So needless to say that my utter abundance of free time lately has lead me with thinking. And I've thought. Not about much in particular, sometimes maintaining balance takes a fair amount of concentration. =P

Some people went asking me what I was going to do for a job now. I have horrible flashbacks to Dillards. I makes me break out in hives just imagining the that brain dead anthill of insufferable peons talking down to me like I'm nothing. If I can say, fuck that to school, I can say fuck that to you too Dillards. You fat asshole. I hope you microwave your overpriced, cheapass dishware and get cancer.

I have no idea what I'm going to do for money. Money. Money. moneymoneymoneymoney. I found a way to make more money at least in the short term. You know. Until I get on my feet, figituritively speaking because right now I can't do much for standing. Half of saving money is not spending money. Why the hell do I need to dump money into a dump of an apartment? That's what I asked myself around 5am sometime yesterday I think. getting rid of this thing is something that ended up being pretty easy. Sure I had to be creative. But being creative is what I do best aside from being drunk and useless. XD

I managed to sublease out to a near sighted Armenian lesbian... I sent her pictures of Justin with promises of an arranged marriage AND BAM. Moneies?! I got moneies!!! PRORATE BITCH!!! I got $275. and some odd change. Do you have any idea what kind of money that is to someone? That's like enough money forever! Life is an adventure!!! I"M WELL EQUIPED NAAAAW!!

Wow, sorry for the lack of updates this month! I've been busy as a bee! Not with school though! Man, am I glad I'm done with that. I should probably back up. From what I can remember, somewhere around the end of February, it got to be pretty clear that school wasn't working out. Papers, papers, papers. What's the point in all of these papers. What's the point of school. I'm tired of all of this! I want to do things with my life, enough of this incessant buzzing of papers.

Sitting inside day after day, staying up night after night, only to have one professor after the other bitch and moan at me that I'm just not trying hard enough. That's not living life! 'Work ahead', they say, 'start now' they say... I don't see how I'm ever supposed to do any of that when I'm working on or researching any of the 2 or sometimes 3 papers due this week. Somewhere around my fourth consecutive all-nighter I finally said 'fuck this'.

Let me tell you, the next couple of days, I have never felt so relaxed. Most of it is in a drunken haze and I don't really remember much of it, and really I couldn't even keep track of the days as I didn't leave the apartment much. I've been pretty good about taking Advil and drinking lots of water before I pass out, so amid the occasional hangover, I've never felt more rested or refreshed. I'm pretty sure that school is just a highly popularized form of suicide.

Hanoko 003 ~ Order in the Sunny Meadow

Finished the audio for number 3 today. (Youtube kind of set it all off anyway :/ )

Abbrev.

So I'm embroiled in my reading for Human Variation and I keep getting confused and distracted. I'm sure the material is doing it's part as the scope feels less focused and defined than in past weeks. But a large part of it is due to the fact that I keep misreading an abbreviation in my mind. LD. What does that mean to you?

In the world of this week's Human Variation assignments, it means 'Linkage Disequilibrium', or 'the nonrandom association of alleles'. In that context it's neat because it's a means of variation in the genetic code beyond single point changes. But the problem is that for the longest time I read strategies for a certain children's card game and, unless I keep a laser focus, I read LD as 'Land Destruction', one of the most annoying, pathological game strategies. I keep hitting LD in this 15 page article and my gut reaction says 'ewwww, I hate LD'. I don't want to read about LD because if I agree with it, it's just going to be bitching and moaning, and if I don't I'm going to find myself in direct opposition to whoever thinks it's a justified deck theme. It takes me a moment to remember: 'Human Variation. LD is kind of cool.'

Abbreviations can be used because of relevance. They only make sense under the assumption that both the reader and the writer have similar background experiences. They cease to provide a convenient, abbreviated form of communication, however, once they become homophones in the written word.

One Must Never Call the Police Dumb.

I spent the majority of my discussion today in Human Variation writhing in mental agony because the professor, in trying to argue that some obvious morphological traits may not be considered adaptations if we can't know their function, used the plates of stegosaurus as an example. "We have theories but we can't say it's an adaptation if we don't know that it's something affecting an organism's survival against a selective force" what was said was something to that effect.

Thinking about it now, I get the point she was trying to make, but that example was outright terrible! The implication is that we don't know the exact function of the Stegosaurus's plates, so how do we know they were evolved to increase fitness and aren't a byproduct to something else. My mind kind of exploded out my mouth in a not good way; I can't even articulate how insane that all sounds to me; those kinds of structure arise, if infrequently, in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. Similar structures appear on each of the three main lineages of dinosaurs: Theropods, Sauropods, and Ornithischians like Stegosaurus. It's one of the most classic examples of Homoplasy I ever thought of! (aside from the whole fly-wing, bird-wing, bat-wing comparison). It's clear that with several different and yet similar structures among large animals of the Mesozoic that these find structures were being used for something communication, mating, heat regulation... something! Unfortunately I've never been articulate when my mind explodes in dinosaur rage and I made myself look an ass in class.

More towards the end I asked her if she ever shaved a polar bear. I don't know what it is with that class in particular, but I feel like I end up looking more like a freak every week I'm in there.

EDIT: I should probably say that although Stegosaurus and his plates are a bad example, you could talk about that weird space in his hip where people thought he had a second brain for the longest time. Or you swtich species entirely! Go to the Segnosaurs, no one even know what the hell those things are anyways.

Fail Cake

We experienced a set back today. I bombed a test and couldn't flail my Lit presentation/paper together on time. I feel like I didn't have a weekend at all, which is weird because I know I spent time relaxing and I hung out with friends. Obviously I've lost my mind, so it's a good thing I had the forethought to schedule some 'talk me through stress' time tomorrow morning. The problem is that I have papers etc due tomorrow right after my appointment, so I had to call in some substitutes for therapy: Fail Cake.

The rules of Fail Cake: Fail Cake must be delicious. Fail Cake must be rich. In fact Fail Cake must be so delicious and rich that while eating Fail Cake, all you can think about is Fail Cake. Fail Cake cannot be eaten beside milk. Fail Cake's unavoidable Fail Cake Sugar Coma is an acceptable time to Fail Cake Sugar Nap in public like a loon. After awakening from Fail Cake Sugar Nap, it's time to tackle a world where you're not eating Fail Cake for a while.

Fail Cake: because actual success is cake in itself.

Heebie Jeebies

Have you ever been in a public sit-down place with friends, and there's talking and laughing to be had? And then you get that weird feeling like someone is watching you, and out of the corner of your eye you can see someone eye-locked dead in on your conversation. It's kind of creepy, yes? Why the hell do people do that?