arrested devlopment
POSTED AT 02:01 AM

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Due to my amazing IMDBing skills, I have discovered that the actress who played Nellie Bluth is Jason Bateman's (Michael's) sister. I just thought I should share.

rutting dog!
POSTED AT 01:08 AM

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One of the books I've been reading is The Cheese Primer. It makes me want to buy lots of cheese and visit France (and maybe other countries; I'm still in the French cheeses section). Not only that, I learned more about Firefly by reading the book! In the chevre (goat cheese) section, there was a tiny sidebar about how male goats are especially stinky, because they pee all over themselves to attract "rutting females." If you watched Firefly, I bet you remember the characters swore by saying "gorram" and "rutting" (those are the only two I remember). I had a feeling it had something to do with animals in heat. Dictionary.com says the following:

rut² n.

1. An annually recurring condition or period of sexual excitement and reproductive activity in male deer.
2. A condition or period of mammalian sexual activity, such as estrus.

 intr.v. rut·ted, rut·ting, ruts

To be in rut. As a sidenote, I just killed a bug. I thought it was the bug I've been trying to kill, but I can never catch it, even though I managed to touch it twice while it was flying by. I managed to trap it between the glass and the windowscreen, so maybe it'll be dead by tomorrow. Yesterday, I saw a spider that was about 2" in diameter. I wanted to take a picture of it before I killed it ( to show it to BrainBus and Daniel), but I was too lazy to get my camera, and it went away. A number of my entries seem to relate to bugs. I think this is because my home has a lot of bugs. There are these tiny, tiny bugs that crawl around the kitchen. They piss me off, so I kill them by sweeping my hand around (they're so tiny, they're instantly killed).  

As I was saying, the use of rutting makes sense now! I had thought that "gorram" came from "goddamn" and "rutting" was from "ruddy," but now I know that "rutting" is like saying (those of you who say "fudge" as a swear word, avert your eyes) "fucking." Now you know that saying "rutting" means you're in deep "goshi" (dog shit in Chinese/Firefly), as opposed to "gorram," where you're only sort of in trouble.

I've started reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I remember a guy from my program mathinger read it; I wanted to read it then, but then I figured I could read it in a few years, when I would have more patience for books that had 1260 pages, and went back to reading The Age of Innocence. Six years later, it still seems like a very long and thick book. However, I have decided that a great response to the question of "What have you been doing since you've graduated?" would be to say, rather nonchalantly, "I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Mein Kampf. Let me give you a synopsis of the books and an analysis of how Hitler, and the National Socialist German Workers' Party (shortened to Nazi), rose and fell from power." Of course, this synopsis would be of a 1260 page book, so it wouldn't be very brief, and then people would stop talking to me before I'd gotten to the zenith of Hitler's power: I would have to run after them, yelling, "Wait! I haven't even gotten to the fall of the Third Reich!"

brain sex
POSTED AT 01:37 AM

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The British have an odd way of putting things. This brain sex test doesn't determine how well your brain would copulate with other brains in an isolated environment, but rather whether you're more like men or women in thinking. Or something like that. I'm not entirely sure what it determines, to be honest. Wait, what is says, from the results page, is that "The scale below is an indication of where you fall in the male-female brain continuum." With female on one end, male on the other, 0 in the middle, and 100 at both ends, I got...well, I think you should take a guess first. Done? I got a 50 on the male end, which is the average score for males who take the test. Most females average a 50 on the female side (surprise!). Of course, I think they may just round up to 100, 50, or 0, because there aren't any markers in the middle of each; that would be rather silly if that were the case.

The sixth part and the angles section of the first part I got all right (supposedly, males do better on average). I really sucked at the spot-which-moved section (half the score of the average male, which is less than the average female), and I blame it on the outpouring of nostalgia after I realized it was sort of like the spot-which-piece-appeared game Daniel played all the time. For the second part, my right hand has less testosterone than my left hand (apparently, I'm somehow female on my right hand and male on my left). I thought the third part was pretty interesting; I sucked at both empathizing and systemizing, so they sort of balanced out, although it has more to do with your perception of yourself than how you actually are, but that's not the interesting part (that was just me rambling).

 

Eyes

This task tested your ability to judge people's emotions. Your score: 8 out of 10 Average score for men: 6.6 out of 10 Average score for women: 6.6 out of 10 What does your result suggest? If you scored 0 - 3: Do you think you're good at judging how another person is feeling? Your score suggests this doesn't come to you quite so naturally. If you scored 4 - 6: Your result suggests you have a balanced female-male brain and find it neither easy nor difficult to judge people's emotions. If you scored 7 - 10: Your result suggests you are a good empathiser, sensitive to other people's emotions. Women generally fall into this category. Professor Baron-Cohen at the University of Cambridge says that people usually perform better than they expect to on this test. Men often think a person's eyes are sending signals of desire when that's not the case at all. Find out more.

 First of all, the men's and women's averages were the same: so much for women being better in this area and this test being accurate. Plus, note the "Professor Baron-Cohen." This guy is a cousin of Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Ali G, really. I wonder what happened to the hyphen with Ali G?

The part that really didn't make much sense, in terms of its inclusion, was the preference for faces section. It doesn't actually have anything to do with "brain sex" (I sort of typoed brain there...). It really only determines a woman's menstrual cycle: "Interestingly, women's preferences are said to vary across the menstrual phase. A more masculine face is preferred during the 9 days prior to ovulation, when conception is most likely." Although I don't even think that that has much weight, because I proved that wrong.

Even though the quiz doesn't really determine anything, like most such quizzes, I still thought it was funny that the quiz determined I was masculine or thought (or whatever it determined). Perhaps I should start thinking about a sex change. When I was little, I would think about how some names seem to have masculine or feminine equivalents: Julia and Julio; Oliver and Olivia; Michael and Mikayla; Devon and Devon. I wanted my name to have a masculine equivalent, and the closest I came was with Anno, the author of these logic-picture books; I would worry about whether or not that was a valid masculine name, or if his parents were just touched in the head.

culture vulture
POSTED AT 02:16 AM

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I was thinking about what great literary works I have read recently, and my mind hit a blank. Well, not counting Harry Potter (although the sixth one wasn't that great). Then, I thought, when was the last time I'd read anything of value? Wuthering Heights! Wuthering Heights counts! That's my sole book of value for the past year. Pretty sad. And I never really got into philosophy either! I mean, I read some Descartes and Adam Smith, but that was when I was 13. Now I read things like "Shopaholic" and "Shopaholic Goes to Manhattan." I've decided that peaking at 13 is too early, so I am going to make a concerted efforted to become more cultured. So don't be surprised if you find me reading Kant or Locke.

(Today, I got a head start by watching Blade. It was funny. Sunblock! haha)

awake!
POSTED AT 07:59 AM

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I find it somewhat amusing that I am wide awake at 7am today and have been awake at such hours for the past few days. Also, I know it's finals week when I go to bed at 4am and think, "Wow, I went to bed early today." Going to bed so early yesterday was for naught, as I only fell asleep at 8am. For some reason, getting four hours of sleep isn't so tiring when I wake up at noon. However, I resolve (as I have resolved every end of the semester when I start angsting about all my inadequacies. it's starting to become a tradition. all holidays must have a beginning, I suppose) to go to bed before 1am next semester. And I really will! For maybe a week.... Back to working on my paper.

If I had a superpower, I'd like the power to follow through with my resolutions. I think I could take over the world with that sort of superpower. And be well-rested, too! Or maybe the ability to create pockets in time for me to sleep in without aging. I love sleep.