I have confidence in sunshine

I'm getting mixed signals here, Ithaca. Yesterday, it was horribly ugly and cold. Today, I look outside and it's a beautiful day! Then I go outside, and it's 40 degrees. What the heck Ithaca? Make up your mind- it's Spring.

In other news, there are tons of prospective students visiting campus. Seems as though every other person I see has a "Class of 2014" nametag and a parent they're walking awkwardly ahead of. Between their nametags, parents, sleeping bags (which most have), and general innocence, it's pretty easy to identify a prospie (as we have taken a fancy to calling them). However, it wouldn't be too hard for one of them to blend in:

By getting rid of
Your nametag and parents, it's
Easy to blend in

All you really need to do to blend in to the school of however-many-tens-of-thousands-of-students-the-number-is-now is leave your indicators at the door. Of course, there's still that innocence problem. If you're walking around and looking like you have no idea where you're going, or looking at all scared- chances are we'll know you're a prospie, and judge you as a result. What you need to do is be confident of yourself. However, make sure that you don't look confident, as that's a dead giveaway- anyone who looks confident obviously has not been at college very long.

The title comes from the Sound of Music song "I have Confidence." It fulfills a double meaning in this context (confidence and sunshine).

Man vs. Climate

Yesterday it was supposed to storm. The day before it was supposed to storm. Both days it was beautiful, minus a couple of rough patches. I'm pretty sure Cornell Days and Ithaca are in direct conflict. That, or Ithaca weather is schizophrenic.

If you know anything about Cornell, you should know that weather during Cornell days is fantastic 90% of the time, and all days leading up and following it are horrendous, as usual. However, this year, things seem to be changing (can you say "climate change"?). The sunny weather came a week early, and now there's supposed to be all of this bad weather, but Cornell Days is holding out thus far. Now the sky is grey and cloudy, but I can still see some blue (which is better than what we usually have). Here's the conclusion that I've come to though:

If climate change can
Mar Cornell Days' weather, there's
No telling its strength

Really. Good weather during Cornell Days is an established fact. I don't know how they did it (deal with the devil) but somehow that's just how it always works, year after year. But now, climate change is going and ruining the tradition. It's just like the Tsar in Fiddler on the Roof, except it doesn't persecute Jews specifically. That would sort of suck if it did. Although at a school where a third of the students are Jewish, it may as well. So what do I propose we do to stop this madness? We need to tie up Al Gore, bring him here, and force him to directly fight the climate change, mano el climato. It'd be like Man vs. Wild, but done in a suit and without eating wild animals.

The Great Picture Show, indeed

I had something to say, I swear. But as of now I have forgotten just what that was.

So instead, I shall share with you a musical artist, and maybe even make a weekly tradition of it, or something. It could be like Music Monday, but with not as easy alliteration (say, "Tunable Tuesday," "Symphonic Saturday," "Singing Sunday," "Thespian Thursday?"). In any case, I have lots of favorite musicians, so it makes sense for me to share them with you, I think. Music's fun.

This week's person is probably my favorite discovery this semester. Her band's name is April Smith and the Great Picture Show.

April Smith writes songs
With both proper grammar and
Some witticisms

Her tunes are not only amazingly catchy, but also reflect proper grammar usage (something I always love) and a number of funny and/or clever moments. For instance, she says "who's spinning whom now," which is the correct context for whom, and it works in the song. Then she has a number of comical moments to be found, such as "Is there anything going on in that pretty little head? Because if you're just drop dead gorgeous, you can just drop dead" or "so if you ever wonder if I'm dreaming of you in the night at my window, by the light of the moon. If you ever wonder if I'm dreaming of you- bitch, please- I've got better things to do." Overall, she's a genius when it comes to writing music and lyrics, and that talent carries on to her performance.

Here's perhaps my favorite song by her: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQohpZ2pVus&feature=related&feature=fvw (though there are about 6 others I absolutely adore, some of which are "Stop Wondering," "Wow and Flutter," or "Movie Loves a Screen").

A tedious, brief scene

I've realized that recently my posts have been a bit long and rambling. I shall correct that with this post.


Concision is a
Quality worth having. Though
It can cause problems.

I can be concise if I want to with ease. However, there's just so much to write. It can be problematic though. For instance, in that haiku. I thought of those first 11 syllables, and then needed to come up with the rest. And then I did. Here's a few examples in which being too concise can lead to complications: concocting a Constitution for your country, conducting a hostage negotiation, sitting on the wrong side of a police interrogation, debating, writing a 40 page research paper, or doing stand-up comedy for a 30 minute block ("okay let's see, 5 minutes in? Crap, I'm pretty much done"). In any case, concision can be valued in blog posts. Unless they suck. Rambling and respectable is better than tedious and brief (the 2nd part is a reference to A Midsummer Night's Dream. There's no reason why you should know that though).

America's Favorite Pastime*

In the news, Duke won the NCAA tournament! In other news, the Earth still spins around its axis and panda bears still eat bamboo.

Also, the other day the baseball season kicked off (although I guess that metaphor doesn't really work for baseball). The Sox (I'd specify which, except no one cares about the White ones) won their first game! And not just against anyone: They beat The Yankees. If you don't live in the Northeast and/or live under a rock, the Red Sox and Yankees have been rivals since forever ago. And they usually win, because baseball is a flawed sport where team strength is almost always based solely on the popularity of baseball in a given area (except if there's a really smart coach, as can be read in Michael Lewis's Moneyball). They usually say that baseball is America's favorite pastime. I'd have to agree. However, I must add a clause to it:

Watching baseball while
Sitting on the couch eating
Chips is our pastime

Really, baseball may be a big pastime, but no one goes to games anymore except for the biggest fans. The pastime is celebrated while loafing around in your lucky boxers and a white undershirt while your significant other yells at you to take out the trash or do the dishes or do the taxes or some other thing which definitely isn't as important as baseball. And most importantly, there's the food. Watching baseball just isn't the same unless you eat all of the foods that keep you from coming anywhere near the shape that the athletes are in. Foods like chips, hot dogs, ice cream, french fries, and anything else unhealthy that you can stuff down your esophagus. All of those combined are truly America's pastime.

Ecstastic about essays?

I have a quiz today. And a presentation on Wednesday, and a book to finish by tomorrow, and a bunch of statistical regressions to run for tomorrow, and a large linguistics assignment for Wednesday. Did I mention I'm in college?

Lucky for me, that's practically nothing compared to the average college student, since none of my classes have real tests (humanities for the win!). None of them have real finals either, which means that I get to leave on May 8th, a whole two weeks before many others get to. Unfortunately, I don't get off the hook that easily, and I have 6 papers to write in the next month. Some people look at that and say I'm lucky. Others say they're sorry for me. I consider myself to fall into the former category. Why?

Paper-writing can
Really be enjoyable
If you make it that

I really don't mind writing essays, because I tend to enjoy writing the ones I write (which consequentially leads to good grades). It's all a question of topic-selection and choosing something that you're truly interested in. This year I've written papers comparing Merlin and Gandalf, discussing the separation of church and state in U.S. government (something I thought to write about myself), analyzing a single song of Mika's, explaining why translating poems loses their beauty, commenting on the rising (yes, rising) popularity of jazz in popular music, giving a history of the vibraphone, and comparing the lexiconal differences in the works of Tolkien and J.K. Rowling. Overall, I have had fun writing all of these (although my iTunes play-count on Mika's "Lollipop" is a little higher than I would like).

So please, don't take pity on me for having to write a ton of essays. If anything, simply take pity on the small time frame I have in which to do them.

Ithaca is... fences?

And it's another beautiful day. I'm beginning to worry here. A couple more and I will think it the end of the world. Or maybe Mother Nature has decided that since no prospective Cornell students will be coming here (as soon as they see the fences, that is), it may as well rain during Cornell Days anyways.

The other day while walking to college town, I saw a sign up which was advertising a competition to design a more permanent fence replacement. Now, I'm all for taking down the fences, but now they're trying to create some sort of permanent solution? I mean, I suppose it only makes sense that they want to keep people from falling and/or jumping off of the bridges, but still- they don't exactly have their priorities straight if you ask me. It's quite simple:

If people didn't
Want to jump off of bridges,
They really wouldn't.

The way I see it is we really wouldn't need to worry about having fences around the bridges if we didn't have people who wanted to jump off. Here's a metaphor for you: if a bull is charging someone and runs them off of cliff- the solution isn't to build a fence, they'll still get gutted. The solution is to stop the bull. But obviously the administration doesn't understand that. If they did, we might have the most important Jewish holidays of the year off. Or maybe the occasional national holiday? Give people a chance to take a breath of fresh air in between drownings.

Oh, or here's another idea: give us a fall or Thanksgiving break that's longer than a local high school's. Really, our breaks are pretty much 3-day weekends when you factor in travel. Or maybe they could just ease up on requirements so people don't have to be taking 5 science classes at a time and not sleeping. And honestly, if people aren't sleeping and are working on Friday nights, you know you have a problem other than a couple of exposed bridges.

The title comes from the architects' ingenious giant poster with that phrase.