. . . . . entries for 29.4.08 . . . . .
You know, this is going to sound weird, but I like Dubya more all the time recently.
"Mr. Bush pinned the problem of rising food prices largely on Congress, saying it was considering a “massive, bloated” farm bill that would fail to eliminate subsidy payments to “multimillionaire” farmers. With the nation’s farm economy thriving, the president argued, it is time for Congress to reduce lavish farm subsidies that translate to higher taxes for average Americans." -here.
Well well, Mr. President. (I guess later in this speech, to a press question or something, he supported BAU for ethanol. Ho hum.)
. . . . . entries for 28.4.08 . . . . .
I passed my road test!
And I am really tired!
And I love when I remember - or think I remember - the way good music felt when I first heard it.
. . . . . entries for 26.4.08 . . . . .
"Demand for biofuels is finally raising the price of crops so hardworking, disadvantaged farmers have a chance; this may however inadvertently affect food supplies and make the spoiled American consumers have to choose between their weekly concerts, ballgames, mall shopping sprees and food (which no one thinks is worth anything). In March 2008, corn was selling at an all time high of well over $5.65/bushel (compared with the recent norm of around $2/bushel)(Maybe the consumers will only get to make one trip to the mall weekly)."
. . . really, Wikipedia? Are you cool with this level of bias? I mean, I'm not saying the guy's wrong - but the guy. . . well. . . yeah. You know. Maybe.
This is interspersed with some sentences that lean heavily in the other direction, along with tons of haphazard edits turning certain statements into "he says/she says" statements.
This is both why Wikipedia sucks, and why Wikipedia rocks. Contention, contention, contention.
If it turns out that various things I hold to be true are not true - I'm talking about environmentalist lines, mostly - then what?
Have I told you yet, blog, that from here on in I have nigh-impossible amounts of work to do? I don't know if I did, but it's probably at least insinuated in my manic tone some places.
It is true. I have so much stuff due - some 25 pages Dean's Date alone, and a 10-page (I think?) research paper's revisions maybe a week before - that my mind is boggled as to how, exactly, it will get done. But it will, I tell myself, because it always does.
And then my May 19 HUM final on a literary corpus of which I have, in almost all cases, read but a sliver.
It may be that all this balderdash will catch up to me at one time or another.
Also: the Met with HUM, then home for the road test and back; later that week, writing conference and dental appointment. God only knows if the lattermost or the road test will go at all satisfactorily.
All my roommates have gone out or to bed. A moderately familiar state of affairs. Maybe I'll do moderately productive things.
I am almost done with 1/4 of my college career. How many baffled 18- and 19-year-olds are blogging that around now?
My roommate hypothesized that the Rapture came, and all our next door neighbors were carried up in the middle of Fight Club, leaving their door wide open and their speakers blasting weirdness. I told her the moral fact of Fight Club during Rapture seemed to preclude any saving that might've went on.
But seriously, where is everyone? Gone to bed early on a Friday night? Granted, I just took a long (and kind of unpleasant) nap, but shouldn't people be around?
Probably around and just not around here. Probably around and living. And anyway, I think the guys came back from wherever they were. They're just playing the standard late-night fare now, and not so loud as Fight Club.
. . . . . entries for 25.4.08 . . . . .
If I had not been in HUM, I would have been more accustomed to these cruel swings of Fate and upperclassmen. Sigh.
Buggery and damnation unto course registration!
. . . . . entries for 23.4.08 . . . . .
WHEEEEEE!
I MUST CLEAN MY DESK
BECAUSE I MUST FIND MY 5-HOUR FORM
AAAAAH
I MUST NOT FORGET
So my EIC and environmentalist man about town, James Coan, won $10,000 in an essay contest about solutions for global climate change. He announced this to us very nonchalantly at our Monday night meeting.
An article will appear in the Daily Princetonian tomorrow (or the next day? not sure) about his achievement. Kelsey was there when the editors heard about that. They went:
"James Coan?"
in a disdainful, skeptical voice. Yeah, bitches - James Coan. One of them was an ORFE, who remarked that he'd made $10,000 working in finance one summer or other, but to make that much in one day was rather impressive.
To this, Mari had just one thing to say.
YOU JUST GOT CWNED.
. . . . . entries for 22.4.08 . . . . .
"Starry, starry night:
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflecting Vincent's eyes of china blue;
Colors changing hue,
Morning fields of amber grain,
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.
. . .
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life as lovers often do;
But I could've told you, Vincent!
This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you." -Don McLean, Vincent
You should know that, despite common conception (and apparently McLean's, from lyrics of Vincent I didn't include), Vincent van Gogh was probably neither epileptic nor schizophrenic. After a long time believing him schizophrenic, this almost came as a disappointment to me; but if he had been schizophrenic, he would have been much less emotional and much less grounded in reason in his day-to-day life, especially in his handling of color as he painted. So that's out.
The two most likely causes of his delusions were an illness called acute intermittent porphyria (AIP) or, kind of humorously, his proclivity to eat oil paint out of the tube, in connection with his apparent addiction to wormwood oil and other trippy substances, e.g. absinthe - at least according to this book I'm looking at for my research paper. Along with his neuroses, he suffered from gastrointestinal issues which point to one of these causes, rather than a mental disorder of some kind. Enormously interesting book, but a neuroscience certificate-pursuer would appreciate it more than I'm able to. So many chemical diagrams! AAH!
I didn't read the passages on manic-depression or mania, and my mom thinks the former is the most likely hypothesis for Vincent. I dunno. Maybe I'll check it out at some point. Not the book - Marquand doesn't circulate - but you know what I mean.
I guess McLean's chorus:
"Now I understand
What you tried to say to me,
And how you suffered for your sanity,
And how you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how;
Perhaps they'll listen now"
points toward the songwriter's intentions to me. He wasn't writing about Vincent, I think; Vincent was just an aesthetically pleasing, available figure of speech for "the mentally abnormal of the world." Now that I know that Vincent might have had a chemical imbalance that was not strictly neurological, some of the song's charm is gone for me. Vincent himself, though, chose to believe he was epileptic, rather than deranged, although the case for epilepsy was based largely in what his mother said she had; I guess I ought to discard McLean's misunderstanding, if not for a likely truth, then at least for a misunderstanding closer to Vincent's own. He didn't want to be a madman. His high-key, manic-looking paintings, if his letters are any indication, were born not out of insanity, but out of love for contrast and the intensity of yellow, especially in natural skies.
Anyway, I should be working.
PS: I don't know that Vincent's eyes actually were "china blue." They seem to be a different color in every self portrait. I don't mind.
PPS: This might be my favorite of his self portraits. Unusually low key, and, I think, beautifully expressive.
Nantucket could be so nice - or, I suppose, it could be a disaster.
I believe one of my HUM professors may have scandalized some of my classmates in HUM lecture today when he showed Courbet's L'origine du monde on the overhead projector. Um. Um. Sorry, conservative and/or male virgin viewers. You probably didn't want to see that.
I kind of think Courbet is a riot, though. I like his self-portraits more than his nudes.
. . . . . entries for 20.4.08 . . . . .
There is something strikingly elegant and alludable* about the lie: "he was a sea captain**, darling." I want a literary occasion to use it, but, God willing, never one true to my life.
(I sometimes pull Master Jeff-like stylistic things in blog entries on HUM - like all this Madame Bovary stuff. If only he knew the secret influence he has. :P)
*Did I just coin that word? I might have - I guess allusion-worthy is its legitimate substitute.
**WE ARE
MEN OF
THE SEA!
^Completely unrelated to Madame Bovary, but my number one association with the phrase "sea captain," which really just makes it better.
Flaubert did some good things, so far as inducing disgust with romantic fiction and its absurdity is concerned. One of the good parts:
"It was the time of day when one hears the sound of caulkers' mallets striking against hulls in shipyards. Tar smoke floated up through the trees, and on the surface of the river there were large oily patches undulating irregularly in the crimson glow of the sun, like plaques of Florentine bronze" (Flaubert 221).
Flaubert here describes the conditions in Rouen in the evening, when Madame Bovary and her lover go out to dinner on an island. It fits into the flow of the "honeymoon" - illicit, adulterous, etc - quite admirably, and still manages to be completely disgusting and true to the real life of industrializing Europe.
I think Gustave was probably a bitter man - I haven't actually looked at anything biographical concerning him - but I bet he would've been a trip at a café.
I wonder if a conscious battle against the inflation of ego can reduce the odds of contracting paranoid schizophrenia.
I'm going to be insufferable until I stop thinking about paranoia/being paranoid. I am fairly certain of this. So what does one do - ignore it? That must be it. I don't know what else there is for it.
And angry music. It enhances my mental stability something wonderful.
. . . . . entries for 19.4.08 . . . . .
In related news: that I get offended when my roommate says schizophrenics have delusions of grandeur might be a bad sign.
Wow.
Two kind of random, awkward boys have now directly complimented me on the dress Mama Ostrowski gave me last Christmas. A third, a British prefrosh, today just acted weirdly friendly with me during and after the Rocky theater showing of A Beautiful Mind, during which I was wearing said dress. I've determined that the dress evokes a very strong reaction in awkward males, and a moderate reaction in some other perfectly stable individuals ("that's a beautiful dress," furtively, shoulder-to-shoulder in the dining hall from someone I've never seen before, as opposed to "I like your dress!" from a girl I went on CA with). I think I will use this as a litmus test in the future, to determine the approximate awkwardness level of people who witness me in that dress.
It is a nice dress though, and I cannot lie: being told it's beautiful by a complete stranger did cast a rosy glow over my evening.
If the unfortunate circumstance comes to pass that I go crazy, I think things will still be okay. After all, there is John Nash.
. . . . . entries for 18.4.08 . . . . .
What Your Taste in Chocolate Says About You |
 You are sophisticated, modern, and high class. Your taste is refined, but you are not picky. You are often the first to try something new. You are a whimsical person prone to daydreaming. Artistic and creative, you're always in the middle of a project. While you are an inspiration to others, you can come off as flaky. You love the feeling of accomplishment. You enjoy doing what's important. You feel lost when you have to do frivolous tasks or hang out with shallow people. |
You got me there, blogthings.
So today, I sunbathed and propagandized prefrosh. Later I will go see A Beautiful Mind, finally.
Last night I went for a stroll, which ended up including the math library - or something? that study space with chalkboards, I saw Andrew there - and the plaza on top of Fine, which was really cool. You can see pretty much the whole campus from there.
It reminded me of a similar space, albeit smaller, atop Sue B at U Rochester. And I wrote something melancholic on the chalkboard in backwards cursive, and stared out the window, and missed Frank.
. . . . . entries for 17.4.08 . . . . .
You should know that I lied. I did not go to the astrobio meeting. I just bummed around all evening. :P
The problem with trying to keep the body of this blog longer than the sidebar is that the sidebar just keeps growing. Seriously. This blog is so old. The archives are ridiculous.
Weather was gorgeous today and is going to be gorgeous tomorrow. I'm recruiting prefrosh to PPN tomorrow for an hour, then maybe going to master's tea in Rocky. Tonight I am going to the astrobiology (AKA UFO-watchers) club Star Party with Kelsey. If she still wants to. I dunno - she's at her exam right now.
And I should be doing research, and FRS homework, and reading Flaubert. Ho hum.
You Are a Walnut |
 You are down to earth and genuine. Responsible and practical, you are a grown up in all aspects of your life. You probably eat a healthy diet and get enough exercise. And while you're not wild, you're not boring either. You're actually very deep and interesting. |
All right blogthings, if you say so.
Juicycampus horrifies me. Something is seriously wrong with the world if such a site exists and is actually used by students at the (ostensibly) greatest university in the country.
. . . . . entries for 16.4.08 . . . . .
I'm nuts, but it kind of works for me.
. . . . . entries for 14.4.08 . . . . .
You Are Disturbingly Profound |
 You're contemplative, thoughtful, and very intense. Taking time to figure out the meaning of life is a priority for you. Because you're so introspective, you often react in ways that surprise people. No one can really understand how you are on the inside... and that disturbs them. |
OH NO
THE BLOG GROWS LEAN ONCE MORE
public boolean loves(SO other)
{ return true; }
System.out.println(Frank.loves(Erin));
I love having such a computerdorky love of my life.
Edit: Afterward, I asked if this was Java. He said "sort of. It's bad Java." I'm not sure if coding languages are generally well-adapted to such gushy expression, however, so I guess I'll let it slide.
. . . . . entries for 13.4.08 . . . . .
I have sort of accidentally knit myself one of these. (Skip the part about Stich'n'Bitch. . . unless you're into that. . . and go straight to the ludicrous tiny indie scarf part.) Now I just need some classy buttons. . .
. . . . . entries for 12.4.08 . . . . .
If one has nothing, one may well as not give oneself to everyone.
. . . . . entries for 11.4.08 . . . . .
It's so nice out. I wish the breeze would blow through my head, lift away all the heaviness, put the beauty outside into me.
. . . . . entries for 10.4.08 . . . . .
Goethe's Faust is definitely some manner of INP. I just don't know if he's a T or an F. I expect this will somehow or other be illuminated throughout the rest of the book, which I think I'm actually going to read in the next couple of days, so I can write my essay on it. It speaks to me in a way the occasional book does, occasionally - but constantly, on every level, almost such that I cannot imagine anyone else reading it and understanding it as I do, as someone as angsty and torn between thought and action as Faust.
Granted there are like a million plots and I'm barely on the first. I trust this thread will continue, probably in disturbing and fascinating ways - to me at least. I further trust that I will actually make myself read this book, for once.
. . . . . entries for 9.4.08 . . . . .
I am ENFJ tonight, apparently. Especially on the N, substantially on the F, somewhat less substantially on the J, a little on the E. Hm.
"Teacept is a concept whose time has come." -Graham Jones
I love Dr. Jones. He is adorable.
. . . . . entries for 8.4.08 . . . . .
There's a big tent walled in with fake plastic windows on the lawn between Buyers, Witherspoon, and Richardson. It is an impediment to walking. It smells plasticky.
With its remove from its surroundings - all closed off, with real doors stuck in the false walls - it reminds me that I cannot go back to April hosting. I can't have that particular emotional breakdown a second time. I'm already waxing too melodramatic, but I'm still kind of bitter, as if Princeton has taken more than it's given to me in terms of happiness. I don't know that this is a quality unique to Princeton, if some college would have kept me youthfully optimistic and, I don't know - bathing in the light of praise forever. That's sort of a horrible way to be, but it *was* nice at the time.
Shannon #2 called and asked for my advice to incoming freshmen. I said that the most admirable students here don't confuse getting good grades with learning, and they can somehow do both. Maybe I should have said: enjoy the glow while it lasts. Princeton is a hell of a lot of work, but hopefully, somewhere in the work, you'll find the work you're passionate about.
Ronnie, one of the most intimidating people I've ever met, dropped HUM today. I guess it's not what she's passionate about, and she wants to focus elsewhere, and learn in addition to getting good grades. I don't think I'm really passionate about HUM either. Environmental studies, I'm passionate about; writing, to a lesser extent. But I'm not gonna be a classics major. It's just not my bag.
By extension, I kind of doubt I'm going to be an English major at this point, and again, by extension, I doubt I'll get my teaching certification while I'm an undergraduate, if ever. I think I'd like teaching, sometimes, but I think much more, and more strongly, that I want out of academics. I want to do something real.
Arrrg. Today is not an excellent day. I failed to properly save my HUM lecture notes, so an hour of Wollstonecraft knowledge has evaporated from my MacBook. And I effectively have 17.5% of my grade for FRS to account for tonight.
Sigh. Anger. Defeat. Et cetera.
SO MUCH TO DO FOR MY FRESHMAN SEMINAR TONIGHT. Gah. Totally forgot about the homework assignment. Turns out I have homework - the grade for which will amount to something like 7.5% of my final grade for the class - on top of the power point for my briefing session on an article on the syllabus - 10% of my grade.
Arrrrg.
So yeah, I'm in Color, half listening. I like this class, but the amount of stuff we do for it that is not expressly "graded" that I do anyway is frustrating. Grades, I have decided, are frustrating, not because they are unnecessary or a hindrance, but because they never seem to be designed such that they motivate me to learn what the professor actually seems to want me to learn.
. . . . . entries for 6.4.08 . . . . .
Having once again pondered possible courses of action, I have decided I must cover my bases so that I might major in psych or English, and so I will have a chance of getting into the Woodrow Wilson School. Turns out WWS wants its students to take three classes in one social science department, so as with English - in fact far more certainly than with English - I could sort of focus on psych as well as public policy.
So I have drawn up my hypothetical schedule for next year, both fall and spring! It occurs to me that I may be blocked out from some classes I want to take, but hopefully, from my list of classes I liked, I can make something work. I've already posted the fall half, but here it is again:
PSY 101 (intro psych)
CWR 203 (intro creative fiction)
WWS 325 (public policy and civil society, AKA nonprofit stuff)
ENV 341 (desertification and stuff in Africa)
MAT 103 (basically BC calc)
And here is my very hypothetical spring schedule:
CWR 304 (advanced creative fiction)
ECO 100 (microeconomics)
ENG 205 (lit survey from Chaucer to 1800, AKA HUM rehash - a prereq, and the other prereq conflicts with PSY 101 the previous semester, sooooo. . .)
PSY 251 (psych stats - annoying, because it doesn't fulfill the WWS stats requirement)
WWS 301/POL 308 (political ethics, I think - a neat way to knock off my ethics and morality requirement if nothing else)
Formals were pretty damn fun. That is the lasting impression of the evening.
Caveats to the pretty damn fun: achy feet and knees.
And, not quite a caveat, but something other than pretty damn fun: I took a moment to sit out in the garden behind Quad (the eating club at which the formal was held), and I saw various couples up to various things, including a sketchy couple in the bushes, a cute/awkward couple on the balcony, and - the kicker - this guy I know grabbing a girl and planting one, very theatrically, on her lips.
It was weirdly dramatic, yet weirdly typical. My love life is not all that theatrical, and while I get a kick out of some good theatricality every once in a while, I am content - more than content - with something less dramatic. Not any more real, perhaps - I am not that guy I know or his lady, so I don't know - but more. . . more the way Sir Ferraro and I are. Whatever that is. Comfortable? Close enough to know well how we fit together?
A certain je ne sais quoi, I guess.
(Did I spell that right?)
Anyway. I felt something at seeing that, but it wasn't envy. It was, initially, a kind of emotional reflection of a time in my life when I associated such scenes with magic, almost - with an inhuman charge. But I guess I've realized, as a person and moreso as a literary person - a reader and writer - that the story is almost always almost the same, if it has that little kid magic quality to it. So upon further reflection, from my objective place sitting alone at the picnic table, I sort of found that moment of theater dull. It's the unique details - the things other than the fleeting glances, the passionate kisses - that make the story good, that make you want to keep watching, or keep living; it's the unique details that make you keep loving.
I dunno the details there. But I know mine, and as a character within, I like 'em.
Miss you, honey.
. . . . . entries for 5.4.08 . . . . .
"Suddenly they can't trust their river anymore. It's like a loved one who has developed symptoms of psychosis. Anyone who has loved a river can tell you that the loss of a river is a terrible, aching thing. But I'll be rapped on the knuckles if I continue in this vein. When we're discussing the Greater Common Good there's no place for sentiment. One must stick to facts. Forgive me for letting my heart wander." -Arundhati Roy, on the damming of rivers in India
This guy took rhetorical steroids before writing this article, which I'm reading for my freshman seminar (economics of environmental protection). So a lot of the language is similarly sentimental, in some places offputtingly so.
But this kind of thing cuts me to the bone. What if my river went crazy because of Gilboa bursting or something? And why can't I talk about how much it would hurt? Why can't I just love my river for no good reason?
In the warmer weather, after a little sunbathing, the chords in Iron and Wine's Trapeze Swinger send those old vibrations through my veins.
Spring is a thing of beauty, but we schoolkids just wait for summer.
And on Sunday, the Pokemon campaign gif leaves this blog's front page. I mourn already.
There be Chicanas in my common room, for ECCSF. They are trying to sleep. I turned out the lights - hopefully my typing isn't keeping them up. (Everyone else has gone to sleep or is out [ahemmariahemahem].)
Random: I really like what very little of the Cowboy Junkies I have heard.
In more newsy things: I have drawn up my "ideal" schedule for the fall semester - ideal not being what I would take if I had no obligations to, say, a major, but ideal being what I have decided, in this real world, I want to take. Sixteen hours of class per week, starting at 9 on four out of five days - and yes, for the first time in college, I will have class all five days of the week. Because of calculus.
It's intimidating, because I've effectively taken three classes each semester this year, even though one of those classes is technically two and pretty insanely work-intensive anyway. But I think I can manage, especially if I pre-learn (read: go through the textbook for and have Frank pre-teach me) calc, and if I get a chill CWR professor.
I gotta work out how the application for that goes this time around. Blarg. Something for tomorrow, before the formal.
Haha, formal. I will be such an art twat. JP is reemerging. Reemerging is she!
. . . . . entries for 4.4.08 . . . . .
Also: April 4 is an important day. Take a moment and think about history sometime in the next few hours.
New news: I *am* going to the freshman formal, with Ting and Alisa, as J.P. Chartreuse. With beret and pinstripe fishnets and all. I think it will be good.
. . . . . entries for 3.4.08 . . . . .
I'm not sure if I can justify going to the freshman formal. I have a lot of crap to do this weekend, and neither Kelsey nor Mari are going. Ting is though. Maybe I will lobby other friends to go.
. . . . . entries for 2.4.08 . . . . .
(But how the blog's body grows thin!)
Clearly more pensing. . . poncing. . . ponsing? . . . I guess it's really not a word. Shucks.
Clearly more thought should occur on this blog.
So I was wicked out of it all day yesterday because I didn't sleep Monday night because I had an essay for writing sem. This essay could have been written over the weekend, true, (agh passive voice my impulse is to compose and fiddle around with it but it's my BLOG for the love of God) . . . but I just didn't have the focus to actually write. Outline and ponder and so on, sure, but not write.
So I wrote it and I don't think it turned out disastrously bad, which is good.
I have *another* HUM paper due next week. On what, I do not know. That will also require some of that nonexistent verb. I probably get my most recent HUM paper back tomorrow.
And I should get my FRS (economics of environmental protection) project proposal back today. That bears looking at, and probably research-starting soon.
It's, what, four more weeks of classes? Dear God.
Oh wow. Bed at 8, got up around 7:30. That is some epic sleep right there. Epic.
come home?
.:people:.
{ting}
she looks like the real thing
{mari}
out and about
[kelsey]
THIS IS AMERICA
{yianni}
stop being depressed
{alisa}
other
[shannon]
close and far
{frank}
islands where no islands should go
[cassie]
eating knowledge
{colin}
my dm
[emily]
shoulder to the wheel
[brian]
nostalgic for fantasy
[nicole]
industry insider
{elle}
angry enviro
[matt]
never heard of miyazaki
[pirate dan]
are you reading this?
[olga]
distracted
[messiah dan]
messiah/believer
{max}
approach focus
[natalie]
wait a minute
[susan]
solitude
{greg}
manbeargreg
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.:skin:.
turtles! turtles! by araglas
(heavily modified by yours truly)