Para-something Herma-macallits.
September 28, 2004 @ 12:16 AM
Wow, studying sure gets un-fun after a while. And I only did four hours or so of it tonight, which is a low number by recent standards. For example, I spent six hours Friday night writing a book review, eight hours Saturday grading papers, and eight or so hours Sunday reading. But it was still decidedly un-fun stuff.
And what did I learn from all my reading tonight? I learned that I dislike paralogic hermeneutics theory. It's kinda funny that I can so quickly learn to dislike a term that, before tonight, was loosely defined in my mind as "blah blah." Now, paralogic hermeneutics has been mentally defined as "uncodifiable interpretations," which of course means "blah-de stinkin' blah." The cool thing about all of this, according to my understanding of paralogic hermeneutics, is I'm allowed to retain such a definition since all knowledge is individually understood, so it's to be expected that my definition varies from that of my peers. There is no community knowlege. And that's why I dislike the theory: I don't trust a general community theory that says general community theories can't exist. :)
You know, I think I actually developed a dislike of paralogic hermeneutics in my undergraduate Argumentative Writing class, but I can't be sure, as the only notes I bothered to take on the subject were a little vague. Okay, so I only took one note during that particular lecture, and it was "Paralogic Hermeneutics for Whiter Whites." My note-taking skills have developed slowly over the years, and are still in the process of maturation. :)
Too much hard reading! My brain hurts. I was going to tell you all a story about how I hurt my bum this last weekend, but that'll have to wait for another day. I need sleep.
My brain needs nutrients. Yeah, that's it.
September 23, 2004 @ 10:10 PM
Here's something about me that a few of you knew, a few of you didn't know, and the rest of you didn't care about: when I'm stressed, I eat. A lot.
As such, my evening meal has consisted of:
Three pieces of Mexican-style pizza. This was actually the remnant of Justin's dinner. He likes to make pizza, but dislikes either finishing the whole thing or storing leftovers. I didn't want mice scaling our oven in search of salsa-flavored Nirvana, so I took care of that nasty little problem waiting to happen.
Tuna fish on wheat crackers. The meal I planned for myself. Not very creative, but generally healthy and pretty darn tasty if I do say so myself (and I do. Oh, I do).
Four caramel-flavored rice cakes. Well, corn cakes. Old Man Quaker seems to get his puffed rice and his puffed corn confused, but they taste similar enough I let it slide. The cool part about these things is they contain 0% of my daily allowance of fat. However, in the way of funny nutrition mathematics, I bet 0% * 4 > 0%. Regardless, I use rice/corn cakes as a munchy-type food to keep my mouth busy while I'm studying. Without something to munch on, I tend to gnaw at my own fingers. Come thesis time, I may well be typing with nubs or dictating to a friend.
Two bowls of homemade bean soup. Curse Sam and his domesticated ways. Sam occasionally likes to cook in bulk, and this evening was one of those occasions. What do we do with two gallons of beans, ham, celery, onions and carrots floating in savory brothstuffs? We ~eat~ it, sillies!
In my defense, I would like to say two things. First, that these items were consumed over the course of a six-hour study period, and were not the victims of one continuous gorging. Second... I swear, I was only planning on the tuna, crackers and faux rice cakes. The rest of those calories were practically forced down my throat by roommates. Forced!
Mrmph. Mean Chipmunk.
September 22, 2004 @ 09:01 AM
Ouch. My brain hurts. Not in the headache sort of way, either. It feels more like there's a chipmunk nestled in my right (your left) frontal lobe (well, not ~your~ frontal lobe... work with me); as long as the little guy is sitting still, everything's fine, but when he gets antsy I get pain. Although I read somewhere once (I think it was Michael Crighton's The Terminal Man) that the brain doesn't possess sensory nerve endings, making it one of nature's great ironies: the organ responsible for coordination all our sensory perception is itself incapable of feeling. Regardless, my brain is certainly feeling something this morning, so now I'm pissed at Crighton. And chipmunks.
Guess how much sleep I got last night? Two hours! ["Dude, if you're gonna quiz me, there's gotta be a -pause- in there somewhere." Eff yoo, Mitch Hedburg.] I don't know why, either. I went to bed at 1am, an acceptable time considering the amount of homework I have these days. And yet, despite my best efforts to shut my eyes and then keep them shut, I didn't doze off until around 6:30am. My alarm did not sound friendly at 8:30am.
So I suppose I should go start to make the most of this beautiful day, because once this much of my brain has been ravaged by a sadistic chipmunk, all I'm really left with is Mr. Rogers. And a bit of Adult Swim.
Now if only there were one for white men...
September 20, 2004 @ 08:46 PM
Okay, I don't normally post stuff like this, but since I've been looking at this page for the last five minutes and ~still~ can't stop laughing (or crying, for that matter, but that's because that's what I do when I laugh too hard, not because the page saddens me), I present to you:
How to Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide for Asian Men.
Check out the editorial reviews, and ~definitely~ read the customer reviews. :)
I wish I hadn't already picked my book to review for English 507. I'd SO be reviewing this one. I bet there's enough Asian men in the technical communication field I could argue the book suits my intended audience. :)
All fun has been cancelled until further notice.
September 18, 2004 @ 01:24 PM
I should be doing homework right now. Instead, I'm playing around on my computer: browsing blogs (sometimes the same few over and over, in case they updated in the last couple seconds), staring at my AIM buddy list, checking my email, and watching Ghost in the Shell download. That last one, by the way, makes me more of a dork than the other three combined. Especialy when you consider I'm downloading it from two different sources (WinMX and Bittorrent) just to make sure I get a good copy. I don't even watch anime. But I was planning to watch some this weekend, and that got cancelled, so now my mind is unwilling to give up on the original plan. Therefore, I'm downloading a movie.
I was also planning to go to Adventureland this weekend. That, also, didn't happen. Eventually, I will learn not to make plans. Until this happens, the coasters have been tentatively pushed back to next weekend, which will be my last chance of the summer, as the park closes next Sunday. For those English TA's interested, I think this has become a group thing. Mark thy calendars!
Oh, a joke. I get jokes.
September 13, 2004 @ 10:16 AM
I don't remember any of my dreams from last night, though I did wake up at 2am with two completely dead arms. I hate waking up with both my arms asleep. I hate standing up (with no help from my arms, thankyouverrahmuch (yeah, I know, you probably stand with your legs, too)) and watching them flop violently at the elbows without my muscles to slow them down. I'm always afraid I'm going to break an arm that way. Eventually I realized my arms were numb because I'd fallen asleep with a shirt on, and all my twisting and turning before dozing off had wrapped the shirt so tightly around my chest and shoulders that no blood was getting through. So I went back to bed slightly less clothed than I had previously.
My first thought upon (officially) waking this morning? "Barking up the wrong tree. Oh, bark! Bark on trees. I get it." I'd never gotten that before. Who knew you could live 23 years of your life without ever catching something like that?
I also learned what inculcate meant this morning, but I don't feel too bad about not knowing that one. I despise academic writers. I swear, they spend more time scouring thesauri for obscure words than they do writing the damn essays in the first place. "Teach? Psh! Indoctrinate? Too many people know what that means. If I use it, they might not think I'm smart! Then the dean might take my lunch money at recess."
Hmm... hate and despise. Don't get the wrong idea, folks. I'm in a decent mood this morning.
I Dream of TP
September 12, 2004 @ 10:09 AM
I had a couple of strange dreams last night. Actually, the strangest part of it all is I'm awake and can still remember bits and pieces of them. Usually, if I do dream (and I can only assume I do), I've no recollection of them by the time I'm awake.
In the first, I walked into my composition classroom a few minutes before class began and turned on the overhead projector to show some assignment information or something. One of the students (we'll call her Veronica) warned me that class hadn't started yet, and I told her I was just giving the early people a little extra time to learn. Most of them started taking notes (remember, this is a dream). Things got really weird when class started. Eight or nine of my students walked to the front of the classroom, placed a gift on the desk, and went back to their seats. I was confused, and asked the occasion. One of them, Bob, gave me a funny look and said, "They're for Thursday." I had no idea what that meant, though my best guess was it was something Homecoming-week related, so I smiled and acted like I knew what he was talking about. I started to put the gifts aside so I could begin class, but they wanted me to open them before we started, and I complied. I opened the first gift, which I think was from Bob, and it was five half-used rolls of toilet paper. The rolls had a different embarrassing statement about my past printed on each sheet (in a bold, sans-serif font of different colors, justified text, and a corresponding visual aid in the lower-right of each sheet). At that point, an authoritative-looking woman of about fifty walked through the door and came towards the desk. I hid a mostly-empty bottle of Bud Ice (which, by the by, I'm pretty sure was another "gift") on the floor and asked if I could help her. She asked if I was the instructor, and I said yes. She asked if I knew where the kissing competition was. And then I woke up.
In the second dream I was a teenager and an amateur wizard of some sort. I had just climbed an enormous tree because I'd heard there was a demon in the tree house at the top. When I opened the door, I saw a boy about my age playing with something on the floor, an old man sitting in a straight-backed wooden chair staring into space, and an identical chair in which sat the dusty skeleton of something that looked demonesque. I asked the boy where the demon was. The boy got up and skipped to the kitchen (big tree house), looked in the cupboard, and said, "Sometimes he's in here." He then skipped to the closet near the front door, pulled aside the curtain divider, and said, "And sometimes he's in here." Then he pointed at the skeleton in the chair and said, "And sometimes, he's RIGHT THERE!" His voice had gone from childlike sing-songy to booming and menacing, and as he pointed, the skeleton took the form of something black and vicious which came straight at me, knocking me back out the door to the ground. On the way back up, I realized that the demon and the boy were working together, and that the old man was comatose and helpless. When I got back to the top, I tried to drive them both out of the tree house and into the sunlight, which I knew would destroy the demon and save the boy. Unfortunately, the only spell I seemed to know very well was how to increase the brightness of the available sunlight, and there was only one window in the tree house, directly opposite the door. Eventually, after being knocked out of the tree several more times and (I'm guessing) using some wizardry I don't remember, I got them both out the door. I walked the boy back to the village where he would be safe. He asked how old I was, and I told him I was fourteen. He seemed pretty impressed, and said he was thirteen but would be fourteen soon.
I also had a third dream which I don't remember well at all. It had something to do with the tuna in our fridge downstairs, and it was fairly bloody-looking tuna in my dream, so I think I'll stay away from that stuff.
Can you see me?
September 10, 2004 @ 02:47 PM
Let me know if you can see this post, please! I've done quite a bit of site maintenance today, and I want to make sure the blog is still working for everyone.
What I've done:
1) Moved to a new server. I'm still with LinkSky, but I moved to one of their newer, faster servers. Hopefully, this will result in the site feeling a little speedier. It also gives me 300MB of room to play around in. :)
2) Updated my name servers. This was required because of the move to a new server. What this means is, some of you may see the old page for a couple of days, while some of you will see the new site. That's why I'm looking for comments... I want to see when people start getting the new site.
3) Updated MovableType. Previously, I was using MovableType 2.64. Now, I'm up to 3.11. What does this mean? For me, it means I have a faster, more customizable, and far more aesthetically pleasing blogging system. For you, this means I'll probably require you to register for comments at Typekey within a week or so. In theory, this will eliminate the (non-family-related) spam problem I've been having.
So! Comment, comment, comment! If you do not comment, you are probably a Nazi. And probably not a very popular Nazi, either. I bet you don't even get invited to the Party parties. Loser.
Between a sweet and a sappy place.
September 07, 2004 @ 10:44 AM
I've had the oddest songs stuck in my head this weekend. Sunday, I kept hearing and re-hearing Grover Levy's "Dear God," which I haven't heard in ~person~ for like five years or something. Luckily, I was able to give Grover the boot sometime Monday afternoon by setting something else echoing through my skull. What'd I get to take his place? Belle and Sebastian's "Beautiful." Argh. All this soft stuff is putting me in funny moods. I downloaded two complete Belle and Sebastian CD's last night to use as study music. So far, my favorites are "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying" and "I Fought in a War." That isn't like me. :) Maybe if I play some Marilyn Manson or something, I'll return to normal.
Eric and Renée's wedding on Sunday was a lot of fun. It was a successful fun, too, since they're now married and all that cool stuff. I hope to have pictures up eventually, but my mom is taking her sweet time about sending them to me. You know, she always complains that I never visit or email her, and then we spend all Sunday afternoon together and I email her the very next day, and she doesn't get back to me. *grin* Lesson learned, I guess... ;)
I still don't have my new phone, even though I tried really hard to get one on Saturday while I was out suit-shopping with Eric and Ray-ray. I don't want to talk about it. Let's just say that the guy (or at least ~a~ guy) that works at the Verizon store in Merle Hay Mall is a dick. Not a big dick, though, cause he doesn't deserve that. He's a little shriveled one with big black hairs growing out the end. And also a liar-face. And I grossed myself out, so we're on to happier things. :)
My new suit is cool. And I'll prove it the minute my mom gets around to emailing me back with pictures, too. I'm glad we found it. We'd already looked at Burlington Coat Factory (not the right size), JC Penny (they all looked like they'd stolen them from retired salesmen), and Younkers (about $400 more than I wanted to spend) before stopping, as a last resort, at Sears. Sears had a suit I really liked. The jacket was 50% off. The slacks were 70% off. I rule. :) I wore a shirt borrowed from Eric (it was the only way we could match, as I couldn't find banded collars in my size anywhere) and shoes I bought at JC Penny in Ames a few days prior on a shopping trip with Amanda.
I studied and did homework for roughly twelve hours yesterday, from 10am - midnight. I'm aware that's more than twelve hours, but I did get distracted for brief periods of time every once in a while. I did ~not~, however, remember to eat dinner. So I'm lucky that Megan decided to be sweet and bring me chocolate chip cookies when she heard I was studying. :) There was a dozen originally, and there's only five left. I'm really hoping she had a few.
-----
I almost forgot! I went to a party at Colette's place Sunday night and had a grand old time. It was different from most parties I've been to. For example, some of the people there were ~sober~. Yeah, I know! And instead of standing around in groups talking at the top of our lungs over incredibly loud rap music, we were sitting around in groups talking in normal tones over the soft background music, laughing, and playing various games that challenged our creativity. And I was by -no- means the guy with the longest hair. In other words, the guys looked like me, only... hippie-er. Turns out, I'm not a hippie. I'm more of a hippie-groupie.
Hovering in much the same way that bricks don't.
September 03, 2004 @ 10:54 AM
I was doing a little historical research on the ol' Wayback Machine (think: time machine, now in condensed URL form!), and I decided to look up my own website. Some of what I found was pretty cool. Wayback has a record of a few entries I've since lost, so I may be able to reformat them and reintroduce them into the blogosphere, where hopefully they'll breed and help sustain my ailing entry population.
Some of the stuff I read, however, only depressed me. I read an entry in which I'm bitching because I'd been eating so much that I had soared up to 170 pounds. 170! I was up from 158. Jesus. I didn't even remember I ~was~ that skinny, however briefly. Shit, though. 170. I'm hovering (assuming an ass that heavy can hover) above 190 now. Wha happen?!?
In news that doesn't cause me to price rice cakes and laxatives, I have a Gmail account! *beams a big smile at my new friendlike person, Alicia* Gmail, for those of you who both live under a rock ~and~ didn't read my ranting on the front page about it this last April, is a webmail system created by Google that has several doubleplusgood properties. For example, instead of having to store everything in hundreds of mailboxes just to know how to find something a few months down the line (my Eudora, which I use to check my ISU email, has 111 mailboxes in 9 folders, and my Inbox is still hopelessly cluttered), you can just search for the message you want using Google-powered search technology. Also, Gmail organizes information contextually. Meaning, if send a message, they reply, I reply back, they reply to my reply (and so on...), Gmail will cluster those messages, giving me quick access to the entire conversation. Oh, and the ~gigabyte~ of storage space isn't anything to spit at, either. :)
If you want it, my new email address is rglazebrook at gmail dot com. I'll still be checking my ISU email and Rootarcana mail, of course. I just like having alternatives. Particularly cool alternatives.
RIP, HD. U POS. (LOL, J/K)
September 01, 2004 @ 10:42 PM
My hard drive committed suicide Sunday afternoon. Actually, I guess, the hard drive itself wasn't entirely at fault. Windows XP corrupted itself somehow (I'm guessing MTV) and was beyond salvation, despite my numerous attempts at reinstallation, conversion and exorcism.
The bad part of this whole naughty ordeal is that I was planning to head to Des Moines a few minutes before my drive started its ill-fated cry for help to get my new cellphone, which I've been ~trying~ to get for three weeks now. Instead, I spent the afternoon (and subsequent evening) trying to save my system.
The good news is, my new hard drive arrived from Newegg today, and I'm up and running again. I've got 200GB of room to romp in now. :) My MP3's and DivX's, which were previously stuffed into every available nook and cranny (mostly the crannies) of my old 40GB drive are now all sitting spread-eagled in bean bag chairs (a waste of space, I know, but they look so very ~cool~ in a retro sort of way).