Of Cliches and Complaints
Prepare for a barrage of short, random thoughts.
Vacation is done. School resumes tomorrow, and it wlil be one hell of a week: PCR day, countless tests returned, and math team meet. During many vacations, I often look forward to going back to school for multiple reasons, not least because I like seeing my friends. But this was an awesome week, despite only having two notable events: 24 marathon and Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament. I can say with no doubt whatsoever that this week was leaps and bounds better than Christmas '05. I don't feel like delving into last Christmas right now, but.. let's just say that my feelings toward it are not favorable. Conclusively proving that I enjoy myself best when left to my own devices and that the Asians ought to interfere with free time as little as Asianly possible.
And now, some cool words from Roy Blount Jr.'s Be Sweet.
- doxology: a usually short hymn of praise to God
--> "Every time I take a Calc test, I say a small doxology to myself: 'Thank God I memorized.'"
- parochialism: limitedness in scope
--> "I'd consider taking Your-Oh next year, but I'm not interested in a course with such parochialism about a continent that includes France."
- onus: burden, obligation, blame
--> "In my horribly biased accounts on my site, the Asians accept the onus for all of my troubles, regardless of their actual involvement or guilt."
- insofar as: to the extent that
--> "Insofar as Arnoldy has screwed up in French class, she still remains far superior to Lotz."
- fluted: having grooves
--> "In past decades, people forsook the beauty of the word 'fluted' for the more 'hip' word, 'groovy'."
- soporific: causing drowsiness, lethargic
--> "Robert bears a soporific presence, one that never fails to incur many yawns and funny noises."
- confabulate: to fill in gaps of memory by fabrication
--> "Consider this fun statistic: Eighty percent of the time, the stuff that you read on this site is confabulation because I couldn't remember details."
- ebullient: agitated, exuberant
--> "Patrick's ebullient nature reaches an offensive threshold, but his energy is too hilarious to hinder."
- risibility: ability or inclination to laugh
--> "I lack risibility when watching things that do not entertain me, such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
- qualm: sudden feel of fear, doubt, uneasiness
--> "I'm sure you'll have your qualms about releasing your names to a person on the internet, but don't worry aobut it! Just send me fifty dollars via Paypal."
- catechism: summary or test in the form of questions and answers
--> "Every time a teacher gives a catechism regarding a book, the students bitch and whine for the rest of the week."
- expostulate: to reason earnestly with a person, especially to dissuade
--> "Trying to expostulate with my parents when they have made their minds is like searching for objectivity in English class."
- auspice: prophetic sign or omen or kindly patronage and protection
--> "Disliking my site is usually an auspice that the Asian mafia will shoot you within the next 24 hours."
- jaundiced: having yellowish discoloration of skin or exhibiting envy, distaste, hostility
--> "With Jack Bauer's every movement, dozens of jaundiced terrorists follow him."
I'll try to use these words in my writing and speaking whenever possible. I'll also try to remember to use the words "plebeian" and "infidel" as insults more often.
Too many things irritate me. Rather, too many people irritate me, and I tend to judge said people unfairly. On that note, I hate when people say "don't judge me". Biggest load of crap I've ever heard. You can't stop anyone from judging you or others. Everything that occurs affects people's judgments of one another. Anoyone who has the arrogance to say not to judge him or her is begging subconsciously to be perceived as independent and judicious - trying to create a favorable impression. I'll be damned if anyone actually tried to get me not to judge him with words like those. I was planning on typing massive walls of text describing a few of my unfair judgments, but they'll appear in much condensed form shortly.
Why? I'm sick of complaining. I've written a gigantic paragraph 'n' a half about people who irritate me already. I just realized that I don't want to type it up at all. Instead, I'll just describe them briefly:
A worker at the hospital in the transport department who reminds me of Lotz. Her voice, hideous appearance... infuriating. It turns out that she's actually pretty nice, though she did not make a favorable first impression by telling me on my first week - before introducing herself or asking my name - that my pants were not suitable for work. The second person was my fellow volunteer: a fat black girl. I don't consider myself biased against her because of her race, but who am I to say? In any case, she bears a maternal, condescending attitude, and she feels the need to punctuate her actions as well as typical silence by just ... saying a few words. I don't know why it pisses me off so much that she feels the need to correct me whenever I make a move. She insists on talking to the other abovementioned person, too. Serious small-talk - I'm not sure how much attention each of them pays to their conversation or how much each of them enjoys it... but it irritates me. Finally, a middle-aged man - totally random, not staff, not a patient, just hanging around. As I finish a job, he lectures me on how to move the stretcher for no apparent reason. He then leaves via the stairs, and to avoid him, I resort to taking the elevator.
Topics like these make me feel stale. I think I've gone over objects of contempt more than enough in the last six months. So let me talk for a bit about the simple pleasures of life: elevators, the nurse at the hospital who looks like Samuel L. Jackson, and my newly discovered and inexplicable habit of saying "Seeya" - in actual conversation. But probably just the elevator, since that's the one that involves the highest mortality rate.
I have mixed feelings regarding elevators. I am no stranger to them - Make no mistake; I am an experienced veteran in the ways of pushing buttons, and the lurch still gets me every time. Every time I enter an elevator, I wonder if this is the end. I believe that eveyrone shares this sentiment at some basic, primal level; I believe that anytime someone locks his or herself in an elevator, he or she acknowledges that this is how thousands of TV shows and movies have finished off characters or incapacitated characters for significant periods of time. Personally, I prefer to take the stairs at the hospital, though the staff don't like it much when I take a wheelchair down the stairs. Especially when the wheelchair has a patient in it. Therefore, I have to use the elevator quite often on Sundays.
There are two ways to be in an elevator: alone and accompanied.
When I am alone in an elevator, I like to think of myself as Plato, discovering the mysteries of physics and theorizing about the universe, all the while personally accepting that much of life is outside of my control. Sometimes I have equipment when I'm alone. Sitting on a wheelchair going up an elevator is high-class entertainment, no matter how you cut it, and going up an elevator on a stretcher is beyond normal pleasure. When I don't have equipment, I take it upon myself to improve myself in the form of poses. If I die, I figure, I may as well do it while doing the bullet-dodging motion that Neo does in The Matrix. As soon as the elevator door closes, I know that I have around ten seconds to immortalize myself, and anime is always the way to go. Usually I don't have enough time to get naked and paint a circle around me in blood.
The other way to be in an elevator is to be with someone else. In these cases, there is an inevitable sense of intimacy, welcome or not. I respond to this intimacy in different ways. In the case of a patient, I deliberately avoid eye contact at all costs; the unspoken message is that I have the natural advantage if we get trapped and are forced into a fistfight to determine who gets to escape. I also use this method to deter people who I don't know in the elevator. You'd think that you'd want to know the person with whom you might have to spend the rest of your life, but then I realize that I'd only want to know these people if I really did have to spend the rest of my life with them. The only time when I actually engage the other person in the elevator is if it's a co-worker. In this case, I stare her in the face, my gaze unyielding, while she practices the art of not making eye contact. Fair enough. But the elevator stops, then both of us will know who has the moral high ground.
And now, vacation is done. I feel a slight sense of remorse and a general sense of fear... maybe I should start on that poetry paper.
SD
Feb. 26, '06
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