An amazing dinner that ended up being scary as fuck

Dinner was fun and amazing.

The car ride home was nauseating.

The folks asked me what I wanted to do after college and I said that I was shooting for med school, but grad school was definitely an open option.

Apparently this did not sit well with some of the people in the car.

One in particular launched into a very forensics-debate style of argumentation that basically said that being a doctor in the United States is a terrible idea because the United States health care system is a corrupt institution so entrenched in its own love for profit and its own history that massive changes would be required, something unable to be accomplished by a worker within the system, only capable of being accomplished by a politician from outside. Another argument was that since doctors and nurses and whatnot work for a corrupt system, they themselves are inherently corrupt. I argued that the doctor is only helping people get better, regardless of the money. The doctor (at least, the good doctor) doesn't worry about how much money the patient will cough up after an operation, only about the welfare of the patient. How could that be inherently corrupt? It's not intentionally and tangibly evil.

Ultimately he suggested that the best course for a person who wants to be a doctor in this world is to be trained in the United States, which offers by far the best medical training in the world, then move to a socialized country where health care is offered by the government, such as Canada, west Europe. etc.

Some of the others tried to stick up for me and my dreams, which I reall appreciated.

These are good people, and I like them. I really do like them. But they're scaring me just a tiny bit.

We be chillin in da Cold Room

I'm sitting here at my new cubicle in the Miller lab located in the Biomedical Sciences Research Building (brand spankin' new!) at the southeast corner of the UCLA campus. I've spent the last four hours doing a miniprep on several samples of our buddy E. coli, taken from biore strips from several different noses of voluntary donors at the acne clinic. The project I'm working on is a contributing factor to the Human Microbiome Project - this specific project deals with finding out what specific microbes and bacteria cause acne.

Your body is a fucking zoo. For reals.


If all goes well and we find out exactly what causes acne, this girl's face could be worth 20 billion dollars. Until then, good luck, lady.
---
Dear new lab bay buddy:

I've been here for ONE day. Get your stick out of your ass and put a smile on that face once in a red moon. You being here for two years does not give you the right to yell at me for not knowing certain lab protocols, such as not putting Pipetman tips in the biohazard bins instead of the little plastic beakers because I was "filling up the bins too quickly." You also have no reason to yell at me because I chose to wear medium gloves instead of large gloves, even though there was only one pair of large gloves left in the box. I'm not even entirely sure why you yelled at me about the gloves. Both gloves fit me just fine. You're a technician. Get over it. You're studying for the MCAT, just like me. And having spent the past two years working under these smart people will not necessarily give you a better score. Get over yourself.

Also, buy some fucking Rogaine. Your beginnings of a combover really isn't fooling anybody.

Love, your new lab bay buddy,
Gordo

Westside glamour and downtown history

Thanks to Kevin's generosity, I've been able to use my one completely free day this summer to check out parts of Los Angeles that I have never seen.

Lunch in Chinatown for six bucks? Not too shabby. The key is to lower the expectation level to 1% (the 1% being that you assume the food isn't poisoned) - that way the food will be very enjoyable. Sure it was greasy, salty, and MSG-filled, but I kept telling myself "this is 99 cents' worth of wonton soup" or "this is four dollars' worth of BBQ pork fried rice" and everything was a-okay.

We then came across Philippe's, who gives claim to the invention of the French dipped sandwich. But OH. MY. GOD. This place was absolutely amazing - the sandwiches are fairly cheap ($6 per), but the flavor of the au jus in which the pork had been simmering and applied to the bread in addition to the Philippe's house spicy mustard. How do I describe this?

It was as if the flavor of the sandwich were jizzing all over my palette. Thick, warm, slightly-sweet-slightly-salty jizz all over the palette's unsuspecting yet willingly embracing face - that was the experience of eating a Philippe's pork roast sandwich.

Sorta like this. Except not really.

If it weren't for the fact that LA is a slight shithole, I would have no problem living here if I could experience foods like this every day. And based on the Yelp searches that I frantically jumped on after coming back here, there are an enormous number of eateries just like Philippe's to discover around the greater Los Angeles area.

After that amazing meal, we somehow wandered into Olvera and El Pueblo de Los Angeles. It was Sunday and mass was being held all day at the mission; there were really exciting musicians playing at the old town center; the stores sold colorful and exciting cheapo knicknacks. Interesting, I thought, until I reached the people making fresh tamales and grilled corn-on-the-cob. THAT excited me.

Then we decided to drive through the famed Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

I almost threw up in sheer excitement and total disgust.

Stores that I have only seen on films and the small screen flew by me as we drove across that three-block stretch of some of the glitziest, priciest stores that our world has to offer.

Basically, what I have realized is this: LA is not as bad as I realized. I still couldn't give half a shit more about all that resplendent crap that west LA offers - that part hasn't changed one bit. The multi-million-dollar homes on Sunset really don't impress me. I have finally experienced, first-hand, the douchebaggery of Southern Californian drivers. So LA still sucks balls.

But I failed to consider that the wide diversity of ethnicities here could offer literally the entire world at my feet in the form of cuisines. And THAT is something I am willing to accept and embrace as a world of infinite potential.

The City By The Bay vs. La La Land. Take your pick.

"WHY ARE YOU IN MY ROOM?!?"

I woke up this morning to the timeless music of "Big C" at the morning blowjob hour of 7:30AM.

This was the only time when I can honestly say I did not want to hear that damn song. Why?

The guy I'm subletting from is letting me use his desk, bed, chair, and walk-in closet. The problem is that his bed is a hard mattress, not a spring mattress. By hard I don't mean firm; I mean it's literally hard wood boards with about half a centimeter of padding on top of it. It's no different than sleeping on a flat board while undergoing intense Shaolin kung fu training. Hell, I'd better be able to shoot balls of energy from my hands and leap across forests as if I were light as a feather by the end of this summer.

We spent the day at Brotman Medical Center in Culver City, three blocks from the Sony Pictures (formerly MGM) studio lot.

The first thing we did was go into Radiology and look at the films for all 18 of the patients that were being covered for today. It was a pretty cool experience looking at real films and handling them, which in my opinion is somewhat of a relic among modern medicine; most hospitals with any amount of extra money lying around spends that money buying new radiology equipment. In most modern hospitals, they don't even use film anymore; EVERYTHING is completely digital. The technician takes the x-rays and uploads them directly to the computer, at which point the radiologists, wherever they may be (yes, radiology readings are now being outsourced to countries like India and China too thanks to digital technology) and the results come back instantly. The advantages are obvious: it saves precious shelf space, it shaves off a little bit of time waiting for the films to develop, it allows zoom, frame capture functions, it allows instant transportation to anywhere in the world (again, allowing outsourcing of radiology readings)...basically anything cool that came along with the combination of digitization and the advent of t3h internets is applicable here. Brotman, being old-school and broke (Brotman filed for Ch. 11 bankrupty protection in 2007), still primarily uses film, but that's cool.


The gaps in my teeth make it tickle even more when I suck your cock. Pretty please with a Cleveland Steamer on top?


--We interrupt your regular programming to bring you this message--
10:01 PM: The police just fucking showed up at my door.
"Are you Alexander?"
"...No."
"Is there an Alexander who lives here?"
"I have no idea."
"...Do YOU live here?" His hand shifts to his belt. I can't tell if it's on his holster or his walkie.
"I'm subletting from the guy who used to live here. I just moved in yesterday, so I haven't met everybody yet."
"So you did NOT call the police?"
"No, I did not."
A skeptical look crosses his face. His hand shifts slightly across his belt towards his holster.
"Let me see some ID."
I showed him my driver's license and my sublet contract. Everything checks out. He leaves, no questions asked.
--We now return to your regularly scheduled programming--

Being trained in the gloriously overlooked subspecialty of Infectious Diseases, most of LMH's patients are some pretty old people with urinary tract infections (UTIs) or something similar. There was, however, one pretty incredible story that I'm glad I got to hear first-hand.

Mid-40s patient had a historectomy at some time in the mid-90s. It turns out that three sponges were left inside her by the surgical team and she suffered through constant pain for the next two years; the doctors ran every test on her except for x-rays because they were so high and mighty that they were convinced that surgical devices left inside the patient was an impossible cause. Anyways, as a result of the infections from the sponges, she lost her bladder. She then had a neobladder constructed out of her own small intestine; the neobladder doesn't have nerve function; it simply serves as a reservoir. The patient has to manually cath to relieve the bladder daily. The problem with doing this on a regular basis is that the patient bring in external bacteria because nothing is perfectly sterile. The patient was admitted into the hospital for infections introduced due to the cath process. The patient was very lively and did not seem bitter at all - hopefully she had sued that surgical team so hard that "MY ASSHOLE BELONGS TO [name redacted]" became permanently tattooed on their faces as a part of the settlement.

Unfortunately, many of LMH's patients are simply pretty hard-aged folks who get bounced back and forth between the hospital and the incredibly shitty nursing homes from whence they came. Many of these nursing homes are really crappy and don't care about their clients at all. These people don't have any family members to come visit them. The common argument is that their families probably don't even know that they're being bounced back and forth between the hospital and the home; my hunch is that the families know but don't care. These are the folks referred to as GOMERs (Get Out of My Emergency Room) - people who simply languish and, according to some cold-hearted doctors, "old people who unnecessarily use up our resources and our beds."

Dementia is another common dysfunction when it comes to these people (I'm not going to use the term "GOMER" because it's rude and disrespectful). However, that's where the humor comes in - demented individuals are usually A&O x1 or x0; they'll have no idea where they are, what year it is, and what they're even in the hospital for. One sweet old man had a broken hip and was on traction but didn't even know it when LMH questioned him about it. When LMH began questioning this patient, he seemed fine - he knew location and time of day, but not year or why he was in the hospital. The two of them were carrying on a pretty normal conversation, and all of a sudden the patient screams, "WHY ARE YOU IN MY ROOM?!? WHERE THE HELL AM I? STOP TOUCHING ME!"

Bob Calonico had many sons, and many sons had Bob Calonico...

LA Rain, and it's not just water

I've been in Los Angeles for about one day and already something feels wrong:
-Westwood Village is pretty awesome. It's like walking through downtown Palo Alto but things are actually affordable and applicable to college student life as opposed to having three Persian rug and four diamond stores.

-I sat next to Noris Malele on the flight here.

-The UCLA campus is nothing compared to Berkeley's. Sure, it's kept nice and tidy, but there's nothing particularly interesting about it, and more importantly, there are almost no public display maps, whereas at Berkeley there are plenty of strategically-placed maps informing you of your location on campus and all the campus building names. And the brick...dear God, the brick. So unnecessary and monotonous.

-It rained. It's raining here as we speak.

It's RAINING.

-I went to the In-N-Out on the corner of Le Conte and Gayley for dinner. An In-N-Out within walking distance of the apartment = win. An In-N-Out with gigantic concrete letters suspended in the middle of the restaurant that spell "In-N-Out" (hyphens included): extra win. With mustard and pickles on top. AND fries.

-The UCLA Medical Campus is pretty damn amazing.

-I walked around most of Westwood Village, and it's definitely a nice refreshing change of pace compared to walking around downtown Berkeley or Telegraph. Things just feel a little slower and more relaxed here.

-A tiny, tiny part of me wished that I were going to school here (the moment when I realized there was an In-N-Out within walking distance).

Then I got on campus and regretted that the thought ever crossed my mind.

The Shittiest Marching Band in the History of the Universe

You went from recording with Fleetwood Mac to performing at the Grammys with Outkast to sharing the stage with lovably cute yet embarrassingly stupid Idol audition failure Reynaldo Lapuz?

Sigh.

Teaching an old dog new tricks

Pumping 40s and watching the sunset at the Big C with some of my favorite people in the world was a lovely experience. "It's like we're on Tatooine," Colin said.
---
Just came back from the midnight showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the California Theatre.

And you can't teach an old dog new tricks. You can't do it. You just can't.

Dear Misters Lucas and Spielberg:

REALLY? Are you KIDDING ME? Do you realize that you significantly tainted one of the most amazing adventure series known across the globe with a new installment that falls far short of the previously established standards, loved by children and adults alike?

...Oh wait, you already did that. Huh, I guess you didn't learn jack squat from Star Wars then.

Now this is a story all about how his life got flip-turned upside-down

Stephen, Nasriah, Sharmeen, Jia and I share one common love:

Will Smith.


Subway owes this guy royalty dues for every ad they run.


We're especially big fans of Fresh Prince. Nick-at-Nite is our call to mass as we gather before the Altar of Flashing Lights and Talking Heads and take Communion in the electromagnetic waves and audio pulses that the Altar offers up as a virtual representation of our MacArthur, our JFK, our Neo.

Yet along comes Tom "Batshit Maniac Trapped in the Closet" Cruise and guides Our Fearless Leader off course through the vile spews of L. Ron Hubbard and his Dianetics bullshit.

Over the course of the past year, I had heard and read rumors of Mr. Smith converting to Scientology, attending meetings, and donating money to the "church," but I had just brushed it off as common celebrity tabloid banter.

But oh, what an unfortunate day today is. Will Smith has opened The New Village Academy in Calabasas, which is fine. The curriculum of this K-6 school is what bothers and, quite frankly, scares me. The curriculum is unique in that it takes a little bit from here and there - Montessori, development theory (AP Psych PhTW), etc. But take a look at the listing of "study technology."

The website defines "study technology" as "an educational model developed by L.R. Hubbard, study technology focuses on three principles. First is the use of “mass” (manipulatives and hands-on experiences) to foster understanding – children need to see and feel what they are learning about. Second is the attention to the “gradient,” which ensures sure students master one level before moving on to the next. Third is the “misunderstood word,” in which students master word definitions and are taught not to read past words they don’t know the meanings of in order to understand completely what they are reading and learning."

Prima facie, these actually don't sound so bad. The first point is basically that if a child is to learn about something, the child should be able to interact with the physical object in order to best learn about it. The second point is simply to follow an appropriate learning curve and ensure that the student is not left behind or hindered by the pace of the course. The third is that the student should never move past a word he or she does not understand because they won't understand the rest of the passage. Pretty fundamental things in elementary education, no?

No problem with the learning curve - that makes perfect sense to me. I do, however, have problems with the other two points.

Hubbard claims that, by not understanding a word in a sentence, the reader will be unable to fully understand the rest of the statement. However, many people are able to figure out or infer the general meaning or gist of an unknown word through the CONTEXT of the sentence, after which we can look up the word to figure out the exact definition of the word and save it in our memory banks for future reference. We don't need formal dictionary definitions of words in order to move through life, we need societal/contextual definitions in order to successful interact with others in our community and keep the society moving.

The second thorn, my point against the "lack of mass" as a barrier to learning...hold on to your hats.

Hubbard's claim as to why being unable to interact with objects is a barrier to learning:

"Definite physiological reactions occur when trying to educate a person in a subject without the object actually present or available. A student who encounters this barrier will feel squashed, bent, sort of spinny, sort of dead, bored and exasperated. He can wind up with his face feeling squashed, with headaches and with his stomach feeling funny. He can feel dizzy from time to time and very often his eyes will hurt. These reactions are quite common but are often attributed to poor lighting or studying too late at night or any number of other incorrect reasons. The real cause is lack of the mass of the subject one is studying."


Not touching Newton's penis while learning about gravity is just like drinking 23 beers in four minutes.

Funny, that. Sure, MCB lectures make my head spin every once in a while, but that's because Dan Portnoy is a terrible lecturer and the material is actually difficult to understand. I can assure you that not having my head stuck inside a woman's vagina while taking sex ed in middle school did not prevent me from learning as much about "vaginal insertion," "ejaculation," and "doggy style" as I possibly could. (I guess I also got dizzy once in a while, but for an entirely different reason, a reason much more logical and pleasurable.)

This is the crap that Will Smith's school is going to be teaching young, impressionable children? The reason why this actually scares me is because of cases like these. The amount of celebrity and money that the "church" attracts is incredible, and as they build A-list name connections and fill their wallets, their strength and reach grows greater. They're going after the children now. It's really no different than Big Tobacco going after the kids starting at a young age in order to instill brand recognition and guarantee a steady stream of money coming into the establishment for years to come. So hear me: SAVE THE YOUNGLINGS FROM THIS ATROCITY.

I caught a whiff of greatness

While waiting to grab lunch with Hsiao, who do I see coming out of Quizno's but Coach Mike Montgomery.

He's shorter than I expected. Slight beer gut, dignified-looking gray sideburns, canary-yellow collared polo shirt with thin blue horizontal stripes tucked into heavy khaki pants with a black Armani belt. No glasses.

Mike Montgomery eats at Quizno's.

Jumping the shark has jumped the shark.

The finale of season four of The Office:

Failure.

As much as I hate the term "jumped the shark," there's no clearer way to put it in a modern cultural context. It was a boiled-down soap opera all forcefully, unnaturally crammed into one episode. I understand that these elements were inserted as cliffhangers for the next season, but come on. A pregnancy, a marriage proposal, a RUINED marriage proposal, old flames rekindled in a malapropos fashion, a character leaving the show...talk about last-minute, desperation 3am brainstorming sessions. Come on.

I'm actually pretty impressed that the writers managed to fit half a season of Days of Our Lives into one hour. Good for you, writers. You've ruined the best thing that has happened to American television since Arrested Development. When does 24 start again?

Michael...BOLTON?!

Jimmy Fallon - that no-talent ass clown Lorne Michaels hired as the new Adam Sandler much in the same way that Horatio Sanz was intended to be the new John Belushi - has officially been announced as O'Brien's replacement (that was a self-test, by the way - I guess referring to him as Conan really does sound better, and will be the standard henceforth) on Late Night when Conan moves up an hour to fill Leno's vacant spot on The Tonight Show.

Let it be known, here and now, that I am a huge Jay Leno fan. Stone and brand me, but I stand by my opinion. He's not that great at interviews - Conan wins there, absolutely agreed - but his background in stand-up really shines during the monologues. Conan's comedy style in terms of the really gimmicky and sophomoric stuff really disgusts me. This becomes especially clear when Conan presents news clippings or advertisements, in an effort to emulate Leno's recurring "Headlines" segments. Leno's news clippings and ads are real - they're so damn amusing because it's a funny thing to point out all the little things in life that stick out of the ordinary. Conan's writing staff Photoshops like crazy when he tries to do the same segment. They don't have anything real, and the stuff that they put in aren't even that funny - they're predictable. Once in a while something fresh comes along, but for the most part it's uninspired, very forced comedy, in my opinion. It's forced because they go for the ratings, not for the art. Leno, in some aspects, has evolved his show to compete with the younger TV demographic that Conan is eating up like a fatty beast - this is one thing that I have disliked about Leno in the past couple years, but I still think his segments are much better than either Conan's or Letterman's.

Not that Conan doesn't have wit or any jocular insight - he is very quick when it comes to interviews, one thing that I really appreciate. The Walker Lever was good the first time - not so much what Conan was saying, but the editing and timing of the clips themselves were well-done. It got old, though - Chuck Norris really isn't all that. Triumph is definitely one of my favorite television creations - the hire for his puppeteer was a smart one. Quick reactions with a lightweight, almost debonair quip or insult with every comment - that's the stuff I really dig. This is possibly one of my favorite clips:


I'm not even going to talk about Letterman because I wasn't old enough to appreciate him in his prime during the late 80's and early 90's, when he was the host of Tonight (before NBC screwed him over). It is not surprising, however, that I really abhor Letterman's shows in this day and age. They're not funny, the comedy is strained, and the studio audience sounds like sympathy, politeness, and tradition rather than true reaction to the presented material. Some say that Letterman "phones it in" on a regular basis now, and I sadly say that I have to agree.

...but back to the point.

Jimmy Fallon? Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME? The guy who can't get through a single sketch without breaking character and cracking up and exposing himself as a hire paid far too much for his skill level? The guy who has starred in box-office smash hits such as Taxi and Fever Pitch and sold multi-platinum albums such as The Bathroom Wall? (By the way, that Grammy nomination for that album is such bullcrap - I can't believe I managed to forcibly sit through four tracks of that filth.) THAT guy? I'll take SNL-era-Sandler with fries on the side any day, thank you very much.

In retrospect (and by retrospect I mean the six seconds it took to hit Enter and type "in retrospect), Fallon's coming into a totally different playing field - in the same way that Leno is great at one-way comedy which comes from his stand-up roots, heavy in rehearsal and scripts, Fallon may be great in the position as a talk-show host, heavy in improvisation and making the conversation interesting and giving the audience a reason to tune in.

Maybe.
---
Obama-Edwards '08.

One step closer to winning $10

It's not quite there, but hopefully this will lead to my grand victory:

Edwards endorses Obama.

Do you smell what BARACK...IS...COOKIN?


Dumb, but still much less lame than possibly one of the most unimportant yet embarrassing public media decisions Clinton's scriptwriters decided to take:

My thoughts during Commencement Convocation 2008:

-I am so tired of playing Pomp and Circumstance. It's not even that good a piece.
-What is this, the third time we've looped this fucking piece?
-Holy Moses, my lip is bleeding.
-Nope, that's just the red dye from the candy earlier.
-Now it's bleeding.
-I wonder if Bob gets tired of doing this crap year after year.
-Why are there all these helicopters surrounding us?
-Bill's checking his mobile web...gunshots on Durant? Oh shit, somebody got shot near Top Dog. I'm sure glad we're here instead of there.
-Finally done. Haha, good thing we're in the shade...look at all those poor suckers sitting out there in the sun. Must be hot as oven-baked honey glazed donkey balls out there.
-KARMA SHIT ON A STICK, CRAIG NEWMARK IS A BORING-ASS SPEAKER. I WASN'T AWARE THAT VOCAL MONOTONY OF THIS CALIBER WAS POSSIBLE.
-.....
-.....Oh dammit, we're playing again.
---
Obama-Edwards '08.

What if this weren't a hypothetical question?

My fortune from a fortune cookie from two nights ago reads "If you tempt a squirrel with a nut, be prepared to be bitten."

I didn't even have to add "in bed" at the end to make it funny.

"Why are we regarded as cattle and considered stupid in your sight?" Job 18:3
---
After some drunken (like, stupid drunken) end-of-the-semester revelry with the phonez, we attended Rock the Clock, the Octet and Overtones joint concert at the Campanile at midnight. Too many people were talking and shouting stupid shit (including us and D. Wade yelling "FREEBIRD" and "NO STAIRWAY" over and over) to hear the groups well. Five stupid jackasses climbed on top of the awning (of the famed backwards "Fiat Lux") over the Campanile entrance. Yeah, I don't know why I wrote that. I have forty lectures from my Globalization class that I need to go over. It's 2:15 AM.

In a discussion about Lizz "Phil of the Future" Campos' lovechild with Bryce "I'm Coming Out of the Closet March 2010, Save the Date and Come To My Coming Out Party Because It's Going To Be Incredibly FABULOUTHS" Townsend:
Tyler: "ABORT THAT FUCKING FETUS"
Becky: "IT'S NOT GOING TO FUCKING ABORT, IT'S JUST GOING TO BE FUCKING RETARDED"
(In regards to using massive amounts of bottom-shelf vodka, such as the plastic handle of Vitali sitting in our dining room, as a miscarriage-inducing agent)

Poor tuckered out Renata is in bed, BUT CRENATA COCO IS READY TO FUCKING PARTY:
She will wisk your babies from home and hearth in the middle of the night and eat them, and if you don't pay her for her very charitable service of taking those little pooping bastards off your hands, she will fucking stab you in the face.

Wait, that's Renata.

I'm calling it now: Obama-Edwards '08. $10 to Stephen if I'm wrong.

Humanity towards others

My beloved ThinkPad is back and I have decided that I will use Ubuntu primarily on this (my Dell will still primarily use Windows).

I haven't been this happy with my computer in a long time. Ubuntu is fast, fairly easy to use, and with some very helpful friendly people on the Ubuntu forums, I have my computer set up in exactly the way I want it to.

I will love you and hug you and squeeze you and pet you and feed you and shower you with love forever and ever and ever and ever

Back in November of 2007, my trusty, ugly, sturdy, business-inclined, bento-inspired IBM (yes, IBM, just before the mainlanders working for Lenovo got their grubby little hands on it) ThinkPad T43p halted to the point where I could no longer use it on a regular basis.

There's a didactic lecture somewhere in there about not downloading or streaming videos of Japanese girls puking in each others' mouths or elephant beastiality or Brazilian fart porn or German scheisse videos, but we've all heard it a thousand times, so save your breath for yelling at the hippies wasting their time in the trees.

It was at that point that I purchased my current Dell Inspiron 1520, with which I am unsatisfied (the discount price I received was the main reason I justified the purchase - that, and my unquenched thirst for...um...webcast lectures.) It's perfectly functional, sure, but not any prettier than the ThinkPad, in my opinion, and it's a monstrous brick - 6.5 lbs. versus the ThinkPad's 5.1 lbs. - that happens to perform calculations billions of times faster than the human mind.

Only recently did I decide that I would cut off yet another corner of my deep-fried, high-fructose corn syrup soul and throw it into the parched orifice of Beelzebub himself, Bill Gates. Actually, make that Steve Ballmer - it's so much more entertaining/literal to the analogy. I purchased a cheap-ass copy of XP Pro with SP2 on eBay, and by cheap-ass I mean at the low Helena's Handjob price of $130 as opposed to the retail, Big Bertha's Blowjob cost of $270. I purchased it since I did not have the disc used to install my copy of Windows on the ThinkPad.

Over the weekend, I opened the ThinkPad for the first time in a true semester to try to boot Windows from my new CD.

My screen now putters to death at totally random times. So not only is my software screwed, my hardware decided to give me the proverbial shaft as well. A little part of me died because I thought all was lost - my favorite piece of equipment in my life thus far (yes, it's better than the Wii. I said it. Here's a sack of stones; 10 points for the head, 50 points for each nut).

But in a conversation with Nick, I was reminded of the fact that these things tend to come with Warranty, or the "Cover Our Ass Documentation." I told him that warranty on the ThinkPad had expired, because I thought that surely, after almost three years after purchase, there was no way the warranty was still good - standard warranty is one year. But just for kicks, I decided to look it up on the Lenovo (ugh) website...

"OHHH MAHHH GAAWWWDD HOLY DEEP-FRIED CHICKEN SHIT ON A STICK THE WARRANTY IS THREE YEARS"

Dear The Scholar's Workstation (they use "The" in the same way that I use "The University of California"): FIX MY SCREEN, BITCHES. I GOT WARRANTY ON THAT SHEEEEIT.

Moral of the story: German Scheisse videos...I mean, webcast lectures, are not the evil things that the higher-ups say they are. They give you what you need to move on in life, despite the fact that you pay over $8,000 per year for their services.

Real moral of the story: Check the warranty before you freak out.