Some satisfying things induced entirely naturally

It was definitely worth taking Sosc to fill out the evaluation sheet today. Usually, I spend about 0.000003 seconds on the evaulation sheets, or about as long as it takes me to lose interest in whatever it is I'm reading in Sosc at the moment, so no time at all.

However, on this Sosc evaluation, I went the whole 9 yards.

Well, not really. Basically, a few answers to some of the questions went something like this:

"I frequently wished both Marx and Smith had been illiterate."

"This course made me feel insignificant while making my brain feel like it was going to explode."

"I was not made for higher level thinking."

"I think I would have been able to survive in blissful ignorance of everything Smith had to say in his book."

The long and short of it is, if I had put my name on this evaluation sheet, my mother would not have been proud of me.

Another thing that made me mildly happy is someone asked to study with ME! ADRIANNA K. GYORFI! in Egyptian. A circa 29 year old grad student, nonetheless. She has NO IDEA what a huge abyss of ignorance she is going to encounter within a few days because the brain...it is empty in here. I don't even know her name, but I do know she is married, she has a really pretty wedding ring, she went to Harvard for part of her grad school, she spent a year in a cubicle job after graduating college and when she told her co-workers she was getting out to go to school, they all gazed at her longingly and she was spurred to stand on top of her desk to urge them to break DOWN their cubicules and GO FREE! This part reminded me oddly enough of Marx, but what book did he write again? That's right, I don't remember because I am forgetting that first quarter Sosc ever happened because I HATE IT THAT MUCH, AND I STILL HAVE TO WRITE ONE FINAL ESSAY FOR IT, DAMNIT!

Time of the Tea Entry

It's time for Celestial Seasonings' 15 minutes of fame, everyone!

I remember buying this box of tea. I remember buying it because I thought the cover was pretty weird, and also because I wasn't wearing glasses so I had to hold it about 2 inches away from my face to see what flavor I was buying. 1.5 months ago was also about the last time my body was not composed solely of veggie burgers, and the last time I seriously considered not wasting time, but moving on...

Without further ado, I present to you: Celestial Seasonings' Madagascar Vanilla Red Rooibos Tea











Sorry. It's flipped, but it doesn't deter from the message. I'll just clarify it for you anyway though: There is a lion sitting on a wicker chair with a cup of what is presumably the Rooibos tea, enjoying the afternoon sunlight while waiting for Simba and Nala to come visit him later.

I did some extensive research this morning, and discovered that in fact Madagascar does not have any lions natively living on the island. Madagascar has lots of other weird species, since it was relatively isolated when all those things were developing (like the Galapagos Islands...remember something about evolution?). So for a while, I was stumped about the presence of the lion.

And just in case the drinker has any doubt that it is indeed a lion sitting on the cover, there is a glorious enlargement in full color on the other side of it:











Anyway, here are 2 different versions of stories I can get from the picture.

VERSION 1:
Exerting superhuman powers to ignore the fact that lions don't in fact live in Madagascar, and that it has tropical rainforests, where there is CLEARLY a savannah or whosits pictured here, I think this lion is sitting resting after having a long day roaming the brush. Now he's having a cup of tea to work up an appetite to go chase after the zebras, even though lions don't hunt alone, since they are social cats and hunt with a buddy. So this is why he's waiting for Simba and Nala; he'll take them hunting the zebra, and while he's chewing away at their necks, Simba and Nala can gnaw on the zebras' tails or something.

It's also possible he's having a cup of tea after eating the baby elephants of the family of elephants in the background. So his tea is actually red because he's just washing away the blood that was until recently covering his entire face. That's why he has such a satisfied smile on his face.

VERSION 2:
That is not a lion at all, but a poacher wearing the mask of a lion. *Think: Little Red Riding Hood moves to the wide and open of Africa.* Since lions aren't native to Madagascar, all those endangered and weird species living in Madagascar right now are going to go over to the lion because they're going to be thinking "What in Sam Hill is that? An indri monkey with Down's Syndrome? A drugged Crested Drongo?" In a few seconds, once he has leisurely taken one more sip of tea, he will yank off his mask and shoot all of the animals around him.

All this speculation has naturally led me to one point: Why is the lion drinking tea in the first place?

Drink Celestial Seasonings. It's guaranTEAd (ah-HA!) to make your day.

Glory be to the end of school. Now just finals to get through.

In which I prove my blog is in fact, not a plog

I'm sitting here eating my completely mediocre veggie burger with some entirely mediocre guacamole (which would be way above mediocre, had it not been such a pain in the ass to extricate from the plastic pouch), while listening to some mediocre Christmas music courtesy of Julie. Frank Sinatra himself is far from mediocre, only he had to have some kids sing with him. I don't like kids singing with gentlemen like him. That is, I would have liked it better had I been one of the girls singing, but I'm assuming at that point I would have been too young to realize that Frank Sinatra is way above mediocre looking, and I would have just been too eager to keep his imagined cooties away from myself instead of...uh...trying to...uh...wink at him. Yes. Instead of trying to wink at him.

This morning the chocolate macadamia nut coffee ran our right as I reached the little coffee spout, so I was stuck with the "neighborhood blend" coffee (code for THE NOTHING SPECIAL coffee).

I did a mediocre job of organizing the broom/trash closet at work. Frankie had mediocrely difficult math homework, which he completed while complaining about a mediocre stomach ache, which I think was faked.

That's right: I'm going for mediocrity in this post.

I got my second sosc essay back today, and I got what I expected: a B. A completely mediocre, unassuming B. I am definitely not complaining, since that's what I got on the first sosc essay, and that's what I'll be getting on the last one (I hope ). While I was composing the essay, I said to myself:

Self: You have an awesomely mediocre thesis! With an awesomely mediocrely worded essay! You are going to do an awesomely mediocre job on this essay!

Sure enough, I did not let myself down.

The reader will kindly note at this point that I am OPENLY and FREELY DISCUSSING A GRADE ON THE INTERNET. Nay, not only discussing, but posting it!

There was a time in my life when this grade would have kept me up, and I would have questioned what I had done wrong to deserve such a grade. Was it because I didn't go to church Sunday? Because I didn't give every homeless person some money on the street? Because this grade is just a sure sign I'm doomed to go to Hell?

Since coming here, I have learned to realize mediocre grades are a fact of life. I mean, I might find it in my heart to accept the occasional above-average grade the teachers throw at me when they feel sorry enough to see me wallowing in my mediocrity. Besides, it's so much more satisfying when for one millisecond a concept is elucidated for me and for one glorious second I am lifted up above the mediocre crowd into the realm of the people who ACTUALLY deserve to attend this school as opposed to being accepted off the wait-list to get in here.

Yes, I was accepted off the wait-list. If I weren't so exhausted right now, that might actually give me a minor complex.

So this is the end of my awesomely mediocre post on blog. I now lift my water bottle high: TO MEDIOCRITY! I guess if I wanted, this water bottle could be filled with some sort of alcoholic beverage, but then my night might be in danger of leaving the realm of mediocrity. In which direction, I don't know.

(Take that, Mary Kate. Not one single picture in this post.)

Tonight's dinner was grilled chicken with chimichurri sauce

I realized that this Globalization and its Discontents is the winner of the Nobel Prize in economics. This means that I should be spending time in doing more than a cursory read of the IMF and everything associated with it in the book, but right now my mind is in a million different places. What I need to happen is just for classes to stop so I can study instead of learning new things, but the more I learn the more nervous I get.

So here are some pictures from the weekend:














Coop bookstore entrance on campus















An artsier-fartsier version of it. I am not artsy fartsy. I just go out of my way to not do my work. I'm guessing that's how people get to be "indie," "scene," "artsy"...they just don't want to do work.















There is this German market thing going on next to State Street. It does actually have a German name, but Jim is the one to say it, and I'm the one to just look at it. Here are some more pictures from it.















Yeah...that's pretty much the size of Kat's fake Christmas tree in our room...















Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, how blah blah blah blah















I had no idea cuckoo clocks go for this much.
















Last picture. There are train tracks and a wee city down on the ground.

Julie has NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN TO LOOK AT PICTURES OF FAT CATS AND DOGS ON GOOGLE.

National phenomenon

It's beginning to mildly worry me that all the girls on facebook are starting to look the same because they feel the urge to kiss each other, the camera, or to display their molars/cavities to the entire world. They're not making facebooking conducive to wasting time in between chapters of Globalization and its Discontents.

I don't mind posting their pictures on here because I'm fairly sure most of them can't read.

Gobble gobble

Thanksgiving has never really been my favorite holiday. If my family and I ever went to eat somewhere, it was always a test of will to see if I could be content with only one serving of stuffing or only one little sliver of pumpkin pie before someone came around checking up on how full the plates were and said "Oh, you must be a diet" when they came around and saw that I surprisingly don't have the whole turkey on my paper plate. Yes, I am on the "Don't-eat-a-whole-turkey-and-I-hate-mashed-potatoes-South-Beach-Diet," and please don't announce it to the entire room. And the truth comes out about why I don't like eating over in "company" and why I prefer eating at home instead.

Anyway, this year the first years on the floor seemed all excited to make food for Thanksgiving, so Mary Kate, Julie, and I got all Emeril-ish and made these:















That is a fudge chocolate cake and a fruit salad. Julie is really excited to be holding the fruit salad.

Earlier, we had gone to Hutch for Thanksgiving lunch where they busted out the nice silverware. Which we (in otherwords, I) stole once again. This year we stole 4 pastry plates, and last year it was a water pitcher. We're going to make it tradition. Here are some pictures from there:















That is David on the left and James on the right. David is a first year, and he made a "Middle Eastern Salad" for the dinner later in the day, which was the best salad I've had in a really long time. He is also a first year, but our age, because he spent a year after high school living in his grandparents' house in Bel Air while they sold it. I wouldn't mind that deal.















Yes, that is a peackock (or turkey?) made out of watermelon and kiwis. Ther was also a bear made out of frosting, which disappeared by the time I tried to photo it.















What would you think of a guy who wears a shirt like that? Now what would you think if you knew he was a student at school? And finally, what would you think if you knew he was a 40 something year old student living in my dorm?

Yes, I would have stopped thinking by now.















In which Adrianne nearly falls asleep while contemplating the fate of all good turkeys and Mary Kate is obliged to turn away and nearly bursts into tears to see Adrianne's hair looking so terrible. Both girls can hardly wait to go back to some sunshine and some place to cut their hairs.













This is the painting of some former president that was stolen some years ago by students and taken around Chicago ala Amelie and the gnome. The students were caught when they were digging a hole in the president's backyard so they could bury the painting.
















Have you ever wondered what a pigeon looks like in 16 degree weather? Here you are. They make unusually wholesomely delicious popsicles as well as being incredibly photogenic.

Well, I'm getting sleepy. I'll just do the rest of the pictures later.

...or not

So every last flake of snow decided to melt, and right now it is a grand total of (get ready for a stellar display of math skills): 7x3=42/2=21x1=20+1=22-1=21 degrees farenheit (but feels like 4 degrees with wind chill), and the sun is out, and there IS NO SNOW.

I have PROOF of how the red line is an awesomely bad means of public transportation, and deserves to be roundly and heartily jeered at for 3 hours straight.

Last night I wanted to go to Trader Joe's. So on we pile to the 55 bus, then down to the red line, where we found the train stuck at the beginning of the platform with wooden planks stuck to the front. And they sat there for I don't know how long scratching their heads, and had the potential passengers shipped down 3 stops by bus so we could stand at the Sox stop listening to the same song and dance about a train being stopped at Garfield. When we finally decided to give up and go back in the other direction, of COURSE the northbound trains were working, and we were obliged to watching about 8 red line north bound trains go zooming merrily past us while we were waiting for the 55 bus, which is about 3 seconds away from being just as shitty as the red line.

Here's a picture:















James is ready to jump down there, roll up his sleeves, and get to work extricating the train from the biggest wreck of the decade.

Anyway, we're getting ready to go to the Thanksgiving dinner at Hutch, which starts at 11AM and ends at 1:30PM. That only gives you 2.5 hours to get in the mood to eat serious food, which seems like it's going to be hard to do, since I just woke up at 11.

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving break everybody!

What do I care how much it may storm?

It's SNOWING!

Guess what's coming later today?

PICTURES!

An Epiphany

My desk is a pigsty, as is the floor around it, and all because of this essay. However, I am not actually complaining about the process of writing it. Not for a while. Shall I post you a picture? Why in Earth not?!?!





























As you can tell, I am failing miserably at this whole "don't post pictures so frequently" thing. Soon I will be cataloging intimate details of all my roommates in picture form, such as where Julie hides her nerds, where Mary Kate puts her underwear, and where Kat keeps her drugs.

Today, I used the microfilms for the first time at the Reg, and it was SO MUCH COOLER reading old English on a microfilm than a packet. I mildly felt like Julia Roberts in The Pelican Brief. I don't remember if she used microfilms or not, because the only thing I remember right now is the making-out scene with her boyfriend, him exploding, her sitting at a desk with a lamp writing, and when she and Denzel Washington race out of her car before being blown to smithereens in a parking lot structure.

Oh, and some spy in high heels and a business suit chasing after them in said parking lot structure.

All of that, naturally, occurred because she used microfilm to research Mr. Pelican or Dr. Brief. Whichever it was. And I am totally sure that I am causing the FBI to go on high alert by researching chinoiserie in 17th c. England and how it represented the society and incorporation of French and Dutch Baroque elements. Completely positive.

Don't be surprised if this essay is published posthumously in a really awesomely prominent art history magazine and you see my name all over the press.

One thing to be grateful for

Thank God only 11 people have newly updated profiles on facebook.

Good Luck, Agi

I went back to the Art Institute today, to look at objects like this:











































And also what my facebook picture is now. There were a ton of people downtown today because there was a parade and Mickey Mouse was going to turn on the Christmas lights. Concerning the Cinderella display Marshall Field's put up this year, I was talking to a cashier in the store and while I was inside, I was still able to say "It's kind of nice to see all the people getting excited over what's on the outside of the store as opposed to the inside." So when I was walking outside to get some ultra-touristy pictures of the Chicago sign, for about 2 seconds I had the all goodness-y Christmas-y feeling when going through the crowd. After the second family to stride on my toes and walk by with a baby wearing an obviously full diaper and a whiny little awkward kid, I lost the Christmas spirit and a great big demon had a great big urge to erupt from within me to pick up the little kids and ram them bodily into the Marshall Field's display case. But, I did manage to fight my way through and found THIS on the other side of the crowd:





























How old IS Julie Andrews?

Later on, Kat, Julie, and I went to Subway, where I got a wrap (my days are absolutely enthralling). The guy who made my wrap was absolutely inept. He asked me if I wanted 2 loads of chicken on my wrap (?) and then once I had ordered everything on my sandwich, he proceeded to douse it down with sweet onion sauce with reckless abandon.

Here are detailed step-by-step instructions of what a subway wrap should be like:








































Here's what happened tonight:










































































Kat thinks the explanation was that he was high. I think he was beaten as a child and that his dog ran away when he was 10 years old.

Good luck with all your work, Agi. I love you.

Now, on to MY work!

A I-Made-It-To-Friday Post

After writing about 3/4 of a page in ten minutes for my Marx paper, I realized that I don't really care what I get on this paper, because I don't really care about Marx, and the only thing I care about is my next parsing lesson in Egyptian and my paper for art history.

It's started getting cold here in Chicago. I know this because if I'm wearing slightly loose pants and I'm walking outside, then I get goose bumps when the pants hits my leg every other step. I also know it's started getting cold because someone started setting fire to the school in order to keep warm.

I got interviewed today by a tv station. Life does not get much better than this, people.

I also had a remarkably good Friday afternoon.

Mary Kate, Julie, and I went to eat at Cosi. I THINK it was Cosi, at least, our ultra-hip waiter put us so far back in the restaurant that we were nearly out the back door, for no apparent reason.

Here are some gloriously wholesome pictures to round of this frighteningly wholesome post. Tonight was just a night of some wholesome fun.

























































Yes. They both wanted to kill me, but I wanted to make sure at least ONE of them wasn't blurry.
Kat was there in spirit. See:














That is Kat's spirit. No, the picture did not originally look like that, but Kat did.














I don't know why the camera decided to chicken out, but it did. It would not focus.














The red line. It sucks.















These reindeer are girls.

And that ends that for the evening. I can't wait to go back tomorrow to look at the Art Institute yet again. It is neverending.

Memo for Me

This post would fall into the "Psuedo--Semi-Emo" post .

I'm sitting here trying to tease out the difference between reality and thought according to Marx (obviously. Why else would I be writing this?), and I need to remind myself of the promise I made way back when. The one that has something to do with trying not to be a depressing hippo or an honest-to-goodness full blown bitch. It's not like I'm ever going to be able to apologize to my roommates in person, so here it is: sorry. Ahhh, last night's feeling was "Let's ENTIRELY skip over the intro of last year's Jan.-Feb. and go straight into March-June." Kat, you are not yet fully acquainted with Adrianne's chimera, and I'm going to try hard to keep it that way.

It was just scary for me because everything's been going comparatively well, despite gobs of homework and regular work. And then something (don't know what) had to come along and make me the little black raincloud of the room.

Lord, I am NEVER getting married if it means someone is going to have to deal with these mood swings for many years every day.

And on that note, I'm going to end this Marx essay by just smearing earwax all over it and then writing my true opinion about this:

"The appropriation of man's essential powers, which ave become objects--indeed, alien objects--is thus in the first place only an approrpiation occurring in the consciousness, in pure thought--i.e., in abstraction: it is the appropriation of these objects as thoughts and as movements of thought."

Marx, the italics are not accomplishing one damn thing. It's so obvious that you just recorded some sort of stupid politician or soap-box lecturer and decided to combine those ideas with the church sermon you half-slept through and then woke up to long enough in order to spend the rest of the time oggling at some pretty proletariat girl's ankles. I can just as easily write something that profound:

The realization of man's power as embodied in a veggie burger is made evident through spiritual entities: the distearyldimonium among humans is also magnified through the extrapolation of the big from the very little. Man is only man when he realizes the truth of the entities of the opposition of the real of the sensuoulness and/or the semblance of his appearance with that of Triticum vulgare.

Christ. You should have just shut the hell up or thought twice about writing such confusing shit.

I am DEFINITELY getting a really shitty grade on this essay. Marx is probably turning over in the communistic grave he dug himself. Just as well, he should know that by writing such a book he did not in fact make many people's lives easier.

Completely unimaginative, yet still desires to see something typed here because it can't fit in with Marx

I just went to the trash room to throw some things away.

It smelled like horse dung.

This is but a small indication of what my essay is like.

Marx can wait a couple of days

So that sosc paper is due on Thursday. Of course it would be announced the one day I (ditch) feel so ill I miss class.

And about pictures: I decided I’m too picture happy, and since for the next week the most exciting thing I’m going to see is the inside of several thousand books, I’m just going to reserve taking pictures for special occasions.

Sometimes things just come, and then they go

Before (re)starting my essay, here are some pictures:

A Realistic Post

Who am I kidding. I am not fooling a blessed soul by pretending to write my essay 2 days before it's due. I never was, never will be that diligent about sosc (that is the correct spelling) and I might as well face reality. I have been slacking off since 2 PM like it's my job, an expression stolen from Mary Kate.

So here is the uncensored evolution story behind my essay.














2 PM -4PM: Heading















5 PM: Switch order of heading. Put fake title on my paper.















6:45: Have intro paragraph.















7:45 Change the font to size 26, because there's no way I'm getting 2 pages tonight. I still have Egyptian to do. And because, come on...















There's no way I'm getting my life together enough tonight to write/bullshit 4.75 more pages about Marx.

Do you know how I chose the topic for this essay? The other 2 topics all required me having a more than minimal knowledge about Adam Smith. Process of elimination.

ANYWAY, here are some other things you're missing by not being here:














and it was Matthew's first birthday today:














HAPPY BIRTHDAY SQUISHY FACE!