George Bush has imposed trade sanctions on North Korea... essentially sending Kim Jong Il to his room for a time out. Basically "we" are taking away his iPod, Rolex, Cognac, cigarettes, jet skis, luxury cars, and Harleys.
The guy has nukes, and lots of them. But who am I to judge? You go George, take away his mp3 player...that'll teach him.
TVLand just came out with a list of the top catchphrases and quotes heard on TV. Some of them bring back some great memories from childhood. Some of them are just plain boring. And still some of them make me laugh all over again just reading them.
These bring back some memories...
"Hey hey HEEY!" (Fat Albert, "Fat Albert")
"Homey don't play that!" (Homey the Clown, "In Living Color")
"How you doin'?" (Joey Tribbiani, "Friends")
"I'm Rick James, bitch!" (Dave Chappelle as Rick James, "Chappelle's Show")
"Is that your final answer?" (Regis Philbin, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire")
"No soup for you!" (The Soup Nazi, "Seinfeld")
"Norm!" ("Cheers")
"Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?" (Grey Poupon ad)
"Read my lips: No new taxes!" (George H.W. Bush)
"Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids" (Trix cereal ad)
"Suit up!" (Barney Stinson, "How I Met Your Mother")
"Tell me what you don't like about yourself" (Dr. McNamara and Dr. Troy, "Nip/Tuck")
"The truth is out there" (Fox Mulder, "The X-Files")
"Well, isn't that special?" (Dana Carvey as the Church Lady, "Saturday Night Live")
"Whassup?" (Budweiser ad)
"Would you believe?" (Maxwell Smart, "Get Smart")
"Yada, yada, yada" ("Seinfeld")
"You're fired!" (Donald Trump, "The Apprentice")
Today has been a mix of feelings, emotions, ups and downs...
It all started with me driving to class this morning. As I drove down the streets I couldn't help but notice a handful of people with sheer sadness on their faces. It is anything but cold out these days so there definitely were not scouring from the cold. So that just got me thinking about people getting stressed out by the holidays and holiday time in general. Then I felt a bit sad. But I got over that as soon as I got to skool and realized I had way too much to do.
I sat down at the computer in the finance lab and felt I was in way over my head. I have this report due on international portfolio investments. Let's just say before today I couldn't even remember how to sum two cells in Excel and now I can get the standard deviation and correlations of 6 months worth of daily data on world and emerging markets, analyze the data, and graph it into scatter plots...all in Excel. Hats off to me. My inner voice was cheering for me all afternoon ;)
Then I came home and realized I have way too much to do in the next two weeks. Presentations, reports, research papers, exams...and...wait for it...packing! That's right folks...I'm leaving on a jet plane headed for the Eurozone. I am leaving for Germany in 17 days and I could not be more excited. It will be the first time I travel to Europe on my own, so I'm eager and a bit trepidacious at the same time. I hear Germany is absolutely amazing at Christmas time. They have huge Christmas markets in every town each night...
So, along with getting to see my favorite German (apart from the German my sister will eventually marry ;) ), I'm ready to see the country with my own eyes.
Then of course I'll be headed to India to spend New Year's with my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I'm going on a pilgrimage to a temple this time. How's that for holy?!
Ok I think I am rambling enough at this point. Just know that I am excited beyond belief to go to Germany and then to India in less than 3 weeks. And that I'll be slaving my way through school until then.
Sasha Baron Cohen is a funny guy. Ali G, Jean Girard from Talladega Nights, even Borat are all incredibly funny characters this guy brings to life. I'm not gonna lie...this movie was funny. Mostly for the fact that it mocked America in all its incredibly unwarranted ignorance, bigotry, and sexism. It captured the essence of seemingly unaware Americans in their everyday lives. Without the context of this "unaccustomed Kazakh", I wouldn't have batted an eye at the people depicted on screen. Yet, with Borat there to bring out all their idiosyncrasies and all their raw emotions, it's quite easy to draw humor from certain American lifestyles.
That being said, I feel it my obligation to warn anyone and everyone who has not seen this movie... this was perhaps...scratch that...this was THE crudest movie I have EVER seen. I took a break from my unusually stressful holiday weekend to go see this movie. And I can't say it was a welcome distraction. It was crude and it was vulgar. Of course, the story and the jist of the movie sort of requires this pervasiveness, but sometimes too much is just too much. There is a certain hotel room scene involving Borat and the fat guy that would not lend to an X-rated screenplay, let alone this one.
So it was funny, but it was crude beyond words. It was raunchy enough to the point where I felt dirty being seen walking out of the theatre.
Eventually, I'm sure you will see at least a portion of this movie. So just let me know what you think. I was disgusted, yet chuckled the whole way through. What's your take?
I'll admit it, I'm a Michigan fan. I have been ever since I can remember. I always thought I would go to college at UofM. When I was young I told every one of my parents' friends that I was going to go to the 7 year medical program up in Michigan and be a doctor. Yeah right. When I look back on that I think I only said that to get all those doctors off my back and let me be a kid. Then my dad starting working up in Ann Arbor doing some intensely brainy sort of job for the university that only a biomedical engineer could do, and I was hooked.
I followed the Fab Five even when Chris Webber proved he was dumber than he looked in the National Championship basketball game. I was glued to the tv each and every time Michigan has been at a Rose Bowl in my lifetime.
I'll be honest and tell you college football is not too exciting to me anymore. Yet, I know this game is huge. It is every year, and it is even more so this year. And no matter how many years it gets to be down the road, I will always be a Michigan fan....because Michigan to me is my childhood. It's car rides up to Ann Arbor for dinner with my family, it's little UM souvenirs my dad would bring back from work for me, it's the 'Pubs of Ann Arbor' t-shirt my dad bought for me when we walked down State Street in Ann Arbor...which was the last time my dad and I really hung out - just the two of us. So basically, being a Michigan fan to me is like being a fan of my dad. Just like Michigan he didn't always win, he didn't always lose, he had his ups, he had his downs, but through it all I've been a fan. And I always will be.
I'm sitting here in the million dollar trading lab, just wasting time before class. What is the million dollar trading lab you ask? Basically it is a small room on the second floor of the business building, tucked away just enough so that most undergrads are too intimidated to enter. There are only a handful of computers but each one has two screens...oh that's right...two screens...Sex and the City style. Remember "the Russian" from SATC who had this monsterous computer Carrie was freaked out to work on? Oh yeah, its like that. So I like coming up here to work a little, chat a little, blog a little, and mostly avoid the undergrads. Is it just me or did you start to become very glad you were no longer an undergrad after you graduated? I mean it's like being an undergraduate in college requires having an entirely different mentality than everyone else in this world. Undergrads seem to be all about...
A) how much they are going to drink tonight, tomorrow, and this weekend
B) how early before the football game they will commence "pre-gaming"
C) how hot the guy/girl sitting to the right of them in accounting class is
D) how not so hot the guy/girl sitting to the left of them in accounting class is
E) how "like" wasted "and stuff" they were Friday night
First of all, I was never quite like any of that in college, so maybe I'm one of the lucky ones. But for some reason, and most of my friends who have pursued higher studies will agree with me, I find being around undergrads nowadays to be particularly bothersome. Of course there are some exceptions, but most of the time I find myself retreating up here to the trading lab. It's best to keep my distance and not get caught up in the drama of undergraduate life.
So what's your take on undergrads? Am I alone here?
Recently I have had a lot of reasons to question our government. Most of us feel as if we are not directly affected by the decisions the President or even Congress makes on a daily basis. To an extent we are not affected, or at least we don't see it or notice it everyday. I remember my college roommate Sarah's dad once said something to the effect of...as long as I have my orange juice and my garbage is getting picked up I'm not worried about what they do up in Washington. Wise words I must say, but lately its seems much more complicated than just breakfast beverages and trash.
Here I pose just a few questions and thoughts:
If pro is the oppposite of con, does that mean progress is the opposite of congress?
The President's salary is well above $100,000. A fairly nice living for most Americans. Yet, our taxes pay for every single want and need he has. Lavish state dinners, trips up to Camp David, new silk tie for the State of the Union, etc.
Military body armor would cost too much in terms of defense spending. Yet, $100 million was lost last year on unused airline tickets for Dept of Defense officials.
Congress approved $500,000 to go towards the reconstruction of the former home of Abraham Lincoln's neighbor.
Federal prison inmates are accomodated with heated cells, air-conditioning, cable
tv, fitness facilities, and clean clothes daily. (You tell me what's wrong with that.)
Ok so maybe this post is meant to be deeper than it really is, and its not quite fun and hip and exciting. Nevertheless, it's what is on my mind. I think tomorrow I'll aim for funny. Or a little post-Office and Grey's commentary.
Yes, today was a slightly less than ok day. Optimistic me says the day is not yet over. Pessimistic me, and by far the cooler me, says the day cannot be saved at this point.
It all stems from the fact that I have a growing disdain for many of my professors. I know teachers should be respected and I do respect them. But respect and understanding are two very different things when it comes to professors, especially at a graduate level. There is my marketing professor whose sarcasm and pettiness causes nothing but tension and frustration amongst the majority of his students. Then there is my international finance professor. This guy is a trip. The material in this class might as well be written in some tribal aboriginal language...it's that hard. It doesn't help that this guy comes in to class everyday, shares some story about walking barefoot into Switzerland, tells us how he drank potato vodka in the Ukraine, then rants about how he has no idea who Katie Couric is. The fact that I even have a clue as to what interest rate arbitrage is proves that I got skillz. And it is no thanks to the professor.
So basically I just had a frustrating day. There is so much busy work to do between now and Christmas and it seems as if it's all starting to weigh down now all at once. I have a presentation to give tomorrow on a topic that I could not be any less informed about. Since the professor in that class likes the sound of his own voice I am hoping I'll get off the hook. Keep your fingers crossed.
In other news, I applied for a job with AC Nielsen at their Cincinnati office today. It's in market research, right up the alley I want to be in, so hopefully it pans out. We'll see. Keep your other fingers crossed.
Oh and I made a killer gaucamole for dinner tonight. That makes me kinda happy.
Grey's Anatomy (Seriously? Seriously. Seriously!) Well here I am...and here it is...my first official blog entry. I played around with other wannabe blogs back in college, but looking back that was just a phase. I'm really loving this font that seems to gracefully flow into this space, so I think I might end up having overly wordy and nonsensical blogs. Yeah, I'm just gonna blame the wordiness and nonsense on liking the font. Because I never ramble. Never ever. Except for that one time I rambled so much that the therapist told me to shut up. In my defense I think she had a drinking problem though.
Sooooo, where were we? Ahh, yes my first blog. After much cohersion I'm here, attempting to document my inner most deepest thoughts on a daily basis. Well, good luck to all you devoted readers out there (I know who you are). What can you expect in this here blog: sporadic entries, 2 oz. boredom, 2 oz. intrigue, juice of one lemon, splash of excitement. On the rocks.
