Everything Is Clear Now

Reading from dude's notebook:

"I will start a pharmaceutical company specializing in brain drugs."

Brain drugs. Yes, indeed. Ok, I think it's time for me to go before dude stands up and does his stretching routine again. I'm sure you all will thank me for stopping the clogging of your feed readers :)

Sequel!

Note to guy who scared off the cute girl:

Repeatedly grunting and stabbing at the book you're reading with your finger while manically nodding your head is also a good way to freak me out.

Focus Wavering - 20+ Papers To Go

ok, dude sitting across for me: spending 10 minutes breaking the binding on your paperback (Think and Get Rich) is really starting to wig me out. Turning each page and flattening down the spine is just a little spooky.

See? I'm not the only one. You scared off the cute girl who was sitting next to you.

Pining for Prongs

I know you guys are thrilled with tales from grading, so here's another nugget:

I really dislike the old 'three-pronged' essay. I think most people do. I thought that everyone had to learn how to write them in high school. I guess not anymore. At this point, I'd love to see some. Even a two-prong. One well-developed prong would be an improvement.

A Well-Lighted Place to Grade

It's become nearly impossible to get a space at any of the cafe/coffeeshops around where I live anymore. The big bookstore one is crowded with well, paying customers - the nerve of them all. The funky cafe with free wireless is always jam packed unless you get there at 8am. Oh, and no one ever leaves, either. I think they've installed feeding tubes. There's a Starbucks, but it's usually a tight squeeze too, but they have done a very cool thing. They put in computer tables. They're six to a table with a power-strip in the center. Very nice. Even better is that my wonderful sister gave me a Starkbucks gift card, so my frapaccino is free-to-me! (don't worry - it's a light frapaccino hehe)

So, all that said, I've got about 30 papers to grade and yesterday I got a stack of 45-ish blue-book exams on top of that. Nice timing, eh? So it makes perfect sense that I'm blogging instead of grading, right? Oh, maybe not so right. Ah, well, if I'm not back in a day, call the EMTs.

What Am I?

Advanced Global Personality Test Results Extraversion |||||||||||| 43% Stability |||||||||||||||| 70% Orderliness |||||||||||| 46% Accommodation |||||||||||||| 56% Interdependence |||||||||||||||||| 76% Intellectual |||||||||||||||| 63% Mystical || 10% Artistic |||||||||||||| 56% Religious |||||||||||| 43% Hedonism |||| 16% Materialism |||||||||||||| 56% Narcissism |||||||||||||| 56% Adventurousness |||||||||| 36% Work ethic |||||||||||| 50% Self absorbed |||||||||||| 43% Conflict seeking |||||| 30% Need to dominate |||| 16% Romantic |||||||||||||||| 63% Avoidant |||||||||||| 50% Anti-authority |||||| 30% Wealth || 10% Dependency |||||||||||| 43% Change averse |||||||||||||||| 63% Cautiousness |||||||||||| 43% Individuality |||||| 30% Sexuality |||||||||||||| 56% Peter pan complex |||||||||||||||| 63% Physical security |||||||||||||||||| 76% Physical Fitness |||||||||||||||| 64% Histrionic |||| 16% Paranoia |||||||||| 36% Vanity |||||||||||||||| 70% Hypersensitivity |||||||||||||||| 63% Female cliche |||||| 30%

Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com


Seen at Zerodoll's

Hrmph... This is almost illegible on the template. Be happy you're reading this in a feed reader. If you are.

If you aren't... Um... sorry.

Jeeves Is A Smartass

SatireWire | Feature: Interview with the Search Engine

Oh, Great, Like I Need Any More Geek Cred

You Are Scooter

Brainy and knowledgable, you are the perfect sidekick. You're always willing to lend a helping hand. In any big event or party, you're the one who keeps things going. "15 seconds to showtime!"

The Muppet Personality Test

Blogthings - The Muppet Personality Test

8.32km - 40'30"

Woot!

Well, I broke under a big number this morning on the weight scale. I haven’t been this light since I was in the army. Of course, I was a lot more muscular then, but I think I’m getting fitter now, and that’s the whole goal. Well, the other goal is to shrink my belly, but that’s happening slowly as well. Yeah me.

The problem is that I want to reward myself, and in the past, I’ve always rewarded myself with big honking tubs of food and candy. Hmm… Counter-productive, no? I’ve certainly earned a bag of skittles or something, but that seems pretty boring.

Why Does TCM Taunt Me?

I come home to do a bit of reading and go to sleep, but they're showing another Audrey Hepburn movie. I mean, c'mon! I'm only human!

Random Reading Reme... Er... Meme...

Bold the books you have read. Italicize the books you might read.
Cross out the books you probably won't read.
Underline the books you have on your shelf to read or have started reading.
Pass it on. (I found this over at Aspiring Academic's thru Do Thy Research)

I would like to add, if you want to do this, you should also add five books to the list yourself - because it’s a very eclectic list and should become more so.

1984 - George Orwell
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Aesop’s Fables
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Dune - Frank Herbert
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Neuromancer - William Gibson
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
The Analects – Confucius
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
The Bible (Old and New Test)
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Koran
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Where the Sidewalk Ends – Shel Silverstein
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

Why?

There's voodoo in the air in the Land o' Overread. We're a very small department. Almost a subsection of another department. As of right now we've only got a MA program, and this year we're graduating only a handful of folks. Here's the thing that's got me flummoxed. I think I'm the only one who is really aiming for a career in academia. One officemate is running away from university altogether. She's got a couple of 'real' jobs lined up. She'll probably be pulling a hefty paycheck down from a giant megaconglomocorp within a couple months of graduation. Another officemate half-heartedly applied to PhD programs, but has now all but decided that she really would prefer to drop off the face of the earth and go play somewhere else. I'm kind of jealous. Another officemate (did I mention I've got about a sitcom's worth of officemates?) has decided that she really wants to go be with her husband and spot living on opposite sides of the country. She's applied places too, but I don't think she'll accept.

The crux of my current pondering is that I really respect these people and each of their choices. They are very gifted and capable people. I'm jealous of each one in different ways. Although I should be happy that there are less people in the field for me to butt heads with when job-hunting comes around :), I find myself a bit pensive. Why in the world am I doing this? Why am I wanting to be a horribly over-educated, underpaid, overworked, and possibly chronically unemployed academic? Even the title can be dismissive. It's all academic, right?

I'm not having a crisis of purpose or anything, and I know that this job is definitely not for everyone, but I wonder what little electrical impulses are firing in my brain that are firing differently in their brains. Lemmings all think they're right until they hit the water, right?

(This post might have been brought on by the fact that one of the big unis I applied to said that their decisions would be made in about 2 weeks)

Later Run

8.21km - 40'34"

Felt a touch slower, and guess what? I was! :)

Ohm...

I've reached a Zen-like state of understanding. I know I cannot finish all that I have to finish, and so I won't.

This is the sound of one hand clapping. In this spirit, I present to you the first installment of

Overread Open-mic!
where all poetry must be haiku, and all poetry must be awful! Feel free to join in - it's a 5-7-5 syllable form, and it's best to have a twist of some sort on the last line.

My plate, heaping tall,
Jealous tasks, stealing my time.
I sit, unperturb'd.

Papers, by students sent,
befoul my innocent drive.
Someone, call a priest.

Overheard

Teenybopper #1: Did you know that to be a sociology person, you've got to take a drug test?

Teenybopper #2: Ohmygod! No!


-

A sociology person, eh? Is that an official job title, now?

Mon Run

8.23km - 40'15"

Superbowl Commentary

I'm biased, but the first winner for commercials is the Pixar Cars commercial. I really don't get the NASCAR fad, but I love Pixar :)


Additions:

Escalade Oil sucker/model commercial = pathetic. What are we supposed to think? The SUV is too thin, overpaid and addicted to drugs? Oh, well check that too thin, and it's not too bad. kudos, Caddy for admitting that you're selling a piece of crap.

Noooooo Kermit!! Don't shill for Ford - even if it is for a hybrid... My childhood memories.... destroyed...

Let's give Godaddy.com a pass too - Their commercials have always been horrible. Think of all the money they pay so that we get to see them... sad...

Gillette's razor of doom commercial is very interesting though. They're obviously selling so much more than a razor now - it's more like beer selling sex. Gillette's selling tech and geekdom.

Halftime:

Wow, Mick sounds awful. Is there something wrong with his mic?

Et tu, Yosemite Sam? A shill for Honda? sigh...

Final Seattle 10 Pittsburgh 21:

Well, I'm a little disappointed. I wanted Seattle to win, but more disappointing was that the game really never seemed that exciting. It just seemed like another game. Nice for the Bus to win, but overall: eh...

Grading

I know I say this every time I grade papers, but it seems absolutely impossible that these students have ever taken an English Comp class. Either that or everyone is stoned out of their freaking gourds when they're writing these things.

Thesis:
Throughout the history of the world, people have always been like this. A is like B but also like C. (the most common and hated thesis)
Body:
According to text Z, A was a really wild guy. He did M, N, and O. (completely unrelated to so-called thesis)
Conclusion:
A is like B but also like C. This impacts my life because I got drunk last week and the guy who held my hair while I puked had a beard and so did A.

***Sorry for writing so short a paper! My computer is dying and the printer at school didn't work and my roommate has the bird flu and I think I may be going to Mexico***

Also: I'm sick so I won't be going to class, can you tell me what we will talk about?

Thanks! :) :)!!