Formerly Felines for Anarchistic Green Democracies

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Tuesday, September 28, 2004  
Wow. I just 'watched' tonight's Red Sox game by staring at the mlb.com Gamecast thing, and hanging out in the mlb.com Red Sox chatroom, bugging people into telling me what was going on. And I kind of enjoyed it. If I hadn't gone over the edge before, I surely have now.

Greenwell, MountainMan, Schi, NYRedSox, Strechii, Kapluver, wherever you all are, thanks for making my day just that much weirder. But weirder in a good way.

Best moment of the game: Kevin Millar hits the ball in the 11th that would ultimately give us the win. The following all came up at once.

greenwell: MILLAH!
BostonFanInMichigan: MILLAH!
KapLuver10: MILLAH!
MountainMan: MILLAH!
strechii: MILLAH!

It was truly a thing of beauty.

Also, this guy put my 'Keep the Faith... and we'll fly' animation up on his blog. Score. The anim can be found here, if you missed it before.

Bio lab this morning was awesome. We spent the entire 3 hours IDing mammal skulls. I went into paroxysms of glee. See, I could immediately identify the oppossum skull all on my lonesome, because of the large interparietal crest. That sort of thing makes me happy, OK? And I got a nice sketch of an amia ('tis a kind of fish) skull. The rough bit is that we have about 75 distinct bones to memorize for next Tuesday, and that's just on skulls. It'll be interesting to see how they expect us to survive once we get into actual skeletons or, god forbid, muscles.

The best bit of the lab was that our GSI was taking care of a rabbit for one of his friends. He didn't want to leave the rabbit alone for 3 hours, so HE BROUGHT IT TO LAB. Since we weren't dissecting anything today and the rabbit was litter trained, HE LET IT RUN FREE IN THE ROOM. It was a specially bred pet breed of rabbit, so it had fur that was chinchilla-soft. Oh man. I was all over the damn rabbit. I pet the rabbit. I fed the rabbit lettuce. I cuddled the rabbit. I watched the rabbit. I pet the rabbit some more. That rabbit made my week.

It got very cold all of a sudden. It was in the 70s yesterday, and today it's suddenly dropping into the low 40s at night. I admit that I like this weather a whole heck of a lot better than the heat, but it does make waiting for the bus a bit more of a chore.

I got up north for lecture tonight about half an hour early, because I had nothing else to do and wanted to beat rush hour for busing purposes. I was just planning on grabbing some sugar and sitting on one of the art school couches with a sketchbook until class started, but I ran into Emily, so I went and sat in a vacant classroom with her, Brandon, and Greg. They had ordered Tio's delivery. I didn't realize that Tio's delivered to North Campus. Apparently it did take an hour, but that's still surprising. I'm a little wary of Tio's meat products, but their nachos are really quite ace.

I actually could go for some Tio's nachos right now, but No! BAD FelineAnarchist! Bad! Too close to intended bed time! Maybe this weekend if you're good.

And thusly I depart.

10:57 PM

Monday, September 27, 2004  
Drawing homework for this weekend was 'texture'. I know the professor probably thinks she's being nice by giving us NO GUIDELINES WHATSOEVER when it comes to homework, but, I don't know. I guess I sometimes wish I had a little more direction.

For instance, a little more instruction as to what I had to draw might have stopped me from making the dire mistake of thinking, in my little brain, "Ooo! Texture. What has texture? Really horny and scaly lizards have texture! I'll draw a horned lizard! All will be well in the drawing world!"

Two Micron pens, 8 hours (although admittedly some of those were spent half drawing and half watching the Red Sox game), and some very blurry eyes later, I have created Horny Lizard. In pen. With texture. And it is good. Sort of.

The thing is that I know at least one of my classmates is going to come into class tomorrow morning and pin up on the wall a little drawing done in smudgy pencil that visibly and inarguably took them 5 minutes before class to do.

And this is all because my own damn conscience, or artistic temper, or whatever the hell you want to call it, simply will not let me get away with a little scrawly drawing if I get an idea and have enough time to execute it. Fuck you, work ethic. Get out of my head.

Because, you see, I got the lizard done, but not the lab report for Tuesday, or the CFC work for Tuesday. Which means tomorrow night is going to be splendid. Sigh.

Lions lost, I don't want to talk about it. When Harrington took off with the ball and it just squirted out of his hand.... oh dear. *think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts*

Red Sox won, last night and today, and it was good. It was beautiful. It was Yankees smack-down. I could go through and name every guy on this team whom I love right now, but it would be most of the team. Schilling... you are a Good Human Being. And your little screaming fit at Butch Stearns made my month. Maybe my semester. Pedro Astacio.... you threw at a Yankee. Naughty. No dessert, but you're secretly the kid we love anyways. You endearing little rascal you *insert virtual indulgent chuck under the chin here*

However. "What can I say -- just tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy? I can't find a way to beat them at this point. ... They're that good. They're that hot right now -- at least against me. I wish they would disappear and not come back... It's just frustrating for me not to do the job. It was all me. I wanted to bury myself on that mound.'' This is what Pedro said after the first homegame of this series, which we lost, and which he had been pitching. Thank you Pedro. Because Red Sox nation needed to hear you say that the Yankees are your daddy. At least the Boston Dirt Dogs are finding a cynical kind of humor in the thing. I mean. Fer crissakes. Even when Lowe loses it he just gets all redfaced and weepy-eyed. At least he doesn't lie down and present his proverbial soft underside to the toothy jaws of the enemy. Is that even a proverb? I don't think I care at this point. On to happier things. We won two out of three! Yay! We've got an upcoming series with Tampa Bay, yay! We finish the regular season against the Orioles, oh-dear-god-don't-think-about-it-don't-think-about-it.

Michigan beat Iowa pretty badly (or well, if you take it that way) on Saturday, much to my delight, starving though I was at the time. We looked much more dominant than we had in past games. It's entirely possible that our rocky start was mostly due to our young (actual freshman!) quarterback and his undeveloped relationship with some of the veterans on the team. Hopefully all that is starting to get smoothed out and will be resolved by the time the Michigan State and Ohio State games roll around. Notre Dame has been cleaning up like mad, so I suppose we shouldn't feel too bad.

In case anyone feels like tormenting Dave a little, you can note the fact that Northwestern got destroyed by (wait for it... wait for it...) the Golden Gophers of Wisconsin. Snicker. I'm sorry, but if the team is named 'the Golden Gophers' I just can't take them all that seriously, no matter how good at football they are. Syracuse got slapped by Virginia, so I guess I can laugh at Jason too.

If anyone else's school had a football game this weekend, I am unaware of it, because I don't keep track of all your schools in your PUNY LITTLE LOSER DIVISIONS. Ha ha. I'm lookin' at you, Division 3 schools! And yeah, Pac-10, I don't want to hear it. Big 10 or bust, and don't give me any of that 'no offense' nonsense. I sing 'Hail to the Victors' in your general direction.

Good lord. There goes my nice idea of going to sleep early. Urp. Good night, kids. I will close with some quotes from a conversation I had with Matt last night (AIM names changed to protect the allegedly innocent).

Excelsior (12:47:45 AM): cuz of mcgreeevy
TheFeline (12:47:50 AM): who?
Excelsior (12:47:53 AM): gov of jn
TheFeline (12:47:54 AM): oh, the guy who resigned
Excelsior (12:47:55 AM): nh
Excelsior (12:47:56 AM): nh
Excelsior (12:47:58 AM): nj
TheFeline (12:48:00 AM): ha ha

Excelsior (12:48:36 AM): read the nytimes
Excelsior (12:48:36 AM): its good shit
Excelsior (12:49:05 AM): yaeeeah
Excelsior (12:49:07 AM): hootye
Excelsior (12:49:22 AM): mfuecher

TheFeline (12:58:10 AM): wait.
TheFeline (12:58:18 AM): you went out and got drunk AFTER fasting all day??
Excelsior (12:58:21 AM): yeah
Excelsior (12:58:22 AM): bad
Excelsior (12:58:24 AM): hahe
TheFeline (12:58:24 AM): oh man
TheFeline (12:58:26 AM): no wonder




1:15 AM

Saturday, September 25, 2004  
OK, I wrote this while watching the Sox/Yankees game tonight. Decided to take a page from East Coast Agony's books. It's mostly about baseball, although there's other stuff sprinkled in there, and hopefully even the baseball will be somewhat interesting to those who aren't particularly into baseball. I started it in the 3rd inning, just because. It's a bit... long.

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

3rd, A Rod was OUT at third, but called in. I cry. I rant. I gibber and curse and maybe send some extra anger out towards A Rod’s metrosexual highlights. I mean, really. They’re making fun of Bronson's hair? Those things look they came out of a Loreal box.

The announcers (Dave O’Brian and Gary Miller, I think... feel free to email me a correction if I'm wrong) are talking about how utterly different the Red Sox and Yankees bullpens are. The Sox ‘pen is apparently ‘a party’, while the Yanks ‘pen is ‘all business’. Does this adversely affect our playing? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it’s even good for us, I don’t know enough about baseball to say. But I think that I prefer our ragged team of individual heroes over the coldly mechanical stoicism of the Yankees. If winning comes at the price of losing our team’s spirit, I’ll take the loss and keep the team, thanks.

Youkilis and Kapler are both available to play over Yom Kippur which I suppose it a good thing. Big props to Sean Green of the Dodgers, though. It’s the holiest freaking day of the Jewish year, and people are jumping all over the poor guy for refusing to play on Saturday. Would anyone complain if there was a Christmas game and all the Christian players refused to take the field? I think not. It’s not as though

OH FUCK YES MANNY HOMERUN TO RUN HIMSELF IN AND ALSO BELLHORN WHO WAS ON FIRST OH HELL YES TAKE SOME O' THAT MUSSINA!

Sorry. It’s not as though Green is trying to get out of playing, or is taking off for a minor holiday, like Chanukah or Sukkot. Yom Kippur is a big, big deal, and good for him, making the choice to place faith over baseball for one night. I fail to see why people are having such a problem with this.

4th. Millar’s facial hair has taken on a hideous life of its own and must be stopped now, before it takes over the world and destroys all of civilization. Johnny Damon can wear his beard with a certain amount of bearish dignity, but Millar looks like he’s cultivating a severed squirrel tail on his chin. Aaaaand he flies out.

TROT NIXON HOMERUN! I love that sound. You know the one. The sound where all of Fenway leaps to its collective feet, screaming, fists pumping in the air. I swear sound reverberates differently in Fenway. Maybe it’s the Green Monster acting as a barrier to sound waves, sending them rolling back around the park for a second run. Then again, maybe I’m full of shit and just like hearing my team play in their own park.

Ha ha, the announcers show the clip of Cabrera’s winning homerun from Wednesday night. Apparently when Cabrera rounded the plates and was mobbed by the team at home, someone (he suspects Manny) tried to ‘pants’ him. Hee hee hee. Although the announcer keeps saying ‘depants’, which I’m pretty sure is not the accepted term. I love this team.

5th. Ooo, that little update thing just ran along the bottom of the screen. Apparently Ricky Williams is going to have to pay the Dolphins 8.something million for violating his contract and, essentially, screwing the entire offensive half of the team. Small consolation, but I guess the Dolphins will take whatever positive scrap they can get out of Williams’ bizarre and devastating desertion.

Man, I hate the way Sheffield bats. That whole rapid-fire ‘wappita wappita wappita’ thing he has going on with the bat, keeping it in constant motion before the pitch arrives, is really annoying. Apparently it works, at least sometimes (not this at-bat though, heh), but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Bellhorn walks again. Hm. That’ll bring Manny up in a minute, as soon as ESPN decides to stop telling us about the use of instant replay in the Wisconsin game tomorrow. Frelling Badgers or whatever they are. *takes a moment to picture a whole school full of Hufflepuffs*

Wow, Manny’s helmet is filthy. Does he not clean it as a good luck thing, or can they just not get the dirt off? You can barely see the B. LINE DRIVE FOR MANNY, Bellhorn to third, sweeeeet. Ortiz coming up. I do so enjoy the Manny-Ortiz combination in our lineup. Oh well, nothing happened. Would’ve been nice to drive in Bellhorn at least and widen our lead a little.

6th. Took a bathroom break. I came back just in time to see Trot Nixon come loping across the outfield to twist, dive, and catch the ball in a fairly spectacular out. The brim and front of his hat are both white with field paint now. We’re glad you’re back, Trot. We sure are glad.

Bollocks. Run in to score on a sacrifice fly. Bollocks. Game tied up at 3 now. Bollocks. We should’ve gotten in Bellhorn last inning.

Cabrera scoops one up that went down the center line, shoots to first, batter out, and that makes 3. OK. So they tied it up. We’re batting now, it’s not the end of the world. There’s still an awful lot of game left to play.

I hate those new Las Vegas ads. ‘What happens here, stays here.’ So you can have a week of bacchanalia, prodigal spending, sybaritic and fleshly pleasures and it’s all OK! That’s what Vegas is here for, kids! You can break any law you please, because if it happens in Vegas, it stays here. What a moronic ad campaign.

Millar hits one high off the Monster, looks to be a double, then Matsui throws it out of left field and gets Millar out at second. Woah. They just showed the slow-motion replay. Millar was apparently tagged directly on his groin. *waggles eyebrows suggestively* That sucks, get a double taken away from you on your birthday, and get tagged out in the nads to boot.

7th. Cabrera makes another lovely snatch of the ball at short and zips it along to first for the out. I haven’t missed Nomar since I came to school.

Followed by a base hit for Jeter, putting him firmly on first. Meh. Not the the end of the world, not the end of the world. Frelling Jeter. So wrong in so many ways. Is he the one who said he got a sort of masochistic pleasure out of playing in Boston where everyone hates him? Hoo, A Rod pulls one way up but just foul. My heart didn’t stop just then or anything, honest.

Seventh inning stretch. I’ll take the time to put some more detail in the ink drawing I’ve got going of the lamprey dissection we did in this week’s lab. It’s a bit difficult, since I’m working from scrawled notes, a really atrocious pencil sketch, and my own memory. I’ve got the middle bit down OK, but the head end, especially right around the esophageal area is giving me all kinds of issues.

Tom ‘Flash’ Gordon in, pitching for the Yankees. Cabrera gunned down by A Rod from over at third. The announcers think he’s showing off, since he waited so long before grabbing the ball and sending it along.

JOHNNY DAMON SENDS A HOMERUN INTO THE CROWD! SKOW! SHAZAM! BOSTON TAKES THE LEAD, 4-3!

Ah, the flowing locks of Johnny Damon, fanning out behind him as he trots around the bases. It is a happy, happy sight to see.

8th. FUCK. Matsui ties it right back up. BUGGERATION. Pedro closes his eyes in momentary agony. BUGGERATION AGAIN. I DON’T LIKE YOU, MATSUI. I DON’T LIKE YOU ONE BIT.

FUCK. Bernie Williams with a ground-rule double. MORE BUGGERATION.

FUCK. Yankees take the lead 5-4. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. Francona wanders out in his red nightshirt to pull Pedro, who simply stares at the Green Monster, refusing to look round a moment before he absolutely has to. He walks off to cheers from the crowd, who aren’t pleased with Francona’s choice here. We’ll have to see. It may not be wise to put the game in the occasionally palsied hands of Embree right now, but then again Pedro did just give up a few things in rapid succession. Embree has a massive wad of something in his cheek, making him look like a little like a retarded chipmunk.

So long as he doesn’t bring in Kim again, I’m willing to reserve judgement on Francona until the end of the game.

Hup, Embree out and Timlin in. The camera zooms in on the evilly-formed nose of Joe Torre. His Yankees hat overshadows his eyes, making him look some kind of cartoon villain. I mean, honestly. We don’t even need to help his image along any, he looks like that on his own.

Zut. Timlin walks Cairo. Jeter up to bat with runners on first and third. Boos fill the park, as no one likes Jeter and
OH MY GOD BALL GETS AWAY FROM VARITEK SIERRA RUNS FOR HOME VARITEK FLIPS THE BALL TO TIMLIN WHO TAGS HIM OUT AT HOME BY ESSENTIALLY GETTING HIS HAND STEPPED-ON BUT THE DUDE IS OUT phew, thank cats. Bottom of the 8th coming up.

Manny out, Ortiz out. Erk. And there goes Millar. Aargh.

9th. IF THOSE FRELLING TRUCKS OUTSIDE DON’T STOP WITH THE SQUEAKY AIR BRAKES, I AM GOING TO THROW SOMETHING OUT THE WINDOW AT THEM. SOMETHING HEAVY AND DESTRUCTIVE, LIKE A BOWLING BALL OR A LARGE, WEIGHTED KNIFE. I HATE THIS CONSTRUCTION.

Two down in the 9th. C’mon Timmy. Sheffield up. Strike one. Strike two. Both looking. Hoo boy. Crowd is up and cheering. Aargh, line drive base hit. Mneh. Timlin grimaces and mouths the word ‘Damn!’ Only a single, could’ve been a lot worse. Don’t beat yourself up, Timmy, we still need you.

Full count on Matsui, two out, Williams on deck. I begin to hyperventilate. SHIT BALL HIT TO BASE OF THE WALL IN LEFT, MANNY CAN’T DEAL WITH IT HANDILY, SHEFFIELD IN TO SCORE. 6-4, Yankees. Jeter throws his despicable little first up in the air while A Rod claps sycophantically next to him, gazing upwards from underneath his lightly gelled coiffure. Matsui on second. This is NOT happening.

Matsui is really ugly. I can see how people could consider A Rod attractive, if you approach him from a purely aesthetic standpoint and ignore his evilness. But Matsui is just plain ugly. Damon catches a fly to get the Yankees out. OK. Bottom 9. Three runs to win it, boys. Do me proud. Please.

I like the ad for GMC trucks, where they have the crumpled up bits of metal car frames flying through the air and landing in a field. Then they cut to a guy at a drawing board, balling up a sketch and tossing it into an overflowing trash can, which fast-cuts to another piece of scrap metal (analogous to the discarded sketches, see) landing on a pile of twisted steel. Cool. Good job, GMC art department, the Feline Anarchist approves.

Mariano Rivera walks Nixon. Sweet. Kapler in to pinch-run. Varitek up. Can’t breathe. Kind of want something to chew on, other than my fingers, but the sun has been down for a while now and it’s Yom Kippur, so that means no eating. Fingers it is.

FUCK FUCK FUCK VARITEK FLOBBERS IT TO RIVERA, DOUBLE PLAY MADE, TWO OUTS ON THE SOX. The crowd is noticeably subdued. Yeah, well, so am I.

Cabrera dumps it the to right, kicked to the wall by the fielder, he gets a double. Bill Mueller up. Oh lawdy. Bill Mueller has good facial hair. See, Millar, take a look at it. That is an acceptable goatee. That is an attractive goatee. Yours is not. Mueller hits a ball just barely foul along the line, giving me a heart attack.
SHIT and that’s the game. There goes the AL East. Shittocks. What a waste of a Friday night. I guess it’s off to finish that lamprey drawing.

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

That said, I somehow don't feel as bad about this loss as I did about the losses to the Orioles. I mean, it's the Yankees. This is expected. And I feel like we played a good game, all things considered. They may have played a better game, but we were respectable. The postseason could be OK.



The Michigan/Iowa game tomorrow is at 3:30, which is nice because I had assumed it was at noon. Sweet. Sleep. Maybe even laundry. Although that probably won't get done until Sunday. I know it seems as though Michigan is having a 'rebuilding' year, but I would still like to beat Iowa. I'm watching BYU/Boise State right now, because it was on ESPN after the Sox game. The field is bright blue. It is very disconcerting.

Can I just say that I have the best mother ever? She sends me food packages at school. Clearly I am a lucky, lucky person.

I just glanced down at the lamprey, and it looks a horrible lot like a dissected phallus. Oh dear. Will go try to rectify this unfortunate resemblance with the magic of Excessive Shading. Sorry these have been very sporty posts lately, but I just can't help myself. G'night, kids.

12:35 AM

Friday, September 24, 2004  
They're trying to kill me. They're. Actually. Trying. to kill me.

I'm not talking about the art school, although I very well could be (class 1:30 to 4:30 on North campus, 5-6:30 on Central, 7:30-9 back on North... this is when you often need half an hour to get from one campus to another... what were they thinking??). No. I am not talking about the University bus system, although they've changed the schedule so that there aren't enough buses at rush hours now, making them hellish to ride. No, I am not talking about the apparently knife-fixated classes I've been taking this semester. I mean, one class, sure. But to have Exacto-centric projects going in both drawing and CFC? And then to have to deal with the razors and scalpels in bio... well. My poor fingertips, they are sliced to bits.

Regardless. This is not what I am talking about.

I am talking about the Red Sox.

They won last night. It was a nail-biter, ESPN televised it even though they hadn't had it in their schedule the last time I had checked. So I ended up watching it. All 12, stomach-turning innings of it. Foulke had come in as the closer and allowed the Orioles to tie up the game, causing me to put up an away message along the lines of 'GOD DAMN YOU FOULKE GOD DAMN YOU DAMMIT'. I left it up for a while.

Then there was the parade of pitchers, the switching of everyone else, the apparent desire to use every single person on the Red Sox bench. I gnawed on my (already Exacto-knife-shredded) fingers, I threw things, I wailed around with my Patriots pillow, I generally made a scene and caused my hallmates to come looking for me in concern. Embree, who usually fills my heart with a horrible, clammy, Derek-Lowe-like fear, did his job. Huzzah. Too bad Foulke hadn't.

In the end Cabrera hit a walkoff homerun to win us the game, I whooped very loudly and blatantly violated Quiet Hours (I forget the actual weektime hours, but it most definitely starts long before that game ended), and I put the Patriots pillow back down. A little sheepishly. Nate came wandering in, shirtless and rubbing his eyes, to peer blearily at the TV and gingerly give me a victory pat on the back. I think he mostly wanted to see if I was done yelling for the night.

I would have written a more detailed account of the game, but that was last night and a million relative hours ago, so no such luck. I suggest popping over to read East Coast Agony, because it is possibly the best thing I have read in recent times. He starts off the entry talking about Mark Bellhorn (whom I rather like, for unfathomable reasons), but then goes into a transcript of last night's game. Like I said, one of the funniest things I've read. I actually laughed out loud. And then felt like an enormous dork for laughing out loud to myself while sitting at the computer.

Anyways, the Red Sox lost tonight, I watched the end of the game on that horrible GameDay gamecast thing on the computer, which makes you feel like some kind of junkie. Must... get.... Red Sox... fix... need... play... by play.... perfectly... willing... to stare... at these.... pathetic... graphics. Yeah. Sox lost. I imagine it would have been worse if I had actually been watching it, instead of staring at a poorly designed website, screaming at it 'Update! Update! C'mon, I know the play must've happened by now! What the hell, people!'. This is getting bad.

But hey, no need to feel blue! We've got a game coming up tomorrow night, and that'll be nationally televised so I can spend a merry Friday night sitting in and watching it! Pedro's pitching! It's in Fenway! Should be great!

We're playing the Yankees.

Oh, the giant pink rabbit was back today. It was standing outside the Michigan Theater before our weekly guest artist lecture. This time it had attendents, people wearing bunny ears on their heads and elbow-high white gloves. One was holding up a sign that said 'Vote Bunny for Change!' on one side and 'Bunny Against Bush' on the other. One had a basketful of baby carrots, which were being passed out to the various people streaming into the theater. One had another basket full of little paper notes, some of which said 'Art Students for Bunny' or 'Vote Bunny!'. I got one with a clipart image of the American flag on it next to a poorly photocopied image of a rabbit. It said 'I promise to lower the price of iMac G-5 PowerBooks and carrots.' I don't really know what to say.

At the end of the lecture, when the guest artist was taking questions from the crowd, he paused at one point to peer uncertainly into the back of the room. "Um. I think there's a giant rabbit back there. Stand up back there!" The rabbit stood up, waved, and sat back down. The lecturer was visibly relieved. "Oh wow. I thought I was hallucinating for a second there."

Although it is pretty clearly somehow associated with the art school, the rabbit's presence has still not been adequetely explained.

Oh, and there's a dead cockroach on the floor of my hall's bathroom. Don't click that link if images of deceased vermin worry you. There's a sign from 'pest control' on the stall door, telling us to not go in there because of the dead cockroach. I have no idea why they didn't just sweep it away or something. Of course, this does raise the delightful thought that there are apparently COCKROACHES IN MY FRELLING DORM. Lovely. Just lovely.

Must sleep. And the Sox must win tomorrow. Because, if they lose, I won't get much sleep tomorrow night. And that would be especially bad, because I'm going to the Michigan/Iowa game on Saturday if it kills me. It being Yom Kippur, it might actually do so. I'm not sure if it's possible to go to a football game when you're fasting without passing out at some point, but we'll see how it goes.

1:12 AM

Monday, September 20, 2004  
I've noticed that I'm writing an awful lot of blogs lately. I think this is due in part to the fact that you can only check the same websites so many times before any chance of them updating is, by the old Watched-Pot-Refusing-to-Boil Law, nullified entirely. I'm sure that my increasing need to do something vaguely school-like while not actually being school work does not factor in at all. For instance, there is absolutely no need for me to be studying chordate anatomy right now.

This recent abundance of blogs might also be partly due to the fact that it's something one can do late at night, when it's far too late to actually draw anything good. I've found, under many trying circumstances (the aborted attempt at 24 hour comic day included), that I cannot actually draw anything past a certain hour. Nerves may be firing like mad in my brain, but their little myelinated sheaths just aren't getting the message to my hands, and bad things happen, like wibbly little hands and massive wobbly heads.

Writing you can do any old time! Mind, the writing might not be quite as good or coherent as it normally is, but I figure that even something I write in here at 4 am when I haven't slept in two days will be easier to read than something written by an AOL kid (OMG teh othr day lizzy was like asking me if i liked tom an i wsa like plz! he is 2 hott 4 wurdz!!!!11! an then she sed she waz datin him an god shes such a bitch sumtimes!!!! k bye livejournal, luvvies!!!).

Fun game for everyone to play! Go through the past entries here since I got to school and, without looking at the times, try to guess which ones were written late at night and which ones were written when I was more-or-less awake.

Of course, this could also all be due to the disturbingly large number of weird and surreal things that have been happening since I got to school. Swampscott is, to put it mildly, quiet over the summer. Yes, people have 'wicked crazy' parties where (surprise surprise!) people get drunk and/or high. ex: OMG! tommy tottally hookd ^ w/ like 5 girlz last night, but it waz ok becuz they were all marblehead ho's. dude there waz like beer pong for 4 hrs & then we like playd cards and smoked up sumthin wikkid an janie tottally told us all she luved us and had teh hotts 4 mikey, we hadda like pry her of him @ the end of teh nite an o man her 'rents r gonna kill her! so funny. has ne1 seen my like baby blu tank i was sure i had it last nite but mebbe not?? if u find it tottally gimme a ring on my nextel!!! k bye livejournal, luvvies!!!1!

Point being, that sort of thing might be good for a couple of entries, if that. But such material does not a thrilling blog make. And there are only so many entries of "So tonight I stayed in and drew some comic book characters, it was a lot of fun, oh and we got ice cream and drove around for a while" that one can take. So, a lack of entries over the summer.

But now... well. Sports, for one thing. With my own TV I can watch anything I want, whenever I want. And apparently I want to watch ESPN. I think it's because I can have sports on and do something else, like study bio (*guilty pause*), at the same time. But if I have an actual show on, I can't do it. Do not ask me why, I haven't a clue. So I watch a lot of sports, and gleefully report them herein.

And, to get back to the point from a couple of paragraphs ago that I completely disregarded and lost in the tangent-ness, a lot of surreal things have been happening here lately. Witness the deer, the walrus (and subsequent tackling) incident, the sheer number of comments I've gotten about the stuff hung up on my door. This last has reached alarming levels. I mean, it's gotten to the point where every day someone pokes their head in to either inquire about the Joey Harrington picture, ask belligerently why the hell I like the Patriots (oddly, no one ever complains about the Red Sox), or yell something like 'Go Kerry!' (it's hanging up on my wall, but you can see it when my door's open). Just today I had a kid (another one of those 'I know he lives on my hall but goddamn I forget his name' folks) hail me as I was walking down the hall and say, "Hey, I really like the Lions fight song on your board. It makes me happy." Er. Yeah. I wrote the Lions fight song on my message board after yesterday's win. Um.

Anyways, today I dragged my half-asleep carcass up to North Campus at 8 in the am for drawing. The bus got in around 8:15, so I had time to get coffee at Pierpont Commons. Beautiful, beautiful caffeine. Grasping my cup o' liquid joy in one hand and my oversized portfolio in the other, I staggered across the street to the Arts and Architecture building. And stopped. And maybe stared a little. Yes, upon reflection, I think there definetly was some staring.

You see, standing in front of the door to the art building was a rabbit. A giant rabbit. A giant, pink, grinning rabbit, standing next to a basket that said 'GIVE TO FRIENDS!' on it. Cue frantic gulping of the coffee. I am awake, right? I am awake? Yes? This isn't just some weird, twisted, Donnie Darko-esque hallucination?

After about a minute, during which time the rabbit did not disappear, I tentatively made my way to the door. The bunny, with it's huge, unnatural smile, accosted me halfway there. It thrust out a hand, aggressively. Clutched within its bright pink paw was a kiddie-sized Baby Ruth Bar. I stared some more. And then I spoke.

"Um. Good morning."

The rabbit gave a short bow in acknowledgement, pressed the candy into my already over-full hands, and capered off to accost Jeff, who had just crossed the street and was staring at rabbit with an expression that seemed oddly familiar. I turned around, shook my head violently, and managed to open the door with my feet. Then I went up to drawing and finished my coffee.

No one knew what the rabbit was for. Although we conjectured that it had something to do with someone's CFC class, because if there's something inexplicable but vaguely performace artsy going on around the art school, you can usually blame CFC with impunity. But then again, isn't it a bit early in the year for big CFC projects to already be due?

Hmm.

Oh, and an open note to the kid on my floor who plays the fiddle. You probably do not read this, but just in case. I am certain there is a way to dampen the sound of your fiddle, or to somehow more thoroughly soundproof your room. Perhaps you could find out and invest in such measures, because IF YOU EVER FEEL THE NEED TO START FIDDLING AT MIDNIGHT AND KEEP ON FIDDLING LOUDLY AND BADLY UNTIL THE WEE HOURS OF THE MORNING AGAIN I WILL FIND OUT WHICH ROOM YOU LIVE IN AND I WILL EVISCERATE YOU WITH YOUR OWN DAMN FIDDLE HAVE NO DOUBT OF MY WRATH yes thank you, that's all.

4:38 PM

Sunday, September 19, 2004  
Oh yes. It is time again. Time for The Song.

Forward down the field!
A charging team that will not yield!
When the Blue and Silver wave,
Stand and cheer the brave!
Rah! Rah! Rah!

Go hard, win the game!
With honor you will keep your fame!
Down the field and gain
A Lions Victory!
Go Lions!


With luck and skill and Joey Harrington, we are going to hope that this song appears here every time that the Lions have a game. Because I will be posting it every time they win. Oh yes. So that all the world (or the miniscule portion of it that reads this thing) will share my boundless joy.

The first half was pretty awful-looking. No one was scoring on either side, turnovers were rife, etc. etc. In the second half suddenly both teams turned on and started driving for points. Harrington didn't look spectacular, but he looked solid. He made some good completions, he kept his head, he ran when he had to. The announcers kept saying that our defensive secondary was really weak, and there were indeed some poorly-covered plays back there, but we also recovered what seemed like a ridiculous number of fumbles.

Eddie Drummond returned a kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown. I love him. I love him to little, tiny pieces. No relation to Brian and Stephanie, by the by. Although, as Stephanie pointed out, he is exactly the same height as her, and (according to the Lions website) enjoys dancing and swimming. Maybe they're secret namemates.

Anyways, I was so ecstatic about this win, I made another desktop image. Email me at samcat@umich.edu if you want it full-size for your own use.



The Red Sox game was on, but I didn't watch it because it just got depressing. The Patriots are playing right now, but they're not on TV here... ESPN is showing golf, ESPN2 is showing some kind of drag racing thing, ABC is showing some horse race or other, FOX is showing Seahawks/Bucs, and CBS is showing the Cowboys/Browns. Bah. Clearly the Patriots are more important than any of those things.

Happily, the night game tonight is Dolphins/Bengals. So I will be watching that while hurriedly scrawling something passable for my drawing homework. And studying for bio. Oh, how I will be studying for bio.

Hum. My RA, Ryan, just popped in to say hi and ask how his Cowboys were doing. I guess he likes the Cowboys. *cough*freak*cough*

I was going to just make a sandwich or something in the dorm tonight for dinner, since I have all this homework that needs doing, but I just talked to Leslie and she wants to venture out into the great big world of Ann Arbor for dinner. So I guess I'm doing that. Yay. Food.

But for now, homework.

edit: I watched the Dolphins game. I don't want to talk about it. Defense. The whole. frikking. game. was defense. And you can't, you just can't have a team without an actual quarterback. That's all I can say. It was painful. Painful.

Sportscenter announcer, while reading off the highlights of the day: "Daylight come and you gotta Delhomme."

5:04 PM

Saturday, September 18, 2004  
Derek Lowe, Derek Lowe
We knew in our hearts he was gonna blow
He can't seem to give us any kind of nice throw
Thank god A-Rod's ball hit him on the toe
If he'd been in any longer I'd have more deep sorrow
Thank you dear Derek for that win-high deathblow
Oh wow, oh woe
For the abysmal pitching of Derek Lowe.

And is anyone else worried about how close the Michigan game was? Yes they won. Barely. I mean... San Diego State, people! Were they even supposed to be good?

5:02 PM

 
Aargh, so tired. But I will stay awake, because ESPN is doing 'Which Curse is Worse: Cubs or Red Sox?' and I need to see what the final decision it is. I have to say that, right now, it looks like the Cubs are more cursed... but really. A goat? We have the noble Curse of the Bambino, and they. have. a. goat. How... rare.

Anyways, Red Sox beat the Yankees earlier tonight, much to my glee. The rain delay ended up working out nicely, because it meant that the game was on after I got back for the evening. Manny's grab in the stands to take the homerun away was stunning. I actually had to watch the replay a couple of times before it truly penetrated my brain that he had grabbed the ball. The announcers seemed amazed that the fans had let him get away with it. I suppose the shock of the whole play happening so quickly might have frozen them in their seats. One cannot help but think, however, that if it had been Jeter or somesuch creature leaping into a crowd at Fenway, he would have at least departed the stands with a beer-drenched hat. Whether this reflects poorly or well on Sox fans is a matter for debate :) .

I would like to mention that watching Dave Roberts run is like watching poetry in motion. Really, really fast motion. With a lot of slider dirt stains on its pants. Arroyo's hair is sort of starting to grow on me (not literally, not literally). And he is kind of cute, in a has-a-really-goofy-pitching-form sort of way. Millar's 'beard', though.... no. Just no. That has to be done away with, preferable right this very second.

I have nothing more profound to say. If you want actual good writing about this game, check out Surviving Grady or Cursed and First.

Barry Bonds, 700. Mmmhmm. They cut away from the Sox/Yanks game to show it live. Wouldn't you just love to be the fan who caught that ball? So it's just Bonds, Aaron, and Ruth. Good for Barry Bonds, good for the Giants, hooray for a feel-good day for baseball fans everywhere.

Lowe is pitching tomorrow. Meep meep meep eep eep. Someone needs to do some fast and sincere praying.

Oh wow. This kid named George who lives on my floor just knocked on my door and asked where I 'got that picture of Joey Harrington'. Took me a minute to realize what he was talking about. He meant this one:



The reason I didn't immediately realize what he meant was because I didn't 'get' it anywhere. I knocked it up on Adobe Illustrator last year. Heh. He actually wanted me to email him the file so that he could have a copy. I think all the crap I have taped on my door has induced more conversations than any other single thing this year.

A few nights ago one of the moron girls in the art school ran over a baby deer on her way back from North Campus. Apparently the mother deer hung around for a while trying to get into the road to get to the baby, and had to be chased away by some people who saw the accident and pulled over so that she wouldn't go running into the street too.

A couple of days after this event (which has been widely discussed up North) I walked into my bio lecture. Upon the professor's desk I beheld a deer. A baby deer. A dead, stuffed, stiff baby deer, lying prone across the entire top of the desk. With cotton stuffing coming out of its eyeholes. Apparently the very same deer that met its untimely demise under the wheels of a rubber-cement-crazed art student. It was so simultaneously horrible and hilarious that I spent the entire class choking on suppressed laughter.

Saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow today with Heather and Carla. We had to go all the way out to Ypsi to get a theater that was playing it, but it was worth it. Visually a delightful confection of a movie. The outline blur was a little disorienting in the opening sequence, but after a while you didn't even notice that everything was digital, since it was stylized so as to minimize it. There wasn't really much in the way of plot, but so long as you weren't expecting it, it didn't much matter. The whole thing had a kind of 'comic book story' feel to it... stuff happens just to get cool scenes, very little backstory, etc. Didn't bother me, though.

Gwenyth Paltrow was pretty horrible, but it was hard to tell if this was her acting or the fact that her character was so infinitely annoying that you just wanted her to fall off into the air by the middle of the movie. Jude Law was... Jude Law. His acting was stylized enough to work elegantly with the visual stylings of the rest of the movie. Angelina Jolie should have been in it more, she was much more delightfully sharp in her role than Paltrow was. Giovanni Ribisi was well-suited to his part.

God, just announce the verdict already, ESPN. So exhausted. And I washed my sheets this morning, so I am very excited to get to sleep in squeaky clean glory. I have to get up relatively early tomorrow for the football game at noon. I'm meeting Beth at her apartment at 11, and we're supposed to meet up with Ann (our RA from last year) and some other friend of Beth's for the walk down. We're playing San Diego State, at home, so if we lose this game I might have to stab a hotdog through my eye or do some equally desperate act.

Sunday! Lions/Houston at 1! Pats/Cardinals at 4:15! Hopefully the Pats game will be on here. But the Lions will be, in any event. I would like to see them win again. That would be a very nice thing indeed. I am going to post the Lions song every time they win a game this year. With any luck, you'll be seeing that damn song all over this here 'publication' in the coming weeks and months.

Oh good, they're making each member of the jury give a reason for which team they chose as having the worst curse. For cat's sake, people. Just give us a verdict. Wow. Wow. A stunning majority of 11-1 chose the Red Sox as having the Worst Curse. Does this mean the Red Sox won or lost? Hmm. Either way, now I can go to sleep.

A couple of quotes from the TV baseball watching of the night--

One of the ESPN Baseball Tonight announcers: "What Ken Casey is to the Dropkick Murphys, Johnny Damon is to the Red Sox." I'm not entirely sure what he meant by that, but it sure sounds good...

Former infamous Sox pitcher Bill "the Spaceman" Lee: "When that ball went through Buckner's legs, 200,000 New Englanders hit the pavement. *thoughtful pause* That's why we have a generation of brain-dead people."

1:33 AM

Tuesday, September 14, 2004  
OK, I've been in classes more or less from 9 am this morning until 9 pm tonight. I say 'more or less' because some of that time was transit, and there was a half hour break for lunch, and I actually rolled into my dorm around 9:30 pm due to the utter, utter Evil that is the University busing system. As you imagine, I am rather tired.

I had my first bio lab today, and it wasn't bad at all. Of course, we don't start dissecting until next Tuesday (lampreys!), so today wasn't very difficult at all. We just went around identifying stuffed critters (including an oppossum with stuffing coming out of its eyeholes) and pickled critters (some of which we got to take out of the bottles and pass around... let me assure you, you haven't really lived until you've tied a long dead, alcohol-soaked hagfish into a knot using your bare hands).

At the start of class we went around and each said our name, grade, and intended major. There were a good number of sophomores, a fair number of juniors and seniors, and a couple of graduate students. Eep. Then we started going through the lab. Our GSI (Graduate Student Instructor, the fellow who runs our labs) was throwing out questions about various animals: "What's the big visible difference between the hagfish and the lamprey, other than color?" "How can you tell if a legless animal has a tail or not?" "What kind of bird is this giant dead bird I'm holding up like a popsicle?" "Why can't you hold a male platypus by his back end?" "How can you tell if this is a male or a female skate?" "Who's ever heard of a tuatara, and what is it?"*

Guess who knew the answer to almost everything he tossed out? And guess what the rest of the class did? If you guessed 'the Feline Anarchist herself' and 'stared blankly', respectively, then you were quite correct. I felt like a horrible show-off, being all eager and answering the GSI's questions readily and whatnot, but hopefully it'll pay off in the end. Only four people in the entire class of 80-100 kids get an A, and while it's not likely that I'll be one of them, it certainly can't hurt to respond if I actually know the answer.

And it certainly made me feel better to discover that my knowledge base for the class was not particularly inferior to that of the grad students. Since, you know, the only actual bio classes I've ever taken were AP bio in high school and Animal Diversity last year.

I was sitting at my brief lunch break today, doing some reading that I had left a bit late. At the start of a paragraph my brain saw the word 'As' and processed it as 'A's'. Like the Oakland A's. It took me a good solid minute of staring at the page, brain saying, 'Wait, what? That doesn't make sense,' before I managed to work it out. Good lord. I NEED TO STOP WITH THE BASEBALL.

Gah. Because I didn't get back to the dorm today until so late at night (relatively), I didn't get to check my mail until the front office was already closed. I have two package slips, but I can't pick them up until after classes tomorrow. Aarrgh. You think the damn desk would at least stay open until 10.

*Answers to the questions! "The rasping mouth." "If its backbone extends beyond its pelvic girdle, than it has a tail, regardless of whether or not it has legs." "A common loon." "Because he has poisonous spurs on his ankles." "If it's a male it will have giant, clearly visible claspers." "Oooo, I have, I have! It's a reptile, related to lizards, extremely endangered and the only species of its kind."

edit: Aha ha ha ha! And ha! Ha. Ah yes, teh funny. Well, I laughed.

10:46 PM

Sunday, September 12, 2004  
Lions win, 20-16. Against the Bears. In Chicago. This means the end of the inauspicious 24-away game losing streak. This means breaking out the song.

Forward down the field!
A charging team that will not yield!
When the Blue and Silver wave,
Stand and cheer the brave!
Rah! Rah! Rah!

Go hard, win the game!
With honor you will keep your fame!
Down the field and gain
A Lions Victory!
Go Lions!


That said, it was a messy, messy win. Everyone had turnovers galore, and the big Lions touchdown was not a lovely Harrington toss or an acrobatic Pinner run. It was a freaking blocked field goal return by Bracy Walker. Hooray, good for Bracy Walker, very neat play. But it would've been nice if OUR OFFENSE WAS ABLE TO GET INTO THE ENDZONE. Granted, we did eventually get there, but I rather wish we would've had more than one actual offensive touchdown.

Also. Charles Rogers! Did I not address you directly in the last blog? Wasn't THE ONE THING I SAID TO YOU 'Don't Get Hurt'? Did you not just BREAK YOUR COLLARBONE? AGAIN? Yeah, you and Dre Bly. I am disgusted with the both of you.

I heard what happened to the Red Sox today, and I have to admit I'm kind of happy that it wasn't televised here. I watched the A's/Indians game, for the simple reason that it was on. I am now watching the Chiefs/Broncos game, for much the same reason. And I should now go pack up the ol' art supplies for tomorrow and hope that my teacher doesn't chuck out my homework in rage.

It's not my fault... the assignment was 'half black'. That was it. No instructions as to medium, paper size, WHAT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE DRAWING, nothing. So I copped out and wrote the word 'BLACK', with the bottom half of it black letters on white and the top half white letters on black. I am fully prepared to be embarassed in class tomorrow.

A final note: much as I despise the Hummer as a useless and almost infinitely annoying vehicle owned by almost infinitely annoying people, I do rather like their new ad campaign.

edit: Heh, just checked my stat service. You know it's back to school time when your hits from college towns finally start edging out the hits you get from your hometown. That apparently means you, Tufts kids. :)

11:20 PM

Saturday, September 11, 2004  
Well, Michigan lost to Notre Damn today, 28-20. Frell frell frell. I don't really want to think about it. The guys across the hall are currently replaying the game on their ESPN football video game. Judging from the vindictive shouts emanating from there, I would assume that, in their version, Michigan is winning rather spectacularly.

I watched the game in Shelby and Amanda's apartment, along with Beth, Katie, and Amanda's boyfriend Eric. Their apartment is really nice (although this could be, in part, because they're both so good at keeping it clean) and the location is amazing. They're right on the corner of State and Washington... literally two or three doors down from the State St. Theater. Le wow.

Also sending me into delighted shock was the fact that they had cooked food for everyone. Amanda made hotdogs, and baked beans (not out of a can), and corn bread, and homemade rice crispies treats. Shelby made a fancy and delicious dip for the chips. I was sitting there, partaking of this veritable feast, thinking to myself, "Man, I've been living off of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and microwave noodles. They have asparagus in the fridge!" Clearly I am not yet worthy of an actual kitchen.

Last night was madness in the form of a house party that inconveniently was not in Ann Arbor. It was fun, I got to catch up with some art school folk, and it was laid-back enough that I didn't begin to hate humanity (as is likely to happen at, say, a frat party). However, it meant getting driven all over creation and not getting back to the dorm until around 4 am. Cue tiredness. Cue lack of homework completion. It looks as though tonight and all of tomorrow are going to have to be given over to work, but that's what I get for having a good time on Friday night and footballing for most of today.

Classes continue to be tolerable, probably because it's early in the year. I fail to see why I have this much homework on the first weekend after classes began, though. Doesn't exactly bode well. My first bio lab is on Tuesday, and it's going to be either great or miserable. It could be great because it could be really interesting and fun. It could be miserable because I could have no idea what I'm doing, and I could get stuck with a horrible lab group. There's also the pleasant prospect of the dissections. I don't mind them in and of themselves, but our professor told us on Friday that we were all going to come out of labs stinking to high heaven, and that we might want to change around our social schedule so we don't have to see anyone for a while after a lab. Not something I wanted to hear. Especially since I have a class right after lab.

The art classes are fine. My CFC ('context form and content'... 20-person, 3-credit class that everyone has to take) teacher is making us take all our notes for the year on a giant roll of tracing paper, because 'regular paper constricts your thoughts, but a roll of paper encourages you to just keep going, keep thinking, keep creating!' At first I was highly dubious, but I have to admit it's a terrible lot of fun and I am now tempted to take notes for all my classes on rolls of tracing paper. It is a bit impractical (you have to unroll the whole thing to look through your notes), but the idea has its merits.

In ADP ('art design perspectives'-- everyone in the grade is in one big lecture) we're going to be doing readings and papers and things the whole way through, but we have one big project that's going to take us the entire semester. It's supposed to be a kind of digital photojournal thing, with the topics chosen at random by each student from a large pile of completely arbitrary subjects. I got 'light pollution'. This has the potential to be pretty good... I already know a little bit about the subject, and it makes for really interesting visuals. But it's going to be difficult to get good pictures for it. They're all going to have to be at night, pretty much, and capturing ambient light in the sky at night is tough. We'll see. Some people got 'litter', which is almost too easy, but then again other people got things like 'famous images in windows' or 'nature stores-- not hiking or camping supply stores', so I guess I can't complain.

Drawing looks like it's going to be awful. I have no need to learn how to draw sculptural schematics, nor do I particularly want to do so for 8 weeks. Thankfully this class switches over to Digital halfway through the semester, and we're learning Maya (a 3D program) in that, so I'm kind of excited about it.

Speaking of computers... I got up nice and early on Friday, because the art school tech guy, Andre, had announced in a mass email that he was going to have a Mac expert come in on Friday for a sort of 'computer office hours' event. As you may or may not recall, my computer had had a mental breakdown over the summer, freezing with frequency and causing me to resort to such drastic measures as reloading Panther. This, unfortunately, had done something unspeakable to my programs, essentially trashing their preferences and registrations, so that I couldn't use some of them (like GoLive or Acrobat) at all, and others could be used only incompletely (like Photoshop or Illustrator).

Anyways, I went up north, clutching my computer case tightly, hope in my heart and dread in my eyes. I was somewhat reassured by the sight of the Mac tech guy, who was very nice, very friendly, very knowledgeable, and incredibly cute. Cripes. Computer tech people are not supposed to be that cute. Or to wear black shirts with the Mac logo on that are really, really tight. But in a good way. A very good way. Ahem.

Andre was there as well, and between the two of them they decided that the thing to do would just be to get rid of all my old programs, and load in new ones, complete with proper registration and all. They also decided, since I was in anyways, to upgrade all my Adobe programs. So I now have the entire brand-spankin'-new Adobe Creative Suite, and I may assure you that it is quite spiffy. Everything works as smoothly as a Ravenclaw's charm, and you can take a moment to quietly suffer in jealousy right now.

Yesterday the Red Sox won, apparently... they weren't televising it here, so I couldn't see it. Sniffle. They were showing the Yankees game, so I watched that instead. Ah, a Yankees loss. Such a truly lovely thing. They're not televising any Red Sox games here until Friday, when the series against the Yankees starts. I think the Saturday game is on too, but it's unfortunately an afternoon game, and Michigan is home that day. Well. I love the Red Sox, and they're playing the Yankees, but given the choice between a Sox/Yanks game on TV and a Michigan football game in person... there's really no competition.

I will, however, be watching the Lions game tomorrow. It's in Chicago. C'mon, Lions. You can win this one! Start the year on a positive note! We all want to see your silver-clad asses in the Superbowl this year, so you'd better get working now. Harrington-- you have weapons now, use them! Bly-- intercept and make us proud! Rogers-- for cat's sake don't get hurt! Jeff Backus and James Hall-- you went to Michigan! Represent!


Yeah, I made a Joey Harrington desktop image. If you'd like to use it for your desktop, drop me a line at samcat@umich.edu for the full-sized image. Make sure you tell me what screen size you're using, since the one I have right now is made for a Mac at 1280x854, which I think is a screen size used by nothing else in the world. But it's easy to resize, so don't sweat it if you're on a PC or something.


A few days ago I was sitting in my room, innocently printing out the ridiculously long chapter one of my lab manual. My door, as is usual, was open. I heard a knock. Looking up from my computer, I was somewhat startled to see, at my door, a giant electric blue walrus with a rainbow top hat. The walrus waved genially, and informed me that there was a Battle of the Bands going on right as we spoke down at Palmer Field, and I really ought to go check it out. I smiled bemusedly, my brain still catching up with the facts, and thanked the walrus for letting me know. He said he would see me around and waddled off down the hall.

A few minutes after he went out of sight, my hallmate Nate came charging down the hall at top speed. I heard a loup thump, and then a yell of triumph.

"GUYS! I TACKLED THE WALRUS, I TACKLED THE WALRUS!"

I think I am starting to like Couzens Hall a little bit.

8:46 PM

Thursday, September 09, 2004  
Oooo, OK, look, I finally got that long post posted. Down below this one. Read it for happy magical good reading times.

The Red Sox are on right now, and I am watching them, and then I will go to sleep. I don't technically have to leave my dorm for class tomorrow until around 12:45, but I need to get up wicked early if I want to be able to do laundry. But, for now, Red Sox. I got Popcorn Factory popcorn from the family today, and I ate a lot of popcorn just now. So good. I will probably regret it later, but, you know, popcorn. So good.

Because of classes and whatnot I wasn't planning to do anything tonight. I went over to Alice Lloyd (the dorm next door to mine) to meet up with Leslie and eat dinner. She wanted me to meet her hallmate Anthony, who isn't an art student but is very into art. Anthony brought his friend Matt, who lives in a single in Markley with his own personal bathroom. We also picked up various other hallmates as we straggled down the hall, including some fine folks named Laura, Christine, Xander, and someone whose name was either Mary L or Muriel or something of that nature. We had very nice conversations and I think I like Leslie's hall. After dinner Leslie and Xander came back to my room for the purposes of ogling Couzens, and it was all very pleasant.

The heat appears to have gone for now! Low 70s in the room! *does the happy 'low 70s' dance*

Wow, someone across the hall just started making hairball noises. I do hope they're faking. Otherwise someone is going to have an unpleasant clean-up to deal with.

One of the search phrases used recently to find my blog: "a mau cat that can turn a person into a catwomen (sic)". Heh. I hope this little alleged publication was able to be of service in that noble search.

Tired now, two outs in the 9th, Red Sox up 8-2, Red Sox pitching. A shot of the crowd shows a kid in a Red Sox shirt waving a broom (sweep the As in the series, ha ha!). I hope you're all reading Surviving Grady. Oh, Sox just won, OK, sleep now.

Special fluffy feline thanks to everyone who called today! Much appreciated. It is nice to hear from home folks when I am left gasping, like an overtaxed ray-finned fish out of water, on the unfortunately located sandbar of Michigan.

Read that down there \/. It is long and informative.

1:40 AM

Tuesday, September 07, 2004  
OK, I attempted to write this blog two nights ago, when I was planning to sit in all night, but Pam came over and then a large and unexpectedly friendly group of kids from across the hall came over, and nothing got done. Then I was meaning to write it yesterday, honest, but I was in and out all day what with trying to remember where Subway was and having hall meetings and whatnot. So I'll write what I can now, before dinner and my next class.

I warn you now: this will be long.

Oh, and before, I forget-- Happy Birthday, Dave!

The drive up here was fine-- long but uneventful. The actual move in was hell, but then it seems that it is always going to be. I don't deal well with move in. Or move out, actually. I apparently just don't deal well with large semi-permanent residence changes. I assume it's some bizarre psychological thing, but the reactions are, evidently, physical. So I was feeling pretty ill the day of move in. At least I didn't spend the whole night after move in throwing up, like I did last year. Then again, that might've been the food. Or the roommate.

The evils of move in were as follows:

1. The box spring didn't fit on the bedframe, which meant that when I sat on the middle of the bed it would sag to the ground. This was fixed by my handy mother, who found the magical bed winch and fixed it. The bed is still incredibly wobbly, but at least I can sit on it now.

2. The internet wasn't working. Last year I just plugged in the computer, and all was happy fast ethernet. This year I couldn't get the computer to hook into the system. Something about some address or other being already in use, but then I couldn't change the address, and oh man oh man big mess. So I called ResComp, the University computer helping people. I was on hold for about an hour. They played elevator music at me. I eventually couldn't take it anymore, hung up, fiddled with the computer for a while, and fixed it myself. Thank you, ResComp. *insert ironic bow here*

3. The cable wasn't working. I was getting, for some unknown reason, a bunch of University channels, a couple of Japanese channels, and ESPN. And nothing else. This only got fixed today. I was going to call Comcast, because I had specifically looked up the diagram of how to hook up your TV to the cable and had very carefully plugged it in accordingly, and still it was not working. This morning, however, I decided to shuffle the wires around one last time, just in case, because it would be the height of stupidity to call Comcast and drag them out here for a mis-plugged TV. Lo and behold, the diagram had been incorrect. I'm still not getting Bravo, inexplicably, but that's fine. All I need are the channels that the Lions, Patriots, and Red Sox are going to be on, and I appear to now have those. Huzzah.

4. No powerstrips or extension cords. I had thought that I had packed them up with all the computer wires and things, but when we got to the dorm it became apparent that I had not. Whoops. So my mother got a powerstrip when she went to Bed Bath and Beyond, and my dad went tromping all over campus to find an extension cord. Even with the powerstrip I have four plugs plugged into a four-plug socket. One look and you think to yourself 'fire hazard!', but such is dorm living.

The joys of move in were as follows:

1. The room was much, much, much bigger than I had been anticipating. I was expecting a single along the lines of what Kevin or Anne had last year, which would have been something approximately the size of a Harry Potterish cupboard under the stairs. Instead I think I actually have more floor space than last year. Obviously the room itself isn't bigger, because even a relatively large single isn't as big as a small double, but since there's only one set of furniture I have more actual space. And I have a lot more wallspace, since I hung up all my posters from last year, plus some new stuff (like the Red Sox inserts that have been in the Sunday Boston Globes recently), and still had a ton of blank space. Also, I had room for a bean bag chair! Huzzah! It's blue and white with a giant Michigan 'M' on it. And my closet is ridiculously big. Last year's offering didn't have room for a suitcase in it. This year, with nothing in it, you could fit four people into that closet.


A couple of shots of my box-for-a-year. Note the beanbag chair.


2. No roommate. Last year it was clear from the very first hour of move in that a harmonious existence with the delightful girl was not to be. Now, I know very well that I like having my own space, but I still maintain that I could've had a reasonably pleasant experience with another person. Say, someone who showed evidence of the slightest amount of normal human courtesy. Anyways. No roommate this year, I have the lovely single all to my own self. And, you know, with a single as relatively comfortable as this is, that fact can bring me only happiness.

3. I am now a sophomore. I am well aware that it's not that much better than being a freshman, in the grand scheme of collegiate things, but it was awfully nice to come back to a school which I already knew how to navigate (somewhat), and where I already had some friends. As opposed to last year, when I didn't know where anything at all was, and I didn't know a single person for miles and miles around (except for the two people from my town who went here... but you know what I mean. People I was actually friends with. Not that we're enemies... you know. Aargh).

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

The day after move in, being Saturday, was the first football game of the year. Michigan vs. Miami (of Ohio). Since almost none of the art students I know had season tickets, I had gotten tickets with Beth's seating group at the end of last year. Beth was one of the lovely First Jo ladies, so I knew her quite well, but the rest of the seating group are mostly people she knows from high school. Meh, I don't care, so long as I'm at the game and know someone there, I'm perfectly content.

A little before 11 am I trotted down to her apartment (which, for those of you who know Ann Arbor, is in University Towers, right on the corner of South U and something or other). It was pretty damn nice. Two bedrooms, bathroom, little kitchen, little living room area. Nothing spectacular, mind you, but probably as nice as you can get without paying downtown Boston prices for an apartment. And the location certainly isn't bad either. I would've said hello to Elisa while I was there, but she was very soundly asleep. Sorry Elisa, but we didn't want to wake you up.

We walked down to the stadium, marvelling at all the little but undeniably awesome stuff about walking down to the stadium on gamedays that you forget over the summer. Like the sheer number of people. Or the crazy frats on State St. Or all the alumni hurrying past the crazy frats with their hands over the eyes of their small children. Or the guy with the crazy dreadlocks and the pickle-tub drum who sits down by Yost Ice Arena and makes really quite impressive and clever rhymes about the people walking by.

Or the guy running down the street with his pants around his ankles. Or the people standing outside their house (obviously student housing) with a hose, spraying anyone who walked by in Miami of Ohio red. Or the two guys who were weaving in and out of the thronging crowd on a two-person bicycle, who slowed down next to us so that the one on the back could say "Hey, blue hair, that's cute, I like that, I'll see you 'round later," and high five me. Yes, I do so love gameday.

My seat this year is much closer to the field than last year, although I didn't move any closer to the 50 yard line. I was in row 90-something, and now I'm in row 50-something. Makes a difference in view. Of course, it also makes a difference in the crowd.... it was always crowded up in the top rows, but there was usually breathing room. Down in the middle rows people just kept cramming in, so that you couldn't stand without rubbing shoulders with your neighbors (literally). Mind you, it was still a lot of fun, but it would have been even more fun if the temperature hadn't been so hideously high, or the game quite so long.

I sort of met Beth's friends, but the place was so crazy and loud that I didn't really catch anyone's names, except for the girl standing next to me, who I think was called Abby. One of the other girls there whose name I didn't catch (although she seemed quite nice when I talked to her) was dating one of the football players (!). This particular football player, to be exact. He's not a starter or anything, but he did get in for at least one play of the game that we saw, and heck, to be on the football team in any capacity at Michigan is a great, great thing.

The game ended around 4:15, at which point we were dead from hunger, heat, and exhaustion (you don't sit down except at halftime, at a Michigan game). Beth and I staggered our way back to the Union for food, and then back to our respective living quarters to shower and collapse bonelessly for a while. During this time I discovered the Position of Ultimate Dormroom Comfort: sitting on my beanbag chair, with my feet up on the desk chair, the laptop on my lap (cords running everywhere, but that's immaterial), the fan sitting on my bed blowing right at me, and the TV in plain view for some ESPN viewing (since that was the only channel I was getting at that point). Ah, t'was bliss.

Later that night I met up with Heather who, in her infinite art schoolishness, had not gone to the football game. Sigh. We had dinner at Cosi, which is our default place when we can't think of anywhere else to go and it's too early to get ice cream. She spent the spring semester taking classes at Michigan and living on her sister's apartment floor, so three and a half hour long calculus classes looked delightful in comparison.

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

Sunday I was planning very firmly to do nothing at all, since the combination of 12 hour drive, move in, and overheated football game had mostly killed me. Imagine then my horror when I found myself, at around 9 am, starkly and irrevocably awake. The frelling curtains in this room don't keep out a single photon of light. They're like some horrible translucent fabric that keeps you from being seen by anyone outside your window but permit any and all light to pass through. I soundly curse the deranged mind that created them.

That evening I met up with Pam and went out to dinner at some bizarre, bizarre place on the outskirts of Ann Arbor. She wanted to see my room and to chat, so we went back to Couzens and sat. The night grew more interesting when the kids across the hall from me came storming in to chat with us. These were people whose names I barely knew. Our discourse previous to this had consisted entirely of "Hi. How's it going?" So it was terribly amusing that they suddenly stormed my room and entered into a detailed and intense discussion about romantic relationships (using as focal points the histories of Pam and JR, who is one of the kids from across the hall). It all ended with them eventually trooping out, chanting, "Remember, YOU ARE THE REWARD! YOU ARE THE REWARD!" Very odd. But hilarious.

Monday I finally got to sit in and rest.

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

So I have indeed finally begun to get to know a few of my hallmates. It's a bit difficult, because initially a bunch of people kept coming in and introducing themselves. The problem was that the second they left my room I would immediately forget their names. Eek. But I'm getting better. The room across the hall from me is a triple, and I finally got them all sorted out. Nate, JR, and Lee. I've only really talked to Nate and JR, but they're pretty cool kids. They keep bugging me to hang out in their room (which is admittedly pretty nice, since they're in a triple suite, but put all three beds in one room, thusly leaving the other room as a sort of entertainment lair). I also met a friend of theirs named Shannon (I think) who lives in Couzens on some other floor.

Pfft. Some guy in a towel with his hair all wet and rucked up just stopped outside my door and asked if I "drew all this stuff on here?" Yes. Yes I did. He seemed impressed. I assume he lives down the hall somewhere, I have no idea. Ha ha. Amusement.

That's one of the other things. This floor is co-ed, and I guess after the all girls hall of last year I was sort of expecting there to be more girls than fellows. But we had a short and pathetic hall meeting yesterday, and apparently the vast majority of my hall is male. It was a bit disconcerting, the first day, to see people just wandering down the hall in a towel and nothing else, but I got used to it rather quickly. It's kind of funny, after the football game on Saturday you could just walk down the hall and almost every room had a college football game on TV.

Other than the folks across the hall, I know Rob (about whom I have already spoken herein), a sophomore girl a couple of doors down named Carolyn (engineer, likes to play the piano in the dorm lounge), and Tom and Gabe, the two guys whose room is in the center of the crosshall to mine, so that their room sort of faces into the end of my hall. Gabe I sort of accosted the first day I was here, because he was wearing a shirt with the Yankees symbol on it. He assured me that it belonged to a friend, and was a little league kind of thing anyways.

There are a million more kids on my floor alone, and I have no idea who any of them are. Ah well. I don't even know the names of either one of my RAs. I know one by sight, because he came in to chat, but it was one of those 'he told me his name and I immediately forgot it' things. Ah well.

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

Classes started today. Allow me to say 'hooray' in a sarcastic monotone. The one happy fact was that I would normally have had a biology lab this morning, from 9 to 12, but since we hadn't even had a lecture yet, there was no lab this week. So I just had two classes: CFC version 3, and art lecture. I was happy that the CFC class had a reasonable number of people I already knew in it. Taylor was there, and Megan, and Abbas, and Danny, and Hye Jin. Of course there were people I knew in art lecture, since it's our entire grade. I caught up with Emily, Brandon, Adamo, and Carla (Carla came back to my room to chat for about an hour after class, since she lives somewhere on the 3rd floor in Couzens). I saw Tomas and got to give him a hug, but didn't really have time to chat. Pretty much the only person I didn't even see there was Joe, but presumably he was around.

We had a girl in CFC who had transferred in from LS&A, named Bertha. She is the least Bertha-like girl you could imagine. She's this tiny, really pretty asian girl, with tastefully trendy clothes. It's actually kind of hard to address her, since the name seems so extremely unlikely.

Anyways, it's obviously hard to tell how classes are going to go this early in. CFC seemed OK, but who knows, it might turn into installation-art-horror by the time we get into our first project. The lecturer this semester was funny and relatively interesting when he was just talking to us, but the moment he started doing his actual lecture he lost it and everyone reverted to the old glassy eyed stare standby. I also would like to know what moron in the art school thought it would be a good idea to have the big art lecture 7:30 to 9 at night. This is a bad idea. This is an exceedingly bad idea.

Especially since they've changed the bus schedules and routes, meaning that the buses come much less often than they used to. It's annoying having to stand around waiting for the bus now. I can only imagine how horrible it'll be once it gets to be winter. Not to mention the fact that if we're leaving for this class at 7 (you generally leave half an hour to get from central to north campus) at night in the winter, it's going to be pitch black out and depressing.

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

I happily got to watch the Red Sox/Athletics game last night, since ESPN was the only actual channel I had. What a delightful game. Manny and Ortiz made me squeal with happiness. The fielding... ah, the fielding. Poor Kotsay, or whatever his name is. I wish tonight's game was televised, but I guess it's only on NESN, which of course we don't get out here in the distant Midwest.

I recently came across a couple of very good Red Sox websites. Funny, intelligent, well-written. There's Surviving Grady, which I think is alternately written by two different guys. It's very, very funny. I suggest you head down to the entry for Thursday, September 2. I laughed out loud. Delight. Delight.

Another quality site is Cursed and First, which focuses on both the Red Sox and the Patriots. Go read her entry from September 3, before you read anything on there. It details her journey to a preseason Pats game. It. Is. Hilarious. I imagine it would be funny for anyone reading it, but if you're from Massachusetts and recognize some of the things she's talking about... it's all so true! and so funny! Just go read.

Clearly, someone over at the ESPN website has lost their mind. The first link is page one, the second link is page two. It's the Yankees/Red Sox story. Told in, um, Legovision. Told, um, interestingly. A lot of stuff happens. And it will make you laugh.

I think a nice note to end this obscenely long blog on is the statement made just now as I was watching Baseball Tonight on ESPN 2, about the way that the Yankees were demanding a forfeit from the Devil Rays because they couldn't get out of Florida, due to the hurricane:

"They handled that incorrectly... you know [the people who were demanding the forfeit], just mouthpieces for Steinbrenner...It was an embarassment to baseball."

Man, that's what the Red Sox fans have been saying about the Yankees all along.

4:54 PM

Saturday, September 04, 2004  
OK, I'm all moved in here at the good ol' U of M. I am currently sort of a shaking wreck of tiredness, but I shall just leave a note here to say a few things. I plan on doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING tomorrow, since these past couple of days have pretty much killed me, so I'll try to post up a proper blog then.

Football game was amaaaazing, we beat Miami of Ohio 43 to 10. Yay! Details later.

Room is much, much bigger than expected. Everyone send me posters, I have tons an' tons of wallspace. Also: beanbag chair! I desperately wanted one last year and didn't have room for it, but this year I do! Huzzah! Details and perhaps photos later.

OK, much tired, too tired to type this all up. Just wanted to let everyone know that yes, I'm here, and yes, I'm alive.

More or less.

edit: Oh man! Cougar kittens found in Washington backyard! Awww they must've been so cute. No images, alas. I hope they grow up to be great big happy cougars.

Also, I didn't take my camera to the football game, but if you want to see some really good pictures from it you can have a look at these pictures from the mgoblue.com website. Their photographer is really quite good.

edit again: Oh man, quick update again tonight (it is now 11:30 in the pm) because this was just truly amazing. I was walking down my hall from a trip to the bathroom, and every single door on it was closed except for one, which happened to be pretty close to mine. The kid was sitting there with his lights off (this isn't creepy... everyone keeps their lights off as much as possible, as the overhead lights in this dorm are horrendously bright and hurt your eyes) on his computer. I thought to myself, 'Hey, I'm sitting in my room with my computer, with the lights off and ESPN on. Maybe he's exhausted by the game today and is just sitting in and taking it easy, like I am. I should go say hi.'

So I knocked and introduced myself to Rob (that being his name). He's in a single, and he's a junior, which made me feel better, as I was beginning to fear that I was the oldest (grade-wise) person on this hall. While he was talking to me, he had this weird, weird stare going on, like his eyes were really wide and he didn't blink very much. It was extremely odd and disconcerting and I found my brain screaming 'Engineer! Engineer! Engineer!' at me.

I mentioned what I was majoring in and asked what he was doing. Computer science. Score one for the brain.

Anyways, he seems like a pretty nice kid, if a little odd. But then again, who am I to judge? Just thought I ought to relate the encounter, because it was really quite bizarre. After rereading what I've written here I'm not too sure I conveyed that properly, but trust me. It was pretty weird.

8:13 PM

Wednesday, September 01, 2004  
OK, this is going to show up one day late, but as I haven't gone to sleep yet it still counts as August 31.

Happy 19th, Corey!


Since I got very little done today, I am going to be packing all day tomorrow. Then I'll be in the car all day Thursday, driving out to Michigan (thank cats for you, iPod). Then I'll be racing around like a stressed-out maniac, moving in on Friday. Then, on Saturday.... FOOTBALL GAME. Oh hell yes. Oh hell yes. I will probably still be a stressed wreck by that point, but that's OK. Football. Football. FOOTBALL. *shivers in anticipation*

I should go to sleep now, so that I may wake tomorrow and pack bright and hideously early. Hope everyone else's home-to-college transitions went/are going/will go smoothly!

1:26 AM

 
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