Hilarious four minute long video. Read the text below it first.

I just had another weird flying dream. I have flying dreams a lot, but most of the time my ability to fly is extremely minor. In this dream, I could do this thing where I would hop into the air, and then kind of slowly push at it with my hands and feet, as though treading water, and stay in the air, and move in any direction at about the pace of a brisk walk at best. I was doing this in a crowded city street when I noticed Larry David looking at me as he passed. I kind of mulled over whether I should say anything to him until his back was to me and he was about ten feet away, at which point I said "Hey, Larry David! I loved Seinfeld!" He turned around and kind of just looked at me, and I asked, "Do you want me to teach you to fly? Anyone can do it!"

I don't remember anything David said throughout this dream, except that his general manner was somewhat like his manner in this Woody Allen movie I saw him in recently, Whatever Works; he was kind of brusque and taciturn, but just interested enough to follow me. So I led him into a little area surrounded by buildings and tried to fly there, but couldn't because the area was too closed off and there wasn't any wind. So we moved into a more open street and I showed him how to fly, and told him that I figured out how to do this in Cape Cod when I was ten. We flew along a sidewalk for a bit, and came upon a cheerful woman in her thirties who was peddling a course in flight. I told her that flying was nothing new, and that I'd figured it out myself in Cape Cod at age ten.

Then Larry David seemed to have lost interest and caught a bus somewhere. I wanted to see him in the high window of the bus, so I flew up to where he was, but at this point the dream took a turn for the sinister as some kind of government monitoring system decided that I was a danger and sounded an alert to catch me and probably kill me or something. I fled among some building rooftops and at some point there was some sort of strange boss battle against a giant robot of some sort that I don't remember at all. THE END! Dream flying is great, though, I wish I did it more often and less lamely.

The author of an awesome webcomic writes a blog post about buying an idiotic painting.

Just saw Kevin Smith at Northeastern! Only found out about it a couple days beforehand, but got in, skipping my pretty slow analysis class and paying five bux for a ticket. Arrived early and got primo seating. Dude's still got it - despite having heard half his stories already (which isn't surprising considering how heavily I follow him), I was pretty much laughing for three hours straight. Even the old stories had little nuances that caught me by surprise. He's coming back to Boston in the spring for a public show (this one was Northeastern-and-guests-only) which I am def going to try and go to.

It's finally happened! A reverse image search is active, letting you submit an image and find websites that contain that image or variants thereof. Still only in beta and has a relatively small database, but very cool.

I dreamt that I was in high school on the last day of classes (interesting that I just had my first day of classes in grad school), in a painting class (this also relates - my mom just found a bunch of paintings I did in high school and put them in my room, one of which was a self-portrait). I had yet to do a project (for some reason I hadn't even started it), and so I had to do the whole thing, or as much as possible, in that one class period. The teacher first announced that she needed to get a piece of painting canvas (everyone was standing near the painting canvasses talking), and I picked one up and went back to my seat. I sat with some people who were my friends in the dream, I think, though I don't think they were real people. They were finishing up some work.

I started filling out the sheet on what I was doing for the project - it was a portrait and I had to fill out some basic information - and then I had to find someone to pose for the portrait. I didn't think anyone would want to sit still and stare straight ahead on the last day when everyone was talking and finishing stuff up, so I think I went to the teacher - she announced that I was doing the project in a single class period and needed someone's help (which I thought was odd, because it was obvious I was doing the project just now from my picking up the canvas). To my surprise, like 3/4 of the class stood up and made as if to come help me, apparently happy to get out of doing their work. Either I or the teacher chose one, some kind-looking Latino guy.

The guy sat down across from me and started doing his own work; I told him I needed him to pose and he said, "Aww! You needed me to pose?" (apparently all the people who had stood up just thought they were needed for moral support or something). So he sat still and looked straight ahead. I finished up the preliminary info on the form, and found that I had to do a sketch on a part of the form first, before doing the actual painting. I looked up and found that the guy had disappeared. I was right next to a window and looked around, trying to find him, but I think it was snowing or something and it was hard to see him. I thought to myself, "he's pretty fast for a guy in a wheelchair" (I don't think he was originally in a wheelchair, but he was now), then thought that that was a stupid thought to have. Then he came back, looking dirty and kind of overexerted, but cheerful, and posed.

My initial intention was to just do as realistic a painting as possible - this was what I generally did in painting and drawing classes in high school, feeling that I couldn't do a really good stylized work unless I got good at painting or drawing what I actually saw. I puzzled over how I wanted to frame the portrait (i.e., where the edges were going to be) and started sketching with my pencil, only to find that it was absurdly small and that in fact the space for making this sketch was really big, almost as big as the canvas itself. I erased the tiny sketch and started a more reasonably-sized one (this is actually something that happened a lot in high school), and found myself drawing the guy as a kind of ogre rather than a person. I decided that I in fact wanted to draw him as a melancholy-looking green-skinned ogre in this guy's clothes with jutting, sharp teeth called Sergeant Jargon, who wasn't really a sergeant but was some guy working in an office who was disillusioned with his work and having some kind of existential crisis. As I drew him, I thought more and more about his backstory until I became Sergeant Jargon in the dream (though I think while this was happening, I was aware that it wasn't real, and thought that I was more kind of acting, making a movie, even though there was no movie equipment and I was really just living this guy's life; think The Truman Show).

As Sergeant Jargon, I standing by an elevator door. I had poisoned some kind of food for an office party and was anxious to see if it got through undetected and started killing people; I was deeply unhappy in my job and just wanted to kill my coworkers. I pushed the button to go up, and the digital floor display showed quickly-changing random two-digit numbers, as in that elevator in ShinRa Headquarters in Final Fantasy VII. I thought to myself that this was either a weird bug or a nice security feature; I for some reason had the impression that such displays were standard in secure office buildings.

I took the elevator up and came out in the floor where my office was. I overheard an annoyed-sounding secretary saying something on the phone about poisoned cookies, but I hoped that they had nevertheless made it through. I stopped by some other office along the way, an area full of low cubicles with a bunch of people milling around, and saw none other than David Klotz working there. I had some short exchange with him that I don't remember. I walked on to my office, which really looked something like a video store, with the counter-area being used to dispense food for the party. My coworkers were milling around.

I went to the counter and the person behind it showed me the finished painting that I had been working on, laughing. I got angry and defensive and asked what was so funny. The person said, "Doesn't it look just like you?" I said, "So what if it does? What's funny about that?" Then I looked at the food being offered, weird crumbly cookies that were all the same size but colored and shaped differently, and didn't see mine, which were "have a nice day" smiley faces. I stomped over to another counter and started yelling at the person behind it in a state of outrage: "Where are my cookies? There were supposed to be poisoned smiley face cookies here! I was going to kill all of you! Where did you put them? I want my cookies!"

I went between two of the video racks and saw some guy who for some reason wanted to pick a fight with me. He started to charge up for some powerful super-kick, like in a video game, as I stood a good eight feet away or so. Then he let loose, kicking straight up but overdoing it and somersaulting, comically landing on his face. Then he just lay there, defeated. Then the movie-quality of the dream reasserted itself, as Andy Samberg (of Jizz In My Pants fame), sporting a bit of a jewfro, made some quip about the guy who tried to kick me; he was playing one of the people at the party. Then the room went dark and credits rolled for Sergeant Jargon on one of the walls from some unseen projector.

Interestingly, Sergeant Jargon is apparently the name of some unknown rapper; search for 'jargon' in the following page: http://alphaflomegaman.xanga.com/676960620/how-can-i-not-write/
A fitting name, I suppose.

Finally done with this pain-in-the-ass 19-page manuscript for my capstone project, and hence with UMass as a whole. Starting all over again with Northeastern's math masters program next semester, gonna be signing up for classes around this Monday.

MSPaint Adventures is an awesome webcomic and everyone should read it. The older adventures are good, but this new one has an incredible amount of side-content and overall quality.

( Click )

Funny speech by John Hodgman on C-Span about Obama.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW7OPByRGDY