Christmas stands for Communism!

And so, a Communist joke: Lenin walks through a park and sees a little girl walking towards him. Stopping, he leans down and pats her on the head. The next day, the papers all say how majestic and forgiving Lenin is. After all, he could have killed her.

On the flight over here, there was a baby sitting a few rows behind me who wouldn’t stop screaming. Three hours of constant screaming. I didn’t know little children were capable of doing such things. My friend Tom thinks that children should be put into a Matrix-like training device until they’re fifteen and in this circumstance, I completely agree.

Presents!

It’s Christmas season, the season I go to malls and spend lots of money buying presents for my enormous family (mom, dad, step-mom, uncle, grandfather, grandmother, step-grandfather, step-grandmother, step-great-grandfather, step-great-grandmother, step-aunt). I went shopping with my mom and my grandmother. Surprisingly, I was the only one who found presents for people; not enough for everyone, but a start nevertheless. Of course, I have plenty of time, since my family celebrates New Years, not Christmas. It’s the smarter thing to do, anyway; you get more time-value for your money (econ joke, let’s move on).

My grandmother tells me stories about Russian Communism, and it’s absolutely fascinating. People betraying other people, rapid changes of power, the continuous ideological volatility and normal people adjusting to all of these changes. Now that’s interesting history.

The wine tasting

After hearing me praise the wine at my step-grandfather’s house and the wine at the Blue Chips party, my uncle decided to test me by allowing me to choose a $30 bottle of wine, while he chose a $10 dollar bottle of wine, and seeing if I could taste the difference. Both of the wines were Californian Cabernet Sauvignons. He poured some wine into six glasses, and I was supposed to identify which wine was the more expensive one.

Needless to say, I failed. I identified two out of six glasses, which put me into the “slightly dumber than a monkey” wine tasting category. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between the two wines. However, I am convinced that more expensive wines are better than less expensive ones. Perhaps we just didn’t buy one that was expensive enough.

Trivial and pedantic

One of my mom’s students complained that my mom was “legally” obligated to give them three hours for the final instead of two. This is because my mom was allocated the classroom in which to give the final for three hours. However, I can’t possibly think of why there is any sort of legal obligation to use up all of that time. The professor is given complete discretion as to what happens in the class. At my Legal Reasoning final, the professor didn’t let anyone start writing for the first thirty minutes. Nobody complained; it’s his discretion.

My roommate found out that he submitted a draft of his sosc paper instead of the final paper and that the final paper on his computer back at school was corrupt, so he had to rewrite the paper from the rough draft. I feel really sorry for him. I hate rewriting papers when I lose information; I’ve already done the work once, and doing it again seems pointless.

That 'coon 's good eatin'

While walking with my mom to her office at night, I noticed something scamper up a tree. My first thought was that it was a grossly fat squirrel, but that turned out to be wrong, because it was just a regular sized raccoon. Raccoons are sort of like squirrels, except that they can cause more trouble, since they're larger. Also, raccoons are evil. You could never imagine someone saying "Awww, look at that cute little raccoon." There's simply no such concept when it comes to them.

Yesterday, Chris and I visited the Asian Art Museum. Unlike the nice movie attendant who let me see Pride and Prejudice for the student rate without my student ID, the anal museum lady refused to give me a student ticket because I didn’t have my student ID with me. I don’t carry around my student ID when I’m on break because it’s attached to my Chicago keys, and I don’t need my Chicago keys when I’m not in Chicago. Still, the Asian Art Museum was really fantastic. It was a pity that we got there so late; we only got to spent one and a half hours admiring Asian art before the museum closed. I found two pieces very amusing. The first was supposedly painted at a party while the artist was drunk; the Buddhist monk is shown with a very mischievous facial expression. The second was a helmet with an indentation for the topknot that some Persian warriors wore. Crazy Persians.

Just so we’re in the clear

This entry isn’t late. It’s 11:00 pm in California, and I happen to be in California.

I met up with my friend Chris (from school) today and toured Berkeley and San Francisco. We ate lunch at a delightful sushi place. It had little boats which floated around in a little moat around the chef, who kept it well supplied, and you could take whatever sushi you wanted to eat. What a novel idea. I can imagine this being applied to many things. It’s like a sushi-eating assembly line, where you assemble your lack of hunger.

Among other things, we also went to this really famous bookstore called City Lights. There was this little book there called something like 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know. However, it should have really been called A Lot of Useless or Obvious Facts That Nobody Cares about and a Few Interesting Ones. Among the interesting ones was that Bayer (the drug company) invented heroin. It just goes to show you that drug companies can do amazing things.

Berkeley parking

My mom and I went down to Berkeley because silly people on the semester system haven’t finished their finals yet, and since she’s a professor there, there’s some silly obligation where the professor has to give the students a final. Oh, rules… who cares about them?

Parking in Berkeley is ridiculously difficult. For me, this revelation came from two sources. First, there aren’t any parking spaces. When the city planners were planning Berkeley, they must have forgotten that people own cars and want places to put them, because there are streets (entire streets) without parking spaces. Te second source of my difficulty came from the fact that I have completely forgotten how to parallel park. But really, parallel parking is just like driving a bike… or a car. You don’t really forget how to do it; you just hit the curb a few times until you finally get into the space.

California sunshine

So, after being grounded in Chicago for a day, I’m in California. Funny story – I missed my plane on Saturday, and all the other flights got cancelled due to nasty weather. This was partially the fault of the bus – it took an abnormally long time getting to the airport. However, I fully accept the responsibility for waking up later than I should have. California weather is fantastic – a full sixty degrees more than the zero degree windy Chicago deathtrap.

Today, I saw Pride and Prejudice. It was a fantastic movie – very well made and very artistic. Besides, watching the English in action is always cool. Their culture is just so funny. Lords and ladies and people who don’t do any work but somehow get ridiculous amounts of money every year… where does it even come from? And the balls. People say that if it’s one thing Americans have, its balls. But we don’t have balls. Know what I mean?

Finished!

Had my last final today – econ. I don’t know what to thing. I either did really well, or really poorly. Some parts just seemed like they were too easy, which makes me think that I wasn’t getting it. Maybe I should think about dropping out of my econ major. Who knows? It feels awesome to be done with school though.

History still sucks

I had trouble falling asleep last night, which is what always happens to me whenever I have a final the next day. Not that I didn’t try – it just took me two hours. In essence, I got four hours of sleep to take my history final and legal reasoning final. The history final went okay – I didn’t bomb it, but I didn’t ace it either. What really annoyed me was that the teacher didn’t test us on substantive issues in the class – most of the identification questions were things that played a very minor role in the course. I’ll probably get a B or a B+ in the class.

The legal reasoning final went pretty well. The only complaint I had at the end was that my hand hurt like hell. That’s what I get for writing for an hour and a half without a break. I can’t wait for the day that we take tests in computer labs and abolish writing completely. Like that’ll ever happen… maybe when we run out of trees.

History sucks

My schedule today:

9:00 – 11:00: My alarm rings in a futile attempt to wake me up

11:00 – 12:00: I wake up, see my history book next to me (I fell asleep reading history), and read it for an hour

12:00 – 1:30: Legal reasoning study session. We go over all the cases

1:30 – 2:00: Legal reasoning office hours. I’m not really worried about this final

2:00 – 7:00: Reading history

7:00 – 11:00: History study session. We collectively decide that we are screwed for the final tomorrow

Last night, we got my roommate Charles a birthday cake and sung him happy birthday. Surprisingly enough, it was his birthday. He seemed really happy. It was definitely a high point in my day. Now, I have to wake up at 6:30, take my history final and then take my legal reasoning final. Then, from 3:30 to midnight, I’ll be studying econ for my final on Thursday. And then I’ll get really trashed. After my final, that is.

Sleepy

All-nighter Serge is a strange creature. I’m really tired, don’t really want to do anything, and I call everybody “dude.” The weekend was pretty good, but now it’s over and finals are oh so much more real. I’m really tired because my eight page sosc paper was due today, and it wasn’t very fun to write. I started writing at 3:00 pm yesterday and sat in the same chair for about 24 hours, give or take food breaks (ramen, popcorn, and Sprite).

There probably aren’t many things worse than writing a paper for a day. Even still, I have to go study for econ, then read history, then study for legal reasoning, and then crash. My time mismanagement skills are simply amazing.

Reading period is aptly named

I spent most of today reading Greek history. Greek history is sort of like the Stephen Jay Gould theory of evolution – really exciting at some parts, and really, amazingly boring at other parts. Or maybe that’s just how my history book is written.

So, a Thanksgiving story because I have nothing else to write about. Last Saturday, I decided to be really organized and get the Legal Reasoning reading done; it was also 2 AM and I couldn’t sleep. So, I started reading death penalty cases. Now, the cases themselves were fairly straight forward. However, they also involved extremely detailed descriptions of the criminals murdering their victims. So, I’m sitting in my room in my basement and I hear a creak. And then… another creak. I get really scared, lock my door, go into the bathroom, lock the bathroom door, and finish reading in the bathroom. I felt pretty silly locking two doors. I guess I managed to freak myself out pretty well.

Yesterday was a fucking bad day

I somehow got rejected three times. You already know about the first one (the girl) and the other two don’t need going into. Needless to say, I was upset. However, the straw that broke the camel’s back was, amusingly enough, my backpack.

Last night was the Blue Chips party. The Blue Chips is the investment club that I’m part of which manages a portfolio of $100,000. So, it’s pretty fun. Anyway, it was the annual wine and cheese party. On my way out of the party, thoroughly trashed, I pick up my backpack and notice that it doesn’t feel right on my back. I examine it more closely, and realize that it isn’t my backpack after all. Not only that, but it’s blue, not green! I completely flip out. Finals are coming up in a week and my backpack is ESSENTIAL. I even start insulting the girl who took my backpack for getting a C on her hume paper. Needless to say, I was drunk and having a really bad day. I find her room on the facebook (an online directory) and go up and knock on her door a lot. After realizing that she wasn’t going to answer her door, I try the doorknob and walk into the room. I discover my green backpack on her floor and replace it with her blue one. Honestly, I still don’t understand how you can not notice that the backpack you’re carrying is the wrong color.