Better By Nightfall

I'm trying to relax in the wake of all the stress that seems to have befallen me within the last 36 hours. Between homework assignments, a mild case of depression, and now a debate tournament underway, I'm just not sure I'm in top condition. Probably do in part to the fact that, in a minor form, my greatest fear for this semester has almost become realized and it's only the end of the third week of classes--the feeling of losing control.

It's not fully realized yet, and that's the saving grace in all of this. I still have time, hopefully. Between everything there is room to breathe, to relax, to take things apart piece by piece and bit by bit and realize, perhaps, that they aren't as bad as I think they are.

My only hope for this weekend is not to rid myself of the stress as it is cyclical in nature, but rather to learn to bend and not break.


Oh, yeah, and to kick Carroll's ass at the final tournament in the northwest this year! I'm ready, I am.

As I've already noted, I've been trying to do my Calculus homework bit-by-bit before it is due. I figure if I do bits of it before it's due and finish it, I won't have to do it all in one night and depressed (seriously) about the ridiculous amount of time it takes me to complete a single homework assignment. However, it would appear that my efforts are in vain. This week my professor has posted the homework assignment in fragments. Each time I think I'm on task or ahead, I refresh her homework assignment webpage and realize I have 20 or 35 more problems to do. And while I don't mind doing the homework as it actually builds understanding of the material we discuss in class and Calculus on the whole, I'm upset with the fact that all of it has to be turned in on Monday.

Now, I'm not slacking off or saying that my Calculus professor needs to give the class more time on the assignments--personally I think a week is great. However, this week it is surely going to be a tragedy. The homework is still do on Monday, as always, but I won't be here. This weekend, starting on Thursday and running through Sunday, I'll be at a debate tournament in Oregon. Furthermore, I won't be getting back to campus until late Monday afternoon, thereby leaving me with little time to actually complete the homework during this weekend.

So, I asked the professor about turning the homework in and she said I need to turn it on Monday--even if I slip it under her office door. It needs to be in her office on Tuesday morning so that her grader can pick it up and grade it, but it can't be delivered any later or it won't be counted.

Essentially, I have to finish the homework this weekend somehow or miss the assignment and lose a fraction of my grade. It just goes to show that every time I think I'm ahead in one thing or another, I'm only falling further behind by the minute.

Is it just me or does the current Orbitz commercial seem a bit strange? The end especially disturbs me: the announcer is on bended knee and a flamingo is going in towards his crotch, so the announcer grabs the flamingo's (I don't know if birds have this) ass like he's trying to pull it in closer.

If you've seen it, tell me what you think. If not, watch it sometime and tell me what you think. I'm sorry I couldn't find a link to this or any of their commercials.

Perhaps I am suffering from SAD or, as Dr. Cliff Anall postulates, perhaps it's because January 24 is, mathematically, the worst day of the year.

Check it out.

For approximately four and a half hours today, I played EA Games': The Sims 2. While that could be classified as mildly obsessive, I assure you what I did next certainly attributes to the fact that I have a lot of time on my hands.

After installing the game and finally figuring out how to get the cheat codes to work (because what's the point in playing God if you can't completely be God?), I made a "family" of four people. Actually, they're not a family. More like a group of friends living together in an apartment. Each one looks similar to the actual person it was modeled after. Yeah, that's right, I put Lacey, Barton, Bunya, and myself into the game and even built a house that looks kind of like the apartment. I played the game through that house (a long time ago) for a few hours and then decided to make each one of these characters have a significant other. Everyone's significant other is fairly normal, per se, except for Barton's. Barton's girlfriend is a black hoochie mama named Latifah Elliot with the romance aspiration (Those of you that know Barton will get this). Since Lacey was so intrigued with the game (especially after all those communication analysis' on the game that said it was ethnocentric and whatever else) she decided to custom make her own boyfriend. Personally I think he kind of looks like Clark Kent from Smallville, but that's just me.

As for my girlfriend wife, Rebecca, I made her so that she doesn't really look like anyone I know. I don't like to assume anything or jump the gun. Though, oddly enough, I think she kind of looks like a short-haired blonde Kirstin Dunst. And yeah, in those four hours today I managed to make my Sim dude get married and have a kid.

Now that's obsessive and strange, huh?

Don't worry, I know it's not real. After all, I'm not like my old roommate Peter who insisted that his online character in Diablo II was closely matched to him in almost every way possible. He also had an online girlfriend who he talked to every night...with his hand. Now that's delusional and obsessive.

After only two easy, but time consuming, homework assignments in my Calculus course I'm starting to realize, more and more, that I don't want to major in Computer Science. The more I think about the mathematic applications that might apply within said major, the more I think I'll hate it and just end up burning out or wanting to do something else. Granted, there may not be any real parallels to the math I'm doing now and the math that will be required of me in the future if I do something related to Computer Science, but if there are then I really don't see any long-term joys in pursuing this path.

I've always been told you should find something you enjoy doing and pursue it, that way you feel good about what you're doing and feel that whatever it is, it's more than just a job. If this premise is true, then Math under Computer Science doesn't fit. I'm never happy when I'm doing Math, even when I know how to do it because it takes multitudes of time to do some of the simplest equations, functions, et cetera. I lack the patience to continue with it. If Computer Science requires this course and four more thereafter, it's time I come to the conclusion that Computer Science is not for me.

It's time to finalize on a major that centers around things I enjoy doing. I'm not sure what that is right now, but I'm sure I'll figure it out in time.

Fall Out Boy, Midtown, The Academy Is..., and other great bands from Fueled by Ramen are going on tour! Sweet!

I must get tickets soon or I know I will regret it forever.

You know that new Brauny commercial where a muscular mountain man walks in the house carrying bags of groceries and "accidentally" gets mud on the floor, but then he cleans it up with a Brauny paper towel and smiles at the end because it's what a real man would do for his wife.

Yeah.

How funny would it be to have the same dialogue in the commercial, but at the end, instead of the mountain man smiling next to a fire place, extend to have the "wife" walking through the door saying "Honey, I'm home!"--the wife being Richard Simmons.

SNL, please spoof it!

Comdey legend Johnny Carson dies at age 79.

I'm starting to think that I have a horrible "near-shitting of bricks" pet peeve with the kitchen and living room remaining clean. During the past two Thursday's I've found myself cleaning the kitchen and living room (with the help of Lacey on the first Thursday) because the apartment stinks like moldy ass. I'm not sure if it is the food being cooked, the trash, or the pile-up of pots, pans, and dishes on the stove and counter, but it bugs the shit out of me. I HATE having to take a whiff of the odor each time I return to the apartment. And sure, I'm probably being an ass when I'm slamming doors as I'm cleaning because (besides Lacey) no one else really cleans the kitchen or living room. And while I have assumptions as to why that is, I'm sure it's not really important. I just want the apartment (especially the common areas) to be clean and odor free, as best as possible.

That's not too much to ask, is it?

Have there been any cases involving blogs where students of a school or college or organization have been expelled, kicked out, or removed because of what they typed on their blog?

Feel free to leave links if you can find any. I've just been wondering, especially after hearing Dooce's NPR spot.

Everyone should read "World on Fire" by Amy Chua so that they understand not only globalization and the ethnic hatred it creates, but also to have the proper backing to solidify their false assertions about Rwanda, Yugoslavia, and various other nations. Especially Rwanda since certain people obviously don't know the history and the rising action that led to the genocide of the Tutsis.

Historically, Rwanda's roughly 85 percent Hutus were cultivators, whereas the roughly 14 percent Tutsis were herdsmen. "This was the original inequality: cattle are a more valuable asset than produce," writes Philip Gourvitch. After 1860, when Mwame Kigeri Rwabugiri, a Tutsi, ascended the Rwandan throne, the stratification between Hutus and Tutsis intensified. Rwanda essentially became a feudal kingdom in which Tutsis were overlords and Hutus their vassals. Still, the line distinguishing Hutu and Tutsi was much more porous than it would become later: Two two groups spoke a common language, intermarriage occurred, and successful Hutus could "become Tutsi."
-Amy Chua, World on Fire page 165.

I'll stick with credible information from a Yale Law School professor before I ever go with what someone's senior thesis noted on the Rwandan genocide.

A good friend from high school, two years my senior and obviously in college, once told me that "dating in college is probably one of the most intriguing phenomenon known to young adults...basically because everyone is either immature, horny, weird, or a combination of those three...and if you have your V-card you're less likely to be seen as 'fresh meat' or 'a piece of ass' and more likely to be seen as 'lonely and desperate' because you're either not attractive or you aren't flaunting it enough."

Well, I know I'm not flaunting anything for obvious reasons, but the fact that I can't seem to incur anyone but cucumber-loving boot-knocking bimbos, internet stalkers that think my use of diction is sexy, and debate-groupies that seem to think I want to talk about my epistemological stance on life kind of makes me think that I have a hidden freak-radar that emits to those from the far reaches of sanity or, perhaps, something is wrong with me. Now, I'm not asking for pity or appraisal about my modular body and good looks that I don't have, but rather, I find it interesting that besides my strange encounters of the absurd kind I can't really say that there have been any takers here. Not that it is a bad thing, it isn't. It's not like it is important or dire either, after all no one ever died from not having a relationship--at least, that's what Road Rules: Semester at Sea led me to believe.

Still, I'm starting to think that ultimately, outside my circle of close friends, I'm not supposed to have an close relationship (a.k.a. girlfriend) at college. Unless, as a debate team-member brought to my attention, I lower my standards. I could certainly do that if I wanted to pick up one of the aforementioned girls that I seem to attract, but they're not what I want. And, before I hear about it in the comments, I don't think I'm that picky. I think it just boils down to the fact that I'm kind of nerdy and not so muscular, and those always mean lower scores on hotornot.com (No, I do not partake in that online slut-feast. I did once for fun, but it was weird and I quit soon after. 7.9, in case you were wondering.)

Eh. Perhaps I'm better off not dating. I mean, porn is free right. Ha ha! Just kidding! Seriously, though, if I was I don't know if I'd be happier than I am right now with everything going on in my life. Furthermore, if I were dating god only knows if it would be with some crazy IdaHOan who had been secretly stalking me for the last year.

Until then, I'll just continue to walk with my head held high and the V-card sign glaringly visible on my back--not signaling to pick me, but rather, to ignore me.

I think, sometimes, I get too serious about debate. Certainly some of my posts on the long dead and not so long ago deleted group blog that consisted mostly of former high school friends would attest to this. I don't know why I get serious either, honestly. I think it's due in part to the fact that everyone, especially myself, wants to be right in a discussion or argument. Perhaps "right" isn't the exact term I'm trying to display though. Maybe justified or assured also fits the depiction, I'm not sure though.

Regardless, I think I get too serious in rounds--even when they are only for practice. Even the most minor of things like the slamming of a fist on a desk will potentially set me off, and, sure, in some way it is understandable. And for reasons unbeknownst to me, I think that sometimes those minor things just hit a nerve. It's not like I "lose it" or go psycho when a nerve is struck, not at all. It's more of an emotional thing, like being told that your pet just died or having a friend tell you that they think what you said was stupid. It's a psychological plucking of a thin string that is usually in tune suddenly sounding off tune--not snapping.

The effect of attachment and seriousness.

For as overwhelming as it can be, it has, at least, allowed me to think a bit more about my actions in response to it. At least, now, I realize that I need to relax more and take a step back every now and then, maybe even laugh at the whole scenario and then just move on. Today, especially.

Wow! My speeches are really rusty! Har har! Shiße! Looks like I need to continue the practice throughout the week.

Also, my SIMS 2 Game isn't working properly! How am I supposed to play it if I can't cheat every now and then, huh? Answer me that!

Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
The tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be, yeah

I dare you to move...

Dare You To Move :: Switchfoot

It's time to depart my main home and return to my secondary home and my extended urban family. And while it's easier to do with each year, it still makes my heart sink every time I have to hug my parents, sister, and mutt dogs goodbye and know that it is the last lasting closeness we have for the next four months or until whenever I return.

There is, however, no escaping it. As much as I enjoy (and dislike) Germany, I know that Idaho is where I need to be right now. I know that it's time, once again, to continue my education as fun and stressful as it gets--including all those damn three/two day in advance of a debate tournament near-breakdowns that always occur no matter how confident I think I am; or professors who aren't organized well enough to properly teach the material to a degree that it is educational (seriously) AND fun (apparently it's difficult [I'm sure it is, but there are some simple things that can be done to make things more interesting]); or listening to the drama and gossip that seems to hover around the campus and then thinking of ways to easily end the pain in the fastest (and probably cleanest manner). (And we're still trying to be positive, I swear!)

Regardless, I'm on my way back to another semester full of interesting experiences and obstacles that I'll cross when I get to them in their own time. (And for debate, of course, this means I'll be crossing some of them the day after I get back to Idaho). I just hope I have strength enough to move and make it meaningful.

I recently read Dooce's entry on The No Poop Policy and I can't stop laughing! Ha! My sides are kind of sore. Everyone must read this! Haha!

Instead of doing a yearly reflection, list of links, talk of resolutions, etc. typical of most blogs I'm going to simply say "Happy New Year!" and wish everyone well this year.

I enjoyed 2004 for the most part--mainly from May to December* (especially August**), and I'm looking forward to what this year will bring.

May this new year bring you what you ask for.

---

*Most of you should get this :P
**You know who you are and you know why ;)