FreakyFoucault

@punctilious, you better make sure that hubby devotes a good amount of space to you in the acknowledgements section of his dissertation, especially if he ends up at Maryland!

Some grains of salt notwithstanding, I tend to accept the data as given. I don't see much of a reason to lie about application stats anonymously. I guess one could do it for the purposes of self-validation, but that'd be some grade-A delusion. At any rate, none of it is dispositive or predictive since each applicant's case is different. But it's still good for passing the time! I also agree that there's room for unintentional error. But those are probably skewed more toward exceptional cases, like the ones you mentioned.

Fair enough, I won't disagree. And hey, taxes are important. So is allowing corporations to raise gigantic space armies and occupy peaceful planets. Because GOVERNMENT!

Aaah, @mk-8, I have to disagree. I don't think any of the characters are interesting! Qui-Gonn is stoic and not much else; Obi-Wan has like 10 lines; the Federation aliens' mouths don't match their speech; Queen Amidala is emotionless; Queen Natalie Portman is a yawn; Palpatine is okay-ish (only because Ian McDiarmid is a gifted actor); Maul has 2 lines; and ... I think those are all of the characters (yeah, yeah, there's the Jedi Council, but they don't do anything of note except navel gaze). And what else is there to say about Anakin, our would-be protagonist, that's not included in the video below? (Also, corrupting a thread with Star Wars analysis is a mainstay of the Internet, and also, that sucks about your transcripts frickin' thing!!) N.B. I forgot to mention Jar Jar, probably because my brain would like to preserve the few cells that weren't already destroyed by freshman year or Jameson. But he's probably got the most panache out of all the so-called characters. Says a lot!

For the model's sake, we must assume they're all accurate!!!! Why would random people on the Internet inflate statistics about their lives???

@punctilious Indeed, the very same!

@Crow T. Robot, I agree that RotS isn't a complete letdown; it probably has the most potential of the three. I recently tried to watch TPM, however, and I couldn't finish it. The pacing is so horrifically bad that by the time our protagonist shows up, I have no interest left. I think you're right that perhaps there is something to the "small-kid-in-a-big-universe" dynamic, but the kid's lines are so cringe-inducingly vapid that, again, I'm taken right out of the drama. AotC is the worst, but because it's the worst, it's also the best. So, in my book, TPM is the actual worst. Richard Brody, of The New Yorker, has an interesting take on how the prequels fit in George Lucas's aesthetic. His is analysis is very ... how do I say ... Richard Brodian, so take it with a grain of salt. But still worth a read: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-the-seven-star-wars-films-reveal-about-george-lucas

I've consulted my childhood Magic 8 Ball; its conclusion is as follows: OUTCOME IS UNCERTAIN ...fuck

Congrats to the Duke acceptance!!!

I'm out, too, and I was going to upvote your video. We'll call it even!

@punctilious, as it would happen, Uncle Owen was fluent enough in Tatooinian youth culture to know that "power converters" is slang for "cheap hookers." He just didn't want Luke mixing with the wrong crowd! You do that, after all, and you'll be dead!

So are you ready for Darth Binks in Episode 9?

It's something that a true Star Wars fan has to do every few years. It's the kind of cleansing that Aristotle's talking about in the Poetics. And you're telling me that the sand quote (dare I say, pick-up line?) wouldn't work in the real world? Maybe I need to get my dating advice elsewhere?!

@punctilious, don't even bother with the prequels. They're trash, everything in them is trash, and they're a compelling reason to not like Star Wars. Actually, scratch that: Get really drunk -- gin drunk, even -- and watch them all straight through. You'll have a ball, especially with precious moments like this one:

Bahaha I just got yelled at in a meeting for reading @punctilious‘s post instead of some dude’s dumb Powerpoint! The struggle is real!!

Booze helps.

Agreed. Agreed. Especially if it’s Lagavulin. Agreed. And when I heard that, I sighed with a world-weary grimace, “Oh, honey, if you only knew!”

That was a fantastic decision, @Wooshkuh—definitely one of my favorite shows. In addition to keeping up with The Good Place (much different than The Good Wife, but a great program nonetheless), I've been rewatching Sex and the City, because why the fuck not, and also getting my butt kicked on the treadmill and in the weight room. But most exciting (for me, at least), I've begun to play piano again, and I'm honestly so much happier than I've been in the last six months. Of course, being done with apps has certainly helped, but I think returning to music, my first love, has done the most to restore my sanity. Work still sucks, so I've been spending a lot of time at the office checking in with you lovely people (shhh don't tell...) Other than that, I've been reading as much as I can and trying to catch up with people I neglected when I was working on the apps. But I will admit that I get excited every time my phone buzzes after receiving a new email. Can't be helped! Also, I'll be wishing your husband good luck, @punctilious! Fingers crossed!

I mean let’s be honest, we’re all just trying to keep the moms happy...

Next time: "ARE YOU PRINCETON? NO?" click.

Same thing happened to me yesterday, but Google revealed that the number is of a known spammer. I've never been so disappointed to have been spam called! Sad face

Well, then I suppose I should apologize to @Crow T. Robot for high-jacking the thread, because I did not in fact apply to Duke Literature! My bad!

@Warelin, I did my initial program research awhile ago, so I may have forgotten, but I don't remember seeing much, if anything, about the Literature program (at least on their English website). I wonder if the sizes of the two departments are comparable.

Ah, this I didn't know -- don't tell Duke! I'm sensing a lot of hand-waving in that distinction...

Yes, indeedy! Hoping to study Victorian lit, with emphasis on the history of science, the mind, and proto-modernist conceptions of selfhood! Between fainting spells, fits of reverie, and good old fashioned crises de nerfs (and reading too much Flaubert), I almost forgot that Duke does interviews! Any idea when they usually send those invites out? I'm guessing @Warelin already listed them, but I'm sort of too nervous to check...