06.18.09
Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged OkCupid at 12:01 am by kyrias
So.
I joined OkCupid in 2005 for the lulz and to take the quizzes. I have only recently uploaded a picture - partially because Mr P kept asking me to and because I was morbidly curious.
As to what I was morbidly curious about…
Without a photo, I had 2 people view my profile in 2007. One of whom was Azora.
Without a photo, 4 people viewed my profile in 2008. Better, but not that great.
Still without a photo, 2 people viewed my profile in 2009 — one of which was Mr. P.
Since I uploaded a photo at about 10pm, there has been 20 people who viewed my profile. Now I shall have to see who actually messages me.
Keeping in mind I have had less than a handful of people message me without my initiating it since 2005 until now.
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11.22.08
Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged unreasonable hatred at 11:56 am by kyrias
I keep having people ask me: “Why Boston? Why not New York City, if you’re going to be on the East Coast?”.
All I can say is, I really, truly, hate New York City with a passion.
You’d have to pay me to live there, and I do mean pay me. On top of a well-paying job with all the perks and benefits, there’d have to be an additional stipend specifically ear-marked “For living in NYC”.
Of course, I know that there’s enough people mad enough about the Big Apple that I’ll never get that, which is a good thing as I don’t think I ever want to be lured into living there.
I just have a very visceral reaction to it. It’s dirty, has that distinct “city smell”, and the people are unfriendly more often than not.
I don’t even care that I’m making sweeping generalizations.
After all, this is the city known for “if you can survive here, you can survive anywhere”.
My only reaction is, but why would I want to survive there when I can just go somewhere else and not be compelled into being a Type A personality?
To be fair, this outpouring of hate is mostly because of my recent visit. I didn’t really have fond memories of it from when I visited Zack in NYC twice before — but it was more of a neutral “I don’t like cities” thing. But after my most recent visit — it’s just turned into full-blown hatred.
Cue the rudeness, the unwillingness to help, all things nasty and bad.
Meh. At least I’m not the only one. Nora said to me that she nearly got right back on the train when she arrived in Time square.
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11.04.08
Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged dating, grinch, relationships at 12:01 am by kyrias
I was recently informed that some friends of mine were celebrating their one month anniversary.
All I could say was, “LOL, wut?”
I do not see the point in one month anniversaries.
If pressed, I’d have to admit that anything short of a decade is pretty meh in my book. Maybe seven years is a significant milestone as well, considering that whole seven-year itch idea running about.
But still, one month? That’s not even close to enough time to get off the raging hormonal high that occurs when people first fall in love or start a crush.
I don’t know if it’s a symptom of our fast-food society that one month is considered significant or if it’s just a measure of how people treat dating relationships. Or perhaps it’s just some sort of self-persuasion schtick going on, an effort to ascribe meaning to something which doesn’t really have any yet.
Or perhaps I’m just a grinch.
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10.07.08
Posted in On cabbages and kings at 8:19 pm by kyrias
Their frozen pizzas suck. Or at least the pepperoni one does.
Their sushi tastes about the same and sometimes marginally better than Yoshi’s. Isn’t that kind of sad?
Their cooked food looks kind of good — it might be worth it to try having a take-home dinner made entirely from stuff picked up there.
-*-
My cheddar cheese that is local and was bought from Whole Foods and therefore expensive had mold on it. Edible or no? Some people say cut it off, some say toss it out, and some say eat it with. Anyone have any opinions?
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09.27.08
Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged college antics, frivolity, randon trivia at 10:16 pm by kyrias
Me: Dammit! Now I have the DOTA song stuck in my head because of something someone said.
C: Well, I have the Bumblebee tuna song stuck in my head. Yum yum Bumble, Bumblebee Tuna I Love Bumblebee, Bumblebee Tuna Yum yum Bumble, Bumblebee Tuna I love a sandwich made with Bumblebee tuna.
Me: If you don’t stop singing that, I’ll put DOTA on. *smugly*
C: If you do, I’ll play the Bumblebee tuna song.
Me: You have that song on your computer? What kind of sick fuck are you?
All I can say is — why do people make such catchy songs with such horrible horrible lyrics? Thanks to my beloved comrades, I can’t hear someone say “I…” without having the ditty “I…wanna fuck a dog in the ass…wanna fuck a dog…in the ass…” start up in my head.
College may have taught me many things, one of which is to never form mental images, but sadly, this isn’t one of them. If anything, I only found a lot more songs to get stuck in my head that I never really needed to know in the first place.
If you’re a glutton for punishment, here’s Boten Anna. Enjoy.
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09.10.08
Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged cultural superiority, languages, stupidity at 9:00 pm by kyrias
I was eating at Xinh Xinh tonight with Zora and Caesura.
There were two Chinese girls sitting at the table behind us who were talking very loudly in Chinese the entire time. Despite the fact that they were sitting in a Vietnamese resturant in the middle of Chinatown, they had no compunctions about discussing their love lives in great and graphic detail.
To start with, honestly, please don’t assume that people don’t understand what you’re saying when you’re talking in a public space. It’s especially silly when you’re speaking Chinese in Chinatown.
Then, even if you do decide to air your dirty laundry in public — for the love of God, don’t raise your voices just because you think no one can understand you. It took all the self-restraint I had to not look over and deliberately say something in Chinese just to see how they would react.
I was honestly baffled by how comfortable they were about discussing how they “handled” their boyfriends and their sex lives in public.
Were they honestly ok with people knowing all the intimate details of their lives? But then again, I seriously couldn’t see such blind hubris as to assume that people would not understand them.
One might argue that if they were ok with it, then who cares? Personally, however, I thought it was rude of them to intrude on other people’s dinner conversations in such a manner.
There are some things that I really just don’t want to know. If it’s regarding your sex life and how you’re “controlling” your boyfriend, anything more than “I do have sex and I’m happy in it” is way too much.
Play nice, kiddies, and don’t assume linguistic superiority.
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09.08.08
Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged cult, Landmark at 4:13 pm by kyrias
A friend of a friend, Tia, visited a week ago. She was here in Boston to attend the Forum held by Landmark Education.
Caesura attempted to find out what exactly Landmark Education did, and what sort of conference “The Forum” was. As Tia wasn’t able to describe exactly what it was that they’d be doing, he went and Googled Landmark Education.
He found that they were thrown out of France for being a cult. Considering that the proponents of Falun Gong were thrown out of China for being a cult — I wasn’t too excited by it.
Then, the night before she left, we got to talking about what exactly she got from the conference and that was when I started to wonder about the true nature of The Forum.
From what Tia initially said, it seemed that they were just a more effective self-help course. But then, after further conversation, it seemed that Landmark was essentially practicing psychotherapy on a grand scale. Not only that, but it seemed that some of their “methods” were somewhat suspect.
It was the “they will not apologize for making you cry, and many do” that rang the warning bells. Tia said that they will force you to acknowledge your shortcomings and help you past that.
The next day, I Googled reviews for Landmark and found some very disturbing accounts.
Supposedly, signing up for The Forum involves agreeing to certain things:
- Being cooped up with about 100+ other people in a room from early in the morning to late at night. Some “days” have run as long as 16 hours.
- Having to rely on the 30 minute breaks they give you every three hours or so to relax.
- Not being allowed more than one meal a day — mostly because you’re not given break-time for more than once a day.
On top of all this, you have to promise to be “coachable”, which involves listening to the Forum leaders shout things such as “Your life sucks!” or “Your life has no point!” and have them psychoanalyze you when you’re asked to talk about your problems. One woman was told that she was a disgrace and that she might as well just kill herself.
It seems that essentially, what they’re doing is breaking people down with sheer brute force, using sleep deprivation, hunger, peer pressure, and harsh words. Then, after everyone is very open to suggestion from them at this point, after they have set themselves up as the gurus who hold all knowledge and authority — they tell you to let go of your “rackets”, your self-harming thoughts, your anger, your hate…
And people do. They return from the Forum changed, transformed, some even say transcendent. Sounds good, right? After all, no gain without pain, yes?
But then, I have a couple of problems with Landmark:
The Forum Leaders are not trained for psychotherapy and although I think that perhaps some of the people who attend the Forum do need someone to be so harsh to them to get them out of their rut — I do not believe that it is a good technique to use on everyone. There are some accounts of people who have had mental breakdowns after attending The Forum.
I do not approve of them using their forum graduates to pull in more people and use them as free labor. Landmark raked in more than 36 million last year from its members, has centers worldwide and yet has less than 1,000 salaried employees. The bulk of their labor is done by their members “voluntarily“, with little to no recompense.
Lastly, it seems that they’re not so much helping and changing people as brainwashing them into being Landmark automatons who live only to serve Landmark.
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09.05.08
Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged my stupidity, scrapes at 7:13 am by kyrias
So my workplace has this lovely high-tech Flavia coffee machine and I was playing with it yesterday.
I thought that each one of the packets would only work with the expresso shot function — so when I only got a paltry 1/3 cup of liquid with one packets, I decided to put in another one. Besides, I wanted to try out the french vanilla with the hazelnut.
Then, because I liked the taste of the coffee, but not the after-taste — I decided to cut the coffee with English Breakfast Tea, because, you know, adding tea to it cuts the nasty after-taste.
I hear that drinking two expresso shots with a cup of English Breakfast Tea is a great idea when you usually don’t even drink carbonated stuff with caffeine.
Right.
Two hours in I was internally jittering like mad, heartbeat at least twice its normal speed and tense as a cocked gun from containing the jitters. Add tension from trying to concentrate on data entry to that and I was pretty much a hair away from capering around the room and crowing.
Two more hours later I was trying to eat without horking and watching my hands shake. The waitress probably thought I was a junkie.
Long story short — by the time 9pm rolled around, my back started cramping because it had been in vibrating knots all day. Cue the song “I’m alright, I’m alright — it only hurts when I breathe…”
Three A.M this morning saw me sleepless from pain.
Six A.M was when I found out combing my hair was a Herculean task.
Crippled by coffee — I get in the most amazing scrapes.
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09.01.08
Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged stupidity at 12:29 am by kyrias
I keep wondering, who uses Coinstar machines and why.
My bank was always willing to deal with my jar of coins when I got around to bringing it to them. I can’t imagine why anyone would pay 8.9 cents per dollar to have their coins counted by Coinstar.
Do people not realize that Coinstar is taking a cut? And what’s even wierder is that supposedly 81% of their users made a special trip to a Coinstar machine, and Coinstar is touting that as a way for retailers to increase their traffic.
If you’re making a special trip to Coinstar machines, why not just take them to your bank? If your bank isn’t willing to deal with your coins for you — maybe you need to find another bank.
Although… according to a poster, banks in New England are unwilling to sort your coins for you. Bummer.
What further confuses me is - why the heck do people have gallon containers full of coins at home? I can’t stand having loose cash lying around, I’m so addicted to my plastic, that the thought of potentially having three-digit amounts of money in coins lying around is slightly twitch-worthy.
One thing that’s also frightening is that you might lose a significant chunk off your change deposit because of how stringent the machines are about rejecting coins. Dirty, chipped, or even just slightly “off” coins get dumped and you don’t get them back. There’s apparently even a possibility that your dimes will get counted as pennies.
Hrm, that explains how I had about $98 in coins one time and the bank teller only gave me about $30…
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08.21.08
Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged College of Wooster truths at 8:48 pm by kyrias
Supposedly, the College of Wooster has the “second best senior capstone project” in the nation, according to the US News and World Report.
Nora pointed out that it’s the best “required” senior capstone project.
I was fairly disappointed with my Senior I.S experience.
I learned a fair amount, I’ll give it that. But I definitely think that it could be done better.
I would have preferred to have only Senior I.S and only one other class. Even just two other classes would have been better than having a three course load with a lab and then having Senior I.S on top of that. Honestly, perhaps it was a personal thing, but there was so much stress tied up in Senior I.S that I was a walking vibrating tangle of nerves that entire year.
I feel like I would have enjoyed and learned more my senior year if I wasn’t that stressed. I would have wanted to be “able”, on a personal level, to visit my advisor more and have had more energy to spend on my I.S.
Perhaps most people don’t have that problem, but I know I’m not the only person who think that they would have liked to have had the ability to only take Senior I.S.
That quibble pales before the other one though.
I know it’s impossible to have the same sort of grading guidelines across majors — but it’s terribly stupid to not have the same standards across the board.
If it’s required for graduation, if it’s being touted as a “capstone thesis”, then make it count.
I know someone who graduated, even with an I.S which recieved the comment to the gist of: “I have no idea what your thesis statement is, I don’t think you actually have a main theme.”
Then there’s another person who had an I.S which used Disney’s Mulan as a primary source.
Then I know there’s a lot of people who don’t do their work until spring break, pull it out of their pants within that two week period, and still manage to graduate anyways.
To a certain extent, I feel cheated. I went to Wooster for the Senior I.S and now I feel as if it wasn’t worth it. Both a failure on my part and the school’s: I think I could have done more work, put in more effort, tried harder to overcome the debilitating stress I was experiencing…something and anything. On the other hand, I think that the school could have done better with preparing us for I.S, both in teaching and telling us what was expected of us.
Then, there’s the disappointment in that, how can I feel proud of what I did when I have the same grade as someone else who just pulled it out of their ass during the last three days?
Maybe, with the amount of work I did, I did deserve the same grade as some of the people who finished it within the last three days. I can’t imagine I deserve the same grade as someone whose I.S was deemed to have no “thesis statement”.
I think that the I.S has been cheapened by grade inflation, same as everything else, and that is the most disappointing part of my college experience.
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