Well, you may have noticed that your favorite blog has been out of commission the past week or so, but we are now back in bizness. I have been on winter break from school, just hanging out in Mill Valley. My tests went alright, I ended up with a pretty decent grade in the one class I had a final in. My school is weird in that only one of my classes (biochemistry) ended at the end of the semester and the other three (anatomy, histo/physio and fundamentals of medicine) continue on into the spring. Biochemistry will be replaced with Micro/Immunology when I get back to school.

Hanukkah ends tonight, as you can see in the picture above. I think I made out with some good loot this year, mostly books and video games that I've wanted. But as we all know my birthday also lies around this time of year, well, 4 days ago, and my mom, Annie and I went in on an Xbox 360 for that, which was totally exciting. It's definitely awesome and I still am not entirely sure why I waited a year to buy it.

Other than that, not a whole lot has gone on recently. Annie is coming to Mill Valley tomorrow and we might go see Night at the Museum, which I think looks pretty funny. I'll let y'all know all about that when the time comes.

Also, next time you are in O'Hare International Airport, make sure to be aware of the dinosaur skeletons, since they've been running rampant the past couple of months. You can see in this picture the Brontosaurus walking around and totally disrupting the holiday travelers.

The only book written by a celebrity that I have read was SeinLanguage by...you guessed it, Jerry Seinfeld. And it was pretty good. I didn't ever think I would read another celebrity book until I found out about a little something that Fed-Ex is preparing to write (he can write???) should he not receive full custody of his kids and $20 million. This I would read because not only does he threaten to write (again...he can write???) about Britney's drinking and drugs habits blah blah blah, but he also plans to out her on...wait for it...her theories on TIME TRAVEL. No joke. Screw Stephen Hawking, I wanna know what Britney's got to say about it!

Red Jacket Crew in full effect.

Listening To: Nirvana - Something in the Way
All the animals I've trapped
Have all become my pets.

I hope my Structure and Function professor doesn't see this post because it's probably some kind of breech of copyright on the notes he writes, but whatever. I hope he doesn't see my blog at all because that would just be embarassing. This word was brought up in a review session tonight. It can't possibly be a real word. If it is, I think it should be 2006's word of the year.

Alright, well, that's pretty much all I have the time to say right now. I hope those of you that are in finals right now make it out alive. You'll know I'm alive if I'm still blogging on Saturday.

Listening To: The Clash - Red Angel Dragnet
Some day a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.

I will definitely be happy once these tests are over. I have a histo/physio exam on Tuesday on Gastrointestinal, Respiratory and Renal systems. Then on Friday I have an anatomy exam on pretty much everything between the diaphragm and the legs. And there is a lot in there. Much more than you'd think, actually.

Here's a little fun fact about renal physiology while I'm on the subject. The kidneys are made up of hundred of thousands, possibly millions of nephrons, the functional unit of blood filtering in urine production. Every individual nephron filters 180 liters of blood plasma every day (your entire blood supply moves through your kidneys and is filtered in minutes). Urine output is only about 1-2 liters everyday, so more than 99% of what is filtered is reabsorbed into the blood. I just thought it was slightly crazy that these microscopic structures are filtering a volume of blood that would fill one of those recycling bins we put outside our house every week EACH.

Anyway, long story short I haven't even left my apartment today. Just been studying and studying and studying...

And to make matters worse, no Heroes until January 22nd! Also, someone told me that Studio 60 was canceled. Anyone know if that's true?

Back to the studies!

Listening to: Bright Eyes - Nothing Gets Crossed Out
My head is a carousel of pictures,
The spinning never stops.

So, since the very first day of orientation at school, I haven't had a single haircut. That was on August 9th.The picture on the left is from a month after that, so it had some time to grow in. Today, as you probably know, is December 9th. Usually I go about 4 or 5 weeks without a haircut, but now we're at about 16 or so weeks. My hair has definitely never been this long, and I'm still not sure how I like it. The good thing about it is that the people here don't really know that I usually have pretty short hair, so it's not weird for anyone but me.

And yes, I have a much more powerful lightbulb in the lamp behind me than I did before.

Listening To: Beastie Boys - No Sleep Till Brooklyn
Waking up before I get to sleep
Cause I'll be rocking this party eight days a week

Well, the cat's out of the bag on this list that I've been keeping, so I figured I'd write about it here. Apparently, it only happens to me, but when I wake up in the morning, I have a really strange phrase going through my head. A lot of the time, it's an obscure song lyric. Other times, it's just some non sequitur. Whether it pertains to what I had just been dreaming about or not, I have absolutely no idea, since I tend to forget that after about five minutes of being awake.

So instead of writing down my dreams and risking making things up that didn't actually happen in them, I decided to make a list of these phrases every day. So far, it has been pretty entertaining since they are actual complete sentences, they just don't mean anything at all.

If this happens to you as well, I suggest you write them down as well because the further away you get from that day, the more and more ridiculous it sounds.

This project began on November 16 and so I've decided to share with you the highlights from November. In January I'll share some of December's highlights. You get it.

November 20, 2006 - "I'm more concerned about the cats in Millennium Lake."
November 22, 2006 - "I'll bring you a bigger one for your trial."
November 27, 2006 - "So then, what's the point of the horse?"
November 29, 2006 - "Finally I've met someone who has just as much a cat inside them as I do."
November 30, 2006 - "Is this the same Joe Carpenter you guys always talk about?"

These are all absolutely real. There's no way I could come up with these absurd phrases consciously, so I leave it up to my sub-conscious to do it.

Listening to: Weezer - The Damage In Your Heart
One more tear
Falling down your face
Doesn't mean that much
To the world

I have my Biochemistry final on Friday, so of course I've been messing around playing video games. Just kidding, I'm not really, but the temptation is there. I barely have enough time to even write this. I thought I'd just give a little review on a game that I was playing recently on a Super Nintendo emulator.


It's called Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures, and it just might be the worst game I've ever played. Granted, it's fun because you're Indiana Jones, the main character of what might be the best trilogy ever, but after the title screen, everything goes downhill. Basically it's a huge rip-off of the Super Star Wars games, which were awesome. However, rather than make three games like they did in that series, they jammed all three movies into one game. How did they fit it all into one game, you ask. Well, it involved sucking all the life and humor and everything thing that made the Indiana Jones movies what they were. Once that process was complete, they easily fit into one game with plenty of room to spare. And so I guess Lucas Arts had a lot of "suck" lying around in the back room, so they threw A LOT of it in there.

The problem with making games based on movies is that it doesn't seem like there's enough material for the developers to work with in designing levels, so they kinda make up things that weren't in the movie. For example, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indy goes down into the Well of Souls to find the Ark of the Covenant with that guy who played Gimli in LOTR, they pretty much just find it right away sitting right there. Well, in the game, you go it alone, and it takes about 10 minutes to get to the thing after jumping off walls and jumping over pits of snakes and spikes. Oh yeah, also, the Nazis are already down there. So...I dunno, maybe I missed something in the movie but I remember there just being snakes in there.

Also, who could forget the scene from Raiders when Indy is running after a cart where a guy, who can apparently take 10 or 15 bullets before dying, is throwing an endless supply of hay behind him (which can somehow kill Indy in one hit, if he isn't taken over by the scrolling screen before) and then once Indy kills him and jumps onto the cart, he for no reason throws his gun away as he's getting into a fist fight with a guy that's probably 3 times his size? Oh, nevermind. That wasn't in the movie.

I have many more gripes with this game, but not a lot of time so I'll just say one more. There seem to be rats in almost every level. All 28 of them. Except for the level where you're going down the snowy hill on the life raft because that really would be ridiculous. The thing about the rats is there's no way to kill them. You can't use your whip on them, can't jump on them, nothing. So basically when you're in a fire fight with a Nazi, you should be worrying more about a rat touching you than actually catching a bullet. Something is wrong with that.

Also, I don't remember Indy whip-fighting Belloq, the French archaeologist, after he opens the Ark whilst dodging the escaped souls. Didn't the power of God make his body just explode? Indy and his girl were tied to the pole the whole time.

Alright, back to studying.

Listening To: MC Chris - MC Chris Ownz
I am just a cartoon-making rapper
You think I'm lying
Everybody bust a move
Like it is that rave in Zion

This is the view outside of my window. I was a little disappointed when I found out my window didn't face the school, but when I found out that I had this awesome view of a bunch of trees and a small lake, I was pretty happy. These pictures show how much that view has changed in 4 months. I tried to take the same exact picture, but it's kind of hard to line it up perfectly. I think it looks pretty good, though. I remember there used to be programs that you could use to morph one picture into another, but I have no idea where to get that now. But if I did, I'd totally morph these pictures.

Listening to: Foo Fighters - Breakout
I may be crazy, a little frayed around the ends
One of these days I'll phase you out.

There's this website called boingboing.net out there that usually has some pretty interesting things on it to look at to waste your time while on the Internets. A lot of things are posted every day, so if you are lazy, you might miss some cool things. If I had been lazy, I would've missed one of our very own readers getting some Internet stardom of his own today. Almost makes me think that I've missed on other moments of his stardom.

Anyway, my older brother is at grad school at USC and a project he has been working on for a while now is called MobZombies. Basically the premise is you're a guy running around, trying to escape from a rapidly increasing crowd of zombies, out to bite you and transmit Solanum, the zombie virus that is 100% communicable and 100% fatal (Brooks, 2003). You get bombs to place down while you're running to make a bunch of zombies explode, but that's only going to help you for a few seconds because in no time, they will all be back and in larger numbers. So you try to stay alive as long as possible, which, as the seconds go by, seems more and more impossible.

But that's only like 10% of the game. You don't just play this game on any kind of computer. You play it on a hand-held computer while wearing a clip on your pants that has an accelerometer in it that tells the computer, wirelessly, your speed as you physically move around the room, trying to get away from the zombies that are approaching your character on the screen. It must be pretty hilarious watching people play this. Too bad I've never gotten to play it :(

I don't even have my own t-shirt, which apparently are available for $11 at mobzombies. com

Here's the boingboing link that has a picture of a guy playing the game: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/04/mobzombies.html


Also, one complainy little brat named David Meisner is responsible for the Garfield/Get Fuzzy joke and has requested that he get credit. Here's your credit:

OK, I guess yesterday's post was a little over the top. I wasn't trying to be offensive but I guess things can get taken the wrong way. Basically I was just trying to get the point across that I'm not going to stand for every comment posted on here being annoyingly snide. If you know me you know that I'm always up for snide comments, but it's a little disheartening when every time I see that a comment is posted it's someone trying to challenge what I say on here, whether they mean it or not. I know it's all in good fun but if that's all that's going to be said, you might as well not comment at all. I'm stressed out in finals and it's 11 degrees (feels like -5, according to weather.com) and always dark outside, so I have a pretty short temper for things that annoy me right now. Yeah, I'm a sarcastic person and I like sarcastic humor, but there's such thing as too much. It might sound unfair, but it's my blog. Not yours. If someone says something that I don't like, I'm not going to think twice when I delete it. That's that. Please be sure to watch what you write.

And by the way, I don't care what anyone thinks, I like the horror movie thing. It's a joke that doesn't have any reasonable explanation. Horror movies tend to have the most ridiculous titles that are usually more humorous than they are scary because they over-explain the plot in a particularly blunt way, i.e. Friday 13th Part 6: Jason Lives. So the joke is that my usage of them is ironic in that I use them because they don't (as most people have figured out already) really have anything to do with what I write about. So then I guess it does kind of have an explanation. In a weird way.

Alright, enough of that stuff, I've got a mother of a final to be studying for. Expect another post later today. Maybe. Maybe not.

Listening to: Kanye West - Doing Fine
Spit it to ya, say little West's a little beast
To make the Middle West blow like the Middle East

In this picture, one person is 14 years old and the other one is 21. Can you guess who's younger? Hint: It's not the shorter one! And it isn't the one wearing a Marine World shirt, either!

But wait, the taller one isn't off the hook either...hidden behind that jacket, check out the SWEET Get Fuzzy T-shirt! Awesome...probably the best all-time comic ever. If you aren't a HUGE avid fan like everyone else in the world (idiot), here's the premise.... A 20 somethings man lives alone in an apartment with his cat and his dog. The cat is incredibly greedy and obnoxious and the dog is incredibly dumb. Sound familiar? Of course it does, because everyone's a Get Fuzzy fan. Here, I'll just refresh your memory with a recent episode:

Well, okay. That wasn't very funny. Not the best Get Fuzzy strip I've read, but I'm sure there are like oh I dunno...seven?....out there that could knock that one on it's back. Oh....whoops. My bad. I tend to confuse Get Fuzzy with Garfield since it's a COMPLETE RIP-OFF. IIiiiiiii'm sorry. Here's a real clip from Get Fuzzy:

Whoaaaaaaaaa-ho-ho-hoo!!!! Man, I don't know if I'm going to finish writing this entry since I just can't stop laughing! I have to keep wiping the tears away from my eyes just to see the keyboard.

And by the way, I surely don't need to take musical advice from someone who found his life to be complete with System of a Down came out with a double album, or who thought he was cool when the got a leak of the Fort Minor CD. That's the lead singer of Linkin Park's side project. Whether that's good music or not (it isn't), your musical taste is so far away from appreciating Brand New that you shouldn't even listen to it. Maybe when you grow up.

I'm also never going to take blogging advice from that same person who writes one tremendously long blog about some lawsuit he's going file with Dell and doesn't have the respect for his readers to follow that story up until about 7 months later. No way.