Entries for April, 2008
So, I was thinking about which classes I wanted to take this upcoming year.
[Usually, when an entry begins like this, it means it'll be a boring recap of classes that no one else cares about because no one else appreciates good classes and they'll all be failures in life but will make lots more money than I will but I don't care because I can just marry a rich white man and move to a nice home in Malibu overlooking the ocean and be his trophy wife even though he's 15 years older than I am and he's balding and has an ever-rounding belly and his face turns really red when he laughs, which is only when he's had too much wine or he's trying to close a business deal with unimpressed Japanese clients.]
(Classes that: look cool / have cool names / don't have cool names but I'll take them anyway)
I'm amazingly awesome because I don't have to take any distribution classes. I can just sit here the next two years and pretty much take any class I want to take. I love college.
I am a goldfish.
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All my life, people have been asking me, "Jihwan, you're great."
What's that? That's not a question, you say?
WRONG.
Anyway, I decided that since there are obviously going to be doubters out there who refuse to believe that Jihwan is great, I would MATHEMATICALLY PROVE IT.
I know what you're thinking. But Jihwan, you're about as good at math as you are at not being awesome! That means you really suck at math, because you obviously really suck at not being awesome! YOU'RE AWESOME.
[Cue witty transitional quip from narrative to mathematical proof, because I'm drawing a blank. Pretend like I wrote something charming and clever and laugh.]
PROOF THAT JIHWAN IS GREAT, A LA DESCARTES
-I think, therefore I am.
-I am, therefore I exist in the world.
-The world is a big place.
-A big place has many little places within it.
-I currently occupy a little place in the big place that is the world.
-The little place that I currently occupy is Whitman College.
-Whitman College contains Ankeny Field.
-Ankeny field is a wide open space relative to Whitman College.
-"Wide Open Spaces" is a song by the Dixie Chicks.
-The Dixie Chicks' lead vocalist is Natalie Maines.
-Maine was the 23rd state to be admitted to the Union.
-The number 23 is widely known as "The Michael Jordan Number."
-Michael Jordan's ex-wife, Juanita, will receive the largest celebrity divorce settlement in history at $168,000,000.00.
-That's a lot of zeroes.
-Hercules went from zero to hero in no time flat.
-No Time Flat Tire Services has been serving West Michigan since 1990.
-1990 divided by 633.75 [a really mathematical number - mathematicians use it all the time] is 3.14.
-3.14 is the numeric designation of Pi.
-I like pie.
-Key lime pie is considered by most pie experts [like Marie Callender] to be the best type of pie.
-The key lime pie is named after the small key limes that are native to the Florida Keys.
-Some doors in Florida have keys.
-'Keykeykeykeykey' is the sound of villainous anime laughter.
-The most heinous anime villain is The Tuxedo Guy from Sailor Moon.
-I don't care if he's not really a villain. He's evil. EVIL. JUST LOOK AT HIM.
-C.S. Lewis' book "The Screwtape Letters" is a book about evil.
-Lewis also wrote some obscure book for bratty kids. It has four kids and a goat-man and a really big kitty. It's called Marnia or something stupid like that.
-I really like randomly yelling, "FOR MARNIA! AND FOR ASLAAAAAAAN!!!!"
-Aslan is a Turkish name meaning Lion.
-Lions eat people.
-As of 12:00 am on April 2, 2008, there were 6,798,744,532 people in the world.
-Scientist John Eccles, Nobel Prize winner, says that one chance in 1,010,000 is considered an infinite improbability [aka impossibility]. 6,798,744,532 divided by 1,010,000 is 6,731.
-I currently have 537 Facebook friends. 6,731 divided by 537 is 13. [I rounded up.]
-If 6,371 people in 6,798,744,532 think Jihwan is great, that is a scientific impossibility. Thus, Jihwan would be NOT great, disproving my argument.
-Going by ratio of Facebook friends, only 13 people out of 537 need to believe Jihwan is great in order for Jihwan's greatness to be a scientific impossibility.
-Greater than 13 people believe, by survey taken on Facebook, believe that Jihwan is great.
-By virtue of the Theory of Negative Inverse Logic [an actual empirical scientific method], a debunking of an infinite improbability statistic means that the opposite of said improbability is true.
-Therefore, if the Theory of Jihwan's Greatness is disproved to be a scientific impossibility, then the opposite is true.
-THEREFORE, JIHWAN IS GREAT.
[I don't care if you think you can disprove my massively sexy proof. I'm right, you're wrong.]
Written by jihwan at 08:07 AM.
From this point on, my fist will be referred to as my "organic punching device."
That's all I have today.
I am sorry.
Written by jihwan at 01:34 AM.
Maintaining a consistent journal is difficult, especially for an amateur writer.
Written by jihwan at 11:16 PM.
There are two weeks of classes left.
I've learned to construe Classical Latin, to comprehend Cicero and Caesar and Catullus, and to re-conceive what it feels like to get a C in a class.
[Alliteration is as amazingly awesome as an arthritic aardvark. Andre. Andre Aardvark.]
I've read much more Hawthorne and Melville than I ever thought possible, and learned to appreciate [or projectile vomit due to] the finer points of each author.
[The class, incidentally called "Hawthorne and Melville," also taught me that Hawthorne was really restricted by his Puritan New England roots and that Melville REALLY likes the sea.]
I've had a great time reading through a century of modern American literature, from Frost to Hemingway to Faulkner to Rich to Pynchon.
My History of Greece class is boring.
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It's a few days late, but the San Antonio/Phoenix game? Wow. If you didn't watch that game, you might as well die in your face right now.
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Sark graduates soon. I still remember when we all finished high school [more or less successfully for some of us]. We were young, naive, and absurdly handsome. Now we're old and crusty and some of us need old-people diapers.
Ken recently sent us a text message that read:
Im watching kids nut shot each other at the northridge mall and i suddenly miss you guys :(
I swear I laughed for like, ten minutes. This one time, we went to the Northridge mall as 7th or 8th graders and stood on the second floor balcony and started cawing like crows at people passing by below us. I don't know why, but it was so damn funny at the time. We thought we were the best thing since the last stupid middle-schoolers at the mall.
Hell, it's hilarious in retrospect, too. It's weird that I've known my boys since grade school. I don't really know anyone in college that's had the same core group of bosom buddies that long. I mean, our parents have embarrassing stories not only about their own kids but their kids' best friends. How cool is that?
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I would be remiss if I didn't expand this train of thought to the international scale.
South Korea just re-elected a new president. Not knowing anything about him, I asked my parents what they thought. [My parents live in Korea right now.]
Jihwan: Mum, what'chu think bout th'new Prime 'minster? Jolly good and all that jazz? Is he quite dishy, or just plain up barmy?
Mother: I like him. Of course, your father and I can't vote anymore so we didn't have a hand in it, but he seems very good and it's a great step for us.
Jihwan: So mum, how's it feel to be blocked from your own country's voting procedure? American citizen and all that, y'know. Is it right annoying? Bloody nora, you must be steaming at the ears to see all these young chaps in their short knickers storming about with their ballots and you without a say in it! Box their ears! Gobsmacked! Get stuffed! Blimey! Sod off!
Mother: Stop with the British accent. Don't make me slap you.
Jihwan: ...
Mother: ...are you still there?
Jihwan: Pip pip, mum!
Mother: *click*
Written by jihwan at 10:43 AM.
I consider the depiction of the life of Constantine Dmitrich Levin to be one of the monumental accomplishments of literary history.
Written by jihwan at 04:41 AM.
[Written a few weeks ago]
- - - - -
It's really hot and I'm really thirsty.
It's a Sunday afternoon and I'm cooped up in the library writing a paper. Rather, I should be writing a paper. I should be shuffling through books and essays and lecture notes [if I were to ever take notes, that is] and I should be analyzing the female voice of modern American literature through Adrienne Rich and Thomas Pynchon. My brow should be knitted in pursuit of that singularly brilliant phrase that connotes what I want to express in one sentence instead of two. Economic writing: Just Do It. I should be listening to Chopin's Nocturne in G Minor and sitting up straight to keep me alert and focused.
Is anyone surprised that I'm not doing what I should be doing?
I'm slouched in a chair by the floor-to-ceiling windows on the third floor, papers and books scattered around , listening to the clickity-clack of keyboards and the shuffling papers of diligent students whose admirable company I can't join. My contact lenses are dry and my mouth is parched due to the surprisingly humid day, and I'm greedily eyeing the sweating cup of iced coffee sitting across the table from my too-warm hands. I wonder if I can steal a sip before the girl sitting across from be returns from the restroom. My feet probably smell like ass.
It's hot.
There's a little girl on the empty tennis courts chasing a brand-new tennis ball around. Her short brown ponytail bounces about in excitement as she seems very happy to have the courts all to herself - the big college kids are studying for finals instead of playing tennis. Her grandfather [grandmother?] occasionally picks up the loose ball and tosses it to her, and she chases it down with much more vigor and determination than her companion. She's the only person outside moving at a pace faster than a volcanic glacier, because it's really hot.
I can't breathe. I'm going to die of heat. I'm not exaggerating. People are withering away right in front of my eyes.
I am now very angry because the girl has returned to her seat and has carelessly thrown away the 3/4 filled cup of iced coffee. THERE ARE CHILDREN IN ETHIOPIA WHO WOULD KILL FOR THAT ICED COFFEE, AMERICAN CONSUMERIST WENCH!!!
Is it considered to be in bad taste if I rummage around the library
garbage can for a recently-tossed cup of icy, coffee-y goodness?
Written by jihwan at 04:35 PM.