabatoging yourself, Scorpy! You've got some nasty habits, like gingivitis and not working your love handles, but there's always time to change! Take a stop by the gym and brush your teeth at least twice this week and we promise people will stop thinking you're a crab. Or have them.

Saggitarius
November 23 - December 21
We know this comes as a shock, but shooting people with arrows is not an option. To win friends and influence people, you Saggy Arrowmen need to get away from your circle of friends who sleep with your boyfriend and pretend their having his baby so he'll marry them when really your friend's a giant slut who was sleeping with the mayor and refused to get an abortion because of her religion and then she had a miscarriage anyway when she broke her hand in a window. Or, you know, hit the Onsen for some relaxation.

Capricorn
December 22 - January 20
Dude, having a career in mind is one thing. But dude, one-track minds lead to one-track hearts that only know self-love. And hey, everyone should love thyself, but it's way more fun to be loved by others, if you know what I mean.

Aquarius
January 21 - February 19
You've spent so much time seeing the Big Pictures that you forgot to watch TV, and dude, like Rumor Gal would say, there's nothing we like more than a cat fight, so get yourself to a CR and plan a takeover! Beware the lions, they have guns.

Pisces
February 20 - March 20
Well, fishy people. Money, like you, smells bad this week so you should totes skip work and go to the Dive-In and chillax with a noodle. Otherwise, you should rediscover the spirit of giving and not taking. Wise words, I know.

Aries
March 21 - April 20
Since rams are all about a nice, supple, full moon, be on the lookout for a sign. If you aren't happy with what you see, turn around and face the other way. The view's certain to be different.

Taurus
April 21 - May 21
While the bulls are stuck on the endless treadmill of life, they should crank up their iPods and pick up the pace. That red rubber ball of a morning sun isn't shining for it's own good. Though we do promise the worst is over now: you can stop hiding.

Gemini
May 22 - June 22
Um, dude. First, you've got two heads, which could mean you're bipolar like my cousin Shaka or you had an evil twin last weekend. Either way, whatever you're dreaming about is never gonna happen and your indulgences are screwing up your love life.

Cancer
June 23 - July 23
Oh my god. You have the cancer and are being tugged between your personal life and your work life. I'm not sure which is worse. First you should really think about chemo, and then maybe invest in a Blackberry. I hear those things are really good for organizing stuff and keeping personal stuff separate from work. Unless you're a hooker.

Leo
July 24 - August 23
Lion-o and all the other lions out there should should all head outside and chillax in the sunshine in your backyard. If you don't have a yard, consider the lawn a good spot to expand your horizons before heading out on a big quest.

Virgo
August 24 - September 23
Mo money mo problems, virgo. You make money and you spend it in a never ending cycle of patriotism. Watch out, the full moon of Aries is headed your way.



Coffee Pin-Up







credits:

editor: Rikku
words: Lee Adama, Toby Moraitis, Warren Peace, Rikku, Cal Stephanides
pictures: The fabulous Chloe Sullivan, the amazing Rory Gilmore, the marvelous Peter Parker, the humble Rikku, and the splendiferous Cal Stephanides
adviser: Ghanima Atreides