Songs without Words

A lot of things have been happening lately. Pretty big things. Pretty big setbacks.

The Senate actually bothered to get together on a Saturday to give a symbolic vote against the ridiculous notion that pouring in more and more troops into Iraq would somehow be the panacea for a ridiculously outdated battle strategy that’s sixty years too old. Remember how putting half a million troops into Vietnam worked out? But the vote failed, and we’re left wondering, what does it mean when Bush can still throw around a Democrat-controlled Congress?

The Hamas party has somewhat reconciled with Fatah, and the prime minister resigned in order to make way for a “National Unity” government. Absolutely shocking to me, although diplomatically logical.

A train blast killed more than sixty people in India, threatening a very fragile Pakistan-India truce.

Now imagine a newspaper where the most widely-read articles make the front page. The internet is supposed to facilitate the free diffusion of knowledge, right?

I can picture the newspaper right now – heck, people all around are talking about these world-changing events! Here’s the full line-up – high-impact news that *matters* to people:

OMG, Britney shaved her head! Tom Brady’s ex-girlfriend is *pregnant* with his baby, the outrage! Let’s all plan a trip to the Bahamas to check out the late Anna Nicole Smith’s house w00t.

[Correction: apparently, the new headline is that Anna Nicole Smith’s body is decomposing.]

Sorry for ranting on a topic I’ve largely beaten to death in the past, but it just seems like every moment the common people wallow in ignorance, the less and less likely it seems that the miracle that could salvage the world slips farther and farther out of reach …

I usually very meticulously plan my schedule so that it’s packed but flexible. Now I’m left sitting here, trying to figure out what went wrong. One little mistake led to a cascade of disasters .. well, you can be the judge on what constitutes a disaster .. I wasn’t prepared for my lesson (the teacher said I “sounded pretty good for no practice”) .. I got sleepy during my MITSO concert .. I had to ask for an extension on my paper (which I’ve NEVER had to do before, except for UROP papers) .. I had to postpone my meeting with my lab partner and might have to again .. and then I had to leave after cleaning up for only 45 minutes after TAI.101 – which by the way was so awesome that I think it deserves an entry of its own. One thing just crashes into the next, and I’m really deeply disappointed in myself for letting this happen.

All because I couldn’t finish my term paper on time. Which is STILL not done. Five lousy pages. I’ve spent like 6 or 7 hours on it. A few years ago, I could write 8 pages an hour. Even last year, I remember writing all my 8 to 15 page papers in one sitting. What the FUCK is wrong with me? Am I so incompetent now that I can’t keep an organized schedule anymore? Do I have to let everyone down? I really hate bailing out on people, leaving before the job is done. And that’s what I just did. I know that some of them are going to be there cleaning and making trips to Walker til midnight or later. They have every right to be really pissed off at me. The only thing to my credit is that I was there promptly at 1 to move stuff into Lobdell and carry the stands from Walker. But even then, cleaning up is 10x harder than setting up. Whatever, I need to get back to work. Ugh, I digust myself.

Ugh, I’m being overtaken by negative energy. This is no good! It happens when I’m tired and not really keeping myself in check .. . Ack, it’s like that time a few weeks ago. A friend asked me if I could scan in my recitation notes for him because he and his girlfriend weren’t going to go. Normally, I just say “sure,” but I was tired (and it was the third time) and I just snapped back at him, “Why don’t you ever go to class?!” I was shocked at the way I said it, so I quickly told him that of course I would, that it wasn’t that much work (well, that’s not really a lie – the act of scanning itself is easy .. writing neatly and not abbreviating and cleaning up the scans isn’t, though), but it definitely scared him (and his girlfriend) a little. They were so apologetic and went to class … gah. I think she might have been sick, too. People usually have reasons for asking favors out of others, but sometimes the human empathetic machine forgets to turn on.

I (almost) never mean to say harsh things like that (even though I might think them) .. I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, and it’s not like it hurts me to pay more attention in class and write neatly. It’s just harder to prevent oneself from blurting out stupid things uninhibitedly (sp.?) when one is tired. Augh. Gonna nap, then write this paper. I *want* to write the paper, too (I chose the topic, so it’s of course something I’m interested in), but the blues just won’t leave me …

Look, MIT.  First you send me an e-mail threatening to not let me graduate because I haven’t finished enough CI-H’s by the end of sophomore year (although I had 1 CI-H and 1 CI-M).  And now you want to pester me about my PE points, of which I have completed 6/8?  If there are four years here, why exactly do I want to be in shape for two years and then do nothing over the next two?  I know what I’m doing, so please let me space my classes out however I wish!  I’ll have all my requirements for my two majors done by the end of senior year, plus all my HASS requirements, plus my PE requirements, plus all the pre-med requirements.  Isn’t that enough for you?

I guess it’s sort of weird, this being my blog for basically everything I want to write about.  Every time I try to get myself going on a particularly “professional” streak, I somehow come to the point where I want to once again revert this to a little, personal space for emoting.  Haha!  It’s been awhile, though, hasn’t it?  I feel like it’s more of a biological cycle than anything else – or at least, I feel particularly detached from the situation right now.  What situation?  I don’t even have an inkling of a clue.

I don’t think that I feel unhappy.  If anything, I should feel more free.  I finished my essays, all eight pages of them, and things are otherwise going smoothly.

But I am having a harder and harder time trying to identify with myself, or feel that I am a human being.  Although I have concluded that most of my memories are indeed of real events, I have also concluded that most of the associated images or even videos that I might recall in my mind are probably false.  How could I have memories of a person picking up one of my phone calls?  That makes no sense!

In fact, I think that maybe I am spending too much time outside of myself.  Why is my brain spending so much of its time formulating the story from the “other person’s point of view?”  I even may feel bitter after having an imaginary argument with someone, or become dizzy after feeling the projection of what I seem to believe are the “rationally approximated” expressions and words for the person in the car next to me, who I cannot even see.

After someone passes me, I watch that person’s average speed to determine in hindsight how annoyed he or she was in the earlier situation.  Why do this?  Because my instincts tell me to, because I get annoyed when I have to follow someone slow.

But it’s all nonsense!  Once again, I am pushing my brain to the edge, trying to guess at things I’m not meant to guess at, and pretending to model the world over which I know I have no control.

I have no point in saying all of this.  But it just .. taxes the soul a little.  Just a little.

The Republicans in Senate defeated a proposal to increase the minimum wage from $5.15. On what reasoning, I don’t know, but probably a combination of wanting to reign in spending and leaving the decision up to states. This is of course absolutely ridiculous. The $5.15 federal minimum has been in effect for a decade according to this AP article. Do a little math here: $5.15/hr * 40 hrs/wk * 52 wks = $10,712 (before taxes). Notice that in Alaska and Hawaii, this is below the poverty threshold for a single person living alone, and in all states, this is below the poverty line for a two-person home (eg single parent). Well, great, so I hope we’re spending money on something better?

But no, the Republicans in the House have decided to pass a permanent estate tax repeal (which I hope will be defeated in the Senate, if only for the sake of a balanced budget for once). Yes, because obviously, the children of ridiculously rich people shouldn’t have to work. The estate tax would generate some $400 bil over a ten-year period (estimates range from $250 bil to $5 tril). Note that the $40 bil per year would cover the proposed minimum wage increase from $5.15 to $7.25 for over 9 MILLION PEOPLE that same year.

I don’t think this is ignorance to common sense. It’s plain, all-out corruption. If we have any hope of doing something right, what we first have to do phase out this Congress, starting this November.

Oh yeah, I finally updated the website.  Blah, alright, onto the next “thing I put off too long ago” …

After wrestling with yet another one of these “sign-up sheets” for a mailing list, I have a strong desire to propose to the admissions committee that they reject about half of the incoming students because their education has obviously not extended beyond the first grade level. This is evidenced by the fact that they never seem to have mastered the very simple art of writing the freaking English alphabet! Look, this ain’t Chinese here.

Here is a summary of the pseudoletters that I had to decipher:

Considered individually:

a: The letter “a” has several acceptable forms. All acceptable forms have the following two features in common: first, the loop at the top is closed, forming an enclosed space; second, there is a tail hanging off the end that should extend straight down or slightly to the right, but never extending below the bottom of the loop.

The offenders: Out of laziness, some people do not close the “a.” Ordinarily, this is not a problem. I’m assuming that you’re Grace and not Gruce, and that you’re Jarred and not Jurred. But is your name “Ovanesyan” or “Ovunesyan?” Am I culturally insensitive for saying that if your name is not common in the US, that you should try writing more neatly?

o: The letter “o” is a circle or ellipse, contrary to what some people might think.

i: The letter “i” consists of a stick with a dot on it. Not two dots. Not two sticks. One dot, one stick.

k: The letter k is a tall “lowercase” letter. It has a full-length vertical stick, then a less-than sign jammed onto its lower half. Although one might write the k with the diagonal-down line coming out of the diagonal-up line, rather than joining at the stick, this creates huge problems if you fail to differentiate between the two diagonal lines.

Laziness causes people to write the “k” like a cursive k, and then further laziness leads them to no longer join the curve back to the vertical stick after doing the loop.

Notice how this creates a very beautiful “h.” Yes, dear Mr. Cybulski. I spent a good long time researching on Google whether you were Mr. Cybulshi or Mr. Cybulski. I tend to enjoy researching biological engineering slightly more.

h: The letter h is similar to the letter k in that its ornament to the “l” is half-height. HALF HEIGHT. The hump doesn’t get horny and stick all the way up the top. That would create a very tall “n.”

r: The very worst of them all.  At least 60% of people mess this up, and sometimes I fall into that crowd, too, if I’m not being careful.  r has one stem, not two.  As such, the leaf at the top should stick out no lower than the loop of an “a” would stick out of the standard (non-type) lower-case a.  If you branch at the bottom, you have just written a “v.”  And you won’t get e-mails.  Bummer how that works, huh?
For reference, I have depicted approximately correct versions of the letters at the bottom in blue-purple.

Thank you very much and for God’s sake, learn how to write.