Nerd note: I leave it as an exercise for those readers who are acquainted with the methods of formal language theory to turn what I have just explained into a rigorous argument that the set of all possible properly punctuated English texts cannot be accepted by any finite-state automaton.

[source: Language Log]

Coming to terms with the essential ineffability of experience.

There are programming assignments due all the time. I'm going to a quiz bowl tournament in Rochester tomorrow. My English classes own, particularly Prof. Jeffrey Williams and the topics we ramble on about in class.

I've got to come out and say it: I'm not going to see Spamalot this Sunday because even though I bought a subscription to seven Broadway plays in Pittsburgh, I'm not interested enough in Monty Python to attend. I sold the ticket to my roommate instead.

I feel like I just commited heresy or something...

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

-C.S. Lewis

Still tired from the video game symphony at Wolf Trap and midnight dinner at the Silver Diner. (That reminds me: screw you, overpriced Disney restaurants! For over $20 per head for lunch, I expect a truly immersive 1950s environment, replete with anti-Communist rhetoric. McCarthyism throwback, anyone?) I hoped to pay obscene amounts of money for a legitimate high-quality CD or DVD at the souvenir stand, but finding none, I hit up mininova for a Stockholm audience recording. The same group that did Play! organized a Final Fantasy concert series a year or two ago, but that CD hasn't been released stateside yet, so I'm not holding my breath.

The last concert is in Toronto on September 30. I doubt anyone I know in Pittsburgh wants to drive ~6 hours to catch it, but there will be two famous composers in attendance.

I figured I'd be fairly well-dressed in my brother's homemade Link t-shirt, but there were some full-blown cosplayers (a friend and I collectively spotted Rinoa, Auron, Yuna, and Sephiroth) who could just have taken 495 South instead of North and wound up far away from Otakon by mistake.

It's been over a decade since I first played this stuff, but hearing familiar (authentic!) beeps and synth noises from SNESmusic.org will never get old. You'll need a plug-in or stand-alone thing (available from the site; Windows/Linux/Mac) since the files aren't in a standard music format, so it's a little more work than opening a link in µTorrent. On the other hand, since these are Super Nintendo-ripped files, they're all incredibly tiny.

If you like Super Smash Bros. [Melee] or are interested in a proper recording of an orchestra playing video game music, I uploaded Super Smash Brothers DX Concert Live by the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra.

Mainstream America doesn't often see quiz bowl in raw, uncensored form. Though readers of this journal may occasionally be subject to tournament standings or points per game statistics (as a friend once said when declining to hit on a certain opponent, "I think he prefers girls with a bigger PPG"), a jargon-filled summary is no substitute for the true experience.

I have personally dodged cameras at local tournaments (and have heard tell of RM players graciously giving interviews--oh, the burdens of fame) but, at the high school quiz bowl message boards, I stumbled upon several video clips of quiz bowl kids talkin' smack, demonstrating their mastery of pop culture, and proudly wearing their team spirit. Forget Ken Jennings's (you remember the Jeopardy! champion?) carefully constructed blog promoting awareness of his September book release; this is the real deal.

After all, it's MTV. If you can't trust them with the truth, who can you trust?

"You are a nefarious transgressor!"
"I think you're a nascent misanthropist."

There is a couple getting married that wants encrypted messages engraved in their wedding rings. How romantic!

I miss school. I think I might appreciate it more when we all return to academia in the fall.

eta: Follow-up on the encrypted engravings.

( Books read: )

35/101?

(italics for begun but unfinished.)

This list is subject to revision.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons by Kurt Vonnegut
The Plague by Albert Camus
Mythology by Edith Hamilton
Dubliners by James Joyce

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A dozen new books and one long-awaited reread.

eta: ( The list from Summer '03 for comparison )

Advisor Guy approved my prospective schedule for next fall. Note the Shakespeare class.

Emilie and I are promising ourselves that once we finish this programming assignment, we're going to purchase a chocolate voodoo doll and chop it up violently, then melt the chocolate and have fondue with strawberries.

There are children ("Little people," as my matrix algebra professor would put it) and their parents invading my campus for college decisions. I tried to sit at the campo for a little while, but a herd of middle-aged women walked by while I was half asleep, driving me to take shelter in the University Center. I used to be mildly afraid of white middle-aged women when I was very young—no joke—so it wasn't the best flashback to have in the middle of the day.

I don't understand why we can't spend the rest of our lives in college, without silly distractions like extended summer vacation. The daily grind is getting tough (okay, so it's actually been tough all semester, with one or two exceptional weeks) but I know I'll miss it as soon as it's gone.

Declaration: !Lent is a lifestyle, not a holiday.

eta: I retract any implicit bitterness underlying my description of little visiting high school children. Amy Zimmermann somehow found me in the UC and recognized me as an RM student, so I showed her around. It was pretty amazing to reminisce.