Stratovania

I'm constantly having dreams about going back to college, and they never make even the slightest bit of sense. There's often a feeling of frustration and isolation to them. I'm usually back at my undergraduate dorm at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, but either none of the same people are there, or they're there but won't talk to me. Usually the more rational part of my brain will kick in and tell me things that I need to account for in the dream, like being married and being older than anyone else in the dorm. I've actually known some people who lived in dorms while older than most of the students, and I always wondered if it was awkward. Or is it like you're young again but can actually enjoy it this time? I look back fondly on my college years, although I can also recall my depression being more severe back then. I'm sure part of it was because I hadn't gone on medication yet, but there was also a general sense of uncertainty. It was one of the few times when I had much of a social life, but I had to suspect that this was only the case because we were basically thrown together. It helped that I was in the Honors College, so I was in classes with the same people who lived in the dorm. Apparently some people thought the whole thing was too insular, and while they probably had a point, that's advantageous when you're the kind of person who has trouble making friends. It's sort of like when people argue that, before the Internet, people talked face-to-face more often; and my response is "I didn't!" I've noticed, however, that it's much easier to be lonely when you're surrounded by people who seem like they're having a good time. And while I had friends, I never felt I was really close to anyone, and I envied my dorm-mates who were. Admittedly, I rarely sought out anyone's company, and more often just wandered around and hoped to run into someone. Not to mention that getting used to living on my own AND attending classes at the same time was often overwhelming. It was a lot to deal with, and while sometimes I look back and think I could have put more effort into certain things (both academic and otherwise), I also kind of wonder how I got through it at all. Then again, high school was even harder, and there I didn't feel even remotely accepted. It's also interesting to me that I started dating bethje pretty soon after graduating. Perhaps you could say it was sort of a symbolic passage into a new lifestyle. I had no clue how to go about being in a relationship, and in many ways I still don't. Beth is someone I can always confide in and someone I know actually wants my company instead of just being forced into it, which helps to take away some of my uncertainty and loneliness. Now the problem is more that I feel guilty for wanting to do so much alone when she's right there.

By the way, during my time at college, I never drank, never even tried to go to a frat party, never got romantically and/or physically involved with anyone, and never attended a sporting event. I guess by some standards, I never really had the proper college experience at all. And yet I still fell behind in some of my classes.

So, classes start again this week. Actually, it's only one class, but I want to do well at it. Doing homework is such a hassle, though. I probably sound like a little kid, but in many ways I haven't changed a lot since then. It's not just that it can be frustrating, but obligations in general just feel like roadblocks in my mind. Stupid obligations. There are so many leisure activities I still want to do! Having a sense of accomplishment is always nice, though.

I keep having the same sorts of dreams over and over again, and I often feel I should write about them, but I always wait too long and forget most of the details. I know that last night, I had yet another dream about it being my last day of high school, even though I'd already finished college. I remember being concerned about leaving the building because there were a lot of crowds outside. I understand dreams about going back to school are very common, which I guess just shows how much of an impact school has on the subconscious mind. And the night before last, I was in some kind of extracurricular program or something, but I was behind everyone else, and they kicked me out of it without even telling me. I had to hear about it through the proverbial grapevine. For some reason, this was very upsetting. One theme that constantly recurs in my dreams is that of being powerless. Come on, that's how I feel in my everyday life! Can't I have a little bit of slack when I'm asleep?

The most recent Simpsons episode felt kind of weird. Homer strangling Bart has been a running thing on the show so long that it's a little bizarre for someone to actually take a realistic attitude toward it. There were some good moments, especially near the beginning, but it wasn't one of the better episodes even for this season. And I have to suspect they purposely paired this episode with the American Dad one, which also had a father afraid of his son. Really, though I don't have a whole lot to say about any of these shows. I think I used up my reviewing capacity on my post about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and I now need a recharge.

Happy Martin Luther King Day! I suspect a good many are off from work today, as bethje is, so thank the Civil Rights Movement for that. {g} Actually, I'm off today as well, but not because it's a holiday. I just haven't been getting very many hours at Walmart recently, but apparently that's not just me. It's not like that dream I had last night where I cursed out a customer with a complicated order was true, after all.

Since I've already discussed my temporarily missing wedding ring, I can't say I have a whole lot to report about my life as of late. Trying to balance school, work, sleep, and leisure activities is a bit of a challenge, but I think it's been going all right. I have a case study to write for tomorrow, but it only has to be 750 words, so I don't expect it to take that long. On Saturday night, we went out to eat at Bob Evans, which I suppose really isn't worth mentioning. And no, I didn't have any sausage at that meal. It's good sausage, but doesn't work well in omelettes, as I found out a few years ago. Bob Evans is actually the only close sit-down restaurant that serves breakfast all day, now that the Denny's has closed down. There's always IHOP, but that's a little more of a drive.

When I first read the synopsis of last night's Simpsons episode, I really didn't think it sounded very good. We've seen several plots about Moe renovating his bar already, and he's mentioned the possibility of making it into a gay bar a few times as well. Even the title was basically a rehash: "Flaming Moe" instead of "Flaming Moe's." I think it actually worked out well, though. The plot actually went somewhere, and it was nice to see Moe and Smithers working together, since they don't get to interact a whole lot under normal circumstances. I appreciated that they included a callback to the previous changes to Moe's. I prefer it when they acknowledge that they're doing an unoriginal story. I guess if the show lasts much longer, Moe will eventually make his tavern into the milk bar from A Clockwork Orange. I liked the subplot with Principal Skinner dating the new music teacher as well, but the two really didn't intersect much at all. By the way, did anyone notice whether Scott Thompson's character in this episode was the same as the one in "Three Gays of the Condo," or has he now voiced two different stereotypically gay Springfield residents? Also, what was the song they played when Skinner met the music teacher?

I've been getting a lot of spam comments on my journal recently. Is there anything I can do about this? Maybe disallowing anonymous comments would help, since it's been a long time since I got a real comment from an anonymous author. I'm still not totally comfortable with the idea, however.

Happy New Year! Now this is a totally arbitrary holiday, isn't it? I think the reason the year begins in January has something to do with when the new Roman consuls took office. That's very relevant to today's society, isn't it? If they're going to make it that close to Christmas, why not just combine the two? Oh, wait. Because that means schools might not give the entire week off. Speaking of which, I always felt gypped when they made us go back on the second of January, although I guess that wouldn't be the case this year. At least our new year isn't in the seventh month. What the hell were you smoking when you came up with that, Moses? Then again, we have a ninth month called "seventh month," so I guess the Gregorian calendar isn't always that sensible after all. I believe the reason for that is that the winter months originally didn't have names, because no one wanted to bother counting the days, and when they added in January and February they didn't change any of the existing names. Our calendar year really was cobbled together, wasn't it?

Anyway, thanks to my irregular Walmart schedule, I ended up just getting off work at midnight. As arbitrary as New Year's is, I still kind of like to observe the tradition of marking when the year actually starts. Not that I've always done that, mind you. A few years ago, bethje and I were in the car on the way to Atlantic City at midnight. Another time, she was asleep, and I spent the whole night on the computer. Now that I think about it, I guess it's really not tradition so much as obsessive-compulsiveness.

My new quarter at school starts in a few days, but for some reason Blackboard is still showing my classes from last quarter. I wonder when they're going to change, or if I have to do something to enact that change. I'm taking one on-campus and one online course again; I didn't much like my last online course, but I didn't really have a choice with this particular class. Before my classes start, I'm trying to fit in as much time as I can for playing video games. I've made it up to Dourbridge in Dragon Quest IX, and last night I checked out the beginning of Bowser's Inside Story. I've also been having a lot of dreams that are bothersome for some reason or other, and those are never as restful as the other kind. A lot of them seem to involve having to go back to high school and work on some project, although travel dreams are also fairly common. What's up with that crap, subconscious?

For what it's worth, I don't make New Year's resolutions. I really should make an effort to be less sloppy, but that's not likely to happen. Aren't people with OCD supposed to be neat? Figures I'd get the disorder but not the only part that could be potentially beneficial.

Also, according to Harold Camping, the world is going to end this year. Mind you, he said the same thing about 1994. Still, you can't be too careful, right? :P

I'll be pretty relieved when this quarter of classes is over. I still have my Digital Preservation paper/project left to do, and I'm really unsure as to how to proceed with that. I had to generate three ideas a few weeks ago, and they were pretty general, but maybe I should work with one of them. I'd go into more detail, but I'm sure this isn't the best place to ask for advice, unless someone reading this knows about archives and such. Whenever I have work to do, everything else starts seeming more appealing. And it doesn't help that I just received several new items for my birthday. I started Dragon Quest IX over the weekend, and it's quite enjoyable so far, but I haven't done much yet except build up my levels a bit. It's typical for a game like that to really hook me at first, to the point where I play through a significant portion of the plot within the first week or so, then I get to a part that's kind of tedious and set it aside for an indefinite amount of time. That's basically what I did with DQ5, where I still have to make my way through the Crocodilopolis. It's not that I don't intend to finish someday, just that I'm not as eager to return to a game where there's really nothing to do until I make it through a less fun part. Even the Crocodilopolis strikes me as a blast compared to homework, though.

One thing I still can't understand is why dreams that make no sense can sometimes leave me feeling uneasy. This kind of thing happened a few nights ago, with a dream that was too convoluted to really explain, but it had something to do with a guy who must have been a social worker or something trying to reform an alcoholic. It changed from a straightforward story that I guess I was seeing firsthand to a somewhat darker tale of the alcoholic manipulating the social worker. After that, it was kind of a farce with the social worker not noticing how obviously he was being taken advantage of. If it doesn't make any sense to you, well, it didn't to me either. For some reason, though, I woke up from this dream with an uncomfortable feeling. I've had reactions like this from time to time throughout my life. One of the first dreams I can remember, from back when I must have been about three or four, involved reading a poem that ended with the lines, "And he slept so fast/He slept right into midnight." Didn't make any sense to me even at that age, but it bothered me, and I still can't understand why. My subconscious can be a crazy place.

Is it just me, or are the recent Simpsons episodes basically just reusing old ideas? Perhaps that's unavoidable when the show has been around so long, but when every plot leaves me thinking, "Didn't they do this before?", it's not a great sign. In the most recent show, "How Munched Is That Birdie in the Window," Bart forms a bond with an injured pigeon, but we already saw him taking care of bird eggs in "Bart the Mother." Also, bethje reminded me of the recent episode with Lisa forming a bond with a whale that died, making us wonder what's up with all the deaths of sympathetic animal characters as of late. Lisa's irrational hatred of pigeons was an interesting character touch, but nothing really came of it. The plot shifted fairly abruptly once Santa's Little Helper killed the pigeon, and there wasn't much of a resolution. I do have to give them some credit for addressing an issue that I've come across from time to time, with someone getting upset because their dog or cat killed a smaller animal. While I certainly sympathize with the small animals, I have to wonder why someone would adopt an animal that's a natural hunter and then get mad because it hunts. If you want a pet that doesn't kill things, get a herbivore.

Incidentally, the only thing I really know about Rachel Weisz, who played the therapist in the episode, is that she did a strangely compelling photoshoot for Esquire in which she posed with a snake. And speaking of guest stars, Danica Patrick seemed to have been pretty awkwardly shoehorned in. Why pay for a guest star when they don't really do anything? Mind you, this has hardly been the first episode like that. What about Steve Buscemi in "Brake My Wife, Please," who didn't do anything other than introduce himself? He definitely ranks up there with the most wasted guest appearances.

Another year, another Simpsons Treehouse of Horror that airs too late. Hey, Major League Baseball, if you're so intent on having a game on Halloween, can't you at least have the players wear costumes or something? Anyway, the opening was kind of all over the place, but I'm glad they didn't stick with the fight between Homer and Bart. The Monster Mifflin sequence basically came out of nowhere, but I still liked it, and it was a good play on how people are always saying The Office is just like where they work. Yeah, I'm sure. The board game segment felt pretty similar to the old advertising mascot story, but had enough amusing jokes and clever bits of animation that it was decent despite the rehashed feeling. "Master and Cadaver" seemed too long and convoluted to make an effective Halloween segment, and it probably didn't help that I wasn't at all familiar with the source material. bethje told me what it was most likely parodying, but I've already forgotten. I think the only really memorable thing about it was that they did the whole sequence with Marge in a bikini. Not that I'm into cartoon characters or anything, but it was interesting. As for "Tweenlight," well, Twilight is pretty much a parody of itself as far as I can tell, but it was still funny. Actually, one of the most amusing things might be that the parody stuck much closer to the traditional view of vampires than Stephenie Meyer does.

What else? I watched the Family Guy and American Dad Halloween episodes as well, but I don't think I'll bother reviewing them. I did think the FG episode included a surprising number of subplots, even if one was basically just a gross-out incest joke. Have either of these shows done Halloween stories before? If so, it's certainly not typical. Oh, and it's kind of a weird coincidence that both the Simpsons and FG episodes did fairly long runs on not avoiding the use of brand names. Of course, both shows have mentioned actual brands in the past, so I'm not sure how the rules work.

In other news, I finished with my institutional report and my last discussion question for my Intro to Archives course, so I think that's all the writing I'll have to do until the final exam. Too bad I have no idea what my paper for Digital Preservation will be about. These classes go by so quickly on Drexel's quarter system. I'm signed up to take one on-campus and one online course again next quarter, by the way.

So, work. Not a whole lot to say about it, but there are a few things I thought were worth mentioning:

• In some ways, the machine that prints out the receipts is much more advanced than others I've worked with. It automatically separates the receipts so you don't have to rip them, and the register tape is easy to replace. What's weird is that it waits until after you're finished with an order to print the receipt, yet it still includes mistakes. For instance, if I accidentally scan an item twice and then use a void to correct my error, the second scan and the void both show up on the receipt. Since it doesn't print as it goes, shouldn't it be able to filter out those unnecessary slips of the keyboard or scanner? It can only be confusing to the customers, and it's kind of embarrassing to hand someone documented proof that I still haven't totally mastered scanning.
  
• Every Wal-Mart I've been into in the past few years, including the one where I work, has what they call a carousel of bags. I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about. While probably introduced to make bagging faster, since you can start packing another bag before the customer grabs the one you just packed, it mostly just seems to be confusing. People are always forgetting to take what they just paid for. I've done it as well. The rational explanation would be that this is a result of some of the relevant bags facing AWAY from the customer due to the nature of the carousel, but I have to suspect that there's also something about that device's construction that impairs the thinking of anyone around it, customer or employee.
  
• Bags in general can get a little crazy sometimes. I don't like to bag an item all by itself unless I really think it's hard to carry otherwise, but I ask the customers to make sure. And it strikes me that some people drastically overuse bags. I know I've heard some people say they have to catch a bus or something, in which it probably really IS easier to keep track of things when it's all in bags. If you're just going straight home, however, putting some items in bags just creates extra work for everyone involved. You also get people who think they need a bag to prove they paid for something, when that's actually the purpose of the receipt.
  
• The photo department is apparently a totally different culture localized in the middle of Wal-Mart, like an Indian reservation or something. When someone brings pictures to the front, there's usually no barcode on them, and even when there is it rarely works. What the cashier then has to do is to look through a series of sheets with photograph barcodes, and then make sure to choose the right one, even though the photo sleeves have next to no information. Fortunately, I don't have to ring up pictures that often, probably because most people pay in the photo reservation itself.
  
• It still doesn't look like the managers have work out the scheduling. In fact, this past Tuesday, I was scheduled to work from 6:30 AM to 12:30 the next day! I knew this had to be wrong, since it brought my total hours for the week over forty, which I don't think is allowed for part-time employees. Not to mention that I had class that evening, so I couldn't do the evening hours even if I wanted to. Even after I called and asked about my hours for that day, however, the messed-up hours still appeared on the schedule right up until the actual day. While this has only happened once so far, I've been scheduled again for time when I'm going to be in class, so I'll have to discuss that with someone.
  
• I'll never get over the number of customers who are totally excited over the "As Seen on TV" items that are up near the register. Dudes, do you REALLY think a Shake Weight actually works? There's another line called Pillow Pets, for which I've never seen the commercial, but I hear people quoting it all the time. Apparently the jingle is something along the lines of, "It's a pillow! It's a pet!" They're basically stuffed animals that you can use as pillows, which isn't a bad idea, but I really don't find them at all appealing.
  
  At least I can kind of see why kids want these, though, while I'm baffled over children begging their parents for Snuggies. Really? You find a backwards robe to be an exciting concept? What's wrong with kids today? Then again, as a kid, I used to like to wear my robe a lot, and my house got really cold in the winter. So maybe I would have been interested in these things if they'd come out a few decades earlier.
  

I don't work tomorrow, but I really do have to gather the articles for my literature review, and I'm still not sure what my topic should be.

It's been a little while since I've posted anything here, hasn't it? Even though work and school are both only part-time, they add up. And in the time not devoted to those things, I'm usually either sleeping or writing topic-specific posts for my other blog. Those are more interesting for me to write, but apparently not more interesting for people to read, based on the number of comments I get. I know that's not always a good way to judge, as people can like something and yet not have any reply to it, but part of what I'm doing with my posts is trying to generate discussion. If none is forthcoming, then I get a little disappointed. I was kind of hoping the WordPress would bring in more people who don't have LiveJournal accounts, but most of those who comment there are also friends here. Not that I don't appreciate having loyal readers, mind you! Sometimes the topic-specific posts seem a bit pointless, in that I really don't have anything new to say about most of them, so I'm just summarizing information that can be found elsewhere on the Internet. I like to think I write about them in an interesting way, but it still sometimes feels futile. I guess I'M always learning new things, though, so that counts for something, as trite as that sounds.

Anyway, as I mentioned, I'm back in school. I've noticed that people tend to react with cheers when an adult goes back to school, but sometimes I wonder what's so great about it. It costs money, involves a lot of work, and doesn't necessarily pay off at the end. I guess I'm kind of bitter, because I already have a master's degree, and it doesn't seem to have helped me that much. I want to try to be more conscientious about finishing my work and looking into outside opportunities this time around, but that latter item especially isn't really in my nature. I do what's required of me as a student, but I feel awkward trying to make connections. I guess we'll have to see what happens. I'm taking two classes, one on campus and one online, and the latter is a new experience for me.