A 13-year-old girl got killed just two blocks outside my residential complex this afternoon, by a taxi driver (who was simultaneously in a rush to go somewhere AND having three cellphone conversations) swerving along the narrow mountain road partially blockaded by one of many local demolition sites onto the sidewalk. Not that he necessarily deserved to have his vehicle flip into a wreck on the edge of the rail, but it also almost caused a full tour-bus of people to meet a nasty fate if that bus's driver didn't swerve at the last second up a private road, damaging an administrative building instead. Hearing this news (first from another taxi-driver I was riding with via comm link) did not alarm me in the sense that I walk along those roads almost everyday myself and could have easily victimized me in one of my more careless acts of dashing across the street. Instead, hearing this news made me angry. Not at anyone at the scene in particular, but the attitude behind drivers in China (we have more dangerous roads than India!) and the lack of public concern for pedestrians and traffic despite the fact that everyone now has a car on the road. The kid was simply opting out of the crappy transportation, taking the precaution to use the sidewalk, and perished. Combined with our, "drivers rule and pedestrians drool" mentality, 'developers' have every right to dig holes into any terrain regardless of daily public importance that might POTENTIALLY be serviceable later on to 'some residents'. The contracting company at the construction site will almost inevitably respond, as they have in similar recent past incidents, by rushing the job at the current site and siphoning workers to the next construction site on an adjacent street!!!

Jonathan is a diminished star
in the sky
Though he is out there
Burning somewhere just like you and I

What I have in mind to say right now is neither impressive nor, if you know me well enough, all that surprising. I first noticed that there was blackish stuff smudging all over my toiletries when I kept everything in Xavi's bathroom over Thanksgiving break. I figured it was high time to address the problem of things falling on the bathroom floor spontaneously black, and spent about half an hour scrubbing various nooks and crannies of the place until, I thought, it looked noticeably cleaner.

A COPIOUS AMOUNT OF BREAK TIME PASSES IN WHICH I TRY TO WRITE MY PAPERS...

I GET HOME AND MAKE EFFORTS TO UNPACK MY STUFF.

My toiletries bag is 1) Stuck to my larger $200 traveling backpack and 2) Full of REALLY blackened items when I get to uncatching the zipper, including my toothbrush and dermatological medicines!

This was a little distressing, after the joys of traveling at the height of my claustrophobic state. My best response is to run the brush bristles under scorching water while scrubbing the blackness away with my free hands (and some toothpaste). I think I end up brushing my teeth...

Today, with the toiletries bag still caught on the strap of the larger $200 traveling backpack, I discover a familiar item that comes tumbling out. Could it be..? The old 'useless' eyeliner that Beth gave me for Morebid! Stocked precariously amongst things that should not be smudged with chemicals, even "non-toxic" ones. Well, the damn thing is truly useless now, because the contents were apparently shaken and stirred with the dampness also introduced into the bag, giving my entire kit a makeover! Hoooraay eyeliner flavor!!!

I now return to the hopeless completion of my most imminent paper (due 30 min from now) in which I use the remaining quarter of my brain not exasperated with myself for my foolishness to complete...

My personal expenses this semester have officially surpassed my earnings by a factor of two from this afternoon. Though this seems a trivial and inevitable consequence of living near a downtown with stores, I have not instantly reveled in any of my surrenders to consumption for a long time as I did with my purchase of this PATRICK WOLF CD (have been pretty much dancing to the first three tracks of this exquisite electronic-folk hybridization the entire time). I'm sure there's other reasons to like him too...

In other news, I may have actually become sick of any sensory stimuli associated with the presence of ice cream. Me and Strudel were always bitching about not having enough ice cream (and not being willing to expend that much more on groceries) over the summer, and now that there's a soft-serve machine greeting me on the way to the table every meal, and a rudely intersecting Stewart's shop on every one of my warm-weather promenades, I think it (all flavors of ice cream) as being less interesting than chicken soup. I blame the obscenely warm weather (not the least this October's running average of 80 degrees) for this erosion of my major source of happiness.

I HATE WRITING MEANINGLESS THINGS WITH THE PRETENSE OF SUBSTANCE TO FAR AWAY PEOPLE

Alas, I'm hitting up the LJ after months out of the practice of public entry writing, though I did not expect to see my own reemergence in this peculiar state of vague ecstasy. I've miraculously functioned today in spite of the emotions I've carried over from the surreality of yesterday: I got up at 8:30, lingered at my hygeineic duties, ran out of the dining hall with a piece of raisin bread (hitting the bank downtown in the same few breaths to confirm my routing account), wished my dad a happy birthday with 12 minutes of battery life on my phone, and understood for the most part what was going on in my classes.

In my 24 hours of hindsight, the past night (following a tiring full Wednesday of classes, vocational training and martial arts, with a unexpected postcard from Emily's mother this time) was not justifiably more surreal on my part than the weeks leading up to it. You see, I had never stopped thinking about reconciling my past feelings through admitting them in front the young lady who was the object of them. It was my gradually developing intent to say it, that allowed me to give her the downplayed notion of my wanting to talk to her an hour before I had to actually intercept her at the end of her library work shift.

The discussion, from the time I gave the only necessary artificial prompting ("I'm sorry about last year, I was not myself") lasted about 20 minutes... it was largely a genial sort of chat about school-stuff (lots of apprehended sociology jokes, mind you) and our general opinions about the politics of gender relations thing (funny how she can find the term 'feminist' less bigoted than I, and still be more centrist about tackling the inequality issues than I), all pretty natural, whimsical, and surprisingly unriddled with silences I could sometimes even expect in the company of my closest friends.

In the end of that discussion, I received something more than forgiveness, something I didn't dare hope for: she gave me a good deal of gratitude. For in addition to wanting me to know that she would always make herself available to the kind of talk I was initiating, and with my prior invitation to scrabble firmly standing, she told me, in sharp refutation to my apology, about the finger-painting that she would recover for me when her parents visit (that which was the missing response to the second letter), and that she was merely confused about the international mailing instructions I enclosed...

I'm frustrated in a way, though, because I realize now that I didn't go to the person who was necessarily best for addressing my larger concern (about the group I suspect had become disenchanted with my behavior at the end of last year) . She was absolutely willing to strongly insist that she personally saw me as overly quirky, but had waited for the conversation to take another course when I asked her if there was anything specific that still bothered her friends... this coming from someone who seems to unconsciously possess the adhesive factor for the group she socializes in. I was hoping at the very least she had some unique insight to my recently taciturn physics classmate, who she has finally established the romantic relationship with.

Again, I feel mostly lighter knowing that something is certain, that there is an area of ground I can step where it is free of landmines, and that our relationship has the much needed lines drawn in! Whilst I am only looking for 'friendship' on Facebook now (something I promise you will remain in place until the end of this semester), I am devoting some thought to the potential of a specific other sustainable relationship which, at the very least, would require less effort integrating into my existing base social network at Skidmore.

Isn't it funny how seeing a relationship declared on FACEBOOK renounciates aspects of the message that you just don't get when your friend, sitting on the same small slab of cement on a dead quiet night with you, tells the story in her lovely voice?

Put the books in order from favorite to least favorite: Prisoner of Azkaban, Every Other HP besides Order of the Phoenix, Order of the Phoenix
How many times have you read the series: One very good perusing per book, with some review of books 5 & 6 before Deathly Hallows (confirming my annoyance with Order of the Phoenix)
Favorite chapter from your favorite book:
5 Favorite Characters: Lupin, Hermione, Luna, Lee Jordan, Dumbledore
3 Least Favorite Characters: Petunia, Viktor Krum, Umbridge
Favorite member of the Trio: Hermione, God help the other two!
5 favorite quotes:

'Are you planning to follow a career in Magical Law, Miss Granger?' asked Scrimgoeur
'No I'm not,' retorted Hermione, 'I'm hoping to do some good in the world!'
3 Favorite magical creatures: Thestrals
Favorite family: The Weasleys/Lovegoods
Favorite villain: Voldemort
Favorite death Eater: Snape
Favorite non-Hogwarts magical building: Junk Shop/The Shrieking Shack
Favorite Diagon Alley location: Ollivanders
3 Favorite Spells: Confundus, Stupefy, Refilling Charm
3 Favorite Potions: Felix, Polyjuice, Gilliweed
Favorite Unforgivable Curse: Imperio! (if I’m going to be evil, I’m going to go for spell utility)
Favorite Department of Mysteries Room: Brains
Biggest surprise: Harry’s mind-invasion on Snape
Biggest letdown: Draco Malfoy (‘nuff said)
Favorite kind of transportation: Brooms
Favorite Weasley: Fred/George
Favorite Order member: Tonks/Lupin
Favorite pet: Owl
One character you'd bring back to life: Dumbledore!

Moment that will always make you cry: That is one spell Rowling has yet to cast on me (but a handful of authors have that attainment)
Favorite Hogwarts room: Room of Requirement
Favorite class: Divinity (very esoteric and potentially powerful, the Wizard’s equivelent of Cosmology?)
Favorite teacher: Firenze
Favorite DADA teacher: Mad-Eye Moody Imposter
Least favorite teacher: Trelawney
Favorite non-human Hogwarts resident: Firenze
Favorite Hogsmeade location: I heart the Quill Shop
Favorite Triwizard Champion: Harry Potter
Favorite Triwizard Task: The Labyrinth
Which character you'd ask to the Yule Ball: Luna
Which character you'd like to use a love potion on: Doping is not my style, but it would be poetically just to slip some into Umbridge’s tea in the vicinity of any traitor that reported to her office
Which character you'd like to use Veritaserum on: Dumbledore (complex but interesting motives this chap has)
How long have you been a HP fan: I’m an all-around nerd, but not aptly described as anything beyond a casual HP reader (with a decent recollection of spells and creatures)
Favorite wizard rock band: Weird Sisters
Number of midnight releases have you attended: 0 :P
Favorite HP website: (Haven’t made comparisons)
Favorite LJ HP community:
Character you're most like: Characters remotely resembling me are useless for literary devices… young Dumbledore might be the closest
House you think you'd be sorted into: I’d like to think Ravenclaw, but my friends are fervently divided between my placement in Hufflepuff and Gryffindor (some Ravenclaw, no Slytherin)
Your patronus would be a: A Hare, I’d imagine
Your boggart would be: A beautiful woman (with permission to hope)
To you, Amortentia would smell like: Air thickened with blood
You'd use Felix Felicis to: Participate in an interview of any importance
What job would you most like to try: Professor of Divinity (crosses fingers)
Which would you rather see - a sequel or a prequel: PREquel
Put the movies in order from favorite to least favorite:

EITHER/OR

Floo powder or broom: Broom
Bernie Bott's Every Flavor Beans or Chocolate Frogs: Frogs
Death Eaters or Dumbledore's Army: Dumbledore’s Army
Fred or George: Both
CAPSLOCK HARRY or Emo!Harry: Emo!Harry by far… he makes me feel soooo much better about myself
The Ministry of Magic or Gringotts: Gringotts
Sirius or Lupin: Lupin
Occlumency or Legilimency: Legilimency
Animagus or Metamorphagus: Animagus
Mermish or Parselmouth: Mermish
Draco or Lucius: Lucius
Peter Pettigrew or Mundungus Fletcher: Pettigrew
Whomping Willow or Flying Ford Anglia: Whomping willow
Invisibility cloak or Pensieve: Cloak
Grimmauld Place or The Burrow: The Burrow
Werewolf or Inferi: WEREWOLF, of course! Is this a contest..?
Herbology or Care of Magical Creatures: Magical Creatures
Professor Binns or Professor Umbridge: Binns
Yule Ball or Quidditch Championship: Quidditch Championship
Peeves or Nearly Headless Nick: Nearly-Headless Nick
Hippogriff or Thestrals: Hippogriff
Durmstrang or Beaubaxtons: Beaubaxtons
S.P.E.W or the Inquisitorial Squad: SPEW
Three Broomsticks The Leaky Cauldron: Three Broomsticks

 

I picked up my first pay check this summer from Peter's office today! It was great to see a non-punitive slip of paper with my name on it, I thought, running my fingers along the edges of the authentic water-marked fiber. I then saw what was taken off my paycheck, simultaneously as an edge of the check snagged my finger: As a "Head-of-Household" and "Single" resident of New York State, I am getting 7%, or about twenty dollars, of my pay deduced. I am down with taxes, and medicare (as far as my fresh paper-cut was concerned), but I'm pretty sure I don't have the tax-paying status the slip alotted me. Calling my parents would be the sensible fast solution, if it was worth the inherent problems of communicating with my parents. In the future, I'm sure this slip will reflect my tax-paying status more accurately; at least, the single part rings true (I doubt renting space in a friend's basement meets the criteria for "head of household" though).

Speaking of my future, I have made an appointment with career services for next week, probably being one of the most advisable decisions in my life (having previously thrown out all mail from them). Wishing to make something more out of this trip than stuttering my name and class-year during the ten minute period my consultant will smile helplessly through my negligence to shake their hand and make eye contact, I have given the direction of this dialogue substantial thought and came to some startling revelations about my life:

1. I am utterly banking on some kind of academic career that demands I sit and pay through six years for a PhD, I would need to show up radically more academic aptitude than I have; I'd start with getting my grades up about half a grade-point up, and see whether my fate on the GRE can be an improvement from my SAT, perusing the prep book I already bought.

2. I am abjectly entrenched in the social sciences (and only then in psych and soc) if I desire to make any use or justification of my points in academic achievement. Both of these disciplines, particularly psych, are saturated with crazy med-school rejects, so I might have to consider being a high school teacher for a long time, or hope that I get into a university's social work circle where there are other people like me (not ditzy 60-year-old ladies who talk about human dignity while professing the patients as an indistinguishable series of speed-bumps)

3. I might as well do something very exotic to break up the pouring hot disorder in my life, if only it serves to make it more interesting. I'm thinking something good for humanity and my understanding of it, like being an educator in the Peace Corps on one of those pacific islands with fishing villages and a government in need of a conscience. Of course, this might inadvertently funnel me back into that line of social work academia I was rather hesitant about!

4. I can distinguish myself in the social sciences and education by captilizing on my quantitative strengths and interests. Honestly, I might have my own inner-physicist intact, and I've also discovered my ability to appreciate statistics (as it is applied in sociometric studies, as opposed to simply HOW it works like they study in the math department). Many psych and soc majors are math-phobic, and by the time there are PhD candidates, only a few will be faculty at a liberal arts department of psychology nursing their hopes of students taking an advanced statistics course. That might be the narrow sunbeam from the window for me...

This sounds like enough to get a good career services session rolling... so much thought this weekend *sigh*. There is no Strudel (at Bar Mitzvah), no Rob (something involving departure with Greta), and a rarely-present Ryan for housemates this weekend! I am inviting people to come over and watch "Dead like Me" tonight, since I have ran out of things I can do in a house by myself (i.e. take a bath and walk around without a towel).

I like to think I am one who can bask in the glory of a heavy lightning storm, being the physics-inclined, air mage-ish sort of moderate lunatic I am. It is nature, and the greatest of your worries should be remembering to approach the thing with healthy respect, right? This was essentially the rhetoric I used to convince Uriel and Miriam to face their fears and come on out of the dining hall before we were late for our lab class on 3rd floor Dana; a bolt of lightning, not 50 feet in front of us, crashed into the walkway between us and the academic building, releasing what we saw to be a galvanized orb of bright light that lingered a little after the original source had vanished (leaving a significantly longer-lasting crater of smoke). I suppose I had no other preconcieved notions for how such an event would appear to us, but I then again never imagined seeing a bolt of lightning strike a place I must have walked across ten or more times a day without diverting any of my awareness from my ball-scratching routine. So, I cowered with my slightly hysterical classmates with nothing but a roof and flickering lights over our heads, my own rationality lost in the storm...

I was feeling extremely crappy upon discovering that my take-home final was still sitting in Mary's box while I was roaming Dana on Tuesday, and the fact that I had still recieved no confirmation email from the other two professors about the receipt of my final projecs/last minute homework assignments. I cannot afford another GPA fuck-up after last semester, for numerous reasons. My natural coping response of walking with unusually long strides, faster than most peoples' ideas of jogging, until all other pain becomes irrelevant, led me down Broadway where my walk for a cure was truncated by an aggressive intercept of the Borders' bookstore. There, without spending a dime, I read The Alphabet of Manliness (which no-one on my friends list would, or should relate to on the literal level). In hindsight, there is a lot to be said about the humongous ant crawling on *my* toilet seat right upon my return to campus. Maddox's salient message though, that we can dismiss a lot of our 'obligations' in life as meaningless, picked up my spirits a bit, but not in time to prevent me from forgetting to look for more Full Metal that I would have then purchased.

In other news; Chris, Strudel and I are almost completely beat for off-campus living options. I really, really need to find another job, at more than $800/month PER PERSON, to support that kind of 'choice'. Also, on top of regular class (and holding on to the elusive job), there will be different letters to write over the greater part of the summer.

For now, though, I shall enjoy what remains of senior week: getting furiously tagged in photos, more outdoors/martial arts things, hunting down friends that are supposedly here but not apparent *glares at Sarah O'Sullivan in expected general direction*, and basking in everyone's company over the aromas of (primarily) Dan's cooking and easily-dissolved chess games at Reeves D...

For you few priveleged people on my friends list, feel free to add your input to my daemon (you only have 12 days before it's fixed on my entry!), and certainly give it a try on yourself if you are slightly interested... just don't forget all your other life obligations and check it every 9 minutes like Xavi :P

Go Mordecai! speaks louder than words

As of the past two months, I had four main objectives from which I could argue would mobilize me from the unfavorable state of affairs awaiting me next year (a few good friends going abroad, at least one friend transferring, and doing Modern Physics Labs all over again).

One of them was getting a Scribner house with Strudel, Beth and Sarah (possibly Steve). I realize I ultimately have only partial control over this process, but the amount of energy I invested into getting copies of everyone's photo ID over the protests of my housemates watching movies and fooling around with Bill the same week was astonishing, considering the null result. I think my prospective housemates are lamenting just as much about this as me, if not more. The overconfident approach Strudel took towards this process nonetheless still annoyed me, and the others decided that I was being pessimistic about getting a place with the numbers our group had, when in reality I can grasp things better than Strudel (as he would later admit) whenever numbers and probability are thrown into the argument, despite his superior oratory skills. That one is the least important of the four, but this means I have yet to brace myself for impact on the other three fronts. For example, I want to mitigate the impact my depression and deathly cough had on me last semester by making the Dean's List this time around. I basically need to ace all my upcoming tests, other than psych-stat, to achieve that. I want to ensure I also have a way to financially support myself in Saratoga over the Summer, all while working towards something meaningful (other than outdoor survival classes and community service, I need to find a fucking internship in whatever social science a person has any use for me). Haven't heard back from anyone, not even the Subway employer, so not much reassurance there either. The last goal is that angsty thing involving nebulous variables that would be fatal to overanalyze with MY kind of brain and treat with anything other than honest (but composed) emotion, and some actual dialogue. Nothing that I can, or should be trying to with my inexperience, gauge in that arena.

Right after a day of paying homage to the Earth, God gives us the blizzard we all don't realize we've been begging to have. TWO WEEKS before classes end and there's more snow on the ground than there was in late February! I feel torn between laughing at the ironic accuracy with which the weather portrays my personal progress throughout this semester, and vomiting at the prospect of how much I would have to accomplish between now and May to ensure my other goals might be met (there will certainly be less time for growing those watermelon and lavender seeds, the insanely out-of-touch-with-reality Jon thinks).

The one thing on my side is patience. If only I was also productive and assertive... if only I was still thinking more of the silly things in my life that distracted me in the past (if only I could WILLFULLY fall asleep before 3 AM), I wouldn't be facing an imminent nervous breakdown for the first time in my life!

My urgent money problem I nearly finished writing on LJ will have to wait. Something only slightly short of amazing has transpired: I don't need Spandex to keep up with Bill...

Friday:

The first question on the Galaxies and Cosmo test, worth 30 points, was transcribed directly from one side of my notecard... need I say how I felt walking out of my last *real* class for the week?

The weather was amazing, too. Bill got us motivated to run, his own inspiration coming from the belief that sweating makes his pores larger, and therefore his skin tone more attractive (to each his own, right?).

Ad-libs was actually entertaining this time... I suspect Trevor has the crowd-pleasing magic, the kind that makes people (other than the social group that follows Ad-libs) laugh without control.

I beat Geoff and Peter the first time I played Magic in six years (with a deck of cards from my unused laundry bag that I mashed together while I was watching the others play a warm-up match). Unfortunately, even as I racked up damage with Black Vise, Scott bitch-slapped me with his TECHNICALLY ILLEGAL 50-card deck, leading me to a respectable but short of glorious second- place finish.

Saturday:
Ooooh! We had to get up at 6 in the morning... which meant a maximum of 4 hours of sleep for both Geoff and I (playing too much Magic and answering drunk passerbys' questions about elves) and getting to the Sports Center to help carry all the equipment down for Martial Arts Festival. By some other manifestation of the dumb luck that had taken hold this weekend, I was feeling completely devoid of sick symptoms until I had my 3 hours of Brazilian Ju-Jitsu and Military Combat Seminars. I tabled a bit after lunch with Walfield, realizing I was beginning to bottom out again, before going back to my room to nap.

Waking up from a phenomenal power-nap, it was clear in my mind that I was not going to the Mall to see 300, but with nothing else certain. Then I found pretty much everyone else who I considered viable weekend company at the d-hall, and there was a small rejoice of my surviving the first day of Martial Arts festival at the table before going on some interesting biology topics about whiskey and delivering babies. Then there was the SOCCER idea amongst the freshmen that spawned from some tactlessly loud conversation about starting a Vendetta in the dining hall. Fuck, guys... you're missing out if you aren't involved with a group of college students deciding on whim to use the green in front of Wiecking to kick a glow-in-the-dark ball into the pitch-black hours without ever acknowledging the most basic regulations of soccer! My martial arts pants may have been caked in mud, and my 'world-class goalkeeper' lip service ended by the uncontainable energy that radiates from Dani and her wonky shots, but Steph finally accepted my passes and our 'captain' Zach started mobilizing on the field, allowing us to win the 'universal point'.

Just as I was about to shower, Bill and Sarah Sears had found my bathroom (as well as Sean) and distracted me from the unpleasantries of getting work done (getting me acquianted with all the conventions of D&D charater-building in the scenario they *needed* a newbie) before meeting the soccer group again for Skidomedy. I had hoped that Xavi would forgo an opportunity to see Pan's Labyrinth (for the third time!) and hang out at the show with the skit on Pluto's sensational non-planet status getting him an easy hookup with The Sun, but I have no word from her about this as of yet; only creepy things from YouTube about Kermit the Frog and a live man on her LJ. It was a pretty no-brainer that my decision to hang around campus beat any performance the three hundred Titans could have put on for me on screen. The day ended with a sexile from Steph's room, and talking about (what else but sex mixed in with Judaism) with Melissa and Zach in the Howe lounge in front of where the people of various BAC's filtered in and out of the building.

Sundayyy

I got a little academic shit done today (facilitated by the fact that I got nearly 6 hours of sleep night after the soccer ordeal), but more importantly, I participated in as much martial arts as my body would allow me. My partner was having trouble throwing me, though, so I had to let her explore all the ways I could be slammed on the floor before I got my practice in. I also ran to town in record time got mouthwash from CVS, and overcame the difficulties of obtaining baking soda for the catastrophic salsa leak in my refrigerator (that had started affecting the taste of my cabot cheeses in the past week) by appointment at Reeves D.

Note to Sarah: I did not leave the table out of any kind of disgust or hurt, if that was your concern. While I admittedly thought you were being a bit close-minded (and Vanessa quite rude), I was simply engaged in my ridiulous weekend almost forgetting that I'm academically screwed this coming week for my indulgence outside of SMAF. I'm an agnostic myself (albeit with some Jewish upbringing) in case I haven't given you that back story :)

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I can't do this weekend any justice... I find I have simply been gratuitous with my positive adjectives in the past, and I will just have to settle with the assertion that this weekend contorted my body, overloaded my mind, and relieved my restless spirit from the rather montonous routine of consecutive movie-viewings and (recently) outing plans that revolve around Theo. Not that I don't enjoy those things on occasion, but I really needed something active and engaging in its own right like this without fully realizing it before.

Stop Pretending it's Spring Break and Wear Some Pants

I'm augmenting my LJ archives at this moment, on a night before a moderately weighty paper is due:

Why, might you ask, would I be trying to complete any verbally-intensive task when I have several pages to fill up for a grossly inflexible sociology professor by 11:10 am? Why, I ask back in exasperation, do they serve gourmet international dinners and desserts in the d-hall on said night, when I spent a good deal of it arguing out of principle about the merit of my response to a certain quiz question with a professor who *still* has curiousities about a non-existent 'other life' linked to my apparent inebriation in-class? By the time the argument had evolved to something vaugely of mutual understanding about how her teaching methods could cater less to the students unwilling to do the assigned reading, and how my initiative to approach her with this feedback in person deserved more consideration than the 'needs' of the students who wouldn't bother returning the midterm evaluation form given out in class, I had missed out on planned 'dinner date' with the freshman crowd I had struggled to understand [some members] from a less peripheral standpoint since the beginning of last year.

On the academic front, things are not a total disaster (yet!), but things definitely haven't been under total control either. Coming from a devastating fall semester, I was impressed with the implications of morale from the quality of work I had not delivered since the previous year, but I have found the impetus behind even this counter-movement to be finite after a few weeks.

In most of my classes, I find myself currently in the 'B' range, though I shouldn't even be there with my ability in some of those. This shows most sorely in my fizzling Linear Algebra performance where my initial enthusiasm for the subject was estranged in the pace of the class, and my subsequent neglect to take Vella's exhaustive explanations seriously (resulting in a mediocre grade on the take-home test, which was actually not quite so excusable in light of a 92 class average on the exam). My Galaxies and Cosmology grade, likewise, could benefit from more careful attention to homework questions and consistent review between tests. I am getting an 'A' in English Vocabulary, though it's to be taken for granted when the little weekly exercises cater to my short attention span, and not to be taken as a serious predictor of my overall GPA this semester, given that the course counts for 1 credit. I need to invest in something else, possibly something I'm not even aware of currently, if I want to accomplish that goal of securing a place on the Dean's list.

Something outside of the life I pretend to live, however, feels vaguely wrong. It's not quite occupying my mind but it hasn't persisted without some disruptions on my fragile focus. I suppose I would call it a dull pain that's damping the nerves even as it violently jostles them. It has something to do with the way all my enjoyment, within or without company, is cautious. Guilt, I volunteer to describe the gut reaction as, when I take measures of my recent success, and can't enjoy them as they are without some kind of reflection. I have given up this habit of thought on the notion that I cannot truly succeed on my own terms, but only on path illuminated by others.

I sometimes entertain the possibility that all matter of my thought was just plain wrong, although it's not useful in either case. If I learn anything from Mr. Walfield's dilemna (and he at least can realistically hope to have his moments of success on the transcript insulating the perplexity of his new challenges), I need to find where I'm useful/wanted, and work to keep the fragments of actual substance mostly restricted to my imaginary life from slipping from my fingers and building up a sustainable life from the ambitious base-level. I have met but a few people who are successful in the material sense, and yet are clearly more than peons in the other sense too. I am filled with true admiration for these individuals. I adore one of them, too.

I am still, nonetheless, a person with a sense of duty. I persuaded Julie to go to Linear just this once for the first time in 2 weeks, even as I am usually on the recieving end of persuasion. Of course, I shared the reasoning behind my concern for her life choices (in a beanbag chair she had ordered me to sit in) mere minutes before the start of the class period, as an old episode of House M.D. was playing on the monitor. Oh, and she just returned a book to me I thought I lost just as I was writing this...

Ok. This is an acceptable state of mind to depart to sleep in. I have written enough run-on sentences in one sitting sufficient to deem warm milk undrinkable. Goodnight, Strange World!

I'm off LJ for a week and I get tagged by some crazy friend. Well, I should be studying the etymology of English adjectives, but this is related enough (and far more easy on my poor attention span):

Figure 1
frvoliciousfast = Abbrev(frivolous+delicious+fast)

As Figure 1 illustrates in limited detail, my username is comprised of 3 words from Webster's Dictionary of Standard English, adapted to fit in a shorthand form suitable for a feasible existence in cyberspace. It's basically a post-modern reflection of how I perceive myself to have the gift of satisfying peoples' curiousities through expressing my fleeting, trivial concerns, essentially deadening them. Then I might unintentionally spill ice on my pants, and everything I say in my defense just becomes highly entertaining.

Fast, I suppose, is the verb-ingredient of this alias I compulsively affixed to the end for its implications of depriving oneself willingly. I can't laugh at my own idiosyncracies (em>because I understand them</em>, but take what's necessary to sustain my own sanity into humorous stride. Through some principle I've acquired in my idle lifetime, I have beliefs that not milking every situation for all its worth pays off in its own way, in a future life I don't have the maturity or experience to imagine now. At any rate, there is only a small quantity of low-hanging fruit to tempt me off my chosen path.

Hope that was moderately enlightening, if at all intelligible. If you are comfortable with this, then you should not have any qualms about me when I frvoliciousfast your mom. Thanks for hearing me out...

I have little wit to spare, so I won't waste it here

I'm so excited about our house next year... and I feel, on this rare occasion, that my own enthusiasm is contested by those sharing my situation. It's a feat to be as emotionally excitable and uninhibited as myself, to review that pivotal point on all that makes me Jon, but it may be more than attainable after what I've dealt with today: I was ready to start my Social Research Design reading, in the dining hall, when I saw Strudel, Beth and Sarah eating at the red posse table, and my quiet approach was greeted by a booming Strudel voice proclaiming "Speak of the Devil!" I was then brought up to speed about how they were talking about how much worse it would be to leave Gunther in my room than in the living room (this going back to a "veterinary gynaecology" discussion that would be indecent of me to reiterate in text, and should be only be requested at the presence of all four of us, eating dining hall Jambalya). Some of the more memorable lines included collaborative perverted jokes that festered between me and Strudel before we turned them on a slightly off-guard Sarah, and completely hapless Beth. "Fun-size Candy Bars" and the act of eating "Candy Bars with the Wrapper Still On" before we discussed examples of people (male and female) capable of seducing Beth. It was also amusing to hear Strudel tell me that getting laid would take the edge off my hormones (which wasn't suspicious in the least until he suggested the same thing to the girls). We were actually there until the guy had to kick us out of the d-hall for final closing...point in case that even a perfectly mundane routine of mutual dining and movie-viewing is substantial fun when we're all present in the isolated system (pardon ma chemie)!

On the other hand, I spent THIS ENTIRE DAY drawing pictures, finding out shapes and proportions that express beauty in the human body. If I didn't know the sporadic, uneconomical nature of my own motivation better, I would have looked for the nearest available section of Art 131: Visual Concepts with all the coursework up to date, and precede to fail at it once actually enrolled. In case such wasn't implied, I have next to no competence in the visual/studio arts, and most of my in-class 'doodling' consists of obscure stats that would boggle the hardest-core DM of MMORPGer D&Ders. Yet there's definitely something rewarding that I've never experienced before, as I penciled in eyebrows made up of purposefully drawn lines and tried to express the three-dimensional nature of the nose in a reasonably elegant fashion. If you want to see the kind of adventures I took with my spare stack of graph paper from 5th grade today, ask me in person.

Modern, Cool Nerd
91 % Nerd, 52% Geek, 47% Dork
For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.

Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)!

Congratulations!


Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you're interested in any of the following:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Professional Wrestling

Love & Sexuality

America/Politics


Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST


My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:



You scored higher than 98% on nerdiness


You scored higher than 78% on geekosity


You scored higher than 83% on dork points

---

As if the people responsible for e-mail spam were aware of my trendy nerdiness, I was beguiled into opening an junkmail by its innocuous subject heading assuming the form of an important current events editorial:

From: Gluhovich Sergei [Veselov@neuleita.com] Sent: Mon 2/19/2007 5:36 PM
To: Gilbert Rhonda
Cc:
Subject: North Korea Agrees to Nuclear Disarmament
Attachments:
View As Web Page

The Only way to Maximize your Sexual Power and Sperm quality/quantity.

Go and Order it here: http://www.yeeprint.com

P.S.: Approved by Doctors - 100% risk free.

--
rqnuoromoilolulkhtlmlomilkhklklimnmnjsmsljmomkmumrllmfinmhmrlr

Imagine that... I felt thoroughly decieved at the realization that the email was trying to sell me viagra when the subject heading only mentioned that a communist country at odds with the world may have peaceful intentions; but my faith in the e-mailers' intentions were instantly restored when they mentioned in the post script that this seemingly dubious product is actually recommended by doctors!

P.S. Is it me, or is 'junk' mail more than just a non-descriptive term for the content it usually contains (i.e. giving your johnson a bolster)?

Rock Music Fries Your Brains

Things are going alright. I enjoyed Friday night with the entertainment at the Spa and spontaneous ADHD company. The Jewish guy's act was pretty hilarious, with his unrelenting potty-mouth, and the random facts he posessed (I believed the 'luckiest woman in the world' anecdote only because it didn't include a dry-humping at the end). It was perhaps mainly my own opinion that deems his continued use of the 'dolphin' funnier with a little less elaboration after the introduction. I'm quite a fan of the 'tie-up' kink nonetheless. Liam wasn't too dissapointing either, even if mainly through virtue of his pre-taped videos. While I thought cellphone breakup made sense only as pop-parody, and some others seemed to come all too directly from Margaret Cho's vagina (I just think you overdo it, Cho), Parlex and Dr. Ulee were hilarious in their own right, though I think Ulee was all the funnier since the sex doctor reminded me of my physics professor last year in appearance and speech (yes, that's probably veerryyy wrong). Anyway, we got Liam Sullivan's autograph earlier than the crowd, mine on my Ace of Spades from the pack of dim-sum playing cards from a neglected pocket in my filthy jacket. I will now cherish these cards forever.

I indulged in my closeted joy of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on the bus, though I shared it momentarily with Geoff and April, as they inquired about the headphones over my ears. April bought the bday girl a hoola-hoop. Then we hit the bookstore, where I found the outhouse calendar, and my companions their respective one-dollar calendars. The remainder of the shopping trip was filled with reflective gyration, heavily involving poor Kendall's present. Then I labored academically until Stranger than Fiction showed...oh, and Red vs. Blue, before I passed out.

This is my assessment of a satisfactory, though not outstanding, weekend... an uncomplicated dry affair on a still dryer campus, for those obsessed with neutrality. I'm basically rested and almost ready to tackle another week of work; some tedium and hopefully some surprises. This coming week has potential as I have a less grueling schedule, and more importantly, a $30/hour offer for working with a HS Junior conducting a grant study on the effects of swimming on the mood with me in charge of helping her deal with the college-level statistics involved in the final analysis of the data. I'm supposed to meet her on Tuesday and Thursday after her varsity swim practices at the Skidmore SportsRec Center (saying a quick hello to temporary job and moral responsibility).

Iminently, I need to embark on more Magical Journeys with Wally, too...

Chapter 3 Test in HTML on Tuesday, Bitch

I've learned never to lower my guard against the heartless clutches of the failing human spirit, after an elaborate attempt at serious conversation about a thesis prospectus turning in my head with Gabe. But this quantum leap in social awareness didn't stop me from neglecting to bring my card and being denied entry by the lady at the table... this at least explains why they don't have student employees swiping us in anymore

Otherwise, I've managed to survive the worst week of this semester this far, which is more impressive than it sounds. I did this all while fulfilling my new years resolution of finding books to read for pleasure during the academic year. Some of the onerous tasks included handing in a tedious Linear Algebra assignment to a slightly exasperated math professor on Wendesday, stat quiz that afternoon, a 3-page gone 5-page paper on a social research proposal in methodological components due on Thursday morning, and an afternoon stat lab about describing another study criticizing methodology that kept me half an hour before my following 7 PM *stomach growl*. I'm also just happy to have gotten through the first Galaxies & Cosmology test; all the more happy perhaps, because I've departed from the mind-raping experience of squeaking out viable answers with barely any relevant knowledge (or a calculator performing the necessary exponential functions). I will not have to return to class on Monday with high expectations on my score, either!

Liam Sullivan is coming to the Spa tonight, whose cross-dressing antics are more impressive to my sister than to me. Still, a largely campus-bound student needs to fill his cultural void* with new stimuli when it presents itself outside the realm of youtube. Half of my friends' birthdays are coming up in the next 8 weeks... that's a lot of potential good deeds, in my book.

Excerpt from Jon's Book of Good Deeds:

Entry for 2/04-2/10/07

Burden	M	T	W	Th	F
Walked a girl with a cane to class	|X|	|X|	|X|	|X|	|X|

:D

On that cheerful note, I still can't use my computer. But at least my mouse is still working, as I plugged it into my friend's PC. I never thought I'd live the day to see my chinese-manufactured mouse outlast my (Plato sticker-ridden) Hewlett-Packard, but it seems miracles are never completely amiss, not even in a chinese hardware factory.

I hope this weekend proves refreshing, because I'm already getting weary of classes...

*Operational definition of this term provided by Steph

Coal from our vocabulary comes from the Latin derivative Carbonis or the Greek word Anthrax

I'm giving this livejournal thing a serious go again. The timing couldn't be much more ironic, as my computer went haywire and stopped acknowledging control inputs (i.e. the mouse and the keyboard) today, leaving me to hop from computer to computer in the library. I occasionally have things I want to share with other people while sounding less stupid than I do communicating verbally.

Though they won't be missed by any of you, I've locked away my previous lj entries for soley personal reference, as they encapsulated too much of my proverbial 'wallowing', not to mention largely irrelevant to the new time period during which I'm adding friends to the list. If there is any interest from you guys, a few might make their appearance in the friends' domain.

I have several side-projects I'm compelled to make progress on (if not complete). One of them involves work on my short-story collection, currently The Butcher's Gift, and contemplating highly probable attention to the subsequent story, Pleading for Sanity. I've even concieved an entirely new card game Rainbow Nova from my efforts seemingly sunk on a project of comparable ambitions, though this will be staged in the ways I bring it about in public, and involve much more streamlining.

Though popularizing games have too many social factors beyond my control, even amongst my friends, I have fears about printing out my stories. It doesn't help that I'm inconsistent about my stylistic self-consciousness. Though I'm probably yelling into the desert, I want to share that quality work has only manifested itself at times I'm excited about my work, and that the (often uncontrollable) aspects of my life are going at the right tempo. In short, I suspect from my own experiences of having writers' block that most other struggling people who pride themselves first and foremost as writers are not losing their creative capacity. I'm not denying that writing has a skilled component; there's a reason why people who write regularly are simply better than me; though unlike even martial arts, where the amount you practice at least contributes to the consistency of quality, engagement of the whole self into the writing process may be impossible, and therefore the greater dissapointments as you sit there forcing the ideas. I suppose you just need to write as often as you need before you slip out of that 'world' that novelists and playwrights attest they submerge in. Spending your energy artificially enhancing the environment around every aspect of your waking life, however, seems inevitably to lead to diminishing returns.

My toneless 'consolation' aside, I'll be posting my fiction up here in the future to make this webpage a slightly more interesting place to visit... your criticism shaping this abode further to the delight of other readers, if you so will it!