It's Halloween!!

It's officially cold here. It was 65 degrees today at 1 in the afternoon, and that makes it certifiably cold. At night, it got down to, like, 50 degrees. Yeah, the people from So Cal can get picked out pretty easily lately....


Yeah, I really need to get myself one of these.

Ok, I'm happier now. I decided even though I kind of don't like my German teacher (she's kind of old and hard of hearing), sometimes I really do like her a lot. Like today, when I forgot that we were supposed to turn in corrections to an essay, and I asked if I could turn it in to her later, and she was like, "Sure! Just put it in my box!" Ok, maybe she wasn't THAT excited about it. But she let me turn it in late, and that's all that matters in the long run. I'm planning my classes for next quarter. I think I'm gonna take art studio with my pal Ivan--it's three hours two days a week, and I really don't need it for my major, but...it's art! Art is fun. I hope.
They're showing The Shining in the Chem building this Friday! I'm probably gonna go see it. But it is going to FREAK me out. I already know. I've already attempted to watch the TV-edited version at Corie's house (remember, guys?), and that didn't go so well. So we shall see when I have to watch the whole thing. But I've been reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (It's taking me FOREVER! But it's good), and it makes me want to see a Jack Nicholson movie. Because Jack Nicholson was really good in that movie. Not the Shining, but Cuckoo's Nest. So yeah. I've kind of run myself into a dead-end here....
Speaking of Halloween, guess what? I'm really excited about our costumes. Me, Kaylan, Colleen, and Jessica are gonna be janitors! Because Jessica's dad owns an auto-repair shop, so he can get us jumpsuits. And they come with name tags! So Colleen is gonna be Eugene, Jessica's gonna be Charrell, Kaylan's gonna be Joswe (sp?), and I'm gonna be Ping! Isn't that awesome? We will represent many ethnicities.
Welp, now I'm gonna go look at sofas at the Davis thrift store! Byee! (as Hannah says.)

Ach, I'm listening to Coldplay right now (Warning Sign, to be exact), and it's making me feel kind of depressed, very emotional. I don't really know why. Maybe I'm PMSing. Maybe I'm just thinking of Mr. Jansson in the back of my mind. But I don't really have anything to be worrying about right now! I hope it's only me getting adjusted to college.

Mr. Jansson was great. He was funny, smart, and very different from any other teacher I've had. I was so lucky to be in his class.

This is what I did on Saturday, except I was in San Francisco, and these people were in Washington DC. Bring the troops home now! End occupation!

This thing is cool too. It will entertain you for at least a minute or two.

Ghettopoly
An example of a Chance card from this game is, "You got yo' whole neighborhood addicted to crack. Every player pays you $50." Apparently, the game isn't being sold in stores anymore because it's racist and politically incorrect. It's still a little funny, though....
Oh, and the same people are coming out with a Redneck-opoly soon, too!

YES! I've finally figured out how to post photos on my site!! This is definitely groundbreaking, folks. Well, in case you wondered, this is a picture of me and my awesome roommate Kaylan, on the first day that we moved in. Hence the disorder in the room behind us. Who am I kidding? It's always in disorder.

My parents sent me this pic of Myra and Kim:

See, if my mom weren't there taking the picture, I KNOW that Kim would be chasing Myra through the house trying to eat her. And Myra knows it too. That's why they're looking at each other like that. It makes me laugh. I miss my pets!

This is Kaylan's dog, Lucy. She likes to fetch balls in the pool. Isn't she ADORABLE?!

I'm in a good mood right now, because I'm listening to Belle and Sebastian. So I stole these optimistic lyrics from Corie, who also makes me happy:

I've met some people along the way, some of them split some of them stay,
some of them walk some walk on by, I've got a few friends I'll love till I die
From all of these people I try to learn, some of them shine some of them burn,
some of them rise some of them fall, for good or bad I've known them all
We live our life in our own way, never really listened to what they say,
the kind of faith that doesn't fade away we are the true believers

well you can fight or you can run, under a rock till the war is won,
play it safe and don't make a sound,
but not us we won't back down
true believers all the way, you and I
-bouncing souls, true believers circa 2001 or somethin like that

Folks, I have found my calling. If I can't go rescue all of the endangered animals out there, I'll rescue something else instead: Endangered languages! Yes, they really exist. Right now, there are approximately 6,600 languages in the world, and over 90 percent of these languages will vanish in the next century. A majority of endangered languages are spoken by small communities, such as the tribes of Papua New Guinea and the Aboriginal people of Australia, and over 90% of these languages die in the current generation. Pretty interesting, huh? Well, I found this soo interesting that I have decided to write a 3-page paper on it! Ok, fine, it wasn't exactly MY choice to write the paper, and I probably wouldn't write it if I didn't have to. But I still think the subject is pretty cool.

I saw Taking Back Sunday in the Quad at Davis today. I'm terribly sorry I don't have a picture to post of them, like Alex does. But they looked pretty much the same, except the lead singer had a shirt that said "A**hole" on it this time. Me and my neighbors Colleen, Jessica, and Catherine went to see them, b/c it was a free show and because I'd actually heard of them! Wow! That's not common at Davis. Anyway, they weren't so hot, in more ways than one. I just don't see the difference between Taking Back Sunday and...oh...the other 6 emo/punk/whatever groups that sound exactly like them! But it was kind of interesting, because after they'd played 3 songs, they had to stop the amplification, b/c there was some speaker on the other side of the quad who needed to talk, so the lead singer sat down with an acoustic guitar on the grass, and the audience sat in a circle all around him, and he just played and sang like that, while the other members of the band kind of stood w/ the rest of the crowd and watched. And it surprised me, because when he sang normally, without screaming or a microphone or anything, he sounded a lot like the lead singer of the Violent Femmes! Kind of whiny, but in a good way. I actually liked them better that way.

I had a pretty good weekend. But probably the most important part of the weekend for me was on Friday night, when I saw Bowling for Columbine in the Chemistry lecture hall for $3. Why did no one tell me how amazing that movie is? I never saw it before it came to video because I tend to associate the word "documentary" with dry and boring subject matter. Bowling for Columbine is the complete opposite. I couldn't take my eyes off of it, and it just amazed me in so many ways. It really opens your eyes to reality, I think, no matter how much you think you know about gun control and racism in the US today. The movie's funny, partly because of how unbelievably ridiculous it can get, while at other parts it's impossible not to tear up.

EVERYONE SHOULD SEE THIS MOVIE. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET, RENT IT NOW!

I have to post one of the most amusing compliments I've heard in a long time, said by my bestest friend Cammy: "Kate, you're not un-athletic...you just refuse to TRY!" This was said in response to my Wednesday blog. It made me laugh. Cammy, I love you.

I love how candy corn has 9 ingredients, and the first 4 are sugar, corn syrup, honey, and salt.

I somehow got talked into playing Ultimate Frisbee tonight with people from the dorm. WHAT was I THINKING? It's basically soccer, running back and forth across this huge grassy field, trying to catch a frisbee in the dark, and throwing it to other people. I suck at it! It felt like 7th grade PE all over again; trying to avoid having to run, dropping the frisbee every .time someone threw it at me... Luckily my relatively un-athletic pal Colleen was playing too, so we just "guarded" each other until the game was over. Good times, though! My friend Dylan (the same one who hates Friends), is like a STAR soccer player--he is an UNBELIEVABLY fast runner, and he was on my team, so we won. Very exciting. Especially when we finished and got to go home. Ha ha--I'm so amazingly unathletic!

I saw Intolerable Cruelty with Corie tonight. It was...odd. Sure, I liked George Clooney and I guess Catherine Zeta-Jones was pretty good, but...it was just too bizarre! So, I was forced to change the movie o' the moment to the standby choice, which happens to be Milo and Otis right now. That movie never gets old!

Words from Jack White

Move over children,
Let’s get comfortable now.
We can talk to the animals.
We can breathe with our brothers.
We can hope for the best.
We can challenge the mind.
We can open up and rush forward blood vessels upon the ground.
We can deliver fresh food to someone who cannot get it themselves.
So why do I worry so violet? Why do I need more from you and more from life?
Why is it that I don’t become satisfied?
Cannot we break that rule? Cannot we break the tradition of mind?
Satisfaction is death. Satisfaction is death. Satisfaction is death.
It is the pursuit of happiness that brings us happiness, and not the happiness achieved.
I thought about this yesterday too.
So violet, will you then ever be satisfied with me?
You need to constantly pursue me.
You need to chase after something in me,
Always.
You can never be satisfied with me,
I hope you cannot.
I hope you cannot.
Let’s pursue this further.

Jack White
III

Hm.... Very interesting. Kind of.

Today, I learned a valuable lesson. I learned that it is not a good idea to wait until 5 pm to eat, because it will make you very shaky, and make it difficult to walk without feeling light-headed. Here is a list I felt like making.

The Joys of College:
*Going to the school library on Sunday night and discovering that not only is it open, but it's actually possible to find the book you want relatively quickly.
*Getting your homework done on Sunday before 10 pm.
*Watching SNL and finding it hilarious not necessarily because it's funny, but simply because you're watching it with a big group of friends who find it funny.
*Having someone on your floor who plays Weezer on acoustic guitar in the lobby.
*Talking to your best friend (aka Cammy!) on the phone.
*Lavender-scented hand soap in the bathroom (not that nasty cherry-almond kind).

Obviously, I had a good day today! I just hope it lasts through tomorrow....

I can totally relate with Alex on the needing to buy music, regardless of the dearth of cash. (Ooh, big word.) Yesterday, Colleen and Jessica and I drove down to Concord (East Bay area, if anyone wonders) and we went to Tower, and it made me...sad. They had this whole rack of $8 Cd's, and I wanted three of them! Hot Hot Heat, And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead (don't ask), and Joss Stone. But the problem is...will my parents be happy to see that I've spent 20 dollars on CD's? When I need other stuff? Maybe I'll just reward myself at the end of October and give myself a Halloween present. Yes. ANYWAY, it is Friday morning... I use dots too much...and I just realized what a pointless blog this just was. But Alex made me feel like venting.

*ps: We had our traditional "Friends" watching group last night, and we invited this guy Dylan to watch it with us, but he says he doesn't watch because it's "a show about rich white people who don't do anything." So?! It's still kind of funny, gosh darn it!

I saw another funny shirt today:
The guy waiting for a hamburger next to us at the dc had a shirt that said, "Talk nerdy to me," in computer-font. It was funny!

Well, apparently, Arnold is our governor now. I am unable to sufficiently express my disappointment and anxiety.

This is a picture of Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellweger, courtesy of my good friend Billy. You should all say thank you to him.

"The fundamental step is to consider an abstract 'vector space" - a field, if you like, that is bounded by the objective states of neural activation. Mental states would be vectors within this space. It works like this: a neuron can either be 'on' (that is depolarized, 'firing') or 'off' (polarized, 'not firing'), but its firing rate at any moment can only be estimated statistically - for example, as the number of firing within a brief period of time (40 times a second, for example). Experience - at least the elementary features of it such as speed of motion or pitch of sound - is encoded in this firing rate, and I refer to this code, together with its contribution to experience as the 'conscious correlate of the neuron' (CCN)." --taken from A Quantam Description of Mind, Dr. Andrew Duggins

This is my reading homework for the weekend: explaining consciousness through quantam theories. Am I really expected to understand this? Even after reading it 4 times, like I just did?

It just dawned on me...Arnold could be our governor in, like, a month! He's doing really well in the polls, apparently. DO NOT VOTE FOR HIM!!

Only 2 weeks in Davis and I'm already checkin' out the music scene! And judging from tonight, it's...uh...in need of some help. Bria, her friend Alyssa, and I went to this "Turbulence" thing at the UCD gym tonight. It was pretty cool; only 2 bucks to get in, and you got free food (free Jamba Juice!! Who would have thought?!) and pizza hut pizzas, and then they had some bands come out and play. The first one, called Lemon Yellow, of all names, were really bad. They were the usual rip-off of Good Charlotte/Blink 182 that seemed to be very popular at MHS, too, when I went there(Domestic Fury, anyone?). After they played, some dancers came out while the next band set up. This band, called Tryte, looked better; they had bongo drums, and the lead singer played with an acoustic guitar, instead of an electric one. So that made me want to hear them. As it turned out, they were a lot better than Lemon Yellow. The lead singer played harmonica and guitar, (and his name was Octavio! That's pretty cool right there), and the other lead guitarist was really talented. The only thing was...their music just wasn't that exciting. I got a free demo CD and I was just listening to it again, and it's not so great. But yeah. It was still fun to see a band live for free. This is what they looked like, if anyone cares:



Yeah, but the music wasn't the best part of the night! After Tryte finished, Bria and Alyssa and I went to another room, where they had those blow-up obstacle courses! So we had a lot of fun racing each other on those for laughs.
And now, it is 2:30 am, and I am mighty tired. I hope everyone has a good weekend.

Um..yeah. Don't ask.

Kaylan (my roommate) got to flip a sheep today! Ha ha! What can I say--that's what happens when you take animal science at Davis. Their first lab, the class goes out to the sheep farm and learns how to grab sheep around the neck and flip them over on their back between your legs (A very good skill to have in case you need to sheer the sheep or clip their hooves). A girl named Arielle came by our room to say hi, and Kaylan said to her, "Hey, we got to learn how to flip sheep today! I'll show you how! Here, Kate, you be the sheep--" When she said that, Arielle just straight up walked out of the room! And didn't come back! It was so hilarious! Kaylan and I couldn't stop laughing. I was like, "Kaylan! You scare all our friends away!" I love her.

I soo want this bumper sticker for my (nonexistant) car!

What was that phrase that Mr. Ace always said? Peace, love, _____; bring it together! What was that third word?! Was there even a third word?