Here's the thing...you know?

LiveJournal, I don't really know how to tell you this, but I think it's time. We've been together off-and-on for about three and a half years now, and we've had some good times together. You know that I haven't always been the most attentive person in the world, but we understood each other and it worked. But I'm done with college now and it's a big time of change for me; I think it's time that you and I called it quits.

No, it's not that there's anything wrong with you! You've been great. Sure, some of your formatting caused frustrations and there were more than a few limitations on what I could do with you (though I admit, you were a lot more...flexible than I initially anticipated), but all in all, things were great. I'm sorry, but it was bound to happen. Look, people change, grow up. No, I'm not saying that you're 'childish'! I just think that it's time for me to try something new for a while.

It's just...I've found someone knew. She's called Blogger, and not only is there much improved functionality, but it's also tied in with other blogs I could set up and to my Google account. I know, I know, how is anyone supposed to compete with Google? I'm not saying it's fair, LJ, I'm just telling you how it's going to be.

My new blog is going to be a little more...structured. Rather than writing about my life, which I don't think anyone really wanted to read anyways, I'm going to write more about the world and about all the crazy things about it. I even named it something random, "a day in the life of a shoe," which I think is a sign of how this time it's going to be less about me and more about how I see the world. Yeah, I know the title's a little weird, but I explain what it means in the first post. Hey, it may be a bit unconventional as titles go, but there's no need to resort to name-calling.

Look, this is a chance for both of us to start anew. We've been great together and I have no doubt that you'll find someone who'll be better for you than I ever was. I'm sure we'll both be happier this way. It may be hard now, but you'll understand soon. And hey, if you want to read it sometime, you can check it out here. Maybe we can be friends again someday, LiveJournal. I'd like that.

-Jon

I'm done with college. And have an advanced degree! Do they give those things out to just anyone these days? Jeeze.

This guy.

So much for epic adventure. :-( A regular old road trip should be fun, though, right?

So, there's a story of these seven guys in ancient Ephesus who slept for 200 years. They were Christians at a time when it wasn't a good idea to be a Christian, and their refusal to sacrifice in the Imperial Temple got them labeled as enemies of the state, so they ran off into the nearby caves to form a plan. They laid down to take a nap and when they woke up to get some bread from the city, they discovered that it was 200 years later and Christianity was now the religion of the whole empire.

This is all well and good and I bet they were pretty happy to hear they wouldn't be tortured anymore, but my question is this; if someone had fallen asleep in a cave in 1808 and woken up today, a change in state religion would be the least of the shocks in store for them, but intuitively we don't see there being that big of a difference in daily life between 250AD and 450AD. Is that wrong or has the rate of change in the world been radically accelerated in the last few centuries?

It's very easy to say that it has, that technological development is the most important driver of change and that having a new kind of well is not the same as having the cars, iPhones, hospitals and readily accessible pornography but that kind of presentism (is that a word?) makes me nervous. Historians may quibble over the effect of Constantine and later Christian emperors, but there would definitely have been a marked difference in life between 250 and 450; would people at the time have felt it the same way as we do today?

This is far more interesting than writing my papers.

I just went to sell 35 of my old course books back to the bookstore; they rejected a bunch of them and I got ~$135 total; not bad, not bad...

I had a fun present in my mailbox today from John McCain and my buddies over at the GOP. It's some of the most blatant propaganda I've ever seen, though it's couched in a "Critical Issues Survey" to help them get their "Victory 2008" program going; keep in mind that I like McCain and typically vote Republican and I think this is nuts. Here are a few samples:

( Victory 2008, bitches! )

I'm torn on whether I should fill this out 1)as the hardcore leftist 2) seriously (perhaps impossible) or 3) as the most right-wing person I can imagine. What do you guys think?

Well, it's offical; I sent in my deposit today and I'm going to The University of Michigan Law School!

Hmmm, well, I seem to have run out of things to clean and it's too early to start packing. I guess that means I need to pick a law school now, huh?

So, the senior essay is now behind me. Here's what I still have ahead of me between now and graduation:

Mac/PC Presentation (4/15) - I'm going over differences between the two operating systems, how to do common tasks, etc. for people who know one but want to learn or are considering switching to the other. It's open to the whole Yale community, though I highly doubt many people are gonna show. Anyone have thoughts on stuff they think I should have?

Roman Empire Presentation (4/15) - Fuck this shit; I've gotten almost nothing out of this class and really wish I could have dropped it, but I need it for my last graduate credit. Ugh. I need to read some shit and tell everyone in the class what they say, because Lord knows they're not going to have read it.

Pick a Law School (~4/25) - So, I technically have till the end of the month, but I don't want to risk fucking myself over and cutting it too short. I go back and forth by the day between Duke and Michigan and sometimes just want to say 'fuck it' and join the Army, so I really don't know. I think once things calm down after this week, I'm going to put together a long list of my thoughts on it, both to get them out and to send them around and see what people think about my choices.

2 Final Papers (5/9 and ?) - One's gonna be on China's involvement in SE Asian wars during the Cold War (no, it's really not interesting, don't be fooled) and is supposed to be around 20 pages, though it'll prolly be about 15. All I need is a C, so I'll shoot for a B/B+ and I should be fine. As for the other, I have no fucking clue what it's gonna be on, what he's looking for, how long it's supposed to be, when it's due, nothing, so I'm just not worrying about it. That plan can't backfire, can it?

In other news, happy 'Black Day' to all my fellow singles out there. http://tinyurl.com/6ce3ys

1) Get a haircut (failed - completed Monday)

2) Do laundry (succeeded!)

3) Go to the gym at least once (failed - completed Monday)

4) Send a bunch of long emails (succeeded!)

and finish my senior essay. That draft I mentioned? Well, it is 'competent and fair,' according to my adviser, but still needs a lot of work. Better than 'incompetent and unfair,' right? (succeeded!)

Edit: And now that it's turned in, I never have to read about the Supreme Court again! Oh, wait...

I think I'm just going to declare today a lost cause and not bother trying to get any work done.

In other news, I need a girl. Seriously.

I've got a draft. It's 10,500 words long, which is about 2,000 words short of the max, certainly reasonable given the degree to which I tend to add when I edit. I've got a little less than two weeks left to go before the damn thing is due and I'll be running through one round of editing today before submitting it to my adviser to look over while I'm at Duke.

Now, it should be mentioned for the sake of clarity that this draft actually sucks (like, really sucks) but I don't think that's something we really need to focus on right now, is it? I should also note that, while this is certainly the biggest thing on my plate right now, I still have two other 25 page papers to write before I can graduate and I haven't even got a topic for either of them. Pfff, no problem...

In case you were wondering, yes, Easter is really freaking early this year. The second earliest possible day, in fact. How can there be an 'earliest possible day' you wonder? Well, as with so much else in Christianity, it's...complicated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computus

From another Wikipedia article on the issue (with my commentary):

The calculations for the date of Easter are somewhat complicated. [Ya don't say!] In the Western Church, Easter has not fallen on the earliest of the 35 possible dates, March 22, since 1818, and will not do so again until 2285. [Mark your calendars!] It will, however, fall on March 23 in 2008, but will not do so again until 2160. Easter last fell on the latest possible date, April 25, in 1943 and will next fall on that date in 2038. However, it will fall on April 24, just one day before this latest possible date, in 2011. The cycle of Easter dates repeats after exactly 5,700,000 years, [They sure planned ahead, huh?] with April 19 being the most common date, happening 220,400 times, or 3.9% compared to a mean for all dates of 162,857 times, or 2.9%.

In senior essay news, I've got the thing almost halfway written, but I'm more than halfway through my outline, which may prove to be a problem. We'll have to see; if I can get a 10,000 word draft to my adviser before I leave for Duke on the 27th, I'll be golden. Speaking of Duke, there will be a giant "omg, where am I going to go to law school?!?" post at some point, I'm sure. I know you're all oh-so excited.

So, I'm almost done researching this senior essay and, while it's not going to be great, it'll do the job; I've got most of the material I need, and writing the thing should only take a day or two. I'm a little worried that I'm not going to have sufficient material to get to the max length, but I'm thinking my readers won't mind if they have to plow through a couple fewer pages than normal.

More importantly, though, I find the fact that this has actually gone quite well (knock on wood) very disturbing; I'm supposed to have been doing on this all year, yet in a few days of work I can catch up and still do the job? What does that say about the history curriculum here, or, more worrisome, about what I've actually learned here? Did I really learn anything or just how to crank out shit that'll do the job?

Oh yeah, and I'm struggling to reach normalcy on the other stuff and it's also coming along pretty well despite some setbacks. In order to spare those of you who read this from excessive melo-drama and emo-ness (and because I don't want to get in trouble!) I've taken to writing a quasi-journal on my computer, largely in the form of letters that I'm not going to send. It's been really helpful, but created a weird mental block once I wrote one I am going to send...

There’s a really cute girl who sits next to me in class and, looking for distractions from my current state, I decided to grow a pair and introduce myself to her today. I used the power outage (half the campus went dark this morning*) as my in and got a first name (turns out it was a nickname), a class and a major. There was no boyfriend mentioned, she was fun to talk to and she seemed to like me, so my interest was piqued.

Knowing that I didn’t have enough info to facebook friend her, I did some looking through Yale and, then Google, then Facebook and found all kinds of stuff that made me feel like a stalker (I wasn’t really looking for it, I swear!)

I learned what sorority she’s in. I got her address and, since she’s from Dallas and I have a lot of friends there, I wondered if she lived near them. Google’s creepy new street view gave me a picture of her apartment complex when I looked. Weird. Facebook's pictures showed me that, while she doesn’t list it, she clearly does have a boyfriend (damnit) and Google also gave me a lot more about her extracurriculars than I cared to know.

People scared of Google and the Internet, I have far more respect for you than before. And to the girl in question, sorry it now looks like I stalked you. Though if you find this, you were clearly stalking me, too, so we’re even.


* - it should be noted that, while most of the campus went black, important emergency systems like the electronic locks, hall lights and wireless access stayed on. This says a lot about our priorities as an institution.

I write an essay about Mexican people and turn it in. When they ask me what the hell I was thinking, I'll say "Oh, wait, senior essay? I thought we were supposed to write a señor essay! Sorry for the misunderstanding. [pause] Can I have my diploma now?"

What do you think?

Spring cleaning is a good way to keep your mind occupied. I recommend it to all of you out there with more on your plates than you care to deal with.

Plus, it provides immense amusement for your roommates.

I sometimes wonder how people would respond to what would be undeniably perfectly legal behavior in an airport. Would I get nervous glances and stares (and a call to security?) if I were reading The Anarchist's Bible while waiting for a plane, or if someone glanced over my screen while I was eating at the food court Popeye's and saw pictures of weapons or terrorists?

This reminded me of a experiment my friends and I wanted to do in high school; we have a friend who's ethnically Indian but as "red-meat and baseball american" as it gets, has no trace of an accent and is a US citizen but looks scarily like a terrorist if he doesn't shave for a couple days. We wanted to put a towel on his head, like a turban, except position it such that right in the front and center was a Holiday Inn logo or something and see if he could get on a plane. We found the stereotype-bending and absurdity of the idea to be hilarious, but I'm sure that the people on that plane wouldn't. Whether he could get on or not, it would almost certainly have gotten us on a terrorist watch-list or something.

Maybe even wondering these things is the reason why I didn't get that FBI internship this summer...

I think this bad-boy may have outlived its usefulness, though it’s probably still too early to tell for sure. It’s gotten to the point where I update it so infrequently that I can’t imagine anyone still reads it, and I’m so far behind that to update anyone who doesn’t interact with me in person would take more energy than I’m interested in expending right now; add in the fact that there’s a whole swath of my life that I can’t discuss on here and you have something of an obsolete little webpage. Sigh.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. Back to the three days from hell...

Today, I got a new phone number. It's nice and easy to remember, but it's not the old one, which is more important. Sigh. Here it is:

713-703-7073.

Ugh.

And yes, eventually, I will update about this summer.