It’s seriously not possible to find a pumpkin carving knife anywhere on the ass-end of Brooklyn, but if you’re willing to do the requisite searching anyway, you may discover things that are both Halloween and Powerpuff-Girls-related, and thus worth all the wandering.

Once you and your accomplice are determined to complete pumpkin carving shenanegins with the (really quite numerous) already available knives, the trick to de-goopifying the truly large pumpkin is, as it turns out, just to get in there with fists and fingernails and maybe even the occasional ice cream scoop. Don’t be alarmed at the sight of your arms disappearing up to the elbow in pumpkin innards. It’s a natural, beautiful expression of your pumpkinlove and nothing to be ashamed of.

Incidentally, white pumkpins are a stroke of genius, even if they are orange about half an inch under the skin. And the resulting masses of toasted pumpkin seeds? Oh baby, don’t let me commence.

The qat (who is just 2 legit 2 quit, when you get right down to it) is, as I mentioned yesterday, in New York for the weekend. The primary impetus for the trip was the Underworld show from which we are freshly returned. I didn’t realize before exactly how many songs I like are, in fact, Underworld - but it turns out they are, so that worked out well.

Being as I am All Tuckered Out, I’ll go into more detail tomorrow, but I will say for the moment that I take back (almost) every mean thing I’ve ever said about goths dancing, because ravers top them all.

See, the trouble with trying to write an informative and/or amusing post at the end of the first week of midterms is that it just doesn’t get any easier if you’ve also spent the last several hours in a relaxed and extended version of your normal (plenty long) commute. Even the Amelie soundtrack doesn’t help that much as far as post-writing goes; it just makes you more tired and French instead of just tired.

The mighty and mysterious qat is here for the weekend, which is great - don’t get me wrong - but did necessitate the lengthy trek from LaGuardia to Manhattan and then from Manhattan (from Harlem, more specifically) to the ass-end of Brooklyn. Luckily, we were able to at least break the whole journey up into a couple of comfortable stages with a mac and cheese break at the MrTailsHaus.

Now - us being home and it being late and this being the end of a very long midtermful week - I think I’m seriously off to bed. With any luck, I might even escape my now-recurring C dream.

For the Genetics class I’m taking to finish off my sciences requirement, there’s this ass-early (that’s Eastern Standard Time) weekly lab that occasionally involves actually getting down and dirty with microscopy and karyotyping and all that jazz, unlike my Einstein class last term in which we just sat around doing math problems in one of the laboratories.

Now, this lab I’m in at the moment - the class is Human Gentetics, so naturally enough we sometimes work with human samples. The first week, we did that introduction to microscopy thing everyone did in high school bio, where you scrape some cheek cells and identify all those wacky membranes and such. Because this involved actual human tissue, a big deal was made about safety precautions and disposing of slides in the relevant Biohazard containers and everything like that.

This morning, our lab involved taking blood samples from each student and examining them in groups, meaning we were working with our own and other people’s blood. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m thinking that if you get twenty or thirty promiscuous, experimental college kids in a room and have them bleeding everywhere, it’s slightly riskier than some cheek cells - yet we didn’t so much as wear gloves. But it gets better: in order to collect these blood samples, we pricked our fingertips with those not-very-sharp sharps you sometimes come across, meaning we each had deliberately exposed wounds on the same unprotected hands with which we were messing around with other people’s blood. I don’t think I’m that paranoid about things like this in general, but is this not maybe just a little bit risky? We consulted our TA about maybe getting some hot live latex action going on, but were advised not to worry about it.

However: on the bright side, those of us brave enough to stab ourselves with these glorified paperclips were rewarded with the awe and terror of those who were too squeamish and sat at the very edge of the room going “EWWWWWWWW” for an hour and forty minutes.

Because on Tuesdays I don’t get home until so very late and because there are so very many dirty dishes awaiting my attention and this god damned prelab to read and - oh yeah - one of those wacky midterm things the day after tomorrow, I am sending you to go ogle the dollarshort redesign instead of writing an actual post of my own. (However, it seems I am completely capable of writing very long sentences despite being or perhaps because I am so very, very tired.)

It’s been 82 days since I installed OS X and it has yet to crash, ever. Seriously, I thought this was a G4? Current uptime is 25 days (since I rebooted to install Jaguar). I haven’t had to run Classic in a couple of months, either, and I’m much happier for it. I just wish the Multimedia lab at NYU would upgrade - it makes me sad to see rows and rows of these slick workstations and flat panel displays still being mangled with OS 9.

The only thing more irritating than having that one Proclaimers song - you know the one - stuck in your head for three straight days is when you’re realizing it finally isn’t stuck in your head anymore, and then the process of thinking about it gets it stuck in your head all over again.

The thing about venues like Pyramid is that they make me feel about eighteen again. Not just because Chrissy and I were wont to wander down for Electra-City and Malfunction back in the misty prehistoric era of 1999, but because the space itself - especially the lower level - feels like someone’s basement that everyone used to hang out in on angsty high school weekends. It might happen to have a well-stocked bar along with the scruffy couches and christmas lights but the atmosphere is the same. Not that that’s bad, exactly: I did after all lounge rebelliously around plenty of clove-smokey basements in my day. Downtime used to have sort of the same thing going on - maybe less like a basement and more like an oversized garage someone’s older brother pretends is an apartment - but then they went and redecorated. Now it looks like an interior decorator from Starbucks got high and watched a lot of anime. Not that that’s bad, either.

I apologize for my unexpected absence yesterday. Will you forgive me if I promise to take pictures of my stylish new Bedhead-Disguising Cap? What if I promise that it, unlike Simon’s deceptively similar Cap, does not make me look like an extra from Newsies? I mean, not that I’m not all for the whole dancing and unionization thing. Quite the contrary, really. But like, my Cap is made of corduroy.

Well, even if you had agreed to forgive me, I haven’t taken any pictures yet anyway. Ha! See, it’s a funny joke.

I think the fact that my third IKEA catalog in as many weeks arrived today is some sort of subtle hint from the Powers That Be: the book situation is seriously out of control. My apartment is beginning to remind me of Trefusis’s office (from The Liar): Books. Books and books and books. And then, just when an observer might be lured into thinking that that must be it, more books. Barely a square inch of wood or wall or floor was visible. Walking was only allowed by pathways cut between the piles of books. Treading these pathways with books waist-heigh either side was like negotiating a maze. Trefusis called the room his ‘librarinth’. Areas where seating was possible were like lagoons in a coral strand of books.

Putting aside for the moment the sheer amount of field archeology involved in digging out my copy of that book in order to find the passage I wanted and ignoring also the fact that I had to find another book in order to give you an impression of my own book situation: I have quite a few books. The trouble is that I can’t seem to stop acquiring them, no matter how hard I try. First it was those little streetcorner book stands that seem to operate entirely from a pair of card tables or (in really upscale cases) the back of someone’s van. I found this particular guy who always, always has stacks of battered but certainly readable philosophy books that I just can’t resist. It’s hard to turn down Kant for a dollar or even Russell for two.

And then, as if that weren’t enough, I’ve started walking between NYU and my train station such that I pass the Strand twice a day, or more specifically the Strand’s fifty cent and dollar racks outside. And when they’re right out there on the sidewalk, it’s really hard to ignore racks and racks of books you can buy for pocket change. Some days I don’t find anything but others - good lord, back issues of Granta and Vintage Contemporaries galore.

So, yeah. Over the years but particularly since I returned to school I’ve acquired many, many more books than my apartment really ought to hold - primarily because I still don’t own a single set of bookshelves. I’ve got them stacked up everywhere; piles and heaps on every available surface. In fact, I would venture to say that the piles of books we’re talking about here are really more ranges than anything else. Like the Rockies, except peaks of contemporary short fiction and cliffs of classical texts in moral philosophy. Which I mean that’s great until I actually want to find and read one of them, when things become a bit complex. And then this catalog shows up to tempt me along with its predecessors. So many attractive and inexpensive options - if I’m willing to schlepp to Jersey or Long Island. And I’m not sure any Swedish furniture artist is worth that epic journey (think Frodo and Mount Doom).

Damn you, IKEA catalog. Damn you to hell.