Archives for February 2002
it’s the same. Grandma is only somewhat responsive. she seems out of it. if she recovers, it would be a long process.
i don’t have much to report, really. we ate at an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet restaurant tonight — what a great idea that is. the Dukies lost to UVA, which was delightful. *choke*choke*, Jason Williams.
i should be flying back on Saturday, weather permitting.
things aren’t particularly good. i’m still down in Sarasota, and Grandma isn’t doing too well. i was encouraged yesterday when she seemed responsive when i came in, but today brought some bad news. she was less responsive and just mostly slept. a slew of doctors visited the room, including the primary attending physician, a heart surgeon, a cardiologist, an eye doctor, an infectious disease specialist, and a neurologist. maybe even more, i don’t know. they say that the staph has infected her heart and that the “vegetative growths” have damaged (and continue to damage) her valves. in the words of the cardiologist, this is “very serious.”
the only hope now would be for the antibiotics to do their job and then for Grandma to have open heart surgery to replace the valve. that would be followed by a long period of recovery, i think. the family seems pessimistic about the chances for a full recovery.
these past couple of days have been weightless, in a way. they’ve been odd, and without order and groundedness. i don’t know. it’s hard to explain.
i had a good feeling about this before. i was talking to my dad about it. then we came up from lunch and the bad news about her heart came.
unrelated: i wrote the entry for the ICRF convention weekend.
i didn’t go to sleep last night. i took a cab to O’Hare at 5:00 a.m. and talked to the Russian cab driver. he told me his mother was murdered in a hospital in 1989 by Azerbajan (sp?) Muslims during perestroika. he works every day from 3:30 a.m. on. count your blessings.
the trip was uneventful. Mark and Gayle, my uncle and aunt, picked me up from the Sarasota airport, and we got lunch and then went to the hospital. i was expecting worse. my grandmother recognized me and smiled, and seemed to understand when she was being talked to and when jokes were told. i found the whole thing quite encouraging, really. i had been expecting worse.
i fell asleep in the lounge and woke up when my Dad came in. he flew in to Sarasota a few hours later than i did. later in the afternoon, my grandmother was much less responsive and just seemed tired.
i am still not sure how serious her illness is. she has a staph infection. they can be very, very dangerous, but the doctors say it hasn’t spread to her brain or spinal fluid. i am optimistic.
later on, i watched the Illinois-Indiana game with my dad. we won, which was a great relief, although the victory was pretty cheap. unbelievably, UI is now in a 4-way tie for first in the Big Ten. hey, ESPN: suck on that.
we’ll see.
it’s usually the little things in life that put a smile on your face. i’m talking specifically about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue arriving in my mailbox. omfg @ Yamila Diaz-Rahi.
since i bet Tegan will soon read this blog for the first time, i should mention how exquisite it was today in soc. to bash emo with a girl. we agreed that Dashboard are wussbags. she also made fun of an emo kid on her hallway.
i took an evening nap today for the second day running. those kind of put you in this strange, disconnected limbo between day and night. your mind doesn’t reset itself to normal until the next morning.
i have a paper due for Thursday comparing Paul Radin’s The Winnebago and E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s The Nuer. i think i’ll compare their descriptions of warfare, and here’s a tidbit from Radin’s description of the Winnebago that certainly caught my attention…
“When a war party surprised a lodge in which there were children they generally killed them, cut off their heads, pried open their mouths so as to give them the appearance of laughing, and then placed the heads on their bodies again and arranged them against the door, so that when their father came home he would find them greeting him as usual. A brave warrior would never flinch at such a sight, but would prepare a meal as usual and speak to the children as if they were alive and offer them something to eat. Only then would he bury them. Immediately after they had been buried he would go on the warpath to revenge them.”
(Raind, Paul. The Winnebago. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. pp. 113.)
maybe the only good thing about having my page temporarily on Geocities is their convenient little “site statistics” monitor. i’m too lazy to ever run my logs normally, but it’s cute to see who visits my site.
anyway, i saw that a couple of people were getting to my page from an entry on priderice.net. now this is the site that i spoke rather disparagingly of a few days ago, calling it a “Photoshop-and-iframe” site, but at the same time admitting that most of my negativity probably came from my own jealousy.
i subsequently talked to the webmaster of priderice on e-mail and IM and found the lad to be quite personable. i should note that in his post he got the wrong idea of why my temporary page is up; it’s not to design the Photoshop site, but rather because my linux server is down right now.
| AlexiaIscariot: | well, here’s the thing. Anne must go with me. Tony must go with you. adele and mark must go together. mark cannot go with jon |
| underscorebleach: | it’s like a damn SAT math logic problem |
Montel William sucks. i hate that guy.
i rewarded myself after my weekly three hours of Purgatory with Taco Bell. this inspired me to whip up a little chart of fast food restaurants and their qualities…
| Name | Comments |
| Arby’s | mmm, curly fries. and that greasy guy who always came into Circuit City and talked to me worked at Arby’s, so it must be cool. |
| Burger King | i dig the fries. and you have to respect the 24 hour BK in Evanston, even if you have to carry a gun to eat there at 3 a.m. |
| Dairy Queen | tell me again why a place called “Dairy Queen” has burgers? |
| Hardee’s | this place sucks. their fries are horrible and they’re slow as shit. |
| McDonald’s | the ultimate in OVERRATED. overrated fries, small burgers, slow service, and fairly high prices. no thanks. |
| Subway | Jared is a piece of shit. |
| Taco Bell | the best, period. fast, cheap, and good. I LOVE MEXIMELTS. |
| Wendy’s | fabulous selection, fast service, dynamite junior bacon cheeseburgers, and what great decor! |
| White Castle | they don’t even have to flip the burgers to cook them. need i say more? onionlicious. |
oh, by the way… HEY RUSSIA AND SOUTH KOREA, STOP WHINING YOU FUCKING LOSERS.
here’s some more evidence that Champaign, Illinois is a happening place.
coupla nights ago, while quite bored, i was browsing NU’s directory of personal homepages. i randomly picked a girl named Kelly Robinson, who has a page devoted to her Top 10 Reasons Why She Loves Northwestern and Top 10 Reasons Why She Hates Northwestern. this seems like an all right idea to me, so i thought i’d steal it…
Tom’s Top 10 Good Things About NU
Tom’s Top 10 Crappy Things About NU
still not in a good mood, and these two papers that’ll be assigned shortly aren’t going to help matters. hmm. not sure what to do.
still holding out a bit of hope. we’ll see if i’ve got any balls tomorrow after class…
classic…
“Damn it feels good to be a gangsta
A real gangsta-ass nigga plays his cards right
A real gangsta-ass nigga never runs his fuckin mouth
Cuz real gangsta-ass niggas don’t start fights
And niggas always gotta high cap
Showin’ all his boys how he shot em
But real gangsta-ass niggas don’t flex much
Cuz real gangsta-ass niggas know they got em
And everythings cool in the mind of a gangsta
Cuz gangsta-ass niggas think deep
Up three-sixty-five a year 24/7
Cuz real gangsta ass niggas don’t sleep”
[Geto Boys — “Damn It Feels Good To Be a Gangsta”]
(note: the following in no way applies to my own parents. i like them to read my Web site. also, i speak for myself here. this is not posted on anyone’s behalf.)
if you are a nosy parent reading my blog because it was linked from your son/daughter’s blog, and you are trying to find out what naughty things your son/daughter is doing while away at college, give it up. take some time to digest the three most important words in the previous sentence: away at college.
i think i’ll also take this opportunity to note that the overbearing and overprotective style of parenting simply does not work. if you try to shield your child from all of the ills of the world, they’ll have no understanding of how to handle those ills once they’ve left the nest. who do you think the biggest binge drinkers and fashionable drug users of college are? the kids who went to Catholic school for 13 years before they ventured off to school. now don’t get me wrong; this is in no way a condemnation of Catholics or Catholicism. it’s a condemnation of overprotectiveness. it just doesn’t work. you’re not preparing your child for the real world.
one of the best things my parents ever did for me was to be very frank and very realistic about drugs and alcohol. they told me the advantages and disadvantages quite honestly. when i was younger (perhaps 16), on special occasions they’d let me drink when they were around, starting me off slowly so i could figure the whole thing out and gauge my tolerance. that translated into my being able to handle myself when potentially dangerous situations arose and Mom and Dad weren’t there to regulate the situation. while my friends did stupid things and chugged vodka and smoked weed every day, i didn’t. why? because i wasn’t clueless going in, and i could handle myself.
so Mom, Dad, thanks. i’ve always been impressed by that aspect of the way you raised me. i can say with confidence that i won’t become addicted to drugs or alcohol. part of that is luck, because there isn’t much of a history of addiction in my family, but part of it is intelligent upbringing. some of you folks out there could learn from this.
at 20:02 02-20-2002 (i.e. February 20, 2002 at 8:02 p.m.), the second and final time in world history that time will be perfectly symmetrical, i was doing laundry during halftime of the Penn State-Illinois basketball game. Illinois smashed PSU, and I now have a drawer full of clean underwear and clean socks (see 17 feb 02 entry #4).
wow, so i just studied for 2 hours STRAIGHT in the Core. i think that’s the longest i’ve gone all year. i’m perfecting this “scanning not reading” thing, and it’s great.
i read most of The Nuer today, a classic book in anthropology by E.E. Evans-Pritchard. it’s actually not that bad. these Nuer guys are kind of like a big collection of belligerent, drunken Russ Rigginses. they sound pretty entertaining.
a quick question for Tony, Russ, and Mark (which will piss off Mary and Adele, though they’re obviously not happy with me anyway, so i won’t be doing much damage): is this “emo” thing just a big excuse for being a wuss?
ok, so you’ll probably think i’m making this up to be a dick. i’m not. after finishing my studying at the library, i posted #5 above and read Adele’s update on CM that mentioned Dashboard Confessional. now i’ll be quite frank: i’ve never heard anything from Dashboard Confessional, and i really don’t even know what constitutes “emo.” (that’s part of the reason i asked the sarcastic question in #5.)
anyhow, i walk home from the library, arrive at my apartment, and turn on the TV. while flipping through the channels, i’m drawn to MTV2, because i see the whiniest, most not-cool-but-it’s-supposed-to-be-cool video ever. this total wussbag is crooning to the camera and i want to slap him. hard. the voice of the leader singer and the song’s lyrics smack of junior high, maybe even late elementary school. i’m flabbergasted by the utter wussiness of it.
i patiently wait for the video to end so i can see the artist/title. . . . Dashboard Confessional — “Screaming Infidelities.”
i’m not trying to be a jerk. really. but i had to relay that — it was too odd not to. you can like whatever music you want to; i won’t tell you not to. i’ll just be cavalier and potentially insensitive in throwing my opinions around.
and in other music-related stuff, i just couldn’t resist posting some more lyrics, even though i know it’s pretty boring to read lyrics. but the lyrics i’ve posted today are just top-drawer, you gotta admit…
“I’m a freak
I like the girls with the boom
I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom
I’m crazy
Allow me to amaze thee
They say I’m ugly but it just don’t phase me
I’m still gettin’ in the girls pants
And I even got my own dance.”
[Digital Underground — “The Humpty Dance”]
also, i seem to have lost my decidedly meager basketball skills. if you locate them, please return them to me so that i won’t shoot ~7% from the floor again.
well, i been lookin at the cute Photoshop-and-iframe sites today, and the stupid jealousy is popping up. i mean, i think i could do one of these sites, but i’m not sure. they look cute, but their usability is kinda shabby. take a look at http://priderice.net/ and the sites he links to see what i mean.
so i’ve decided that i’m going to make a Photoshop-and-iframe site to make fun of these sites. that will put me at ease. stay tuned, y’all.
oh, and i’m recusing myself from the drama on the blogs.
i love you, Mark. for the comment last night in the BK parking lot that you wouldn’t let me blog, and for this:
| underscorebleach: | check out this site: www.ozones.com |
| markrokosmos: | man i hate that fucking site |
| markrokosmos: | it’s so sluggish |
| markrokosmos: | looks pretty but annoys the crap out of me |
oh, and here’s a suggestion for a song to download if you’re bored: Jimmy Luxury and the Tommy Rome Orchestra — “Cha Cha Cha.”
let’s see. two trips to Starbucks, two 17 year-olds, one conclusion: the difference between high school and college is substantial.
i look across the table at Giordano’s, and Tony says, “remember when this used to be an escape?” vaguely, my friend, vaguely.
dude, are you EVER gonna catch a clue? that dude so out-to-lunch, i just can’t fathom it.
| underscorebleach: | you didn’t miss much, dear. |
| my name is adele: | oh, I heard that there were some winners there. |
| underscorebleach: | tony and i took matters into our own hands and split the group |
| underscorebleach: | thereby keeping a distance between jon and us |
| my name is adele: | very nice. |
| underscorebleach: | i commented that i represented russia, while he was nazi germany, and the walkway was poland |
| underscorebleach: | it’s funny because he’s Jewish. |
a while back, Adele mentioned Incubus as her “guilty pleasure,” and the same topic came up again tonight at dinner. my guilty pleasure is Sugar Ray. what catchy, happy-go-lucky songs they have. and Mark McGrath is cute. (that was a joke.)
i was peeking at Tony’s old blog entries and stumbled upon a very appropriate post from his July 20, 2001 entry…
“The Tonatale Logs does not get involved in conflicts among members of the ‘Weblog Community.’ We here at the ‘Logs’ take a neutral position in all these circumstances. Our reasoning behind this is simple: We usually do not get all the information. Either that, or we don’t care because no one knows this site exists anyway.”
the best proof yet that NU rivals FSU and ASU for the liveliness of its social scene.
