Experimental Videos!

Check out my Youtube Channel. I make quite a few experimental videos and occasionally I put them on Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/user/ZarrinParisa18/featured

In Library, Girl Behind Me Reads Aloud How-To Article On Masturbation

Hello, all! What am I doing? Oh, nothing, just in the library right now, where behind me a group of girls are listening avidly to another girl reading an instructive article about masturbation out loud.  In the last seventeen minutes she's gone over the benefits of masturbation, mental and physical, as well as covering the how-to section on both male and female genitalia. She may not realize how loud she is or how carrying her voice is.
She also may not realize this, but I have actually been annoyed with these girls for a while now.  Since 10:20 to be precise.
When they all started trying to lay on top of one another I thought about sneaking a camera phone over my shoulder and posting the picture but then the logistics were to hard to figure out.  But then they started reading about masturbation out loud and I found their reaction to be somewhat entertaining.
A boy wandered over to try to flirt with them but eventually their intense absorption in the details of female masturbation I think sort of embarrassed him.  Not before saying "Very nice," Borrat-style.
My favorite quote so far:
"I like how it shows all different races, like, to show, that anybody can have sex..."
"... Or make a living..." (another girl sort of snorted)
I inferred here that there were pictures to go along with this "article."
They are now on to PMS.  The article states, "No one really knows why women have PMS..."  okay, not true.  People know why women have PMS.  We may not fully understand the cause of PMS on a biological and sociological level but we definitely understand what it's caused by.
I lost interest.
Back to Henry David Thoreau!

A S S A S S I N

  *** Scroll down for post updates on ASSASSIN***

There is a game....A game of life or death.... played with water-guns.

     So everyone who wants to play puts their name in a hat, then each person gets the name of another person who's playing.  For the sake of explaining the rules, I'm going call these sample people A, B and C.  Person A gets B's name, and so A has to then think up a way to "kill" B with a water-gun.  Person B has C's name and so B is plotting against C.  But before B can "kill" C, A shoots B with a water-gun.  B, now dead and out of the game, gives C's name to A, because that is A's new target.  That is how the game goes on until there are only two people left and then they must kill each other.  Whoever wins is the ultimate assassin.  A few other rules are that there is no "killing" on school property or during sport practices, if you see your attacker coming for you, you can shoot them for thirty minutes of immunity in which presumably you have time to get away.

     This game is often played by graduating high school seniors in the last month of school and we've brought it back to my high school this year.  It started at 2:30 on Monday.

Here's what has happened so far:

     The boy who was telling everyone that he was gonna win, that he'd gotten a laser pointing water-gun that can shoot up to 25 feet off the Internet, was the first to die.

     Roop was walking home after track practice on Monday, was actually outside of her house, when suddenly Annalise jumped out of the bushes in front of her brandishing a water-gun.  Annalise missed.  Roop turned and ran while screaming bloody murder.  Annalise chased her.  Annalise would continue to chase her around Watertown, still somehow unable to get her, for the next hour. 
Roop is still in the game.

     There was apparently some sort of epic shootout between two hockey girls, which a few privileged observers claim to have been "the most fucking awesome thing" they'd ever seen.

     Yesterday, I had last period free, so for the last 20 minutes of school I was sort of walking around while trying to surreptitiously fill my three water-guns and then stash them at various points in my clothing without getting me all wet.  Then I suddenly felt the weird sensation of being stalked.  I looked around and John Delraso was walking by.  A few minutes later I was at my locker and my spidey sense tingled.  I looked covertly over my shoulder to see John Delraso and Ryan McDermott walking down the hallway and both had been looking at me until I turned.  I wasn't really that concerned or paying that much attention.  I continued to sort of watch them through my hair and when they got to the end of the hallway they ran into two other girls.  One was Krysta Breugger, I forget who the other was, but all four stopped, but I didn't hear any voices so I glanced at them to see the two boys both look at me and mouth something, making vague gestures with their chins and eyebrows. I suddenly felt that the person who had my name was in that group, or one of their friends.  I stayed at my locker seemingly intent on some papers, as the two girls walked by me, but I could feel their focus.  They made some inane comments that made me realize they weren't really talking to each other just trying to seem like they were.  A while after that, I was in the entrance hall with Jenna, trying to figure out how find another way to get my person when John Delraso and Ryan McDermott walked by and then sort of stood in the entrance hall talking to each other a little ways away.  I noted them looking at me/us at different points.  Jenna and I decided to go outside and stand on the steps.  Sasha invited herself.  We stood sort of discussing things for a few minutes as the bell rang and a flood of people went out.  We continued to stand there because I didn't see my mom's car yet and I wanted to wait until the crowd thinned because the street in front of the school was fair game.  Then I noticed John Delraso looking at me.  AGAIN. He was standing at the top of a second set of stairs leading down to the basement level side exits of our school.  I continued to watch him exchange words with someone who I deduced was standing on the stairs but below the level I could see, behind a low brick wall.  I WAS BEING STALKED. I was quiet for a moment as a wave of near-panic passed over me.  Then I idly mentioned this to Jenna but she didn't hear.  I told her we had to go to her locker, she said ok, we went back in the school, got rid of Sasha, we broke into a run as I explained it to her.  Her locker was down a hallway on the first floor that had a set of glass doors that looked out on the stairs that the stalker was stalking me from.  We got there, and I saw Krysta Breugger's blond head looking at John Delraso, who was looking around.  He made a shrugging motion, Krysta moved slightly and I saw she was holding a water-gun.  Well, we knew who had me now.  And they were the most unsubtle stalkers I'd ever encountered.  We were joined by Alicia Cotoni and we watched until they left.  Alicia took out a water-gun to walk to her car, and when we exited the school, hiked up the steep incline about a story tall to get to street level I saw my mom's car directly in front of me across the street.  I waved to Jenna, and then was about to walk across the street when I noticed a gold car creeping up behind my mom's.  I halted.  Ryan McDermott was driving.  He seemed to be kinda laughing.  A blond head was crouched down, trying to hide in the passenger side leg space.  The passenger side window was open.  I turned around and faced away, taking out my cell phone, then I called my mom, explained, and told her to pick me up in the teacher's parking lot, on the other side of the school.  I ran back down to the basement side-door, and knocked until someone let me in, than ran to the back door leading to the parking lot, passing Jenna on my way.  I kinda explained then yelled "I'll call you later," over my shoulder.  My mom said when she'd looped around that she'd seen Krysta standing on the corner with a white plastic bag clutched to her chest, her arm in it, talking on a cell phone.  Krysta had been watching her.
     When we got home, we stayed in the car for a couple minutes and then saw a blue SUV drive down our street, slow down in front of our house and then loop around and leave.  Krysta had been driving.

     I refuse to be killed by a dumb blond who tries to act dumb.  When a girl had been telling us when the game was going to start in one of my classes, Krysta had asked, "So, when are we gonna get the guns?"  The girl had looked at her for a moment, then said kind of slowly, "You buy them...  No one's giving out guns."  Krysta had said oh. The other girl continued to look at her out of the corner of her eye for a moment, slightly incredulous.

     Meanwhile I'm still trying to figure out a way to get my person that has no chance of failing and no chance of exposing myself before hand.  I have a reddish-blond wig and dark sunglasses in my backpack.

*************************************************************************************************************************

UPDATE 5/4/12

I've suddenly found myself in the Hunger Games.

     The day after I posted the first part of this post I had to get to school at seven, so I asked Jenna and her mom for a ride.  Around fourth period I went on Facebook for some reason and saw that Aimee had posted on the Senior Assassin wall, "Please do not freak out neighbors of the people you're stalking," because apparently an old woman had call the school to complain about kids in her bushes. And Mr. Watson, our principal, had called down Aimee to the office.  Krysta had commented on that post something like "oh, sorry, I think that was me."  It probably had been because there is an old Irish lady who lives next to us and is always out in her garden in the morning.  I thought about this.  Then found myself behind Krysta in the hallway and so naturally I decided to stalk her to the next class we had together.  I am an excellent stalker.  When I was walking with Jenna I told Jenna all about "the Worst Stalker Ever."  At first Krysta tried to ignore my presence, facing away from me when we waited to be let into a classroom. I kept looking at her, smiling at the friends she was standing with and when Krysta actually looked at me once (I think by accident), I smiled brightly and waved.  She never waved back. 

*************

     So, in the evening after I'd posted the first part of this post update, I had to go to an art exhibit and string quartet combo thing at my high school because I was in the art show (shall post pictures later) and quite a few of my friends were in the string quartets.    I had come with my friend Jenna and her mother, and each of us had brought water-guns for self-defense. Roop, who plays the viola, was also there.  In the middle of socializing she started to freak out about how Annalise was probably going to be there waiting at her car.  I wondered where Roop's mom was because I knew Roop didn't have a car.  She started asking people to walk her to her car, which was in a parking not on school grounds, to get something she'd forgot.  She got Ben to lend her his water-gun and Jenna and someone else were willing to walk her to her car.  They left.  Jenna came back alone, and incredibly pissed, because Roop had assassinated her as soon as they got off school property.  She yelled at all of our "good friends" as she called them, when she got back, because apparently, a lot of them had known Roop was Jenna's assassin.   We left quite soon after that.  While we were walking down the steps of the school, I paused to talk to a girl I knew while Jenna stormed on ahead.  I turned around to see her abruptly pivot and start walking back to me.  She had seen Meghan Kelly, a known associate of Krysta's, with a hooded figure, in the same place Krysta had been waiting for me earlier that day.  We asked Virginia, Jenna's mother, to bring to car straight to the sidewalk in front of the school, and when she did, I asked Jenna to walk a couple steps in front of me and open the backseat door for me.  As we were driving away I watched as the two girls dodged back behind the wall and then suddenly run up the steps, keeping low to the ground with their hoods up, and then run out to a car parked on the sidewalk.  When we got to my house I stayed in the car and called my mom to open the front door for me.  She laughed then tried looking around for Krysta.  I was pretty sure they were in a car and had followed us, and three cars had followed us onto my street.  We waited a few minutes, then I suddenly made a quick jog for my front door. I got up the first set of steps, so I was level with my yard, when, virtually at the same time, my head jerked to my right and I heard someone yell, "PARISA! PARISA!!!" 
     Two blond girls dressed all in black suddenly popped out of nowhere, not that far away.  And, yes, they were calling out my name... to- er, or for....... I have no idea why they were calling out my name.  If you've taken the time and effort to stalk someone (albeit, badly), waited until she was in the open in order to pounce on her and squirt her with a water gun, why do you then start yelling her name desperately? In hopes that she'll stop and let you assassinate her?
     I promptly started sprinting like the hounds of hell were at my heels. Because they were.
     Krysta and Meghan, getting closer and yelling more frantically: "PARISA!!" "PAARIIIIISA!!!" "PARIS-"
     I leapt up the final five stairs and whipped open my screen door, threw myself into my house, only avoiding a face-plant by catching myself on the door handle.  Meanwhile after a final and useless, "PARISA!! WAIT!!" I heard only someone opening my squeaky screen door before I slammed the front door shut with a forced that shook my entire row of houses.
     My mom almost yelled at me about that but before she could even draw in breath, we both heard two bodies hit the door.  They tried using the door handle but it was locked.  I was sort of out of breath but I looked at my mom triumphantly for a moment. They hadn't gotten me.  Again.
     For the FOURTH time!
     Mwhahh hahahahahahah haha haha!!!
     I dumped my stuff in the chair and then looked out one of my living room windows, from which you could see the front porch.  I watched in the light from the lamp next to me as Krysta banged on the door some more, saying something and then Meghan noticed me, and said, "She's right there," Krysta came more into my line of sight, letting the screen door close.
     "Oh,"
      They were both out of breath and not happy looking. I smiled.  I couldn't hold it back and if I tried it would look mean.
     Meghan sort of smiled back but also pursed her lips.  Krysta was much more out of breath and leaned against my railing. We were less than three feet apart, only separated by glass.
     They looked at me, smiling at them in a friendly way. I looked at them, feeling magnanimous.  Then I started to laugh a little bit.  I was sort of out of breath also.
Krysta said, panting, "That was, pretty fast of you there... nice running..."
     I smiled a little wider and said, "You, too, nice running," with a nod, putting a friendly look in my eye.  I had to monitor my smile because when I allow myself to smile fully, Jenna says I look evil/intimidating and my mother calls me a hellion. 
But I couldn't stop it, so I just let myself ease into it gracefully as, in my mind, I was rolling around in mirth.  Krysta and Meghan observed me closely for a moment.  Krysta was still out of breath.
     "You know," she said, "you're, like, really.... it's been, like, four days, and...if you're gonna always be this hard to kill....like, I don't know...."
     "Well, you might die," I said cordially.
     "What?"
     "You might die first, before you kill me," I tried to say this as nicely as possible, and sort of shrugged apologetically, not breaking eye-contact. By this time I had a slightly more earnest expression on my face.
     Krysta looked away and sort of down, tilting her head as she muttered, "Oh, yeah..."
     We all stood there awkwardly for a moment examining each other, then I said brightly, "All right, well, I'll see you guys later, then!" like we'd just been discussing some funny, inconsequential subject.  Meghan said, "See you later," in that same way and they started to walk down the stairs, Krysta muttering something about how she had, like, basically, pretty much gotten me, but I couldn't really hear her.  I smiled even more and waved at them from my window as they walked back across my lawn.  Krysta waved back in a somewhat half-hearted way, Meghan waved also.  I waved again to Jenna and Virginia who were still watching from their car.
     They all left.
     I started laughing out loud.  And at that moment decided to counter-assassinate Krysta, post statuses about where I was and where she was, to alert her assassin, and say Hi to her whenever possible, in a pointed and very friendly way.  I posted a Facebook status complementing her on how she'd almost gotten me but hadn't and tagged her in it, before she could say what she'd been muttering as she left to anyone who counted.
     I've decided I love this game.

***********************************************************************************************************************

Alright, so, horrible update.


     Friday, I got shot by a water gun through my bathroom window.

The Glass Has Been Smashed to Smithereens

And I'm stuck picking up the pieces.

Here’s the low-down: A while ago, I’m not really sure how far back but far, the glass fell, shall we say, and promptly splintered into a million little pieces that went absolutely everywhere and since that time I’ve been walking around my house with the occasional shard of glass lodging itself in my foot. 

            I think people who go around believing life is crap, bemoaning their fate, are despicable little creatures who are trying to influence the way people treat them.  Somehow, they got it into their heads to feel sorry for themselves and thus approach life with a mistaken sense of entitlement. People who think life is crap are too narrow-minded to realize that life barely knows they exist and wouldn’t care if they suddenly stopped.   I similarly feel that people who go around with the logo/motto “Life is good” have hidden agendas.  When I see “Life is good” merchandise go walking by I wait with baited breath to witness something horrible befall the wearer.

 Expressions like "The glass is half-empty," "The glass is half-full," are simply that, expressions. And shouldn't be used to base a whole life-perspective/outlook on.  And yet, this is the new English project.  Ever have that feeling like you've been ordered to open up about something that you find yourself unable to relate to or even contemplate?  It is my senior year in high school, we're going into our last month of school and it is only now that the teachers are beginning to risk hearing our opinions on life, asking us about life experiences, and what-have-you.  And, if we can't come up with enough experiences of our own (y'know, because of our short and sheltered lives spent with our noses pressed up against electronic devices) we can refer to characters or events we've encountered or been exposed to in literature, film, or other art forms.  I find this funny and odd.  And kind of sad.  At this point in our lives, we should be able to see that the characters in literature and film are based on the people around us.  Even if there is no direct connection, the characters in the movies, in books, were inspired by real people and if you look around you can pick them out of the social circles you move in.  You, yourself may be a character in a play or a movie or a novel.  It might be a farce.  It could be a tragedy.  But everyone has to reckon with a larger idea, that you are part of something bigger, part of a whole.  This should be recognized but too often it is ignored, or the words are twisted to manipulate for a specific purpose. 

I have nothing else to rant about at the moment. 
Oh, wait, here's the copy I'll hand to my English teacher:

The Glass Has Been Smashed to Smithereens

            After eons of angst, confusion, and self-doubt, it simply decided one day that it would never contain all it could, reach it’s full potential, nor would it be able to face the constant emptiness inside, and so the glass chose to end it’s eternal pondering of half full or half empty.  The glass promptly splintered into a million little pieces that went absolutely everywhere and were incredibly hard to pick up. Since that time I’ve felt the glass’s anxious presence as I walked around my house with the occasional shard of glass lodging itself in my foot. 

            I can never relate to expressions like “Life is crap” or “Life is good.”  I feel like people who think life is crap have somehow fooled themselves into a mistaken sense of entitlement and are too narrow-minded to realize life barely knows they exist and wouldn’t care if they suddenly stopped.  It would simply go on.  I similarly feel that people who go around with the logo/motto “Life is good,” have hidden agendas.  When I see “Life is good,” merchandise go walking by I wait with baited breath for some horrible fate to befall the wearer. 

            To use a grossly abused and cheesy expression, life is what you make of it.  I would consider myself pretty optimistic but friends and people who know me relatively well have at different points called me paranoid, pessimistic, and suspicious and also sometimes bitter.  I think I’m more observant than they are.  And less forgiving.   I see now, after learning about Toaism and the different philosophies that my outlook on life, which has not changed really for quite some time, has elements of Toaism, transcendentalism, as well as other religions like zoroastrianism.  I also must notice that many of the philosophies we learned about connected to each other and different events in history, like the formation of Protestantism, pop-culture movements, and other, darker events like the rise of Jim Jones. To sum it all up; life is a joke, and I don’t mean that in a scornful way, I mean that life is laughing at you, it’s laughing at everyone one of us and we have to choose whether to laugh along with it.  We have to understand that we are all part of something bigger.

Stars

     I had heard that before the time of compasses, conventional navigation, and GPS, sailors used to navigate by the stars.  But when I finally saw the stars for the first time in my life, and I mean really saw them, without any rude interruptions from floodlights, or flashlights, or firelight, and not just a glance, a vague impression of pinpricks or dots, but a good long look, I felt all the emotions our bodies are made to trap, contain, and struggle with, drain away.  My emotions, the things I had spent my life gathering and hoarding together, trying to identify, categorize, and describe, had left me, leaving nothing in their wake, leaving me staring, spellbound, up into the sky.  I had seen stars before, from the street at home, I would shield my eyes from the streetlamp and I could pick out Orion and his belt, Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper, the little one, Saturn, Venus, and sometimes Mars.  But never before had I seen stars like this, the stars, as I stood there thirty miles from Canada, on the shore of a crystal clear lake. 

The act of seeing cannot describe what happened to me that night.  I tipped my head back, and let every feeling I had ever had in my entire life be sucked out of me, into the stars.  I did not feel their loss, I could feel nothing; the stars were flooding my every sense, flooding like a great tidal wave into me, and I was drowning.  I lost track of what was up or down, right or left.  I drank in the stars through my eyes, tasting their unique, crisp sweetness.  There are not just millions and billions of stars, what a cold way to describe them.  There are forests of stars, boatloads, armies. There are as many stars as there are raindrops, or grains of dirt.  There are just enough stars to fill a pair of cupped hands and more than would fit in the deepest ocean.  There are as many stars as there are cells in my body, and I could feel the stars floating through my veins, too, like an addictive substance.  I could hear the stars, like a great symphony, an intricate yet simple melody that never ends and has always been playing.  I could feel this music wash over me, a baptism, a caress. 

I had seen the great paintings of Van Gogh, Monet, El Greco, things considered to be some of the most beautiful works of man, and now, gazing at the stars, I saw what they had been trying to achieve.  No work of man, however great, complicated, advanced, praised, or insightful, could ever accomplish something like the stars.  Not even God, a figment of man’s imagination, because man always has to have the last word, could have designed this. Only the random beauty of nature, which suffers all sorts of insults and plagiarisms by man, could possess the power for this kind of display that reaches inside a person and grabs ahold of their soul.

And I could only stand there, on a dock, feeling, tasting, breathing in, and listening to something that could never be captured through a lens, could never be drawn, painted in its entirety, given justice by description. I thought, when I could think again, how entirely daring humankind had been, to try and name individual stars, to send satellites to blunder heedlessly around up there, and how in the world could anyone navigate by these?

Slowly, little by little, I felt the stars give me back my body, I felt them relinquish my emotions after sampling each and every one of them.  And even more slowly, I felt my soul drift unwillingly back to me, though something was wrong.  The stars stole a piece of my soul while I was distracted, while I was drowning in them.  It doesn’t matter how big a piece it was, first they had stolen my emotions, to examine, tear apart, and scatter, then they had made a souvenir out of my soul.

After several years of thought, I am still pondering this strange occurrence. When I look up at the stars these days, I start to feel myself getting lifted up, becoming weightless, I feel my surroundings slip away.  I feel my carefully compartmentalized emotions tremble in their seats.  And then I trip on a crack in the sidewalk, I feel a bug bite me, someone calls my name. Or worst of all, a light turns on, and then it’s the stars who turn away first.  They could still have that piece of my soul, if so I must go up there and find it someday.  But what if, as the Earth was idly spinning, self-absorbed on its axis, they decided to spitefully hurl it down and see where it landed?  I suppose this means, before I leave, I must search the world and see if it’s hidden somewhere.

Illusion of Choice

The New Headmaster Decides to Teach Our AP English Class

 February 13, 2011 (Junior Year)

Our AP English teacher, Ms. Regan, had to have emergency surgery and was out for around 6 weeks during which, Mr. Watson, our new headmaster, took it upon himself (about half the time) to teach the class.

 

This is a snippet of an email I sent to Ms. Regan, wishing her well and a speedy recovery, and letting her know how much we all missed her.

As you know, Mr. Watson is now teaching our class, which is making for some interesting interactions between principle and students.  I'm sure you remember the way he spoke over the loudspeaker. Now if you can imagine that in a relatively small space, with four walls, without the PA crackle serving as a buffer between us and the especially earsplitting bits, it's a rather sharp contrast to your quiet, authoritative voice.  Whereas with yours, we were afraid to tune out or start a conversation with our neighbor, lest we miss something detrimental, with his, I think tuning out is some sort of instinctual reaction to save ourselves from the sheer volume.  Maybe he used this tactic to command the attentions of small, fidgety children, but with us I get the impression of an overall feeling of desperation.

It's clear that Mr. Watson doesn't want us to feel that our loving mother has been replaced by this loud step-father, he obviously doesn't want to usurp your teaching thus far, but neither can he replicate the environment you created for us perfectly, and he doesn't want us to get our hopes up that he is going to attempt to fill any one's shoes.  This is all quite understandable, reasonable, and yet I feel that a majority of the class did not realize that this is what he was saying, that it was going to be different, until perhaps our third class with him. 

Mr. Watson offers rather loose, not as analytical interpretations of things compared to your explanations.  This rests the weight of thinking, cutting through mush to the bare essence, the meaning of what we are studying, on us, which I think has thrown some people off-kilter and gives the impression that their responses don't have to be as thought out as maybe they would have been when responding to you.  Personally, I am finding these interactions hilarious and they are even more observable because we now sit in a circle everyday.

One day we were discussing maxims, particularly, "PEOPLE WHO DON'T WORK WITH THEIR HANDS ARE PARASITES." 

Analise, who happened to be sitting directly across from me, jumped right in with her interpretation of this, "I really like this one because I think, you know, it's just so true and...the imagery...the...it's like, you can just imagine some guy in a suit, in, like, an office building, in some corporate job...who just never does anything!"  At this point she was waving her hands around, perhaps trying to show us exactly what he looked like. 

She paused for a moment, and everyone else paused too. In confusion.  I was on the verge of laughter, picturing a business tycoon who just sat at a desk all day, smirking, commanding everyone else to run around madly stapling papers for him - and that's ALL HE DID.

Analise turned to Mr. Watson and said, "You know?"  Mr. Watson seemed at a loss for words. He opened his mouth but Analise got there before him, with waving arms.

"Like, he never does anything for himself, it's always other people who do the work.  And, when I look - er- read this, it just makes me think of people who never do anything with their hands-" Here Zohra and Hannah exchanged frowning glances, Katherine leaned forward like she was going to disagree, Ben had ceased tapping his pencil against the side of his face, and Roop had looked up from the iTouch that was cleverly concealed among the papers on her desk. 

She went on to say, still gesturing by putting her hands behind her back, "Like they don't work with their hands, they only do stuff with their mouth-" She opened her mouth very wide to demonstrate how "they" went about their careers. When this apparently failed to convey her meaning, she started using her hands, forming mouth like shapes that appeared to be pecking at something, while saying, "It's like they feed off the work...they benefit from the stuff that everyone else does, but they don't do anything." Analise paused, looking at her hands extended in front of her. 

Then I said, quite reasonably, I thought, "Would you say a vampire is a parasite?" 

Everyone turned and looked at me as if I'd just suggested that we jump off the roof.  Analise had this look of utter confusion on her face, and said slowly, "N-no." It sounded like a question. I thought to myself, Ah, yes, those carpenter vampires, how could I forget.

So I said, tentatively, "Parasites don't necessarily have to do everything with their mouth...They could also probably do some things...with their hands."  Everyone frowned at me, I frowned at Analise. She frowned back at me. 

Then the room erupted. Approximately 10 people had tried to say something all at once and when they realized someone else was talking, they promptly started shouting, to no one in particular.  It took a minute for Mr. Watson to get everyone under control.

And that was our first class discussion.