Here's the conversation, as close as I can get. Exact wording lost; sorry.

[Valerie] Stupid effing yearbook. . . .
[Mr. Leo] What is this "effing" of which you speak? What is "effing"? People keep saying that and I have no idea what it means. . . . (sarcasm)
[Brian?] You could actually define a function (exact wording lost)
[Daniel] . . . It's bijective and injective, but not surjective. . . .
[someone] something something buttjective,
[Mr. Alan] Daniel maps onto the empty set.
[Mr. Alan, Brian, Daniel] discussion of injection, women who take multiple men's virginity, virgins who map onto the empty set, priests and celibate people, polygamy

[Mr. Juan] What fucking function?
[Brian, Daniel] You just defined it!
[Brian] How about we just call it fucktion.

[Brian] If it's BIjective, then it gets a lot more interesting.
[Mr. Alan] If it's BIjective, then you'd have to redefine the range.
[Brian] If it's BIjective, then it's definitely not BIpartisan!

[Brian] Power sets are like power cords.
[Mr. Juan] No.
[Brian] Like a bunny with a potato on its head!

[Mr. Alan] What can we do with 2000 smarties?
[Brian] . . . in the pool!
[Daniel] We could go Hansel and Gretel!
[Mr. Alan] (falls off chair) I just thought we'd build a fucking cottage with smarties, made no sense at all!

[Daniel] I'm serious about the Hansel and Gretel thing. One every 10 feet, we could go 4 fucking miles!
[Mr. Alan] But then you'd be 4 miles into the woods with no smarties!

Ok, now they're all laughing hysterically. I guess that's the end of this, for now. People are strange at this time of morning.

I was with someone, but I can't for my life figure out who it was, and we were going through a castle, or something. There were two ways into the castle: through the front cover of a book and through the back cover. And then, many things happened that I don't remember, but I remember the ending. I guess there must have been a battle somehow, because there was this sense of danger. On my way back inside through the back cover, I found a nest with two robin's eggs in it, and somehow, I knew that the egg on the right was symbolic of my companion's life. I wanted to take the egg and put it away somewhere safe, but then, a powerful wizard appeared. Not a story-book wizard in huge robes type of wizard, but more of a wise-presence type thing. And he told me, "you can't live his life for him. He has to live it himself."

On a side note, for the first time, I was forced to use the toilet plunger. I had hoped that I might never need it, but it wasn't to be.

I wonder if parents have the right to pass their opinions to their young children? Young children aren't able to think critically for themselves yet. Is it ok for a racist parent to teach their children to be racist? If it's not, then why is it ok for parents to teach their kids their religion?

So I was lugging a trash can full of bathroom supplies up the stairs, when I saw a man in the distance. Upon closer inspection, this man turned out to be the fabled, feared Mr. Zuming. He had a talk with a few of us. That was scary. The last time Mr. Zuming had held a talk with me (many hundreds of thousands of years ago), he'd warned me that if I were late to class one more time, he'd send me on the next plane home. Well. This time, he told me I'd be working on a geometry class. . . with his father. His father! (That's like Mr. Zuming, only squared!) Is there such a thing as more imposing that Zuming? Can someone be more Zuming than Zuming? (Why is "Zuming" not looking like a word anymore?)

Life is exciting. Tomorrow, I must be awake to run around the airport collecting students. We were specifically ordered to make sure that they bathe. And to bathe ourselves. And to not buy our students duct tape, lest they duct tape their counselors to the wall (a rule learned the hard way).

That's enough for tonight, so that I might actually wake up tomorrow. Everyone laughs when they hear that I'll need to wake people up in the mornings. "You, wake students up? Haw haw hawww. You can't even wake yourself up!" And so on it goes. Many hundreds of thousands of years ago, failing to wake up almost got me sent on the next plane home. But beside the point.

Peace and good night!
--- 109

Upon closer inspection, the source of this constant discontent seems to be my abysmal performance in this year's Barge and Runk. That's not fair, that after I leave high school and go to college, I thought all this competitive-mathematics-as-life thing had come to an end, but I guess there is no escaping math. And the power of one three-hour exam to make for weeks and weeks of discontent. Not fair.

Grumble grumble back to studying, my long-living nemesis? Am I yet to have no respite from you?

Blarg = an angry, grumbling blag? I don't really know what's so great about blagging anyways. It has this strange allure of keeping records for posterity, like a despairing Charlie Gordon wrenching the depths of coherent thought into written form before his time and his higher consciousness is gone. But that's beside the point. I am packing to leave for Awesome Math in two days, and I shall blag.

So today, I packed shirts, sweaters, shorts, pants, pajamas, underwear, and socks. I have sheets, a pillow, and a blanket, but I haven't put the pillow and blanket in the suitcase yet. I have shampoo, toothpaste, contact solution, and a cosmetic bag where I will keep cosmetics, a compass, and a triangle ruler. I still need a college-ruled composition book, and that is why this boring packing list is ending up on a blag. It is because I haven't yet a reliable place to put this. Will also have a backpack with a computer, math and LSAT study books, glasses, spare contact lens cases, calculators, a camera, and the necessary wires for a computer, a cell phone, and a camera. And a composition book, and multicolored pens. I will put my cell phone in a purse, but the purse must fit inside the backpack to carry onto the plane. Will also need to bring piano sheet music and the contract form. Still debating if I should bring a violin?

It is also, I believe, time to unload a bit of emotional baggage that has drawn on long enough. Two months after we started dating, he sent me an incredibly nerdy-cute text message saying something to the effect of, happy prime month! And then, he told me that there were infinitely many primes to come. Ah, mathiness! Unfortunately, there will not be infinitely many prime months for us. The Dragon Princess was conversing just now with the Knight Errant of La Mancha, and recounting her sorry tale, and he, his, when all of a sudden, both felt like Quentin the elder, the Harvard student whose father had told him that relationships and time and the cares of life were all inventions by men: tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. He had tried hard to prove to himself otherwise, but failing, had thrown himself into the Charles River. And died, if that was not obvious. In their flagging relationships, one with a significant other and one with a friend, both had tried to prove that their emotional binds were something more, but ultimately, they are just two more tales of sorrow, two more grains of sand atop a sorites heap, two more tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. And now, the Dragon Princess is faced with the thankless but necessary task of writing her squire a letter of demotion.

I think I will want to bring a Rubik's Cube also, for what's a math camp without a Rubik's Cube? It is indeed a bleak world, but of course, this world will never cease to be anything less than glorious. Fine then. It is a world where men are not worth the trouble of relationships. I thought I had all the shoes I need, but I'll probably want to bring dancing shoes also. How will I fit them into my suitcase? I think I need to take some stuff out. Or I'll just squeeze them into my backpack. I do hope this isn't a fundamental mistake, but I'm not someone who would only date a person once, or who would take a break-up as bindingUntilTheEndOfTime. There I go justifying crap to myself. On my person, I will wear a regular set of clothes, plus tennis shoes, plus a watch, plus three jelly bracelets and a peace sign bracelet, plus a giant peace sign necklace, if I can find one. And now, I've gone and spoiled a friendship that was just fine before, and why, why couldn't I just leave good enough alone? I forgot to pack hair ties. Hopefully, the DDR machine is still at camp. I must not forget the contract form, and I must write down the phone numbers.

Should I bring a violin? It is really too late to be stream-of-consciousness blagging. My mother won't be too happy if I bring a violin, but I do need to practice if I want to be a higher chair in orchestra next year. Why is everything a freaking competition? It is really too late to be blagging.

Peace,
--- 109

I am restless. Restless and grumpy. It is, apparently, the ennui that comes every summer: the apathetic sludge of too little accomplished, too many daytime hours spent asleep, too many dark-night hours spent awake with nothing else to do but slough around on a computer, and too many sunrises watched. Actually, the sunrises are nice. It is very pleasant to go to sleep in the first light of rosy dawn. But, it makes for a very bad time waking up before midafternoon. Nonetheless, this lack-of-purpose drives one mad. In the absence of perpetual stress, or at least frequent stress, this amassing of restless energy occurs. There's no time quite like the middle of the night, when everyone's asleep and the internet is the only source of entertainment, to find that there are only a handful of websites that I visit. By extension, it is a very bad time to find oneself bored by those very same websites.

That much accounts for the restless. From where, then, does the grumpy come? Ah yes: the grumpy comes from being beaten by one's dance partner in a math competition. One's dance partner who is a year older than oneself, and by the competition's rules, not eligible to compete next year. A competition where there is no beating one's dance partner next time around.

At least feeling like a caged electron cloud is a change from the usual manifestation of vacation boredom. Historically, one's mind tends to deal by dwelling upon death, pondering nonexistence, the whole slew of depressing, not to mention morbid, unintended and unwanted trains of thought. But what is this strange urge that fills me now? It nags at me to. . . study? Holy project to infinity, life is strange.

It took me 15 accursed minutes to figure out how to post a blag entry. It has been too long. But this summer, I am reviving my neglected Xanga blag. It will serve as a (slightly edited) record of experiments, plus also a page for random ranting every now and then.

Peace!

this is to keep my xanga active. i guess i'll imitate demonslayer and post my graduation speech later, maybe.

http://orz.4chan.org/n/src/1196631476783.jpg

if the link is not working, copy-paste the following line into the URL:
http://orz.4chan.org/n/src/1196631476783.jpg

one cannot say that religious fanatics are irrational. if a few premises are accepted, each of their actions becomes fully logical based on those premises. most of us would consider the behavior shown in the picture to be irrational. however, what if one believes fighting for god's glory will secure heaven and eternal happiness for oneself and one's family? and what if one believes religious freedom will endanger loved ones by turning them away from the presumes true god, consigning them to eternal hell? suddenly, it makes sense to fight, or even kill, these presumed enemies. it is not that muslim militants are illogical. it is the "logical" conclusion they have come to based on their mistaken premises, the mistaken premises that come from the qu'ran. to end the violence of the photo above, it is the premises that must change.

that said, see how few are captured in the photo? each one is capable of killing five people, estimated conservatively, fifty or more with the right weaponry. how many more share their beliefs, but are not shown in the picture? how many of these would feel the slightest regret to kill the "europeans" and "british" of their posters? think how much destruction a few people can cause! there are very forces as powerful and deadly as religion.

surely now, someone will argue that religion drives people to help others and society as well. but, in my perhaps naive optimism, i hope that people would help others for empathy, instead of for the promise of heaven. regardless of race, religion, and culture, humans feel miserable when they think of others suffering, for pious and atheistic people alike are saddened by misfortune, for example, physical abuse or car accidents. i'd like to think that people do not need the bribe of eternal heaven to help others.

a guest speaker once said that two of the most fundamental tenets of faiths: "if you follow this religion, you will go to heaven" and "if you don not follow this religion, you will go to hell," which have their corollaries in christianity, judaism, islam, and most other monotheisms, can be reduced, respectively, to bribery and extortion. use heaven as a bribe to lure in "believers," use the threat of damnation to keep in "believers." surely humanity is better than this.