This post is brought to you by my inner geek and my intense need to procrastinate:

Stikfas are some of the coolest toys ever. My brother got me the red dragon and warrior woman combo last year, and it's fantastic. And the other sets they have are also great. Beta Female Demoness? Very cool. Mechana Segmented Robot (in the yellow and blue, of course)? Adorable - the robot has a little bear friend! So cute! Explorer and jungle cat? Nifty. The phantom? So versatile! The scythe for the Grim Reaper, the pumpkin for the headless horseman, chains for the stereotypical ghost, see-through body for the Invisible Man, and a crown for a Stikfas recreation of the beginning of Hamlet! Because these toys call out the need to be used in stop animation videos, and people have done so - skateboarding, fight scenes, even a bit of Star Wars.

Which brings me to some other nifty toys, courtesy of =http://www.thinkgeek.com/">ThinkGeek. I had already come across Darth Tater, a Mr. Potatohead version of Vader, but there's apparently also a Spud Trooper and Artoo Patatoo (complete with a little Princess Tater 'hologram'!). And then there's the plush Yoda backpack, made to look like you're giving Yoda a piggyback ride, a la Luke's training in The Empire Strikes Back. So geeky, but so very neat.

Okay. Time to sleep. Shakespeare midterm in about 8 hours, whee!

I have a train ticket to DC for this weekend. Whee!

This week's playlist (before the show is actually done, since the Decemberists' song still has about 6 minutes left):

* Yo La Tengo - The Race Is On Again
John Vanderslice - White Plains
* Cat Power - Could We
* Jens Lekman - F-Word
* Neko Case - Star Witness
Sufjan Stevens - For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti
* Beirut - The Gulag Orkestar
My Brightest Diamond - Workhorse
The Dresden Dolls - My Alcoholic Friends
* Exit Clov - Beast Simone
* Camera Obscura - If Looks Could Kill
* Built to Spill - The Wait
* The Decemberists - The Island: Come and See - The Landlord’s Daughter - You’ll Not Feel the Drowning

Really heavy on the rock department playlist stuff this week, but that's because there's good stuff on the playlist. Most of the show was played off of *gasp* actual CDs instead of my computer! Amazing!

So I picked up my Shakespeare book today and flipped to 12th Night. At least, I tried to. 12th Night starts on page 333. My book jumps from 320 to 369 - cutting off As You Like It mid-scene and giving me only the last page of 12th Night. It then proceeds as normal for a bit, with the entirety of All's Well That End's Well. Then there's the intro for Measure for Measure - or the intro to the intro. That gets cut off mid-way as well, giving me another copy of 12th Night's last page, then another full copy of All's Well That End's Well. Then, finally, it proceeds as it should.

So my complete works of Shakespeare has only part of As You Like It, two All's Well That End's Well, and no 12th Night. Lovely. This is going to lead to an interesting discussion at the bookstore...

The Sufjan Stevens concert was excellent; the opening band, My Brightest Diamond, was fantastic. Yay good music!

Playlist from my radio show this week:

* Exit Clov - MK Ultra
John Vanderslice - Coming and Going on Easy Terms
Mike Doughty - I Hear the Bells
Rouge Wave - Are You On My Side
* Beirut - Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)
* Sufjan Stevens - The Henney Buggy Band
Bright Eyes and Neva Dinova - I’ll Be Your Friend
Elliott Smith - In the Lost and Found (Honky Bach)/The Roost
Belle & Sebastian - Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying
Cat Power - The Greatest
* Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Mates of State - Nature and the Wreck
Stars - Calendar Girl
* Jens Lekman - At the Dept. of Forgotten Songs
Final Fantasy - The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead
* Camera Obscura - Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken
* Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s - Paper Kitten Nightmare
* Sufjan Stevens - The Mistress Witch from McClure (or, The Mind That Knows Itself)

And now I sleep, because sleep is good.

I am stressed and unhappy and hating work and feeling unproductive, but at least I have a stomach full of tasty milkshake and quality company for my moping.

The first radio show of the semester went decently well, I think. It was kind of weird doing just an hour, though I'm sure I'll get used to it.

The playlist:

Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
Beulah - Calm Go the Wild Seas
* Beirut - Postcards From Italy
* Voxtrot - Rise Up in the Dird
Mates of State - Fraud in the ‘80s
* Exit Clov - Communist BBQ
Stars - Look Up
Wolf Parade - It’s a Curse
* Be Your Own Pet - Bicycle, Bicycle
Le Tigre - Deceptacon
Sleater-Kinney - Combat Rock
The New Pornagraphers - Twin Cinema
Belle & Sebastian - The Blues Are Still Blue
Pavement - Date With Ikea
* Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s - Talking in Code
* Jeff Hanson - Now We Know

I just received a letter about my culminating essay for English - the requirement for me to graduate with an English major. My impending graduation now seems much more real. Gah.

Off to do my first radio show of the semester now - let's hope we break the tradition of having a bad first show, shall we? *knocks on wood*

The large scale event for this semester has been announced: The New Pornographers. Yay! Also, while I haven't heard of any of the bands coming to Olde Club this semester, it seems like an interesting mix - the usually indie rock, but also some jazz. And a week from now I get to see Sufjan Stevens.

*is encompassed by waves of musical delight*

Evidently I'm no longer capable of sleeping more than about 6 hours in one stretch. I'm not well-rested after these 6 hours, mind you, but I am awake. Last night I went to bed around 1:30; this morning I was awake around 7:30 even though my alarm was set for 9. A similar thing happened yesterday, too... But yesterday, after being up for an hour or so, I went back to bed for another hour, hour and a half of sleep. But I can't go back to sleep right away - after all these years of sleep deprivation and napping to catch up, I seem to have trained my body not to expect anything more than 6 hours. In some ways, this is useful - when I can only get 6 hours, it's nice that my body is reasonably alert. It's bad in other ways, though - namely when I could get more than 6 hours, I can't. At least not without an hour of reading or something before crashing again, anyway.

It seems WSRN loves me more than I love it. I applied for a one hour time slot this semester - I want to do a show, but I already have enough time commitments - and they gave me a two hour show. I almost went with it, but decided not against it. Some rearranging was done, and I got my hour: Thursdays, 5-6 pm EST time. Whee.

Last night I and 3 others took advantage of Restaurant Week (meals at great restaurants for $30 - appetizer, entree, and dessert) and went to Estia. Getting dressed up was fun, getting out of the Bubble was nice, and the food was amazing. So, so wonderful. Especially the lamb we all had for the entree - so tasty! Alas, Sharples today is going to be a bit of a let-down.

I think it may also be about time that I bid adieu to my social life for the semester. This morning I was thinking about what I need to get done this weekend, and it's not a pretty list. Eek.

Facebook's new newsfeed thing creeps me out. Yes, technically it is all information that was there before - which is why Facebook is the best stalking tool this side of MySpace - but you had to look for it before. You had to go to your friends page, look at who had recently updated their profiles, and then figure out what those updates were. Effort had to be made; now all you have to do is log in. If I even so much as glance at the newsfeed, I feel sketchy. And it's impossible to not look at it, since it's right there, smack dab in the middle, with no way to opt out or avoid it.

Here's what I don't really get. Facebook is free for users, therefore it must make money through advertisers. The advertisers get more bang for their buck the longer a user is on the site, since that way the user will see more ads. The newsfeed compiles all sorts of info you had to dig for before - i.e. it can drastically reduce the amount of time a user spends on the site. Which means it decreases the amount of exposure ads get. This seems like a bad business move on Facebook's part, and that's even before you factor in the number of users who are leaving the site because they're creeped out. So... Why? What's the rationale?

Today is the first day of classes - the first day of my last year in college. Eep.

I deem my hall theme a success! Even (perhaps especially) the Quad of Evil is pleased. Yay!

Long day today - early start, followed by a 1.5 hour bus ride, followed by a few hours rafting on the river, followed by another bus ride... So now I'm going to crash. Hopefully my body will let me sleep longer for 6 hours tonight.

Public service announcement: I have way too many clothes. This message brought to you by the lack of closet space in my new room.

I'm back at Swat after a week at home. RA training starts tomorrow, and right now I'm working on unpacking. My new room is nice - the bed is comfy (I tested it by napping this afternoon - in my defense, I got up at 6 am today, which is unheard of for me), I have my own bathroom, and the room itself is rather large. And it's not in the basement, which is saying something, since I lived in the basement for 2 full years - calendar years, too, not just academic, since I spent 2 summers down there as well. Having to climb stairs is kind of weird, and I miss having the water fountain fairly close by. More exercise for me, I guess.

Time to unpack a bit more before my brain shuts down completely.

Because I'm doing just about anything instead of the work I should be doing, I bring you this tidbit of information from a CNN.com article on the horrible heat: "...zookeepers are feeding lions frozen blood to cool off." That's right, the lions at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston are getting treated to blood smoothies. No word on whether the polar bears are getting the same sorts of perks.

Okay, back to procrastination.

I have procured myself a pretty boy.