A week into my summer vacation so its time to have a look at the 2007 Summer of SIH!! checklist:
-summer job...we should hear about that by Wednesday
-vacation spot...first weekend of June may be headed down to Virginia again, July hopefully Miami
-baseball on three of the household TVs at once
-Yankees game...July 3rd vs Twins, likely many others
-Senate meetings...we've had two already, many to come hopefully some with full attendance
-Penn State jerks...we'll see about that
-the late night talk show taping...I'll be applying for Letterdude tickets again soon

-Mikhail

"Procrastination! Gee, I wish I coulda wasted more time!"
-random old guy

Going through something I've actually never experienced before...I'll tell you as soon as I start to really grasp it.

-Mikhail

if you're checkin the post out for the first time, I've fixed around the layout...very nice I say. figured out a way to link my only two associates on here so w00t!! for that. well tomorrows the last scholastic day before the fall, terrible way to go out with two finals. Economics at 10 and World Geography at 3, the latter I'm not worried about at all, while I've tried taking the practice quizzes online and getting raped by them. its gonna be baaaaaaaaaadd tomorrow...I know it. so far I have an A in Math (which I saw coming since I registered for it) and a B in Speech (which I thought was gonna be alot worse). Ethics final today wasn't bad at all, took literally 15 minutes to do lol. it'll be nice to finally be done with school and get to be with the home crowd for 4 months. all there is left is the doubleheader, possible Thursday night stuff?, saying goodbye to people leaving Friday and back home Saturday.

-Mikhail

you know, its always good to know that there's someone that knows exactly how you feel...not because they've experienced it before or that they have a friend thats going through the same thing, but no...they as well are going through it. suddenly after hugging a buddy I hadn't seen in a while, the usual drunken shenanigans, a stellar beer pong game (that pretty much everyone was playing in, when only 4 people were shooting), then a good relaxed chat...the things you've heard the night before went just disappeared. thats another wonderful thing about college the tides turn so suddenly, one day you'll be thinking in the clouds the next your back on the hard ground. I've always been worried about what I really want and the indecisiveness really sucks, but theres one thing I can be sure of right now...I don't know what I want.

-Mikhail

well classes are finally over for the spring semester. its gonna be one extra day til I get back to New York since my folks have buisness to take care of on Friday, so I'll be back on Saturday. bummer too, I really wanted to be back so I can have the entire weekend to get back into New York rhythm. anyway, its been real good times up here, can't wait til the coming weeks when we start to mix the SIH!! Senate with the Penn State homies...the times are gonna be awesomeness.

in other news I just learned how to play with a frisbee...w00t!!

-Mikhail

You ever have one of those days when you're just thinking about everything possible? I don't know why thats happening, but I'd like for it to stop. There's nothing in particualr thats affecting me right now for me to do that so it really makes me feel weird. If I were able to explain it, I'd love to, but I can't...so I'll leave it at that.

In other news, three major assignments on my plate for this week, presentation for Geography, paper for Ethics and most likely my outline for my last speech. I took my entire Sunday and Monday morning doing my Powerpoint for Geography. Thank chesus he didn't say anything about listing resources because wikipedia makes presentations about terrorism 876128961301581239512 times easier.

-Mikhail

This Wednesday the 18th was the Day of Silence against LGBT bullying. I managed to stay silent for 22 hours and 24 minutes breaking it at 10:45 to say "aww, thats nice" to myself after reading a lovely note from Vicky and Paul. I learned that alot of people say "Hey" or "watsup?" to me and that theres alot of stuff probably end up saying to myself. well thats all I got.

-Mikhail

yeah so here's what I learned tonight...I've clearly lost most of my drinking ability (or rather drunk ability). I had quite alot, but I think the real reason is that I haven't had any fun doing so. I haven't enjoyed the satisfaction a good drinking game brings whenever you have to point to someone and say drink, or forgetting the little man rule.

in other news, quite a shitty week has finally passed while also making it 3 weeks left of school. its gonna be so weird leaving, no one to go bother as frequently as I do nowadays. either way I'm not feeling generally happy, which really sucks. theres a real big void somewhere, that not even my buddy alcohol can usually patch up. whatever it is, I might have only a month to fill it before a summer I'm actually looking forward to...hmm.

-Mikhail

So yesterday I finally received a package from my folks of a couple of dress shirts, dress pants and my Yankees and White Sox caps and of course Cheez Doodles. I open the package to see box inside of a box, but better yet this:

yeah very resourceful of them to use it for packaging. really I think this is a nice side effect of college, having better appreciation for my parents. Its sucks that it took some major financial rapeage for it to come out, but I'm glad it did finally and surely enough I think my folks can be grateful for it as much as I am.

-Mikhail

Its been a while since I've made a list of anything, but today seemed like an appropriate time to do one.

The Sick-Day Checklist
-have a 9 hour night of sleep
-while sleeping have one of the most trippiest dreams you've ever had
-wake up at 11 knowing you have something to do in an hour
-take a shower
-realizing you're body aches to much to even walk out the front door, go back to sleep
-wake up at 3
-hear interesting stories about your friend's night that you definitely wouldn't miss out on if you weren't sick
-drink lots of fluids
-watch an American Gladiators marathon on ESPN Classic
-eat lots of cashews
-watch you're buddies play drinking games
-watch Ferris Bueller's Day off

well my headache has finally settled a bit so yeah...
-Mikhail

Revelation for the week: You can say "I don't care (insert annoying person's name here)." this(insert number or random if you haven't kept count) many times and they'll finally get it. Unfortunately still not enough for them to have that concept stick in their heads. example:

[scene] Katie, myself and Bucket conversating about fruits (like the ones that come from trees...no slang) I believe.

Katie: I love kiwis!
Mikhail: I've never actually had a kiwi.
Bucket: OMG NEITHER HAVE I! LOLOLOLOLOL
Katie: Why not?
Mikhail: I don't know...its a really weird fruit to me.
Bucket: OMG I THINK SO TOO!!! ===D~~ :-P
Mikhail: No one really cares.
Bucket: *grunt* *leaves the apartment*

[/scene]

on another note 2700 songs on iTunes *applause*

-Mikhail

Here's some good news today, Happy Anniversary to my digital camera. Two years ago today, after a good hour of pestering my mother into finally getting me one she finally did and went down to Circuit City with me. It hasn't seen much action in recent months other than major trips, holidays, and extremely random occurrences. plus its rather outdated and on the hefty side, so an upgrade is definitely in order.

so cheers to my lovely camera!

If there's anything I've learned so far in college, it definitely has to be that road trippin is an essential to life. earlier today we took a drive out to Shippensburg to do some K∑ bidness for our chartering. The day started around 10:30ish when we stopped at McDonald's for breakfast. actually the surprising thing was it was waaaaaaaaaay after 10:30 and we still got breakfast (bacon, egg, & cheese McGriddle ftw). We got on the road at around 11 and drove down to Shipp, got there at 12, started at 1 and ended at around 5. Then the President of their chapter invited us over to their houses, which were pretty small, but you knew Kappa Sigs lived there. anyway, the guys down there are a good bunch...then we drove back up and then I went to TGI Fridays with Katie, Beckham, Mike, Amanda, Joe and Steph. our waiter was hilarious and the food was considering I'm a TGI Friday's n00b. good weekend so far.

-Mikhail

btw I'm a l33t

w00t!! the nice warmer weather is coming in. you know I love my cold days, but the first few warm days really kick ass. everyone else is really enjoying it, pretty much everyone on campus is outside...like potheads came out to play death hacky sack, everyone is eating lunch out in the plaza, and me and Katie and others went out and played some catch.

btw my speech David Letterman came out just fine. I didnt feel confident about it at all and even my teacher recognized it, but all he said was (well it was to the both of us that presented) "you both looked like you were passionate about your topics, but that umph wasnt there that usually is." nonetheless I got an 87.7% so I didn't do bad at all.

time to finish up me laundry, laters.

Long, long ago (in October I believe), I made a statement saying I'd return to my blogging ways as soon as English was over with. Here we are halfway into the spring semester and about fuckin time I'm bored enough to start this bitch up again. I'll leave my english posts on here for shits and giggles because some of them were pretty funny. I don't think I've ever been that satisfied at my work from any english class.

So here's the story, it's St. Patrick's Day (and happy one to ye all) at the ladder end of Spring Break. Consider that Spring doesn't roll in till this coming Wednesday and that Penn State doesn't believe in breaks in February (much like every year up until this one back home) I'll call it late-winter break. It started last Friday night when me and the brothers of K∑ flocked down to Charlottesville, VA to do some work at HQ to help raise our chartering fee. Needless to say there were lots of shenanigans and probably the most guy ass I'll ever see in a span of 24 hours. Lots of good eating I'd say (1 for 2 at Red Robin, Super 8 Motel's "continental" breakfast...basically english muffins and orange juice, Dominos lunch for free on behalf of HQ, and 2 for 2 at Texas Roadhouse) before returning back to campus Saturday night.

Sunday morning woke up at "9:30AM" and took a shower. "10:11AM" notice the quotes as I find Sahm has called me at 11:11AM. The doorbell rings and low and behold its Sahm...pwnt by Daylight Savings Time. We chill at Katie's, since she was our ride, til 12:30PM and go to H-burg. Half way there I realize I left my ticket on my desk *Price is Right losing sound*. Drive back to campus and get to the station at exactly 1:20PM in time to see the train peace out. Took the next one at 3:05PM and got home at around 7PM.

Monday I go to the DeezMV to get my permit/ID which took a surprising time of 2 hours and 30 minutes (about), otherwise not as bad as I've heard for wait times at any DMV (given the 1 hour wait to have my number called after taking the test).

Wednesday I went down to the Door to see Greg, who at this point I'm referring to him as my life mentor. It was a pretty slow day at the Door so we just hung out around the building catching up on my college life and the usual stuff in that gray building. After the hour and a half of chatting I go walking around SoHo and go to Foot Locker and buy some new kicks, namely these (although not exactly those colors):



Thursday come back to campus on rainy ass day and spent a couple of hours cleaning the apartment.

Friday, literally did nothing all day. I slept about 11.5 hours waking up at 1:30PM to watch Family Matters and an hour of Spongebob. My dickface roommate woke up to a phone call from his mom and proceeded to just yell at her as he usually does. I watched TBS for 3 hours, then Food Network for 1, NBC for 2 hours, and at 10:30PM get an IM from Katie saying to come to Giant with her to get some meds for sickly Alex. I bought 4 DiGiorno personal pizzas for $10 w00t!!, we come back and just talk for a bit and we watched Little Miss Sunshine and then talked some more before going to "sleep" at around 4:30AM.

Nothing on tap today so far, I called my folks and my grandma is on her last nerve with my brother, which = LOLs for me. then I started looking through my potential classes for the fall.

That's all for now, this is awfully long, but hey...its been a while since I've done the blogging thing.

-Mikhail

Lazere in Chapter 7 talks about stereotyping and prejudice. The section about prejudice talked about how it has been used in jokes and comic stand-up routines. The first person that popped to mind was Dave Chappelle. Stereotypes were the basis of a solid portion of the more memorable jokes on the show. As I look through my boxed sets of Season 1 and 2 and the episode descriptions, each seemed to have a racially or sexuality based skit. Hell, an entire episode was dedicated to Dave Chappelle's mock game show "I Know Black People" where contestants included a professor of African American studies and history, and NYC police officer, a writer for both the Chris Rock show and Chappelle's Show, a Korean store clerk, and white DJ, a social worker from Delaware, a white High School student who claimed that the majority of his schoolmates were black, and the lone black contestant a barber from Brooklyn. The questions ranged from things about black people in general such as lingo, things about the show Good Times and "why black people like menthol cigarrettes?" Suprisingly, the winner was the DJ who's grand prize was a can of hair grease, 2 bootleg DVDs and a pack of menthol cigarrettes. Oddly enough Chappelle has said on many instances one of the many reasons why he never came back for the much anticipated 3rd season was that he felt that he saw a white guy in his crew laughing in certain way in response to one of the more racially charged skits they had been working on for the season.

On that note, the piece by James Patterson and Peter Kim "Beverly Hills vs the South Bronx: The Day They Told the Truth on Rodeo Drive" examined the levels of morality "at two poles of American society." They sampled a few hundred people from both regions where even the difference of people surveyed showed a significant difference between the two. The jobs of those surveyed in the South Bronx held more noble jobs such as a clerk, a cook, a nurse aide, a teacher, and a cab driver to name a few. While the Beverly Hills sample include the president of an oil company, two film producers, an accountant, and a physician. The results of some questions such as the higher rates of homicide, rape and robbery in the South Bronx over Beverly Hills, and perhaps higher suicide rates in the Hills. Others such as Hills residents are more likely to commit adultery, hide crime, and own guns (even admitting to shooting people). They are also less to donate to charity considering that the area's average income is over 10 times that of the South Bronx. They concluded in their study that the majority of people in the South Bronx are honest, hardworking people trying to overcome the situation they've been dealt. Beverly Hills also has a high rate of drug use compared to the South Bronx. I wonder if any of them are stereotypical crackheads like Chappelle's Show favorite: Tyrone Biggums

Chapter 6 of Lazere talked about how ethnocentrism and culturally conditioned assumptions affect the value of an argument. He talks about how one's ethnic, religious, and regional background affects how they respond to certain things. What he was saying about abitrary customs and traditions that continue for no reason really other than because that's the way its always been. As someone that plans on being involved television, the example of the laugh track to imply something was funny. An example in television I'm more familiar with is the APPLAUSE sign. I went to tapings of Late Night with Conan O'Brien where on several instances the sign would flash, such as going to and coming from a commercial break, during the opening, when guests/performers would come on stage, and at the end of the show. I think theres some reason for that especially in late night comedy shows where you need a good level of energy to stay entertained and perhaps awake since it IS late at night for the viewer at home.

The dress codes, in particular the hair struck me a bit. Before my parents got used to my long hair (before I cut it I should say, since it was much longer a while back) they would always say "how do you expect to get a job with your hair like that?" Also myself being a Yankees fan, am very familiar with the idea of keeping hair neat means success. Last offseason's acquisition of the free-spirited, caveman-looking Johnny Damon, the cutting of the hair and the shaving of his beard to follow owner George Steinbrenner's personal rule of short neat hair and no facial hair with the exception of mustaches.

Damn, couldn't find a pic of him with his mustache that many of his teammates were sporting in August. Anyway, going on with the dress code, where I've worked the last three summers I noticed an interesting thing about dress code. It was a pretty casual atmosphere since it was a place specifically for adolescent youths, so alot of the staff regularly dressed in jeans and t-shirts. People that were more involved with the operations of the instituion such as finance and on some level legal, although many still worked with the youth, often dressed in slacks and collared shirts. And of course everyone participated in Casual Friday.

The hyperboles of parochialism such as "The World Series" and "The Big Game" whereever it is, gave me a chuckle. I look at "The World Series" more in terms of the baseball world, which I can sort of justify by looking at World Series logos from 1974 to 1986, then to emphasize my theory the addition of the baseball diamond from 1987 to 1991, then the globe from 1992 to the logo for the upcoming 2006 World Series. My last point is on American Ethnocentrism, with the fact that when we refer to America (and even the rest of the world) we're only talking about the United State and not including our North American neighbors Canada and Mexico and Central, South and the Caribbean. My own school is guilty of Penn State Ethnocentrism, we call ourselves "State" to emphasize ourselves as the best of the land-grant schools. That also reminds me of my friend that goes to Penn (University of Pennsylvania), they're the only Pennsylvania school (at one point at least, til we came along), so as my friend tells me of her schoolmates that wear "Not Penn State" on their shirts just in case anyone forgot what school they went to.

In high school statistics class my teacher Mr. Thomas always told us to check our assumptions. In statistics assumptions are used to determine whether or not a study is suitable for analysis. Typical statistical procedures require for a sample to be a simple random sample of the population being questioned. Another assumption is that the sample size is greater than a certain amount because the sample should reflect as much of the population as permitted by the funding available to conduct said study. Such an assumption attempts to assure that the sample reflects a good portion of the population and to eliminate possible bias when the study is a survey.

Assumptions in an argument are important because they help the reader or the audience the author is trying to convince to see where they drew their conclusions from. Using assumptions in an argument might not effectively deliver the point across because these assumptions might pertain to the author's beliefs and not necessarily that of the author's audience. The reader then must under their own reasoning figure the assumptions in order to determine whether or not to agree with the author.

Chapter 3 of Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy

In this chapter, Donald Lazere talks a little about how bias can be created by one's background, whether it be ethnic, religious, political or regional. It also talks about when formulating your arguments, they must appeal to a general audience, as stated by Mina Shaughnessy in her book Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing. Also how recursiveness and cumulativeness are effective in understanding the writer's point. Rereading a previous section and the building up of ideas to reach the overall point the author is trying to make.

Recursiveness, I thin, is pretty key in understanding anything. Repetition helps us to memorize and if there was something that we may have missed upon reading it the first time around, we'll be hopeful to catch it the second time around, or however many attempts it takes. Also cumulativeness because the reader is feed points by the author before he makes their conclusion or makes their point true to the audience.