So, I am writing this entry in advance (August 8th), but for somewhat obvious reasons, I am delaying its publication until August 17th at midnight, once all the blogger apps should be in.

Okay, so, for those of you who somehow are unaware, one of the major reasons this blog exists is because I really want to be an admissions blogger for MIT (along with my general, long-held desire to keep a journal of some sort). This process is highly competitive, particularly this year. As with MIT Admissions in general, however, there is a bit of a philosophy that, just because it is important and competitive that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. As a result, in addition to the various more serious/mundane requirements of the blogger app, there is the following short essay:

Short answer #2 (please choose one of the following).

• Option A: In a paragraph or two, describe to us a YouTube video, and why it is the single most important piece of art ever created. (Please include its URL)
• Option B: Create and submit MIT Admissions blog-related Lolcats (or Lolbeavers, or Lolsnivelys, or…). Submit a minimum of 2 and maximum of 4.

As you may have figured out by now, I decided on option B. I got a little carried away, however, and actually made 9 different designs. Choosing only four was incredibly difficult; I tried to survey many MIT prefrosh and students, but I had trouble finding ones that weren’t also applying to be bloggers. Finally after much deliberation, I settled on the following four which, while not necessarily my favorites, are probably the most directly relevant to Admissions (while also funny). They also happen to include at least one lolcat, one lolbeaver, and one lolsnively… I thought it was good completion. Anyway, without further ado, my four main selections:

This one is actually a recreation of one I earlier posted to the Facebook group. Since it was a good idea then, I still considered it a good idea for this application. Since its old hat to me, I don’t think its that funny any more, but hopefully it is still funny to the people to whom it’s new, like the blogger committee.

This is my incarnation of a lolbeaver. I believe the picture is from Battle of the Bands, CPW 2006. I forget where exactly I found it. Still .. its a true story. (Also clearly lolbeavers have slightly better grammar than lolcats).

I think this one should gain me points for being a simultaneous lolsnively and LoTR reference. It was also incidentally taken by Laura, who is on the blogger selection committee. I hope she will like the caption. I find it hilarious.

With the knowledge that Joey C. is also applying for blogger-ship, I hope he doesn’t mind terribly that I stole his picture. This is also not technically a lolthing, but I thought the motivational poster motif was a better format for this particular caption. Personally, of the ones I submitted this is probably my favorite (though the people I asked didn’t really agree). I just love it cause its a great caption for the picture, but is also relevant because with the blogs, and two-way comments.. it really is pretty interactive.

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So, that is it for the ones I submitted, but as I said, I got a little bit overzealous and made 5 more than the four I submitted. Some of them I actually find funnier, but they are also less relevant to Admissions or are otherwise less appropriate. I present them in (my opinion’s) order from least funny to most funny:

This is a great picture, and by Lulu, but it doesn’t really work with the caption because the cat doesn’t actually look all that happy. It is also too specific. I showed it to a friend on 1E, saying they could steal it for hall rush or something, if they wanted. Sadly, it was deemed not ammusing enough for this purpose and it isn’t really.

This is the first one I did. It is a bit too obvious to really be particularly funny. Still, its a decent application of lolcat dynamics to Snively– an early test in lolsnively technology, if you will.

This is a relatively entertaining picture all by itself. The caption doesn’t really add that much and all told, an implication of bribery (which would obviously be patently false) wouldn’t reallly be appropriate. Still, some of the people I surveryed liked it alot. Again, I think its just the picture. Matt, that is an amazing float.

I’m sorry. I find this one ABSOLUTELY hillarious, both for the original picture (by Lulu) and for my own caption (</vanity>). Nevertheless, I feared this would be a bit too controversial for official submission. I don’t actually think that (all) people on west campus hate kitties.

This is quite clearly the best one ever. It also has little to nothing to do with anything. Still, it is a great picture and I was proud of myself for the irony.

Anyway, I guess if this is published, I am en route to MIT … that is scary .. but also amazingly exciting. It also means that the blogger selection committee is probably in their selction process. Thank you for making such a tough decision. Regardless of if they include me, I hope you pick awesome bloggers to represnt our class for posterity! ^_^

See you all at orientation.. some of you tommorow! :-O

~Donald

Well, I thought I would throw up some more party-related photos from a recent party (Saturday afteernoon), as a supplement to my earlier entry about such parties.

For somewhat arbitrary reasons the theme of this particular party was H.P. Lovecraft and the horror mythos he created. Just as with the Shark Week party, my artistic friends provided theme-related food:

I would like to take a second to inform you that none of us actually ate any of the Cthulhu melon. Perhaps  we were restricted by some unearthly, ancient force; perhaps we were simply too frightened,or perhaps we were actually just frieghtened by the sheer size watermelon that originally came from (look at the diagnol picture and consider the scale given by the cup of straws and cake nearby). I can not say that the King in Yellow got off so easily.. leading to this terrible joke o_o:

Anyway, the primary reason for this party’s theme was because one of the main events was playing Arkham Horror. To those of you who don’t understand the horror of Arkham Horror, or mistakenly think it is simply due to the Lovecraftian elements.. there is also some horrible, as with the melon, in the sheer size of the undertaking (again, my phone doesn’t do a great job of capturing scale.. but consider the size of people, and my hat .. and the sheer number of pieces)

*nerd talk, feel free to skip*
If anyone is interested about the actual specifics of this game itself (assuming you are already familiar with the rules, which are much too complicated to go into here): We were playing with an Ancient One ( I believe Glaaki whose attack was simply to raise the terror track, defeating and devouring all if it reached 10. Due to a complete lack of Elder Signs and failure to get places quick enough, 6 gates opened with only 1 being closed. Thus with 8 players, we faced an awakened elder god (with a full doom track, though I’m still not sure that it should have automatically filled with the awakening) with a need for 8 hits per counter. At -5 bonus and a physical resistance (half off bonuses for physical weapons), this meant that we had 10 turns to roll 8 x 12, which is to say 96 positive fight checks (in layman’s terms, out of approximately 280-320 d6 rolls, 96 had to be a 5 or a 6 … before you throw in random factors caused by other game elements). Against (or right at, by my probably incorrect math) the odds, we successfully defeated the GOO (with the help of a sacrifice by one player giving us 3 extra turns), and Arkham, Dunwhich, and Kingsport were returned to safety. .. in other words, we somehow managed to win! ^_^
*end nerd talk*

Log story short, after a couple hours of playing, we all won… except for the game’s owner, who got devoured by an ancient god… meh, it happens.

Anyway, it was fun and I was glad to get to hang out with all my friends again. I really am going to miss them..

~Donald

EDIT:

Here is a picture of my friends.. also, another edition of the great game entitled “how many people can we fit on the couch?”:

The following is part of a series of “miniposts” about the routine things of my summer that, since they are less routine to others, I hope are therefore interesting. More on my skewed logic and decision to do this can be found here:

I have awesome friends. Now I know that we all think we have awesome friends, but oh well, I just wanted to get that out of the way. Though this entry series is ostensibly about “routine” things, and parties are not actually routine for me, being the anti-social one that I am, I think the fact that there were two in the last week make it totally legit!

Anyway, first I wish to clarify what I mean by “party”. According to the M-W dictionary a party is (amongst other things) “a social gathering”, there is no problem with this definition for my events. Urban dictionary however describes a party as first “something I never get invited to”, since I went to these, NO! .. it second defines it as “When everyone gets together at someone’s house, get drunk, consume illegal substances like weed and coke, and trash the place completely.” This is equally, if not more wrong than the first definition!!

My friends and I party in a different way. In fact, I’d say the only constant is probably houses and couches. There are no drugs (except caffiene, on occasion) and only sometimes music or dancing. Also, some of the dancing may be in absence of music.  Anyway, some select activities from two parties of last week:

• A seated airsoft battle. Yes, I did just say that I was a pacifist, but I have to say I am against real violence. And truth be told though I may have had a bit to do with starting this, I soon sat it out. Anyway, long story short.. my friend left out his Airsoft guns and so he got shot with them. Thats karma for you.
• A first grade style story time. In addition to being awesome, my friends are a bit odd, and while this manifests in many ways (other “games” this day: how many people can we fit on the 3 person large couch? 9 how many feet can we fit on Donald’s face? .. apparently 8 .. though that was something I could have done without knowing), one way it manifested was that a friend brought this book to the party :When this book was thrown at me and I was told to read, I did so, with feeling, and a different voice for big foot, and showing the pictures to everyone. It was definitely odd, but also very fun. I highly recommend this book for a laugh. If you want to know what it is like, there’s an excerpt on Amazon and a page spread shows up on google image search.
• Watching Mythbusters, specifically the Shark Week episodes of Mythbusters. This is to say, we used Shark Week as an excuse to party, and its a perfectly good one. Okay, so we didn’t actually pay that much attention to Mythbusters, but we did sit on a couch (this couch is huge!! it can comforably fit 9 people (if you are curious 2 people were different than on the other couch)) facing vaugely in the direction of the television. Anyway, in the spirit of shark week, some of my friends, who are better artists than I, made shark week foods.
  

  Seal Melon

  

  ...with a shark wound

  

  Possibly from this shark-o-melon

  

  ..with its teeth!!

  

  Sadly it could not be satiated on these fish heads (which were full of salmon)

• Finally, we watched the 3 acts of Dr. Horrible which is most excellent. To those of you who missed it, it was a short (42 minutes) musical written during the WGA strike, directed by Joss Whedon (of Firefly, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, etc. fam) staring Neil Patrick Harris (of Doogie Howser, Starship Trooper, and Harold & Kumar fame), Nathan Filion (also of Firefly fame), and Felecia Day (best known for roles on Buffy and her popuar online series The Guild). If you are still with me after that sea of parentheticals, I highly reccomend you check out Dr. Horrible. You can download all three acts from iTunes for $4 or you can watch it with commercials at: http://drhorrible.com/mushortio.html ). It is hilarous for the majority, and then has a bit of an artistic turn at the end. Anyway .. that is all I will say about it, but check it out!

Anyway, that is just a selection of the activities that went down at parties with my friends in the last week. Personally, I think our varied definition of party is far superior to the urban dictionay one. We never know what will happen, but because we are pretty awesome its pretty awesome.

</ “Minipost” >

~Donald

P.S. I hearby define “minipost” to mean “post of arbitrary length but more than likely containg a bulleted list of some sort”