Indiscipline

Indiscipline Yo, Ive been getting a lot of questions lately in the comments and I really want to do them all justice, so Im gonna answer them next week, when my minds off finals. That way, I can focus totally on your questions and not on thermodynamic principles running subconsciously through my head. MITs music program is like the fugacity of water in a water-ethanol system near the azeotrope point. And whatnot. But I digress. What have I done this weekend instead of studying for finals, exactly? Well, what Im doing right now is writing a blog entry. Im doing that because I went to see Brokeback Mountain last night, and it was really one of the most profoundly effective movies Ive ever seen. I highly recommend it. I can see how some people might find it to be a little slow, but I personally didnt. What was slow was the several-hundred-person line outside Loews waiting to get into the only theater in Boston showing Brokeback Mountain on its opening night. Thanks to the smooth-as-cookie-dough planning of Carter 07, we were able to get into the theatre with enough time to find some pretty good seats near the back, affording a pretty good view of the action onscreen. I had to hurry to Harvard because I had just got finished Christmas caroling with Moria 06 and company outside of the Prudential Center. We did a really excellent Silent Night, and even recruited some people to sing with us. Anyway, we were standing half a block from the Salvation Army, and they didnt ask us to leave or anything, so I figure we must have been doing alright. I had to hurry to carolling because I just got out of the MITblogs ice cream social at Toscaninis semibohemian faux punk rock creamery. In fact, I was in such a hurry that I missed the ChemE holiday party. I even missed picking up my non-denominational Secret Snowflake present, but that was cool, because what I bought for secret snowflake was not so cool anyway and didnt really deserve a reward. Well, it was cool, but it turns out that going to the Harvard Book Store to buy christmas presents was not such a great idea for me this year. They sell remaindersotherwise perfect books that just happened to fall off the back of the truck or somethingfor about half of the list price, and it turns out that this night they just happened to have remainders of three books that Ive always been looking for, and that the holiday season had put me in a remarkably avaricious mood. So, in addition to Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris, (hey, everybody likes modern American humorists, right? surely it will bring my secret snowflake lots of holiday cheer), I also picked up Slow Learner, the Thomas Pynchon anthology featuring Entropy, the short story that really made me get into Pynchon. A Walt Whitman anthology describing itself as a fully unexpurgated collection that restores the sexual vitality and subversive flair suppressed by Whitman himself in later editions of Leaves of Grass. It reveals that Henry James hated Whitmans poetry, but everybody hates Henry James now. I really love Whitman and want to set his epic When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd to music (even though Hindemith beat me to that by like 40 years), so Ive been looking for a good anthology for a while now, and one that costs $8 and features unexpurgated sexual vitality is good enough for me. Cookoff, about competitive cooking competitions in North America. No, really, its kinda cool. But, of course, I missed out on getting the best cooking book of all time at Barnes and Nobles. First Bruce Campbell, then Phil Keoghan, then Rachael Rayhow many more of my idols am I going to miss meeting in Boston? Speaking of cooking, another thing Ive done to put off studying is baking cookies! My friend and awesome pianist David graciously offered to present my Theme and Variations for me in 21M.302, so I baked him some cookies. However, I had to use Summers mixer to cream together the cookie dough, so I ended up making another batch for her and eating only like 20 cookies myself. Does anybody else think of this, the most conservative childrens book ever written? I used the amazing Alton Browns amazing chocolate chip cookie recipe, titled only The Chewy, which I recommend above all other recipes Ive heretofore encountered, even if it does require you to go out and find bread flour for its high gluten content. Anyhoo, heres some cookie pictures. Mmm, baking cookies. Though Im too cheap to spring for a cookie sheet, a baking sheet covered in aluminum foil is serviceable. Alicia 06 bakes equally chewy sugar cookies. Kendall 07 likes cookies even when she cant stand up straight. Cookie porn. Hope you werent hungry before reading this blog. If you were well, now you have Altons cookie recipe. As for the rest of the week well, its aptly explained by my away message: 12/17: thermo 12/18: transport 12/19: thermo/transport 12/20: thermo 12/21: transport 12/22: have epiphany And an obligatory quote appropriate to the end of term, epiphanies, Boston weather, and my general preparedness for finals: His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.