casey-thoughts
who knew you still cared, who knew you still looked?
and you're one of the sixty seven from the u.k.?
know sir alan rickman or his kin?
don't go away! don't delay! send me an email right straight-away!
p.s. seriously, there's no casey-cam passwords here. no matter what google tells you. and since i'm doing my thesis project on google's semantic understanding of mit's courseware, that kinda saddens me.
Casey’s 14 Points for the Perfect Man
today, i was going over something with somebody about something and i recalled my 14 points! i remember making it in the 10th grade. i was really fond of lists around that time. :) of course, being a much more grown-up girl now, i probably have a bunch of amendments to the original 14 points. but, for now, i will leave the points intact in their original form.
- 1. Romantic (love notes, roses, sweet nothings, etc…)
- 2. Sweet (nice little gentlemanly gestures)
- 3. Money (please don’t be poor, offer to pay for SOMETHING at some point!)
- 4. Lots of free time (either have or make time for me)
- 5. Cute (this point can be discussed/negotiated)
- 6. Intelligent (no specific knowledge necessary, just general intelligence, all other puts applicant in the +)
- 7. Patience (able to deal w/ mood swings, whims, tantrums, etc…)
- 8. Personality (having one is essential, a good one puts applicant in the +, I will include sense of humor in this category)
-
- 9. Girls (see subcategories)
- a. desire to give up contact with all girls after meeting me (except for mother, sisters, aunts, etc…)
- b. absolutely no contact with possible love interests/ those interested in you
- c. cheating is not tolerated AT ALL!
- 10. Knowledge of computers (example: distinguishing the ON button from others, all other puts applicant in +)
- 11. Chess (ANY knowledge of the game puts applicant in the top percentile!- but is optional)
- 12. Affability towards animals (combined with this point is knowing what the word affable means)
- 13. Perfection in all ways not previously states (no pressure…)
- 14. Ability to pass a simple casey designed test… (as follows)
a. What is the name of our country (for intranational applicants only) and who is the president?
1. Britain; Churchill
2. Russia; Putin
3. United States of America; Clinton
4. Canada; Clinton
b. What is the best definition for the word eclectic?
1. diverse
2. smart
3. good
4. bad
c. How many questions would one need to answer correctly on this 3 question quiz (INCLUDING THIS ONE!!) in order to pass?
1. 1 question
2. 2 questions
3. 3 questions
4. 4 questions
NOTE: All those who feel they have passed the written portion of this exam may submit answers along with name, address, and list of all other pertinent physical attributes , to me, and may proceed with the oral portion of the exam.
n questions
(where n is greater than, less than, or equal to 20)
- 1. do you make a ketchup-pile next to your french fries or do you smear it haphazardly over them?
- 2. when you see the word delta, do you think of (stop and think BEFORE reading on :p) a.)the mouth of a river b.) delta burke, the actress, or c.) the airline?
- 3. do you wonder what professional lip-readers major in in college?
- 4. do you sit in bed thinking that falling asleep is a learned skill that you must have forgotten?
- 5. have you ever made your own pants?
- 6. do you check behind the shower curtain to make sure a scary-serial-ax-murderer isn't there?
- 7. have you seen the sunlight in the last two weeks?
- 8. does someone with your name have a "non-nude webcam" where they show themselves in their underwear?
- 9. do you speak to less than 10% of the names on your buddy list?
- 10. do you draw pictures with your pizza-grease?
- 11. do you wish you had 4 clones that would sit around all day completing the creative projects that you think up (but don't have the drive to complete yourself)?
- 12. would you want to be a member of mensa if your social anxiety disorder didn't prevent you from going to a strange place to take the test?
- 13. do you prefer blue pens?
- 14. have you ever wondered what you would look like wrapped up entirely in clear plastic wrap?
- 15. do you like the taste of the color pink but not the smell?
santa baaaaby, just one little thing!
after an unfortunate hiatus (due to a month of hell-ish studying), the casey-blog is back! yay! i was actually going to wait until finals were over, but i had an idea for a blog entry tonight. then i realized it was december! and i made a promise to myself way back in august to put up my casey-wants list at the beginning of december.
some background: the casey-wants file had been in existence on my desktop since my last birthday (feb, 2003). most of the things on the list are static, both because casey doesn't often change what she wants and because people just dont seem to get her what she wants :)
the casey-wants list, the christmas flavor, ascending order, for santa, daddys, relatives, friends, and other random casey-loving-gift-buying-people
- 1. black beach chair - 1. it is never too early to start planning ahead 2. they are remarkably uncommon, and i figure people work harder on christmas gifts than presents for other holidays, so it is best to ask for the hard gifts around this time!
- 2. coconut perfume - i need to preface this item with "casey absolutely never wears perfume." i'm one of those people who holds her nose as she walks by yankee candle store. i run through the makeup/perfume section of department stores (did you ever notice how you can't avoid those? all paths lead you there. plus, department stores are set up as mazes anyways, preventing you from getting the hell out of them and into the mall, your actual destination). and yet, i love the smell of coconuts! i would buy sunscreen (which most often smells of coconut) just to sit and smell it. i HAVE bought coconut lotions and body creams from the body shop just so i could sit and smell them (couldn't actually USE them, pffff, read a back entry for my feelings on lotion.). so, i would like to have the smell with none of the other negatives. i think this means coconut perfume, so i can take it with me wherever i go. but since i've never encountered coconut perfume, i'm not quite sure how it will be in reality. another hard to find item!
- 3.power saver - very nondescript, in my opinion. could mean like a powerful screen saver, or a powerful lifesaver... but some computer catalog said this is what they are called. it is very much like a surge protector, but if the power goes out, they provide power for varying lengths of time (mostly depending on how much you pay). now, i know what you are saying, "couldn't you just buy this for yourself, casey?" and, that is true. i could. but the point is that everett only loses power about once a year for more than 5 minutes. when this happens, it is usually like 20 minutes, though it has been up to 40. it is only on those occassions do i yell and scream and jump up and down wanting/needing this. therefore, i dont remember how necessary it is when i randomly go into best buy, making is prime, grade A, gift material! (if you are going to, i would PREFER the one that goes for 100 minutes... :) )
- 4. alabaster- i'm not really a jewelry kind of gal. in fact, i hate jewelry. but, i think this might fall under that heading. i want a piece of alabaster (i LOVE alabaster). i want to be able to rub it all day long. therefore, it should be able to attach to my body somehow, which might qualify it as jewelry.
- 5. ice shoes - i do believe these might have to be built specifically for me, according to my specifications. or, you could probably just get them from the i'm-about-to-climb-everest store. i would like them to fit securely around any shoes i have on at the time. they should have 1 inch, razor-sharp, metal spikes on the bottom, able to penetrate any pesky ice. i think this would be my most important gift, as the ice-season is approaching, so keep this in mind! before, one of my friends pointed out that these are just cleats. but, this is untrue.... hmph.
- 6. 1,000 black polo socks - i never seem to have enough of these. this usually stems from the fact that i lose them underneath the piles of clothes in my room and my mother tends not to do the laundry, ever. and since people are usually in an especially generous mood around christmas, i think this is a good amnt to ask for.
- 7. trip to disney world - isn't this an obligatory addition to anyone's wish list?
- 8. pinball machine - i've always loved pinball machines... i'll even clear a special place in my room for it, if you decide to buy it for me.
- 9. the octopussy bed from octopussy- pink satin sheets are not optional (even though i mght prefer black). this is the ultimate in beds. i'm also unsure if this will cost more than a bmw...
- 10. black bmw - chauffeur not optional. though ev has recently told me that yuppies are officially switching to mercedes, this will forever be my dream car.
- 11. 10 million lego pieces. assorted colors and sizes. available in bulk at the lego store in the burlington mall for your casey-buying-pleasure. will be used to make an entire room out of lego stufffff. perhaps complete with a pancake-making-lego-robot :)
"they have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf"
(calf, little black dog, all the same...)
and on the day of the sabbath as the light from the moon shone no longer... sigh, i can only feign religious fervor for so long! it all began on the night of the eclipse. mommy and i were sitting on her bed watching it. it was quite uneventful, but i felt it was my human-duty to sit there and watch it (maybe i was also trying to get away from debugging my 004 lab, who knows.). we had been calling the boyfriend in for over 30 minutes, to get him to watch too. it was quite unsuccessful up until that point. but, he finally gave in. he sat for a grand total of 5 minutes. then got up to leave.
mommy and i rushed to tell him that he had to stay and watch! he asked, "why?" i was without answer! so, i pondered for a few minutes. and came up with, "because, it is bigger than us, and we, as tiny insignificant human beings should sit back and appreciate that which is larger than ourselves." his reply? "and if i was a wolf in the woods? then what? do they appreciate what is larger than them? no, they just wonder 'why the hell did it get so dark out here'."
just then i looked over to see mozart sitting on the bed with all of us twirling in circles trying to get at his tail from a better angle. he has a slight tail-biting-problem... mozart seemed less than interested in watching the eclipse. strange thoughts started to enter the casey-mind! they reached full peak as the boyfriend held mozart up to the window and said "see boy, its an eclipse, isn't that interesting? no? i dont think so either. all of us animals can go back upstairs now!"
by this point i had some up with a couple different reasons why mozart was not interested in the eclipse.
- 1. mozart is a dumb animal, incapable of appreciating that which is bigger than himself.
- 2. mozart was blind and could not see the eclipse.
- 3. mozart was God.
option 2 was pretty much discounted because of all the times he has demonstrated he is able to see. but, choice 3 was looking better every moment!
if God were sitting on earth during an eclipse, would "he" be interested in it? surely not. as i have stated, the reason to watch it is because it is bigger than oneself. that reasoning does not apply to God. therefore, God would have nothing better to do that to sit around biting his tail during such an event.
oh wait! there's more! as i have abstained from everything religious since confirmation out of spite (my version of God is a big computer science nerd, he doesn't care
when you work, as long as it gets done, even if you procrastinate... HE would not be happy that the catholic church is requiring its followers to attend services at set hours -DAYLIGHT hours- every week! hmm, maybe my god is gerry sussman? heh, who am i kidding, i'm simply a heathen-non-believer...) i'm a bit rusty. but i think i recall jesus being a masochist? (please see definition 3 from dictionary.com!) he just sorta constantly found himself in those situations. and, i think i recall him being given the chance to get out of it? maybe the musical is slightly different than the bible-version, but doesn't pilate give jesus the option of saying he made the whole thing up, and then he would get to live??
a moderately-wise man once said that it is our job as humans to experience all we can during our lifetimes. so, when jesus took the form of a man, why NOT experience pain? it is something to do before you resume the whole divine-being-thing...
this all leads us back to mozart being God. mozart likes to bite his tail. mozart is a masochist. God was a masochist. therefore mozart is God!!!
i started to get slightly paranoid. i thought of all the times mozart had peed on the floor and i had yelled at him. had i yelled at God? did i piss him off? was i going to hell? surely God could pee whereever he wanted and shouldn't have to get yelled at by a puny (oh yes, i am ohh-soo-puny :) -15!!!) human?!?!
on the other hand, if mozart wasn't God (though we have seen that clearly there is a good case to the contrary) then i was going to hell anyway for believing in false idols.
but, isn't society in general leaning in that direction? i had read
this article earlier that day on yahoo (probably why it was swirling around the casey-brain to begin with) about egypt banning
bruce almighty because it depicted a human having traits only God could have. also, there's this new show on tv,
joan of arcadia that depicts God visiting amber tamblyn every week and taking the body of a different human either time (i wonder if it is similar to invasion of the body snatchers??). maybe these people have inside info! maybe God is walking around among us. and, if so, what better body to chose than that of mozart! open and shut case :)
a special thanks to lawrie c. gibson for providing useful insight into passages of the bible that were necessary to bring this entry to the blog-public. (hehe, your full name is included just so i can see if i ever get search hits from people looking for you!!)
the west side story of the casey-brain
sunday morning was such an interesting one. i was supposed to wake up to go install daddy's pc-cillin at 9:30 a.m.. of course, we all know that wasn't really going to happen. but, i still had high hopes that i would be able to get up. and i did, every 2 hours starting at 8:30 a.m.. those conditions are prime for casey dreams... and here we go!
dream #1
mostly, all i remember from this one is being a casey-ghost. i walked through some walls, i haunted some people. not much fun stuff. and i distinctly recall that it sucked to be dead...
dream #2
this one was slightly more interesting. i remember running through city streets with my comrades. we were running from a gang of knife-wielding latinos. being stupid, we ran down a dark alley. luckily, there happened to be an abandoned bus there, which we decided would provide safety. i was the last one on the bus and was in charge of securely locking the door behind us, so the gang of knife-wielding latinos couldn't get to us. unfortunately, i was seconds too late and they boarded the bus... they were a pretty tough-ass gang too, rather than just killing us, they decided to play fun little gang-games. it is all a little hazey, but i remember the game as being: one of their side cuts himself on the arm/hand with a quite large knife, one member of our side does the same, whoever made the larger cut on himself gets to make a slice on the other person. unfortunately, since i was elected the leader of my side, i was forced to take part in the skin-slicing. the game also seemed quite rigged. the guy obviously got to watch me make the first slice on himself and then only had to make it slightly bigger on himself, then he was left with a free chance to cause me all kinds of pain. but, i suppose i shouldn't have expected a gang of knife-wielding latinos to be fair. though the slices seemed to be as deep as papercuts, i remember being distinctly afraid of bleeding to death, which caused me to wake up before we were too far into the game. upon hearing about the dream? ev responds with, "speaking of gangs of knife-wielding latinos, do you want to come see mtg's production of west side story with us this year?" hehe
dream #3
i was now thoroughly freaked out from the knife-slicing, so ... this dream features casey-rambo! :) and though i am sure i was casey-rambo, i do not see how i could have been. not quite the right setting for rambo, i think, though i have never seen the movies. we were in a city with very tall buildings. who the hell knows where she came from, but just like in the movies, i was somehow stuck with a small child to protect. she was being all cry-y... for some reason i told her to "just get behind me, and dont worry." i dont see how this was very sound advice. was i hoping to protect her from any stray bullets (oh, yes, there were bullets being fired, we'll get to that...)? the only way i would be able to do this is if the bullet hit me instead. again, is this sound advice? what if i was killed by a stray bullet, would the kiddie be any better off? she obviously wouldn't be able to defend herself and would be captured by the enemy. and the bullet probably would have been a better fate than that. ahhh, silly casey-rambo! anyways, it was very much like i was in one of those arcade games. the kind where the bad guys pop out from behind every car / window of every tall building. for some reason they were wearing cop uniforms. so, either, i was on the bad side or (more likely) i was thinking of the bad guy from the terminator. hmm, maybe it was casey-terminator and NOT casey-rambo! interesting revelation... at first i didnt even have a gun, which is completely stupid. i was basically running around ducking out of the way of bullets. but, since my dream was based on some kind of movie, i suppose this isn't quite so far-fetched. finally, we made it into a house. there, i met up with other members of the resistance who were fighting against the rebel army. i got a few large weapons from them and brought on a whole bunch of i'm-going-to-shoot-you-up. at one point i think i had killed so many bad guys (and stole the weapons off their dead bodies) that i was unable to even carry them all. so we all decided to regroup and i handed out some of the weapons i had gathered to other members of my side. it was time to go fight again and i tried to open the rifle cases that i just had taken off the bodies of the dead bad guys. rifle case after rifle case just exposed what looked / felt like circuitry on a jelly-pad (if you have ever pulled apart the insides of a palm pilot you might have a better idea of what i'm talking about, i think). for some reason i had the impression that this, itself, was a weapon (rather than thinking the enemies had just carried useless things in their rifle cases to throw off the enemies if their weapons fell into enemy hands) that i simply did not know how to use. unfortunately, every single weapon i had left was one of those. so, once again, i was left without anything i could use to defend myself. i was sorta pissed i had given all the good weapons away and think i woke up in protest.
dream #4
i hesitate to include this one, but it is kinda funny, so why not... hehe. for some reason phil g was having dinner over my house, which was weird in itself. but, my mother also happened to be hitting on him and hinting that she wanted to marry him. also quite weird. for some reason, i was fine with this idea, although i was slightly embarassed about my mother being so forward. i thought it would be neat to have a daddy that would teach me how to design web applications. (i must have been quite out of it) then came the russian spies who were intent on stealing all of us so we could help them hack into some kind of high security level united states federal agency computers. weirdly enough, phil saved us all. which, again, is weird, since i'm usually the savior in my dreams... and when i "woke up" a couple years later, mommy was pregnant with twins. somehow i knew she hadn't married phil even though she had tried to, so i was confused. turns out he decided to come back for a visit after the russian incident and just happened to father the twins. uh huh.
birds of a feather: tityos and me
it is nearly wintertime! which means there will be snow and christmas and christmas lights and 21st birthdays! unfortunately, there will also be cold weather and ice and other stupid holidays (not to mention finals) coming up too. being my domestic-ified little self, i didn't let this get me down. i decided to approach wintertime the way martha would, by knitting a scarf! :) hehe.
it all started in the gap one day... i had been wandering around the mall, eager to buy clothes. because the diet was going so wonderfully, i decided to treat myself with some skinny-clothes. once in the gap, i found the most amaaaaazing pair of skinny pants. they were black and tight and were the cutest kind pinstripe. they were also $58. i can be quite cheap when it comes to clothing. i look at it as wasting money that could be used either to buy desserts (even on the diet i still have this mindset) or for gadgets (like a nice new palm pilot). i had also seen a nice long black knit scarf. it was $30. i decided that was also too expensive for a scarf, even though i loved it. so, it came down to buying the expensive pants or the expensive scarf or neither. i decided i could knit my own scarf, put that back, and wrestled over the pants decision for another 10 minutes (walking back and forth, in and out of the line during that time, i eventually bought them though, they are just soooo cute ;) ).
of course, the idea to knit my own scarf also vacated my brain the moment i left the store. luckily, a few days later it was cold outside. i arrived home, the idea once again fresh in my mind and decided to get started immediately (need to get started right away when i get inspiration because i lose interest quickly). i was dismayed for a couple minutes as i realized i didnt have any yarn available. and then perked up again just as quickly when i realized that i am casey, casey never finishes any project she starts, and casey had started a bunch of knitting projects this summer. so i ran up to my attic and got down some yarn.
it happened to be the same yarn that i was planning on making into blanket for my cousin for her wedding 2 summers ago. i bought 14 balls of soft, blanket-colored-yarn. i knitted about 1/9 of the blanket, used about 2 balls of yarn, and arrived at the wedding with a mommy and a card full of cash in tow. but, i decided i would make due and began knitting. it was cold outside and i thought it would be nice to have an instant scarf both before i had to go outside again and before my mind decided there was something more interesting to accomplish.
unfortunately by row 10 i had slipped a stitch. :( i ran frantically to mommy for help. instead of fixing it, she pulled the whole thing of the knitting needle and told me to start over! i decided it wasn't so bad since i had accidentally made it as wide as a large shirt... and i went up to my bedroom to get started on scarf number two.
i worked the entire night on #2. i was actually starting to look like a scarf. i would hold it up to my neck in the mirror and imagine what it would look like when i finally finished. i went to sleep that night dreaming happy little homemaker dreams of my thousands of little kids sitting by the hearth as i knit each of them little mittens...
the next morning i had to go to the mall for something. i think we were bored and decided to go see a movie. so we ended up at the liberty tree mall. there was a huge line at the theatre, so he decided to go to best buy instead. i, on the other hand, could not walk past a.c. moore without going inside! unfortunately, i had to walk right past the yarn aisles. that, my friends, was the beginning of a long hour... i went back and forth among those aisles feeling all the different kinds of yarns. sigh, sometimes i'm sooo indecisive! i almost picked a nice almost blackish one out. it was soft and nice. it had little white looking thin whisps too, so it wouldn't completely blend in with my black jacket! i loved it very much. then i help it up to my jacket and found it shed more than mozart... ehhh. i settled on a fluffy gray. brought 3 balls to the cashier and was on my way.
when i got home the sad task of tearing apart my half-made scarf was upon me. :( around this time i started to feel like tityos. since this is an educational blog, i will explain for those of you who forget your mythology!
in greek mythology, tityos was cast into tartarus where every day a large bird (most often cited as a vulture) would eat away at his liver. and every day it would grow back again so the bird could once again devour it...
sigh, greek gods handed out such awesome punishments, they should run the u.s. legal system... but, i'm sure you can see the parallels between tityos fate and my own. he is destined to have his liver grow back each day, over to be once again eaten out by a vulture. and, i am destined to continuously start a scarf and never finish it! which is probably for the best, since the scarf i started for ev last christmas still isn't done ;) hehe.
speaking of people whose bodies cover 9 acres of land, guess what! mine doesn't! yay. diet is progressing nicely. and, on a side note, does anyone like yellow or green anything? i don't mean like yellow or green squash. i mean candy. when i was a child, i always knew when dentists or houses at halloween or such were being cheap. they would give green or yellow or orange lollipops. i am reminded of this because on halloween, rather than giving into temptation, i ate my zero-carb gummy bears (the contain only sugar alcohol, no actual sugar, and taste/smell pretty alcoholic actuallllllly ;) hehe). after a bit, all the pink gummy bears, which i like to pretend are strawberry, because i have serious issues with eating anything cherry-flavored were gone. i also have serious issues against anything orange-flavored, besides oranges, but managed to gulp a few of those down. and the bag is now left sitting on my office desk, right next to my computer, staring up at me. highly tempting, except, theres only green and yellow left. i suppose that means they should taste like lemon and lime. i dont know if i've even eaten a green or yellow candy, but the thought has always grossed me out, so i'm not about to start now. i think it is sorta like how i refuse to watch
a beautiful mind , without knowing anything about it, just because i know i'll hate it...sometimes my mind makes strange connections between things! :)
a chocolate bust of fidel castro
sigh, i've neglected my blog for so long! i can't help it. i'm so busy lately. and lady stearn robinson (heh, i always thought it said steam on the front cover) has just informed me that my dream of climbing up a tree to escape the bear (who looked uncannily like the bear from
bear in the big blue house, the children's show) signifies reverses and indicates hard work for small gain. of course, since i have no real life, this all applies to mit. meaning mit-life will only get worse and i will be putting in lots of extra effort (even if it is in vain). this means even less web-log-updates. :( ahh well, luckily you can fill your casey-craving today, as i have come up with an entry!
it all started with $30,000. ex-president truman was willing to pay me that much for grad school, since i am planning on going into a public service career someday (teaching). unfortunately, he was only willing to do so if i showed extreme dedication to community service right NOW. i was always big on community service in high school, so i had no problem putting that down on the app. but, i knew the judges would notice the 2 year sabbatical. so, i set off to get myself some community service. please keep in mind, i wasn't doing it ONLY for the money, i do sincerely wish to help people. but, i am an extremely lazy being, and money just tends to get us lazy-beings off our asses...
mr.shaw was nice enough to find me some kiddies to tutor in math at ehs. even though he did mention he would have to get a criminal background check conducted on me... HEH. but, i still needed something extra. something that would show those judges and that dead-president that i was extra-deserving! most of the mit opportunities to volunteer with kids had deadlines that had passed. others required going off-campus into other parts of cambridge and beyond (remember, lazy-being...). but, i found out that the applications for SPLASH werent due for another week and all the classes were held on the mit campus!
splash is a nice little mit program where mit students teach high school / middle school kiddies in an area of their choice. it only runs for 1 weekend, however, and classes usually only last a couple hours. so, it wasn't like i could teach them java or calculus or even how to spend a summer killing potted plants.
luckily, because i'm on my get-skinny-diet (which is coming along MAHHHHHVELOUSLY DAHHHLING *please read in your most zsa-zsa-like voice*, by the way), chocolate was never far from my thoughts. i decided the youth of america desperately needed a course on chocolate! then i remembered that i wouldn't be allowed to eat any chocolate because of my get-skinny-diet (which is coming along MAHHHHHVELOUSLY DAHHHLING *please read in your most zsa-zsa-like voice*, by the way). if i couldn't eat any chocolate, i sure as hell wasn't going to watch a room full of little kiddies eat chocolate. so, i decided that we would just create inedible things out of chocolate! hehe. and what better to make something inedible than making it pretty! you never want to bite the head off your chocolate bunny rabbit at easter (unless you are that evil-sort). you never want to bite one finger off the "chocolate hand of fate." you never want to break one of the fronds (ahh yes, casey's educational blog, where you learn all kinds of new things!) off a "chocolate island of paradise!" you never want to eat one ear off the chocolate bust of fidel castro (especially if you and alyssa are planning on bringing it to him as a peace-offering...)
so i set about making up my course description to submit to splash. and here's what i came up with:
H-04 it doesn't just taste good...
casey dugan
Sunday 2pm-6pm (4 hours)
Prerequisites: none
in this course, we will produce items that are not only yummy, but also aesthetically pleasing! :) our medium will be CHOCOLATE (colored and regular)! students will work with a wide variety of "molds," with emphasis placed on nonconventional, non-store-bought molds, (ex:the end of a spoon). we will form the various parts of our design (chosen molds may effect the end design or the end design may effect which molds you use) and then connect them together to form the whole. students are HIGHLY encouraged to bring in things they think would make interesting molds and we will discuss how to use it as a mold or why it doesn't work. (hint: try things that chocolate can be poured into / on top of)
personally, if i was a high school student and had to take one of the 200 courses offered that weekend, i would take h-04!!! :) but that is just me. of course, any of the older non-high-school people i know are welcome to come and watch and learn how to make "chocolate islands of paradise!" they are really cute... the base of the palm tree is made using an empty banana peel as a mold. fronds are out of green chocolate using the ends of a spoon as a mold. and the island base is made using any kind of tubberware cover as a mold. i'm going to have to work on making a chocolate hand of fate and maybe some chocolate paintings to show as examples before november though!!!
do you remember what a chrysalis is? i didnt until last night. and that is SUCH a jeopardy question. i'm quite disappointed with myself...
santa, benadryl, and salami
life is quite interesting. just when i realized that i hadn't updated the blog in too long, i had a casey-dream! my subconscious always saves the day. keep in mind, i was NOT on benadryl (nor alcohol) at the time of this dream...
i'm in school. but, more technically, magic school. i spent an entire period trying to make santa's head stop disappearing from his body. except, every group of students had their own santa. which thoroughly confused me, cause shouldn't there be just one santa? although, i suppose if santa's head had the ability to disappear, someone could have replicated him just as easily...
about this time, i was getting ready to leave school, since it was night time. so, i exited the doors of mit on ames st. with some other students. the moment this happened i realized i had made a dire mistake. evil people were outside waiting to intercept us! so we all took off flying to escape. although, i dont think i can really classify it as flying. it was more like in that movie flubber when people put the flubber on their feet and could leap and bound for long distances... i remember finally making it to the inside of a large building. i was hanging onto the glass and metal sides of it (watching the enemies down below) very much like spiderman would have. i think i was surrounded by some of my fellow students as well. unfortunately, they saw us and we were once again on the run. we made it back outside. i recall having to jump from the top of one truck/bus to the next, finally making it into the firestation on mass ave by jumping onto the top of one of the tall fire engines. the enemy could be heard saying "well, as long as they didnt make it in there [motioning to the fire station] they'll never be safe. HA HA HA HA [maniacal laugh...]"
that being done with, it was on to 6.004. this class was held in my kitchen. there were about 5 of us there. i didn't recognize anyone there, but i had the distinct feeling that i knew the person sitting next to me. there were also these extremely annoying two girls sitting farthest from me. they were the types who would answer every single question the teacher asked. luckily, as i was glaring at them, chris terman (lecturer...) began the recitation.
we were doing a case study on benadryl. i'm not quite sure how benadryl counts as a computational structure (something much more course 5-y, wouldn't you think? 7 at the very least) , but it seemed the most perfectly natural thing at the time. we each had a bottle of benadryl in front of us (still in the box).
he said he would be asking us some questions on the product. no one seemed to move. i, being ingenious, decided to open the box and pull out the benadryl instructions thinking they would be helpful. unfortunately, chris terman saw me doing this. he got all giddy and insisted i be the one to answer the first question. of course, i was shocked, since i hate ever answering any question. and kept nodding "no." "how do you spell alcohol?" heh. after a moment of confusion, i spit out the correct spelling. a bag of goodies greeted me! i had REALLLLLLLY wanted one of those benadryl tshirts, very badly, so was totally psyched to get one as part of my prize. chris reminded me that i couldn't accept the other prizes this round if i planned on answering more questions. knowing i would never answer another question this recitation, i quickly took my goody bag! in it, along with the tshirt, was a silver flask of liquor and individually wrapped slices of provolone cheese and what i thought was prosciutto (the ONLY cold cut meat that i'll eat). for the rest of recitation, the annoying girls just answered all the questions.
then, after class, we all met outside. gabi, who didnt have recitation with us, was discussing how his went. unfortunately he said that he had thought about the question too much and responded with "alchol" instead, forfeiting his tshirt and prizes. (in real life, i do not think of gabi as a poor speller, really...)
about this time i looked inside my prize bag. i decided to take a closer look at the prosciutto. i noticed it was a strange color upon this further examination. sadly, i realized it was salami, one of those cold cuts i dont eat. i was sorta sad. then, to my surprise, i ate it! i decided it would be horrible to let a good prize like that go to waste. BAH.
remember that time when someone's girlfriend thought it was weird how i devoted a lot of one entry to him? well, i started thinking... and because i'm now getting "terman"-searchers directed here, maybe i shouldn't have any more dreams with him in it. hehe. would be QUITE WEIRD if he, like us, performed searches for his own name and came upon this one day.
a case study on "sleepy-drunk"
for the purposes of experimentation, a subject received only 3 hours of sleep for the past 2 days. this put the subject into a state that could best be described as "sleepy-drunk" according to the definition proposed by the researcher.
sleepy-drunk- the state in which a subject who has been sleep deprived demonstrates behavior that is parallel to the behavior of one who is intoxicated.
the following is an account, given by the subject and related to the researcher during this period of "sleepy-drunk." the events described took place earlier in time during this same period of "sleep-drunk." the subject's name has been changed in order to protect the subject's anonymity.
i got in the shower this morning. i just stood there. i didnt know how to wash my hair. i was well aware of the customary way. one takes shampoo receives clean hair. but, i realized that was wrong. if the input was shampoo and the output was clean hair, i needed the eigenvalue function h(jw) to
compute each term of clean hair from each term of shampoo. i just stood there working on this calculation for 10 minutes. i tried desperately to find the way to wash my hair. but i knew i was completely unable to proceed until i determined this function. i was almost at the point of tears, i was screaming to myself "jane doe, you need to wash your hair. your ride is waiting outside for you, if you dont finish in the next couple minutes, he will be late. you NEED TO HURRY! just find the goddamn eigenfunction and USE IT!" then, finally, out of pure reflex, i just got the shampoo and shampooed my hair. i said "well, this is obviously wrong since i dont have the eigenvalue function, but i'll just do it this way, and hopefully get partial credit..."
looking back on that series of events, now, i realize i was acting so crazy because i was both sleep deprived and had just woken up. what i failed to see, was that the clean hair was the input, the shampoo was the eigenvalue function. and in order to get the output clean hair, i just had to apply the eigenvalue function to each inputted dirty hair... SILLY JANE DOE! and, i had also failed to state the following at the beginning of my search for the eigenvalue function, "each strand of jane doe's dirty hair can be represented by a complex exponential. the same is true for each clean hair." obviously, i also neglected mentioning this because of the early hour.
as evidenced by the account, the subject shows an extreme detachment from the context of the current situation. the subject was applying the concepts of eigen value functions, input and output, all topics that are usually covered in a course on signals and systems (which the subject is currently taking at university nur) to the shower situation. the same can be shown for those who are intoxicated (as evidenced by their running through the streets screaming and yelling during a quiet night). therefore, the definition holds as those subjects who are sleep-deprived and those subjects who are intoxicated both exhibit similar behavior.
the quadro-of-good
on sept 27th, i had the first casey-dream that i have had in a long time! obviously it is 1.because i am back at school, so my mind is constantly in crazy-mentally-disturbed-mode and 2.because it was during daylight hours after i had already had around 11 hrs worth of sleep (the other two prime conditions under which a casey-dream takes place). the following is an exact account (as written down by myself moments after waking up):
me and the 3 other members of my crime-fighting-quadro were in a very large complex. it was a neutral complex (almost shopping-mall-ish), but the enemy was all around. the enemy being some mob lord and his evil henchmen. we were searching for a nano-sapphire-ring, that was practically invisible to the human eye. even though i am quite certain it was a sapphire ring, the stone (when examined with my special nano-magnifying-device) looked distinctly like lapis-lazuli...
anyway, the mob-boss wanted it and had sent his henchmen out to get it. all the while the quadro-of-good was trying to resecure it for the museum. i had a cellphone with a stun-gun-option installed in it, in order to fend off the bad guys. but it was a hard option to get to, every time a bad guy came along i would have to go to options->scroll all the way down->then stun, making it a highly-ineffective weapon. so i spent much of the time programming the phone to be in stun-gun-mode if i pressed and held down #4.
and i know that at certain points there was high-class delivery food too. i think companies were sponsoring the meals for the quadro-of-good whilst they were on assignment. the first sponsor of the first meal happened to be mit's teacher education program.
anyway, the quadro-of-good eventually tracked down the enemy, who had the nano-sapphire-ring in their possession. we followed them to osco, but the mob had perfected their cloning technology. and was sending in duplicates of people into osco. so it was very confusing to sift through that and try to figure out how to determine who wasnt real, especially since the mob-of-bad had focused on cloning old women and small children to prevent such detection.
:) hehe. i think that is all i remember. phullup and i had a lengthy discussion after i told him about my dream as to whether or not quadro-of-good was correct. he suggested quatro-of-good. but, duo is neither italian for two (due, right?) nor spanish for two (dos). so why quatro? maybe i'm missing a letter or two from the spanish/italian words for four. ehhh. either way, i dig quadro-of-good. i've decided that making up words in part establishes my casey-identity. "it just sorta adds something :) donttcha think?" [elle woods on her pink, scented resume]
after i told him about the dream, and our discussion on quadro versus quatro, phullup reminded me how absolutely crazy i am. yes, i must agree. a while ago, i realized that the blogs with the best/most interesting/craziest names get the most hits off the blogger mainpage. i considered changing the name of this to "green eggs and a lunatic." crowd-pleasing and yet descriptive, no?
p.s. a small victory for casey-kind: "the diet must be working for you, you just had 5 guys staring at your ass." hehehehe.
"better asses and more hip injuries"
hmm, something most of my blog-audience probably does not know about me is that i am a big education-buff. i feel it is everyone's duty (or, more specifically, mine) to turn america's youth (and, again, more specifically, my future children) into little geniuses. so i've decided to become an educator. i haven't quite decided what level, as elementary/middle schools would allow me to teach the little kiddies about the diverse topics that interest me and allow me to incorporate the fun-interesting-creative-ways i have planned to learn those topics into the classroom. but, of course, i also see the value of teaching kids at a higher level. they could understanding computer programming or robotics or some other specialized topic at a much higher level. (then i will never get to test out my 6th grade unit on clouds :( )
because of my interest, i have taken education classes at mit. they are lots and lots of fun. and, i get to do some interesting background reading. i recently read an article about an engineer-lady who became a teacher. she said her job was to create baby-engineers. so true! another article focused on the sort of inquiry-based learning that needs to happen for students to learn. and that is the basis of this entry.
the other day during 6.003 lecture, i looked to my left. this time i was sitting at the end of the row. the lecture hall is sorta set up amphitheatre / mugar omni theatre (without such a steep nausea-inducing slope) style. so there are stairs leading up to higher levels of seats. these stairs were less than a foot away and happened to be calling out to me. suddenly, i thought, "i wonder what would happen if the height of individual stairs was raised."
obviously this question was partially based on my education-reading. i was now looking for subjects that interested me, and was approaching them in a scientifically-testable way. in forming my hypothesis, i thought back to a conversation i had had with my boyfriend the other night:
casey: bah. does my ass look firmer, tighter, and in general, more possessing of a better shape? cause i kill myself on that exercise bike. i even squeeze my ass-cheeks together like you said. i need RESULTS!
the-boyfriend: sure it does. but, how far up do your knees go? you need to get them parallel to the ground in order to maximize the workout your butt gets.
casey[starting to get whiney]: but they arreeeee parallel to the ground. see, this is the exact position they are in when i'm on the bike, cause it is one of those sit-down bikes... [casey proceeds to sit down on the box in front of her bed and pedal her legs furociously in the air, mimicing the position her body is in on the bike] seeeeeee!
the-boyfriend: um, i dont think they are high enough. they need to practically be hitting you in the chest.
casey: but that would make them PERPENDICULAR to the ground, silly!
the-boyfriend: well, they had to be parallel if you were standing, perpendicular if you are sitting...
casey: [sigh]
the-boyfriend: you could try the stepper-machine, that is really good for your ass too.
casey: are you saying my ass sucks? i need to fix it? is that what you're saying?!?!?!?!?!
a happy little smile came over casey's face. obviously, if the height of individual steps were raised, then a person would have to lift up his/her leg higher to climb them. the thigh would be more parallel to the ground. therefore, all americans would have nicer asses!!!!
about this time ev looked over at my lecture notes, which now included my thoughts on the america-ass-lifting-stairs. she asked about it and i told her the conclusions i had come to. being ev, she was not concerned with the BIG PICTURE ("the big picture, boris, the big picture. one of these days we will look into our microscopes and find ourselves staring right into god’s eyes, and the first one who blinks will lose his testicles." sigh,
creator is my favorite movie, i will go watch it after i finish this.)... "but what about the elderly, those with disabilities, and people with bad backs??" "ummm, but... the. rest. of. america. would. have. better. asses......besides, do you think they did tests to determine the perfect height of a stair for those kinds of people?!?!"
last night as we were doing our 6.003 homework until 3:30 a.m. in the student center, i gave my colleagues a little sneak preview of this entry. it was because lawrie, a faithful-casey-blogger, had brought up my smooth-ones-and-rough-ones entry and the-boy-who-will-not-be-named-for-fear-of-a-jealous-girlfriend had not seen that one yet, so he whipped out his laptop and went surfing to the casey-blog. tbwwnbnffoajg even provided the name for this entry! :) jonathan had not read my blog and began to speak on the nature of blogs in general. he said that because of that stream-of-consciousness-style, those who had made their possibly politically-incorrect views available online could one day be hurt by them. i pondered this for a moment, realized i had no views, and said "ehh, blog sounds like such a dirty word to me." it really does.... which is why i insisted the address of the website be caseysweblog.
on a side note, lawrie is going to make a book about the casey-blog. she is thinking of entitling it "casey is watching." i think it is fabulous :) i encourage it. but, anyone who does this, is required to include the address of the blog somewhere in the book, so i'll get more visitors and will have more ip addresses to stare at and analyze in my free time!
on a completely-unrelated-note, i just made my boyfriend go outside to admire my flowers (11 p.m.) , the only thing i managed to successfully grow this summer (despite my $100 investment in seeds, soils, planters, etc - probably because they were the only things i allowed to grow outside, since they were not edible). as i excitedly pointed to the flower boxes, he just looked confused. i looked and realized there were no flowers! i ran over to them to find out what happened. then i remembered that i had seen them the other morning.... i had specifically bought morning-glories at the beginning of the summer.... hehe :)
"is pornography harmful or harmless?"
at times i feel bad when there isnt an update to the blog. i check the stats and see that people have visited anyway and guilt sets in. but, really, i have to wait for these ideas to pop into my head. can't force this kind of thing :) hehe
yesterday, i was going nuts looking for my financial aid statement from mit. mommy tends to "clean up" things that arent hers and all that stuff gets put into neat piles around the house (far away from where i last left it...). so i was searching her counter in the kitchen, where her papers are. i did end up finding my finaid letter. but, before i came across that, i made another interesting re-discovery.
about a month ago, i had been getting a glass out of the cabinet and looked down to see a strange magazine cover. it read, "is pornography harmful or harmless?" so many ideas came into my head. 1. these people dont have a thesaurus? 2. heh. 3. what the hell is mommy doing with this? so i picked it up to investigate.
it turns out it was some kind of protestant magazine. i think mommy has had some religious feelers out for a while now. she used to be really-christian, going to morning masses every day (and not sticking around to wake me up on time for school!!!). then, she started going to some crazy buddhist meetings with her chinese-restaurant-owner-friend. she once told me how she always felt bad for the 80-yr-old jehovah's witness lady that came to the door, so always invited her in for coffee. and now she was on a protestant mailing list. i'm not quite sure who is pissing god off more, me, the unbeliever, or mommy, the omni-religious.
i refused to actually pick up the magazine to read the protestant article on pornography. i was afraid they would tell horror stories about how some of their very own priests (do they have priests?) had ruined their lives because of the downfalls of pornography... but, whenever i look at the magazine cover (it is funny how i can't seem to remember it exactly now, i think it was a fuzzy blue computer screen with a shadow sitting in front of it) a little smile comes across my face. i suppose it is because of the special meaning porn has in my life.
let me first specify that i am not a man. i'm not sure if i've ever done this. it is highly important at this time though. because when i mention how i view porn as stupid and pointless, you will either assume i am a broken-male or female. i want to clear that ambiguity up before you even get there. now, maybe there are some women who like it. that is all fine and dandy. but, i have had outside verification from two sources. one being the other female whose opinion i trust practically more than my own (probably because we tend to agree on such things). the other was some study. it said that women are more into touch and smell and taste. guys are all about the eye-candy.... so it is completely reasonable for a guy to get all kinds of horny over some piece of paper that seems to be opening up her legs just for him (pff, what weak little creatures! men,not the models. those models are powerful women in their own ways).
i think what is most striking is how all porn is now a associated with the internet. yeah, sure, the internet has become an almost anonymous place to look at as many free breasts as you want. but, theres other kinds too! theres always those scary xxx video stores whose windows are covered up so no one can see in. and theres is still good ole-fashioned playboy tv.
lets compare and contrast!! the internet, though not completely anonymous is pretty "safe" for those guys who dont want anyone to know about their recreational-activities. besides, these guys practically have to work for what they get now. maybe not since the invention of kazaa and other file-sharing services, but they still do if they are going to old-fashioned web-surfing way. i remember actually trying to find porn for one of my ex-boyfriends. 1.i was fucking STUPID. and 2. i was bored and it was mildly challenging. and 3. he was search-engine-illiterate. so it pissed me off to hear how he couldn't find any. (there is a huge crane right outside the athena cluster window, with a large hook on a hanging thing dangling back and forth precariously. it is going to come thru the window and kill me...) i would really suggest that girls do a little porn-surfing of their own. not because you will get hot and heavy over it, but because it is funny to see what men have to go thru for this stuff. the number of popups is just silly. then, you have to worry about sites disconnecting you from your dialup number and redirecting you to some dialup in madagascar (heh, my ex always was bad at finding the good porn...) as you rack up a $5.99 a minute telephone bill. plus, you get to see the funny poses / things they have the poor girls wearing.
i usually feel that i was put on this earth to uncover everyone else's secrets. this includes their porn. i really have a problem with the internet-porn men because they think they are getting away with it. boy, are they wrong. well, that is, if they are silly enough to let me near their computer... in the first five minutes, i will not try to crack any of your passwords or find out your credit card number, i wont read your email. i will be immediately on the trail of your cyber-porn. most men dont even see it coming :) (sometimes i like to smile like the cheshire cat, picture that now...).
next up is the men who go to the video stores. it is pretty bad if they are seen walking into one of those places. it takes balls. if the store is dedicated exclusively to that kind of video, they risk people watching them walk to the door for yards. people will talk. and i'm not quite sure what happens in those places, but it cant be very comfortable interacting with the other customers / store employees either. but, if it is a regular video store, you risk walking out of the back room with your "blonde beach babes play with sand and each other" and bumping into a mother with 5-yr-old twin girls (with pigtails) each carrying a copy of "barney's great adventure." then you're screwed. i also dont like that the store-goers are planning so far ahead. they know they will want to watch the video tonight or tomorrow or every day for the next week? that is freaky. maybe you need to be a guy to understand.
finally, i show the most sympathy to the playboy-orderers. 1. there is a clear record that they ordered. they cant hide it from their wives, mothers, or postmen. 2. no advance planning necessary. they are feeling the urge, they just turn it on. and 3.they have large to medium size balls as well. both because of 1 and because they may have to call up the cable company to order (ehh, that is sorta replaced with the easy-to-order remoted-controlled-bought porn on satellite).
and, finally, i think my hair has decided not to grow any more. which means, no matter how hot i get, i will never appear on a trashy magazine cover, since my hair will not cover my naked breasts... oh well, better luck next lifetime.
everybody's gone ego-surfing, ego-surfing u.s.a!
if it is too long for you, only read half! :) i have no choice, i'm busy during the week now, so i try to write as much as i can when i do have time so all the people that show up all the time will have something to read...
you'll probably notice there is a new link on the right. it takes you to
carver's update. jason carver was in 6.002ex (and now 003 and 004) with me and even made an appearance in
a funny thing happen innnnn the forum. when we were scheduling the 6.003 homework solving session, i actually emailed the link to that entry to everyone, since they were all in it. jason didn't look! so, we showed it to him on wednesday night anyway. hehe.
the next time we all had 6.003/6.004 lecture together was thursday. jason had his laptop!! despite all of us being in the front-front-front row (bah, bastards took our real seats), jason was surfing anyway.
i watched in amusement as jason searched for a variety of things (i think it is a faux pas to watch someone else's computer screen if they haven't given you permission, sorta like spying? don't tell jason... hehe). the boy is definitely obsessed with search engines (more evidence to follow)! i noticed that he had opened my blog on the screen. he pointed to the number of hits i have, as if it was impressive. i responded: "pff, that is nothing. you should see how many hits philip greenspun's blog gets..." ev chimes in, "yeah, the people that go there are funny [i took the liberty to edit this down to its real meaning. hehe]." jason, "philip greenspun?" casey, "yeah, you remember from 002ex?" jason, "oh yeah, but watch this. if you search for david huang, the first link is to philip greenspun's site. he doesn't mean our david though. its cool." then he showed me. it was cool. i wonder if we / he ever told david? and what was he doing searching for david in the first place?? hmm. uh huh, meaning he is a little search engine addict! he is not alone, but i will get to THAT later. so i gave him the address of philip's blog and mentioned the return-rate for commenting there, "yeah, you make one comment and you get like 10 hits cause so many people visit his blog. of course, they dont come back more than once, the people who read his blog probably have no interest in the topics in my blog..."
i tried to look back to the 004 lecture for a bit... maybe if i had done this earlier instead of later, i would have known the answer to the "is the nand circuit that was discussed in lecture lenient??" but, i'm a nosey bastard... actually, i like to think of myself as curious. anyway, i noticed jason once again had my blog up on the screen. he has asked about the list of search terms to the right, if i had manually entered them. i said yes. he asked how i knew about that kind of thing. gostats.com actually reports each visitor's referring page, or if they typed in the address. so when people search for something at google or yahoo and are directed here, i know what they have searched for. i tried to show jason my gostats page, but remembered i had password protected it. keeping in mind that jason was a little search-engine-addict, i thought it would not be very off-base to also assume he was an information-addict and might use my password information in all kinds of disturbing ways. so, i directed him to walsh's stats page, which is not password protected. hehe. i saw jason sign up for gostats too! so, lets all click on one of the links to his blog from here, so he'll come here and find out about the entry!!
if you DO click, you should look at his september 18th post. it mentions "ego-surfing." i've been "ego-surfing" for some time now. but, the naming rights to the term are solely jason's. when i first began my ego-surfing, i did just what jason does, i tried to see how many of the results were indeed about meeee. i found it interesting that there were references to the real-me online that i didn't even know about.
eventually, i wore that out. i began to do the "casey dugan"-searches and look through the links that were clearly talking about someone besides me. other casey-dugan's. a crazy concept! there are others living on the planet with your name and doing something entirely different from you!!! i wonder what the
kabalarians would say about that? they believe people with the same first name have similar traits. so shouldn't people with the exact same name be practically identical? i set about trying to see if this was true.
that was on wednesday, january 16th, 2002. the only reason i know this is because i had to go look through my files for the alyssa-convo that i had about this very topic. the day i first searched for me, i asked alyssa to do the same for her name. here is her response, "hahaha. i was in the nutcracker in 1996.and i danced the conga at a dance competition. oh my god. i as a cornhusking champion." then she felt wrong, dirty and exposed finding people with her name and stopped. it was probably because her alyssa's weren't as good as her. or, as she put it, "damnit i have to show these bitches up now."
on the other hand, being a super-stalker, i was quite ok finding out about the other casey-dugan's in the world. i find it comforting to find imaginary connections between us. i always find it comforting to find imaginary connections between things without them. for instance, one of the casey dugan's went to the rhode island institute of technology and was in computer science. this casey dugan was also a him. hmph. well, for the first part of my life i had always wondered why my parents picked out a boys name for me (a surprising amnt of DOGS are named that too. including my 7th grade english teacher's lhasa apso. bah, she informed me of that on the first day of class....), so that holds. he lives on the east coast! maybe all casey dugan's like the east coast! he is into computer science and goes to a technical school. maybe all casey dugan's have an unnatural affinity for computers! yay. i also found one who was a yoga instructor. pff. i bet she is all kinds of limber. that pissed me off. i am NOT a flexible person. when i tried to do karate in the 4th grade, i could never do that butterfly thing where you cross your legs and try to bring your knees all the way down to the floor. sometimes i still try. nothing. atleast this one was a girl. and, finally, there is a casey dugan cemetary somewhere in minnesota (or maybe michigan, or some other state that begins with an m, or maybe just a state in the west, i'm too lazy to search now, but you are guaranteed i'll do a little late-night-casey-dugan-stalking after i publish this. hehe). one day, about a year ago, i received an email. some aol account. the email read "hi, i saw your homepage and you have the same name as me, so i thought i'd write." so many similarities with this person! 1.she/he must be search-engine-obsessive as well, to have visited my website. i bet the person looked up his/her own name, which is neat. 2. she/he isn't afraid of taking the plunge and emailing a potentially scary person to say something interesting. now, despite my social anxiety disorder, i sometimes do this. i think, in general, it makes a person a 1/2 a percent happier if they get an email from someone unexpected saying something nice/interesting. so why not? i added the name to my buddy list, since she had aol. she was online! so, we can assume all casey dugan's are addicted to aim... her away message said something about smoking. and though i dont really have anything against smoking, i just sorta figured that we had too little in common and there was no need to watch/stalk/talk to this person.
eventually, my search-engine obsessiveness overflowed to searching for others as well. family, friends, love interests, ex-friends, teachers, ex-teachers, etc. perhaps it is sorta stalking-ish, but again, i like to think of myself as curious :) hehe, plus ev does it! so, it cant be wrong... the moral of the story? if i haven't talked to you for 8 years and you suddenly get an email in which i describe how i found you through one of my random yahoo searches, dont be scared, i was probably just bored. (um, i did this to someone over the summer and they never responded, not like i expected them to, so, perhaps they will do a little reverse-searching -unlikely- and i put this here so they would know i'm as un-scary as can be.. hehe).
a funny thing happened innnnn the forum
foreword: [chorus: originally, the title for this entry was going to be "nuts, completely nuts." but, as casey arrived at blogger.com the new name just sorta appeared in her head, as many things tend to do. so, she went with it. let us first specify that it was not a single thing, but an entire series of things. and we would like to take this opportunity to remind the audience that every single word is, indeed, factual. the exact order and wording were recorded by our heroine on her class notes as the events unfolded before her. ]
setting: 8 funny and rather bright mit students are "locked" in a lecture hall. they have two classes in a row in there, so the total length is 2 hrs. enough time to drive
anyone a little batty...
act one, scene one
[chorus: 6.003 has just begun... most of the cast is fairly silent, probably from the "early" hour. ev has been munching away at her breakfast. she pauses and looks over at casey.]
ev: my crackers taste like dish detergent.
act one, scene two
casey daydreams.....
casey: ohh noo. someone save me! i'm both drowning and about to be eaten by sharks!! help! help!
hunkly-pirate-type: it is i, your hunkly-pirate-type savior!
casey: yay.... please stop wasting time and save me...
hunkly-pirate-type:right. [saves casey from drowning and sharks] i saved you, my princess!
casey: and now i shall reward thee. with a single kiss.
[chorus: as casey slightly lifts her left arm to put it around her pirate-savior, she feels actual human skin, pulling her back to the horrible reality of 6.003. she looks to her left and sees david. she realizes she must have accidentally brushed his elbow. she quickly looks down, trying to stare intently at her notes, while hoping no one in the audience has mental telepathy and was secretly listening in on her little daydream... suddenly, she feels human contact again on her left arm. she realizes david is trying to get her attention]
david: hey.
casey: yup?
david: look.
[chorus: casey looks over to see jason sleeping peacefully 2 seats away. she is envious, as our heroine wishes to get back to her pirate...especially since anyone with mental telepathy in the audience is probably now tuning into jason's dreams.]
act one, scene three
[a loud series of thuds is heard.]
professor willsky: is somebody trying to get in the door?someone go let them in!
ev: [to casey] wasn't it the speakers?
david: [to casey] wasnt it the speakers?
jason:[to david and casey] he's kidding, right? it was the speakers!
professor willsky: i'm omni-directional. sorry. now, back to the 1880's explosion of Krakatoa. or, the "year without a summer" in france.
casey:[to herself] um, krakatoa?? that is an AWESOME name of a volcano. is it a volcano? it must be. what else explodes? what the hell does this have to do with signals and systems? damnit, i missed something important. no more pirates. EVER! france didnt have a summer? did they have to go to school anyway?
[chorus: 6.003 ends, only 1 minute late]
act one, scene four
[chorus: 6.004 begins... casey is bored from the 003 lecture. boredom usually means her stomach will start growling. so she breaks out the pistachios as a precautionary measure.]
ev: can iiiiiiiii have some?
casey: of course! heh
[chorus: casey is not overly fond of the whole "asking thing." not as in EV asking. casey is more than happy to give ev pistachios if she asks. but, she's never been fond of a person HAVING to ask. knowing casey, it all stems from a time in the second grade when all the little kiddies had asked the teacher for special pencils. by the time casey asked there had been none left. and ever since then... casey felt bad that she hadnt offered. she probably would have once she started eating the pistachios... so she offered to the other 7 people. jason took approximately 2. david took 1. lawrie said no. gabi declined. daniel took a handful. mike said no. and ev was sitting next to her and could take them whenever she wanted.]
act one scene five
[chorus: as ev sucks on pistachio shells, casey flashes her a freaked-out look.]
ev: what? they are good!
casey: uh huh...
chris terman, lecturer: and you just scoot-tch that over a bit.
casey: [to herself] you can scoot-tch something? you scoot-tch the signal diagram? that is awesome. i am going to go home and scoot-tch all kinds of stuff. but first, i must make a note of this "scoot-tching" in my notes.
act one, scene six
daniel: casey, can i have more pistachios?
casey: ohh yes, of course!!!
[chorus: casey felt guilty. once again she had caused someone to ask for something. she had been listening for when daniel had stopped opening pistachios behind her. she figured she would offer him more then. ]
casey:[to herself] NO MORE PIRATE THOUGHTS! DISTRACTING!!!
[chorus: casey proceeds to offer more pistachios to all those that took them the first time. david takes another and jason takes a couple. ]
act one, scene seven
[chorus: ev is lining up pistachio shells in rows on the paper towel in her lap. casey had just eaten two pistachios and rather than tossing the empty shells back in the bag, as she had done, she tossed them onto ev's paper towel. suddenly, she felt bad. maybe ev didnt want a paper towel collecting not only her nuts, but also casey's, on her lap. was it wrong to do?? ev chimes in!]
ev:[to casey] i want to wash them and make something out of them. maybe a necklace. i'm going to save all of them.
casey: [to herself] hmm, she wasnt mad, she was actually happy i was depositing them there.. hmm. ev is crazy...
[chorus: as casey turned back to the front page of her notes to write down more blog ideas.]
lawrie: haha, casey, i like your notes, especially this one [chorus: as she points to scoot-tch]
act one, scene eight
[chorus: this is the act when casey's hearing starts to play funny tricks on her. maybe to amuse her? maybe because she is insane? who knows.]
casey:[to herself] did jason just say that terman just said "gestapo electron?" no way, couldn't have. shit, i better not include THAT in the blog. the next google search the directs someone there will be +"gestapo" +"affleck" +"crossword algorithm".
casey: [to herself] did terman just say "typically the library will include other gays"? he couldn't have. oh, wait, that slide is on gates. i bet he said gates. but, lecture would be much more interesting my way.
act one, scene nine
chris terman, lecturer: maybe somebody out there is smart. oh, um. you are all smart. what i meant was...
casey: [to herself] uh huh, nice save. i certainly dont mind you calling me un-smart, i'm not going to volunteer a 25 mosfet circuit to prove you wrong.
chris terman, lecturer: well, what you do is look at the squeegle function ...
casey: the squeegle function!!! ah ha! whatever the hell he just drew looks a hell of a lot like a resistor to ME. but, i'll accept it. there should be more interesting function names, like squeegle. i would remember them. unit impulse = squeeble, unit step = squeekle, etc. it would make 6.003 homework solving sessions more fun too. "david, what you do is you convolve the squeeble with the squeekle. that gives us the squeegle.... our recitation instructor said so!"
[chorus: about this time, casey looks at the clock and realizes it is time for the countdown.]
[chorus: as ev scrapes out the inside of a pistachio shell with another pistachio shell, and christ terman, lecturer, still has 8 more slides to go, casey writes "1 minute left" and boxes it on the same page of her lecturer notes that he is on.]
[chorus: as casey writes down 0 minutes left, with 6 slides to go, she begins to wonder why when you have zero [x] , you need to pluralize x. ]
casey: pfff. nonsensical bastards.
[chorus: and just as casey writes down -1 minutes left on the 5th slide from the last, chris terman tells them he is done. he looks forward to seeing them all again on thursday. joy! one can only imagine what strange and funny things will confront our cast on that day!]
