Choice quotes from Biology (now with 20% more bonus asides)

Ich schwöre euch, dass ich nicht faul war, sondern ich habe zu viel Hausaufgaben. Wirklich! (Funny that I learned the verb [jemandem schwören] from, and will forever associate it with, a recording of one of Hitler's speeches.)

I don't have much time, so I thought I just might post some golden moments from school. Well, biology; that class rocks.

 Wednesday two weeks ago, we had an old exam paper to do on ecology, and it had this gem of a question: "Describe the benefits of great tits on dates." Confused/shocked/disgusted? Read this before going on. Yes, there's a dubious URL, there's no nudity, I swear. (By chance, that was posted the following Saturday. Talk about great timing.) Anyway, I *still* can't see the actual meaning of the question. Makes me wonder if the person setting the paper was just high (and watching porn?) when writing it. Heh.

 We were talking about DNA replication today (helicase / RNA polymerase / DNA polymerase III / DNA polymerase I / DNA ligase / blaaagh) and we ("we" being both students and teacher) took issue with the textbook stating that DNA polymerase III added short strands of complementary DNA to the RNA primer (if you don't get this, you don't need to). "Short"? Way to quantify your statements. Anyway, the guy sitting next to me, James, suggested it was "about *this* [indicates with hands] long. Not to scale."

 Also today, our teacher, who shall be referred to as Joe (bleheheheh) mused that he'd need to write up a blurb for something or other, and James just randomly started singing. Whee.

One other note, after putting off listening to them for close to three years, I had a listen to Apocalyptica, and was pleasantly surprised to know that they played more than Metallica covers. (Forgive me! I'd only heard of them from a friend, and I gather he only knew about their covers at the time.) Anyway, awesome music. Awesome awesome awesome. I hastily gave my 'cello teacher a CD with Farewell (see below) on it, and she said it was ok to play in 'cello ensemble. Which is especially awesome, seeing as said ensemble has lately been a monotony of easy pieces. (That said, Farewell is nice and high in the treble clef. Practice time!) Pity I only discovered Apocalyptica this year; we could've played so many pieces. A few (well, not just a few) pieces that would be well worth listening to, if you (O great population of readers, who may or may not be greater in number than the number of celli I have every played) follow in the form of Youtube links, listed in order of awesomeness.

 Farewell
 Conclusion
 Faraway
 Ruska
 Hope
 Peace
 Somewhere around nothing
 Hall of the Mountain King (Grieg)
 Stroke

A note for anyone who wants to look for more of their pieces, though - the lead single off their most recent album has a blasphemous title, and their second single, as well as many of their other songs, contains profanity. Just a heads up. (EDIT: Most of their pieces are instrumentals, though, and thus don't contain profanity.)

Und jetzt verschwinde ich. Wenn ich nächste Woche nicht schreibe, dürfen ihr mich ertränken. Oder mich im Brand stecken. Oder mich erdrosseln. Weil es nicht passieren werde!

[random postscript] If my memory serves me correctly, I've played on six celli total. A quarter-size in the classes that were compulsory in year two, another quarter-size when I had private tuition in grades three and four, another quarter-size when picking the cello up again in year six (yeah, I was a tiny kid), a three-quarter size in year seven, and full size in tenth grade (I'm not a tiny kid any more, but I'm still bottom of average. If only I didn't care about my height...bleh). All these celli were/are (I'm using the last one at the moment) rentals from school, by the way. Aaand, deserving of its own sentence, the cello which my parents, who spoil me, bought for me last year. Yay for random asides. [/random postscript]