home suite home.

The first thing that my mom says to me at the airport when she picked me up is that I got fat.

Ughhhhh.

Let’s let this set the mood for my entire home-trip.

Oh.  And since my mom is selling our old house, I have to live at my dad’s.  This isn’t really a problem, but I just don’t really feel so at home.  But, really, even when I was here last time, I didn’t feel “at home” in my other, actual room.

I feel at home in chicago.  Even if it does leak a lot.  I hope I grow to like NJ again — but there’s no way that I’m staying here for, you know, two months or whatever.

I’m going to see the Neo-Futurists — with my mom — tomorrow.  I told her about it last year or the year before or whatever, and she bought tickets to see them when they came to perform where I live.  I don’t know how this’ll turn out.  But whatever.

Dr. apt on monday.  Then…what?  I don’t know.  Nothing I guess.  It just seems like a whole lot of nothing here.  A whole lot of potential that I’m not able to actualize.  Or realize.  Or whatever you do to potential.

Ughhhhh.   Ughhhhhhh.  I hate being in new places with no one to talk to.

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Right to bear arms.

A lot of people are getting their panties in a twist about the opinions that this man has.

Personally, I think that it’s nice to have some kind of an opposing viewpoint, and act consistently with that viewpoint.

The only thing that bothers me is that he doesn’t care that he spelt “pedophile” wrong. That’s not ignorance — that’s just laziness.

Linkie Link.

(Warning for those of you using a 486 cpu — this is a PDF!!!!!)

[edit: for reference, as a few people brought this up, "anal sodomy" is not redundant, since sodomy, in the general sense, can refer to anal or oral copulation, AND according to websters, can be with a member of the same sex OR with a member of the opposite sex.]

okay, bub.

Let’s agree to disagree.  We’re both smart.  We both try to act really great and correct people and know about obscure authors and books and do meta-things like observe that we’re typing a run-on sentence DURING a run-on sentence.  Meta.

But are you smarter than me?  Maybe.  Probably.  I’m not the best math student, ever, I know.  Why can’t you just be satisfied with bragging to your old highschool chums about how you know 14 proofs of the fundamental theorem of algebra — and one uses graph theory.

This journal is getting kind of dull.  We need some drama up in here.  Like, straight-up livejournal drama.  Deadjournal drama.  DeviantArt drama.

I can’t wait to go home, if only to see what kind of drama comes up.

But, going home is a lot like looking through a box of old food.  A lot of stuff has obviously spoiled, you know the crackers are going to be stale, but they look okay as-is, but there are a few things that are pretty much the same as when you put them in there.

There’s a lot of kids I know who are going to be in nj forever.  A lot of kids who even want to be in nj forever.  There’s a few kids I know who are going to be going from crappy job to crappy job, if only because they don’t have the skills or the patience to do anything worthwhile.  There’s a few kids I know who have no motivation to do anything, so they just sit back and do the same thing year-in-and-year-out.  There’s a few kids I know who have such high hopes that they have no idea where to start — so they just don’t.

This isn’t a lecture post.  All of these people can do whatever they want.  It’s just depressing to come home to jersey.

Also, prob no one is gonna wanna study topology with me.  Gimme a ring if you do.

clearing this up.

Alright.  I don’t care how educated you think you are, or how wise being buddhist\wiccan\othertrendyreligions has made you, if you make the following mistake, I will not continue arguing with you:

ect. is short for electroconvulsive therapy, a treatment where seizures are induced to treat various psychological illnesses.

etc. is short for “et cetera”, the latin expression meaning, loosely, “and other things.”

So when you say, “Marbles, superballs, ect.”  what you are telling me is that you collect little spherical objects and electroconvulsive therapy.  Such absurdities will not be accepted into the rigid confines of the stern rules which regulate the underground world of debating.

If you can’t remember this, you can do one of the following: read a book, read a bunch of articles online, look at the dictionary for hours, talk to your therapist regarding the abbreviation, cry about it, ect.

As soon as I found out, I had to post.

I stopped playing videogames at around the time when playstation 2 came out. I decided that everyone stopped caring about the story, and started caring about the graphics. Typical complaint, you know. I know there are some good games for ps2, xbox, the wii, etc., but I just never felt compelled to buy them in the same way I did with NES or SNES.

Tons and tons of gamers feel this way. “Bring back the old style gaming!” But no company listened. It was all about more complexity, better graphics, crazy story-lines trying to be original — but no game has really made much of an impact on me as, say, Chrono Trigger, FF3, etc, etc.

Now, unrelatedly (or so it would seem!), what has capcom made lately? Devil May Cry 4? Dino Crisis 3? What the hell, Capcom. When will you learn?

But, wait. What’s that? You brought back what?
That’s fucking right.

Comcast, I salute you. Now, Square-Enix, please — bring back 16bit RPGs.

Please.

edit:  I just noticed I put “Comcast” in that last sentence, when it clearly should be “Capcom”.  I feel that this mistake is characteristic of someone who has had to complain about comcast so much that as soon as his fingers type that “C”, like a savant pianist who knows the notes but cannot feel the music, his brain instantly makes his muscles make his fingers type the “omcast”, unbeknown to him.

This has obviously hindered my ability to write papers, especially if I have to sign my full name:  James Comcast Salvatore.

nine one one.

I’ve been weening myself off of ativan lately — and, I’ve even been drinking coffee a lot!  I mean, not to prove a point or whatever, but mostly because I really like it.

I wrote my first non-stupid paper.  It’s on weak homotopy equivalence between a finite space with 2n+2 points and an n-sphere.  It follows pretty closely the lectures done by a professor here [I don't want to mention who, since I don't want people to google him and get my blog.] but I wanted to sort of just get to the meat of the argument and sort of “trim the fat”.  It’s still 13, pages, but there’s a few big pictures on it, so.  I mean.  It’s probably 11 or so pages fo’ reals.

I remember sort of being in this dream-like state all of third and second quarter this previous year.  I sort of remember just being zombie-like, going from one class to another, barely being awake — but, you know, not in the regular college-kid way, but in the medically-induced sort of way.  Ativan definitely helps anxiety, I’ll give it that, but I’m glad to be finally off of it.  I don’t yawn as much anymore.  I don’t feel like I’m dreaming while I’m riding my bike.  I can *remember* the events of a particular day *in order*.

My stomach and throat are also getting better.  I think they tend to come-and-go with my anxiety.  So, you know, they’re rul bad in the winter and not so bad in the summer, or something.

Speaking of summer, mine is not even half-way over.  I’m going home in a few days to New Jersey.  Then I need to

• clean up my room, and move things to my dad’s house.
• sell or give away a bunch of books i hate or don’t want.
• see my old jerk friends.
• read at starbucks all the time.
• act as pretentious as possible (eg: oh, you havent read algebraic topology yet?  oh, a lot of people don’t see it for a while, but I did it this year.)

But, in fact, it would be hard to go home and act pretentious.  The only kid I know who’s really into maths [I think!] is Pete, and he’s basically kickin’ my ass as far as learning things goes.  The rest of them could care less what I’m doing.

That sort of bugs me, too.  I mean, with things like anthro or bio or physics or psychology or english or whatever, you can be like, “Oh, I’m doing _______.”  and then the other person is like, “Oh?  What’s that?”  And there’s always a relatively easy explanation for it.  I basically just say, “Math.”  “Oh, so you add numbers together all day?”  “Yes.  And subtract them, too.”

I take that back — Anna is doing something in the biological sciences that she’s explained to me at least 400 times, and I still don’t know anything about what she’s doing.  Something about zebras or fish or something.

What am I learning right now?  Tangent Bundles.  It’s exactly as fun as it sounds.

cooler ranch.

Let me talk about a topic near and dear to me: how I feel about doritos.

Now, many of you are familiar with the cheese and cooler ranch brand doritos, and, really, that’s about all you need.  By the way, if you spell check doritos on wordpress, one of the words you get is “clitorides”, which is one of the two correct plural forms of “clitoris”.  A now-acceptable spelling is “clitorises.”  So that’s that.

In 1966, Doritos were created by Frito-lay, a division of pepsicorp, and were instantly a sensation.  With flavors like “corn chip” how could you go wrong?  Eventually, Doritos needed some new, fresh ideas to compete with the “free love” feelings post-1969.  Cheese flavored doritos were created in 1972 and, not surprisingly, were a hit among hungry teens and adults alike.

Now, cheese is fine and good (I mean, Kraft Mac and Cheese has been going strong for a good number of years!) but Doritos Corp. felt it was missing something. Taco had been made in 1985, but it just wasn’t selling as well as the cheese doritos — the company was in a bind!  But then something strange happened.   The story goes something like this:  In 1986, John C. CoolRanch, a worker at the doritos company, accidentally spilled ranch and ice into the chip-making-machine.  When his boss came out to beat him (as was customary in 1986), he saw the chips, picked one up, and threw it right into the trash.  Looking down at his fingers, the boss [Col. Cornelius Reginald III] noticed what is now referred to as “Cooler Ranch Residue” on his fingers, which he decided to lick off.  Well, it was so good that John C. got a promotion and became the owner of the US’s third largest waterpark after he retired from the company in 1993 — but his chips, named Cool Ranch [and later, Cooler Ranch, for some reason, but now back to Cool Ranch] to honor him, remained a staple of the Doritos Corporation.

In 1997, doritos came out with Spicy Nacho which was to be ranked, at best, mediocre.  It would only take them another year to come out with Salsa Verde, another relatively unpopular flavor.  Ranchero made a splash in 2002, while it took another two years to black pepperjack and another year to develop the ultra-hot (really, it’s hard for me to eat them!) fiery habanero flavor.  One of the most recent is the Blazin’ Buffalo ones, which are prob one of my favorite, after Cooler Ranch and Cheese.  Doritos also had a “mystery flavor” which turned out to be something like hamburger, I think.

Lately, doritos is doing this weird “put two kinds of chips in one bag” deal, which is pretty cool, but, honestly, it just looks like they’re grabbing for something that isn’t there.  People love Cool Ranch.  People love Cheese.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what to do now.

Give up?  Solution: make “Coolest Ranch” which are just cooler ranch chips with more of those flavor spice things on the top.  Those things are awesome.  You basically get like, 3 of these in a regular bag of cool ranch — you know what I’m talking about, right?  Those chips that are REALLY covered in the cooler ranch stuff?  God, those are so good.

milk duds.

How could something so small give me 25% of my daily saturated fat? It’s incredible. I think that’s more or less what people from the 1950’s thought candy would be like in the future — just a small, concentrated amount of fat which is consumed orally and tastes like chocolatey caramel.

I’m slowly cleaning up my room, but I just found out about a bottle of soap that spilled on my floor. It’s gross. But I’m sort of conflicted about how I feel about it, since, you know, it’s soap. It’ll clean up. And, in fact, after I clean it up, the floor will prob be cleaner too. It’s like spilling water all over a dirty shirt. Outloud, you might be like, “damn!” but in your head you’re prob like, “at least I don’t have to do wash now.”

The REU is going pret well. I’m only going to two of the bunch of classes offered, but I’m also working on Differential Geometry [from spivak], so that’s pret fun. I really wanted to finish up Dummit and Foote, but it’s so long! So long.

Ugh, and I haven’t taken a bath yet, either! Ugh.

But, really, I need to update this more later. I hardly update anymore. I need to really change that up.

Oh. But when I go home, I’ll probably be typing up blog posts on the daily, ’cause, you know, I’m gonna mostly be focusing on my studies, crying, and making a strawberry shortcake.

God, so good.

Strawberry.