The storm looms.

It's that time of the year again - final exam time. Unfortunately, I have 2-3 major things to finish before my final exams even start so yeah huzzah at that.

Final exam time. Time to study. *Not*... play Racquetball, or Salsa, or Smallville or act like a damn hippie or anything of that sort. Work. You haven't been doing it all semester; I've been slacking off as well. It's time to start.

Martial Law* will mandated in a little bit.

I was thinking of something. People leave me voicemail and I'm like 'meh' because I hate voicemail, so I'll respond in around 2-5 hours after you leave it and definitely try to call you when you're sleeping - HEY - You're the one that left the voicemail. This is so I can force people to email me, which is often quicker.

Then I thought - all this forcing - probably wouldn't work in a relationship. For example, she'd leave me like 400 voicemails (such is the typical behavior of the homogametic half) and I'd continually ignore her voicemails because I'm stubborn like that. Then she'd get fed up (or ... perhaps enlightened?) and send me an email telling me she's "leaving" (fill in your own appropriate phrase of emotional departure).

Then I'd casually peruse over to Google Calendar, remove the rest of our meetings and go spend some quality time with the PCR machine. I might cough, symbolically, to rid myself of any emotional hinderances.

Cold? Who cares? I don't.

Enjoy another kickass Ted Rall cartoon:


*: If it seems harsh, be glad it's not sharia law.

Evolution

BAH! I know what you're thinking- another post on evolution. No. I won't ramble about Creationism and what I think is right or wrong.

I should stop being so bitter and so mean. Change is mandated.

Subtlety of the wise
Flexibility of the child
Sensitivity of the artist
Understanding of the philosopher
Acceptance of the saint
Tolerance of the scholar
Fortitude of the certain

Isn't that the idea? The Phoenix has risen. It is time to placed on the righteous* path.

There will be heavy restructuring soon. That will be all.

It's nice to be home. Plano rocks.

*: I don't mean any kind of religious path...

What the f*** happened yesterday?

Yesterday was, in my own words, what seemed like the pinnacle of my emotional imperfection. That's all we'll say. Something was weird, something didn't feel right, the planets didn't line up and I'm sure that on some distant planet, the laws of physics broke down and the planet imploded. Such is the effect of the deviations I experienced yesterday.

I'm cured now but I must make sure that kind of misfiring doesn't happen again. On Wednesday, for Thanksgiving break, I'm going back to Plano. Yes. Home. Once again, it is important to make the distinction between my transient place of residence and Home. Generally, there are two opinions of Plano 1) Heroin-addicts. I can't tell you how many times people have said "oh. That's where all the heroin addicts are...". Well, that's only because you hippies can't afford heroin, or you'd be hitting that too along with your cannabis. 2) There's "nothing to do".

Wtf? Of course there are things to do. The point of Plano isn't to provide a fun, party atmosphere for you. If you want to party, go to Dallas. If you want to laugh, go to Fort Worth. If you want to relax, go to Plano. For me, the choice is quite simple- [Broken sidewalk + Nastys + drunken idiots + frat idiots] or [Nice suburban atmosphere where I can walk (although there is hardly a need to walk) without people trying to spit on me or sell me things or trying to convert me into Socialism/Christian/Scientology/Etc]. Quite simple, no?


There's really only one flaw I see in Plano- too many Republicans. They don't really get in my way, so I'll return to my elitist bubble anytime.

I f***ing hate this armpit of a town. Plano rocks. Constantly, I'm plagued by idiots who have "financial problems" but are too damn lazy to get a job. I'll be honest and brutally honest. Doing things requires money. Having money requires 1) Rich parents or 2) Some kind of job. Scores of people "stay in their room" or "don't go out to whatever" simply because of a lack of money. Stop being fucking idiots and go get a job.

What else am I sick of? Hippies. Hippies that complain. Hippies that snort and pout and breathe through their mouth. Unreliable people, they are. When queried for a response as to "Why'd you do it?", a logical answer is no where to be found. They'll usually bring up some reason incorporating the words "feelings" or "felt like doing" or "just gotta relax sometimes, ya know" or "don't worry about it". Another common excuse is the divertion of blame - "Oh I was raised like that" or "It's my parents fault". The ONLY way I'd accept a divertion of blame is - "Oh it's my genetics" + actual genetic sequence proof (which includes matches to known individuals with your condition).

This is the hallmark of hippie-style - "don't worry about it". Naturally, there's a good amount of difference as to who says it. A tenured professor- his words are golden. A hippie, telling me to "not worry about it", is precisely when I start to worry, since they tend to do everything wrong.

I'm glad I didn't have any tests or homework this week, as last night would have messed me up. Alternatively, if I did have something due, it probably wouldn't have happened.

So cryptic.

Fail

I've failed to do some investigative reporting (perhaps even later tonight, meaning that the results will be summarized tomorrow..), but here are some interesting cartoons..





Ted Rall has always been a personal favorite...

Cruising speed.

This weekend has been absolutely useless on my part. I say that almost every weekend, but this one was (or is) especially useless.

Well then. Let's dive right into it.

Error-checking Mechanisms- What the hippies lack.

It is common knowledge that microbiology (shaped to near perfection) often serves as a tacit reminder of how we should order our lives and error checking mechanisms are paramount. This is precisely what the hippies lack (this and regret are the two main things). I'm almost certain, that a certain someone I know, has cauterized himself (as opposed to my clothes, which have been on fire these days from the orangy-red plumage) and his weekend in what seems like one of lust. While this is all very entertaining, I feel like not paying for their medicare later. So what is to be done?

I was kidding, hippies have regrets, they just don't have functional regrets. Then again, I know a couple of non-hippies that could use some functional regret. What do they think of when they awake every morning? I'll tell you what I think of- Yesterday, I was scheduled for a HFH event from 8am to 3pm. Doing large amounts of manual labor on Saturday morning isn't really anyone's thing (except for the few fanatics that show up there*) and I started hoping that somehow, it wouldn't work out. Of course! It's natural. The storm started to brew and I told myself it doesn't really matter what I think, unless I develop masochistic tendencies in the next 30 minutes.

That was just yesterday. Most days I wake up and think- I've only gotten 4-5 hours of sleep and I probably won't last through the day. Then I start making contingency plans on where to take short naps, etc. Except, I've kept up this schedule for so long, I don't really take naps in the afternoon anymore. Also, I give myself a measured dose of sleep, as if it was some sort of medicine. Right before I sleep I think- I need to wake up and not miss anything... set.. 5hours.. 30 minutes on my cell phone timer.

I digress. I then think "yes, life sux and I'm always alone and nobody understands me and I'm constantly surrounded by hippies and I don't deserve this but wait wtf why I'm I being emo I still have marketable skills" etc, when the Dream Machine goes off and Jap music starts playing and lalala- Let us prance our way to the shower while the Hamasaki/Eurobeat music begins to fade in and the worries fade out.

I then get out of the shower, take 2-3 seconds to feel the window for 1) temperature and 2) if it continues to cool my fingers. The first indication is obviously of how cold it is outside and the second measures wind activity outside the window (although it doesn't work so well for my room's window, unlike last year..)

Five seconds later, I have a power look planned**, usually dark clothing with anything bright neatly tucked away or covered by the _____ jacket. Adding constantly to the power effect is my glasses, which are totally kickass. People who meet me for the first time are always fixated on these variable-tint lens and (indirectly) my eyes. Now I just have to work on my power stare and the world belongs to me.

Well. Back to error-checking mechanisms.. They're essential. Don't wake up thinking _____. I actually have no f***ing clue what they think; I will do some investigative reporting later tonight. Wake up and correct yourself. Do something, ask for evaluation and fix it. View and review, read and reread. Perfection, like Evolution, is an ongoing process. Conditions change and nothing is ever absolutely perfect, except math, but math is for idealists (as if Physics isn't...).

*: What a horrible motivation.

**: The power look is very important.

You might be wondering, why my asterisk explanations are so short. This post has been censored and future posts will continue to be censored to prevent accidental harm, until it doesn't matter anymore.

Quickly!

This was to be posted on last Thursday. Can't let it go to waste...

In the 10 minutes I have before HPC closes, I'll try to fill up some space and waste your time a little.

I had to go to a "distant" CVS to pick up some medicine and it's always interesting to see the things that exist outside campus. Of course, going there, I saw a certain WAVES TA and his whatever. I might get hurt if I say anything beyond this.

Coming back, a group of youngsters were dancing around for no reason to music outside the back of some store and then started walking. The music followed. Weird! They had a boombox which one of them was carrying around and solicited random passerbys to join their circus. Indeed. Engage avoidance subroutines.

Op. Lab is closing. I don't feel justified posting this so I'll add to it a bit later.

Another Experience

Frequently when I post, I discuss new experiences and things that have happened to me. If the same thing happens twice, you will mostly likely notice a cursory discussion the second time.

Today, I decided to buy a different kind of energy drink; the huge bottles that were shaped like a battery. This is different from RockStar (Cartman's drink), in that it actually keeps me up. One of the many side effects of caffiene is a diuretic effect.

After drinking this vile substance, I must have gone to the little boys' room half a dozen times over the course of 2 hours. Not only that, but it's 12:36AM and I'm showing no signs of slowing down. Try not to eat/drink anything that comes in the shape of a battery unless you know what you're getting yourself into. Yet again, the world's most psychoactive substance takes a toll on me. Even divinity couldn't save me from emptying my bladder every 15 minutes.

There isn't much going on right now, hence the weak post. Plus I wanted the Friedman thing to sink in. He was awesome. He even wrote me a letter of recommendation, which... I don't know what he said, but I'm grateful to have had him.

I went to office hours once because I had a question and he kept trying to explain it to me in different ways, even though after the first two explanations, I had already understood. He was so excited about explaining it, I didn't have the heart to stop him. Now I kind of wish I listened to all those different ways.

Interesting thing, regret is. I hate it. Cherish those around you, you never know what might happen.

We only assume the sun will rise tomorrow.

Friedman

Charles Friedman - 1946-2006
For those that know him, there isn't much to say
For those that don't, there's too much to say
http://www.ma.utexas.edu/~friedman/

The stress continues to mount.

Today I went to lab and I was recommended that I should continue lab work when my academic commitments are fullfilled, as in, not to worry about committed hours (9 a week) or anything like that.

In a way, that's almost weak and last spring when I had, what should have been a harder schedule, I had time for labwork. Yet this semester, I'm only taking 19 hours, so I should have ample time for lab, but no. I don't. Again and again I've been going over in my head why this is happening, and I've narrowed it down to two options 1) the BME class or 2) my need for perfection has gone through the roof.

I'm going to stick with the second one, because bitching about a class gets me no-where. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that I keep pushing myself harder and harder and it's gotten to a point where I've reached the day limit, i.e. the sleep limit. At this point, the only thing keeping me from finishing everything is a need for sleep and even then, lately, right before I go to bed, I time 6 hours + some (usually 20-30 minutes) and then go to sleep. I've been waking before my alarm clock to finish work, running to class 6-7 minutes before it starts, biking to increase efficiency when necessary.

Why? Yet even with all these changes, I'm totally weak that I can't juggle everything at once and that I must be actively told to "get things in order". A good reality check that was, for I think I know the problem. By this Friday noon-time, things will start settling down. My cell bio exam will be over and my BME project should have little left to do. The situation is changing now, performance anxiety is building to immeasurable levels, so change begins.. now. Push harder? Hell yes. But with better grace, better control. I want to, need to, get back to the machine-like efficiency I demonstrated last spring.

11/7/06: The Phoenix rises.

An attempt

Orange: Elevated due to self-induced threats.

Attempts. Something I've been doing a lot of lately. Attempt to do this, attempt to do that. Completion is something that rarely comes about. By completion, I mean absolute completion. For the last 2-3 days, I've been attempting this MRI project for my BME class.

Yesterday after my MCAT class, I went straight to ECE and worked on that and the BME homework for 5 hours. When 12:30am rolled around, I was so bitter, so angry that it got to a point where my being in the lab was being counterproductive, so I just left. I would have to say last night was within top 10 of most difficult nights ever.

The last time I had such a difficult time period was about a year ago, when I had an Organic Chemistry (with Bocknack, not Iverson...) Final and PHY315 Final on the same day. What a difficult day that was! I almost exploded after the last final finished due to the large burden being lifted.

I won't digress from the main topic - an attempt. What's with my strange taste in music? (Puffy, Hikaru, Hamasaki, Eurobeat, Eurobeat, Eurobeat) If you haven't already noticed, I draw parallels to Star Trek from my life, so unless you've seen all or most of the episodes, you probably won't/can't understand everything. I will draw another one.

So most of my music choices are either 1) fast (Eurobeat) or 2) 11-year old music (Puffy). What is the purpose? Romulan warbirds rely on an artificial quantum singularity for power, Federation vessels rely on a matter-antimatter reaction core and inside myself, there's something spinning as well. We'll leave it at that, lest people call me crazier than I actually am. Simply put, eurobeat keeps the ____ spinning. It's like a tornado, no.. maelstrom. Draw strength from the chaos, something hippie like that.

Ok.. Weird. What about Puffy? I may seem to be frequently overstating my difficulties, but panic really does ensue. It's like I've been put infront of a firing squad and I'm supposed to take the shots as they come, without as much as a grimace. "Set an example!" as one of them them would say. Them = TPTB. So where am I to let loose? In the comfort & privacy of my molybdenum-tipped headphones. If you see me randomly chuckling to myself, especially if I have headphones on, you now know what's going on. Either that or I'm thinking about Walmart and their expansive jewelery section. Oh the sparkes!

I want to make a side note on that. Please don't buy external clothes from Walmart. External meaning anything that you would show up to class with and people can see, unless you have the overly homo-erotic habit of wearing short t-shirts and allowing people to see your boxers. In that case, don't talk to me, ever. People complain about the price, but seriously, the GAP has sales and if you're Asian/Mall-monkey enough to know that there's a cheap section in the back of the store, you know what to do. Btw, In this sense, clothes includes jewelery. How cruel I am.

Once I start rambling, I can't stop, so I'll continue.

\\

Yesterday I had a Verbal MCAT Class. It was, in one word, awesome. What an entertaining teacher! Besides the continual (and a little pagan) references to a need for knee pads to give the AdComs fellatio, he was an effective teacher, although totally hippie in my eyes. A hippie with a purpose. Already, I can feel the cold drafts from Hell. How do I reason this? It's probably better to watch a video to demonstrate the analogy I conjured:

Hippie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAFt-SFVj-M

Non-hippie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EuKRmh1Y9Q

Same character, no? Yes I know I'm totally loser for picking that analogy. Find me at MELRC this afternoon.

What's going on?

Very few things are happening. But today, I'm just going to talk about an isolated incident, then connect it to the whole picture: Physics major.

It comes up over and over and you probably think think there's a slight nuance of narcissm to it and you're right. Except it's not slight.

Today my MCAT classes started and I tried my best to suppress many facts about me, since most of the people in there are mouth-breathing pre-meds anyway, it would be best if they didn't know what my major was, an inquiry that usually leads to other more personal numerical inquiries. So I sat there, without doing anything active, just patiently took notes and didn't even bother to answer the questions he (instructor) was asking, making him think we were all tards. Oh, I should mention, Class 1 = Physics (Units, Kinematics, Projectile motion. I will let you ponder on the difficulty. Kantan desu ne!).

Back to the story. I just sat there, no answering of questions, not even altering the facial expression. Stoic, stoic, me. Alas, time was nearing to a close (20 minutes left) and he assigned some practice problems. In my infinite stoicness, I looked at the problems, looked up and had the answer a couple of seconds later. The instructor had a good habit of placing time limits on the problems, so once I had the question answered in my head, I looked up at the clock and started counting seconds, seconds that I would deduct from "time call" to give a rough estimate on how much faster from "optimal pre-med" I was completing these problems. Since they are not heavily computational, a typical problem proceeded like this- 10 seconds into it, I had the answer, 11 seconds- I was staring at the clock. Stoic? Yes. Completely. By the third question, I realized he'd been looking at me for a good amount of my clock-viewing time. When time was up, he immediately asked "You must be engineering?".

This is the part that I loved in the beginning, but now am starting to hate - "No, I'm Physics." Some girl asked how he [instructor] knew and he said "He's doing the problems way to fast to be anything else". Many people would say "Oh wow! That is something certainly worthy of praise." or "Congratulations". You know what this means? Glares. GLARES. Everyone else looks, everyone else looks for me to fail. Since the material on Physics isn't getting any harder, I probably won't fail miserably, which will make them bitter and bring out the worst of the pre-med nature in them. They hate competition, these people and in the worst possible way, because they're lazy. I don't like competition, because I might fail. They don't like it, because they'll actually have to expend effort.

In the beginning, people would ask my major and I'd say "Physics" and they'd say something like "oh wow" and I'd think "Yes, yes. Quick. Give me a brownie because I deserve one for being Physics". But now, it's fucking annoying. Various replies I've received that piss me off:

• "Oh wow, must be hard!" No shit. Get off my case, please. This statement usually implies "Why are you doing this to yourself?" - answered below.
  
• "Well all the biologists think Physics is common sense" I love this one, because it usually comes from people that have no clue about Physics. Of course, once they take it, they have trouble with the simplest of 'common sense'.
  
• "Your son must be smaRT!" (to my Dad, me standing ~1m away) Say it once, and my Dad will refute it in his own cryptic way. Say it again, you've been marked for deletion (aka, you're pissing me off)
  
• "Jeez that's so nerdy" Yes. Yes it is. So? You're either a nerd, or you work for one. You know all those gizmos that make your life easier? Well some nerd invented them and to appeal to your pagan tastes, some very very RICH nerd invented them. Nerds are better people, upper crust of society. Get used to it.
  
• "I feel sorry for you..." Why? Because I do something that I like? Usually stated by people who have absolutely shitty (aka liberal arts) majors. Since LA majors don't really have "life goals" or "academic interests", anything that remotely requires "writing" or "writing equations" is painful and can never be interesting. Eat shit, you fools.
  
• "Why would you do that to yourself?" One of the many MANY reasons why I'm still in this discipline is because it's damn difficult. It's good to be challenged and pushed to the limit. People that ask this usually have easy majors and proceed to pursue the proverbial "college" life. Why would I do this to myself? Yes, it is painful at times. But when that TIME rolls around, you know, when the admissions council looks at your transcript and then at mine and sees that for the same GPA, I can tell you discrete quantum states of the hydrogen atom and why paramecia can regenerate, wheras you can only muster up remnants of the word paramecium (no doubt due to all the alcohol consumed during the pursuit of this proverbial "college life"), they'll make the call and you'll get shafted. In the eternal cosmic play of things, balance is not only a requisite but a fact of life. Finally, when you clear up enough doubt to ask yourself why it happened - just know this - You were probably took weak, too slow, too stupid and lacking too much foresight to actually confer a challenge upon yourself. Now get me some coffee.
  
• Multiple variations on #1

Stop with the patronization. Just say "that's nice". If you wish to be even more polite, ask me how something works. We're bustling with random pieces of trivia. One more thing. We can probably do everything except heavy manual labor:

Hold up conversations? Check.
Select appreciable jewlery? Check.
Be outgoing and friendly? Check.
Philanthropy? Check.
Overall awesome people speckled with chunks of conceit? Check.

Biology is memorization. Chemistry is microphysics. This is where renaissance-men are made.