Saturday, October 02, 2004
Oh, You're Going to Love this One... (or, How No Pop and No Sleep Make Carl a Dumb Boy)
Man, am I tired. I decided to write, as an experiment, to see what my blog would look like under sleep deprivation conditions.
You see, I was/am studying Biochemistry again… I am desperate to rock this next test (Monday at 2:30 PM). On the first test, even after the professor threw out a couple of spurious questions, I received a score of 68%. This was not only a giant blow to my confidence and overall grade; it was also death on my ego. I don’t get D’s. Period. Not since the days when the Old-Carl attended Bible College have I ever performed so poorly. Now, excellence in that course is a personal matter.
To this end, I have studied all week long, at least 3 hours a day; neglecting other classes, and doing just enough to stay afloat. Some days, like today, I approached 7 hours of study time on this one subject. I started from scratch; page one, day one. I covered everything; even material that we aren’t going to be tested on. So now you understand how messed up and tired I would tend to be on a Friday night, after a week of early waking, lots of studying, and late nights.
So as the witching hour approaches, I find my mind shutting itself down. I am trying my hardest to learn everything I need to know about covalent inhibition of enzyme catalysis. I started to stray, and began to read about how penicillin works by covalently inhibiting the enzymes that are necessary in creation of bacterial cell-walls. Then I realized I was many miles off course (well, I was covering far too specific of material for the test anyway).
I had to start scanning the page to see where I “should” be, and was just starting to build up momentum in my reading/note-taking when over my headphones (I have loaded about 75 hours of music onto my school laptop, and I listen to the songs in “shuffle” mode when I study… the sad thing is that I have a lot more music I wish was on my computer, but I just haven’t borrowed the CD’s back from my brother. You see, we share a common CD collection, and they are mostly with him at his house. Together we have literally hundreds of CDs…)
Anyway, back to the point. Over my headphones, as I tried to read, I heard The Eagles of Death Metal sing (in their song “Already Died”) these words;
“I see you have a new man, and he’s some sort of new age hippie, and he’s rollin’ in the money… I’m glad we are friends because we are hateful as lovers.”
That did it. I was hopeless to get back on track. Every time I looked down, and started to read, I found myself thinking about love and frustrated affections. I was thinking about people I love, people I should love more, people I just don’t love anymore… Then in true “Council-Bluffs-native” fashion, I started thinking about food (I got a serious late-night snacking problem). It took a short reach to grab a handful of candy corn (which is sooooo Iowa if you think about it). Then my thought progression went like this: its too late for this much sugar, I need to see a dentist, I am fat, I like candy corn, corn, Iowa grows corn, corn stalks, autumn means a lot of hunting, I used to hunt with my dad, I hate to hunt, I love spending time with my dad…
I started thinking about guns, and about my dad (who collects and shoots guns), and about how it’s too bad that guns are so available, and that it is sad that gun violence is so common… And in my headphones The Smiths were singing “When you laugh about people who feel so very lonely their only desire is to die, well it doesn’t make me smile. I wish I COULD laugh…It’s too close to home, too near the bone; more than you’ll ever know” (from their song “The Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore”). This song and I have a long past. I listened to it (and the rest of the songs on the album) about twenty times on a long drive home from Denver, Colorado a few years back. I cried almost the whole trip home (which is a bad way to handle a car moving at 75 miles per hour). I was as miserable then as I have ever been in my life. Now when I hear the Smiths, it sort of cheers me up it a real introspective way; my life isn’t perfect now, but at least it isn’t the suffocating, dark maze that it was in the late 1990’s.
Whew. It wasn’t until the first chords of Portishead’s “Cowboys” were emitting a ghostly melody into my head that I realized I had sat and listened to the entire Smiths song, and hadn’t even looked down at my studies once. Then I saw something move. In my kitchen: it was like someone stepped into view, peering over my stove and nook area. This is par for this time of night. I see things out of the corner of my weary eyes all of the time. It gives me a start every time too. I jumped, did a double take, and there was nothing (like always). It never fails to completely disturb me.
But then, the Dixie Chicks came on my headphones, singing that classic Fleetwood Mac song “Landslide.” And all was right with the world. And I decided to blog. And now I am done. AND my headphones are playing The Eels, and they are singing “Life is hard, and so am I, you’d better give me something, so I don’t die; Novocain for the soul, before I sputter out.” And I’m really tired. And hungry. And sore from playing racquetball today. And afraid to go into my kitchen… I’ve sputtered out for the night.
See ya!
You see, I was/am studying Biochemistry again… I am desperate to rock this next test (Monday at 2:30 PM). On the first test, even after the professor threw out a couple of spurious questions, I received a score of 68%. This was not only a giant blow to my confidence and overall grade; it was also death on my ego. I don’t get D’s. Period. Not since the days when the Old-Carl attended Bible College have I ever performed so poorly. Now, excellence in that course is a personal matter.
To this end, I have studied all week long, at least 3 hours a day; neglecting other classes, and doing just enough to stay afloat. Some days, like today, I approached 7 hours of study time on this one subject. I started from scratch; page one, day one. I covered everything; even material that we aren’t going to be tested on. So now you understand how messed up and tired I would tend to be on a Friday night, after a week of early waking, lots of studying, and late nights.
So as the witching hour approaches, I find my mind shutting itself down. I am trying my hardest to learn everything I need to know about covalent inhibition of enzyme catalysis. I started to stray, and began to read about how penicillin works by covalently inhibiting the enzymes that are necessary in creation of bacterial cell-walls. Then I realized I was many miles off course (well, I was covering far too specific of material for the test anyway).
I had to start scanning the page to see where I “should” be, and was just starting to build up momentum in my reading/note-taking when over my headphones (I have loaded about 75 hours of music onto my school laptop, and I listen to the songs in “shuffle” mode when I study… the sad thing is that I have a lot more music I wish was on my computer, but I just haven’t borrowed the CD’s back from my brother. You see, we share a common CD collection, and they are mostly with him at his house. Together we have literally hundreds of CDs…)
Anyway, back to the point. Over my headphones, as I tried to read, I heard The Eagles of Death Metal sing (in their song “Already Died”) these words;
“I see you have a new man, and he’s some sort of new age hippie, and he’s rollin’ in the money… I’m glad we are friends because we are hateful as lovers.”
That did it. I was hopeless to get back on track. Every time I looked down, and started to read, I found myself thinking about love and frustrated affections. I was thinking about people I love, people I should love more, people I just don’t love anymore… Then in true “Council-Bluffs-native” fashion, I started thinking about food (I got a serious late-night snacking problem). It took a short reach to grab a handful of candy corn (which is sooooo Iowa if you think about it). Then my thought progression went like this: its too late for this much sugar, I need to see a dentist, I am fat, I like candy corn, corn, Iowa grows corn, corn stalks, autumn means a lot of hunting, I used to hunt with my dad, I hate to hunt, I love spending time with my dad…
I started thinking about guns, and about my dad (who collects and shoots guns), and about how it’s too bad that guns are so available, and that it is sad that gun violence is so common… And in my headphones The Smiths were singing “When you laugh about people who feel so very lonely their only desire is to die, well it doesn’t make me smile. I wish I COULD laugh…It’s too close to home, too near the bone; more than you’ll ever know” (from their song “The Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore”). This song and I have a long past. I listened to it (and the rest of the songs on the album) about twenty times on a long drive home from Denver, Colorado a few years back. I cried almost the whole trip home (which is a bad way to handle a car moving at 75 miles per hour). I was as miserable then as I have ever been in my life. Now when I hear the Smiths, it sort of cheers me up it a real introspective way; my life isn’t perfect now, but at least it isn’t the suffocating, dark maze that it was in the late 1990’s.
Whew. It wasn’t until the first chords of Portishead’s “Cowboys” were emitting a ghostly melody into my head that I realized I had sat and listened to the entire Smiths song, and hadn’t even looked down at my studies once. Then I saw something move. In my kitchen: it was like someone stepped into view, peering over my stove and nook area. This is par for this time of night. I see things out of the corner of my weary eyes all of the time. It gives me a start every time too. I jumped, did a double take, and there was nothing (like always). It never fails to completely disturb me.
But then, the Dixie Chicks came on my headphones, singing that classic Fleetwood Mac song “Landslide.” And all was right with the world. And I decided to blog. And now I am done. AND my headphones are playing The Eels, and they are singing “Life is hard, and so am I, you’d better give me something, so I don’t die; Novocain for the soul, before I sputter out.” And I’m really tired. And hungry. And sore from playing racquetball today. And afraid to go into my kitchen… I’ve sputtered out for the night.
See ya!
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