A Quick Post

Me: You know, I thought it was 2004 today.
Mary Kate: Well, you were only 2 years off.

A Rebel's Reflections in the Reg

So for the past two days I’ve had David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” song stuck in my head. You can make fun of me NOW: __________________. Ok. Probably because I watched the Transamerica trailer once too many times (what ELSE am I supposed to do?), where it’s played. My mom is probably onto something when she says that the tum-tum music makes you stupider.

So as I was sitting in the library in between classes, I had this song going through my head, right? And I sat there thinking “Wouldn’t it be pretty badass and hardcore if I skip my sosc class and instead parse some Egyptian?!?!?!?!?!!?” I then conducted a quick 3 person SMS survey involving Mary Kate, Julie, and Ron. Julie got the text message at 3:30 this afternoon, and she doesn’t count anyway, since she never skips class. Mary Kate said skip, I THOUGHT Ron said skip it, but it turned out that he meant “yes” as in “go to class” and not as in “yeah, you ditch you hardcore punk you.” But, well, who am I going to trust? The luckiest girl alive in terms of choosing what days of class are unnecessary, or a guy who probably doesn’t even know what Roswell is? The answer is OBVIOUS.

And this is how Adrianne came about to intentionally skipping a class this year for the first time without having a really good reason. I can guarantee you this would not have happened if I would have had “It’s a Marshmallow World” stuck in my head.

I’ve got my Egyptian midterm on Monday. I’ve got a vague idea about why the flight of Egypt happened way back when. It was because of the dative constructions in the hieroglyphs. You can hardly blame them.

A post with very little purpose

Except to say that facebook should NOT be making it so obvious that you can put up multiple pictures in an album because then even less work gets done when within eyesight of a computer.

A post with pictures

I finally got pictures developed, some left over from the summer, most from when Stacy! came and visited me. Hopefully these pictures will inspire others to come and see the way cool place I live.

However, let's start off with a very few pictures from the summer.

Here's Eszter with her husband of two years, and me in their really cute apartment:














Just as an aside, yes, I do think I look extremely strange(r) with longer hair. There were a few memorable occasions this summer where I didn't recognize myself in the mirror, and I was even sober. By the way, people in Hungary rarely smile. You can always tell who's been Americanized in these pictures.

This is the morning we left Hungary:














Stacy, Jen, and I went to the beach when I got back. I think one of these pictures is basically obligatory for anyone who goes to the beach:













This is a tree trunk shaped like a man rocketing down the hill at Stacy's ranch:
















Here is some of the view at Stacy's ranch:














This is Stacy in Chicago. She is really excited to be using public transportation, especially because it is the blue line and it doesn't suck like the red line. And because we're at Pilsen.














This is the stop at Pilsen, which is the Mexican area of Chicago:













Here is some more of Chicago, from the top of the John Hancock tower:














Still from the top of the tower:













Stacy and me in fron to the bean, which got de-panelized. FINALLY the mystery of the covered bean during last winter is solved:













Here's the place we study. That cord in the middle of the picture is my internet cord, and it's where I plan on hanging myself up once Egyptian gets too hard:















Speaking of Egyptian, the vulture wants to say "hi:"




























Welcome to life after late fees! To UCLA! Would you like a stress-free, delicious, and happy holiday with butterball? How about using some Clorox bleach wipes?













I am slowly but surely trying to get over the initial shock of the color combination. I have no idea if I'll ever get used to it though. And I can't think what possessed me to take this picture horizontally, but whatever.

Some more UCLA-ish goodness of pictures of the room will come once everyone gets around to putting up all the stuff on the walls.

That's all for now.

The first all nighter of this school year

And it wasn’t happening because I was up getting drunk or smoking up, but because I was doing some honest-to-goodness Egyptian hieroglyphics translations.  There was a PARTY going on in room 612, and I’m going to tell you all about it.

Somehow all nighters have lost their charm.  I sat down at the kitchen at about 8 PM, and I knew before that that I was in a veritable pile o’ shit.  In high school all-nighters were filled with long IM conversations about how we really should sign off and do some work, but ISN’T IT GRAND THAT WE’RE ONLINE TOGETHER?  And you knew you’d finish all the work by the end of the night.

I sat at that table at 8 worried that I wouldn’t finish about 24 lines of Egyptian translation in 9 hours.  And guess what.  I didn’t.  

Some of Kat’s amazing coffee got me started.  That coffee…if it were in space I’d mistake it for a black hole.  It had the consistency and taste of tar, since it was brewed for 18 hours.  Now, the blackness absorbed all color, but it also actually emitted a black aura and the voltage usage of the entire dorm had to increase two-fold because the building turned so black when the coffee pot was out of the refrigerator.  I think it had the power to fuel a small factory or a nuclear bomb.

Despite the coffee, during the night my most coherent thoughts were:
“GOOOOOOODDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN!”
“QUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAILS!”
“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”
“POOOOOOOOT WITH LEEEEEEEEEEEGS!”
“VULTURES!  SHIT!  HELL!”

After a while the cursing just turned into one long, silent, sustained scream in my brain.

(I’ve since recovered.  You can talk to me.  I will not start growling.)

Anyway, by 5:30 AM I literally could not see straight, my eyes were jiggling back and forth in my head, and I couldn’t focus on any more words.  I felt like if I looked at a single more Egyptian hieroglyph I’d end up barfing all over the kitchen table.  Much frustrated weeping and hysteria ensued.  It was not a pretty sight.

So at 6:30 I started listening to some way awesome music on my computer, and I calmed down.  

And then my Egyptian teacher said he wouldn’t most likely not be counting the homework as a quiz.

And that is the story of my first all nighter of my second year of college.

Just one of those things

This week was one of THOSE weeks. One of those weeks where the 2 ply toilet paper keeps on separating and only coming out one…sheet…at…a…time and your hovering tolerance is challenged even more than at kickboxing class. It was one of those weeks where you find crumbs everywhere in the room, there are ALWAYS dirty dishes in the sink, and the trashcan is always on the verge of exploding.

Yes indeed, it was a looooong week.

Today I met the most pretentious, obnoxious, repellent, detestable, irritating girl in the ENTIRE WORLD. She’s in my art history class, and today I sat within 3 feet of her, but never again. If she gets within arm reach of me I’m going to choke her. We had a mini quiz for attendance and I didn’t get the artist on one of them AFTER the quiz was handed in.

Me: “Hi, did you get the artist for the third piece?”
Biggest Bitch in the World: “You LOOKED at my quiz?”
Me: “Well, I saw you had written something when you handed it to me to turn in…? I didn’t copy, or I wouldn’t be asking you now.”((I was already calculating how long it would take to crack her thick skull right now)
BBITW: “I don’t give out answers.”

She sits in class and in her thick British she stutters (unfortunately, sometimes she does stutter, which is mean of me, but this also means we have to listen to her talking for even longer) through her ideas, and after she’s done with them, she gives out this self-satisfied grunt/sigh and looks around expecting the people to die from astonishment because what she said ACTUALLY CAME OUT OF HER MOUTH. She sits there thinking “Aren’t I the smartest, brightest, most beautiful girl in this class? GOD I AM AMAZING.” Her nose is stuck so high that you can see straight up into her brain and there IS NOTHING THERE.

She bothers me. The only reason I survived discussion today was because I imagined ways to kill her. (This is how I relax nowadays, by the way).

1. I would either hang her up by her hair right next to the speakers in there and just turn the volume up really loud and leave her hanging there for a long time.


2. Put one of those cow rings in her nose, tie her feet together, and drag her around with people sitting on her back.


3. Put her in the clothes dryer.

Ah. That was cathartic. You don’t want to get on my bad side. So far I’ve only got Adam Smith and that girl on my hit list, so there’s plenty room for more.

Would you like to come over for dinner tonight?

The menu for the next three months will be:

Veggie patty al dente
Crème du veggiè pattiè
Veggie patty delite
Veggie patty pureé
Veggie patty fritatta
Old World style veggie patty
Veggie patty picante
Veggie patty sashimi
Veggie patty salad
Veggie patty rings
Fried veggie patty
Baked veggie patty
Microwaved veggie patty

And of course for dessert:
Frozen veggie patty

Enjoy.  Courtesy of room 612 and the leftover veggie patties that got shunted on us from the Shoreland BBQ
     

On the top of the 4th page for Adam

Reflecting back on the very recent past (since when I've been reading such greats as the Marx-Engels Reader, The Wealth of Nations (yes, you have heard me complain about him long enough, I know) and other philosophers about social theory) I've come up with a perfect solution to the problem I face with not comprehending ANYTHING I read from them.

Read The Wealth of Nations as a lullaby to kids.

It puts ME right to sleep as a near-20 year old, so I'm sure it's a guaranteed headnodder for 2 year olds. If I would have grown up listening to the division of labor and the real price of money ideas by Smith since I was 5 months old, I am so sure something would have stuck. I can recite out loud to you Sleeping Beauty and The Fox and the Hound if you just get me started, so just imagine if my kids could do that with The Wealth of Nations! GOD! I WOULD MAKE THEIR LIFE SO MUCH EASIER.

It's settled. I am going to sing them Plato's Republic to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and they WILL listen to me reading The Wealth of Nations before falling asleep.

Egyptian Lesson 101

Before we start on this week's intial Egyptian lesson, I'll just mention that I read the essay prompt incorrectly for my soc essay and I was in this delusional state where I thought that I might be able to finish the essay within a reasonable amount of time. So, if anyone could "Critically discuss Smith’s arguments on the consequences of capitalism for the human beings and the society," then please, give me ONE idea.

Anyway, this week's lesson will be dealing with bilaterals and trilaterals. Except I only scanned in a couple bilaterals.

What are bilaterals and trilaterals, you ask.

Well, per each picture, there are 2-3 consonants. Bilaterals, 2. Trilaterals, 3. For example, there is a picture of a shark, and it is prounounced jly, or there is a picture of a very small shoe and it is prounced mk.

In order to better memorize each of these bilaterals, I suggesting placing a sexual connotation on each one, or something dirty attached to each. In addition to blushing throughout the entire quiz, you'll also have a good reason to go to confession that weekend.

1.








This one is pronounced "wa." The ONLY logical reason I came up with it being "wa" is because it kind of looks like a sperm, and I'm assuming sperms go "wa" when they are going up to wherever it is that they are headed. By the way, I guess I forgot to mention that a lot of these associations are pretty convoluted and stupid.

2.









This here is pronounced "pa." It is pronounced "pa" because there is a piece of poop coming out from it's bum, and "pa" starts with "p," just like "poo" does. (That isn't actually a piece of poop, but we have to use our imagination. Just like I'm going to have to to figure out WHAT is capitalism)

3.







This is "ma." Doesn't it look exactly like something your ma would heartily beat you with?

4.









This one is "mn." I forgot to mention that Egyptians didn't show any vowels in their writings, so Egyptologists kind of have to imagine what it sounded like. The standard vowel filler, however, seems to be "e." So this picture I made into "men," and, well, it's got little lines sticking up. I placed a phallic connotation on those little lines. After all, the ARE sticking straight up.

5.









This is "mr." So, "mer." If you're looking at this pretty late at night after many, many hours of painting, you can kind of see a MERman's tail.

6.










This is "ms" which equals "mes." This looks up a broom, which would clean up a mess.

7.









This one is "shw" (roughly), which sounds like shoe. Which is what this looks like.

8.









This is "sn," which can be pronounced "sin," and it's pointing down to Hell, which is straight where I'm going because of all the other ideas I had for the rest of the pictures.

These were only 8 out of the 90 some I learned. There was plenty of room for creativity in the rest. Stay tuned for another Egyptian Lesson that will come one day.

Let's see about that essay now.

The daughter spoke to her father when she saw the female servant upon his donkey

So it seems my blog (as many others) has become a dumping ground for minor companies looking for cheap advertising. I am absolutely thrilled.

This weekend was basically awesomely unproductive.

I just read the 2 prompt choices for my first soc paper. My eyes dilated completely and I'm still short of breath. Sorry, Rory, I can't finish the "opera" update because I don't think I'm going to be able to finish living if I have this essay topic ahead of me. Creative thinking is absolutely impossible when Adam Smith is around. And I started reading Marx again, who is just as bad, but that somehow slipped my mind.

To take my mind off things, Julie sang me Hush Little Alien while Mary Kate played the mother and smashed my head in with a brick. You know what, I'm just going to write out my schedule today:

6:45 AM Wake up to finish parsing my Egyptian
7:00 AM Breakfast of blueberry oatmeal and some sort of almond cereal bar thing from the 2 for $5 section at Walgreens
8:00 Get on bus for Egyptian
8:15 Get to class. Sit there until 8:30
8:30-9:25 Egyptian
9:30-10:20 Espanol
10:20-11:20 Go with Pam and Neale to the Reg library and do some Egyptian.
11:30-12:20 Astound everyone in my soc class with some revolutionary ideas about Marx's theories
12:20-12:35 Check my e-mail for kicks, trip some unsuspecting students in the library, and completely switch the "B" and "C" shelves of Harper library
12:45-1:37 Go to work in the office
1:45-2:15 Go out to run errands on campus. Run into Mary Kate and her friend Jen. Make a concrete, absolutely certain date to go see Harry Potter when it comes out. Start imagining what trashbags would suffice for costumes
2:20-2:45 Sit in office and talk with Nicole. Add some more members, that sort of thing
3-3:35 Go to library to do some more Egyptian
3:45-5 Get Frankie to do his homework while I do my Egyptian. We can tell what most of my days are consumed with
5-6 Study with Frankie for his science test.
6:15-6:45 Walk home REALLY SLOWLY from campus.
6:45 Confronted by Mary Kate and Julie who want me to go eat at BJ with them. I decide to eat at home instead. They threw their boogers at me

I've done nothing since then. Besides get read to and check my email a zillion times. I'm going to go now.

How was your day?

The daughter of the overseer rides a donkey to her female servant

Since I've come to Chicago I've been to two operas: Carmen and La Cenerentola. Carmen's tickets were more expensive, and the seats were worse, but what do you expect. It's Carmen.

Anyway, they were probably made 80 times more enjoyable for me because these were two operas I watched constantly when I was younger. My afterschool activity in kindergarten was Encino Man, 2nd and fourth grades was Ricki Lake and Montel with Stacy, which progressed to the Lion King and Aladdin in 3rd, then when I could stay at home alone, it turned into Carmen in 6th grade, then West Side Story for a record breaking 2 years, and then I don't even remember. All I know now is that I can't sit through West Side Story for the entirety because I watched it WAY too much.

With West Side Story, Carmen, and La Cenerentola, I distinctly remember fast forwarding the overtures every day. I wasn't patient enough to sit looking at the screen, but tonight when I was sitting down I realized that I actually (ok, my ring just fell down the bathroom drain, SO I'M REALLY PISSED OFF BECAUSE I COLLECT THOSE THINGS FROM SPECIAL PLACES AND THEY'RE ALL IMPORTANT TO ME AND SO YEAH...I'M PRETTY ANGRY RIGHT NOW AND I CAN'T FINISH THIS LONG AND INVOLVED POST BECAUSE MY RING IS DOWN THE DAMN DRAIN AND I'M GOING TO MISS IT DAMNIT)

Adam Smith

What Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations Makes me feel like doing:


When I'm reading it, I want to kill the whole world. Today in class, once I had slammed my head down on the table after answering 5 questions incorrectly, I contemplated the miriads of options I had for destroying the book.
1. Ripping out the pages slowly one by one, relishing the tear of each page, and then eating all the pages
2. Jumping up on the table and violently start ripping it apart, then taking a hammer to it
3. Just dousing myself and the book in gasoline, then running through an enormous bonfire I would have set with all copies of the book I could find.
4. Kat just suggested going to a little nation in Africa, starting my own country there, and then printing the new currency on the pages of the books. She is able to think more rationally than I can, because I am blinded by hatred.

That book makes me feel like I'm plastered on wall and someone is continously and rythmically hitting me with a bludgeon.

The worst part is that I won't even be able to go to my default topic for the essay (the oppression of women) with this book.

Parsing

Today I discovered something new to abhor and to complain about here, and it's not going to be about that brat in Spanish class who's hardly opened her mouth but who's made herself understood that she's WAY to advanced for everyone there and that yeah, of COURSE she can handle a project by herself because she's just such an amazing señorita that she helped furnish the Spanish faculty, curriculum, and department lock, stock, and barrel, and everyone goes to her to translate Spanish movies into English.

So, back to parsing.

I don't know if parsing exists in English, but if it does, God help us, because I don't see how people could want to do this in two languages.

Parsing. Even the word sounds like you should be pulverizing the fleshy part of your fingers against a cheese grater.

It starts out harmless enough as explaining "the morphology and syntax of a word of phrase." That sounds kind of like the morphology we did in Hertzog's class, no? But no, it goes on to where in an exercise a simple verb suddenly becomes "circumstantial verb form with 3rd. masc. sing. suffix pronoun as subject." This brings students back to the age-old question of why do we NEED to know this? And this brings me around to asking "So why am I taking Egyptian again?"

The answer is pretty simple. I figureD, I can't talk about anything normal with people, like what the party was like over the weekend, the OC, boys (HA!), or the latest Franz Ferdinand album, since I would end up talking about things like...ROSWELL. So here is my chance to be way cool at frat parties and talk about, what else: Egyptian!

Way to go, Adrianne.

Just as an aside, I am not taking Egyptian to have more things to talk about with you. I'm taking Egyptian so that I can ruin that Spanish student girl's life, and I WILL accomplish this by taking Egyptian.

Some Saturday night Fun

Reading some Adam Smitty, with occasional breaks of asking Kat if she flushed the toilet, making her run back pell-mell to make sure she did. Ahhh, it never gets old.