If any of you are just dying to meet some interesting and available methods of applied mathematics, but you just don’t feel comfortable introducing yourself, I suggest using Sean Mauch as a socially acceptable matchmaker.

This text has a bouquet that is light and fruity, with some earthy undertones. It is ideal with dinner or as an apertif. Bon apetit!

Only somewhat more reputable than the average creep in an online singles forum, but far cheaper than most parts of a college education. What better way to spend a Monday evening?

I had a bit of a breakdown last night. I keep telling myself that it’s okay to have a dysfunctional term, that it’s okay to feel sad, or apathetic, or anxious, that these feelings don’t have to come from some obvious external event to be valid, and that having or acting on such feelings doesn’t make me a bad person or a bad student - and I realized I don’t actually believe a word of it. Not where it counts.

You see, if I were a good student, the kind who was always destined to become a great scientist, my love of learning would overwhelm these feelings. If I were a good person, my commitment to my fellow man would allow me to feel these things without acting on them, except in carefully constrained circumstances of course. Then I would explode.

Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe I am a good person, and I just had to explode. Of course, a really good person would have waited until summer to explode, instead of doing it when she would be abdicating academic responsibilities and needlessly concerning other people who just want to get on with their job instead of wondering why this silly girl is fucking up for no apparent reason, but we can’t all be such saints.

But I still can’t shake the thought that if I really were a good person who exploded, I’d have been more spectacular about it, maybe gone anorexic or drawn things on my arm with razor blades instead of playing minesweeper for god knows how many hours on end. I could’ve at least stayed in bed and mumbled things to my pillow, I mean, geez.

Anyway. After I cried, Peter pulled me out on a 3 am walk through the neighboring too-much-money-build-big-house-on-curvy-street district, and I guess there was a suburb-fairy who didn’t take kindly to all the talk of Colonial vs. Tudor pretentiousness, because even though we weren’t ever lost per se there were many times when the mountains were in the wrong part of the sky.

Magical suburb-fairies are vengeful fucks.

I too have that token Irish potato famine refugee lurking somewhere ’round the family tree. He’s never been enough to garner me free beer or kisses, no matter how many times I make flagrant gestures with a pennywhistle.

So in the spirit of a token celebratory linkfest, I’ve been listening to Live Ireland, which has spotty quality control but some interesting things, and reading that list of disgusting things traditional flute players do everyone else seems to be linking, which is absolutely true in every particular.

Happy Green Beer Day.

I’ve just had to evict three people from my sneakers, they want to know if
you have any room in your shoe cupboard?

I am nobly resisting the temptation to run upstairs and take a picture of my shoe cupboard. I’d probably wind up taking one of my sock drawer as well, because I’ve lately started storing my socks rolled-up instead of haphazard and I think it embodies a pleasant crazy-quilt aesthetic, and nobody wants to see that sort of nonsense.

Anyway, there’s still room in my shoe closet if you’re willing to live with a box of someone else’s dishes and some spare towels, but I’m a bit short on shoes. If these people bring something in a women’s size 8 they’ll be more than welcome.

I saw the last shreds of the missile defense test from the roof.

(more…)

Wit changes at two-thirty in the morning. It’s just before silly o’clock, so you can’t get away with saying “hamburger” for laughs, but you can come damn close with nonsensical shots at someone’s mom. Yeah, your mom’s so fat, the World Bank recommended structural adjustments! I found your mom’s Wronskian last night!

Meanwhile, horrible meaningless War on Terrorism jokes have become just as easy. After all, if you don’t finish those fries, the terrorists will have won. This brings us to one inescapable conclusion:

Your mom fights terrorism… in my pants!

Hamburger.

My new toy arrived today. Obviously, now that I’m the owner of a digital camera and a blog, I must also be the owner of a photoblog. It’s ugly with the default templates, and there are archive problems… but it’s now the ass-crack of finals, I won’t make anything pretty or working for at least a week.

I will, however, think a few thoughts about general design issues. I threw this place together without much thought, because I like to let things evolve for a while before making nice homes for them, and it has indeed evolved - more in my head than onscreen, of course. Can you folks point me to novel or successful implementations of multiple blogs within a single design-concept-navigation-scheme-you-get-the-idea?

You Monkey Pork-Choppy McMOOTS!

Yep, that just about sums it up. As a side note, I’m currently the only person on the internet who’s used the word McMoots in an indexed location. Perhaps I should adopt it as a surname, to distinguish myself from all the Yami no Matsui fan clubs…

I want another slice of rhubarb tart!

So do I. I’ll fight you for it.

Seven psychic seoritas steeped in sodium supplements.

If they’re not surely selling seashells by the seashore, I don’t want to hear about it. Unless, of course, it so happens that the sixth sheikh’s sixth sheep is sick.

Any burning issues you’d like Stephen Hawking to address? He’s on campus again, and will be giving a lecture Friday where he answers some random questions from the undergraduates. I’ve got until dinnertime to think up clever things.

My campus is peach, always. The buildings are adobe peach, the lights at night cluster around a sodium vapor peach that’s seedy and depressing without being dehumanizing or sexy. Even the sky is filthy smog peach if it hasn’t rained in a while. So when they install a bright blue emergency beacon at the beginning of my walks, I can’t help but stare at it, peripheral vision slowly fading, squinty blue lines springing outward bringing the dust on my glasses to the dust in the air, the treetops, the frisbee players, campus security.

It’s a cosmic connection that can only be destroyed by gummi worms.

I tend to think of a weekend as a single day - I have X, Y and Z to do this weekend, plus some random distribution of sleeping and laying around in pajamas eating leftover Thai food. It’s been shocking, looking at my little case of pills and thinking hey! that can’t be the right number left! only to realize that yes, Saturday and Sunday count for two pills so if I start counting on Friday, Monday will be roughly in the middle.

This might explain why I feel somehow cheated on Sunday evenings, when the Simpsons are over and it’s time for me to go do X, Y and Z. If I had distinct routines and responsibilities on Saturdays and Sundays, would I just feel cheated twice?