Burninating

I apologize to Brian, since he’s already read my description once via IM—I’m just too tired to come up with different imagery. You see, I’m usually thoroughly trashed by the time Friday evening comes along. This evening, out of fear for the mass of homework I have due Monday, I set my trashed brain on fire.

That’s right: I just did three hours of homework on a Friday night. You may feel sorry for me.

Barring corrections from Renee (I think I’ll deliberately avoid her this weekend, so I don’t have to face those—haha!), my 434 homework is done. I have 3/5 of probability finished as well. So it’s the rest of probability, a case study, and a “partner” project that remains in my way. That doesn’t sound as bad as the whole enchilada was sounding earlier this week. I’m still afraid I’m going to hit a brick wall on those other two problems, though. (This sounds like a job for… NyQuil!)

On Wednesday I discovered that business majors are only lazy when that doesn’t conflict with their being stupid. You see, on the first day of class (the one I missed due to snow), my professor asked the class to debate—and thus decide—whether or not we should hold a lottery to give one student a free pass on the final exam.

On Wednesday I discovered that my class elected not to do that. Idiots!

Had I been there, I would have been a vocal proponent of the raffle. I mean, 1/20 is better odds than you’ll ever get in the lottery.

In other news, I saw my first Segway on campus today. It seemed pretty out of place, and definitely attracted attention. I wondered about the practicality of it all: I doubt OSU wants those indoors, but I also doubt you want to lock it up alongside the bikes that will be stolen while their owners are in class.

Not gonna make two more weeks

On Monday I went to talk to my professor about the fact that I had a partner project in a week (this coming Monday), but hadn’t seen my partner since day three. There was another guy who also needed to talk to the professor about how to save his grade; he was such a slacker that he was the only one in the class who had never bothered to sign up with a partner, despite the fact that we spent a good deal of class time getting things worked out early in the term.

So it turns out that the way to save his grade is to partner with Brent. Doh!

I just got an email from the guy, who “had been thinking a lot about the project” and thought that we should cover all sorts of topics ripped from the syllabus. He didn’t think we could find a single company that would embody the list of topics he provided, but thought we could piece things together by talking about a bunch of companies. Oh, and he was free to meet on Sunday night, and didn’t think it’d take that long to put together.

What are we supposed to do? Find an article on a company, make connections between that company and some of the class topics, write a two-page paper and give a twelve-minute PowerPoint presentation on it all.

Let’s go over all the points my partner missed:

1. Find an article

2. On one company

3. Write a paper

Furthermore, I’d assume from his “let’s throw lots of stuff together” plan that he’s unaware that the presentation cannot be any longer than twelve minutes. Needless to say, I think I’ll be meeting him on Sunday evening—with an article, a paper, and a PowerPoint presentation in hand.

Only two more weeks…

Two more weeks of this stuff

I made the mistake of looking at my homework this evening, which gave me the all-too-familiar feeling of “I have no idea how to do this.” Methinks I’m going to have fun over the next few days.

In other news, I just got the baby pictures confirming that Emily has freed herself from Tammy! Yay!

I must be delirious, since I’m leaving that last “paragraph” the way it is. I’d probably better stop now, before I do any more damage.

Link and Run

Hrm. Today was a decent day, but I have little wisdom to actually write about. So, instead, I’ll link to Qwantz.com’s Daily Dinosaur Comics, which Brian first introduced me to last night. There’s more wisdom in those comics than I’ll ever be able to impart here. Sad, but true.

Old School Joke, Redux

Back in the day, in the glorious age of high school, I had a friend named Josh. At some point, my group of friends learned that Josh hated the game Parappa the Rapper. While I’m sure half of us easily agreed with him, none of the rest of us were so vocal about our dislike for the game… thus a nickname was born.

Both Brian and I were reminded of this when w saw a certain strip from Lore Brand Comics this evening… sadly, I don’t have Josh’s current email address, so I’m left with posting it for everybody but Josh to see. [And, incidentally, now is a good time to point out that the title of this entry was “old school joke,” not “old-school joke.” The distinction is critical, here.]

But, damn. I had completely forgotten about Parappa. Those were good days, all right.

Errata

I neglected to mention last night that I was surprised by the voice of Eclair, from Kiddy Grade. Wow. She’s going to take some getting used to, to put it mildly. And the Galactic Organization of Trade and Tariffs (“GOTT”) has got to reassess their standard procedures. I mean, this is the process for arresting someone:

Confront the suspect. No need to restrain him/her, at this point!

Charge the suspect with being an interstellar criminal by your authority as a GOTT ES member. Flash your badge.

Communicate with the chief of the GOTT to get “authorization to execute an arrest.” The chief (so far as I’ve seen) will grant the authorization posthaste.

Pledge allegiance to the chief (erm… put your hand over your heart) at the same time as your partner, while simultaneously verbally acknowledging the positive response.

Be once again flummoxed by the alleged interstellar criminal, since you took too damn long not-arresting him/her.

I managed to form a good, strong water bubble in my right ear as I showered this morning. It drove me crazy for a good four hours, and effectively rendered me deaf on that side… and I’m not normally known for my excellent hearing. It finally gave up the ghost when I decided to take a nap, and I was much happier afterwards.

Took some ibuprofen this afternoon, since my body’s been aching recently—and I noticed that the expiration date on the bottle read “NOV/02.” Oopsie. Perhaps that’s why it hasn’t seemed to be all that effective.

Right now, when I’m not courting the idea of another nap, I feel like cleaning things out—both on my computer’s hard drive, which has accumulated quite the boatload of junk, and in the area around my computer. If nothing else, I have a pile of old computer magazines I should really recycle.

Yatta Yatta

I can summarize both Thursday and Friday as follows: I did the bare minimum required of me to get through my day, and then collapsed in a heap. Friday, Marin pieced together that she and I are considered “nonessential employees” by the management at work.

If that had any positive meaning in our office, such as “doesn’t have to come in on snow days,” I’d be happy. As it stands, I’m just tired of it all.

Today was a much better day, since I got to work with Renee and Bryan on my math homework (sad what passes for social time in my life these days…). They’re a hoot to be around, since they always have some crazy story to tell. Today, among many other things, I was reminded of Dr. Parks’ story of how every French math proof begins with “Nous sommes,” which he (incorrectly, it seems) translated as We beasts of burden. Needless to say, every math proof ought to begin that way.

At some point Bryan got hungry, and so we moved our homework camp to the King-Tin restaurant. On the way to Renee’s car we passed Eileen, who was headed in to campus; seeing her put a big ol’ grin on my face.

Spent the evening watching the second disc of Rahxephon, where Marin once again went against all odds by calling something an episode before the show seriously began dropping hints about it… I’m enjoying Rahxephon far too much; it’s obvious that it’s a well-crafted story, and I’ll be darned if I don’t savor the heck out of it. We followed Rahxephon up with the first disc of Kiddy Grade, which suffered some for the contrast. Reviews pegged Kiddy Grade’s first disc as (essentially) not bad, but not great—and I’d have to agree. Marin’s heard that the show really picks up after episode ten… but, of course, that’s ten episodes in.

Argh… still haven’t shaken off whatever bug has been haunting me for ages. First it was a week of nausea, now it’s been a week plus of extreme fatigue. I’m ready to be healthy again; it’s unbecoming of me to be exhausted at 11:00 pm. (Yes, that means I’m seriously dragging as I type this.)

Powerful

Had fun mouthing off in strategic management today. We had formed a line so that the professor could check off whether or not we had the slightest sliver of work done on a journal that we’ve (theoretically) been keeping all term, and the line was progressing slowly. As I reached the professor, I commented to the guy behind me that he should note my nice title, “Journal,” and the fact that there was text underneath that title. The guy behind me then admitted (jokingly) that his journal was really a case study for the class retitled.

Ran into old high school classmates Matt and Rachel C. today in the Commons; it was nice to see familiar faces, but odd to see two of them at once. Yes, it really is time for me to move on.

And speaking of (not) moving on, everybody who grew up playing Metroid on the NES owes it to themselves to check out MetroidMetal.com. I grew up listening to that music. Powerful stuff, man. Powerful.

Perhaps

I wonder if I’ve become too negative. Today I found myself explaining to one follow that, in my rating system, “that wasn’t bad” is about the highest compliment I can give.

In other news, I just finished up my third case study for my strategic management class. Tomorrow I’ll join the rank and file business students by generating a journal of thoughts (that I was supposed to build up over the term) in a time span of about two hours. It’s not the hottest position I’ve ever been in, but it’s far from awful. I suspect strongly that nobody really cares about the journal itself, aside from the fact that it—via the peer review process we’ll undergo tomorrow—will fulfill a generic Writing Intensive Course requirement.

Reptilian Brain

Curse my animal brain! One of the follows in dance class today was wearing perfume, which I later noticed had transferred to my hand. It smelled damn good. I know, because I smelled it repeatedly.

dammit.

Hot Damn!

At Eric’s suggestion, I just tried importing short movie clips from my digital camera (it can do really grainy video, for about 30 seconds at a time) into iMovie. I remember having tried that once before, and it failed miserably. (I’ve been interested in messing around with movies for a while now, but I never had enough of an interest to justify the cost of a digital video camera.)

This is the new version of iMovie, though, and it now works like a charm. I whipped together a really, really bad string of video clips, and applied a few transitions and other special effects—without knowing jimmy jack about how to use the program. When I click on “photos,” all my pictures from iPhoto are available for instant insertion; when I click on “audio,” my entire iTunes library is ready to be part of the soundtrack. The integration of the applications surprises me, and is damn nifty.

The creative potential of this is huge. And I can export finished movies to DVD, too. The mind boggles at the horrors I am now capable of unleashing upon the world.

My computer really has more potential than I’ll probably ever be able to take advantage of… but, damn, it’ll be fun trying things out. I haven’t been this fired up about the creative aspects of a computer in quite some time.

PSA

Pepsi Vanilla isn’t half the cola Vanilla Coke is. Regardless of which soda product you generally prefer.

Andy came down to visit today. After eating at Pita Pit (where you can no longer order teriyaki chicken, but can get grilled chicken with teriyaki sauce), we went to visit ex-UHC-head advisor Jane and her husband Mr. Bill. (Yes, everybody calls him that.) It was good to see them again. Afterwards, I handily trashed Andy’s Jam with my Baiken repeatedly. I informed Andy that his Jam should practice more before facing me again, and he informed me I was treading into dangerous territory.

This evening I (barely) fought off sleep to head to the first Ballroom Dance of the term. I still enjoy watching more than dancing, which places me squarely in the “weird” group. I did get out on the floor a handful of times, though.

But that’s not the important part. At the dance—and I had to check multiple times, because I just couldn’t believe it—I saw UHC office Jen. She graduated last year, and I thought she was gone from OSU forever. Nope—she now has a gig at the local CCC office. Eric and I should hunt her down in the near future and hang; it’s been far too long.

Another weird thing was that Robin, the gal from my dance class who randomly stopped and chatted with me in the Commons one day, looked rather unhappy after the dance was over. The other Robin from my dance class was talking to her, though, so I didn’t stop to check on her. The important thing, I figure, is that you have someone there… and though I’m preferable to nothing, most people are probably more skilled at those situations than I am.

Freddy vs. Jason—place your bets!

Wow. I was only spewing rhetoric about that whole Freddy vs. Jason thing in my last post, but Eric called me on it… so tonight we watched the clash of the titans. It was obviously catering towards fans of the two series than trying to be a real horror movie, but it was still fun enough, I guess. I don’t feel totally ripped off, but that’s probably only because I expected to be ripped off going into it.

I was amusedly taken aback when the movie opened up a can of gratuitous nudity approximately three seconds into the film, and that amusement was increased threefold when I later heard, via commentary track, that the gratuitous nudity was actually demanded by a test audience. I was also amused to hear that the test audience outright rejected any ham-handed attempts the creators made to demonstrate any character depth whatsoever in the potential victims of Freddy and Jason.

I guess it’s rather hard to make endearing characters (especially when they’re destined to be cannon fodder) in a two-hour movie, though. I’ve stood witness to that technique courtesy of anime, though—it is rather devastating.

Ah well. This’ll be a memorable enough Valentine’s Day, I suppose. My favorite memory of this holiday comes from a few years back, though: hanging out in the Honors College lounge with Rachel, both of us bemoaning the fact that we were single. I was griping for fun, but I suspect Rachel was not. I suppose that’s not a very good story, but somehow I’m fond of it—I always smile when I think of it.

When I was a kid…

What’s wrong with the world today? It used to be—oh, say, five years ago—that cable TV would rather drop dead than let a Friday the 13th pass without some network airing a Friday the 13th marathon.

What did I find on the air last night? Damn near nothing! The closest I got to horror movies was the AMC Fright Friday block, which was featuring They Live. I was witness to a hilarious brawl between two friends over whether or not one of the guys would put on some sunglasses; you see, the sunglasses let you see which people had been taken over by aliens.

I’m of half a mind to rent Freddy Vs. Jason, just to get my fix. That’d be an awesome Valentine’s Day.

Goal!

I made it to the weekend! I didn’t think I would, but I did! Yay!

If I had to choose right now between sleep and having a wish come true, I’d take the wish… and then wish for a really colorful simile to illustrate to y’all how tired I am, so I can type it down and be done with this pointless post. As it is, I’m dragging something fierce, and only coming up with wildly inappropriate similes to illustrate that fact.

Draaaaaaaaaaaagging. Quite a bit. Yep. Good thing this is Friday, because I don’t think I’m going to wake up tomorrow. Hey—maybe there’s a Friday the Thirteenth movie on TV somewhere! That ought to be enough to get me some shuteye.

Memory

Dance class was hilarious today, as Barbara (the instructor) was in rare form. She even managed to work in a reference to The Police, somehow. You know, “Every Breath You Take,” “Roxanne,” “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da.” Not as in “the fuzz”—or, my preferred term, black & whites.

Lessee. Ah, yes, NyQuil truly is the drug of champions; after doping myself last night, I finished my fourth and final probability problem within fifteen minutes. I gotta try that more often.

Had fun poking around the innards of my computer this evening, after being a Good Boy and backing things up. (Poking around the computer was more like the straw that broke the camel’s back, rather than the only reason… it’s been quite a while since I last backed up my data. And while it’s not much, it’s still my data.) The reason for the surgery? I got cheap RAM! woo hoo! I remember when my dad paid more money per megabyte for hard drive space than I just paid (per megabyte) for memory… I swear, every time I walk through Costco I have to pick my jaw up off the floor over how cheap electronics have gotten since I last looked.

I’m now convinced that my computer can remember more than I can—and that’s on top of my earlier concession that it is able to compute more than I can. It’s also quieter than I am, and does what you tell it to do. Dang. Really, maybe it should have been the one to go to college.

…I actually wouldn’t mind that, on warm sunny days like today. I was sorely tempted to lounge around the house in lieu of going to work; the last two days have been wonderful, for the simple fact that I could roll down my car’s windows and not freeze. I love driving with the windows down, even if it makes a mess of my hair.

I mean, it’s driving! With your windows down!

And my hair gets messed up every night anyway.

Jam

If today handed me toast, at least there was some jam to accompany it.

So, yes, I’m still alive. We’ll have to see, but it seems like I did OK in both exams—quite remarkable, since I didn’t study too much and could tell that I only needed one false step to trigger another bout of nausea.

When I pulled my cramped hand off of my pencil at the end of my strategic management midterm, the sun was shining and it was actually warm out. I then went to work, where I was quickly asked Eric’s birthday. Unwittingly, I let the cat out of the bag.

Had I been thinking a bit more, I would have realized that people were probably asking me because Eric himself wouldn’t tell. Next time, I later thought, the appropriate answer was “July 4th.” Yes, Eric was born on the Fourth of July.

Honest!

Now the only thing between me and my weekend is one probability homework problem. Since NyQuil worked so well on the first three, I think I’ll pop another gelcap and see what I can make of the last one. If nothing else, I should sleep well. Ha.

Perhaps something exciting will happen soon. I’d hope for that, but right now I’m too busy hoping for my health. Stupid sickness.

Toast

Two midterms tomorrow. No studying done for one, damn little studying done for the other. I’m tired, and have continued to feel nauseated throughout the day—so much so that I skipped dance class (!) and a free meal on work (!!). I’ve taken two naps in the last twelve hours, and don’t much feel like staying up late to study.

Yes, kids, it’s time for kamikaze test taking!!!

I’m predicting… suboptimal… results, what with the minimal studying I’ve done and the decent headache that prevents decent just-in-time thought. On the positive side, though, last night—while hopped up on NyQuil—I was able to solve three of my four probability homework problems that are due Friday.

Maybe I should play that angle again tomorrow. Yeah. NyQuil.

…head hurts

Today Eric mentioned that my blog has been lacking… um… I forget his exact word, but it might as well be pizzazz, as of late. [Editor’s note: Eric has since informed me that his exact phrase was “lacking high adventure.”] There’s a very good reason for that.

This is a blog about me. And I’m sick right now, which means I’m doing even less than I normally do—and that’s an impressive amount of nothing. For perspective: the most interesting thing that happened today occurred as I was leaving MTH 434. A syrupy smell pervaded Kidder Hall, and one of my classmates sighed, “Ah, Kidder smells like pancakes. All is as it should be.”

The other noteworthy event of the day was that I reset my cable modem, and discovered that I now have a download speed of 3 mpbs. (Any Comcast cable internet subscribers should give it a shot, if they haven’t already—good times!) Too bad most servers out there don’t seem to be able to dish content up as quickly as I can now take it.

I felt nauseated today, so I tried to minimize the amount of stuff I did. It worked well—save for the fact that I have both midterms of this term scheduled to attack on Wednesday, and I’ve studied for neither of them. I don’t anticipate being at work for very long tomorrow, since my usual pre-exam technique (staying up late the night before) doesn’t mesh so well with an 8:00 am test.

Finished watching Ai Yori Aoshi last night, to free up study-time during the week. The final crisis wasn’t unexpected, but it was enjoyable to see how it played out. For some odd reason, though, I ended up feeling badly for Tina—stupid habits and all. If the second season progresses the story at all, I fear for how she’ll take things. (Yes, yes. I know the characters aren’t real.)

Oh yeah. You can scratch the seventh back off of your calendars, since it turns out I didn’t really have my homework done after all. Bryan noted that Renee and I had blown our calculations of “d” completely out of the water, and Renee passed that on to me—so I spent Sunday afternoon and evening reworking those problems. Joy! At least now, though, I have things correct in my head… which helps, what with a midterm and all coming up.

Nothing Important

Met Renee this morning and actually finished my 434 homework. Mark the seventh on your calendars, as it’s likely to be the last time I get any homework done before the day before it is due. I’m reminded of my friend Simon’s definition of homework, which was “stuff due tomorrow.” Funny, since he’s probably the brightest/smartest/most intelligent guy I know.

Spent the rest of the day getting very little done, per tradition. I did manage to kick the computer at work some, and the second time hopped in my car just as a disgruntled, scruffy guy pulled up. Further investigation (especially since he really didn’t look happy, and he didn’t seem to have any reason to be there) revealed that he was cleaning the building. Odd, since we know the people who traditionally clean, and he’s not one of ’em.

Early this evening Marin and I watched forty-five minutes of MXC, or “Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.” I think it’s the only entertaining show on Spike TV. Anyhoo, what they do is take some crazy Japanese “sport” competition show, and edit and redub it to create their own masterpiece. It’s quite funny, in a brain-numbing sort of way. I’d recommend it as a decent way to kill time, if you can overlook the fact that Spike TV only has four ads to run during its numerous commercial breaks.

I’ve been watching Ai Yori Aoshi during the evenings when I should be doing something academic. This ‘un is a romantic comedy with strong harem tendencies, but it distinguishes itself in a handful of ways. Namely, the focus of the story really is about the budding love between two people, and the protagonist is actually someone even mildly worthy of attention. Sure, he had a harsh childhood—but he doesn’t let that get him down, either. Extraordinary!

At first I worried the harem elements of the show would spoil it completely, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised as things have progressed. The gals are all reasonably well-developed and sympathetic characters—even Tina, who began the series by frequently grabbing others’ chests. (^_^);; If ever I’ve cringed in anime, I cringed at that.

In other news, I’m almost on a normal sleep schedule again. Yes, I write that after midnight… but I’m having trouble holding my head up right now. Staying up late is getting to be difficult, which is befitting of my old age.

Down and Out

I’m currently trying to recover, after my mind fell apart at approximately 11:15 am this morning. I had fun taking notes without comprehending a thing, since the chalkboard just started swimming. (If you want to know how I managed to take notes, I just made sure that my notebook swam in the same manner that the chalkboard did. Hopefully that’ll be good enough, later.) Dance class was also quite challenging due to various symptoms of Broken Brain, but I somehow survived.

So, count me down and out for now. Here, I’ll pass along a little math humor I ran across at bash.org, so you too can spend a little while in recovery:

What’s the complement to a 43 degree angle?

My, you’re looking “acute” today.

I dunno about anyone else, but I found that hilarious.

Owie

My body aches on a cellular level. I blame it on starting to catch up on sleep, which has allowed my body to recognize the world of pain it’s in right now.

It seems that winning a free song from Pepsi is a double-edged sword. I’m vacillating quite a bit about which song to blow my freebie on, and that’s probably used up more of my life than it would take to earn 99 cents. I dunno. Baby Got Back? Elephant Love Medley (from Moulin Rouge)?

Laurie, from my latin dance class, commented that, soon, I’d just be another guy in the dance class (a commentary on the progress the class was making in covering my knowledge of cha-cha moves). I guess I never showed her my other advanced cha-cha moves.

I am teh winnar

So Pepsi finally delivered for me today, and I have one free song waiting for me at the iTunes Music Store. (^_^)V

I arrived at probability (after having a delightful chat with Renee and Bryan in the Commons) to discover that my professor gave me 10/10 for my first homework assignment. He’s being far too kind to me, I think; not only did I turn my work in late, I left two problems unfinished. I don’t think anybody in the class solved one of them, so I can let that slide… but the other is puzzling—I’m just not used to a professor being that forgiving. I really need to study his comments (he actually finished my proofs off, for me!), and get as much out of them as possible.

I’m quickly becoming a fan of his, despite some serious doubts I had formed last term—and that’s not just because he forgave me my first (serious) screw-up. He really does care about his students. That says something, since I’d honestly say that the majority of my professors care for their students.

Plowed through work, and then gave Eileen another call this evening. Looks like we’ll have to go bowling sometime. Also looks like I should prepare to be soundly beaten.

Probably a good thing I don’t mind losing. Except in that Pepsi/iTunes promotion.

Beware

I’m beginning to suspect that my dog is rather intelligent. He’s also remarkably devoted to my mom, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to the rest of us. Anyhoo, yesterday evening my mom was on the couch watching TV. Marin and I were downstairs on our computers, when Yoshi (yes, my parents won the naming battle) hopped on downstairs. He ran over to us, made sure we saw him, and then ran back upstairs (we might have written this off as “looking for Mom,” but he should have already known where she was). We went upstairs, where we found Yoshi waiting and watching us.

I think he was testing our reaction to his trip downstairs.

Yeah, so Yoshi’s finally relaxing some. He now wanders around the house (instead of hovering around his cushion), greets Mom in the morning, licks our hands when we pet him, lies down and doesn’t always jolt when somebody moves, and so on. He also seems to understand that he shouldn’t make messes in the house (he hasn’t peed once inside—even overnight!—that we know of), which was a pleasant thing to discover.

Today, again, my promotional Pepsi/iTunes Big Gulp asked me to Please Try Again. If I don’t win a song tomorrow, I’m going to cry foul about this “one in three” win business.

<burns>Excellent</burns>

Now that I’ve gotten over eight hours of real sleep, I’m mildly functional again. Yesterday I was happy to note that the Pepsi/iTunes Music Giveaway (100 million songs! I don’t think I can count that high) also applies to Big Gulp cups at 7-Eleven. Now, as Eric so wryly pointed out yesterday, I can feed both my addictions.

Sadly, I was Not A Winner yesterday.

Everybody’s a winner today, though, for ADV has announced that Azumanga Daioh DVD 1 will be released on April 27! Now we do the dance of joy!

…and now we forget we ever knew about the dance of joy.

In other news, there’s actually a cha-cha variant of “Lady Marmalade,” from Moulin Rouge. I know, because we did the cha-cha to it in dance class today. (The things I learn!) Oh, and Brian wanted me to point out how kick-ass birds can be. I’m not entirely sure why he doesn’t just post this on his blog, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that he would then have to update.

And say hello to my first confirmed reader from Canada! The intarweb can truly be a wondrous device.

No TV No Beer

…no sleep make Brent go craaaaaaaaazy! Crazy or not, I did do a double-take when I read that officials had found ricin in the Senate. Jeebus.

My craziness was curtailed when I started hacking continuously this evening, and took some NyQuil in desperation. I can now breathe, but I want desperately to go to sleep. Think I will.

Omelas

Have you all heard the ethical tale about Omelas, the town where everyone could be happy so long as one person was locked away and carried the burdens of everyone else? (The question posed by the tale was this: if you were there, would you stay, or would you leave? The evil catch of the story? Omelas is Salem O, backwards. Oooh.)

Anyway, with my school schedule the way it is, my Sundays are the day that bears the burden for the other days’ happiness. All of my homework comes due on Mondays, so I get six days of freedom followed by one day of hell—all courtesy of my complete inability to manage time. It sucks.

But it only sucks on Sunday.

Here’s the plan

You work on my two math assignments and my business case study. I’ll curl up in the fetal position and sleep.

[sound of tossing cookies]

I threw up today. I’m sure you all wanted to know that; I’m just as thrilled to be able to type that in all honesty. I feel like complete junk, which has once again destroyed any plans I had to get a serious amount of homework done today. Go me.

Guess I’ll at least mention the few things that have happened over the last few days that have been notable:

In last Tuesday’s dance class, the instructor put on a “beginner’s cha-cha” (we were moving from merengue to cha-cha that day) that had a hilariously over-accentuated beat (“BUM BUM BUM cha-cha”), to introduce the class to the basic rhythm. From there she put in a different CD and fired up Smooth, by Santana (featuring Rob Thomas). She then said, “yes, this is definitely Santana doing a cha-cha.” Hey—I found it funny. As you might guess from this, we only covered the extreme basics of the dance that day. When we finally got to dance to music, though, I found that my partner (Laurie? Dunno how to spell her name) loved cha-cha like no other dance—so I unlocked my ballroom III-level cha-cha moves. That makes me sound cooler than I really was, but I’ll let it slide.

On Wednesday I was in the Commons, furiously speed-reading my Strategic Management text after having eaten lunch, when I heard a gal say “Hey, Brent!” Lo and behold, it was Robin from dance classes of past (ballroom III) and present (latin I). She asked me what I was reading, which segued into talk of majors and dancing before we went our separate ways. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have too many females (especially those who don’t know me all that well) come up completely of their own accord (I was so engrossed in my text that Sandra Bullock could have walked by and I wouldn’t have noticed) to chat with me. It was odd, but I could get used to it.

On Thursday, then, we did some more cha-cha. Laurie remembered my name this time, and described me as “the guy who knows what he’s doing.” To which I replied: "!!!" I’ve never been described that way before, especially in relation to dance. Also amusing was that another gal in the class was telling me about how one of the other leads was “kinda creepy”; by implication, I figure, that means I’m not creepy. That’s always a plus, especially in a dance class.

Friday… er… I don’t remember too well. Ah, yeah, I was late to a bunch of my classes, for various reasons. Go me. That evening, an Undisclosed Friend and I watched that classic movie, Hackers. Let me tell you, $1.99 was too much to pay to watch that movie. Even if I only paid the 99 cents of that. These hackers were totally elite: they had awesome handles (“I don’t have an identity until I have a handle!”) like “Crash Override” (a.k.a. “Zero Cool,” the fabled hacker whose virus single-handedly took down 1507 computers in one day), Acid Burn, Cereal Killer, and Lord Nikon. They totally used abbreviations such as “b 4” and “how R U?” The gal, played by Angelina Jolie, had a rocking 28.8 K modem that was too hot for all the boys to play with. Half of them used the ultimate hacker machine: the Apple Powerbook, running something not-OS X. And they even brought out the internet to do some wide-scale damage to a specific computer system. Awesome stuff.

My Undisclosed Friend, however, was disappointed that there wasn’t any scene featuring Angelina Jolie’s naked back; he had seen a preview for the movie as a young, impressionable, male, and that scene was apparently one of the two defining moments of the preview.

I likened it to the back of the box for the movie Hangmen, which we had seen at Hollywood while picking up Hackers. That box featured a large picture of a female in a suit packing heat—and, of course, she wasn’t in the movie at all.

Today I’ve been poking around the blogging world again, when I haven’t been tossing my cookies or sleeping. Out of curiosity, I checked to see if Mike Toole (of Anime Jump fame) has a blog; I don’t know if it’s the same Mike Toole, but there is definitely a Mike Toole blog out there. And it has some hilarious stuff in it—my personal favorite:

I wish John McCain would run again on an independent ticket. He should have destroyed Bush, but it’s hard to fight the Bush family. McCain is so badass. If he was in office on September 11th, he would have addressed the nation on September 12th, live from a cave in Afghanistan, holding the severed head of bin Laden.

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