Yankees... who?

Not at all surprising, but satisfying nonetheless: all the New York dailies are writing about the Mets. A series loss to Boston will get you a few pages in Newsweek, but last place and half a game down from Tampa Bay will get you the good old New York shunning.

Bad start... for all but one.

Here is what might happen. The Yankees might have, what I'd like to call, a Texas Rangers type of season. Namely, Arod puts up a spectacular performance, but due to a lack of pitching and offense, the team finishes just slightly above last place (in this case, the lowly Devil Rays).

If I were a gambling sort of girl, (which I am not, by the way) I'd be much inclined to wager whatever I haven't already allocated for the annual Apple store purchase on the likelihood of Arod hitting at least 74 home runs this year. And you know, I'm never wrong about these things.

Comics

Can anyone recommend any good comics? Just to give you an idea of the genre-within-genre that I'm thinking of, I happen to like quite a bit: The Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, The Sandman, and especially, Bill Willingham's Fables; I didn't particularly care for: Blankets. Anything? Oh, also, if anyone has Fables TPB #9:Sons of Empire, can I please borrow? I'll only really need it for about one day, and lunch at Ollies (or equivalent) is on me.

Fake or real

I can't tell if this amazon review is fake or real. Either I don't exactly know what an abacus is, or I don't know what computational astrophysics is. I am inclined to bet on the former.

Topical: Hoes

Big money

Columbia University received an immense donation of $400 million from John Kluge, half of which is to be allocated to financial aid for students enrolled in Columbia College. Yesterday, I attended the meeting (rather, press conference) at which the announcement was made. This is great news for the President, as was evidenced by his genuine optimism, since it almost guarantees the success of Manhattanville, and thus, his legacy.

Yet somehow, I am finding it difficult to muster up the requisite amount of excitement about this news. Obviously, it's nice that some future students will get enough financial aide to study at the College. By all means. In fact, this is much better use of a philanthropic donation than the typical building renovation or a chair in the Literature department. But, if I had $400 million in free money, I would look to remedy other, more pressing educational issues than the financial difficulty of paying $140,000 for four years of liberal arts at an Ivy.

A side note - Mayor Bloomberg was also present at the announcement, and made a short, somewhat pointless speech. He mentioned how well his improvement plans for the NYC public schools are materializing. Unfortunately, nobody from TC was present to challenge him. Still, our differences on education reform aside, (transit strike? what transit strike?) Bloomberg is definitely my favorite politician. For one, he is an engineer (B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins), and obviously very clever. Also, he is short, in a charming sort of way. And that's pretty much all it takes.

So it goes

RIP, Kurt Vonnegut, one of the greatest and funniest American writers, and one of my personal favorites. His cleverness and humor serve as a great example to future writers, as do his ridiculous characters, absurdly realistic scenes, and brilliant incoherence. But his most important and consistently profound message is that kindness is the most essential among all of our values.

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - God damn it, you've got to be kind."

New blog (that I like)

There is a cool new baseball blog - Any Which Way the Wind Blows. It's clever and funny, and this trivia questions about current GMs has been driving me absolutely nuts. Definitely check it out.

Updates

In the form of a numbered list ...

1. To simply say that I've been busy at work would be an understatement that would make even members of the Bush administration uneasy.

2. My graph theory class is going well. I am finding the material extremely easy. I don't think that I've studied this in any great detail in undergrad, but for some reason it just makes sense to me. Really, the class is not particularly challenging. I did extremely well on the midterm, and I'm nearly sure of an A. I'm going to ask this professor for a recommendation for my file, but I am afraid that it'll go something along the lines of "She has clearly studied this material before, and I suspect that she is taking this class just to annoy the other students."

3. I have planned out an aggressive course schedule, and I have concluded that I can complete all the coursework that I need for my PhD by Fall 08. After that, I'll have to do "research," or rather, "Research." Of course, I can write my dissertation from anywhere, which adds quite a bit of flexibility in terms of planning that trip around the world, and such. The schedule is aggressive in the sense that it assumes that I will remain a free-tuition-whore, and continue working full time at my current job. It also assumes at least two summers where I take 3 classes. I also don't think that I'll be able to teach at all next year.

4. I recently had some sort of birthday, or something. I feel pretty good, in the sense that I've achieved pretty much all the academic and social milestones that my grandparents have set out for me on the day of my birth. (Is anyone out there operating under any other measure of success?) There is really very little that they can nag me about now, but they are creative people, and have a great deal of free time to come up with new material.

5. I am starting to look for a house again. Again. AGAIN! I am looking in Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst, primarily. It is a dreadfully disturbing thought that so much of my house-acquisition planning and thought is influenced by Intern Zach.

6. I think that in the fall, there is going to be a great big parade in New York. And Derek Jeter is going to be watching it on TV. And you know, I am always right about these things.

7. I'm going to make a best effort to blog more frequently.