it's come to this.

today, while law and order was on commercial break, i picked up my brother's math book and started flipping through it to see what's new in the world of calculus:

"since polynomials are easy to integrate, (of course they are.) the problem of integrating rational functions is really that of integrating proper rational functions. (duh.) but can we always integrate proper rational functions? (this question keeps me up at night.) in theory, the answer is yes, though the practical details may be messy. consider first the integrals of f and g above."

"It is a remarkable fact that any proper rational function can be written as a sum of simple proper rational functions like those illustrated in examples 1 and 2." (really? remarkable? is that the right word here? i mean, i think the unfortunate success of lady gaga is remarkable. proper rational fractions? not so much.)

here's my favorite part:

"we found their values by 'brute force' (that probably means "without a calculator") but there is an easier way. (thank goodness for that.) blah, blah, blah more boring math words that i don't understand, blah, blah, blah....you have just witnessed an odd, but correct, mathematical maneuver." (it's like magic!)

i know, it reads like a novel, but that's not my point. actually, i'm not sure what my point was, because i'm mostly thinking that i'm kind of embarrassed that i spent all that time typing from a calculus book.

i marvel that b takes this class on his own free will. do you know why? he is a math major. he chose to pay money to learn about this stuff. and you know what really kills me? as if majoring in math wasn't enough to suck all the life out of you, he decided to add another boring major. he's a dual major in math and--NO! you guess.

(ha ha, robin, you can't google this.)

CHEMISTRY!!! (were you right?)

i dare you to think of something boringer. you can't.

man, b is so dumb. well, no, that's not true. he's quite smart, obviously, because he actually understands this stuff. and all this from my brother who recycled a bunch of brand new notebooks because "i don't need 'em." and missed his flight (while he was sitting at the gate) because he forgot about time zones and thought he was one hour early.