7:15 PM:

Sundown is imminent, so I have to make this fast, but I have a new niece! She was born to my sister early this morning. Both my sister and her daughter are well.

Whoo-hoo!

I caught The Weakest Link on Wednesday night. It wasn't terrible, but there were at least three things that bothered me about it.

First and foremost, I really didn't like the host's gratuitous meanness. And, yes, it was the gratuitousness that bothered me more than the meanness per se.

There's also a structural problem in the game, which would seem to all but guarantee that the strongest player will be voted out in the second-to-last round, provided that the other two have the slightest grasp of tactics; the danger in keeping hir around outweighs the extra few bucks to be gotten at that point. Which is precisely what happened on the show I watched, leading to a player who wasn't nearly as good ultimately triumphing over the player I'd been rooting for. It would've been more satisfying if she'd at least been beaten by a good player.

A lesser matter was that I found the end-of-round pronouncements as to who was "statistically the weakest link" to be grating, as they weren't entirely accurate. They failed to take some factors into account (e.g.: performance in previous rounds, time taken to answer questions), and didn't deserve the significance the host placed on them, I thought.

Overall assessment: Catchy tagline, but I'll stick with Millionaire and Jeopardy.

In other news, I wrote this week's column for the school paper, finishing it during the break midway through my nutrition class, as usual. (And arriving back to class a bit late, also as usual. The day's a juggling act, y'know.) As planned last night, it had no real point, but did feature lots of puns about cows, most of which were ones I had used elsewhere in the past. The most significant exception was a shaggy-dog story that was murder to build, and which just might confuse every reader my column has. But it goes as follows:

Which reminds of a conversation I had the other day with Sir Loin. "Chuck?" I said, "my friend and I would like to make a campfire on your field tonight."

"Well," he replied, "I'd love to oblige you, but there's a problem; we have logs you can use, but no kindling."

"What about the vines in that pile over there?" I asked.

"Those vines," he said, "are being prepared to be used in stringing some bows for my hunting outfit. They're very absorbent, and they've been soaked in a special solution for several days. You'd never get them alight."

Right about this time, his foreman, Seth, came over. "I've got some kerosene and matches. That'll do for starters."

"Great!" I said. So I turned to the other side of the field, where my friend was, and called, "stack those logs!"

"Should I use the vines too?" he asked.

"No," I replied. "Bow vine's spongy. Foreman Seth'll light us."

Between finishing this entry and publishing it to the Web, I belatedly did what I should have done last night: double-checked the actual meaning of BSE (or "mad cow disease"). The good news is that the term I'd remembered it as being -- bovine spongiform encephalitis -- is found on several Web pages, and seems to be an acceptable variant. The bad news is that the dominant, more correct term appears to be bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

If I'd known this at the outset, I wouldn't have gone with this joke at all; as it stands, I'm not sure what to do. It's quite possibly too late to change anything, but it might be possible, if I had anything to replace it with, which I don't. Unless I write a whole new bit, involving a bad golfer, perhaps.

No, not worth the aggravation. Worse comes to worst, I'll print a correction next week.

Sigh.

Last things first: The nutrition midterm grades are in, and the instructor graded very generously, it turns out. To be exact, he deducted one point for each wrong answer, on a 50-question multiple choice exam. In other words, if you answered every question wrong, you still ended up with fifty points, and random chance would probably give you a 67, just barely enough to pass.

Me, I ended up with a 74, which means I got slightly more than half the answers wrong, but still ended up with a C. So I'll probably pass the course after all, and I am much relieved.

(I've stopped caring about anything but making it to graduation. I don't have much choice.)

5:35 AM:

Okay, so thinking I'd get to sleep that early was foolishly optimistic of me, given that my good ol' cicadian rhythm is busy working its way around the clock again.

Actually, this particular pattern has been going on since Winter Break, more or less putting my body on a 25-hour clock. Which would be fine if I could just slow the Earth's rotation to match it.

Anyway. Here's a brief update of school stuff.

I keep missing linguistics classes, but remain confident that it won't matter. This may come back to haunt me (Tortoise and the Hare, anyone?), but I doubt it.

Over in public speaking, we had our debates tonight. I was on the "make all drugs legal" team, and while we were short a member, I think it went quite well. Although I'm still not sure if I should be feeling guilty that the third member of our team didn't actually say anything; I and one other person pretty much dominated the pre-debate preparation, and then handled all the actual debating. Granting that we were both ready to have the third person take a more active role, and that he claimed not to really be interested in speaking himself... well, I dunno. I have to admit that, to some extent at least, I was more than happy to get the extra time. Maybe I should've fought that impulse and insisted he take a turn?

Working my way backward... last night, I was at the wedding of a former schoolmate and study partner. This was nice, especially in that I got to see a bunch of people from Far Rockaway whom I hadn't seen in months. I did get home past 1 AM, though. And I missed the first new episodes of Buffy and Angel in weeks, in a dramatic display of self-sacrifice... but I did get my brother to tape it, and to swing by my apartment and drop the tape off earlier today. I expect to watch it shortly. Perhaps I should be doing so right now, if I can't sleep anyway, but once I finish writing this, I still have my column to write for the school paper.

Over in political science, I got my midterm back, and, as expected, didn't do terribly well. The professor decided not to count it; instead, I have a short paper to write and turn in this coming Monday, which will count for partial credit, and my grade will be very heavily weighted towards the final. Said short paper should be very easy to write, essentially consisting of a short summary of part of one chapter from one of our assigned books. The catch is that I have not yet managed to get more than two pages into said book, as said book is written in a very, very, very dull manner. But, obviously, I'm going to have to do it, so I'll stop complaining. Maybe I've just gotten spoiled.

Tomorrow -- or later today -- it's back to speech therapy, after which I get to find out how well my coin flips correlated with the correct answers on the multiple-choice nutrition midterm. I used a quarter, at least, which seemed as if it ought to give more substantial answers than a wimpy penny or dime, but we'll find out, I guess.

In the meantime, I still have a column to write; the fourth-to-last one of my undergrad career. I'm still not sure what this one's going to be about, although right now I'm thinking in terms of a whole lot of bad puns about cows, the excuse being all the mad cow disease hoopla. This has the advantage of being a subject I'm very familiar with, having done this once before (with a different catalyst) for my camp paper. It has the disadvantage of not really having any point, but what the heck.

The last three columns are tentatively planned, at least. #67's going to criticize the English Department's new guidelines on plagiarism, pending my confirmation that they went with the proposed guidelines I saw a few weeks ago. #68's my valedictory address, and #69's my final column, and I hope they'll give me the full page I want for it, 'cause I have lots and lots of people to thank.

(The run was supposed to end with column #70, but they cancelled one issue this semester. You can stop sniggering now, thank you.)

And that's about it for tonight's Insomniac Update.

Okay, I've gotta go to sleep, but given the recent dearth of entries, and the low probability that I'll actually finish the whole story of my trip to Michigan in its proper detail anytime soon, let me just cut to the capsule synopsis. I liked the school. I liked the professors, the students I met (both current and prospective), the program, the school libraries, the financial aid. Taken in isolation, it looks pretty much perfect.

I'm somewhat less taken with Ann Arbor. It's a nice enough place, don't get me wrong, it's just very different from what I'm used to. Culture shock is definitely going to be an issue. But my real problem is that it's not New York, I suppose, and as places outside New York go, I could certainly do worse. If nothing else, they've got lots of good bookstores, and a very nice library with an amazing weekly book sale.

On the downside, there isn't much of an Orthodox Jewish community there, although one can find the basic requirements between the Chabad House and the campus Hillel. Most importantly, I confirmed that kosher frozen pizza is available at a local supermarket, so I'll have what to eat.

It ought to be good.

11:43 PM:

Today is Heather Corinna's birthday. She edits Scarlet Letters, an erotic webzine, and -- more importantly, to my way of thinking -- Scarleteen, a site providing sex education for adolescents.

So last week, I was asked if I'd be interested in being part of a birthday project, an erotic rewriting of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Of course, I gave the only answer I could: that there was no way in the world I'd have time for it, but, sure, count me in. Which may be a perfect illustration of why I'm always bouncing from crisis to crisis... but, really, how could I resist?

This led to yet another one of those Shmuel moments this past Thursday night, when I noticed that there I was, a nice Jewish boy, using an Irish pseudonym, trying to write an erotic parody of a children's classic while watching Jesus Christ Superstar on TV. Yeah, yeah, I'm large, I contain multitudes, but I don't know sometimes...

Anyway, the final results are over here. Chapter Thirteen is mine, although much of the credit rightfully goes to Chris Bridges, who was giving me feedback via ICQ while I was writing the thing. He also wrote my favorite bit -- "The Congress and the Senators" in Chapter Sixteen -- although there are admittedly a few chapters I've only skimmed so far.

(Confidential to Erin: you probably don't want to check this out.)