Retro-active

"You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions."
-Brian Johnson, The Breakfast Club


This week I have once again embraced my love of the 80's. I don't know what brought it about. Suddenly my John Hughes DVDs started crying that I hadn't watched them in so long. My Tears 4 Fears CD opened its own case and flung itself into my player. I had to wash off the neon blue eyeshadow I had absentmindedly over-applied to my lids this morning.

Aaaaand, it just so happens that today VH1 is doing a special on the top 100 1-hit-wonders from the 80's.

Coincidence? I think not.

Intelligence

"Only the curious learn, and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient,"
-Eugene S. Wilson

What is intelligence? A measure . . . Of what?

I've spent my whole life thinking that intelligence was the end all of personal characteristics. I looked with envy upon the countenances of those great come-befores who had tasted the sweet nectar of Knowledge, and had, indeed, paved a way for others to drink.

How dearly I longed to sample more than anyone else. I relished quantity, not quality, and ended up gorging myself on trivial concepts and ideas. It mattered not that I had no love for what I learned. The learning was simply a means to an end.

Astounding, is it not, that one so intent on the acquisition of Knowledge could be so blind to the facts in front of her face?

For now I think I will just enjoy the tasting.

Johnny was a Chemist's Son . . .

Today the little-g gods of Chemistry conspired against me.

As hard as I tried, my precipitate would not turn black. Instead it stayed a raunchy yellow that looked like so much dried mustard, all the while giving off a horrible gas that smelled like egg salad. Which apparently is highly toxic . . . The gas, not egg salad, just to clear that up.

My security blankie, Jared, was not there. Neither was Robo-Rex. One confused TA stumbled around the lab and looked frightened when I shouted questions at him along the lines of, "WHY IS IT STILL YELLOW?!?! DO YOU KNOW WHY IT'S STILL YELLOW?!"

I can't say I blame him.

One good thing came out of class, though. I finally learned the pH of saliva: 8. This experiment came to life when I decided to spend the rest of our 3 hour lab period not analyzing my lunch-smelling vial of jaundiced slurry.

See? Even when I'm being unproductive, I can still learn stuff!

Inanity

"In common things that round us lie/ Some random truths he can impart, --/ The harvest of a quiet eye/ That broods and sleeps on his own heart."
-William Wordsworth

Simplicity

"That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest."
-Henry David Thoreau

Right now I am eating a piece of Dutch apple pie in a belated salute to pi day, and smelling unbelievably like campfire.

And I am utterly happy.