The Daily Adventures of Mercat

I'm actually liking this daily challenge thing. Some days I'm a little busy to catch it in time, but for the most part, I'm actually making daily posts. :D SUCCESSFUL POSTING IS SUCCESSFUL.

Today's! My favorite subject to study... Man, I don't know. I love learning. I don't always love lectures, or homework, but I love the sense of accomplishment from understanding something, and the perspective you gain from it. I love love love reading. In case you couldn't tell from the fact that I probably spend a minimum of $50 every time I hit the bookstore... which is like once a month. And the fact that I spend sooooo much time online reading blogs. I LOVE INFORMATION. I think it's all one of the reasons I chose engineering--not just so I could get paid more for doing technical stuff (which I'm actually starting to think I might hate, as a job)-- but so I could have that background and understanding. Math and engineering and physics can be challenging, but once you understand it it's kind of amazing, the way you can see patterns. However, I'm not good at learning from proofs or methodologies; I sort of work from multiple examples, working my way through them to understand the subtle differences. This poses a problem wherein most engineering professors don't like to do tons upon tons of examples, I don't have the time to be in their office hours all day long, and the textbooks aren't much better (they usually just have one or two examples).

I like history, but I've found that challenging, too. I was fascinated by ancient history when I was really young-- Native American, Egyptian, Greek, Hawaiian (I remember checking lots of books on those topics out in gradeschool)--but I found learning American history out of a textbook difficult because our textbooks were written really poorly. This continued into high school where I already didn't have a great sense of world history, but I gleaned a little bit here and there except European History with the best history teacher I've ever had. He told events like stories, and would sort of reenact them with the help of his "time machine" (his closet), which often contained props like Napoleon's really cheap bendy plastic sword. He would often stop his storytelling at the MOST EXCITING PARTS, glance at his watch and tell us, "oh, looks like we're out of time!" There was one day, I believe, he was "out of time" with 20 or 30 minutes left in class. SO RIDICULOUS. But to this day I still remember the whole crazy story of Rasputin's death and the Russian royal family's deaths. And why everyone thought Rasputin really was a holy man (from either heaven or hell) by withstanding poison and being shot only to drown. (I think. He might have also survived drowning and then died of hypothermia or something...? Okay, wikipedia tells me he did die from drowning, but what I was forgetting was that he was beaten and secured before being thrown in the river, but then broke free of these bonds to then drown.) ANYWAY.

College history is a lot better, because we had a "World-War-II-In-One-Lecture-Using-Only-Battlefront-Maps-of-Europe" day, which gives just the kind of summary on the war that our crappy textbooks lacked that is kind of like a five-sentence-outline version of the politics of the time and let me start placing events within that timeline. Honestly, whoever wrote the textbooks we used in gradeschool and highschool needs to reevaluate their methods. The problem is, they told history like a bunch of individual stories, which makes it very difficult for someone with no overarching view to tie them together. There were basically no ways for me to string everything together into one timeline, at least, not well. BUT. Strangely, I got another good "summary" of globalization through Hawaiian and Pacific history, strangely enough--because it's essentially watching undiscovered lands mature into modern countries in less than two centuries. A century and a half, even. Not to mention, the Pacific was a significant part of WWII, which is a good education on the Japanese side of things rather than the standard Nazi/European focus.

I also like art, because it gives more relationships for history, and understanding the context of famous art pieces makes them a lot more meaningful. Although I now find Warhol annoying. I understand his intent but him, personally... he seemed kind of pretentious in his videos when we studied him. Like the forefather of Hipsters. (For srs.) Also, art history also makes you more prone to getting into discussions about the meaning and value of art (see: trivia night two weeks ago, haha!).

(For the record the argument was whether or not modern art is worthless. My position is that modern art is much more meaningful than other art because it is completely expressive at it is freed from the necessitation of replicating life exactly--that is, the invention of the camera and video, etc. allows for much more "creation" in art. The opposition was saying that this is pointless because you aren't simply looking at something, the art is in the emotion or the context, which isn't the art itself. SO. LET IT NOT BE SAID MY ART HISTORY MINOR WAS EVER COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.)

So! What have I covered so far? Math, physics, engineering, history, art... Music? Music is my-life-outside-of-design. I could do it as a career if it were the right thing. I miss marching and I don't know what I'm going to do without anymore marching band... ever. Although I am taking tap next semester, so, currently, dance is my closest-approximation-replacement. And tap is percussive, so it's closer than, say, ballet, which I can't watch anymore BECAUSE THE DANCERS DON'T MOVE NECESSARILY WITH THE MUSIC /rant

Okay. Am I missing anything else? Oh! English (and languages). I love grammar, and spelling, although that is something my gradeschool also taught poorly that I picked up in high school better. One, because I was learning a new language as well, so there was a focus on grammar, and two, because we learned to diagram, which is also a focus on grammar, and it's basically all like one big puzzle. Now if only I could do better with strange verb conjugations! OH, SUBJUNCTIVE/PRETERITE/IMPERFECT/ETC TENSES. (I also miss learning languages.)

Uh... earth sciences? I guess that's what's left? Also fascinating. I love nature. I find psychology fascinating. Astronomy is SO COOL. It probably helps that my parents are doctors, so my sister and I got a lot of weird biology talk (and a lot of big words) and a pretty good grasp on some areas of science when we were young. BUT, my gradeschool had a completely awful science teacher for 6th/7th/8th grades (shared teacher), so that wasn't great either. Although our books were at least better, more diagrams, more straightforward, so I could at least self-educate to some degree. Now, another topic for another day, our lack of good science communication is evident in science fairs in gradeschool and highschool, because my version of "original experiments" were never quite on par with what they wanted. I still don't understand what they wanted. Because it wasn't a demonstration of a principle, but my ideas were more often too strange to be taken seriously, it seemed.

My science fair projects throughout the years: whether people could actually tell the difference between cola brands, whether kids carried too much in their backpacks, whether cat saliva prevented germ growth (e-coli or streptococcus? or both? can't remember], whether edible fauna (a.k.a. pansies) contains vitamin C, and whether fake or real wine corks do a better job of preventing germ spoiling of wine. I'm missing seventh grade's project... I don't recall at all, really. At any rate, these projects were all off the wall because everything else I had come up with would have "been done before" (meaning my teacher didn't really want me to do that specific project, although they never really gave much advice as to what exactly I could do to improve it) so my methods were always slightly bizarre, and my data was never quite clean enough, and other than the science geniuses who managed to do amazing things (these are the people who make it to international science fairs, I mean) A LOT OF PEOPLE BULLSHITTED THEIR DATA. And got better grades because of it, because their presentations were easier when they didn't have to answer difficult questions about their data's subtleties. So basically despite the fact that "the data you get doesn't have an effect on your final grade", meaning, let science do it's job and don't force a proof of your hypothesis, I generally got fucked over by being honest. Yes, I'm still bitter about this. WHY? Because ethics are important to me. Because human treachery starts early. Because I get punished for being honest. Because my generation clearly doesn't have a problem with cheating and lying to get themselves out of a challenge. FUCK IT ALL I'M SO GODDAMN BITTER ABOUT THIS SHIT.

Sorry to give this a turn for the sad for a moment, but I really don't tend to trust a lot of people my age, and this shit is why. (On the other side, I trust them more on the technical side than I trust myself because, unless I feel I can do something perfectly, I feel very unsure of myself and second-guess myself to no end.) Same kind of shit even happened on retreats! One of my many disillusionments with faith--all the people who act like their religiosity made them so much better than everyone else, when they couldn't even set aside their phones and cd players and everything else for our week of poverty. (To the point that there were prank calls and a string of tampons and pads let down from our room to the guys' quarters. Complete bullshit for a whole week.)

ANYWAY I LOVE LEARNING BUT DON'T TRUST PEOPLE MY AGE. They are not above buying their way out of things. =/

I kind of want to do an anonymous study of gradeschoolers and see how many bullshit their data now. Ugh.

(This is why I've started to think I don't really want kids--I look at adorable babies and toddlers and think, "some day you are going to be an asshole.")

I may or may not be a horrible person.

BUT I LOVE LEARNING :D

Oh, I guess, in terms of "favorite subject", specifically, I guess I could say marching. Because drum corps is my life, and I don't know what I'm going to do without being able to do it any more. (Teaching is definitely not the same and I don't necessarily have the desire to be a music teacher. Although I could do visual, but it's still not the same as competitive marching.)

Have you seen those ads for the Haunting in Connecticut movie? They really bother me. Why, you ask? Because that poem is COMEDIC. It's supposed to be weird. And it rather bothers me when horror movie writers butcher something like that just to scare people. =/ Here's the whole thing in case you were curious:

One bright day in the middle of the night,
two dead boys went out to fight.
Back to back they faced each other,
drew their swords and shot eachother.
Two deaf policemen heard the noise
and went to kill the two dead boys.
If you don't believe this lie is true,
go ask the blind man, he saw it too.

I learned this from my friend Jon in like eighth grade. I think eighth because I'm pretty sure I remember learning it in Mrs. Moeggenberg's classroom.




I remember some really random shit sometimes.

Sometimes, I get some really bizarre thoughts. You know, the kind that would turn your life into a really good fiction? Basically, plot bunnies, but they're usually just something based on my life, so they don't really work well with the "plot" part. More like "Diane is crazy" bunnies. Possibly they are Plot Jackalopes.

Long story short: A lot of personal realizations this week that I haven't got down on paper on LJ yet. (Because I'm lazy, lol.) But I was thinking about all the things that change, and this year, how weird it's been just this summer to 1) realize some of my best friends might be engaged, 2) realize some of my best friends probably will be engaged soon, and that I really need to get over some personal issues there that have nothing to do with them as a couple, and 3) that mom and dad want to move. A lot. Meaning, they are both pretty damn ready to get the hell out of Dodge. But anyway, I was thinking about those things, how your life changes, and how it affects your friends, and where am I going to end up living (what if I get a job with Disney? JPI? COST? None of those are in Ohio as far as I know) eventually, and where will Laura be, and Max, and Kyle? And my friends? And then I started thinking about grade school friends who I haven't seen in a really fucking long time. Like, I haven't seen Zack since graduation, I'm sure, becuse he didn't come to Jacob's funeral, I don't think. Which it then kind of hit me again, wow, someone my age, someone I grew up with, is dead. And, guilty as this may be, I don't remember much about him. I remember him making me laugh in first grade and I snorted chocolate milk out my nose and onto his shirt. (I didn't drink chocolate milk for a long time after that, but I always said I didn't like it. I think it comes in phases, because I liked it for a little while at Carroll but I'm not so big on it again.) And getting in trouble for laughing in like fourth AND fifth and probably all the other grades. Oh, and him spelling "sex" instead of "six" in second grade, and everyone laughed, and I honestly don't know how many of us knew what we were really laughing at. But other than him just being kind of a dumb goofball... I don't remember much. =/ He wasn't one of the guys that I hung out with, and even so, the stuff I remember from gradeschool is really random and generally... scholastic.

BUT ANYWAY, so that was all thoughts I had while mowing today, and then the bike ride comes around, and I do a lot of good thinking on bike rides. And this isn't a thought, really, it's a plot jackalope, which I like to encourage because they're pretty rare, but I just realized, what if he's really not dead? What if he's some super spy and it's all an FBI coverup? Cruel but cool.

Yeah, see? That's the way my brain works. I know I'm crazy.

also, I totally blame it all on the Hardy Boys novels, and I've been jiving to be read them all again.

So I was just scrolling through my last posts on the main page and noted that the big bad thing that might have been headed my way is currently on delay, hopefully until a time when it is no longer such a big bad thing. =)

You know what I find to be one of the weirdest things? I want to say "when younger people die" but that's not the weird part. When a person dies, and they leave behind their facebook or their livejournal or whathaveyou. I mean it doesn't really matter what age they are, it's just weird. Because that part of them is frozen in time, and it's like another face, but one that isn't dead, just permanently stopped. For example this kid who went to my gradeschool hanged himself last year, and it's just weird to see posts on a facebook go from "hey X! how've you been [insert inside joke] lol you're crazy" to "you were a good guy, I'm going to miss you" or the even weirder (to me) third person "X was a great guy and I wish we'd had more time with him." Because then you are adressing him, his digital online self, but you are talking about him and not to him.

Yeah... I don't know if that made any sense to you. It just reminded me of a journal someone posted a long long time ago about a LJ user they knew who they thought committed suicide. Someone they did not know at all in real life, and never heard from again. And it's weird because the journal just sits there, not updating. (Although it might be weirder if it did update, you never know, haha.) But I mean, what happens? In 200 years if humanity's still around and our life length is about the same, what are companies like facebook and livejournal going to do with all these old pages? Probably delete them, but that's weird to me because it's practically living history. It's basically history unaltered. And honestly I think it'd be pretty cool to go digging through abandoned LJs for facts from the past, you know? On a related but tangential note: friending your parents/children on facebook? Kind of weird. It's just kind of one of those "they are creepy or trying too hard to be cool" type situations. I mean rarely there are parents who actually fit in with that scene, but generally not. In this case I told my mom to set up a facebook so she could see pictures when I post them, but I would block a lot of stuff. Not because it's bad, but... I dunno. It's weird to me? Maybe I'm just too paranoid about Big Brother type situations.

But back to the subject: This is the whole thing that started it (sort of). And apparently the girl who died wants everyone to wear their favorite shoes to her funeral. I can't quite explain why this sort of thing makes me feel relaxed, because death is really a big thing for me. (Look here, I almost cried in Indy IV and they only even MENTIONED that someone had died.) (By the way I plan on digging out my favorite pair of shoes to wear as well, just because. Guess sort of a Memorial Day thing. I have no idea which ones are my favorites though, maybe my LLAMA SHOOOOES) But it just reminds me of what my dad said about getting old, that he doesn't want to just sit around in a retirement home with the TV on. I remember him saying he wanted drum corps music blasted as loud as possible (because he'll be pretty deaf anyway), and I can't remember if he said it or if I made it up but that he wanted a model train running around the room. I also remember him saying he wants a HUGE crazy party when he dies, with all the family and friends, I think maybe just because it's an excuse for a party, and he doesn't want us to be sad. (When I think about things like that, it makes me wonder how religious my parents are. I mean my mom is away at a retreat but I've always got the impression from my dad that he doesn't really care as long as you're being nice to someone, except that he goes to mass every week and encourages Laura too as well. I dunno. I want to know but at the same time I can see it getting very awkward in any type family situation if they knew I was semi-agnostic. Seriously, you have no idea how big of a pressure point religion is in my family. Pretty much automatic HUGE FIGHT if it's us and my cousins and my grandparents.) ANYWAY, and then the other day we went to visit Nana and Papa's graves (and George's, and Grandma/Grandpa's parents, I forget which, the Cwioks) and we were talking about how we wanted to be buried. Laura started it like she always does, being cynical, but I can't remember exactly what she was critiquing. But I mentioned that I'd like my organs to be donated and the rest of it put to science and if I didn't die in any unusual way then to be buried in a natural way, just the pine-coffin-in-the-dirt thing. Put what you can to good use and the rest of it let it go back into the system. I really see no benefits to locking my body up with a bunch of preservatives so I can look good as a DB (lol) hundreds of years from now, whoopdefreakingdoo. I'd rather be remembered for what I did (crazy architecture? something awesome and Disney/COSI-like? something House On the Rock-ish?) and maybe have a wacked-out grave marker. Maybe.

Also, this topic always reminds me of my bequests from my senior year of Carroll when I was getting "killed" by the bass drums and all my stuff was going to band kids. ;) All I remember is like crazy socks to Alicia and my visor to Domer. Lol. Good times. (It also makes me usually think about exercising more so I can still maybe even run when I'm ooooold.)


And now for something completely different. Does anyone know how Burger King runs their toy promotions? I got the ant-box about two weeks ago (that thing actually surprised the shit out of me because I wasn't paying attention when I opened it) and then the boulder on Tuesday, and then the whip yesterday and today. After going from boulder to whip so fast I was kind of excited it was random because then there was less chance I missed the ones I wanted, but I don't know. Hopefully they will just show up at garage sales and stuff for super-cheap. ;D (The blacklight journal is my #1, and then the two temple-things. The others aren't particularly interesting.)

[EDIT]Woah, the monarchy of Nepal is now gone, it's Communist. Totally random but we had the princess of Nepal visit my first grade class. ( the article because yahoo deletes them )

Mmm, I think I've made enough posts today. Definitely filled my out-of-my-comfort-zone quota for the day, though I think it says something when swimming with sharks requires less mental debate than say, oh, flirting. It's not really important or relevant to anything, I just thought it was interesting enough to note.

Also, Freedom Players... Break a leg, homes! Ilu <3 I am sad that I can't go home to see the play (though if I had the money, I'd SO be there. I really have nothing planned for this weekend). Damn, I have been in the bad habit of calling musicals plays because of St. Brigid. We always called it "the Eighth Grade play" even though it was always a musical. oh, right, that's the train of thought that led to the flirting comment. FUCK MY EIGHTH GRADE PLAY Hm, I just remembered we didn't do a school showing of our play in eighth grade, can't remember exactly why though. (But it's damn good we didn't, and don't bother asking.) YES TANGENT SO, yay Carroll! I love you guys. =) Have a good show, make sure to do something stupid on Sunday yadayada... omg mariotheme was thebestever Have fun and all ;D Send me a video, all that good stuff. Make sure greenroom is entertaining... haha Lara's brother

76 days until Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull! Today's trivia: Sweet! A rare photo from LC. Just a warning, it's FUKKEN HUGE

Hmm... my papers were mildly successful. Now let's see if my grades agree...