Worried

I might be becoming a music person.

"It's a band," I heard myself saying. "You probably haven't heard of them. They're ungoogleable."

Also a:

bad feminist

bad Hindu (see below)

bad atheist (see above)

I was reading some of my old linear algebra proofs. They are laughably bad. At one point the TA had, justifiably, written "Why??" five times on one problem. I remember calling the professor at his house to ask him if I should drop out of the class. He said no, that I would need linear algebra for neuroscience.

I agree with everything in this blog post. Trying to add more thinking-y things to my regular blog reading. Many thanks to David for his contributions to that goal.

Rat #6 bit me today. It didn't hurt...except my feelings.

There was a teen self-help book I read with some zeal a few years ago. It suggested counting the number of times one says "I" in the course of a day, then cutting it by a certain fraction/amount/something. And almost every time I say "I" or type "I" I think of that book and feel guilty. And then think of another book: Ayn Rand's "Anthem". Whoops. Just outed myself as a

bad Objectivist.

Moving backwards

It seems my discussions with my mother have regressed in maturity/intellect. Where once we would have (unfailingly) dissected the American education system, with a few uterus jokes thrown in for good measure, it has now come to this.

The scene: my return from another fail day at lab.

Mother: Have you eaten any lunch?

(I should note that this is the first sign of strangeness. My mother does not inquire as to her children's health, only her guinea pig's.)

Me: Yes. I had cookies.

Mother: Cookies are not a lunch! Here, let me get you some rice.

Me: They were pretty big cookies...

Mother: Shut up and eat your rice.

Actually, that last bit hasn't changed.

Tips

Here are some useful things you can do with dark chocolate m&m's.

1. Mix with peanuts. Pretend they are peanut m&m's.

2. Mix into vanilla yogurt for a colorful, crunchy concoction.

3. Just eat them already.

On the occasion of this, my twentieth blog post (!!), I would like to thank you, reader, for sticking around. One of you is in the eastern hemisphere. One's in the southern hemisphere. One is from Australia, which basically takes care of the remaining quadrant. So could you say this blog is bringing the world together? Yeah, probably. Anyway. Thank you for reading my complaints on the internet, and probably listening to them in real life too. You are a good kid and I'm grateful to count you as a friend. One day I will tell you that outside of cyberspace, and maybe there will even be eye contact.

My favoritest singer accepted my friend request today (yes, this means creeping on her baby pictures). I was almost left inside a locked bus today (again). Are these two events related? I'll leave you to speculate.

Hustle and cuss

• Spider solitaire is considerably more difficult than I remembered.

• A few years ago my mother and I got our noses pierced together. I brought her pictures of puppies to distract her and held her hand. She still screamed. I apparently forgot about her pain tolerance issues when I suggested we get tattoos to celebrate our respective graduations...and she took it seriously. whoops.

• Hormones get a bad rap. Actually studying endocrinology this year helped me appreciate how important and tightly controlled they are. So, people blaming their actions/mood/behavior on "hormones" make me cringe. Take responsibility for yourself already.

• The dog is smiling at me. creep.

• If I had any sort of credibility while cussing it would happen a lot more often. Wait, already have the facial piercings, leather jacket, mysterious scars, and imaginary tattoo. Maybe a motorcycle is key?

Faster than ice caps

• Gold Peak tea is delicious.

• A new College Board report says the country is 12th in terms of 25 to 34 year olds with college degrees. Canada, South Korea, Russia, Japan, New Zealand, Ireland, Norway, Israel, France, Belgium and Australia are all ahead of us. The NYT article I read this in was well-written but for one glaring problem: the writer consistently equated Lady Gaga and Snooki. ("Putting our brains on hold", Bob Herbert, 8/7/10)

• Within fifteen minutes of being lined up on a table in view of each other, my rats start doing the same things at the same time--sleeping (in the same position, no less), grooming, whatever. Any ideas how/why this happens?

• No seriously, gold peak tea, I need more.

• I also found it interesting that the college board president "called on educators to develop curricula that are more 'interesting and inspiring.'" Err. Somehow I don't think that will help much.

• "American politics is apparently cursed by the fatal allure of free cabinetry." Gail Collins = best NYT columnist? I think so. (First typed "communist" instead of "columnist".)

• "The most horrifying of the lot was [the] green backless disaster, which looked like something a concubine would wear to the annual Harem Achievement Awards ('Harries')." Funniest clothing review I've read in some time.

• I'm going to write a mystery novel where the identity of the killer is totally obvious and there are a bunch of clues and it should be open-and-shut, but through a series of hilarious mishaps and general displays of incompetency, the detectives still take the length of the novel to figure it out, by which time the reader thinks I must be pulling their leg, there's no way it could be that obvious, but then it actually is the obvious person, and the reader's mind is blown by the obviousness. Blam, bestseller.

It's not the third

I blog too much. But think of it this way. It's a lot easier to ignore a blog post than a wall post.

I'm veering wildly between

1. Of course I'll get in. In fact I'll get in to multiple places. I'll get in to so many places I will bemoan having to choose between them.

2. Under what audacity did I spend so much of my parents' money applying this year. There's no way I will get in anywhere. One school has a ratio of 5000 applicants for 88 seats. Really? I'm going to beat those odds?

Currently in #2. The premed student forums don't help. Everyone there is insane. They raise my blood pressure like nobody's business. I can count the number of premed people I genuinely like on one hand.

There's a really cool combo of coffee, energy drinks, and self-doubt running through my veins. But it might just be all those existentialist webcomics.

Update: Pep talk received . It went like this.

Me: Mother. I'm having an existential crisis.

Mother: Again? Well, you have to have one every month or so to make sure you exist, I suppose. What is it this time? You won't get in anywhere?

Me: I won't get in anywhere.

Mother: Huh. That's okay. I'll teach you to make parathas.

Sister: You want her to be a housewife?!

Mother: No, no. She'll make parathas in tiffins for all the bachelors. Every day they'll pay her to pack tiffins.

Me: But they'll have creepy mustaches.

Mother: No, hire a delivery guy. You just make the parathas.

Me: (...)

Mother: I don't care if you don't want to write. Go.

And so I went and here we are. I'm good now.

Spicy Indian noodles

I think the arsenic is working.