Rain

This morning it was raining, but I was unable to discern it from the poor vantage of our dorm window and consequently left the building wearing flip-flops. I lacked time to return and change them - I was already running late and had missed my chance to shave and to eat breakfast before calc - so I had to trudge for 30 minutes and back across soaked concrete paths, laden with puddles due to the hilly terrain, wearing Rainbows whose dye bled off onto my feet and yellowed them. Needless to say I splashed through enough water to wet my pant legs, which made walking even more uncomfortable. Most people's umbrellas meet me at approximately eye level, so walking in the rain generally entails several pokes to the eye or at least splashes to the face. Buttprints dotted the path down the Hill, solemn memorials to those lost playing Zero Traction on Slippery Slopes. Someone had apparently been separated from her chemistry notecards in the middle of De Neve Plaza, which were shriveling up in lament as I walked past. Despite all of this, I couldn't help but feel rejuvenated - something about rain, despite its inconveniences and melancholy symbolism, never fails to put me in a good mood.

I am a plant.

Finding Food

Yesterday we were walking to Ackerman in search of food. When we approached the locked-up Bruin bear, a woman was walking by with her husband and daughter, who appeared to be about 2 years old. The girl was crying and repeatedly bawling "Bruin bear! I want to see the Bruin bear!" Her mother attempted consolation: "The bear is sleeping. I promise he will be here next time." Which allows us to conclude: USC loves making children cry. What shameless schadenfreude.

Even though it was 1 PM and everybody was returning from their Thanksgiving breaks (presumably much more satisfying than mine), Sbarro was the only place open in Ackerman. So we got in line behind an old man who ordered a slice of mushroom pizza and sat down at one of the tables with a notebook. I didn't think much of it until I was passing by him to get some water and glanced over his shoulder. He was doing calculus - one of those Ph.D.-in-math kind of guys who spends his time thinking "Let's see if I can become famous this way." In other words, what I want to be when I grow up.

Actually, that's a lie - research in mathematics bores me to death. But that doesn't make sitting down alone in Ackerman with some mushroom pizza while doing calculus any less hardcore.

Other unrelated observations:

• The Ackerman hobo has changed her hair color. It is now bright red.
• Only athletes have the nerve to take the elevator to the second floor. How does that make any sense?
• The hallway of Hedrick Summit 7 SMELLS SO BADLY.
  

Thanksgiving Weekend

I missed our usual second Thanksgiving today because of the Oregon game. I turned on my phone after the football game and received a bunch of picture messages from my uncle. He photographed everything they ate. And I don't mean a picture of the dinner table, or the dishes filled with food - they were pictures of individual foods laid out on a napkin. Unfortunately they take up most of my phone's memory and I will probably have to delete them soon.

Game Show Network

Recently we have begun religiously watching the Game Show Network. Unfortunately we are basically alone in doing this is so advertising there is quite cheap - and it is painfully evident. Not only is every commercial for an obscure untested medicine (though assuredly praised by the elderly) or for Fruit of the Loom underwear, but after sitting through a single half-hour block of programming you will have seen the same set of commercials at least three times.

However, one of the rarer commercials has captured our hearts:

Basically it is about some people who love Alpacas - But I'm not sure why this needs to be advertised because I'm usually too enthralled by their splendor for any auditory comprehension to occur. The website itself is worth a look as well.

The Game Show Network's afternoon lineup is generally consistent: an hour of Family Feud, a half hour of Chain Reaction followed by Lingo and then by Whammy. The Weakest Link and Who Wants to be a Millionaire are occasionally thrown in later in the day. I am sure you are familiar with most of these but some might be foreign:

Chain Reaction is a word game where you basically try to create two-word phrases from one word to another. It's actually pretty entertaining. In the final round two members of the winning team have to alternate saying one word each to ask a question to the third member. Today the answer to a question was "Al Gore" and one girl was trying to ask the question "Who was the president who ran against George Bush?" But her idiot teammate either forgot Bush's first name (or perhaps she really is a complete moron) and she wasted a few seconds before saying "John" instead of George.

Lingo is another word game where you basically have to guess 5-letter words. It's not particularly interesting - but the worst part of it is this stupid woman who incessantly vomits babble about the players and the host. Today there was this dumb couple who would kiss each other on the lips literally EVERY TIME they got a word correctly (which was often). And the camera crew was sure to catch it without fail. I may watch this channel for completely brainless entertainment but this isn't exactly what I had in mind.

Whammy is the worst game show of all time mostly because it is 100% based on luck, aside from the absurdly easy trivia questions thrown into the second round. They emphasize "pressing your luck" and still have the audacity to tell losers that they played well. The game revolves around pressing a button over and over and hoping you don't land on a Whammy, who, accompanied by horrendous CGI, steals all your money and prizes at once, making the game even more of a waste of time than it already was. To make matters worse the contestants are literally encouraged to be as irritating as possible; while spinning, they shout "BIG MONEY BIG MONEY NO WHAMMMMIESSS!!!". Females do this in their highest-pitched voices. The host then berates them (hypocritically) for being so annoying.

Today there was a Star Trek episode of The Weakest Link. William Shatner was unfortunately voted off very early on. The winner was definitely deserving - except he actually said that ten squared was five hundred. It's bizarre when someone knows literally every piece of obscure trivia but has no grasp on elementary mathematics.

I ate a fortune cookie today:

As awesome as this would be, trusting this cookie means expecting my dream to come true. Which, according to this cookie, cannot occur while I am expecting it. Therefore I must reject the fortune: my dream will come true when I am expecting it. But I will not expect it unless I trust the cookie. What a sad existence.

Needless to say, it is fun to pretend sometimes.

Professor's Day Off

Today we were waiting (eagerly) for Italian food class to start when the two TAs walked in and told us that the Professor had been called away today and that they would be giving the lecture (much to our dismay... of course). The first guy, who generally knows what he is doing and is quite articulate, begins to give a nice overview, complete with Powerpoint visual aide, of this week's readings which are excerpts from Boccaccio's Decameron. As you might imagine, this is fortunate for those of us who will never actually do the readings. This spanned about 40 minutes.

Then the other TA began her part of the lecture: "I want to talk a little bit about pasta." She then attempts to describe the origin of pasta but uses so many Latin and Italian words for antiquated types of pasta that it is virtually incomprehensible (and she seldom makes sense to begin with). My notes for the day can be seen to the left. The end of her presentation included a Powerpoint too. The difference between the two was of course that hers was completely useless.

In a course entitled "Italy Through the Ages: Food and Literature," so perfectly opposite everything we anticipated that we'd learn in school, I thought that it would be difficult to deem one moment more completely irrelevant than the next. Today unfortunately proved me wrong. The Powerpoint started with pictures of various types of pasta, labeled in Italian with font too small to read (I sit in the second row from the front). Before long the labels disappeared altogether and we were simply left looking at rather hi-res photographs of pasta; by this point I had of course completely tuned her out but I am sure she was trying to get us to actually LEARN something. The end of the Powerpoint was of course a grand finale of the Mona Pasta a photo of Fatti una Pizza in Italy which features pasta curtains. These she decisively deemed "some modern uses of pasta." Cassandra captured this lovely photograph of my immediate reaction.


I have invented a new game: It's called "Zero Traction on Slippery Slopes." You try to take as many steps as you can down one of the hills here while it is wet wearing old, thoroughly-worn flip-flops without slipping and falling to your death. On a completely unrelated note, the Bruin Bear is temporarily out of service.


Our last French midterm was also returned this morning; I have photographed my essay on Paris Hilton. This should dispel the myth that I don't ever make mistakes. Those of you who have taken a bit of French will hopefully get a laugh or two out of it.

Foggy Morning

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This morning were lucky enough to get the same fog that I was talking about last Friday, so now I can share it with you. Also know that I had to go through and edit the CSS of this blog to present them like this. So you had better enjoy these.

Writing a Calculus Book

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Hey JAMES STEWART, let's write the most irritating chain rule problem of all time! Just to totally enrage anyone unfortunate enough to have to use our textbook!!! Here's a start.

Sorry, I don't think that's tedious enough! Let's add a part B!

Hey Professor Weinstein! Let's assign students using the chain rule in higher dimensions for the very first time in their lives the most irritating chain rule problem of all time! You know, as an introduction!!

What a great idea! Let's add it to the syllabus! Wait, here's four more problems exactly like it! Let's assign those too just to make sure they really get it! Five times the problems means five times the proficiency!

Mexican Food

Yesterday night in Rieber was amazing because it was apparently Mexican food night - Tostadas, beef tamales, Spanish rice, and limitless churros, which I ate five of and can only assume were a gift from the gods. The scene was complete with horrendously stereotypical and horrendously awesome mariachi music, unsurprisingly the best music they ever play in the dining halls. I have never really felt any connection with my heritage but something about this atmosphere made me feel utterly at home - perhaps it was the frijoles refritos.

Incidentally Rieber is now my favorite dining hall, despite its ruthlessly brutal massacre of my rightmost toe last Monday morning, a trauma from which I am still recovering. Who wants to see?!

My mom always used to tell me that we learn something new every day. Today I learned never to come home again unless I am sure something is going on. Yes, this is a desperate plea for you to entertain me.

11:11

Lucky lucky 11:11 post time because Michelle requested it!

My scores came yesterday! The only thing that irritates me is that the score to La Fiesta Mexicana is nontransposing :[ Who does that?

French Midterm

On my French midterm just now I had to write about a typical weekend of Paris Hilton. I spent too much time thinking of ways to insult her in rudimentary French and consequently wrote too little.

Fridays and Bikes

Sometime I have to relearn how to actually get out of bed once I've turned off Clocky. Today I didn't get up until 6:56 and we usually try to eat breakfast at 7. But today is Friday and Friday is my self-declared big-breakfast day so I took a quick shower and forwent shaving (I really need to) so I could get down to Rieber in time. To my dismay Rieber hates me now and never has bacon anymore - the essence of big-breakfast Friday. So I just ate some cereal instead.

It was the start of one of those perfectly mediocre days until we went outside. Apparently while I slept yesterday UCLA levitated to the end of the world. Walking down the hill around what was once Drake Stadium gave us a captivating vista of absolutely nothing. It was a scene out of The Neverending Story except not hilarious. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me and the fog had cleared by the time calc was over. I think I need to start carrying it with me at all times. Other recently-missed Polaroid moments include:

• A chalk drawing of the outline of a small person garnished the side of path by Rieber yesterday afternoon. It was labeled Midget died here.
• The floor display of the right elevator in Hedrick Summit briefly read "Q" as we were returning from lunch.
• The fattest squirrel of all time catapulted itself across our path this morning.
• An old guy and a youngish woman both walking tiny dogs. The dogs started staring each other down and everything was motionless for about ten seconds. Finally their owners awkwardly said hello to each other.
• Some guy who looked exactly like me.
  

Over the course of the past two months here I have unfortunately developed an acute fear of bikes. When I'm walking up hill few things are scarier to me than a bicyclist suddenly appearing out of nowhere and heading right towards my feet. He doesn't have much room to maneuver because I am only one of what is probably a hundred people walking up or down the same hill. Somehow I realize in the few seconds I have left before the collision that he is better at dodging me than I am at dodging him. But when the vicious hum of bike wheels reaches my ears and those malicious little devil-eyes stare at me in the straight in the face, fight-or-flight syndrome kicks into full gear and the last thing I want to do is stand still. Fortunately in the end I manage to restrain myself yet again.

This happens several times daily and now I can say sans exaggeration that I hate bikes with every fiber of my being. Those remorseless baby-killing terrorist machines.

Alarm

My roommate's alarm has gone off four times already. He keeps hitting the snooze button. Still no sign of actually waking up.

Italian Food and Calculus

A typical day in Italian food class goes something like this:

1. For the first 30 minutes or so I am alert. I write down about half a page of notes which I will never read again in the same time it has taken the girl next to me to complete three full pages. Her handwriting is smaller than mine.
2. My mind wanders and I start to doze off. It's gradual at first and I know that today will be different. Today I will be awake through the full two hours.
   
3. I am asleep.
4. Cassandra concocts some unruly way to awaken me. Today her method was a quick strike to my nose with a pen. She says next week she is going to rip my arm hair off using tape. This must be avoided at all costs.
5. I yell. Or at least I think I do. Every morning I wake up in a pool of sweat after nightmares foreboding the day that my reaction is loud enough for people to actually hear.
6. I sit up straight and do not fall asleep again for the rest of the lecture. Note that this does not entail actually paying attention. Today I was asked a question about something the professor had just said. I was not aware that the professor had said anything.

Now today was a bit different than normal because today our second two-page response paper was due. Nobody proofread mine and I liked what I had written far less than what I had written for the first one, so I was a bit nervous about turning it in. But it's difficult to imagine a better way to erase my apprehension than catching a glimpse of the work of a certain S. Han, who had adorned the upper half of his/her paper with the gutsiest title I have ever witnessed: TITLE. And who was submitting this for a grade.

TITLE is even pretty gutsy as far as filler titles go (usually I use POOP)


There's a chalk ad on that cement wall halfway up the hill to De Neve where someone misspelled Kerckhoff as "Kerchoff". who wants to go carrot-mark in a K and a smiley face with me?



Dear multivariable calculus,

Why do you hate me?

z = cos(x + y + z)
δz/δx = -sin(x+y+z) * (1 + δz/δx)
δz/δx = -sin(x+y+z) - sin(x+y+z)(δz/δx)
δz/δx = -sin(x+y+z) / (1 + sin(x+y+z))
δz/δx (π/4, π/4, 0) = -1/2

I told you I could do it correctly :[

Vehemently,
Alex