piglets and triplets

a new era dawns

2007-10-04T20:13:00.000-04:00

first there were three. now there are five. sometimes, the world seems like it's caving in, but you gotta keep pushing. pushing hard against the foam of the ceiling and ignoring the chuckie-cheese dolls screaming at you from the sidelines. who ate all the chocolate? where my apples at? these are the primary questions. the rudiments of life. the apples of life. see that synecphronesis? you'll notice that I've avoided all hiatus in this post. Ciao for now, but I'll be back quicker than you can say "Jimminy Cricket". All smiles (zortax).

too hot for tv

2006-12-07T01:23:00.000-05:00

for sheezy. charlie cheesy. you all missed me, i know. but now i'm back and you can breathe out deep and inhale the sweet crisp air. a long time has passed, i know, since we last talked, since we last crossed our blessed paths. but now, a new era of daily posting is here, wherewithall we can discover the secret passions of life together, familially.

She must be at Harvard

2006-11-03T21:36:00.000-05:00

uno momento

2006-09-08T15:57:00.000-04:00

non-kosher cannibalism? who comes up with this satay? the little red hen you say? went out to the Frick museum today, with my dadday. was funnay. saw some manet and a monet. i enjoy music by loeille (hint: pronounced with "ay" ending for extra fun!)(!)(?!) sittin' on mah couch, you know, just relaxing. i guess people are already moving in to school, like jill. she was busy with her super secret packing on wednesday. the whole world knows now that dr. octagon is the man. i cut out his picture from the weekend arts section of the nytimes. its going on my wall or something. speaking of newspapers, the ny sun is clearly better than the times. I am going to start subscribing. maybe, just maybe, if I convice a few more people, there will be a landslide and everyone will abandon the times in one fell swoop. believe, brother. cinna-man bandstand land. more like cinna-bun or cigga-weed. chinese checkers. im glad everyone is in the one-up club. i invited many more people, but it will just take time, i guess. thats the way these things are. people are so. timid. but i. know the truth. it will take a while and then. a landslide of people.

and then went down to the ship

2006-09-07T22:02:00.000-04:00

that's pretty crazy about lab rats. i prefer sugary things too. i guess we must share the same genetic code. did you know that humans share 99.9% of the same genetic code? hard to believe. that's why i don't. they be hating on my style. gotta counteract. new beginnings, fresh starts, facebook. mini feed. you know what i'm going to say about that. don't respond with a heckle, you sardine mustard face. tomorrow I may go to the Natural History Museum with my father. imagine that. I know I am. that '70s show marathons this weekend were good, exciting, fr-fr-fresh (friggity wee-bop). can't take the heat of my insane designs. collaborating and collapsing at the same time! oh no, refridgerated mushroom cauliflower soup is sprinkling my head with rainbow showers. too bad mohammed wasn't there to see it, but I did hit him up for a falafel with wally wall the viscious killer with his Black Magic. Yeah, you know, foo. packing good, going well enough, but soon in the high time the minions drone on and on, waiting for the solemn ending song to finish them away. activities for the new year, classes, these things are on my mind and interest me philosophically. what of the other things? social awkwardness from being ostracized in dewolfe? gatherings? sophomore get-togethers? what will I say in all of my grandiose toasts with cabernet savignon and colt 45 moustache top-touchery? tom foolery, y'all. just timberlake, antacid pills, caliber nitrate solution soluble enzymes. can't debilitate my rhymes. in rhythm as it flows like Greek and natural solo. mumbojimbo. been readin' poe short stories. they are good. I recommend "gold bug" and "x-ing a paragrab." both classic, one long one short, cut to the chase, mac daddy spleen. Bodies exhibit--too graphic for these virgin eyes. fetuses all dead and rubberized, nasty things like cancer and goiter. sexy chinamen with the flesh melted off and muscles preserved, holding american footballs. wonder what the world comes down to, huh? money and cash, hos, entrepreneurial skill sets and street smarts. little kids get swept away, wind swept into the sea. small fish small fries, they all wish they want to die. morbid thoughts? chicken salamander throat weasels, evil kneival, kneisel hall and books of self-mastery. jet li like a tiger makes you fearless even over death. I thought it was impossible, but in this human life we don't go on and on. one day perhaps I'll flit about along the tongues of men, my body ash and spirit wasted dust beneath the ground. sometimes it seems that we are all preoccupied with the individual, when really look at the ant and how the race lives on through all these years. when will we have time to procreate? master plans and fish farming all consume the expendable energies of a weary animal world. toil, toil, double double boil. trouble's hear and that's all I'll say. you know that you wish that you could that you might be one day a storyteller too? well, fiddle-de-doo.

From the NYTimes magazine

2006-09-02T21:10:00.000-04:00

Some interesting reading from the New York Times magazine, about some addiction research conducted by Bruce Alexander at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia (full article here):

Beginning in the late 1970's, Alexander and his team of researchers at Simon Fraser set out to study the role of our environment on addictive behavior. Until that point, most scientists studying addiction put rats in small, individual cages and watched as they eagerly guzzled drug-laced solutions and ignored water and food, sometimes dying in the process. This phenomenon was noted — first by researchers, then drug czars, then parents trying to keep their children off drugs — as proof of the inherently addictive quality of drugs and of the inevitable addiction of any human who used them. This was false, of course. Most people who use drugs don't become addicted.
So what made all those lab rats lose their minds? Bruce Alexander and his research team had a rather simple hypothesis: The rats had awful lives. They were stressed, lonely, bored and looking to self-medicate. To prove it, Alexander created a lab-rat heaven he called Rat Park. The 200-square-foot residence featured bright balls and tin cans to play with, painted creeks and trees to look at and plenty of room for mating and socializing.
Alexander took 16 lucky rats and plopped them into Rat Park, where they were offered water or a sweet, morphine-based cocktail (rats love sweets). Alexander offered the same two drinks to the control group of rats he left isolated in cages. The results? The rat-parkers were apparently having too much fun to bother with artificial highs, because they hardly touched the morphine solution, no matter how sweet Alexander and his colleagues made it. The isolated and arguably depressed rats, on the other hand, eagerly got high, drinking more than a dozen times the amount of the morphine solution as the rats in paradise.

The rest of the article is 7 pages of analysis on prevailing attitudes toward addiction as a disease, but the real question is -- when can I play in Rat Park?

Alright bishes... make me a sammich

2006-08-22T20:42:00.000-04:00

Hey you crazy fuckers. I know, I know. You're saying to yourself, "Is that really him?" ... Well yes it is. IT IS t3h PETRUSZ0rZ!!!!

Now that the wonderful intro is out of the way it's time to get to business. First order of business? I have slept for 4 hours in the past....let's see if today is Tuesday... is it Tuesday? Yeah... Saturday... to... yeah... carry the zero... no wait... two zeros and a monkey then divide by your mom... 53 hours. So basically this is going to be short and sweet or I'm going to mangle a kitten (but only if it's a vampire kitten). I'm coming up to Maine, Zach's lame-a-tude-ness of coming up later suits me just fine as I will be coming up either mighty late Sunday or fucking crazy ass early Monday (whatever works best for you, Jue) and if Zach wants to join me for a wonderful drive up then give me a ring-a-ding-ding baby, yeeeeaaaah ;-) and we'll work out the details.

PS: For those keeping score I've just finished my presentation at the lab and now will be cutting back hours in preparation for the return to school/sanity. It was ok but the essence of it was "I'm going to need to stick around for a while to actually finish up this stuff... and then I think I'll stay some more... oh yeah."

PPS: Ya momz!!!

another brick in the wall

2006-08-22T15:10:00.000-04:00

today, when i officially finished my course and got my sweet sweet greek t shirt which i designed, i felt so releived and relaxed. it was wonderful. i almost hit the cieling with happiness as i roamed nyc to various locations to do my collections. big shout out to my people at def jam, lady luck, method man, the whole JMT crew, you know how we do. ciao, folks.

excited?

2006-08-20T18:26:00.000-04:00

i was really excited when i saw that there were two comments on my latest post. but then i looked at them and saw that they were not posts but porn spam that got posted twice in a row. i feel like a sham. the only people who want to listen to me speak are actually lists of code for porn software. i guess its better than nobody.

and then...there's life

2006-08-16T17:02:00.000-04:00

of course, a thing is only dead when you call it dead. therefore, im revoking my previous comment. this blog is very much alive. As Frank Zappa says:

a moonbeam through the prune, in june,
reveals your chest.
I see your lovely beans
and in that magic go-kart, I bite your neck.
The cheese I have for you, my dear,
is real and very new.

What to make of this genius? Later on, Zappa explains that a real prune "knows no cheese" and is "taller or softer than any tree (or bush)." Zappa's manipulation reminds me of the poem, Dreamland, by edgar allan poe, which begins something like this:

by a route obscure and lonely
haunted by ill angels only
where an eidolon named Night
on a black throne reigns upright
...
from a wild weird clime that lieth sublime,
out of space--out of time.

later, Zappa tells us that "a prune isn't really a vegetable," which could be seen as an affirmation of the fact that the prune knows no cheese.

our blog is officially dead.

2006-08-08T17:59:00.000-04:00

obvi. whatev whatev i do what i want. ayathoi d' eridakrues avdres.

the garden of epehmeral delights

2006-08-07T17:23:00.000-04:00

The Ether, by Rae Armantrout

The room is ether-bright,
rigid,

adrift in words

or I am

an afterthought,
refusing to dissolve.

Nothing

to be taken away;
to be added.

______

What can words say?

Chaplain service at the checkout;

a desire
to be credible
across the straight.

A man and woman
finish sentences
and laugh.

Each sentence is both
an acquiescence
and a dismissal.

I took this baby from a New Yorker I found on the floor in the CUNY graduate center. it was from page 74 of the may 22, 2006 issue, in case any dedicated readers of this blog are interested. It's nice, I think. I don't really get it, but then again, I don't get a lot of things, so it doesn't seem that important. I found a great chinese restaurant today. It's called "five star chinese dining," so i knew it would be good even before i order my chicken and broccoli lo mein buffet lunch special. life in my greek course is winding down. its the final stretch, so im down for the count and all that. i've already picked out all my classes, so i can't procrastinate with that anymore. unless i hypothesize about classes i would pick if i were in another major. which I have also already done. who knows when our housing packets will come? i don't. i'm moving in on the 9th, most likely, so if anyone is reading this, living in mather, and very flexible about dates for movement, move in then so that i won't be alone and cold. i'm off to see a concert at avery fisher now. its the kremerata baltica with gidon kremer. it should be good, the program is mozart violin concertos 4 and 5, shostakovich string stuff, and a modern piece in homage to mozart. Did you know that he wrote his first opera when he was 12? pretty wild, huh? In other news, I can't read the newspaper anymore because it makes me sick. when i glance over the front page, i want to vomit. what the hell has happened to our country? our world? I guess its hard to notice these sorts of things when they slip by so slowly and subtly. also, ever wonder why our galaxy is called the milky way? well folks, its because galaxy comes from the greek word meaning "milk." in greek, its yalaktos (the y is a substitution for gamma, which has a "guh sound). My greek derivatives are slammin by now, so if you have any questions about obscure etymology or language developement down the windy chains of proto-indo-european, you can be sure to count on my completely useless and overtly unhelpful data bank of limited knowledge. the third stanza of the above poem, "i am," reminds me that I am tired and hungry. so i will make myself a cheese and turkey sandwich for the subway ride. the heat wave is pretty much over, but it was horrible while it lasted. power very nearly went out in the east side grids and my zone was actually damaged quite a bit. but, i don't know if its all this global warming shit. i mean, i accept all the global warming stuff, yada yada, but just because we have a heat wave doesn't mean that the apocalypse will be dawning on mankind in the next five years. i mean, weather is the most inexplicable and freakishly difficult things to predict. its so spontaneous and no one has yet come up with a legitimate explanation for weather patterns, except on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years. plus, it would be pretty damn sweet to have all that water in manhattan. i mean, i could swim to school and shit. it would be like water world. except without the failed budget. and kevin costner would be dead.

a new rising sun

2006-08-01T17:53:00.000-04:00

i unearthed this gem from a "new enlarged anthology" of Robert Frost's poems:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

at first glance, i thought this poem was utterly pessimistic. but after spending a couple of days, i'm not quite so sure. the cute rhymes and the terseness suggest a playfulness. the work is also from the section entitled "country things," including "the road not taken." obviously a more introspective period.

some food for thought

2006-07-31T18:27:00.000-04:00

"I don’t please all the men of Megara;
So what: not even Zeus is praised by all,
Whether he holds his rain or lets it fall."

"When the city is upset, Kurnos, keep calm.
And stay, as I do, on the middle road."

"Beside the punch-bowl, many are loyal friends,
But in important matters, they are few."

"Acted, I haven’t acted; finishing,
I’ve finished nothing. Nothing is complete
Though I’ve completed much; accomplishing,
I’ve not accomplished anything at all."

these are a few quotes from the elegies of the 6th century BC author, Theognis. he was a very troubled, paranoid, and sarcastic man, who was wise beyond his years. he also had a penchant for younger boys. i find the truth in these to be everlasting, and witty enough to keep with me as a stock phrase for general use. unfortunately, not much is really known about theognis. he was from megara, which was later an important ally to athens. that is all.

the deal about maine

2006-07-18T16:07:00.000-04:00

i have this thing the weekend on the 26th, but i'll probably come up after that, so i guess on monday the 28th or so?

Well then.

2006-07-17T17:47:00.000-04:00

Z: So I guess we don't really talk anymore.

P: No, I guess not.

Z: For example, we're not actually having this conversation right now.

P: Yeah, I guess not.

Z: You know what it is, it's this distance thing. It makes people lose touch.

J: I haven't lost my touch. My touch is still pure magic. It's gold. It's fuckin golden petroleum, that's how valuable it is, and from the looks of the news, it's getting even MORE valuable!

P: No I know what you mean, this is a regular long distance relationship now.

Z: Or, you know, a long distance threesome.

J: ...with some important differences, Z.

P: I don't see any.

L: In Dey Ase!

Well then.

Z: So, I was going to say something.

L: Oh, don't let me interrupt you. How's everyone doing?

J: Good good, and you L.? We could do some sort of bonding activity.

P: You mean like play drink-and-examine-the-color-of-my-stomach-contents? No, I don't think I'm gonna partake.

Z: I don't know what you're talking about.

L: We could go to my house for dinner.

P: We could go to Vegas.

Z: We could go to Disneyland.

P: We could go on a cruise.

Z: Or, yeah, you know, like a...

J: Like a what?

Z: Never mind.

L: Not a gay cruise though.

P: Right, right, not because we're bigots, but because we are not gay. A family cruise would be fine. Or a cruise for young people who have a diverse array of backgrounds, including ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. Into which I would fit as the Portuguese, straight type.

J: So you don't really talk like that in real life, do you?

P: No, I really don't.

J: Sorry. So I guess there's one question remaining.

Which is?

J: When are you guys coming to visit Maine?

spring chicken

2006-07-17T16:32:00.000-04:00

well, jumbalayos, its time to rev up the engines. or start them, i should say, as i cock my gun. the resonating click of the cock soars into the upper airs as the contestants ready themselves for--get this--competitive eating. joey "jaws" chestnut is the winner.

of course, in the above hypothetical situation, no animals were harmed in the thought production line. that is to say, no animals but myself and Keebler, the small elf-like rat who gnaws at my toenails during the night.

productively, i'll stop that train of thought and transfer at penn station to the 1 train because yesterday i went to 66th, which is a local stop. in other news, folks, stop the presses and start the pullers. jews and arabs don't like each other. so, what do we do when we don't like one another? we pulverize one another with the most up-to-date military technology that we can. unfortunately for the arabs, israel seems to be the bigger fish in the sea. my ultimate prediction is that israel engulfs the surrounding arab states in the flames of hell and decimates the deeply fragmented and weak "governments" that are really coverups for the elitist militant and fundamentalist organizations which actually control the "democracy" in these nations. Tough luck, palestine, but it looks like israel will fuck you up.

consequently to my prior statements, it is of no consequence to be. also, im pwning the program, which is good news for all you massive supporters out there. i really appreciate what you're doing. stay clean, boys and girls.

secondary, the pathways of insanity have begun to cloud my mind. there is no escape from this, and i feel the impending doom coming closer and closer.

this blog post was brought to you by the folks at Betty's Pizza Shack. Betty's Pizza Shack--serving millions of yuppie Lenox residents with esoteric surfing-inspired pizza slices that are dripping with soggy overheated cheese and bizarre flavor combinations. in other news, the T'ang quartet has left the BUTI program, but I did get to chat with Mr. Levine about his programming choices for the TMC chamber music concert, and Elliott Carter made a guest appearance for the performance of his song cycle based on Elizabeth Bishop's poetry. Long live Bev's! (now known and trade-mark copyrighted as SoCo).

today, i died

2006-07-12T08:32:00.000-04:00

syd barrett is gone, folks. the legendary founder and crazed member of the band Pink Floyd has passed away. his odd behavior and constant drug use forced the band to kick him out in its earlier days, but his later solo albums and his influence on the rock'n roll stage show will be testatements to whatever brilliance lay lurking in his deranged mind. I take this moment to remind you of what the world was like when syd barrett was alive, and what sorts of issues he was revolting against. Perhaps we can all learn about ourselves through a contemplation of this man. except for the daily LSD use and psychosis.

two words, wang

2006-07-09T12:22:00.000-04:00

national vanguardb

This is frightening

2006-07-09T11:36:00.000-04:00

There are some who claim that the United States in its war on terror has reduced itself to the moral equivalent of the fundamentalists it claims to oppose. I've always disagreed with this viewpoint, if only because there is a much more pluralist element in the Western powers' claims, of upholding democracy, freedom, and whatnot. Thus, something like this in the news ought to give us all serious pause. This comes on the tail of the last several months of reporting of the pressures that army recruiters are facing, and the measures they take to fill quotas. Now, one consequence is that neo-nazis and white supremacists have started infiltrating the ranks of the U.S. armed forces. I suspect that these people are being kept in the army out of necessity, but probably also because they make for more zealous, effective soldiers:

The report quotes Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator, saying, "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members."

The article also quotes a white supremacist site, just in case the sheer madness of racism has worn off for anyone today:

Light infantry is your branch of choice because the coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be very much an infantryman's war...It will be house-to-house, neighborhood-by-neighborhood until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and 'cleansed.'

It continues:

As a professional soldier, my goal is to fill the ranks of the United States Army with skinheads. As street brawlers, you will be useless in the coming race war. As trained infantrymen, you will join the ranks of the Aryan warrior brotherhood.

It is interesting to me how something like this not only highlights the issues that face our society, but how by way of analogy, adds a more tangible element to the idea of a militant fundamentalist. If you consider this guy the American version of a militant fanatic, then the depth of the problem facing the world as a whole really comes into perspective.

Another gem from the interworldweb

2006-07-07T15:49:00.000-04:00

This is the sort of thing which upon first reading, appears to be some sort of front for propagandist religion, then appears to be a joke, then appears to fly in the face of your naive assumption that the advancement of technology, social mores, and general common sense had made this type of thing obselete: www.rational.org.

I'm hard pressed to explain what is happening here. I don't want to rule out the possibility that it's a joke, but then again, I'm usually the one who laughs at wildly inappropriate moments in a room of pathologically humorless people, and my impulse to laugh here could just be more out of fear than anything. This, for example, could have come straight from an SNL skit:

If you are a "secret sexer," pursuing forbidden fruit against your own better judgment, you are likely in the grip of your Sex Beast®, a mindless desire for erotic pleasures. If you pursue illegal pleasures, your Sex Beast® wants you to believe that you are out of control, that there is no cure for your obsession, and that you are doomed to keep rolling the dice until the worst happens. Your Sex Beast® wants you to think there's something wrong with you...

And so on and so forth. Is it really necessary (read: legal) to register a trademark that is not only an inane mischaracterization of the human libido but which also rests on a profound misunderstanding of advances in neuroscience for the latter half of the twentieth century?

Oh, there's more where that came from:

There is nothing in your past, in your genes, in your brain, or in your personality that compels you to drink or use. Using is voluntary, purposeful behavior.

If you find yourself becoming convinced by the (lack of) reasoning in this, please go back and read this article that I linked to several days ago.

I guess more frustrating to me is the fact that we can't really do more than laugh at this or pronounce it below our reasoning powers to debunk. The existence of these websites (and the people who write them) is a waste of humanity's collective resources and
an impediment to social progress.

the answer is...

2006-07-06T18:19:00.000-04:00

8436.

(i counted in greek)

---]ho aetos[---

Since we mentioned her name...

2006-07-06T14:56:00.000-04:00

Margaret has 4 different kinds of pants, 7 tops, 6 necklaces, and 57 pairs of shoes. Each article of clothing can be worn in any combination with any other article, except for one necklace which can only be worn with 2 of the tops. If on any given day she wears an outfit containing one of each type of clothing or accessory, how many outfits does she have to choose from?

Pictures!

things swimmingly (through a glass)

2006-07-06T08:38:00.000-04:00

Necessary precautions must always be observed. Not wanting to slip into being a rigid iconodule, I have mustered up what is left of my strength to write this seemingly unfitting blog post. Last night, I began to watch Seinfeld on NBC. Having become tired and languid from George's sycophantic humor, I lapsed into channel-flipping mode, which left me watching a vaguely suspensful horror film from the 1980's. I knew that if I were to watch this movie, I would be scared and have trouble sleeping. My intuitions kicked in and I flipped back to Seinfeld. Though I had returned to the home station, where it was safe, my mind began to play games with me. Margaret (my evil pseudo demon conscious) leapt into the foreground of my lobes and bgan to taunt me. Her evil ululations resounded within the walls of my brain and I knew that insanity was just around the corner. I began to flip back and forth, the shows became a blur. Suddenly, the Television exploded in a burst of flames. I stared in horror as the souls of my favorite characters drifted from the blazing yellows and oranges. Wisps of smoke and comedy saturated my sallowed carpets, and shades of drama darkened my white walls. Extinguishing the fire with the existential heaviness of my predicament, I whisked myself away into dreams and darkness only to realize how futile my attempts would be. Turning every few minutes to get a cold, refreshing patch of pillow, the covers swamped me like a night's heavy invasion. I was caught, twisting in the cotton fibers my mother bought in 1989. My room began to turn itself against me. Objects became hazardous and frightening. All around, the laughter of my Television. It was like a sick joke.

This morning I have obviously awoken. Prevailing through the consequence, I submit to you my tale. Though it is woefully uninteresting and rather unintensive, I have realized that style rather than essence is the matter keeping things afloat, and have therefore realigned my verbal strategy to fit the model. All musings aside, the drawers in my parent's room still stare at me inquisitevly.

THe precautions that were aforementioned in paragraph one still hold. I'm putting mental barriers and restrictions on myself to discipline and cultivate every last drop of elegance and skill that pervades the walls of my body. I want to pour out energy from my flesh and feel it resonate willingly around my being. The power of knowledge is underestimated. Not of course, for traditional and cliche reasons. To each his own is my motto, and I stick by the well-charted courses of history for this one. My beliefs and life patterns are perhaps a bit too traditional. I have begun an intense cycle of self-discipline and concentration which has manifested itself positively in my studies and mental well-being. However, I am already perceiving the negative effects upon the previously cherished youthful arrogance and boyish humor. Unfortunately, as time stretches itself across the shores of fate, one must realize that all things are finite, in fact, and that the infinite is only an impression within the mind. Perhaps this is why we struggle with the world. To understand and live by its undeniably simple rules that have become mutated and enriched by countless generations of thinkers who impose rather than listen. Thucydides has said some interesting words on the subject, and I defer to him in these cirumstances:

"I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire, and never more so than by your present change of mind in the matter of Mitylene. Fears or plots being unknown to you in your daily relations with each other, you feel just the same with regard to your allies, and never reflect that the mistakes into which you may be led by listening to their appeals, or by giving way to your own compassion, are full of danger to yourselves, and bring you no thanks for your weakness from your allies; entirely forgetting that your empire is a despotism and your subjects disaffected conspirators, whose obedience is ensured not by your suicidal concessions, but by the superiority given you by your own strength and not their loyalty. The most alarming feature in the case is the constant change of measures with which we appear to be threatened, and our seeming ignorance of the fact that bad laws which are never changed are better for a city than good ones that have no authority; that unlearned loyalty is more serviceable than quick-witted insubordination; and that ordinary men usually manage public affairs better than their more gifted fellows. The latter are always wanting to appear wiser than the laws, and to overrule every proposition brought forward, thinking that they cannot show their wit in more important matters, and by such behaviour too often ruin their country; while those who mistrust their own cleverness are content to be less learned than the laws, and less able to pick holes in the speech of a good speaker; and being fair judges rather than rival athletes, generally conduct affairs successfully. These we ought to imitate, instead of being led on by cleverness and intellectual rivalry to advise your people against our real opinions."

Thucydides quotes Cleon, son of Cleaenetus here. Although Cleon had previously suggested putting the whole group of Mitylenes to death because they had revolted and therefore renounced the bonds of kinship and allegiance dictated by the alliances between Athens and Mitylene, his words in this passage could not be truer. I would especially pay attention to the last few lines, where he discusses government and how it is best utilized once it has been established. Obviously, Cleon writes with the knowledge of Plato's failed excursions to Syracuse to form his "Republic," and is also cognizent of the shortcomings of the Greeks in their own domain. I leave you all to view these words as you will and to cherish the thought of the man who wrote them. There are, of course, many other wonderful passages from Thucydides' history. This section comes from Book III. For those wandering souls, I will push a few questions further here. At what point is the government solid enough for the people to be in control? How can a system be created where the people can be in control? What sort of legal limitations must be imposed to ensure the proper treatment of the nation? Most importantly, how can we as intelligent people, begin to apply such ancient ideas to our own faltering government? Or, is it perhaps too late?

Switching seats on the Titanic

2006-07-05T21:49:00.000-04:00

Although I don't use the phrase in the sense that relapsing drug addicts who go from one drug to another use the phrase, I thought it might be a fitting description for a common feeling we all have. It's the unfortunate fact that, after having escaped the shackles of our high school selves we find the erstwhile restraints still present, in a truer, more insidious form. It's the moment when, after having blamed your unhappiness, failure, myriad self-loathings -- replace with less dramatic, more realistic, subtle, complex, personalized psychological issues here -- on something else, that something disappears and you no longer have a scapegoat but are nevertheless still crippled. Then you say to yourself: Oh! I was supposed to DO something about this, take a bite out of the self-improvement pie and see the great American daydream with my own eyes. Instead the only real solution is to scuttle your blasted idea of happiness and if James Cameron were to describe you with a CGI animation, you'd be one of those ant-people sliding down the deck of a big steel ship, bumping into rivets and steel pipes and all, before it breaks in half and slips unceremoniously into a big salty puddle.

Who am I talking about? Myself? The other members of the blog, some of whom may or may not use paragraphs (hint hint)? No one really. I wasn't intending to talk about this touchy feely stuff at all.

In fact, I was compelled to donate a few words only out of indebtness to the July 4th Blogyourfeelings cause. Apparently in this country one of the most important sources of introspection is the wonderful reverie induced by the inhalation of the remnants of colorful chemical bombs. I had a firework when I was 5, it was this plastic cannonball of sorts, pretty impressive size for a pair of small hands like mine, and clearly too complex for my equally small brain to handle. I put it in upside down in the launching tube and put a crater in the pavement outside my grandfather's apartment complex.

So what was I thinking about amid the satisfying thuds and pops of Freedom's birthday? Well, the cruel fate of males who ponder excessively about the difference between sex, beauty, and love, and even though sexy isn't even the same part of speech as love the two still manage to pop into my head, both of them, at inopportune moments for the appreciation of either. And what is the evolutionary purpose of those people who can be labeled emphatically, certifiably sexy that to ponder them actually begs the question of why they aren't emphatically, certifiably lovely as well, although that's really an easy question to answer. Not so is the existence of those for whom sexy is a crass understatement but their presence in fact transcends your ability to have an infatuation for them per se, but cause you to speculate on the nature of your faculties of love and aesthetic appraisal in general.

And if you think I'm talking about anyone in particular, yes, Ms. Portman, your ring is on layaway.

the fourth

2006-07-04T22:41:00.000-04:00

of july has come and gone, once and again. i took this year's ceremonies to reflect with one of my closest friends and his father. we were down by the river, where you can not only see the fireworks, but they resonate within your very flesh. i thought about our country's founding, about patriotism and the drive to succeed and survive. i thought about people whose lives are cut short for a cause and wondered if anything is really worth dying for. i thought about times of the past. when you go away and come back, nothing is ever the same or, more precisely, the way you thought you would like it to be. you accept and move on, letting the pieces of your life settle into whatever place they do. i thought about the future, years and days to come. i thought about the people i've known who are now ghosts, mere remnants or shards of my past. i see them every now and then, they float in and out of my head and the real world, when i catch them at a theater or the deli. their lives are always the same in my mind, they never seem to change. we reminisce about the good and bad alike because we aren't fond of the memories, but of nostalgia itself. i think that's because looking back is a way of reaffirming the fact that we are existing in the present. the skies light up with a couple screaming rockets, and there was a japanese family to my right. her six-year-old eyes were glued to the booms from over the river, and as i watched her delight and giggle at the oos and aahs of her japanese grandparents, life abruptly became alarmingly simple. it was a feeling of timelessness and innocence like when you have your first piece of cake or ice cream and it dribbles down your shirt. or when you buy something with your own money for the first time. like a first kiss. the air was filled with smoke and memory, and for all the sounds around me, it was the first time in a long time that my head was filled with silence. not the kind of silence you hear when you're alone at night or a loud noise dies down. its the inner peacefulness of the sunset when you're walking along a familiar road into a territory you thought you knew once before. you don't recognize the scenery, but you are almost certain you've been there before, like life is pulling together all of its forces into one central pathway for you. i have radical ideas about societies and the worth of human life. however, when the fireworks were done (i couldn't tell if it was the beer or the zen) i felt like i was on another plane. certain things run over and over in your mind. they don't have to make sense, but when you get into one cycle, others follow. today, i broke the cycle of monotonous thought and its like an avalanche for my mind. this was the first day, in a long time, when i felt free and unrestrained. i was at the top of my game when i went to a friend's fourth of july party, and i reaped the rewards. i had mixed feelings about much of my past when i went to a movie with old friends on monday, and other experiences that are all bleeding together as each day ticks by. im proud on this fourth of july to celebrate this nation's independance. i can't tell if its my waning nostalgic touch or the bittersweetness of could-have-beens that are never more, but today, i was proud to be an american citizen.

da forf

2006-07-03T17:40:00.000-04:00

mad reps to the peeps for real, da forf is heeyah. no wut i sayin? fo real, shiz sun, cuz u a copout, damn! greek has made me insane. all day, little voices laugh at me inside my head and when i start to laugh back, everyone in class looks at me and starts whispering behind my back. i get so angry that i rip my clothes off and turn not green, but pale salmon, which is the true color of my soul. then i systematically destroy every one of them until the chalkboard is sticky with shredded body and gore. the floor is warm with blood. blood is the color of red. red is on the american flag. america is a nation. so is china. that means that tomorrow, china will crumble into my fist pockets. pockets rhyme with rockets, which are used in the air. birds fly in the air too, which rhymes with shoe. obviously, china shoe, then what comes next? unsolvable riddle, you may ask? paradigm, tryptophan, misogonous chicken broth. stocky bone beams, radiant flabbergastums. im going to some forf pahties tomorrow, so ill represent all you piggy trippies (J, P, where you be?) in other news, tomorrows paper will hold an obituary for the old zachary, he lost his mind and soul and is being reborn again as a fiery angel of fury and inconceivable innocence, like jesus and matt damon combined. watch out for the potholes, kids, and always remember to brush your teeth. this is the mad capper signing off, in what may be his final appearance yet. the shapeshifter, the dashing emollient, the once and future fading star, its ztax the irrevocable idiot! (capcom reserves all rights to this character and the aforementioned sickly adjectives that go with him. parts must be assembled. batteries not included.)

here's a bit of latin and greek for all you folks who care. an imaginary remark by brutus in greek after caesar's famous line.

Caesar: et tu, brute
Brutus: w Caesar, on autos aychas. etuthayti nun.

a few things

2006-06-27T08:15:00.000-04:00

head in a basket. more like casket. toe to toe. rascals in the market. sparks. you can call me marx. parasol. carousel. caramel, baskin robbins. your whole crew is ice cream fudge.

Myxomatosis is way cooler

2006-06-26T14:49:00.000-04:00

than papillomatosis, which is when warts grow on vaginas. Happily enough, I now know the cellular characteristics and diagnostic criteria of the latter, and my true vocation of going to Australia and chasing delirious rabbits with big nets and watching their brains eat themselves from the inside of their heads out has, alas, been put on hold. I can also look up your pap smear results and use those records, dating back in a span of 3 years beginning in 1999, in clever machinations devised to the betterment of humanity, or more pertinently, to the raping and pillaging thereof.

Speak of the devil, or rather, papillomatosis, in other (old) news, the HPV vaccine has finally been approved, despite the religious right lobbying against its adoption under the argument that preventing cervical cancer will induce teenage girls to go into a state of wild promiscuous sexual frenzy. Sorry my Christian friends, we all know there are only two things in the universe capable of such delightful effects, El Diablo himself, and the nuclear sex god whose post is displayed below mine. Go to some parties for me. Maine is rather dry.

I spent about 20 hours this weekend finding out facts like how John Scheick of Clifton, Maine, is either 58 or 97 years old, lives in a fairly affluent neighborhood near a body of water and is a less likely candidate for being the father of a boy who attends John Bapst high school with the same last name than B & S E Scheick, who live in Bangor along a series of sub-urban developments that generally show good promise for overbearing parents likely to send their kids to summer courses in SAT prep.

If you didn't bother to read that last sentence, I looked up 500 yearbook names on whitepages.com to find the addresses of the kids' parents. Who knew one could also use google maps and another public directory service to find the location and age of the intended targets. Now all we need are public databases for favorite color, bra size, and right handedness and we'll be able to...I dunno, find true love.

Then I stayed up until 2:30 AM stuffing envelopes and completing what had basically amounted to about a 18 hour work day. Hope your recruiting is going more smoothly, P.

that is so

2006-06-22T17:04:00.000-04:00

disgusting, jue. the last comment, i mean.

Well alright, since you mentioned it...

2006-06-22T15:35:00.000-04:00

I'll write something. I remember too when I had days where there was a space of time between classes, work and sleep when I wasn't doing any of those things, a sort of cooling off period where I get to uncoil my wound-up mind from the million things it had to process. Where is the 2 hour uncoiling mode now? People in China never had one, and I don't ever seem to get enough sleep even though I'm on a regular schedule and go to bed pathetically early by my prior standards from the school year. Watch out for malnutrition kids! Skip breakfast and you are skipping out on your well-being and ability to stay awake between 2 and 4 pm, which is usually when the head pathologist decides to come in and interrupt you from your hard work on youtube.com and quizzes you on the names of growth abnormalities in lung tissue, followed by a passionate dissertation on the life of Hector Berlioz the innovative musical genius, except all you want him to do is admit that Berlioz was a nut and that Beethoven was better anyway. Also, why is he so happy that Berlioz quit medicine to pursue music? Does he think this is a good teaching example?

Saw a 7-year old get part of his skull back today. Too bad he won't also be getting back his faculties of speech.

inane

2006-06-22T08:42:00.000-04:00

he lives above the down below
twitching with the summer glow
a second spare avails him not
he wants to be a greek hero

he studies in the OCT
decoding wordy mystery
a dewy mist elates his eyes
jazzing up eternity

forever must the darkness sleep
the bitter universe's sweep
where fearsome foes enumerate
and malice marvelous does creep.

remember when...

2006-06-22T08:35:00.000-04:00

we all used to use the blog? to communicate? regularly? also, next year, are we going to change the name/url address to conform to our new room? we should have a subcommittee meet on that issue.

well its official

2006-06-20T16:39:00.000-04:00

greek is the hardest thing i've ever done. last night was a record 4.5 hours spend on homework. this will kill me.

the first day

2006-06-12T16:47:00.000-04:00

well, boys and girls, i did indeed survive the first day of school. my greek program is very intensive. by intensive i mean crazy. its about 6-7 hours of greek in class per day and about 3 hours of homework. we have four hour exams on monday. quizzes and drills every morning for 2 hours. and daily assignments to hand in. we also have review sessions on sunday. all professors are on call at all hours of the day and night. that should give you an idea of what intensive means. each day we cover approximately a week's worth of material. i think im going to go insane and be burned out for the start of real school (college) in the fall.

in other news, i could be better but, hey, thats life right? i guess. Usuaully, when im not doing greek, a general anesthesia of feeling runs through my veins. i think im becoming numb to humans. there were a bunch of nice kids in my program, but i didn't start much up with them, i sort of just watched the moments pass by. i feel surreal, i guess im missing certain things, like college for example. but i still wake up eveyr morning with a knot in my stomach, and its followed by this sort of weird emptiness of hollowness that pervades all my being throughout the day. During classes today, I felt a little like a zombie.

I lost my Hepatitis A vaccine record

2006-06-06T21:08:00.000-04:00

which apparently isn't even needed to go into the OR. However, that has not prevented the surgeons from eluding us at every possibility, leaving one last crucial hole in a horrible mess of paperwork that started the day I came in and won't end until it's too late for us to go observe operations anyway. The fifty bucks I spent at the immunization clinic probably could have been put to better use, although I didn't actually pay for that, but now maybe I should go to Honduras, because I hear that that requires a Hep A vaccine so that means that I basically get $50 off a trip there. Perfect. I wonder how much plane tickets to South America cost?

Another autopsy today. Fetopsy, actually. I'll let you guess what that is and spare you the details. Suffice it to say, one of the interns fled the morgue once we started on the scalp. Last autopsy, on the adult, she simply complained of being hungry the whole time.

Should I feel as numb to this as I am? I suppose I had a slight twinge go up my spine at key moments, key as a relative term, I suppose the moments where in a manner of speaking, a world is laid bare before you, the golden city emerges from the parting valley walls of a forbidden mountain pass, the monuments of revelation come out from behind the dissipating mist, although the more accurate cinematic metaphor would be the scene in Independence day where the scientist makes the first incision onto the very alienesque alien who is curled up in a fetal position inside his biomechanical super hyper tech suit and the tentacles curl up and all hell breaks loose.

What I'm actually saying is that nothing exciting like that happened. Not on the table, not in the room, not in the building or in that little dead head that was being cut into or the less (more?) than dead head perched on my shoulders waiting for a life lesson every time it gave the command to the other limbs to extend a finger and touch the liver, or when it asked the question of where to find the gallbladder or the caudal lobe and the same head that confuses the hypothalamus with the thyroid gland and secretly basks in the approval of getting obscure medical terminology correct as if that provides verification of the meaning of riturals. The meaning of routines, of saving a life here or one there, in the clinic or on the surgical bench, with an astute diagnosis or the cut of a laser, the question of what constitutes a life saved and who gets credit for what, where, and which is the expendable link in the chain of need and dependence, the doctor or the nurse, or the dosimetrist or the radiologist, maybe the clerk, the security guard, the politician?

I'm not bothered. I write like I was. I'm more bothered that I'm not bothered than I'm actually bothered. And I'm more concerned about my general lack of concern of anything when it happens, than the things itself. Medicine is pragmatic, unsentimental, but not out of any lack of feeling -- compassion drives it, but the practice of it is the result of intense calculation and triage. I say this with the most pronounced aversion to any mystical or spiritual interpretations, but is a life saved a life redeemed? Should it be the call of the doctor to not only give back heartbeats, but also to uphold a civic and social responsibility, one that goes beyond just the physical well-being of patients, but their lives' meanings too?

a play on catullus

2006-06-06T20:09:00.000-04:00

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
sum scio, sed etiam sentio et excrucior.

god that was long

2006-06-06T11:42:00.000-04:00

this is short.

just kidding. whos up for a musing on allah? perhaps coming attractions voting next week--solidarity. i miss the arch bishop of dooningham. rotting away. gemstones, flinstones, you could call me fred. i'm dead to the matrix world of immortalities. peace be with you. (pbwu). stfu. now thats talking, leet, meet my leet speak, freak. (geek). abundant philosophical quandrifications, unbelievingalities. making up words is so much fjork. I've blonked it to myself again. Repressingly.

So, you think you can battle. Yeah? Well, you probably can. That make you feel better? probably it did.

musings on the torah

2006-06-06T11:28:00.000-04:00

to quell my anxieties at missing old, dear harvard, i have taken to a study of the torah. partially in hebrew. it is, in fact, quite interesting. more interesting than i originally thought, because there are some interesting notions in genesis that are not often explored in mainstream thought. for instance, Adam is not the first man created. He is merely the first servant of god created. god creates him in order to till the earth of the garden of eden. he is essentially a human extension of god, a servant on earth. It is interesting that the torah mentions that both adam and other men and women live on earth at the same time. this is further evidenced later on when Seth and the sons of Adam take beautiful women for their wives. These women mysteriously appear on earth, they are not part of God's divine lineage. Another interesting fact is how scared God becomes when Adam eats from the tree of knowledge. God fears adam will eat from the tree of life and will become eternal, like God himself. God sends him out before he can do this. Is God's action the result of a power struggle? Is he afriad Adam will usurp him? It seems that we have the case of a Man-Fearing God. There are other smaller inconsistencies within the Torah. Talmudic scholars have commentated on the fact that the first explanation of the creation (the 7 day theory) is actually written in a different style than the shorter creation theory which occurs in 2.4a of Genesis. Since ancient times, these scholars have postulated that there are two distinct theories of God's creation, and hence two theories of how man came into being. Modern cross-referncing of greek and aramaic texts has supported these conjectures. I intend to read more of the Torah and study some of the other philospohical issues that come up.

On another note, I miss Harvard a lot, as you will have read above (if you've read it at all). Hopefully, this blog will remain a way for us to stay in contact (I have been pooping, thank you Pedro). I don't trust anyone, let alone myself, which is why I will delete this post after I make it. In fact, I'm deleting it right now. I miss all of you guys, especially our dearly beloved raccoon ladies (i agree, sea lions are way more relatable).

in other news, i read an article explaining that in a few short years, invisibility cloaks like those in harry potter may in fact become a reality. scientists are working on them right now, as we speak, in secret, invisible laboratories. I made a joke just there, but I'm not actually joking about the entire subject. It's true. Word. Anyway, think about the implications! Next year, I'll use one of the prototypes to check out all the freshman girls when they shower. Yeaaah, boy! Thats actually sick. I'm contemplating deleting that, but I know its what you all like to hear, so I'll keep it. Actually, I think I'll delete it.

Today I committed the perfect crime. And since I acted alone, I was my only accomplice. But the perfect crime has no accomplices. I can't trust anyone, let alone my own self. Goodbye, blogger world. Goodbye.

P.S. I've listened to most of the Frank Zappa albums straight through. Vegetables truly are the saviors. They're real good and keep you fresh, baby.

P.P.S In other news, short antiquated dolphin busks robbed a bank earlier today with high-powered mackadazie pistol whippers. 18 were injured and flipped whiplash is a common side effect of the post nasal discography eliminatrix.

the way things are

2006-06-02T22:52:00.000-04:00

my shelf is all full of OCT texts and translations. I'm starting Greek and have begun by looking at the books. they are plentiful with information and such other nonsenses. life is lonely in new york, college is missing, and parents just don't seem to fill the void. i find myself wandering around the city, looking at sidewalks for hours or spending the day in a museum, all wrapped up by myself. i find myself wanting to rest and contemplate all the time. when the program starts perhaps i'll find solace, but for now, i fill my days with meaningless chores and boredom. i haven't yet turned to the tv or movies, i hope it won't come to that. that shit hurts my eyes anyway. in other news, the sopranos is amazing. since im pretty sure only pedro and jue read this damn thing anyway, i won't spoil it for you, pedro. but now that we're on break, you better get your ass to the videostore. that's all i'll say. also, if you need the episodes from season 6, i can "arrange" to "give" them to you on my "hbo on demand." "hbo on demand" refers to aim instant messenger. each is maybe 350 megs, which is not so bad. of course, you'll also have to pay me for the rights to distribution, which i obviously already bought from HBO. hope you're enjoying the light of day, folks. that's all for now. until next time with the irrevocable idiot.

:golf clap: ... I'm being sincere damnit!

2006-06-01T17:15:00.000-04:00

Sounds like a hell of a time you're having there Jue "The Wang" Wang... I guess you'll get used to the smell at some point and you even get to view internal anatomy before I do. Hot diggity damn, that's a pretty sweet deal. (You could put something pungent and sweet inside your nostrils)... no the sweet wasn't part of some poorly constructed pun. Lastly, there are some people who leave you with a very bad impression despite not doing anything "wrong"... very odd. I'll talk to you about it later as per our usual GTP progress meetings. Until then, stay classy... and clean... poop EVERYWHERE!!!

that rough

2006-06-01T11:17:00.000-04:00

jue, im sorry for what you've gone through. at least you said it eloquently. by the way, do you get to carve your initials into his insides? i would totally do that if i were you. regardlessly, i am here in nyc, doing nothing because everyone is gone.

Second day at work

2006-05-31T16:45:00.000-04:00

There's something about the smell of shit in a dead man's open abdominal cavity that really makes you concentrate. You can tie shut the colon before you cut it out, but once a few microscopic pieces of fecal matter make it to your olfactory cells, the room takes on the distinctive odor of death, and you seem to put aside the myriad nagging worries of the outside world. Gone from your mind are the decisions of the day -- which flavored coffee will fuel our next foray into the abyss (pistachio ice cream is too unorthodox, and strangely enough, chocolate raspberry smells like fruit hooka). Wiped from your thoughts are the trivial and fantastical, the incessant worry that your shirt is bunched up in an unflattering way, the mental checklist of things to do after you get home (1. SHOWER, 2. SHOWER), the attempts to imagine what a fellow intern looks like under her scrubs (a purely hypothetical situation -- I'll have you know that the air of decay belied, with the starkest contrast, the pureness of my thoughts).

This is the sometime hideaway of a pathologist's assistant, who is confined for hours to a dungeon of a room in the recesses of the Eastern Maine Medical Center, past an unmarked door with a warning sign that reads like an understated threat -- NO ADMITTANCE BEYOND THIS POINT. The worst part was before the first cut was made, when there was still ample time to contemplate the incomprehensible, the truly troublesome, the existential questions posed by ourselves to ourselves. Is this chunk of meat, organs, skin, this bag of once-functional biochemical machinery, still a man? What is different about him now, what has he lost, that he possessed a day before that time labeled on the body bag? Did he even change at all?

That, and who he was, but now that is answered, but I deleted the link that was here originally because I would have been sued for violating patient-doctor confidentiality.

Of Nasiocs and Ztax... es

2006-05-29T02:27:00.000-04:00

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1011956

Behold, with one almighty post it is possible to be permanently banned from the North American Subaru Impreza Owner's Club website. In many cases it is called upon the mods to remove undesireable elements but never with such speed have I seen the task accomplished. Why test the limits of the Subaru community with such force? To prepare it for the great war... and when that day comes... we shall be prepared.... WITH ALL WHEEL DRIVE, BITCHES!!! I'll see you at the speed limit... = sqrt(E/m)

actually

2006-05-28T10:58:00.000-04:00

i drive a volvo. which is not as sweet, but is very good in terms of damage. my mom is screaming at me right now bcause i forgot to pack socks. this is what i come home to?

Subaru

2006-05-28T01:48:00.000-04:00

So you say you like cars? A Porsche you say? Paying twice if not 5 times as much for a car that's barely faster (or for the cheaper models) only faster at speeds you can never attain during street use? Well, you good sir have made your decision (but driving pleasure awaits you not). But you say you prefer the leather and the shiny buttons and sound system? Well I must argue that leather is not as practical as cloth, not as wonderfully grippy (for those high G-turns), and far too costly for the it's detrimental effects (felt only by the more practical/purposeful people of our day and age). The sound system, the remaining straw man for me to set aflame... well quite simply... I shall be listening to the sweet rumble of my boxer engine... Boxster you say? No, boxer engine for I also have the horizontally opposed beauty known as the flat-four and you my good sir (and your hemorrhaging bank account) can prance about in your sliding leather seats as I watch countless lines ribbon past me on the highway.

sopranos

2006-05-28T01:36:00.000-04:00

is so fucking awesome. one more episode left.

hello

2006-05-28T00:11:00.000-04:00

now im back in my natural habitat--NYC, baby! (yeah!). things are pretty sweet, and i hit the ground running, which is a must. Some books I ordered came in. Jue, if you're reading this, i looked at some of the stuff for cs 50 and i don't think i'll be able to do it. im sorry man, i know i always let you down. pedro, if you're reading this, stop laughing at me. seriously, it really makes me feel bad and hurts my self esteem. anyone else who is not an administrator, snub it you grotty wankers. i've been reading herodotus and pindar lately, in preparation for my greek course. yummy. ciao for now.

goodbye

2006-05-26T12:43:00.000-04:00

this is the last post i will make before i leave. my last sober post, that is...
sayonara suckas (that's chinese for hello)

this makes up for...

2006-05-26T10:00:00.000-04:00

when i shot myself
in the face
in the arm.
alarms sounded the day i jumped from story three, room the seconde. book the firste, liverwurst. "end up dead. ice like winnipeg. gemstones. flinstones. you can call me fred." (thanks to my main man) mainly plans, manly mans, standing. rocky shores. lonesome boars. stores. robbing, looting, paying money for school. you a fool, go back to summer schule.

too. many. posts.
STOP
(get out of my
head?
)

shitting oneself: a poem

2006-05-26T09:56:00.000-04:00

(this is for the kids)

a warm pile
for a while
i can't get up and dance
im stuck to my shitty pants

haha a poem
syllyndrome
now the rhyme
goes unchecked

how many years
waste away tears
before what's writ
unearthed bit by bit

can you find the message???

2006-05-26T09:49:00.000-04:00

redolent adds thereof
effeminate irate stags worrying
lewd T-turns errant sophists
fecal accountants H-water, orange dye
ousted winglets llamatic fingers NDS
theta
esoteric eccentric
redolent TM-PM
esoteric
sagacious gentry!

a counterargument

2006-05-26T09:47:00.000-04:00

soundless sand suffocates.
sorry, so sorry;
seeing simplicity slide softly.
severed still,
swimming sullenly
stand strong, summer solstice.
sifting songs.

nasioc

2006-05-26T09:45:00.000-04:00

you all know what it is. he spends at least 4 hours on it a day. so, i log in, create an account and all, and make one silly little post about absolutely nothing on the off-topic forum. i get banned. those silly nasioc peoples. don't they realize that their lives are completely meaningless and without worth? plus, i would take a porsche any day. tony wouldn't want me driving around in a subaru...

Self Defecation

2006-05-24T18:15:00.000-04:00

Oh I meant deprecation. Or it doesn't matter, the two are the same for those whose view of the world rests on a purely metaphorical plane, and which stops before those necessary final connections to reality are made. These sorts of people include LSD junkies, fictitious people of all sorts, and the kids in Straus C who watch 17 episodes of 24 in 24 hours. Jack Bauer is welcome to have sex with me if necessary for the interests of national security, but I'll be damned if I let him reduce me to an ill-ventilated couch ornament no more active than a Chinese broccoli. Must we also mention the retinal consequences of the ionizing radiation?

Anyway, the topic at hand is shitting oneself, and/or the fact that nothing we post on this blog is worth reading, whether by us or anyone. Maybe by us, but we could probably be doing more fruitful things, like playing half life or going on Nasioc. The only way that last sentence could possibly have been funny or meaningful is if you're one of two people in the world who knew what I was talking about. Going for a wider readership does not necessarily imply forsaking our style, and the major themes of jokes about penis and poop that have been keystones of our humor, but the presentation could stand to be a little less self absorbed.

I know, haha, it's fun to make fun of yourself. But I'll let you read that sentence again. Nothing we post on this blog is worth reading. Or how bout an inversion. We don't post anything worth reading on this blog. As for the other topic at hand, shitting oneself, we'll let the other contributors give their 2 cents.

what would happen if...

2006-05-24T17:32:00.000-04:00

every time you got a receipt, they tattooed a bar code onto your ass so that you could have proof of purchase? not a bad idea, and i think that some people are actually into that kinky shit.

on top of old smokey

2006-05-24T17:30:00.000-04:00

i just came back from a tour of the radio transmittor sites. it was unbelievable. first we went to the roof of the holyoke center and from there you can see the expanse of cambridge. then we went downtown to the roof of 1 financial center, which is an elevation of approximately 650 feet, and you can see everything in boston, cambridge, and the surrounding areas. it was truly breathtaking, and i was able to see the tops of the airplanes coming in because i was actually higher than them. i gotta go eat, im starving.

i hat eyou

2006-05-24T02:31:00.000-04:00

you know who you are, you pimple of death. i hate you in all your colors. fuck you and just die. i also hate your sword. beam sword. beam.

smyth

2006-05-23T16:05:00.000-04:00

im in smyth right now. for those of you who don't know, its departmental library in widener. i was sleeping for a while on the expansive leather couch, but now im typing, obviously. or is it so obvious? i don't know. I was watching jue, but i think he was staring into space. sometimes i wonder about scanners and such electronic fuddy-duddy matrix-esque brouchards. But then again, im surrounded by latin and greek manuscripts. can you believe people actually wrote in those languages? why didn't they just youse engrish is beyond me. by the way, im using a mac to make this post, and whoever said macs don't freeze is a liar. this machine has stopped still for at least a minute for a total of 3 times already and i just want to bust its fucking screen. but its so... beautiful? (i don't know how to type properly, shoot me now). (no, now). (alright). (no, yes)) no no (ye)s no, ?? ())))no

Half full? Nah, it's half empty

2006-05-22T22:30:00.000-04:00

Yup I definitely have half as many exams now that two are done, pessimism isn't so bad... ;-)
This is obviously a test for the new set-up since I can't think of anything to say despite the fact that I'd really like to keep from studying from math... (and the ensuing realization that I may just have two left but I'm about to get fucked harder than New Orleans).
"Anywho, git outta hea ya crazy kids!"
"Crazy old man, sex is for kids!"

The surreptitious slingshot slayer strikes at supper

2006-05-22T21:42:00.000-04:00

The SSS strikes at supper.
One S worse than the SS, with inhibitions a great deal less, one must confess his fangs resemble so those of a critter of the Loch Ness, but bigger still, he is one with whom you should not mess.

Unless, (allow me to digress), a vial of kryptonite should you possess, and thus and only thusly so thrown into great distress, the SSS may find his powers to impress

a great deal less.

for jue

2006-05-20T21:28:00.000-04:00

touch me, im looking at you right now.

zach

Got Work?

2006-05-10T17:59:00.000-04:00

I sure do. It's nice that with all this extra time I've been given I seem to accomplish absolutely nothing. Accomplishment for the last two days you ask? I read 13 pages of chem, not too bad... for a 5th grader. Zach and Jue are putting shotgun shells in NPC's right now in Opposing Force. How do I feel about it? Pretty damn good, I could go for some shotgun shells in the pile of work I need to do. If you were wondering yes it is possible to complete assignments with well places rounds of ammunition. Don't doubt me or I'll consider thee a hw assignment. Yeah, I went there, now I'm going back.

P: "Fark!!!"
Z: "Fart isn't a swear P..."
P: " I said 'Fark!' get your swears in order Ztax."
Z: "Oh, yeah, sure"
P: "Farkin' A!!!"

Did I manage to stay on Nasioc all day until approximately 5pm? Yes, yes I did and I'm damn ashamed, but at least I had meself a good time. So next time you think you're procrastinating, wasting time, slowly dying inside without having anything to show for it... just go on nasioc.com it really helps dull the pain and the OT is fucking sweet.
Stay classy interwebnets! or should I say... BISHES!!

this is

2006-05-10T04:24:00.000-04:00

pathetic. this blog has become a disgrace. we need to recreate it and reformat it.

It is time my good men... for War

2006-05-09T23:04:00.000-04:00

The girlz have started up their own blog, we could link to them and be nice... or we could start up a Holy War that will in the end destroy us all. We could, althought much lamer, just realize that they'll get tired of it at some point like we did (or not because girls chit chat so much) and ignore the whole thing.

BUT I CALL FOR WAR!!!

I shall respond with a clever post, one so amazing that everyone on blogger comes to our blog to read it and then never leaves!

I shall work on said blog later... till then, Stay classy Interwebnets!

paparz!

2006-05-08T16:21:00.000-04:00

paparz?

Shit's a bitch

2006-05-08T01:15:00.000-04:00

Guess what time it is, come on... yeah, guess.... I TOLD YOU GUESS, BITCH! Reading Period is correct, and that of course means no classes and no weekly problem sets... WAIT I HAVE PROBLEM SETS DUE!!! AND A LAB??!! AND MODULE III?!??!!! BUT WHAT ABOUT FUCKING AROUND AND THEN STUDYING LATER?!?!! SHIT BITCH DAMN ASS FUCK DONKEY BANANA!!!! It's cool man, just gotta be a no limit soldier, out on the front lines, hiding from everyone, stealth... yeah stealth... DOING MATH P-SETS MOTHERFUCKER!!
:Pencil through your neck BITCH!: .... :sharpen... sharpen... blow off the pencil shavings ... scribble scribble INTEGRATE!:

look out below

2006-05-03T21:49:00.000-04:00

hahaha, work.

(laughs sadly by himself in his room)

An AIM Saga

2006-04-30T11:04:00.000-04:00

WheresWaldoNow: hey sexy
PedroPhdMD: hey
WheresWaldoNow: oh wait
WheresWaldoNow: this isn't
WheresWaldoNow: craiglist
WheresWaldoNow: sorry
PedroPhdMD: look left
WheresWaldoNow: well, i guess i won't be sleeping tonight
WheresWaldoNow: be staying up w8ing 4 u
PedroPhdMD: OMGHIU2!?!?!!!1111
WheresWaldoNow: teh 0wnz0rz
PedroPhdMD: FTL!
WheresWaldoNow: who am i kidding
WheresWaldoNow: im a classics nerd
PedroPhdMD: yup
PedroPhdMD: look left again
WheresWaldoNow: no
WheresWaldoNow: fuck you
WheresWaldoNow: i won't do it
PedroPhdMD: look
WheresWaldoNow: no
PedroPhdMD: you know you want to
WheresWaldoNow: i know
PedroPhdMD: dooooo eeeeet
WheresWaldoNow: its eating at me

Craigslist + Personal ads + Ztax = trouble

2006-04-25T01:58:00.000-04:00

MANSANDWICH:
yo
craigslist ruulz ; )
lets do it today dude!!! i checked you out on facebook
and i'm gonna come to yr room. ill be there at 5. make
sure evryone is gone and we'lll go at it. im soooo
horny rt now lol
cris

ZTAX:
that wasn't me earlier today, that was my roommate being an asshole.
sorry, but im not interested., please don't come to my room.

MANSANDWICH:
i'm gonna be a little late so i cant be there at 5.
ill just come later tonight. or do you wanna meet
somewhere else?

ZTAX:
well, i don't think you understand that no one will be there and that
you can't come in. because the original email was a joke.

MANSANDWICH:
lol!!!
see you tonight

ZTAX:
no thank you! im sorry for the miscommunication before, but again, i
have no interest in any sort of activities with you.

MANSANDWICH:
dude you dont sound into this : (
do you really not want me to come?????
cause i really want to

MANSANDWICH:
haha i changed my mind. i found yr phone number (that
harvard facebook is good for something lol lol) and im
gonna get in touch with you tonight. i promise itll be
fun.
until later ; )

So it gets to about midnight and we've more or less forgotten about the situation until the red-batman-get-the-batmobile-warmed-up-because-it's-time-to-jump-into-action-phone goes off...

Pedro "Zach, I'm not picking it up... you got yourself into this mess"

he picks up the phone and I hear the following

"Look, this is a huge misunderstanding....... no it's ok.... no..... i'm not going to let you in.... :panic!: :hangs up:"

::heavy steps up the stairs::

O.O

::KNOCKKNOCKKNOCK::

Pedro "Zach, you might want to put on pants" (Zach was in his underwear at this point because he secretly... well yeah...)

Zach "You gotta back me up on this"

Pedro :rolls eyes: "Whatever..."

Zach puts on pants and opens the door as I sit waiting to see what unfolds...

Moral of the story? Dan/Elliot/Matt are fucking good pranksters and deserve a medal. Zach needs to avoid craigslist and facebook is a dangerous thing...

2006-04-23T10:57:00.000-04:00

i am awake and alive, yet i am not happy. what a paradox to be human. how can i be and not be; coexist with the self i love and hate? i hope its possible, but lately i think i have lost except there is no clear winner, just a non-winner.

It's been one year since I can buy porn

2006-04-18T02:10:00.000-04:00

J: It's been one year since I've been able to buy porn.

Z: and cigarettes.

P: Have you bought any?

J: What, cigarettes? Yeah. (pulls out half-finished cigar from pocket, smells it, then places tip lightly between tongue and upper lip, as if tasting, afterwards moving jaw as if chewing. shrugs)

P: No, I mean Porn.

J: Oh, Porn. Well, no, I mean I can just get that free off the internet.

Nervous glances.

(Introducing) Lucas: In Dey Ase!

Z: Well, whatever, you guys are wimps, I don't need porn.

J: You don't masturbate? Everybody masturbates! Even girls masturbate!

P, L: (Nervous glances)

Z: Well, what everybody needs, I have no trouble getting. Why buy porn when you can have the real thing? (+7 wittiness and crudeness when acted out)

P: Anyway, happy birthday man...I'm sure you're enjoying it, one way or the other.

J: See, that's the thing. Nothing's changed. Legality is a non-issue, I've had cigarettes since I was 5, and porn? I mean, I'm not buying it now, and I never did. Here's a milestone in a life. A milestone on a long uninteresting jog is still a rock placed 5280 feet from some other rock on the road. You can even try to turn it over, to see if there's anything cool underneath, but it's probably better to just keep going so you don't ruin your mile pace. Think our proctor stopped to commemorate his 19th mile on the marathon today? No, he was probably thinking, this powergel shit is sticking to my throat, I have 7 more miles to go, my knees hurt, and there's nothing I want more right now than to have that silly-looking old fucker in front of me throw out his osteoperotic hip and start crying so I can pass him and laugh like he passed me after the 3rd mile. Maybe I'll step on his shins by accident too.

inner voice: perhaps N isn't nearly as bitter as you are about senior citizens finishing ahead of you in road races.

other inner voice: I'd still like to break that guy's legs, wherever he is now. I'm on the goddamn cross country team! I'm young! I'm virile! Why can't I just run a 5 minu--

Z: I'll get you some strippers to celebrate.

J: Nah, forget it. Either get me some whores, or I'll just get drunk tonight.

P: Ummm, guys? Let's not leave the wine bottle in the recycling bin in plain sight, alright? I just feel that this is not the optimazizzle thing to do.

Z: Well, you know, you ARE one year closer to when you'll be able to drink copiously without having to think about pretending to have a guilty conscience.

J: Wow, you're right. I think maybe that's what adulthood feels like.

the law school

2006-04-16T22:37:00.000-04:00

jue is sitting across from me, typing. i am here, on the other side of mahogany slabs. expos is open and john berger is looking at me. the clack of flip-flops passes by me. she isn't wearing much. now she is gone. illicit food and coffee; students with no names. they become their work and their friends.

2006-04-12T10:29:00.001-04:00

Think about how awesome this picture is. That's it. Just think. Now, get up out of your chair, walk towards your refrigerator, and get me a soda. That's it. Actually, fuck the soda. Yeah. That's it.

damn straight

2006-04-12T10:21:00.000-04:00

thats right. just when you thought he was gone forever, the tax man make a huge recovery. people have said that i'm just not good enough, that i'm too old for the game. even that i've lost my touch. well, they don't know squat my friend. they don't know squat.

speaking of squats, im very out of shape. i did a few at widener today and almost threw out my back.

hey, if you thought that was funny, come back again for my show next week.

just kidding. i don't have a show.

Update 4/10/06

2006-04-10T12:32:00.000-04:00

Just to keep everyone up to date here's what my lifesci notes have evolved into...

Doctor, I’m worried about my son. He spends hours selfing every day! < My balls itch. < My balls bitchnads

A comparison of classdouche

A group effort by the Mather Blocking collective.

Once upon a p0wn1ng

2006-03-27T19:42:00.000-05:00

All in a flash it's over... or rather in a long dragging painful wrenching of my internal organs and then the grating of my brain in the wild production of Pedro's Brain Nachos with extra Pedro Brain coating the finely layered Pedro's Soul Chips [trademark] Tostitos. Midterms = t3h suck. But it's over, and despite the p0wning things are well ... except for the Godzilla attack on my way home. I hoped he'd atleast let the red line operate without interruption but apparently that was far too much to ask and so he smashed upon it with his ghetto stomp skillz0rz. (That's when the camel shot itself... with the last straw [spitball style]) and I blurted out "Godzilla, this hasn't been a fun week and now you're totally pissing me off!"
"Sorry Pedro, I didn't mean to :-( I was just trying to find the nearest IHOP... I'm hungry."
"Oh... well that's sorta understandable... I know where one is wanna give me a lift?"
"Sure, :-) I <3 pancakes!"
"Me too Godzilla, me too"
and so we stomped off into the distance together, we had each made a friend that day; warm feelings filled our souls. We talked for hours and ate pancakes galore until the sun set... but then that dirty bitch tried to convince me that we should split the check 50/50 when he ate 32 more tons of pancakes than I did! I kicked him in the shin and then spun him around by his tail taking out most of the Quad in the process... (sorry!). He was pretty impressed and complemented me on my large muscles... but flattery wouldn't get him out of this one... and with him spinning around as I gripped his tail fiercely I wondered what move I'd do next... bricky bricky? kick him in the nadz0rz? punch him for an hour doing a total of 20 damage? drop the final cutter on his ass? bust two nuts? should I call them nutz0rz for added effect? Falcon Punch? Falcon Kick? PK fire? Pecan Fire? Pika Fire? Pikan Fire? You're fired? Home run bat attack? Give him a ginger massage and cuddling him into submission... and then have my way with him? Bomb him with my superior American firepower? Urinate on his soul thusly wetting it to a point where it can no longer fly? ... you know like butterflies... or maybe it's bees... suck him up into my belly and turn him into and egg? bust one testicle? no... smaaaaaash..... SMMAAAAAAASH SMASH!!!!! booooooom POW!
+1 FOR T3H W1N!!

2006-03-27T01:40:00.000-05:00

It's 3 AM. The air is calm this early in the morning. Streetlights filter into my room, casting onto my curtains the silhouettes of trees that stand silently just outside my window. I shift my head restlessly across my sweat-covered pillow into another uncomfortable position. The faintest breeze seeps warmth into my covers, and for a puzzling moment it seems that the window is open and it is summer again, but the buzzing of the radiator abruptly puts these thoughts to rest.

Only I cannot rest; I cannot sleep. I toss and turn and kick and squeeze my eyes shut. Still the hot blood of longing flashes through my veins. All of my mind and body has converged into a singular fixation on a desire I cannot comprehend. I throb with it, I rage with it, but what is it? I only know what I feel, that suddenly I am filled with the sensation of wanting something, someone, or some place, or some delicious dish.

Without knowing what it is, I flail around hopelessly. Frustration transfigures into an increasingly blind desire for violence. A bloodcurdling cry wells up in my throat, threatening to break out at any moment. Now I have the urge to smash the window, break the chair, and pound the wall until my fists bleed black. But there is something else, another part of me weakening inside, as if an internal organ has shriveled up and atrophied in the languid blackness that envelops me. Even as an implacable passion wells up in my chest, an even stronger lethargy presses my conscience back against a wall of inaction. My mind unthinking, the insidious depression descends, unthinking still, no reason to guide me, I'm in its suffocating grasp, wherefore unreason clouds the inky pallor of what is forever indeterminate. There is no guiding aroma entreating me to the savoury filet mignon of truth, sweet truth.

And you. You say that you have become empty inside. You cry out for fulfillment, for deliverance. I've given you all I could and yet you still will not be satisfied. Don't you know that the pain you feel, I feel it too, deep inside my gut, grinding away with the fury of some alien animal terror. Be still, my aching stomach. You anguish is mine, I toss and turn as you grumble and churn. What sparks in the riotous expression of your longing have extinguished themselves in pain? Which ones yet fly and elude me with the cruel caprice of what still could be? I have waited too long to act upon this insatiable hunger, to do what I've always felt, or have felt for four hours now, ever since I digested dinner.

O give me love, give me grace over this longing, this hunger for food, for a snack, for life itself.

The dream to take to the skies...

2006-02-23T01:19:00.000-05:00

It has long been lusted after, the ability to fly. Men have created engines and planes and marveled at birds in the process (stealing their technological superiority of the air) and have placed themselves in various artificial "flying" contraptions (Birds can't go mach 4 though so fuck those slow ass bitches). However, to be quite blunt all of this was hardly necessary during the prehistoric ages. 91,004,573 BC to be exact it was a bright spring morning and little Timmy the Cave-adolescent-boy had just hit puberty. As is wont for children arriving at this horrible time in their lives, Timmy suddenly had many changes brought on by the differences in his gene expression, you know, the good ol' DNA to RNA to Protein dogma that we all love. It was at this time that Timmy realized that he had been given a miraculousitafic gift, he had by complete chance/fortune been blessed with just the correct mutations in both of his alleles for producing KR13 to give him the unique recessive mutation allowing man his first chance at flight! He began hovering and soon gained the confidence to soar high above the tree tops! He was then promptly impaled through the head by the beak of a pteradactyl as it soared through the lower atmosphere both instantly killing Timmy before he could have the chance of passing the miraculous genes on through the oh-so common inbreeding of the day (hey they had hott sisters, can you really blame them? and Timmy could fucking fly, I'd want a piece of that action too if I slept near him every night... oh sweet Timmy... with your soft and supply thighs...) and so he was killed instantly and dropped with the pteradactyl (as his balls would have done the very next day if he had not died... minus the pteradactyl part) snapping the bird's neck on impact and ending man's brief stint of natural airborne travel. This great event has been commemorated this year, several millions of years later, with the new product "Airborne" for preventing human illness, the shittiest product ever produced by man.

sex: a poem

2006-02-15T19:54:00.000-05:00

i think 'bout it a lot
so thats a clue for you
its in my every thought
and in the title too,

i'd love to tell you how
it wracks my brain--so hard!
so we shall start right now
with me as sexual bard,

This morn when I awoke
the first things in my head
were ripping off my cloak
and taking her to bed

the next two thoughts that came
within my mind and loin:
coitus with my dame
and pleasure in my groin,

i stopped to ponder still
the mem'ry of her flesh
with wonder and a will
the dazzling smooth caress,

i rose up from my springs
with thoughts still yet to come
and for the birds that sing
my stomach became the drum,

i pounded it quite hard
and rough beats did resound
while outside in the yard
the squirrels gnawed the ground,

while arms I dressed with cotton
and denim adorned the leg--
my thoughts went simply rotten
of sperm upon the egg

i tried to cleanse my mind
from thoughts with an "amen,"
but a minute's simple grind
brought them back again!

It's that time again ladies and gentlemen... and gentle ben

2006-02-15T14:55:00.000-05:00

so very gentle...

When does it fit good enough?

Are you wacking on all the sides or does it slip and slide right in with the perfect amount of friction?
Test with either

i. Goodness of fit test

ii. Homogeneity test, “D00d I don’t want geneticists given me the homogeneity!”

What = goodness of fit?

i. Answer: pleasure

Or you can use this here formula it’s like chi^2 = Sum of each class of data (observed number – expected number)^2 all divided by the expected number.
If your hypothesis is true and the samples are big enough then this quantity has a formula you can just write down on a piece of paper, pretty sexy huh?
You have to assume the hypothesis is correct otherwise you’rea douche-bag
Do some mathz0rz and stop being a Tits McGhee
Then you’ve got t3h answers, what do you do with that kinds a dataz?
pWn them in the assz0rz!
Numbers are really important
Don’t fake your dataz0rz or you’ll never find a mate that truly loves you
He wrote the program, he knows.
Dude got shot down, his degrees of freedom must be hurtin
Damn, I actually need to know how to do this chi square stuff
Long live the crib sheet
Degrees of freedom suck t3h ass
No more statistics! Hurrah!
Inbreeding = Cletus the yack jawed Yokel
Depressed people like to get married with each other
“You may not even know what the IQ score for your mate is… but you know.”
Picasso is apparently a proponent for random mating, he’s got gray people fucking wite people with orange hair and invisible tata’s
Picasso was probably on acid, Picasso probably didn’t paint this painting, it’s not cubist but I can’t pin down the painter… so for today we’re going to assume that Picasso really wanted us all to fuck like bunny rabbits in a deep dark hole… haha (works on so many levels)
It’s like this and that and like this’n’a it’s like shit and shat and like shit’n’a
Jue is rubbing his face in frustration/depression/bordom/rage now he’s placing them together in a comtemplative manner. Now he’s rubbin’ up on it, ewww not in Lifesci Jue, not in lifesci.
Why don’t we ever hear the people that die in car crashes tell us how safe their car was?
Genetics is a cruel joke with equations to test approximations with approximations with the assumption that the data isn’t going to be that accurate anyway.

about a special teacher of mine

2006-02-15T11:17:00.000-05:00

its the afternoon
and i've just had lunch
but there's something else
that i'd like to munch,

you got your PhD
now a doctor you are
i'd love to have you
in the back of my car

i am unstoppable

2006-02-15T10:42:00.000-05:00

there once was a man from straus
who loved math as much as did gauss
when he got into bed
with his sweet newlywed
he found out he was hung like a mouse.

there once was a woman from matthews
who had the most fabulous shoes
though she had lovely sneakers,
her conscience was weaker
and she often succumbed to the booze

there once was a man from lionel
who, in height, did more than excel
when he came home from school
he bumped his head like a fool
and with his face on the floor gave a yell

there once was a whore from canaday
who only did guys that were gay
when she finished them all
she was ashamed and appalled
and then she moved right on to grays

there once was a man from mass hall
and he loved backward caps of baseball
"please?" he said with grace
and got slapped in the face
now thats what i'd call a foul ball.

haha, the creativity keeps flowing

2006-02-15T10:33:00.000-05:00

you come into class
with a pen in your hair
and daintily sit down
in the neighboring chair

i watch from close by
as you copy the board
my eyes flame with passion
but are swiftly ignored

you never glance up
to look at my face
or picture me now
in a loving embrace

i wish i could tell you
how much i do care
never into my eyes
do your loving ones stare

and since you will never
acknowledge our sin
i've made up your bed
in my lovely dungeon

my love for you
is like a blistering storm
tell me, does this rag
smell like chloroform?

v-day poems

2006-02-15T10:15:00.000-05:00

I.
roses are red
violets divine
like secant to theta
you've won over my cosine.

II.
roses are red
violets are elegant
come into my bed
im hung like an elephant.

III.
roses are red
violets sublime
i can't think of anything
else that will rhyme.

IV.
roses are red
and soft like your lips
my love for you
is a total eclipse.

V.
roses are read
just like this poem
im sitting here writing
alone in my home.

VI.
roses are red
violets are blue
oh wait i'm just kidding
Patrick's here too.

VII.
roses are red
violets are shifty
i love you like harry
does love his big swifty

VIII
roses are red
and violets kowtow
im on such a roll
theres no stopping me now

XI
roses are red
violets are curled
i could write about anything
in the whole wide world

X
roses are red
and bloom once a year
now after poem ten
i could use a cold beer

XI
roses are red
violets do thrive
if i've something to say
make it a colt 45

XII
roses are red
like bloody old sweater
although now im thinking
coronas are better

XIII
roses are red
violets are picked
now some dark guiness
will resolve the conflict

XIV
roses are red
violets like heaven
this poem is numbered
by twos and sevens

XV
roses are red
violets are blue
im sick of this shit
and you must be too

fragments

2006-02-14T16:48:00.000-05:00

...cylinders flying...and then I
...
once again, a (daughter/son)...please(?)
...don't do that again--I am...
....
hazy

midget sex

2006-02-13T22:52:00.000-05:00

P: "having sex with a midget is like this."

pedro punches his hardcover biology textbook repeatedly with his fist.

I Hate That Fucking Sound.

2006-02-13T15:26:00.000-05:00

Yeah. There it is, I said it. You know what I'm talking about. That gleeful syncopated bounce that just loops again and again, just begging me to kick the shit out of the TV. Da-da-daduDA-da-da-DUMMMM! How insipid are those synthesized beeps and twangs, little droplets of infectious auditory torment gathering over time like itchy rain collecting and dripping from the bottom of a chin. This isn't music. This is fuel for a powerful dementia. Recipe for becoming a serial killer/cannibal: plug in N64. Turn on frighteningly addictive game. Win round. Leave N64 on at the final score screen and stare/listen FOREVER. After listening to the same 32 measures for 10 million times you will get an uncontrollable urge to gut Kirby with a switchblade. Regardless of whether he can turn into a rock and get 10-4=6 kills. Thanks guys. I hope you had fun. I'll be billing my anti-psychotic drugs to you.

Is that the sun?

2006-02-13T04:54:00.000-05:00

And so our hero slowly pushes forward through the rubble to be greeted by what seems to be the faint glimmers of hope... sunshine... rays of freedom from beneath the books and problem sets. But will this hope be banished yet again from our hero's gaze by the vile trickery of Starcraftorus? Will our hero be able to survive the onslaught of The Army of the Automatic-Program-Boot-Up-Upon-the-Insertion(yeah... insertion)-of-CD-into-CD-tray? Or will the grim hand of deathz0rz rear it's ugly... wrist? Tune in again tomorrow, same bat-room, same bat-Straus-a-channel!!11one! NANANananana!

an early morning poehm

2006-02-09T10:52:00.000-05:00

bass line thumpings and cracked glass
press my thoughts forward
the book on my desk, som money, music and dried frosting--
these slip away faster than they should,
like the stapler they are real but still memories
lost in a swirling world of questions.

I used to think that answers lay bubbling
skimming the surface, waiting to be plucked out
like the dead hairs of a woman's eyebrow,
but when I reach down
the waters swallow everything--
my whole body, the face i knew
and in that instant of submersion and loss
(of course there is clarity)
i see those I know and love.
Embalzoned in sinewy flames on the golden shield of my mind,
the waters recede and i fall back
exhausted and satiated with the spice of life.

experimental form

2006-02-08T23:14:00.000-05:00

the strains of melody
can bend my heart and break
the softness of my soul

a simple chord now here
and there makes harmony
as bells that peal and toll

how can it flit away
so empty and too fast
divided from the whole

shadows

2006-02-08T23:00:00.000-05:00

grotesque timbres unite!
frightful flittings of melody
or is it haunted harmony
that drives that piece insane?

a question and an answer
I'll ask once more and yet again
but answers come and go
never real, never slow.

quivering with depth, the string
breaks in concentrated songs
for times long past
perhaps they'll stand still like they used to.

a drop, a stop,
cell phone--away we go.
"Yes, I'm well,"
"How are you."

The backdrop is stupid chatter,
its a pity that the persian rugs didn't soak it up.
I can see it in the eyes,
luminous beings never betray the truth.

The phone is gone and she's still smiling,
you just can miss something's amiss
and then the glimmer's gone and fled
to another world of shadows.

the longing and hope--it was once real--
lives on in blackened rivers,
glutinous and thick,
perverted with felony.

a fading, so soft to feel
like black velvety paws of a poised cat
the passion is gone but the music stays on
we continue but the smiles are false.

Now its all an act, a pretense,
you can see it in her arms, her fingers and face
now markedly rigid withour musical thoughts
and only "this morning" is what runs through her mind.

So much to lose and now the pain that follows within,
how can she restrain and tighten the reigns
slack and loose is the easy path
its hard to remain mortal in the shadows.

the only color i can see

2006-02-08T22:55:00.000-05:00

worlds fade apart in twos and threes
yellow is the only color i can see
no brown or red, or even blackish hues
meters compounding threes or twos,
a silent gasp emits the fate
the slice of life, a golden gate.

i wonder now if the time is ripe,
bananas smiling at me from afar
"stop it," i would say, but no one listens.
only words drip from the air
mingling and mixing--cold and fair
the pale blue no more,
a wand in sand
a far off land.

don't stray from the thoughts,
sane and alive they keep you
fear them well you should
alone, the silent true.

star wars

2006-02-08T17:00:00.000-05:00

looking here, i see glasses. yummy shiny, i want the shiny. i can't believe he's still talking, i think he has a fever/ and now hes looking longingly at me with his tawny locks. mmmmmmm, tawny. lips so subtle and gentle, the betrayers of a race of women too long overlooked by the effervescent effeminates of our time. pop your collar, young man, ears aloft with fever. dance maroon sweater, dance. entrance my eyes with glimmering glory and all will be sound and safe.

a new era

2006-02-08T01:38:00.000-05:00

this is the beginning of a new era, a new dawn in man's history. the often overlooked step of the dodo is now the pride of the people in a museum. understanding is forgiving, but only too little for the little people. can't understand the standing under? when my ipod sings its sweet tune, i know its time to go, the starcraft humming softly from her computer. all white wth gray, no delay, songs and fingertips are intertwined like a new era is beginning. the one dollar bills stacked haphazardly on the cheap mahogany glimmer without the glimmer and stand dully basking in the shade of cartman and stan. why, oh why, little ipod earbud, do you soften my vergil's eyes. arms and a man can't hold you now, stop your singing--incandescent! Once I thought I saw it, but then it was only a dream today.

1 Bizzle

2006-02-07T01:08:00.000-05:00

Actually Pedro's notes:

Talkin’ bout the resistance to drugs and such (Malaria, Life Science 1b’s AIDS)

Use the genetic sequences to fix the problem?
Lots of problems with the drugs, $2 per day cost of treatment
Lots of fakes and shiz foo’
Expired drugs being sold again with new expiration dates

Why aren’t there more drugs? (For Malaria/Anti-Bacterial)

Take anti-bacterial and then you’re done
Money is in stuff you take all your life
Malaria market doesn’t support the level of expenses (they ain’t gots da money)
Organizations attempting to entice companies into making t3h drugz0rz

Time to look at genetics… great… fucking great

Recipe for Nobel Prize

i. Take one part genetic control for random shit and processes

ii. Add 2 cups of studying random genetic thing to control some other random thing

iii. Must add one pinch of “give a shit”

iv. Add a dollop of complicated and knowledge of organism

v. Mix together in bowl with l337 sk1llz

vi. Bake at 350°

vii. Do not take a dump in oven

viii. Serve warm or before you die, Nobel Prize ain’t worth nuthin’ if you dead foo! You ain’t be getting’ shit!!!!1111one!

Use Neurospora crassa, it’s like freakin’ great

i. Have two mediums one that’s t3h shit and the other has to have like… t3h minimum for sustaining t3h lifez0rz

ii. Prototroph grows in the complicated as well as the minimal medium

iii. Auxotroph only grows in the complicated, it’s fuxxz0rred metabolically

iv. Do a mutant screen get a large number of FREAKS

v. Freaks have to be relavant

vi. See which genes are fuxx0red

vii. Once you know how many genes you got, you look at each representative mutation and see how it affects the problem

viii. Then find out why!

ix. Lay out a diagram with all the genes proteins and interactions and say “Check this out bitch! Look at whats I found!”

x. Wait for the Nobel peeps give you props and cash. Make sure to spend the cash on mad tizzight rims and purple mink coats

Mutagenesis

i. Have a bunch of adorable little cells

ii. BURN THEM WITH THE RADIATION OF A THOUSAND SUNS!

iii. Split them up and see if anyone survived

iv. Then use them to score da mad nobel bling

v. You can’t study cells that are dead… hmmmm very clever

vi. Your mom’s a mutant

vii. Test out each culture by putting it on minimal media to discern auxotrophs

viii. So you’ve got a shit-load of test tubes.

1. FILLED WITH MUTANTS!!! LIKE YOUR MOM!!!! 11 HA!

ix. Test all of the possible nutrients necessary in different compounds to find out exactly how fucked up your mutant is. Have fun with it, dress your test tubes and have them wear high heels. Make sure to take lots of pictures for your own sick perverted personal collection. Also, as an appendage to this note:

1. SUCK IT, BITCH!

x. So now you have a mutant that requires arginine.

xi. Multiple mutations are t3h lose for then you need t3h more tests to findz out whats up.

xii. Multiple mutations are very rare, like say…. Sucking it! Haha

xiii. I know everyone that asks questions, makes me feel popular, my mood is slightly boosted and I now feel important, as the king of Kashmanisktan should feel.

xiv. XIV is pretty far down the line, I’m going to start up a new string just because I don’t want to get to XXX, because then all the dirty people will use my notes for porn and that just ain’t right.

xv. Branched metabolic pathways lead to more requirements

xvi. That was not an enjoyable answer… I wants ta know now!

xvii. Precursors to arginine can be t3h toolz.

xviii. I am now the nickel and dime spy that shall slowly lead to the paranoia of all who would find my accursed coins of fury and vengeance.

xix. Cells get all blocked up if they don’t eat their prunes

xx. Temperature sensitive mutants are t3h shit. Unstable proteins at certain (higher) temperatures.

xxi. Siamese cats gots dat ^ , say what?

[with sounds of Starcraft in background]

2006-02-06T15:32:00.000-05:00

How does something musical come from being unmusical, were there not varying degrees or states of being between musical and unmusical?

Wow I think we are really pwning this thing.

I don't know what meaning there can be in all of this. We're all going to be extinct some day anyway.

Your little critter things are so creepy, yeah, eugh, creepy little critters, that's some creepy shit yo.

You know what I've decided? Maybe there really isn't a purpose to anything after all, and we should all just stop looking. You know? Like there are other things in life, other things that could make it good.

Of course, even if there's no purpose, it's still worth living.

You guys are still trying to figure out the meaning of life? Seriously? You, know, this is just my opinion, but I think it's very simple. We're here to reproduce. I mean, it is our biological function. We were intended to perpetuate our species, nothing more, and there's no need to try to find some sort of over-arching thing or--

GET YOUR SIEGE TANKS OVER HERE

I don't have any.

okay, um...I KNOW. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

You guys make me sick.

So.

Anyway, I just think you guys are trying to find something that isn't there.

No...it's just...(head-shaking, stammering mouth-noises)...I don't...that's just not how it is. How do you explain the existence of our society? The arts? Philosophy? Is technological advancement for no other purpose than to improve our evolutionary effectiveness, and art the opiate to sedate us and keep us on our track to continual meaningless self-recycle?

J is happy to believe it. Self-contented smile.

P's expansion in upper left corner is being attacked. J's carriers have joined the onslaught. Computer game noises fade into background. Agnus dei. Barber. The final chord fails to resolve. J slumps further into chair, then sits up. His brain has started asking questions. Why are we here? What was the name of the girl who was across the room at the social dance two nights ago? Where are my keys? How? Whence?

Long overdue...

2006-02-05T03:11:00.000-05:00

If our careful readers will slowly think back to one of my prior set-up posts where I finished off alluding to the important of "ya momma type jokes" then yee shall be pleased to know that that end shall finally be brought back into the fold... on THIS a day that is to live in infamousny! So a buddy of mine introduced me to the ways of the "YOUR MOM!!!" which I have then (as a part of my daily habits) exposed to Jue and Zach. They are now infected and you may very well be next. Wherever there's a person who is just about to complete a sentence, I just may be in the shadows... or perhaps Eric... or maybe even Jue... Zach... or perhaps now you... ready to blurt out the phrase that cures all ailments ... or maybe you should just suck it? how about that? want to suck it? you sure do... suck it like YA MOOOOM!!!! oooooh shnaps!

this blog =

2006-02-02T17:31:00.001-05:00

Free association by Pedro... (Zach thinks I don't know how to use words... I'll show him)

2006-02-02T17:22:00.000-05:00

one two three four five six seven ate (haha) nine ten eleven elves twelves thirteen fourteener eleventeen twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen seventeen eleventeen twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen seventeen eleventeen twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen seventeen eleventeen twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen seventeen eleventeen twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen seventeen eleventeen DAMNIT WHY DOES SEVENTEEN HAVE TO REMIND ME OF ELEVENTEEN!!! FUCK THIS SHIT! t3h w0rdz ar3 t3h suck.