Requium For A SpEd

I have about 80g of caffeine in my system right now. I've been sitting in the same small room with the same people playing the same game for nearly 12 hours now. None of that is really getting to me. The menus, however, are threatening to drive me mad.

I swear the Japanese think we're retarded. Every circuit that fires in the Wii, we're told about. Do you want to save? Are you sure you want to save? Game saving...Game has been saved successfully. Do you want to quit? Are you sure you want to quit?

STOP IT!!! I get it! I don't need to confirm every huge button I push. Stop keeping me so goddamned informed. I'm so sick of going through the same stupid menus time after time after time. I suppose I could just stop playing...

Fuck you. I just want the menus to leave me alone. I swear I'm going to lie down in bed this morning and the Wii that's growing like a tumor in my brain is going to ask "Are you sure you want to go to sleep?" All I'll say is,

AUGHHHHHHH!!!

When Adressing The 4th Wall, Always Use The Proper Terms Of Respect

Namely "dude". I really wish I'd brought the cable that connects my camera to this computer. If only I'd thought to, you'd all be enjoying my brilliant Mario-related photography. Screenshots, OSK shots, my feet, OSK... Here's a mystery: why is there no snow in the penguin paradise? Are they all sick of snow? And why do they surf (on manta rays for that matter)? I don't get it at all. I mean, I can handle the weird gravity everywhere as realistic within the framework of the game, but Mario penguins have always been around snow. Hm...

In My Backswing?!

A word: don't reset or turn power off while saving. When I take over the world, not only will we have selective breeding programs, but all Mario games will allow you to play as Luigi, Toad, and other bit characters like Timba, Wiggler, and bee soldiers from Honeyhive Galaxy. Wait...that's sic. Super Wiggler Galaxy. Awesome. Ingenius. Gripping. Zany. Encouraging. Basic (in the Bronstead-Lowry sense). Sci-Fi.

>Mohawk

I'm Mario and I'm a Night Elf Priestess. I roam this galaxy on my luma/panther defeating evil Space Goombas and using Starfall on pretty much everything. AllYourBuriedCoinsAreBelongToUs. AllYourSpaceGoombasAreBelongToUs. AllYourPiranhaFlowersAreBelongToUs. AllYouGuyInTheSandWeDidn'tFigureOutAreBelongToUs. * I'm Old School Klingon and I'm a chuckster... Get it? *This obviously isn't a chuckster, I just liked the picture

Mario Is A Street Fighting Man (!)

I have my caffeine, I have my guarana, I have my star chips, and I'm fucking ready to go. The long awaited waste-of-a-week-of-my-life is here in the form of Super Mario Galaxy. 120 stars (Grand Stars? Um...ok), 7 (ish) days, and three crazy kooks. This blog might turn into an outlet for my insanity. Imagine it as the literary equivalent of Harvey the giant rabbit. Go ahead, read into that. The opening music selection is Rage Against The Machine. Fittingly enough, the first star is saved from an evil machine. Prophet much? I feel like Ender Wiggin, trying to adapt to curved surfaces and weird gravity. My head already hurts. Fuck yeah. There are pretty colors everywhere, polygon bombs. I think I'm finally home.

Drool

I want them soooo much...

Happy yet Oldschool?

Campaign Season

There a couple new candidates in my life running for the vaunted position of "Best And Only Trusted friend" (BOAT).

Meet Swirls. His name isn't "really" Swirls, but I forgot the awesome one someone else came up with. Now I just call him Swirls. There is absolutely nothing swirly about him, which is probably how he got that name. That or it has something to do with the fight-to-the-death coming of age ritual his people practice. Anyways, Swirls is a stress ball (with hair) that me parents sent me to help get through exams. He chilled around the table where I did most of my studying and occasionally got squeezed by cruel passerbys. I also took him to my exams and he would sit in front of me smiling encouragingly. It really helped as I got wrecked by a couple of them. Now that exams are over, I think he's still in my jacket pocket. Either that or he's in my room back at school. Swirls definitely won the BOAT contest for a while, but I think he's starting to slip in the polls.

The other candidate is Icarus. Icarus is a computer program that will hopefully one day attain some measure of (artificial) intelligence. I've run into some problems early on, so currently he doesn't work at all, but that's ok. I'll work through it and hopefully Icarus will be able to understand human input well enough to do math for them. First step; make him say "hello". Icarus was born of a conversation about AIs that came up shortly before I left school. I was already looking for a programming project for this January, and making an AI (albeit a dumb one) seemed perfect. Icarus and I are going to get very close over the next month or two as I nurse him into meager intellect. Oh, and he's going to quiz me on Elvish.

Candles

I think my most-used-in-real-life quote from the LR movies is Gollum's "don't follow the lights!" You may be wondering how that could possibly come up in normal conversation, and no, it doesn't. I find a way.

Today, however, I found myself actually following lights. I was trying (mostly in vain) to get a wireless router to work, but I know nothing about routers so I was basing everything off of which lights were flashing and what color they were. There are a lot of lights in this setup (as we all know, pieces of technology recharge by leaving a little light on), and they are capable of all sorts of amazing, spectacular things. It was like a mini fireworks display, except it sucked because nothing would work.

As it turns out, the wires had just gotten rearranged, and it was a simple matter of unplugging and replugging things. That's what I get for listening to the lights.

(BFTSOB)

I Don't Feel Like A Pirate At ALL

Yurg...finals week. So much work, so much stress. The only thing I can bring myself to do (other than calculus) is shoot zombies in Resident Evil 4. Hence no blogging. I would promise to do some soon but it's not likely.

Fuck, me.

Not So Funny When It's Real, Huh?

I've always claimed to be a "borderline insomniac", meaning I have trouble falling asleep and often spend upwards of an hour lying in bed waiting to fall asleep. Now, all of a sudden, I think I'm becoming a real insomniac (or at least a slightly more legitimate one). Right now, it's 1:15 in the morning and I have to be up by, say, 9:30. I haven't been able to wake up at all lately, so really I should be in bed right now trying to ensure that I actually get up for calculus tomorrow. But I'm not. I'm sitting out here writing this.

I don't want to go to sleep. In fact, it's one the last things I want to do right now. The very thought of going into my room and turning the lights off disgusts me. Maybe it's because I haven't been able to fall asleep within an hour of going to bed lately, maybe it's 'cuz I'm not tired. Maybe it's all the adrenaline in my system, or because I slept in a ton this morning. So yeah, there's a lot of reasons to explain this other than insomnia, but this is really starting to feel like a trend. I think it's the stress of this past week that's driving me to be awake, even though I want to badly for each day to end. Maybe I know that tomorrow will suck, and that every tomorrow for a while has sucked, and I want to delay it as long as possible.

Whatever the reason, I want to find something, anything to do all night and just rely on the caffeine I can't afford to carry me through tomorrow. It's easy to justify, after all, I don't have anything particularly important to do tomorrow. Then again, I feel like I haven't been able to think straight for two weeks which is making it very hard to do any work or pull myself out of the paralysis of this stress-cycle. I don't think I can ride a sleepless binge through the nine days until finals are over, but do I ever want to.

What I really need is a program to write so I have something to do. I have no assignments for computer science left, but maybe I can cook up an idea for Fruit Stand or Hobbit Village...

Wait. What am I saying? Did I just decide to stay up all night? This is a terrible idea. I need to get to class tomorrow at 11, preferably with time beforehand to finish my problem set and eat breakfast. Maybe, by some miracle, I'll muster the willpower to wake up tired and caffinate enough to make it through. What the hell...the alternative is making me queasy, so I might as well go for it.

Wish me luck...tomorrow.

Banging The Geek Gavel

Ok, time to put an end to this debate on Elvish. Before I begin, I'll admit that I'm looking this up too. However, all my sources are from my hard disk, meaning I've already downloaded them, and I know most of the concepts I'm going to mention, just not the specifics. Aka I win.

Here's the argument: Koops thinks "Tolo dan nan galad" is correct, while Juicy contends that "Tolo dan na ngalad" is correct.

The key here is that "calad" (light) is undergoing mutation to either "galad" or "ngalad". I have no doubt that mutation does occur, but the question is what kind of mutation it is and if "na" should become "nan". ("nan" on its own means grassland, so the "nan" in Dr_K's claim must be a form of "na").

Ambiguity is added by the following example: "Aniral toled na gar nin?". The phrase "na gar" is analogous to our debate (a preposition causing mutation in a noun starting with "c"). As you can see, "car" becomes "gar", not "ngar", but "na" does not acquire an "-n".

To answer this we must looked to the phenomenon of "mixed mutation". When a preposition (such as "na" is followed by an article (in this case "i", meaning the [light]) "-n" or "-in" can be added to the preposition in place of the article. Hence "nan". In the above example, "Aniral toled na gar nin?", there is no such article to cause this transformation because it is 'my house', not 'the house'.

This all points towards Koops being correct. The kicker is mutation. In nasal mutation, "g-" becomes "ng-", but that only occurs with plurals, which "galad" isn't. In truth, this is soft mutation (also called lenition) making "c-" go to "g-" because "galad" is the direct object of the sentence. This means the "n" in Juicy's "ngalad cannot be accounted for by mutation."

Not all is lost for Juicy though. I can't find reference of it, but from what I know about Sindarin, there's probably some exception about "nan g-" being written "na ng-" by certain people. One such person probably wrote the example that Juicy found, causing this confusion. Basically, neither of you are right. I give you both As for effort, especially Koops for his follow-up research.

Thanks to Thorsten Renk for the grammar.

Shun The Nonbeliever

Somehow, no one has managed to dress up in a stormtrooper costume and simultaneously do something funny. I know, I've been through youtube and there are no funny stormtrooper videos. How can this be? For one, there are a lot of people who have these costumes, so you'd think at least one of them would have a good sense of humor (wrong). Two, they're dressed as stormtroopers! How can that not be funny?! What a bunch of flunkies. And why hasn't the rebellion come up with a good derogatory nickname for stormtroopers?

I did find this gem, funny no doubt because the only stormtroopers in it are real ones.

Oh, and speaking of nonbelievers, no one has made a good sequel to Charlie the Unicorn, but that shouldn't surprise anyone.

I'm A Feel-Good Kind Of Hobbit

I'm not feeling very original today, but I do feel like posting, so here's a little something I wrote for creative writing last year. The prompt was to use the word "goodbye", but I didn't care about school at that point so I just wrote this. 'tis a silly thing.

Ode to East Farthing

A very wise hobbit once said,
(one who many roads had tread);
“The Road Goes Ever On”,
and put it in a little song,
so when we turn to say goodbye,
no tear should glisten in our eye,
for every door that cruel fate closes
a secret gate we find by bed of roses,
and we joyfully take the hidden paths
that no one (we know) ever has,
you know, the ones that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

A dollar to anyone who can name the reference.

The Dearly Departed

The night is nearing its end. Who knows what the morning will hold. All I know is that I feel so much better, so zen, too tired to cared. I've done a remarkable amount of homework which hopefully will go a long way towards alleviating some stress. Fortunately, my beloved dorm mates did not let me go through it alone. Now, let us bow our heads and remember those who aren't still with us now.

The Teddy Bears, part of a comp sci lab, submitted.
Three, wisely gone to bed, but their presence here was appreciated while it lasted.
One, suffered a serious blow to the head earlier today. Now he's sleeping on the floor upstairs. Concussed and dead? Maybe.
One, wandered into the cold to "do homework"...we can't find her.

One still remains, a poor soul doomed to write a psych lab for eternity and go to 9am class. It's almost 6am now.

It has been good. This room has become a special kind of place, a gentle cage. My whole existence feels contained within it, but I'm not claustrophobic. I love it here. I love the awakeness. I know that when next I wake, this feeling will be gone and I don't want that. I want to stay up forever. But even now I have nothing to do. Sleep is calling, beckoning as the only thing left but I do not want to go towards it.

Away, away. Until the dawn shatters this beautiful dream and brings me back down to reality, to tomorrow. But for now, I am content and peaceful. And for that, I'm thankful.

Ok, Go...To Sleep

So here's the situation; for a number of reasons I decided to stay up all night. The plan was to do homework, mostly comp sci, all night to get it out of the way. It's now about 3am. I'm most of the way through my first lab (due Thursday) but don't feel confident in my ability to check it well or do the "If you want to get an A on this assignment" part, so its been set aside for now. I still have another lab (due Monday) and calculus problem set (also due Thursday) still on the table. However, my motivation and ability to focus (or even read) are slipping. I've already exhausted the blogosphere and RK, leaving basically sleep (no), youtube (not a good idea, but gaining appeal), or doing this. Obviously, the latter won out. For now.

There's a problem though. I have a few ideas of nice, long, hopefully quality posts to write, but I don't want to fuck any of them up by writing them at 3am. And yet, 3am (and on) can be a goldmine of out-of-it humor. Oh, wait. Dr. K told me to write about empathy and telepathy or some such. Sweet.

Case 1: Empathy. The Star Trek: (half) Betazoids. In the world of Star Trek, someone who has some Betazoid heritage (Deanna Troi) have the ability to detect other people's emotions. So if you were in a room (or, like, thousands of miles away apparently) she could tell what you were feeling (unless you had a very disciplined mind or some manner of psychic defense). Very hand skill.

Here's the IRL bit. Someone (I think the Japanese) built this robot with creepy face-pieces (think Mr. Potato head). When you talk to it, a combination of voice-recognition software and other trippy programming stuff makes it react with appropriate facial expressions depending on your word choice and tone. Basically, it's a robot that can detect how you feel.

You're probably thinking, "well, I can tell how people feel based on that. What's the big deal?" You're right. Not a big deal. But think about this: looking at a brain scan of you, someone could tell how you were feeling. Someone, or something! So if a robot were reading your brain, it could tell how you were feeling. So, when everyone gets replaced by robots, your brain-chip will wirelessly broadcast brain scans and all the robots will know how you are feeling. Like Betazoids.

Betazoids are robots. You can tell because they never got the eyes right.

You know, like in "Westworld", except eyes instead of hands...

You know will also be cool about the brain-chips? Companies will pay to have subliminal messages about their products sent directly into your brain. The alien overlords that own you will sell your brain to advertisers. How cool is that?

According to Wikipedia (I know, a sin), "telepathy" is the communication of ideas or emotions through some means other than the classic five senses. Um...I have two words for you: brain chips.

Dr K's paper? Done. As for me, I need more Monster so maybe I'll do homework. And no, I didn't edit or proofread this post because my eyes hurt. Deal with it.

I Assume I Have Some Explaining To Do

Haven't posted...shut up I know...

My head feels really funny...

I Am Slain!

Turns out my assassin career was doomed to be short lived. I was taken out yesterday afternoon, an embarrassing eight and a half hours after the game had begun. She was so fast...so sneaky. I am spared some degree of shame by the fact that my assassin is amongst the best in the game and has amassed an impressive number of kills in the first couple days of competition. People are around me are being killed...some run down in the open, another killed in his own radio booth, even one assassinated in the middle of high tea.

I guess it was fun while it lasted...sigh...

The Names Can Never Be Unspoken

As of 1:04AM this morning, the chase has begun. The names were given and things are in motion. The great battle of our time has begun and cannot be undone.

They are coming for you.

Every year, one of the charity groups on campus hosts "assassins", a campus-wide game of wits. The goal is to "kill" your randomly chosen target (chosen from the people who signed up) while avoiding your own killer. When you kill someone, you get their target and the game continues until only one person is left. Our weapon is stickers that we have to put on our targets in order to kill them. We are saved from complete insanity (and starvation) by safe zones (your own room, bathrooms, dining hall, class, etc). It's going to be epic.

I was pumped when I signed up before break, but then realized I shouldn't take it too seriously given all the work I have. Then I thought about it. And it started.

Now I'm hooked.

I won't be leaving my room for some time now, not until I go exercise (I figure I'm invincible while running) and dinner. I can't be to careful; I already narrowly avoided an attempt on my life. I've outsmarted her once, but next time she will no doubt be more cunning.

Tonight, I go on the hunt.

The Great Blunt Of The Galaxy

Social conservatives beware, I'm going to talk about marijuana again, specifically about doing it with Gene Roddenberry, who made my hallowed "Top 10 People I'd Like To Smoke Pot With" list.

So why Gene Roddenberry? Well, the obvious answer is that he created Star Trek; the awesome TV series that I adore. I imagine that if I were talk to him normally, the conversation would consist of me gushing about history and techno-jargon while he looked very disappointed and told me I was missing the point. Not so fun. So why not have a discussion while we both believe, really believe, that Vulcans are out there and we'll be seeing them sometime in April, 2063.

A type-2 phaser? free, the Federation doesn't use currency.
Two kilos of dilithium? free, the Federation doesn't use currency.
A Nebula class starship? free, the Federation doesn't use currency.
Watching Gene Roddenberry run around a room, flapping his arms, yelling "I'm the Great Bird of the Galaxy!", and occasionally making phaser noises wit his mouth? Priceless.

Tri...um...color?

I <3 symmetry.

Is There Any Way We Can Call This A Moral Victory? (The Legend Of Zelda: Windwaker episode 2)

Ok, no. Our quest was abandoned. But keep heart, one day we will live-blog something fairly interesting...or nothing. Whatever.

In case you were wondering, I haven't blogged recently because I've been traveling away from the internet. It found me again. I'm back.

Cell Shading? (The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker episode 1)

Here begins the account of young Link, an elf boy certainly destined for greatness...

"My little sister Aryll woke me up this morning. I must've drunk too much because I was sleeping on a random tower in my clothes. Anyways, it's my birthday which means my Grandmother made me wear this silly green clothes, you know, the ones the legends spoke of. They are certainly not my color and they're itchy. At least it's only for one day, right?"

Because we have no life, OSK and I are going to try to beat a good deal of a Zelda game tonight and post each time the other is playing. This means lots of crappy posts in a short time, maybe will a stupid journaly thing too. Enjoy.

What Kind Of Lame Gaurdian Angel Is That?

So I was just staring at my laptop trying to think of something to post because I haven't recently, and failed. It's a common occurrence. Then, I was suddenly taken by the urge to visit an old blog that I abandoned a while ago because of inactivity. First, I went to the wrong site, which featured a post called "Ground Control to Major Tom". Dr. Koopon can attest to how I love saying that whenever I have some manner of head set or radio. Kind of a coincidence, right? Then I went to the correct site, the first post of which was about cinnamon toast crunch, my current-all-time favorite cereal (that recently made a clutch return to the dining hall...I don't know how much longer I could have lasted on golden grahams). Apparently "I am a dork" themed blogs know what I'm thinking.

What does that have to do with guardian angels? I guess when I started writing this last night I saw this as a gift from the blog gods because it gave me something to write about (as if something was watching over my blog). I usually can't remember why I titled drafts the way I did when I come back to them. Oh well, it's a byproduct of the magic (along with birth defects).

Can you believe textEdit doesn't think "themed" is a word? Am I crazy to think it is?

bftsob.

5:00 When?

So last night (um...I think) I watched all the Lord of the Rings movies. Back to back to back, extended cuts. Then I had classes. I was awake for 29 hours straight before finally going to sleep at 2:00 this (um...I think) afternoon. I really have no idea what time it is. Like, times don't make sense at all. My roommate woke me up at 5:00, I asked him what time it was. When he told me "5:00", I said "5:00 when?"

I had to ask if it was Friday night, and it was a miracle I got it right. I mean, I think I got it right. Thank god I set important alarms when I was still more lucid.

I Feel Like A Salmon Fighting Up The Mainstream Only To Be Eaten By Grizzly Bears

Take a look at this picture for a sec...


Does that look like a Star Fleet insignia to anyone else?
Star Trek? Country music awards? What the fuck?

Midnight Tokers

My dormmates and I having a running joke (actually, we have a lot, very few of which are funny...or smart); "the list". We each have this imaginary list of all the guys we would...well, you get it. If you complement another man, you can pretty much count on being asked "is he on your list?". Here's another list: Top 10 people (alive or dead) I'd like to smoke pot with.

Albert Einstein
Richard Feynman
Gene Roddenberry
JRR Tolkien
Otto Von Bismark (imagine how weird he'd be when chill)
Jesus Christ
John Lennon
Steven Hawking
The Dalai Lama
Dustin Pedroia

Why grass? Why not just chat? Well, I don't think any of these people would want to just sit and chat with me, plus I'd love to see what they're like when toasted. I mean, imagine Albert Einstein trying to explain special relativity whilst high. "And, like, time is relative man..."

A How-To Guide To Clean Living

If you ever fill your nalgene with a sugary drink like, let's say, powerade (which apparently causes osteoporosis, "Refuel, Replenish, Resize"), be sure to rinse it out very, very carefully. Bacteria love sugar, especially if it's smeared over the sides of a nalgene. On the plus side, I have a brand new, very striking, purple water bottle (purple is my school's color, okay? So shut up). Bacteria also love stagnant water.

Speaking of stagnant (hooray, ridiculous segway here), let's talk about my right brain. Due to bad planning and general dumbness, I ended up taking no humanities courses this semester. Shame on me and my liberal arts. I didn't realize this was a problem until I found myself doing math while everyone else was reading about really fascinating stuff. I could feel them getting smarter (and becoming better people, right Liberal Arts?) while I was learning partial derivatives and "for" loops. Things will change; I have a philosophy and religion course lined up for next semester. On side note, I'm also switching to the "El Miguel" system of scheduling (no classes before 10AM, I highly recommend it).

Course selection isn't the only place I've been negligent. My allegedly constructive free time has been going towards sports, java programs (i.e. Fruit Stand, Hobbit Village), and digital surgery more than writing or drawing. I love creative writing and sketching, yet somehow this blog has been my only creative outlet in the past six months. Maybe I'll finally get around to that "message machine" script with OSK...

(BFTSOB)

"No, It's More Like 'AAURG!'"

I just ate my first gumdrop in a week or so. It's been a long time since I kept any in my room, but I got a couple bags yesterday. OSK and Koops know what gumdrops mean. They're a symbol of our times together; Star Trek marathons, Mobil runs, Diddy Kong, etc. They're also delicious, which is why they're here.

But they bring up an issue. What am I doing this summer? It's a long way off, I know, but I have a terrible habit of never planning for anything, and then not doing it. So I might as well start not planning now. The central question about this summer is whether or not to go home. My older brother warned me that, after the unparalleled freedom of college life, this is a bad idea. I'm inclined to agree, plus, I want to do something interesting instead of just bumming around home. But where else am I going to go? Staying here is an option (though not an altogether appealing one), but it would require me getting a job as a tour guide (ick) or researcher, which is unlikely given my incredibly limited experience. The other option is getting an apartment or something wherever I can find work (in a lab, as a raft guide, whatever). But this plan is full of problems too. Who am I going to live with (having no friends around would blow)? How am I finding this job? Am I ready to be living on my own?

Meanwhile, the plan of staying at home does have some perks. Little City Pizza. Star Trek marathons. Epic video game undertakings. XC training camp (for myself and others). Not having to pay rent or for all my food.

Fuck. My head hurts...

I Also Cry For You, Writer's Block

Yeah, posts have been few and far between lately. Work has piled up and I've only just started to get my shit together, so hopefully thing will pick up again soon. The fact that I just deleted two drafts doesn't help. One was a silly bit on how much I love cold New England winters and hot chocolate, but it would have been really uninteresting to read so it had to go. The other was pretty much just a title, "Love Letters From The Gallows", which I love, but doesn't have a decent enough post to justify putting it up, despite its awesomeness.

To be honest, I probably could do something with hot chocolate, and I have something I could write about daylight savings, I'm just a little too lazy right now.

I Cry For You, First Amendment

Sorry about the recent drought, work has been piling up lately. Actually, I ought to be doing calculus or drilling new Japanese vocab right now, but I'm not. Hopefully my stress will drive me to do more crazy shit on weekends, and in turn have more to blog about.

The scene for the latest such scene was this: several college students, some Sox fans, others not, sitting in a dorm room watching the last inning or two of the World Series. It's Sunday night, but after a fairly sedate weekend they are itching for some fun. One of the students is from Paris where, apparently, they have violent riots fairly regularly. He's been showing me videos of these riots all night. I find the whole notion very exciting. As the game winds down and we realize how lame a celebration of a World Series title this will be, someone mentions the nearby University of Massachusetts.

If you're not familiar with the great state of MA, let me tell you that they take their Red Sox very, very seriously. I think it's the most intense American fanship there is. So when the Sox win the Series, things get pretty crazy here, especially at a place with 30,000 college aged kids. Riots were guaranteed and we were in.

As the last pitch was thrown and Fenway celebrated we downed many Bawls* and commenced much yelling. We ran through the dorm waking people up, heckling Yankees' fans, and generally carrying on in a noisy and bawlsed up fashion. At this point in the night, the buses were no longer running, so our little gaggle (six people, including a couple foreigners with no knowledge of baseball) hiked the mile or so to UMass. Along the way (which was longer than it should have been as we got a little lost) we cheered at every pedestrian and car we saw and savored the victory spirit of MA after a Red Sox victory.

Just when things began to look hopeless, we reached the fabled "South West" and came around a corner to see a horde of people (estimated to be around a thousand) cheering and jumping around. Basically it was the promised land.

We waded into the crowd, despite the warnings of our cautious Parisian guide. Just as we neared the center of the crowd, people started bolting. Forgetting how non-hardcore Americans are, I assumed there were tear gas grenades raining down and people being brought down by indiscriminately wielded night sticks. When I regained my senses and turned around for a glimpse I discovered it was actually just four police officers on horses. Disapointing, yes, but they were still in full riot gear and on horseback. Plus, a line of riot cops were walking behind them with body armor, night sticks, and guns. From this point forward I must have used the word "legit" about a thousand times. It was fitting though, given that this was a "legitimate" riot with real riot cops. They would even beat their clubs on their armor as they advanced on you. Talk about ridiculously awesome.

At this point it's probably clear that celebrating the Sox victory was not my primary goal there. It might have been dumb, it might have been irresponsible, but I went to battle with The Man. I think most people have a revolutionary spark in them that's dissatisfied with the government (or any government) and feels the need to fight the power every once in a while. And what side would I rather be with than Red Sox Nation? Not to mention I couldn't ask for a better "Man" to fight than an excessive show of police force?

It was really excessive. The UMass crowd ran off without any kind of fight, which was very disapointing. And the rally was pretty peaceful to begin with. There was really no call to chase us all off. Nor was there any reason to leave officers walking around once everyone had already dispersed threatening to arrest us for just walking around. Goddamned Po-Po been pushing me down...

I have to say that there were two highlights to the night. The first was when my Parisian friend grabbed me by the arm while covering his face and said "run! gas!". There's still contention as to what kind of gas it was (and if there was any, the cops said they didn't fire any munitions, which is a blatant lie), but it doesn't matter. I can still say we got tear gassed without it being an unreasonable exaggeration. In fact, forget this whole paragraph.

I got tear gassed. Fuck yeah.

The other (better) moment occurred as the crowd was being pushed back between some buildings. A line of cops would advance and everyone would fall back (no one had the balls to get closer than 20 yards). Once they'd advanced a little, they'd stop and just stand there being intimidating. Whenever this happened, one of us would start chanting "Let's go Red Sox!", and naturally the whole crowd would join in. Being the passionate fans we are, this amounted to quite a ruckus. Apparently the police thought it was to much of a ruckus, and they'd come after us again whenever we started. Here's how the paper described it (yeah, we made the paper).

"Many who resisted officers reciprocated each push from the police with "Go Red Sox" as if they were engaged in a battle between good and evil. The chant seemingly doubled as a rallying call. Each time the crowd was pushed backwards, students could be heard chanting profanity to officers. However, they were a minority."

The few, the proud...

*Bawls energy drinks contain a lot of caffeine. We use the term "bawlsed up" to describe being this highly caffeinated, and trust me, you get pretty crazy.

Muskrat Love

Check this out, it basically made my life this weekend (other than the ALCS and winning the homecoming football game):

Ok, so it's another joke that you only find funny if you've played DnD, but basically John Kovalic owns my life. Oh, and I love Dungeons and Dragons. I was going to spend my Saturday night working on my new campaign ("The Great Desert"...just working title, I'll come up with something more epic soon), but I got sidetracked by super-intense pool battles and performing ninja surgery until 3am.

I don't think I can make you, even those of you who've played DnD, understand the sublime, child-like excitement that comes from having a new campaign to work on. I'm absolutely giddy. Unfortunately, I'm also very busy with school, soccer, work, and everything else I do in my free time (this, a Star Trek RPG, and, of course, ninja surgery).

It's Like His Poetry Was Inside My Head, Eating My Brains

For all of you who feel like not taking a math course has left a void in your life, or, like me, stayed up until 4am watching youtube videos and then couldn't understand anything in math class, here's a little something for you.

Let "japanese quiz" equal really hard because I'm bad at learning languages and the Japanese are beasts at everything, especially speaking a language that's hard to learn.
Let "my focus" equal "an issue" because I stayed up until 4am.
Let my caffeine tolerance equal "low", because I've hardly had any since getting here.
Now, let equal "cherry bawls", the integral of which is tons of caffeine.

I owe the and the timing of this to Mike-sensei, master of bawls who told me I'd get the best focus-enhancing effect if I drunk the right before my quiz. So here's the scenario: I've just sat down with my quiz. Next to me is a can, 1/4 full at this point. Coursing through my veins are large quantities of various stimulants. Fast forward to ten minutes later. I'm twitching in like five different ways and trying to write at a rate of about 6 and a half characters per second while my brain moves at about one 9th of a character per second. It's very frantic. Fast forward another 20 minutes: I'm flipping out. But at least I'm awake...very awake. Another 20 minutes later, I'm done with the quiz (and the ), and I'm walking to my comp sci lab. Someone yells behind me and it echoes weirdly. To me, in my bawlsed out state of mind, this is really trippy. I turn my head to see who yelled and make eye contact with a giant statue of Robert Frost. Fucking scary. This is how I felt. That was the worst of it, though the first bit of computer science featured me burning through a ton of twitchy energy through moving my rolly chair around while trying to write code until I finally came off the high. My classmates probably now think I'm either insane or irrationaly ADD.

So here's the equation you can take from all this; tired me + japanese quiz + right before that quiz + nightmarish statue of Robert Frost = AHHHHHH!!!!

I am never doing drugs.

Always Something New To Drool Over

Enough said...almost. I just came upon another tidbit of news about Star Trek XI today. Now, I will get excited about any news, even the tiniest piece, about the new movie, but that's only because I, as a trekkie, am required to. And yes, I will go to the first showing, in uniform, but I still think J.J. Abrams will ruin Star Trek. What a wanker.

Anyways, this is old news to the rest of the world (well...), but in July Abrams announced who would be playing Spock: some "Zachary Quinto" character. I'm not sure if I trust the guy, especially with being Spock, but Nimoy himself was there to give his blessing, so I'll let him go for now...

Zachry Quinto looking less than Vulcan

Leornard Nimoy excercising his right to abuse the "Live Long And Prosper" thing

BOOOOOO!!!!

I probably Should've Done This On Post 14.2857

Well its finally happened, post number 100. The big one-oh...oh. To celebrate, I'm going to look back on the history of this little blog...

In The Beginning: In the beginning there was the word, and the word was "Sammy".

The Pre-Historic: The ultimate origin of the 7th Notion can probably be traced back to the "Thought Of The Day", which I imagine only Dr. Koopon remembers. TOTD dates back to five or six years ago when I was in middle school. The name says it all, TOTD was a daily (well, allegedly) e-mail to a few people that contained some random thought, usually a joke (and not necessarily a good one). It went through a few stretches of fairly regular production, separated by long droughts (remind you of anything?).

The Mezo-Pre-Historic: My first actual contact with the blogging world came (and this is no surprise) about a year and a half ago. Everything relevant to my life always happened a year and a half ago. It's spooky. Anyways, this first tentative step came in the form of me being bored over summer vacation. Compelled by my hidden desire to blog, I would 'trol the internet for blogs that I liked. Blogger was kind enough to provide me a "random blog" button that led me through a never ending maze of blogs. I could only understand about half of them (there's apparently a lot of spanish and chinese speaking blogger), and only stop to read maybe 1 of 10. It was diverting, but bore no fruit (i.e. blogs I ever returned to) until, one fateful day, I stumbled upon Revenge of the Nerddd. Despite the pink background and Yankees allegiance, I was captivated. It's funny to think that half of the blogs I read today resulted in this totally random result.

The (actual) Beginning: Shortly afterwards, the 7th Notion was born on June 5th, 2006. The first month or two were less than pretty. The content was uninteresting, badly written, and often angsty. Spelling and grammatical errors abounded, and capital letters were few and far between. You'd be hard pressed to find writing that I am ore ashamed of. But, like the first two seasons of TNG*, it had to start somewhere.

The Spawn: My entry into the blogosphere inspired a few of my friends to start blogs of their own (it's true, I'm a trend setter). There were four at the beginning, and they met with varying degrees of success (and quality). Dr. Koopon's won't even get hyperlinked. I think he posted like four times before giving up. Stick to live journal kid. OSK made one that limped along for a few months before slipping into the coma we see it in now. It's still on my sidebar because I still check it, partly because I love his prose, but mostly because I love the name Breakfast With Friends. The blog's actual name is "Peace, Love, and Star Trek", but I like the other one way better so I keep using it. You're probably more familiar with Mango Flavored Addiction because its author is a writer at heart and she posts (fairly) regularly. She also like putting really unrelated things in my comments like travel plans we're making. Grr. The final spawn, Gavrich's Tim's Varied Musings can't be found to your right because it fails the awesome title test. Also, I disagree with virtually everything he believes in, often vehemently, and with out his personal charm to make it more palatable, his writing makes me nauseous. I might also be a little bitter about how much crap he gives me about spelling.

The Dark Ages: After its humble (aka crappy) beginning, the 7th Notion improved steadily over time but fell on hard times when I went back to school. Posts grew more and more sporadic, shifting between terrible droughts and spurts of activity. If you dig through the archives you'd be a loser. Also, you'd find stretches of posts that all begin with an apology about not posting recently. When this past summer rolled around and I had free time again, things still didn't turn up. In fact, they got worse. To be honest, I'm surprised any of you still read this after so many months of no activity.

The Present: That brings us to now, the present. Obviously (I hope), the quality of writing here has improved. It gets spell checked now, and even edited sometimes. I use apostrophes in conjunction, but not exclamation points. I refuse to ever use exclamation points outside of interjections. No sentence (not in caps) is that exciting. Stephen Hawking, if you read this, I loose respect for you every time you put one in A Brief History Of Time. Grr. Also obvious is that I most more now. For some reason, getting to college has compelled me to post a lot, who knew.

Well, that's it...the 100th post. I feel like I should leave you with something very 7th Notion...y, but even after 100 posts I don't even know what that would be. So, uh, elen sila lumenn omentielvo.

*Star Trek: The Next Generation. If you didn't know that, you might want to leave.

Joining The Ass Parade

That's not what it sounds like. Actually, "parade" is referring to another kind entirely (a band wagon, to be precise), but the word "parade" made me think "ha, remember the ass parade?", which I did, and here we are. But speaking of ass parades, I was sexiled (being evicted from one's dorm room so one's roommate can have a 'friend' over) again last weekend and ended up in the dorm I often do when sexiled. Ok, by often I mean twice, but both times I've been there to sleep on someone's floor, loads of people from that very same floor are in the same predicament as me (luckily, we haven't been forced to fight over floor space yet). I'm convinced that this dorm has an eery ability to get ass, and therefore has a very respectable refugee per capita rate. I wouldn't be surprised to see tents thrown up in their common room or choppers dropping off water and pillows for the sexiled natives.

The parade I meant to talk about is the 'I'm in college and therefore are going to be constantly excited about the next awesome concert' parade. Everyone does it because everyone seems to have an uncanny read of the indie music scene. Everyone here knows about loads of obscure bands I've never heard of, and I feel very left out. But now it's time to strike back! If fate smiles on me, I'll be heading to two Dispatch remnants, State Radio and Braddigan to kick off my Thanksgiving break. Plans to do this just came to my attention tonight, and six tracks into Year Of The Crow, I'm already giddy with excitement.

Good thing that ass thing came up, otherwise this would've been a pretty lame post.

Tryptophan High And Karmic Frosting

I think I was abducted by aliens in my sleep last night, it's the only way to explain why I was so tired this morning. Don't look at me like that, I've seen that episode of Star Trek where the crew is being dragged into sub-space while they sleep so weird aliens can run experiments on them. More to point, I took an innocent late morning nap (it was really more of a mid-morning wake up to do my homework anti-nap) during math today. When I woke up I didn't have enough time or appetite to go to lunch, no big deal. As it turns out, today was 'decorate your own cookie bar' day. WTF?! First of all, how out of character is it to have a cookie decorating bar, and second, WHY ON THE ONE DAY I SLEEP THROUGH LUNCH?!



Yeah...rub it in.

Multiples Of Twelve

One of my dreams has come true. It was a dream largely inspired by this, but I have spent most of my life looking forward to it. What is this dream? To play Dungeons and Dragons with a legitimate group.

It's no surprise that any college would have such a group, and last Friday* I was lucky enough to find them. Disclaimer: despite the criticism that's about to follow, I still think I'm lucky to be in this group, think they're awesome, and am really looking forward to our next session.

Before we'd rolled a single die, I started to get the feeling this wasn't going to be the utopia I'd been imagining. The first hang-up was that our DM ("dungeon master" for you noobs, the most important person at any playing session) didn't go to our college. Apparently the guy organizing things here knew him from home, and figured it would be easier to play with an absent DM than find a new one? Um...okay. The next oddity to arise was that no one seemed to know anything about computers. What the hell kind of nerds was I playing with? (Also, how did they expect to pull off this absentee DM thing without any modern telecommunication expertise?). The problem was solved by yours truly who had to walk them through getting Skype accounts so we could talk to our DM through a better system than the speakerphone mode on cell phones.

Another disclaimer: if you don't know anything about D&D, much of the rest of this won't make any sense. Hopefully my righteous rage and geekiness will be funny anyways.

One of the very first steps in creating a character to play is getting their "ability scores" (these include strength, dexterity, intelligence, etc). There are six in all, each requiring a number between 3 and 18, which is gotten from rolling dice (specifically, rolling a typical six-sided die three times, or 3D6 as we say in the biz). The method I usually use involves rolling four dice and discarding the lowest to ensure that my character isn't totally impaired. The people I was playing with would roll the typical 3D6 six times, then discarded the lowest five. For each score. The result was awesome ability scores and, in turn, tons of bonuses for pretty much everything.

The kicker came at the end of our session, when our DM awarded us all a level up (for one, that's way too fast, plus he obviously didn't judge the quality of our play separately). On top of that, he doled out random magical weapons as rewards. I hate that. Enchanted weapons are not for new characters, nor should they be treated as trinkets without cool backstories. These silly, generic +1 weapons are just there to make characters a little better but not more interesting. Grr.

This approach is something typical of what we call a "munchkin". Munchkins are people who want to have extremely powerful characters 1) without having 'earned' it, and 2) at the expense of good role playing. Both of these things are anathema to me ("anathema" is my word of the month so I've been dying to use it, I'm not sure if this is right though...). I have a massive pet peeve about getting things you don't deserve (in life in general), and have an even massiver (yeah, I said it) peeve about D&D characters doing it. Having a weak character sucks, but you should have to go through it to help build their character and learn to appreciate power when you get it. That's my take anyways.

When I first started playing D&D, I was very young. My immaturity led to "slasher" campaigns that had nothing but fighting. As I grew out of that and towards the role-playing side of the spectrum, I developed a disdain for anyone who played slasher style games. Hence more munchkin hating. I don't hold all this against most of the people there because they're new and don't know better, but the other two I have a bit of a problem with. Knowing me, this is going to result in my chafing against all munchkiny things, so my character will suck in comparison.

*I know today is Friday, but I started writing this post on Tuesday or some such

With My Head Under Water

I blame my recent hiccup in post frequency on my being home too much lately, which is my fault, so ultimately that's not an excuse. Whatever. The point is, I have spent the last two weekends back here instead of at college. The reason for this is a combination of bad timing and bad planning (respectively), and so far I lack any good stories regarding being back. Hence the lack of posts. Mostly my time has been taken up with dealing with specters from the past and this new spin on the concept of "moving on". Wouldn't we all love to believe that the moment we left something, a place, a person, anything that was an important part of our lives, that it would all fall apart in our absence. Not out of malice, but we want to feel as if we were vital, and that people would really miss us. Evidently, this is not the case. Life marches on with a disturbing lack of grief and it takes old teachers a minute to realize you even left. Old friends make new friends who seem to replace you, maybe only because you're all too scared to admit you miss each other. Nostalgia becomes a sign of weakness because no one wants to be the one who hasn't moved on.

About a month ago, a friend of a couple of my classmates killed himself. I never met him, never even herd of him before, but I've thought about him a lot lately. It was totally unexpected; he was well liked by everyone, perfectly happy. Then he went off to a very respectable college, fell into deep depression, and was found dead in his family's vacation home. Now, if you look through the facebook profiles of his friends, he's in virtually every one. The whole town has a backdrop of sadness. It's a familiar feeling; it comes up every time local high schoolers die, but never like this.

No one knows why he did it. No one was there. I can't imagine any of the friends he made in his brief time in college knew him well enough to see what was wrong, and of course everyone from back home had been scattered across the country. Now they're all left to wonder and try to find some solace in their shared, if distantly, grief.

Life marches on. That must be what they hope for each of their old friends now. 'Who cares if they forgot me, as long as they're doing alright'. Maybe dying is the best way to get remembered; it's hard for their lives to march on when you just took your own?

Suicide is a waste of opportunities to live. Wasting opportunities is like suicide. Carpe diem.

LaserJet Blues

Security is important, but at some point it becomes too much. When I sat down at this computer (which is in the IT center), I had to enter my username and password to use it. Fair enough. To access my school e-mail, I entered the same username and password. To get into my Japanese class' site, I had to enter it again. Yeah, again. Then I had to print some writing paper, and we get charged for printing stuff so guess what: username and password again. It's not even different accounts, it's all my school account. Why can't I just be logged into everything (maybe not e-mail, that I can accept redundancy on) when I access the computer itself? And guess what? I also had to print a paper, which required that username and password four more times.

Why four? Well, the first time I printed it, I only got the first three pages. Hm. I tried printing the last seven (don't be impressed, most of it is data tables) and it didn't print anything, just the coversheet telling me I'd been charged 35 cents for the seven pages I didn't get. Fuck. So I tried again, and got the last four pages. The last four?! What the fuck? How does that happen, after I got the first three before? AHHRG. The fourth try, thankfully, was successful, and now I have my paper, after entering that stupid password eight times. Sigh...

Staphylococcus On Rye

Today is a French day, or at least a little bit of a French day. I don't know why they happen, but ever since I stopped taking French classes, I occasionally have days when a fair amount of my thoughts end up being expressed in French. I was thinking "je suis tres malade" on my way to Japanese class this morning (my disease has shifted from impairing my voice back to making me cough up a lung).

On a totally unrelated note, I was thinking about movies that suck today and happened upon this thought: everyone always says we need more than one word for "love" in order to distinguish between filial love, romantic love, friendship, etc. I disagree. While I admit to all those being very different, I don't think they should be distinguished between any more. My theory is that a person only has so much deep emotional commitment that they are able to give at any one time. For example, if a girl is really tight with her parents, then she won't be as committed to her boyfriend because it might take away from her relationship with her parents. Or if someone has a really crazy close friendship, and one of them starts dating, that friendship is going to suffer because all of a sudden emotional commitment is going elsewhere.

Think abut the Oedipus complex. Aren't we all supposed to be competing with our fathers for the affection of our mothers, even though the nature of our relationship with her if different than our father's?

It's Funny Until Someone Gets A Hole In Their Throat

A combination of sickness and yelling rendered me almost totally speechless over the weekend (I can talk now, it just sounds funny). After cheering as best I could through two races on Saturday, my ability to speak just vanished to the point that I would start statements in an ugly, raspy whisper that would trail to "fuck" as I couldn't finish a single sentence. Until this morning, I've been communicating in a whisper interrupted by smoker-like coughing fits. Two people have been very sympathetic. Everyone else has laughed at me mercilessly.

I came across a breakthrough yesterday when I found that, if I pressed me hand against my throat in a certain way, I could talk louder. The practice was short lived because I was afraid I was damaging my trachea in some way, but while it lasted I looked like one of those post-op smokers who has to hold something to their throat in order to talk. I was amused. Actually, I found the whole thing amusing for the first couple hours. At this point I'm, sick of it. Thankfully, I'm bouncing back well and hopefully should be close to normal by tomorrow's IM soccer game, during which I may well lose my voice again.

Speaking of soccer, I had another (nearly) two hours of practice today, probably giving me the title for most practice by any IM soccer player. I think I take silly little things, like IM soccer, more seriously than (allegedly) important things, like classes. Oh well, I figure there's people counting on me to give them a fighting chance in our games, so I better not disappoint. Plus, soccer (even getting my ass kicked in goal) is fun, and I've heard that's a good thing. First game is tomorrow, time to get PUMPED.

The Rain Is Gone

Despite not having a particularly regular schedule, I've managed to fit a fair amount of exercise into my schedule here at college (not as much as when I was on a team in high school, but certainly more than this summer when I was unbelievably lazy). I've even flirted with thoughts of a "comeback" to road races and maybe even the track team in '09. At this rate though, that'll never happen because things keep coming up to prevent me from taking my training seriously.

The first is a classic: not enough time. Between classes, homework, trying to have a life, and the meager extracurriculars I've found, it's very hard to justify spending a lot of time on working out instead of hanging out. This is basically the problem I had last year. Wanting to be happy (that is to say superficially happy, the kind where you spend times with friends, laugh, etc) and running well are mutually exclusive (at least for me). Who would spend hours every day running, lifting, and suffering when they could be having fun?

Early this semester, which is to say during and right after orientation, my exercise featured yoga more than running because it was supposed to be geared towards rock climbing. At the time I was getting used to the idea of my running career being over (that feeling has since left) and was turning my attentions to outdoorsmanship, which I figured was more sustainable later in life (if I ever get old, which I don't plan on doing, I want to be one of those really tough guys who can still climb and backpack and shit). Frustration at my lack of climbing skill or conditioning, plus no stimulus from the outing club has moved climbing to the back burner.

After a week or two of good running, we get here. At this moment, I ought to be running but I really don't want to. This is partly due to the fact that today is simply a lazy day. More importantly though, I've fallen into the trap of fun sports. I've joined the cricket club (worth a post sometime in the future) and an IM soccer team. For those of you who don't know, intramural (or IM) sports are for people who aren't good at sports, like yours truly. But I take stuff, especially sports, seriously all the time. Plus, the team if my hall, which I'm feverishly loyal to. The end result; I practice for IM soccer almost everyday, as long as I can find someone to kick balls at my head. See, I'm goalkeeping for my team, something that I was very good at in 1st grade or so. Now, not so much. Anyways, even though I get pretty beat up in the process, soccer is way more fun than running (and accordingly way less helpful for my fitness), so I keep trying to justify not running with playing soccer. By the time soccer season is over, winter will be fast approaching and with it limited running opportunities and broomball (count on that taking tons of my time and energy).

You've now reached the end of this post. What you probably realize is that it lacks a point, a conclusion, or even a series of lyrics slipped in. I hope it at least has been pleasantly diverting, and left you hungrily anticipating future posts about goalkeeping, cricket, and broomball. Failing at that, at least your appreciation for decent prose has been increased.

Apparently, Prostitution Hasn't Been The Same Since '76

I like to think that, beneath my mean and cynical exterior, I'm a fairly nice person. Wait...my do I always use these stupid lead-in lines? Fuck that.

Ahem. I went to give blood today. My (mild?) desire to help other people always manages to overcome my hypochondria* when it comes to blood drives (imagine a hypochondriac walking around knowing full well that they're missing a pint of blood...not pretty). Plus, I feel obligated to donate given that my blood type is O-neg. More than that, I wanna heal, I wanna feel what I thought was never real (saving lives). Some people get lucky that way and don't have to worry about donating because no one else can except their blood (here I'm thinking of Vulcans living on Earth and Mike Shinoda**). Anyways, I was pretty excited about pretending to be a hero and getting an excuse to lie around all day. And on a totally random note, I just turned down free caramel apples that were in the same building, which I now regret very badly...maybe I can get one before my next class...

Right. So I wait around for a while, read all sorts of stuff about HIV and how I might get nerve or artery damage (!?!), then finally walk into the donation room and sit down with a nurse. Within ten seconds I walking back out because I'm sick today, and apparently sick people (even one with just little colds) shouldn't give blood. I guess that makes me one step closer to being Mike...

I'm glad no one I knew was around, 'cuz it's pretty sketchy to get obviously rejected from a blood drive. I know there's all sorts of legitimate, honest reasons like travel, gay sex (not kidding), or (duh) having a cold. But who assumes any of those? You see someone get turned down by the Red Cross and of course the first thing in your mind is "unprotected sex", not 'oh, I bet he spend a summer in Mexico building houses for orphans with AIDS.

*the reason it's so easy is that my hypochondria doesn't set in until after I make an appointment, at which point I can tell myself "there's no turning back now"

**his blood type in Krylon Technicolor, Type A

P.S.- I know I said I was going to post daily, and then failed after the very first post. I don;t know how I got this way, but I promise that I'm breaking the habit tonight

They Don't Call Them "Daughter Salutations"

So I've been 'trollin' round the blogosphere lately, via The Rising Blogger and realized there really is a breed of ligitimate bloggers with ligitimate readerships. Hm, but self deprecation can wait. More importantly (well, maybe not, but that's an easy segway) I saw how many people post every day (or very nearly). I want to become one of those people (obviously sans the large number of subscribers) because I figure if you can find something in your life to blog about every day, then either you lead a really interesting life (which would fit well with my 'carpe diem' ambitions) or you have the kind of thoughtful outlook that lets you write intelligently (and hopefully interestingly) about fairly inane things. So here goes; day one (strictly speaking, this happened yesterday and I started writing it last night, so today is really day two).

I'm trying to figure out what it means to be the only straight guy in my yoga class. I mean, I knew it was going to be a group largely attracted to men, but the reality is far more striking. Maybe that sounds a little homophobic. It's not that I mind being in a room full (not full, the vast majority of people in this class are girls) of gay guys, it just makes me wonder about where I fit into all this. (No, I'm not unsure of my sexuality). See, I am a little homophobic insofar as masculinity is really important to me. I don't care if people think I like men (or if you happen to like men), but being a flaming "queen" would disgust me. I personally don't see this as my disliking gay people, just emasculate men (and I stand by disliking a group of people based on their personality traits).

Anyways, more to point, I wonder if I've managed to find a middle ground between 'rooted, tough, East-coast athlete type' and 'metro, Starbucks sipping, California yuppie type'. I find Eastern religion and philosophy fascinating, so I really hope I can explore that without wearing a beret or knowing the distinction between mocha lattes and cappachino Dr. Pepper (23 flavors and no room for cappachino?).

What? I should just be myself? Fuck you. That attitude is a ridiculous oversimplification. Any serious interest comes with a culture, a whole ideology held by people with the same interest (though not necessarily related to the interest itself). So to say "just be yourself, like yoga and football at the same time" ignores the fact that serious interest in yoga (or Eastern religion as a whole) will inevitably expose me to the Starbucks/beret-wearing culture (no I don't think Buddhist monks drink Starbucks, Eastern philosophy in the West has its own culture). The yoga ideology will conflict with other various ideologies I've gotten myself it (running, Star Trek, etc) and reconciling all of them will require more thought and effort than simply, magically "being myself".

Ok, that was off-topic and kind of angry. The point is I brought my hands to "Namas-te" and realized "holy shit, I'm the only straight guy in this room". But I still went back to my dorm, talked sports, and drooled over racing flats. Did anyone realize there's berets in my closet?

Remarks In Closing

The number 1 fear: suffocation

The neurosis: hypochondria

The condition: exercise-induced asthma (imagined?)

(the reasons I flaked on my last set of lunges today)

Starvation

For some reason I haven't found anything to blog about lately, so to fill space here I'm going to take a random picture and talk about it (I've become enamored with pictures on my blog and now I wish I had a camera with which to better document my life).



This is the beautiful scene in my right periphery (I'm watching football instead of doing work, in which case I'd be staring at this wall more directly). On the far left is a map of campus I put up during orientation. Within my first couple weeks here I got lost in basically every building I walked into, which was exceedingly embarrassing. Plus I naturally had no idea where any buildings were, hence the map. For some reason, my college is terrible about putting labels on any building making it even harder to find them. And they're old, so the dance/asian languages buildings still has "Geology" and "Life Sciences" engraved on it. The whole getting lost thing is not helped by our science building, which is literally built like a maze with no perceivable numbering system. Yes, that's where the psychology department is.

The thing next to the map is a random wooden-bowl-hangy-thing I bought in Tobago. I use it to hold the remote for my alarm clock. Yes, my alarm has a remote. Yes, that's as bad an idea as it sounds.

Obviously there's a Canadian flag there too. Lots of people hang flags of their native country in their dorm rooms. However, Canada is not my native country. I just put the flag up to show my lack of US nationalism. If anyone starts a political debate in the comments, I'll smack them.

Note the fire alarm. It is the loudest fire alarm ever. The ridiculous volume and strobe light flashes make fire drills feel like acid trips. I think anyone who burns popcorn will get lynched. See, we had a fire drill the other day and people were pissed about the excessive loudness of it. It's a wonder no one has actually set it off with popcorn yet, given that someone makes it almost every night (I know because the smell of food travels almost instantaneously through all four floors of my dorm).

Random anecdote: I went to this big dance party last night and got frisked by security on my way in. Ligit frisked! I mean, what the hell? Are people bringin' their 9's to college dances now? The more likely explanation is security is made up entirely of douchebags.

Heart Of Gold

Everyone knows that adventures are fun, and therefore make good blog posts. But how does one get into adventures? (other than hanging out with dwarves- I swear someone is whistling the Shire theme right now!). It's fairly simple, just set your mind on something fairly inane, like Talk Like A Pirate Day. One of my neighbors is pretty obsessed with pirates (why? we don't know) and is very excited about tomorrow. But, in typical girl-with-a-problem fashion, she has nothing to wear. Since I had next to no work tonight, I decided to find some appropriate pirate attire for her. Of course, I forgot about the Aucum/Murphy law of JV trying to do stuff: the simplest solution never works out. Hence the adventure.

First was googling the local area for costume shops and anything involving pirates. There were two hits within free-transit range: a chain party store that closed too early and the "Gypsy's Heart Boutique". I called the gypsy place and got, well, a gypsy, who told me she had gone out of business. She couldnt get anything pirate related quick enough, but ws extremely friendly and called me back, telling me of a store where I could get something. Unfortunately, this place was well out of free transit ranger, and would've required me to beg my RC to drive me there. That plan was abandoned and things looked grim. Then, a breakthrough! I remembered this cool little store in the next town over and, against all hope called to see if they stocked any pirate clothes. But, alas, my hopes were dashed; all they had was eyepatches, certainly not enough for Talk Like A Pirate Day. Another twist: the people who work at this store are extremely cool and celebrate the niche holiday themselves, and so could direct me to pirate gear. My spirits buoyed, I borrowed someone's bike and risked my life in a harrowing ride down a busy street to the nearest Walmart (a sin, I know, but the only place I could turn). I wandered forever through the vast, obese expanses of Walmart before finaly coming to the pirate section. Much to my dismay, they had no legit pirate hats, so I had to settle for an eyepatch and bandana. Tieing my booty to the borrowed bike and switching on my light (yeah, I was riding down a busy road, with no helmet, in the dark...but it was worth it) and peddled back to my dorm.

The end result is quite hilarious (a lot of "what are you wearing?!"). Here's a picture of said neighbor, sporting new pirate gear.

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Ekhein

As of tomorrow Epoch and I will have been together for a week. This may not seem like a lot to you, but for a fish that's half the size of your thumb it's a pretty big deal. If he can make it another few days, he'll get a bigger tank. We (myself and my hallmates who also got fish) have sadly had to adopt that kind of pessimistic language because 1) they're very small, 2) we don't really know how to take care of them, and 3) we got them in a mass free giveaway with no food. Our lack of hope is well founded, as oe of Epoch's compatriots died yesterday. Hopefully I can get a picture of the "tombstone" that was erected where he got flushed.

But life isn't all bad for little Epoch. Last weekend I made the trek to the mall and returned with supplies and advice for him. Most notably was te filter I got for him (my roommate keeps asking me if I regret buying a $16 filter for a free fish yet). Even it was the smallest they had, it's still grossly oversized for my little tank, not to mention grossly overpowered for Epoch (it nearly sucked him up when I first turned it on).

Because I know you're all dieing to see them, here are so more pictures of my new pet. Note the unnecessarily large water filter. (and I apologize for the picture quality, the only thing I have that takes pictures is my laptop, which doesn't lend itself to quality shots).





Hopefully my next expidition to the pet store will yield a suitably bloggable story...

The "Shut Up And Do Your Homework" Monster Is Looking At Me Again

Sorry about not posting in a while kids, but school has picked up a bit and I actually have work to do (oh, and friends). Japanese class has basicly turned my life into a nightmare of flash cards (Terra, if you still read this I totaly feek your pain). Speaking of nightmares, I had the weirdest dream last night. It involved playing one-on-one hockey against a track star, wearing what looked like a gumball machine on my head, and getting my car backed into by a boy with a really deep voice (he tore the hubcaps off, but I was chill about it 'cuz I was chill about everything in that dream). I think I get it now...spooky.

Anyways, I only had one class today so hopefully I'll find time to give you all an update on Epoch.

WXXX?

Ok, so there's porn of the internet. What else is on the internet? The 7th Notion (that's the only connection, I swear). We've* always talked about putting porn on the radio ("pornio", it'll be a big hit), so could we put the 'Notion on the radio? The reason I bring this up is because I'm kind of considering joining my College's** radio station. I find the idea of having my own radio show intrigueing, but I don't know what it'd be about. Then I got to thinking, could I convert this blog to a kind of radio show? Hm...

*By "we" I mean me, OSK, and Dr Koopon

**For stalker reasons, I don't want the actual name of my college, myself, etc here. So, those you who know me, please refrain from mentioning it in comments or on your won blogs that are linked here.

P.S.- Are all these asteriks annoying?

Good Thing We Live In MA

Everyone, I'd like you to meet someone (my Moldovan neighbor calls it my "life partner"): my new fish Epoch!



For reasons I'm still not quite sure of, my school was giving away free little fish yesterday. It was one of those things that must cost a lot but they don't advertise much (which is odd because there's signs for the most random shit everywhere). I happened to be in the campus center yesterday morning and saw all these people with fish tanks, so I headed back after Calculus and, lo and behold, free fish! Naturally, I got one because, well, I guess I do need a life partner. Unfortunately, they had no food, so poor Epoch has had to go hungry so far (allegedly there's some arriving later today). Thus far, there aren't any good stories about him* but count on him becoming a regular here on the 7th Notion.

*I have no idea if Epoch's a dude or not, but I'm sticking with the male pronoun anyway

Afternoon Snack

Apparently Congress passed the "College Cost Reduction and Access Act" on Friday by a huge margin. Basicly it gives more of the government's money to Colleges to make them more affordable. Oh, and I keep hearing about this debate on universal health care. And I'm presently living in a state that requires everyone to have health insurance (first step towards that universal health care I would say). Say what you want about our capitalist-minded government, but we're moving towards a welfare state. And guess what; piece by piece, everyone (well, maybe just liberals, but around here that's all that matters) will agree with it because morally we all believe in welfare states.

(This message brought to you by late-night political debates...and the government, who pays for your 7th Notion subscription).

A Little Of That Old Time BFTSOB

Ok, so it's getting late, I'm bored and can at this point get a maximum of seven hours of sleep tonight. I would turn in but my roomie has a paper to write that somehow got left until Sunday night. Whatever, it'll happen to all of us so I'm not going to be bitter, just bored. But I guess it's a positive statement about the state of tis blog that my BFTSOB posts are due to boredom, not inactivity. I will probably go back to reading Stephen Hawking soon, but I can only take so much of him at a time (given that it's complicated and occasionaly blows my mind enough to mke me stop). Before that, I'll give you a couple random tidbits:

There's apparently a Crazy John Brown University. This amuses me greatly. (Anyone who took US history with me knows why).

I've recently embraced my OCD side and starting keeping a host of to-do lists, daily planner stuff, etc. The most recent addition to my to-do list: disprove the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (probably more on this in a future post).

Question worth debating: would being fluent in Elvish improve or hurt my chances with girls?

Just when I thought I was really disapointed in my institution of higher education (aka drinking is dumb), I found out that no one on my hall knows who Bones McCoy is. I know it's geeky and they're young, but that shit is classic.

Let's Get High On 'Nerd'

Let's look at one the most basic precepts of the way we view the world."There is, and there is not". We all have a concept of nothingness; it's basicly the antithises of everything else. A cup can be or empty or full (sure, it can be half-full, but thats just a combination of the two, not a wholly different middle ground). A piece of paper can be empty, or written on. You either love them, or you don't. You get the idea; we found our worldview on the concept of a filled/void contrast.

But where does that concept come from? Like most (or all?) of our ideas, we derive it from experiences we have in the natraul world. And what experience would teach us about the difference between being full, and being empty? Air. In our daily lives, the atmosphere is the negative space to positive objects. Look across the room to the far wall. Don't you consider the space between you it empty (even though you know it's full of gas)? Sure, it's empty; you could throw a ball through that space and it would reach the wall. But you can't throw a ball into the next room because it would hit something "full" (the wall).

But that's wrong. That space isn't empty; it's full of atmospheric gases, and that ball didn't move through it unimpeded; it lost speed as it hit all those little particles. Even space isn't empty; it's full of cosmic rays and radiation.

So could everything we believe be wrong? Could our entire view of the world be flawed at its most fundemental level? Could our experiences with nature ultimately lead us to misunderstand it? Maybe there is a middle ground, something between full and empty. Empty-ish? Maybe that coffee mug isn't "half empty", its going through a weird transitional period during which it's full of a coffee/not coffee hybrid substance. Our idea of nothingness makes us see ourselves as isolated objects seperated by void, but what if we're all part of the same soupy continuum?

Think about it.

The Numbers Game

I got a 2290 on my SATs the first time I took them. Sure, it was fun, but I don't really give a shit. I'm glad it got me into college, and I'm sure as hell glad I didn't have to take them twice. But whatever, standardized tests are largely a load of bullshit. It's the story of my life, though: getting the laurels of alleged intelligence constantly laid on me without being smart so much as 'good at getting grades'. But it's easy to feel pretty good about yourself, growing up as a 2290 kid. People love telling you all about how great and smart you are, and even with a healthy dose of self-hatred it eventually gets to you.

I must admit I gave in to the adoration nd got to believeing that I really was the shit. Then I arrived at the fabulous college I supposedly deserved to get into and I got a reality check of bitch slap proportions. Not only is everyone here really smart; capable of intelligently discussing any topic, dropping hard-core vocab and sparkling AP scores everywhere, but they all have tons of other stuff going for them. We have elite athletes, people who can speak four different languages, founded all sorts of clubs and organizations. I listened to my orientation trip comrades spend two hours of a busride simply listing the books they've read. One of them could also boast a strong musical background and brief career in competitive rock climbing. My only non-academic credit is a few seasons on varsity teams (not particularly good ones) and a captainship. Stuff ike that is footnote here. I just ate dinner with a kid who, for a school project on emersion journalism, traveled to Iraq on a whim (without telling his parents until he arrived there). He made national news for it.

Can anyone say "inferiority complex"? Actually, yes they can...in four languages.

Greek Life

I kind of imagine this as a montage from the end of a Scrub's episode where all the subplots get tied together by JD narrating to really fitting music. Having said that, don't count on good organization of a well-defined theme. (the soundtrack is Fallout Boy's "I Have A Dark Alley And A Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Up").

Everyone has a collection of idols in their lives, people we lean on when reality lets us down. We all also all lose idols. It can be late at night around a fire, talking about how much of a whore a mutual ex-girlfriend is, or by foolishly looking at pictures of people you don't need to see. The story? I recently started playing an online Star Trek RPG run by a women who is an able organizer, excellent role-player and fabulous writer. Needless to say I grew to respect her, which, because of my...unique realationship with women, means she ended up on a bit of pedestal. Then she sent out a picture of herself and several other players at some geek-con (the fact that they went to some convention is no surprise, after all they play a Star Trek RPG). Sadly, she looked like a total dork (and not even a hot one). Should that matter? Fuck no. But I'm a guy, so my pedestals always involve a certain degree of attractiveness. Do I want to bang my RPG mod? Of course not, but I did imagine her as a little hotter.

Yeah, I'm kind of a monster, it's true. But at least I still have my RC.

I Take My Oatmeal With Extra "WTF"?

With school fast approaching (2 days and 1 epiphany away), I want to resurrect this old blog and fill it with kick-ass college quality posts. I have a couple in mind already but presently I'm far too tired to write coherently. I've been staying up until 5 or 6 AM the last couple days and being forced to wake up far too early (noonish). After a summer of sleeping ten hours a day, its been a rough tranisition. More to point, I can't see straight so I assume I can't write straight either. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I'm going to try some SoC poetry to prove that I shouldn't be writing right now.

Ok, I take that back. I just tried it and mentioned lollipops by the fourth line. Call me a coward, but when I start composing poetry about phalic candy and guys named "Beezelybum", it's quittin' time.

How About A Crash Course In "Bitch"?

You know all those horrid commercials? The ones with dumb "moms" sraying every surface in their house with anti-bacterial chemicals that will, in truth, doom their children to world full of antibiotic-resistent pathogens? And you know how all those stupid products claim to kill "99.9%" of bacteria? Hm. Well, I noticed those commercials alwys include lovably dirty little ids in them...why not just sell something tht kills 99.9% of kids?

Well, One Of Us Must Be Haunted

Somehow, through some bizarre (or, ok, mildly coincidental) twist of fate, spent pretty much my entire life within earshot of a bell tower (think church steeple meets rooster), all of which insist upon playing the same tune at every hour or half thereof. I suppose thats what you get for living the prep school life (grew up a one, went to high school at one, will go to preppy college). If you think that years of this would mean I'm used to it, you're wrong. The combination of an uncomfortable couch, an easterly facing window of no small size, and, you guessed it, 8am bells made sleeping in this morning quite difficult. I think that morning people. who can easily conspire against the rest of us by having early morning meetings (and of course would because they're annoying) have built these bells just to bug those of us who sleep in more. It wouldn't surprise me, morning people always seem jealous and mean (though this may be due to the fact that many of them are old, and we all know old people are bitter and mean-spirited by nature).

The only the thing worse than living under the shadow of evil mechanical roosters erected by morning people is dating one. When out of school, I think 10am is early, especially after late nights (which are the only pleasant way to see five 'clock). This does not sit well with people who wake up at seven every morning without the aid of 120 decibel alarms, the threat of imminent death, or specially trained wake-up dogs. Apparently morning people don't realize that waking up takes a fairly long period of time unless aided by loads of caffine that induces a heart attack, forcing someone to zap you with those paddles, thereby waking you up. I think I'm going to slip sleeping pills into her food next time I see her...

I Won't Be Ignored

I spent chemistry class today surfing YouTube for videos about blowing stuff up with fairly common chemicals. What I found were a host of videos of home-made bomb instructions (not serious ones, but fairly legit), apparently all made by white suburban guys between 16 and 22. Hm. Oh, and they were all set to Linkin Park and System of a Down music. Screamo mexican terrorists (one video had all its instructions in spanish, so we can only assume). I'm not sure which is more disturbing; the obviously large demo out there making these or the fact that now I really want to...

Check it out for yourself.

I Just Got My Liscence In The Mail

Well, it's official: I'm a whore. I've turned this blog into a shameless enterprise to make money and I'm already .3% of the way there (to where exactly I'm not sure, they wouldn't tell me how much I'll make). You can see the evidence of my prostitution (do not quote this out of context anyone) right below the vaunted "Hall of Fame" where is says "Ads by Google". That's right, I signed up to host silly google ads because, frankly, I need the money (even if is a mere pittance) and it makes me feel important. I got off lucky though, it's not nearly as glaring as I'd expected and blends in quite well, so I don't have to be too ashamed of this. I just hope I don't get arrested for tax fraud if I don't end up paying taxes on what little I make...

Since the above doesn't really constitute a ligitimate post, I bring you this (another sign of whore-like activities): condoms. See, if you go to prep school as I do, you run into a lot of used condoms (in case you thought we were sheltered compared to public school kids, at least they do drugs and have sex off-campus). The problem with people who are popular enough to get any is they're not too bright and apparently can't think of any classy way to dispose of condoms. So you find them lying around behind the old, seedy gym and by the track (three words: high jump pit). I can understand no one wanting to go through the hassle of carrying them to a trash can or anything, but what I don't understand is some of the places they get. Sure, the high jump pit is secluded and comfortable, but how does your prophylactic end up in the middle a field, 30 yards away from it? We even get them in the middle of fields, no where near anything padded. Is that what happens when the high jump pit is occupied? You go out in the middle of a field? Dirty.

Acid Rain

I love Senior Spring. You knew school could be so relaxing? Turns out all we ahd to do was stop working...There's really only one guy who still cares about grades or scores or anything: the Man. The Man won't let it go, so the Man keeps making us take silly standardized tests. It won't be for too long though, last week I sent off a scantron(r) with "SEND HELP" bubbled in.

What I'm trying to say is that we all still have to sit for AP exams even though the scores don't matter, which not only gets us out of all our classes for the day, but also affords us the oppurtunity to put some pretty ridiculous responses. Here's some from the chemistry exam I took earlier today:

Calcium carbonate plus aqueous sulfuric acid yields: [insert my incorrectly completed reaction here]
Explain why granite (aka calcium carbonate) statues degrade outdoors:
"Tiny metieroite collisions" (the correct answer was acid rain)

Silver ions are an oxidizing agent, Iron (II) ions are a reducing agent. Solutions of the two are added together, what is the product?
"Sunshine!!!"

A solution of Iron (II) is titrated with permanganate. Explain why the color changes when the end point is met.
"Color is carried by a variety of subatomic particles called 'clown bosons'. When iron (II) is oxidized, purple clown bosons are produced that annihilate with the invisible blue clown bosons on hydronium. Therefore there is no color change until the blue bosons are depleted, at which point the purple ones start reacting with the atmosphere, producing a massive, catastophic chain reaction."

What happens when too much permanganate titrant is added?
"A starving kid in Africa doesn't have enough titrant"

Explain how the pressure ration of PO2/PO3 changes as the reaction takes place.
"No, trixs are for kids!"

How would that ratio change is a catalyst were added?
"Ibid"