Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Two Important Realizations

My last blog entry was called "few and far between", which was meant to describe the number of good writers at Princeton, but could just as easily deal with the state of my blog entries. Recently I haven't had too much to write about, but today I had two major revelations worth documenting.

The first is that I discovered today that the entire point of my life is to gain better and better technology. It struck me when I was browsing through CNET and found a very excellent feature called "show us yours" where various readers send in pictures of their amazing living rooms, home theaters, etc... If you're name is Chris Knight or Justin Khalifa and this sounds interesting to you, the link is right here. The second I saw real life examples of the gorgeous plasma screen TV's and surround systems I had gawked at in Best Buy for so many years, all I could think was:

"I need that. I will get that by working hard at a job, and then I will buy it with money."

I realized that the only reason I'm going to school is to find a good job, and the only reason I want a job is so that I can afford to buy good technology. This may seem sad, but I'm just glad to have purpose.

I have big dreams too. Even if my house is only two rooms, one of those rooms is going to be a home theater. My entire life my parents refused to get a TV larger than 24 inches, and my desire for big flat screens is overwhelming at this point. You might call this behavior shallow, literally, because the TVs I'm planning to buy will be no thicker than 3 inches.

The blog will now take a quick turn to the Clemmonsian as I point out another article that I found on CNET about a new Christian mp3 player. Turns out the only thing "Christian" about it is the fact that it comes preloaded with an audio bible. It also is one of the bulkiest mp3 players I've ever seen, and holds only 4 gigs of music, so we'll see how many Christians fall for this marketing gimmick.

Onto my second revelation of the day, which is, simply, that Chinese is such a godawful language. I was already upset that our teacher has given us no less than 8 substantial assignments due this week. Yes, that's right 8 assignments, including roughly 100 new vocab words, an online oral presentation, 1 test, 2 quizzes, and a United Nations simulation on Friday that I am dreading with every bone in my body.

But this isn't what set me off. That came when I searched an online dictionary for a word I needed to use in one my many papers. The word is "he" which, I found out, in Chinese has 40 different meanings! 40 meanings for a single little word like "he". I know what you're thinking, well at least there are the four tones so that we can tell the different words apart. No! The second tone version of "he" still has 26 completely different meanings, including cereal, nuclear bomb, mandible, and to respond by singing. You must be kidding me. You guys actually thought this would be a good way to communicate?

I've decided to start my own language. It only has one sound. Let's say the sound is "dee". "Dee" means everything, and everything is "dee". The way that you understand what some is saying? That's simple...context.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Few and Far Between

Princeton has surprisingly few great writers, but they're out there. In my opinion the two best are Kendall Turner and Powell Fraser. Powell writes an always outstanding column for the Daily Prince that used to be published on the same day as mine. Fortunately, he moved to Monday, so that I no longer seem like a hack in comparison. He has the most distinctive voice of any Prince columnists: every column is about alcohol and how the administration is ruining the campus by not letting him drink alcohol and by lowering his grades. It's a tactic that could backfire terribly, but Powell makes it work by filling his articles with hilarious pop culture and inside jokes. Hmm, I've made him sound like a bad episode of Family Guy. Let the writing speak for itself:

Operation Enduring Employment

Kendall might be an even better writer than Powell. She writes good poetry, which is something almost no college students can do. She also wrote the best article in the already excellent "Foss" issue of the Nassau Weekly. Every year the Nass picks one student in the Princeton student body and they dedicate 20-odd pages to telling the story of his life. This concept transforms a normally so-so publication into compelling reading. For her article, Kendall went on a date with Foss and wrote about it with style and grace. Here it is:

Dating Ryan Foss


Another writer who aspires to the greatness of these two is Tom Knight. Though I wouldn't dare link my story in the presence of such greatness, but it does come out in the Prince tomorrow. Check it out if you want.

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