Wednesday, February 25, 2009
true story.
turtlenecks. worst invention ever. i feel like i am being strangled while simultaneously breaking into hives of the neck. worst invention ever. true story.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
procrastination finds social awareness...
Let me go ahead and start this by saying grad school sucks...and if i were really the super star grad student i once aspired to be, this blog likely would not even exist. luckily for all involved, i am not. over my five years in grad school (meh...four and a half, lets not jump the gun here) i have found that my ability to procrastinate via the Internet has truly flourished. I say this because in my desire to kill more time not doing work/planning experiments/reading journal articles to expand my scientific expertise, i have found that cnn.com is a huge tool for procrastination...and let me tell you why....
prior to my discovery of cnn.com, i had a limited number of other web pages which i used to not to do work..among my favorites are thesuperficial.com and wwtdd.com because who doesn't enjoy a few minutes a day to shamelessly bash celebrity schanaginns (whoa..prob not even close to the right spelling). the problem with these sort of websites is that, while enjoyable, they are limited and to the point...at best one can kill maybe 10 or 15 minutes before being faced with the dilemma of either going ahead and being productive or finding some new way to not be productive...and here enters cnn.com
holy mother of god you could lose an entire afternoon on cnn.com. There are literally hours worth of articles that could be read if you found yourself inclined to do so...and believe me, i have become inclined to do so...now, i would never consider myself a political kind of person. I am not a "super concerned with the going ons of humanity" type of person. i mean, i dislike war and poverty and general heartache as much as the next person but i do tend to forget about things that happen outside my immediate realm of exposure. But my desire to not do work has made me far more worldly than i could ever have imagined...it starts with the headline stories, obviously. A quick scan through to see what is in store followed by systematically going through each one, avoiding the videos of course because well, i don't actually want to WATCH the news..uck.. From there I immediately move to the crime page because i suppose the voyeur in me cant help but be drawn to the atrocities committed against people and animals alike. I read all the cnn articles and start loading up in new tabs all the local news web pages that are featured. Because my computer hates me, and because I feel the need to open like 12 tabs at a time, this will take a while to load...so in the meantime, i move world news because all of these articles will appear on the actual cnn website and therefore do not present a further loading problem...as i familiarize myself with Zimbabwe's latest inflation disasters and Mexico's drug cartel and corruption woes, all the many crime pages eventually load and provide me with volumes of small town news of indecency. After taking in all of this, i obviously immediately rinse and repeat....and by that i mean go to the US page and start the loading process for all of those local news pages, this time covering a wide range of topics, not just crime (have they found Hailey from Florida? did those Georgia peanut farmers know they were contaminated? and what about Micheal Phelps and his oddly long torso, has the world forgiven him for his bong photo?? oh and don't forget the family that found a new kidney for their dad on craigslist...that one pulls at the heartstrings). Of course I make my way back to the world page in the meantime to check in UKs economic situation and Iraq's latest bombings (this is my least favorite topic and one i try to avoid). Alas, I almost never make it to the "entertainment" pages...after all, i have thesuperficial for that.
At the end of the day, i have wasted untold periods of time but have no remorse for it because it is not procrastinating if i am just catching myself up on worldly events....it makes me socially aware, not a slacker. clearly. and with that thought marinating in your brain, i leave you with a few of my favorite's from today's cnn.com adventure...
Cops: Hair Weave stops bullet
http://www.nbcactionnews.com/news/local/story/Cops-Hair-Weave-Stops-Bullet/x6Lq5NPwxUSMhiY0QSyqRA.cspx
Ugly Whales get love and protection, too
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/02/19/saving.right.whales/index.html
prior to my discovery of cnn.com, i had a limited number of other web pages which i used to not to do work..among my favorites are thesuperficial.com and wwtdd.com because who doesn't enjoy a few minutes a day to shamelessly bash celebrity schanaginns (whoa..prob not even close to the right spelling). the problem with these sort of websites is that, while enjoyable, they are limited and to the point...at best one can kill maybe 10 or 15 minutes before being faced with the dilemma of either going ahead and being productive or finding some new way to not be productive...and here enters cnn.com
holy mother of god you could lose an entire afternoon on cnn.com. There are literally hours worth of articles that could be read if you found yourself inclined to do so...and believe me, i have become inclined to do so...now, i would never consider myself a political kind of person. I am not a "super concerned with the going ons of humanity" type of person. i mean, i dislike war and poverty and general heartache as much as the next person but i do tend to forget about things that happen outside my immediate realm of exposure. But my desire to not do work has made me far more worldly than i could ever have imagined...it starts with the headline stories, obviously. A quick scan through to see what is in store followed by systematically going through each one, avoiding the videos of course because well, i don't actually want to WATCH the news..uck.. From there I immediately move to the crime page because i suppose the voyeur in me cant help but be drawn to the atrocities committed against people and animals alike. I read all the cnn articles and start loading up in new tabs all the local news web pages that are featured. Because my computer hates me, and because I feel the need to open like 12 tabs at a time, this will take a while to load...so in the meantime, i move world news because all of these articles will appear on the actual cnn website and therefore do not present a further loading problem...as i familiarize myself with Zimbabwe's latest inflation disasters and Mexico's drug cartel and corruption woes, all the many crime pages eventually load and provide me with volumes of small town news of indecency. After taking in all of this, i obviously immediately rinse and repeat....and by that i mean go to the US page and start the loading process for all of those local news pages, this time covering a wide range of topics, not just crime (have they found Hailey from Florida? did those Georgia peanut farmers know they were contaminated? and what about Micheal Phelps and his oddly long torso, has the world forgiven him for his bong photo?? oh and don't forget the family that found a new kidney for their dad on craigslist...that one pulls at the heartstrings). Of course I make my way back to the world page in the meantime to check in UKs economic situation and Iraq's latest bombings (this is my least favorite topic and one i try to avoid). Alas, I almost never make it to the "entertainment" pages...after all, i have thesuperficial for that.
At the end of the day, i have wasted untold periods of time but have no remorse for it because it is not procrastinating if i am just catching myself up on worldly events....it makes me socially aware, not a slacker. clearly. and with that thought marinating in your brain, i leave you with a few of my favorite's from today's cnn.com adventure...
Cops: Hair Weave stops bullet
http://www.nbcactionnews.com/news/local/story/Cops-Hair-Weave-Stops-Bullet/x6Lq5NPwxUSMhiY0QSyqRA.cspx
Ugly Whales get love and protection, too
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/02/19/saving.right.whales/index.html
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