Moving day. My summer apartment has a different cheesy parquet pattern in every room. My bedroom is tiny - smaller than any room I’ve had since freshman year, when I lived in a 3 m^2 cell - but two walls are swathed with glorious windows. If I look down, there’s a street and a parking lot, but if I lay down on my new lumpy $30 garage sale futon, there are treetops and skies.

There’s also a cable modem, hurrah.

So I changed the oil in my car last night. Got a little antifreeze in the windshield washing fluid (oops) but managed not to burn myself on the oddly-placed exhaust manifold (yay!) so I think it’s a draw. I spilt a sad amount of motor oil, too, and still feel rather guilty about that, dump no waste drains to ocean and all. Sorry fishes!

Now that I am a certified car owner and caretaker, though, I can understand why people talk about babying their auto-machines. When there’s something squirting noxious fluids, which you must catch and dispose of and replenish lest the thing stop working, what else can it be but a baby?

There’s been a thread, loosely running through my favorite academic blogs, on the emotional effects of grad school. I’ve identified on an almost therapeutic level with some of it; for the past four years, I’ve struggled to maintain health and balance while watching bits of my intellectual self-confidence flake off like pieces of pastry that I’m not allowed to eat. Sometimes I’ve managed, and other times I’ve hidden under my pillow.

But all these nice sympathetic blog-entries have come from people in the humanities, and many (most?) of the proffered explanations have a humanities-specific basis. Which is nonsense; scientists have feelings too, and lots of them are feelings of inadequacy. I’m not alone in my bitter rants. So… what are the shared features of a prototypical graduate education in the humanities, and my particular undergraduate science program?
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jimmy, do you want to explode now?

Well, not really. Do I have to?

fly fly fly

Apparently so. Ouch. I don’t like flying.

whatever you do, remember to drink your water. for the love of god, DRINK YOUR WATER!!

Look, I know an explosion can be very dehydrating, but this is just silly. Shouldn’t I be worrying about more important things? Like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Or that bit about me exploding?

Don’t hit me with that board like I was some kind of dolphin. Thanks.

That wasn’t me. That was the Israeli Army. And also a tuna fisherman.

my magic 8 ball says you smell like poo!

Dude. Your magic 8 ball doesn’t even have a nose. Have you ever considered a Ouija board instead?

princess

See? Princesses don’t smell like poo, so there.

I still want to be a monkey pirate.

Yeah, me too. But I’m not really qualified - you need at least three years experience in the pirate or monkey industries before you’ll even be considered for a monkey pirate gig. Damned job market.

Nope, I’m definitely peeling. Feels like I have a receding hairline, only it’s not receding from gradual hormonal shifts, it’s receding because little fungoids are chomping at the edges of my face. It burns and itches, but of course I’m a compulsive picker and peeler, so every so often I pull off these little translucent strips of flesh and stare at them. They look like old laminate peeled from a library book.

My new face is a little bit pinker than the old one, but I haven’t gained any new warts or anything. That’s a relief.

So I’m wondering if the repeated application of “Vitamin E Therapeutic Aloe Vera Gel” will keep my nose from peeling off of my face. Even though I’ve never before peeled off my nose to find a new and hideous nose underneath, inductive reasoning only goes so far, so sunburns this severe are always a little bit worrisome.

We went up the coast to San Fransisco and back, with stops at beaches and aquaria along the way; I took gobs of pictures. Contrary to everything I’ve ever known, we stayed in motels along the way. My parents are under alien mind control, and I fear for the state of Iowa.

They gave me a diploma, the silly people!

The Dean mispronounced my name, even though I’d phoned up to record myself saying it correctly; he does that with a good portion of the graduates every year. There is no apparent pattern to the mistakes. It’s just a crap shoot.

I’m sure it has more to do with heat stroke than it does with the Dean being French. An outdoor graduation, in full sun, in Southern California, in June, with black academic hats. Four years of accumulated knowlege just sizzled away. Whee!

Blogging will be light to nil over the next week, as my parents are here and we’re going camping.

The commercial value of nanotech stems from the simple fact that the laws of physics don’t apply at the molecular level.

Shit! My degree is worthless! Thank you, Caroline Lucas.

(link from the Life of a Fake Lintott)

So as a feel-good wrap-up to our careers in the illustrious instrumental music program here at Tech, the directors commissioned an arrangement of Joplin’s ‘A Strenuous Life’ — for all of the graduating instrumentalists.

• 5 trumpets
• 3 flutes
• 2 violins
• 1 harpsichord
• 6 hands, 1 piano
• 2 hands, no piano
• 2 clarinets
• timpani

And the arrangement ends with a horse whinny for each of the trumpeters. The horse whinny, for better or worse, is what makes or breaks a novelty trumpet player. Connaisseurs of the art will recognize the need for a strong flutter tongue and a good collection of mutes (see The Novelty Cornetist for many effective combinations of these two basic techniques) but when push comes to shove, the masses want their horsies and that’s all there is to it.

My horse whinny is pretty lousy. I’m too loud at the end, when I leave the high register, and I tend to shake at the wrong frequency. I plan to compensate for this with an audience of academic city slickers. It should be good fun.

My car needs a valve job. A valve job will cost more than I paid for the car.

Dilemma.

On the brighter side of things, my roommate machined me a shiny aluminum button for my pants. Yay!