Anti-Shell Matter

To: Arizona State University
Re: You're dumb. Seriously.

My transcript says that I have been attending an Arizona high school the past four years. My home address is in Arizona. I pay taxes in the state of Arizona. My driver's license and vehicle are registered in Arizona. I'm pretty sure I'm a resident of the State of Arizona. I'm pretty sure I specifically said I was a resident for tuition purposes when you asked.

Why do you have me down as a non-resident?

You are not helping your case of why I should go there instead of UA if I stay in-state.

------------------------

Coffee House was a pretty hardcore-wild time. benyahamin makes a fetching Raoul de Chagney and zychi is more or less my hero of the week. I don't know if I'll be going back at any later times this week.

Oh, yeah, to the MCs: Podium.

Seriously, I think I have the honor of knowing most of the best performers at the show--all the performers in the Nerd Herd were particularly kickass, singing or playing instruments or whatever. I missed all of act one save the final two acts, which means I missed some O'Boyle (sad, because he's so good on cello) and Troxler and a monologue I have heard performed at every other talent show ever.

I had wanted to get a jazz band together to play "Tank!" this year, but I had no idea it was already time for Coffee House until the day tryouts started. Such is what I get for dropping out of band. I'm out of the loop.

Fuck you, college applications. The FAFSA was especially annoying. What worries me is that it kept asking about the 2005-2006 school year, when I want to apply for 2006-2007. If I did that for nothing--

My guitar class's workbook is laughably bad. No less than half the songs are titled after books (with the suggestion to read that book by so-and-so), and judging by the songs of the books I have read, the songs just don't... make me think of the book. Seriously. Consider level-1 picking-out-notes nonsense titled "A Wrinkle in Time", or whatever, and while I will admit that book was surreal and the song could be considered ethereal--somewhat--it's not quite the same effect. I think they just ran out of song titles for the etudes.

And, there's some random song called "Sakura" with Japanese lyrics. I kid you not. This amused me greatly.

Philipi brought his video i-pod to calculus and has infected me with this urgent need to finally get an mp3 player. It's shiny and slick and pretty and it plays Family Guy and it's sooooo nice. My family has been promising me an i-pod since last Christmas (and the past birthday), so I should collect on that.

( Because this is more interesting than telling UC Berkley why it wants me. )

Right. Back to work.

And then there are those times when you have to wonder whether or not it would actually be wise to listen to your parents.

Medical school is not any pressing matter; I would just as happily go into biochemistry or molecular biophysics and pursue a PhD, and something tells me I would far more enjoy working in a lab environment than a hospital environment. I've gone through stages where I've considered psychiatry (and I mean working with true loons in the asylum, not prescribing medicine for ADD and pseudo-depression), but my parents are both vehemently against their daughters becoming physicians. They both are physicians themselves, and they say this not because medical school is difficult or demanding, but because of the direction the field of medicine has taken. They both say if they had it to do over, they'd never have gone to medical school. Their reactions are immediate and passionate when the subject is touched.

Besides, I've never known a physician's child who wanted to go to medical school.

Went to the college fair at the Phoenix Civic Center. As far as in-state is concerned, once again UA seemed far more attractive than ASU; a representative from their College of Science talked the place up and made some rather attractive offers, and threw out some numbers (research grants, etc) that far outrank ASU's. Honestly, I don't know if those numbers mean jack in the whole scheme of things, but my overall impression of UA versus ASU is in favor of UA, unless ASU starts making some very attractive pitches and talking their science program up a bit. The ASU representatives seemed rather tepid when I talked to them about their science program and asked about foreign exchange and the Asian languages. The guy from University of Pennsylvania had an awesome bow-tie that I swear was purchased at a costume shop under the 'nutty professor' section. Harvey Mudd sounded awesome but gods-fucking expensive.

I was at Ikea with my dad before that picking out a hanging wardrobe, since he's been on a crusade to get me to buy one, and he offered to pay for it. I had never been there before, and today was a big 15% off sale for their 20th birthday, with cake at the exit and everything. It was an absolute zoo. That place is huge, and their stuff is so cool. They even have restaurants and cafes, the former of which sells Swedish meatballs and other such things, and a kid's play-center. It's like Disneyland. I saw this amazing overhanging bed with a workspace beneath, sort of like a bunk-bed lacking a bottom bunk. Supposedly keichisfuuma's aunt and sister were there too, but I did not see them. It would be easy to miss people in there.

Tomorrow sounds like it's going to rock hardcore. I'm not going to wear my gory costume to school. It would be a pain in the ass to manage with a backpack. I'll figure something else out.

Oh, tricky_bastard's party was incredible, moreso because benyahamin and three other guys made themselves into living Tetris pieces and sang the song and everything. And we watched Bruce Campbell movies. And eagle8635 was a red mage. And it was awesome. Like whoa.

So, another Law and Order marathon was on USA, which means that I was glued to the TV for three hours. Will Arnett (GOB from Arrested Development) was one of the guest villains on Special Victims Unit, which made me immensely happy because GOB is love. Both times I have seen Arnett on television he had been playing a relative slimebag, though this time he was truly despicable (if you've seen the "NAMBLA" episode of SVU, you know what I mean; he was the travel agent). The last episode was of the Criminal Intent persuasion, which I honestly thought was going to be nowhere near as interesting as SVU (for those of you who do not know, SVU is reserved for the really twisted crimes, crimes of a sexual nature or crimes against children; you get the serial killers and psychopaths as villains, whereas in the other seasons the criminals usually have a more down-to-earth motive), but tonight they aired the "Theory of Everything" episode, which was, for lack of a better word, pure cool. The other episode was the "dolls" episode of SVU, which was also cool.

The pilgrimage to the University of Arizona went well. Pat drove the party-van to Tucson so we could go as a Nerd Herd, as it were. UA is making a lot of attractive offers and putting on all the bells and whistles for in-state students. The vast majority of the lectures were mind-numbingly boring, but I did get needed information. The College of Humanities is incredibly proud of their creative writing program, which is ranked tenth in the nation or something like that, but since I am not going to major in creative writing (I can teach myself, thankyoumuch) this is not a determining factor. I would love to take some classes if I do go to UA, though. I know I at least want a minor or a part of a double major in Japanese language; the other major (of three if I go truly insane) is up for debate. I was thinking biochemistry or microbiology, but after watching Law and Order: Special Victims Unit I always lean toward criminal psychology. Yes I know it's a delusion. All things considered, though, it sounds like UA is a pretty solid school. Problem: it's in Tucson.

In favor of the UA, they do have a Panda Express and two Dance Dance Revolution machines, which was bad for me since I had gotten a blister on the bottom of my foot playing DDR on Friday, and my addiction is such that I just can't say no even if it's not in my best interest to play three rounds on heavy. So, as of now that blister has gotten much worse, and the outside of my calf is sore since I was gimping around and landing badly on my ankle.

Rachel and her little friends went to Edgefest, and I'm about to go pick them up at Some Guy's house. Everybody Rachel knows lives by Saguaro. It’s rather convenient.

To: Colleges, looking in to
CC: Scholarships, applying for
Re: Suck my nuts

Right here.

You suck hardcore and I had such better ways to waste Labor Day.