Well, I'm less proud of the death camp paper, but honestly at this point I could care less. It's over, done with, and I have only one more paper to go this weekend.
The man who was finished one of his papers is king. Or something. The important thing here is that I finished my Magruder textbook paper. I'm sort of proud of it, except where I'm not. I'm not sure how well it passes on the essence of the whole thing in 5 pages, but whatever. It will all make sense in the end.
Now I get to write one on Soviet prison camps in the 1930s. That'll be exciting.
Also, I offer up a website, and a quote.
And the quote, in reference to the book that's based on the website, or something.
"It also doesn't really end, so much as it jerks abruptly to a halt like an exceptionally stupid and excitable dog reaching the end of its rope at full speed."
---Kate Nepveu
Because reading rasfwrj will broaden your mind. Or turn you into a raving lunatic. Or both.
*air guitar riff*
HST 421 paper due date moved from Friday to Monday. Also, I have my makeup exam for that class that same Monday. Life now owns. Life will own much more right after the nap I will now be taking.
"Put them...in the iron maiden."
"Iron Maiden!? Excellent!"
"EXECUTE THEM!"
"Bogus!"
The hangover part of the week:
Thursday: Conference on the paper that's due in two weeks. I need to have a bibliography and maybe an outline together by then. Also a group meeting for my presentation next Thursday.
Friday: This'll be fun. 5-6 page Archives research paper due in HST 310. 5 page paper on the gulags due in HST 415. 10 page paper on Xenophon's Anabasis due in HST 421. I urge you all to remember that while I've done most of my archives research, I have yet to touch the books for either of the other two papers.
Next Tuesday: 3 articles with reports due for Anth.
Next Thursday: Archives research presentation due in HST 310.
2 Mondays from now: 10 page Historiography paper due, with serious bibliography, research, etc. I haven't even got a serious topic yet.
2 Wednesdays from next: Exam in HST 415. Comprehensive. 6-8 at night.
2 Thursdays from next: Exam in HST 421. 9:30-11:30am. I WILL be writing that entire time. Exam in Anth. 12-2pm. You will note the time, there. Yes, half hour break. That'll be lots of fun.
And then? And then I am free. Free at last.
In the eeeeeeeevning...
*loud drums/guitar*
Or something.
So on the plus side of this last week, Wednesday I played some great MW:DA. Thursday I saw Matrix: Reloaded (can't find my copy of the original - how annoying). Friday I went out with Tali and Laura, had ice cream, played cards, enjoyed the weather. Saturday I went out with Tali and Laura, threw a frisbee around for a while, enjoyed the weather, ate some good pizza, and watched a really bad 60's horror flick. Good times. And today I got fed. Yay.
The dangerous thing about books, and I mean the good ones here, the really good ones, is that they make you think. Worse than that, they make you FEEL. End of a really good book, you sort of put it down, and you get kind of sad, and you kinda dwell on it a bit, dwell on yourself, that sort of thing. And then you go to bed, and you wake up, and nothing's changed in your life, and it's all back to the same old thing.
Yeah. Guess who's been reading way too much today? The worst part of it is, it left me with a realization that I am very very tired of my life at the moment. I realize that I have about 30 more pages to write for school, in a couple of weeks, and then the term's done with. I'm tired of papers. I'm tired of school. I just want to relax for a fucking week with no schedule and nobody bitching at me to do shit. And I know it's not going to happen. Term'll end, and we'll go immediately into the whole "why don't you have a job" routine. And when I don't get one immediately, we'll do the whole "well, look harder. And you know if you had done this earlier during the term, you'd have one already." Yeah, we've been here. And of course saying I'd like to go to Michigan will bring up the whole money thing and the job thing and all that shit. I'm sick and fucking tired of that one, too. Tired of having all the little past mistakes build up and haunt me forever and fucking ever.
And the fucked up thing about college is, the emotional stress is the killer. Way more than the work. Shit. Used to spend more time doing pointless shit in HS. Just it's one little thing, one after the other. Sitting here remembering when I first came to college. First couple of days, met a bunch of people, had a really fun term, good times. And now I'm sitting here as a tired, stressed out, burnt out college senior who does nothing but work and play video games, sees almost nobody for weeks on end, and has very little to say even to his oldest friends.
And believe you me, I am WAY tired of that shit.
Did, in fact, see Matrix: Reloaded last night. I shall simply say that my speculations on whatever the hell is going on are going to wait until the third movie has been seen. Until then, I can always listen to the blather on rasfwrj about it.
Movie kicked ass, though, even if I have no idea where it's going. The very long fight scenes were maybe a bit too long, though there is a certain part where I was thinking that, and Neo grabbed a pole, and I went "Nah..." And I'll make the comment that everyone has been making, that, Neo, Trinity, couple others are like, the token white guys in the film. We can but speculate on the reason for that.
Good times, good times.
Let's see. Whir wants a blog update. What's been happening. Still going out of my mind doing papers and shit for classes. STILL haven't taken my Greece midterm 'cause the prof's been out for some reason. Did my "redesign the history board" project this morning and turned it in. Will do my second archives visit tomorrow, then write the paper. Then somehow I will get together four books on one of: Diocletian, Constantine, the entire Fall of the Roman Empire, or something wildly out there. THEN I will read Xenophon's Anabasis and write THAT paper. THEN I will write the paper on the Diocletian thing. I think I forgot a paper or test or something in there. Whatever. I just want it to all go the fuck away, thank you very much.
Got the chance to go play some Mechwarrior: Dark Age over at the game shop last night. Tourny night, no less. First guy had some artillery and the Banson's Raiders Legionnaire, which is a seriously buff mech that kicked my ass all over the place while I made an end run around with a ton of infantry on his arty. I ended up losing, but it was cool. Second guy had a bunch of random Steel Wolves pieces. Think he was new. Did the inf end run again, and it turned into a giant melee over there while my vehicles went straight down the center towards his arty and my mech ran around stomping the living hell out of the guy's vehicles. Won that one handily. Third one was this ultra-scary Zeus-X mech backed up by a bunch of hoverbikes, and a random APC stuffed with inf. APC comes up the side straight off, and I spend a while smacking it down while Mr. Zeus comes up and I run like mad before turning and charging. Vicious fighting ensues, and I technically won, though if the game had gone on longer I'd have lost pretty badly. Mr. Unique Zeus is not Fun To Fight.
And then at the end of the night I got voted the Fellowship award prize for nicest player. That was cool. The same unique Thumper that Cole used to cause hurt to me the other night. Happy happy joy joy.
And I may get to go see the new Matrix tonight. We shall see. Stay tuned.
Well, I just registered for fall. It's all over the hump and down the other side, now. Life rules.
MWF 9-10: ANTH 330, Evolution
M 2-5: Gender Issues in Modern Europe, my Writing Intensive class, will suck
TR: European Military, 1400-1650
10 credits. Ownage.
Soviet humor:
[a group of rabbits are attempting to flee the USSR to Poland]
Border Guard: Why do you wish to leave?
Rabbit: The GPU has given orders to arrest every camel in the Soviet Union.
Border Guard: But you are not camels!
Rabbit: Just try telling that to the GPU.
This is Whir's fault, really.
http://www.drunktv.com/flash/icon.swf
So this is about what happens when you're sick for a week straight in college.
1200 pages of reading
1 paper
2 midterms
All due over the next three days and next monday. Feel the love.
Just saw this as an ICQ ad. I love ICQ ads.
"Cyber love can go ALL the way!"
Yeeeeeaaaaaaaah.
With some form of apologies attached, I offer two quotes:
"Jesus saves, and and takes half damage."
"Jesus saves, roll for initiative."
It's a D&D thing.
All the short stories, the quotes page, and ROTD 1/2/01 and 3/17/01 have the new better look and linking. Slowly but surely, things get better.
Until a really weird CSS error shut me down, I was doing some good work on getting my webpage back in the running... All the links should at least partially work now. The D&D and BT sections such as they are are now up, the Writings section has at least a working front, and the About section is fixed up a bit. More to come.
Well, the cold is getting worse and worse, and I skipped class to sleep through the damn thing, which sort of worked. Going through fluids like mad. You'd think I was actually sick or something.
On the plus side, I've finally figured out an acceptable workaround to the image border problem I was having and which was preventing me from doing more site work. It's not the one I wanted, but might well turn out to be better in the end. We'll see.
And I'm all but finished with Epic 27, Epic 28 opened today and looks like it'll be a blast, and I just finished a solo game with the Vikings whereupon I got stuck in the most ass end of the world disease-ridden jungles anybody has ever seen, but through heroic efforts and repeated Celt-slaughtering, I managed to pull ahead of the pack, causing the death of the Zulus and the Persians by world dogpile, then pulled the AIs into eternal world wars, and was well on my way to spaceship victory when that rat bastard Mao, who was my best friend the entire game, turned around and sneak attacked me. World dogpile on HIM, and a UN vote because I didn't feel like fighting a modern war where I lacked rubber and oil. Civ rules.
Fine, I'll post something, Whir. Happy now?
Sick. Picked up a cold from somewhere, and it's miserable. I fucking hate being sick. And the bell tower on campus randomly screwed up and went off constantly for like 8 hours straight all night, so I got no sleep. Very annoyed. With my luck, my Greece midterm will be tomorrow and I'll be screwed utterly.
So about a week ago, I'm poking around over at RBCiv, and I notice a random non-there link. So I whip out ye olde email proggy, fire off an email to Griselda over there. Yeah, you're sort of missing a link, and oh by the way I changed my website addy, so a bunch of my links are broken. Next thing I know, I get one back to the effect of "Say, noticed you live in Corvallis. Well, so do I. We should get together sometime."
It's a six inch world, some days.
So to make a long story short, we do on Tuesday, and there's much talking about Civ, D&D, school, you name it. Good times. What's more, I find myself invited to a demo of Mechwarrior: Dark Age on Wednesday over at Matt's Comics, a place I'd never even heard of. So I go, and I get a nice big hands on demo of the game for like 3 hours, and at the end of it all I'm flat out given a whole ton of pieces, which would've cost me some unfathomable amount to buy on my own, just to help me get started playing. Such generosity overwhelms. So needless to say, I'm enthused.
On the other side of the coin, I spent Tuesday night and Wednesday morning alternately reading the 300 page novel we were assigned for Stalin class that I didn't have time to read before, and writing the 5 page paper that was due, uh, Wednesday afternoon. Got it back today, B- only because he thinks I went slightly tweaky at the end. Considering circumstances, I can handle that.
And the sun is shining. Life kicks ass. Yay life.
You say '"You sorry ass piece of shit! why the hell couldn't you crash an hour ago? Or 2 hours? Or even 5 minutes from now! NO! You had to do it in the middle of a LONG post to my forums that I was 30 seconds away from completing! I'm NOT HAPPY! ( apologies, I needed to vent )"'
Whir snickers softly.
You say 'Sent via the talkback feature'
Whir laughs so hard he falls over dead from lack of air.
Whir says 'Dude, you really should seek help.'
You say 'I did. He wanted money, so I shot him.'
---Samson and Whir