I have told everyone I know. I have posted it on Facebook. I have written many e-mails. And finally, here, the final and irrefutable culmination of my awesomeness. Drumroll, bitte!
I shall most likely graduate with a 3.95 GPA.
Summa. Highest honors.
Breathe, Jeanette, breathe.
Now, this is, of course, not set in stone as of yet. I have these last four classes to complete. As it stands right now, I have a 3.95 even. If I make four A's, which I think I might just be able to do, I shall have a 3.954545... or something like that. I forget the exact number that the online GPA calculator gave me.
This brings me to a discussion of my hatred of math. I found the formula for calculating your GPA. You add up two totals: the total credit hours and the number of points you received for each class. A three hour class gives a total of 12 points if you get an A. With a B you get 9. I'm not sure what you get with a C (I have never gotten a C) but following this same pattern I would assume you would get 6 points and with a D you would earn 3.
The final step is to divide your total points by the total hours.
Now, I did this with pen and paper. Somewhere a number was off, because I did not get the optimistic 3.95 that the computer tells me. I came up with 3.86 (which is not Summa, but Magna: still an awesome feat but clearly it's just not the same). I hate math because you make a tiny mistake in an early part of the equation and the entire thing becomes skewed.
It reminds me of an old "Bloom County" strip. The smart kid, I believe his name is Oliver Wendell, figures out mathematically just how everything in the universe could exist. But in reading over his numbers, he notices that it explains everything except the existence of penguins. At this point, Opus the penguin begins to disappear. Oliver, oblivious, looks over his math as Opus loses first his feet, then his midsection, until the only thing left is one hand holding his ice cream cone. Then, suddenly, Oliver says, "Oh wait. Forgot to carry the two." He scribbles and fixes his math, and a frazzled, bedraggled Opus reappears, his ice cream cone atop his legendary nose, as he says "You stop that!"
My heartfelt thanks to Berke Breathed for wonderfully illustrating my point.
Math, ill-calculated in the wrong hands, can be a dangerous thing.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
"Death at a Funeral" Remade...
Like Eddie Izzard said... any British film that meets with any kind of success in America will soon be remade by Hollywood. "Room With a View and a Staircase and a Pond" will be amped up into "Room With a View of Hell... Staircase of Satan... Pond of Death..."
I quote Eddie because, firstly, the man is outright hilarious. Second, he's absolutely correct.
Take, for example, a movie trailer I saw last night while waiting for "The Book of Eli" to start (which was not half bad, but I was disappointed by the ending. He should have exchanged the pages. It doesn't really make sense the way it is. Can you tell I'm really not trying to give away the ending here?).
Chris Rock stands at a coffin. He looks down sadly. Then he reacts. "Who is this man? This man is not my father." Immediately bells are going off in my head. This seems awfully familiar. While I'm still thinking about this, we meet Martin Lawrence, who plays Chris Rock's brother, a man who is more about money and girls than he is about responsibility. Again, entering an uneasy realm of recognition. Soon any doubts I may have had about "have I really seen this before" were completely erased. We see James Marsden take a pill he believes to be valium and start to trip out, we meet Danny Glover (Uncle Alfie, the mean old man with the cane and the bad bowels), and finally... Peter freaking Dinklage is standing by the coffin.
Peter... Freaking... Dinklage.
Officially, this is no longer a question of have I seen this before. This is a question of why the hell is Hollywood remaking "Death at a Funeral"?
The original, a very funny little black comedy, is undoubtedly going to be better. As much as I like Martin Lawrence (he's just a likeable guy), there is no way he is going to play the brother as well as Rupert Graves. He was just perfect as a slightly sleazy novelist. And let's not forget the absolutely marvelous Alan Tudyk. I adore Alan Tudyk. His high Simon was an absolute laugh riot, and there is no way on God's green earth that James Marsden will be able to compete with that.
The recurrence of Peter Dinklage amuses me. He's playing the same character both times, that of the deceased father's, ahem... well, to use the little I remember of Yiddish, he's his "don't ask." He really is a good looking guy, and not a bad actor either. He's younger and less scruffy in the British version (it was made in 2007).
I will most definitely skip this remake.
I quote Eddie because, firstly, the man is outright hilarious. Second, he's absolutely correct.
Take, for example, a movie trailer I saw last night while waiting for "The Book of Eli" to start (which was not half bad, but I was disappointed by the ending. He should have exchanged the pages. It doesn't really make sense the way it is. Can you tell I'm really not trying to give away the ending here?).
Chris Rock stands at a coffin. He looks down sadly. Then he reacts. "Who is this man? This man is not my father." Immediately bells are going off in my head. This seems awfully familiar. While I'm still thinking about this, we meet Martin Lawrence, who plays Chris Rock's brother, a man who is more about money and girls than he is about responsibility. Again, entering an uneasy realm of recognition. Soon any doubts I may have had about "have I really seen this before" were completely erased. We see James Marsden take a pill he believes to be valium and start to trip out, we meet Danny Glover (Uncle Alfie, the mean old man with the cane and the bad bowels), and finally... Peter freaking Dinklage is standing by the coffin.
Peter... Freaking... Dinklage.
Officially, this is no longer a question of have I seen this before. This is a question of why the hell is Hollywood remaking "Death at a Funeral"?
The original, a very funny little black comedy, is undoubtedly going to be better. As much as I like Martin Lawrence (he's just a likeable guy), there is no way he is going to play the brother as well as Rupert Graves. He was just perfect as a slightly sleazy novelist. And let's not forget the absolutely marvelous Alan Tudyk. I adore Alan Tudyk. His high Simon was an absolute laugh riot, and there is no way on God's green earth that James Marsden will be able to compete with that.
The recurrence of Peter Dinklage amuses me. He's playing the same character both times, that of the deceased father's, ahem... well, to use the little I remember of Yiddish, he's his "don't ask." He really is a good looking guy, and not a bad actor either. He's younger and less scruffy in the British version (it was made in 2007).
I will most definitely skip this remake.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Onward!
I've decided to continue with the blogging thing, despite the lack of need. Perhaps in one of my insane rambles, I will strike upon the idea which becomes the novel which makes me famous.
Today's insane ramble will be a most depressing poem. It will be depressing because I have to be "serious" and "relevant." I use this medium because otherwise I know I'll never start writing the thing. I'm intimidated by intensity.
But the main object of this assignment is to create a poem with the flow of regular speech, but with precision in word choices. For example, a poem we read in class used the phrase "Halloween orange." Not just regular orange, not even pumpkin orange, but Halloween orange. This invokes monsters, fright, and general horribleness mixed with an almost ghoulish glee because Halloween is a fun time (candy, costumes, we enjoy it) - which worked perfectly because the man was ghoulishly gleeful as he watched his house burn.
Let's just try this thing and see how it goes.
(Just so y'all know... This is not working... I'm staring at the blinking cursor and thinking to myself, what am I going to do? And I hate this chair. It's distractingly uncomfortable.)
Turning Off the Tap
Water leeches to my skin
As it floods in sudsy waves around my feet,
Ignoring the drain's inconsistent pull.
For Proust it was his "petites madeleines."
For me, it's this watery ankle-deep hell.
My eyes close and I remember
A childhood memory I tried to forget.
Grandmother's wrinkled hands clutching the faucet,
Turning off the tap,
Leaving barely an inch of tepid water
Skimming the base of the bathtub.
Any more and I might splash the floor:
A reprimand balanced on her tongue waiting for a reason,
Guilty before given the chance to be innocent.
But that's not quite right,
The immediate guilt
Glowering like a vulture on the showerhead,
Salivating in anticipation and leaving me
Drowned in a half inch of water.
(Done! And it only took me a week to write...)
Today's insane ramble will be a most depressing poem. It will be depressing because I have to be "serious" and "relevant." I use this medium because otherwise I know I'll never start writing the thing. I'm intimidated by intensity.
But the main object of this assignment is to create a poem with the flow of regular speech, but with precision in word choices. For example, a poem we read in class used the phrase "Halloween orange." Not just regular orange, not even pumpkin orange, but Halloween orange. This invokes monsters, fright, and general horribleness mixed with an almost ghoulish glee because Halloween is a fun time (candy, costumes, we enjoy it) - which worked perfectly because the man was ghoulishly gleeful as he watched his house burn.
Let's just try this thing and see how it goes.
(Just so y'all know... This is not working... I'm staring at the blinking cursor and thinking to myself, what am I going to do? And I hate this chair. It's distractingly uncomfortable.)
Turning Off the Tap
Water leeches to my skin
As it floods in sudsy waves around my feet,
Ignoring the drain's inconsistent pull.
For Proust it was his "petites madeleines."
For me, it's this watery ankle-deep hell.
My eyes close and I remember
A childhood memory I tried to forget.
Grandmother's wrinkled hands clutching the faucet,
Turning off the tap,
Leaving barely an inch of tepid water
Skimming the base of the bathtub.
Any more and I might splash the floor:
A reprimand balanced on her tongue waiting for a reason,
Guilty before given the chance to be innocent.
But that's not quite right,
The immediate guilt
Glowering like a vulture on the showerhead,
Salivating in anticipation and leaving me
Drowned in a half inch of water.
(Done! And it only took me a week to write...)
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