I don't think I ever want to compete again.








The picture of George Washington on the quarter was always a little unsettling to me, and it is only just now that I figured out why. It's because he's naked! Granted, only his neck is showing, but in those days if you were naked up to there, you were naked all over. Who would have thought to put such a risque image on currency?

Another picture taken completely out of context

Actually, this one isn't exactly out of context. That really is a 19th century gentleman giving a 19th century lady a good once-over.

AHHHH

HHHHHHHHRRRRRGHH


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


utyfuyigiuo;ih;ougutdtestre


It seems that no matter how preemptively low I set my expectations, I will never fail to be surprised.


I used to be a lot nicer.


And, I have no life.

Dance and Porn

Here is a poem I wrote about dance:

Dance
Glistening foreheads, damp underarms
Awkward innuendo, incest
Sore calves, wounded egos
Bad music, great downbeats
Russians
Dance


And here is some porn:



















It is a vulgar and scandalous picture of my nekkid leg.

Little Albert

Little Albert was a baby who was a test subject for Dr. John B. Watson of Johns Hopkins University in the early 20s. Watson wanted to extend the findings of Pavlov's dog studies to human children. He decided that the best way to do this was to find a baby and train it to fear soft, fluffy things.











The following are notes from the experiment:

Age: 11 months, 3 days

• White rat suddenly taken from the basket and presented to Albert. Just as his hand touched the animal the bar was struck immediately behind his head. The infant jumped violently and fell forward, burying his face in the mattress.
• Just as the right hand touched the rat the bar was again struck. Again the infant jumped violently, fell forward and began to whimper.

Age: 11 months, 10 days

• Rat presented suddenly without sound. When the rat nosed the infant's left hand, the hand was immediately withdrawn. It is thus seen that the two joint stimulations given the previous week were not without effect.
• Joint stimulation. Fell over immediately to right side and began to whimper.
• Rat alone. The instant the rat was shown the baby began to cry. Almost instantly he turned sharply to the left, fell over on left side, raised himself on all fours and began to crawl away so rapidly that he was caught with difficulty before reaching the edge of the table.

Age: 11 months, 15 days

• Rat alone. Whimpered immediately, withdrew right hand and turned head and trunk away.
• Rabbit alone. Negative responses began at once. He leaned as far away from the animal as possible, whimpered, then burst into tears. When the rabbit was placed in contact with him he buried his face in the mattress, then got up on all fours and crawled away.
• Fur coat (seal). Withdrew immediately to the left side and began to fret. Coat put close to him on the left side, he turned immediately, began to cry and tried to crawl away on all fours.
• [A lab assistant] brought the Santa Claus mask and presented it to Albert. He was again pronouncedly negative.

Age: 11 months, 20 days

• Rat alone. Withdrawal of the whole body, bending over to left side, no crying. Fixation and following with eyes. It was thought best to freshen up the reaction by another joint stimulation.
• Just as the rat was placed on his hand the rod was struck. Reaction violent.
• Rabbit alone. Leaned over to left side as far as possible. Began to whimper.
• When the rabbit was left on Albert's knees for a long time he began tentatively to reach out and manipulate its fur with forefingers. While doing this the steel rod was struck. A violent fear reaction resulted.
• Rabbit alone. Started immediately to whimper, holding hands far up, but did not cry.

Age: 12 months, 21 days

• Santa Claus mask. Withdrawal, gurgling, then slapped at it without touching. When his hand was forced to touch it, he whimpered and cried. He finally cried at the mere visual stimulus of the mask.
• Fur coat. Wrinkled his nose and withdrew both hands, drew back his whole body and began to whimper as the coat was put nearer. In moving his body to one side his hand accidentally touched the coat. He began to cry at once, nodding his head in a very peculiar manner.
• The rat. He allowed the rat to crawl towards him without withdrawing. The rat was then allowed to crawl against his chest. He first began to fret and then covered his eyes with both hands.
• The rabbit. After a few seconds he puckered up his face, began to nod his head and to look intently at the experimenter. He reached out tentatively with his left hand and touched the animal, shuddered and withdrew the whole body. The experimenter then took hold of his left hand and laid it on the rabbit's back. Albert immediately withdrew his hand and began to suck his thumb. Again the rabbit was laid in his lap. He began to cry, covering his face with both hands.

The good doctor considered undoing the effects of his experiment (which, disturbingly, involved potentially "stimulating sex organs") but decided against it in the interest of time. On the plus side, the experiment was enlightening and taught psychologists a lot about conditioning, but sadly resulted in the creation of a man with an intense fear of bunnies and Santa masks.

Family and other things.

Here is an old fable which I narrate often to anyone who will listen:

A frog and a scorpion want to cross a river. The scorpion says to the frog,"Will you carry me on your back as you swim across?" The frog says, "Now, why would I do that? You will sting me!" The scorpion replies, "Well, if I sting you, then you would die and I would drown." The frog decides that this is a valid argument and lets the scorpion ride on his back. Halfway across the river, he feels a sharp prick in his side. He exclaims, "Scorpion! Why did you sting me? Now we will both die!" "I tried to help it, but I couldn't," the scorpion says. "It's in my nature."


In my Visual Communication class yesterday, we talked about parody, and why it is so popular. One theory is based on evolutionary psychology: we like to see spawn. We as humans like comparing children to their parents, copies to originals. I think this is definitely true, at least for me. I like comparing people to their family members, see what has been passed on, whether their little quirks or habits are inherited.

I am sad.

You should let the turtle live alone.

Hm

If you made a turtle and you gave it no shell and no legs and one eye, would you make it live its life with other, normal turtles, or would you make it live alone so it never knows it's inferior?


I'm listening to romantic songs

(Two most romantic songs on my playlist: "Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith and "J'ai Tout Oublie" by Marc Lavoine & Cristina Morocco)

and I'm trying to pretend I know what they're about and it's kind of nice. It's also kind of weird because I suddenly feel very moved by the ray tracer I'm trying to build for CS.

This is my second add-on to this post. (Psst... It's no longer 11/12 but I'm too cool to post two days in a row) I've decided I should never listen to music while I study because a) it makes my homework seem way too dramatic and b) part a is irrelevant because I end not doing my homework anyway. I've also decided that Thomas Newman is the most brilliant, brilliant composer there ever was, and that film music the best kind of music, period.

4 best Thomas Newman soundtracks:

1. Road to Perdition. JUST BEAUTIFUL. The main theme is classic Newman, evocative and full of strings, then come the tracks that betray his recent (well, semi-recent) foray into experimental sounds and exotic instrumentation. Amazing.
2. American Beauty. One of the all time greatest soundtracks ever. Which is a broad generalization to make, considering I don't really know much about music. But whatever, it's great.
3. Finding Nemo. The main theme is a Waltz. Also, it's so beautiful it makes you want to cry.
4. Um. I don't really have one. I actually only know the above three. I'm kind of a shitty fan.

Also, I just silently burped and I'm proud because no one noticed.

House

I've never been so delighted to see old people kiss!

My blog is useless

Other peoples' blogs are full of rich, informative insight into the world and themselves. The entries are interesting and witty. My blog entries are much like myself: short and dumb. And kind of ugly. Did you see the formatting on the last two? Ick.

And now a picture taken completely out of context

(For the pathologically curious, this is the image found on the Penn Relays trophy, and depicts happier times when relays were best run in the nude and supervised by Ben Franklin. Also, I have the maturity of a 5-year-old.)





I am a sucker for attention.

I was studying in the bookstore today when a man wandered in and started talking loudly to himself. This went on for a while, until he decided to shake things up and talk loudly to the strangers around him instead. It was, to say the least, very irritating, and everyone in the vicinity eventually left. I, too, decided to pack my stuff and leave, but not before he noticed that I was still around and lumbered over to chat. I braced myself and prepared to ignore him, but as soon as he started talking to me, I was won over. I decided I liked him, and engaged in light conversation for the few seconds before a security guard came and gently escorted him away.

Am I boring?

Yes.






Four random horrifying childhood memories:


Getting pecked to death by chickens. Multiple times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgPMe51Uoxg

Um... Okay. So, not that horrifying in retrospect. But I cannot describe the initial terror my brother and I felt when we realized the chickens would actually attack.

Watership Down.

Without a doubt, one of the most brutal, violent, sadistic "children's" movies ever made. It made me scared of movies containing rabbits. I cried once when our kindergarten class started watching a BBC version of "Peter Rabbit" because I was convinced that at any moment, blood would come pouring out of Peter's every orifice.







Petting zoo in preschool.

Rabbits have not been good to me.

We had a petting zoo bring bunnies and tarantulas to our preschool. I liked the tarantulas. They were cute and stupid. I was terrified of the bunnies.

Some genius decided it was a good idea to let the bunnies run around unattended in a room full of 5-year-olds. What they failed to take into account was that rabbits have an annoying tendency to die horribly when under extreme stress (like, say, the stress that comes from a little kid trying to pull your ears off). I successfully caught a bunny, watched its little heart beat visibly and its little nose twitch, and decided it was so cute--until it decided to die. In my lap. While my parents watched.

I cried and dropped it, and it was reanimated, but the image of its temporarily lifeless form was forever burned into my mind.

Getting lost on a beach.

This one may not really count, because my memory of it was very fuzzy. I don't know which beach, how old I was, who was there, or--if I'm going to completely honest--if I was even really lost. All I can remember is suddenly feeling terrified and not being able to find my parents, and sitting in a puddle of wet sand and crying. However, I recently found a photograph of me at a beach, sitting in a puddle of wet sand and crying, while my mother laughs in the distance. So either I was an incredibly stupid kid with incredibly mean parents, or I was not actually lost.

Dunkin' Donuts

I love Dunkin' Donuts. I am such a frequent patron that the people there know me. They have good bagels.