Author Archive: Claudia

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“Here it is! The tire pump of my dreams!!”

This is frighteningly addictive.

And I’ve never even seen Star Trek.

Blog 841: Claudia’s Still Bored

These comics are amazing. I love them.

That is all.

No more red!

Yay! So tonight, with help from Rob, I dyed the red out of my hair. And Rob also has blackish hair now, ‘cause there was a lot of dye left over. Haha.

Just thought you’d like to know.

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Just one more group of classes to go…

Two things really good happened today:

1. Work’s over. For me, at least. I want a few days off before the next semester kicks into gear.
2. Buddhism’s done with and I got an A in it. That’s always a good thing.

Okay, I’m done for now. Long day.

ARE YOU SERIOUS

God DAMN the U of I!

They cancelled Metaphysics!

WHY?! FUCK!

Too angry to blog. This ruined my schedule entirely. There are like three classes I had to NOT TAKE so that I could fit Metaphysics in that little block on Monday.

Screw it. Too angry to blog.

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As promised!

Heehee.

KABOOM

Um. You know…in case any of you have never witnessed this awesomeness.

Death by the Demise of the Moon

Damn you, Rob, I spent my entire night researching glitter because of you!

The initial conversation in a nutshell:
Rob and I were walking to Shari’s tonight and out of nowhere he goes something to the effect of, “it would be really cool to embed glitter into the road pavement.” So we talk about that for a little while, until I theorize this idea of all this loose glitter being picked up by a tornado and how absolutely brutal a tornado like that would be (fake CNN article on this idea coming soon). Then we got talking about what glitter was made of. So tonight I decided to do a little glitter research.

And the rest must be explained via Messenger logs:

And the Wiki page on glitter is hilarious
“Glitter is commonly used in craft projects, especially for small children and sorority women”
LOL
That is one fact of life I was unaware of

Here is the site for a company that specializes in glitter manufacturing. Yes, you read that right: a company that specializes in glitter manufacturing: http://www.meadowbrookinventions.com

Hahaha, there’s a conflict over when it was invented
That must be a heated debate right there
It’s like Leibniz/Newton, but with glitter

Precision cut glitter
Seriously, who is that anal about glitter?
It’s glitter, you either throw it or stick it to something

This glitter site advocates decorating a mosque with glitter
A MOSQUE
Glitter has no place in religion!
lol
“MY religion sparkles brighter than YOUR religion!”

This website is hilarious
They’ve got this picture of a little girl who looks like she’s huffing the glitter

The safety data is HILARIOUS
“Ingestion: seek medical attention”
Eat glitter and DIE!
“Explosion .. not available”
“Product is stable under normal atmospheric conditions”
Haha, they make it sound like it’s Plutonium or something

OH MY GOD GLITTER BACKGROUNDS FOR THE COMPUTER
MUST HAVE

Oh good lord, the Angelina Fibers look like out of control angora bunnies
I think I see an eye in this one
Yeah. Glitter = amazing.

A Paleontologist in the year 3000 walks into a 1000-year-old jazz bar

“I dig this place,” he said, and got to work with his spade.

Sorry, I’m RIDICULOUSLY bored and I want school to start so it can be over.

Also this.

“No TV and no internet make Claudia something something…”

We’ve been without internet for about 4 days. That’s enough to drive us both insane. Sean’s been trying to steal WiFi off of the neighbors, but they’ve got them all password protected.

So we walked to the library tonight to get a few quality hours of internet in, then walked back and hung out. It was very nice.

But we really need internet.

Free Will! Determinism! Dr. Pepper!

Okay okay, no Dr. Pepper.

Here are my top 5 reasons for determinism, or at least my top 5 reasons against free will as most people see it. Probably not very well argued and certainly not comprehensive, because it’s 4 in the morning and I just ate a metric ton of M&Ms and am bouncing off the walls. From “least powerful” to “most powerful.”

Have fun.

“Choice” doesn’t really exist
I know this point is probably splitting hairs, but it’s a point that I think should be made. We can’t not “choose.” We may assume we’re in control of what we decide to do, but in truth, we’re not. Suppose I had an apple and an orange, and I got to pick which one I wanted. Even if I were to say, “I don’t like apples or oranges, so I’m not going to pick one,” I would still be making the choice not to choose between two options presented outside of my control. The choice not to choose is in our control, but it’s still a choice.


We are constrained and ultimately directed by our desires
I think we like to believe we have free will because we assume that we can choose to follow our desires or not. Suppose I had to choose between eating a crap ton of M&Ms (obviously the choice I want) or going to the rec center. If I chose the M&Ms, I would be choosing in the favor of my desire. But if I chose the rec center instead, I would be going against my desires, thus showing I could choose against what I want, right?
I don’t think so. The extent of our control over our desires lies only in the psychological realm, I think. I don’t believe we can ultimately choose pain over pleasure, even if, in the short run, what we’re choosing appears to be pain. I hate going to the rec center and think it’s boring. So why would I ever choose to do it? Because after I’m done, I feel better. Even people who do stuff that are “painful” or “not desirable” as characterized by the majority of people do so because, for some reason or another, the activities are desirable to themselves. I think, with any choice we make, we can find some positive link to a desire.


True free will would “eliminate” this desire
Okay, so what if you still think we have free will despite this element of desire? I’ve talked to some people (I talk about this a LOT, trust me) who have said that free will is the absence of any sway or any outside force influencing your decisions (like for example, one guy mentioned God’s influence). Well, wouldn’t that just put everything onto a level playing field, then? I would think it would be impossible to get anything done if we weren’t swayed by any influence outside of our own mind. “Do I wash the car or do I kill the president? DO I WASH THE CAR OR DO I KILL THE PRESIDENT?!?”


Parsimony
It seems like the inclusion of free will eliminates a portion of the parsimony of universal laws that can be retained if the same phenomena can be explained using determinism. That is, I think that determinism retains a simplicity that is lost when free will is added to the mix. I believe that our choices and actions in our world can be explained just as well with determinism as they can with free will. If this is so, then a universe with determinism included in its model rather than free will is a more parsimonious universe.

Finally…

Materialism lends itself to determinism
I’m a materialist, which basically means that I think that all of consciousness arises solely out of the biological functionings of the brain and has nothing to do with any sort of “outside” source like a soul. The biological processes of the brain, of course, involve various chemical and electrical interactions. I think processes like these—things going down on an atomic level—are essentially governed by causation. Positive and negative charges influence sodium-potassium gates, if I can remember back to Bio 102 (sorry if I’m wrong, Matt). I think these causal influences, if we take materialism as our assumption and assume that consciousness arises out of purely biological mechanisms, can run all the way up the chain. That is, causal processes at the atomic level = causal processes at the level of the whole consciousness. To me, that just makes sense.

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I used to think I was good at life. Then I played Rock Band.

Hahaha, wow, I fail at Rock Band, seriously. At least at drumming. Apparently I’m pretty good at singing. But yeah, since I didn’t have any homework for Buddhism tonight, we played Rock Band for a bit, and I was utterly humiliated over how horrible I was. But it was totally worth it to hear Sean try to sing Ballroom Blitz.

Oh, and then he and I walked over to Shari’s and got pancakes at 10, ‘cause we’re just that awesome.

Getting set up in a new house…that’s something I haven’t done like 16 times already…

New room = set up. Also, we now have a shower curtain, dishwashing soap, sponges, a broom, and about 1/5 of the dishes from Sean’s washed. We also set up Sean’s “entertainment center/bed/desk” combo thing last night after he got back from work, something that is NOT a two-person job. It didn’t help that we put one side on backwards and the pieces weigh like 200 pounds a piece.

But yay! I live off campus and out of my parents’ house now. Finally.

Another one off the list

So now three books have made me cry upon completing them: Watership Down, The Chosen, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

I didn’t think Hemingway could ever make me cry, but it did in a totally unexpected fashion.
Very cool.

I am not your pool boy, I shall not wear those shorts!

First off, Rob, thank you SO MUCH for helping us move! I’m sorry we injured you to the point you were walking like Dr. House to/during/from the drag show.

And now to the meat of my blog…

This new house is AMAZING. And by “amazing” I mean “completely falsely-advertised and yet completely hilarious.”

Things that are totally worth mentioning about this house include:

  • There are these two HUGE windows in the front of the house. There are no curtains/blinds/anything to cover them.
  • One of these said windows is in Sean’s “bedroom,” which is really just a side room off of the living room that is connected with two large French doors (also without curtains).
  • The porch light, which is way too high for any human to reach, has an outlet in it. What the hell?
  • There’s this depression in the floor of the corner of the living/dining room. We have no idea what it is or where it came from, but it looks disturbing. We’ve dubbed it the Soul Hole.
  • The second bathroom that was listed on the webpage? Yeah, we can’t find it. We’ve decided it’s invisible.
  • One of the bedrooms is painted LILAC. It’s amazing.
  • The filter for the air vent is like 3 times too big for said air vent. It’s this big green filter just shoved under the vent. Awesome.
  • There’s an upper apartment. With people living in it. This wasn’t listed as a duplex. But we can’t find the stairs, so I guess that’s okay.
  • The porch tilts dramatically. We’re calling it the “wheelchair accessible” feature.
  • My room’s closet has CUBBIES!!
  • There’s a random piece of wood tied to the fence.
  • Half the lights are missing/broken/both missing and broken. The fluorescent light in the kitchen could cause seizures.
  • The window in my room? It FALLS OUT OF THE FRAME. RANDOMLY. WITHOUT PROVOCATION. IT ALMOST KILLED ME.
  • And the blind for this window is about five inches too short.
  • Michael’s room’s closet doors are off. They’re just propped up against the wall.
  • The locks on the three rooms clustered in the back are—get this—on the OUTSIDES of the rooms. That means we can lock those three in their rooms. Sweet.

I’m going to love it here, I’m telling you that right now.

Clean sinks and heater grates? No thanks, I’d rather discuss metaphysics

For once, something of real interest came out of the U of I’s incompetence and disorganization.

As you may know (if I’ve told you over Messenger), my lovely little stalker and I discuss metaphysics (mainly the existence of god) during lunch. Well, we did so today—rather loudly, because he was attacking me ‘cause I’m not a theist. After lunch, my partner Mike and I were up at GSR. We cleaned the unlocked rooms pretty fast, so we sat down in the last one, prepared to wait a good hour and a half for Roy to come pick us up.
We’re sitting there in silence for a few minutes until he asks me what stalker boy and I were talking about over lunch; apparently he’d heard us debating but couldn’t catch what we were talking about. So I told him, and what do you know, he’s a Christian, so we start debating.

We debated for three hours. It was awesome. I must say, Mike did a pretty damn good job of defending his beliefs—in fact, I think it was the best theist argument I’ve ever come across. But from the directions his reasoning/evidence pointed, I’ve decided that if there is a god, he pretty much sucks. Best evidence for this: if we are striving to be like god in our virtues, universal compassion is NOT something we should be shooting for.

MENERGY

MENERGY!

I’ve got it!

The Proposterone coursing through my system makes me want to go hump-catting instead of blogging, so that’s what I shall do.

God has given me lemons. I found a new god.

PARADOX?!

So open-mindedness is “how open you are to revising them [your opinions] in appropriate circumstances,” correct? In other words, it is the opposite of close-mindedness.

Here’s the question: would an open-minded person still be considered open-minded if circumstances required them to change their opinions to the point that the person became close-minded?

But then wouldn’t they just be close-minded and it wouldn’t matter anyway?

Is open-mindedness close-minded to close-mindedness?

Cleaning sinks all day does nothing to distract my mind from this crap, and probably screws with my logic quite a bit.

More of my obsessive behavior

So I’ve now downloaded and finished watching all of the Metalocalypse episodes for season 2 that have been made. I really have no idea why this show is so freaking funny to me, but it is. I love it.

And now I present you with an “All I Needed to Know I Learned from Metalocalypse” list I found on the internet. It may not be funny if you don’t know the show, but I think it’s great, so deal with it.

– If you don’t like something, fire it. Or set on fire. Or both.
– Booze is not food.
– Teeth grow back.
– Wearing makeup doesn’t necessarily make you a beautiful lady, but it will make you a counsel for makeup tips.
– 80s music sucks. Reunion tours are metal.
– There is only metal and unmetal.
– Cilantro is disastrous (haha, poor Skwisgaar).
– Doorknobs are not a cure for anything.
– Nickels are money, too.
– NEVER rewrite a national anthem.
– You are That Guy. Being a fan is inclusive to being hated by bands that hate their fans.
– Eating phallic shaped food makes you gay.
– ANYTHING can be metal. Even snakes, helicopters, candy and coffee.
– Be a dick or be a dude, there is no in between.
– Ladies are soul-murderers.
– Psychologists are OUT TO GET YOU.
– Never trust a clown.
– Fashion designers are murderers.
– Even the incredibly famous can be dumb as rocks.
– Comb-overs are sexy (hell freaking yes, Pickles = super hot).
– Ant farms are pretty awesome, and can be stood on.
– Even fat ladies can get tender lovin’.
– It doesn’t matter what you’re really like, you can be badass as hell with corpsepaint and a guitar.
– Even CHILDREN can’t wait to be brutal.
– Get a good manager. You never know when you’ll be stranded in the woods and need his kung-fu.
– Adoption is not tax-deductable.
– Employee conferences will assuredly end in brutality and death. Avoid having them.
– Have a good exhale-yell for your tennis back swing.
– Stop to smell the roses and look at the swans.
– Your doubles are NOT your friends.
– Trains are not only a matter of conveyance, but good material to write about for blues songs.
– Nuclear submarines can be brought back up and running by a bottle full of vodka.
– Comedy is about hating yourself.
– Comedy is NOT about body bags.
– Banana stickers are an apt form of psychological validation.
– Just because you say you’re good at something, doesn’t mean you are.
– Solid gold telephones are just as good as a raise.
– Birthdays are complete crap, unless you get good gifts.
– Your family hates you just as much as you hate them. They only want, want, want.
– All religions are the same boring crap.
– Making movies is hard.
– Watches are fun to smash.
– Have a little you-time.
– Closets are a great place for meeting up with people and discussing business.
– May the ugliest horse win.
– Voting sucks.
– Just because someone died because of something you did, it doesn’t technically make it your fault.
– Balloons are awesome.
– Never forget your digital recorder.
– Cell phones can be weapons.
– Pick up your refuse; this isn’t a waste paper basket can.
– Robots are not to be trusted.
– Strings are near the frets, but frets are not strings.
– Education helps you learn.
– They won’t let you reunite with a band unless you’re broken up.
– Porn awards: totally worth it for the kissing.
– Embezzling is metal.
– Never trust anyone offering you hookers and ice cream.
– Fish are your friends.
– Getting painted by naked ladies is a good after-show backstage pastime.
– Acoustic guitars are for pussies and grandpas.
– Recording on water isn’t the best idea, really.
– You are undoubtedly a douchebag.
– You never drink before a show. Never.
– Don’t lie on your measurements. It causes eating disorders.
– You should have thought about anonymity before you became famous.
– The internet is… er…
– “In” the ocean and “inside” the ocean are completely different.
– Don’t forget to press record.
– It’s not Wednesday. It’s Friday.
– Band therapists are not band members.
-A strap-on dildo can be a really cool codpiece.
– Some things lack zazz.
– Public executions are okay as long as they’re performed by death metal musicians.
– Douchebags are on the other side of the cage.
– Cinnamon bun franchises are hard to buy, especially when you’re drunk.
– No running around the hot-tub.
– You’re not supposed to wear clothes in the hot-tub.
– It’s possible to make too much money.
– The earth is no longer considered a planet.
– Paper towels will make you fat (I think this was my favorite episode ever).
– If you force all the blood to your face, you can give yourself a real cool blowjob.
– Sometimes it’s good to Rock-talk.
– You can bargain your eternal soul with the devil for a $5 gift card to Hot Topic.
– Deaths that you stumble upon can be easily forgotten when you ring a bell.
– Even people who try to kill you deserve to have a Viking funeral.

Oh, and if you ever hear some random, totally irrelevant quote from me, it’s probably from this show.

This is almost as good as Leibniz porn, but in a totally different way.

www.ilovetypography.com
Note to self: find Leibniz porn.

Vrooooooooooooom!

Rock on.