When the frowns of his countenance drive the nations together, who can stand ..

I exempted out of my philosophy exam, isn’t that nice?

As of yesterday afternoon I still had no idea what to expect for the philosophy final.  We had been assigned a decent chunk of reading to do for the class that I had more or less, or rather completely, ignored that included such things as Aristotle’s Ethics and some philosophers that followed him in the classical period.  Having not read any of it I was desperately looking forward to the exam review so that I could get a grasp of what I needed to cram for.  Well, on Thursday we got our exam review finally.  And at the end of class, right after my laptop’s batteries had finished dieing for the day, he announces a little bit of information of high interest to myself and a vast chunk of the rest of the class: if anyone in the class is currently at the grade of A, B+, or B they did not have to take the final exam.  They could take it if they wanted to and have the chance to bring the grade up but he did warn as well that it had a chance to bring the grade down.  I, choosing not to press my luck, am absolutely fine with a B.  I was actually surprised to be one of the people who wasn’t getting a C in the class.  A B is a-ok in my book.  Turns out it was going to be a take home exam anyway.  And on top of that it wasn’t due until a week from Monday when the exam is scheduled for a week from Saturday.  I think it all boils down to the fact that he’s retired and most likely does not want too much reading to do for finals as well as not wanting to come in on a Saturday morning to administer the exam in the first place.  All in all it works out fine in my opinion.

So now all that’s left for this semester is my Japanese final, my Asian History final, my Asian literature essay, my Rhetoric presentation, and my Rhetoric essay.  I am even trying to get started on my Asian literature essay this weekend.  I have a good idea as to what I’m going to write for it.  I just have to actually put to the grindstone and get to it and get it over with.  The same thing with my Rhetoric projects.  I’m doing the presentation and paper on a rhetorical critique using fiction/theme criticism of mid-90’s alternative music.  Sounds lofty, doesn’t it?  Anyway, in particular I intend to display some of the inherent fatalism and escapism displayed in the pieces.  Fun!  I figure the hardest part will be narrowing down the music selection.  Beyond that the criticism itself is fairly formulaic and I merely have to plug in the information, infer a few things, and the rest will like as itself.  I’m not expecting it to be too difficult.  The hardest thing will probably be studying for the history final.

For the Asian history final I have to go over more reading that I haven’t completed yet as well as be familiar enough with the information to be able to write two essays in the alloted time.  Luckily we’ve been given the essay questions ahead of time and also are being allowed to bring in a sheet containing ten words that will be used and defined in each of the two essays; so twenty words total.  And they’re being particular about the word count; including the word ‘the’ counts as a second word and will throw the count off.  No matter, I think the questions are easy enough and with some cramming I should be able to pass it off fairly well.  My Japanese class will be more structurally difficult simply because it’s more implementation of concepts than the history will be.

I’ve paid attention throughout the semester and have done (most of) the work so at this point it should mainly be plugging this information into the required sentences and translations.  Easy enough, ne?  Maybe, we’ll see how it turns out.

Played Starfarers from Catan the other day with Tuten.  That was a ton of fun!  Look forward to a thrilling write up of it on my other site, Moving Pieces.

When the whirlwind of fury comes from the throne of God ..

More Blakey fun.  Yay!

So updates slowed down there I’m sure you noticed.  Of course you may not have.  I have dropped my link around one whole website so I may have attracted one ’sometimes’ reader.  Who knows?  I’m not aiming to be popular, mind you, but talking into a vacuum isn’t much fun.  Then again, thinking back over some of the things I’ve written other places before in spats of discontent that get out  .. well those still haunt me a bit these days.  Hell, I may be the only one who dwells on those occurrences, too.  That’s ok, though, I am an expert at devising clever little punishments for myself in penance for small indiscretions.  But this will not be a whiny post.  I don’t feel like doing one of those.

All sorts of people are out of the hospital these days.  Tuten was released over the weekend and, despite the surprisethat I answered my phone, sounded well.  Hopefully he’ll be up for hanging out later this week.  The Lacey’s had their kid the other day, too.  Tim called me on Thursday night with the news and I wished them well.  He mentioned that while she was in a private room right now that once they were moved to a more open one we could go visit.  Me, being the misunderstanding nincompoop I can often be, misconstrued this to mean I had to wait for a call to hear a room number.  Today I find out that it was just listed there and I could have stopped by on most days after the first :O  Oh well.  Sandy and new Lacey are at home and doing well from what I gather.  I should go say h’llo at some point.

My own medical malady has now passed; pun somewhat intentional.  On Wednesday last week I was in the midst of the worst suffering of what I believe was food poisoning.  The intestinal cramping was severe and I could hardly get a few feet from a bathroom before it was time to dehydrate myself a little more.  I actually ended up leaving early that day by an hour.  Great.  Love when my innards cost me money.  Anyway, Thursday the problem persisted despite my best immersion bathing techniques that I had involved myself with for three hours the night before.  Since Tuesday night I basically couldn’t eat a full meal until late Saturday night.  All in all, though, I lost about eighteen pounds last week.  Me likey.  So now I know the secrets to weight loss: stomach bugs.  Even still I feel like I fill up a lot faster than I did before.  Lingering effects or did I just get a little more used to eating less?  One can hope.  I had had a doctor’s appointment on Saturday because I couldn’t get one on Friday and still was sore and not eating.  Saturday, however, I woke up feeling mostly fine so I canceled it.  I haven’t been to a doctor in years, why ruin a record?

Work continues in a persistant fashion on a Call of Cathulhu game.  Not really something I’m going to get into here; thats’ what my other ‘blog is for.  I just wanted to mention it as it’s the thing taking up a lot of my extraneous time right now.  At home I still have school related work to take care of.  Two more papers and another presentation due next week.  Next week also brings three exams to the fore: Philosophy, History, and Japanese.  Here’s to hoping I don’t fail all my classes!  It’s unlikely but it never hurts to hope for the hopeful.  Or something like that.

I’ve been having a good time vacillating between lurking and posting on the RoundCon forums.  Since Saturday, though, it seems to have for the most part completely dried up.  A little sad, really.  It was something I can do from here to interact with gamers and such but with this year’s con in the past now I guess more and more people will stop checking it until it gets closer to next year’s con.  Pending on certain con existential issues.

When the souls of the oppressed fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand ..

In case anyone is curious, the titles of these posts are lines from William Blake’s poem “Lullaby” that was later (much later) put to music by Loreena McKennitt.  That aside, maybe I won’t seem quite as off my nut.  Then again.. who knows?

Got my two month late paper back from my history class today.  Seems if I turn it in after that extensive period I lose some points; ten to be exact.  So total I made a ninety on it minus the ten points leaves me with a pleasing B.  Beyond that I was offered the chance to bring it up by five additional points if I visit the writing center and have them work with me on it.  I might.  Honestly a B is far better than I was expecting already so I’m not sure it’s necessary.  But other than that I wonder: how would my class know that I went there or not?  I’m an English major so theoretically I can revise papers with the best of them.  Unless they stamp your hand or something I might just write a revision myself on my already limited time to turn in.  If it nets me five extra points all the better.

Tonight around six PM is my oral exam for Japanese.  Looks like I should study for it then.  I have the sheet with me and since I’m kinda skipping my third class today (my second was optional attendance today, too!) I plan on doing that some.  Also I need to sleep at some point.

Last night I spent three hours in the bath turning on hot water repeatedly as fast as it would refresh.  All in all it seems to have really calmed my stomach down.  However, between that and a couple small assignments coupled with a general inability to sleep I didn’t get to bed until right around six this morning.  Then I awoke bright and early at eight thirty.  So.. yeah, I’m kinda exhausted.  At least my sickness has subsided to mainly just some muscle soreness and a headache.  I have a little reflux again but I think I can attribute that to the Vivarin I took this morning to go to class.  I had to turn in those things I worked on last night, after all.  Current plans include resting, studying Japanese, taking IB Profin, and some generic Tums.

I ended up leaving work last night an hour early because I just couldn’t take the stomach upset anymore.  Couldn’t eat anything either.  Tried a mostly plain six inch turkey sub from Subway but I could only take about three bites.  Besides, the turkey Subway uses tastes like ass.  Seriously, it was closer to some sort of horrible turkey baloney or salami than sliced turkey.  Do not want.

Time to hit the books, pills, and all other fun related activities.

Who can stand ..

Yup.  Looks like I’m just about full fledged sick.  Don’t know for sure what did it either but my stomach has been killing me for at least 24 hours now.  According to my bathroom scale I’ve lost around eight pounds since yesterday, too.  I’ve got chills, fever, and general soreness to boot.  All in all I’m having a great day.

Got one override for my Japanese class, so one down two to go.  I managed to get into both a History class and a class on Shakespeare’s tragedies that only slightly overlap as concerns the History class’s extra section class.  My hope is that I will be allowed to switch sections.  The Linguistics class teacher emailed me back but unfortunately did not have the best of news: the class already has 32 students signed up and they don’t believe they can fit any more in.  Looks like I’ll be sitting on that one daily through drop/add.  Still waiting on response from Creative Writing.  That class will focus on characters and short stories.  Needless to say, if anyone who knows me enough reads this, I’m enthused.  Being better able to do short stories is something I would love to work on.

One other bad thing.. Heh, look at me, framing my post in negative!  I asked the schedulig person if, by any chance, I could switch around the occasional Thursday day off for a Saturday one.  I’m having pretty big gamer withdrawal as of late.  So, the idea popped into my head that maybe they’d allow it.  Last week before RoundCon they forced me to work Tuesday and Thursday because, as they said, my schedule was not actually a set schedule.  Turns out it’s suddenly back to being a set schedule when I ask about switching things around sometimes.  I love this.  Last year one of the managers even emailed me asking if it was ok that I never had any weekend days off.  Since it was during the semester I said it was fine and that I needed those days off for class.  He wanted to make sure that I wasn’t being forced away from weekend days off in lieu of other people.  Back then I wasn’t; at least not visibly.  Now it seems a little more decided since the only people who get to switch Saturdays off include the person who writes the schedule.  I might bring this up to the management.  Not cool.

One of the other techies is heading out to Subway now to get dinner.  He’s covering me for a 6′ turkey on plain white with a little lettuce and minor mayo.  About as plain as I could  consider it.  I could have sworn I had brought my $10 with me today.  Oh well.  Earlier when I had a pair of peanut butter sandwiches my aches subsided for a bit; I think it was the bread.  If it wasn’t for that I just wouldn’t be eating tonight.  I feel pretty bad.  Shakes, chills, all the stuff above now with added teeth chattering.  Great fun for phone conversations.

Here’s to hoping I don’t hurl before the night ends.

When the senses are shaken and the soul is driven to madness ..

I think I’m getting sick.  My stomach’s been bothering me fairly hardcore the past two days and now I have a headache.  What fun.  I’ll muscle through it, though.  That’s what I do.  Try to fix problems?  Screw that!  Better to just wait ‘em out, ya know?  Maybe that’s not the best philosophy.

So it turns out Youko-sensei has agreed to move the chapter test forward to Monday.  This makes me kinda happy.  For one thing I get the entire weekend to study for it rather than worrying about studying for both it and my oral exam together.  On the other hand, though, I have to finish my Rhetoric presentation this weekend that I’ve barely started on.

The professor’s aware that because projects are based on the final paper and final papers are not due or likely complete yet that most people’s presentations won’t be the best they could be.  I sat in on some yesterday and kinda got an idea as to what other people are doing.  I’ll do the same thing tomorrow.  Rhetoric occurs between my History and Philosophy classes so it’s not like I have anything else to do for that hour or so.  I also have to turn in a one page response to her on my thoughts regarding any of the presentations I witnessed on Tuesday.  If I had completed all my reading responses on time this wouldn’t be an issue but I ran out of reading one response short of complete.   I already have an idea about what I’m going to write about: one of the presentations dealt with lyrics for a rap song by a group named Outkast.  The lyrics were in their handout in all their vernacular glory except for one: the ‘n’ word.  Now, I, like most people, don’t really like that particular spat of verbiage.  However it is interesting to note the presenter’s self-censorship as contrasted against their completely uncensored rendering of lyrics describing all sorts of colorful slang phrases and biological happenstances.  While this doesn’t really pertain to the topic of their presentation, something dealing with how society views rap versus the lyrics from this particular band, it’s more in keeping with my personal interest in linguistics and language usage.  Just something that struck me as odd in that one could perhaps construct a hierarchy of offensiveness of certain words.  This is almost uniquely English as well since we have by far the largest amount of ‘taboo’ words than any other language.  Of course we’re repressed in all sorts of fascinating ways, aren’t we?

And a tongue to drown the throat of war ..

Lookie here.  Updating two times in one week.  Blasphemy!

Went and visited with Tuten again today.  He’s looking pretty good and seemed to be in good spirits.  Seems he should be out of the hospital on Saturday or so.  It’ll be good to have a mobile Tuten again.  He’s been moved out of intensive care and is now in .. regular care?  I guess.  His mother was there when I arrived, as were Martin and Tim.  We chatted for a bit and munched on hard candy before it was time to leave for most of us.

After that I went and spent the evening with the folks.  Free food is always good, as is spending time with the folks.  We ate turkey legs and watched House.  All in all a good evening.

Now I’m at home.  I have a Japanese oral exam and chapter test to study for Thursday and Friday respectively.  I also have my last presentation of the semester to do on next Tuesday.  Oh!  I also have to write my last reading response paper for that class too; Rhetoric.  Currently I’m kicking around a topic based on a fiction/theme criticism of some mid-90’s alternative songs to display the mood of the times.  Or something like that.  Then I have a rather large paper due on the same topic but it’s not due until the end of the semester.  I think I already ranted on these yesterday so that should suffice for school chatter.

Heard today that this state (South Carolina) is considering lowering the requirements for people to become teachers.  Seems there’s a shortage of teachers right now.  Yeah.  Seems to me that if, I dunno, you stopped treating your teachers like ass, paid them what they’re worth, and ditched the deadweight ones that are feeding off the system then the problem would correct itself.  Since I’m planning on going into teaching myself this strikes kinda close to home.  At least I’m planning on teaching at a university level…hopefully.  What non-English country probably couldn’t find a use for a highly trained English grammarian and linguist?  Linguistics are fascinating to me but I’ve garnered from the glazed over expressions I get when I start going off on them that it’s best to just leave the subject at that.

Learned about a good place to get jeans today from  Martin.  My old and final pair that fits me right now is slowly dieing due to repeated washing and wearing.  So today I went around to a few places before I got my hot tip and checked their prices.  Or at least I would have had they actually had any stock.  Moe Levy’s downtown had my size just fine and I bought two new pairs; blue and black.  Been years since I had a decent pair of black jeans.  It’s like coming home again.  If I could lose some weight I’d be able to find jeans that fit me easier but that’s the subject of another raving I suppose.

Oh, for a voice like thunder ..

So.. I’m updating again! It’s only been ..what, two months? Yeah yeah yeah. Not like many people check here anyway. A lack of posting’ll do that!

So Life has been interesting as of late. It’s almost the end of the semester first off. Multiple papers, presentations, and major tests are pretty much putting my junk in a grinder. This month alone I have an essay for Philosophy, an essay for East Asian Literature, an essay for Rhetoric, a presentation for East Asian Literature, and a presentation for Rhetoric as well as a major exam for East Asian History and the oral exam for Japanese. So far I have completed a chunk of that. The Philosophy essay, Literature presentation, and History exam are behind me. So.. almost half done. And that’s not counting all the finals I have at the end of the month. All.. well, three. Japanese, Philosophy, and History. I just have to pass everything and I get closer to graduation. That’ll be nice.

I still have a few more semesters to attend full time before all is said and done. Unfortunately, next semester, all the classes I want to take are pretty much full. What’s annoying is that class sign-up hasn’t even been open a full week yet. Looks like I’ll be having to get a pile of overrides for next semester. Still have to complete my FAFSA, too.

That’s enough about school.

This past weekend was RoundCon. The con was fun and all but was missing something. One of my oldest friends was attacked and hurt the night before the con opened. He’s still in the hospital healing up but ended up missing the entire con. Hopefully he’ll be back on his feet soon, laying in bed all day seems like it’d get tiresome after a bit. Whenever I’m surrounded by a vast array of things I want to buy my general brokeness weighs heavily on my shoulders. I did manage to pick up a couple things and spent more money than I really should have but I had planned on that, so everything should work out. I got to spend time with many people at the con which was interesting. I saw a lot of people that had a big sense of camaraderie about them and their groups. That’s something great.

Guess I’ll always be me; at least some of you guys out there, for some weird reason, actually like that sorta thing Don’t think of this as dramatics or whining or anything, just contemplative. What makes an existence? Experiences? Maybe. That’s something for another time, though.