A tongue-in-cheek clip for those of us who spent this Valentine's Day single, yet perfectly content!



Hehehe. Tim Minchin is awesome. If only he would do a U.S. tour...

I think it's about time for me to say goodbye to LiveJournal for a while. For six rather long and intermittent years, good 'ol lj has not been my constant companion and confessor. Instead, it's become an embarrassing repository of stunning amounts of immaturity. Erm...I've probably treated a sizable audience to a cringeworthy show here. Oops. Sorry.

If I do pick up lj again, it'll be sometime in the fall of next year. In the meantime, I'll be lurking online, just like I'm doing full-time in real life now. I may or may not resume blogging somewhere else, either out of boredom or a misguided attempt at self-improvement. Have fun, everyone!

I downright fail at using crutches. Also, upper body strength is helpful.

The chances that I'm getting a second injury before I go home are pretty high.

Oh, MIT.

I got wind of this from reddit, but it seems they've frozen the votes as the votes are clearly being messed around with. Hehe.

Moar fun facts: Did you know? Stephanie is known to have no soul, as evinced by her total lack of musical preferences. Some attribute this to the fact that she was brought up on a strict auditory diet consisting solely of classical music (enforced by her guardians until she was no longer capable of developing her own tastes). However, it is far more likely that she is simply too lazy to go through the trouble of obtaining any music on her own, other than the occasional random track that she yoinks from online or her friends.

My clothes smell like feet because some asshole decided to use the laundry machine to wash his most exquisitely fragrant shoes. (That, or the dryer.)

I wish the people on hall would giggle and shriek at less ear-piercing frequencies sometimes.

I hate life. And I hate you all.

Somebody give me this guy's address so I can mail him $50 to stop wrecking his vocal chords. Teehee.



Also, here's something similar that will probably appeal to a non-trivial superset of the people who enjoyed the above. (In other words, it's more awesome. :D)

The MIT campus is filled with unpleasant discontinuities, especially for someone who likes to use a friction-reduced form of transportation/recreation on occasion. There's one near building 26 that I particularly dislike. Grrrr! Either that, or I'm klutzier than most.

is my name in Arabic. (Can the encoding handle it?) Thanks, عبدالله.

This lake has balls.

"Department of Water and Power workers are emptying out bales of plastic balls in the Ivanhoe reservoir in Los Angeles on Monday, June 9, 2008. Department of Water and Power released about 400,000 black plastic 4-inch balls as the first installment of approximately 3 million to form a floating cover over 7 acres of the reservoir to protect the water from sunlight. When sunlight mixes with the bromide and chlorine in Ivanhoe's water, the carcinogen bromate can form." --Irfan Khan/AP

3 million! *glee* :3

It was a nice, blissful, escapist week while it lasted. But now I'm most assuredly back to my depressive funk. Welcome back to the real world, dahling.

bletchoo!

Central vacuuming: take one central heating/AC system. Remove furnace/condensor/kompressor/other functional units, and replace with super-powered suction device. Store and secure loose or lightweight objects, otherwise remove them from the house altogether (includes pets and small children). Seal all openings. Flip switch, and remain outdoors with pets and small children. Turn off central vacuum at your discretion, and re-enter your newly cleaned and spotless house.

There were obvious problems with the idea, but it was still one of my most treasured fantasies as a kid.

:)

Now that I'm home and have made my pilgrimage to the library, I've been reading voraciously for the last few hours, all while propped up on a large, fluffy Hello Kitty wedge pillow on my bed. First a dose of David Sedaris (I got to revisit SantaLand Diaries, heehee, which is made of pure awesome), then chewed through The Lovely Bones. Next will be Lolita, which I've wanted to read for far too long, and can conveniently do double duty as penance for not having kept in touch with Charles. Then a smooth transition into books catering to my recent interest in the Middle East: Reading Lolita in Tehran and Girls of Riyadh.

How I've missed having the leisure to plop down and read a good book. Or two. Or three or four or five.

Also, my left leg is no longer gimpy. Yey!

//edit: The Lovely Bones is such a beautiful, contemplative book. I'm on my third rereading of it in 24 hours; Lo (light of my life, fire of my loins) will have to wait a bit. Also, I realized all the books I've realized are "girly," with the exception of the David Sedaris shorts. I need more neutral reading material.

"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

Yes, Blanche, you're fucked for life.

Today, I was on the receiving end of two acts of random niceness from strangers.

It's things like these that give me hope for the human race, that we aren't biologically wired to be constantly fucking each other over. (<--Last word of the sentence possibly optional.) Maybe the rich and powerful will take their eyes off of becoming even richer and more powerful, and care for those at the bottom of the pyramid. Maybe society will stop oversexualizing people at ever-younger ages (I cringe at the thought of what I'll have to deal with as a parent), and we'll be able to come to terms with human sexuality in a healthy, sane way. Maybe people will be able to abandon centuries-old superstitions/traditions/prejudices, and stop bashing out each others' brains with rocks because he/she is a witch/adulterer/gay/etc. Maybe certain Americans will stop insisting that Obama is a Muslim who wants to be sworn in on the Koran. Maybe we will SHAVE the WHALES and attain WORLD PEAS!!!!

Nah, who am I kidding? We're all doomed. (Utopia = place that does not exist)

---

I am so fucked up. I can't do MIT properly; I can't even leave MIT properly. Packing seemed more like tossing cargo off a sinking ship than, well, packing.

This will be good for me: time away from MIT, stuck in the suburbs without a car and having only kept vaguely in contact with my friends - insufficient to justify randomly calling and asking to hang out (plus "ride plz", no less!). *insert guilt here* (Or do I just need a dose of self-confidence?) Which means I'll have plenty of time to mope around and think self-fulfilling thoughts on the shiteous excuse of a person I've become.

MV people, you know who you are: if I haven't been able to shore up the courage to call you by the time you read this, feel free to take the initiative. You will probably be showered with love and gratitude, and an invitation to hang out somewhere - seriously. 651-366-2573, if you don't have it already. (I'm not perturbed by stalkers. Prank callers, however, may be an entirely different issue.)

//edit: Okay, I'm feeling better now than when I wrote that. Implicit meaning of the entry: I just got home today. I'll be around for two weeks or so (until the 4th), and I'd love to meet up because I've missed everyone a lot. Also, I probably pulled my hamstring moving heavy boxes up/down stairs and across campus yesterday, so I'm limping a bit. Finally, congrats to Minn! (It feels odd that my mom went and I didn't, but of course, it wasn't physically possible...)

Whoops, I spoke too soon in my last entry. If I thought I was full of PHAIL yesterday, today's 6.003 exam has sunk me to such horrifying depths that my person alone cannot contain the PHAIL. I now ooze, no, gush, PHAIL from every pore and orifice. It has settled around me in an ominous, roiling, suffocating cloud that follows me wherever I go. Everything I touch is permanently marked with an ignominious stain. Even the little pulses of electromagnetic waves that bear any information I disseminate to the world carry the stamp of doom. Yeah, you've been infected. Sorry. *yadayada angst-a-thon*

Anyways!

In the process of trying to distract myself from the vast ocean of shame and sorrow that is slowly swallowing me up (please hurry up, Mr. Mental Health clinician), I just discovered massively multiplayer online Snake (so cool that I had to type out the whole thing). The abstract, inorganic graphics are a comforting escape from real life. I'll probably be using the handle CircuitSteph whenever I play, by the way. ^_^ Nom nom nom!

Most likely in a literal sense.

If I'd known two years ago what I'd be like today, I think I would've curled up in bed and gone into shock.

Somebody tell me I'm going to be alright.

Oh Colbert, I'll always adore you, heehee. And all I could think of every time the Korean guy was in the frame was, "His hair looks like mine did when it was short!" Enjoy your Colbert bump while it lasts, dear. ^^

(A little bit of background)

New Boston Apple Store Largest In the World.

Good for you. Really, good for you.

...

Also, my latest half-gallon of orange juice did not last even 24 hours. Aaaargh! Oh well, I promised to give him that liberty. But now MacCon is closed, and I'll be orange juice-deprived for the night. >_<