“I’m guessing the 4x4 matrix is impossible, because otherwise you’d have to spend a long time doing it.”

Continuing Work-Study might be impossible.

Going to Suspicious of Whistlers for free pizza merits a callback?! Clearly I am an expert on intelligence.

Did you just say custard?
No, mustard. As in, we could relish some mustard when we catch up.

Okay I'm out like... like... we have both a banana and mozzarella cheese in the freezer.
Is that a metaphor or a statement of fact?

“Oedipus conjugated when he should have declined.”

I fear I hear Cat purr
And grow sadder
Since they, who sublime climb had, were
Upon fallen ladder.

For some reason my Away Message was not set yesterday, so all of you missed a bad pun. Similarly, my SI entries were overlooked this week. (Including one that could have been much funnier were I one who watches the OC.) So if you heard some bad joke coming from me this weekend, it wasn’t my fault- I swear it there was something in the French fries. (Like vodka, only without the alcohol.)

A man walks into a butcher shop and says to the butcher, "I bet you $5000 that you can't reach the meat on the top shelf". The butcher thinks for a second, then says, "Sorry, no, those steaks are too high.

“It’s an incentive to stay on top of things. You don’t know whether there’ll be a quiz. I don’t know whether there’ll be a quiz.”

In theory there is a 1/6 chance of having a pop quiz in CompSci. In practice, it’s a lot closer to 100%.

Google’s best advice regarding the current noxious influx of Spam-IM:
“One of these days, an attractive girl named Megan is going to im me and i'm not going to believe it because i'll just assume she's another one of these spam im things” [sic]

Four-square naturally evolves into dodgeball.

Wash U B (Team Korean Raw?) won 5 of our first 6 games- and then dropped 7 in a row to finish 5-8. At least we got propped as the funniest team there.

Highlights:
The appropriate incentive to discourage tardiness: having to take “The Judge”- a suitcase with 9 lights on the side that contains the buzzers, a battery, and a lot of wires- through security.

Fluxx. [It still might be my turn.]

Shuttle drivers and car rental agents will laugh at you if you try to take 9 people in 2 mid-sizeds.

Weakest Link. <[space]>

Ironically, one must be 19 to gamble in Canada.

RPS. [When it counted, 3-0.]

<sports bar trivia>
What kind of category is “Famous Roads”?
“How about the one Not Taken?”
“The Yellow Brick?”
Colossus of?
“...That’s the nerdiest thing I’ve heard all day.”

In an earlier Away Message I stated that
I am in a state that begins with M and is 8 letters long.

I think everyone who read that guessed wrong at least once, and most did so twice. For the record, there are 3 states {Maryland, Missouri, Michigan} that fit the criteria of beginning with M, being 8 letters long, and having me be in them while such an Away Message was displayed.

Appearing in Maryland while I was in Michigan was an SI entry attributed to Missouri which I composed in, er, Molorado. [Unprinted was Disquali-migration: Technical term for a Nannygate.]

I am in a state that begins with M and is 8 letters long.

I think my New Year’s resolution is to next year not have to make the New Year’s resolution to buy a calendar before New Year’s by buying a calendar before New Year’s. For the second consecutive year I am in mid-January scraping through leftovers trying to find a decent page-a-day calendar. Sure, they are discounted, but the saved money isn’t worth the hassle from limited selection.

(Finally decided on the Escher.)

“Catch-22” seemed more a collection of character sketches than an actual story, yet the further I read the more I became absorbed. There was an “Atlas Shrugged” moment, when like “Who is John Galt?” a phrase in the book transforms into an idea in the real world while still in the book. Nately’s whore’s kid sister reminded me of “Les Miserables”’s Cosette; I’m not sure what Rome was. Orr’s unexpected secret fit so perfectly [though I cannot remember what it reminded me of]. The narrative style convinces that Yossarian is insane, then that everyone is, and finally that Yossarian is the only sane one. But the biggest problem I had with “Catch-22” is that I thought “Caine Mutiny” better: the former says that war is crazy; the latter says why.

“The Dick Cheney Code” is more effective as a satire than a parody. I kept expecting the plot to perfectly parallel the source, but it instead diverged, probably to allow the political humor to be more one-sided. Most of the political jokes are the ubiquitous type; they are not as memorable as how effectively the book labels as bad a bestselling novel thought good. The book’s missed opportunities are equivalent to those of the Da Vinci Code.

And besides, the author also writes Latin humor books. And the local geography is too familiar.

Singled in this week’s SI. I’ll assume it was the best I submitted, since I don’t have access to my rejected entries.

For that has been the only critical disappointment with Vanessa: the lack of portability hence flexibility. Otherwise she truly has been fabulous. I’d forgotten how annoying it is to type on laptop’s keyboard, or to accidentally use the touchpad, or to try to angle the display. To say nothing of sharing.

The difficulty is somewhat ameliorated by the perfectly named external 80 GB offshoot or division of the main portion of a structure. Another contraption which happens to be a useful holiday gift.

Saw Wicker Park, having not given in despite my stalker having drugged me on the outbound flight, sabotaged the third in-flight movie on the return flight, and scratched tonight’s DVD. The random squeals emitted by the speakers were less painful than the dramatic irony the film is saturated with.

It is gratifying that he knows about the “used to be funnier” stage, and that it is so historically fundamental. For there is a cycle, one I have witnessed in others besides myself, going from introduction to discovery to reading to fanatic following to clipping columns to purchasing books to aforementioned realization. But following that final realization, after which the fanaticism leaves and one seeks humor elsewhere, there still remain too many uninitiated, who will not get some allusion, just waiting for their introduction into the greatest humor writer of the era.

Dave Barry Was Here

Focus Puller sounds like it should be a name. Like, “Focus Puller’s Day Off”.
Obscure cinematographic occupations were but one piece of trivia featured in the advertisements running too quickly in the Aspen theatre before coming attractions, so that it was a bit hard to snarkily comment upon them to BLS sitting beside me. The 2-3 seating arrangement was fortunate, since the family was seeing Meet the Fockers; for even though it was less painfully dramatically ironic than the original, with embarrassing replaced by embarrassed, the meta-pain was much worse.

It had nothing to do with the aborted nighttime stroll through Aspen.
The problem with a family ski vacation isn’t the ski part.

Begun watching Lost in addition to Alias, both of which resume tonight.

I may not be able to respect Michael Vartan any more- apparently he smokes...
That’s nothing; apparently Jennifer Garner has unprotected sex with Ben Affleck.
<winces> So that’s true? I saw it in some tabloid.
I read it on imdb. You know what happened the last time I disbelieved an imdb rumor about Jennifer Garner.

Claustrochronomentrophobia, the fear of closing walls and ticking clocks.

The underwhelming New Year’s celebration consisted of finally completely watching The Big Lebowski. It seemed overrated, ironically analogous to the title. There were a few moments, but it overall seemed to be missing something, probably plot, which made the relatively abrupt end feel anticlimactically unresolved.

I can’t help but think it was symbolically appropriate.

I’m beginning to slightly see a use for locative announcements, yet the banality of a fixed “munching on a rutabaga”, “studying rutabagas”, “rutabaging”, etc. seems too abhorrent. I suppose I could use my profile or restart a blog to continue the spirit of interest promised exactly 3 years ago, keeping the best of both worlds, but I feel too resistant for some reason. Or perhaps a second AIM account could provide the flexibility to be simultaneously boring and creative.

I don’t think I’ll do anything before I return to Vanessa, since my position is too stable and the connection too unstable.

A boring resolution for a boring New Year? Forget being resolute; I know not solution.

“Wouldn’t it be good if we could be together...”
Home, and I desperately need New Year’s plans. And Spring Break plans, for that matter, but first things first. If you're reading this and anywhere close to in town, IM/call.

[Awesome points if anyone parses the quoted lyrics.]
“...Take me away, / Take me far away from here...”

“Tomorrow's a day of mine / That you won't be in...”
May be nigh incommunicado until New Year’s Eve, but would love any contact from any set of friends, and especially regarding potential New Year’s plans. IM is certainly out; e-mail I’ll try to check but no guarantees; cell phone service???.

The first one since third grade without homework over it. I wish I didn’t have to leave, but there’s no reason to stay.
“Vacation / All I ever wanted / Vacation / Had to get away / Vacation / Meant to be spent alone...”

Finally watched Kill Bill 2. [Because there seriously isn’t anything better to do around here.] At one point I thought that there was absolutely no way that the plot could be resolved other than by deus ex machina, only to in astonishment realize halfway through the next chapter how plausibly it indeed was about to be. So until the end I held out an in retrospect unreasonable faith that, given a choice between contrived or realistic, there would be a realistic resolution; perhaps, as mentioned in a previous Away Message, in the manner in “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”.

I vent a silent prayer
Up endless stair:
Fall uncontrolled through soulless air,
And world, and I don't care.

“Too much poison come undone...”
I hate it when I have been enjoying a song only to discover that no, actually, it’s really about drugs.
And when it happens twice in one night.
“I don't think you're what you seem...”

You know you’ve switched from math to classics when someone asks what lim sup means and you immediately and only think of Pelops.

Does anyone know what the deal is with that massage room?
“I think that’s where they give massages...”
<laughter>
“...no, wait, I didn’t finish my sentence...”

“I was sitting on a plane next to a guy going to an anarchists’ convention in Ann Arbor...”
Wait, wait. How does someone organize an anarchists' convention?

There will likely be some kind of final Chanukkah celebration tonight. I’ll guess ~7:30 in Ursa’s Fireside. Bring your menorah, dreidel, gelt, candy canes…

My mad dreidel skills Night 7 (winning 75-10) compensate for my sucking at Candyland, which, in fairness, is likely genetic. I still maintain rock-paper-scissors is a game of total skill. And there is something to be said for the just introduced Guillotine’s killing French people.

Slivered pastry, oh so tasty,
Shrouding cream in candlelight:
Do delay tea, don't be hasty,
Come to kitchen in Forsyth.

With a very soft if rather large acrylic scarf having been abandoned for hours at Ursa’s unto closing time, I’ll try strangulation.

“Yet, another obvious truth is that there must be some catch, otherwise this would not be a studied problem.”

[This was not plagiarized from a stereotypically Duke profile.]

Sometimes it’s a miracle if the candles don’t stay lit.

Q: What do you tell a woman with 2 black eyes?
A: Nothing; for you've already told her twice of the inanity of using a bait and switch tactic to call together to a mandatory discussion allegedly on rape awareness but rather instead on semantics after 10pm on a busy night; thus it's not worth positing that humor, depending on an audience whose sense of humor will have been able to be judged from a period of cohabitation, consists of often defensively mechanistic reflections of observations of oddities of human existence, which in her particular case are based on a pun on connotative versus denotative meanings of "tell" and are only indirectly dependent on the scenario, in that easily identifiable circumstances better expose the double definition.

And who your worst sexual experience was with.

Metaanalytically, I suppose I would be least likely to burn down the dorm (or merely set off the smoke detectors) tomorrow, rather then tonight, for tomorrow’s action depends on a success tonight, and 2 vs. 3 candles seems insignificant compared to familiarity with the action. Although for determining the night most likely to burn down the dorm (or etc.) the additional candles would probably be most crucial, and accumulated carelessness from the evidently 7 arson-free nights could balance any initial inexperience.

I suppose it would indeed take a miracle to light 8 candles for 8 days.

[And it's not worth risking a mandatory Arson/Pyromania Awareness "floor program". Can't we go see a movie or go bowling or have psychological testing done on us like normal floors?]

Doubled SI. Rejecteds I also liked:
"Yasser Arafat Pronounced Dead in Paris" [2]
Linguists Unsurprised
Chirac Reveals Palestinian Leader's Secret Nickname: "Mortie"

"A Squeal of Approval for Avril Lavigne"
Teen Star Fit for Pigs

"Lindsay Lohan, Wilmer Valderrama Break Up"
Pair Considering Sprint, Cingular as Alternatives

"Iran Says It Will Suspend Uranium Program"
Secret Underground Cavern Will Hold Lofted Laboratory

"Schumer Will Not Run for N.Y. Governor"
Pataki's "Relay for Life" Team Left Undermanned

[likely unprintable]
"Coming of Age Takes on a New Meaning"
Beauty Left Unsatisfied

I am my own roommate.

“Excellentissimam virtutem, Crastine.”
“Party on, Caesar.”

“St. Louis, the Gateway to the West; and Baltimore… is in Maryland.”

Well played, Ken, a perfect replacement should Alex Trebek step down.

Continuing in the category “Other Things I Really Shouldn’t Care about This Week”:
These are collectively a crash, and should have a better plural form.
[What are rhinoceroses?]

The season’s first snow is always glorious, but especially following such a dreary rainy week. And yes, I know, it’s not the first snow; but why force it to count if no one else experienced it either?

Noon registration: Anyone considering sections of Diff.Eq.s, EComp, CompSci 2, or (less and less likely) Intro. to Linguistics? [Diff. Eq.s = 01 (10-11), EComp = 49 (2-3), CompSci 2 = C (4-5:30), Intro. to Linguistics = hahayeahno.]

3rd mistake:
3 <= 3
3|111
3! =/= 3

Nothing in this week’s SI for I completely misread the contest instructions; a particular shame since it ruined a joke I first attempted in 5th grade with an ideal setup, only to have been left waiting for another opportunity after mangling it. At least I am getting practice in faux-French collaboration.

‘Monsieur éléphant, while zee life is insignificant, as is zee living of it, and zee outcome of this situation may not be worth zee immediate intervention- mon dieu, who of us can ever tell?- it is not zee place of me to act decisively; but I will allow myself to say that zee ‘cowboy’’ (and by this he meant the Crocodile) ‘will bring about an unfavorable diplomatic isolation before you might say “qu'est-ce que c'est que cette petite tasse là qui j'ai prendre à ma tante de la bibliothèque, n'est-pas?”’

This is the way Tri-Colored-Python-Rock-Snakes always talk.

[And back through the bedroom window.]

Finding Neverland, despite adultery compounded with implications of pedophilia and drug usage, was a sadder “Shakespeare in Love” or “Shadowlands”. Perhaps it’s only a Washington thing, but the line “redskins are defeated” caused a wave of laughter to overwhelm an otherwise teary-eyed theatre. I still think the title would be better simply “Neverland”. Odd seeing Johnny Depp pretending to pretend to be a pirate.

The LinDanny bonding prior to returning from the east allowed chopstick usage to be instinctively taught. And you so owe me awesome points.
“...So we have time for a game?”

Virtually touring, for it is so transcendental.

At the annual Catchphrase game:
“Every woman has one… and she can never find anything in it…”
Someone did manage to guess “purse” before the first wave of laughter began to die.

[I will not even begin to guess why the computer was restarted. I hope no one tried to IM me...]

“Sweet dreams are made of this...”
With linen having not yet been praised, let me now extol the modal sheets, plush backrest, and luxurious egg crate which have allowed my dorm’s narrower bed to make even the diminished hours of sleep so luxuriously restful. And now at home I am able to sleep less tensely on eggshells.

[And also thankful for being able to get into Baskin-Robbins 5 minutes after they close.]

Not exactly sure how Away Messages will be maintained over Thanksgiving. If this is being displayed, likely not very well. Cell me.

[If this Away Message is being displayed I should be at home.

Although, since it means I'm away I suppose I could be out. It's still probably best to cell me. Or, since I'm allegedly home, call me here.

[Or, since I forgot how bad cell service is back home, perhaps IM would be better.]]

“Deseritur Cieros, linquunt Pthiotica Tempe
Crannonisque domos ac moenia Larisaea,
Pharsalum coeunt, Pharsalia tecta frequentant.
Rura colit nemo, mollescunt colla iuvencis,
non humilis curvis purgatur vinea rastris,
non glebam prono convellit vomere taurus,
non falx attenuat frondatorum arboris umbram,
squalida desertis rubigo infertur aratris.
Ipsius at sedes, quacumque opulenta recessit
regia, fulgenti splendent auro atque argento.”

Obviously it’s about a cow.

Singled in this week’s SI, though it is more of a halved I suppose; my actual submission proposed a 2π% sales tax. I think I impressed the Empress by parenthetically citing an entry I feared similar to my proposal of strictly enforced 11-20, 21-30, 31-40 etc. item lanes. Yay academic integrity.

For a great book ought to not be read but once. As stated in a previous Away Message:

Reductio ad absurdum:
Orwell/​Carroll/​Orwell/​Tolstoy/​Unknown/​Waller/​Dostoevsky/​Chaucer/​Dickens/​Dumas/​Dostoevsky/​Marx/​Dickens/​Mann/​Hubbard/​Frank/​Johnson/​Dante/​Cervantes/​Stevenson/​Stoker/​Bradbury/​Turgenev/​Friedan/​Hemingway/​Rand/​Shelley/​Steinbeck/​Dickens/​Fitzgerald/​Seuss/​Rowling/​Conrad/​Doyle/​Twain/​Hugo/​Dostoevsky/​Homer/​Freud/​Ellison/​Benchley/​Alcott/​Nabokov/​Golding/​Kafka/​Eliot/​Melville/​Homer/​Steinbeck/​Dickens/​Kerouac/​Kesey/​Darwin/​Woolf/​Milton/​Wilde/​Austen/​Plato/​Rushdie/​Hawthorne/​Austen/​Eliot/​Carson/​Lawrence/​Shikibu/​Dickens/​Lao-Tzu/​Hardy/​Dumas/​Nietzsche/​Lee/​Woolf/​Stevenson/​Joyce/​Susann/​Thoreau/​Tolstoy/​London/​Baum

The next time I take a computer science course I am taking it pass/fail.

Watching and sometimes botching, wondering what emazing radce is.

I think maybe we meant radishes? But we were really hungry and tired and sorta confused...

So miserable I can’t even begin to whine in self-pity. I really hope there wasn’t anything going on this week that depended on me being in a good mood.

I somehow forgot to link to <http://www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com>; I think I planned to use this for my Election Day Away Message. A pity, for what had once been a refreshingly novel outlook has regressed into a too common repetitive mantra.

To paraphrase Churchill: American democracy is the worst form of government but I’m voting for it anyway.

No one should be this happy from using the Mean Value Theorem.

You want to know but you don’t want to know but you want to know.
My life is an onion and it’s making me cry.

Team Superfrosh has retired undefeated, after having taken first in its only tournament, in which the earned gift certificates when divided among team members ironically led to its receiving the lowest prize/person of all competitors.

Whither the Poisonous Platypuses (which also Word prefers to Platypi)?

Snatch was like Big Trouble, only for a very different audience. And, um, better.

(And rabbis actually do discuss the etymology of virgin.)

Pecanny Pinery
Catherine and Arthur, twins,
Cush’ning those prostrate on
Knees that won’t bend,

Fetched cafeteria,
Aiding those ailing from
Hypoglycemia:
Truly a friend.

No, it’s Jupina.
(Though I still think I prefer Orangina for that type of drink.)

A: Because she’s not tall enough.
Q: What’s the other reason why Barbara Mikulski wouldn’t get this joke?

I discovered a couple weeks ago that "rather accurate" is an oxymoron, but I can't take advantage of this. It's so long after the 60 Minutes scandal that everyone else has forgotten about it, and with the timing wrong it’s not funny enough to try. I had hoped that CBS would have some election-night snafu that would give me an opportunity to share this gem, but alas. What can one do with expired humor?

So between losing (again) and finding my key I came across an empty new journal lying abandoned by a trashcan, which just had to be acquired. However, I’m not exactly sure what to do with the thing. Too perfectionistic to begin to commit irrevocably by staining the bright white pages, I can always just strew them through Away Messages if I do want to record my private thoughts.

Fiddler on the Roof : Latin :: Tevye’s 2 youngest daughters : 4th and 5th declensions

The kleptomania mentioned in an earlier Away Message referred to the Election Judge button I absconded with. I wanted some piece of memorabilia, and without any “I Voted” stickers, the only other thing to take was a fistful of chad, for St. Louis used *those* Votomatic voting machines.

And speaking of stealing and elections, I am even more in favor of Electronic Voting Machines after having served with an alternative. Granted, this is the extreme straw man; but chad aside, the ease of overvoting is ridiculous, and it is not possible for it to be easier to (alleged worst case situation) code false smart-cards than it is to Xerox any of the so many pieces of paper that must impossibly be obsessively tracked, to say nothing of how awful checking for write-ins is.

A huge rush at the morning with a couple spikes in the day, and 88-90% turnout- then practically no one for the final 2 hours? We kept awaiting the huge pre-closing evening rush, until 10 minutes before closing, when we realized it wasn’t happening. So what do poll workers do when it gets slow? Bingo!

There are 6 check-in judges {A-C, D-G, H-K, L-P, Q-S (me for half the day), T-Z}, each with a voter register. By 5 most pages were nearly full, many needing only one more voter. (Absentee balloted were free spaces.) There was a 4-way tie with 2 bingos each with 30 minutes left, and a voter total of 2399; yet no one else came except for a girl who ran up at 7:02 as I was removing the outer signs, who I forget to ask the last name of.

Yay truancy, yay kleptomania, and one more cheer for apathy.

[Okay, that is probably the most unclear way of stating what I'm feeling, but rather than rephrase I'll just refer to the I don't care sentiment.]

Lots of anecdotes, but so tired that I don’t care and so don’t care that I’m tired.

I don't suppose anyone planning to vote around lunchtime might accidentally leave a slice of pizza in the voting booth? Midafternoon snacks would be just as appreciated.

If it didn't violate the election law I must uphold I would also be receptive to arguments against writing in Jon Stewart for President. Because, honestly, I think I would trust him most to lead the country.

“Why can't we be ourselves like we were yesterday...”
Halloween was as New Year’s Eve was, except with BLT instead of da ba dee da ba daa.

According to Zeno of Elea, halfway done with my paper on Greek Mathematics.
“...the wisdom of a fool won't set you free...”

A bowdlerized single will at least end the SI drought, and considering how tasteless my entries were I suppose I should be grateful that I got anything. Forget deciding whether to chance submitting a misogynistic joke to the Empress; what does one do after she doesn’t get it and requests an explanation?

[Okay, Doughnut Guy seems doable. If anyone has something like an apron, give me a call.]

Any simple good last-minute ideas for a Halloween costume which aren’t based on Rocky Horror Picture Show?

Hold, the phone.

(Though maybe Carnahan and Gore then won't call back?)

Speaking of sweeps: can I pick a great week to stop rooting for the Red Sox? With the kindergarten era preference for the color red and the regular tickets to see the Orioles dominated having been long dissipated, was it so awful to desire a home team I could actually root for?

“Another life awaits me…”
7-hour bus rides are easily undertaken for the wonders of nostalgia with old friends moved away years ago. The reminiscing, the endless chess and card games, the admiration of feline antics, the lunches, the lazy weekends, the glimpsing of new lives with the photographing of old ones: random touches of the eternal past incidentally swept together.
“…for I am not your broom.”

I believe I might have just read the best book I have ever read: Umberto Eco’s “Baudolino”. It is the type of book that reading changes how one reads books. After every chapter, page, and paragraph I had to remind myself, convince myself, repeat to myself that it was not true, so that by the end of the novel I was questioning what truth itself was.

Like other Eco novels, however, it does have a steep period of struggle where the reader must invest himself until the can’t-put-it-down suddenly catches: ~250, I estimate.

Vander wasn't bilt in a day.

If Cardinals/Astros Game 7 didn’t have enough pressure, now the winner will take the World Series. The Astros offer Texas/Massachusetts in a contest appropriate enough for 2004; however, the Cardinals offer me a rootable home team. This is an easy call.

Hypothetically: an hour into a no-buyin poker tournament with about the initial 3250 remaining, you hold AT offsuit. Preflop the 50-100 blinds are raised 1500 by the left-hand player (who holds ~2000 more than you­), which you call after everyone else folds. Flop is 987 rainbow. How do you play?

Yesterday was brought to you by the phrase “Don’t Bother”. I’d explain further except cantaloupe and I’m still trying to decide what should be done with an $85 carabiner.

And speaking of apathy, while I still think that media will eventually merge into politics, even before any new paradigm I wonder why Jon Stewart does not run for office. Aside from being more qualified than, say, Schwarzenegger, he seems to want to make a difference, and most importantly realizes what must not be done better than any other political figure aside from basic voters.

Which is not to imply that an Apathy Club shouldn’t be formed, but it shouldn’t.

Apologies, but couldn't design entries: fourteen grueling harsh innings juxtaposed knowledge, lab, midterm. Now our perennial, quixotic rhyme: "Successor / Two-thousand-four / Undeserved vitriol / Whore"
XOXOXO
Yours zealously,

I finally saw the Tivoed third debate and despite all the reports feel that Kerry did badly, but after his successes in the first 2 debates it doesn't matter at all, and honestly, I don't care. I’m more concerned that Kerry doesn't seem to consider Missouri as a potential swing state anymore.

To sum up the debates:
Who won the first, What took the second, and I don't know the third.

Upward and downward, and downward and downward:
Ascended the arch, and the amazingly cheap markerboard fell down. Descended the arch, and the rehung markerboard broke as it fell again.

So do I just buy another cheap one, or try to salvage this one, or go without though I have been receiving messages? Or just never descend from my room?

Dearest dainty damsel Cat
Your name, it seems, does rhyme with Matt.
(I had to write a poem on that.)
Be back later for a chat.

[Yay bad poetry. It’s that kind of weekend.]

Pulp Fiction was interesting in a way I am still not sure how to otherwise describe. Perhaps contrarian, as if, at points when the audience would have an expectation the opposite would be done. Perhaps a thrill, in the way a roller coaster is a thrill ride: it is more entertaining the more queasy (physically and psychologically) an audience becomes?

1+1+2+1 actually came up in a problem during Calculus study session- but no one else had a Clue.

[And a Hessian matrix is an nxn array that fought for Britain.]

The difference between Christopher Walken and Christopher Reeve is the first guy isn't Reeve, and the second guy isn’t

Part 1 of a Catullus poem: Geography lesson.
Part 2 of a Catullus poem: My mistress is a slut.

[Final chance to find my key…]

"If his name were George, you'd capitalize it; his name is God, not George, so..."

[Still searching for my key, or $85, or my pride. If anyone has any clues *please* let me know.]

My overwhelming concern about my missing key has made it too hard to vanish for the weekend and spread the rumor that a Secret Service agent infiltrated the freshman class to provide an ultimate level of security for the debate.

[If anyone found a Wash U keychain with a room key on it *please* let me know.]
Likely losing one’s keys and thus $85 really dampens any political enthusiasm.

Blah blah Kerry dominates Bush but by less than in Debate 1 so it doesn’t matter that Kerry, having finally shaken the impression of a wishy-washy flip-flopping extreme liberal gave a wishy-washy flip-flopping extreme liberal answer to the abortion question since it’s a tie anyhow.

In a particularly ironic follow-up to 2000, I believe Bush just invented the Internets.

[If anyone found a Wash U keychain with a room key on it *please* let me know ASAP...]

Let reading the Republic be remembered and debating the Democrat be decisive.

Fahrenheit 9/11, seen with it being shown complimentarily, was the propaganda expected. Admittedly the technical quality was rather good; however this may be more of a drawback as the blatant illogic might seem harder to dismiss than that of, say, the lower quality Outfoxed. Buried beneath the preponderance of preposterousness slung throughout are a few potentially intriguing arguments [to be itemized later], half of which thus cannot be accepted without independent confirmation.

Danny’s Law of Work
The time when a task will be finished does not depend on the time the task was started.

Turkigy Armendy
Catherine Anne Karayan,
Farseeing Oracle,
Mistress of Pout,

Torn between many mates,
Auto-prognosticates:
Sibylline sylph with her
Love life in doubt.

At 8:44 pm (Central) on October 2, 2004, Claire Kaufman awoke.

“elatus est” seems like it would be translated as “he [Atticus] is happy”. Not “he is elated”, since the Latin teacher dislikes the mere substitution of English words for Latin. Considering that it was the final line of the final chapter of the final assignment before bed, it did not seem to be worth thinking further about.

However, as revealed to embarrassing laughter, “elatus” is from ex + latum = carried out. This makes more than a slight difference, as Atticus was, at that moment, dead. The fact that he would have been pleased with his funeral arrangements isn’t worth protesting.