this afternoon i ran into a kid who was a student in one of my sections last quarter. we chatted for a bit and i asked if he was engineering major. you know taking calculus, chem and physics (blech! to it all). he said yes, aerospace. he then mentioned that his dream for some time (a few years im guessing) has been to start a cruise company using zeppelins as the vessels. he then proceeded to tell me about a new model of zeppelin and why it is superior (thankfully) to the hindenburg. it was quite interesting, to be sure. if nothing else, that for a youngster of 19 his goals are so unique and well-defined. strangely my deepest ambitions have scarcely stretched beyond the domain of bagels. i need some motivation.

saturday night i went and saw shallow hal at a bargain theatre in the valley that my friend affectionately calls The Stickyfoot. i enjoyed the scene where gwyneths character remarks about jason alexanders characters members only jacket and asks if hes the last member. in fact, hes not. ive seen two members since, one man and one woman. apparently, the membership is alive and kicking. if anyone knows how i might inquire into making membership, let me know. i desperately need a sense of belonging.

prescript: referring to the post below: i was reading the website and felt convicted. if anyone whose never heard of jlc or doesnt already like them goes to the show, i will personally give one dollar to that person. this is not a gimmick; this is a bonafide promotion.

to my vast readership (mom): sorry ive been an ablogger lately.

i had a super random dream last night. usually my dreams are vivid and somewhat complex. i can usually tie some key elements back to people and events of the previous couple of days. but i have no explanation for this one. i remember i was like a student in a class of some sort and i was leafing through the newspaper and i saw an advertisement for a free slush puppie with coupon. i remember getting very excited that i had found it. then perusing the advertisement further for locations (cus, as you know its really hard to find slush puppies anymore, in fact the only place i know of that might still sell them is a mobil station off the 15 in escondido and its been a few years since ive been. theres no use in bothering with dairy queens atrocity of a knock-off known as the misty; it just aint good) i noticed the following line: "available at the marine base" at that moment i knew i was screwed. i might just have to make a trip up to escondido one of these days to see if they are still available.

and if youre able, go catch jump, little children on march 20 (a wednesday night) at the mint in los angeles. for more info visit the JLC website. the show is only 8$ and the venue is small, i presume. its a show worth catching, or your money back!

so, today in one of my classes, the professor stated a theorem and said that the proof was "obvious". he even put quotation marks around it. of course, as a student little is obvious. but it reminded me of my old undergraduate days in the class of one riu-tai dong, visiting professor from china. doctor dong was a nice man, but as a professor he had three strikes against him.
(1) his english was quite lousy.
(2) he was extremely nervous in front of a class.
(3) he had a speech impediment.

a typical lecture with dr. dong would open up something like this (and i am not exaggerating at all):
s..s..so..ah...s..so..ah...ah..s..ah..s...s..s..so..ah...so to...ah...so today...ah...we talk about...ah...a metr...ah..a metric space...ah...a metric space.

the uncanny thing about good professor dong, was that his deficiency in english wasnt just a matter of verbal communication. there were words he apparently didnt know and so in addition to leaving them out of his speech, he would leave them out of his written lecture notes on the blackboard. in other words, there would be a gaping conceptual hole (while no syntactical holes!) in his board presentation, so much so that some sentences were plainly unintelligible.

anyways, the point of this story, now that you have a flavor for the man who is riu-tai dong, is that he would mispronounce (and misspell) the word obvious as "obivous". the humorous part is that these results so-called seldom were. we decided to give a definition of the word "obivous" which meant something either totally clear or utterly elusive. it was nice to remember this today.

im a man who keeps his word.

so another television confessional: i really like to watch pop stars. sure, ive only seen two or three episodes, but once it comes on, i cant look away. i was thinking it would interesting to have a show called rock stars, where its like pop stars, but they dont have to be good dancers, like being able to do the axl w rose sway would be plenty and they dont have to have good voice, anything scratchy would suffice. they dont really even need to have the right look or style or dress, just grab an old flannel and dont shave before the audition. basically its a random assortment of musicians, trying to get lumped together into a band with an instant record contract. like pop stars, the songs would be written for the band and we could even have studio musicians record the tracks for the cd. basically the selection criterion would be, who seems the least to mind being a mindless icon who expresses himself through music that he cant actually own. maybe its not such a good idea after all.

but it would be funny to see mid thirties hairy dirty guys crying on their cell phones back home cus they just got cut.

in one of my classes, the professor made a remark in passing about an apparent bruhaha (as he called it) of a couple years ago wherein mattel put out a pull string barbie in which among phrases like, I love my hair, and ,Im so pretty, or whatever could be heard ,math is hard,. cracks me up. do any of you all remember that?

there was a nice instance of the mathematicians pride in that same class this morning as the professor delivered the following monologue in the midst of a discussion about the class reading other students proofs critically:

"You should read my proofs critically, too. Icould be wrong on some occasion, as much as I might not want to admit it....But I will if I am..........Not that I will be."

gotta love academia.

And finally, a special shout out to jonatha brooke who is performing at the coach house in san juan capistrano tonight.