Even though no children showed up on our doorstep last year, mom inexplicably bought bags and bags of candy for this year's celebration. And we got the same result. As I stared at all the sugar I was supposed to ingest, this conversation took place:

Me: You know, thanks a lot guys. I'm trying to lose weight here.
Dad: Just eat a bit at a time. It's just moderation.
Me: That's like asking an alcoholic to stop drinking.
Dad: (suddenly a very serious tone) You're joking, right?

You're the one who should be joking, dad. Your daughter is noticeably morbidly obese. If it's not a glandular issue, there's definitely some sort of eating problem. He expressed similar surprise to me announcing I could eat a bag of chips in one sitting. How the hell did you not realize that?

Today I was standing outside my apartment steps waiting for someone, when an old lady approached. Literally in the first minute of our meeting she told me she was from Rhinebeck, that her daughter was moving into the apartment that day, that she had taken the MetroNorth down and her daughter was supposed to meet her at the 1 train, that her daughter was late so she came via the Bx7, that she was seventy-seven, and that her daughter works in pyrotechnics on Broadway. It was a deluge of information in sixty seconds, which barely even scratched the surface of what else I learned in the following six minutes.

For me it was a surreal situation because it was the complete opposite of what I'd do. If I were her, I would not have spoken with me or even made some sort of eye contact. It's a combination of shyness and being raised in New York City. But sometimes I wonder what I lose from not chatting with people. For example, my dad's roommate Panay was really friendly. He met dad randomly at a bus stop and struck up a conversation about how he was having problems with his Filipino roommates mocking him for not being macho enough. Dad and him decided to move in together. Later on Panay's former coworker called him up when she first immigrated to America, looking for a temporary place to live. That woman was my mother, and the rest is history.

What kind of friendships and connections pass me by for keeping quiet? What kind of interesting situations do I miss for not being involved? And yet I can't help but imagine how much time I'd've wasted making small talk with people. All those books I didn't read on the train because I was chatting with some dude about how Riverside Park is looking better nowadays.

And the worst part is I never know how to end those conversations gracefully. It's usually something along the lines of, "Okay, bye!" and then fleeing as quickly as possible.

I think humans have activities that are demonstrably harming the environment and that we should change our methods to try to minimize our impact. I don't think it's within human nature to do this overnight and without a replacement for our current lifestyle, e.g. suddenly stop using electricity until we find a suitable alternative for fossil fuels. But the environment should be one of the many things we consider as a people. I think it's a reasonable stance.

That being said, I really fucking hate it when this shit is shoved down my fucking throat. One of the reasons why I think Chrono Cross was a horrible sequel to Chrono Trigger is its extreme environmentalist stance, of which Chrono Trigger had none. I was playing it with Paul over the weekend, and we got to the part when Kidd is poisoned. For those of you who haven't played it, the only cure is the humor from an animal that lives in these marshes, but it's the only one left in the world and the marshes for some reason will turn poisonous if you kill it.

Part of the game was big choices like this, so you could do two things. The first was choose to kill the animal. While you're proceeding through the marshes, these really hostile dwarves try to stop you the entire way, explaining that by killing this animal you'd destroy their home. After you've cured Kidd, you must meet the Water Dragon on an island populated by fairies. When you arrive you find the dwarves have killed almost everyone, saying that humans have taught them that killing people is right to get what you want and they'll make their new home here. After you've killed all the dwarves the fairies blame you for bringing them here and rhetorically ask you why you can't live in peace without hurting anyone.

If you choose not to save Kidd, the story requires you to visit the Water Dragon and you find that someone else has killed the animal in the marshes and the dwarves are murdering the fairies anyway. The fairies still denounce humanity and kick you off the island.

Even as a kid this incident made me really angry. It's so fucking one-sided anti-humanity that it actually damages its own argument:

1. Okay, so the over-hunting of this animal was humanity's fault. But it wasn't like dicks were just shooting them for fun like the buffalo. The animal is really important in medicine, and saving your own loved ones is a reasonable thing.

2. How the fuck is a swamp dependent on the survival of one animal? I'm not talking about a species. It's literally one animal. The moment this shit dies, everything turns into poison. That is the weakest ecosystem ever. Okay, we've hunted other species to extinction, but that didn't mean nature died too. Mauritius didn't devolve into madness the moment we wiped out the dodo bird. Japan kept on rolling around just fine after the Hokkaido wolf disappeared. The makers of this game created an unreal situation — "are you really willing to destroy an entire swamp to get what you want?!" — just to make humans look like bigger assholes.

3. The dwarves have shit like metal helmets and even tanks. How the fuck is that environmentally friendly? Last I checked, mining was damaging.

4. And seriously dwarves, how the fuck are humans the bellicose ones when you have a fucking tank? Don't fucking tell me you were only going to hunt for basic sustenance with it. What, were you going to shoot deer with it? And then try to pick through the exploded bits afterward, hoping you could possibly make a meal from that? And who the fuck makes a tank in a swamp anyway? And how the hell did you carry that shit all the way to the bottom of the Water Dragon's cave? That is literally 90° drops right there.

5. Fairies, you need to shut the fuck up. I just saved your asses from the dwarves. I'd understand if you were angry at me AND the dwarves, but you did not say a single thing about the people who bludgeoned your friends and family to death in front of your eyes. This apparently was all my fault. Okay, maybe if I chose to save Kidd it can be directly linked to me, but even if I didn't do a damned thing they blamed me anyway for being a human. And THAT is fucking racist. Half the fucking game is about how humans discriminate against demi-humans, but you can't bitch about that shit when conversely demi-humans are discriminating against humans.

6. And finally, and this is what really got me, don't fucking pretend humans are the anomaly while the rest of nature is pacific. Nature is vicious and cruel. If any species had the chance, they would overpopulate the shit out of a place. Look at rabbits in Australia; yeah, we introduced them but they happily took over on their fucking own. It's just that we're really good at what we do. No other species can compete with us. But they would readily take the position as top of the food chain if they could. There's no fucking species on earth that thinks, "Well, I should let these animals live because they're a necessary part of our complex system of life, and after all we should just let bygones be bygones and exist harmoniously." That ironically is only a human philosophy. In real life, those dwarves would've fucking slaughtered those fairies and eaten them.

That's why Chrono Cross ultimately failed Chrono Trigger; I don't think it really added anything to the lore of the series. They literally just threw Lavos and that shit at the last minute and everything up until then was a battle between FATE on the humans' side and the dragons on nature's side. So fucking dumb.

The MTA is considering implementing articulated train cars in the next twenty years, which are basically trains with one long passage, i.e. not separate cars but rather a quasi-single one. Articulated trains have larger carrying capacity; consider for a moment the amount of space in between each train car and how many people that could've carried. Not only that, there is ease of passage up and down, which allows people to exit and enter more efficiently or move to accommodate other passengers boarding.

But there are cons, which made me realize how dependent we are on separate cars. Take for example performers or beggars; what is their M.O.? Go to one car, give their spiel, then move onto the next. If you're annoyed at a mariachi band waking you up, you can find solace in they'll be gone soon to bother someone else. That can't happen in an articulated train. They will perform, move twenty feet, and perform again.

Or if there's a drunk in one car who vomited or stripped or some who's particularly unruly due to the influence or mental problems. There's nowhere to escape. A train car is about a block long, but that stench/problems can follow you all the way to the end.

I'm still on the fence about the issue and have to ride one of these myself to see what they're like. I feel most of my protests is just simply me being accustomed to a certain way and I would easily habituate myself to another if I had to. Either way, I hope there are interesting things to see in the next twenty years. Who knows, maybe the display for the upcoming trains will finally work at my stop on the 1 train.

That is a filthy, filthy lie. “Doesn’t look so big”? That thing is about as big as her torso. If I were in her shoes, I would not be fucking holding that thing in my hands. I’ve be across the room, trying to shoot it with a goddamned gun so that the abomination won’t walk amongst us ever again.

Our governor, Andrew Cuomo, recently drew attention for watching The Godfather. Normally no one cares if a politician watches a movie, but Cuomo is of Italian decent and for a long time he refused to see it because it has negative implications for the Italian community in America, that it generates stereotypes. Cuomo left the viewing saying artistically it was a masterpiece, but he still disapproves of its subliminal message. I've been told by Alex on several occasions that it's a good movie; I myself have never seen it and probably won't any time soon.

And that's the point: "I've been told." A lot of our life is based upon report because it's physically impossible for us to personally experience everything. For example, I have no proof from my five senses that Egypt exists, but I'm trusting other people when they say that it does. You spend your life absorbing accounts from others whether it's the nightly news or your mother's gossip about what she saw on the subway and sift through them to judge their veracity. We do it every day and we're all comfortable with our first-hand ignorance.

And yet I don't understand willful ignorance. It's just not something I can comprehend. What did Cuomo gain from refusing to see The Godfather? Nothing. Even if you don't agree with something doesn't mean you should turn your eyes away from it. If anything, if this issue is so important to you, you should make a point of watching it because then you can refute point by point why it's wrong. Cuomo's stance was, "Well, other people have told me that it reinforces the idea about Italians and the mafia, so therefore I won't watch it." That is a weak argument. Because I have follow up questions like, "What specific points in the movie confirms the stereotype about Italians and the mafia?" "Is this movie different from other movies that portray certain gang groups? If it's the same, should we just not have movies about organized crime at all if it reaffirms racial stereotypes?" "Is there anything in the movie that's redeeming for Italians?" And he would have the same answer as I: "I don't know, I haven't seen it."

There are lots of things out there that I don't agree with, but that doesn't mean I should just dismiss it entirely. Let me give a quote here: "I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet." I completely disagree with this statement. You know where it's from? The Bible, 1 Timothy 2:8-12. And I can assure you that passage was actively used to suppress women's rights for over a thousand years. So should I just ignore the Bible entirely? No. In fact, I read it actively so I can specifically say what parts I think are good and what are bad.

I think consciously shielding your eyes demonstrates a certain insecurity in your own position. If you honestly thought you're right, reading / watching / listening / seeing something isn't going to change your mind. For example, my grandmother once told me she refused to read The DaVinci Code because she "was a good Christian." What, did you think reading one book would shake the faith that you've held on to for the past eighty years? Did you think you'd stop being a Christian? I personally am regretful I never read it because I can only debate with people about it from hearsay, and I would think she'd want to as well to prove to people why The DaVinci Code is just fiction from her own knowledge of Christianity and Catholicism.

I'd totally look at the opinions from other people I disagree with like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. Hell, the library is currently holding for me Ron Paul's End the Fed. Mein Kampf is on my reading list. Or let's take anything from the Middle Ages. Their science is atrocious. Should I just skip that? They're unabashedly racist. Should I pass over it? Their views toward women and the poor are despicable. Should I ignore it? Then I wouldn't have much to study about. I admit my ignorance vastly overpowers my knowledge, but that's mostly out of necessity; there's only a certain number of hours in a day, a human lifespan is too short, and I have to set priorities. But to say I purposefully be narrow minded to create my own world view is something I refuse to adhere to.

I'm super hyped for A Link Between the Worlds, but I'm scared shitless that they'd go the same route as the other DS games and have a central dungeon that you repeatedly return to centered around sneaking.

A quote from my mother:

"Are you going to buy stuffed animals again when you move back into the house? What do you need them for? You're twenty-six! Why are you buying stuffed animals? It makes the house look like a trailer park. They give you asthma."

In Florida last week, two girls aged fourteen and twelve were arrested for bulling a third girl to the point she committed suicide. The specific charges are third-degree stalking. It seems the dead girl was an ex-girlfriend of the fourteen-year-old's current boyfriend and for some reason that incensed her, although there are probably more details that haven't come to light. The sheriff in this case was incensed about the older girl's lack of remorse and her parents' denial of any wrongdoing.

I'm really ambivalent about this case. Definitely these girls need to be punished for what they did, but I'm not certain arrest and jail time is it. They're twelve and fourteen. This isn't like they personally pulled a trigger and killed someone. They bullied a person, which is what I expect twelve and fourteen year olds to do. Intellectually they understand bullying is wrong, but we all know we've done really stupid shit at that age.

It's still a very, very serious matter, more so than just an expulsion. But then I believe the parents should be taken to account. When a young child does something terrible, usually the parents are punished in their stead (as is the same with pets). It was obvious this was an issue for quite some time if the girl's been cutting herself, been sent to a psychiatric hospital, and was eventually removed from the school altogether. I know these girls are at the age when parents start stepping back, but by this point they should've been involved, and yet they refuse to believe any of this happened, saying their daughter's Facebook account has been hacked. Yeah, as if any hacker would give a fuck about this.

What led to the arrest is what truly amazes me. Bullying has always happened and will continue to happen, but this case shows how the digital age has changed the game. How often have these problems gone unnoticed in the hallways? But now with Facebook the bullies are left with the digital footprint, a digital footprint that anyone can see.

Project M is a fan-based mod to Super Smash Bros.: Brawl that tweaks the characters' stats, adds or removes moves, or even includes new characters altogether. Moham came over the other day and the two of us tried it out. I'm happy to report it plays smoothly, although I can't attest to how this changes the overall balance because we were not able to experiment with everyone. I hope Nintendo doesn't try to be dicks and shut it down.

None of that really matters in comparison to this: The Project M site has a profile page for each character to explain the changes, and they refer to Mr. Game & Watch as "G-Dubs". G fucking Dubs.

I spent the evening researching the candidates for the upcoming elections, and these vague statements need to stop. Lhota apparently wants to "empower and uplift all of our teachers." What the fuck does that mean? I don't think there's a candidate out there who would want to weaken and downtrod our teachers. Carrión says he'll create "a strong and relevant curriculum." Like what? What subjects are we talking about here?

Yeah, I know why they're doing this. It's politically astute to not be specific, but I'm paralyzed here without a sense of a candidate's intentions and method. Half of John Burnett's campaign ad was about his parents, and quite frankly I don't care. Can you give me enough substance to make a good choice?

Or you can be like Randy Credico from the Tax Wall Street Party and be too specific:
-I will replace the current Police Commissioner, Ray Kelley, with former police officer Frank Serpico and retired detective Graham Weatherspoon.
-The NYPD will no longer be allowed to participate in the policing of parades, particularly the West Indian, Puerto Rican and Dominican parades, other than the deployment of the NYPD’s unarmed traffic police to help with the flow. Parade organizers will be responsible for their own policing of their respective events.
-I will rename City Hall Park, “The John Brown Lawn of Tolerance”.
-We will test for steroid abuse by the NYPD.
-I will ask a panel of progressive poets, performers and artists led by Harry Belafonte, Alfre Woodard, Danny Glover, Kathy Engel and Ruby Dee to run the office of Cultural Affairs.

All I've been doing all day is refreshing my news feed to see if congress has passed anything. Seriously, what the fuck is going on in Washington?

I haven't read The Iliad in over a decade, so I plopped down and finished Stephen Mitchell's translation. For those of you who don't know the plot, I'll try to be brief: There was a grand wedding with all the gods invited except for the goddess of discord Eris. Being naturally pissed off, she crashed the party and threw a golden apple with the inscription "to the fairest one." Three goddesses — the goddess of marriage Hera, the goddess of wisdom Athena, and the goddess of sex Aphrodite — wanted that title and fought for the apple. Eventually they decided a Trojan named Paris should pick, but instead of a fair fight all of them bribed him: Hera said she'd make him king of Europe and Asia, Athena said she'd make him wise, and Aphrodite said she'd make the world's most beautiful woman fall in love with him, and he chose the last. Unfortunately the world's most beautiful woman, Helen, was already married to King Menelaus of Sparta. So when he discovered Paris had run off with his wife, he chose war for such a dishonor. To add to it, before he and Helen were married, she was wooed by practically every king of Greece, so to prevent fighting they swore they would defend anyone who was chosen to be Helen's husband. Now that Menelaus was attacked, every king of Greece was required to join him in his fight with Troy.

Actually, none of that is in The Iliad proper. It was probably part of a whole group of poems describing the Trojan War including the prequel, but only two of Homer's poems survive. The Iliad fast forwards to ten years into the war. Menelaus' brother, King Agamemnon of Mycenae, had taken a Trojan priestess of Apollo to be his concubine, so Apollo was raining arrows down upon the Greek army. Consequently he was forced to give her up but was upset he was the only Greek king without a concubine so he got into a fight with Achilles and took his. Achilles, the strongest of the Greeks, was pissed and left the battles entirely, preparing his ships to sail for back home. To punish the Greeks for dishonoring Achilles, Zeus gave strength to the Trojans' most powerful warrior, Hector, who proceeded to cut up their army. The Greeks begged and bribed Achilles to return to no avail. Eventually Achilles' best friend Patroclus took on Achilles' armor, hoping that the Trojans would just run away in fear, but instead he was killed by Hector. Pissed off, Achilles rushes back into battle and kills Hector. The epic ends with Hector's dad Priam claiming his body.

This poem is twenty-four books long and has over 15,000 lines. The huge bulk of it are battle descriptions, with spears being thrown, shields being broken, arrows being launched. You can viscerally feel the pain on the battlefield, along with the pain of the civilians who have to watch their loved ones march out every day. That's why I prefer The Iliad over The Odyssey: It shows you the horrors of warfare along with the honor and bravery.

But while I was reading about all the misery and anxiety I thought to myself, "Why the fuck didn't the Trojans just give back Helen? Literally this has nothing to do with any of them. Okay, yeah, Paris is the son of the king. But not even his dad or his brothers like him. Hell, even Helen doesn't like him; she's forced by Aphrodite to be raped every night. All of this could be solved if they just fucking handed Helen over years ago. Now it's too late because the Greeks are too pissed over after a decade of fighting for anything other than total destruction of Troy, but say year two or so everyone could've just sat down and said, 'Why are we doing this? This is really dumb. Here's your woman back, sorry for the inconvenience.' It's a war over nothing."

Our house originally had a hatch to the roof that was very inconvenient because it was located in my mother's closet. Each time we wanted to go up there we had to practically empty out four decades' worth of clothing and shoes, so we limited our ventures up there to about once every fifteen years. On top of that the ladder was very cumbersome and the hatch itself was very heavy to the point that dad couldn't even open it anymore.

Consequently when we redesigned the house, I suggested an easier route to the roof, but I was thinking something along the lines of a pull-down stair. The architect produced plans for adding another stairwell that leads to a patio on the roof, which I heartily approved for awesomeness. However my parents nixed the patio, which made the stairwell seem kinda weird: The steps now lead to nothing.

Last week our stairs subcontactor finally finished and shipped them over. We went over today to inspect everything, and my parents finally went onto the roof the first time. While I admit the view isn't Central Park East, it's not awful. Mom seemed to agree because she was moaning about not putting a proper patio up there.

Honestly though, I just want a proper balustrade or something. The parapets lining the edges barely go up my ankle, which if anything is just a tripping hazard. The staircase makes us more inclined to go up there, and I can totally imagine us just walking off the side.

The four humors theory dominated the medical field for thousands of years. It was based upon the concept that the human body was composed of four substances or humors: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Any sort of sickness was an excess or deficiency of those humors. For instance bloodletting was removing the extraneous blood to return to the proper amount. And the concept expanded to almost all aspects of a person's life: to this day someone who is phlegmatic means they are calm and rational, which meant they had an excess of phlegm in their body. Each food added or subtracted from a person's humor: A person who had too much black bile should avoid carp but eat pike. People with lots of yellow bile have curly hair.

The idea is attributed to Hippocrates, the father of the Hippocratic Oath, who was a famous Greek physician around about the 400s B.C. Later on in the 100s A.D. another prominent Roman physician named Galen popularized the idea, and through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance his works were practically the Bible for doctors throughout western Europe.

Beginning in the Renaissance, chinks began to appear in the four humors' armor. First a Belgian anatomist Vesalius in the 1500s began to notice Galen made several errors; Galen himself mostly performed experiments on animals, not humans. While that's good to realize things like nerves exist, it causes problems when trying to describe a human body. Then an Englishman named William Harvey in the 1600s discovered the circulation of blood. This actually completely smashed the theory entirely because it stated the four humors just lay still, but with Harvey's discovery the organs seem like mechanisms. But it wasn't until the 1800s that doctors let go of the four humors. Even though certain aspects were demonstrably false, only when a new theory — germ theory — arose then doctors could let go. Disease, instead of being an imbalance of say phlegm and yellow bile, could be seen as an infection.

I've known about this for quite some time, but I still hold my initial when I first came across this in middle school: What the FUCK was black bile? Blood and phlegm? Okay, can see that. I wouldn't really think that phlegm is good for you, but I'll roll with it. Yellow bile? Maybe they were confused with urine. I don't know. But what the fuck did they think was black bile? When Galen was dissecting his pigs, what did he find in there that made him think, "...Huh. Hippocrates was right. I see the black bile right there." People were killed constantly in the Middle Ages. Surely during all that stabbing someone must've come across an eviscerated body and thought, "I don't see any black bile anywhere." Did it seriously take people thousands of years to realize this shit doesn't make any sense?

I remember once in my medieval manuscripts class our teacher showed us an anatomy book of male and female genitalia. While the male portion was heavily detailed, the female side was just a triangle. I thought, "Wow, even back then guys had no idea how to deal with a uterus."

I discussed this in my xanga, but I'll reiterate it again: Secondary education in Germany is split into three different camps: Hauptschule (main school), Realschule (real school), and Gymnasium (um... gymnasium). Hauptschule is 5th-9th grades where they learn the basics of a general curriculum, but it is mostly considered a vocational school and ends at about age fifteen. Realschule is ranked above and has a larger general curriculum, but is ultimately the equivalent of our high school diploma and also ends at about the 10th grade. The Gymnasium is the true elite with students graduating at age eighteen and on track to entering a college. In fact, you cannot enter tertiary education with attending a Gymnasium.

The problem with this system is there isn't much flexibility. You enter the school depending on your grades at age ten, meaning if you fucked up in elementary school you're never entering a university and are fucked for life. And it enters a perpetual cycle: Parents who graduated from a Gymnasium definitely have greater resources for pushing their children to study more at an early age.

Today I came across a word I hadn't seen before in German: Gesamtschule (whole school). My teacher told me it was a school that incorporated all students, regardless of their aptitude in elementary, and that this type of school is experiencing a pushback in Germany for being "communist;" anyone can go to there and prepare for college. He said most Germans don't realize that the US has a Gesamtschule system; yeah, some high schools are definitely better than others, but all of them offer the opportunity for further education without an actual prohibition.

I know the communist label is thrown around casually, but it still startled me how something we definitely don't consider communist to the Germans is. In fact for us, education is the great equalizer; even the son of a swineherd can achieve greatness thanks to America's compulsory education. And yet when we have something like nationalized healthcare, that is communist or socialist, and for Germany healthcare is mostly government funded. It's weird how what is abhorrent to one political system is all right for another.

The patron saint of England is St. George, but if I had to pick another saint it'd be Alban. Unlike George, who's from Turkey, Alban is actually from England and he had a great following from as early as the 500s, so much that the town of his execution is named after him. However the facts behind his story are very vague at best: We know he was executed for his faith during the Roman persecutions, so probably at some point in the 200s.

I knew the main points about his life, but now I'm translating the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which is basically a very famous chronicle of England from the beginning of written history until Bede's time in the 600-700s. He writes extensively about this incident, and... wow. It's kinda crazy how people actually believed this shit. You ever heard of the word "hagiography?" As a technical term it just means a biography of a saint. As a secondary meaning, it's a biography of idealization to the point of fantastic.

Bede states Alban took in a fleeing Christian clergyman, who eventually converted him from paganism. When the authorities finally located him, Alban offered himself up instead. The judge offered Alban to renounce his new faith, but he refused even after being tortured. Angry, the judge then condemned him to death. On the way there the people came out to see him to the point that only the judge was left in town, and saddened that their multitudes physically prevented him from crossing the bridge to the execution spot, he prayed and the riverbed dried up to allow him passage. The executioner was so moved by this he refused to complete his task and asked to be killed alongside of or instead of Alban. When Alban finally came to the hill of his death, he prayed for water and a spring bubbled from his feet to prove that the water in the river had also disappeared at his command. Another executioner came to take the first's place and killed both of them, but then his eyes fell out. The judge then was amazed by all these miracles and ceased persecutions of Christians.

There are so many questions in this story. If everyone appeared to show their support of Alban, why the hell weren't there riots in his defense? Hell, if everyone liked Christianity so much, why was he the only one executed? Why did the second executioner step up the task after it was apparent this wasn't your regular dude? Why was the executioner punished for killing Alban but not the man who ordered it? I particularly liked the clergyman who was hiding out in Alban's house and did not do anything to help him whatsoever. And speaking of him, the soldiers knew the dude was in there. Why did they just take Alban? Why not Alban and the clergyman? He's still running around, converting people.

Before literacy rates were reasonable, saints were often depicted with a symbol or event for the peasant folk to be able to identify them in sainted glass or whatever. For Alban, he's usually depicted as decapitated with an eyeless executioner. I know a couple of others, like Peter usually has keys, George is usually in armor with a lance and dragon, Ambrose is associated with bees... but to be honest I'm not very good at it. I had a classmate who could identify a saint in an instant just by looking at the symbols, but I don't read hagiographies that often because I inevitably start laughing. I know in the early church miracles were important: Jesus himself converted the masses through miracles, and later Roman Christians claimed they converted pagans with the same M.O. There are countless stories of a missionary approaching a king and to prove the Christian God is better than the pagan gods, they perform a miracle while the enfeebled pagan priests can do nothing.

It's just for me martyr stories are particularly spurious because they make the saint seem so awesome and yet there is considerable proof no one from the town gave a shit and the person died in obscurity until a century or two later when Christianity became the dominant religion the oral traditions came into the light. There is no evidence that St. Albans suddenly became Christian after one dude started springing up water all over the place. I'm fairly certain the Roman records would mention this. And if not him, the other dozens of martyrdom stories that are floating around with equally implausible assertions. But I always wonder how these stories came to be believed; surely there was someone running around who can verify that none of this happened.

Those who populate your town in Animal Crossing: New Leaf are just assholes. For example, let's say you invite someone to your house. At the moment I don't have much furniture, so they immediately comment how bare everything is. But then they say, "Where do you spend all your money? Oh, I know, you must be buying presents for everyone. That's so nice. But make sure not to give anything to so-and-so, okay?" What the fuck was that? I didn't know you were so petty as to tell other people not to give gifts to someone you don't like. Wow.

You're also the mayor the in this game, and whenever I ask for suggestions they always say it's underdeveloped. So I announce new projects, like a bridge or a cafe, but apparently there's no taxation here so everything is by donation. I ask how much as has been collected, and they say the townspeople have given 1000. Okay, how much is the project? 198,000. Yeah, that difference is all on you. Fucking complainers can't even contribute to the thing they asked for.

I was reading recently about injuries in sports: football players receiving brain damage, ligament problems for baseball players, or even sumo wrestlers dying from cardiac arrest. The articles, which I unfortunately cannot find now, were questioning whether we demand too much from our players. I think we do in some aspects, but definitely not in this case. Are they under intense pressure? Sure. But they're well compensated with their salaries. Do I expect them to live an exemplary lifestyle because they're "role models?" No, not at all. I just expect them to score points and win a game. That's their job. If they want to sleep around, fine. As long as it's not illegal, I'm okay with that.

But simultaneously they should realize there are hazards on the job. It's like asking when a soldier dies in war or when a firefighter is burned or when a policeman is shot whether we're demanding too much of them. No, it's a dangerous occupation and there's a good chance of injury. I'm not saying we shouldn't send the soldier without proper armor or the firefighter without oxygen masks or the policeman without a bulletproof vest, and we should take steps to prevent injuries in a game, like helmets, gloves, etc. But it's impossible to create a purely sanitized environment. Stuff is gonna happen. I mean, if you get tackled for a living, what the fuck do you think would happen? The same with sumo wrestling. It's two fat dudes trying to push each other out of a ring. Unless you want to stop sumo wrestling forever, the players are going to have cholesterol problems.

This isn't like the gladiators of ancient Rome where they were captured and forced to kill each other. You voluntarily enter your career choice knowing the risks. It's like a celebrity whining about paparazzi or a garbage truck driver complaining about shit. That's part of the job.

[14:06:38] gattsu456: YO, SON.
[14:06:56] gattsu456: SO I'M WATCHING THE NEW POKEMON ORIGINS SPECIAL, WHERE THEY BASE IT MORE ON THE GAME.
[14:07:14] gattsu456: AND I CAN'T TAKE THE MAIN CHARACTER SERIOUSLY AS HIS OWN CHARACTER BECAUSE OF HIS VOICE.
[14:08:45] gattsu456: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=QJHgg0QPR14
[14:16:36] Dun 4 Hire: OH. MY. GOD.
[14:16:56] gattsu456: THEY DIDN'T EVEN TRY TO MAKE HIM SOUND DIFFERENT.
[14:17:08] Dun 4 Hire: YOU WERE SICK OF ALL THE SHIT FROM KONOHA AND DECIDED TO RAISE POKEMON INSTEAD, EH NARUTO?
[14:17:26] gattsu456: I JUST EXPECT HIM TO SHOULD OUT "KAGE BUNSHIN NO JUTSU" IN THE MIDDLE OF A BATTLE.
[14:18:35] Dun 4 Hire: "MEWTWO? FUCK THIS THING, I'LL JUST USE RASENGAN."
[14:19:13] gattsu456: "RASEN- I MEAN, CHARIZARD!"
[14:23:32] Dun 4 Hire: "MAN, THIS IS TAKING TOO LONG-TTEBAYO. LET ME JUST DO IT MYSELF."
[14:23:37] Dun 4 Hire: AND THEN HE PUSHES CHARIZARD OUT OF THE WAY.

A follow up from yesterday. Let's look at that citation again:

Plait, Phil. "Why Is Vesta Groovy?" Bad Astronomy, October 1, 2013. Accessed October 2, 2013. http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/10/01/asteroid_vesta_grooves_indicate_it_may_be_more_planet_like.html

Anyone else notice how that fucking address was so damned long? It looks so fucking unprofessional and drives me nuts whenever I add it to my footnotes. Some teachers don't mind if you just write "slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy" and leave it as is, but that's just my teacher cutting us all slack and isn't a representation of the professional community. It just fucks up the justification of my page with these huge long spaces. Fuck this shit.

In the United States there are several citation styles, but I learned Chicago, Turabian, and MLA (Modern Language Association). There are long manuals published for any type of situation: a book with two authors, a book with an editor, a book with an editor AND translator, an oral interview, a radio show, a movie clip. With the advent of the internet new standards had to be created, but all of them more or less require the same thing: name of the creator, name of the site, name of the institution affiliated with the site, date of access, and web address. So for example, this would be cited in Chicago style as:

Plait, Phil. "Why Is Vesta Groovy?" Bad Astronomy, October 1, 2013. Accessed October 2, 2013. http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/10/01/asteroid_vesta_grooves_indicate_it_may_be_more_planet_like.html

When I first learned these methods something immediately came to mind: link decay. I know why they add the access date: to say when the writer looked at the page and to show how it could've changed since then. But then again, what if the website doesn't exist at all? Scholars put a lot of emphasis on footnotes because that's what proves your point, and I feel they spend more time glancing at the bottom of the page than your actual article. People ask me where I get my books from; well, I just saw what another author cited and then borrowed it from the library to see what he was talking about.

But websites are constantly changing. The author I cited, Phil Plait, is famous in the science community not only for making astronomy accessible for laymen like myself but also for pushing inoculation, science education, and global warming, and I'm certain plenty of students have cited him at some point. About a year ago, Plait moved from Discovery Magazine to Slate. Currently Discovery is keeping his archive on their site, but who knows how long that'll last? Later on when someone reads a student's dissertation and sees a link to Plait's blog, will that article still be there?

It seems my misgivings were correct. A few days ago The New York Times released an article saying 49% of the linked citations for the Supreme Court decisions no longer exist. And the internet is relatively new. Does that mean about half a century from now we'll look at the Supreme Court and have no fucking idea why the hell they argued a certain way and only have a link to something like "/dogs-on-virgin-pussy.html?" You just sit there and wonder what the fuck was on that website that changed the course of American law?

It's not just the Supreme Court. Everything coming out of the academic world is at risk. We have things like the Internet Archive which is trying to keep a library of all the information we spew out, but no one's citing that nor can it keep up with every comment on every video that may be mentioned. This is a serious problem that the academic world needs to address as we become more reliant on the information age.

Does anyone else besides me find it ironic that I linked to shit that too may decay in a few years? That was part of the problem with my Xanga; I'd write about something and there'd be all these comments, but the link to what I was talking about didn't exist anymore.

The Republican primaries for the 2000 election in South Carolina were really, really dirty. It was John McCain and George Bush, and Bush's campaign decided to focus on the baby girl McCain had adopted nine years previously from Bangladesh. His team spread rumors that McCain had fathered a black baby and distributed pictures of McCain family photos with this little girl, Bridget, standing with her white siblings. McCain lost the South Carolinan primary, never made it to the general election, and you know the rest panned out.

McCain's biological daughter, Meghan, later wrote a book Dirty Sexy Politics detailing her life in the 2008 campaign, but she did touch on this moment in a really poignant way. Years later Bridget playfully googled herself, and inevitably every single article that popped up about her was the 2000 primaries, which her family hadn't told her about. She called up Meghan hysterical, thinking that it was her fault her father did not become president, and asked this question: "Does President Bush hate me?"

I think in the whirlwind of the news cycle we forget to be vicarious to the subject of our gossip. When I first heard about it years later, Bridget never occurred to me. It was just one more thing to hate Bush about. And I don't think anyone in the Bush camp thought about what all this would do to a poor nine-year-old girl. Nor anyone in the media who repeated the allegations day after day after day. And brought it up again in 2008 when McCain ran again.

For politicians, actors, and musicians I have no sympathy. You know it's a hazard of your job: constant media scrutiny, waiting for that one moment you make a mistake. But for an innocent bystander, they never fucking asked for this and suddenly their face is spread all over the TVs and the internet. The women whom Anthony Weiner sent his dick pics to had to quit their jobs and leave school because they were hounded by reporters hoping to get an interview or even just an opinion. Some of those women did encourage Weiner, and some of them literally were just talking to him about policy when he sent those. They weren't trying to stick their necks out. Imagine one day you try talking to a politician and the next morning you wake up to find four media vans outside your house and the TV has a reporter standing by your front steps saying, "We are outside of so-and-so's house" and you see the camera focusing into your windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of you in your bunny slippers. And anything you say will inevitably be distorted: "So-and-so slams politician." "So-and-so in angry rage." "So-and-so denounces the establishment."

I forget that sometimes when I watch it on the news. I forget how intrusive this can all be. And I viscerally feel we should be doing something to stop this, but I don't know how without impinging on freedom of the press. Even if viewers tell their news organizations to stop, I don't think they would listen because they actually do get an interview sometimes from their dogged work. And I don't want to pass laws preventing them from trying to get interviews. The media is one of the most powerful entities of our country, and there's no fucking oversight. Not that there has to be, but Jesus Christ it needs to calm the fuck down.