Professor: *explaining a particularly complex problem, for a premed physics class in any case.
Pre-Med Student: "Why the hell do we have to learn this?"
Professor: "This material saves lives."
Pre-Med Student: "What do you mean, the material saves lives?"
Professor: "Well, for instance, it keeps certain people out of medical school."
Truly enough, I've TA'd enough classes that were filled with premeds to be quite concerned about people's lives one day being in their hands. Hopefully those ones that were truly incapable of what seemed to be the simplest of things simply don't make it into med school.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Sunday, October 23, 2005
$0.53 Movie
So I was hanging out with Tania yesterday and we decided to rent a movie. For some reason I had remembered a movie I saw in class one year at UCLA (for a GE cluster about artificial intelligence and evolutionary design), The Thirteenth Floor. In my opinion, it's very underrated in general because it came out the same year as the Matrix, and the synopsis / theater trailer made it seem like a matrix-copycat movie, when in fact it's quite different in many regards. In any case, it's a really good movie I felt like seeing again, and Tania had never seen it, so we went to the local Hollywood Video store to go rent it.
It's been what seems like ages since I've actually rented a movie. In college I tended to lean toward the "see it in theaters or just download it instead" route, or even just buying the movie instead. After all, why pay 5-6 bucks to rent a movie when it only costs a little more to see a movie in the theaters, and only, say, twice that much to buy it permanently. I mean, honestly who needs a movie for 5 days anyway? They should really just charge 1/5th as much and give it to you for one day. In any case, we finally find the movie and head to the cashier and Tania signs up with them, since we're near her place in Redlands, so it's her local video renting place we're at.
After the girl at the counter finished registering Tania in the system or whatever, she turns to us and says "53 cents." We both stood there for a second. I said something to the effect of "huh?" and the girl repeated that it was $0.53 to rent the movie. I pull some change out of my pocket. "So I'll buy the movie if you buy dinner," I said to Tania with a grin as I gave the girl two quarters and three pennies for our rental.
It's not like it's always that cheap there, but they were having some kind of special promotion that day for really cheap rentals. Noramlly it would have been 2-3 bucks. Still, not as bad as I remembered. Maybe video rental places finally realize not many people will pay 1/2 the price of the movie to see it once and not while in the theater.
It's been what seems like ages since I've actually rented a movie. In college I tended to lean toward the "see it in theaters or just download it instead" route, or even just buying the movie instead. After all, why pay 5-6 bucks to rent a movie when it only costs a little more to see a movie in the theaters, and only, say, twice that much to buy it permanently. I mean, honestly who needs a movie for 5 days anyway? They should really just charge 1/5th as much and give it to you for one day. In any case, we finally find the movie and head to the cashier and Tania signs up with them, since we're near her place in Redlands, so it's her local video renting place we're at.
After the girl at the counter finished registering Tania in the system or whatever, she turns to us and says "53 cents." We both stood there for a second. I said something to the effect of "huh?" and the girl repeated that it was $0.53 to rent the movie. I pull some change out of my pocket. "So I'll buy the movie if you buy dinner," I said to Tania with a grin as I gave the girl two quarters and three pennies for our rental.
It's not like it's always that cheap there, but they were having some kind of special promotion that day for really cheap rentals. Noramlly it would have been 2-3 bucks. Still, not as bad as I remembered. Maybe video rental places finally realize not many people will pay 1/2 the price of the movie to see it once and not while in the theater.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Most. Horrifying. Dream. Ever.
(Note: This dream ends gruesomely and quite terrifyingly. Just wanted to warn the squeemish. You be fairly warned, says I.)
It started off as a normal enough dream...
Dusten, Chris and I were hanging out in an outdoorsy-mall type place browsing around, and we start chatting it up with a couple of cute girls. One of the girls seemed to want to go home or something, but the other one and I were hitting it off, getting along pretty well. Her name was Jen, I think, and along with going to college she had two jobs, working at a movie theater and at a pool. What she did at a pool I don't remember asking, but for some reason she didn't say she was a lifeguard, she just referred to her other job as "the pool," much in the same way we used to refer to work as "the theater" when I worked at a movie theater one summer.
Eventually these girls need to head home, but didn't have a ride, so we offer to take them. Once we get there, Dusten and Chris needed to go back to my place to get my car and bring it back to me. I'm not sure why I wouldn't just go with them to my car, but it seemed at the time as if that weren't an option for some reason. In fact, they almost left me there and took off, because I had mistakenly thought my car was at this girl's house. Why would it be at this stranger's house? Because it's a dream, and dreams are weird like that. In any case, I was now alone at this girl's house with Chris and Dusten gone, to be back "in an hour."
I must have been napping in the car ride there, because I felt very just-woke-up, not really thinking straight, taking in the sights with hazy, tired eyes. Jen's friend either lived with her or was, in fact, her sister, because she went into this house too and began to make herself at home. Jen invited me in, and I felt somewhat awkward coming into this girl's house, since I had just met her. It was a VERY nice house, and I merely assumed belonged to her parents. It was all white, if I can remember, with a beautiful wooden spiral staircase that went straight up several stories near the entrance of the house, in the giant entrance.
The staircase was the first thing I saw on my tour of the house. But when I got to the top it wobbled back and forth severely, and I remember almost falling off. In fact I remember there being a long vertical wooden pole, all carved and antique-looking, that I had grabbed onto for support and it broke in half. After a big of rearranging, Jen's sister (who could apparently reach the pole to help from the bottom floor... which made perfect sense at the time) helped reattatch it, while freaking out about me breaking it. Obviously she didn't like me being there.
Jen showed me the rest of what felt like "the house" but it was actually just the one giant, flowing room on the ground floor. There was a giant TV on the right side, where the sister/friend I had met and another girl a bit older than they were sat watching TV in silence. On the other side was a grand piano, completely white, along with everything else (the carpet, the ceiling, the walls,...) and so, of course, I began to play.
But the notes didn't seem right. I kept trying to play the Final Fantasy prelude (the scales I play at the end of my really long FF piece, for those who are familiar with my piano skills) but I kept hitting the wrong notes, or merely not hitting enough notes, or something. I then realized that although the piano was laid out like a grand piano, it was just the size of an electronic keyboard at the actual keys. If fact, it was smaller than most keyboards, about the size of one of those kiddy-keyboards that have only 1 octave of notes. Well that didn't seem to matter to Jen and she kept asking me to play something if I supposedly can play piano. My explanations that there just weren't enough notes didn't seem to appease her.
Needless to say I was frustrated, especially since I was still very tired, vision blurry, and I just wanted to sleep more than anything. It was clear they were letting me stay until Dusten and Chris got back just to be nice, but I had overstayed my welcome and they wanted me out. I felt that somehow I knew it was about the time for the rest of the household to arrive home, and they didn't want to have to explain who I was to their parents (particularly, their father.)
(note: this is where the dream STOPS being crazy and weird in a FUN, dream-like way)
Wanting to get away a bit, leaving the rest of the household be, I was at the top of the staircase again, just chilling until it was time to leave, vaguely observing the girls watching TV as I peered over the side of the stairwell into the giant room (the staircase had now tranformed for some reason, at the top, into a more classic, wide, flowing, carpeted staircase.) I don't remember hearing a car pull up, or the front door open, but there was now a large, slightly round man standing at the entrance. I don't remember if he was wearing black, or red, or a combination, but something about this man told me he was not good. Perhaps it was the (I forget now what it was exactly) large axe? or chainsaw perhaps? or butcher's knife he held in his right hand, his arm casually laying by his side, the weapon drooping down almost to the floor.
Many more people appeared. They didn't actually walk through the door, that I remember anyway, but they were certainly there. They couldn't see me up in the stairway (no one from the bottom floor could see me up there. It seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.) I don't particularly remember these men grabbing hold of the 3 girls, nor do I remember them trying to break free, or run, or fight back, but what I do remember was that this man began hacking Jen into pieces.
Arms and legs gone in a flash, soon they had spread her entire body, in various different sized pieces, onto a large, white, rectangular table that was now in the room somehow. The other men that had appeared brandished their large butcher's knifes (at least I think that's what they were. They were the large, square blades a foot long or so and about as deep as they were long. What I think of as the classic "big old - murdering knife", not the actual large knives most people have in the kitchen.)
The girl's entire body was chopped into tiny pieces on the table as she watched. The man held her head, and from the way her eyes still moved I could tell, somehow, she was still alive. Unlike the previous unusual things, this didn't even make sense in the dream. How was she still alive if she was only a head? How cruel, I remember thinking, it's not even OVER for her - she has to watch the rest play out. Eventually the other men brought out flat metal grate type-tools to mash the meat of her flesh even finer, as if they were preparing ground beef for dinner.
They repeated that procedure with the other two girls, as well as countless other times. I don't remember where they got the other victims from, I just remember it went on for what seemed like forever. All the while, Jen - and only Jen's - head was being held by the giant, bloodspattered man, observing it all. He held her by her hair, and just like his weapon, his arm was flat at her side, her neck almost touching the ground and she saw everything. That was when she saw me. I noticed that for some reason she had a third eyeball in her mouth, pointing outwards as if it were a fucntional eye, but obviously it didn't work.
I hid behind the staircase, and peeked through from another angle, but her eyes found me there too, they were following me now, staring at me wide-eyed as if it were all my fault. Once again I felt dizzy, tired, vision blurring, fading in and out of consciousness as I stood there on the stairway. After a few minutes I remember opening my eyes to see the giant man coming up the stairway at me, no longer holding Jen's head, but still holding his weapon.
I distinctly remember trying to throw myself backwards off the stairs as hard as I can. "I have to kill myself before he can get to me," I remember thinking, in a panic. I turned and tried to leap off the edge, but I felt his blade hit my back, sticking into it, holding me on the stairway. I remember closing my eyes, because at least if I close my eyes I don't have to feel what happens anymore (much like closing your eyes at the movies means you don't have to look. It made perfect sense at the time, I swear.)
Now I was the one on the table, watching the men hack at my body and grind it into meal just like the others, knives chop chop chopping and metal grids grinding what remained until it looked about ready to be prepared.
Fade to black.
Fade back in, observing what appeared to be an outdoor grocery-stand. I don't remember the label on them (it wasn't any wide-spread official label I might remember) but it was something like "Mama's old fashioned brand muffins." Don't ask me how I knew, since none of the men were at the stand selling them, but something inside told me with certainty what the secret ingredients of those muffins were. I watched people buy them. Not by the hordes, and not once in a full moon, but just like any normal grocery-type stand, people stopped by once in a while to buy some.
"Their muffins are the best," I heard someone say.
EndDream.
Honest to God, this was the dream I just had.
I'll think twice next time I decide to take an afternoon nap.
It started off as a normal enough dream...
Dusten, Chris and I were hanging out in an outdoorsy-mall type place browsing around, and we start chatting it up with a couple of cute girls. One of the girls seemed to want to go home or something, but the other one and I were hitting it off, getting along pretty well. Her name was Jen, I think, and along with going to college she had two jobs, working at a movie theater and at a pool. What she did at a pool I don't remember asking, but for some reason she didn't say she was a lifeguard, she just referred to her other job as "the pool," much in the same way we used to refer to work as "the theater" when I worked at a movie theater one summer.
Eventually these girls need to head home, but didn't have a ride, so we offer to take them. Once we get there, Dusten and Chris needed to go back to my place to get my car and bring it back to me. I'm not sure why I wouldn't just go with them to my car, but it seemed at the time as if that weren't an option for some reason. In fact, they almost left me there and took off, because I had mistakenly thought my car was at this girl's house. Why would it be at this stranger's house? Because it's a dream, and dreams are weird like that. In any case, I was now alone at this girl's house with Chris and Dusten gone, to be back "in an hour."
I must have been napping in the car ride there, because I felt very just-woke-up, not really thinking straight, taking in the sights with hazy, tired eyes. Jen's friend either lived with her or was, in fact, her sister, because she went into this house too and began to make herself at home. Jen invited me in, and I felt somewhat awkward coming into this girl's house, since I had just met her. It was a VERY nice house, and I merely assumed belonged to her parents. It was all white, if I can remember, with a beautiful wooden spiral staircase that went straight up several stories near the entrance of the house, in the giant entrance.
The staircase was the first thing I saw on my tour of the house. But when I got to the top it wobbled back and forth severely, and I remember almost falling off. In fact I remember there being a long vertical wooden pole, all carved and antique-looking, that I had grabbed onto for support and it broke in half. After a big of rearranging, Jen's sister (who could apparently reach the pole to help from the bottom floor... which made perfect sense at the time) helped reattatch it, while freaking out about me breaking it. Obviously she didn't like me being there.
Jen showed me the rest of what felt like "the house" but it was actually just the one giant, flowing room on the ground floor. There was a giant TV on the right side, where the sister/friend I had met and another girl a bit older than they were sat watching TV in silence. On the other side was a grand piano, completely white, along with everything else (the carpet, the ceiling, the walls,...) and so, of course, I began to play.
But the notes didn't seem right. I kept trying to play the Final Fantasy prelude (the scales I play at the end of my really long FF piece, for those who are familiar with my piano skills) but I kept hitting the wrong notes, or merely not hitting enough notes, or something. I then realized that although the piano was laid out like a grand piano, it was just the size of an electronic keyboard at the actual keys. If fact, it was smaller than most keyboards, about the size of one of those kiddy-keyboards that have only 1 octave of notes. Well that didn't seem to matter to Jen and she kept asking me to play something if I supposedly can play piano. My explanations that there just weren't enough notes didn't seem to appease her.
Needless to say I was frustrated, especially since I was still very tired, vision blurry, and I just wanted to sleep more than anything. It was clear they were letting me stay until Dusten and Chris got back just to be nice, but I had overstayed my welcome and they wanted me out. I felt that somehow I knew it was about the time for the rest of the household to arrive home, and they didn't want to have to explain who I was to their parents (particularly, their father.)
(note: this is where the dream STOPS being crazy and weird in a FUN, dream-like way)
Wanting to get away a bit, leaving the rest of the household be, I was at the top of the staircase again, just chilling until it was time to leave, vaguely observing the girls watching TV as I peered over the side of the stairwell into the giant room (the staircase had now tranformed for some reason, at the top, into a more classic, wide, flowing, carpeted staircase.) I don't remember hearing a car pull up, or the front door open, but there was now a large, slightly round man standing at the entrance. I don't remember if he was wearing black, or red, or a combination, but something about this man told me he was not good. Perhaps it was the (I forget now what it was exactly) large axe? or chainsaw perhaps? or butcher's knife he held in his right hand, his arm casually laying by his side, the weapon drooping down almost to the floor.
Many more people appeared. They didn't actually walk through the door, that I remember anyway, but they were certainly there. They couldn't see me up in the stairway (no one from the bottom floor could see me up there. It seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.) I don't particularly remember these men grabbing hold of the 3 girls, nor do I remember them trying to break free, or run, or fight back, but what I do remember was that this man began hacking Jen into pieces.
Arms and legs gone in a flash, soon they had spread her entire body, in various different sized pieces, onto a large, white, rectangular table that was now in the room somehow. The other men that had appeared brandished their large butcher's knifes (at least I think that's what they were. They were the large, square blades a foot long or so and about as deep as they were long. What I think of as the classic "big old - murdering knife", not the actual large knives most people have in the kitchen.)
The girl's entire body was chopped into tiny pieces on the table as she watched. The man held her head, and from the way her eyes still moved I could tell, somehow, she was still alive. Unlike the previous unusual things, this didn't even make sense in the dream. How was she still alive if she was only a head? How cruel, I remember thinking, it's not even OVER for her - she has to watch the rest play out. Eventually the other men brought out flat metal grate type-tools to mash the meat of her flesh even finer, as if they were preparing ground beef for dinner.
They repeated that procedure with the other two girls, as well as countless other times. I don't remember where they got the other victims from, I just remember it went on for what seemed like forever. All the while, Jen - and only Jen's - head was being held by the giant, bloodspattered man, observing it all. He held her by her hair, and just like his weapon, his arm was flat at her side, her neck almost touching the ground and she saw everything. That was when she saw me. I noticed that for some reason she had a third eyeball in her mouth, pointing outwards as if it were a fucntional eye, but obviously it didn't work.
I hid behind the staircase, and peeked through from another angle, but her eyes found me there too, they were following me now, staring at me wide-eyed as if it were all my fault. Once again I felt dizzy, tired, vision blurring, fading in and out of consciousness as I stood there on the stairway. After a few minutes I remember opening my eyes to see the giant man coming up the stairway at me, no longer holding Jen's head, but still holding his weapon.
I distinctly remember trying to throw myself backwards off the stairs as hard as I can. "I have to kill myself before he can get to me," I remember thinking, in a panic. I turned and tried to leap off the edge, but I felt his blade hit my back, sticking into it, holding me on the stairway. I remember closing my eyes, because at least if I close my eyes I don't have to feel what happens anymore (much like closing your eyes at the movies means you don't have to look. It made perfect sense at the time, I swear.)
Now I was the one on the table, watching the men hack at my body and grind it into meal just like the others, knives chop chop chopping and metal grids grinding what remained until it looked about ready to be prepared.
Fade to black.
Fade back in, observing what appeared to be an outdoor grocery-stand. I don't remember the label on them (it wasn't any wide-spread official label I might remember) but it was something like "Mama's old fashioned brand muffins." Don't ask me how I knew, since none of the men were at the stand selling them, but something inside told me with certainty what the secret ingredients of those muffins were. I watched people buy them. Not by the hordes, and not once in a full moon, but just like any normal grocery-type stand, people stopped by once in a while to buy some.
"Their muffins are the best," I heard someone say.
EndDream.
Honest to God, this was the dream I just had.
I'll think twice next time I decide to take an afternoon nap.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Serenity
Ever since Ian got me hooked on Firefly and I hurridly bought the complete series (14 episodes) on DVD and watched them through in, I think, a weekend or so, I've been eagerly awaiting the release of Serenity. Last friday it came out.
Being a big fan of the TV show, which was sadly cancelled, I was expecting a lot.
I was surprised.
It was BETTER than I was expecting.
Without seeing it a second time and really paying very close attention to every moment of the film I'm not sure I can say exactly what things make the movie great. There was lots of action and suspense and humor and tension and drama and overall it was very entertaining, but it was more than that.
Underneath it all there was a very real but subtle theme of "when is something worth dying for" that I really liked. At what point do you stop running away or stand idly by and watch things unfold? At what point do you essentially throw your life away for an ideal, for something to believe in, for something to give you life meaning. I think overall it was the way the characters managed to do heroic things with actual purpose, other than "I'm the hero of the story, and this is what heros are supposed to do."
All I can really say is that it's been a very long time since I've seen a science fiction movie this good. Maybe the original Matrix? It's not often I cough up the ten bucks or so to go see a movie in the theaters, but this one I think I'm going to have to go see again.
So if any of you ... 6 or so people who actually read this agree in my taste in movies to any tiny degree, go now and watch this movie. It's really just that good.
Being a big fan of the TV show, which was sadly cancelled, I was expecting a lot.
I was surprised.
It was BETTER than I was expecting.
Without seeing it a second time and really paying very close attention to every moment of the film I'm not sure I can say exactly what things make the movie great. There was lots of action and suspense and humor and tension and drama and overall it was very entertaining, but it was more than that.
Underneath it all there was a very real but subtle theme of "when is something worth dying for" that I really liked. At what point do you stop running away or stand idly by and watch things unfold? At what point do you essentially throw your life away for an ideal, for something to believe in, for something to give you life meaning. I think overall it was the way the characters managed to do heroic things with actual purpose, other than "I'm the hero of the story, and this is what heros are supposed to do."
All I can really say is that it's been a very long time since I've seen a science fiction movie this good. Maybe the original Matrix? It's not often I cough up the ten bucks or so to go see a movie in the theaters, but this one I think I'm going to have to go see again.
So if any of you ... 6 or so people who actually read this agree in my taste in movies to any tiny degree, go now and watch this movie. It's really just that good.
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