. . . . . entries for 31.5.08 . . . . .
Although: the initial impression of Dionis Beach was not particularly fun and shiny shell-ful. As some character or other - the older king? - in the new Beowulf flick said: "this place reeks of death." Tons of stuff washed up and rotting from wind the past week, and no beach clean-up crew, because it's still in the off-season. I haven't read my bits of pocket Thoreau about Cape Cod yet, but I bet he witnessed something similar, and that's what made him so aware of the power of Nature on the shore - not just the sterile, pounding surf, but the creatures dying above the line of tide.
But it's all natural. We just hide it during shoebie season.
Yesterday the Shermans and Ostrowskis went to the calmest beach on the island and collected tons and tons of very shiny shells, which I may or may not make into a pretty necklace. Also swimming in very cold water, awkward sunburns, and crab bites. It was a good day. (And steak. Forget not the steak.)
Today we are going to the whaling museum and wandering around town. And buying Frank chocolate.
. . . . . entries for 28.5.08 . . . . .
Alive. Just in case you were, perhaps for lack of facebook, wondering. On Nantucket. Things are going predictably and therefore, I suppose, unremarkably. Except for some remarkable things, upon which I nevertheless shall not remark.
. . . . . entries for 24.5.08 . . . . .
Well, I'm out on the Cape, and I had planned to open up my laptop, fail to find a wireless signal, and try to work on my villanelle. I'm glad that did not happen, because I had two problematic emails: one from my Color professor, regarding the woes of TIFF compressors and essay contest submissions, and the worse one from a lady at SICM, who thinks I am coming in to work on Tuesday. No no no no no. I will be in Nantucket. EEK. We changed this. I am pretty sure we confirmed this. So. Problem.
Um. I hope all that will be okay. And I am not really in the mood to write a villanelle anymore. :(
. . . . . entries for 21.5.08 . . . . .
Last night in Princeton. Should I be doing something nuts? Eh.
. . . . . entries for 20.5.08 . . . . .
I LOVE THE CUBE PERSONALITY TEST. It offers so many possibilities for analysis and speculation. And overcomplication, for certain unusual people. :P
If I haven't run it on you yet, and you're in the mood for some interesting, abstract, possibly illuminating self-examination, let me know.
So my roommate has a bunch of this stuff in powdered form, and she offered me some to take home. I read that wikipedia page and I was like "hm. aphrodisiac. clearly I can't take any now - it'd be incriminating." :P
In other news: today is packing day, and picking-up-work day. Eek.
What is this nonsense!? Waking up with a stuffy nose, unduly groggy - Mother Nature, you're not about to tell me I'm sick, right? (That would be novel. I haven't been rightly and properly ill in ages.)
. . . . . entries for 19.5.08 . . . . .
I go on Gaia very infrequently. That being said, my avatar is hot.
You know, despite consistent feelings of uselessness and futility, I think I did learn some stuff this year. And now the retroactive tone applies: I am done with freshman year. Freakin' strange.
. . . . . entries for 18.5.08 . . . . .
So if a friend of yours basically exposes you as a shut-in loser to another friend of yours, what are you to make of it?
. . . though I guess I do fit the profile of "shut-in loser" pretty well.
I sort of feel like Nobuo Uematsu gave up on Final Fantasy battle themes after FFVII. Because seriously. None of the other games compare for sheer epic-ness.
I wonder if there's an orchestrated version to be had.
Appended: "Orchestrated" isn't the right word, but I bet it can be found on one of the three Black Mages CDs.
Appended again: SERIOUSLY.
. . . . . entries for 16.5.08 . . . . .
Tonight, I had dinner with Lifeties, dessert with HUM, and picked up my writing sem paper. I got an A. :D (With grade deflation and all, that's kind of a big deal. For me, anyway.)
So. Good day, basically. I feel like maybe I should start packing.
The family bug, I keep telling myself, is a kind of hypochondria. So when, like now, I'm worried I'm getting sick, I remember: the family bug. Keep plugging. It's probably just in your head.
. . . . . entries for 14.5.08 . . . . .
Arrrrgh. This guy graduated from Shimer and has apparently been a brilliant scholar of political stuff ever since. And now he is at the Wilson School. Only he doesn't appear to have updated his page since last year, and even then, he was teaching grad courses.
I want access to his brain. Perhaps I can finagle it next semester through my own WWS professor.
Fact: this blog needs more clutter. Other fact: I need to be studying for HUM, but HUM-study futility is already creeping up on me.
At some point in my career, I think I ought to try a drop of absinthe, given my artsy inclinations and research on Vincent. More importantly, I shall have to try a drop of chartreuse - given my color preferences, and apparently, it's spicy. What more could I ask for in a brain cell-killing beverage?
This is neat. Try to find mine, if you can.
. . . . . entries for 13.5.08 . . . . .
The written work has been submitted, and I am enormously sick of typing. Only the HUM final remains.
And packing. Lots of packing.
. . . . . entries for 12.5.08 . . . . .
When I go home I am going to watch Mulan. And possibly other Disney movies.
"My favorite use of the trochaic meter is 'MOTHer FUCKer FREEZE!'" -Ting, when watching Trapped in the Closet for like the fifth time in a couple of days.
I really enjoy this pseudo-outline I just wrote for part of my paper:
[more on what women are good at]
[women not good at philosophy]
[“something wrong with sexuality”]
[but wait - what of all that begetting and giving birth nonsense?]
[I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.]
Jesus H. Christ. First Myanmar, now Sichuan. That's Ting's province. Her folks in China live 90 miles from the epicenter, and all the phone lines are down. They're probably fine, but a few thousand people are not fine.
What made the world think it was okay to go freakin' insane during my reading period? I need to focus. So inconsiderate.
But seriously. You know.
. . . . . entries for 11.5.08 . . . . .
Well, blogosphere, I have finally lost all my baby teeth.
. . . . . entries for 10.5.08 . . . . .
WRI work near done, since around 4 last night. FRS and HUM nowhere near done. Working on FRS presently.
Today there was green curry, because today I missed brunch, because I woke up after 2 in the afternoon. Really rather epic. And the curry, it was good.
. . . . . entries for 9.5.08 . . . . .
I think people should be more tactful. (Myself included, probably.)
And I think I especially should be more motivated, though I know not anymore of what admirable motivation consists. People say "motivated" as though the gerund itself were a virtue. But by what? It does matter, doesn't it?
This song reminds me of Nietzsche. :P
. . . . . entries for 8.5.08 . . . . .
I don't really know what I'm good for. That seems like a dumb thing to say, now that I'm saying (typing, blogging, whateverthehelling) it, but it's been on my mind.
The Princeton Internships in the Civic Service (PICS) orientation dinner was kind of. . . I dunno, not something I was in the mood for. :P Too much "this could change your life! Be on your best behavior! Introspect deeply!" I feel like these are things I generally don't need telling, that most kids at Princeton probably don't need telling, but maybe I did. In any case, I have other things, like things due Tuesday, about which I ought to be introspecting deeply at the moment. I cannot divert my introspection. That would be a bad move.
But I do wonder if all this will somehow alter me fundamentally. I doubt it.
"First you need data. Then you need to change the political will," said a kind of loopy but apparently important speaker to the PICSies.
I essentially want to make a career in changing the political will. I want to be a loudmouth whom, for whatever reason, people actually listen to. I don't know exactly how that happens, though. I don't know where I should be looking.
. . . . . entries for 6.5.08 . . . . .
I spent most of today working on this for HUM:
Oi vey. So much time.
. . . . . entries for 4.5.08 . . . . .
Were I a painter, this would be my red swatch period.
Vincent didn't actually have a yellow period as such. He sort of viewed Arles as an enlivening of yellow and blue in his work, but varying degrees of yellow appeared in his paintings episodically throughout his (sadly short) career.
I gotta write that paper. By Thursday at 5. Mreh. :P
(And another 25 pages on various things by Tuesday? Goddamn. Better get on that.)
Dental odyssey tomorrow (today?). Nietzsche and the laptop are coming with.
. . . . . entries for 3.5.08 . . . . .
The HUMorists decided to assign characters to everyone in the class - that is to say, everyone gets a title equivalent to the name of a character or writer we encountered sometime in the course of this year, which hopefully relates somehow to their personality. I'm photoshopping the appropriate heads onto the appropriate bodies, so people are sending nominations for character-classmate pairs to me.
Some of the nominations are off, but MY nominations have just been weird so far, and no two the same - granted, I only have three. But sheesh. I guess only time will tell.
Don't tell me that class isn't applicable to anything. It is, in fact, applicable to everything, including the horribly silly and useless.
YOU
YES YOU
GO PLAY WITH VAN GOGH PAINTINGS
. . . . . entries for 2.5.08 . . . . .
I was not actually inaccessible for all that much of the normal waking day today, because my dental appointment was canceled. The hygienist went home sick. So: in on an emergency basis for Monday. Mom is uppity. These things happen.
Just returned from HUM dinner with Professor Cloud, who is awesome.
Oh, the stuff that needs doing! The stuff!
I'll be inaccessible for a sizable chunk of the normal waking day today. Don't call me, I'll call you, or something like that. (Cas: I accidentally hung up on you last night because my phone opened just slightly, then shut again. :( Sorry.)
Blarrrrrg
. . . . . entries for 1.5.08 . . . . .
I am done with freshman year classes. Not coursework - just classes.
I should still be working, like tonight, but I am weirdly groggy and my back hurts when I breathe too deeply sometimes, and I sort of feel wreckish. So I am going to nap, or something. And maybe go to Marquand for WRI later.
Mrah. Much to do - much to do. Let me crunch the numbers and see how much of my GPA remains to be determined.
HUM (weighted 2x): paper (15%) + final (20%) = 35% ; /2, for weight of total GPA = 17.5%.
WRI: research paper (30%) + weird assignment (15%) + floating five (%5) = 50% ; /4 = 12.5%.
FRS: research paper (15%) ; /4 = 3.75%.
Add them all up: 17.5% + 12.5% + 3.75% = 33.75% of my GPA this semester yet to ascertain, not counting participation grades, which may or may not somehow rest upon things yet to come. Sigh.
Passage 40 in Beyond Good and Evil is quite something. It reminds me of someone who I don't think reads this blog, but of whom I think often - a person to miss and to hope for.
And others. But mostly this one.
The line of the passage that caught my eye: "It is not the worst things of which one is most ashamed: there is not only deceit behind a mask - there is so much goodness in cunning. I could believe that a man who had something fragile and valuable to conceal might roll through life thick and round as an old, green, thick-hooped wine barrel: the refinement of his shame would have it so."
The whole passage is great, though. I'm ashamed of liking Nietzsche after claiming so brazenly to hate him for so many years, but he's an engaging writer, and he says some compelling things - along with the awful things.
Rolling through life. Perhaps some people would always appear as wine barrels if no one ever looked into their eyes.
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)