So after about a month of using Tumblr, I have decided to move to WordPress. If any of you guys care, it’s at:

onlyatireswing.wordpress.com

I first lost because I was using fast-speed mode and obnoxiously and impulsively made myself get killed by my rival. Then, I told myself I would play in slow-speed mode with the speed toggle. I did until I got to Miltank, who wiped the floor with me completely. So sad, I’m really sad.

So I’m about to play Pokemon Crystal with a modified version of the Nuzlocke Challenge. For those who don’t know, the Nuzlocke Challenge is a “hard-mode” established by some player who changed the game so that it became infinitely more difficult. The rules are set by the player, not by the game, so it’s up to the player to complete it. I modified the rules to make them difficult but different from the traditional challenge:

1. If a pokemon faints, it is considered dead and you must release it.
2. No items may be used in or out of the game, unless they’re needed to progress the game (such as bicycles or pokeflutes). This includes hold items as well. Also, only HMs and required TMs (to progress the game) may be taught. No repels allowed.
3. You may not catch a legendary (implied from 3)
4. You must nick-name your pokemon (to develop an attachment to them).
5. You may only catch the first pokemon you see in a new route. If you see a new pokemon in the same route, you cannot catch it, even if you did not catch the first pokemon you saw, or if you return to the route. No master balls allowed.
6. Patches of grass, small ponds in cities, or pokemon given to you count as new routes.
7. You can only buy one pokeball at the store.
8. Battles are played in set mode.
9. Black outs/Lost battles = game over.

I’ll see how this plays out. See you in a couple of days, probably Monday when school starts up again.

So right now it has just ended - a very uneventful Christmas just as usual. It felt like a perfectly normal day.

Lately, this winter break, as most winter breaks since 10th grade, I’ve been working at my parents’ place. Most of the time I dread it, but then when I get there, it’s not too bad, kind of adrenaline-OCD quenching when I listen to Glee on my Zune and fry rice. It’s not a terribly boring job like bullet-sorting that I did when I was in high school. @_@. That job was awful and mind-numbing. There’s at least some freedom to walk around and eat food. That’s always fun. Plus the other coworkers sit around and talk shit while I do whatever. It’s not a terrible way to pass the time, though one thing I have to point out: when I’m working at this job as a fry cook, I feel different. You have to be on your feet especially when it’s busy, and I am always so tired by the end of the day. I wonder then about the relation between bodily pain and the requirements of survival in relation to intelligence and the ability to think about the a priori. It’s weird, but then at the end of this train of thought I usually just forget what I originally wanted to say with little or no motivation to continue the original thought. I think I should buy a voice recorder and record these streams, but I wonder how often I would use it.

I’ve been reading a little Hobbes, mainly the introduction of the Hackett version. Mostly the beginning. I usually like to read the introduction by some editor before I embark on the reading the actual text, because most of the time I get so lost without some sort of context. The text itself, written by Hobbes, is not too difficult to get through despite it being written in Early Modern English, which I usually find to be bowel-wrenching. I’m a very slow, very attention-deficit reader, and it takes a while for me to get the point of what the writer is saying, so I have to slow down and piece together the argument, which is made infinitely easier by reading a synopsis.

Along with this, I’ve been preparing for some of the comp sci courses I’ll be taking by reading another text on Algorithms I found on the interveb. Vasirani, I think. I think I butchered the name. In any event, this along with some tutorials on C should pipeline me into a comfy position at the start of the quarter. Without adequate preparation and a pokerface on for school here at UofC, you’re bound to fail and crash into a tree. I hope this time I around I’ll hit a comfy patch of grass instead.

Finally the last thing of mention that seems to be a little refreshing in this weird, sluggish state of mind I’ve been in is my tumbling on different blogs found on the web. I’ve been scanning everything from blogs on critical and cultural studies blogs to random comics and people’s postings of introspective-ish pictures of themselves in bizarre poses. Some of them have been fun, some have been too apparently boring to quench my intellectual fetishes, and some have been interesting. I’m just looking for something to give me some flow in this frustrating life of academia. I wonder how this will change in the future.

Made it to the end.

“YOU’RE TAKING ME TO SEE HOHENHEIM. TO THAT BASTARD - TO MY FATHER!”

29 Reminiscence (Tsuiso) - Fullmetal Alchemist 2 (by Tahu5Fan)

While I do agree that yes, as college students we are lucky that we don’t live in a state of genocide like Darfur or are getting our legs chopped off - or even something less immediate but still life-threatening - like knowing you have leukemia or getting beaten by your abusive parents - this does not mean that college students should not feel sorry for themselves when they don’t reach a goal that they wanted to accomplish, even something as simple as grades.

Getting bad grades is more than just an ego-breaker - it also means one more impediment to getting financial/life stability. It is very hard to survive, given living expenses, without a college degree. Even with a Bachelor’s degree, you need to have some kind of technical skill or you won’t find a job. Your choices are either to become an academic and work 60 hours a week teaching and researching and making $45,000 a year (if you’re lucky to get tenure), do some other job like teaching (where you work hard, pay sucks and there’s little job security), or go into the medical/engineering field and put in very late and flexible hours, if you’re lucky to find a job.

With that said, college is expensive. Some people I know are graduating with 50,000+ loans. A C+ is devastating if you are in this position. It is an extremely horrifying position to be in graduating with 50,000 dollars in loans and no job because your grades were too bad to get you into medical, law or graduate school. There are also a lot of people who don’t have the parental support you mentioned. Some parents are assholes, and will look down upon you if you fail. You’ll be talked about as the failed student, and for some people, while it isn’t equal to getting your leg chopped off, just places you in an undignified position which no one wants to be in.

A bad grade means no recommendation letter. Keep that up and you won’t have any recommendation letters. Without a solid 3.3 GPA, a solid MCAT score, research experience, and solid recommendation letters, no medical school will accept you, anywhere. You’ll have a useless degree and loans under your belt and you’ll have to work as a teacher, being treated like crap and twiddling your thumbs until the next admissions cycle. And people manifest their frustrations differently - sometimes people try so hard and then fail. And then they hit this wall around them and they can’t do anything to get out - nothing works.

Yes, I agree that our situation is not in comparison to those who are really suffering on a life-threatening level - but I think that there exists an ideal state of security that all people want to be in (and should be in in an ideal world). And different people have different ways of coping when they don’t get into that state. There’s no reason to say, why are you coping this way and toughen up, stop being a baby. There shouldn’t be this demeaning of someone because they are too weak to fight.

belaine16:

If you cry over grades, imma need you to stop.

I understand and can relate to having a breakdown due to feeling overwhelmed, stressed out and frustrated due to your work-load…but crying after receiving a lower than expected, or bad grade, is so pathetic.

Okay, maybe if your a 2nd grader who…

Such beauty has never been found in a racetrack

Gahhhh.. I should be studying right now. This week is going to be hectic/crazy for me, yet I’m not feeling the “chasing-monster” syndrome which is probably not a good thing, I should be stressed out. Unfortunately, these last few weeks have taken all of my strength and attention away, and all of my work has been half-assed and I’ve been exhausted staying up late every night finishing these crazy assignments. Next quarter I’m seriously going to have to do a revamp of my entire schedule, this quarter was just information overload in so many ways.

With that being said, I’m going to have to plan this week accordingly.

It is amazing how much these two relatively new social networking machines have just made human communication so much more extensive and efficient. It’s mind-blowing, even though I’m a generation 90’s - 00’s kid, I’m just now getting on and it’s so efficient for finding out new information. Muh Gawd…