You know it’s the day before the Dreaded Second Midterm for Logic when my Tuesday - which normally doesn’t require me to be awake before 2pm - begins at 9am and ended just over an hour ago, at 10pm. I spent most of the day meeting with students between my other classes, and I joined the other TA in holding a late study session after my last seminar. I’m not actually bitching, though - I dig being a TA more than I thought I would, and I’m certainly going to know sentential and predicate logic inside and out by the time I graduate. Nearly eleven hours of philosophy (well, nearly ten of philosophy and one of computer science) might be just a bit much for one day, though. And just think - I have another philosophy class bright and early tomorrow morning (at 9:30am).

Chris and I finally saw Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Keeping in mind that I’m a rabid Patrick O’Brian fan and that I was already aware of the major liberties being taken with the plot, I wasn’t disappointed. While the storyline was mostly fabricated (being taken neither from Master and Commander nor The Far Side of the World, although it’s more of the latter than the former), I felt it was more or less true to the spirit of the series itself. The roles were cast well, and as someone already familiar with the characters from spending an entire god damned year reading about them, I liked the way they were played - although I wonder how much is lost for those who haven’t been exposed to the novels. There’s not a lot of exposition, character or otherwise, but maybe more isn’t really necessary. Chris enjoyed it, despite being aware of having missed some inside jokes.

I was worried about Bettany being cast as Maturin, not having seen him in any other roles, but I think he did it well. I’m glad they didn’t get rid of the music and the natural science expeditions, although I did notice they cut out a lot of his Irish mannerisms - I have the impression this wasn’t always the case, as reviews of screenings of the film from last year often referred to him as the Gay Doctor. I don’t like Crowe all that much in general, but again I was pleasantly surprised with his Aubrey.

They certainly left the ending open for a sequel, although I wonder how closely they’ll stick to the general story arc of the series given the departures in the first film. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of the same, however.

Sometimes I like to pretend I’m six months shy of having a bachelor’s in philosophy, and when I read Slashdot posters grappling with enormously complex ethical issues, it’s generally one of those times. Not that I’m somehow more qualified than most Slashdot posters to grapple with enormously complex ethical issues - quite the contrary, I’d bet - but I’m probably more qualified to get pissed off while watching from the sidelines.

I mentioned that Slashdot thread not because I want to lay out the One True Way with regard to rules for teenage internet access. Rather, it’s indicative of one of the biggest noticeable side effects of a four-year philosophy education: I get pissed off a lot. It drives me absolutely batty when other people casually commit themselves to half a dozen ontological positions as if they were necessary truths, or when they smugly beg the question and expect a pat on the head, or when they confuse metaphysical issues with epistemological ones and don’t understand the patiently-explained distinction. In other words, when anyone says almost anything at all. Of course normal people don’t think about this stuff - if they did, we would all have been eaten by tigers long before Kant came along.

So when you think about it, getting a degree in philosophy is actually counter-evolutionary: I have become dramatically less fit for survival as a human than I was when I entered as a freshman, and I only went slightly into debt to do so. Three cheers for higher education!

It wasn’t until Tycho asked me to tell him about some new music the other day that I realized that I haven’t been listening to anything new at all. Chris and I don’t really do the club thing anymore (our occasional excursions with Al and croo aside), and I don’t remember the last time I actually bought a CD. Do they even make them anymore?

So in the spirit of figuring out what the hell I do listen to, I investigated my Recently Played list on iTunes, and discovered that I’ve somehow gone back to high school without realizing it. I’ve been listening to a lot of Nine Inch Nails, Sisters of Mercy, Skinny Puppy, old Radiohead, and The Cure. Seriously, in the past week I’ve listened to nothing that came out after 1995, which doesn’t sound that old until you realize that it’s almost 2004. It’s not that I dislike the past near-decade of music - not at all. It’s just that I really do think I’m thirteen again and wondering if my mom will drive me to the store to buy black nailpolish.

On an only very slightly related note, it’s been an awfully long time since the last NIN album came out. (I’m aware that liking NIN is no longer something one should admit to, but I still think they’re wicked cool.) However, it was five years between The Downward Spiral and The Fragile, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s been another five years since last we heard from dear old Trent. It does seem as though there’s something in the works, which makes me happy, but I hope they’ll let me out of the old folks home to go buy it. Plus there’s bound to be another tour. Do you think personal mobility devices would be frowned upon in the pit?

Sort of a homebound Friday, given that I don’t have classes on Fridays and the wind outside is still the kind that makes me think of poor little Atreyu clinging to a branch while the Nothing comes to take him away. It’s not that I don’t want to get fully dressed and go grocery shopping instead of ordering Chinese food, it’s just that the delivery guy is much better equipped to deal with the Nothing than I am. He’s got a bike and everything, and I don’t even have shoes on.

So I spent this afternoon working on a couple of different papers and eating my wonton soup. There are fifty different things I should be in a panic about this weekend, but I chose not to think about any of them today. Finals are coming up, things are due, classes need to be picked, bills paid, post-graduation plans finalized, even tickets home for Thanksgiving should have been bought weeks ago, but I’ll think about all of it tomorrow (after Pokémon, of course).

I’d tell you how my day went, but I was carried off by the Insane God Damned Wind that swept through the city and am currently waiting to land among the Munchkins. (I just hope nobody drops a house on me in the meantime.) However, I feel I really ought to point out the existence of Pumpkin Pocky, which has the potential to be the greatest food of all time. It’s Pocky, and it’s pumpkin.

Chris and I just got back from seeing the third Matrix movie (there’s nothing specifically spoiling here, but you might want to skip the rest if you haven’t seen it and plan to). The only explanation we can think of is that everyone involved in the first movie took all of its profits and proceeded to spend the intervening years developing debilitating drug and alcohol problems, rendering them incapable of writing even the merest snippet of comprehensible dialogue, much less making the second two thirds of the trilogy live up to the promise of the first. We knew not to expect much, but we’re still pretty disappointed - I’m particularly irritated as a philosopher, not because I expected them to wrap up the issues explored in the first (and to some extent the second) films in any satisfactory way but because I expected them to at least wrap them up in some way, philosophically credible or otherwise. Why bother with the elaborate setup if everything was eventually going to get thrown out the window in favor of a half-assed action flick?

Ahhh. I’ve been waiting for the day when the NYU computer labs containing Macs would upgrade to OS X. In fact, I’ve been avoiding them until the switch - there’s no excuse for OS 9 two months shy of 2004 - but when I made one of my periodic checks of the Multimedia lab on West 4th today, I discovered that not only have they finally upgraded the operating system, they’ve also bought a whole fleet of delicious new G5s to run it. I have to admit, I’ve warmed to the new case design a bit since I first saw the cheese grater photos over the summer. They’re a little bigger than the G4 cases, and not as shiny as I’d anticipated (which is a good thing), and much, much quieter. Maybe one of these days I’ll get a cheese grater of my very own while I’m still eligible for the educational discount.

It’s alarming how quickly my last year is going by. Thanksgiving is in two weeks, the semester’s over in about a month, and (if nothing breaks or unties) I’ll be wearing a goofy purple cap and gown in six. I register for the spring semester next week, and the CAS Student Council keeps harassing me about buying an overpriced yearbook that won’t include photos of me or anyone I know. Shit, I could get an horrifically ugly three hundred dollar class ring, while I’m at it!

And no, I haven’t seen the new Matrix movie yet. Fanboys of the world, I beg you: please stop mailing me to defend your favorite franchise. It’s probably inevitable that I’ll go see it eventually, but it’s unlikely that you’ll convince me in advance that it rules: keep in mind that I don’t enjoy action movies, and the general consensus of the other philosophy majors is that it isn’t much more than a mediocre one.

It seems as though we sort of skipped fall this year. Last week it was almost eighty fucking degrees and now we’re down in the thirties, so it looks as though we’ve gone from summer to winter in the space of eight days. (Which is also probably why Chris and I both got sick again.) However, it should be a measure of exactly how much I hate hot weather that I’m still happier now, even coughing and sneezing and wearing socks to bed.

And holy shit, Thanksgiving is in two weeks? Where was I during October?

I actually set an alarm so that I would wake up in time to get coffee and a bagel before Pokémon came on. I don’t think you understand how exciting it is that the new series is set in Hoenn: I’m the motherfucking Champion of the Hoenn region, and I don’t care if this May chick does mysteriously look exactly like my character (who isn’t named after a month). My Groudon will kick her Torchic’s ass any day of the week.

I cleaned my apartment in a half-assed but satisfying sort of way. It’s easier to write about epistemology in a clean apartment, you know.

I made a vast quantity of Thai noodle soup to be eaten throughout today and probably most of tomorrow as well. My throat’s doing that thing such that it hurts to a really remarkable degree when I swallow at all, but it hurts slightly less when I’m swallowing hot liquid. This means that when I have throat things I drink very little except tea and eat very little except soup, but I eat a lot of Thai noodle soup even when I’m not sick (because it’s far better than any soup ought to be when you can get it for seventy cents).