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On Monday, some idiot decided to crash into my still-newish car and run off without leaving a note. There’s a moderate amount of damage to my rear driver-side bumper, but it looks like whoever decided to hit me lost his side rearview mirror. Good. I kept the debris as evidence, although the police don’t seem to care. Apparently, nothing can be done without a license plate number or a witness description.

Jaymie kindly took me to the police station to file a report, and of course, they couldn’t do anything aside from filling out the paperwork, since there were no witnesses and no possible way to identify the moron. We did see a sleazy-looking guy while we were there who was begging the lady at the desk for his car keys, having recently been arrested for a DUI. We were a bit disgusted, though, when he said he worked for the LAUSD. As if anyone needs another reason to not send their kids to Los Angeles public schools…

So I feel pretty downtrodden right now. Not only do I have to pay out of pocket for an accident that’s not my fault — I need to haul my rear over to the repair shop and a rental car place sometime soon. I know it shouldn’t be a big deal, but I hate wasting my time doing things that aren’t absolutely necessary. Moreso than that, I feel 찝찝해. According to Naver, there’s no English equivalent for that word. I’m generally not a materialistic person and lucky for me, I don’t fawn or obsess over my car. Still, it gets to me that someone just violated my property and now I have to go through these next few days with an unneeded sense of urgency about getting it to the shop and worrying about the fact that my bumper is partially detached and that the plastic guard in my wheel well has fallen off.

And so yesterday, with all this stress, I couldn’t contain my passive aggressive rage when I came out of work to see that another judiciously challenged person had parked their car at a 45 degree angle to mine. Even better, I had an existing vendetta against this person for speeding dangerously in the parking structure at my expense. The last time, I left an empty water bottle under the person’s front tire so that when they backed out, it would crack and, ideally, startle the driver. This time I just left a note, written on a torn envelope, with the ever-so-eloquent ‘LEARN 2 PARK PLS.’

As for my car, I think I’ll put off the repairs and rental car business until the weekend. I simply don’t feel like dealing with this right now. I’ve begun feeling sick the last few days, physically.

I hate people.

I’m really dreary and also a bit devastated, right now, because I can’t believe how many people still question the validity of global climate change. They still question the science behind it, despite the fact that the international community of climate scientists has warned us that anthropogenic climate change is happening. They’re so damn certain that it’s some kind of sinister scheme.

The most common argument I’ve seen lately, aside from “but climate change is natural!” is that global warming is all a ploy to get us poor victimized consumers to “buy green.” Who the shit ever said buying “green” products was the way to combat warming? Just don’t buy. Don’t waste. Quell your voracious appetite — the solution is not about replacing one type of consumption for another. But it’s so hard to get it past some people’s heads when this destructive mindset is what they’ve been indoctrinated with for so long. Gah, I really need to stay out of Facebook debates, where I’ve been seeing most of this corporatist sponsored trash. The best claim I’ve seen yet: “It’s not beyond human intellect for people to live on Venus.” First of all, fine by me if you go live on Venus, but leave me out. I like my Earth. Second, it may not be beyond human intellect to entertain such fantasies, but it is against physics. Effin’ kids.

I really wanted to go off about this whole topic at work today when someone started scoffing at the idea of warming, saying instead the earth was cooling, based on some new data that the temperature of the oceans is getting lower. But this isn’t the time or place for debate, and straining my relationship with my coworkers is probably not the wisest choice for an employee still on probation.

As for the data on ocean cooling — so what? Thousands of years ago, a sudden melting of glaciers cooled down the oceans, shut down thermohaline circulation and caused the Younger Dryas. Why did the glaciers melt? Warming. No shit? The Younger Dryas has been the go-to argument for climage change naysayers, but you can’t use it against warming yet deny the very same processes that put it into effect when the evidence becomes inconvenient.

So fuck you. Everyone who, in the face of all the facts and evidence and science, still refuses to accept reality. Just so you can justify your wasteful habits. Shame on you.

If you have a problem with anything I’m saying here, let me know. Then let’s meet in person and discuss the issue thoroughly, using facts and science, leaving politics out of it.

Sheeple: I have nothing in particular against Dr. Paul himself. As a socialist, I’m fundamentally opposed to a lot of what he’s about, but there are some ideas of his that, to a degree, I don’t think are half bad. It’s a good chunk of his supporters that I’ve got the aversion to…it’s wonderful that any candidate at all can get people as inspired as he has, but there are some that have taken it to a level that’s almost a little…well…cult-ish.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but there’s something wrong with a blimp flying all around the country with a candidate’s name emblazoned on it.

Me: I don’t mean to be too contentious, but how is renting a blimp any worse than playing attack ads or pasting banners all over the city. It’s OK to advertise for rubber tires in the sky, but not to get the word out on a revolutionary candidate? This mindset is exactly what’s wrong with our country. Sure, bring on the consumerism, but the moment we get someone who challenges the establishment, he’s labeled as crazy. No wonder we’re stuck in this rut.

Ron Paul: [The draft] should be called slavery, involuntary servitude.
Howard Phillips: It violates the 13th amendment, which prohibits involuntary servitude.
Ron Paul: Yeah, and the argument that I’ve always resented the most was, if you’re 18-years-old you owe it to your country. I’ve always wondered why the guy who’s 58 and had a million bucks and hadn’t served, why doesn’t he owe more to this country, maybe he should be on the front line. 18-year-old didn’t get anything yet, and he has to go and risk his life.

No, linguistics is not “an epistemological system of derivation.” Whatever the heck that is. Some people… One reason philosophy classes breed so much frustration is because discussions often reject scientific and even common-sense reasoning. If you wanted to come to all your knowledge based off of a priori notions, then you’d go in circles for the rest of your life. The most useful application of philosophy is to take tenets that we know and apply them in a useful, logical way - not to sit around talking about whether you’re actually talking about anything.

I sent out applications to two more places, which I won’t disclose unless I get the positions, this morning. I was looking through job posting sites though when I noticed that cbcampus had a ridiculous article claiming “Gen Y workers ask for too much.” Who came up with that title anyway? Sorry, but it’s not our fault that college tuition and costs of living have outpaced inflation and entry level wages are stuck at 25-30k. Try paying for rent, making loan payments, and saving up for your future. Why aren’t more people outraged at this not-so-subtle economic slavery that we’re bound to from the start? Not everyone can be an investment banker, ya know? The sad thing is, I’ll take whatever any of the companies can offer me. I guess this is reflected in my own diction - economic slavery, not indentured servitude.

A pat on the back to anyone who can come up with a good gmail username for me. It needs to be professional. All variants of my name seem to be taken. Or you can direct me to another service that has as clean an interface, i.e. not Yahoo.

Btw, it’s pretty pathetic how some people double-space a six-line heading and then increase their margins to 1.5″ on papers. But these are the same people who’ll end up at the top 20. God have mercy on your souls. And it always amazes me when people think they couldn’t live on 80k salaries. This opinion and the aforementioned people are very closely related.

Why do we as Americans feel entitled to a better quality of life at the expense of others just because we happened to be born here? Each one of us could just as easily have been a citizen of a different state looking to the ‘better life’ that we currently lead. Some people are so scared of making even the smallest of sacrifices. Perhaps they forget that communal living and society are basically one big compromise. The basic premise of a social system is that people give up some of their liberties to benefit the community as a whole. For example, you give up your freedom to kill anyone you want, but in return you don’t (shouldn’t) have to be afraid of someone killing you and taking your property while you sleep.

Sometimes I want to scream my head off.

It’s been a long week with nominal sleep at best, thanks to the longest shifts at work in the history of the world and ridiculously early classes. Today, then, should have been a welcome break, my morning class having been canceled. Too bad I didn’t know about it. This morning basically amounted to an absurd coffee run - I got to campus at 8:45, got coffee by 8:57 and got to class by 8:59. Oh wait. No class. I forfeited my precious sleep to go to campus to get coffee. Great. It’s ONLY FIRST WEEK?

I want my name to be a third declension noun (refer to title).