Labyrinth- The Quintessential '80s Movie

But I liked it anyway- surprise surprise!

So Labyrinth, starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly is chock-full of lessons, like "life's not fair," "don't take things for granted," "friends are everything," and so on. But I think the most important lesson we must take away from this Sesame Street/Wizard of Oz/LOTR/Alice in Wonderland- like film is: Never trip on LSD! Lest you fantasize about being infatuated with David Bowie in tight gray leggings. Ay, what a nightmare!

I Spy a Sty in My Eye

Sometimes, I forget that I only have two eyes, and no replacements. Thanks to my disregard for proper eyecare, my left eye is now swollen and lazy-looking, and according to Sarah's research, the symptoms indicate the formation of a sty within my eyelid. YAY. It doesn't seem like too big a deal as long as I don't pop it on accident, but I was scanning the list of sty-related problems of a more serious sort:

-The eye is swollen shut.

-Redness appears around the entire eye.

-You have any change or disturbance in you vision.

-Swelling lasts for more than 3 weeks.

-The sty or styes come back or bleed.

-Your eyelashes fall out.

-Pus or thick discharge continues to drain from the eye.

-You have a fever higher than 100.5.

-You have excessive persistent tearing.

-You have significant pain.

and for some reason, of all the serious problems listed, it was the one about the eyelashes falling out that freaked me out. There is something distinctly horrifying about the possibility that one morning, you'll rub your eyes upon waking up and find all your eyelashes stuck to the back of your hand.

But now my curiosity is getting the better of me: I wonder how I would look with no eyelashes? Would it make much of a difference, given that my eyelashes are of inconsequential length in the first place? Hm.

I've always envied those with eyelashes so long that they make air currents when they blink and necessitate the use of curling irons instead of plain old eyelash curlers.

Funniest Facebook Group EVER!

NAME: Dora the Explorer is soo an illegal immigrant...

DESCRIPTION: Ok, so here's the deal... If you need the explanations they're all around you...

1) She speaks spanish... she speaks spanish perfectly... what is she like...5? Her backpack even speaks spanish perfectly!

2) That backpack of hers has EVERYTHING in it! And we're talking everything! Life support, water/food, clothing for any weather, ropes, grappling hooks, shoes.... i mean c'mon!

3) She's carrying a freaking ZOO with her! I mean, she has a monkey, an band of insects, a bajillion other animals! Really! What kind of legal immigrant has that many pets!?

4) She's always on an "adventure" to transport a "package" to some destination and is always being stalked by a person trying to take that package... i mean... really, Swiper is so obviously some sort of border patrol person trying to collect evidence of Dora's entire narcotics trafficking buisness

The evidence is so obvious and around you guys! And they're even poisoning our little children with them... Who wants our toddlers to grow up knowing spanish before english?! Even if it's the USA...

ONE MEMBER'S POST:

"OMG..I had no idea this group existed. My 2 yr old daughter LOVES dora and her only words come from the show. seriously, her first word was back pack. I'm not kidding. She says abre and hola and zapato and baila and she can name all the characters on the show. It's so sad. My boyfriend and I have always joked about how dora has cocaine in her backpack and is smuggling it and she must be having sex with boots. Wow. Thank you for this facebook group!"
-Mother of a Dora Fan

Where's the Blimp?

I was listening to "Strength and Honor" from the Gladiator soundtrack, and suddenly I thought of that scene in Cinderella where the mice are trying to get past Lucifer the mean, fat cat.

Is that weird?

There's a little blurb in the Science Times about how scientists are ready to put the Large Hadron Collider (named Atlas) into action, possibly recreating the the birth of the universe over and over and over again- 30 million times per second to be exact. It's also possible that the monster machine won't produce anything special, in which case the credibility/rep/etc. of the scientists involved will be annihilated, they probably won't receive funding again for such an endeavor anywhere near our lifetime, and the hope of finding evidence for certain theories will be lost for a long time.

So nothing too exciting, in other words.

Shouldn't this stuff be advertized by a blimp flying a banner, at the very least? I guess they can't count the chickens before they hatch.

PS Meets HP

What's your greatest fear? I completely empathize with you, man!

MMA-Worthy Idea?

I want to build a bunch of random objects like chairs, birds and hairdryers out of playdoh, put them on display, and call it "Plato's ideals".

5-Second Rule!

An awesome one-page article on a scientific study of the 5-second rule. I'm pretty blase about eating stuff off the floor. A little dirt don't hurt, and I'm sure I've ingested much dirtier things than a few colonies of bacteria in my lifetime, and see, I managed to reach the age of 23. But of course if it fell on the Septa bus floor for example, or on the floor of the bookstore bathroom, I ain't that stupid- that shit's staying on the floor.

Happiness to Thoreau

“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder…”– Thoreau

Aphorisms

Beauty is only skin-deep; underneath that skin, everyone is fucking crazy.

The real question is, is it true that the more beautiful and perfect you look on the outside, the more fucked you are on the inside, because it takes so much effort to maintain the physical semblance of sanity and perfection? Or is it that "everyone is fucking crazy", but some are so fucked inside that the fuckedness hidden underneath the skin oozes out like puss through the pores, thus making it visible to the naked eye?

"Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well...."

~Magritte, about his painting, "Son of Man"

If I Were a Dictator

Forget ordering mass genocide and hoarding all the wealth and food. If I were a dictator, I would standardize melons. Honeydew, cantaloupe, golden melon, watermelon, (just) melons- there's just too goddamn many of them! And papayas are melons too! Unbelievable...

When life gives you melons, make melonade.

Melon is Elvish for "friend."

If Physicists Were Weight-Loss Specialists

You know what's a great way to lose weight? Go down an elevator and have someone cut the cable. You weigh...zero pounds, congratulations!

Surgeon General's warning: Weight-loss using the above method is temporary, and excessive weight re-gain is highly probable upon impact when landing.

If Physicists Were Bullies

"Your mama's so dense, light bends around her."

~Ouch. I've definitely heard that one on the playground.

I just love how they have a page on Wikipedia for "yo momma" jokes, which got popular, apparently, in the early '90s.

Words of Wisdom

"If there’s a defect in basic cell biology, it might be shared by other cells. So we can learn a lot about complicated organisms from studying very simple cells like yeast."

~ from an interview with biologist Susan Lindquist

Since things usually evolve from simple to complex, then it does make sense that if something's wrong with a basic function, then the problem occurred early on and continued throughout. Kind of like when you make a calculation error early on in a complicated math problem, but you don't realize it until you reach the solution, so every line thereafter is wrong (carries the error).

Tragedy or Comedy?

1. There's a lot of bad shit going down around the world. But it's always been like that, right? To me, though, the Virginia Tech massacre seems all the more tragic because a lot of them were so young. Dying is awful, but it's worse when it happens to people who haven't had a chance to do everything they want to do. (Tragedy)

2. What's with the Koreans Gone Wild? (Hm, I just thought of an inappropriate spoof* of Girls Gone Wild videos- Comedy). First there's that second year Penn law school student, John Cho, who barged into his downstairs neighbors' apmt door and fired 15 rounds because he thought they were commie spies, or something. Then this Cho Seung-hi guy. Two don't mean a thang, though.

*Word History: We are indebted to a British comedian for the word spoof. Sometime in the 19th century Arthur Roberts (1852-1933) invented a game called Spoof, which involved trickery and nonsense. The first recorded reference to the game in 1884 refers to its revival. It was not long before the word spoof took on the general sense "nonsense, trickery," first recorded in 1889. The verb spoof is first recorded in 1889 as well, in the sense "to deceive." These senses are now less widely used than the noun sense "a light parody or satirical imitation," first recorded in 1958, and the verb sense "to satirize gently," first recorded in 1927.

3. I recently experienced some drama-trauma myself, when my ipod went missing for a full 4 days. (A tale for some later time.) But I got it back yesterday, and when I went home, I scrapped all my evening plans, hooked up my ipod (my baby!) to Sarah's speakers, plopped down on the living room floor and listened to glorious music until well past midnight. For the record, I did, in fact, croon "dear ipod, I've missed you so!" not once, but twice! With feeling! (Near-tragedy)

4. Sanjaya making it into the top 7 in American Idol. (Comedy)

5. Sanjaya singing country. (A Tragedy for the Country music industry, a Comedy for the rest of us)

6. Sanjaya winning American Idol (Tragedy).

7. Ryan Seacrest's look this season just screams "MINI-PAT SAJAK!" They should get him a wheel. (Comedy)

8. A giraffe with a fear of heights. (Tragi-Comedy)

Dialogue

Theme: Insults

Scene 1:

Joey: You know what I like about you? No matter how much I insult you, you are unflappable. You're like the ship that sails serenely through the fog.

Angie: Wow, I've never heard that analogy before- I like it! How does it go again?

Joey: Yeah, you're like a ship, see there's this thick fog, you can't see anything, and you just sail like a ship through the fog, completely unfeathered.

Angie: So...I'm the fog.

Joey: Yeah, see, so there's this ship, it's sailing through a thick fog, it's night and you can't see a thing, but you just sail on through it

Angie: So...I'm the night.

Joey: The knight in shining armor. See now, it's raining, and it's foggy, and there's this ship that's sailing on the water, and the knight's armor gets all wet from the rain.

Angie: So...I'm the rain.

Joey: Yeah, except it's strange because you're carrying an umbrella. But it's one of those umbrellas that, when you open it, it rains on the inside, but you only see those in cartoons.

Scene 2:

(At the bookstore. My co-workers and I are standing around at the info-desk being our usual useful, hardworking selves.)

Karen: ...blah blah blah Angie blah blah blah...

Molly: The problem is, it's really hard to insult her because she just doesn't listen.

Me: ...What?

Science Times

This week's Science Times is a gold mine. I sat at the bookstore yesterday and read it cover-to-cover. They had this huge theme, "Desire", which caught my interest, sure, but the article that was supposed to be a main feature was kind of a let-down in my opinion because a lot of the discussed "discoveries" were common sense, trivial, "duh" discoveries that everyone and her mom already knows. I know that that is part of science too- proving the obvious facts through the scientific method, but I hate it when researchers make a big deal when they discover that "oh my god, people tend to like their own personal space," or "sexual arousal is linked with emotional/inner states, not just physical for a high percentage of women." One result they found particularly interesting was that straight men are only attracted to women, whereas straight women, though they say they prefer men, are nonetheless attracted to other women. Well, yeah, that's because a typical woman's body, compared to a man's, is just damn sexier, more beautiful with its curves, not just an angular box like a man's; a typical woman's body is simply more aesthetically pleasing. We'll see how long it takes for that to become a hypothesis.

The other main feature, on the other hand, was definitely not a let-down. Some interesting points I found were:

-all fetuses are female by default! At least until a certain gene on the Y chromosome, if present, diverts the reproductive tissue from the ovarian-forming pathway (Picture a stick figure chromosome man dressed in a clown costume jumping up and down with his arms raised, shouting "hey, over here! Lookit me, lookit me! Follow me, and grow some balls!) into the pathway that makes the fetus man up.

-baby boys whose dicks are accidentally cut off due to a circumcision job gone south (maybe not south enough), who are raised as girls, are still attracted to girls

-based on a study of twins, they found genetics definitely plays a key role in determining sexual orientation, especially in males- not an amazing revelation in itself, but then one has to wonder how homosexuality, if it is genetic, survived in the genes since homosexual males tend to have 1/5 the number of kids as their straight counterparts.

The article discussed the possibility that either

1) it's a byproduct gene (just like how our penchant for believing in a higher being could simply be an evolutionary byproduct of another trait) that just came along for the ride, attached to some other actually beneficial gene. Picture now, Schwarzenegger going for a motorcycle ride with his son sitting next to him in a side-car. (They crashed, but they survived!) I just learned of this incident from my current annotating task.) , or

2) it's explained by the fraternal birth order effect, which says that males with older brothers have a higher chance of being gay. Something about more testosterone being in the womb for the next birth. Each older brother increases the odds by a whopping 33%! Suddenly, while reading about this theory, I couldn't help but marvel at my straight friend Joe from high school, who had 6 or 7 older brothers (and very old parents, I might add); Joe's a walking talking miracle. A bit of a mama's boy, yes. Oh and just so I don't get shot, by "miracle", I mean a statistical miracle.

-a lot of brain-related genes are on the X chromosome. Why? A possible explanation discussed in the article is:

1) Guys only have one X chromosome, so mutations on it have more of an effect, leading to fast selection.

2) Girls prefer smarter guys. (I guess this has been true since the beginning of man, is the assumption.)

Coupling facts 1 & 2 together, any advantageous brain-related mutation on the X chromosome is going to be snatched up quickly, resulting in a lot of brain-related genes on the X chromosome. I grappled with this for a while. For some reason- maybe because I haven't had bio since high school- I had a hard time understanding the connection, but I think it makes sense now. I was like, "Why do they keep saying 'fast selection'? What does that mean?"

Also, an article about the flight pattern of fruit flies, which sounds mundane at first, but they're like fractals! No matter how close or far you watch their flight pattern, it looks the same (fly straight, make a right angle turn, fly straight, make a right angle turn, rinse and repeat). And why would anyone care? Because next time you're searching for a needle in a haystack with some friends in the stix, you'll remember this article and suggest to your friends that maybe the best, most optimal way to search isn't by combing the fields in straight lines, but in a crazy zig-zag pattern! Take a leaf out of nature's book- a lot of times, it turns out to be a pretty good guide, you know?

Here is an interesting quote from an article I found while searching for the fruit flies one:

"NO longer content with dissecting tissues, analyzing proteins and breeding fruit flies, an increasingly diverse group of scientists has decided that the best way to study life is to make some of their own.

They are creating a field called artificial life, [this is where I stopped reading to check the date of the article- September 29, 1987] mixing the impulses of biology with the tools of computation. By looking beyond the usual materials of life - beyond the familiar biochemistry of earthly animals and plants - they hope to capture its spirit: the animated, the energetic, the replicating, the evolved."

Wow, imagine how crazy that must have sounded way back in the eighties.

And last, an article about the discovery of the oldest depiction of a fish. Guess what kind of fish it is- an Atlantic salmon. That's how accurate and detailed the 25,000-year-old depiction was; they could actually make-out the particular type of fish! Speaking of salmon, it's cool how such a simple thing as wearing the same jewelry as the rest of your tribe could have played a part in ensuring the evolution of you and me- modern modern man.

Last Words

"Don't cry, I need all my courage to die at twenty."

~the last words of Evariste Galois

Poop Talk

You know what's a laxative? When you only have one bathroom, and your roommate is using it. Somehow your stomach knows...

Dictators Aren't Below Good Ol' Name-Calling

Okay, so he didn't call him "butthead" or "nincompoop" which would have been AWESOME, but in the past, Venezuelen President Hugo Chavez has called Bush a "donkey," a "drunkard," a "coward," and best of all, "Mr. Danger." Oh wait, it gets better! Now he calls our dear jefe "El Diablo." Hee hee! Well, he does have the cowboy accent and probably the boots to go with.

Also, last year, Chavez showed a keen interest in having a biographical film made starring Oliver Stone as the Venezuelen president. Apparently, Stone passed up the offer (of a lifetime).

And once, he rebutted criticism from Condoleeza Rice by suggesting she had a crush on him.

What a colorful character. Evil, maybe, but colorfully so.

Joey's Trick

Something Joey showed us at work one day:

eyeye

(double vision!)

The Hazards of Dance

I split my pants dancing to Beastie Boys yesterday.

"Kickin lyrics right to your brain, so when you hear that sound you'll be right as rain!"

Help, I need a needle and thread.

Stash the 'Stache

Weird. There's this Arabic looking guy who looks as if he hasn't been in school in quite a few years in the computer lab who is looking through facebook. What business might he have on that site? Maybe it's the moustache that's throwing me way off in my estimate of his age.

I've got a thing against moustaches- they skeeve me out. They look so...child-molester-ish. At the very least they make guys look way older than their actual age, and not in a good way. Older and shadier. The only man who ever looked decent with a moustache was Omar Shariff in Dr. Zhivago, and even then...it was still unsettling.

Also, when will I get "too old" to keep a facebook account? Will my profile be up there forever, forever displaying my activities as "high-tailing it from heaven, burning in hell", like some weird time-capsule or info-age diary or photo album? Oooh, thinking about such a distant future kinda freaks me out. But not as much as moustaches do.

Again With the Drama!

Alias, Heroes, Boston Legal,...and now Sopranos! I've recently gotten into this awesome HBO series. The writing (lots and lots of dialogue) is just terrific. It's comedy, it's very subtly dramatic, there some action, but only because it's a show about the Mob, but it's the writing that makes it a keeper. And also, the characters don't get friggin annoying like they do on 24. 24 is OK, but it's all action, no depth, no wit, no light moments, no funny (yes, it's a noun in my book), and the characters- you just wanna kill them because all their annoying habits and stupid things they choose to do.

I watched the whole second disc (4 episodes, folks!) of the first season of the Sopranos last night after I got home, and that's pretty much what my nights are gonna be like for the next two weeks so that I can take full advantage of my Netflix free 2-week trial...except when I'm in Florida, I guess. Netflix is awesome, folks- get it! I urge you strongly! You've got almost nothing to lose, no tricks, no fine print! And I like their commercials where the family comes home to find all these movie characters in their living room.

(The title of this post is a line from one of the episodes.)

Anthony Jr.: "Is it true that the Chinese invented spaghetti?"

Tony: "Think about it: Why would people who eat with sticks...invent something that you need a fork to eat?"

(Of course, I almost always eat pasta with chopsticks if it's available, with sriracha sauce dribbled all over it. But it's still funny!)

"They're called Hasidim, Paulie."

Paulie: "Hasidim, but I don't believe 'em."

Happy 3.1415926535... Day!

In honor of this special day, a quick poll:

What's everyone's favorite pie?

I love pecan pie- without the pecans.

Caveat

Logical validity doesn't imply truth.

A Link About the Neuro-Law Link

Another great Times magazine article about neuroscience and the law, which taps into my recent surge of interest in the brain.

Divination, presently only a "woolly" and "imprecise" (that would be McGonagall talking) subject taught at Hogwarts, could become a science once we find out more about our brain! In one study, they could predict when the subject was thinking about places vs people by studying the way the brain lit up. That is crazy and cool.

In preparation for the upcoming release of HP 7, I've decided to relate all blog matters to the magical world of Harry Potter. It's like Lent preceding Easter except way more exciting! And I don't have to give up chocolate, which seems to be my latest food obsession.

Yesterday, while I was working at the bookstore, I ate like 7 different kinds of chocolate (cookies, doughnuts, bars, etc.), and was bouncing off the walls. Plus the sun was shining. WowowoWW no one should ever let me eat that much chocolate in one day ever again. I felt like I could fly I was so happy, and also, I felt kind of trapped too because my excess energy and zest for life was bounded by my present surroundings and situation and by not having any wings dammit. Like the only match for my mood would have been flying to the moon on a magic carpet...with an Aladdin. Hmmm this sounds familiar.

It's That 3-Letter Word Again

What does God see when he looks in the mirror?

Dog. Here puppy, puppy!

Unless he is looking into the Mirror of Erised. Hm...what would God see in the Mirror of Erised? What does He desire more than anything else in the whole universe (or multiverse)? Maybe He wants a body. Or world peace. Or a piece of cake.

More importantly, what does Dumbledore see when he looks into the Mirror of Erised? We all know it's not really socks.

Darwin's God

an interesting article from the Times magazine. I especially liked the part where they talk about "spandrel" (page 3), a term coined by some famous evolutionary biologist and his colleague that is used to describe "a trait that has no adaptive value of its own."

Sometimes there is no "why" or "what for"; it just is.

Say No to...What?

I find myself growing more and more averse to mob movements the more I read about them. Consider the following comment made by a partaker of a demonstration following the release of the Mehlis report "implicating high-level Syrian officials in Hariri's death":

"We are protesting against the Mehlis report because it is untrue," said Marwa Jelaylat, 17. "We were very surprised to hear these accusations against our government."

The first thought that popped into my head after reading the word "untrue" was What does she know? She's a 17-year-old Syrian common citizen for crying out loud. Gee, now I sound like one of those baddies on tv that pushes the heroine out of the way saying "get outta the way little girl, you don't know what you're doing, go play with your dolls." But come on. How can she just say that a report presented by the U.N. is untrue, and with such conviction?

What percentage of individuals in a protest crowd really truly understand what they are fighting for or against, I wonder? Maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is to get passionate about some issue or another, even if the stance is chosen mostly out of ignorance or misinformation. At least they care enough to shout themselves hoarse and raise picket signs.

Revelations:

The scariest book in the Bible.

My life is full of epiphanies and revelations. Of course, what's a revelation for one can be mundane fact for another, hardly worth an eyebrow-raise, if you have the ability to raise one eyebrow at a time. I myself can only do it with the left brow.

...On another note: Mandarin and Cantonese are known as Chinese "dialects", but they are completely different languages really. How are they different? Well, if you ask a linguist, you'll get a really convoluted reply about tones, syllable-final sounds, merging, phonological change, and so on.

A much simpler answer would be: Cantonese is ugly, while Mandarin is not. So if you ever hear someone (most likely a guy) say adamantly: "Chinese is hot!" and maybe even furnish you with an example involving that girl in Rush Hour who's in every other hot-Asian-chick role, then most likely, he is talking about Mandarin.

Absolutes

Random internet find #47:

"When your mama says you should never run with a sharp stick, she was probably right. Of course, if you don't, you'll never win the Great Sharp Stick Race!"

Learning from the best

Whatever happened to those educational cartoons of yore? And now, the Warner Bros (and Warner sister!) present: the U.S. presidents!

Note: the astericks indicate the original lyrics
Note: the prophetic nature of the bolded verse

Yakko: Heigh ho, do you know
The names of the U.S. residents
Who then became the presidents
And got a view from the White House loo
Of Pennsylvania Avenue?

Wakko: George Washington was the first, you see
He once chopped down a cherry tree
Dot : President number two would be
John Adams and then number three

* Yakko: George Washington was the first, you see
* He once chopped down a cherry tree
* Dot : President number two would be
* John Adams and then number three

Yakko: Tom Jefferson stayed up to write
The Declaration late at night
So he and his wife had a great big fight
And she made him sleep on the couch all night

* Yakko: Tom Jefferson stayed up to write
* The Constitution late at night
* So he and his wife had a great big fight
* And she made him sleep on the couch all night

Wakko: James Madison never had a son
And he fought the War of 1812
Dot : James Monroe's colossal nose
Was bigger than Pinocchio's

Yakko: John Quincy Adams was number six
And it's Andrew Jackson's butt he kicks
So Jackson learns to play politics
Next time he's the one that the country picks

Dot : Martin Van Buren, number eight
For a one-term shot as Chief of State
Yakko: William Harrison, how do you praise?
That guy was dead in thirty days

Wakko: John Tyler, he liked country folk
Dot : And after him came President Polk
Yakko: Zachary Taylor liked to smoke
His breath killed friends whenever he spoke

Wakko: Eighteen fifty, really nifty
Millard Fillmore's in
Yakko: Young and fierce was Franklin Pierce
The man without a chin

Dot : Follows next a period spannin'
Four long years with James Buchanan
Then the South starts shootin' cannon
And we've got a civil war
YW+D : A war, a war down south in Dixie

Yakko: Up to bat comes old Abe Lincoln
Dot : There's a guy who's really thinkin'
Wakko: Kept the United States from shrinkin'
Saved the ship of state from sinkin'

Dot : Andrew Johnson's next
He had some slight defects
Wakko: Congress each
Would impeach
Dot : And so the country now elects

Yakko: Ulysses Simpson Grant
Who would scream and rave and rant
Wakko: While drinking whiskey
Although risky
'Cause he'd spill it on his pants

Yakko: It's eighteen seventy-seven
And the Democrats would gloat
But they're all amazed when Rutherford Hayes
Wins by just one vote

Dot : James Garfield, someone really hated
'Cause he was assassinated
Wakko: Chester Arthur gets instated
Four years later, he was traded

Dot : For Grover Cleveland, really fat
Elected twice as a Democrat
Then Benjamin Harrison; after that
It's William McKinley up to bat

Yakko: Teddy Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill
Wakko: And President Taft, he got the bill
Yakko: In 1913 Woodrow
YW+D : Wil...
...son takes us into World War One

Yakko: Warren Harding next in line
Dot : It's Calvin Coolidge; he does fine
Wakko: And then in nineteen twenty-nine
The market crashes, and we find

* Yakko: Warren Harding, he does fine
* Dot : It's Calvin Coolidge next in line
* Wakko: And then in nineteen twenty-nine
* The market crashes, and we find

Yakko: It's Herbert Hoover's big debut
He gets the blame and loses to
Dot : Franklin Roosevelt, president who
Helped us win in World War Two

Wakko: Harry Truman, weird little human
Serves two terms and when he's done
Yakko: It's Eisenhower who's got the power
From fifty-three to sixty-one

Dot : John Kennedy had Camelot
Then Lyndon Johnson took his spot
Yakko: Richard Nixon, he gets caught
And Gerald Ford fell down a lot

* Dot : John F. Kennedy, he gets shot
* So Lyndon Johnson takes his spot
* Yakko: Richard Nixon, he gets caught
* And Gerald Ford fell down a lot

Wakko: Jimmy Carter liked campaign trips
Yakko: And Ronald Reagan's speeches' scripts
All came from famous movie clips
And President Bush said "read my lips"

Dot : Now in Washington D.C.
Wakko: There's Democrats and the G.O.P.
Yakko: But the ones in charge are plain to see
Dot : The Clintons, Bill and Hillary

* Dot : Now in Washington D.C.
* Wakko: There's Democrats and the G.O.P.
* Yakko: But the one in charge is plain to see
* Dot : It's Clinton, first name Hillary

Yakko: The next President to lead the way
Well, it just might be yourself one day
Then the press'll distort everything you say
YW+D : So jump in your plane and fly away

How I Ended Up in a 7-11 at 2:30 in the Morning in my snowflake pajama pants and eeyore nightshirt, holding a brownie in one hand and cheetos in the o

ther. (Title space has a limit?) Otherwise titled: Nighttime Wanderings.

I woke up from a nap at around 2 in the morning (so far, nothing out of the ordinary). I picked up the book that I was currently reading, "In the Shadow of the Law" (nothing strange there). I found my place and started losing myself in the story again (great book, by the way). Then, somewhere down the line (line 9, page 347), my mind started wandering.

After some random pit-stops, it wandered to "Meet Joe Black"- possibly the weirdest movie ever made in the history of movie-making. And damn, way to kill the effectiveness of the "dramatic pause" through overuse. Also, I don't think the director realized that if you pause for too long, intensity and level of anticipation and interest actually decrease exponentially, members of the audience actually start to forget why we are pausing in the first place, the link between the pre- and post-pause line lost in the silence. And so, we are left scratching our heads and wondering why the word "Death" has just flown out of the Brad Pitt's lips.

Anyway,...after ambling into Meet Joe Black, my mind then wandered effortlessly to Brad Pitt, who plays Death, and made a smooth connection to peanut butter (in the movie, Death develops a rather obsessive taste for peanut butter). *Gurgle gurgle*. My stomach approved. So, slave that I am to the desires of my tummy, I pulled out the pb and started eating it straight out of the jar with a spoon, just like Brad Pitt does in the movie.

Then, instead of wandering further into the murky depths of undiscovered associations, my mind remained a passenger on the food train, and I began to think how wonderful it would be to have a nice big decadent slice of 7-11 (we say "magic") brownie on a plate in front of me. But it's 2:30 in the morning! protested my voice of reason. He was quickly silenced. Throwing a coat over my pj's, I was out the door in a minute, down the escalator,...and that's how I ended up at 7-11 at 2:30 in the morning in the said get-up, with said comestibles in hand.

But what about the cheetos? That was to balance out the sweet with a little salty. Apparently, my voice of reason was not completely and properly silenced upstairs. That shall be remedied in good time.

Otherwise entitled: Why it takes me so long to read even a good book like "In the Shadow of the Law".

Do the dew, not the doo

Oh man. I dunno whether to laugh or be embarrassed, so I am currently doing both. I was sitting in front of the computer annotating WSJ sentences (OK OK I was surfing the net, reading the Times), when the bottle of mountain dew I had this morning called for a trip to the freezing cold bathroom down the hall. I opened the door, walked in, and exclaimed aloud to no one in particular: "pee-EWWWW!" because man it smelled like the worst case of doodoo in there, and because I thought I was alone. Only I wasn't because the next moment, I saw a pair of feet peeking out from under a stall from the reflection in the mirror. I had the horribly impolite but involuntary urge to giggle, and then thinking how embarrassing it would be to come face to face with the doodoo-doer, I quickly shuffled out of the bathroom. And now, I'm sitting in front of the computer once more, desperately needing to go pee.

Welcome Home

Gee, Philly is supposed to be the hub of violence, but so far, I've witnessed nothing in the city of brotherly love (KNOCK ON WOOD!). Then I come home to Tacoma for a 3 week vacation, and in one day, a fight breaks out at our local mall, right in front of my eyes, where a woman actually gets tasered, then later that night, I come out of a club in Seattle, and there's a guy knocked unconscious on the ground, his body twitching, and blood dripping out of his skull, forming a dark pool around his head. Then a couple weeks later (today), I learn that there was a fatal shooting at my old high school.

What's with that?

Yet, I still had a marvelous time yesterday in the beautiful city of Seattle, where I saw the Dead Sea Scrolls(!!!) which were on tour at the Pacific Science Center, and then had an interesting sushi dinner at U Village, which is all lit up with fairy lights at this time of year. It was interesting because it involved swiping our entrees directly from a giant conveyer belt. As for the scrolls, I've got a keen interest in ancient scripts/paleography, so no doubt it was fascinating and linger-worthy, seeing those arcane scrawlings on scraps of goathide which when deciphered, revealed stories about the genesis of the world and frightening tales of the fiery end of the world. And I even got to carry out a black-ops mission on the side, which involved faking a major coughing fit in order to get past security. OK, the coughing fit was real. The mission? Not so much. But y'all already figured that out...

Cobalt out.

Dinosaurs

Does anyone else find it amazing that dinosaur fossils are being uncovered to this day, that new dinosaur species are being discovered and outrageously named and studied, to this day? How can anyone believe in the Creation theory while knowing that these eons-old, gargantuan, sci-fi-ish creatures actually existed? Or is there a way to make the existence of dinosaurs compatible with Creationism? On "Friends", Ross is given a lot of crap for being a nerdy, boring paleontologist, but I think it would be a really cool job.

Obama and a dash of Dubya

Here's a brief, interesting article on Obama. I don't agree or disagree just yet, but I think it's time for me to stop making a god/savior-figure out of the poor guy and actually open up my mind to his faults as well as his strengths.

"You know, I, when I speak, like right now, for example, I'm speaking to the American people, of course, and I want them to know that I know how tough it is."
-- George W. Bush

Both are from Slate, which I never read until now, thanks to the influence of Eric and Jess. Maybe I'll vote for it next year.

Jack Kerouac On Madness

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

Reading Lolita Made Me Crazy

Does a book have to be serious in order for it to be taken seriously? I'm almost through with "Reading Lolita in Tehran", which I heard was an amazing memoir- and it is, but it is so ultra heavy and serious that now, all I want to do is curl up under my covers with a good comic book. I miss laughing with my books. It's ironic because part of the purpose of "Reading Lolita" is to convey the author's love of literature; it's about her desire to impart this love upon the reader. Instead, her book created in me this intense, semi-irrational aversion to the very thing she wanted me to love.

I'm reminded suddenly of the story I heard in psych class of a perfectly healthy man who pretended to be crazy in order to escape prison. When he was released and sent home to the care of his wife, the prison received a letter from his wife later thanking the guards for taking such good care of her crazy husband; that he was now safely in the care of a mental house. Turns out, after weeks/months of pretending to be crazy, he really did go insane.

In the same way, Nafisi took me, a perfectly healthy individual who loved to read novels, and through her desire to cure me (read: impart her love of literature on me), instead instilled in me a fear of "good literature". It's no surprise that I am often found these days sitting in the back of the car reading "Mutts" and laughing hysterically, or even sitting at a Barnes reading Godel Escher and Bach, which although it is no light read (literally), at least does not engage my emotions too much with depressing stories about the drudgery of living in an oppressed land.

Speaking of light reads, this morning I opened up a window to the Times, and started gasping and nearly hyperventilating (ok, exaggeration, but whatever).

"What?! What is it Angie?!, what's wrong?" asked Sarah and umma (mom).

"Guess what? The title of the 7th Harry Potter- it's been announced! EEE!!"

"OHMYGODWHATISIT?" cried Sarah.

"Gee, I thought it was something important," grumbled umma.

So exciting. Harry Potter gets serious too, but unlike "Reading Lolita", it's also funny and contains magic, fantasy, imagination, and thus bears little semblance to reality (although one can definitely draw some parallels if one really has the hankering to do so). In short, my kind of book.

Time & Space

Time:

Pun with non-native English speakers: Yesterday, my family and I decided to update the family portrait that's been hanging on our walls for the past 11 years. We had more than 2 hours to kill before our appointment (because we're not the kind of family that makes appointments before going into the studio...and also, the updating of the family portrait was kind of a spur-of-the-moment idea), and so my cool dad decided that it was indecent for girls that graduated from Penn to go around without watches (yeah, now you see where I inherited my amazingly rational brain). We spent such a long while browsing the Sears watches that I wondered if we'd missed our appointment, but Cool Dad assured me, "don't worry, we have plenty of time."

"Ho, ho, get it? We have lots of time?" I said, gesturing to the gazillion watches that surrounded us at the mo', and winking a couple times in case they didn't get it. Well, maybe I didn't wink enough times, because Cool Dad, after releasing a couple plosive 'ha's', said, "but you do know that shi-geh ('watch') is different from shi-gan ('time'), right?

I knew I should have winked a 3rd time. See, in the Theory of Joke-Telling, the winking, among other functions, serves to sway the audience from their inherent tendency to be so literal-minded, allowing individual words to cluster into groups of words that are similar enough to be deemed identical (we say the words are isomorphic) within the particular joke-world.

Thus, my winking should have dispelled the notion, for the moment, that "watch" and "time" were two distinct words. Unfortunately, I forgot the often-ignored corollary, that when the audience consists of either non-native English speakers or members of the Chung family- double whammy- than the jokester ought to consider throwing in a couple extra winks for good measure.

Space:

I discovered the true relative position of the sun to the Earth way back in the first grade- which in itself was kind of an embarrassing moment. See, we were doing a poetry unit, and Mrs. Bornander had each of us stand up in front of the whole class and read our poem aloud. I guess in my lame first-grade poem, I was describing the various objects found on planet Earth, like sky, grass, flowers (and rainbows and butterflies yay), and when I reached the part about the stars, moon, and sun, my classmates started snickering for some reason unbeknownst to First Grade Me. I stood there clutching the piece of paper with my poem written on it in one hand, and staring up at Mrs. B. as she tried to explain very nicely that the sun actually lived outside of the Earth. How traumatizing. No wonder I hate class presentations. I think that is the first time I ever considered that anything existed outside of our humble planet, past the blue sky.

When Two Jobs Meet

Here is a sentence I had to annotate for my linguistics job:

"The Penn bookstore charged John $100 for a mechanical pencil."

Heh. I love real-life examples.

WPSM

I now carry around a screwdriver in my purse, so that the West Philly Screwdriver Mugger (WPSM) and I can have a proper duel for my wallet. I imagine the scene to play out like this:

WPSM: Gimme your wallet (wields an intimidating-looking screwdriver in his hand)!

Me: Wh-wha? Oh hey, you must be the Screwdriver Mugger! Hold on, lemme just look in my purse here...(I rummage through my purse much like the way Mary Poppins rummages through her carpetbag, muttering to myself)...Ah ha! I've got my own screwdriver, what now Screwdriver Man?!

WPSM: Gimme your wallet, or I'll poke your eyes out!

Me: Oh-ho-ho-kay, fine, just take it. And keep the screwdriver, too. (By now, I'm too chicken to call him a "filthy animal" like in Home Alone.)

Damn! Instead of making the world safer, I've managed to arm the Screwdriver Mugger with a second weapon! Woman!

Good thing this isn't real.

Most people just laugh and say "Silly Angie" when I tell them about this new habit, but when I mentioned it to the Penn Shuttle driver last night/this morning, he said, "Instead of a screwdriver, you should carry around a screw. You know, he's probably just a harmless, guy who wants to unscrew a screw, and here everyone is thinking he wants to attack them." What can I do but laugh, because that's just the funniest goddamn response I've gotten yet. And so I laughed, saying, "Oh, wow, yeah, he probably just wants a screw!" And then I stopped laughing because that's not so funny. Eep! I hate violence.

Rhyme Time

Inspired by Vinod's cousin, who fell asleep in the tub yesterday, followed by a discussion of disgusting bathtubs, I present a poem of neither rhythm nor rhyme, but plenty of alliteration:

Orange gunk gathers
Cracks 'n' crinkles caulk
Along yellow, aged edges
Where sprawling limbs lie
The slumbering sot

(A drunken snore here would be appropriate, but not entirely necessary)

Working Toward Self-Destruction, or Irrelevance

"The goal of the GALE (Global Autonomous Language Exploitation) program is to develop and apply computer software technologies to absorb, analyze and interpret huge volumes of speech and text in multiple languages, eliminating the need for linguists and analysts and automatically providing relevant, distilled actionable information to military command and personnel in a timely fashion. Automatic processing "engines" will convert and distill the data, delivering pertinent, consolidated information in easy-to-understand forms to military personnel and monolingual English-speaking analysts in response to direct or implicit requests."

This description of the GALE program is taken directly from the DARPA website (DARPA is a research program funded by the Department of Defense). What worries me just a smidgen is the bolded part. So essentially, we're working to eliminate our relevance in the workplace is what they're saying, which sounds like a bad thing doesn't it? But after a moment's thought, I realized that machine translation research is only one of many fields in which the work is, as I called it "self-destructive". Research scientists in disease prevention, alternative energy sources, anything technology-related- all these can be self-destructive in some way. But I'm not that worried, because most of the time, a solution to one problem only generates more problems (more work for us!), like infinite recursion, and also, it will be way beyond my lifetime before a solution is even found. Although, judging by this really interesting article on machine translation, it may be sooner rather than later in this particular field. (Okay, looks like the article "Me Translate Pretty One Day" won't be posted on line until December 1st.) Here is a text version of the accompanying picture:

"Dos burritos, por favor"

Human translator: 2 burritos, please!

Machine translator: 2 young donkeys, please!

Ducks Backward Sans Vowels

Check this webcomic out, it's awesome!

Ponder This

"Chew the cud" means to ruminate, and "ruminants" are cloven-hooved quadrupeds of the suborder Ruminantia, like cows, who chew their cud. Which begat which? My guess is that the name of the class of animals comes from the thoughtful expression that appears on a cow's face when it chews its cud. I also think we give cows too much credit. What kind of deep thoughts do you think ole Bessie is mulling over as she chews her molasses-like abc grass? Certainly nothing as deep as world domination.

"I Dunno"

What do you say when someone asks you a question you don't know the answer to? You can either

a) reply in Belgian ("waffle waffle") with the proper intonation and accents and stuff, or

b) go Poppins on the inquirer, singing "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!", or

c) gaze fatefully and absentmindedly at the moon, and say "Mars is bright tonight."

Think of these options as the equivalents of a blank stare. That last one is from Harry Potter 1.

Wow how did it become a post about Alias? I thought the world revolved around cheese

I decided that I am not a pathological liar. In order to be a pathological liar, I must believe in the lies that I tell, which I most certainly do not. Lying is a valuable skill to have/develop, especially if one is involved in the business of crime-stopperage, espionage, getting out of sticky situations, and being a good mother.

For instance, Irina Derevko was an awesome mom, and what was that line that defined, directed, and defended her actions from beginning to bloody end? Truth takes time, baby! Come to think of it, we still don't know the truth. "Ah, but there was neither truth nor an endgame in the Alias-verse, little grasshopper" says the wise, objective non-viewer. Lord, if life, reality, and morality are anything like Alias, then we're in trouble folks. No objective truth, no official moral code that is above human interpretation, we may as well be Lost on a little island in Hawaii. With a fat guy named Hurley. And a misplaced polar bear.

To be honest, I'm not far from believing that the subjectiveness of the Alias-verse well reflects the realities of our own Universe, but that's another story for another time. (Something to do with colors and evolution and moral codes.)

Luck and Deception

You know, I don't believe in luck, but sometimes I like to pretend I am lucky, and then luck seems to follow me around. Or, I like to pretend that coincidence is luck.

I am currently playing an incredible, whopper of a prank on my bookstore co-workers right now. It is awesome. Details later. Oh god, it's so funny.

Bookstore Encounter #847

A customer came in today looking for Pimsleur's Arabic and Hungarian language tapes. She was a thin, energetic, vigorous woman of about 45 or 50 with white-blonde wavy hair, tanned, weathered face, and unnaturally blue eyes (contacts, she confirmed later). As we rode up the escalator, I asked her why she was learning these languages- whether it was just for fun, or for her line of work. She said it was useful in the kind of work she does for a living. Of course I had to ask what she did for a living, to which she replied, "I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you." We both laughed, while my mind wandered immediately to Alias and Sydney Bristow and espionage in general. I said aloud, "We laugh, but it's true!" She and I burst out laughing even more jovially at that.

I'll bet you the world she was a spy.

The whole situation, with the laughter, and the secret thoughts hiding behind the laughter, and the darting of the eyes to see if we could read behind each other's laughter was...funny. She and I got to talking for a bit about how dead-useful knowing a bunch of languages can be, career-wise, especially Arabic and Spanish. She said she was a flight nurse in the military, and a regular nurse at HUP as her civilian job (she is soooo a spy!), but dude, if she had told me that she worked at a bank, I-I, I don't know what I would have done. I might have just fainted right then and there.

Anyway, hm, oh well, the point is, sometimes, I forgot the reason why I want to learn all these languages, and the theory of language, and then this woman came along to remind me that they do have a place in the world, that I'm not just wasting my time and being unpragmatic. Thanks, Lady with Unnaturally Blue Eyes. Do you think if we did a retinal scan on her, she'd turn out to be a double, like Ethan Hawke or (shudder) Francinator?! Ok-kay, I really need to turn down the imagination station a notch or two or five.

(She is soooo a spy, y'all! Eeek!)

Oh, and I met Jonathan Safran Foer yesterday.

Math and Politics

The situation is, people are pissed off at Kerry because he said the following at a rally in Cali:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

American soldiers in Iraq, among other groups, were extremely insulted by Kerry's "joke" because it sounded like he was saying that they were dumb.

I just want to say one thing about this whole situation, and it's pretty ironic really because the outcry stems from a logical misinterpretation on the part of the American soldiers: Kerry's statement was not an "if and only if" statement, as we say in the language of math or logic. His statement, broken down into essentials, says

not smart => stuck in Iraq.

American soldiers misinterpreted his statement as:

stuck in Iraq => not smart.

P implies Q doesn't equate to Q implies P, in other words, but it's a mistake we make often in math as students, and in life and politics apparently. I know it's a technicality and probably would annoy people if I tried to point it out, but I just wanted to throw it out there.

Sometimes I get this:

John: You work at the bookstore? Hey I think I've seen you before! I came in asking for bumper stickers once. I dunno if you remember...

Me: Wh- waitaminute, you're that guy that came in asking for bumper stickers? No friggin' way!

Well, that's my internal response. Outwardly, I just admit that I don't remember. This must be what it's like to be a kindergarden teacher. One day, you're reading "If you give a mouse a cookie" to your little rugrats, when suddenly your storytime is interrupted by the entrance of a guy in his thirties, about 6 feet tall, whatever, saying "Hey Miss C.! Remember me? I was in your class in 1989. I was that kid who ate paste, you remember?"

No fucking clue, man. And I'm married now.

Sticky Superhero

I'm so excited about my Halloween costume! Last year, I was Sydney Bristow's first alias ever, and man was it awesome. This year, (man, it is so brilliant!) I'm Superglue, the superhero with a deadly, sticky, white weapon (boys keep your minds outta the gutter), here to save you from any sticky situation! Keep the image of a bottle of Elmer's glue in mind as you read the following description:

white leotard,
white (footless) tights,
red shorts (underwear would be a tad unseemly, no?),
a superman "S" on my chest,
utility belt strung with Elmer's glue bottles,
white Wonderwoman calf-length boots, gloves (because it's gonna be freezing),
orange cape,
and to cap it all off (heh), an orange party hat on my head
and plenty of booze b/c Dave & Friends are awesome

The Lamest Vending Machine That Ever Was

So I've just had an encounter with The Lamest Vending Machine That Ever Was on the mezzanine level of Stellar-Chance. Everything in there, save the gum, costs 85 cents, so I fed the machine a Washington, thought for a sec before deciding on the Cheez-its (should it be Cheezes-it? Is there a separate rule for product names? Actually, I do believe the plural is "cheez-its" because morphologically speaking, "cheez-it" is considered a single morpheme, kind of like how the plural of "maple leaf" is "maple leaves", but two or more members of the Toronto hockey team are the Maple Leafs. Yep. Wow it is quiet as death in here), and pressed C6.

Would you believe it if I told you that the machine didn't give me my bag of cheez-its because I didn't have the exact fare of 85 cents? Because that is exactly what happened, no joke! What sort of machine from the 21st century, or any century for that matter, does not give change for a dollar? So I rummaged through my purse for change, found a handful, and started feeding Sir "I'm too good for change" a bunch of quarters and nickels and dimes (no pennies; pennies have always been discriminated against by vending machines everywhere. I should stage a riot.), but dammit, the Ungrateful Bitch won't take my change, just plain spit it back out as if it disapproved of the taste of metal. I'm like, wtf? Even Zianja, my old neighbors' baby sister ate quarters like candy...True she also spit them back out, but from the other end, into her diaper, accompanied by gooey brown shit.

Curse you, LVMTEW. I'd write more, but I gotta go home and stop by Wawa on the way so I can get my Cheez-its.

Capricious Nationalities

As a follow-up to Eric's joke which goes like this:

Eric: Before you enter the bathroom, you're...
Audience: American!
When you're in the bathroom, you're...
Audience: (think, scratch head and/or other body parts) Durrr, we give up!
Eric: You're-a-peein'!

Part 2:

Angie: When you're walkin', you're...
Audience: American!
Angie: When you're runnin', you're...
Audience: Gosh...We give up!
Angie: You're rushin'!

They Call On Me For Everything

...and I mean everything! Today, the Penn bookstore held a story hour for the local kiddies featuring Winnie-the-Pooh. The girl designated to play Pooh Bear was late, and so naturally they called on me (Old Faithful, they used to call me during the war years) to put on the furry-backed costume and the giant bear head that smelled of piss, stand by Chris as she read the story, and greet the kiddies afterward with a wave here, a hug there, a handshake everywhere...

I think I've found my calling. I can't wait to tell my parents, for I'm sure they'll understand why their daughter put away a career in medicine or law or research for this, and they'll be very happy for her, I am certain of it!

Putting away the sarcasm- as well as the image of the initially uncomprehending, then horrified looks on my parents' faces were I to tell them such a dastardly thing, though, I actually had a lot of fun playing Winnie-the-Pooh. I think, there's a dormant "class clown" part of me that enjoys getting laughs and being silly and stupid in front of a crowd. And the kids were so so cute!

Afterward, Emily walked me out of the children's corner, and I said to her, still dressed in the Pooh Bear attire, "Now where's my cigarette?" And then, I proceeded to knock out a customer who was getting off the elevator with one swift, furry punch, pick up her fallen merchandise (which happened to include the book: How to Avoid Getting Mugged By a Friendly Bear), and run out of the store into the bright afternoon sunlight.

Flatland: A Mystery of Many Dimensions

I was shelving books at work today-yesterday, when I came across a copy of "Flatland" by Edwin Abbott. I know the inventory of books pretty well by now, if I do say so myself, and I happened to know that we were supposed to have 5 copies of Flatland, but when I went to shelve the loose copy, I noticed that there were already 5 on the shelf.

Mystere!

I thought the Bookmaster (BM; computer program that tells you the number of each book the store has in stock) was mistaken, and so I shelved the loose copy and changed the number in the BM from 5 to 6.

A few hours later, I came back from lunch, and guess what lay innocently on the desk, but another copy of "Flatland"! Maybe someone picked it up, but decided against buying it and didn't put it back in its proper place, that bastard! I thought. And so I picked up the loose copy and went to shelve it, only to find that there were already 6 copies on the shelf!

Double mystere!

By now, I was slightly freaked out because I knew that "Flatland" was about 2-dimensional shapes discovering higher dimensional space, and here before my very eyes, the stockpile of Flatland copies was growing- or under my nose, since I didn't know what or who was causing the growth. They were like stubborn weeds, cropping up in random corners of the Bookiverse in unwanted numbers.

What could I do but shelve the 7th copy and change the number in the BM from 6 to 7?

Now, I'd like to say that this mysterious increase continued until we were up to our ears in copies of Abbott's sci-fi classic because that would certainly heighten the tension and mystery and absurdity of the situation, but in truth, this bookstore mystery, at least, was solved pretty soon after the 2nd extra copy was found.

Turns out that "Flatland" had been assigned as a reading for some Penn course, and so students thinking about taking the course were bringing down copies of the book from the Textbooks section and leaving them around the store, inadvertantly creating a strange scavenger hunt of sorts.

For a while, though, I couldn't tell which side of the looking glass I was on. I was living the written word. Bookstore life is so damnably exciting.

This incident reminds me of the time we were hunting around for 3 missing copies of "The Book Thief". Come to think of it, I don't think we ever recovered those...

Early Morning Ambiguities/Crazy People at the Grocery Store

I was moseying down the cereal aisle at frogro yesterday when suddenly this middle-aged black man came down the aisle yelling "Life! Life! I need life! Where's life? Life, life!" with incredible vigor. When he reached me, I replied, "You're living it!"

Turns out, he was just looking for the cereal.

An employee showed him the row of Life cereals, and the Crazy Man said "What's it doing way over here?" "It's a long story," replied the employee, helplessly.

Was the employee talking about the cereal or his life? Okay, probably his cereal, but I thought the whole thing was bizarre and funny and bloggable.

Science Link

Something about time.

Filling the Void

For the past couple of days, I've been feeling like something's been missing in my life. And being a girl who's never been in a relationship before, I immediately assumed that that 'something' was a boy. But today, I realized I was wrong. Today, I realized that the crevasse in my heart was created by the lack of an obsession. It only took me 12 episodes of 24 (straight!) to discover this truth. Indeed, truth takes time.

Cockamamy Is A Funny Word

Man, getting wasted on a Monday night- look what living in a frat house is doing to me. What's that you say? It's not the frat house, it's me? Quiet, you.

Also, my silver senior formal wristband broke off yesterday. I dunno how it happened- one minute it was on my wrist, the next minute, it was on the bathroom floor and I just stared at it for a third minute going "Fuck, I've had this baby on since May 10th!" I thought the event merited a minute-by-minute account on this blog here.

Elvis is Dead, Y'all

He didn't listen to his mama when she said "Boy, don't you evah eat 13000-calorie sandwiches!"

Recipe for the King's fav Fool's Gold sandwich (aka, 5 easy steps to a fatal heart attack (aka, Lethal Weapon 5)):

1. Warm up a whole loaf of white bread in the oven.

2. Hollow out the middle.

3. Spread a jar of peanut butter on one side, a jar of jelly on the other.

4. Layer up the inside with a pound of bacon.

5. Eat and perish.

Serves: 1

Reply

Ms. Chung

I realized too late that you were not Sarah....wrong hair color...but I thought "how could anyone look so much like her but not BE her"? I nearly returned to apologize but didn't want to increase my embarrassment. Give my regards to your sister. And you too have a great summer.

WAC

Yet Another Case of Mistaken Identity and the Ensuing Email

Hi Professor Clee,

It occurred to me that you were mistaking me for my twin sister, Sarah (who was in your 412 class this past semester) today at Van Pelt. It took me a while to realize who you were because I only went to your first class. Anyway, that's why I looked at you funny, that's all. Have a nice summer. If that wasn't you at the library, then feel free to ignore this email and maybe have a laugh over it.

Angie Chung

A Trip to the Loo Takes Longer Than Expected

"We are all terminal cases."

This is the kind of graffiti one can only find at a Barnes and Noble bathroom. I won't begin to tell you how long I sat on that toilet, trying to figure out what book/movie that line came from. It was long after I left the bathroom that the answer finally came to me...I'll let you google it if you don't know.

Undesirable Findings

Oh ew. I just found a pile of fingernail clippings next to the computer. I can't decide whether I'm more disgusted or disturbed.

Lowbrow Graffiti

Walking down Walnut...

Sarah: Haha, look Ann, someone wrote "Scarface dies in the end" on the wall!

Angie: Hahaha, that's hilarious! Heeheeheehoooooo!...Have we ever seen that movie?

Sarah: No, I don't think so.

Angie: Oh. (Silence.) Hm. Not so funny anymore.

W.H. Auden

I heard this on "Four Weddings and a Funeral":

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,

I thought that love would last forever: ‘I was wrong’

The stars are not wanted now, put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

These words don't reflect my current mood in the least bit, but still, I've never heard such a perfect expression of grief before I heard this poem from Auden's "Funeral Blues" delivered in a clear, plaintive voice with the rolling r's of a Scotsman.

It Ain't Over 'Til--

The Fat Lady has sung- ow ow owwwww!!!!

3.1415926535897932384626

4338327950288...That's All Folks

Greetings from Ephraim the Retarded Rabbit-Catholic Priest: Quid agis, medice?

It just occurred to me that at one point last night, I was reciting the digits of pi in a drunken reverie.

I miss books. I'm gonna drop everything and go work at a bookstore. Peasout, friends, et al.

~Explorer

ssss

woah...i am stilll drunk. peasout luvya everybody every body

One-Liner

Sometimes, it's fun to talk about little, inconsequential things like your favorite chocolate bar.

Study Breaks

Yesterday, I did the silliest thing. I spent all day yesterday studying in my room. (No, that's not the silly thing.) Naturally, many study breaks were taken, involving snacking, peeing, cleaning, and brushing teeth, among other gerunds. During one study break, I had a sudden desire to try on my fancy turquoise and black dress from Mandee's, so I shimmied into it and modeled it to myself in front of the mirror. Then I took it off and hung it back up in my closet. But instead of putting my jeans and top back on like a sensible person, I decided to try on my Old Navy dress. Then my gray H&M dress. I ended up modeling every one of my dresses that afternoon, posing and prancing...basically holding an impromptu fashion show for me and my chiral twin. Eventually, though, I exhausted my supply of dresses, and so I put my jeans and top back on and went back to studying analysis. I had a total girl moment. Gee, I probably shouldn't even be telling you this. If I had any pride, I would keep this moment to myself. Sometimes, I feel sixteen again. And I have no shame, apparently.

Tabula Rasa

Almost anyway. You know how it is with blogs: you expose yourself, then you feel too exposed. I realized, while cleaning out my blog, that I've had this thing for over a year. Long live Archimedes- hoo!

Coloring My Name

"Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Angie. I was named after the Rolling Stones song of the same name."

I decided today that from now on, whenever I meet new people, I'm gonna tell them that I was named after the Rolling Stones song, "Angie". I've grown to love that song, which is a huge change from my initial reaction (Ew, why are they saying my name funny?!). Looks like I'm going through a Stones phase. I always go through phases.

Care For a Lemon Drop?

I feel like a bag of Chex Mix. Speaking of bags, I realize that it has been four months since the start of the new year, and I haven't told anyone my New Year's resolution. Maybe for good reason. But I'm feeling slightly adventurous or ready to be ridiculed, so here goes: My New Year's resolution was to...be like Dumbledore- wise and whimsical. Har har, I know. Well, it's definitely a challenge, I'll tell you that much. But today, I made a very Dumbledore-ish decision, and it worked for the better, so I believe I've got a good thing going here.

Not Me

I feel crazy. Tell me to jump into the Schkulkyll (sp?) and I would almost do it...except that's just disgusting and cold, and I'm not suicidal, don't worry. Sorry about the cryptic post(s).

A Line (Or Two) From Mick Jagger

Wild horses couldn’t drag me away
Wild, wild horses, couldn’t drag me away

A Little Reminder

of why I wanna puke on my writing class:

" In terms of a grade, this means that if you have an A paper but have made no or only cosmetic changes, the essay will get a B+ at best."

Bad Names

Think twice before you name your kid "Lisa", especially if you live in West Guadalcanal. In their language, it means "louse egg".

La la la!

Riding high on life despite massive massive amounts of schoolwork. Don't ask me why because all you'll get is a smile and a shrug in response. I wish I could bottle this feeling up and give it to the masses. It's like Felix felicis in Harry Potter. Thanks to my ipod, I'm developing a habit of randomly bursting out into song while studying, scaring Sarah in the process. 

Peas out peeps,

Angie

This and That

I'm studying at Van Pelt Rosengarden library with the Numa numa yei song blasting into my ears, and suddenly the guy sitting across from me lets out a gigantic fart. I heard it loud and clear through the music- that's how loud it was. I don't think he was even that embarrassed because he just grinned sheepishly at his neighbors. We all kinda stared at each other and at the perpetrator and giggled to ourselves before going back to our books.

I've got a full weekend coming up: Dessert/performing night tonight, Applebee's/strictly funk on Friday, Chord on Blues and Jin's dinner on Saturday. And studying. That almost reads like an afterthought. How anticlimactic.

P.S.: I bought my cap 'n' gown- eek!

Motivation Level: On the Increase!

Well, once anything hits rock bottom, there really is only one way to go. Unless you have a drill. Please don't hand me a drill- that would be cruel.

Riddle Corner

Name the "beautiful old man" in the following quotation from Rebecca Goldstein's Incompleteness:

"Soon the famous head with the ion-charged hair was strolling the suburban sidewalks, so that at least on one occasion a car hit a tree 'after its driver suddenly recognized the face of the beautiful old man walking along the street.'"

(Isn't that the funniest description of his hair you've ever heard?)

How to Make Life More Interesting 102

Well, there are many ways to spice up your life, but here are three things that I personally do to seriously jazz it up:

1. Leave hollow clementines lying around the room. I left one perched on the arm of the couch today. It's really tricky, because every time you see it, you think it's real- and it is!...but there's something false about it, you know? And then you remember that there's nothing inside. It's like looking at a really realistic-looking still life painting of fruit.

2. Eat everything with Rooster sauce. Like, everything. Pizza, pasta, hotdogs, rice, subway sandwiches, chicken caesar salads, soup, eggs, chips, crackers, spinach, baklava, and on and on.

3. Read aloud in a Scottish accent anything from Lord of the Rings to a math textbook. Do this, and I guarantee, yawning and drooping eyelids will be a thing of the past. One problem that might occur, though, is your Scottish accent might come out sounding Indian, which...yeah, they're actually pretty similar-sounding.

Aesthetics

I can't believe I've never been to a Mask 'n' Wig show until yesterday! Afterward, I couldn't help thinking how different my four years at Penn would have been if I had been a part of some performing arts group. I miss being on stage, even if it was just for some amateurish kiddie recital.

"What is the most beautiful thing you've ever witnessed in your entire life?"

Before Thursday, I would have a hard time coming up with an answer to this question, but now I know what my response would be.

I would tell them about Sasha Cohen's free skate program for the Torino Olympics- the most enchanting performance on ice I have ever seen. She looked like a real-life fairy, I'd tell them, clad in wine-red velvet, and when she did her spins, she looked exactly like those figurines that twirl around in the centers of musical boxes when you open them. I would tell them about the music that she skated to: Nino Rota's amazing score from the old Romeo and Juliet movie starring Olivia Hussey. Then, I would go on a tangent and tell them about the first time I watched this movie, how my oh-so-humorous, slightly-perverted ninth grade English teacher would pause every time 13-year-old Olivia Hussey's gargantuan boobs graced the screen, and have a rather unseemly giggle over it (or "them", I guess) before moving on. Then, I don't know where I would go from there. I'd probably tell them about how annoyed I was by Romeo's incessant whining and fake-crying throughout the whole friggin' movie. It got so bad at one point that even Apothecaryman was all, "Boy, you best get your panty-hosed ass outta that corner and grow some balls before I sic you with one of my poisonous herbs." Sigh. Boy was doomed from the start.

On top of our radiator sits a small bunch of flowers in an attractive Poland Spring water bottle, their petals- half pink and half a pale, lilac shade- reflected in the suicide-proof highrise window. It's nighttime now, but during the day, when the sunlight spills through the window, it looks like Mary Sunshine paid a visit and left a trail of cheeriness behind. Anyhoo, ever since, I've developed a keen interest in flowers of all kinds. In case anyone cares, Frogro doesn't have the greatest selection of flowers. Yes, indeed, I was checking out flowers at our local grocery store.

Special K

"Remind students that confidence is spelled with a K."

Oh man, this just keeps on getting better and better. Kaplan the Komedian.

Speaking of funny, this essay (if you can call it that), which, not surprisingly, received a score of 1 out of 6, totally cracked me up:

I think it is wrong to only think about productivity when you judge. It really unfair and bad, There are lots of ways that a person can give to community even if they are not producing much and I think it is unfair to do that. Its like the monkeys that send the old monkeys out of the pack when they get too old to help get the food. That is totally wrong and mean and we don’t want to be that way. It would be better to be like elephants who take care of the old elephants until they die and then the elephants bury the ones that died.

In conclusion, productivity is no all there is.

"Monkeys are meanie-mos, elephants Kare." Oh god, I can hardly breathe! Whew...wheeeew... I hope to god that none of my students ever write something as bad as this, because I might just laugh in their faces. But then, I'd have to tell them not to worry because confidence is spelled with a K, and I seriously don't know if I'd be able to do that with a straight face.

Here's a good one:

"It is ludacris for one to believe that education is merely the study of names, dates, and other facts."

Simply ludacris. Totally pimpin' all over the world.

Snow Day!!!

A foot of snow, big bowl of pho, snowball fight on the way back, leisurely studying, pair-skating (bea-u-tee-ful!),....what an amazing day. It's like a strip out of Calvin 'n' Hobbes.

We shoulda slashed the snowplow tires.

Winter Sunlight

It's the kind of light you could usually only see in the early morning, if you're even awake at that time; the kind of light that pours out blindingly white from the sky, creating beautifully contrasty shadows of leaves and tables and chairs and walking figures on the ground. Together with the ear-numbingly chilly air, it created a distinctly wintery feel outside all day. What is this? Winter weather in January? It's simply preposterous! Outrageous!

Dreaming of Cece

Remember those really fun clapping games we played as kids, where we sang little diddies like "Cece Oh Playmate" or "Miss Susie Had A Steamboat", and things like that to the rhythm of some clapping pattern? Well. Hee hee.

You see, I was doing some homework problems in my room, while Sarah was taking a snooze, when suddenly, a bunch of slapping sounds interrupted my thoughts. I thought, is this how Sarah wakes herself up, by slapping herself until she opens her eyes? I turned around to put an end to this self-abusive act, only to find out that, no, actually, she was playing "Cece Oh Playmate" with the air! I asked her what she was doing, but she just giggled in response and continued to high-five the air. Gimme a sec...

(HARHARHARHARHARHARHAR! HOOHOOOOOO!)

Okay, I'm done laughing (snort).

Some Choice Phrases to Describe the Night

Pregame studying
Moussaka
Red light
Stained glass
Men in shades
Shady men
Venus fly traps
Apple-flavored hookah
Techno
Good friends
Dancing at Loie's
60 degrees in January
Bright night sky

Today was a most unusual day. Everything from studying on Friday to the unusually warm January night made tonight feel all hazy like the thick fog that blanketed the city skyscrapers this morning. I think the feeling comes from doing so many things that I normally do not do, all in the span of a few hours. Add to that the weird weather and the strangely bright night sky, and suddenly, I feel like something is gonna happen. Something's in the air...it's probably nothing though. You know what it is, it's probably that tendency of human beings to expect Big Things to happen to us during our lifetime. Like armageddon, or reaching the final scientific paradigm, or...In reality, though, I predict that tomorrow will come, and then the day after, as normal as any other day. It's probably just a warm front, nothing really out of the ordinary.

Mickey D's Loves to See Me Smile- What About You?

Knowing what makes Angie happy is an indispensible skill to have if you wish to succeed in life. So here are three of the top ten things that gets my endorphins kicking:

(1) The smell of coffee. You might catch me lingering in the coffee aisle at frogro. What, doesn't everyone have a favorite aisle at the grocery store?

(2) People playing with my hair. Totally puts me to sleep, it's better than yoga or a good bedtime story.

(3) Jazz music: Ella Fitzgerald, Norah Jones, etc. Ella's voice makes me feel like I'm relaxing at a bar during the Roaring Twenties, even if I'm actually in a neuro lab sectioning spinal chord tissue from a mouse.

The Genitive

Okay, this is for the benefit of J:

The rules for writing the possessive are pretty well known: add an 's to the end (ex: Angie's house), and just add ' if the possessor is plural (ex: friends' house).

But two questions that pop up regularly are:

1) Is friends' pronounced "friends-iz" or "friends"?

2) What is the deal when the possessor is singular (regular or proper noun) and ends with an s?

Here is the lowdown:

1) friends' is pronounced "friends". Likewise, parents' is pronounced "parents", and so on. In general, when the possessor is plural with an s at the end, the possessive is pronounced as if there were no apostrophe.

2) (a) In writing: In most cases, we add an 's at the end (ex: James's house, the hostess's house), even though they end with an s. However, classical names that end with "-uhs" or "eez" take only an apostrophe, no s (ex: Jesus', Moses', Archimedes').

(b) In pronunciation: If it is written 's, say the s; if it is written ' (no s), don't say the s. The exception to the rule is with the classical names (Jesus', Moses', Archimedes'): here we have a choice of either saying the s or not, even though there is no s written.

It's important to remember that language evolves, so the rules are always changing. For example, the possessive of James used to be written with ', no s. This is why, for example, it is acceptable to say either "St. James' Cathedral" or "St. James's Cathedral".

Makes sense?

ARRRRRRRRRGH!

Didn't Garfield used to say that a lot? I don't like a lot of things: guys who listen to Yanni, the whole Arthropoda phylum, cauliflower, Audioslave. But above all, I really really really hate the state of confusion, where things don't make sense, where logic seems to have lost its mojo, where...I just want to go to bed and forget that I have a massive homework assignment due on Thursday.

Hence, the ARRRRRRRRRRRGH!

Satan's True Identity

I can now say with all honesty that I've stayed up until 3 am reading about orthogonal transformations, wallpaper groups and point groups on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the devil, you realize, because everything is connected, and so once you pop, you can't stop. It's just link after link after link...

Ah, the first snow of the winter season is upon us- Woohoo!

Riddle Time

Three men are captured by a band of pirates: Patrick Henry, Nathaniel Hale, and Max. The pirates hold a conference in order to figure out what to do with their hostages. Finally, after much deliberation, the pirates decide to execute them in three different ways: one, they will hang, another, they will feed to the crocodiles, and the last, they will make him walk the plank.

Meanwhile, the hostages stand with their hands tied, patiently awaiting their fates. The pirate leader says, "let's do the one with the two first names first. That's always been my biggest pet peeve: people with two first names- Yarrr!"

So the pirates approach Patrick Henry, and the pirate leader asks him, "Yarrr, any last words, any regrets?" Patrick Henry replies, "I have no regrets! Give me liberty, or give me death!" So they gave him death by hanging.

Next the pirates approach Nathaniel Hale, and again, the pirate leader asks him, "Yarrr, any last words, any regrets?" Nathaniel Hale replies, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." Then he was promptly fed to the crocodiles.

Finally, the pirates approach Max, and again, the pirate leader asks him, "Yarrr, any last words, any regrets?"

Can you guess what Max's greatest regret was?

Answer: That the plan(c)k was so short! 10^-33 centimeters, to be exact.

Yes folks, this is what I do with my time. I'm the Riddler!

Chance of Snow!

Snow-flakes

Out of the bosom of the air,

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

Silent, and soft, and slow

Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take

Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

Even as the troubled heart doth make

In the white countenance confession,

The troubled sky reveals

The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,

Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

This is the secret of despair,

Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

Now whispered and revealed

To wood and field.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Recluse

I realize that for the past few weeks, I've been living in the Dark Ages: no cell phone, no personal laptop/desktop. Surprisingly though, I kind of like it because it makes me unreachable, which I know can be frustrating for others (read: for my mom), but it's rather nice to be sitting in Starbuck's or the bookstore for five hours straight by myself with no interruptions. Without these things, I've created a sort of haven for myself where I can be alone (even in a public place) and do my own thing without constantly wondering where everyone else is or what they are up to.

Have you ever wondered, just who is Charles Bliss?

Wow, never?

Well, he's the inventor of the Bliss symbols, a writing system based solely on meaning, not sound, which is unlike any other writing system in the world. Even the Chinese script has a phonetic basis. One of my favorite symbols is the one for "secret", which is the symbol for "mouth" enclosed in a box. Doesn't it make so much sense? One can even write that ultra-famous nonsensical phrase coined by Chomsky: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" in Bliss symbols, although "furiously" is written with the symbols for "angrily".

And this is exactly why I don't think a solely semantics-based writing system could ever flourish like a regular writing system with some phonetic basis, because there is no room for synonyms; otherwise the system would be way too unwieldy. I could be wrong about this though, who knows. Maybe it just takes a little thinking outside that Box that everyone keeps talking about. By the way, did I use that semi-colon correctly? Those things always confused me...

Happy Belated Birthday to Calvin & Hobbes!

"It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy! Let's go exploring!" ~ Calvin

Kitchen Inventory

Sink.

Stove.

Silverware.

Pots & Pans.

Spices.

Bed.

Waaaaitaminute.

Yes, folks, there's a bed in our kitchen, and mold spores flying about our bedroom. Oh, and Harnwell drain pipes? Suck like a lollipop. Maintenance? Sucks like a black hole. What is the noun form of "to suck": is it "suckage" or "suckitude"? Either way, maintenance and Harnwell drain pipes are doing a fan-fucking-tastic job of it.

Subtleties of the English Language

From: Angie Chung
To: Sarah Chung , Jessica Kim , Hoa Trinh , May , tameil@seas.upenn.edu, cordaben@gmail.com
Date: Nov 5, 2005 6:00 PM
Subject: morimoto's

Hello, les gens, my brother James wants to take Sarah and me to Morimoto's while he is here, on the Friday after Turkey day. Anybody want to come along? I know it's pricey, so I would totally understand if you guys can't make it. Lemme know if there's anyone else staying in the city of brotherly love over break taht should be added to this email list. And let me know if you are not a homestar and thus would like to be eliminated (from this list).

Later homestars,

Cobalt

Benoit: What's a homestar?

May: Home? Star?

Hee! Gotta love international students.