I made an about page! I like it; do you? (Haha, you can’t tell me - comments don’t work.)

Through clever use of titles, I am now once again the top Google hit for Anush!

Jason’s home for the holidays. I am excited about this, and will probably be a dork.

I have a list of holiday things to do tacked up on my wall, and it’ll be interesting to see if any of that actually goes down. Recently I have found myself making to-do lists compulsively as an attempt to get myself to do things. The lists are usually titled things like THINGS FOR YOU (STUPID) TO DO and DO THIS NOW OMG !!!1!. They never work. The most recent one (YOU REALLY HAVE TO DO THIS STUFF, OK?) is trying to make me do World Area Studies and apply to Yale/Princeton. I am applying to Yale/Princeton on the grounds that telling people “I’m going to Plan II!” (and receiving a clueless response) is less satisfying than “Yale/Princeton accepted me, but I’m going to Plan II out of fiscal responsibility and a touching desire to stay near my parentals!”

The comment function appears to be broken. I’m on it, sort of. A million thanks to Ryan, the eternally vigilant, who let me know.

I am back. Ski trip, Lea, and shopping in Taos were all very fine. I am a master skier. Oh yes. Except I still cannot do moguls with any finesse on normal skis. This year, I tried my grandmother’s snowskates (very short skis) and, as it turns out, I can do moguls on those just fine. Pffft.

Christmas is working out okay for me this year. For once, I have been giving rather good presents. This is good because my family likes me, but bad because I am experiencing a net loss in material goods. This is okay because I am above materialism. In other news, I have decided that I need an iPod. It’s been a dilemma for me, because I sort of generally consider myself not very trend-following and my poor beaten-up CD/MP3 player is still truckin’, technically. Also, I prefer Windows to the Macintosh OS and am a little fearful of an iPod subversively choking my computer with Apple, cackling like the witch from Snow White. It’s just that, well. So very shiny.

Etan posted Ayn Rand’s thoughts on Christmas, which I mostly agree with, even if she is a crazy person. And China Mieville wrote a fantastic short story in the Socialist Review. I can’t quite decide if Christmas commercialism is a terrible thing or not important.

Off I go to ski in Santa Fe. It is all very exciting. I intend to not run into any trees, this time. Happy holidays, etc.

I’m very close to freedom. Except as usual I procrastinated on work, and now I’ll be up very late the night before the last day of school, studying for the WAS final. And I don’t have Christmas presents for hardly anybody. The spirit of capitalism takes some getting into.

We went to the Trail of Lights at Zilker Park today. It was boring. Everything was sponsored. I bet more people have seen the Starbucks logo than Guernica, even a reproduction thereof.

I got into Plan II! My life is complete! WOO!

Seriously, I’m not going to do anything at all resembling work for the rest of the year.

On a Decemberists kick right now. I like their lyrics:

Some had crawled their way into your heart
To rend your ventricles apart
This is the story of the boys who loved you

     — Red Right Ankle, the Decemberists

I spent too long today watching animations from the Ringling School of Art and Design. Go look at ‘Animations’ in ‘Portfolio’ — they’re almost universally fantastic. The one called ‘The Pier’ blindsided me completely — watch it! Do it!

Finally, done with Extended Essay. Woo! Next: self-improvement! happiness! sleep!

I am so excited about sleeping. I am, I am. Extended Essay nearly done-ish.

Why am I so bad at working? All I have done today is make this page look different and kill some comment spam dead. I was down to 1000 comments a couple hours ago, which is a reasonable five per entry. Just now I checked again and I had another 200. Augh! I actually like the fioricet ones best, because they share such pearls of wisdom as “why be a man when you can be a success?” and also fioricet is a pretty word! They should name babies Fioricet.

In other news I like this guy’s art and intend to make something similar for Frontage Roads. Sometime!