stunt_muppet

My Bio prof this year recommended me for a Seminar course in Synthetic Biology next sememster. It's capped at 12 students and is normally intended for juniors and seniors, so needless to say I'm flattered, and it sounds like something I might actually be interested in. I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of workload, though, particularly since I'm planning to take Calculus again next semester, which will be all kinds of hard. I also still haven't completed my PE credits, and my chances of fulfilling my Art credit (and thus *maybe* having a class where I can relax *a little*) are slim, since the intro-level art classes fill up fast. I'm not sure what to do about all this, and I'm sick of having to tell my parents "I don't know" every time they ask me. Even though I really, really don't.

In other news, I'm almost finished with Red Bicycle and the second part of Sixth-Date Rule chapter 2 (because that's really what's important, right?). And, incidentally, the hype is true - Legends of Zelda: Twilight Princess is all kinds of awesome. Oh, how I will miss that Wii.

A further note: I am going to win this contest. That's not a question.

I mean, how amazing would that be? I know there's no chance that I'll actually win, but just the thought of playing the corpse on CSI makes me delerious. I wouldn't have to learn any lines, and I'd just lie very very still while Grissom and Doc Robbins discuss what killed me. How surreal. 

Of course, when I squeed about this to my parents, my dad promptly replied "I might be a little upset seeing my oldest child as a dead body." Aw. 

And now, to round it all out, a meme:

Leave a comment related to this meme and I will pick 3 interests from your "interests" lists to ask you about. You can also ask about 3 of mine should you so choose.

Cleaning: This will sound strange, but I love to clean. I don't always have the energy to do it, but I get this incredible feeling of satisfaction once I've scrubbed down a sink or vaccuumed a carpet or dusted off my desk or Windexed the windows. Cleaning makes me feel like I've accomplished something, not to mention it's something I can do while I'm idly thinking about something else - some of my best story ideas have come while cleaning. Plus, after a while I can no longer stand to walk on a messy floor or sit on a bed with dirty sheets.

Libraries: If I had to stay in a single building for the rest of my life, I'd stay in a library. I love libraries. I love the smell of old books, I love the quiet, and I love just aimlessly wandering through the stacks and picking up anything that interests me. Even better is the experience of sitting down against a bookshelf and just losing yourself in a novel or reference tome, right then and there, not even bothering to head to a desk. School libraries are my favorite, since they have mostly non-fiction. I can look through reference tomes all day, absorbing new information. I'm a bit too picky about fiction to find the fiction section as enjoyable; I can't just pick up a fiction novel at random and start to read, like I can with non-fiction.

Nostalgia: I am already old and crotchety; I am firmly convinced that everything was better when I was a kid, and that these kids today have no appreciation for (insert whatever you choose here). In a sense, I suppose that's bound to happen. I look with fondness on the trappings of my youth because everything was easier and simpler then, and I was ignorant of all the complications and moral ambiguities that life is so full of. There are movies and TV shows that I watch, and music I listen to, and books I read, simply because I have such find memories of growing up with them. I love the film Matilda because I watched it every year at summer camp; I still have an Animorphs book in the back of my bookshelf (which I even read, on occasion) because I devoured those books in middle school; my unnatural attachment to the Muppets springs mostly from a childhood raised on Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock (I can even still sing some of the Fraggle Rock songs). My childhood is what I retreat to when adulthood, big and scary and unknown, starts looking over my head. It's how I put off dealing with The Real World for a little bit longer.

And three more from [Bad username in LJ-tag]

Video Stores: My love of video stores (particularly old or out-of-the-way ones) is similar to my love of libraries. One of my favorite time-wasting activities is wandering around a video store, peeking at every single title I can find, making note of the ones that sound interesting, laughing at the obviously bad movies, marvelling at the obscure gems that I occasionally find hidden in the stacks, and sometimes even buying something. If I had a portable TV on which I could sample these films, it would be almost as wonderful as a library. In fact, I've found a few of my favorite movies by digging around video stores, or at least rediscovered them. I've also been known to get a quick, cheap, immature giggle by peeking at the inevitably huge collection of anime pr0n. XD

Rants: Ranting is therapy. I manage to fool people into thinking I am nice when I'm really just passive-aggressive. Everything from minor annoyances to detailed, well-thought-out arguments to barely-intelligible screams of rage end up here, because putting them on paper (so to speak) makes me feel better. Also, when I disagree with someone or something, I rather like detailing precisely why and going through it all as though I'm actually making a case to someone. Same goes for TV, movie, and book-related rants. No idea why it's so much fun, but it is. :)

Discworld: If you haven't read the Discworld novels, I highly recommend them. At their most basic level, they are fantasy parodies, but they are more thoughtful then they seem at first, and in their skewering of fantasy conventions most make a very salient point. They're also riotously funny, I don't know if I mentioned that. Here's an excerpt from my personal favorite, Small Gods:

"It's a sign!" said an old man with a wooden leg.
"Yes! A sign!" said a young woman next to him.
"A sign!"
"It's a bugger." said a small and totally unheard voice from somewhere around their feet.
'But what's it a sign of?" said an elderly man who had been camping out in the square for three days.
"What do you mean, of? It's a sign!" said the wooden-legged man. "It don't have to be a sign of anything. That's a suspicious kind of question to ask, what's it a sign of."
"Got to be a sign of something," said the elderly man. "That's a referential wossname. A gerund. Could be a gerund."

And that's not even the funniest passage in the book. Not by a long shot. I've been reading these books since I was eleven(ish) and for a long time they were the only fantasy I read. I've never yet found one I didn't like. They may not be the height of literary whatever, but they're entertaining.[Bad username or unknown identity: ]