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.