SCOOPTITY BOOO
I really miss Moscow. Like, I’m not sure if I could live here again just due to the fact that it’s pretty hard to walk 15 miles in such a tiny town without taking the trail to Pullman all the time, but it does really feel good to come back here every once and a while. I like knowing that I’m at most like three miles away from home anywhere in the city and I like how quick and easy it is to walk to Walmart/Safeway/Winco and get nonsense stuff.
And how cheap everything is.
Also, MOM!
MOSCOW-BOUND
I’m heading to Moscow for a bit, YAY! We’re driving back from Calgary today and then I’m in the ‘Scow for like two weeks.
Rockin’.
Edit: $163.27 wheel of cheese? It better be…gouda.
Psst…
…you like mathematicians?
Yeah, you do. Here’s a timeline showing when many major math figures lived and what their main contributions were.
(Leibniz FTW.)
KILLAHS
I’ve been super into The Killers lately. I’ve realized that their songs (a lot of them at least) have such an interesting, distinct tone to them…kind of like a frantic, nervous yearning behind the lyrics and music. It’s really interesting and really good.
Current favorite songs:
- Run for Cover (this is the best The Killers song, fight me)
- Just Another Girl
- The Man
- Human
- Some Kind of Love
K
Ugh, I want to draw, but I feel like I have no creativity in my brain right now. Or more like there’s creativity in there, but it doesn’t want to come out.
Which is frustrating, but not unfamiliar.
Moscoooooooooow
I am SO FREAKING HOMESICK RIGHT NOW.
I’m glad I get to go back to Moscow in half a week or so. This has been a very long spring/summer following a very busy winter semester and I really miss my mom.
I also really miss Moscow itself, despite how difficult it is to do my daily 15 miles there without looping the hell out of all the streets.
WOO!
What in the absolute hell, YouTube
Appropriate at 4 AM? No.
And yes.
What is this “air quality” you speak of?
Me: “Walking is healthy because it helps relax you, helps get your heart rate up, and helps get you outside to absorb some of that sweet vitamin D.”
Air quality:
Me: *walking 15 miles outside anyway* “HHEEAALLTTHHYY…”
Where There’s Smoke, There’s Calgary
It’s hot, it’s smoky, and I feel like every time I go outside I lose like 10 minutes off my life expectancy due to said smoke, but I’m sure I’ll be missing this “weather” once it gets cold and horrible again in a few months.
VROOM!
I saw this clip on Robot Chicken when it originally aired.
I think about it a lot for some reason.
Anyway. Sorry, don’t have anything else to say today.
Wanna be ‘80s cool?
Yeah you do. I submit that it’s impossible to be sad while watching this.
This is apparently an extended version of the 1988 Crystal Light National Aerobic Championship Opening.
Is this competition still a thing? ‘Cause it needs to be. All these people have big dick energy and I love it.
Now I’ve GOT THAT SONG STUCK IN MY HEAD FOREVER
Edit: holy crap it totally is!
Edit 2: bought the song on iTunes like half a year after posting this blog. Life will never be the same.
*slaps roof of blog* This baby can hold so many pointless surveys
German Philosophy ask!
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz : What is the integral part of your personality?
(The fact that this survey started with Leibniz is what made me take it, not going to lie)
(Also, lol integral joke)
Uhhhh…I guess my desire to make incredibly stupid puns? I’m not sure if that counts as part of my personality. I’m also incredibly good at screwing things up, so that can count, too.
Immanuel Kant : How honest are you?
I try to be as honest as possible in most situations.
Critique of Pure Reason : Do people find you boring?
Probably. Especially when they first get to know me. “Oh, she likes statistics, she must be boring as all hell.” But I’m also a useless bag of trash, so I probably really am boring.
a Priori : Are you a fast learner?
I like to think that I am, for most things at least.
a Posteriori : What is the field you are most knowledgeable about?
Stats? Probably stats. Unless Leibniz counts as a “field.”
Synthetic a Posteriori : Do you like to disappear from people’s lives?
I’m really bad at holding onto friendships if that counts. I like to drift through a point in people’s lives, let’s say that.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel : Does your speech get incomprehensible at times?
Aaaauughsddflkacjperofhfhfhfhfhfhfhfpppppppppppphh
Young Hegelians : Are you a rebel?
Nah. I like to follow the rules (unless they’re really dumb).
Old Hegelians : Or do you like to keep things in order?
In fact, I get pretty upset when other people don’t follow the rules. Just do what you’re freaking supposed to do. You’re not special.
Arthur Schopenhauer : Do you like to isolate yourself?
People are turd bags and I’d rather be around just a select few. I also just tend to be awkward as hell and don’t like to talk to other people, so it kind of all works out.
The World as Will and Representation : Do you feel like the world is working against you?
Sometimes. Sometimes it feels like everything is just out to get me. But then I remember that my importance in the grand scheme of things (or even just the minor scheme of things) is basically zero, so.
On the Suffering of the World : How do you deal with your pains?
Physical pains? I bitch about it. Emotional/mental pains? I bitch about it more. Existential dread and related pains? I brood.
The Sublime : Would you like to just leave the world and disappear?
Holy crab apples, you have no idea.
Friedrich Nietzsche : Are you the sore thumb?
I am the sore thumb that broke the camel’s back.
Übermensch : Do you work hard?
I try to. I’d say I worked very hard to get where I am right now, at least.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra : If you had the ability to change one, and ONLY ONE thing in the minds of others, what would you change?
Answer I should give: probably something to do with “stop being racist dickholes” or something
Answer I want to give: EVERYBODY WALKS ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE SIDEWALK
Human, All Too Human : Are you alienated?
Nah.
Schopenhauer as an Educator : Favorite teacher?
Junior high: I really liked my science teacher, Mr. LaFortune.
High school: Mr. Garrett, my band teacher!
College: Either Dr. Woo, because he was ridiculously smart and crazy, or Dr. Abu, because he was so cool and calm and nice.
Karl Marx : Do you believe in change?
I hate it, but I believe in it.
The Communist Manifesto : Left or Right? Or neither?
Left.
Das Kapital : Can you manage your money well?
Pfft. “Manage.” I buy stuff I need (and sometimes some extra nonsense) and hope that there’s sufficient money in my account to do so. Does that count? I mean, I’m not doing $500 shopping sprees or anything.
Max Stirner : Are you selfish?
More selfish than I’d like to be, yes.
Gottlob Frege : How are you with maths?
That’s…that’s a complicated question. I don’t find it intuitive in the slightest, but I can power through and make sense of (some of) it.
Rudolf Carnap : Would you try first, think later, or think first, try later?
Think first, try later in most situations.
Ludwig Wittgenstein : Did you finish something grand?
I walked 5,100 miles last year. Is that grand?
Tractatus Philoso-Logicus : How many languages do you know?
Uno and a half. English and I can spell in ASL, so I’mma count it.
The Beetle : Objective or Subjective?
Objective.
Karl Popper : Favorite branch of science?
Does math count?
Grocery Stores and Leibniz
So every time I’m in a grocery store, I think a lot about Leibniz.
“But Claudia,” you say, “you think a lot about Leibniz wherever you are.”
True.
True.
But grocery stores, man. These things did not exist back in his time. I always wonder what his reaction would be when stepping into one for the first time. I’m sure shock would be one of his more prominent emotions.
But what else?
Would he be curious as to how we have been able to amass such a large quantity of food in one building? Where did it all come from and how did it all get here? Do all of these things grow in this area? Why are there so many foods in boxes and packages?
Would he be excited? There’s so much variety! What the hell is a papaya? What the hell is M&Ms? Refrigeration??
Would he be in awe? How much food is in this building?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE ARE FORTY MORE OF THESE TYPES OF STORES IN THE CITY?!!?
Would he be concerned? Do you ever worry about running out of food? Are there enough resources to continue to produce at this level? How much waste do grocery stores produce?
Leibniz is the type of guy, in my opinion, who would have all of these thoughts and would try to find answers as he happily ran around the store, opening packages he wasn’t supposed to open, eating random vegetables and snacks and whatnot, and going into places he wasn’t supposed to go, like the deli or the bakery.
I just…I think about Leibniz a lot.
Especially in grocery stores.
The LEG, the LEG, the LEG the LEG the LEG
Today marks the one-year anniversary of me screwing up my leg/thigh/whatever. I still don’t know exactly what happened because I never did go to the doctor (I am a responsible adult, after all, living in a country where it doesn’t cost your first-born son to go to a doctor), but I’m going to say that it was a muscle tear. That’s the only thing I can imagine a) feeling like that, b) hurting in the very specific situations where it hurt, and c) taking this damn long to heal.
It’s still not all the way healed. I feel it twinge on occasion and am still a bit terrified to run, kneel, or even just stretch the muscles in that leg. But it is a lot better than it was. It’s finally to the point where I’m not constantly thinking about it. It’s finally to the point where I feel like I can start pushing it on my walks a little bit more.
It would have been great if it had never happened, but I suppose, given how much I walk, there could have been many more worse injuries I could have sustained. And honestly, as I’ve said before, it probably would have healed faster if I’d actually given it a chance to heal rather than pounding it into the pavement for 15 miles a day after two days of “rest.”
Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.
Moosic
YO, I love Rob Scallon and this was super interesting to watch. Check it out.
THREE CLASSES?!?!?!?
So this upcoming semester just went from “I don’t know if I’ll be teaching” to “I might be getting one class” to “I’m getting THREE classes” very quickly.
The good:
- THREE CLASSES! They obviously need me, which gives me (hopefully) better chances of a permanent job sometime in the future maybe kinda sorta please?
- These three classes are two STAT 213 classes and the only STAT 217 class being offered this semester. I’ve done these classes before, so prep work won’t be too bad. Hopefully.
- The classes meet back to back to back on Tuesdays/Thursdays and they’re not too far away from one another.
- I will have SIX HUNDRED students. That’s…a lot.
The bad:
- I’ll probably have to drop that Continuing Education math class, though, just because that would probably be a little too much.
- …That’s pretty much it for the “bad.”
WOO!
HEY
I’m bored and feel like crap and have nothing interesting to say, so this is all you’re getting for a blog post.
Sorry, y’all.
The Real Prince of Denmark
Blame a crossword puzzle for this buffoonery. I was going to do the whole song, but I guess I just crashed on the couch and didn’t finish anything but the first main verse thingy.
I’m a rock star.
(Sung to the tune of “The Real Slim Shady” by Eminem).
May I have your attention please?
May I have your attention please?
Will the real Prince of Denmark please stand up?
I repeat, will the real Prince of Denmark please stand up?
We’re going to have a problem here
Y’all act like you never seen a dead father before
Lyin’ on the floor, an uncle with poison runnin’ out the door
Started rulin’ the country worse than before, Hamlet thought he was bored
But he’s just melancholy
It’s the return of the “To be, or not to be, woe is me,
Horatio didn’t just see a ghost, did he?”
And Ophelia said…
Nothing you idiots, Ophelia’s dead, she drowned after goin’ mad!
Also, I just realized how freaking long the original song is.
Popular (?) Opinion:
Vaping is dumb.
Crab Rave
Heh. I dig it.
The House: 10 Years Ago
So tonight, instead of working on posting my tremendous backlog of blogs, I do what I always do instead when I’m procrastinating posting my blogs: read my old blogs.
And in doing so, I realized that it was 10 years ago today that I moved into “The House” with Sean, Aaron, Lanky, and Michael.
Living there with those guys was one of the most enjoyable years of my life. Fun memories:
- How ridiculous that house was. The Soul Hole, the window that kept trying to kill me, the lack of curtains, the seizure light.
- Rock Band. All the time. Obsessively. It was our lives.
- Midnight trips to Shari’s.
- Netflix movie nights, which were basically us nostalgia-tripping on movies from our childhoods while at the same time criticizing the hell out of them.
- That time Aaron, Lanky, and I day-tripped to Missoula to get piercings and ended up not only getting piercings but also getting three packs of “adult” word fridge magnets to have fun with.
- Algernon (the mouse) and his incredibly large and invasive family.
- That time I had to take out one of Aaron’s infected piercings with a needle-nose plier.
- The time that Michael left the rotting bag of potatoes in the laundry room closet and we had HUNDREDS of flies in the house. It was gross as all hell.
- All those damn YouTube videos we constantly quoted (Halifax, PowerThirst I and II, the Cooking by the Book remix, The Ding Dong Song, Ebeeto’s Might & Magic reviews, etc.).
- Noodle Fridays and spending approximately $35 per visit at the Dollar Store.
- Setting stuff on fire in the kitchen (both on purpose and accidentally).
- That pair of fake boobs that each one of us, at one point, wore.
- Pogo-sticking around the living room.
- Pogo-sticking up and down the street.
- Running around in the rain/thunder/lightning.
- Breaking every last one of Michael’s chairs (by accident, I swear).
- The Orgy Couch.
- Nerdy conversations with Lanky.
- The 60+ pizza boxes that we’d let pile up in the kitchen.
- Us making terribly suggestive phrases/poems on the fridge thanks to my set of magnetic words + the dirty ones we bought in Missoula.
- The Quote Book.
- Hookahs on the porch in the summer (no hookah for me, though; I tried it once and it hurt my throat).
- DA COLE TRAIN.
- The upstairs neighbors who were constantly loud but said enough stupid things that we mocked them incessantly and did so loud enough so that they could hear us.
- Those dollar store tiki torch things that are STILL IN THAT DAMN YARD.
Super fun. I miss those guys so much.
SOMEBODY EXPLAIN SOMETHING TO ME
Why has this song suddenly emerged from my childhood memories and why has it been continuously playing through my head all day?
Lampy was always my favorite.
I love how this movie has such contrasting songs. We’ve got this innocent “life is magical journey, and at the end is the a wonderful city of possibilities!” and then later we get this, which is “Gilbert Gottfried in hanging lamp form gives a lesson on the horrors of existence,” then even later we get this, which is “everything is worthless, including you, forget your friends and family ‘cause they were lying to you about your importance.”
It’s like an analogy for one’s outlook on life as one grows up.
80’s kid’s movies, man.
KABOOM
As more and more of my friends/Facebook acquaintances get married, the happier I am that Nate and I had the smallest, most inexpensive wedding we could get away with.
I mean, bridal showers, bachelor/bachelorette parties, bridesmaids, groomsmen, 100 guests, catering…it all sounds a) way too expensive and b) way too stressful to be worth it.
Nate and I are super introverts who don’t like being around a lot of people. We also didn’t want to go into debt just to get married. I see some people booking these lavish venues and buying ridiculously expensive (or expensive-looking, at least) wedding gowns and bridesmaid dresses and having a wedding attendance of 50+ people. And I get it, some people really want that.
But if you save your money and save all that stress, don’t you think you’re in a better place starting off your marriage than if you’re starting it off with a huge expense and an enormous amount of stress?
Just sayin’.
Hit the Snooze
Hahaha, shit.
Assuming this is a legit version of the test, a score between 16-24 indicates “Severe Excessive Daytime Sleepiness.”
I’d be more concerned, except I know that’s coming strictly from the fact that I sleep like three hours a night.
So yeah.
UNPACK THE WHACK
Hahaha, how did I not know this happened?
That’s great. Blevins can act, yo.
Eigenblogger 