Today I slept nearly till noon (an accomplishment of which I am unbelievably proud), got dressed only to go get hummus and baked tortilla chips, which I then ate while playing several straight hours of SSX Tricky. Around ten pm, I switched to Skyy & vodka and Sherlock Holmes DVDs. It’s officially spring break, and I haven’t started cleaning out my inbox or doing laundry or catching up on my reading yet, but boy howdy am I having fun.

On the menu for tomorrow: a whole lot of Dune on SciFi at the Crispyhaus. Yes, I swear I’ll get around to answering mail and everything. Just, you know, not quite yet.

So as much as I loved Two Towers, I do admit that it starts to wear a little on the third viewing - either that or three hours plus previews is just much too long to sit through when your tummy’s already grumbling. Unless you’re a fan of six dollar movie popcorn, in which case get down with your bad-ass buttery self. Chris and I hadn’t seen it since we went in January and noticed it’s still playing on 23rd street, so we headed over this evening, and while I still completely dig the Ents and everything, I did catch myself looking at my watch a couple of times. Afterward we ate at this really strange restaurant called ReCharge (or something) that I can’t seem to dig up a link for - we’d been there before with Spencer, they have this weird sort of gym theme going on but the food is quite good and completely ungreasy.

Other highlights tonight include the drunk guy on the train rocking out to some godawful Jennifer Lopez, getting a cute little embossed card telling me I made Dean’s List last semester (which I already knew, but still: something to put on my fridge), and the cup of pre-sleep green tea I’m currently drinking.

Okay, so, email: I know. I used to be moderately good about keeping up with it; I made an effort to clean out my caoine.org inbox at least once a week and tried to reply to most of the messages. However, my mail volume has been increasing massively over the past year or so, and I started falling behind. I’ve now managed to accumulate a truly, truly obscene email backlog. However, next week is spring break, which is traditionally when I take care of things like cleaning my mid-semester shambles of an apartment and I suppose I can add cleaning my mid-semester shambles of an inbox to that as well. For the time being, I promise I’m reading almost everything that comes in, even if I’m not replying, and I’ll try to get back to most of you over the next couple of weeks.

China Entertainment Television Broadcast is considering a new game show called Count Our Blessings in which teams of three would compete against each other. One team must have at least two members with an acceptable impediment - hearing, visual, or speech-related - while the other team would wear “dark glasses, mouth gags or headphones blasting out loud music.” The reaction, understandably, has been mixed.

What do you do if you find a Chee-to the size of a lemon? Sell it on eBay. (Regarding the leviathan’s origin: “We call it Seasoning Accumulation,” Cogan said. “If you love cheese, this is the Chee-to for you. It’s beyond dangerously cheesy.”)

I think Valentine’s Day when you’re seventeen is probably stressful enough without creepy notes from your Catholic school teacher. I’m not sure I’d find even a regular Valentine from a teacher at the high school level any less creepy, though.

And finally, this isn’t really news, or at least I hope it isn’t.

Continuing in this philosophical vein, a couple people suggested Matrix fans might read some Plato with their skepticism. There’s definitely a lot of Plato in the movie, I agree; I’m just sick to death of the Greeks. Although I suppose I’m sick to death of Descartes, too, by now.

A couple new things, site-wise: there’s an RSS feed, now, for those of you who have been asking, and I’ve also collected some past books featured in that sidebar over there along with selections from the weblog archives that pertain to books and reading. The result is right here. And if I can get all self-referential for a minute: Technorati pointed me to a post listing a total of five Emmas who happen to have weblogs. And here I thought my name was uncommon! Additionally, Jeff has alerted me to the amazing emo-reducing properties of Caoine. Thanks!

Speaking of site stuff, Dooce has a new design and is back in the saddle at last, having made the painful but inevitable transition to CSS over nested tables that everyone seems to be going through lately. That and the transition to Movable Type, which seems equally widespread and (perhaps) inevitable.

Jaymis writes to suggest maybe the recent release of The Matrix and Philosophy has something to do with those pesky freshmen I complained about. Amazon tells me there’s also Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in The Matrix, to be released in April. I wouldn’t be surpsised if either had something to do with it, but let me save you some time: if you want to know what The Matrix has to do with philosophy, get yourself a book on Cartesian skepticism. You could go straight to Descartes himself, or for something a little more current I’d recommend Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader (which includes an excellent Hilary Putnam essay, and papers by NYU professors Thomas Nagel and Peter Unger). There’s even a copy of “Brains in a Vat” (from Putnam’s Reason, Truth, and History) on the web. Either way, you’re probably better off than you’d be with that impish Keanu as your skeptical introduction.

Incidentally, I can’t help pointing out that the author of Taking the Red Pill has also produced “a nonfiction anthology of essays about Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” according to the Amazon review.

I mentioned that I recently acquired access to the OED Online through NYU, so I’ve been having barrels of fun with it. Here’s what the OED has to say about me:

emma

used orig. in telephone communications and in the oral transliteration of code messages, hence colloq., for m, as in ack emma, for a.m. (see ACK); emma-emma-esses (see quot. 1919); emma-gee, for m.g. = machine gun; pip emma, for p.m. (see PIP n.4); toc emma, for t.m. (see TOC EMMA).

1891 Man. Instructions Signalling 94 The reader may pronounce his letters in any distinctive method to distinguish those letters which resemble others in sound, e.g. B, V, D, E, or M, N, etc. may be called Beer, Vay, Do, E, and Emma and N, etc. 1898, etc. [see ACK]. 1915 ‘IAN HAY’ First Hundred Thousand xix. 289 ‘Pip Emma’ as our friends the ‘buzzers’ call the afternoon. 1918 H. W. MCBRIDE Emma Gees i. 9 Emma Gee is signaler’s lingo for M.G., meaning machine gunner. 1919 DOWNING Digger Dialects 22 Emma-emma-esses, smoke-oh. (From the signal alphabet, MMS, Men may smoke.) 1926 E. WALLACE Door with Seven Locks xiii. 125 Tell him I want to raid Gallows Cottage, Gallows Hill, at eleven-fifteen pip-emma. 1931 Morning Post 20 Aug. 8/5 He was the only infantry officer..who had a good word for the Trench Mortar crowd. ‘Are you Toc Emmas? You’re just the men I want.’ 1969 WODEHOUSE Pelican at Blandings vi. 83 We shall meet at twelve pip emma.

I’m sorry I neglected you all yesterday: blame Chris, and Sherlock Holmes (that bastard).

I’ve mentioned it before, but I continue to be impressed with William Gibson’s weblog. His latest post wades through a bit of its genesis, and I think he’s achieved rather admirably his goal of establishing a personal presence and continued contact with his readers. I’d read all of his books long before he began writing on the web, but my concept of Gibson as a writer and also as just some guy has deepened immensely in just the past few months, and I suspect I’ll get more out of his books when next I reread them (as I inevitably will). I could wish that more authors (or whatever) would follow his example - although his is not just an exemplary author-weblog, but an exemplary weblog, without qualification.

I got a lot of mail about that Brown post, most of it sharing in the admittedly caustic opinion I expressed, but some of it casting dire aspersions upon my character and sexual proclivities, so let me clarify: yes, I really meant that Sarah Green is more a little wonky over grades. So there.

But no, really though: I’ve got nothing against Brown and its esteemed student population. I visited Brown when I was in high school, back in the misty prehistoric dawn of 1998 or whatever. You know, Providence and all that. It’s good stuff, I can’t deny it. The vehement defense of Sarah and/or current and future Brown grading policies is duly noted.

Regarding Saturday’s venture to Batcave for the first time in eons, accompanied by a motley crew of NYU students (and faculty), I can only quote Catchdubs: “Like Abraham Lincoln, alcohol is the great emancipator - free your mind and your ass will follow.”

Finally, I just have to say that if one more freshman philosophy major brings up The Matrix - which seems to occur with stunningly unfortunate frequency, whether or not Cartesian skepticism has anything to do with the issue at hand - I’m seriously going to do something.

Dear Local Pizza Place,

So, like, I’m confused. How does the whole making money thing work out for you guys if you don’t actually deliver pizzas and collect the resulting money? See, when I ordered my pizza last night and was told it would be here in about an hour, I was just settling in to watch A Fish Called Wanda - I don’t know if you’ve seen it. Probably you have. John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis? Right, that’s the one. But then I realized the movie was over and the pizza hadn’t showed up yet, so I called to find out what was up.

And here’s where you lost me: I was told that the pizza had been delivered to my address and paid for by “a guy.” I admit I was a little baffled; see, there definitely wasn’t any pizza at my house. Plus there’s the whole thing where I live alone, so if I didn’t pay for it then it wasn’t paid for - much less buy an elusive guy. I expressed my confusion and was told that “it’s not a hard address, lady, I think the delivery guy could have found it.” Well, yes, I suppose he could have: but he didn’t, is my point. I talked it over with my crack team of highly skilled pizza place motive analysts and we came to the conclusion that the surly youth with whom I spoke was probably trying to cover the fact that Local Pizza Place had forgotten to send out the order at all. Of course, if that’s the case, it didn’t cover the error very well, but we couldn’t think of any other explanation. Assuming the delivery guy took it to the wrong house, who pays for pizza they didn’t order?

Either way, I called Better Local Pizza Place and they sent over a completely unsurly young gentleman on a bike with my god damned pizza within ten minutes, and I’ll just have to remember to indignantly avoid calling the first place again.

I realize I’m not ideally qualified to complain about the grade-grubbing ways of other college kids - I was admittedly vexed when an A- marred what would have been a 4.0 for last term - but this Brown chick is taking things a little far:

The traditional, 11-level grading system - what scholar of pedagogy Peter Elbow calls “a yay/boo meter with eleven markings” - is exasperatingly arbitrary. Let’s talk about the A- for example. I hate the A-. I hate it vehemently. What, exactly, is that particular grade supposed to tell me? That the professor just doesn’t give A’s? That if I hadn’t missed that one section or eaten a sandwich that one time during lecture, I would have gotten an A? That the professor didn’t like my perfume? What the hell! Why couldn’t the professor just break down and give me the goddamn A?!

What is an A- supposed to tell you? Come on, Sarah, you go to Brown and you can’t figure out what an A- means? It doesn’t mean that “the professor just doesn’t give A’s,” or that you would have gotten an A if only you had abandoned your wily sandwich-eating ways: it means your work was very good, but not perfect. It’s really that simple. My own A- from last semester, for example: I am under no delusions that it’s because the professor didn’t like my perfume; it’s because my grade on the final was slightly lower than the rest of my grades for the term, bringing down the average. You do understand the concept of an average, Sarah?

If Ms. Green fears the introduction of the eleven-grade system will reduce her to the depraved depths she describes in her editorial, that’s an indication she’s a born grade-grubber, not that there’s something fundamentally wrong with the grading system itself. Take a couple of deep breaths, make a cup of tea, and console yourself with the thought of B’s tempered with that cute little plus rather than focusing on A’s defiled with the dreaded minus. Not, I suppose, that Sarah is the type to ever get a B (not even a B+).