Unbelievable amounts of geekery (or, I've realized that I'm sort of wasting my entire life.)
It's not really as bad as the subject makes it sound.
Today was fun. No class until very late, hot chocolate-mocha-and-marshmallows, buy-one-get-one-free ice cream sundaes, and PRETTY ENVELOPES (*_*)!
But that's not really what I'm talking about.
Every Wednesday night, I have academic team practice meetings. I don't feel any smarter after, but the people are lots of fun to talk to and play with, and there's always a chance that I'll be able to dredge up some half-forgotten fact from a class I just took, a book I just read, or make a wild guess. All in all though, unless there's an unfair portion of Biblical, internet culture or mythology questions (and not even all of those; seriously, the Apocrypha is not part of the Bible!), I've more or less resigned myself to being useless.
Last week, one of the grad students kindly printed out what shall henceforth be referred to as evidence-that-I-have-no-life (1). He had no interest in it, and little-to-no knowledge whatsoever, which makes what he did a self-sacrificing deed worthy of immortalizing in song or clay tablet.
(For those of you unfamiliar with these competition packets - everyone, they consist of 25+ toss up questions, framed as paragraphs with obscure/mostly unknown clues relating to the subject followed by more and more widely known ones (with an extra five points - referred to as "power" - if you answer on the first two or so obscure clues instead of waiting for the "give away" clue at the very end and a negative five points - referred to creatively as a "neg" - if you answer incorrectly before the question has been completed), and a matching 25+ bonus questions, with a maximum of thirty points at stake distributed among questions which usually consist of three ten point questions on a single subject, but can often vary to 5 five point questions on a single subject, with an extra five for getting all of them correct. The bonus questions cannot be stolen, and they often have more diverse types of questioning; it can consist of saying an entire list, or having to identify things from a list, and have very varied difficulty.)
This grad student, who, I must reiterate, deserves some kind of large monetary reward (or at least a fat-free yogurt, and if you get that joke, please keep it to yourself, I've destroyed my reputation enough for one day. RIGHT!) for his deed, had printed out a packet based entirely on Pokémon.
Needless to say, I pwned that packet to death. Despite some embarrassing neg-5s on questions that I actually knew the answer to (Jigglypuff!, which is ironic, because the clue given was about a huge Jigglypuff...), I powered a ridiculously large amount of questions, finished half the bonus paragraphs before the packet reader could finish mangling every vaguely Japanese word contained in them, and just, in general, revealed myself to be completely and utterly without a life, even with the excuse of having a similarly Pokémon-obsessed younger brother (at an age where it isn't embarrassing to be able to name all the gym leaders and respective badges, the TM NUMBERS of half the attacks you get in-game, and all four or five sets of starter Pokémon).
This week, the same long-suffering grad student printed out evidence-that-I-have-no-life (2). Yes, it was a packet devoted entirely to Japanime, from producing studio to seiyuu to music artists to hair color of every single character.
I pwned this packet to death too. Every time I powered a toss up, I asked myself why I knew that Amestris was the fictional country Full Metal Alchemist took place in, that "Shining Collection" was sung by the fictional band Nittle-Grasper in Gravitation, that Studio Gonzo made Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo. (I even got the Elfen Lied question because of lily22's most recent entry. They mentioned vectors and blood, and I remembered Claymore but not the other one until the very last clue.) The poor other members of the team (save for the girl who dragged me into this in the first place, but I beat her hands down too) sat there in absolute bewilderment as I demonstrated my retarded knowledge of Bleach characters ("Name these divisions of Soul Society's 13 Squads. 10 points if you get it from the vice-captain, 5 if you need the captain. Yachiru." "Eleventh." "Abarai Renji." "Sixth." "Chojiro Sasakibe." "...what, no one cares about him. What's the second clue?" "...Ya-..." "First."). And my crowning idiotically stupid moment was when we were told to name the voice actors based on list of characters played (what kind of idiot takes the time to memorize this anyway? Me apparently!), and I corrected the packet with Sugiyama Noriaki (rather than Sugiyumi) of angsty-pretty-boy voice fame, i.e. Ishida Uryuu and Uchiha Sasuke...and then everyone on the other side of the room (i.e. the normal people who have no idea what's going on) went, "No, seriously, I bet she's right". Halfway through I was begging the person next to me to shoot me to stop me from doing this to myself, but everyone took great pains to assure me that it was okay, that I should be happy that I'd gotten about 700 points from the packet all by myself.
Next week is the Final Fantasy packet. This, at least, will not make me want to kill myself, and I can sit back and be my normal useless self.
If only I could somehow use all this wasted brain space to properly learn my Organic Chemistry and Systems Physiology. Or at least Russian literature.
Next entry will be Kateikyoushi Hitman Reborn. Why I'm read/watching it, why I think you should read/watch it (if time allows, of course), character biographies and summaries. Because one-sorta-two-yeah-two-hahah people requested it today.
Today was fun. No class until very late, hot chocolate-mocha-and-marshmallows, buy-one-get-one-free ice cream sundaes, and PRETTY ENVELOPES (*_*)!
But that's not really what I'm talking about.
Every Wednesday night, I have academic team practice meetings. I don't feel any smarter after, but the people are lots of fun to talk to and play with, and there's always a chance that I'll be able to dredge up some half-forgotten fact from a class I just took, a book I just read, or make a wild guess. All in all though, unless there's an unfair portion of Biblical, internet culture or mythology questions (and not even all of those; seriously, the Apocrypha is not part of the Bible!), I've more or less resigned myself to being useless.
Last week, one of the grad students kindly printed out what shall henceforth be referred to as evidence-that-I-have-no-life (1). He had no interest in it, and little-to-no knowledge whatsoever, which makes what he did a self-sacrificing deed worthy of immortalizing in song or clay tablet.
(For those of you unfamiliar with these competition packets - everyone, they consist of 25+ toss up questions, framed as paragraphs with obscure/mostly unknown clues relating to the subject followed by more and more widely known ones (with an extra five points - referred to as "power" - if you answer on the first two or so obscure clues instead of waiting for the "give away" clue at the very end and a negative five points - referred to creatively as a "neg" - if you answer incorrectly before the question has been completed), and a matching 25+ bonus questions, with a maximum of thirty points at stake distributed among questions which usually consist of three ten point questions on a single subject, but can often vary to 5 five point questions on a single subject, with an extra five for getting all of them correct. The bonus questions cannot be stolen, and they often have more diverse types of questioning; it can consist of saying an entire list, or having to identify things from a list, and have very varied difficulty.)
This grad student, who, I must reiterate, deserves some kind of large monetary reward (or at least a fat-free yogurt, and if you get that joke, please keep it to yourself, I've destroyed my reputation enough for one day. RIGHT!) for his deed, had printed out a packet based entirely on Pokémon.
Needless to say, I pwned that packet to death. Despite some embarrassing neg-5s on questions that I actually knew the answer to (Jigglypuff!, which is ironic, because the clue given was about a huge Jigglypuff...), I powered a ridiculously large amount of questions, finished half the bonus paragraphs before the packet reader could finish mangling every vaguely Japanese word contained in them, and just, in general, revealed myself to be completely and utterly without a life, even with the excuse of having a similarly Pokémon-obsessed younger brother (at an age where it isn't embarrassing to be able to name all the gym leaders and respective badges, the TM NUMBERS of half the attacks you get in-game, and all four or five sets of starter Pokémon).
This week, the same long-suffering grad student printed out evidence-that-I-have-no-life (2). Yes, it was a packet devoted entirely to Japanime, from producing studio to seiyuu to music artists to hair color of every single character.
I pwned this packet to death too. Every time I powered a toss up, I asked myself why I knew that Amestris was the fictional country Full Metal Alchemist took place in, that "Shining Collection" was sung by the fictional band Nittle-Grasper in Gravitation, that Studio Gonzo made Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo. (I even got the Elfen Lied question because of lily22's most recent entry. They mentioned vectors and blood, and I remembered Claymore but not the other one until the very last clue.) The poor other members of the team (save for the girl who dragged me into this in the first place, but I beat her hands down too) sat there in absolute bewilderment as I demonstrated my retarded knowledge of Bleach characters ("Name these divisions of Soul Society's 13 Squads. 10 points if you get it from the vice-captain, 5 if you need the captain. Yachiru." "Eleventh." "Abarai Renji." "Sixth." "Chojiro Sasakibe." "...what, no one cares about him. What's the second clue?" "...Ya-..." "First."). And my crowning idiotically stupid moment was when we were told to name the voice actors based on list of characters played (what kind of idiot takes the time to memorize this anyway? Me apparently!), and I corrected the packet with Sugiyama Noriaki (rather than Sugiyumi) of angsty-pretty-boy voice fame, i.e. Ishida Uryuu and Uchiha Sasuke...and then everyone on the other side of the room (i.e. the normal people who have no idea what's going on) went, "No, seriously, I bet she's right". Halfway through I was begging the person next to me to shoot me to stop me from doing this to myself, but everyone took great pains to assure me that it was okay, that I should be happy that I'd gotten about 700 points from the packet all by myself.
Next week is the Final Fantasy packet. This, at least, will not make me want to kill myself, and I can sit back and be my normal useless self.
If only I could somehow use all this wasted brain space to properly learn my Organic Chemistry and Systems Physiology. Or at least Russian literature.
Next entry will be Kateikyoushi Hitman Reborn. Why I'm read/watching it, why I think you should read/watch it (if time allows, of course), character biographies and summaries. Because one-sorta-two-yeah-two-hahah people requested it today.