I will never ask if you don't ever tell me

Currently Playing: Taking Back Sunday - Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)

Apparently, sleep is now bad for you. In fact, too much of it will kill you.

Or so says the results of a six-year long study of more than a million adults, coincidentally conducted by psychiatry professor Daniel Kripke of UCSD (I did not even know we had a psychiatry major). Someone who sleeps an average of 6-7 hours a night supposedly will have a lower death rate than a person who sleeps an average of 8 hours a night.

Now, being the scientific-minded, sleep-loving person that I am, my first instinct is to immediately question the validity of such an experiment. I mean, using people in an experiment is hard enough to control. But using over a million people?! There is just a staggering amount of variability there, with no way to control for it. The differences in sleep could be due to a number of reasons: emotional state, physical state, age, sex, and everything else that is different from one person to another. All this experiment really proves is that there is a link between people who sleep slightly less and a lower mortality rate. Which really amounts to nothing.

Think about it. If a person that normally slept 8 hours a night read this study and decided to sleep an hour or two less a night, would that person automatically reduce their mortality rate? Probably not. I am more inclined to believe that the chance of that person dying has more to do with their emotional and physical health, but maybe that's just me. But you know what? THAT might actually be a worthwhile experiment to carry out. THIS experiment does not prove anything except to be an atrocious waste of time and my tuition money.

You're always so right

Currently Playing: Simple Plan - Shut Up

The "bird flu" panic has gotten way out of hand. I have been seeing at least one to two top headlines about it every day. What really got to me was the most recent one: Bird Flu Could Appear in U.S. in Months. Attention grabbing, yes. This headline was obviously written to catch your attention by inciting panic. For months now we've been hearing that the bird flu could be the first pandemic of the 21st century. It has been likened to the plague that ran through Europe. How could you ignore this frightening possibility?!

Quite easily, in fact. What many people do not seem to realize is that all of this is theoretical. Yes, there is a bird flu virus strain known as H5N1 that currently can infect and spread from bird to bird. And yes, in theory, there is a possiblilty that this virus could mutate and become infectious to humans. And yes, in theory, that could possibly mutate and become contagious and spread from person to person. And yes, in theory, there is a chance the virus could become deadly.

But remember: In theory, communism works. In theory. Risks should be assessed, and precautions should be taken, but all with a grain of salt. The virus has taken eight years to spread from East Asia to Europe. As this article says, "Short of eating infected bird feces, humans seem close to immune." And honestly, if you eat bird crap, maybe it's your own fault you got sick.

So to sum up, this whole bird flu scare is stupid. OMFGWTFBBQ! One cat died from infection! Kill all birds! Kill all cats! Sigh. Anyway, moral of the story is: Don't eat bird shit.

Can't reset the years

Currently Playing: OZMA - Gameover

I miss the days where I could shirk my responsibilities with little or no repercussions. Don't get me wrong; in no way am I saying that I miss school or class. But I am saying that I miss missing class.

With that in mind, I never wrote the "reflect back on the last four years" entry that I was planning on writing when I graduated. And you know what, I probably never will.

Just so long as this thing is loaded

Currently Playing: Taking Back Sunday - Cute Without The "E" (Cut From The Team)

I found a Jack Bauer spin-off of the Vin Diesel/Chuck Norris Random Facts. The Jack Bauer one is more awesome not only because Jack Bauer is the fucking man, but also because many of these are conceivably true.

These are some of the most hilarious I have seen:

-Upon hearing that he was played by Kiefer Sutherland, Jack Bauer killed Sutherland. Jack Bauer gets played by no man.

-If you wake up in the morning, it's because Jack Bauer spared your life.

-When life gave Jack Bauer lemons, he used them to kill terrorists. Jack Bauer fucking hates lemonade.

-If it tastes like chicken, looks like chicken, and feels like chicken, but Jack Bauer says its beef. Then it's fucking beef.

-Lets get one thing straight, the only reason you are conscious right now is because Jack Bauer does not feel like carrying you.

-Jack Bauer once won a game of rock paper scissors using niether rock, paper nor scissors.

-Jack Bauer removed the "Escape" button from his keyboard. Jack Bauer never needs to escape.

-Jack Bauer arm once wrestled Superman. The stipulations were the loser had to wear his underwear on the outside of his pants.

-Jack Bauer's favorite color is severe terror alert red. His second favorite color is violet, but just because it sounds like violent.

-When you open a can of whoop-ass, Jack Bauer jumps out.

-Jack Bauer uses #1 pencils on standardized tests.... Jack Bauer doesn't associate with anything that is #2.

-What color is Jack Bauer's blood? Trick question. Jack Bauer does not bleed.

-In Season 3 Jack Bauer "distracted" an armed terrorist using only a lighter, some bullets, and a tin can. He then shot the man anyway.

You won't be the last one anymore

Currently Playing: Yellowcard - Underdog

Kobe Bryant, in his self-written article in the newest issue of Dime:

"I HATE being scored on, even by players who some say are "un-guardable". I don't believe it when they say "Oh, that player is just hot today." F--- that! Cool his ass off then."

On a related note, we MUST put a stop to the current trend of getting our asses kicked in IM basketball. And I need to figure out why my shoes have lost all traction to the point where I could slide across the court without even lifting either of my feet off the ground.

And I'm thinking I'd prefer not to be rescued

Currently Playing: Jack's Mannequin - Rescued

The top 10 things I would do if I were to suddenly came into a large sum of money (i.e. by winning the lottery, robbing banks, dealing drugs, etc...you know):

1. Buy everyone I know a fucking electric car. Then when people say my car is electric, I can respond with, "Not as electric as yours, bitch!" Or something to that effect.

2. Pay off my parents' mortgage, car loans, etc...As long as I never have to worry about money again, they should never have to worry about money again.

3. Buy an awesome home entertainment system. Complete with the best speaker system available and the second largest plasma TV ever made (I mean, I would not want it to be too gaudy; and I definitely do not want to make it seem like I am compensating for something).

4. Find a part-time job that I would enjoy doing, but could still blow off if I felt like it. Something like substitute teaching, for example. (On a side note, I have always wondered about substitute teaching. Are substitute teachers actually substitute teachers for a living? Or are they former teachers who are inbetween jobs? Or do they just substitute teach as a side job? Who are they?)

5. Buy Tiffany that *ahem* (overpriced) necklace she likes so much. Among other things.

6. Go back to school and get a degree in something useful. Like...I don't know, Philosophy or something. Not this junk Biochemistry and Cell Biology degree I have now.

7. Blog more often. Or maybe not. I would have the time, but would I have the will to get over the laziness?

8. Travel. I could do this even if I did not win the lottery, but this way I could travel now.

9. Buy Lakers season tickets. I need to make up for all the games I have missed (i.e. all of them).

10. Donate to cancer research or maybe even do some research myself. Because let's face it, if you live long enough, you are guaranteed to get cancer sooner or later. And that sucks.

My life has become a boring pop song and everyone's singing along

Currently Playing: Jack's Mannequin - I'm Ready

Have you ever had one of those days where you just seem to be standing still while everything around you continues to move? All of the sudden you realize you have no recollection of the past four hours, and by the time you finally get over the idea that time has passed without you knowing, another two hours have passed.

"And today was a day just like any other."

It's been a long time, very long time since I heard your voice

Currently Playing: Newfound Glory - Sincerely Me

It has been awhile.

Three months and ten days to be absolutely precise.

I know my updates don't come often, but that has to be a new record. I've actually started 4 entries in that time, but never got past the first paragraph in any of them. Normally, I only update when I am subject to a sudden burst of (marginally) creative inspiration, and that's why I started 4 entries. But I was always interrupted before I finished, and by the time I got back to the entry, I had lost the will to write (or had just forgotten what I wanted to write about). Anyway, the inspiration for this entry comes from Robby's newly created blog and latest entry. Since I strive to best Robby at every little thing I do, I am now driven to finish an update, in spite of the fact that I am currently at work and have a lot of work to do (funny how that works out). And although I do not quite have Robby's eloquence with words, nor his sharp wit, I did beat him 6-2 in fantasy basketball, even though my team is currently dead last (a whopping 22.5 games behind first place). And so I ramble...

A lot of time has passed since my last update, but not much has happened. I graduated, started working full time, and that's pretty much it. And please, don't ask me about what my job entails. Unless you have a background in molecular biology, then I don't want to take the effort to explain it to you and you probably don't want to hear me explain it to you. Let's save us both the trouble.

Randomness: In basketball news, Kobe Bryant scored an unfathomable 81 points last night in a win over the Toronto Raptors. His stats last night had some important fantasy basketball implications for me, but what he did goes beyond that. As a fan of basketball, it is just amazing to me that anyone could score that much in a come-from-behind victory without any overtimes. And yet, I can already hear the criticisms now: Kobe is too selfish; Kobe shoots too much; Kobe doesn't make his teammates any better; whatever. Why criticize and say he should pass more when he has the ability to score like that? Is any other player in the NBA even capable of scoring 81 points? Even if they took 60 shots? (Kobe did it in 46) And why should he pass the ball more when him scoring 40 every night gives them the best chance to win? Kobe has tried being unselfish before. It didn't work. At least not with names like Chris Mihm and Smush Parker in the starting line up.