Here's a great story (via Schneier on Security) of an improv group in New York who got 80 people dressed similarly to Best Buy employees and went into a store to record the results.


I've gotta say it...I'm jealous that I didn't think of it first.

Some people invent new ways to use existing words. Some people invent new words altogether. And some people invent neither and think that people who are "inventing" these things are just making mistakes and are wrong and should stop calling these mistakes "inventions". And to these people I say: shuddie! Addifying to language is clutch!

My last exam, natural language processing, is tomorrow.

Then I just have one paper left and I'm done. Gulp!

"In the days before the event, he had the whole world wondering if he would show up. Plane after plane waited on the runway while he napped or took walks and ate sandwiches. Henry Kissinger called and asked him to go for his country's honor. Soon after arriving, he offended the Icelanders by calling their country inadequate because they had no bowling alleys. He complained about the TV cameras, about the lighting, about the table and chairs, and the contrast of the squares on the board. His hotel room, he said, had too nice a view.
None of this had anything to do with chess, of course...or maybe it did. If he won, he'd be the first American world champion in history. If he lost, he'd just be another patzer from Brooklyn." -- Searching for Bobby Fischer

Sitting outside the exam room, waiting for the doors to open. I know the drill once they do. Find a table, sit down. Get out your student card, your pen, and backup pen, and do a last minute glance at some of your notes. Bags and jackets to the front. Smile at the few people you know in the class. Mouth "good luck" to them, and secretly hope that they fail. Try to read the first few questions through the cover sheet of the exam booklet. And then wait.

I know what it feels like to read a question and have no idea how to answer it. I know what it feels like to read a question and have half the answer already written down before you finish reading it. I know the panic that comes from having no idea how you're possibly going to pass this exam. And I know the surge of confidence that comes from knowing that you kicked the crap out of it. This exam is no different from any other. Or maybe it is.

When I walk out of that door... When I hand my paper in to the prof, and we make eye contact... When he smiles slightly because he knows me... It will be the last exam I write. It'll be the end. The paper will slip out of my fingers and into his, onto the little pile of exams that he's collected so far, and I'll gather my jacket and hoist my backpack onto one shoulder and that'll be it. It will seal the deal. It will be over.

It won't feel like goodbye, because it never does. There's no final Bahen coffee and corn muffin in a morning class. There's no final giggling in the grad lounge to sum up my five years here and all the years prior. There will be no fireworks streaming through the air as I walk home. People I walk by on the street will barely glance towards me because there will be no sign above my head that exclaims that this is the end. Profs will grade their exams as they always do. And then they'll begin planning their courses for the fall. New students will come, and old students will go, and I'll be just one of the countless thousands who have passed through the system. Who handed in their last exam and wondered silently why no one else noticed that it was the end of the world.

And I'll take a plane and fly off to the other side of the continent. And people will say "she's gone to Google" as if that could possible sum up the billions of experiences I'll have. I'll meet new best friends, and find new things I love and new things I hate, and grow in ways I couldn't possibly have imagined.

And one day I'll look back at this moment and laugh because I had no idea what was to come. I'll think I was cute and characteristically over-dramatic and I'll vaguely wonder whether or not I really believed that I would take over the world. Hindsight is 20/20 and I'll giggle at my follies and suddenly notice foreshadowing that seemed unimportant at the time. Some people will have been lost to the noise of the world and others will still be close friends and we'll talk about the past like it was a piece of artwork.

But it will be over.

So I read through some last equations. And I memorize the words that comprise definitions, not really paying attention to their meaning. And I try to tell myself that it doesn't matter how I do, even though right now it matters more than anything else in the world.

And I know that there are others in the room who are just as scared as I am. Not of the exam, because the mark you get is just a series of numbers, but everything to come. A lot of movement and a lot of change.

The prof walks out of the exam room and gestures that it's time for everyone to come in and take a seat. And he glances at me, even though he couldn't possibly know everything that I was thinking.

I smile. He smiles back.

For a brief instant, this could be just any other exam that I've taken. And then it's time to go inside.

There's the gentle whoosh noise of my e-mail disappearing and it's all over. My final assignment has been handed in. No more assignments, no more exams, no more anything undergrady ever.

I thought I'd be contemplative, but all I can find is excitement.

ZOMG! :D

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

They say that time goes slower when you're about to die. They say that every sense becomes heightened and every moment overextended.

I'm not sure who this "they" is, because they'd be too dead to tell this tale. Perhaps zombies told us. Perhaps they paused from eating brains and told us what the last few moments of life is like. I'm not sure if we can trust them. Zombies have been known to lie before.

I do know, however, that it feels like time slows down when you try to just absorb your surroundings because you're leaving them and don't dare miss a single instant. I know what it feels like for my fingertips to read the bumps along Bahen's walls, and I can hear the soft scrunch of fabric against fabric of an awkward goodbye hug, and feel the pressure and release of a goodbye hug without a trace of awkwardness.

I can feel the grit of too many sourkeys against my tongue and the slight jitters of too many coffees in one day, because I wanted to have one with everyone who wanted one last one. And I can feel the grin on my own face that comes from glancing back one last time and seeing someone glance back too, and I can recall the mirrored grin on their face too.

I'm worried about forgetting. I'm worried about being forgotten. But mostly I'm worried about taking this jump from something so certain and known, into a life that I don't recognize and can barely even predict.

That's part of what makes it fun, of course. The challenge. Worrying and then jumping anyway. I've been known to do stupider things.

So I hug and I grin and I say goodbye and good luck and see you soon and this won't be forever and call some of you idiots for even suggesting that this is a real goodbye. And because I like to call you an idiot. Idiot.

I have other things I want to say as we part. I want to say that I've been handed an amazing future on a platter -- the Ben&Jerrys Vermonster sundae of lives -- but that I know that it's because of you. If everyone had this kind of cheering section behind them, everyone could have anything. There are so many of you who are responsible for getting me where I am today. And this means that if I fuck it up, it's entirely your fault. That's right; you're accountable, buddy.

Now that I'm on the edge of leaving, I'm not sure what's more scary: leaving, going somewhere new, or being gone.

Someone will have to draw the stickcats for me. On the grad lounge board. In the math building window. Random places around the city.

And someone will have to attend undergrad lectures and play World of Warcraft in the back row but feel really guilty about it. And dance around the Bahen hallways absolutely beaming because a prof knew your name in first year when you were just another face in the crowd.

And someone's going to have to take up the crazy hair colour torch. It's a burden to bear, but someone has to do it. Start with green, then purple, then you can switch to the pinks and blondes, because it's hard to go back to the fluorescents after that.

And we'll need a volunteer for the bizarre things to happen to in this city. Someone whose bike can be stolen once a month, and who can have a crazy person hit them over the head with a bottle, and who can be told on the streetcar that she could be the posterchild for coke, and who can have a crow sneak into her apartment.

And you should all shower these volunteers with all the love and praise and sarcasm and sass that you gave me. So that it doesn't go to waste, y'know.

Only save some of the sass, captain sassy pants. Find a bottle, and keep some in there. Because I will be back to visit. And what's the good in coming back if you've used it all up and have nothing left for me but the politeness reserved for strangers and guests? I want my sass.

To everyone here in the t-dot: thanks. Thanks for buying the "Catspaw" cheerleader pompoms, and choreographing that "zomg you rule" dance, and reminding me that my over-dramatic catastrophes weren't the end of the world. And thanks for pushing me off of cliffs when I insisted that my wings were simply decorative.

But most of all, thanks for not telling San Francisco what it had in store.

Population of Catsys in Toronto: 0
Population of Catsys in San Fran: 1

Here I go. Think they're ready?

I'm here! Would you believe it?

Mota meowed on takeoff and landing but was otherwise an absolute angel during the flight. I was supposed to remove her from her carrier to get her through security, but the huge still-bleeding scratches on my neck and arms from putting her into her carrier at home, plus the fact that I was a little teary eyed (I'm moving forever! shuddie! I don't need this shit from you!) caused a handful of security women to eventually take sympathy on me and let me just pass her around the metal detectors.

We departed from Toronto. I read, I napped, I wrote a story and watched DVDs. We landed in San Francisco. That's how these things work, these "flights".

"Well, here we are, Mo", I said to her as we arrived at our new 'home'. It's hauntingly empty but still as gorgeous as I remember it. Soon I'll make it my own.

Mota found a corner to crawl into and just hid there. I wanted to do the same. But instead I grabbed some snacks I'd packed, my bottle of water, and hiked up to the top of a hill near to my place to look out onto my new city.

I'm gonna be just fine here. Better than fine.

But for tonight, it feels a little like I'm on the other side of the galaxy.

I've started exploring my neighbourhood in a very similar way to how a scared rodent explores a new home. Darts out, runs a little ways, turns around and hides in hole for another few hours, then darts out, explores another direction, then turns around and hides again.

I know where the closest grocery store is, the closest bank, pharmacy, radio shack, hardware store, large grocery store, and post office.

But there's a pile of Canadian coins on my table (my one piece of furniture) that I can't bring myself to put away. I won't need these coins til Dec or whenever I visit home. But it's money. Real money. And all this American money in my pocket is fake money. Tourist money. I'm having trouble making my mind flip these over to their new definitions. Maybe I just need to spend more of it ;).

Have I mentioned in the last hour how gorgeous my apartment and neighbourhood are? No? Then please allow me to reiterate: ZOMG! I'm still somewhat stunned.

It's going to take months and months for me to furnish it properly though. So those of you who are on the first battalion wave of visitors are going to see it in all it's purdy-but-empty glory.

Another week til I start working for the big-G in the sky. Don't think I'm not counting down the hours.