I had a dream that my college sent me a letter saying I was required to do 400 sit-ups in order to graduate. I spent most of the dream wandering around the physical education facilities (which looked a lot more spacious than in real life) looking for the gym teacher who was supposed to evaluate me.
This might be because I looked at my degree audit and realized they still think I haven't passed my physical education requirement, even though I have. Or it might be latent insecurity about my flabby belly. :)
Evidently, Roger Clemens wants to get his first career stolen base. For those of you who don't do the baseball thing, Roger Clemens is a 6 foot-4-inch, 235-pound, 42-year-old man with bad hamstrings.
I'm definitely taping SportsCenter when he tries it.
Cascading style sheets are like HTML, except not. Oh, God.
You only get to keep a World Series trophy for one year, but if this actually happens, it'll last a good while longer. I think that Derek Jeter Center in downtown Boston has a nice ring to it, don't you?
What I'm listening to today: Dookie, by Green Day
I've taken great pleasure in whining about the drunk, boorish slobs who call themselves my hallmates this year. And now I can finally say I get why they're here.
You see, one of the reasons I chose to go to this school is the almost complete lack of Greek life. All we have are a couple of small fraternities. Now, I thought that the frat boys lived in the frat houses. I mean, that's common sense, right? At this school, where saying Greek life is marginal is putting it kindly, why would you pay to be in a frat if not so you can live in a nice frat house with friends instead of subjecting yourself to the vagaries of the housing lottery?
But here's the crazy thing- the frat guys don't live in the frat houses. They just give their parties there. So where do they live, you may ask?
Oh, yes. My hall. My hall is the frickin' frat house.
I will now stab myself with knitting needles.
Anyway, I came to this revelation because one of my hallmates got arrested last weekend for the old fighting/public drunkeness/ resisting arrest combination. I'm being overly optimistic when I hope it'll get his fellow idio- um, frat brothers to tone down their act a little, aren't I? Oh, well.
I am a form-filling machine, baby. Between all my foreign study forms and filling out applications in triplicate for my major, minor, and the honors program, I've written my name down so many times my fingers are still twitching.
Anyway, in an attempt to extend my thinking beyond "oh my God I have midterms next week," I bought tickets to The Light in the Piazza in June. Thank you, Lincoln Center, for letting me buy student-price tickets in advance. The rush thing is fun, but actually knowing I'll have good seats? That's a nice feeling.
My Old English professor is a big-time "Beowulf" fan, and much to our amusement, today he showed us a couple of pieces of "Beowulf"-related merchandise he'd picked up.
First on the list was the "Beowulf" comic book. I kid you not, folks- this was Beowulf as Viking superhero, complete with a scantily clad female sidekick. Unferth was cast as the slimy villian- which is sort of appropriate, actually- but the great part was seeing the Scandinavian hero fight off space aliens as if he were Superman or something. Hilarious.
Now, you'd think nothing could top off a red-headed Beowulf spouting horrible comics dialogue. But you'd be wrong. Because the second thing our prof brought in was a tape of the "Beowulf" musical.
*insert screams of horror here*
He played a few choice ditties for us, including an upbeat "Unferth mocks Beowulf" number that reminded me of a cut-rate "Master of the House," a big wannabe-Andrew Lloyd Webber love ballad for Welthow, and best of all, Grendel's distorted growls singing about how much the partying at Herot irritates him. It was unbelievably cheesy all the way though- the class was practically rolling on the floor from laughter.
Of course, this is exactly the stuff that gives musical theater a bad name, but I made myself feel better by remembering that Sondheim was at his prime when this was written. And we don't judge all movies by Battlefield Earth, do we?
Today I went to the gym, read Beowulf, wrote about why I'm studying English Literature, took a nap, did some knitting, and watched episodes 3 and 4 of the Beatles Anthology.
Oh, and I discovered that this blog and Firefox don't exactly mix. *pokes it*
The sky is unbelievably clear tonight. I could see dozens of stars, even through the haze of street lights and moonlight and the fog of my own breath. I'm hoping that despite the fact that the groundhog saw his shadow, this good weather lasts until it's officially spring. I'm really not in the mood to freeze anymore.
You know, getting a flower from a stranger is a nice way to start dinner. Follow it up with tables covered in red tablecloths, heart balloons and candy everywhere, an a capella group singing love songs, and chocolate-covered strawberries, and you have quite possibly the nicest time I've ever had in the dining hall. Hooray for Valentine's Day.
Did I mention the chocolate-covered strawberries? I ate a few too many of those, but they really need to serve them more often. Yummy.
What I'm reading today: The Supreme Court, by Lawrence Baum
Ack! Internet...not...functioning. Xanga is up, but LiveJournal is down. MSN and Slate are goners, but hey, at least this blog works.
Okay, I'm going to eat before I throw a toddler-style temper tantrum over not being able to read my Friends List.
Edit: Wah! I want my Lexis!
I've had a continuous headache since I woke up 5 hours ago, I feel nauseous, my stupid schmuck of a neighbor won't stop hawking loogies in the hallway, and did I mention my head hurts? I. Hate. This. Everything is a neverending cycle of homework-eat-sleep, yet I never feel like I'm getting anything done. I'm tired, and I'm sick, and my damn head won't stop hurting. Only a couple of weeks until midterms. Yipee.
I saw Ray last night. Somebody please explain to me how that plodding mediocrity got nominated for Best Picture.
...
No? Nothing? Well, I don't get it either. Unless it's some kind of horribly misguided tribute to Ray Charles or something. I mean, really. Come on, Oscar voters. You have quirky, emotionally satisfying, and intelligent movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind waiting to be nominated and you choose this? What are you smoking?
Queen Mary College in London has so many cool theater classes I'm making little squeaking noises as I read the course catalog.
No, that wasn't a joke. Yes, I'm a dork. As if that's news to anyone.
Of course, I really don't know how many of those theater classes would count towards my *cough* English Literature major, but hey...a girl can always dream. And not for the first time, I'm wondering what it would be like going to an artsier college. There's art here- it's just not a big presence. Kind of like sports. Or anything that isn't academics, really.
Like I said before, I'm a dork. So excuse me while I gawk over the fact that Queen Mary has six classes on Shakespeare. Holy crap.
I was actually also gawking over the fact that it was nearly 1 am on a Saturday and my hall was silent. Silly me. That lasted about 5 minutes- the drinking oafs have evidently come back from whatever place they were chugging from a keg to take up residence here and have extremely loud conversations about how "ish so toterly...cool."
Excuse me while I take knitting needles to my eardrums. Or maybe I should just go on that stabbing rampage I've been longing to have since September. Hmm. Decisions, decisions.
The New York State Supreme Court has ruled that banning gay marriage violates the state constitution.
Now, the caveats. New York is weird in that its Supreme Court is actually its lowest, trial-level court. So this ruling only applies in New York City. The city is considering an appeal to the next level- the Appellate Court. And the ruling will apply to the whole state only if the Court of Appeals in Albany upholds it. But still...pretty cool, huh?
Even in ultra-conservative Idaho, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage has been rejected for the second year in a row. Admittedly, this is probably more of a libertarian than a liberal thing, since they have a statutory prohibition of the practice. But the President really came down on the wrong side of this issue. If he starts pushing a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage again, I really think it will end up being a political loss for him, as well as a loss in the history books. And in 20 years, a lot of people are going to wonder what the big deal was in the first place. It's not a coincidence that the younger the people you ask, the less support you'll find for this fight to "protect marriage."
Oh, and one more side note. I interned at the Appellate Court during my senior year of high school. Let me just say that if this gets appealed, it'll be a whole lot more interesting than most of the cases that come through there. :)