it's beginning to look a lot like spring time...

The trees outside my bedroom window are blossoming in full force, and my little rose plant on the windowsill has three new buds. I think that we are finally on the short path to summer, and this is good becuase I could really use some sunlight. My legs are so pale I keep thinking that they're haunting me --- ghoul legs --- spooky.

eleven pages down!!
four to go
But I also woke up with a sore throat this morning, and a bit of a fever. But I am not getting sick, oh no, I am not getting sick. I am fighting off sickness, and I shall not sucumb. I do not have time to be sick. When I finish this paper there is still a computer science assignment (of the "rephrase the following papragraphs out of your textbook" variety, so easy but tedious) and some french homework (merde! la conditionel!) that need doing by tomorrow. So it will be an exciting day.

we're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl year after year

Today is Cam's birthday, and can you guess what he's getting? Not nearly what he deserves! A cranky girlfriend who has eleven more pages and two assignments to due by Monday. And maybe a cake baked for his, but we'll see. End of term is psychotic.

I'm also trying to do this damned ass computer science lab on visual basic, where I'm supposed to be making a program that will calculate the value of an exponent using a user-inputed base and exponent numbers and a do while loop and a for next loop. And I'm going to shoot myself. My brain is just no good at thinking in nice logical ways like that.

Still, at Least Every Empath Pleases You

After school today I am just going to write this damned paper. No more pathological overresearching, tonight, I write. Why? So that by this weekend, I can write another. That is unless, of course, someone else want to volunteer to take over either 'the role of Cocain in pertetuating the conflict in Colombia' or 'some damned lousy political philosophy criticism of some jackass who thinks he's too smart.' Don't worry, I didn't actually think that you would.

On the topic of people who think they're far to clever, I feel compelled to metion Dionne Brand. We're doing her lastest contrived piece of Über literati po mo anti-fiction in my english class right now, and I'm ready to strangle her with the vacuum cord. Why? Well, for example, the bit where she flies to Amsterdam (for no particular reason -- having plot is apparently passe) and her luggage is accidentally sent to New York and she has to survive without it for two days, and decides that she then understands how slaves felt. I quote (from A Map to the Door of No Return, p. 208): "... to be without luggage. I wonder if this is how they felt in that other century, no familiar thing which would suggest that you decided to travel, you have a destination, a place where you will land..."

See what I mean? And my personal pretense-tolerance level is sooo low to begin with.

why does monday always happen to me?

okay, to be fair, I guess it happens to everyone, it's just that no one else I encounter seems quite as groggy or confused as me.

My advice: take the day off and sleep in
but in the meantime, I'm off to school.
See? Do as I say, not as I do. Doing what I do just seems to make one tired.

guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug cartels in Colombia combined have an income of about twice the national GNP

As the 1990 presidential campaign got underway, [Pablo] Escobar went on a rampage with the clear intent to bend the political process to his will. His minions not only killed [would be president] Galan but three other presidential candidates as well and brought down a fully loaded 727 airlines, likely as an attempt to kill one of the last credible presidential contenders. He blew apart the building housing El Espectador, a newspaper that had opposed him, with ahuge truck bomb using anhydrous fertalizer (the type later used in Oklahoma City)... He set out to kidnap a selection of wives and children of the country's most elite families so he could bring maximum pressure on the new president... Escobar wanted to influence the assembly's drafting of the new constitution to forever bar extradition of Colombian nationals and arrange special plea-bargaining rights for criminals such as himself.
- From Phillip McLean's Columbia: Failing, Failed, or Just Weak? In the Washington Quarterly 25(3).

it actually IS like the fucking movies.

while you were always leaving, I was always coming home

I want to adopt my english teacher as another sister. She's feisty and smart and Ukranian, she'd fit right in. You just can't have too many sisters, I think, either that or I've been spoiled by having especially good ones. But either way, I think she'd be a good addition. I want more family, I'm just not prepared to start creating it myself.

if I seem skitzy and like I'm running in circles, it's because I am.
not that I'm not fine
its just that my list of things to do is longer than my life
and this is not desirable.

she blinded me with science

well folks, computer science 100 is officially the cutest class ever. It's the computer science course that doesn't count towards a computer science major (so that should say something) and can't take if you've ever taken a computer class before (highschool typing counts) and I brutally over studied for the mid term. The TOUGH questions consisted of essentially regurgitate the example of a database query I used in class two days ago. Oh well, hopefully my good mark in it will be enough to nullify the impact of this stupid political philosophy course I'm taking that, everytime I try to do some reading or attend a lecture, makes me want to shove a pencil through my eyeball. or maybe several.

jargon fest

i have my computer science mid-term today, and yes, i can draw a functional representation of a computer's memory hierarchy or an lcd display, but i'd really prefer if you didn't ask me to. because i'm still sleepy. and grumpy, and i have too much else to do. i count on my computer science lecture to get all my poli sci reading done. now all of the sudden they want my undivided attention? what gives?

in other news, my litte sister departs for cuba for two weeks today, and the day after she gets back, my mom and littlest sister fly to the uk for, well, awhile. i have papers due the day before and after my mom leaves, rather than having any sort of glamourous destination myself.

sun, sun, sun, here we come

well, it is in fact another beautiful day outside, and another day - yay- when I'm not at school, but my "to read" list is getting a bit too long for my own liking, so I will probably be stuick inside most of the day reading, but there are, I suppose, worse fates. But for now it's on to my favorite new game - procrastination replacement. Right now, for example, I'm going to vacuum and do the dishes with the express purpose of procrastinating doing school work. See, it fools the brain...

Reading:
Richard Wagamese "The Keeper and Me"
Leave None to Tell the Tale: Genocide in Rwanda
Michael Sandel "The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism

Hearing:
Crows fighting outside and Radiohead

Surfing:
Pictures of my favorite greek island
Paros