Living with the Jungle

<input ... ></input><input ... >Mom and I are *watching* the new "Time Machine," and it's pretty lame as expected. One thing I never understood about "The Time Machine" is why am I supposed to feel like the Morlocks are evil exactly? How is the way they survive any different than what we do now? They aren't even the same race anymore, it can't even be considered cannibalism. Are chimpanzees evil because they eat monkeys?

We weren't paying enough attention to the movie, but here is what wikipedia says about it

" the Time Traveller moves forward in time to find answers to his questions on 'Practical Application of Time Travel;' first in 2030 New York, to witness an orbital lunar catastrophe in 2037, before moving on to 802,701 for the main plot. He later briefly finds himself in 635,427,810 with toxic clouds and a world laid waste (presumably by the Morlocks) with devastation and Morlock artefacts stretching out to the horizon."

OK, so in the movie some of the "Eloi" speak the "ancient language," which is English of course, and there are artifacts from the Brooklyn bridge and the public library. What?? no, seriously, what????? after almost a million years!? And then over 600 million years there are still artifacts from the year 800,000?! geez.

School starts this week, and I am lamenting the time I won't be able to spend on making socks. Turns out I really like knitting socks, a lot :) One of these decades I'll make enough to give 'em out as gifts. I'll have to start going to bed early on sunday nights because I'll be leaving early in the early mornings monday. Bleeeeech. My weekly schedule:

mon:   Go to NYC on 8am train
                 10 am 1 hour meeting w/ patti
                 2pm Speech processing class
                 6:30 Syntax Practicum
tue:     10am teach in the Bronx
                 2pm syntax class
                 take train back up to Poke
wed:   3pm teach in New Paltz
thu:     7pm biweekly colloquium in NYC
fri-sun: time to do homework and catch up on reading and grading! Yey!

Hopefully it won't be as stressful this semester. I am only taking two classes, but I am teaching two classes as well. They are the same class at least, so I won't have to do twice the preparations, just twice the grading.

Wish me luck!

Just came back from Avatar with kels and her dad. Well, sort of her dad, because he ended up giving me his ticket because I am an ass. We agreed to get tickets online so that we would be sure to have a seat. I was trying to convince my dad to come and so put off buying the ticket. By the time it was clear that my dad wasn't going to come the showing was sold out. Kels's dad went to see Sherlock Holmes instead which he says was much better than the previews made it out to be. More mystery and less action-flick.

Avatar was good. A bit silly at times. They thought about a lot of details, and then seemed to forget a bunch that may have been more important. Like, why was it so easy for whatshisface to adapt to the way that the Na'vi avatar breathes, eats, takes a crap (which they never address at all, btw) etc. One would not expect his neural circuits to be automatically in tune with that sort of stuff. Especially since there are extra appendages involved.

Got some jelly bellies from Mr. and Mrs. Joel, thank you! Am enjoying them right this moment.

One more paper to finish by Thursday, and I will make it this time no stress! Whoo!

Also, so far series 4 of Dr. Who is great. But why is Donna always crying?

I had a really lovely weekend, went to the movies with Sarah Cassie Ken and Jason. Saw Ninja Assasins. It was OK. The beginning was incredible, I thought it was going to be great fun. then they spent the next 45 mins with a lot of boring backstory, which was not as fun. Then the end was pretty fun again.

After that I went to Tom and Ilana's where they were hosting an art show. Everything was lovely. I really wanted to buy one of Ilana's paintings. Evan's minimalist video was really neat, I wanted to ask lots of nerdy questions about how it was made, but didn't get a chance. And the other two artists were also very good.

Was supposed to go to NJ Saturday, but it snowed and Dad didn't feel that great, so I stayed home and wrote up my statistics homework instead. Should have read syntax too, but I guess I'll do that now.

This is the last Monday of horribleness this semester. Yey! I have realized that I need to have more people to enjoy the city with before I can feel like it is my own. Hopefully I can build this up next semester.

Tomorrow I will be up in Poughkeepsie because my dad has several important doctor's appointments that my mom wants me to come to. I won't be able to go to them all, but at least I can be there in the morning. I'll be showing my class a video on ape cognition, called Ape Genius. It was really good. I'm being so nice to them, if they just show up to class and answer a couple of questions it will count for 10% of their overall grade. I also gave them the option to do extra credit, but I forgot how many points I told them it would be worth. I hope I said five....

If Diane Kruger grew up in germany, why was I so unsatisfied with her German accent?
I must not be a very good jugde, or perhaps I just don't know enough about different German accents. I'll have to ask my resident German friend. I haven't talked to her in a while anyway.

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We watched flower drum song with psychobirdgirl last night. That movie is horrible! I mean, I know I'm supposed to expect horrible racial and gender stereotypes from a Rodger's and Hammerstein musical, but this was ridiculous! The songs weren't even any good. The libretto was wtf? and the story... ugh. 

see for yourself, song is ZZZZzzzZzzZZZ

School has started, and the new apartment is starting to feel like home. This semester will be hard, but all of my classes are interesting so far. I really don't want my intonation class to be cancelled because it's interesting, and likely the best skills to learn if I don't want an academic job.

These past few days I've been kinda living in a dream-land. I hope I wake up and it's happy when I do.

We just saw Tropic Thunder. It's great offensive fun, And while I understand the whole outrage, I also kinda think the point was something different.

Anyways, I don't really have much else to say. I have Indonesian first thing tomorrow morning. So far I really like it! But when have I ever not liked a language class..... I'm thinking Mrs Mancarella's Spanish class, but that didn't have anything to do with Spanish, but more about how we didn't learn Spanish.