9-28-06

"It's not so bad when people look at their watch. What's bad is when they shake it to see whether it's still going."

-- Professor Oster

9-27-06

I can't seem to get any game right these days. We've been playing Caylus too many ways wrong to elucidate.

9-26-06

I'm taking a poetry workshop this semester. The following comment appeared on a classmate's critique of one of my recent poems:

"The rhyme/meter in your first poem was cute...but now it's a little annoying. No doubt I can appreciate the effort, but try to change up your style a bit."

I'm sure that when Chaucer, the Father of Modern English, the first great poet -- really, the first great writer of any kind -- who wrote in a language which we can recognize today as English, decided to write all of his poetry in rhyme, thousands upon thousands of lines of rhyming iambic couplets (or Rime Royale, which is even harder) -- he was doing it just to be "cute." That clearly was his motivation.

And when Shakespeare, one of the greatest dramatists of all time, decided to write over 150 sonnets in strict iambic pentameter rhyming quatrains, and also to compose the bulk of his legendary dramas in rhyming iambic pentameter, he was just trying to be "cute," too.

Apparently it's irrelevant that nearly all of the greatest poetry ever written, in any era, in any language, on any subject, rhymes.

Today, put rhyme into a poem and that's automatically strike one. In a workshop of thirteen people, I'm the only one who rhymes. And we never talk about the others' decision to write in free verse; no, there's nothing strange about that. But when my poems are critiqued, people don't just point out places where the rhyme is forced, the language is weak, the structure could be improved, etc; they also question whether it is wise of me to be rhyming at all. That's right: people seriously wonder why I am rhyming in a poem.

That's the attitude. I wish I were joking.

As far as poetic talent goes, I'm somewhere around the middle of the class. But just because some of my poems stink, doesn't mean that the rhyme is there because I'm trying to cover up the stench with cheap glitz. The rhyme is there because I'm trying to write poetry. We can debate whether a blue square on a green canvas is art, but a portrait of a woman is clearly art; similarly, we can debate whether free verse is poetry, but something that rhymes (and has meter to boot) is clearly poetry.

I love the workshop, I'm learning a lot, and I get to read a lot of terrific poetry. I'm just surprised, amused, and a little saddened that the presence of rhyme in a poem is now considered STRANGE, whereas a block of ungrammatical, underpunctuated prose chopped up into haphazard lines has somehow become the poetic ideal.

9-25-06

I'm going to grad school for English.

9-24-06

Radio waves don't go through metal.

9-23-06

It would appear that cereal stays crunchy longer in whole milk than in 2%. I do not present this as a fact, however -- merely an impression.

9-22-06

Today Dave and I played the demo for Fuzion Frenzy 2, the sequel to the greatest original game ever made for x-box. (I say "original" because Soul Calibur 2 and Oblivion were both made for other platforms. Halo comes in a distant fourth.) I am sad -- no, astonished, grieved, and heartbroken -- to report that all of the charm, vivacity, and splendor of the original was, on the way to the sequel, stuffed in a moldy trashbag and dumped in a nearby river. The music is no longer punchy and upbeat; the characters have lost all character, having been transformed into lanky generic anime-ish dweebs in multicolored Halo suits; the games are new and different but slow-paced and uninspiring; the guy who yelled "FUZIOOOOOOON FRENZEEEEEEE!!!" is gone. And the demo only includes three games. Three!! Contrast that to the original Fuzion Frenzy demo, which had enough games to actually justify paying money for Halo.

It's still a bunch of mini-games, and maybe some of them are fun, but the spirit of the game, the soul, has been completely ripped out.

9-21-06

In any group of six people, there will always be at least three who either all know each other or don't know each other.

9-20-06

Kevin writes his papers by hand, then types them up.

9-19-06

Lifting weights when you haven't done it in a while and spent the previous Sunday curled up in a ball trying not to vomit, really sucks. I was lifting the equivalent of a chicken feather and two peanut shells on the triceps machine and started huffing and puffing by the second rep. I just hope none of the girls were watching. Or had ears.

9-18-06

My left shoe, it's okay, but the right one, the tongue is always sliding under the laces. I've been screwing with it for ages and it still does that. Last time I buy Sketchers, that's for sure. God damn tongue.

9-17-06

Real-time MST (minimum spanning tree) algorithm with moving balls. Download it here and save it to your desktop before running. Make sure you hit F1 when it starts to see all the options. Comes with Prim's AND Kruskal's algorithm!

9-16-06

There are less than forty black people at Case.

[9-22-06 note: this is horribly, horribly wrong. About 6% of campus is black, which is over 500 people. Thanks to Heather for the catch and correction.]

9-15-06

Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis & Clark fame, committed suicide.

9-14-06

There is a strand of bacteria that resides in eggs and undercooked meat and is invisible to the eye. It causes miscarriages and sterility. Thankfully, only in women.

9-13-06

9-12-06

"To my mind it was like he was raking up diamonds in this very strange vegetable patch." -- Professor Gridley

Ahhhh, poetry teachers.

9-11-06

Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, died last week. He was stabbed in the heart by a stingray.

9-10-06

Learn to Play Bridge. This program is simply amazing -- a must for anyone who wants to stop sucking. You will not BELIEVE the things you could possibly not know about bridge.

9-9-06

It took me almost half an hour to explain the rules for Caylus.

9-8-06

A roll of two threes is called a "hard six."

9-7-06

Gay bathhouses.

9-6-06

The first correct sorting algorithm was not selection sort. It wasn't even bubble sort. It was generate-and-test: arrange the numbers randomly and then see if they're sorted. And if my algorithms professor is to be believed, it took the computer science community five years to come up with this.

9-5-06

One third of the software written for the government is never used.

9-4-06

Older men have a higher chance of fathering autistic children.

9-3-06

Arrow Tag. Fun and simple.

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xkcd. Not sure what it stands for, but it's funny. Don't be discouraged by the fruitcakiness of some of the entries, particularly the early ones -- discounting those, it's a solid comic.

9-2-06

"Märklin", which I'd always pronounced "MAR-klin," is actually pronounced "MARE-klin."

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Our hallway still smells like Cinnabon-blueberry-cheese-flavored vomit.

9-1-06

King George III was not a native speaker of English. He was German.