Right now my ears are burning (partly because of tiredness, partly because my friend just called me a monster, and partly because I just had an angry conversation when he mentioned my ex-boyfriend).

I must be losing my mind. Today I emailed my physics TA saying that I forgot to put my name on my problem set. Small problem that was causing me minor worries. She replies saying that on the last problem set, I didn’t turn in the first page – which therefore not only didn’t have my name on it, but also didn’t have the first two problems. I went to my mailbox to retrieve it, thinking that the first page must’ve been ripped off. No such luck, the second page was perfectly stapled and there was no sign of another page being ripped off. I must be going crazy.

Luckily my TA let me resubmit the homework if I found the first page (nix – I cleaned my room last weekend, cleaned out my binder, and threw out my recycling). Instead I just had to redo those two problems. Not a big deal, but these types of small minor tasks cause me more stress than necessary. The fact that I have to remember to turn this in tomorrow subconsciously pulls at the back of my mind while I am writing my research paper about ancient Chinese medical childbirth rituals. It’s because of my neuroticism that I am going to die at a young age.

I’m also very antisocial recently. I don’t even have the time to slow down and talk to my friends for a few minutes. Today after dinner, my friend bumped into me in the cafeteria and walked with me down the hall, hoping to have a conversation with me. In my hurry, I was powerwalking and talking to my friend trailing behind me. My body language clearly said, “I don’t have the time to spend 10 seconds listening to how your day went.” I haven’t spoken to my roommate in three days. In the morning we wake up and go about our morning ablutions, when one of us walks in the room, the other doesn’t look up, it’s like we have this tacit agreement that during finals season, we just don’t have the energy to be social.

Last week, My Crush said to me, “we should talk, do you want to take a walk sometime?”
“Ok sure”
“How about next week?”

Stanford students are going crazy.

Today an Alabama man shot and killed ten people, including his mother, grandparents, aunt and uncle, and random passerbys including a child. Five heads were discovered in ice chests in Mexico.

Everyone is going crazy.

M/ST/PT: 2/2/2

Averaging five hours of sleep a day, early onset dementia, my friends think I’m a monster, how could it get any better?

If you are interested in knowing, my typical schedule these days is as follows:

7:40 am – wake up, feel very very very cold, but take hot warm shower, feel even colder after getting out of shower
8:00 am – eat nice relaxing slow breakfast of toasted bagel with scrambled egg whites and tomatos + high caffeine tea while finishing reading for research project or making last minute edits on Chinese lit paper
9:00 am – go to human physiology and physics classes
11:00 am – crash in bed
2:00 pm – realize that I’ve missed lunch, am late for lab meeting at hospital with principle investigator of research team, decide that since I’m late I might as well take my time
2:15pm – arrive at hospital to find out that meeting has been canceled
2:30 pm – the only person to attend physics section, meanwhile down a bottle of ensure to make up for skipped lunch
5:00 pm – go to Costco to pick up prescription which was promised to be ready. It’s not ready. need to go back tomorrow. Asked my friend to drive me by saying we would go to In N Out across the street, which has no vegetarian options.
8:00 pm – Study in Green library until midnight, when I take a one hour midnight breakfast break
1:00 – 3:30 Study in computer cluster, but these really annoying kids are talking too loudly about chem, so I study in the freezing hallway, and now I have a cold.
4: check the alarm to make sure its set for 7:40, and then SLEEP!!!

Well, it’s 1:45 now, and just in case you’re wondering, I’m going to sleep now, and I’ve set my alarm for 5:45. Well, I’ll probably watch some Monk first, because of the stress induced insomnia.

Please everyone who is in finals right now, take better care of yourself than I am!

I realize that most blogs in the blogosphere are already yups who can’t get a real job so they post their opinions about current events and feel cosmpolitan thinking that others actually care about their opinion.  I call it: ego-masturbation.

I want to preface this with: I fully realize that what I am about to engage in myself is ego-masturbation (albeit quite frankly, this entire blog is ego-masturbation).

I recently developed the habit of switching my default bored website from facebook to CNN (read this blog to see why). Recently, the headlines have been pretty much the same: corporate greed, poverty and joblessness, and occasional portraits of how select families are making it through. Today I finally found the silver lining in this economic downturn: to save costs, some states are considering abolishing the death penalty (read article here). The argument is that Justice comes with a cost, 1.9 million more per capital punishment, to be exact.

Justin Thurber raped and killed 19 year old Jodi Sanderholm in 2007. On March 1, a jury will decide whether to uphold Thurber’s death penalty sentance.

“If Kansas Senate Bill 208 passes, it won’t take effect until July 1, so it won’t affect Thurber’s sentence. But future savings could be substantial.”

Consider this hypothetical experiment of Justice: A and B commit the same crime. Hold everything about the crime constant: motive, place, date, etc. Vary only the amount of time for legal proceedings so that A’s trial is on June 30 and B’s is on July 1; perhaps the judge for B  had a cold and had to reschedule. The outcome: A is sentenced to death and B gets a life sentence. The fine line between life and death is a germ.

The moral of the story is that Justice is not absolute. It is not a necessity. It is a luxury that can be appropriated and contorted to transient social needs. Yet, the bright torch of Justice is waved in the air – inextinguishable and unfaltering – the bright light in this dark world of sin. Just as one person is using that torch to shed light into the unknown, another is using it to burn.  This notion of Justice we all carry in our hearts is just as sick as how we preceive those we exact Justice upon. It begs the question, who really is morally superior, and who is morally polluted?

I can’t supress a slight [mental] chuckle. After decades of vicious debate and moral name-calling, it all comes down to the money.