Stupid People are Stupid

Number of people who have asked when a book that wasn't on the shelf was coming in on Sunday, October 31st: 8

That's the start of 6th week by the way.

One girl asked for a book, and I told her we already returned it to the publisher, but if she still wanted it, we could special order it for her. She replied by saying "Grr...I'll come back tomorrow." "Grr"?! WTF man. You come in 6th week and expect us to have books for you...? And you were accepted to UCSD??

Sigh...all I can do is shake my head and continue eating from the bucket of candy that was put out for me...I mean, Halloween.

Sleepy

Currently Playing: Taking Back Sunday - I Am Fred Astaire

Hello. It has been awhile. There's good reason of course. The dreaded fifth week has come and gone. Midterms are (mostly) over, finally. I have probably gotten 5 or 6 hours of sleep total since Sunday night. Usually, the coming of the weekend would mean a break from all the cramming and homework, but not this weekend. Although I had a midterm, two lab reports, and a quiz this week, next week is going to be arguably even worse. I have a midterm, two papers, a lab quiz, and a lab report due. The midterm next week is for Psyc, so it won't even be one tenth as hard as the biochemistry midterm I took this week, but I still have to do some 200+ pages of reading for it, which I have yet to start. I also have neither read the book that my Philosphy paper is going to be on, nor gone to class in the past week or so. Add all that up and it doesn't look like I'll be sleeping much next week either.

And I need a haircut.

(Long) Randomness: My Psychology class on Tuesday lasts from 6:30 pm to 9:20 pm, which, incidentally, was when game 3 of the World Series was being played. Almost everyone with a laptop had the live play-by-play open, and at random times during the lecture I could hear a supressed yelp of delight (I'm guessing they were Boston fans). It got so bad that my professor stopped lecture and started talking about the adverse effect that winning the pennant would have on Red Sox fans. She started talking about how Red Sox fans have played the part of the loser for so long that it has become part of their identity. If they won, that identity would be taken away, and many people won't know what to do. They might even yearn for the days when suffering because of a painful loss was a part of their lives. She gave an example of when masochists find that they no longer have someone to abuse them, they lose their sense of identity. Anyway, the whole point of me telling you this is because I saw this article on Yahoo! today. Odd coincidence.

Perfect Endings

Currently Playing: Straylight Run - The Perfect Ending

Taken in context, it's not a bad thing.
But when you start to pick it apart,
It's so depressing.
It's that sort of thing that makes you think too much.
It's that sort of thing that makes you lose your objectivity.
So if you've made it, just be glad that you did and stay there.
And if you've felt loved or needed,
Remember that you're one of the lucky ones.
And if it's over,
Just remember what I told you,
"It was bound to happen so just keep moving on."
There's no perfect endings.

Music Survey

1. Your favorite song with the name of a city in the title or text.
Something Corporate - I Woke Up In A Car

2. A song you've listened to repeatedly when you were depressed at some point in your life.
Dashboard Confessional - This Ruined Puzzle

3. Ever bought an entire album just for one song and wound up disliking everything but that song?
I don't buy albums.

4. A great song in a language other than English.
Cool Joke - Undo (Full Metal Alchemist Opening Theme 3)

5. Your least favorite song on one of your favorite albums of all time.
Yellowcard - Twenty Three

6. A song you like by someone you find physically unattractive or otherwise repellent.
Clay Aiken - The Way

7. Your favorite song that has expletives in it that's not by Liz Phair.
Senses Fail - One Eight Seven. "I try so fucking hard, but I can't fit your mold."

8. A song that sounds as if it's by someone British but isn't.
Eh.

9. A song you like (possibly from your past) that took you forever to finally locate a copy of.
I find everything.

10. A song that reminds you of spring but doesn't mention spring at all.
Something Corporate - Watch the Sky

11. A song that sounds to you like being happy feels.
All-American Rejects - Swing Swing (Yes, even though that is a sad song, it sounds happy damnit)

12. Your favorite song from a non-soundtrack compilation album.
Umm...at this very moment in time, Straylight Run - Your Name Here (Sunrise Highway).

13. A song that reminds you of high school.
Weezer - Buddy Holly

14. A song that reminds you of college.
Shakira - Whenever, Wherever. (*shudder*...)

15. A song you actually like by an artist you otherwise dislike.
Clay Aiken - The Way

16. A song by a band that features three or more female members.
Umm...I guess that one song by The Donnas...

17. One of the earliest songs that you can remember listening to.
Random Chinese songs that I don't know the names of.

18. A song you've been mocked by friends for liking.
Michelle Branch - Goodbye to You

19. A really good cover version you think no one else has heard.
OZMA - Superstar (Originally by The Carpenters, Sung by Star)

20. A song that has helped cheer you up (or empowered you somehow) after a breakup or otherwise difficult situation.
Taking Back Sunday - You're So Last Summer

21. If you went crazy and decided to go on a mass killing spree, what song would you be listening to as you were pumping lead/tearing apart/stabbing your victims?
Boys Night Out - This Broken Killswitch. "I'm reaching in my chest, but the killswitch on my heart is broken and I've been dead for years."

22. Do you have a song that you can listen to that puts you in a better mood than you were in prior to listening to the song?
Motion City Soundtrack - The Future Freaks Me Out

23. What song is your "guilty pleasure"?
Not sure what that means...

24. Is there a song/songs that made you cry? What was it/were they?
Yellowcard - Firewater

25. Name an artist you like that would surprise people who think they know you.
Boys Night Out

26. Is there a song you could never get sick of?
There are a few: Matchbook Romance - Tiger Lily, OZMA - Korobeinki, The Postal Service - Nothing Better, Brand New - Failure By Design, Brand New - Play Crack the Sky, and maybe a couple other ones

27. Describe one memory you have (off the top of your head) that surrounds a particular song, which will immediately pop into your head as soon as you hear it, and name the song of course.
SR-71 - Right Now. Me and Jeff's project on Asian-American influence in the media for Poli Sci senior year of high school. We spliced the song into the intro of our video, along with a 5 minute Simpsons clip (the one where the mob fights the Japanese mafia). The genius part was, we used the same exact project for Chinese.

28. What song reduces you to giggles, or is guaranteed to cheer you up with the sheer absurdity of it when you need a good laugh?
Umm...the "Chicken Dance" song? Arden, Kevin, and Jon were playing it last night while doing their ECE homework...

29. What is your lifelong theme song, the music and/or lyrics that defines something about who - and how - you are?
Brand New - Failure by Design

30. What music piece from a movie stands out for you as particularly memorable and/or enjoyable?
Aladdin - One Jump Ahead

31. Finally, the omnipresent "20 random songs" question:
1) Yellowcard - Finish Line
2) Simple Plan - Perfect
3) Unwritten Law - Before I Go (Acoustic)
4) Toshiro Masuda - Rocks (Naruto Opening Theme 1)
5) Taking Back Sunday - Timberwolves at New Jersey
6) Dashboard Confessional - This Bitter Pill
7) Something Corporate - Break Myself
8) Copeland - Walking Downtown
9) Newfound Glory - Goonies R Good Enough
10) Something Corporate - I Want to Save You
11) Murder By Death - Holy Lord, Shawshank Redemption is Such a Good Movie
12) Taking Back Sunday - Slowdance on the Inside
13) OZMA - Rain of the Golden Gorilla
14) Weezer - Falling for You
15) Thrice - Stare At the Sun
16) Straylight Run - Another Word for Desperate
17) The Postal Service - Clark Gable
18) Nami Tanaki - Realize
19) Senses Fail - The Ground Folds (Acoustic)
20) Something Corporate - Konstantine

I just used the first 20 songs that played in Winamp that weren't already in in this survey.

Randomness: It's sad when people grow apart.

21 and Invincible

So my twenty-first birthday has come and gone. I am now legally able to purchase and consume alcoholic beverages. I have yet to really take advantage of this fact, but I don't really care to either. It's weird; before I turned 21, I couldn't wait until I could legally drink. Now that I am 21, however, I don't really care if I drink.

My birthday was still a good and memorable one, and I didn't even have to get piss drunk (or maybe because I didn't get piss drunk?). Tiffany took me to Benihana for one of the best dinners I've had in a long long while. Just in case any of you haven't been to Benihana before, you sit at a big table that seats a maximum of eight people. Usually they wait for enough people to fill a table before they seat anyone. Then, after you order your food, a chef comes out and cooks your food right in front of you. Our chef was cool. He made a face on a egg with some celery and carrots and then stacked it on top of another egg, then he drew himself in the fried rice he was cooking. He topped it all of with a onion volcano that shot out steam, which was impressive.

Of course, the most important part of the meal was not the setup or the chef, but the food itself. I ordered a filet mignon and scallops. Tiffany ordered the chicken and shrimp. The meal also came with soup, salad, a shrimp appetizer (which turned out to be the same as the shrimp Tiffany ordered), assorted vegetables (in this case, onions and zucchini), and your choice of ice cream or sherbert. To top it all off, the chef added a generous helping of mouth-watering garlic butter to everything except the soup and the salad. Delicious indeed.

To take a page from Arden's book:

October 5, 2003

Maybe it's fitting that my first (real) entry be today. But then again, it's probably not. Today is probably going to be just like any day of the twenty years that I have been alive. A slow descent from unique to routine, eh? Twenty years...1040 weeks...too many days for me to even bother calculating, my laziness kicking in. So how does two decades sound...one-fifth of a century?? Sounds like a pretty long time to me. And what have I done with all this time you ask? I'm not exactly sure.

I have gone through my life not looking too far into the future, or the past for that matter. I don't know if this is a good thing or not, but I've always believed what comes is going to come, and if you spend time regretting the past, you'll just regret regretting what you were regretting (if that makes sense). A lot of people I talk to say they have not accomplished anything, or have not accomplished enough, compared to other people. This bothers me. Compared to other people, I have by no means "accomplished" much of anything in the twenty years I've been alive. However, this does not mean that I am not content with my life and the way it is turning out. I have my own definition of accomplishment, and I believe I am doing what I want to do at this point in my life, and that is accomplishment enough for me.

As for the inevitable question of whether I actually feel older, I think I do. Every year I get asked this, and usually I just respond with "No, I feel the same as I did yesterday, or the day before that." Maybe it's because my age starts with a "2" now instead of a "1." Or maybe it's because it has finally dawned on me that I'm in my third year of college, and soon I'll have to leave this environment that I've grown quite accustomed to, and go venture into whatever new world awaits me. Bah, nobody likes change. Change is baaad.

I'm not sure if anyone is going to read this, or if I even want people to read this, but this might be my one and only entry. Writing all this is hard work. So if I don't write again, ja ne?

So that was me one year ago. Waaay back when I first started writing journal entries. What a difference a year makes huh? It's funny how much things can change, and yet stay exactly the same. The thing is, I like my life the way it is now. I don't want to change a thing. And nothing will change. Ever.

No, I am not delusional. I'm just a wishful thinker.