Snip snip snippets

In no particular order:

1. I am of the steadfast and unyielding opinion that the word 'like' should be permanently banned from the English language. Everyone knows how a valley girl sounds, but the grossly inappropriate usage of the L-word has become établié, so ubiquitous as to be completely, totally, and in all other ways unavoidable. Not only does it grate most unpleasantly on the ears, this annoying interjection reduces the average IQ of any statement by an automatic 50%. Minimum. It is impossible—and I use the word with full cognizance of its finality and nevertheless in firm insistence of its appropriateness—to sound intelligent while interjecting ‘like’ with all the enthusiasm and unconsciousness of a four-year-old with Tourette’s. “Don’t you, like, think that if we’re talking about, like, relative deprivation as the, like, cause of ethnic conflict, wouldn’t that, like, be supporting the, like, economic causes theory?” I kid you not. It happens. It denigrates an otherwise intelligent—or at least comprehensible—comment appropriate to a college student and reduces it to the intellectual and linguistical equivalent of picking your nose: not to be done in public, appetite-reducing for the poor souls in your vicinity, and if you’re lucky, you won’t have to eat it (you know, like, your words). Rant over.

2. Wait, new rant. I hate TV. A lot. And more every day. I think it has passed the point where you could convince me that TV is worthwhile, or even remotely interesting. It is noise, and always on, and irritating. My attention span is somewhere between that of a goldfish and that of a shoelace when it comes to TV, I can’t be bothered to watch it for more than ten minutes. But most of the time, I just want it to be turned off (for a change!).

3. Autumn is coming. We had the first cold and icky day since I’ve been here; it’s been good sleeping and good running, and makes me not feel so bad to be inside.

4. I want to steal people’s bicycles. Basically, anyone with a nice road bike. I’m not too picky.

5. We’re building a refugee camp out of cardboard boxes next week for an awareness activity about Darfur. It’s going to be pretty sweet, and pretty cool looking (I think).

6. I really like having my own bathroom, rather than sharing it with between two and five or six other people (depending on whose boyfriends were over). I miss living with cool people with whom I have some sort of a relationship. I enjoy having a living room, I guess, though I can never use it. The yard is cool too.

7. Turns out I don’t like driving all that much, only in the mountains with a fun car. Give me a bike (see no 4) any day.

8. You meet cool people in libraries. Librarians are cool people, though I don’t know if we qualify as actual real live librarians. Mostly we explain thirty thousand times a day how to look up books and how people can look up the books themselves so we don’t have to.

9. I know more people than I thought I did. Lots of cool people are gone from work but some are still there, and the new ones seem dece. I have classes with friends, astoundingly enough, and run into acquaintances with relative regularity. People remember my face, which is surprising and often more than I can say for them. One guy actually remembered I speak German, which is funny as I always used to completely omit his face from my memory and would be utterly surprised when he would speak to me in German elsewhere on campus and not just in the library. Goes to show you my memory for faces is contextually dependent.

10. Intro classes suck. Makes me wonder how half these kids got out of high school, honestly. I used to think my brother was overdoing the intellectual elitism regarding his classes, which he claimed were all too simple—but now I am starting to agree. I’m not particularly impressed by the level of thinking done by 95% of the people in five sixths of my classes. Also see comment no 1.

11. But most of my instructors are really good. The intro to astronomy and anthropology are taught by interesting people who make an effort, and they present the material in a way I understand. History is bearable if dry, and politics is really interesting even though I’ve already covered all the material thus far with various past research papers.

12. I don’t like reading as much at night. Which is why I am writing and not reading an article on mediation.

13. My to-do list has 23 items on it. C’est ma vie. Speaking of which, one of those items is to have my French evaluated. Turns out I don’t speak French, but I’ve decided I want to move to Belgium next summer, so I suppose I ought to one of these days.

14. I can highly recommend Pandora.com, as an internet radio (“music genome project”) which suggests songs you may like based on characteristics of music you have given in your preference. So far, I have come up with a ton of great artists, including John Butler Trio, Matt Wertz, Hello Saferide, Ellis Paul, KT Tunstall (I knew of her before), Brett Dennen, and others.

15. I've pretty much stopped drinking coffee, except on occasional days when I remember to bring spare change. I miss it, in that I enjoy the taste, but I don't have coffee cravings. I find Bagels to be pretty fantastic, particularly with humous, and I miss Brötchen.

16. My experiment: make it through the week on the food I bought on Sunday. Progress: haven’t starved yet. PS: wasabi peas are addictive.

Good night!