Mayhem: From Labs To The Big Screen

To be honest with all of you, I'm not in much of a mood to be blogging this evening. I just thought it would be a nice break from doing whatever it was that I was doing a moment ago- which was nothing. Yes in deedy this evening is another break for me. I do have things that need to be done this weekend, but I have two days to do them. Only one could possibly be done at this time of night and that is home work. To be honest my brain is way too tired to be toiling with the likes of that weight at this hour. So I shall fill every one in on my day, and as usual, our opening act is school:

Calculus III- doing the Max and Min of functions with two or more variables, and frankly it’s messy. Lots of side calculations and time consuming, ink wasting, mind numbing good times. Yes, that’s right you read me (if I said you heard me and you thought you did you should see a doctor) correctly, I do actually enjoy this from time to time. I am a nerd. It is a badge that I display proudly whenever and wherever I get the chance to let some one know I am smarter that they are (it does happen frequently and everywhere). I just get worn down by daily grinds and good time being shoved down my throat. More-over: cake is not as good if you are choking on it. “Let them eat cake” is an under statement, it should actually be: “when his mouth is full, bend him over”. That ladies and gentlemen is how the institutes of higher learning treat you. And when you are out, you hope it is worth it. I certainly do (actually it damn well better be, or there will be truoble).

Modern Optics I & II- as promised last time, here is the whining complaining and oh- so aggravating details of my lab this week: I let my laser warm up so there wasn’t any confusion there, and the first section went surprisingly well. The latter part was another story. What we had to do was observe some polarized light in a couple of different syrups. And by syrups, they were glass cylinders filled with a sugar solution. Keep that in mind. The light was linearly polarized, passed through this stuff, and polarized again, with a blotch on a viewing screen (the ‘blotch’ was actually the incandescent lamp bulb filament focused through all of that with a lens of about 48mm). them when you rotate the second polarizer the colors change. And it really works, you rotate and there is a different color of the rainbow with every turn, it’s pretty cool. However, the problem comes when they asked me (and the rest of the class) to explain why. The answer is that the sugar molecule has a helical structure and as the laser light hits the molecule, the electrons oscillate in the helical pattern and radiate the light out in different directions. Do you think they bothered to mention a damn thing about the structure of the sugar molecule in the lab manual? No. and was Shanghi- Sue the TA any help? No. all the sudden I had to learn chemistry, with no hint from anyone, except listening to other student’s spill the beans under the TA’s hushes. Now, enough of that.

Time for my movie review: 30 Days of Night. I finally went to see it after a few other attempts failed by unforeseen circumstances. The movie started out well, with the character introductions and ‘histories of left for later in the movie’, and foreshadowing galore. It follows a small town sheriff and quirky and weird and the on edge survivors of the town over run by vampires for a month. Good golly did it have gluttonous amounts of gore. The acting and writing left a lot to be desired, even for a horror movie. In fact, the female lead only seemed to have one tacky line in the film: “I’m going with you”. Which was promptly followed by another voice: “No, it’s too dangerous, you stay here.” Painful isn’t it? The movie was peppered with a lot of that crap. The action and suspense was good, and so were the special effects (the gore, THE GORE! Hehehe). There was also the Renfield character, the guy betraying his own kind to save his neck, and gets a sort of Stockholm syndrome from them, but ends up morally conflicted and sad, and doesn’t see the end of the film. And don’t try and give me that ‘you just ruined it for me’ crap, because if you couldn’t see that coming I’m surprised you haven’t been hit by a bus or two. Back to the movie: now the vampires. Why is it that every time there is a vampire on the screen they have to be hissing or screeching or snarling or any combination of those? Yes they have fangs, but not Down-syndrome; they can close their mouth from time to time. Please. I get tired of just the teeth. C’mon people please get a little more creative. There really is a little more to work with I promise, and it’s not scary- it’s dumb and tacky. The best part of the movie was the ending, and I do not mean that in a negative way. That was clever and an interesting way to end a vampire flick. I really was surprised with that. Not the best however, just different. All in all this was a so-so. Not terrible, but wait for the dollar theatre.

Now I am going to go up and read for the remainder of the evening. I’m still working on Don DeLillo’s Falling Man. It’s pretty good so far, and I enjoy reading him so much I am going to take as long as I can to get through this book. I even read the same paragraph two or three times just for kicks. Its that good. And tomarrow I will be a little busier. Until then folks I leave you with these inspirational words:

“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday” – Anonymous (probably, or maybe I just forgot)

T