I remembered something I meant to write about several days ago. I have to do it now, before I fail my physics test and am too demoralized to write anything humorous.

As certain people may know, I like to make fun of RPI because their football team is called the Engineers. I mean, come on, that's just sad. Can you imagine everyone screaming, "Go Engineers!!!" And I shudder to think of what the mascot must look like. Well... the other day at a volleyball game (MIT won!), I found out the awful truth while looking at a game program. MIT's nickname is... the Engineers! Aaargh! That's awful! Here I was, coming to some school I thought was at least respectable because they wouldn't be silly enough to call themselves the Engineers. Guess again... All I can say is thank goodness that no one actually roots for the Engineers - they scream "Go Tech!" instead, which I suppose is a bit more acceptable.

So now that my bubble of innocense has been deflated, I've started looking at ways that MIT has copied/been copied by other schools. I applied to MIT and RPI and they both have the same team name. I also applied to WPI, and I realized that one of our fight chant thingies is suspiciously similar to WPI's. Now, I don't know which one came first, but one is copying off the other. Shame shame... Okay, thirdly, I didn't apply to CalTech, but I was planning on it for a good long while. And... the similarity there is that CalTech and MIT share the same mascot - the beaver, obviously because both schools are full of busy little engineers.

Those are all the similarities I could think of for the moment. Nothing Carnegie Mellon-ish yet, because MIT doesn't have a Kiltie Marching Band. Then again, you never know. With MIT having so many similarities with other schools, it may be only a matter of time before we start hearing bagpipes at the football games...

- Flykyr Skysong

Current mood: Scared!

Wow... I had a weird dream last night. I was sitting in the driveway at home, trying to fix something. I heard this strange noise coming from the sky - it sounded like people talking to each other through walkie-talkies - sounds all distorted and everything. So I looked up and there were these two planes flying around over the neighborhood, scouting around. I knew that they were Iraqi planes, come to spy on us. As I watched, they flew search patterns down the road. Suddenly, five more planes appeared from the north and started attacking the two enemy planes. Hooray! The Air Force would save us! The 'bad' planes kept morphing between airplane and helicopter but eventually they were both shot down. The second one tumbeled out of the sky in flames and landed on whatever I had been fixing in the driveway. Before I could even go over and inspect the damage, a whole bunch of people in those white contamination suits ran over and started cleaning it up. Then this guy who looked like a general appeared, and since I seemed to be the only person that had witnessed this battle, I asked him what was going on and stuff. He thought I was out to steal military secrets. :P

- Flykyr Skysong

Current mood: Hungry!

My friend sent me this touching email today:

Hey Flykyr!

What's up? I never see you, that sucks.

Love, Agent X

(Obviously, names have been changed to protect people's privacy. Not that it really matters, I guess.)

It's true though. I really should get out more. But... I have so much work to do! I'm hoping to get my math done this weekend so I can go out and explore or something. But I'm going to have to study for tests too - I have 3 next week. Aargh!

Durn. I always have stuff I want to write about, and then I forget it by the time I actually sit down. Maybe I shouldn't try this at 1 in the morning. I wonder how I can add links into my main text? Hmm... Oh sw33t!

G'night. ;)

- Flykyr Skysong

Quote of the day:"You know how all the frats have Rush Girls? Well, this is our Rush Boy." - A WILG resident
Current song: DJ Sammy - Heaven. Oops. Now it's a really stupid remix of 'Can't Get You Out of my Head.' This is sad. Dumb radio.
Current mood: Does 'blind' count? My contacts are getting kinda smeary.

Wow... It's been a few days. The end of the week is always so busy for me - I have Physics due on Wednesdays, Calculus due on Thursdays, and Chemistry due on Fridays! Aaugh! I thought the chem p-set wasn't too bad, but that's only because I've gotten the first half done. I hear the second half is much harder. :'(

*sighs* Well, I barely passed my first math test (by 1 point) so that's had me depressed recently. I also have 3 tests next week - physics, chemistry, and math (again!). So... hopefully I will survive.

I am stupid in math. I can't do anything. I don't have high hopes about the next test. Let's face it - I'm a SPAMIT (Stupid Person at MIT). I'm the one they let in by accident. I don't have time to study for anything because my whole time is spent trying to figure out problems that I just don't understand. Have I been overrating myself all along? Last night, I was working with some people in the Concourse lounge, and we got to talking about our math test grades. Amy got a 96, which is just incredible. So Jameel asked her what her IQ was, and she said she'd never taken an IQ test. So then he asked what she got on the SAT and she said, "I didn't do too well. I got a 1590." Cor! Ain't that a disappointment? I wonder what she thinks of me - I'm so useless.

Huh... My desk lamp died the other day, and so I've been looking all over the place for a replacement bulb. It's a halogen bulb, so it takes a bit of searching to find. My parents just sent me one from home (we have the same lamp at home) and it turns out that it's a non-standard bulb. As in, I probably have the only one in the whole world. What's up with that?! I really like the lamp, but it's kinda stupid if the bulb's irreplaceable. And my first bulb didn't even last very long - only a few weeks. Well, they say "made in China" for a reason. :P

- Flykyr Skysong

Quote of the day: "...and that's why people come to the Masochistic Institute of Technology." - David, my Physics Recitation Leader
Current song: Linkin Park - Pts of Athrty. Gads, the Reanimation cd is so good, especially when you're in a bad mood!
Current mood: Sleeeeeepy

Got fed by the friendly people at WILG again today. They had a most excellent seafood soup - lots of shrimp and scallops, yum! Then Janet dragged us (me and Amy) along to Fenway house, another Independent Living Group. We enjoyed tea and scones and got a nice house tour. The people were very friendly, but I could never see myself actually living there. They are having an anime marathon tomorrow night, but I think I'm going to be too busy doing physics to go (since I'm not doing physics right now :P). Oh well, gotta love the free food.

An interesting thing happened last night. It was raining and all, and I guess there was a bit of thunder and lightning - nothing close by though. Then suddenly, there was this HUGE clap of thunder right outside the dorm - so random! But it was even funnier because it somehow set off a car alarm... Imagine that! I wonder how long it was until someone went and turned it off... :P

Okay, okay. Enough staring at the computer screen for now. I practically spent the whole afternoon trying to do the most evil physics problems known to Man on CyberTutor. Stupid online thing. Evil evil evil! Okay, I'm sane now. Back to doing car crash problems. Fun. Er, "fun" is more like it. Oh yeah, here's a good quote from Mike at Fenway House, "Y'know, there are three things at MIT - friends, sleep and work, and you can only have two of them." How very true that is.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: None - enjoying silence for once
Current mood: In a depressed physics sort of mindset

Rrrrr..... Since my blog died on me a second ago, I have to type this all over again. Hmm....

Yeah, so today Amy and I went looking for Japanese comic book stores. Amy researched a little bit on the web, and found two that were sorta along Mass. Ave. so we would hopefully be able to find them. Turned out that both were random Japanese food markets that had random video rentals - all in Japanese of course. So that was sad and stupid. By then, we were way past Hahvahd and stuff so we turned around and started walking back. We stopped off at Hahvahd Yahd to wander around and stuff. It was fun to see dorms made out of bricks instead of concrete. And trees and grass! We had fun wondering what it would be like if we picked up Simmons Hall and dropped it in the middle of the Yahd (Yeah, I'm determined not to pronounce/spell that place properly ever again! :P). Then we walked back to Harvard Square (Oops, broke my promise already!) and found this mall with two or three anime-related stores, so life was all good again. Didn't buy anything, naturally, since I'm such a cheapo. What would I buy anyway? Found some Slayers manga, but they were only about Lina and Naga - no Zelgadis, boo hoo. :'-(

Well, anyway, after wandering around there a bit, we started walking back home. I had wanted to stop by WILG - the Women's Independent Living Group - for dinner at 6, but by the time we got there, it was around 7:15 and starting to rain. I said we should stop by and see if they had anything left or whatever, and they were still serving! The food was really good, and the people were really nice! We even got a house tour. It's a nice place. Maybe I should think about joining it??? Hmm... Here are some facts about WILG:

- You can still join it even if you can't live there - you just have to move in when you're allowed to
- $2200 to live at WILG - this includes meals
- $100 if you don't live there - this includes 1 meal a week, social fees, etc.
- 48 people live there right now, but there's about 15 more members that live on campus.
- Most rooms are singles or doubles, but there are a few triples and quads
- All the quads are converted to triples this year - this is actually a regular occurence
- Can do laundry there - 50 cents to wash, free to dry
- Bathrooms shared between 3 and 5 people, who are in charge of keeping it clean and everything
- Dinner served 6 times a week, I believe. You get paid if you volunteer to cook.
- Also make packed lunches which you can take with you
- WILG is only a 5 or 10 minute walk away - pretty close!
- You can paint your room any way you want, pretty much.
- You can loft your bed! But of course, I'd be way too clueless to make one by myself... :(

Er, that's all I can think about right now. Sounds like it's worth it? Oh yeah, random fact of note. I met my first Lindy (that isn't me) the other night - she lives at WILG! How cool is that?

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Chumbawumba - Tubthumping
Current mood: Happily tired

I'm enjoying my three-day suicide prevention weekend. I love how MIT gives its students random days off, presumably to de-stress. Today I'm going to indulge in some urban hiking - in search of comic book stores with my roommate. And to return the stupid light bulb that I bought that doesn't fit my lamp. Figures that I get a lamp with an irreplaceable light bulb that dies in the first few weeks of school. :(

I so wish I had a CD burner so I could get all these downloaded anime episodes off my laptop. I've got more than 5 gigs of movies here, sheesh!

Ooh! I have a job (sorta, kinda, not really). On Friday, I went and became the subject for a psychology test. It was lots of fun! I sat in front of a computer screen and pushed buttons. It was test on color recognition and memory. All good except for when my contact lens fell out and I had to spend a few minutes looking for it. The experimenter guy came in, and was wondering what I was doing. :P Oh well. I got paid $10 for it!!! Not a bad way to go. ;) I gotta find more of these tests to do...

Time for some more homework avoidance!

- Flykyr Skysong

Yay! I got to see Lilo & Stitch last night. That is such a cute movie! It was funny - the LSC was showing it in the hall where I have math lectures. I never knew that that room had a projection screen or such good sound. I was impressed. :)

Last night marked the start of Rush 2002. Doesn't really apply to me since this is Frat and Independent Living Groups rush, and not sorority rush, and I wouldn't even be able to join if I wanted since all freshmen have to live on campus, but... it means free food! So I had steak and lobster last night. It was really good, besides the fact that my knife was totally dull and I couldn't really cut anything. We also enjoyed some acapella by a group from Tufts, and lots of cheesecake over at WILG. Then the frat next door had a roof drop - the strangest thing I have ever seen. It mostly consisted of a bunch of guys tossing stuff off a roof just to watch it fall five stories and self-destruct. They had waaay too many old computer moniters (I wonder where they got them from), also parts of a toilet, a few TVs, and printers. Oh yeah, and a few fireballs. Very weird - I'm glad I didn't have to pick up the mess. Between that and Zeta Psi's car bash (where people destroy a car), you start to think that MIT people have a lot of pent up aggression...

- Flykyr Skysong

I've been meaning to write about this for the past few days, but I keep forgetting. But I remembered today!

Okay, so I was reading about sleep in my psychology textbook, and there was an interesting phenomenon called 'sleep paralysis', which happens when someone who's sleeping wakes up and can't move for a few seconds. When you fall asleep, your body seems to paralyze itself so you can't move around and fall off the bed or whatever, and once in a while, it carries over. I was thinking 'Wow! That's so cool! That would be interesting if it happened to me.'

So then a few days later, I was taking a nap in the Concourse lounge between classes. I was sitting in this armchair thing, and I guess I dozed off. About ten or twenty minutes later, I woke up, thinking that my friend Sarah had called my name and it was time to go to class or whatever. So my eyes opened, and I tried to sit up... but I couldn't! It was a very strange feeling - I did not feel like I was paralyzed, only that I couldn't summon up the willpower to actually move and sit up. I tried moving my arm and my leg, but nothing happened. So I concentrated on putting all my energy into moving one finger, and that did it. As soon as I managed to move my finger, I could move again! Needless to say, there was still half an hour until class, and Sarah was sound asleep too. So I went back to dozing away my time.

Wishes do come true, don't they? ;)

- Flykyr Skysong

Yay! It's Friday! Not only that, but today's the first day of Rush. 2 weeks of hanging out at random frats that I can't join. At least there's free food! Steak and lobster, anyone?

Sad that this was all done in one day. Man, I really need to find a new skin. Er, rather, I need to finish this essay. Aargh!

Aaah! I'm awake for once! Stupid paper, I'm never going to finish it. Easier to waste time with this. :P My first college math test tomorrow. I'm gonna fail. :'( I wish I were better at Riemann Sums. Fun stuff, that.

*blinkblinks* The clock says it's only 11:30? Man, I wish. Better than 2:30, all right! Hmm... This must be based in California or something, right? Nice weather... *drools* Sunshine! Not like there isn't any here, but I'm always stuck in my room, doing homework, or just wasting time (guess which one I spend more time doing?) :P Night night!

Yay! My first entry into the world of blogs. That's a funny word, isn't it? Well, I'm all tired out from writing 'The Psychology Paper that Never Ends.' And it's only 4 pages. This is kinda a bad start, ne?