I didn't go to class today. In other colleges this wouldn't be terribly notable, but thanks to Shimer's heavy emphasis on discussion our attendance policy works a little differently. Students are permitted to miss no more than four classes; if a student misses more than four, they're probably going to be dropped from the course.

So this marks the first time I've missed these two particular classes. I needed today as a mental health/catch-up day. With my class with the Neo-Futurists, my school's play and my school's school, I've gotten a little bogged down. I think I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was trying my best to use an organizational method known as Getting Things Done; unfortunately my ability to actually do things after listing them out is still lacking.

Of course as the day's progressed I've managed to actually do stuff, which has made me feel better and better - if that weren't the case, I probably wouldn't be writing this post write now, since I find it kind of difficult to post when I'm in a not-so-great mood. But as stressful as these days can be they have a tendency to work as a wake-up call - an unpleasant wake-up call, true, but a wake-up call nonetheless.

In other news here are some cats.

Two Things That Have Happened In Monolithic Chain Establishments That I'm Kind Of Ashamed to Patronize But Still Occasionally Do Nonetheless

1. McDonalds

Two guys are sitting at a table not too far away from me. There's nothing particularly outlandish about either of them, but together they have a penchant for hilarious conversation. The best part is that they don't seem to be aware of how funny they actually are. Examples:

"What texting plan you got?"

"Unlimited, but I'm almost out."

and:

"You know, if I like a girl and she likes me, I'm gonna date her."

"Funny how that works out."

2. Starbucks

I've been stopping by the Starbucks on Berwyn before every class I've had with the Neo-Futurists. Every time I grab a coffee there there's this short white-haired man in big round cokebottle glasses that make his eyes look comically larger than they actually are. The collar he wears indicates that he's a priest or something of the kind.

The last time I was there I was waiting for the restroom to open up. The restrooms are single occupancy, so there's almost always a wait.

So I'm standing in front of the door for the men's restroom when I hear a flush. And from out of the women's restroom walks the priest.

I look at him and involuntarily cock my head.

"Sure," he replies. "I do it. Everybody else does it." And with that he walks off.

I realize what the heck, they are individual restrooms, it doesn't matter, and decide to use the women's restroom. I realize that it is in no way different from the guys' room.

Tuesdays are supposed to be productive days but they seem to end up being lazy days. See, on Tuesdays I don't have class, which ideally is a wonderful thing. Nothing to do but to catch up on all the things I have to do, right?

Nope. Inevitably I think to myself Monday night, "Hey! No class tomorrow," and end up staying up late, which leads to waking up late the next day, which results in me feeling lazy, which results in me not doing anything until later in the day (which is already late to begin with), which results in me not having a lot of time to do the things I need to do...you get the idea.

Right now I have two papers I need to be rewriting. They are due tomorrow. I could (and should) be doing them right now but my energy level is nowhere near where it needs to be. I'm sure that'll change as the clock ticks further and I realize more and more, "Shit! This has to get done!" but for now I'm having a very hard time actually doing those rewrites.

As of late I've been playing with a method of getting things done known as Getting Things Done, which is a sort of a zen-like approach to squaring away all of the stuff that you need to do. One of GTD's big focuses (foci? but I dislike the word) is making sure you write down everything you need to do the moment it crosses your mind. Then you take all of those little things you've written down and compile them in a more organized fashion. It doesn't seem like too drastic of a strategy but I find it super helpful. Just having an outline of what I have to get done helps out a lot.

And now I can cross one thing off of my list. "Write blog post." And that wasn't even due until tomorrow.

Here's a super rushed post for you because I spent about an hour today working on a paper for class and I still have reading to do and my brain kind of feels like one's legs might after running a marathon:

Some of you are nerds like me and already know this, but there's probably a huge chunk of you guys who aren't aware: the video game industry is in kind of a difficult place these days. We're getting to a point where the usual way of selling new games and systems - i.e. boosting the tech specs and making games look better - isn't having the same sort of effect that it used to. Thus game makers these days are pushing themselves to try new things; hence the popularity of stuff like tilt-based games on the iPhone, the Rock Band games, and the Nintendo Wii.

This is where Scribblenauts comes in. The game was shown off at E3 (sort of like the World's Fair for videogames) not too long ago and was a surprise hit. Like the three things I listed above it's not graphically impressive; instead its selling point was some really innovative gameplay. Here was Scribblenauts' promise: think of a noun - any noun - and write it on the touchscreen. Boom: said noun appears onscreen.

It sounds awesome in concept, but the big question is: does it actually work? I'm happy to say yes, yes it does. According to some enterprising players there are over 22,000 words one can write down in the game and use to help them solve various puzzles. The vocabulary is huge, folks. Interesting objects I've managed to come across include:

• God
• philosopher
• mime
• black hole
• teleporter
• time machine
• clone
• keyboard cat (seriously)

among many others. But there's something even more impressive than the vocabulary: the fact that all of these objects interact with one another in really amazing of-course-that-should happen sort of ways. I mean, there are some bog standard interactions that take place - write "dog" and "cat" and you can bet your bottom that the prior will chase the latter - but some are truly remarkable or particularly clever/hilarious. For instance: in one level your objective is to "Give Santa something that will make him happy." Cookie works - as does present, reindeer, Mrs. Claus or (don't take this the wrong way) child. Or also maybe the one time when I wrote "God" and "philosopher" only to find the philosopher was scared shitless by God.

Of course there are flaws, though. The controls can be a little wonky every here and there; you control your main avatar, Maxwell, via the touch screen, which just so happens to also be the way that you interact with objects onscreen. So occasionally when you're just trying to tap on, say, a doughnut, Maxwell might think that you want him to go to where you just tapped on the screen and thus he'll fall to his doom. Also kind of a bummer is the fact that interacting with humanoid objects isn't really an option. It's too bad that, despite the fact that objects interact so impressively with one another, they're usually more or less apathetic to your presence.

But I'm super happy to say that Scribblenauts works and it works damn well. 5th Cell, the developers of the game, deserve to be commended for even trying to make this game, and they deserve ten times the more congratulations for actually making it work.