It really is remarkable

Just how much work work manages to be. I remember next to nothing from these days, just a cloud of sleeping off sickness, infecting others (Dawson, I'm sorry), and reading paper after paper after endless paper.

Oh, and writing. That second milestone was a fair bit of work, I suppose, although I think a better chunk of the 13th was spent pretending to read S. Mckee's thesis on nuclear energy, which I never did get all the way through (although I did manage to forget to cite her half-life data. Whoops).

I'm going to say that this was the day that I walked to dinner with Jared and Bashir, because it will make for a more interesting post.

Bashir is the crazy Lebanese guy who works in my lab. He is, as I've said, crazy, but you will probably get more on that later.

Jared is Bashir's roommate. Jared is a big Asian guy from a big city (and I say big in a relatively loose sense of the word, because, while tall and muscle-y, he is still extremely skinny) who wears baggy t-shirts and long shorts and waves his arms and gesticulates in a manner suggesting a comfortable existence in a ghetto.

On this particular day, I walked out of the dorm with the pair of them.

"Why," asked Bashir, "are there no black people in RSI?"

Jared and I looked at him.

"There are not! I look, and I see black people, and they are all MITES. There are none here. Why are there no black people."

Jared looked pained.

"Why!" demanded Bashir.

"Well, there was supposed to be one, but his visa fell though, and he was, like, actually from Africa," I said.

"No, look, see," said Jared. "You can't just ask this shit."

"I just did. You say I cannot ask this, but then look! I do!"

"I think what Jared means is that it's not the sort of thing that one generally talks about. It's a sensitive subject."

"Yes! That's it. We don't talk about it. You just pretend that it doesn't exist."

"Why would I pretend that it doesn't exist when it so clearly does?"

"Because that's what you do," responded Jared. "You pretend, and then it just, I dunno, goes away."

"I'm not exactly certain that it--" I started.

"It will not go away. Look at your movies."

"What?" said both Jared and I.

"All the black people in the movies--they are stupid. Stupid. So stupid. They cannot talk, they cannot live, they cannot make money. They are poor and stupid. What am I supposed to think about black people here when all I see is 'blacks are dumb'?"

"SHUT UP! Bashir, don't let anybody hear you!" Jared looked worried.

"Well, what do black people do?" asked Bashir.

"I dunno, they play basketball," said Jared.

"I'm not sure that's the sort of thing you would think that you should be saying," I said.

"Shut up."

"Jared, I thought that you played basketball."

"I used to."

"Why'd you stop?" I asked.

"Were the black people better than you? Did they make your asian-boy look stupid?" asked Bashir, before beginning to laugh.

"Bashir, someone is going to hear you, and they are going to beat you up."

"No, they will not. The only one who will beat me up is you, and you won't, because you love me."

"I do not love you."

"You are my roommate. Of course you love me."

"You are so fucking crazy."

Bashir just laughed.

Overheard

Today, during extended Health, I slipped out of class to go use the bathroom. There were two girls, probably sophomores, standing in front of the sinks and talking. There was a short, talkative one, and a larger, heavier one. I'll call them L and B, respectively.

L: Nice iphone.

B: Thanks.

L: My parents are getting me an itouch for my birthday.

B: Cool.

L: Know what's great about itouches?

B: No.

L:You can use the internet on them.

B: Yeah.

L: Emily has an itouch. She uses the internet on it.

B: Huh.

L: She looks at porn on it.

B: Wow.

L: Sometimes, I look at porn on it with her.

B: Oh.

L: It's kind of weird.

B: Yeah.

L: Don't tell anyone I said that.

B: That it's weird?

L: No, that I look at porn.

B: Sure.

L, speaking to me as I dried my hands: That includes you.

Tea: I don't know you anyways. Even if I told someone, they wouldn't know what I was talking about.

L: Good.

I, of course, promptly told both Red and Kathrya the entire story after I got back to health class. Kathrya and I agreed that even though we don't watch porn ourselves, it really doesn't seem like the sort of thing you want to do with a friend. I mean, seriously, that just seems like a recipe for either severe awkwardness or clandestine lesbian hookups.

On a completely unrelated note, we're writing essays on gender in English. Here are the theses of my group:

Margot: Girls wear clothes that are really uncomfortable.

Carter: Being a guy sucks because, like, we have to fit into expectations and stuff.

Brian: I have great female role models in my family, and we've now studied this so excessively I feel that my brain my spontaneously combust. It's all just empty talk that isn't going to do anything to stop sexism; that takes actions.

Tea: Femininity is an insurmountable obstacle preventing me from controlling my own life.

Rob: What Brian said.

Renna: Being a woman means not knowing what you actually want. Also, is it a problem if I write a synthesis essay using only personal anecdotes?

Fun

In health class, Red poked me while the teacher was talking and whispered, "Mario was just staring over here, so I waved at him, and he looked away," although she actually referred to him by both first and last name.

He was probably trying to figure out why I kept looking over where he was (I was watching the clock! Honest! The second hand was broken, so it was doing this really entertaining thing where it skidded forward only every four seconds!), or had become completely enthralled by Red's red hair or the weird poster with the male olympians on it (unlikely), but really, Mario, you were creepishly staring at Julie just last week! You need to be more careful not to zone out while looking at people.

Speaking of Mario, as I've said before, Kathrya believes that he walks awkwardly. In fact, she believes that she can distinguish a nerdy guy solely by his walk. I told this to Ginny today while Bryant and Tybalt were about twenty yards in front of us. I finished up with, "I mean, just look at the twins!" right when they rounded the corner ahead.

"You want to run after them and observe?"

"Yes!" I said, and we rent running up to the corner before continuing to walk, this time a bit closer behind them. For anyone who's interested, they were stepping in opposite synchrony, going inside-outside-inside-outside, and they don't walk in precisely the same manner.

During science research today, I did the lab that's supposed to teach us how to use the micropipettes. Lumiere and Elle talked about this weekend's drunken antics. Lumiere seems to have some real memory issues. He had no recollection of telling Elle that he'd devirginized seven girls (he claims that he's slept with seven, but only three were virgins (only three. ha.)), and had no clue why he'd woken up on Sunday morning with a bed full of sand (tag on the beach). Elle professes to be very dedicated to TAG, which is Teens Against Something-to-do-with-drugs-and-alcohol-that-starts-with-G. Julie mildly insulted Lumiere while he was going on about his moral code, and she used a large-ish word I've forgotten (purport? profess?) but that he didn't know the meaning of. This from a boy who is going to Yale next year. I, for one, am appalled.

Sighting

Now that OFM is over, I am going to have to continuously struggle to prevent myself from simply using this blog as a medium to record Mario sightings and the various short, pointless conversations that ensue.

In fabulous news, I made pit orchestra for Guys and Dolls! I'm so excited. I'm sharing the piano part with Harry (I'd apparently nicknamed him already. Who knew?). I'll have to talk with him to decide who gets to play what. Getting him to talk should be interesting to say the least. He isn't exactly gregarious. The whole "I'm now going to have to talk to this guy I don't know" situation reminds me of last year, when I first started taking the train with Mario and was regularly freaking out over how awkward it was.

Also, I've begun studying SAT words. My word for today is disparage, which means belittle. For instance, after hearing that Rachel was going to the dance with Mario, I made many disparaging comments about her, trying to make her seem less important.

My funny story is actually from a few days ago. Actually, I lied, it was only yesterday. I was walking with Avon and someone else (I think it was Red, but that doesn't really make sense, since she isn't in Spanish, so it may have actually been someone else, but I really think that it wasn't Julie or Gretchen, and I'm not sure who else I would have been walking with, since it was definitely a girl) after Spanish. We were headed towards the bridge. I had my weird Mario-is-nearby sensor go off a little bit, but I assumed it was a false positive (considering the fact that it hasn't been wrong yet, I should probably stop doing that). Then I realized that I had a physics test next period and was walking in the wrong direction. I did a 180 and headed back towards the stairs and lo and behold, Mario was actually behind me. We both said hi, I passed him, and then about a millisecond later, I ran head on into a senior girl who gave me a very dirty look.

Birthdays!

I turned 16 today, which mainly involved a lot of my friends saying "happy birthday!" and me squealing "thanks!" and enveloping them in high-velocity hugs. These high velocity hugs pose a bit of an issue, as my lack of kinesthetic awareness leaves me rather accident prone. I managed to shoulder Red in the neck, and when I hugged Avon, my long, ungainly arms managed to knock into the blonde boy behind her. He gave us a very pissed off look. It was, all in all, rather comical.

The other thing I wanted to address today was a silly exercise in probability brought up by Kahuna, a boy in my United States History class. He claimed that if you have a 1/3 chance of being hit by a car, and a 1/3 chance of thinking about the car, then you should think about the car, because the chance of both thinking and being hit is only one ninth. I said that probability said so, but that didn't mean it would make a difference. Jeremy calmly informed us both that they were independent events with independent probabilities.

However, this still let me somewhat confused. Well before I was born, my father was in a plane crash. He was in a little airplane in Alaska, and since he had a pilot's license, he was sitting in the cockpit with the captain, who was showing off. Well, the showoff of a captain ended up crashing the plane into a mountain, breaking some bone in my father's girlfriend's back (she blamed my Dad, and immediately broke-up with him). However, the probability of him being in more than one plane accident is extremely small. Therefor, it makes sense for me to travel on airplanes with him, because the chance of a crash is reduced.

Clearly, probability is screwed.