NSO

Hey, sorry it's been so long since I've posted (not that anyone reads this, I'm more apologizing to myself), but as you know, I've been involved in Orientation here at Stanford. I could explain, but I think I'll just post some pictures. Enjoy!


This is the obligatory image of Hoover Tower (HooTow). Isn't it glorious?


This is lovely Roble Hall. The RA's memorize your face from pictures you send and then announce you over a loudspeaker as you check in. Roble Love!


There is a New Guinea sculpture garden right out in front of our dorm. I just know that one of these nights I'll be coming back from Chem lab and one of these mamajamas is going to scare the bejeezus out of me.


Dodge is a golfer who lives in our hall. Nice guy, but we really don't see a whole lot of him. I believe this is pretty self-explanitory.


Fleet Street: A Stanford Tradition- not unlike bike accidents, which are not unlike craisins, when you think about it.


One of the advantages of living in an older dorm: IN-ROOM SINKS!!


Freshmen Beware!! the Cap'n be guardin' THIS sophmore dorm, ARRRRRRghhhhh!!

NOW The Time Is Right

It's a fine line between a dog and a chicken. Now, those of you who know me doubtlessly realize that I have a generally kind disposition toward God's creatures. So, by logical extension, you must know that when there comes a fuzzy little friend that I can't deal with, it's usually not my problem. I have been terrorized by my neighbor's dogs for as long as I can remember. From the age of six, I had to do nothing more than exit my house and I would be assailed by the raucous vocalizations of Charlie and Sammy (or something like that). For years I plotted my revenge. I considered throwing them chicken bones, a method which, I'm told, is a sure fire way to kill a dog, although I've never figured that one out. In the end, it was decided that it was too messy. After a while, the barking was met by me not with cowering fear but with a wry smile as I said under my breath "yeah, just go ahead and bar, you'll get what's coming to you". I was kind of a dark kid, If you haven't picked that up. Anyway, after years of plotting and being unable to bring myself around to any decisive action, both dogs finally died of natural causes. So, after a beloved pet of 14 years bites the dust, what is the logical course of action? Sit quietly and contemplate all the hours of ceasless exhuberance and undying canine devotion? Or perhaps you could learn to cherish your children more and be thankful that they don't eat embroidered hand towls, barf them up on the front steps and stand over their little present with their head cocked and one ear folded over as if to say "please hit me with a rolled up newspaper"? No, honey I just CAN'T stand the silence! Let's go get another dog NOW! Oh, and the old ones weren't loud enough. Make sure you get one that barks like a strangled chicken! Now the "chicken-mutt", as I have come to call him, resides beneath my bedroom window and diligently makes sure I don't accidentally fall asleep. Ah, man's best friend. Anyway, if you're wondering if this little narrative has a point, it doesn't. I was just feeling a little irritated by those dogs today. Hopefully I'll break this rut of uninteresting and generally unamusing rambling once I get to California. Until then, keep your chicken bones handy, you just might need them.

An Excursion

I hate shopping. No, let me clarify. It's not the actual act of picking something up and paying for it that gets me. I can deal with it if I absolutely must (e.g. if my last pair of socks has disintegrated to the point where more of it's material can be found in the lint trap of my super-anaesthomagneto-ionic-ozonizer-hepaxtreme air filter than on my feet). What really kills me is having to walk through the mall past all the ridiculous glamour shops for 9 year old girls, wandering through a department store past rows of women's lingerie with no end in sight and then, once I have found my department, spending fifteen minutes wandering back through the women's lingerie (in case I missed any important evidence before) to find a register manned by a chain-smoking 50 year old woman talking on the cell phone to her daughter about silica gel. Then, count in the fact that I then have to find my car (which caused me to scream "This is the Owl Lot! Where's the fucking raccoon lot???" and scare a couple of children), return a bizarre pair of polystyrene-cross-training-pump-action bunny slippers that someone in my family had inexplicably bought at "Journey's", fight horrible traffic through a Dantean maze of parking lots and roads to get home and discover that in my panic I accidentally bought tube socks (I have not the words). So, it's not the core act of shopping that bothers me, it's the significant amount of peripheral irritation that tends to give me the fear. I'm not the tight-fisted Scrooge that people seem to think I am. I don't have a problem SPENDING money, I just tend to go need a goodly amount of sedatives in order to calmly get to a place where I can. And then, after the little gnome who lives in my spinal chord was just about to sever my final nerve, the neighbor's chicken-mutt starts barking/squawking at me, causing me to go into minor cardiac arrest. Yes, something must be done about that dog... But now is not the time. I must patiently pack my socks and wait until the moment is right...

What is CIAI?

Oh, how do I even begin to explain this? Well, for starters, CIAI (pronounced See? I, Eh... Eye) is the Centro Italiano Aiuti all'Infanzia, which helps children, so I guess it's OK. It is also the Cochlear Implant Association, Inc. (in case you ever want a job at Hooter's, where the minimun cochlear girth is a whopping, unrealistic yet provocative 3mm). It is also the Clark Inspection Agency Inc.. CIAI is a brilliant tactic. CIAI is what you say when you don't have anything else but you know you have to say SOMETHING to keep them off your back. Oddly enough, CIAI doesn't always work out that way. CIAI can stop time. This can be a bad thing if it happens to slip out of your mouth at an inopportune moment. CIAI has a mind of its own. CIAI will never die, just like Gilmore Girls. CIAI transcends all catagories of human thought. CIAI is unlike Gilmore Girls in this respect. CIAI must be watched diligently. CIAI's similarity to Gilmore Girls here is the subject of a furious debate between my father and myself. CIAI will triumph in the end. Well, I mean, CIAI, meant... What was the question?