Holier Than Thou

I'm glad trivia will be on hiatus for 3 weeks; it's too frustrating being on a team with > 8 people in a very very tight space unable to move and having to jockey too look at the answer sheets or argue answers. It's just not worth contributing much at that point. Also, I tend to get a little pissy when my brilliant team name suggestions don't get chosen. Our team name tonight, while amusing, was not in my ever so humble opinion the best to choose from.

But what can I do? The masses control the flow. I'm afraid that in the graduate school circles I travel not many people mesh fully with my sense of humor. But fuck 'em! The masses like XKCD, the masses like Dane Cook, the masses like Carlos Mencia. I have to generate a lot of crap to find my golden points of wit but they are indeed golden. If this makes me sound like an asshole, too bad, because I know I'm a really funny person and I also know that I have a long way to go in being funny but I still don't like it when it gets ignored.

The beer allergy resurfaced this weekend at a party. I really need to get that tested.

But at least I met new people! Shame that the girls there were not single, as is my luck, but at least I know that alcohol is not my crutch.

I missed Japanese club this week because I was stuck photoshopping for lab. Japanese club still pisses me off when it's poorly organized, but there are some new cuties there this term and I was hoping to talk to them some more this week! The sacrifices I make for research... definitely don't seem worth it half the time.

Tedium

I'm sick of reading books and watching movies every damn weekend.

Kamehame-HA

Dragonball Evolution. Wow. Every bit as bad and awesome as expected. It does not hold a candle to Super Mario Bros., the best worst best movie ever created, but it does entertain. It gets a fair of story and characters out there in only 80ish minutes, which is impressive, and imparts that knowledge to people unfamiliar with the actual story well. The acting is quite wooden--let's be honest, most DBZ characters are 1-D themselves--but I wish the actors were a little more talented (but Piccolo was great).

Bad points:
- At no point does Goku train in 100x gravity.
- Shenlong had no lines, but I wish he did and was a dick.
- Several black characters, none named Mr. Popo.

Here's to hoping they're saving those for the sequel!

I realized today that I own zero board games. And I got the urge to purchase a game I remember having a lot of fun playing back in 6th grade: Shogun. Apparently its name was changed to Samurai Swords, and it's out of print. The cheapest copy I could find was > $200! ARGH! There's always Axis and Allies....

Dead Pirate Roberts

26 days of sobriety come to an end, with a celebration! We finally won trivia! After week after week of losing usually because of a round of baseball trivia, we were finally rewarded with a round on... wait for it... comic-book heroes! The final round too, so we knew we had won. And it'd've been a shame not to join in the celebration paid for by the free $75 bar tab that is first prize (and I'd told my roommate that winning trivia would mean an end to the drought)!

Oddly, right after drinking that beer, my neck started itching something furious again. Perhaps it is an allergy.

The title of our post was our team name, which references both recent events and the Princess Bride; it was even more amazing when other teams came up to us afterward to correct us, only to be relieved that it had dual meaning. They seemed really ticked off that we got the character's name wrong!

Lost continues to amaze, I have no words for it. 3 episodes left this season, and I don't know how I'll survive without a new episode next week!

Confessions Of A Newly Boring Guy

As a side-effect of my self-imposed sobriety, I have done not much outside of my apartment the past couple of weeks. Part of the blame comes from spending too much time on campus, but I've bumped movies, TV, and books up the priority list on things to do.

Deer Hunter - Really? This movie is classic? I get it, Vietnam sucked balls. 1970's, learn how to pace movies goddammit. 3 hours long this need not have been.

Evangelion 1.0: You Are Not Alone - They made Evangelion real pretty and I'm always excited to watch it again. Also the early introduction of Kaworu has me on the edge of my seat to see how this remake diverges from the original series. It's a shame only the first movie is out and that it'll be no earlier than 2012 when this finishes.

ICHI - A female version of Zatoichi, the blind samurai, in a rather gripping story that really brings to mind classic westerns. However, it's also slow paced at times like classic westerns. I took away from this movie the message that women can be as skilled as men if they have a man to help them. As a master sexist vying for grandmaster ranking, I approve. Also, I wanted to bone Ichi. (N.B. - After looking at less made up pics of the actress, Haruka Ayase, I'm not so sure of this anymore.)

301/302 - One of the most wonderful things about Man Vs. Food is that watching Adam eat his way out of the nation's craziest challenges makes me hungry and appreciate good food. This Korean thriller does the exact opposite. A story about two extremes of diners living next to each other, one a horrible anorexic and the other utterly obsessive about food, 301/302 actually managed to make me horrifed long enough to delay my lunch by an hour (which is quite a feat, I have a rather steel stomach and desensitized disposition for violence/gore). Oh, Korea, will your psychological thrillers ever cease to amaze? A good, short watch, but best to wait at least 30 minutes after eating.

Breaking Bad - Just started the first season, and it's pretty gripping. A less funny Weeds with Bryan Cranston as a chemistry teacher, I'm impressed by it's somewhat accurate use of chemistry and horrified not only that one episode centered around HF but moreso that the characters only wore half of the recommended safety gear! That shit will fuck you up, so why does a high school chem lab have some? Eagerly awaiting the rest of Season 1 from Netflix.

Cruel Angel's Ph.D. Thesis

Another prospective graduate student visiting weekend has come and gone. Thank goodness it's gone; it's way too draining. It's specifically draining because my buddy and I have essentially taken over the planning since we arrived 4 years ago. The big thing we have been making sure to do, and I'd say this year we have nigh perfected it, is keeping the prospectives busy and social throughout the entire 2 visiting days. Naturally this task involves plentiful alcohol but also not allowing anyone who has flown in from the East Coast or awakened early to catch on to the fact that he is probably sleepy. And it takes too far a toll on me as well.

It's important to be social because convincing them that our school is the most fun is really the only way a graduate student can convince them to come; prospectives tend to pick places mainly on research I sense, and I have very little chance to give them a change of heart in that aspect. But I no longer want to spend 2 days getting to know people I may never see again; and if they do come here there's no guarantee we'll be best of friends (although I will be friendly). And my recent alcohol abstinence pledge has the effect of making me feel that I'm just being fun and witty because I'm jumping through the hoops of it.

A couple cute girls, but I'm not going to get my hopes up for something that would start to happen 5 months away at best.

Going to a Japanese film festival tonight, going to catch the first Evangelion movie (of 4 to be made, the second comes out July in Japan) and Ichi, not the prequel to Koroshiya Ichi but rather a female version of Zatoichi. I'll try to write some reviews tonight or tomorrow.

Mawwiage Is What Bwings Us Togeva Today

Two of my very best second-tier friends just got engaged! Ok, ok, they're not second-tier; they are just 1/2 of my reader base so I might as well poke a little fun. Here's your little internet shoutout. It's on Facebook now, therefore it's officially official, so Mazel Tov again!

I was once told that in orthodox Judaism it is believed that if you set up/matchmake 3 couples who go on to get married then you get something awesome in the afterlife. The details are fuzzy, and it doesn't really make sense because in Judaism everyone goes to the same afterlife (no Hell), but because I am the catalyst for this lovely couple's meeting and subsequently ending up together forever. I can count this as my 1st of 3, which should make me happy, except for one small detail.

Why'd you guys have to go ahead and have a wedding when you have still yet to succeed in finding me a girlfriend! I don't want to let another +1 go to waste! If I have to find my own girlfriend, I'm going to propose to her and plan our weddings for the same weekend. And make our friends choose whom they like better. Don't think I won't! Cause I will! So hop to it!

I'm A Toys-R-Us Kid

When one waxes the other wanes. Such is the relationship between my social life and success in lab. It's to be expected, I suppose, because the longer my hours in lab the more energy drained by the time I'm free to explore the world socially. Heh, conservation of energy. Fuckin' physics. But I finally have > 50 devices fabricated! No telling yet how good they are, but the nanolab responsibilities should subside for a while. This quarter should prove rather exciting for research.

I'm now over 2 weeks sober. My poor gastrointestinal system, having protested throughout my 3 year tenure as an alcoholic-in-training, finally decided to step up its degree of resistance. For my general health, no CH3CH2OH for me in the near future. Having successfully avoided alcohol at several bar trips and a couple of parties, however, I worry that this resolution is simply one more leap towards boring adulthood. It's a bad sign if I have become reliant on alcohol as a crutch to let loose, although I don't think I was quite that bad. Still, at the parties I felt self-conscious about seeming less fun because I was drinking water only.

I don't think I've lost all my fun yet, because I did create an awesome game of Truth-Or-Dare-Minus-Truth Jenga. Being at a rare party with females I don't already know, I was entreated by the host to fabricate this Tower of Babel of party fun. At the same time I am honored to be the one trusted with such a task, but it distracted me from actually talking to aforementioned females. And, alas, my efforts to rectify this by creating some raunchy dares and convincing them to join me in the inaugural game fell rather short of expectations. And I know I will never see that Jenga set deployed again.

You'd think a sober guy would have an advantage with drunk girls, but not that night. I will attribute it to a misalignment of the stars. And I enjoyed myself with the Jenga, so it can't be called a complete failure, maybe just a Pyrrhic victory.