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.”