the days fly by

I got nothing accomplished today. Absolutely nothing. First of all, the only other girl in my program came in after a week of hiding in her room, and I was so excited that we spent hours giggling and not getting anything done. One of my coworkers told me that his noise-cancellation earphones weren't advanced enough to mute our giggles. We gossip a lot, make exploding sounds, draw stick figures on the white board, talk ghetto, sing bad songs, and torment our colleagues. Basically, we're like five-year olds.

Of course, I also worked on my tennis ball catching skills today (I can catch with one hand!) and realized that I can't beat guys in arm wrestling (or anything sports related). It's not fair that I'm so deficient because I'm a girl. On a different note, I realized that I can get things if I pout and/or whine enough. This disturbes me slightly b/c I feel like I get my way just because I'm a girl and it seems like I'm cheating. I'd rather fight for it (but I'd lose).

The highlight of my day was picking out a birthday card for one of my colleagues. I think my sense of humor got the better of me because he's going to know right away that I was the guilty party responsible. We insult each other within an inch of our lives. Poor boy. I'd like to think of it as honing my sense of humor.

I'm mostly just glad that my cough is almost entirely gone. I barely slept last week and almost went crazy because I was putting in 16 hour days of studying. The guy who lives in the room directly above mine told me that he could hear me coughing at night. That's pretty bad. I would sit in classes and really hope that I wouldn't die coughing. I think I definitely started pissing people off with my coughing. The worst was not being able to sleep. I became scared of trying to go to sleep because I knew that I'd just start hacking my lungs out. Of course, that made it even more difficult to sleep. I became even bitchier than usual.

But classes are over, and I can't bring myself to be too stressed yet (maybe tomorrow). Maybe I'll go to the office and actually get something done if I can stay away from the temptations of playing catch and teasing my coworkers.

doom and destruction

My marathon weekend of bad movies continues with Doom and Chronicles of Riddick, both of which I watched for one actor. Watching bad movies is sometimes fun because I can laugh and mercilessly tear everything apart. You need to go in there ready to laugh and to have absolutely no expectations at all.

It strikes me how few actors actually make it to the top in Hollywood. There are only a few dozen faces which get recycled over and over again. I don't have strong feelings for the Rock, but I rather enjoy Rosamund Pike's cultured, quiet way of acting. She reminds me of a less intense version of Cate Blanchett. I liked her in Pride and Prejudice and thought that she did an admirable job in The Libertine. Anyone who's able to hold their own opposite Johnny Depp should receive several awards.

Doom was utterly horrible, though perhaps not as bad as Chronicles of Riddick. Although Chronicles of Riddick had some sort of half-baked story (Doom's storyline was even worse), the cinematography was off-putting. The necromancers didn't seem so much aliens as having bad hair and even worse clothing. Whoever said Vin Diesel was hot must have been on drugs. His voice sounds reminds me of the Sahara desert. Not to be shallow or anything, but I can't appreciate men who sound like they've swallowed an entire colony of frogs. There's nothing hot about him. Everything about him screams gangster and blue-collar.

The major problem I had with Chronicles of Riddick was Vin Diesel's glowing white orbs. Honestly, the entire movie seemed pointless. There are evil people who are taking over the world (they don't seem too evil) and less evil people (but still evil) who must prevent them from doing so. Add in a few metal headpieces, double sided pikes, people who disappear, and the indifference just explodes.

Doom isn't better, but at least it doesn't pretend to be important. The strange thing about this movie is that there isn't much action. Considering that Doom is the forefather of first-person shooter video games, the fact that the movie goes on for half an hour without a shot being fired is disconcerting. There's an unconvincing sappy family story and some genetic mutation crap that tries painfully to be semi-intelligent. Spare us. There's a lot of mystery and dark things lurking around even darker corners, but not much in the way of substance or action.

clueless

It's been so long since I've indulged myself in chick flicks and otherwise pointless movies. When Clueless first hit the theaters, I wasn't even in double digits. When I started watching, the first thing I thought was: People really wore that in the '90s??? Was there a plaid revolution? And where are the bagpipes that go with the kilts?

Despite the cluelessness of it all, there's something to be said about the movie. Some of the dialogue is way sharp and Alicia Silverstone has a sweet, pouty air about her that doesn't exactly inspire nausea. I admit that I love Paul Rudd, despite his insipidness. He's just the nice, all around big brother but not big brother with a really nice smile. Even though Cher's so fake, they're still totally adorable together.

I enjoyed watching Clueless so much more than Cruel Intentions. Cruel Intentions just felt like young adults trying to be teenagers trying to be grown-ups. Ryan Phillipe comes off not so much as angsty as trying to be angsty and self-important. I find that I enjoy watching older actors and actresses much more than those around my age because they're more sure of themselves. They know who they are and have the experience and depth to convey more emotion.

Generally, ultrasweet and sappy girls onscreen annoy the hell out of me (i.e. Kirsten Dunst). It's even worse when it's forced and feels like it's forced. I dislike watching actresses who don't have the capacity to be anything but the sweet damsel in distress. It's not that I'm an incredibly deep and angsty and complex person, but I'd like to see it onscreen once in awhile.

Sarah Michelle Gellar was all right in Cruel Intentions, though nowhere as evil as she was supposed to be. Selma Blair was just an idiot (I guess she nailed her part dead-on) and Reese Witherspoon was all right. Frankly, I expected the movie to have a little more bite, but I guess I'll live.

ad infinitum

Yup. I'm at a new motivational low...yet again. The predictability of my life is becoming slightly grating. When you're prepared for the peaks and the troughs and they're exactly where you thought they'd be...it's hard to drum up any feeling for anything.

In theory, there's some crap like I have control over my life. Everything always works perfectly in theory, but reality is just a mass of gray splotches. I feel like I'm going blind. It's wonderful to have dreams, but then I wake up and life's about paying the rent, paying my taxes, wondering when I'm going to fit getting married and having kids into my life, if I'm going to finish all of my problem sets on time, if I'm going to become a professor, and if I do, if I'll get tenure, how much fatter I'll get if I don't exercise...so it's easier not to have dreams at all. It's easier just to not care because it hurts too much to look outside and not see anything.

It's frightening because I think that I had dreams at one point. Now I just don't care. Reality's gotten the best of me. It's easier to take the path of least resistance. I'm tired of fighting and tired of trying to change. Honestly, people don't change that much after a certain point unless they're traumatized, and I could do without. I think the worst thing would be if I still felt like this in ten years. It's not so much the world rushing by me as the feeling of everything standing still. What's the point?

10 signs that your friendship might be doomed

1. Your potential friend (male) asks you (male) if you wear long-sleeve shirts to cover up your arm hair.

2. When you try to sit across the table from your potential friend, he shifts so that he's sitting next to you and explains that he needs his space and can't make direct eye contact with you.

3. Your potential friend thinks that you're his weekly ESL teacher.

4. You accidently get at least 50 calls and incoherent messages a day from your new friend who can't figure out how to work his cell phone and your name just conveniently happened to be Aardvark.

5. Your potential friend has a habit of spitting all over people's faces when he's drunk.

6. Your potential friend asks you why you don't shower. When you retort that you shower twice a day, he promptly tells you that his kids won't have clean water because of you.

7. When you joke about wanting to see what your potential friend's classes are like, he emails you his entire schedule complete with suggestions.

8. While at lunch with your potential friend, he tells you that his father once told him that there are only two things in life that men should handle with their hands, chickens and women.

9. Your potential friend calls you to invite you over to his apartment to watch the super bowl. Ten minutes later, he calls you back and tells you that there's no more space at his place.

10. You can't decide whether or not to start a conversation with a guy, mainly because he's been standing over the serving tray of sausages for the last twenty minutes, has two sausages sticking out of his mouth, and is glancing around to see whether anyone notices him.

10 signs that your date might be doomed

1. You met several times at the allergist's clinic before going on a date.

2. Your date is an ex-almost-pro football player who weighs three times more than you do and has a jealous girlfriend who weighs twice as much as you.

3. Your date (female) thinks that you (male) are a homosexual.

4. Your date brings you to a two hour long Hebrew service and you don't speak Hebrew.

5. At an ice-cream parlor, your date (female) orders two scoops of chocolate and you (male) order one small scoop of mango sorbet. She then stares at your sorbet and comments, "It's light and fruity, kind of like you."

6. Your date asks if you would ever consider dating someone twice your age... (See 7)

7. Your date asks you if it would bother you if you dated someone with kids your age.. (See 6)

8. You break the ice with facts about dieting before your date informs you that she used to be anorexic.

9. You're watching a movie with your date about the African-American experience (neither of you are African-American). Ten minutes into the movie, she turns to you and loudly asks you why everyone in the movie is black and all of the black people in the theater (everyone) turn around to look at both you.

10. Your date enthusiastically picks off all of the croutons in your salad without asking you first.

Juicy's Quotes

Babel:
"I'd hate to be stuck in Afghanistan with a bullet."

March Madness:
"I'm not in the pool. I don't know anything about football."

TV:
"You watch Law and Order:SUV?"

Physics and Wheelchairs:
"Isn't Stephen Hawking that guy who used to play superman? I thought his name was Stephen Stocking."

Obesity:
"Poor people are genetically disposed to be fat."

Oregon:
"Are you going on the Oregon trail with those covered wagons and oxen? How are you going to cross the rivers with those oxen? And watch out for those indians. They'll shoot arrows at you."

Atheism:
"Does that mean you hate God?"

Crime:
"The guy got his wallet stolen and knocked up."

airing my dirty laundry frustrations

What a fraking awful day...it's not like today was going well by any stretch of the imagination anyway. Between the coffee rush and subsequent crash and general neurosis and paranoia, I remembered that today just happened to be the worst day of the month---laundry day. You'd think that sorting laundry, shoving it into the machine, pouring detergent over the mess, and inserting a couple of quarters would be brainless, but it's anything but in this crappy grad dorm that I live in.

First, there are about 20 washers, about 19 of which work on a regular basis, and 20 dryers, about 20 of which don't dry. I'm wondering if this might be a slight problem. In the beginning of the term, I decided just to wash my clothing and hang it up in my room to dry. That worked wonders. My damp clothing gave my room a definitive Amazon rainforest feel. Of course, I didn't have enough hangers for my underwear and socks, so I spread a sheet on the floor and waded through undergarments for several days. The end result of this little experiment is that all of my M sized shirts could now comfortably fit someone who's XL, and everything else is stiffer than cardboard and feels like cardboard when I wear it.

Everything that could possibly happen has happened when I try to do laundry. It's like running an obstacle course with a loaded laundry basket. So many of my quarters have gotten stuck in the machine and gone to the evil laundry gods. Once, I was so out of it that I starting washing a load, then pushed in another rack of quarters for no good reason. I dread doing laundry, so I only face extreme and intense pain once a month rather than spreading the pain over the month...I don't go for strong torture methods. I prefer a bullet to the water drop torture method.

So out of the 20 dryers, three semi-work. We define semi-work here as drying half a normal load successfully. All of the other dryers apparently can handle a max of five pairs of pants. Five cotton t-shirts are apparently too much and still come out damp. I have never in my life encountered more useless dryers. I could seriously stand in front of my clothing, blow vigorously, and they'd probably dry faster than turning in these monstrosities. It's probably not a good sign that you can see the beads of condensation trickling down the inside of the glass door.

The whole trick is to snatch the three semi-working dryers. Otherwise, it's entirely hopeless. Today I was unlucky and had to wait for one dryer...which also turned out not to work. On top of that, I got bitched out by the girl whose wet clothing I took out of the dryer two hours ago. So I had to resort to only using one of the semi-working dryers and a couple of the non-drying dryers. Honestly, it would probably have been a better use of my time and money if I had just sent everything to the dry-cleaners.

Laundry is not supposed to be painful. I don't understand how I can take something this simple and make it into such a huge deal. Life can't be as frightening and complex as I make it out to be.

ICA

The new ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) in boston is rather small, but easy on the eyes. It's not the nicest building in Boston, but it's in a prime location by the waterfront. The views of the water from inside the museum is amazing.

If there's one part of contemporary art that I don't particularly care for, it's the AV stuff. I can do without the jerky camera movements and either meaningless objects falling on top of each other or ugly, earnest people puffed up in their own self-importance. Of course, there are entire movements of modern art devoted to Marcel Duchamp's canned excrement and porcelain urinals, but that's somewhat amusing...

frak it

I'm sick...and midterms are coming up. There's nothing to really worry about, since I've adopted the philosophy of refusing to panic until I panic. I'm more concerned that I somehow got sick by watching 15 straight hours of Battlestar Galactica and then some last week. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I ended up with a massive migraine, runny nose, and a deformed spinal cord. It's a tragic sign that I'm not as young as I used to be. I was whipping blithely through 24 marathons, pizza, and massive loads of sugar just a year ago. Then again, that's probably why I can't do it anymore, not to mention the coffee that's totally fraking up my sleep patterns and the alcohol that's fraking up my brain. Frak me.

I didn't know anything about Battlestar Galactica a week ago, then familiarized myself with everything about the show, and now I'm fraking sick of the show. Coining the word 'frak' is definitely the master stroke of this series...I'm ambivalent about the rest. For a sci-fi show, it's surprisingly gritty and pseudorealistic (dark and gloomy is always a plus on my scale). BG's a departure from the usual shows that I indulge in since I like the plot and hate the people. It's always the other way around.

The people on this show are so...human. It totally blows that all of the characters have an assortment of flaws. We're not even talking about stupidity or selfishness or something equally insipid. Instead, we have genocide-supporting, pill-popping, religious maniacs on board. Even I don't have such a grim view on humanity. I find it amazing that these people were the ones left after 99.9995% of the purported human race were destroyed by the machines. I can't sympathize with shows that don't have a moral center...BG does have a moral center, but no one's following it.

To me, the part of the show worth watching is how it addresses the question: What constitutes being human? BG embraces Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." Although the machines were responsible for the human massacre at the beginning, we are shown repeatedly that the people behave no better than their machine counterparts. In fact, the most interesting concept is machines trying to emulate people. We see that machines want to experience love and community, and what happens in their quest to become more like us.

Of course, I also appreciate that the not so subtle hints toward Iraq, religious fanaticism, and other heavy political issues are addressed directly. Battlestar Galactica does not shy away from anything. If only I could get over my absolute hatred of the schoolteacher-turned -president, I would enjoy the show so much more. Honestly, sometimes I think she should be shoved out of a fraking airlock. There's nothing worse than a combination of self-righteousness, weakness, religious fanaticism, and totalitarianism.

In all, Battlestar Galactica's a good show, though not fraking good. The ship sailed to another galaxy a few hours ago.