Neglect!

As you've probably noticed or maybe haven't, I've been neglecting my blog lately.  This is due to many reasons, including but not limited to final exams and road trips and family obligations.  Blogging for hours on end would have been impolite, inconvenient, or both.

I'll get back on it soonsiiieees.

Garter Snakes

I brake for garter snakes.

Driving up north last year, I stopped the car because a big one was basking in the middle of the road.  That part is understandable - who wants to run over a sleepy snake? That's just rude.  But I did manage to park the car and get out and follow it until it escaped into the roots of a tree.

It doesn't matter what I'm doing or where I'm at.  If I see one, I will stop whatever I'm doing and attempt to snatch it.  No matter how mature I've grown, the sight of snake plunges me into child mode where my only goal is to GIT IT!!!  Just last weekend, as I get out of the car in my Easter-Sunday Best, I noticed a slithering motion in the patch of grass next to where we parked.  I was on the ground before I even realized what it was.

These occasions of snake sighting are usually few and far between, but I have seen two in the past week!  While most superstitious people would find this as a bad omen, to me, this is the best of luck! I have less than five days until summer break and the past few weekends have been gorgeous and I've been blessed by the presence of some rather adorable sneaky-snakes.  

This summer's gonna be good.  I can feel it in the air when I flick out my lil forked tongue.

raptor ate my homework

what's the likelihood that several velociraptors will manifest, get up to the 4th floor of a building, break into a room, and destroy a laptop with a bunch of unfinished papers saved on it?

I guess I'll try my luck.

ajar

My friends and I will never get enough of certain jokes. Some make no sense, and some make perfect sense but would not be funny to anybody else.

One that I'm compelled to draw:

You see, anything that's ajar could actually BE A JAR at any given moment! Your doors, your drawers, your windows and your washing machines! They could all be a jar at this VERY MOMENT!

And, scene.

Oranges

There's a small patch of land behind the dining hall with a very tightly niched ecosystem.  Trees, grass, and squirrels all coexist, relying on people to keep the plants well-kept and to throw the food upon which the squirrels thrive.  People throw things like apple cores and banana peels and stale cookies.  You know, the usual dining hall rejections that nobody is willing to hold onto long enough to find a decent trashcan.  So, to the squirrels they go!

Lately I noticed that somebody has been throwing entire oranges back there.  As if they took one look inside the peel, remembered they hated oranges, and chucked it at high velocity towards the nearest tree trunk in disgust.  It was interesting at first when there were two or three oranges out there, but now...

Squirrels, you'd think, would enjoy these oranges, but they still seem quite whole and there are less squirrels in the area than I remember. Almost like oranges are invasive species upon the squirrels.  In the competition for space, are these oranges MURDERING SQUIRRELS?!

On a more serious note: What? Is it some sort of... trend? Or a plague? I'm not sure what to call it. And it could be more than one person doing it.  I wish I knew their motives.  Nobody hates oranges THAT much without doing something a little more mature about it.  Seems like a pretty ineffective way to speak against the commercialism of oranges.

Well. Anyway. Whoever is doing this, I commend you on your attempt at chaos, but you need to do a lot of work if this is going to develop into a major scheme.

Do Not Touch

Over the weekend, I went to an art museum for the first time in a good eight years.  It's been a big eight years apparently because I have a developed reverence for art.  Everything in the museum was beautiful and fascinating and I wanted to know everything about everything, everrr.  I was proud to point out uses of tenebrism, chiaroscuro, linear perspective, monumentalism, and so on.

Naturally I didn't go by myself.  I begged my dad to take me dragged my dad along and it was quite an adventure.  He and I feigned our way through pretentious attempts at scholarly debate and discussion of certain works.  We actually impressed each other with our imagined knowledge.  I could tell that even though we were pretending like it was boring, we were having a great time.

But there was one thing that I did not enjoy: my father's proximity to works of art.

Be it a hollow 4-foot Korean ceramic sculpture or a bust of George Washington, my dad felt free to gesticulate animatedly around sculptures and just barely avoid scratching the paintings.  I nearly had a heart attack every single time.  But he never faltered.  No security guards seemed concerned.  No alarms went off.  Other patrons did not seem to take notice.  My dad totally got away with exchangin' electrons with one-of-a-kind works of art.

Why? Have I been wrong in thinking that squinting from four or five feet away yields a reasonably close-up view of a work of art?  In his more experienced age, does my father have a better grip on the volume he takes up in space? Is he just confident in his movements?  Or does he have no art bubble and just thinks that that's okay?  Cuz it wasn't okay with me.  Maybe he interpreted my mild panic attacks as an attempt at hilarity, if he noticed them at all.

Yknowww, I could probably ask him about all this.  But I probably won't.  If you're reading this dad, hello, and please help me understand your ways of a graceful bull in a very fine china shop.

Rewarded for Procrastination

I should be writing a textual analysis paper.  But I'm not.  I've been procrastinating for weeks, days, and hours now.  I have about 8 hours to turn it in.  It'll get done, of course, but not before I push all my limits.

I wouldn't procrastinate so much if I wasn't continuously rewarded for it.  Despite producing horribly last-minute and slip-shod work, I keep getting decent grades.  It's like goofin' off pays off.  I can live in a world like this.

The ultimate reward came tonight.  Instead of writing my paper all day, I slept. I got in a good 18 hours.  Guilt eventually settled in so I sat down at my desk, typed six words of an introduction sentence, considered which books I'd need to consult, and then decided I was ready for a break.  I went to dinner and attended a three-hour play before actually sitting down to get serious.

I think it was at this point that the Karmic wheel in the sky took notice of me.

Within moments I realized I was severely lacking energy and went down to the lobby to buy myself a soda.  Err, a pop.  Soda-pop.  Anyway, I bought a Pepsi, and as it was vending, I heard several clunks and thuds and bumps.  The flap seperating me from my sugary carbonated drink was jammed shut! Refusing to accept this I punched it until it loosened.  To my ultimate surprise I had been vended not one but THREE PEPSI PRODUCTS.

That's right.  Karma noticed that I needed some caffeine for my fateful night of paper-writing and granted me three doses of caffiene for the price of one.  Sky-wheel, you spin in some odd directions, but I praise you nonetheless.