I haven’t posted in a week because I’ve been studying for the two huge tests I had yesterday. Calc II at 8:30 and Physics at 1:30. It was not cool. The good news is I got my Calc test back and I got a B! That’s all I want is a B and I got it.

It’s pretty much the first good thing that’s come from this class in the month I’ve been here. In any case, I hope physics goes as well.

My toys came in the mail this past week. I ordered two Evangelion figures that have an insane amount of articulation, and the come with a lot of neat weapons and stuff too. I ordered a third one to reward myself for busting my ass this week and doing as well as I could on my tests. I don’t know if that’s a good thing to do or not, but I don’t care. I have a ton of homework to get done over the weekend too, but I’m content to ignore it in light of the week I just had.

I also don’t care that I’m 18 years old and still literally play with the action figures. I also miss my legos a LOT. College sucks in plenty of ways, but most noteable is its lack of toys.

Another thing that annoys me is that FOX doesn’t come in very well on the school’s cable. Every tuesday we tune in to watch House (and by ‘we tune in’ I mean ‘Ian tapes it for me becuase I’ve got some stupid thing to go to’) and it looks all fuzzy and unclear most of the time. Which is sad, because that show’s filmed really well.

Speaking of TV, I also missed the McCaskill/Talent debate. Did anyone see/hear what happened? That reminds me of a great story my mom told me about something that happened right by my house (71st and Ward Parkway):

My 6th grade teacher had a big ol’ Jim Talent sign in front of her house up really early, I assume because she had it from the last time he ran. Anyway, someone sole the middle two panels so you could just see these two blue stripes; all the words were gone.

So they got another one. And someone stole the entire thing. Next the put up a sign that said ‘Hey Claire, We Want Our Signs Back’. I figured that it would just stay up there and be awkward for the rest the of campaign. But no. Someone broke that sign in half, and another person STOLE HALF OF IT!

I love my neighborhood.

Today in my Political Science class our professor was putting up this ‘political spectrum’ thing on the board.
It looked sort of like this:

|–radicals–||–liberals–||–moderates–||–conservatives–||–reactionaries–||–radicals–|
|———Progressive Change————|—-Status Quo—-|——Regressive Change———|

Granted it was on a chalkboard and in my professor’s entertainingly sloppy cursive, but whatever. That was it. So we’re talking about the political implications and how people use the lables for different things and so on and so forth. Suddenly this girl raises her hand. I should preface this by saying that she has (to my ear) a very strong nordic accent. Based on oppinions offered in the past, I conjectured that she was an exchange student, or something in that vein. I was right.

She starts trying to apply economics to this scale, and she wanted to stick socialism on the left and capitalism on the right. Breuning (prof.) tells her that in actuality, capitalism, free market economy, is a component of classical liberalism. She used the adjective classical.

As in Capitalism is to Liberalism what Zepplin is to Classic Rock. It’s THAT connected.

But she keeps on pushing it, saying things like, “In my mind I associate capitalism with a much more regressive direction of change,” except in a Sweedish accent. And all of a sudden I felt a horrible little pang in my gut. Something burried so deep under piles of embaressment and frustration that I’d honestly forgot that it was still down there.

It was patriotism,
I shit you not.

It’s all fine and good when I complain about capitalism and how it screws the poor and rewards the rich, but when this girl was really adament that capitalism was a bad idea it made me really mad. The U.S. basically wrote the book (figuratively) on how to do the whole free market thing. That’s why we have so much money floating around; we got a jump on capitalism. And it just drives me nuts that someone from a mixed economy (prevalent elements of socialism and capitalism) in Scandanavia (one of the THE richest places per capita on the planet) would have the gall to knock capitalsim.

I can sure as hell gaurentee you that the Swedes didn’t get all that money by simply taxing the crap out of their citizenry and providing awesome government services (which they do) alone. They’re on the capitalism bandwagon as much as the next european country.

Sorry. That was way uncharacteristic of me.
I don’t know why that irked me so much; and to be honest I was far more interested in the fact that I responded with annoyance than in the actual annoyance itself.

Unrelated story: At Truman, or at least Centennial Hall, we have supernatural plumbing. I like to take a shower with pretty hot water. You know, the tempreture where it’s not quite painful, but just about? So I was doing that, and I heard a toilet flush above me. Instinctively I braced myself for the onset of luke-warmness. Instead my skin just about burned off.

Someone flushed a toilet and the water got hotter.

I’ve not the slightest clue why.

I was just poking around on Wikipedia, and I found one of the most interesting images. It’s a map of the United States divided politically, where the color of the state represents the ratio of democratic to republican representatives in the 109th Congress.

[View the Full Image]

Noteable states of interest include:

Arkansas, West Virginia, North Dakota, & South Dakota: Surprisingly democratic, when viewed against their presidential track record.

Minnesota and Mississippi: Right in the middle, though you’d expect them to both be at opposite ends.

Delaware: What the crap. You’re supposed to be blue. It’s your job as a member of the ‘New England Club’, which New Hampshire has just been kicked out of.

Anyway, I thought it was sort of interesting. If not colorful.

We were walking to dinner and someone was playing the ‘Casino Night Zone’ theme from Sonic 2 on the piano. No joke. This is funny, seeing as how Ian and I beat Sonic 2 last week. The damn song’s still stuck in my head.

There was an SPS (Society of Physics Students) meeting tonight. I really like physics, and every time I hear about the research opportunities I get really, really excited. But then I try and do the homework and I get sort of depressed and annoyed. Kinematics really doesn’t interest me; I don’t care. I do, but I don’t. It’s weird. I think I’m less settled into the whole college thing than I thought I was.

The new season of House also started, which has me totally excited. It’s the only show I turn on the TV to watch regularly, so it’s kind a big deal. And by big deal I mean huge deal because I’m a little bit obsessed.

I also just set my voicemail, so give me call (660) 785-4920.
Hank and I both went to the trouble of making entertaining messages.