Rachel:	You should be at Screw!
Me:	So should you.
Rachel:	Where’s your partner?
Me:	I don’t have one.
Rachel:	Did you DITCH her???
Me:	No, she ditched me!
Rachel:	Okay, good.  Bye.

Just finished watching the Pulp Fiction DVD I had lying around, and frankly I’m stumped. I’d heard a lot of people say it was amazing, then I saw it and said, “huh?” So I checked out IMDb, and there is much more of the same. The most brilliant film of all time. A true masterpiece. Whatever. I mean, I don’t get it. Okay, the storyline is non-linear, or something. Big whoop. The dialogue is interesting and adds depth. Yeah, okay. The three stories have potential. But what is the point? What happens? One guy gets shot, one guy gets rich, one guy finds God, one guy gets even, and one lady gets a hole in her rib cage.

And what is up with that damn bible passage? I mean, quote the scripture then let some idiot thug and his psychotic girlfriend leave with all of the innocent customer’s money? That is really the way to prove you’ve changed to The Good Side.

So perhaps someone can tell me what makes this movie so incredible, because I can’t really see it. And I know that it is cliche to say this is the best movie of all time, and saying otherwise is blasphemous, but please, what do you see in it? Besides great acting, I mean.

I was checking my stats today and found something funny. In my three months at Brandeis I have used 14.98 GB of incoming bandwidth. On 11/23 I had 4884.6 MB come in. On that day alone I accounted for 1/3 of my total bandwidth for the last three months. Wow. It’s cool when everyone goes home for Thanksgiving and you have the entire internet connection to yourself! 🙂

It is good to remember people’s names. That helps you identify them.

Oh, wait…nevermind. False alarm. Go back inside from the rain, go back to sleep. Sorry. Stupid prankster pulled the alarm. We are now organizing a posse.

Sigh.

Mock Trial tonight, and it didn’t go as well as the previous meetings, but good enough. We had a lot more people with “experience” show up then I expected, and naturally our demonstration of a witness examination was therefore often interrupted by objections and criticism. It was all productive and all, but I wish I had prepared more, or stresses that this was not the real thing. It was all a bit odd.

After MT I got to see the last 2 hrs. of JFK, which was assigned for Jerry Cohen’s class and was being shown – again for the third time – on the same night as a Mock Trial meeting. Worse still, he thought that he had reserved our room! I made him move to Brown 316 (heh) and then went to talk to the people at Kutz. They gave us a printout of the confirmation form that “proved” the room belonged to us on Wednesdays at 7. Wow…I feel so…powerful. Or not.

Despite my reluctance to attempt a “dance,” I have been apparently setup for the Screw Your Roommate dance with a female unit under the name of Monisha Cherayil. Doing my general background research on anyone I hear about (namely, typing the name into Google and seeing what comes up) I found a few essays by Monisha on one of her friend’s blogs. This led me to explore the blog and find out a bit about Tingting and then find her college rapsheet. It is instructive. Here I feel bad about my lower test scores, less activities, or whatever, and then I look at where she got in and I realize it all is kinda a wash. Tingting has much higher test scores then I do (and mine are none too shabby), more APs, more cool positions, but ultimately we got in to most of the same schools and rejected from the same, with one notable exception. Guess which. Yeah, yeah, MIT. But we both got into Berkeley and UCSD, I didn’t apply for UCLA or Wellesley but did apply to Brandeis, obviously, and got in like she did, and we both got our rejections from Yale and Stanford, and I got one from Princeton while she got one from Harvard. She appears to be more mathematically apt then myself, so I wish her well at MIT, and am still content with my school.

What was I talking about? Oh, nevermind, I’m going to sleep. Or to catch up on some reading.

Two new essays posted in the essays section, although the Philosophy one will be difficult to understand without the topic…

I have a clothing thing. Not really sure what to call it. Sensitive/dry skin, discomfort, whatever. So I need very soft, very specific clothes. Nothing can cling, everything has to lay nicely without stretchiness. No stiff collars. Nothing that can’t be tucked in (meaning pretty long). And everything at least somewhat loose and baggy. So it is almost impossible to find me clothes.

Linda and I went shopping yesterday for winterware. See, when you live in New England, you need cold-weather clothes. Like, uh…pants. And long-sleeve shirts. And boots. And I really had none of these things. So we went on a bit of a spree. I found my new favorite store, Timberland, with very wonderful soft shirts (that I will be sure to use lots of fabric softener on to keep them comfy) and some nice shoes and a jacket. My biggest problem was really pants. After a few stores Linda figured out what I don’t like, and she stopped suggestion most normal fabric things.

We found a nice pair of cords in black, but nothing really superb. Finally, at the last store, Abercrombie & Fitch, right before we were going to leave, on my final pass, I saw a side rack that wasn’t part of any display. On it I saw one pair of very nice wine-colored pants. They looked thick and warm, but comfortable. I could tell instantly that they were perfect.

But one pair! No way they could be my size! But I knew they were, and they indeed were, and they were the only pair in the store, and they were perfect!!! The pants gods were shining down on me, or I am just incredibly lucky, but I now have a new favorite pair of pants. Yay! *smiles* And now I’ll stop laughing at people who wear the stupid $30 Abercrombie t-shirts. I still think they’re stupid (the shirts, not the people), but I like that store now.

I’m just not getting the whole train concept. I got up early after spending the night in my room (instead of going back to the hotel) and got ready so as to make the 9:06 Commuter Rail into North Station. Only, oops, its a saturday! There is a 7:36 and a 10:16. Sigh. So after a 15 minute walk in the cold, I had to make a 20 minute walk back to the dorm. Sigh. Well, at least I have some nice new a capella music to listen to…

Somewhere around a week ago I wrote this entry while in Conspiracy class. Now it finally goes up, when my iBook gets plugged into the net again.

I have heard great things about the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television show. Things working against it, in my book: It’s on the WB, I missed the first few seasons, and its totally implausible. Well, its on UPN, so I dunno if it switched or what, but my religion now allows me to watch it. I did miss the first few seasons, or perhaps many, but it might be recapped on Mighty Big TV, so I could catch up, plus it seems easy enough to follow thanks to all the flashback “previously on Buffy” things. So I’ve basically shown I know nothing of the history of this show. And of course the implausibility factor. You quickly realize when watching it that its not about being truthful or realistic, its about having fun.

All this introduction leads up to me announcing I’m in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Last night I had my TiVo record it because there was a special musical episode on that looked really cool. Well, it was. It was awesome. It was an hour ten of singing, dancing, and storylines. And they made fun of themselves a lot. And they (in general) really can sing (fairly well) without voice doubles. So this is an episode that I’m putting in my newly founded archives of wonderful TV, next to the season 2 finale of The West Wing. And, as much as it pains me to say it, I’m afraid I might have another television show to watch. Which is bad, because it sucks up too much time. I now have West Wing, Farscape, The Pretender, The Daily Show, and Buffy. I have stopped with the monstrosity known as Enterprise after three episodes. I’m giving up The Outer Limits unless an episode looks particularly interesting. And The Invisible Man hasn’t been on in a while. So lets do some math. Farscape (4) + Pretender (5) + Daily Show (4) + Buffy (1), and that’s 14 shows a week. But the Daily Show is only half an hour, so make that 12 hours a week, which isn’t terrible, although its higher then I would generally like. But then count TiVo time, meaning that I can watch them whenever I want (like when I can’t fall asleep at 3 AM), and I can skip commercials, making an hour show about 45 minutes, and now it adds up to 528 minutes, or 8.8 hours. So I’m watching maybe 10 hour a week if you include the junk between, the commercials I don’t skip, etc. Cool. I feel good now, I’m not a TV-aholic. And all the shows are worthwhile and entertaining, so I don’t feel like I’m selling out. Now just wait until Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, etc. start back up. Sigh.

So I did some math a little while back, justifying to myself and others my television viewing habits. And now that is all in disarray. Let’s look at what we had:

Farscape (4) + Pretender (5) + Daily Show (4) + Buffy (1), and that’s 14 shows a week. But the Daily Show is only half an hour, so make that 12 hours a week, which isn’t terrible, although its higher then I would generally like. But then count TiVo time, meaning that I can watch them whenever I want (like when I can’t fall asleep at 3 AM), and I can skip commercials, making an hour show about 45 minutes, and now it adds up to 528 minutes, or 8.8 hours.

Simple enough, right? And then some other good shows come on. First off, I don’t think I’m going to watch any new Buffy episodes, because I’m so far behind. Then look at this: FX is running the entire show from the beginning. I’m catching it about halfway through. But what’s this now? It’s running how many times per day? Oh, yeah, four. Two “new� shows and then the repeats of the previous day. Crap!

I’m also watching 24. But nothing else! NOTHING ELSE!!! So let us recalculate.

Farscape                                   4.0 hours
Pretender                                  5.0 hours
Daily Show                                 2.0 hours
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (AHHHH!!!)       10.0 hours
24                                         1.0 hours
The West Wing                              1.0 hours
----------------------------------------------------
SUBTOTAL                                  23.0 hours
(Assume 15 min/hour commercials)        x  3/4
TOTAL                                   ~ 18.0 hours

Eighteen hours or so. Hmm. I dunno, its too long, now I have to figure out what I can cut out. But I have no idea what I would cut. What I can do is assume that, since Farscape is getting nearer to their new season, this schedule should be reduced by next semester to 1 hour/week. Similarily, The Pretender is reaching the end of the line in anticipation of a made-for-tv movie, so that one should cut down. So starting next semester, I should be okay! I hope, I hope, I hope.

I’ve also realized (not for the first time) how useless cable TV is to me. If I had my way I would pay the same money for, say, 6 channels, all commercial free. Give me NBC, ABC, CBS, SCIFI, Comedy Central, and HBO. And maybe throw in Discovery Channel and TLC. Eight channels. I’ll give you eight bucks a month, now dump my commercials. Please?

Nothing witty to say today. Went to a nice Thanksgiving dinner, met Aunt Linda and Ercil, and Ercli’s daughter Ursula (sp?) and her fiance Matthew. Had some fun in Connecticut, and in Boston. Took the T a bit. Missed a train, hurt some muscles…slept in a hotel, decided I like my room better. Except the food there is better, although Aramark has poisoned me so that any “real” food I eat makes me feel icky. Its a good reason to eat less, though. 🙂

Yes, I’m still obsessed with Buffy. It hasn’t passed yet.

Television gets a bad wrap. Just because there are stupid publications doesn’t make people say “books suck.” And just because we have the Boston Phoenix doesn’t mean people say “newspapers suck.” And just because we have Rush Limbaugh doesn’t mean that “radio sucks.” The medium and the message – argue all you want about how they are tailored together, or at least theoretically should be, but one message doesn’t poison an entire medium.

I watch television a bit. Or perhaps more then a bit, but certainly less then the “average” American, and I am not ashamed of my watching habits. I watch shows that I consider to be either meaningful, distracting, or both meaningful and distracting. I like shows that are epic, as opposed to episodic. I like larger-then-life tales that span multiple shows, where plot is intricately and delicately developed over time and mysteries are revealed. Where you care about the characters, where multiple motivations are and ethics are represented and explored and understood.

I don’t watch sitcoms, I don’t watch adventure. I watch social satire, I watch drama, and I watch epic adventures. Things that have a point, morals, meaningful stories, or at least a lot of humor. Yeah, so, television gets a bad wrap. There is good and bad television, just like every other medium. Just because of some of the incredibly terrible storylines, characters, blatant product placement, and whatnot, that doesn’t mean the entire medium is evil. Okay, and that sentence was really…bad.

I write this because I’ve been catching up on Farscape on SciFi and the character of Zahn just died. So she is a tall blue alien plant thing from a distant galaxy. So what? I feel the loss, and that makes it good TV.

Oh, and Farscape Rocks!

Andrew, this one is for you! After great effort I am nearly finished integrating PHPix, bplog, and my new commenting system. Its all very rudimentary, but it looks good, works cleanly, and is not so complicated as to be hackable. So hit the media link now, buddy, and by very impressed. All of my old galleries are gone, but all of the pictures are still there, now it just remains for you all to caption them! Ain’t that a treat? 🙂 So caption away! And this new system means adding more images is as easy as dragging and dropping, so expect pictures to go up much more quickly in the future. Plus the great scaling features of PHPix mean I can drop the huge 1600×1200 shots in a folder and it will convert them to thumbnails and smaller sizes all on the fly. Wowsers, I am quite impressed with myself and this software. I’d better sit down before I hurt something or someone.

Happy clicking!

There was a cool meteor shower-thing last night, so we stayed up to watch. Phew. I ended up going to bed about 3 and getting back up at 4 to see the sight from a rock formation behind the castle. It was pretty fun, although quite cold (because I wasn’t dressed for it. I need gloves!) After a while of everyone saying “Ahh!” after seeing a hit, we switched to saying various words including “fart,” “Jehuda,” “Aramark,” and my personal favorite, “Lithuania!” after each occurrence. We started cycling through various countries, then just shut up and watched the sky for a while.

I finally got to sleep again around 6 in the morning, and woke up again somewhere around 2 in the afternoon. So now I’ve been up for maybe three hours and its already dark outside again. I am so confused… And now I have to start my homework. Sigh. 🙁

I love it when people spin the truth for their own advantage. Everyone does it, and its a valid way of living, and oftentimes its all in good fun. But I don’t like it when people try to spin to me when we both know that I know its spin. Not that its a lie, because its not, but because it is spin, as opposed to the simple facts. So with that, I’m off to tell people to hack into the brandeis central web server but oh, by the way, don’t do anything bad. See, I’m discouraging! Because I care! 😉

Tonight is the second of this year’s Pachanga dances, put on by the international club for a purpose I really can’t quite fathom. I mean, I understand the whole dance aspect, but not why International Club does it…I think they get money from the A-Board because it is a “cultural” event. Heh.

Today Brandeis held their debate tournament, which I did not judge in because I forgot it was coming, despite numerous emails. Whoops. The consequence of a debate tournament is that lots of students from far away spend the night in our dorms. We had a group from Brown here on Cable 1. The group decided to have a party.

Now, North is a “dry quad,” although our floor does have signs stating quite clearly that we are a, “Wet Floor.” When a buddy of Abe’s from BU started vomiting after an extended stay in the Mods, BEMCO was called, and along with them of course came campus PD. Dana Baker, quad director, was also called up, I guess. She patrolled the hall, noticed the bit of a party in [**Name Withheld Due To Request**]’s room, and did her duty as a quad director, making them throw out the booze and taking names for some sort of “write up.” [Ed: False information about punishment removed.]

I found the whole thing quite humorous. I was in the room a few minutes prior but luckily I was in the hallway when Dana came by, and consequently I was not written up. Not that I was drinking anyway. So I did what any good geek with a weblog in my position does, I took pictures.

Our last Pachanga resulted in probably a dozen visits to the hospital, including my buddy down the hall Roman, the frat boy. I’m sure this one will keep BEMCO and Waltham Deaconess Hospital quite busy. Fun. Meanwhile I sit here and code… I’m really pathetic.

Good question. Finished and turned in Jerry Cohen paper, then got another one right after. Sigh. Went to an AMST/LGLS dinner celebrating Louis’s birthday (as I commented earlier, I think), listened to some guy speak, but it quickly got a bit…tiresome, with everyone debating capital punishment, which is interesting, but I wasn’t in the mood for a Gordie/Jerry debate.

Mock Trial tryouts went well, and it looks like we have a lot of good people for our teams. We’ve made it club policy not to discuss individual performances or decisions outside of our closed-door meetings, to respect people’s feelings. All in all I was pretty impressed with everyone’s ability to speak, improv, respond to questions, etc. Now we’re going through the difficult task of hashing out who will be on which team, and I hope to send out an email tomorrow.

I just realized that my recaplet of Buffy the Vampire Slayer never got up here, its still sitting on the laptop. So I’m going to get on that pronto…once I wake up.

And on that note: Watch the Buffy Musical Tonight at 8/7c on UPN!!! For every minute you don’t watch…I shall kill you!!! (Uh-oh, reference to Family Guy. I really should go to bed)

At 11 I meet with some folks to discuss the Brandeis web site. At noon is news on screen, and we’ve hit internet topics, so my insights are valuable, IMHO. At 1:30 is philosophy, and we just got another paper in there as well. Sigh, papers. Plus I soon have a COSI assignment due, so lots of work. But I’m happy and peppy, and somehow I was pulled into watching The Usual Suspects instead of reading Media Rants (which is somewhat outdated anyway), so I’m a bit behind on that. Typical. 😉

Staying up too late, waking up too late, not enough time in the day. Lots of lots of lots of reading to do. Plus lots of Mock Trial planning needs to be worked out. Plus we spent 1 hour holding tryouts (that went really well) then about 2 hours debating over who should be on what teams. Geez. It was hard making the decisions, and we’re still not done yet, we have four more people who weren’t able to make tryouts. In all I feel very happy and upbeat, I just have so much schoolwork that probably needs to get done, I have to figure out how I’m going to get through it all.

Meanwhile, some people *cough* Andrew *cough* keep bugging me about getting photos online, so I’ll do that too, as soon as I get some free time that isn’t better spent working. I’m setting up Gravity Magazine’s online presence and will be doing some PHP coding for them, which is okay because it is part of my web project for News On Screen that is worth like 20% of my grade. JehudaDaddy.com, on the other hand, is just for fun.

I was just looking back on my TechTV interview (4.4MB Movie File). Heh. I look funny! They were supposed to give me five minutes but some “breaking news” cut it to 1 and a half, which I guess is why they ignored what I assume were some pre-planned questions and just opened with the terrible “so…tell us more about what you did?” which I was completely unprepared for. Way to go me. Anyway, it was humorous, and humor is good, so I figured I’d share! 🙂