Boosh, Boosh, Stronger Than A Moose

Saturday, 07 November 2009

  • if this isn't nice, what is?

    In Kurt Vonnegut's novel (? I hesitate to call it that, but anyway) Timequake, he describes a pastime of his Uncle Alex. Whenever said uncle was enjoying a particularly pleasant moment, he would stop and say aloud, "If this isn't nice, what is?" to remind himself to enjoy the present and savor the small things.

    I think this is an excellent idea that everyone should adopt, even if it's just something you think instead of saying out loud. I've certainly been trying to do it more lately. Example: Tonight I went out on Franklin for some cheap dinner, and while I waited for the bus back to middle campus I bought a perfectly decadent vanilla bean/tiramisu gelato at Sugarland. Gelatos are small but very rich, and they give you a tiny spoon with which to eat them. They're a bit pricey but something to be savored, and eating it was the perfect way to spend the ten minutes it took for the bus to arrive. It was quite idyllic, sitting on a park bench on Franklin, eating my tasty treat and watching the groups of threes and fours strolling by, some flushed with alcohol, all flushed with victory. If this isn't nice, what is?

    Oh, and speaking of victory.



    If this isn't nice, what is?

    Go to hell, Dook! :)

Friday, 06 November 2009

  • matchmaker matchmaker make me a match...

    I need your help, Xangans.
    I was never a real football fan until I started following the Panthers. I couldn't get into the NBA until I found the Celtics. With the exception of college basketball, in which every game from Dook-Carolina to Austin Peay-UTEP enthralls me, I could never care sufficiently about a sport until I had a team to cheer for.

    I think this is my problem with baseball. Right now I find going to games in person a mildly entertaining diversion, but watching them on television is nearly impossible. So much of the game is spent standing around, chewing tobacco, giving hand signals. And those times when the pitcher keeps trying to get the man at first and he will absolutely do nothing else OH MY GOD WILL YOU PITCH THE DAMNED BALL ALREADY THIS INNING IS ALREADY TWENTY MINUTES IN. I can't enjoy it properly because I don't have a team.

    Now my mother is a Red Sox fan and my father is a Cubs fan. I'm immediately rejecting these two because I want a team of my own. In the same vein I cannot be a Phillies fan because all my relatives are and because Philadelphia sports fans annoy the ever-loving shit out of me. I also hate the Yankees, for no particular reason except I just don't like them, so they're out too.

    Because I hate both the Yankees and Phillies, because it will annoy my relatives, because I like the logo (a big factor for me) and because my hero Jon Stewart is one, I am strongly inclined to become a Mets fan.



    Yeah, I could see that.

    For reasons too complicated to explain here, I think I could also be a Rockies fan.



    Why not? I became a Panthers fan on less ground.

    I'm not positive though. I do want to make a decision by next Spring, to see if having a team to call my own makes me give a damn about baseball at least a little bit. Given that it's the only major sport going on in mid-summer once the NBA finals are over but before NFL training camp, it would be nice to have- then I'd have a significant sport in my life all 12 months of the year.

    I know there must be lots of you baseball fans out there. So I'm asking you- convince me! Should I be a Mets fan? A Rockies fan? Some other team altogether? Who do YOU love and why should I love them also? Be persuasive! And maybe hit this with a rec if you're super nice so I can get a variety of responses. :)


Wednesday, 04 November 2009

  • the kindness of strangers

    So today I trekked to the Hillsborough Wal-Mart to look for white leggings for this weekend. And by "trekked" I mean "took the 420 bus". It's a pretty long ride from Chapel Hill to Hillsborough. Like 20 miles. Which, if I had known that before I just looked it up on Google Maps, probably would have made me even more panicky, but anyway.

    I was waiting for the bus on one side of a busy intersection, two lanes one way and two lanes the other way. I saw the 6 o'clock bus come by going the other way, but he didn't see me, and before traffic would allow me to cross the road he kept going.

    I wasn't sure if that was the last bus or not, so once I crossed the road I stood around freaking out a bit, wondering what the hell I would do if I got stuck in Hillsborough. By 630 I was 2 minutes away from calling my roommate and seeing if one of her friends with a car would have mercy on me when the very last 420 came.

    The bus driver said that he technically went out of service at the Maxxway down the road, and if he had stuck by it I would have been royally screwed. But instead he was super nice and took me as far as the Eubanks P&R lot so I could catch the NS bus back into Chapel Hill. He didn't have to do that. He could have easily kicked me off in downtown Hillsborough and left me there. But he didn't.

    Little things like this are what make me think that most people are pretty decent folks, and the world isn't as bad and scary as Fox News would have you think.

    Do you still believe in the goodness of humanity, or has cynicism wrung it out of you?

Tuesday, 03 November 2009

  • Homecoming Queen

    It's five days till Carolina's homecoming. They make up for having it ridiculously later than any other school's by (at last!) making the game meaningful (football vs. Dook on Saturday afternoon). This will be my first-ever Dook football game, because in previous years they always held it over Thanksgiving break. (The conversation I imagine took place in the athletic office: "You know what, Harry, I don't think we're screwing the students over enough with the basketball ticket policy. Let's make the rivalry football game over Thanksgiving when they all get kicked out of their dorms and are forced to go home. Ha ha ha!" Then they light their cigars with flaming Nike revenue checks. But I digress.)

    It being that time of year, the Pit is absolutely jam-packed with girls holding signs and shouting at passers-by to vote for their best friend/sorority sister for Homecoming Queen. There must be at least ten candidates this year, and at least 50 annoying girls blocking up the main campus thoroughfare. As if their efforts are really going to make a difference.

    The idea behind Homecoming Queen is that in order to be nominated, a girl has to have undertaken some massive community-service project. I guess they did this to make it less of a popularity contest and more merit-based. In a school of so many people, most of the underclassmen have no idea who the candidates are, have never met them, could care less. This way you can vote for which project you think is best, instead of the girl herself.

    What they fail to take into account is the fact that no one gives a damn enough to vote. What does being Homecoming Queen really signify? You get trotted out at halftime, someone puts a plastic tiara on your head and gives you a sash and some roses, and then that's it. You are never heard from again. Yes, it is recognition for your service efforts, but if you are doing meaningful community service, the project itself should be its own reward. If you're only doing it so you can become Queen, that's rather hollow of you. The most deserving Homecoming Queen, paradoxically, is someone too humble to submit herself. She is probably sitting quietly in a small off-campus apartment right now, reading about the plight of women in third-world countries. She's the one who deserves the stupid plastic tiara and all the applause, but she knows that it is ultimately meaningless and distances herself from the process altogether.

    Since most people realize that it's an empty title and skip voting, the end result is to make it a popularity contest all over again, since the girl with the most friends willing to vote for her will end up winning. So at halftime this Saturday, I'm going to go buy a Coke and an overpriced sandwich, thank you very much. If ever a girl can make the sodas at the stadium cost under $3, then I will vote for her for sure, but not before.

    Oh yeah, there's a Homecoming King too, but there aren't a hundred guys out campaigning in the pit, because guys have the sense to realize how dumb that is.

Monday, 02 November 2009

  • life.

    Sophomores schedule tomorrow. In an effort to beat them to the punch I have spent the last few minutes trying to put together all three of the distributive courses I need before the underlings get access to them. I thought I had done it! I need a fine arts credit, a science-y credit and a social credit. And I have all three in my schedule for next semester. Yet when I went back to look at the online automatically-filling requirements sheet, SOCI 250 had magically moved from the 'distributive' to 'elective' section and it says that I still have one space to fill. Impossible! There's no way something that counted as a distributive 2 minutes ago suddenly does not now, the only change being that I added a fine arts credit. Something in the back of my mind thinks that there's some requirement about not taking all 3 of your distributives in one semester, but I don't really have a choice at this point. Hopefully my advising appointment next week will shed some light on this. If that is a requirement, it better be one that they can waive, because I'll be damned if I'm staying an extra semester for 1 course. Shit.

    Also, there is a slim chance I may end up in Pittsburgh after graduation. Slim, but it's there. What I would be doing for money there I don't know, but then, I don't know how I'm going to go about getting money anywhere.

    Friends appear still to forget that I am here. There's nothing new under the sun.

    I know I'm boring. Here, I'll offer you a song- at least one thing can be novel.



Sunday, 01 November 2009

Friday, 30 October 2009

Thursday, 29 October 2009

  • she ain't got to love nobody

    I don't like Lady Gaga. Or rather, I don't much care for her music. I do enjoy her funktastic outfits. But I'm straying from the point.

    The point being that if you have not watched the new South Park that was just on, you really should. Because Cartman sings Poker Face, and it is priceless.

    There isn't anything more to it. I just felt like I should inform any of you who are unawares. Because I probably startled half the floor with my laughing.

    Can't read my, can't read my, no he can't read-a my poker face...

    AHAHA THE VIDEO IS UP... WIN
    http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/254171

Tuesday, 27 October 2009

  • october: the month of the existential crisis.

    I swear, every October is the same thing. School gets even more uninteresting than normal. I am absolutely unmotivated to do anything. Scheduling occurs, which is nightmarish. Happened today, actually. I need three distributive courses to graduate (never mind what they are; suffice to say they are hard to get). Got into two. Absolutely cannot find a third, and cannot get an advising appointment for two weeks. So then the questions start. What if you have to take an extra semester? Where will you live? What the hell are you going to do with yourself once you are done? What are your relatives going to say? Actually I don't care about that last one so much, but I really do not want to take a ninth semester if I can avoid it.

    If I had more friends, I would ask some of them if they would like to go to Peppers tonight. But I don't, and I'm not going there alone, so who knows what I'm having for dinner.

    I need a dramatic event. Something ground-breaking, earth-shattering. Nothing bad, like someone dying or something like that. Just something momentous.

    Some days I wish the LHC would create a black hole that would eat up the planet. Because if that process took some time, and we all KNEW we were going to be gone in, say, 18 months, there is no limit to the amount of fun we'd all have. It would be total pandemonium and chaos, sure, but really, there are so many possibilities. Liquor to drink, boys to hook up with, responsibilities to toss out of the window. The Earth is going to disappear, so who cares?

    If you knew the world was going to go kaput in a year and a half, what would you spend it doing?
  • I hate fall.

    Summer is hot and tumultuous and the only time you can reasonably swim in the ocean, my all-time favorite thing to do.
    Winter brings us snow, snowball fights, hot cocoa, Christmas presents and Christmas tv specials, and New Years Twilight Zone marathons.
    In spring the days get longer and longer, an NCAA champion is crowned, and the NFL draft happens, giving Mel Kiper tons of money for his stupid predictions that won't matter in 6 months anyway. I want to write a book called "Mel Kiper is a douchebag and an idiot" with Tom Brady's picture on the cover. That's neither here nor there though.

    But what is fall good for? Everything dies. The days get shorter and colder. If you don't have a winning football team to watch, there is almost nothing worth living for. What a miserable time of year this is. Now I think maybe I understand why Target has had their Christmas displays up for a month now. If we could we'd skip all of fall and go straight to the day after Thanksgiving.

    Just two more months just two more months just two more months

    Which season do you enjoy the least?
  • Visit Carolina17's Xanga Site
    • Name: Sara (Batman...)
    • Country: United States
    • State: North Carolina
    • Metro: Chapel Hill
    • Birthday: 7/30/1988
    • Gender: Female
    • Member Since: 6/30/2004
    • True

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