Highlights

Some highlights of the past few days (or weeks)

1. The Olympics finally ending, although I am disappointed that I never did get to see the reportedly very attractive women's US curling team.
2. Spending last Saturday chilling with Casey and fabricating from scratch a bracket to mount his iPod to the dash of his car when I should've been at home doing homework. He says I should've been an engineer (he's majoring in mechanical engineering) because I was really helpful in making the thing. He's probably right...
3. I've ridden my bike twice so far this week because its been so nice out (70 degrees the past two or three days).
4. I'm working on a new website for my friend Alvina for Sushi Tora where she and Da (Amanda) work. I haven't done any HTML stuff in a while and it's always fun to get back into it. If only I had more time to work on it...
5. Did some laundry the other day so now I have some clean clothes again, but I would really like to just throw/give most of my clothes away and buy a bunch of new clothes.
   
   Let's see... what else has there been...
   
   
6. Told Jason and Casey that I'd go to San Diego with them for Spring Break (again). I would have preferred to do something else that we haven't already done twice and that is cheaper, but I couldn't think of anything good. I'm sure I'll have a good time though, I like San Diego.
7. Had cream of cauliflower soup and a bread bowl for lunch yesterday, I love breadbowl soup.

Now that I look back, the past few weeks have been fairly bland. Hmm.

Prejudice Map

Here's something interesting:

Google Prejudice Map

Some Things that I Like (believe it or not)

In no particular order...

1. maps
2. cleaning my bathroom
3. getting up early
4. when a clogged toilet miraculously unclogs itself
5. typing really fast
6. talking fast
7. skiing moguls
8. driving in the snow
9. being in airports
10. "Jake" brakes
11. seeing people fall down
12. vampire movies
13. movies with subtitles
14. good-looking people
15. my horrible handwriting
16. using chopsticks
17. soymilk on my cereal
18. getting to school way before I actually have to be there
19. saving more than %10 on my grocery bill by using my King Soopers card.
20. finishing sudoku or crossword puzzles
21. big diesel trucks
22. telling people where I'm from
23. telling people my majors
24. when arrogant/cocky people are proven wrong
25. below freezing temperatures
26. getting to the bus stop just before the bus arrives
27. finishing homework assignments early
28. coming up with something intelligent to say/ask in class
29. sleeping in complete silence and blackness
30. being (mostly) right
31. getting over 30 miles per gallon in my car
32. chocolate
33. riding a bus
34. fresh underwear
35. doing well on tests without studying hard for them
36. causing mass chaos and destruction on Vice City (video game)
37. knowing people's first AND last names
38. knowing what kind of car people drive
39. beating Grant going uphill on my bike
40. VH1 and MTV
41. Discovery Channel
42. getting messages on my phone, in my email, on my blog, etc...
43. cutting my fingernails
44. Swiss cheese
45. new socks
46. when my teachers know my name
47. fully charged cell phone batteries and full signal
48. driving alone in my car
49. the color black
50. the smell of freshly wet rocks/dirt/concrete... (similar to the smell right before it rains)
    

The Little Tiny Mammoth

Here's a delightfully morbid little song (and animation) in Spanish about a little tiny mammoth that does things to excess and pays the price. Let this be a lesson to everyone not to do things in excess (well, maybe some of these things should just not be done at all). Also, if you have friends like this little mammoth does, maybe you need new friends.

It's in Spanish. Here are the words with line-by-line translations beneath them.

La Historia de un Mamut - The Story of a Mammoth
Un mamut chiquito quería volar.
A little tiny mammoth wanted to fly,
Probaba y probaba y no podía volar.
He tried and he tried but he just could not fly.
Una palomita, su amiga, lo quiso ayudar,
A bird, his friend, wanted to help him out,
y de un quinto piso lo hizo saltar,
and so he made him jump off a five-story building.

Mice: ¿y qué pasó?
And what happened?

¡Mierda..el Mamut se hizo mierda!
Shit! ... The mammoth shat himself!

Un mamut chiquitito quería fumar.
A little tiny mammoth wanted to smoke.
Probaba y probaba y no podía fumar.
He tried and he tried but he just could not smoke.
Un perro su amigo lo quiso ayudar,
His friend, the dog, wanted to help him out,
y 500 cigarrillos le hizo fumar.
and he made him smoke 500 cigarettes.

Mice: ¿y qué pasó?
And what happened?

¡Cáncer, al mamut le dió cáncer¡
Cancer! The mammoth got cancer!

Un mamut chuiquitito quería tomar.
A little tiny mammoth wanted to drink,
Probaba y probaba y no podía tomar.
He tried and he tried but he just could not drink.
Un oso su amigo lo quiso ayudar,
A bear, his friend, wanted to help him out,
y 10 litros de Whisky le hizo tomar.
and made him drink 10 liters of Whiskey.

Mice: ¿y qué pasó?
and what happened?

¡Cirrosis, al mamut le dio cirrosis!
Cirrhosis! The mammoth got Cirrhosis!

Un mamut chiquitito quería debutar.
A little tiny mammoth wanted to have sex.
Probaba y probaba y no podía debutar.
He tried and he tried but he just could not do it.
Un burro su amigo lo quiso ayudar,
A burro, his friend, wanted to help him out,
y con cien prostitutas lo hizo debutar.
and so he made him have sex with 100 prostitutes.

Mice: ¡oh! ¿y qué pasó?
Oh! And what happened?

¡Sida, al mamut le dio sida!
AIDS! The mammoth got AIDS!

Un mamut chiquitito se quería drogar.
A little tiny mammoth wanted to do drugs.
Probaba y probaba y no se podía drogar.
He tried and he tried but he just could not do drugs.
Un gato su amigo lo quiso ayudar,
A cat, his friend, wanted to help him out,
y 10 líneas de coca le hizo probar
and so he made him do 10 lines of coke.

Mice: ¡eeeh! ¿y qué pasó?
Whoa! And what happened?

¡Sobredosis, el mamut con sobredosis!
Overdose! The mammoth overdosed!

Mice: ¿Y ahora qué le pasó? ¿murió?
And then what happened to him? Did he die?

¡Se murió! ¡El mamut se murió!
He died! The mammoth died!

Get over it!

So Dick Cheney shot a guy this weekend. Yeah, it's pretty funny. It should be good for a joke or two, but people seem to be getting their panties up into a really big bunch about it. People are mad that the White House waited until Monday to say anything about it. On the news this morning they were making a big stink about how Cheney didn't have a requisite $7 stamp on his hunting license permitting him to hunt quail. I think its kind of ridiculous that people are making such a huge deal about this stupid little thing. Calm down people! Un-bunch your panties, tell a joke or two about our vice president shooting people, and move on already! sheesh...

In other news, today is Valentine's Day (or as Amanda has dubbed it, Vomitimes Day). I have a date tonight, a date with HOMEWORK!! Hahaha... I almost tricked you, didn't I? Anyway, I hope everyone has a swell Valen-Vomitimes day.

Dreaming

I had some kind of strange dreams last night. Here's the part I remember:

My friend Ding (a.k.a. Justin) went with me to the Post Office to apply for a job there. For some reason, the post office was in the middle of McGuckins. Anyhow, I got back there and there was a really tall lady who I asked if I could apply for the job there. She said, "Sure!." So I proceeded to show her my resume, at which point she became very concerned and ran back to talk to her manager. She then came out and said, "Your resume looks very good, but there are two reasons that this won't work." I then sad, "Let me guess. 1) I'm a college student. 2) I'm not tall enough." She then said, "Yes, and we are also concerned about your Chinese skills because there is nobody here for you to speak Chinese with. And as a college student you can't work the hours we want you in the afternoon on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the weekends." "But yes I can," I said. "I am available those times to work! And I don't care if there isn't anyone here to speak Chinese with, I can speak English." "It just won't work out," the very tall woman snapped, and Ding and I walked away while I was cursing under my breath at her in Chinese. Then Ding said, "man, you really blew that interview." "I know," I said. "Maybe you shouldn't have used all those one-liners." And then I was thinking, "what one-liners? I don't think I used any one-liners." "Oh well, let's go get some Chinese food," I said. And that was the end of the dream.

Apathy

Well, the State of the Union address was almost a week ago now, and I pretty much don't care anymore, so I'm not going to summarize my thoughts about it. If you are interested, you can read it here, at the White House website.

In other news... well there isn't really any other news. I've just been grinding away at school. I think this is the first semester where I've ever actually found my International Affairs classes to be interesting. Sure, I still feel like an idiot in them, but at least I'm an interested idiot.

I'm surprised that my favorite linguistics class this semester is the Sound Structures one. We are learning about all the different sounds that the human vocal tract is capable of uttering, and how to express those sounds using the International Phonetic Alphabet. We also have to do transcription labs on the computer where we hear recordings of something and have to transcribe them in IPA. It's interesting how much our spoken language differs from our written language sometimes and how the written form affects our perception of the spoken. Even in the transcription labs, I'll hear a sound in a word and think that I am hearing a "p" for example because that's how the word is spelled, but if I listen really carefully and look at the spectogram and stuff, it is actually more like a "b." Pretty interesting stuff. Now I find myself walking around listening to how I'm articulating my own words or how other people are articulating their words and sometimes walking down the sidewalk talking to myself repeating a word to try to figure out how it is articulated. Yeah, I'm pretty wierd like that.

I think my study of words class might get interesting once we start to actually get into word components, but so far we have just been talking about things like the history of English, how dictionaries are made, how to use dictionaries, and stuff.

State of the Union?

Seeing as how I am an International Affairs major and thus am supposed to be interested in politics and whatnot, I feel obligated to write something about my opinion of Bush's State of the Union address last night, but alas, I FORGOT to watch it! I was planning planning to watch it, but then I ended up tinkering with my bicycle trying to fix it so I could start riding it to school, then I fixed it and was so excited that I decided to take it for a test ride to school, and when I got there I realized that the speech had started 45 minutes ago! I was kind of bummed.

Anyway, I have only read through the first few paragraphs of the transcript so far so I am not really in a position yet to form any opinions about the speech. We did spend the whole 50 minutes talking about it in my American Foreign Policy class today though, so I do have a few preliminary thoughts/observations/opnions. I think I will hold on to these though and wait until I've read the entire transcript before I write about my views on it.



In the mean time, I took a short quiz to determine which Princess Bride charater I am, and to my delight I am Inigo Montoya.



Which Princess Bride Character are You?