Hey kids. And/or cockroaches. Yes, cockroaches. Further questions will result in instantaneous death.

So anyways. Stuff happened this week. Got an A on my Microeconomics midterm. W00t.

And... I'm going to be a rent-a-cop for Halloween! It's totally going to kick ass! The shirt cost me a gagillion dollars, but on each sleeve it says "HAWK ONE SPECIAL POLICE" which kicks ass.

And... hell, that's all I've got for now. Had more, but I think I lost it while commenting. Damn. Oh well, I'll try to get back to you fellows quickly.

Hasta la byebye.

All right, so I'm just a little bit of a dumbass. I post this thing about comments and all that rot... and then I don't comment. Oh yeah. I love being fucking hypocritical. But I have an excuse!

No. Not really.

But I figure that I'll try to make up for it now with some kickass blogging followed by some kickass commenting. I shall now speed through what I remember of the time interval that you have no heard from my sonorous voice.

Well, I went to my aunt's house last weekend. It was Parents' Weekend over this way, where all the kids whose parents live within one thousand miles of DC have their parents come and visit. I definitely preferred hanging out with my aunt.

Her boyfriend-thing (I'm not sure what to call him, really) Carl was there too. And he's quite cool as well. The three of us really had a good time that weekend, which we filled up with very little when I come to think of it--all we did was go to the restaurant that my aunt's ex-husband (or my ex-uncle?) owns and watched The Motorcycle Diaries (which featured the lead fellow from Y Tu Mama Tambien as Che Guevara). It's the only movie I've seen recently, but it was definitely worth going to. Cantay says WATCH, BITCHES.

So that weekend was cool; did lots of chillaxing. Then I came back to school and got back into frantic mode.

Tuesday was lots of fun, though, I must say. It was Late Night with the President where all the freshman halls get together and try to win a free dinner for themselves with the school's president by bringing in the largest proportion of residents.

But before any of that actually started, there was a bit of a fiasco.

In Lafayette (the name of my hall) we have one elevator, and it's quite small. We often attempt to cram as many people as we can in there (I think the record is 11 for an elevator that's about the size of two telephone booths) because we all love each other and it's great fun.

Well, this Late Night with the President thing was at the Marvin Center, which is this very large building that everything seems to take place in. We had to head up to the fifth floor.

There were a lot of us waiting for one of three elevators. When one came, everyone rushed towards it. These elevators were much larger than the one we had in Lafayette, so we were very excited to try to set an impossible record at the Marvin Center. I was one of the first ones in, so I got squished back to the wall, but even so I, along with just about everyone else, encouraged as many people as possible to get in.

It was great, let me tell you.

Until the elevator started slowly moving down before the doors fully closed. That was kind of scary. It really didn't help that we were packed in there like sardines.

Needless to say, we soon settled safely at the bottom of the elevator shaft, but we were trapped for somewhere between fifteen and thirty minutes--I really don't know which it was because I hadn't the ability to look at my watch.

I recommend that you guys never try to do that. It kind of got extremely hot and this one fellow said "SHUT UP!" every five seconds or so. Not too pleasant.

It was great when the fire department came, though. They broke us out pretty quickly and we all climbed out. One fellow waited back and counted everyone as they came out. There were 31 of us in there, all from Lafayette, thankfully.

Sadly, we didn't win the competition for free food when we got up to the 5th floor. It wasn't because we were late (we actually had left our hall really early), just because damn Mitchell Hall was somehow able to scrounge up a large proportion of its population.

But it was fun. I got to use my cheerleader skills again as I screamed along with about seven other guys that were trying to be very loud. Chants of "GPA not STDs" and "It's not Woodstock" (the Mitchellians had brought a band) still ring through my mind, and I can still feel the pain in my throat that lasted until Thursday. I also got a very strange, gruff voice because of that. Much lower and much sexier than my normal voice, apparently. It's gone now, though. I think I want it back.

Wednesday was pretty uneventful, except for the fact that I missed my Comparative Politics class.

I'd set my alarm for 8:05, and it woke me up at 8:05. I turned it off and stayed in bed for a second to get my bearings. When I turned around to check my clock again, it was 10:21. I went ahead and slept through to about 12:20, which was probably for the best, really. I had a 5-7 page paper that was due the next day for my Proseminar. I stayed up until 3:30 finishing it up. I doubt I would have managed what little coherence I had if I were more sleep-deprived.

And I just got back from my only class of the day, which was Microeconomics. Normally I have Comparative Politics in the morning, but the professor is conducting a symposium that lasts more or less the whole day. So I haven't had any Comparative Politics this week. Which sort of sucks cause I like that class.

Oh, and there's a very funky smell in the little hallway from which you can get to my room or my suitemates' room. We're not entirely sure what it is--it sort of smells like rancid butter. And burning incense only makes it much worse. Thankfully, a girl from the 8th floor was kind enough to give us her Oust! air sanitizer stuff, so we're using that.

And that's all I've got for now. I really don't like it when I feel obligated to sum up events so quickly and so poorly as I did now, but alas... this happens when you do not blog.

Ah well, good day my little cockroaches. Hasta la byebye.

Bon apres-midi, mes etudiants. Ajourd'hui, nous allons racler le chewing-gum du trotoir.

So anyways, hello again everyone, for another pre-French edition of Hasta la Byebye, the reality show that you can't be quite sure is a reality show. Perhaps it's a sitcom? Or maybe a made-for-TV movie? No, my friends. It is indeed a reality show, and we're in our second season. As is the case with all kickass television shows like Survivor and CSI, we also move around with the new season, so our new name is Hasta la Byebye: Washington DC. Don't like it? Then you're not cool. Suck a lemon, bitch.

I had my Comparative Politics midterm today. It'll probably be my lowest midterm grade unless Professor Jouejati decides that he really likes my confused (and confusing) writing style. But that lowest grade would be a B. At the lowest. I really don't get why everyone is worrying about these midterm things so much. They're so damned easy. Even the honors classes (of which Comparative Politics is one) are like little slabs of cake.

French, however.

French is a massive chunk of cake. Obscenely large. Like a massive star, except it's cake. I might just get sick that it's so huge. Our oral portion was yesterday, and I didn't do particularly hot on it--mostly because I tried to answer the questions in detail when a simple "yes, I have two sisters" would do. But even though I wasn't particularly hot, I was still pretty hot, and probably hot enough to get an easy A on the midterm when the written part comes around tomorrow.

Man, but I'm glad that I don't hate midterms. Hell, I really like them. I like them a lot more than papers especially; for two honors classes, we're going to end up having term papers instead of final exams. Which sucks. Comparative Politics is 10 pages or so, my Proseminar is 5-7. De-bloody-lightful. And I have another Proseminar paper of 5-7 that I have to do by Thursday. Bah, I say. Bah.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm really worried. Not about my grades or about school or anything. No, I'm worried about the water. At least three times a day I refill my one-litre water bottle at the drinking fountain, knowing that there have been multiple articles about the copious amounts of lead found in the tap water across the country. Especially in DC.

And my stomach always gets unhappy when I drink that water too much. It just sort of aches for a few minutes, then takes care of itself. So. I guess I hope I don't have lead poisoning yet.

But that's not going to change the fact that I'm going to the water fountain every day for my water supply. Hell if I'm going to pay for water. I've got a small backup stash in case of emergencies, but I refuse to actually use it. Is this a good idea? Saving about $100 this year by getting my water from the fountain? In the long term, probably not. Unfortunately, I don't care enough to let it stop me just yet. Let's hope that my stomach complains a bit more, eh?

And with that, I bid you a good afternoon. Hasta la byebye, senoritos.

Today we play our final game of the season in soccer. So far we're 2-2, and a win will get us into the playoffs. I have vowed to play the best game of my life today, and I plan to rally our defense, which leads the league in goals allowed. And yeah. That is kind of embarrassing to admit.

But there was more that I wished to write.

It's depressing, you know, when you say something that you think is profound; when you say something that you want people to respond to, but you don't get much of anything. I'm very good at setting myself up for that, these days. Perhaps someday I'll figure out why I seem to do it so often, or why it feels like I'm doing it so often. Ah, the joys of psychology.

But yeah. I really like to get comments about those sorts of things, you know? I mean, I imagine that it'd be awkward much of the time, and sometimes you don't really have anything to say. This I know. But it does make me feel better to get something.

And no, I'm naturally not addressing just you folks, my dear audience. I'm talking about a few other things as well. But you are my audience, and small though you may be, every so often I want to hear more than one or two individuals speaking up.

I don't do a great job of commenting all the time myself, and often times when I do comment, I leave something ridiculous or short. But the way I see it, we would make these blogs private if we didn't want people to look at them; you wouldn't know turkman.blogspot.com existed unless I wanted you to read what you found here.

And I don't know how you guys feel about having comments on the blogs you deem important, but I know that for myself, when I write something that's more than simple, I like to see my comments box filling.

That is all. Hasta la byebye.

UPDATE:

Yep. Well, we didn't present my new script today either. Because my professor is evil, and felt the need to teach us about à and de. Again.

Goif.

And in other news, Pink Floyd's song Time. I used to hate it with a passion, but for some reason, I'm really starting to like it (though Comfortably Numb and Us and Them still trump it nicely). One of these days I should go out and get Dark Side of the Moon. And The Wall. I don't care if The Wall is lame. I like it, bitches. I also ought to pick up Wish you Were Here and Animals. Hell, Pink Floyd rocked in the 70s--after Syd Barrett left and before Roger Waters did.

For Halloween, I'm thinking of being Goatman. Creative, yes? All I need is a good mask and good horns and good hooves. And perhaps even some white body paint. Man, that would be so hawt.

Oh, and I figure that while I'm feeling crazy (French does this to a fellow), I'll make a rather impromptu declaration. I, ladies and gentlemen, am a furry. This can't surprise you too much if you know what a furry is and if you've been around me for more than five minutes. If you don't know what a furry is, here are some excerpts of definitions extracted from the Urban Dictionary:

Possibly the strangest sub-culture in all of geekdom. Furries range from being harmless fans fascinated by anthropomorphic characters and animals, to immensely withdrawn or self-abosrbed persons who actually believe, or want to believe, they're eagle-winged fox-like versions of themselves with giant genitalia who wouldn't dare be anything else that could be considered mundane. Furries defy any coventional or unifying definition.

The above is actually the harshest definition that you can find on the first page of entries (Urban Dictionary carries 37 for "furry"), but I think it hits it about right. I don't quite envision myself as an eagle-winged-fox with giant genitalia, but I can't really say I'm merely "fascinated" by anthropomorphic animals (you know, animals that walk and talk and such). Really, what furry means to me is damn near impossible to define, but there's more to it than meets the eye.

For one, I don't really believe I'm a goat. I'm clearly not. Nor would I be able to actually communicate with any goat I met better than the average fellow. I guess I sort of draw similarities between goats and myself and also just generally feel goaty. And I haven't always felt this way; I mean, it was only relatively recently that I really identified myself as a furry in general, and even more recently that I identified myself as a goat. But even after the eighteen months or so, I still can't properly define it--not even for myself.

And that's the best I can put out, really. It's not like it's a dominating personality trait. I just talk about goats. A lot.

But yeah. Just thought I'd say that, partly because I felt it needed to be clarified, and partly because--sadly enough--this entry needed something to weigh it down a bit. I really hate it when my thoughts and feelings of the day aren't enough to accomplish that.

So anyways, goat power and hasta la byebye, folks.

It's quick and dirty bloggin' time!

All right, so, French sucks. French sucks interminable amounts of ass. Interminable amounts of hot, sweaty ass. Can you imagine that? Sucking an interminable amount of interminably hot and sweaty ass? I don't think you can. It's like the fucking Holocaust. You can't really understand it until you've lived it. And I'm living it now, bitches!

What's my problem, you ask? Jesus, it's so fucking boring! I want to gouge my eyes out with the broaches I pulled from my dead wife/mother's fresh corpse! I want to drink absinthe! Gallons and gallons of absinthe just to stop the pain! I want to send the world into a never-ending nuclear winter so I could have an excuse to miss class!

Okay, okay. So it's not that bad.

It's still pretty bad though. And the professor doesn't speak English very well at all, which always complicates matters when the extent of my French knowledge is something along the lines of voulez-vous cucher avec moi?

I mean, I'm acing the class and everything, but I feel my peers' pain every day when I'm in there, because a lot of them just don't get what the hell is going on.

To digress a bit, I have to say that in some respects this makes me happy, while in others it makes me sad. Now, contrary to popular belief, I don't really enjoy human suffering that much. I'm not a misanthrope or anything... really. I'm not. But despite that, it does make me feel better when I can think arrogantly to myself, "I am smater than these guys." At the same time, though, it's somewhat frustrating to feel like I'm right back in high school, mixing with the common element. It sounds elitist and it is, but a small part of the reason I came to GW was to escape the intellectual inferiority of those around me. Smart people make me happy; they allow my mind to grow and they make classes more fun, whereas people who are not as smart tend to make classes move with agonizing slowness and sort of make me want to fall asleep.

This doesn't really make too much difference in French, of course, because the class would be boring whether I wanted it to be or not.

I just sort of wish our professor spoke English--you know, fluently.

And now I'd best be off to that dear class. Earlier than usual, since I have to stop by a computer lab and get a script printed out. Did I mention that I did the same thing yesterday only to not use it since halfway through the class, the professor decided to start teaching a lesson and told us that she would give us a new assignment of a similar sort. What makes it much worse is that she'd forgotten to give it to us by the end of class, and just as we were leaving, I made the dreadful mistake of asking what the assignment would be. Everyone immediately groaned and the professor rifled through her papers, grateful to be reminded.

I don't enjoy the suffering of others, really. I don't. Just myself. Masochism is so fucking underrated. Hasta la byebye, kiddies.

"You're in German? Which one?"

"German 9."

"Oh really? I was going to be in Spanish 9..."

"But you didn't take it?"

"No... I was going to, but I couldn't take it for credit cause I placed out, so... Oh hey, I'm #356!"

And with that, we said goodbye, I took my spicy chicken sandwich combo from Wendy's and walked away. As I made the short walk back to Lafayette, I realized that I sounded like an incredible ass. "I placed out, biatch! I was too good for it!" That's probably what it sounded more like. And you guys know very well that if I think it sounds assholerrific, then it must be really assholerrific.

I decided I'd tell you guys about it here. That I sounded like an asshole. While getting my brunch (it was at about 11).

Also, you wouldn't believe this, but... my parental units took a look at this blog. They left no commentary about my kickass writing style; no no. They looked at it and said "OMG CNATAY FEL DOWN TEH STRAS! OMGOMGOMGOMG! WE HVAE TOO CALL HIM!!!!!11111"

So then they called me, sounding really pissed off because we'd talked recently and I'd mentioned nothing about getting severely injured on the stairs. I had to explain to them in the middle of my game of LOTR Risk on Sunday night that I was actually perfectly all right, and that the blog was a hoax.

They were, of course, resistant to the idea that it wasn't real, especially since my dad (who was perusing the internet and decided to search for this site I'd mentioned) went down and woke up my mom to show her.

See, the funny thing about this is that my dad actually sent a letter to his parents when he was at Ohio State saying that he had just joined a cult and that it was great. At the bottom of the letter, he wrote "saka", which essentially translated in that sense to "just kidding". Somehow, his parents completely missed that final word, and when they sent a letter in response, they tried to gently convince him to find new friends. Only when my dad sent back another letter saying that he was joking did they actually believe him.

So I guess it's genetic or something. I can just see it now... my son will publish his journals someday, and I, a crotchety old dictator, will read that he was maliciously raped all throughout college by the mean boys across the hall, and then I will go to great pains to exterminate those boys and their families before reading that it was all just a joke. Man, it'll be great!

That provided me with some nice laughter, the whole episode did, I have to say.

What sort of sucked was when my mom called on Tuesday or Wednesday, though. She apparently had looked at the blog as well, and became extremely worried that I was unhappy because I was considering transfer to Texas. She left a cryptic message on my phone saying to call her immediately. I was under the assumption that someone died or that my dad had been laid off or something, judging by the grave tone of her voice, but no. No, it was just that she thought I might have been unhappy because I was considering a transfer.

Damn it! I would have consulted her on the matter if I began to actually formulate some sort of decision, but there was no reason for her to know I was uncertain of myself unless said uncertainty continued to manifest within me. All it could possibly do is make her worried. I put it here so that for the future I could look back and say "so this is about when it started" and so that you folks could see; so that I wouldn't explode by keeping my ideas to myself.

::Sigh:: But she saw it and got worried.

Oh well, I'm going to hold them to their word--the one that said they wouldn't seek this place out again. Doesn't mean they won't read it, necessarily, but I hope they'll respect me enough to refrain from opening my life for their own perusal frequently.

For the not-so-subtle part of the hint (should they be reading), if you read, don't ever take action based on what you see. Discuss it with me if you want, but be prepared for me to not be thrilled about it. And that's all I have to say about that.

In other news, I'm still listening to The Strokes. Obsessively. Go figure.

Oh, and lots of folks here say Kerry won the debate. I rub my chin and wonder. He certainly didn't lose, but he didn't make any stunning victory either--the polls themselves show that even if my perception is off.

But it's a good start, says I.

But 2024. That's the year, guys. The year we won't have to settle for good starts, but rather will expect huge blowouts. The year that the American public will find their perfect president (and eventual benevolent dictator). People will give a hearty fuck you to democracy and appoint me their benevolent dictator. We won't need polls, and the debates will always result in a resounding victory for me.

It will be grand!

Hasta la byebye! Viva la revolución!