blogwaffe

Who else thinks that “to devour in greedy gulps” must have come via Thanksgiving from “the guttural, chortling sound of a male turkey” (American Heritage Dictionary)?

Even if it didn’t, the two words have now a happy coexistance.

Thanksgiving was held here at the SLR this year, which meant Greg, Paul.za and I had to figure out how to sit seventeen people in our living room in order to make war against Thanksgiving dinner. Not a trivial task. Paul.za’s and Greg’s Ikea desks were drafted for service in the trenches. The real problem, though, was chairs. I think, between the three of us, we have over twenty places for people to sit. But about half of these seats do not couple well with dinner tables. Thus, Wednesday evening, I could be found aimlessly walking around the apartment expecting to find a new chair source we hadn’t yet thought of (“hm, maybe I’ll look into my room again – see if there are a half dozen dining room chairs in there I forgot about”). So I broke down and went to Target, where I enlisted four folding charis and a card table. Heidi brought another set of folding chairs to complete our arsenal.

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I suppose I should write something about Thanksgiving, but I have a backlog of photos to put up regarding Ariele’s birthday party held at the SLR. So here they are. Michelle was using my camera, so laud her for anything remarkable.

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Amazing how quickly one’s outlook on life can change in a twenty-four hour peiod. Yesterday I was so pleased with myself because, for the first week in months, I had turned in all of my homework in on time. It was cause for celebration. I did a bit of work here and there inbetween classes, but overall I was reasonably unproductive.

Today I found out I’m failing general relativity.

To pass (mind you, passing only requires 50%), I need to do better on the remaining two homeworks than I have on any of the previous seven. you might ask how I could be doing worse than 50% so far. Well, I neglected to do the first set until the last (literal) minute (GR was my only class with homework due the first week – I forgot about it), and one set I faithfully placed in my bag but forgot to turn in until a week later, knocking 75% off my score (not to mention things like getting 0/10 for flipping upper and lower indices in a computaional problem and 3/10 for not proving that rapidity (a sophomore level concept) is additive).

Today (which has passed) was drop day. Not that dropping the class is a great solution. I (more or less) need it for degree requirements, plus I haven’t done a lick of research these past months because of my course load. All for naught if I drop. But I’m sure Preskill has been notified already. Looking forward to group meeting on Thursday.

Ass.

We’ve all taken them. From them, I’ve learned I’m a gin and tonic, a freakin’ accountant, a demon in the sack, and that I don’t know the difference between Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Osama bin Laden. But when I saw What Religion are You (Mystery of the zen hex – The truth that is pulled over your eyes to blind you from the world), on some livejournal account I got to from the coven (xaosseed -> spankarella), I was intrigued.

Turns out I’m of “unknown category” but that I lie somewhere between modern satanist and average christian.

Oh man, I nearly cried. Couldn’t ask for more entertaining results.

My dad went to a Death Cab for Cutie concert last night. Calling it a “cultural experience”, he says the (almost) last concert he went to was a Simon and Garfunkel in Chicago. And I’m sure he’s not talking about a reunion tour. Apparently he was a few standard deviations away from the mean age, but he saw lots of people there he knows (contemporaries of Allen’s or mine, people he knows from church, additional degrees of separation, etc.).

The sold out concert was, in his terms, “loud and energetic” and “not bad at all”. He certainly seems to have enjoyed himself.

I’m not sure I could ever have dragged either of my parents to a similar concert while I was in high school. Though, to be fair, I doubt I would have wanted to. But he’s good friends with a couple kids from church (juniors or seniors by now – damn), and they convinced him to go (without their parents of course).

Glad he had fun. Now if only he and Mom will go see the movies I tell them to.

Putting my bilious mood behind, I decided to celebrate. And I even came up with a good reason: drink and rejoice because America has not had to suffer through a terrifying regime change in nearly four years! Besides, since free as in speech has taken a bit of a hit after eleven states decided to constitutionally ban gay marriage, I might as well excersize what freedoms I do have left and consume vast quantities of free as in beer.

That’s a good name for a party.

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Not a terribly good name for a holiday, is it?

But a good night, certainly. The week previous, Greg, Paul.za, Heidi and I went to Aardvark’s to see about costumes for the annual Prufrock Party (warning: poorly styled double links). Aardvark’s is truly ridiculous. Where else could you find an honestly good collection of kilts alongside wide assortment of ruffled shirts, kimonos, and hospital gowns. Not to mention the chaps. And they’ve got collector’s items as well. Want a jacket made entirely out of unopened condom packets? How about a kid’s danger mouse hoodie?

We spent about an hour there and all made out quite well. Paul got a leopard print floppy hat, and a leopard print… something. I don’t know, was it a nightie ,or a little girl’s dress? Or… I’ll just stick with a “something”. Couldn’t say. Anyway, in case you hadn’t guessed, he went as a leopard. Really quite amusing.

Heidi got a cheerleader skirt (they have a crap-load of skirts there but not one cheerleader top. Must be someone out there running around with about a hundred cheerleader tops wondering where all her (his?) bottoms got to), a high school athletic jacket (named Jessica Hooper) and some pom-poms. I think we eventually decided that she went as a college cheerleader dressed up as a high school cheerleader.

Greg, perhaps, stole the show. He got a plastic hula skirt, a long black wig, and (yup – you guessed it) a coconut. The hula girl outfit was complete after cutting the coconut in half and affixing it to his bosom. A little eye-shadow here, some lipstick there, consumate glitter and you’ve got yourself one seriously unattractive woman.

Laking such inpiration, I got an outrageously colored clown outfit and a gigantic blonde afro. No one ever quite pinned it down, but I must have been some sort of pedophillic circus escapee what with the ill- (read “non-“) shaven face. We met up with Michelle (a very lovely fairy), Suvir (glam rock/Beckham – I didn’t hear him say himself but received conflicting reports from others), Bert and Saucy (private schoolers), Ace (the guy that’s not Waldo – perhaps the best idea for a costume I’ve ever heard of), and Adam (a very well done Clark Kent). Pictures can be found at the coven. Sorry – I forgot my camera.

Holly also joined us for the night dressed as (I kid you not) “pretty”. She, Paul.za and I spent most of the evening together being highly entertained by our own and others’ antics. She danced with a pumpkin. It was most amusing. Her conversation and gesticulations were most amusing as well – but they might best be spared the ether.

Other notables: Mark and his girlfriend as Papa Smurf and Smurfette, Alexa and Shannon as angel and devil, some dude as a box of Franzia (complete with spigot!), and some other dude as chiken and waffles (genius.).

Anyway – fully enjoyed by (almost) every one in attendance.

So the last many posts have been entirely devoid of content. Perhaps someone out there found the new bits interesting (though I think the robots are the only hits I get these days). If so, I’m glad. The new bits are the only thing I’ve done the entire week other than class, TA and sleep. And certainly none of that is interesting.

Last week(end), however, was more entertaining. Saturday night in particular. The evening started with a rollicking good (if long) time at the Lunasa concert on campus. The band is from .ie and claims to perform traditional .ieish music. I can’t back them up on their claim, since I don’t know what it is “supposed” to sound like. I can tell you that the concert was pretty awesome. The performers were obviously mighty musicians and masters of their various instruments. Additionally, their stage presence was most entertaining.

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So it seems the pizza fest was a success. At the very least, no one complained or openly admitted to having a bad time. Maybe if grad school doesn’t work out I can open up a little pizza place. I’d call it “Fratello’s” after the pizza dough’s provenance. The only disappointment on my part was Dixie having to leave early before I was even able to get out of the kitchen and socialize. Oh well. Cheers, Dixie. At least I got some material goods to make up for it: (one third of) a wine rack from Jeff and Ariele, and an official burninating uniform from Heidi and Greg – both highly appreciated.

In other SLR news, I met a couple of our new downstairs neighbors today. Seem quite nice. All of them downstairs are +/- my age and working at various jobs in Pasadena. Hopefully I’ll see more of them.

It’s decided; the best idea for a blog ever goes to one \_jeff_{krimmel} for his coverage of his Madden 2004 football double elimination tournament. Others may have had similar ideas in the past, but Jeff’s is the first I’ve seen, so he get’s it: the honour of an oh-oh-ficial blogwaffe shoutout.

He starts off with a good description of the situation and continues with an in depth commentary on each of the games he’s played. Humble enough to admit and explain his limitations, but still very concerned about the outcomes of the games. And who wouldn’t be? He’s got a lot riding on this. Like getting Ariele pissed off that he’s spending too much time with Madden.