Ants in my Pants. I was sitting in class today when all of a sudden I feel a tingly feeling moving up my leg inside my pants. Now usually, if the tingle is stationary or moving downward, you can dismiss it as nothing. But if it moves upward, you can be reasonably sure that it's alive. Well anyways, I did the brushing of the leg, and the fake semi-stand up while pretending to adjust your pants thing. But like a minute later, the itchy feeling comes back, and I start driving myself crazy thinking about what kind of bug might be on my leg. (I think I'm more afraid of wiggly critters than the six-legged variety.) So I start patting my leg and pinching at my pants. This must have gone on for like 20 minutes before I think I finally got it. After class, I immediately came back to my dorm and stripped off the pants to do an inspection. The culprit turned out to be a fly. Rascally critter. No idea how or why it flew up my pant leg.

Treat my Shoes Like my Ride. After much resisting, I finally got suckered into getting myself a pair of Feivues (wushu shoes, wushoes, whatever). They cost me $15, which isn't bad I guess. But they have like zero padding at all, so I ended up dropping another $15 on Dr. Scholl's athletic insoles. In retrospect, that seemed just plain silly. It's like how I'll never understand those ricers souping up their cars- spending more money upgrading the car than the car was worth in the first place. Why not just start off buying a better car and leave it at that? Well, I guess it's no more absurd than "souping up" your shoes. Maybe I should switch out the laces too, haha. But yea, anyone remember those L.A. Lights? I never owned a pair myself, but I thought the kids who wore 'em were sooooo cool back in the day, hahaha. And those Nike Pumps- I actually had a pair once; the fun wears off about a week later when you get too lazy to kneel there pumping. Ah, the memories.

I always get a little freaked out when I notice several bug bites or random red bumps on my skin. It goes back to the fact that I didn't come down with a very severe case of chickenpox as a kid. I only had like 5 pox, tops. I dunno if that was enough to ensure immunity for life. And it's scary cuz they say that that chickenpox is a lot more deadly when contracted as an adult. How pitiful would that be? To have your obituary say that you died of a disease that most kids shrug off as nothing? Shameful.

There was a "Ninja vs. Pirate" themed party in West Campus last night. Intrigued by the premise of the event, I went to the party with Rex & one of his friends. (We were all ninjas (link via John N.). I sported my Konoha forehead protector on my arm as well- the only occasion I've ever worn it in public, haha.) Well, it turned out to be a very... white... party. *ahem* Allow me to "clarify"...

The festive activity of minority homo sapiens differs markedly from that of their white counterparts. It is speculated that this sharp contrast in behavior can be attributed to the different kinds of aural stimulation (i.e. music) present at their respective events. The white human is prone to listening to "rock" music at his celebratory events, often characterized by the practices of quasi-moshing, head-bobbing, and the all-too-popular "stand around and chitchat." Contrastingly, people of color are more inclined to listen to "booty music," which, as its name implies, is typically accompanied by sensual and provocative dance. (Excluding "white-washed" or "yellow-fever" cases,) It seems only natural that one aligning him or herself with a minority race would feel out of place in the foreign environment of a white party, and vice versa. However, while it is quite easy to discern the visible differences between the two types of events, it is a much harder task to explain the cause of this contrast and is beyond the scope of this discussion.

Aaaaaaaanyways, it was [different] to say the least. I dunno, I guess half the problem was that I didn't know like anyone at the party. Meh, I guess I'm just not cut out to party with white folk, haha. Ah well, at least it was fun dressing up.

Yesterday night, a torrent for a 4.3gig file purporting to be Naruto movie showed up at my favorite anime BT site. Well 4+ gigs is a pretty large file by any standard. Surprisingly enough, when I checked my resnet port status, it said I have 6 gigs for the week instead of the standard 4. It felt like a gift from above- like the forces that be wanted me to see the Naruto movie. And anyways, my bandwidth resets on the change from Friday to Saturday, so I figgered I'd take one for the team and get the file.

Anyways, today, after already having blown about 2 gigs of bandwidth, I take a look in the mIRC chatrooms and get word that the file might be a fake. I must say, the evidence is stacked against it. Blehhh... thinking about it makes my stomach turn. But I think I'll finish the d/load just to satisfy my curiosity. Maaaaaan, I wanna see the Naruto movie! =(

*"...at any rate, elves DO NOT run around naked a lot. We do have SOME sense of propriety... We just don't possess some strange belief that CERTAIN bits of flesh are perfectly okay to be shown while OTHER spots are dirty and shameful."
~Errant Story
Hmmmm, a most interesting notion, but it doesn't change the fact that I find certain parts of anatomy more *ahem* arousing than others. Though I admit that perhaps all that is cultural conditioning anyways. Very thought-provoking.

Ugghhhh, I pulled my first all-nighter of the year last night- the official sign that school has started, haha. The hw's not really even for a grade, but I practically had to beg to get into this class, and it'd reflect poorly on me if I kept turning in hw's late (or not at all, haha). I say it every time, but dang, there's no sight more loathsome than seeing the sun rise on a sleepless night. I can't blame that archer in the Chinese myth for shooting down a couple, haha.

Great Taste, Less Feeling. If I had to call myself religious in any way, shape, or form, I'd probably call myself a bad Buddhist. The thing that gets me most is that I just can't bring myself to stop eating meat. "If we weren't meant to eat animals, then why does meat taste so good??" However, I occasionally get that twinge of guilt cuz of that bit about respecting all life and whatnot. About two or three years ago though, inspired by the Native Americans, I decided to say a mini-prayer in my head whenever I eat meat- my Pagan variation of grace, I guess. "I thank the animal(s) that died that I may eat so well." ...it's usually goes something like that, and I imagine the animal as it would have been while alive.

And that all worked great for a couple years, but recently, I just don't feel like there's a whole lot of heart behind those words. It all feels like posturing. The words feel empty. And since I'm not actually saying the words aloud, I feel like I'm lying to myself. (Lie to the world all you want, but never lie to yourself.) Yet I can't bring myself to stop performing this ritual. The underlying intent is much more important than the physical action itself. Somewhere deep down, there's gotta still be some bit of sincerity left in the prayer. I just have to find it again.

I was originally gonna hit up the Austin City Limits music festival today, but that didn't quite pan out, cuz they were sold out of one-day tickets by the time I got there. =( Disheartened, I came home. But I thought I should have an adventure on the town to try to make it up myself. Me, Rex, and Tracy had Amy's Ice Cream then went and played at Toy Joy. They've got all the obscure toys and junk there that you probably wouldn't find at a Toys-R-Us, per se. I got myself a Spiderman sweat band, a mini-Slinky, and lickable tattoos. OMG, I was so gonna invent those. They're just like temporary tattoos, only they have flavor, so you can lick yourself like a cat and not be a complete weirdo. Dang, beaten to the punch.

Later, me and the Riverside crew went and had the Endless Shrimp Feast at Red Lobster. We went in there without a gameplan though. Like suckers, we fell for their tricks when they tempted us with appetizers, salad, and bread. Veterans like us should have known better than to be distracted like that, haha. I demand a rematch! We let those shrimps off easy this time, but don't think you've won, shrimp! I have not begun to fight! And to the staff of Red Lobster:
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says fool me once ... shame on..... shame on you.... But fool me - can't get fooled again."
~President George W. Bush

Me vs. Pythagoras. You know when you set out to prove something wrong, then end up proving your own preconceptions wrong instead? Yea, so I've been thinking about the pythagorean theorem for the last couple days. There's no real written record about how Pythagoras "discovered" it (though it had also been discovered by other civilizations like the Babylonians and the Chinese). Anyways, as one legend has it, Pythagoras was in a tiled courtyard and after staring at the tiles for awhile, he miraculously uncovered his famous a^2+b^2=c^2.

Well frankly, I didn't buy it. You see, I too have spent many hours of my life staring at tiles. When I'm in the bathroom, my mind just wanders, and I find myself staring at the floor tiles. In the honors dorms the past two years, I had a little project of uncovering all the possible configurations of tiles that would tesselate (; I came to the conclusion that any four adjacent tiles could be tesselated to form the floor design). This year, Jester's bathroom tiles are a lot less interesting- the only thing remotely interesting is the random color distribution. My potty-time mini-project this year consists mainly of developing pattern recognition techniques. Anyways, I digress...

So I was thinking about tesselations a lot and decided that you couldn't tesselate a design that would lead to the revelation of the pythagorean theorem. My logic was that the simplest pythagorean triples lead to angles that would be too hard to cut consistently for tiles. Perhaps this was my folly: to focus on integer values for the sides instead of angles. To my knowledge, the only right triangles that anyone would reasonably make into a tile pattern would be 30-60-90's and 45-45-90's. The former doesn't lead to any geometric squares. It wasn't until I got a good look at a pattern of 45-45-90's that I finally saw it- buried amidst the clutter, is that classic chubby Y-shaped figure used to teach kids the world over. Foolish me for ever doubting, haha. Pythagoras- 1, me- 0. Still though, could you extrapolate a theorem for all triangles based on just the standard right isosceles? But that was just me being obstinate again, cuz after a bit more thought, I realized that if you toss a square or two into the mix, there's actually several tesselations that would yield the pythagorean theorem. Dang, score one more for the Greek.

Game, set, match- Pythagoras.

CSA's Lunar Festival event was tonight, and I performed wushu/kungfu with CSA's newly formed Shaolin team. It was a hell of a lot of work practicing to get ready for the show, but in the end I was very satisfied with the result. It was by far the most legit kungfu performance I've done since coming to UT (, as opposed to the goofing around that passes for a show that me & Mike usually do, heheh). But yea, we did some real forms as a group, and then we each did some individual forms that we made up ourselves. I did a kwando form that was half "real"/half made-up and a dragon form that was completely contrived. I've honestly never seen a real dragon form in action, which made the creative process all the more amusing, heheh. Not sure how convincing I was as a dragon, but I had fun, so it's all good. Afterwards, the wushu posse went and ate at Golden Bay.