These gloomy winter months elicit a wide range of emotions; on the one hand, there’s torpor, and on the other, you’ve got lethargy. Yet just as rain mixes with snow to produce slush, so too can a sudden urge to bury oneself under the covers, and hide away from the wasteland outside, shock a sluggish system into a great many sensations.

To name just a few that I’ve encountered, albeit anecdotally:

Irony

At Ruloff’s Karaoke Night on Monday, playing a drinking game called “Sink the Ship,” in which competitors take turns pouring a bit of beer into a floating glass, until the loser, who overestimates his pour, has to imbibe the sunken cup’s contents.

While we were playing this game, a girl started a wretched rendition of “My Heart Will Go On,” Celine Dion’s epic ballad from Titanic.

Pretentiousness

I sat through There Will Be Blood — all 159 minutes of it (the running time confirmed by my friend’s BlackBerry after a grueling 78 minutes) — because the acting was good, the cinematography, breathtaking, and the music, haunting. That said, it was an exercise in monotony; nothing happened for two … and … a … half … hours.

As I left the movie, I turned to my comrades-in-yawns and said, “This is the kind of movie that you can’t say was bad, because people will just say you didn’t understand it.”

Then, I called my friend Josh Harris, and told him how much I hated, hated, hated the movie. He was eating sushi with Mike Gelinas, who, Josh said over the phone, wanted me to know that I probably just didn’t understand it.

Paranoia

A report in yesterday’s New York Times stated that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission underestimated the risks of a potential terrorist attack on college campus’ nuclear reactors. I’m not sure if Cornell’s Ward Center for Nuclear Sciences is still in operation, or if there are fissile materials lying around, but I do know that a few years back, a Sun photographer was able to bypass the entire facility’s security and photograph its reactor complex.

Another New York Times report states that it’s near-impossible for Facebook users to be permanently deleted from the website’s database, and that like the nuclear waste stored under those mountains in Nevada, our digital profiles will remain to haunt us for an interminable half-life.

I don’t know if it’s Zuckerberg or Osama, but somebody’s out to get me.

Frustration

A few minutes before 10 a.m. yesterday, every Jew on my buddy list signed online, presumably to sign up for Birthright, the free trip to Israel. Much like LaGuardia Airport at Christmastime, the website became so congested with irritable would-be travelers of the Hebrew persuasion, that the entire operation came to a standstill.

After two hours of clicking and re-clicking to no avail, we were directed to a virtual “Waiting Room,” where they told us to sit patiently and not refresh our browsers. No refreshments were served.

Mortality

In the library the other day, I asked a bunch of freshmen girls if they knew who T. Pain was, as I’d seen advertisements for his upcoming performance at Cornell. Perhaps it was an homage to the great Common Sense thinker, I wondered aloud?

They giggled, and informed me that he was in fact a hip-hop artist, and that I must know his song, “Low.”

Later that week, the very same song came on at a party, and during the refrain — a basso crescendo of, “Shorty got low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low” — all of the girls danced low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low.

I tried to keep up (or down, rather), but then I threw my back out.

Pessimism

There was a time when Cornell drew convocation speakers like former President Bill Clinton and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

The last two speakers have been CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien (we announced her appearance on April 4, 2007, just one day before she was replaced on American Morning due to lagging ratings), and Martin Luther King III (or as he’s sometimes called, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jr.).

With prospects for ’08 including Ralph Nader’s barber and Roger Clemens’ estranged trainer, the glass is looking half full.

Exasperation

To “serve” means to “offer or distribute a portion or portions,” says my dictionary, as a bartender serves a patron. Not so, according to the Interfraternity Council, which charged three fraternities with serving hard alcohol during rush week in January.

During their unreasonable searches and seizures, the IFC made its cases on three findings at three different locations: (1) a sealed bottle of alcohol was found in a brother’s private room; (2) two girls who lived in a Collegetown annex with some guys in a fraternity were seen drinking in their own room; (3) a few kids were spied through an upstairs window drinking from what looked like a “bottle of clear liquid.”

Based on these three findings, each of the three fraternities was charged with $1,000 fines and eight weeks of social probation. For the IFC and its surly president, Greg Schvey ’09, to “serve” means “to be present … anywhere,” an illogical conclusion that might prohibit minors from entering supermarkets because Mike’s Hard Lemonade is sold in the next aisle.

We all tried to appeal the decision, based on the inconvenient truth that there was no evidence of freshmen being served — in the true sense of the word — hard alcohol, but reason failed, and stupidity prevailed.

Nostalgia

We were telling funny stories from our childhoods the other day, when my roommate told us about a slumber party he had with his middle school friends. They talked about the birds and the bees, and puppy love, and my roommate blurted out: “Does it ever feel like you have three balls?”

He’s better now.