Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Ho Ho Ho

Marry Christmas!

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Me

I hate school and I hate class
and I hate homework and I hate
twelve (12) page papers
and I hate grades,
but I hate myself.

And I hate my dad and I hate my mom and I hate
my sister and my sister's friends and my friends
and acquaintances
and myself
and people I've never met and racial minorities - especially blacks -
and women
and leaders of foreign nations
and the impoverished, flea-bitten bloated-bellied AIDS Babies of those nations,
but I hate myself.

And I hate Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides and
Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and
Derrida and Sam Beckett and
the Theater of the Avant Garde
and Theater
and logical derivations and doubly-linked-lists and especially AVL trees.

NYU and C and emails from my grandmother and The
World and God and my father and my grandfather and me and every one of my successes
and all of my failures.

I hate this blog and I hate this poem.

And I hate Global Warming and I hate
hybrid cars and The Economy and Adam
and Eve and Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud,
but I hate myself.

I hate love and
I hate generosity and
I hate diarrhea
and Ayn Rand.
I hate hate and
I hate haters
and hate groups
and hate speech
and speech in general
as well as non-verbal communication and silence.
I hate love again and respect and children
and hope and happiness and suffering.
I hate death and life and my life and me
and my name and my toes and my id and my ego
and my boyhood and my nose and I hate
God
and my cock and my balls and my asshole and my mouth
and my interests and my intestines and my aorta and my neocortex too.

But most of all I hate you.
I hate your face and your breath and your ideas
and everything you think, say, and do.
I hate the money you make
and the sex you have
and the things you own.
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!
I hate you, the world, God, Christmas, and you.

But I hate myself.


If I get a diploma, I will burn it.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Size doesn't matter. Except when it does.

Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here! You will recall the twelve (12) page paper on which I was so recently working which turned out in the end to be a cowardly seven (7) page paper. Well, I embarked tonight to fill out the remaining pages with such extra time as I've been afforded. After a few hours of toil at the library, I jumped back home to do some stuff and plugged the new paper into OpenOffice to check my progress (I write the paper at the library in Google Docs, which has very poor page count estimates). Nine pages. Hmm, thought I. This is going to be a long night. Somewhat crestfallen but eager nonetheless, I returned again to the library for more toil. At 3am they finally evicted me from the stacks (the place with the book) and I relocated to the study lounge. The study lounge has iMacs with Word, so I took a deep breath, crossed my fingers, and pasted the paper in. Sixteen (16) pages. I finished the sentence I was working on, slapped my name on the top, and emailed that bad boy in. Done and done. On a related note, the eight (8) page paper I was also working on weighed in at a clean eight (8) pages. Yeehaw.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

News From the Front

Thought I would continue last night's tradition of liveblogging from the library. It's 12:45 and the paper is halfway done (it was halfway done at 12:30 - I haven't done anything the last 15 minutes) and that's very good. Remember, this one is eight (8) pages long. Or it will be when it's done. Yesterday's paper has gotten a new lease on life: it turns out not to be due due until noon tomorrow. Whether that gives me enough time to double its length is doubtful, but I might squeeze in a few extra quotations. I have only slept about two out of the last forty eight hours. I'm actually feeling surprisingly good for so little rest. Not as witty as I might be, but as I always say, "can't be witty after every 48 hours of sleep deprivation." See what I mean. Well, I'd best get back to that ole paper. Maybe if I finish before four I can work on the other paper and get it up to ten pages before noon. Wish me luck!

Monday, December 17, 2007

Essay Terminus or One Down, One to Go

Yesterday's/last night's/this morning's twelve (12) page paper is finished, but at the last minute decided to be a seven (7) page paper. I'm not too worried. Unlike parachute ripchords and French emperors, a short essay never killed anyone. Though I wouldn't put it past my paper. It's already burgled some of my property. My watch - the one I never wear except for when I do - is now lost somewhere in the Bobst library. Thrown from my wrist in a frenzy of page-turning, no doubt. This is the same watch, by the way, that was leaking chemicals up and down my arm. It's a comfort to know that I continue to educate myself in the importance of not loosing shit. Like the children you see on leashes who must always wear their harness, I must always keep my watch on my wrist. I like to think that, at 21, the lesson is only repeated for rhetorical emphasis.

Well I've barely recovered from the no-sleep, no-timepiece extravaganza that was last night's paper, and I'm already gearing up for tonight's no-sleep, no-timepiece eight (8) page essay extravaganza, due tomorrow! I'm armored and ready for battle. I have my sword, my pen, my furry hat, my library card, and but for a wristwatch I am the image of scholarly preparedness. Bring it on, say I! And if this eight (8) page paper is paper enough to meet the length requirement, then I shall meet it in the ring of honor. Tonight. Slash tomorrow morning. Bobst Library. Fourth floor. Be there!

Jealousy

Am still at the library writing the aforementioned twelve (12) page paper. Sitting across from me while I was deep in composition was a girl reading a book. The book was entitled, "Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgender Prostitutes."

The paper (my paper) is about Greek drama, by the way.

Lessions in Search Quality

I'm at the library right now writing a twelve (12) page paper which is something that I don't enjoy doing very much. Anyway, (some of) the computers in the library only have Internet Explorer in a quasi-kiosk mode with no address bar. The only way to navigate to, say, Google, is to open the IE search sidebar and search for "google". The IE search sidebar uses Windows Live Search.

So I get on to one of these computer and need to get to Google Book Search (books.google.com). I type "book search" into the search sidebar and hit enter. Before I tell you what results Windows Live gave me for "book search," let me briefly tell you what Google gives you for the same query: books.google.com - result #1, just what I want. Now here is what Windows Live gave me:

Result #1: www.book-search.com "Best way to search for books on the net! ... All rights reserved. This page is copyright 1994 Triple Threat Sportscards." [Emphasis mine]

Result #2: www.bookfinder.com "Search engine that finds the best buys from among 125 million new, used, rare, and out-of-print books for sale. Includes textbooks and international titles." [Emphasis mine]

Result #3: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Book_Search [The Wikipedia page about Google Book Search]

Result #4: booksearch.blogspot.com [The official blog about Google Book Search]

Result #5: www.usedbooksearch.co.uk [A used book retailer... in the UK]

Result #6: www.usedbooksearch.co.uk/books.htm [Apparently it thinks I could use another result from the same UK estore]

Result#7: books.google.co.uk [Finally it gives me the UK version of Google Book Search. To be clear, I'm not using the UK version of Live Search. It recommended the .co.uk domain before the .com domain]

In the subsiquent results were books.google.ca and books.google.au, but plain old books.google.com didn't show up in the 35 pages I clicked through. I thought that was an interesting observation.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Today

Rain. In December. Rain in December.

edit
Correction: It's sleeting now.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The Legal Definition of Cheese

This, from the Wikipedia article on American Cheese (emphasis mine):

Today's American cheese is generally no longer made from a blend of all-natural cheeses, but instead is a processed cheese, i.e. it is manufactured from a set of ingredients (such as milk, whey, milkfat, milk protein concentrate, whey protein concentrate, salt) which meets the legal definition of cheese.

Further details emerge on my impending doom

Consciousness is knowing you're alive. Sentience is knowing you will die.

Over the past four years I've begun to think more frequently about my death which is, I imagine, part and parcel of growing up. But I realized today that I've only thought about my death in the abstract, "I'm 21 - I'm almost dead," kind of way. It wasn't until this afternoon that I spent some time wondering seriously about the end of my life. This is the stuff self-fulfilling prophesies are made of!

My paternal grandfather lost nearly all of his cognitive powers with age. I have been reminded on numerous occasions of the similarities between he and me. Aside from looking identical at age 7, we share many personal and mental traits, according to my father. I am told to have inherited both his great potential and his propensity to waste said potential. My maternal grandmother on the other hand is frighteningly lucid and shows no sign of slowing down. The family fears she will outlive us all. (My maternal grandfather died when my mother was young and my paternal grandmother died when I was young. My paternal grandfather is also dead.) I am nothing like my grandmother. It therefor seems likelier than not that I will lose my mind when I get old. If in my crazy old age I am only able to remember people and events from my youth, I wonder what time frame that will encompass. For all I know, my life right now will be all I can remember in sixty years. I'm trying to decide if that thought makes me self-conscious.

I usually think of "older me" as another person, but for some reason I don't think of the many "older mes" as a group of other people. What I mean is, I think of me at thirty as another person, and me at forty as another person still. I can, when I so choose, feel the gaze of a singular "future me," judging my current actions, but I cannot evoke the sensation of a group of "future mes" judging my behavior collectively. This, despite my birthday mind game.

Assuming I remand lucid, I do wonder how large a component of my identity age will become. I feel that much of my ego for the past 21 years has been predicated upon youth. I have defined myself in terms of being a "young person." As that bedrock slowly slips from under my personality, I find it's replacement (maturity) to be alarmingly absent. For this reason I think that Old Scott, if his wits are about him, will relish in the appropriation of age to support his identity. To "be old" will probably be my favorite part of being old.

Truth be told, I can't wait to be old. It's the "getting old" part I'm not so hot on. But the "being old" looks like a hoot. Any excuse to shit my pants...

Life is so much prelude to death.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Sun, Dec. Nine

  • Woke late (2:30).
  • Showered and Interneted.
  • Ate food (4:10).
    • While eating, ran into my friend Nate. Sat down with his crowd.
    • We were then joined by Evan (whom I haven't seen in ages) and other people.
    • Had the most amusing meal I've had since April.
  • Now it's back home and I need to study.

"Sunday" is redundant.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

D. Sam Bur

Happy first of December.

Touching yourself: Good, clean fun for everyone!

Finger Cheese

Fact: If you keep your fingers in the same place on a keyboard for upwards of six hours, those keys will acquire a layer of goo. The goo is probably dirt, sweat, and dead skin cells. I won't tell you how I've learned this, but if these keys mean anything to you, you already know: W, A, S, & D.