So, I'm trying to read something public-affairsy, readying for school. I don't think this really counts, but I read this.

But I really feel comfortable summarizing it with the David Cross quip making fun of simplified explanations for terrorism. So not only do I not read the original MIT paper the article came from, I dumb down the article, YouTube style. That's how I roll:

Just as much as meets the eye

Today, I went against every natural instinct I have to Wal-Mart*, in search of a product-placed*, movie-as-giant-toy-commercial* toy tie-in, all-American, gas-guzzling* Honda Civic** Si Decepticon.

They didn't have it in the Transformer Aisle* (perhaps it's not released yet), but they DID have a Mr. Potato Head Transformer**.

Optimash-Prime

Transformers was good! I'm second-guessing a lot of stuff afterward, but I definitely enjoyed it as I watched it. It kind of makes you*** want to drive a Camaro real fast. And then your ragtag convoy saves the world!

*These things bother me.

**These things delight me.

***(me)

I have between 1 and 2 tests tomorrow

Total study time: 10 minutes.

I have, however, done all my laundry and put it away, gone through all my mail, washed the dishes, meditated (then fell asleep sitting up), went down to the gym (which was locked), drawn a bath (it takes a few hours to get to a non-scalding temperature, so I have the actual bath to look forward to still), vaccuumed, and restacked my boxes of bamboo flooring.

I also found this video which claims to show how that egg toast breakfast was made on V for Vendetta. Well, it doesn't make that specific claim. Probably because the end result looks more like my own messy attempts at it rather than the movie version. Their version allows a lot more wasted toast (the chewy center part, too).

Two things about me:

• I eat only the center of pancakes, unless I'm very, very hungry.
• I read magazines backwards.

sample space

In my statistics class, I've been forced to find entertainment in my fellow classmates. At first I thought the young man with his arms and neck choked with tattoos would be most interesting--he got irrationally angry when the teacher was not explaining things to him, and would testily say "thank you" and stare pointedly at his hands after each interchange. I also was forced to find humor in the kiss-up girl in the first row so that she didn't annoy me (I later found out she wasn't on-the-ball because she's a statistics expert, but because she's already taken and failed the course once). But for the last few classes, my hero has been the Eating Boy. EB has great timing that makes everything he says unintentionally funny. His timing is because before he says ANYTHING, he stuffs about 5 animal crackers in his mouth, and continues to put them in his mouth as he talks.

The teacher often has to get a tall person to help her do things. EB is pretty tall, and usually obliging, but once she asked him to stand on his desk to turn on the projector on the ceiling, and he calmly put a cracker in his mouth and said "I don't do desks." She had to stare at him a few moments to realize he really wasn't going to budge. The teacher was, for about the fourth time, wanting to show us a slide she has of mammoth and elephant tusks, and how at the extremes, their normal curves intersect, and that you wouldn't be certain what kind of tusk you were looking at if it was in this intersection. This time, she began talking about a museum in Lincoln, Nebraska that has six full mammoth skeletons, and how astoundingly huge they are. For someone so stressed about the accelerated nature of this course that she rarely answers students' questions to their satisfaction, she can get off on a tangent. And with all the interesting examples that are used in the textbook problems, it's easy for all of us to get off on a tangent. Anyway, after a full discussion about mammoth bones and current digs in Nebraska, there was a silence as she sidled back up to the board to segue back into the actually math of the problem. Crackers (I like this name better than EB) finished chewing his mouthful and said "You are crazy about mammoths, lady." The next problem was finding the human threshhold to detect sulfur in wine. Tangent: "There are people who's whole job is to smell things! Like wine! And... perfume! And.... lots of things." Her tangent wasn't especially interesting in this case. And I don't know how many other things people get paid big money to smell. Anyway, Crackers said with uncharacteristic enthusiasm "Have you guys heard that thing about asparagus?" (no response from class) "Some people can actually smell asparagus" (no response) "In PEE." Another girl responds "Yes, it's one of those genetic things--you either can or you can't." I don't know what the teacher was doing at this point. After the class had no further response, Crackers stuffed his mouth, nodded sagely and said to himself smugly "I can. I can smell it."

Furthering occurrences that don't translate well into stories: at a bar the other night, a man came back looking for his wallet by our table, and found it! He was so overjoyed, he wanted to buy us all a beer. He left and came back several times, repeatedly expressing interest in buying us a beer. He said "Thank you! Thank you so much for guarding my wallet! Or... for not stealing my wallet!" (slight awkward silence on our part) "Or, for not having the wherewithal to turn around and look behind you!" He ended up buying us a pitcher of beer at about 1:58am. This was why we hadn't wanted a free beer--closing time. But we were glad to share in the man's overwhelming joy.

And here is something my boyfriend said the other night, about Juliet from Lost. "I would probably watch a porn with her in it." (I glare). "What? I would!" And just for the verisimilitude, picture Cliff from Veronica Mars saying this.

i've had some feta cheese in my fridge for a week, and I haven't done anything with it. I realized that I wasn't sure what feta tasted like. I knew I'd had it before, but I kept imagining cottage cheese, which I knew was cottage cheese. So I took an enormous bite (because that's how much came off in the fork). You might be thinking "oh, one time I, too, had an enormous bite of feta like that." But let me stop you right there because I'm pretty sure I have taken the biggest bite of feta cheese ever in the history of cheese. And I'm also pretty sure it had gone bad. You know what, I don't even want to talk about this anymore.

I am going to go ahead and have a serving of this peach cobbler which is green and black in parts (and was last night when I took it out of the oven), but I'm not even going to question that. My taste buds' sense of horror threshhold has ballooned ridiculously in the last 10 minutes.

And now I'm going to watch House, which shockingly features a brain tumor according to the summary.

IT'S STILL ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also, this, from my phone uploads:

In illustrating the 68-95-99.7 rule in statistics, my notes came out looking like an elderly gentleman in a pith helmet.

don't try to cheat the future

I've been working all week, and I'm tired, and I still somehow feel like I haven't worked enough. And then, when I came home at night, I'd remember how there was something nasty in the cabinetry.

It sounded as though a bird was trapped in my pantry, but that didn't make sense. It seemed to be knocking to get out, which was a little bit terrifying. So rather than find out what in the world could be fluttering and kicking with such strength, I just taped the door shut. True story. I'll post a picture so you believe me. Anyway, days passed, the thing was still alive and kicking (and punching). Xander and I (BC still MIA) huddled in terror and curiousity. At some point, I imagined it a hulking exoskeleton-ous crablike monster, as featured in the Buffy episode Bad Eggs, and sort of like in Aliens, also. The idea of opening the cabinet terrified me because this!

could happen to me or Xander!

Speaking of Xander, he's driving me crazy! I had no idea how much BC had to put up with, but that cat wants to play ALL THE TIME. And now he's taken to sprinting out out my front door whenever I open it.

In the end, I put some diatomaceous earth in a crack of the door, and after a prolonged and mighty struggle, I think whatever's in there is dead. But I'm going to wait till I get back to town on Monday to actually check and see. Expect an autopsy report then, if the acid blood doesn't kill me.

I'm so exhausted. I like my sleep, and that's one thing I haven't gotten this week. I can't wait for my 1.5 hour (direct!) plane ride tomorrow. Naps! Then Saturday: exoskeletons! (will become clear later)

emails

I've written 85 emails since 10AM today. 63 of them for work. Which I am now leaving. (to go to Other Work).

Battle Cat has located his proper domain for doing battle: under the deck of the sports court in my condo buildings. That's where he lives now. With centipedes and possums, which I assume double as both roommates and meals.

Xander likes being an only cat again. But things can't last this way.

I was locked out of Blogger for a few days and couldn't fix the seemingly unavoidable grammer and spelling mistakes that I sometimes notice if I bother to read my own updates. Gosh, the only thing that happened to me though is that I watched 5 minutes of a show called "Growing Up Tiger" on Animal Planet, and one shot of a tiger cub getting a bath has sustained me through a somewhat trying week. I'm not sure why I was so anxious to update the last week. Probably just because I couldn't.

Last night my cords for the Super Nintendo came, but I couldn't get it to work. So I worked on my iTunes library for a while and tried not to cry about it. But today I might take it to Gamefellas, a shop right by my house that I always wondered about, and it turns out they specialize in classic video game consoles.

And lastly, Thursday is my first attempt at a role-playing game, and I have barely sketched out my character! I love doing this kind of thing (hence my participation in several imaginary comic books throughout my life), but I haven't had time and I want to do it right. But I'm running out of time. So, if you'd like to be a dear, just post some random traits/background my character might have, just to give me some ideas to start with. I'm thinking I'll try to work Russian into it because another player there speaks some Russian, too, plus there's a Siberian corporation in the game's universe. I can't be magic, but otherwise, the sky's the limit.

I saw Spider-Man 3 last week, a movie dripping with big fat man-tears. I probably wouldn't have thought much about it, except I saw it with someone who's been accused of being emotionless. You hear phrases like "emotionally unavailable," but they don't really sink in until you experience them. Anyway, maybe I'm contracting a slight lack of empathy myself because I totally agreed with a friend who said, regarding MJ's mopiness in the movie "Get over it! You're dating a superhero--you're following him. He's not going to relocate for your crappy acting career!" Of course, it was more subtle than that in the movie, but really MJ, you're going to have to toughen up if you want to keep dating Spiderman. Spiderman and all his friends will probably also have to stop welling up at the drop of a hat.

Anyway, with a real-life person lacking a wide range of emotion, it helps to re-define emotions to include such things as nausea, headache, and dizziness. True, these may sound more like "symptoms" than "emotions," but whatever it takes to get my friend to be more emotional.

A big rope of ants discovered something under my bookcase! I have no idea what they could be doing under there. I'm surprised they can even fit, or that they made it all the way to the third story of my building. I'm constantly covered with phantom ant bites now. I don't think they're really the biting kind, though. I'm just being very emotional. Itching is also an emotion.