Happy New Year

Twainian thoughts on New Year's:

New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions.

I miss you all. I hope you enjoy the celebrations and the associated TASP togetherness in New York. (I was about to set out on foot, but I decided against it after finding that it would take 18 days to cover 1300 miles at a continuous rate of 3 mph.)

Make New Year's your scapegoat!

Love and Hugs,
Valentin

Minimalist Post #2

No longer bored.

Minimalist Post

I'm bored.

There's a Reason Why Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" is the Most Popular Karaoke Song

I watched Orange County last night, and I've realized that my dream to go to Stanford is no different from the protagonist in the movie, whose name escapes me at the moment. I've realized that I really do want to escape this place. I want to escape the pettiness of the population.
For example, my principal wouldn't talk to me at the beginning of this school year because I wrote him a letter at the end of last year about how disgusted I was with his leadership skills, or lack thereof. Now, oh sadness, he goes out of his way to say hello to me. So I go out of my way to avoid him.
My dad and I drove the tractor over to our house this afternoon, froze to death, and lifted ourselves in the bucket of the front-end loader to make a lighted archway leading in to our driveway. It's incredible.
And now it's snowing. Again. Which is just another excuse NOT to go to the dance at the school tonight, which I wasn't going to anyway, but when my friends ask me why I wasn't there, I can say I couldn't drive in the snow.
So, these guys spend their whole lives doing this. I think. Because they have a website devoted to it.
www.eepybird.com
I just wanted to inform everyone that I've decided what my future occupation is going to be. I am going to be a registered nerd. Not a geek. A nerd is a geek minus the social skills. I will live my life having love affairs with test tubes and beakers of hydrochloric acid. Or Diet Coke.

Tact

Since it's almost Christmas, people are bringing in tons of cookies and stuff for us. A lady brought in a plate of frosted Christmas cookies today, and they reminded me of you guys. Remember those cupcakes that we decorated so lovingly? These were like those, only instead of "Bruce Robbins," "Marry Me," and pictures of Kirshner and Croatia, these had No Smoking signs and stuff. And it wasn't a joke or anything--a couple of the librarians smoke, and I guess this lady thinks they shouldn't.

"Arabi's army was about seventy thousand in all, And, virtually speaking, it wasn't very small."

I have just discovered the man famous for being the worst poet ever, William McGonagall.

From "The Late Sir John Ogilvy":

ALAS! Sir John Ogilvy is dead,
aged seventy-seven,
But I hope his soul is now in heaven;
He was a public benefactor in many ways,
Especially in erecting an asylum for imbecile children to spend their days.

How about this one, from "A Tribute to Dr. Murison":

He told me at once what was ailing me;
He said I had been writing too much poetry,
And from writing poetry I would have to refrain,
Because I was suffering from inflammation of the brain.

Reminds me of a Monty Python sketch...

Blog Revival Festivities!

Hey, you guys! Congratulations to you all for your UChicago/USAMAWP/Columbia/Yale/Stanford admissions prowesses! I have literally been skipping around my house and throwing confetti everywhere for the past 2 days. (Minus, I must confess, the time of a brief nervous breakdown a little earlier this evening...) With any luck, the admissions Gods might be more merciful to me come March. (Or perhaps not!)

CONGRATULATIONS, I am ridiculously proud of you all!!!

Also, an official "Happy Birthday" to David squared and to Gili!

Nothing About This Post Is Intellectual

I would like to preface this by saying that Laura told me to post this. It's all her fault.

So my school's yearbook is being slapped together, and our senior polls are... well, they're something alright. There are about three pages of these "awards," but there are some real gems here.

Some Selected Categories:
1. Nicest Personality
2. Classiest Strut
3. Most Likely To Join The Military
4. Tallest
5. Most Easily Confused
6. Shows Great Sportsmanship
7. First To Marry

We also are being pressured into completing our "Senior Write-Ups," the bits of information that go under our pictures in the yearbook. I've decided not to do one, but as I keep getting bothered by the teacher overseeing the yearbook to write one out. He told me we're allowed to have ANYTHING if it isn't obscene or a reference to drugs. Here's what I have:

Nicknames: that weird girl, Helga, the space cowboy, the gangster of love
School Activities: 23-Man Squamish League, Future Trombonists of America, Junior Society for the Conservation of Unicycles, Extreme Ice Polo (Captain)
Likes: ice fishing, the Amazonian kneegle fish, balls of hair, small pieces of pocket lint, orange
Dislikes: being attacked by wolves, corn muffins, the feeling you get the first time you ride a bike, the stench of death, the Hamburglar
Memories: that time I was attacked by wolves, deep sea diving with Stack, passing a kidney stone in English class
Wants to Forget: being attacked by wolves, passing a kidney stone in English class, the color blue
Quote: L8R DOODZ!!!1111

Either they'll publish it and it'll be hilarious, or they'll leave me alone. Win-win, really.

Procrasti(nation)

I wish I were above it, but right now I ought to be working on AP Calculus problems, and who wants to deal with all that nonsense? It's unnatural, like a baby with four legs. Related rates? Please.
I'm done with most of my applications, but I haven't submitted them yet. All I have to do is proof them, give them a kiss, and send them out into the world.
Maybe I have a subconscious desire to skip college and go straight to grad school.
I had to give a lecture today for my Modern Middle East class. I was part of a "roundtable panel." Three of us delivered talks, and then sat for questions from the audience, which was composed of my class and a bunch of random folks. And our head of high school. He and I are buds, though, so it was OK.
The topic of our roundtable was Iran. The other two people delivering lectures chose normal topics (nuclear proliferation and minority groups). I had to choose a weird topic, because my history teacher has a doctorate in Near East Studies and reads Foucault, so I do all sorts of bizarre stuff and get away with it.
So I decided to analyze the rhetorical use of themes prominent in the Islamic Revolution of 1978-9 in contemporary Iranian political discourse. My thesis was that revolutionary rhetoric acts as a form of population control and a means of repressing reform movements.
Except maybe a large crowd of high-school students isn't the best audience for a lecture on an esoteric topic, especially if that topic has the word "discourse" in it.
A representative selection from the paper I delivered:
"It is interesting to note the interplay of Marxist theory and messianic theology in the call for the spread of the Islamic revolution... the process of the spread of revolution (especially as Ali Shariati articulates it) is more or less straight out of Marx. The influential political philosopher declared that human history is marked by a dialectic, a series of conflicts between opressor and oppressed, and that this dialectic is historically destined to be resolved in favor of the downtrodden. We see the these two ideas in Shariati’s language—the sociologist’s usage of Marxist idioms lends a radical edge and an elegant flourish to his rhetoric."
Ah, Marx for Dummies. Even this absurdly reductive explanation of the dialectic appeared to have gone over everyone's heads.
But wait. It gets worse:
"Opposition to a powerful 'oppressor'... unites Iran’s population against a real or perceived hegemonic threat and encourages it to depend on the revolutionary government for protection. The demonization of Israel serves a similar function: it allows Iranians to define themselves as a cohesive group in opposition to their Israeli Other, and leads them to look to the hard-line Iranian government as a bulwark against the 'threatened domination of the region' by that Other."
Just imagine this scene. Just imagine. I'm looking around at the audience like a speaker is supposed to do. Directly in front of me, there's this football player with this incredible blank look on his face. Terrified animal blank. It was really out of sight. It was a total lack of any understanding. I can't even describe it adequately, except to say I've never seen anything approaching it before.
I felt sort of guilty at the end of my speech because I gave in to my pointy-headed-intellectual impulses instead of doing something other people would learn from. I forgot about it pretty quickly, though, because there was a very cute boy sitting a few rows ahead of that football player. My friend Mimi and I are planning to ask 8 or 10 guys to the next school dance and to go as a big group of two girls and with four or five dates each. I'm thinking about asking him to be one of the group.
So, now you know how shallow I am.
Love you.

On Metaphysics and the Mating Habits of Snails

Like the venerable Dylan Kenny, I shall take up my duty of blogging. (As though I needed another excuse to procrastinate writing my essays!)

The applications process puts things in perspective. Alternately it makes me feel that I am better and worse than all the other thousands of candidates applying. One realizes that all of it is not very important in the least. Sure, I used to think that getting into the best college was the summit of life. Now that the rat race is nearing its end, I see that the reality is quite the opposite. Rankings mean nothing, really. Of course, I am still applying. Why? Perhaps it is because of the rankings. But it is also because of a desire to be at an institution of like-minded people, of people interested in and concerned about the world – a place where people are contemporaneously trying to solve the problem of world peace and the problem of ontological determinism. Hence, I slog through the applications – applications that reflect not even the tiniest part of me.

As I sit here by a clear window, I look out upon a snow-covered landscape where everything is beyond me, everything exists absolutely on the other side of the window. It is as though I am watching some great drama unfold as snow falls and birds huddle in dry branches.

Aquinas knew of the ontological good, the goodness of things in their mere being. Yes, I have lived in important places, seen momentous things: a squirrel clambering up a tree, a blade of grass trembling from a single dew-drop, a man strumming a guitar by the side of the road. They are all good, all equal in their being. It is an extraordinary moment when one realizes that a pebble on the shore is as great in its absolute existence as the Parthenon. Some people, however, conclude, then, that the Parthenon is lowered to the level of the pebble. But, perhaps, it is the other way round, that the pebble is raised to the level of the Parthenon. If everything is equal, everything does not need to be worthless: all of it may very well be of infinite worth.

Always, the everyday exists and will exist. But it is by no means commonplace. Emerson says, “The sun illuminates the eye of man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.” In the world of men, everything is given false importance. The truly valuable things in life are despised, and the worthless things are exalted. It is the child who sees the world as it really is, and, like Milosz, is in “constant amazement.” Yes, there are some strange, exuberant times in life when it hits you suddenly: “I’m alive!” – and then you are, like Heidegger, in wonder at the mystery and beauty of a simple word: "esse."

I shall conclude with a quote from Soren Kierkegaard: “I am terrified by everything, from the smallest gnat to the mystery of the Incarnation.” The mundane, in a Heraclitean flux or a Hegelian dialectic, passes by not in silence, but with “trumpets and zithers.”

And no, this post has nothing to do with the mating habits of snails. Unless in some metaphorical way.

The Annals of Productivity…

are non-existent. All the same, after weeks of heart-rending un-productivity, surely it wouldn’t hurt to procrastinate just a paltry day or two. Or ten. What is productivity anyway? Isn’t it a state of mind relative to your general happiness? Can’t I choose to define productivity however I want to? Why am I forced to subscribe to a standard of productivity imposed on me by an arbitrary authority? Am I just a pawn of money-hungry admissions officers?
Of course, I have a choice. They want us to have ‘free will’ after all. Nobody is forcing me to do this to myself. It’s a democracy, for God-forsaken sakes. I have a choice, the wonderful freedom of choice, just like a guy at the gunpoint has a choice to be shot or not be shot. Statistics are astonishingly favorable to the latter, but no one can say he didn’t have a choice. Of course he did. He just tried to have some basic common sense, too.
So let me choose. I choose to be forgetful. Let me be forgetful and I will be content. Let me forget that I have to be productive and drown myself in bliss ineffable until the sounding doom of consequence comes. Let me spend this day in paradise and I will gladly suffer a thousand years of agony in hell. Let the world just be a simple shining bubble of fragile joy. I don’t mind if it’s hollow. I don’t mind if it’ll burst. I really don’t.
Really.
Fine. Fine! I do mind! I do care! Because I don’t have free will. Because it’s vaguely discomforting to think that behind it all is just the glorified whine of someone who’s too lazy to work and too stubborn to admit it. Because colleges don’t appreciate this fascinating and diverse perspective on the moral valuation of productivity. Because in two weeks I just have to get it done.
Because…because…oh, just because. Yeah.

Damnations on them all.

Snow Day Thoughts

There. I've done it. My first post.

I know most of you applied early somewhere, but I, the great procrastinator that I am, decided against it, "to keep my options open". And the deadline isn't until January 1st, so, of course, I have waited until the last moment to write all of my essays. I've been struggling against a writer's block, which is really more of a personal rebellion against college essay prompts, which isn't really going to hurt anyone but myself, I realize that.
"Who or what influenced you to apply here?" "Tell us why this college is a good place for you?"
My great friend sarcasm looks more beautiful every day, when prompts from hell haunt my disturbed dreams.

School is horrible, as always. And, as always, I am enjoying it, wallowing in all that misery. My calculus class is a waste of time. Chemistry is impossible. I fail all of the vocabulary tests, and manage to ace most of the problems tests, which are much harder. There is no way I'm passing English. No matter how hard I try, I always get bad grades in seminar. Seeing as there are only five out of the twenty in the class who actually participate, I wonder if the bad grades come from participating too much.
And, I'm in choir. My choir teacher informed me I actually can sing, which I highly doubt.

It's snowing in Colorado, thus, the snow day. All the ski slopes are open, and there's some really nice fresh powder, if anyone is interested. Also, there's an extra room in my house, at least until winter break when my sister gets back.

I miss you all terribly.
Love,
Ana

Internashunul politicz made flesh!!!??!

Whoa! Whoever came up with that deserves some sort of an award for MCFoP (Most Creative Form of Procrastination). Ever.

I miss you all terribly.

Get Well Soon

I should explain that my chemistry teacher thinks I'm some kind of crazy genius. Irrationally.
I don't really like chemistry, and he's not helping. I try to just sit there and do my work. Nothing special. But every time he asks a question to the class, he'll either single me out to ask me, or say, "I know Laura knows. Does anyone else know?"
And he's just so impressed that I know what a benzene ring is. Nothing about it, really, just what it is. Which is something he taught us maybe two weeks ago.
I should add that he's an awful teacher, so benzene rings are one of the few things I've learned this year.

Anyway, the kids in my class kept a "Laurometer" of how many times he'd say something about how I'm a genius, or single me out to explain something to the class, or congratulate me for something I didn't do, or things like that. The highest it ever got in one day was to 8. If it ever were to get to 10, I don't know what would happen, but I'm thinking a standing ovation. The kids in the class love the whole thing, so they'll give me two or three rounds of applause a day, on average. Mostly, again, for just sitting there. It's okay, though, because they also clap for other people.

Anyway, it's an awful class. Yesterday, I didn't have to go. I had to go to the eye doctor's in the middle of calculus, and I just didn't come back to school that day. I didn't tell any of my friends why I was leaving, but I didn't think there would be a big deal about it.

Later that evening, my little brother comes into the kitchen where I'm eating dinner with some friends and asks me, "Laura, you're doing okay?" I say yes, he says okay, I ask, "Why?"
"Oh, some kid in my 7th hour said you were in the hospital for heart trouble."
"Wait, who? I went to the eye doctor's"
"You don't know him. You didn't get taken there by an ambulance, did you?"

My class told my chemistry teacher that I was in the hospital, in intensive care "because my head exploded or something." He had the class make me a card. A huge card on a huge piece of paper.
It got around to the whole school, I guess. I don't know what I'm going to do on Monday.