Friday, June 30, 2006

La Familia Lopez De La Garza

I already knew this since I am a member of the Mormon branch of our family, but I spring forth as a product of vague in-breeding:

Excerpt from an email I got today from Tia Linda

I would also like to share a genealogical tidbit... we have very recently discovered that JULIAN DE LA GARZA, whom we share as a 5th (?) great grandfather (in my case, on mother's side) is also our 5th (?) great grandfather on MY FATHER'S SIDE! It turns out that the Lopez family (Papi) comes from JULIAN DE LA GARZA's previous marriage. So maybe, this intermarrying stuff is responsible for the high, and sometimes unlikely, incidence of certain characteristics in our family... i.e. red hair, hyperactivity, height, y lo cabezón y patón! (or maybe even lo safado) Sé que usted es toda una eminencia (as Guela Consuelo loved to say) en esta área.... what do you think?

Love
Linda López de Román


Not sure why I decided to blog this, it seems like the kind of thing one would hide from loved ones. But there you go, you'll notice I present with most the "symptoms" Linda listed. (cabezón y patón == big head and big foot).

Also, there is now a Lopez family online forum; that was the actual reason for the email. Thats sort of neat.

Plausible

Eberlein: "Are they suffering enough, it seems like they should be suffering more"
TA Minion: "Well, they're suffering a lot, but I think you're right, they aren't truly tormented yet"
Eberlein: "Any ideas?"
TA Minion: "We can give them the next HW and make it due in 3 days"
Eberlein: "Thats good, I like where your head is, but to add a soupçon more, lets make it the longest hw yet"

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

I came out of the MSI concert unscathed. Or so I thought. Since people generally flee a man my size in a mosh I don't have any injuries inflicted by others. But throughout the day my neck got continuously more sore. Best I can reckon I hurt it just by doing the whole jumping and head-banging thing.

Sidebar: After a long night I got up and went to /all my classes/. I was very proud. But then after class I was meeting with Joe et. al. to have some sushi and go see the premiere of a scanner darkly. That was fun, but I have been running on fumes the whole day.

And now I am finally home and I am wired....I want to sleep!

=-(

I think I need a hug...

Monday, June 26, 2006

Automata

I am in Automata Theory right now. It occurs to me that "Automata" sounds like some sort of European highway system:

"How do I get around [Euro-Country]?"
"Oh, just take the Auto Mata"

Big and Tall

"Big & Tall: Casual Male" had a very clear message for me today. That message is that I am neither "Big" nor "Tall" and that I am in fact small, short, miniscule and wee.

This message is very at odds with what the rest of the haberdashery retail world has to say to me. In their world view I am both "Big" and "Tall" to such an extent that they havn't the time, resources, or desire to assemble clothing that will fit me.

So I stand in a strange sort of apparel limbo. I have 3 options available to me:
Option 1: Wait until my current wardrobe deteriates beyond use and get arrested for indecent exposure, be sent to prison where, I recently learned first hand, that they have no shoes my size.
Option 2: Lose roughly 15 lbs so I can count myself in the upper echelon of "Normal" sizes
Option 3: Gain roughly 50 lbs so I can count myself in the lower echelon of "Big and Tall" sizes

1 is easy and I figure I'll wind up in prison at some point anyway, but it's a catch-22 since I'll be stocking footed when I beat the largest, meanest guy in the room to death and rape his lifeless body in an effort to establish dominance. I can't deal with being stocking footed.

I'm still single so it would behoove me to wait on option 3 until I "lock that shit down".

Option 2 is really my only way out of this quagmire. So now I need to develop a bad body image, an ironically difficult task for me.

Santa Urine

All the homework is done (except automata, which is technically done, but turned to be due tommorrow rather than today). The project is in. Wave 4 of courswork for this session is over. It will all start again soon, but for now all I have to do is wait for the MSI concert.

Honestly, it's like christmas eve up in my head.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Bad Day

Dylan: "That chicken is probably bad"
Me: "Fuck you you lilly livered twat-waffle, I'll eat whatever I damn-well feel like and you'll say nothing more, bitch"

So I got food poisoning yesterday. Relatively painful food poisoning at that. The worst of it went away pretty quickly but it has stuck with me.

Not one to heed the still, small whisperings of my body I went ahead and drank heavily last night.

Then I had this weird dream where my Persuasion professor was my mother, rather than my real mother, and I was in her class and we just hated each other. And the fact that she was a lesbian was important, so now I am worried I am a homophobe. Oh, and there was a dog and some barbeque and a bridge at some point. It was a horrible dream.

I woke up in a very bad mood. It was early since I had to work on my project /all-fucking-day/! That was exhausting. Then I came home to do more homework.

All in all, this has been a shitty day.

Other side of the coin: I, with my roiling stomach, mother issues, and intellectual exhaustion, am still inexplicably happy. So fuck you fate!

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Shake That Laffy Taffy

We had a small, impromptu gathering at our place last night. Really, you could call it a party. It was actually extraordinarily impromptu. Nonetheless it was very fun and exactly what I've been needing for a while now. It turns out that 12 hours in 6 weeks build up a non-insignificant amount of stress and kathartic social events are really my only means of release =-D.

[EDIT: In the below paragraph "Taffy" means the literal definition of Candy -- Thanks J]
Also, earlier in the evening, Sarah and I endeveoured again to make taffy and met with astounding succuss. We were pulling the taffy when others arrived at our place so we had no shortage of guinea pigs to try our newly made taffy. Try to picture this: 6 people sitting in my living room in dead silence all gnawing on a peice of taffy. *Smack* *Smack* *Smack* They looked like a bunch of cows chewing on cud =-D.


Oh, and tell me if this is clever: "I think haiku's are proof enough that poetry is uncountably infinite"

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Haikubes Redux

Apparently the past-time that span off of my cynicism at Microsoft wasn't entirely original. Nay, a solid 5 months before we got moved into Cubes and were inspired to write poetry someone else had already published.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

More Pink Tickling

Monday, June 19, 2006

this tickled me pink

chmod +x chmod

Gurgle

Yester day we went swimming and did a little grilling and watched a little basketball and a little Equilibrium. It was fun.

It was also the first time I swam in the pool at our complex so I did not know that it got as deep as 8 feet. I rarely get to swim in a pool that goes over my head because of my height and I got very excited and disrobed as quickly as possible, ran full blast toward the edge and dove head first into the water. It was fantastic!

Unfortunately in my excitement I neglected to remove my glasses; I came to realize this as I flew not entirely without grace through the air toward the surface of the murky water. Before splashdown I had enough time to consider the probability that my glasses would stay on my face; I estimated that my chances were not good.

A moment later I sat 8 feet below water feeling my face and considering what my next move ought to be. I had two options: I ask for help, likely suffering ridicule or I could use my skills of a swimmer and scour the bottom of the pool alone. I settled on surfacing and breathing.

After that, though I began to search for my glasses. It took about 10 minutes of up and down before I stumbled across them on the pool floor. But I found them. Yay.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

This momentous occasion brings me much happiness. Blake and Crystal are engaged! ^_^

Link

Friday, June 16, 2006

Pop Surrealism

The only art movement that has ever counted me as a "fan" is Surrealism. Yesterday Joe turned me on to a more recent "pop surrealism" thing going on in japan and other places. So far I've liked what I've seen:

Link

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Even though it was Economics

I just took my first test in over a year. I don't want to overstate this so let me see if I can't find the exact phrasing necessary: I bitch-slapped that test so hard that anyone within 2 seats of me died; they just stopped living.

I can really only claim correlation. Did the sheer magnitude of my intellectual might generate some sort of expansive wave that in some way caused my peers to pass away? Really only God, or Gil Grisom, can tell. Still, I feel a pang of guilt. Sometimes, as is the case with me, a person can just forget their own strength and mistakenly, y'know, kill someone.

I'm like the oxymoronic cereberal parrallel to Lenny, from "Of Mice and Men". Really, the poetry here is mellifluous. I am the ultimate tragic figure. Given extraordinary power of contemplation I find that my gift is also my curse.


Oh my god....I'm Spider-Man

*tear*

Monday, June 12, 2006

I knew it

I knew they changed the Geico Gecko's accent recently! To obvlion with all of your gainsaying.

Article

"It was the ad agency's idea that the gecko should lose its aristocratic English accent and get an East London cockney accent..."


HUZZAH!

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Tootie Fruity

Good weekend! I started off finishing class on Friday. I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure but finishing class on Friday is great. Not only because you are finishing class, but you are finishing class on Friday. Seriously, give it a whirl if you're feeling squirrely. Anyway, I had a metric assload of work due at weekend's end so I skeedaddled to Tazza and sat and worked until I finished all the assignments with the exception of one essay and the coding project.

I went home and found Dylan watching a little SG-1. So I sat down and we marathoned it while I waited for life to shower me with fun and happiness. Generally when I do this very thing I fall asleep at 2 alone and sad. Not this time though since I got a ring from Sean. So I wound up at Jefferson commons amongst old friends, new friends and perfect strangers playing volleyball and getting tipsy after a coupla beer bongs and a non-insignificant amount of malibu.

I woke up saturday morning at 9 to get a head start on some stuff and meet my partner to work on our project. I was only slightly hung-over and managed to plow through the day in a state massive productivity. That night was the Riverboat Gamblers concert. I've never been a huge fan of Punk music; it's like one of those magic images that are full of visual noise and only after a long period of squinting and head-tilting will you be able to appreciate any midly discernable aspects. Other side of the coin: If you want to bop around wildly, there is just no better place than a punk concert. I /love/ to bop around wildly. I've only been to maybe 3 punk concerts in my life and none of them were nearly as good as Riverboat Gamblers. The lead guy was literally bouncing off the walls, hanging off the rafters and colliding with anything that stood still for more than a fleeting second, literally. The moshing was good too. Some dude decided to crowd surf straight into my head, but save a shirt soaked in 30 other peoples' sweat that was all the damage. Once I saw Sarah holding her own I was free to zone out and collide with any warm body in my vicinity. Fun.

After the concert we went to Sean's again for a very short visit. They were having fun but the concert was draining and I smelled six ways to mother's day. Home at 3, up at 10 to hit the code again. We finished it off and turned it in this afternoon leaving me free to do laundry and clean the damn kitchen and bathroom. Dylan and I rented a coupla flicks. One of them was Lord of War, just standard Nicolas Cage fantasticossitude. The other was "Reign of Fire" or, as Dylan so succinctly put it: "Dragons Vs. Helicopters". I managed to finish my essay during the movies and put down a handful of wings from Pluckers.

It's mundane, it's not worth mentioning but, damnit, it's what makes me happy. ^_^


Sidebar: The morning after the concert I woke up with the worst headache I have ever had excepting only the time I got knocked out by that closet door and [obligatory ex-girlfriend joke]. I managed to shake it off before we started watching those movies.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Don't Stop! Beleeeeiving! WHoaOOOOOoooAAAAo

This post is a reminder to myself to nver stop studying this weekend. Next week I have 4 assignments due, 2 papers, a Project, a Puzzler and 2 Mid-terms for good measure. =-D

On the other side of the coin, 2 of the assignments I already have done, I am halfway through one of the essays and we got the majority of the projects done.

Mid-Terms are still scary though.

I was given a boost of confidence, the assignments and quizes and puzzlers that i've gotten back have all been A's.

*Glee*

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Title

I think I suffer from some form of low-grade megalomania. I wrote a response to an essay question that I found pleasantly clever and immediately spiraled into a fantasy where I am given an A for the entire class so profound was my responses affect on the Professor.

If I hadn't caught myself I would be receiving the nobel prize right about now.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Gobble Gobble, Baby

I was walking down University Drive today on my way to Macroeconomics class with the strangely attractive professor when I crossed paths with a Muslim chick. Now in general crossing paths with a Muslim chick isn't interesting saving the occasional glance of fear and/or suspicion I'll get. This particular Muslim chick broke the mold by getting a cell phone call.

So as we are walking toward each other she gets the call and pulls out her cell phone, a clamshell. I am still puttering through my usual "I wonder if she has issues with sweat" thought-process when she takes the open clamshell phone and puts the earpiece part into her head scarf and lets go of it. IT STAYED! ^_^

Her headscarf was holding her entire cell phone to her head and she was using it as if it were an earpeice. I never thought of that particular possibility. It makes me wonder what other interesting headscarf-related tricks these women have. I don't know if there are rules against this, but having a second purse adorning your head leaps immediatly to mind. They could even hide a handcuff key in there, y'know, just in case.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Damn

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/Issues/2006-05-11/news/feature_1.html

Friday, June 02, 2006

C8H10N4O2 Get Thee Behind Me

I've been feeling a little under the weather. Not sickness, but a general dullness of wit and movement and awareness that I originally considered the first sign of my impending brain-death.

Then I realized that I have not had one of my Dr-Pepper-two-fors in a week and my general dullness felt much like the caffiene withdrawels I felt when I quit drinking caffiene in High School. So I've decided that my being beneath the proverbial weather is a result of caffiene withdrawels. Obstinate need for control over my life plus a rabid fear of chemical addiction mean I am officially quitting caffiene again. Last time I did that it lasted somewhere between 5 and 6 years =-D.