TASP 2003 at UT Austin: The Mystery of Creativity



reasonably remarkable



Saturday, January 31, 2004
wow... when they handed my extended essay back to me to revise... i just changed the date on the title page and turned it back in... my advisor thanked me... he said, "i was feeling a bit overwhelmed with all these extended essays... and so this works out just fine..."
I'm doing a countdown to February (six more minutes) reveling in post-extended-essay glory. I'm done, I'm done, I'm completely done and they're probably going to make me reformat and reprint because it's single spaced but oh God, I'm done.

So this is directed at Mónica because (i) she taught me how to make pretty title pages and (ii) I know she reads the blog secretly without posting anything: after much experimentation with my extended essay title page I found another format that works: [everything is in Garamond, of course]
centered vertically on the page:

Title on left alignment, in bold, large size that does not quite fill page width
Subtitle in plain text, left alignment

----this line across the page----------------------------------

Name
and subject
and date
and everything else in size-11 or smaller, plain text, right alignment.
Spread out vertical alignment to balance titles on top.

It's February now and I'm going to go raid the kitchen in celebration. If Eunice were here we'd be celebrating more creatively, but, oh well.

ps: Bryan, I didn't mean to make you feel bad about feeling bad!
Friday, January 30, 2004
wow... you guys rock. Tae-Yeoun, thank you for calling me - that was really sweet of you. Yeah, so i feel better... sort of. lol... for being a tasper, i am incredible inarticulate. My social life (what there was of it) was a mess and ib tests and finals and scholarship apps and lack of sleep and food and not practicing my violin and on and on... so anyway, I feel bad because all of a sudden, im getting phone calls at 11:44 Mountain Time asking how im doing. I didn't mean to make you guys worry. Sorry about that.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JACOB!
Thursday, January 29, 2004
some combination of song and poetry and blog has somehow just evoked a tumbling smack pounding thud of tasp-sickness; for the first time in many i'm remembering TASP as I did in the moments before boarding my flight home. you are collectively necessary.
really, really-- come.
hawaii is not that far.
Well, Bryan, i think we all agree that the obvious cure would be a nice relaxing trip to hawaii (and aimee..). Failing that, my advice to you bryan, is to do something active (while my personal favorites are ballet and odd yoga poses, the actual activity left to your discretion. : ) That always makes me feel better (probably only the heroine-like endorphins, but dont think about that part.)

-brings me to my next blog-topic. DANCE PERFORMANCE!!! (i expect you all to be at the Gates Performing Art Center this saturday at 7 with you $8 for admission). I will be doing two ballets, a tap dance, and (brace yourself for this one, folks) a can can. Yes, a can can. That one's just too damn sexy for me- those fishnets and all....

Just glad to post- I havent read up on the blog since christmas, & its good to hear from you guys.

p.s. I applied to CBTA; when do we find out? I'm visiting cornell on the 13th (or something like that)-- will I know by then?
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Just out of curiousity, is anyone else over-whelmed with moments of self-loathing? I mean, for some reason, at a time of my life when I'm supposed to be "happy," I only feel incredible disdain for everything I do... Maybe, there's a male version of PMSing? Oh well...
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
whoa, today is tuesday? i totally thought it was wednesday! holy obscenity, second semester is the bestest!
adrian, i say this completely without sarcasm (as much as i say anything without sarcasm) - i live for your dolphin sex reports.

just finished watching spellbound and i must know - which of you guys did that? c'mon, fess up, i know we must have some competitive spellers in our midsts. i want war stories!

i would post more but real world's on, and all i can hear from the tv room is seagulls squawking and the words "casual sex." reality tv rocks my world (sadly this is true.)
Sunday, January 25, 2004
Well Tae-Yeoun, I had figured out how to put them on the page and (through trial and error) how to arrange some of the HTML, but I didn't know how to fix links. So, anyway, I thought "I'll leave these here and figure out how to do the link part later." Obviously later never occurred. I was probably just to arrogant to ask for help and thus expose my computer-incompetence. I always post at odd hours of the morning not because I stay up late, but because I wake up really early, like 1:17 yesterday, which was kinda surprising to me also.
How's everyone doing on those FAFSAs? My parents are painfully slow on the computer, and for some reason want to read every question out loud, and then yell at me if anything goes wrong (even if it's like one of them losing a paper). My mom's been in this pissed off half-panic because she took it upon herself to fill out this income based payment estimator. It said that we should be paying out a fifth of our income, which due to debt--a thing that the estimator she found didn't deal completely in--is more than we'll be able to afford. SO, she wakes me up at like twelve am, two hours after I went to sleep, with "O Adrian, you're going to have to apply to some Illinois schools or go to Rice because we can't afford to send you to any of the other places you picked." --and not even in a nice voice... in one that sounds like "You've done something wrong again..."
It’s like being a parakeet. Person comes in and yells at you for chewing on a curtain, but you don’t know why the’re making all these loud noises because you’re a parakeet.

O, did I tell you all that one of the dolphins at the aquarium has Bulimia? Well, not quite… Kri just likes the feeling of throwing up. It isn’t as destructive to their digestive track as it would be to a human’s, and she’s found that when she does, the trainers come out and feed her again. It’s kinda funny, but kinda odd.

How did everyone do on finals?
I'm super happy that I got an A in econ on the final. I think it's the first A I've gotten in that class, and it it's the first time I've ever raised a class grade with the final test. ...I hate AP Economics.

Does anyone have any classes that the're excited about next semester? Instead of AP Capitalism, I get to take Asian Studies, as I hear a great class, and the teacher, Mr. Goldberg is really cool. He was the teacher for the India exchange, and I had him for philosophy. It will be most awesome.

Bryan, why are no not gay?
Saturday, January 24, 2004
I'm not gay....
Friday, January 23, 2004
Adrian! I am so sorry! I hadn't realized you'd posted more poetry on the geocities page. See, when I check the site I glance over the date/time of the last update on each file and when some ungodly time in the morning is recorded in the zone of whereever geocities is based I automatically assume I'd been the last person to look at the thing, so don't bother checking it. Why in the world were you posting poetry at four in the morning???

So, everyone, three new works by Adrian, here, here, and here.

I have no idea why it's the year of the Green Wooden Monkey. The wooden part has something to do with the five elements that circulate - I think most of us are Fire Tigers or something along those lines.

Oh, on driving - I too am learning very, very slowly, if at all, and this afternoon I was practicing with our driver (the last time my mom tried to teach me, I got to drive a block before she started screaming in a strange Korean dialect and made me stop) and at an intersection, he suddenly said, "CUT!!! CUT!!!" And for some strange reason, in the midst of panic I remembered Alex's story and thought, so THIS is what Alex meant. And drove straight into someone else's car. When we returned home we made up a very complex story about hitting a trash can and how that was not my fault.
Thursday, January 22, 2004
Yes tae-yeoun and a good ole "sun neen fi lo" to you to. I certainly hope that you "gung hei fot choi" and such. Well what you do on the new year is supposed to foreshadow the upcoming year; you're not supposed to argue or borrow money or stuff like that. Because I am toiling away at calculus, english, and biology, we all know how 2004 is gonna be :( . Olga this year is the year of the monkey to the crazy chinese, although I don't know what Tae-yeoun means by "green wooden". Well I need to get back to cramming, but I have not yet forgotten about the audioblog, the pictures, and tex-men. oh btw eunice I tried to call you on your birthday 3 times but I couldn't reach you!
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Happy "Green Wooden Monkey Year" to the Asian Invasion. Or, specifically, Eunice-Adam: xin nian kuai le! Bryan-Susan: se hae bok man e ba da! (wow that was clunky) According to a relative, many disputes and arguments await metal and wood people in 2004, because a green wooden monkey is apparently made of metal and wood, elements that do not go well together without water, which represents wisdom. Hmmmm.

This semester I started volunteering at the elementary school library in our school during my used-to-be-ToK free period - an idea inspired by the trip to the children's section of the HRC that never happened. And, to my delight, I found and read Click Clack Moo, a book recommended by Brian that Jacob seconded some time ago, and would like to third that recommendation. Somehow the book had Jacob, Brian, Kelsey, and DefCom written all over it.

(Eunice, I'm ARRRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!-ing on your behalf from across the Pacific)
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
ARRRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Sorry, I needed a cathartic scream---scary Chem III final tomorrow--
Wish me luck!
Talk more later--can't think in coherent sentences.
Speaking of challenges...I have a somewhat pointless anecdote for all of you. I have defended tasp honor through ping pong. Yes, ping pong. My friend who attended a summer program at brown would talk trash about us, and I about them, and I used by Bryan Lee-like moves to beat him 6 games out of 7, thus winning $15. So Ha! Tasp was worth at least $15 :p
Monday, January 19, 2004
so i was watching the finale of road rules real world challenge: the gauntlet and it occurred to me that the road rules real world challenge scene is probably a lot like tasp, if the taspers had been selected for our beauty instead of our brains and there had been alcohol and we had been split into two teams and daily set at each other in arbitrary contests and then at the end a bunch of us had been given cars.

the best part of the tara-kelsey reunion a few weeks back: buying THIRTY-FIVE DOLLARS WORTH of candy and trying to eat it all in one night. also my mom bought me red satin sheets in anticipation of her visit, no joke. also we talked shit about you guys for like sixty years, it was awesome.

ok guys who i like to make fun of for listening to sally-ass acoustic guitar music, listen up. i have a music suggestion: our lady of the highway. the drummer is my metal shop teacher and they kick jason mraz and john mayer's collective ass. go to the site you can download songs.

i am as many of you are as well in the middle of finals. also i am probably the only high school senior in the whole world who is still not finished with college applications (i'm dragging the process out as long as humanly possible because i just love it so much.) still just three days from second semester seniors and so we march on. every paragraph of this post must have a colon and so i have a question posed in this particular sentence structure: who else applied to the telluride house?

hmm, how to finish this? perhaps with a more successful analogy than the opening one. here goes - my love : taspers :: fat kid's love : cake. next year in israel, right olga?
well today is the 19th and as of yet no one has posted since girlie Sue. So...I'll bore you with my guitar problem. Is it just me or is it really really hard to sing and play at the same time? I mean I sound absolutely tone def...well not absolutely but it's pretty bad. Do any of our guitarists have any advice? I'm playing brown eyed girl and it's not a particularly difficult song but for some reason I just can't sing T_T. Lol kelsie just Imed me this second and sed blog. And I owe had an audioblog, pictures, and Tex-men. In conclusion I suck :p
Friday, January 16, 2004
bryan tells me that the presidential scholar candidates were announced, and we have three potential tasper presidential scholars: him, eunice, and jacob. good job guys!
Thursday, January 15, 2004
If everything was spelled correctly, and you didn't bother to tell us that it was written in second grade, I would really have thought that the child-like syntax was intentional. I suppose that I'll have to find a persimmon that is semi-sweet, somehow.
Taste is a hard thing to describe.
Pear tastes like pear, or maybe a sclerenchyma rich apple, without the tinge of mustard-like-ness (?) that apples sometimes have. the skin is either rougher or softer, the flesh too-
Grapes taste like grapes... Moist and round and small. Sometimes taste like purple and acid, or just purple, or just green.
taste is an odd thing.
Adrian, your persimmon question reminds me of a poem I had to write in second grade. Upon the prompt, "Write a poem about your least favorite food...."

Persimmons

Persimmons are gross.
The smush aganst [sic] your tongue like tomato walls
Only without the seeds.
Persimmons are sly.
My dad says they're sweet, "their [sic] Chinese apples,"
But their sweetness means loss of texture.
If you get one that's sweet, it's mushy.
If you get one that's firm, it's tasteless.
Perisimmons [sic] are bad either way.

I really hated persimmons, and I still refuse to eat them. But, I am presenting a very biased opinion, so don't go by my account alone.
I just realized that this is my first poem--if you can call it one--that I have willingly presented to anyone other than a teacher. Although this doesn't create much of a first impression of my poetic skills, perhaps I will get another chance to stun you all with my brilliant grammar and turn of phrase (adapting Alex Y's wonderfully sarcastic tone from his rendition of: "Gora-anga....")
I want to say something profound and relevant, but can't.

My mom ran out of ideas today and dinner was make-your-own-sushi-roll-without-real-sushi-ingredients, and it made me think of, well, sushi, but with you, in Texas, and the sushi stories we shared. So my post is about fake sushi.

How to make fake sushi: (I feel like Arundhati Roy listing her recipe for banana jam, which I thought to be a good (albeit harsh) metaphor for the book itself, although I'd love to hear more about it from Olga and Adrian (sort of) who seemed to have liked the book despite Velutha)
ingredients:
- unsalted seaweed sheets (available at any Japanese/Korean grocery)
- cooked 'real' rice (rice that doesn't fly off your spoon)
- egg (1 or 2...)
- spinach
- oden, or crabstick, or some substitute
- SPAM (I'm so serious)
- kimchi (optional)
- soy sauce and sesame oil

(1) Prepare egg: beat egg, adding a dash of salt and optional sugar. Pour mixture into frying pan and fry. When it starts solidifying, fold like an omelet. Cut into strips.
(2) Fry spam and cut that in strips as well.
(3) Boil spinach with salt
(4) Cook oden if it needs cooking, I don't know
(5) Spread rice thinly on half a side of the seaweed sheet
(6) Place strip(s) of egg, spam, spinach, oden/crabmeat, (optional kimchi) on top
(7) Roll firmly
(8) Dip in soy sauce/ sesame oil to personal liking and enjoy

I'd actually wanted to do this with you guys one night coming home from something - it was midnight - and I suggested a trip to the Korean grocery place Susan got her kimchi from, ultimately having Mónica laugh at me for not realizing most stores close at night.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Jacob, Thank You! I couldn't remember it for the life of me, and some things are difficult to find unless you already know where they are.

A third person asked me about TASP today, and I have begun to realize that far too many people will apply for the sum 60 positions that we were so lucky to have qualified for. A girl from my choir may be visiting the site so everyone tries to sound smart (ha). right.

For all you who prophesize my dolphin-intercourse, I finally have moved into the Marine Mammal Department at the Shedd. It means I have to do all the cleaning and dirty work of an intern for 6 hours instead of 40 in a given week, and my swipe card doesn't open any of the important doors. I get to be one of those vital-looking persons who stands behind the beluga trainer at some of the shows and doesn't actually do anything (I need like 40 hours at certain tasks before I can touch or train animals)...I'm qualified for a Penguin tactile in six weeks, so after feeding the birds I get to push them into the water so that they have to swim.

O, and I read King Lear for English. Bloom was right, Shakespeare thought of modern psychology long before any of those other old dead guys...and he invented the wheel too. I do ponder however, one thing. Did Shakespeare use archetypes for characters like Cordelia (the perfect loving daughter) and Edmund the Bastard (need I say more?), or did he establish these archetypes? I'm sure they have some relation to medieval story characters, but these are, as Bloom would agree, some of the most complex and complete beings in the world of literature.

Hey everyone, since I don't know, and it might be an interesting literary exercise, would anyone here be able to describe the taste of a persimmon to me?

"Horseback on Sunday morning, harvest over,
We taste persimmon and wild grape,
Sharp sweet of summer's end."
-Wendell Berry, from Wild Geese
Monday, January 12, 2004
natashia: they're in alphabetical order.

i've always liked faulkner's nobel acceptance speech, myself.

have decided that the secret to alluring mystery is terseness. also i no longer have an attention span.
O well. I guess I have a bad memory. ha. Everyone can laugh at my wasted excitement... I know I just did.
Sunday, January 11, 2004
sorry adrian. I think it was you.
Hey, who suggested The God of Small Things for discussion? That is such a weird book, and I'm really excited unless it was me who suggested and then forgot it as a duscussion topic. (?) I don't think it was. ....

I think Velutha is too perfect, and that Chacko is such a great guy that it's really a shame that he lost his offspring.
Hey, this week I had two people come up to me about TASP... It was soo cool! (ha) Did you all know the number of essays is up to six? There's this one chick Tessa from the drill team who I thought was an airhead, but I know better now. The other dude, Mike Reynolds from the track team got a letter, and when he told me I almost hugged him (but we were in the locker room, and were changing shorts and such). I told mike it would be one of the most rewarding academic experiences I've heard anyone talk about, that you're assigned between three and six hours of reading a night, and that (as far as I can tell) they will be six of the most sexually frustrating weeks you'll ever come across.
I don't know about you all (Adam especially), but I got the new brochure from the Dean's office at my school. I have no Idea how they got it.
I'd like to thank Alex Y. for recommending Brave New World. I got around to reading it over break, and It was super. If anyone ever has time, read feed by M. T. Anderson. It's like Catcher in the Rye and Brave New World combined. What's really cool is the modern technology that is noted. People in the future will have pop-up adds in their feld of vision because of internet-implants. ...right.
That e e cummings poem is great. Sometimes the odd syntax is a real offput, but that one it seems to fit to well. . . .
Hey, I need to ask Jacob something, .. but I'm sure someone else must know this too. : what was that poem by the dude that goes "when the kids are sleep, and my wife is asleep..." something about dancing naked infront of the mirror?
I want to know who that's by.

Hey, has anyone noticed that on the new brochure, there is that one picture of two girls riding two boys and apparently jousting with brooms? That didn't happen our year!? I don't think that's the only picture that's been recycled either... ave

O, and if you ever want to really offend a Christian friend with a leg problem, email her the text of Judith by A Perfect Circle ; D
TWENTY ONE FOODS, EACH ONE REPRESENTING A RANDOM MEMORY I HAVE OF EACH OF YOU FROM TASP

goulash
pirate's booty
m&m's
meringues
chocolate cake
mango
slurpees
burritos
tea
turkey
nothing
heirloom tomatoes
kimchee
fake meat
marshmallows
chickens
burgers
pie
cider
heroin
oatmeal
Friday, January 09, 2004
i promise to write a post about the marathon and i promise to write a post about my newest book recommendations (foucault's pendulum r0x0rs forEVA) and i promise to update you all with endless details about me and tara's FANTABULOUS uberreunion but most of all i promise to never let a day go by without a post.

so here's friday's installment, barely 5 minutes before texas midnight. unlike all of you who are into 3 trazillion fabulous colleges and yet still submitting applications (EUNICE) i am scrambling to get even one done. today i played ddr at school on a playstation. i have totally lost my non-existent touch from this summer. dammit i'll never be full-fledged korean (or as cool as dr. chapelle).

okay that's all. post post post boys and girls i love you all (duh.)
Thursday, January 08, 2004
YAYYYYYY ADAM!!!!
Here's how it works: go to www.geocities.com and log in under [ tasp2003austin ]. (password is 'remarkable') Then, under the [advanced toolbox] heading on the right, click on [easy upload]. Upload your pictures! Make sure you change your picture file names so that they don't contain any spaces... Feel free to organize the photos in a webpage yourself, or, leave them alone and I'll do it.

And, to Jacob's particularly enthusiastic delight I'm sure, seven new tasp pictures!!! (courtesy of Kelsey) See them here and here.

As a side note, if you find anything wrong on the website, or if you have any suggestions for it, please, please, tell me, and I'll get to it as soon as I can. Also remember you're all free to make any changes you find necessary - login info. as above. Again, yayyyy Adam! yayyyyy Kelsey! (and congratulations, Eunice!)
Well I finally got my hands on a scanner. Can somebody let me know how to post things on the other site?
What is the cause for Eunice humming "waltz of the flowers" as loud as she can while swirling her robe like a cape in her room? Yes, you guessed it. I finished my college apps!!!
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Hey does anyone know how I can get a copy of the new brochure? I know you can just download it on the side bar but I'd like to have something tangible for nastalgia's sake. Yeah and like I wanted to know the transcript from my interview (does that make sense?). How do I get a old of that thang? And yo my guitar adventures has led me to Weezer's butterfly, which I am learning cause jared used to play it all the time. It makes me think of tasp everytime...^^, bye all
Is everyone's winter break over already?
Sort of responding to Eunice's prompt on the appreciation of art in general-- last night I was most indescribably annoyed by a lofty, flowery, most unnecessary afterword to a Korean novel I had just read, and wondered the same thing: that I probably would have enjoyed the book better if the critic hadn't killed it with stretched analyses and a completely random reference to Eliot that was ever-so-clunky within its exclusively Korean context.

So, Eunice, this was what it made me think of:

"A fine writer will always make you feel that [some compliment to Hemingway]," Mrs. Phelps said. "And don't worry about the bits you can't understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music."

- Roald Dahl, Matilda
Typing frantically in a library is never the way to write an endearing post. But you will have to bear it. (two minutes left). The first stanza of the e.e.cummings poem reminds me quite a bit of Adrian. What else?... I have a question. Although analyzing things sometimes lends to making them more complex, and more rewarding, do you ever find it gratifying just to appreciate a work of art? (Let's not touch that art discussion for the time being) Just for what it is, and nothing more? It's like the Krishnamurti quote on listening that Professor Chapelle read us near the beginning of TASP. Rather than trying to understand it, trying to associate the work with something that we have defined as our background, do (or can) any of us appreciate something just for what it is?
I would really like to say more but the time on the computer says 30 seconds left, so I better stop typing.
Saturday, January 03, 2004
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EUNICE!

(what's this? four days into the new year and we've already let pass a day without posting? where are the reports of the two January-3rd reunions? )
Friday, January 02, 2004
That's okay Adam, I sent copies of TEX-men to the NYC area people only last week or so, so they'll probably receive it at the same time as everyone else, provided that they don't get lost in the post-Christmas mail.

Last night I read D.H. Lawrence's 'A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover' and thought it ever-so-relevant to so many TASP topics (it covers body-and-soul, touches upon yearly cycles and rituals, censorship/ politics and creativity, Buddha-Plato-Jesus, and more) so wanted to share it with you, but I couldn't find the text online - rather, when I tried searching google all these porn sites popped up. Hmm. Coincidentally, the original manuscript is in the HRC.

The blog looks like blue and green tupperware because I heard somewhere that 2004 colors are blue and green.

I'll end the post with yet another labor quote:
"Do you yarn?"
- Rohan Mascarehnas, in reference to a spool of string on my desk. He meant 'knit' but was thinking of 'sew'

Happy New Year to everyone--
To everybody who has asked me for a copy of Tex-Men ....my sincerest apologies. I haven't even started them...to be honest I finished my college applications literally ten minutes before the deadline. I've also be holding Tae-yeoun back, who is entirely blameless. I will get on top of it!...hopefully. And also-just to be a picky pete-the current time for New England on the right is an hour too slow...perhaps you were confused by daylight savings time? Well I don't know how to fix it anyway.
Do you folks know if the tasp brochure has already been mailed out and recieved by this years round of lucky applicants?
if so, i will search my school's junior class to get my hands on a brochure. (somehow the version actually sent by the t association seems more genuine than the copy i have printed (and plan to stick to my refridgerator))
-aunt cheryl
(i have just decided to create a blogging alias and thus escape the bounds of aimee's limited perspectives and concepts of reality (i'm also working on going crazy))
Thursday, January 01, 2004
and, now, ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, the smooth dulcet tones and happening poetic stylings of our very own mr. alexander m. borinsky.
Is it bad if my laziness (senioritis) has stooped to the level of thinking... hmm... kelsey has posted a blog longer than my college essay - there's no way I'm reading that? Oh well, such is the life of a post-Tasper in the year 2004. I hope that this year brings much good news and luck to all of you. (btw, at least my rambling is so concise that whatever potential for transitions exist between thoughts has been nullified to a slim .23% chance...)

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[ recommended for discussion ]
Existentialism is A Humanism, Essay by Sarte
preface to the lyrical ballads
the trial
heidegger's what calls for thinking
When Life Almost Died (deals with the Permian mass Extinction)
elizabeth costello
the god of small things
jung's aion
foucault's pendulum
coetzee's nobel acceptance speech
faulkner's nobel acceptance speech
koestler's The Act of Creation: part one, the jester
my mother and the roomer
Tao, the Greeks, and other important things
rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead

endgame
the book of job
Trilobites
joseph campbell