(no subject)

I know this is totally random, but I got this Beach Boys song stuck in my head the other day and now I can't for the life of me remember what it was. It's really annoying. It's like I have this echo of a song stuck in my head and I don't even know what song it is, or any of the lyrics or music, it's just the echo of the stuckness that is stuck. If I could remember what song it was it might go away... Like how, you can't remember where you put something and it drives you CRAZY for a week and then suddenly you find it and you didn't really need it in the first place, it was only that you couldn't find it that bothered you, and now that you've found it you can throw it away.

Yeah. Sleep deprivation and caffeine, baby.

Deus ex Machina

So, along the same lines as the stuck songness is the stuck phraseness. For the last five days or so, I've had the phrase "Deus ex Machina" stuck in my head. I've been finding all SORTS of ways to apply the phrase to daily life over the last week. (For those of you that don't know, a Deus ex Machina is a plot device used in literature that... well... it's like plot cheating. The author pulls something out of thin air to resolve a completely otherwise unresolvable situation, something that couldn't at all have been anticipated, and something that makes the situation all peachy and perfect. It's a literary cop-out, sort of. In Latin it means "God in the machine," as though... um... you use a machine that's godlike to fix an unfixable situation. I think.)

So (and I swear this is related) this week I haven't had much free time. I studied for the GRE like mad, worked on my thesis a bit, got some cells going, went to classes, actually took the GRE, got stranded in San Jose for six hours afterwards, etc. I didn't start my PChem homework until last night, which was unfortunate, since it was due this morning. It wasn't that I was putting it off--I actually like this class and I really want to do well, and I *gasp* ENJOY doing the homework--it was just that I hadn't had time to start it before last night.

So I was up until past midnight working on the stupid assignment, exhausted and slightly crazed, in that sort of state where matchsticks are holding your eyelids up and you're laughing at shadows. I finally put the homework down (I only had like two problems left) at the end of my bed, in a neat stack, ready for me to pick up this morning so that I could get to school early and get help from one of my friends.

I got up this morning a few minutes late and sort of rushed out of the door. I picked up my notebook, which had my homework in it, and went to school. I got there half an hour early and opened my bag. Notebook, check. Homework in notebook... not check.

Panic ensued. I'm usually so organized and paranoid about homework--I'm not the kid that forgets shit and shows up unprepared! I almost cried. I hadn't slept much, I didn't have my (extremely important) homework, which I'd actually DONE, and wasn't just trying to get an extension on, and the caffeine in the cup in my hand was so NOT in my bloodstream. I wasn't going to be able to get my homework to the grader until Monday morning. I don't have a car and couldn't feasibly get up to campus twice today--too much other stuff to do (I actually ended up having to cancel one of my things anyway, and I'm still too busy to get back up to campus). So my homework was going to be late and my grade was falling and bye-bye graduate school... (boy, is my imagination overactive)

And then. The Deus ex Machina.

I got a scanner this week. My dad sent it to me as a five-month-late birthday present. I hooked it up on Wednesday. I kid you not.

So I rode my bike home, turned on my scanner, scanned in my homework (which was inside my textbook at the foot of my bed, right where I'd left it...) and emailed it to my TA.

Fucking Deus ex Machina. God in the stupid machine. God in the stupid scanning machine.