many questions that nobody has yet asked me about grad school but which i am prepared to answer, especially because i am the Future of New Media Journalism and one day people will look back on on this blog and marvel at its humble beginnings and want to know how it all started before i pass away and have my ashes shot out of a cannon or fed to a wild african lion to complete the circle of life or what have you, and it is important to document your intents and purposes for the little people.

so. where are you gonna go?
good question! this fall, i only applied to three places: university of maryland, northwestern, and berkeley. some people urged me to apply to columbia or missouri, but i never really considered those because the idea of moving to NYC or missouri would make me want to dig out my own eyeballs and cook them for dinner. for the most part, i always secretly told myself that if got into northwestern, i'd go. problem is, i found out i got into berkeley before i found out about northwestern, and thus had many hours to imagine myself making napa valley my playground, sipping wine with michael chiarello, and generally communing with nature. i'm still holding on to that sunny dream. but probably northwestern.

you know that chicago is kind of cold, right?
i have heard vague rumors of this coldness, but one thing a good journalist is supposed to do is not believe anything unless presented with facts. so this whole "being frozen into a meat popsicle" thing will have to wait until i can see it for myself.

so, like, are the facts that you are a lazy writer, a sloppy speller, and can't understand an issue more complex than your pinky finger of a concern to your journalistic future?
not really!

well, they worry me. a lot.
don't worry too much. i'm not going to journalism school to be a political magazine writer or a daily newspaper reporter, as worthy and interesting as those jobs may be. yes, writing and reporting is a "big part" of my "education," but i'm in the new media program, baby! which really means I'M LEARNING HOW TO BE A BETTER BLOGGER! or, actually, what i'm really interested in is this crossroads that traditional print journalism and online technology seem to be at. for the past couple of years they've been like two awkward eighth-graders at a school dance, holding each other at arm's length and swaying back and forth to boyz II men while trying to hide their totally out-of-control-budding-sexual-hormone-freakiness. i want to be there to encourage that next step. note: this is not like me advocating that 13 year olds have sex.

so are you freaked out?
yeah, well, i've had that special throwup feeling in my stomach for over 24 hours now, so i guess so. leaving DC is not something that agrees that much with me, especially as i've felt i've just started to really know and enjoy the city in the past year. i feel like i'm just starting to make really important contacts and do better work with DCist and, like, GO OUT and be a normal 25 year old in what i realize is a rather remarkable place. plus, you know, all the people in the world that i love are here. but i've done it before. 2002, i packed up and moved to italy to do a job i knew nothing about and live with people i had never seen before. and it was fantastic. of course, italy didn't turn me into a frozen meat popsicle, so i might not be ready for that. but it's only a year, right?

any other questions? bring em on! i'm gonna be A JOURNALIST, which means i now know the answers to everything!

Have a look at this. And no, despite all indications to the contrary, I am not twelve years old.

ALMOST RELATED BONUS: Kriston sent me this yesterday.

So how about those cell phones? Lots of little parts, huh? Well, see for yourself:

I've at least got a working theory as to what happened. The battery (which still holds a charge) is connected to the system by a just-a-little-too-short ribbon cable. The last time I remember having a working SK in my hand, I was performing a stupid little trick where I toss it while it's opening, and the screen clicking into place sends it whirling into my other hand. In practice it probably just looks like I'm chucking it from one hand to another, but it feels cool -- lots of unexpecting torque and chunky noises and whatnot. Yeah, I'm a dork.

This ill-advised little maneuver probably rattles the insides quite a bit, and my best guess is that this nudged the poorly-designed ribbon cable out of position with the circuitry it's supposed to power. Whoops!

Well, it's great that I think I know what's wrong, but getting this thing back together is a whole other matter. There are five distinct layers going on, a magnet that fell out from god knows where, and I twisted the screen cable more than I should have while trying to disassemble it. With the odds of a successful reassembly plummeting, I think I'll bite the bullet and buy an SK2. Unfortunately, no store in the DC metro region appears to have any in stock.

Oh, and in case anyone stumbles in from google: this guy is who I should have been listening to for disassembly instructions.

how cute are these t-shirts? [via dcist]