I didn’t think I’d be saying it this soon, but I am very, very ready for school to start up again. It’s not that I have all my work done- no, I still have to do all my summer work (see below), except calculus. It’s the I’ve spent a month sitting around my house and doing nothing, and I’m sick of it.

I’m not very good at self-motivation. If left to my own devices, I don’t do anything unless I have to. I’m hoping to break myself of this habit before I start living on my own because I don’t want to be fat, stupid, uncultured waste of space. I want to go to school every day and do my homework every night. I want to see people. I want to start my new classes. I want to get my senior year over with.

I always have great plans for the summer- books to read, things to accomplish online(Forbidden Fruit needs exa-work), weight to lose… it never gets done, though. I’m very good at looking at my life and figuring out what to do in order to improve it. However, I’m terrible at getting off my ass and starting to improve it right then.
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I mentioned a while back that I was displeased with the new I, Robot cover, which is based on the movie. I saw the movie today, and dislike the cover even more. I wrote about it here.

A few hours spent at Barnes & Noble (because the library isn’t open on summer weekends) and a bit of late-night reading, and I have finished Song of Susannah, the sixth and next-to-last book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.

First, something general with no spoilers: in introductions to his Dark Tower books, Stephen King makes it very clear that The Dark Tower is his opus, his One Big Thing, the story that he feels most passionate about. I haven’t come close to reading everything he’s written, but I’ve gone through a good bit of it, including (obviously) all published Dark Tower books. I can definitely say that they’re my favorites. As a whole, The Dark Tower is completely different from everything else he’s done. There are six parts out now, and nearly every store and library has a few of them. So I don’t understand is why no one seems to have read them.

Sure, I’ve talked to other Dark Tower fans, but the vast majority of people who tell me they love Stephen King shake their heads when I ask about The Dark Tower. The first book is a bit boring, yes, but the others are beautiful. I think they’re of a higher quality than the rest of his work, overall. The Dark Tower isn’t just about a single set of characters and settings. It’s about everything. It travels through countless variations of the past, present, and future, of our world and all the others. It is the metastory, the story that all his other tales exist in. I could go on and make this an entry all its own, but I’ll stop. Read the books, though. They’re amazing.

Further discussion of the book will go behind the cut, as I’m going to be dealing with some pretty major plot points. Don’t be an idiot and read it if you don’t want to know what happens.
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This fall, I’ll start my senior year of high school. I always told myself that I would do everything I could with the college application process over the summer- write essays, print out and fill in applications, write up my resume, decide which teachers to get recommendations from… And now it’s the summer before me senior year! I actually have to do the stuff. First, though, I have to decide where to apply.
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A few days ago I watched a video from PETA called Meet Your Meat. Though it was a bit sensationalist and I would have trusted it more had it not been made by PETA, it reminded me of the biggest reason that I don’t eat meat.

Ever since I read Ishmael (plug plug plug- read it!), I’ve been very aware of the way humanity interacts with the rest of the natural world. The most important idea I got out of that book is that the Earth does not belong to us. It belongs to itself. We are animals like any other animals- the only difference is that we’ve evolved to the point where we are intelligent enough to dominate other species. People tend to look at the world as Us vs. Them- Us being humanity and Them being trees, bugs, monkeys, oceans, volcanoes, diamond mines, protazoa, lice, chickens, and everything else that comprises our world. We belive that we are the masters of our world, and that it is our privilege/right/responsibility to beat it into submission and reform it the way we choose. The earth is not our kingdom. It generously sustains us, and in return we must cooperate with it instead of trying to subjugate it and the others that live on it.

I’ll get to the point before this gets too long. I think that all life has to be respected- not just human life. When we put animals like cows and chickens into tiny cages for their entire lives before shipping them off to slaughterhouses, are we respecting them? No, we are thinking of them as nothing more than a commodity. That’s what I have a problem with. Every other animal on earth has just as much a right to exist as we do. We are not the only ones that matter. It’s terrible to see entire species deprived of real life just so that you can eat a steak without trouble.

Thus, I am not against the act of eating other animals. I am against the way in which we do it. If I lived in a situation where free animals were hunted because people needed their meat, bones, and hide in order to survive, I would probably eat the meat. Animals prey on each other, it’s a law of nature. What I cannot stand is the the way we deprive other conscious organisms of of their lives, not only by killing them, but by making the short lives they do have miserable.

Last, I would like to express my irritation at those who love their pets and cry at the thought of people being mean to little doggies, but turn a blind eye to the suffering of animals in factory farms. If you can’t stand the thought of a cute little puppy in that situation, how is it any better when it’s a calf?

Edit 2/23/05: Since I wrote this, I realized that I would only feel comfortable eating meat if I didn’t have a choice. I believe that if I can live without killing another conscious thing, I should. But I respect your right to do otherwise.

The metric system is very efficient. The English language, on the other hand, is not. We have multiple words meaning the same thing, we have obscure words that some people don’t understand, we have no reliable way of comparing some adjectives to others… it’s not a very aesthetic way to communicate- so messy. But never fear! The clean efficiency of the metric system can be applied to language.

It’s simple. A certain length, of more than a meter, can be called a hectometer. Everyone who knows the basics of the metric system (not too hard) knows that a hectometer is one tenth of a kilometer and ten times as much as a dekameter. If I call something “hectocool,” you know exactly what I’m talking about. Since “hecto-” is a prefix denoting a slightly larger than average amount, I think that the thing in questions is pretty cool, but not amazing. If we’re going to be strict, calling something “hectocool” would mean that it was 100 times cooler that something that was just “cool.” However, I don’t think that we need to follow those rules exactly. As long as the hierarchy of preficies is understood, there is no confusion. A table of all the metric preficies I’ve ever heard of is included below.

When using this method of commumication in everyday speeach, it is advisable to pronounce the entire prefix before the word. In written language, however, the symbols for the preficies may be used. I suggest a hyphen between the prefix and the word it modifies. Be sure to pay attention to the capitalization (or lack thereof) of the prefix. Note that the symbols for many opposite preficies are the same letters, with one of them capitalized (see yocto and, symbol y, and yotta, symbol Y). This is a good reason to use full preficies when speaking.

Examples will clarify.

See? It’s very easy, and lets you add meaning and emphasis to your words without making them too complicated. So who will join me in the noble quest? Use the metric preficies, and use them well! Feel free to ask any questions about usage and the like.

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I’ve updated the about page. Whee!

For the record, I realize that, though this layout is called “Tea for One,” there are two cups of tea in the header. The point is that they’re both for me. Hah!