Marisa's Blog

This Blog Has Moved

2009-08-31T10:52:00.000-07:00

This blog has moved to

http://schizotypalvamp.wordpress.com

Satire

2009-08-29T21:17:00.000-07:00

I picked up a book today from the shelf by Ambrose Bierce called "Civil War Stories". Ever the biting satirist, this was where he chose to set his latest stories.

I finished half of the(very short) first story and set the book down. I felt uncomfortable. I couldn't take his distortion of the Union to fit his point, though I couldn't see what that was yet. I started to think and wonder if another war would affect me the same way.

The Union was made up of people who were flawed and, in some cases, just as bigoted as the Confederates. But the soldiers were still heroes who ended slavery and gave or risked their lives in the process.

I tried to think of other wars since the Civil War and blanked for a second. American education concerning history is very Anglocentric. But what wars would be the background for satire? The Ugandan genocide? Only the ones in which we had simply stretched out our hand like superpowers and taken what wasn't ours.

Laughing at Myself

2009-08-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

I like the morality in kid's books. The humor, the decisions, and the personalities can all be tiring, but all the books I was fond of as a child preached tolerance, preserving life when able, and creativity. No personal agendas are pushed, like Tolstoy's love of Christianity-the man can write a novel, an exploration of human nature, in every sense of the word, but why did he have to end that one with propaganda? I love adult books, but it's nice having solid ground, so to speak, where these tend to be full of shades of gray. To, also, at least pretend that people can be taken by their better emotions.

I started re-reading this book called "Enchantress from the Stars". It's a kid's book, but it isn't. It reminds me of something I would write in my spare time as fun. It deals with a highly-advanced race posing as enchantresses and magicians on a world in the equivalent of the middle ages when an imperial, newly-interplanetary race starts to take their planet over in the name of their empire.

So many personal universes, so little time. I love reading the great books because of their nature and depth, but exploring someone's raw creative output can be fun, too.

Hi

2009-08-28T17:58:00.001-07:00

I haven't been talking about my life lately because there isn't much to report.

I've been jet lagged. I hung out with Tedrick once; we saw a small chihuahua which was insanely cute. I've been reading a lot of nostalgia books, namely the Animorphs and Jedi Apprentice, because they were really entertaining back in the day. KA Appelgate fails to be five people or, at times, even a decent writer of prose. But what she does accomplish is cool. The Animorphs doesn't sugarcoat the fact that these kids get scarred and changed by war. She explains technological loopholes and takes as much advantage of the fact that aliens are probably not going to be anything like humans, though she at times fails. I suspect she models the Andalites after East-Asian cultures. I see no reason why aliens would be so taken with human passion, though. She tries to integrate science and complex moral lessons and all levels of society.

But it's still not exactly productive in the most conventional sense, though it is in others.

My mom and I went to the mall, where we saw the cheaper Venetian creations selling for cheap prices. Everything else was expensive; moreso, in fact, than in London. It seems like the first new wave of European fashion is hitting the stores, but most of it is not my style. We saw real Venetian and Vatican jewelry for very marked-up prices. Plastic jewelry dangled everywhere. I got sick of the place very fast.

Today I'm going to hang out with Jessica.

Gypsies and Black People

2009-08-27T20:25:00.000-07:00

I never got a chance to include this in my trip diary.

On the train in Rome we met Gitanas , Gypsies. Everyone had crowded away from them on train. On the Eurostar we were advised to keep away from them. "Don't trust the Gitanas. They have no fear."

I don't know if gypsies still are masters at theft. It makes me sad, though, to see this alienation of a culture, a people, because of a stereotype. It upsets me to see this discrimination.

Black people are seemingly not integrated in Venice and Florence, for the most part. The only place I ever saw them was at the side of the road selling knock-off bags.

I hate bigotry.

Mass Murderers

2009-08-26T10:02:00.002-07:00

So I was thinking about why people fear killers like Marilyn Manson more than they fear Dick Cheney.

The decisions which Cheney makes lack people screaming for mercy in his neat and polished office. They are a product of military and intelligence interpretation; in other words, they lack a human element. They are also done in the name of "the country", a socially acceptable motive.

However, Manson's crimes are at the personal level, at the exact level which puts a face to the victim and is supposed to trigger compassion. Cheney does not seem like he would stab a person repeatedly in the same cold-blooded manner Manson did. A person without compassion is a person with no place in society.

And a person like that is horribly scary.

Sadness

2009-08-26T10:02:00.001-07:00

Today, Socks is missing and my heart is broken. Most cats go off to die alone, even if they spent their life running up to the door and having conversations with you. Even on his last day, Socks was meowing to me, but it was a continuous meow, a meow that seemed to beg for his mama, which was part of the reason I was so angry when she came back. By the time we realized how bad he was the vet was closed.
I loved this kitty, and I wanted him to be my personal pussycat one day. He was so dorky but sweet and irresistibly cute.

On Friday the kitties are all going to the vet.

Edit: We found him in the front yard, stretched out in the driveway.

Opinions

2009-08-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

I now have a photobucket with 273 pictures from our trip. I'm not done uploading and tranferring, but I hope you enjoy!

I sometimes wonder about our capacity to accept aliens in the future. If they were of a different genetic build it would perhaps in a strange way be easier than if they were similar to us.

Gaiylee came back today. I was happy to see her and know that she was alive. This was quickly turned when she hit and snarled any of the children that came near her. I felt so angry when Socks, who is sick and throwing up, came to her for comfort and stood there, using his precious energy to wait for his mama's reassurance while she completely ignored him.

I know that's what cats do in most cases, though Mother never did. It's a clause in many parts of the animal kingdom to remember food but not children. Yet I could not suppress my emotions watching her hurt the kids she protected so well to their detriment. Of course there was a practical side; the yard is the kitten's home, and a hostile intruder was not welcome there. She had obviously recently given birth, and I was sympathetic to that. Where or when were a mystery. The kittens in our backyard will be spayed, but there seems to be no way to catch her now, which worries me because of the exponential rates at which animals can reproduce.

How am I? Staving off balancing my social and academic life and reading books I read before. Horribly jetlagged, but functioning.

Coming Home

2009-08-24T11:17:00.000-07:00

Today I was awakened by toy mice pelting onto my bed. My cousin and aunt were so generous and good while hosting us, and I’ll miss them.

We went to Heathrow with a nice taxi driver, a Kurdish man from Turkey whom has been here for 25 years. Hearing his appraisal of the political situation in Turkey, Germany, and England was interesting. He was of course affected by the general racism in Turkey when he was a child, and how even now the right wingers don’t want to give Kurdish people rights. He also stated that Turkey doesn’t want to admit to the Armenian genocide because it will then be forced to take responsibly for it and give Armenians their land back. He talked about how friendly and clean Germany is. I’ve never heard “friendly” used to describe the general mentality of the German people, though he was perhaps talking about the large Turkish population there. He talked about how much more integrated these people are, though I have heard otherwise. I don’t know. I think there are bigots everywhere, and an almost disturbing number, at that. It is true that England seems less enthusiastic about its large immigrant population than from an outsider’s point of view makes sense(and I would be considered part of them). I still love England, though, and do think they have plenty of economic activity going on in their country.

It makes me so angry to hear about us powerful nations coming in and just carving up poorer nations for our own benefit. Imagine that happening to you, your country no longer existing because somebody faraway told you so. You’/d think nobody would accept this outrage, but these same people barely seem to know you’re alive. You try to fight and are labeled terrorists. Can you imagine the helpless rage?

Our first flight was seven hours long. It only took me three hours to beat the first five or six scenarios of Starcraft, and I couldn’t read for long or get motion sick. Get vegetarian food on the plane even if you’re not one; we get served first and our food is usually better. We landed in Boston, angry and tired, ate some food and sat at the gate, waiting for four hours for our connecting flight. I fell asleep almost immediately as we boarded for the entire seven hour flight . Note: Don’t do this type of travel. It’s horrible. I dreamt, at one point, about a rock elemental possessed with a spirit who was transported to another dimension where he couldn’t fly. He kept trying to break whatever the dimension’s hold on him was by trying to fly, but eventually found the cause was a tiny city going under the earth, filled with a rich Adriatic-style culture. However, only the princess was good. The rest of the city was not so good, and they could bind together like ants into a behemoth which he had to fight. I blame this on one of the miniatures in the British museum, which was based on a Chinese story where an official wanders into a beautiful city and marries its princess. She dies and he is turned out for turning to drinking while devastated over her death. He goes back to search for the gate, only to find it was an anthill.

We then waited for the Flyaway bus and took a taxi home from Van Nuys. Everyone, exhausted, threw themselves in bed, only to find out they couldn’t sleep. The kittens were also really happy to see us, and there was purring involved. I ate some Indian food and locked Clingy inside, upon which he went a bit crazy and we let him out again.

So that is the end of what seems to have been a very pleasant dream. Last night I dreamt that I visited a large, old cathedral by my house, and was frustrated to wake up and realize that I couldn’t anymore. I’m glad to be back home with Snuggles, who keeps meowing for huggup, and the kittens, who aren’t letting us out of their sight, and my books and capability to work, though. It’s like coming back to reality, which is also a little scary. Time to get down to business.

2009-08-22T12:44:00.000-07:00

Today we went back to the British Museum and saw sculpture from East Asia on Buddhism and Hinduism.I also saw Assyrian and Egyptian art. I love miniatures. We also went to Buckingham palace.

I thought about a lot of stuff but don't feel like writing right now. Cheers!

Full Day Yesterday

2009-08-22T01:09:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting dream last night where a friend of mine turned into a god, like Apollo, and lived as a shining, bright center of truth for some time. Then a visitor came and showed him that he and the gods were turning into mysteries of smoke and shadow. It was actually quite touching. The gods went off to find a cure, though my "awake" mind knew it was almost hopeless.

Last night I was too tired to write an entry. We went to the Tate museum and and Stonehenge yesterday. I get angry when people compare side-of-the-road and cheap artists to these people. My favorite were the English romantics,and my favorite painting was "The Deluge", the second picture on this site. This was extremely powerful in person. I could hear the waves and the people. I also saw the first picture, "The Death of Ophelia", which I have wanted to for years. It is much sadder in person, and the foliage is much more defined. There was also this awesome picture with children lighting Chinese lamps in the Victorian section. After lunch, which was good, I went back and got lost in the Pre-Raphealites, and it was actually quite painful to pull myself away.

I want to turn part of my house into a workshop. I've always wanted to do metal and glassworking and grow crystals and crap, and now I can sort of do some of that. We'll see.
I have a lot to do when I get back, including learning a lot of math and physics stuff that I want to.

We took a tour to Stonehenge, which was the most efficient(and cheapest) way of getting there. The guide was nice, though muffled. It was a two-hour drive there and we only got one hour at the site, not enough for me to go explore the barrows and pine forests, which I reallly wanted to. The first henge on that site was erected 5000BC, and the country used to be all forest. Isn't that cool? You can sort of see how the creators meant it to be and connect with people from 3000BC. It bears a strange resemblance to the colosseum, and the altar in the middle reminds me of cult horns.

I was thinking more, but no more time to write. Tommorow we fly back.

Taking a Boat, Train, and Plane: Literally

2009-08-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

Side Note: Everyone seems to think that we were either British or Indian in Italy.

Today we went to the airport in a water taxi. Venice is beautiful, chock full of history from foundations to roofs, and I am definetly coming back there again. The buildings are so old and reused in so many ways because of necessity. Here is where the ghost of Titian is supposed to live; here Wagner gathered inspiration. Perhaps Venice's decay is a symbol of the place great art has in the world today, though in my opinion the bricks and age make the buildings even better in most cases. Venice is better taken care of than Rome and Florence, though. At least it has the glass and lace industries producing new works, whereas the other cities seem to be depending on tourism. We bought an awesome book about legends/folktales/history of Venice, which I read on the plane.

Coming back to the UK made me extremely happy, though. The systems here are so much more efficient. For example, to check in Venice airport the entire flight has to wait in one queue. It was extremely easy and cheap to go by public transportation the equivalent of two hours driving, besides a few flights of stairs which we had to haul suitcases up. Two nice men helped us at one point. I've met a lot of nice Italians, French, and British people on this trip who have made this easier on us.

My cousin took my mom, aunt, and I for a walk through the forest and cemetary in the back of her house. Seeing the momentos on the graves made me wonder if my sentimentality is already building mine, brick by brick. I don't know how to express what I mean in this case.

We came back home, talked, and are now relaxing.

I'm on a Boat anndd, it's Going Fast anndd...

2009-08-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

Today we mostly relaxed.

We went down to the Riallto bridge, which took a few hours as we shopped in every store in Venice. Or maybe that was how it felt. Anyways, I wasn't blameless since I got a (droool, I love this)pendant, earrings, and other things. I also bought a beautiful scarf for cheap which looks as if it is of expensive Spanish make. I wanted to buy a duck for Chris but didn't have any extra money at that point, and it wasn't that great quality. Hopefully I can get some pasta for him; I know how much he would appreciate that. I saw a jazz cd but didn't know if the music was good or not.

Most of the figurines would break in the suitcase, so we are not considering them, though we got a bird.

We ate in a delicious side place run by a Chinese man who had low prices and well-prepared shrimp salad. The Italians don't serve salad dressing from what I have seen, so I mixed some balsamic vinegar, pepper, salt, and olive oil into my salad, which tasted delicious. It was very cheap, too.

The businesses here in the tourist sector seems to be mostly split into lots of small stores and the high-end designers. I like it, as most of the stores sell made-in-Italy goods at reasonable prices. Hopefully Italy does not make its people slave to produce them, but I doubt it. The goods are also higher quality. I wish that we could have businesses like that, though I haven't seen any, say, office supply stores in Venice. Today was the first time we saw a chain store, which was called coin. It obviously catered to tourists, though, since everything in there was written in English without any Italian subtitles. I really like the "clocky" which runs away, but not at 55 euros. It felt kind of depressing to go in there after all the small businesses.

I wish we had time to visit the Venice where the Venetians live.

We got dressed again after showering and relaxing away from the heat. We ate at a restaurant while it got dark and the street entertainers came out, which was nice, though I felt guilty passing one without giving him change(no hers were present at this time). We walked to the canal and watched the gorgeous water seethe. It reminded me of a beating forest. I don't think it's a coincidence that this picturesque lagoon city is connected with glass. The inspiration is so close by, shining with a light that nobody has ever been able to capture. We watched the boats, talked, and came home.

One thing that bothers me about ancient art is certain symbols such as dark skin meaning evil or slanted eyes meaning evil. We must imbibe those to appreciate what the pictures mean, and personally it doesn't affect my day to day life, but it still makes me uncomfortable. Western society really needs to move on from those.

Tommorow I go back to the UK.

Dance, Dance

2009-08-18T12:42:00.000-07:00

Tired; too tired to write a real entry, probably.

-Had a private tour of the Murano glass factory with a guide named Frederico.
This was included in the price of the hotel. We caught a water taxi which was nice with leather seats. Apparently there are "roads" in the water. The art pieces are amazing; the silica sand is so pure that they look as if lead is in the glass. Some pieces looked like porcelain, some had fishes in them, and many were dyed amazingly. There were even cubist pieces. Many were plated with gold and hand painted. We bought a necklace and two sets of earrings from the showroom, where you can't take pictures. It sort of spoiled all the other glass pieces selling around the place, which now look like plastic. From the cheaper room I got a necklace and a pendant, but the difference was clear. I think that, many years from now, museums will feature pieces from this place. So gorgeous. Our guide/salesman was very nice and strangely honest at the same time as trying to sell us things. I liked him a lot.

-Took a boat back to St Mark's Square
My dad and I saw the Archeological Museum, Correr Museum, Historical Museum and Art Museum. The Archeological Museum had a lot of Grecian statues and Roman copies of Grecian statues. The Historical museum featured the life of the Doge and some war pieces, including intricately carved...pikes/scythe hybrids and pistols. The art and historical museums featured art from many different periods, which was nice because of how close we could get to the paintings. I kept getting lost in them.

We then went to The Church of Gold. The line was about 20 minutes long; bring an umbrella. The ceiling is covered in gold and painted with Byzantine figures. We didn't see the treasury, though, but we went behind the altar. Reallllly pretty and different.

Since everything closes at this time, I bought a quick calzone(mmm blue cheese) and headed back to the room, where I took a long nap.

-Wandering Around
We sort of wandered the streets and shopped. I bought a little octopus and crab for Afif and Ilya, just because. I also finally got a mask, which are selling everywhere.

-Getting cheated for Dinner
Again. Plus Mosquitos. I hate these types of mosquito bites, as they don't stop itching and swell up to huge sizes like the ones that made me stop going to Trinidad for four years. That should give you an indication of how bad they were. Bring a bug zapper!

Little story on that later.

Abbr. Version of the Day

2009-08-17T13:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my mom, dad, and I got up early to go to the Uffizi museum. Though we arrived there at 8:30am, the line was already about 20 minutes long. Apparently they only let people in in groups. The highlight was seeing Botticello’s Rite of Spring and Birth of Aphrodite. They look so much better in person, and the women’s hair glitters with real gold. There were also Titians, Rembrandts, Giottos, a lot of Grecian and Roman statues, and other notables. The ceiling was adorned with paintings. The medieval art glittered with gold and symbolism.
We then walked down to the Ponte Vecchio, which is full of gold shops.
We wandered around a bit, then my dad and I went to Santa Maria Novella. This is one of the few churches that felt as if it had a holy presence inside. Boticello’s Adoration of the Magi and Cross were inside, as were many beautiful works of art. The walls were full of frescos, tombs(?!), and paintings. It really is a must-see if you come here.
We also checked out a Roman fort, but it was closed. Everyone then went down to the Ponte Vecchio, Neptune Fountain, and Piti Palace. We ate at a restaurant with disgusting food, then went home.

Today I got up late to go down to the Eurostar. We took to train to Venice and a water taxi to the hotel. It’s very different. Venice is a city without cars or bikes; only pedestrians and boats roam the islands. It’s also gorgeous, without graffiti and seems more organized than Florence or Rome. Our hotel is luxurious, but has no elevator. We were starving but had arrived in time for the siesta, which takes place for good reason since it is boiling hot. My family ate leftover salami sandwiches and I had to eat gellato. We were all going to go to the grocery, but a bunch of us left and went back home. I saw a gorgeous church in the Venetian style, and we returned to our room to wait until the siesta and burning ended. The grand canal is big and everything glitters with white marble and water, which doesn’t smell contrary to popular opinion. I also bought postcards for people.

It’s funny because I’ve seen a bunch of people walking around with California t-shirts who obviously are not Californians. Also, there seem to be more Americans here. Why is all the music here English when most people speak it brokenly? This is not just in the tourist spots.

We then went to San Marco’s square. The Church of Gold is covered in it and shines when the sun hits the walls, but was closed. We wandered around a bit among pillars and gondolas and columns, then had trouble deciding where to eat. We accidentally ate at an expensive place and went home.

Argh! Mosquitos!

Falling into a Mud Puddle in Pisa

2009-08-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

Little note: They serve vinegar and oil instead of butter in Italy. Also, straws are rare.

I feel better today. We got up early and took the train to Pisa. The Italian countryside has the same fractal distrubition as Los Angeles.There are cultivated sunflowers everywhere. There are a lot of decrepid places which we passed. Italy seems to be slowly degenerating from a lack of enforced rules.
We arrived after an hour later, to discover the tower was far away. I slipped in a mud puddle and fell. Yes, I got covered in it. Thankfully, there are a lot of taps in Italy, but there was no way to take the dirt off my white skirt which covered it the entire day.
My dad, mom, and I decided to walk to the tower. Pisa is very broken down, it seems, besides a few areas. My aunts and cousin were shopping. We saw the tower and my mom decided to join them. My dad and I bought tickets and saw the inside of the cathedral and battisere, which were beautiful. The architectural style is very different from Rome; less clutured but still involving many paintings. The ceiling was filled with gold flowers. I really want more time with those paintings. When I am an old, grumpy woman I'm going to come back to every major architectural wonder and museum and gaze at each painting for at least fifteen minutes each. The Battisere was simple, though coloums were carved with great skill. The simple altar was solomn brass.
My mom wanted to know why I like the churches so much. Besides the fact that beauty is not determined by religion, this art is created by the masters of the period using the full extent of their craft to celebrate what was most important to them. Religious art is sort of a doorway into the cultural subconcious and a look into how people viewed their idols and icons, another doorway into that mysteriosness of being human. The medieval icons I saw in retrospect seems to be respective of the period; technically proficent and yet flat, though this changed in later periods.
I wonder if taking pictures instead of writing those thousand words is detrimental in some way to eloquency? Anyways.
We though we had lost mom but I found her, the bus passed us by, and we all took a taxi back to the train which was not air conditioned this time and let us roast whenever it stopped. The train goes very fast, faster than Amtrak.
We returned, ate pizza, and my mom, dad, and I saw Il Duemo. The inside is actually fairly simple, with soaring ceilings and pretty windows. The outside is, well, complicated, full of green and white and statues and gold. Gorgeous. We wondered around for a bit on the streets and then came back to the hotel.

I may not be able to post tommorow.

Bye, Rome

2009-08-14T12:36:00.002-07:00

I feel almost too sick to write an entry today, so I'm going to give a cursory outline which I will hopefully fill in tomorrow:

1.) Took the Eurostar to Florence
-Information guy only speaks Italian
-comfortable ride through the Italian countryside
-lots of sunflowers and forest. Also saw a trailer park.
2.)Found hotel
-was within walking distance, so no taxi
-another strange elevator
-curfew at 1:00am
3.)Ate Lunch
-got lost a lot trying to find the restraunt, finally followed directions from a
little old lady.
-numbering system sucks
-food good
4.)Went on a ride-around taxi
-pay by hour, not by person
-One seat was smelly
-people in back can't hear
5) The Tour
-Saw Piazza Michelangalo
-Beautiful view
-Got umbrella with Botellici's Rite of Spring on it
-Saw oldest church in Italy
-Medieval style carvings
-More my type of religious contemplation(sans graves)
-hard not to step on graves. must walk on marble strip.
-Saw another church

Feel sick so must stop on the tour. Dad and I seperated and went to the Academia. Saw David.

2009-08-13T09:38:00.000-07:00

Flickr Stream Updated; LOTS of pics

The Vatican

2009-08-13T08:19:00.000-07:00

Today we took a taxi to the Vatican out of practical considerations. Our taxi driver was honest and charged us under the pre-agreed price. The line to get into the museum was long but quick. We walked through room after room of detailed ceiling, faded but intricate tapestries. and walls covered in art. It was very obvious who was a master vrses who was a painter; a painter simply painted flat scenes, but a master made them come to life, like in the Sistine chapel. I love Michelagalo's work on form and shadow, but couldn't see his faces close enough to really appreciate them. Also, we were ushered in the opposite way the church was supposed to be seen, so most of the paintings were upside down. It's frustrating to be around a work of art in its original element and not be able to appreciate it.

No talking or pictures in the Sistine Chapel.

It interests me that everywhere I go I see people with cameras doing more snapping than seeing. Maybe I'm mistaken, but it almost seems as if sometimes people forgo living in the moment for taking a picture of it. I never really thought about this before I read an essay on it. Perhaps it is related to the fact that we are rushed through all of these places without time to truly appreciate the art or carvings.

The food at the Vatican was delicious, but the toilets had no seat covers.

We then headed over to the security check for St Peter's Cathedral, after which my dad and I got seperated from the rest of the group. We thought "Oh, the Cuppola, that seems like a good place to see". Unsuspecting, we bought tickets and took an elevator up to the heart of the beautiful church where all the saints were painted on the ceiling backed in gold. Then there were steps. 320 steps, to be exact. My dad and I nearly gave up, but it was one way only and we made it to the top of the tower where I took a couple pictures. Going down involved the same amount of steps but was not nearly as hard. We exited into the Basilica, which, well, no words. Michelangalo carved many statues in there, and the walls were filled with gold and paintings. Pictures didn't come out well inside, though.

We finally made contact and went into a few shops before going home with another honest cab driver, who charged us very cheaply.

2009-08-12T14:19:00.000-07:00

Flickr stream updated

(Will Not) Fade Away

2009-08-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

Since I accidentally locked myself out of the room and my mom and Brenda have gone to greet my other aunt and cousin who are arriving today, I decided to write that entry on decaying art I meant to.

Seeing the statues in the British museum, I sensed some irony in their decay. After all, didn't the Greeks have an overarching belief that art is eternal? I believe that age has given them character, but has the defacement that some, or even most, of them have faced really made them more beautiful? Or would we gasp even more in awe at how the artist meant his work to be portrayed?

Like a source of radiation, these works have inspired hundreds of thousands of images and copies, but none are as good as the original.

Should art realize its decay and embrace it? Create slight faults so that pieces come off in a certain order? Plant the plants that will eventually engulf the piece?

I know there are certain schools of thought which say yes. For me, it's just an interesting ideology to think about. Though I believe if we as a culture simply stopped attempting to reach for the eternal in some way it would destroy an essential part of the soul.

PS Marian Churland's "Beast", I wants.

Some Boring Title

2009-08-12T08:09:00.000-07:00

I woke up late today after refusing to go to sleep last night. I' bumped my head several times in the night by accident. We accidentally discovered a market on the way to Theremini, which was filled with cheap and beautiful goods. The quality of the jewelry is better here. The silver is really silver, the glass is really glass, and the design is beautiful. I got a vintage pendant and another amber pendant, a necklace made out of the inside of some shell, and a ceramic Roman-style necklace. I nearly bought some beads. I also got a plastic swatch which is about to become the new "fad", methinks, for extremely cheap because it is waterproof. A couple of the guys gave me discounts.

Most of the sellers were Indian. In fact, most of the people peddling goods are either east Asian or Indian. Apparently there is a large Indian population here, and a decent population of East Asians and African-Italians. I'm just reporting from the streets, not statistics, though, and that is skewed by the tourists.

The subway in Rome is only decent. It really needs more stops, and the maps of the subway/busses aren't free. What? I have to assume this is due to tourist season.

We were going to the Colosseum and the middle of Rome. The line was HUGE. Buy a Roma pass or reserve tickets. I cannot stress this enough. I got a parasol to deal with the burning sun. After a couple of mishaps my dad and I waited in line to go into the middle of Rome, and our faces nearly melted off. A single ticketwoman was dealing with more than two hundred people in a line which was constantly growing. By the end of the line I was almost too exhausted to walk inside. The forum, pallecento, etc was inside, and we saw them. But mostly both of us were struck by how sad the crumbling buildings that blended together were. Hints remained about how beautiful the buildings must have once been. Even though Rome was a corrupt tyranny at the end, the art should not have suffered. We half joked that ghosts must wander the streets because of the violence that happened there. It's obvious how great Rome must once have been. I've really come to appreciate their skill and finese. and it's amazing that their buildings still stand as well as they do.

We met my mom and aunt by a restraunt, where I ordered a seafood risotto that had whole baby squid in it. I was scarred, pretty much. I think I'll stop eating squid for the most part, as they are very intelligent. Also, scars.

Mom and I went into the Colloseum. What a work of architecture. This was much better organized than the other tourist-wise, and even had an elevator. I learned a lot about the history and organization of the structure inside the museum, which included many statues from its better days. The wooden floor has been removed so that the underchambers are visible. One of the things I learned is that the ruling emperor, who had pacificed Judea after its rebellion, declared himself emperor by force, but de-privitised many of the areas Nero had made so arbitrarily and built it as a public area on top of the artifical private lake Nero had created.

We're going to go out again tonight. Wheee.

Walking

2009-08-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my mom and Brenda went shopping until my dad and I got frustrated and we separated. Nothing against them, but that's just not what we wanted to do. Dad and I walked down to the end of the street and saw the middle of the heart of ancient Rome, that huge propaganda monument which is gorgeous, part of the colosseum and a Trajan's colomn. Two stray cats were around. I tried at first to take a picture of all of the Roman architecture I saw, but it appears the ancient ruins are really the heart of the city and stick out in many places. Rome feels frozen in time to its glory days in the 1800s when artists flocked there in numbers and the might of the Romans, though it could be the fact that most of the locals have left the city and tourists abound.

I also finally got a messenger bag I am happy with. It's so nice that I don't want to mess it up and am considering getting a "casual" one. Why is my extant one not sufficent? Because it doesn't zip and I am constantly in fear of things falling out. It's also too big.

We ate at a restraunt which was very popular. I think there were a lot of native italians there, though the food seemed soaked in oil for tourists. Accents abound, and I've heard French, German, and British. I think I saw Icelandic graffiti.

Today we got up too early, in my opinion, and I cleared my camera off onto the computer. The hotel provides free food which we took advantage of. We waited for my aunt and uncle, then left for the huge metro station Thermini. We had a lot of fun trying to figure out how to get train and metro tickets. Things were very unclear, partially or mostly because we don't speak Italian, though most people speak some English. There is an excellent book store in the station, though most of the books are in Italian.

We took the subway to what was advertised to be the Trevi Fountain. However, we still needed directions and the map to get there. It's always a shock when walking up to these monuments. Usually they are blocked by buildings, and all of a sudden this huge, intricatley carved things comes into view. I can see why the Romans liked fountains with this weather, though. This is the first place with heat to match the valley's that I have ever travelled to, and to make it a little worse the weather is slightly humid. We then ate at a nearby cafe and went towards Hadrian's temple. My dad got lost and then my aunt and mom got lost and then my uncle got lost. Then we finally made it, seeing another Trajan colomn along the way. My aunt and mom also stayed in a souvenir store for a long time before meeings us there. I have no idea why they decided to put the ministry of agriculture in there.

We then accidentally got to the Pantheon, which is amazing, as you can probably imagine. The church was much more oppressive than St Peter's Basilica, which we visited yesterday. Oh! I forgot to tell everyone about that. It was so pretty I nearly cried, no joke. The architecture and paintings are amazing. Also, ironically, they had dedicated part of a cloister to celebrating Gallelio and relativity. It had soaring ceilings and beautiful paintings.

So after everyone was found, we went to the Piazzo de Navona, which is a huge building with a huge fountain in front of it. A nice French girl gave me part of a cracker she was feeding the pigeons with and one sat on my lap. We then walked to the Campo de Fiori, which was supposed to be a huge market, but had one or two stalls and a lot of neglected buildings. Dad and I checked out an interactive exhibit of Leonardo Da Vinci machines which turned out to be for children, while my mom, uncle, and aunt got gellato.

My aunt convinced us to get a taxi to the Spanish Steps ,which dad and I walked up. The church at the top contained the usual amazing paintings and marble, and apparently was first sponsored by a courtesan. At this point everyone was tired and we decided to go home. We got seperated for an hour during which everyone got very angry, and then rested at home.

Arriving in Italy

2009-08-10T06:22:00.000-07:00

Argh, I wrote this entry originally on Works and then lost it.

Today I got up around 5:30am to fly to Italy. Ella was doing more cute mischief and puffed up her tail and fur when she saw me this morning. She also rubbed all over dad’s suitcase. Sooo cute.
The tax ride was smooth, and we had pre-paid the proper amount so we didn’t have to worry about getting ripped off. I like Heathrow’s check-in system, at least for this terminal, better than LAX’s by a long shot.

They’re starting to speak Italian on the plane and it’s, well, Greek to me.

The check-in went smoothly and quickly, except that my bag got isolated since I had forgotten the bottle of water in it from the last flight. The guy in front of us was trying to sneak rum and cologne on board the plane, so it took a while to sort him out. The TSA guy finally just got my bag over with quickly. He was nice, and handed back my shoes and sweater before searching it.

We then went into the stores, since our gate hadn’t opened yet. Marks and Spencer is still expensive. I got a look at the new mini-VAIO. I’m jealous of its size, but the processor is only 1.33ghz and I don’t see why they made a deal with Vista instead of Ubuntu. I honestly think the latter will affect the popularity of it. But it’s great to see a prototype of the future of netbooks.
The other netbooks were basically like mine or worse, and cost its equivalent in pounds. I LOVE my Acer, as practically everyone knows.
I’m also happy to learn that Packard Bell survived in Europe. We have computers from ‘88 and ‘98 made by them, which still haven’t broken. If they still make computers of that caliber, then I am so glad they survived here. Of course, their netbook has a 1.2 Ghz AMD processor., eheheheh.

I’ve realized that the fact that I am familiar with most of the movies/television here is more a comment on how LA and the internet are hubs of information than anything else. I’m also glad to see uniquely British movies in a generic store, though not the titles “Giant Shark vrs Octopus” and “Lesbian Vampire Killers”. I wanted to buy the first season of Little Britain and may when I get back. They also had Goodnight, Lenin in the store.

I’m sad to see a dearth of the healthy snacks I observed from my first times in England, which also has an obesity problem now. There are less bookstores and less Starbucks.

My uncle gave me a sandwich without telling me it had chicken in it(he does know I’m a vegetarian). I consequentially got a stomachache.

I slept on our flight here. Customs were almost too easy. My uncle’s suitcase got lost. We then took a large Mercedes Benz taxi with a very enthusiastic cab driver, who showed us half the monuments in the city and confirmed the stereotype of people being very enthusiastic with their hands. The architecture is amazing. More on that later. There seems to be a large proliferation of tagging on the beautiful Italian housing and trains. Our cab driver then didn’t know how to get to the hotel and shouted to people on the street for directions. We eventually got here. The elevator is old-fashioned and scary. I love the trees in the boulevards, which are flourishing in their natural habitat. The rooms are very clean and nice, though the outside is not much to look at. Thankfully there appears to be unfamiliar music, though Lady Gaga followed us here.

I hope that we adapt without incident to the Italian culture without incident. It’s very different from our task and time oriented culture.

Off to Italy at 6:00am

2009-08-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

I have to write an entry on decaying art.

Today I rebelled against long sleeves, as it has been warm and even hot here. My dad and I split off from the main group to go to the Natural History museum while my mom met up with my aunt Brenda to go to Oxford Circus, which is a street with shopping. The natural history museum here is excellent and certainly better than the ones in LA and San Diego. Even the architecture is gorgeous, though you can see through the windows into the messy research institutions. This museum was the first that taught me about the sheer scale of dinosaurs. As a kid growing up in a world full of skyscrapers I was never impressed with the fossils I saw, but the enormous T-Rex in the lobby showed me exactly why this was the king of tyrants. I don't know what they did with that skeleton and I wish I could have seen it today, but the gigantic diplodocus that took up most of the lobby will have to suffice. I never knew there were so many species of ichtyosaur, nor that they gave birth to live young. Seeing their fossilized remains right before birth was kind of sad. The usual suspects, mosasaur etc were there as well, but one of the best was seeing the only fossil identifying one of the species. I wonder why they even were in different genuses?

I then bought a mini-puzzle of the HMS Beagle for Chris in the Darwin shop. They had an "extract your own DNA" kit in the shop, which I wanted even though I could probably do it fairly easily with a little ingenuinty, but it cost too much.

The birds were too crowded at that time, so we went up the stairs. I can't remember what order we did things in. I think the next thing we saw was the gems. They have thousands of pounds worth of beautiful minerals in one of the most complete collections I have ever seen, including tons of beautiful and famous diamonds like The Star of Africa. They also had the largest gold nugget ever discovered(from Australia), worth over 500,000 pounds. One of the meteorites was on display and I touched it because I couldn't help myself. They also had several moon rocks and a metorite from Mars. The cut gemstones were also amazing. So cool!

We quickly went through an exhibit on the Evolution of Man, but most of the bones were casts. This was the first time I saw Lucy in person, though. There was a GIANT sequoia trunk over 1300 years old when it fell. We bought my mom a beautiful red amber necklace on a sterling silver chain. I got a clear rock quartz-studded chain and an unusual hematite chain. There were also a lot of different and interesting toys, also known as "I'm going to look up how to do this on the internet when I get back". The birds exhibit was sad, as they had some animals that had gone extinct because of us. The hummingbirds were gorgeous, but dead. It does make me sad that they had to die, even if it was for a good cause.

Then there were the dinosaurs, which had a line to get into. The wait was supposed to be 30 minutes but ended up being about eight. I joked in the exhibit that the warfare of the future would involve cloned dinosaurs instead of tanks. The skeletons(and claws) were huge! I have pictures, but they don't show the scale of the animals. Iguanadon was freaky. The club on the end of those dinosaur's tails was huge! Some dinos suffered from arthritis. There was also a really realistic animitroncic T-rex which was almost scary. Dinosaurs were the ultimate killing machines, and now the planet is ruled by little, soft, pink things. There is no way we could have stood up them. There was also a section questioning why dinos are so popular. Well, no crap. Humans have a thing for huge reptiles and cool things.

I also got a notebook with a cover made out of recycled circuit boards!

We went to meet the rest of my family at this point, went the wrong direction and had to take the tube another stop. Finally, we ended up in the right Marks & Spencers. We went to Boots and then went home.

It's interesting how even the vegetation in England is familiar because of how much of it is imported to the United States. I am happy to see local brands and books. I haven't seen any Innocent Smoothies so far; what happened?

Ella is doing cute and naughty things. She was in the blinds and now is in Sharon's bed. She purrs when she's about to "get" someone.

Please Mind the Gap Between the Train and the Station

2009-08-08T14:04:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up from a series of reoccurring nightmares where I woke up too late to go to to the British Museum and had to go socializing instead to my mom handing my chocolate milk and saying "Get ready, we have to go to the Museum". We went and saw the Grecian art section. Words can't describe these artifacts. One day Grecian statues are going to just get up and walk while proclaiming that cannons and age have just given them more beautiful gravity with gracious arrogance. There is something about them that I have never seen in other statues. We also saw plenty of Myceanean and Minoan art, which was even more pleasing about reading about them, and parts of one of the former wonders of the ancient world. I was so freaking happy. I love the British Museum so much. It's the freaking Parthenon, people! Sometimes I just want to shout at everybody. "Don't you get the SIGNIFICANCE?" "Don't you see how beautiful these things are?" "Don't you get how people carved these works of art without half the tools we have today?" It seems like so many people just see these things without seeing them because they feel they should. Pictures will be added soon.

Then started the train ride to Heathrow to meet my aunts, which was an hour and a half long. On the train I realized that we had bought day passes for zone 1-4 and Heathrow was in zone 6. When we got out we nearly got fined 50pnds each. We then took the bus, which didn't give us help and dropped us off seven stops too late. We had to wait for the next bus, which we nearly had to pay for. Needless to say, everyone was very, very upset at the end. "Are you guys hungry?" my aunt asked. "And angry!" I said. Everyone laughed and the tension diffused. I don't look foward to the day when I'm too old to technically do that. We talked to my two aunts for a while, took pictures then headed home and watched The Queen, which was excellent.

UK Day Four(With Pictures)

2009-08-07T11:33:00.000-07:00

I love how in England every two miles there is a sign saying "Slow Down", the GPS tells the car to slow down and the cars don't allow people to go over a certain speed, and yet people are still breaking the speed limit regularly.
The clothing in England reminds me of the clothing in America except for a little bit wilder and a little bit shorter, and for some reason it scares me.

Last night I didn't go to sleep until around 7:00am, literally. At 10:00am I was waken up. We went to Hyde park by the Tube and visited the Trinidadian embassy for longer than we liked. Embassy row is surrounded by fancy cars, unsurprisingly, that were mostly Mercedes. I wondered what the buildings were before they were embassies, as they were obviously older than the organizations in them.
We then got off at Leicester square and ate in a pub, then walked to Covent Gardens market. Finally, we walked to St Paul's, a monument in architecture. It took a long time. I have vivid memories of walking up the steps of that cathedral, but we couldn't do that this time since there was going to be a mass. Then we visited a couple bookstores, and I bought a bible of Buddhist literature.
There are plenty of brands in England that I don't recognize, but plenty that I do. I love the woods here.
Anyways, I'm keeping it short so that I can do a picture entry now.

Update: Photostream updated.

Trippin', UK day two

2009-08-06T14:44:00.000-07:00

So today after I had insomnia for about four hours I was awakened and got chocolate milk. We went to Brighton, which is a long drive from where we are. The GPS took us around some funny places a couple of times. One was a bridge in which a two-way road suddenly transitioned into one way, and the one way was the opposite direction of which we were going. UK drivers are still crazy and some of the roads are too narrow for two-way traffic. Also, there are a lot of Mercedes trucks, mostly garbage trucks. I object to this homogenity of cultures. Most of the music on the radio and movies mentioned I am familiar with, though Sharon's car has a USB drive. What! I want a USB drive.

We arrived in Brighton and were immediatley greeted by parking prices we refused to pay. After finding new parking, going the wrong way in a stairwell and discovering a wonderful smell, we ate in a seafood restraunt where the food was good and fresh, though expensive. We then walked up a street containing lots and lots of restraunts and some gambling places. My mom and aunt spent some time in a shoe store, and we visited a 99 pound store, factory store, and an enormous store called Pricemark which had great prices. I bought some cheap pants and another best coat ever, which means my search for coats is over. I was sort of disturbed by the mother and high-schoo daughter shopping for sexy underwear together, though I guess it is good that they are open?

British young people seem to dress either like British punks or in a style similar to Californians.

It had started to rain while we were in the store, and we decided to leave Brighton after the stores started to close. I wrapped my scarf around my head to keep from getting wet. We then spent more than two hours on the road during pouring rain while it got dark. I slept during most of this time. Drivers were still scary.

We came home and ate dinner. I lied about the pictures today. Soon, my friends.

Insomniacalicious

2009-08-05T23:08:00.000-07:00

I am having trouble sleeping. I'm thinking about how glibly most women I know dismiss the fact that high heels damage feet. It seems that most rationalize this with "yes, but only if you wear it all the time" or "these aren't high enough to do any damage". Every time a person wears high heels they are damaging their foot a little, and in my opinion they really are the new footbinding. There is only one pair of shoes with heels which I will wear, and even my formal shoes don't have any. Looking good is not a good enough reason for me to hurt myself.

I really like these toy robots from the 80s. They look more like robots than what is seen in the toy section today. I used to love virtual/giga/robotic pets, and still have a mess of them around the house. I'm trying to figure out how to make use of them, also. The problem with virtual pets is that they're missing two of the crucial things which makes a pet worth having: behavior to observe and unpredictability. A worm is more interesting to observe than a Giga pet.
When we develop better pet robots, though, I am getting one hands down. They combine my love of electronics with my love of animals and pets.

This morning I want to do everything. I want to check out the underground comic stores and all of the cool little places here. I'm probably not going to get to do that, but waaaaaaah.

I like this article on behavioral economics and how it is more realistic than "rational man", but dislike how it paints humans as creatures unable to help themselves.

UK Trip, Day 1

2009-08-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

So today was very hectic. Our flight was at 7:50pm, but Primetime(an airport taxi which picks multiple people up from their houses and takes them to the airport) was going to arrive at our house at 3:40pm. As a result, we were basically in a rush to do last minute housework all day and take Snuggles to the vet. I also was trying to put an extra movie onto my computer but my mom’s compy refused to cooperate. There was a lull in activity around 3:40pm, when Primetime had called and said it was going to be at our house at 4:05pm.

Mom and I are worried about the kittens. They may not want to be picked up, but they love attention and are sweet and obedient. We hope they will be alright for the time we are gone.

Checking in took a longer time than it should have considering we were second in line. Thankfully, they took our bags instead of making us go in that annoying extra line which I hate. Everything else went smoothly and we ended up at the gate an hour and a half before departure. I dislike the fact that airports think people should pay for internet access, but I’m glad they provide free chargers. Stupid me forgot to mention getting an AC/DC converter before the flight. I love this laptop, as it helps make me productive and useful while giving me access to music.

Our seats on the plane got switched at the last moment much to mom’s chagrin, but dad was right in front of me and mom beside me.

The planets are so easy to spot from a plane.

I did bunch of work on the plane, followed by eating and falling asleep. My mom had accidentally forgotten to order a vegetarian meal for me, so I had to eat the tray. When I woke up the plane was twenty-five minutes from landing. We were early at the gate, but the gate was not ready for us and they had problems with the jet way, so we ended up getting into the airport a little late.

Airplanes really are well constructed. I don’t mean that sarcastically.

Into customs we went. Forty-five minutes later we went and picked up our suitcases, which were one of the few left. This is why my parents need to walk faster. I may not be that fast, but compared to them I am. Heathrow’s bathrooms are really, really clean.

We had a lot of fun after this, because we weren’t sure if my cousin Sharon was picking us up or sending a taxi. We tried calling her a million times, but to no avail. We were finally forced to take a taxi, which ended up charging us double the amount usually charged. I fell asleep in the cab from the warmth.

We finally reached Sharon’s house, which is a pretty brick(like most of London) residence with a park in the back, and a cemetery in back of that. I’ve been there before and it’s not bad at all, but I’m still a little freaked out by sleeping here on principle. She has a cat named Ella who seems very sweet and has converted Sharon and Rosabelle(my aunt) to cats. We went to a pub to eat dinner, where I got scampi, and then went to ASDA. ASDA is a huge grocery store that got bought out by WalMart. The store is huge, and carries a lot of of familiar and unfamiliar brands. There were no movies that I was not familiar with, which was dissapointing. The cars here are also starting to resemble American make. Many are the same model now. I'm a little upset by this, honestly. Homogenity, smogenity, I like variety in the world.

People here dress basically the same as the States, but don't have perfect complexions. Obesity is also a problem in the UK just as in the US. In one day we were nearly malled by three drivers, and I'm hoping that isn't a generalization.

Anyways, showertime. I'll see you all tomorrow, with pictures.

Childish

2009-08-03T01:30:00.000-07:00

So I am in my room, attempting to go to sleep. I am planning on bringing the my-size Barbie I mentioned earlier back with me to La Jolla, because I hate to see it sit in the closet and do nothing. Then I started contemplating what exactly I was going to do with it. The problem is that dolls are easily creepy as artwork, and Barbie represents part of the ultimate shallowness of our culture. She exists to change clothes, drive convertibles and utter vapid catchphrases; in her spare time she plays a princess to be rescued. Turning her into the popular-girl-gone-rebel is still a shallow commentary. I could shave her head and turn her into an android, but it would probably be creepy.

Actually, I might do something like that.

The thing is, I'm not looking to comment on culture(for once) with this doll. I'm bringing back a happy memory of a Christmas when I got what I wanted. Nobody else will understand, but this isn't ironic.

I could make a cool android costume easily....

My room at home is weirdly frozen in time, a commentary on all the little hidden things from when I was younger. I've genuinely changed, though I am still going to play with my stuffed animals. Just not have tea parties with them like I did in third grade.

I DARE YOU to comment. Ok, I don't. Please don't shame me?

One day, all of these little odds and ends and old toys will find a use somehow. I can't bear to part with them, but I also can't bear to watch while they sit by idly. Whether being encorporated into artwork or something else, I won't simply let my childhood either sit idly or be given away.

I'm going to read Applied Lingustics to feel better about myself.

My Day, Featuring Cats

2009-08-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

Top: Snuggles, my kitty
Left: Kittens sleeping on each other

Some days, most days these days in fact, I quantify and solve and logic out the puzzle. Today I drift away with the music of the piano keys to a world both dark and demure, childish and fraught, beautiful and perilous.

Yesterday I came back to Los Angeles after finals and a day full of hectic movement. On the freeway I did stuff with my compy, took pictures of the sunset, and played music. The kittens were there to great us when we came home and rocked themselves to sleep in a bundle on the patio swing. They also like to come in the house and explore tenatively. Kittens are extremely distracting. I imaged some movies(I own) and chatted, etc.

Today Andrea came to visit, which was nice. We visited a Peruvian restraunt and went to the mall. I got the coolest jacket ever and mom gave me a pair of boots of hers that I have always liked. We talked and ate and shopped. I hope Andrea had fun. She's probably reading this. Hi, Andrea!

We just finished "Finding Neverland". I really liked it.

So, what I was going to talk about yesterday. I spent some time when younger attempting to make things "my space", but I've realized that I don't really mind the touches of mom's decorating inherent in my appartment(due to the fact that a lot of my things are taken from home). This has become a blank canvas that I project onto. My thoughts feel able to roam in a variety of directions, wheras if my appartment was themed I would feel as though they were being forced down a certain path. Though, I'm willing to bet as time goes on I will metamorphose my room into a style I don't know exists yet. At the moment, my decorating style is "put books everywhere and maybe some clothes". I predict it will involve a lot of plants.

Blarghersnarphle

2009-08-01T23:34:00.001-07:00

I am TIRED. Tired tired tired tired tired.

Back in Los Angeles. Kitties kitties kitties kitties playing on the patio and big stuffed kitties and kitties.

Was going to write a piece on how my home is like a blank canvas that I project onto. But I will have to do that tomorrow.

Yes, I will be blogging from the trip, and posting pictures.

Bear with me.

Imagination

2009-07-31T00:49:00.001-07:00

(Image credit; By artist Dean Yeagle)

Some moons ago Boing Boing posted a link to this Flickr gallery featuring Soviet radio apparatuses.

They also posted a link to the online archive of the American eugenics movement. We like to censor our social attitudes at the time of WWII in retrospect, but I really think that in this case we could benefit from learning from it. Also, it strikes me as blatant propaganda to hide this ugly truth. Perhaps it is beneficial that the story is alien from us as it makes it all the more repulsive, but America is guilty and needs to answer for that. It is also beneficial to face the realities of a society where quote-unquote scientific enlightenment ruled, or rather, how easily "common sense" and misinterpretation/failure to take into account variables in/of models can turn into a destructive force. As someone who welcomes intellectuals as leaders this era has especially served as a cautionary tale: yes, in ideal form, this would not happen, but a lot of things work in ideal form and Joseph Stalin does not come to power, for example.

So I don't have a Wii, but the images for the new Steampunk "Epic Mickey" freak me out and make me want to. As long as they don't have that six-legged MechaMickey in there, because I would probably accidentally throw the controller through the screen when he turned up. This is probably the most blatantly psychological steampunk I have seen, filled with a landscape of broken childhood innocence. Imagine a post-apocalyptic fairy tale, or set in a formerly fairy land. I had a dream like that, where fairyland had been transformed into suburbia and it was my job as the leader to lead my people to wake the fairy queen. We had to escape guards at Disneyland and she was in a pond where houses and graffiti were encroaching; it was nevertheless a beautiful place, much like a lake I saw in Scotland. In fact, it probably was that lake in Scotland, a lake where we thought that an oil slick made the water shine from afar but was in fact a healthy and living beauty. I was the only woman, I made fire and water dance together for a couple's wedding and accidentally made it rain. But I am all about actual utopias(or as near as humans can get, or a civilization where everyone is enlightened and can fullfill their creative urges...something), so someone else will have to write the story.

Here is an interesting story from Wired on the economics of the Somalia pirates. Note: an average pirate makes seventeen times the income of a regular Somalian citizen.

You know, all of this buisness news is blending into "estimated this and that". I'm suprised economists haven't included into their own model the estimates of what reporting can do to stocks.

If you love stop-motion animation, you'll love this. It's seriously amazing.
(Credit: The PEN story, found via Boing Boing, is another amazing stop-motion video made as an ad by Olympus. They mention him as their inspiration in their credits. )

Honestly? I can't wait for Italy and England. My blood is boiling from the need to travel to Europe again. I've been having dreams about it, and finally I'm going. And yes, I am going to be posting while there, which will probably be my only contact with the outside world.

Remiscent

2009-07-30T14:56:00.001-07:00

Yesterday while I was drifting off to sleep(continuously until 3:00am, why, body, why?) I was thinking about how playing Super Mario reminded me, in a way, of Toy's R Us when I was a little kid.

When I was a kid I used to dream of getting one thing, just this one thing, and then everything else would fall into place. And at Christmas time I used to ask for my big wish. My parents never failed to buy me the big gift that I wanted more than anything. Heck, they still do, as last Christmas what I really wanted was my Acer laptop, which is a gift that keeps on giving. I love you my precious, er, my laptop.

One of the gifts I wanted was a My-Size Barbie, not because she was a Barbie which was kind of a downside, but because I was kind of hoping she would come to life. It sounds silly to admit it now, but this was pretty much what I wanted. In elementary school I had plenty of friends and my best friend, Jessica Lee, who I would argue about jumprope with and..I don't remember, but we had fun. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the last time we fought was about jump rope in 3rd grade, and I was dreading going back to school because I thought she wouldn't be talking to me but the next day she didn't remember and I didn't mention it.

But I wanted a friend whom I could talk to about the imaginary cities I made up in my head, my crazy science experiments and philosophy and all that good stuff. Also, nobody else was reading the Animorphs except for a guy in my class, and I'm pretty sure he just liked the explosions. Besides, back then I thought it was not proprietous to have close guy friends. I didn't want to make up an imaginary friend because I could predict what they would do. I wanted someone who wasn't me to give a different angle. Even if an imaginary friend gave me praise, it was false praise. It also thought that this seemed like a recipe for schizophrenia. Believe it or not, reading about all of the creative kids having imaginary friends made me feel dumb because I didn't, a situation which only changed later.

This is not to say my classmates weren't cool. I was really into Geology and fish, collected types of Silly Putty, weird pens and miniatures. And everyone was totally cool with that, or at least I think they were.

Ah, how times have changed. Except that I still find people who are cool with my various oddities. I love you guys.

Another gift that my parents gave me was Lego Mindstorms. I am going to dig that and Barbie out of the closet one day and do stuff with them for fun. Barbie is going to get dressed up as an art piece and the Mindrover will roam around my apartment while I laugh with glee. Then I'll probably dissect it and start getting crazy over robots. Look forward to that stage.

William Shatner making fun of Sarah Palin. He's so different now! But he's made it clear that he wants to be known for more than Star Trek, so let's appreciate him for being an awesome actor.

Ptbbbbbbth

2009-07-29T19:24:00.000-07:00

Whenever I see something incredibly strange and perhaps scarring, I get this urge to share it with my friends. "Hey, this hurt my soul, maybe you should check it out!" Don't worry, I never do this without warning people first.

Watermelon juice that tastes like squeezed watermelon is at Trader Joe's. Go get some, because it is delicious.

Americans produce so many anti-dystopic themed stories but we are sort of living in a dystopia in which we are the fat cats. Of course, we are now sort of paying the price and taking everyone down with us, but think about how corporations affect labor laws to keep their bottom line down. The problem is that those who don't generally don't swim.

Here is an interesting structure called "The Bat Spiral". I like this article for these two lines:
"I'm led to wonder, however, what non-human future might await something like Aranda\Lasch's 10 Mile Spiral if it were to be constructed – and later abandoned – amidst an ecosystem for bats...
We are inadvertently building the future infrastructure of an animal world."

One of the gifts I was planning on making Chris was a terrarium with abandoned architecture, so he could watch the plants slowly grow over and break it down. I'm planning on making one for myself in that magical time known as the future.

Here is a reason why they like physicists and computer scientists in Wall Street.

Also, though I talked about how much I dislike Twilight in the last post, I would like to point out the irony of calling Edward gay-ish: the main fans of the series are women.

Today saw me trying to dissect Mario, figure out optimization strategies, and then ask myself what exactly am I doing. Things are more fun when you're good at them, but this no longer feels fun. I'm doing it wrong.

Reading Into it All

2009-07-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the link Anonymous, I finished reading the story today.
As someone who has read Flatland I am hoping he got to copyright first, which he probably did.

I am a sworn enemy of the Twilight series. Everything I have read about it reinforces my resolution not to read it, especially Edward's line "You're like my own personal brand of heroin". What girl actually wants to hear that? Well, apparently many, many teenagers these days, but still. It doesn't help that my usual reaction to romance scenes is to skip them unless I'm reading a classic or it's a very good book. And here is my problem with most fantasy novels:

1.) Guy meets girl, guy and girl fall for each other. Cool.
2.) Guy and girl go through tribulations together, keep love to themselves. This is realistic.
3.)Guy and girl confess love and then get married/spend eternity together shortly thereafter. Wait, what? No?

First love sells, which is just a matter of fact. But these novels include only the honeymoon phase and none of the ecstasy or pain that comes with real love or spending a significant amount of time together. A partner is a person whom you know for years and will still be a surprise sometimes and totally predictable in others. These saccharine, unrealistic portrayals are not doing anybody any favors, ultimately. Why would you want a love like that if you could have the real thing?
Also, as far as I understand Bella follows Edward to the exclusion of everybody else and then gets pregnant right after high school. What a great example. Also, talk about communication issues between Bella and Edward. As far as I understand, in the second book he leaves without telling her why.
I know that people are going "it's a book for teenagers, you shouldn't expect better". And there are plenty of examples of other books where the characters meet, fall in love, and get married soon thereafter. It's usually their saving grace that this is not the central pillar of the plot which excuses this.
Ok, so people in my generation were reading Harry Potter in middle school, and I would love to say that nobody took them too seriously, but it's Harry Potter. I have read all of those books, and while they are entertaining and do use actual mythology/characters from history in them(eg Nicholas Flamel) they are entertainment and nothing more. I do not get why so many other just as good or better books did not gain the popularity of this trilogy. Maybe it was a changing climate in regards to fantasy, or the series was simply extremely accessible to people, or a bit of both. Either way, LOTR was then produced, which I approve of. Then there was Wicked. I never finished the book, but it is dark and graphic and I'm willing to bet most people don't actually read it. I've heard some of the songs from the musical and read the Wikipedia entry on the play. The songs are very simple musically and tap into generalized emotions. "I'm not that girl" is something most, if not all of us, have felt in the past before and probably associate with deep emotions, but it's not exactly brilliant writing. The whole the popular girl and the outcast can get along! and the popular girl has problems and can feel like an outcast too is good. Of course, I believe most of us learn this immediately after high school if not before then.

Today's speed run: 12 minutes to the end of 6-3(got killed by the world boss).

One of the differences between photographs and paintings, at least, to me, is that, in a painting the subjects are beautiful shells waiting to be filled with meaning, but a photograph is of someone extant, a person who's shoes we may attempt to step in but can never replace. In fact, completely replacing the person in a photograph dehumanizes the model in a way, because they become simply tools, vehicles for ourselves. Of course, many fashion photographers attempt to take the image of a model and make it their own in the way painters made model's images a work of art. One could argue that the ending photograph is as far removed from the model as a painting, but this is not intuitively extant to me. Perhaps because when looking at a painting, the first "person" considered is the painter, but when looking at a photograph, it is the model. Or perhaps it's my perception of models then and now.

After reading this article on horrible, horrible US companies that again throw the phrase "first world problems" into harsh reality, I had a heart attack when Nesquick was #1 on the list. Child slave labor, some of it from human trafficking, harvests the cocoa in their drinks. I love chocolate milk and consume vast quantities of it. I am never buying Nesquick again. The Kirkland milk I buy is organic, certified by the American Humane Society and obviously sold by the awesome Costco, but where does the cocoa in it originate? Here is a site called "Rountable for a sustainable cocoa economy". Declaration of Trinidad and Tobago?! This hits much too close to home. But I can't find out where the cocoa is from. Most likely a middleman.

It's Personal

2009-07-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

A girl running through lavender fields. Pic via Jezebel via the Getty.

An illustrated Mario death by John-
ny Yakon, via Offwo-
rld.

Today's speed run time: 14 minutes until the end of 7-1. I tried out a little bit of "Super Mario: The Lost Levels". Here was my reaction: "I don't see why this was considered too hard for Western au-"/murdered.
I used to suck at the first Mario. I played a single game today, got up to 5-3 and then was killed by Bowser's castle.
My mom used to play the first Mario with us and actually was very good at beating it. In fact, she was considered "the expert" in the family on that game.

Speaking of my mom, she picked up Clingy today, who was so shocked he didn't even struggle. She put him down and he proceeded to hide, then come back and play on the patio. My mom corrected me, as it has been over two weeks since we last saw Gaiylee herself.

Look at the language in this article from the Reuters:
"But Paal cautioned Clinton against hanging her reputation too much on improved relations with China.

"We are not in a position to control them," he said."

There is always the possibility that this man's quote was taken out of context. However, it is very telling of the imprints of foreign policy in this country, even if Obama is trying to change them.

I didn't copy or write down a lot of stuff today.

Wouldn't it be cool if there were bridges that were water and held together by water tension in a theoretical world? It would be so trippy to swim through them and put a hand out into the air.

Physorg.com published an article on friction free computer circuits via quantum mechanics. I'm too lazy to link. Go do it yourself!

So I have over two hundred entries in this journal, which is impressive. I love writing and I love sharing cool stuff with people. Blogs are a perfect balance of the two. I feel strange writing a diary on the computer, especially since I don't want to have one somewhere that is ultimately hackable, but I dislike writing by hand since, well, I'm faster at typing and my handwriting starts to resemble random loops after a while. I just figured it out! A flash drive!

Flash drives, though certainly hackable if you put the wrong things in them or leave them connected to the computer, are the first ultra-easy ways to distribute data that don't require linking computers directly and actually keep the information remote from the rest of the digital world(if you don't keep them connected to the computer, again). They are our first private digitilized miniaturized domains widely available to the public. And don't tell me about external HDs, because those are not miniaturized, at least in comparison to the flash drive.

Of course, unlike a book, you need a computer to make a flash drive work, an extra piece of equipment that must take part in the process. And boot before starting the process. Ah, the booting.

The original Star Trek is an entertaining, theoretical and thoughtful show. What it is not is in any way realistic. Which is now I bring to you this parody; look for upcoming ones about Grecian gods appearing, geniuses going insane, and time travel. This particular one is based on "it's scientifically impossible!"; specifically "Shore Leave" from season one, which I actually enjoyed quite a bit.

1.) The landing party beams down and everything looks perfectly normal on their sensors because their sensors are crappy. Also, everywhere looks like Earth because of Somebody's Law of Planetary BS(or, we reuse the same drawings as alien backdrops several times).

2.)Something impossible is seen and hard proof of its existence is found, usually corresponding with the word "fascinating". Spock's soul dies a little more.

3.)People still think that it's a good idea to split up because that makes for dramatic death scenes which lead to dramatic scenes for Captain Kirk to lament over his crew member. Or Kirk still thinks that crew members can handle themselves even though they keep dying because they have PHASERS*
*Note: phasers usually knocked out or taken away by the end of the episode

4.) Captain Kirk meets THE GIRL. All girls in this galaxy have an inexplicable attraction to at least one member of the crew, usually the one who's name is an anagram for "Tiberius Kirk James". And that specific member tends to "genuinely" fall for this woman in return because they have sexual ADD. McCoy, Spock, and Kirk have at least 5 women each who are waiting for them to settle down with.
In this episode Kirk meets a special lady from his past of which he has 6 million. He must have been dating some of these girls at the same time as each other or be a serial monogamist, because, how many relationships can you have in twenty-something years?
P.S. Kirk's charm has won more battles for the federation than the Enterprise herself. The Federation should just package up an "essence du Kirk" and send it around instead of spaceships.**
**Working parts included.

5.) Their phasers stop working. Suprise! Also, The Enterprise is helpless for one reason or another because the scientists in this time period are too busy focusing on how cool it would be to be able to "blow up half a continent" rather than "shields that work properly", despite the fact that the Enterprise is mainly a defensive ship. Communicators are out, too, and for some reason it never occurs to them to use the injectable trackers besides as a deux ex machina for prying them out of their arm and setting things on fire in a Nazi jail. Yes, this actually happened.

I mean, nothing usually goes wrong, right?
Wait.

6.) So now the crew is being chased and seduced by a wide variety of things that turn up for no reason despite the fact that it's pretty obvious now what's happening. Everyone seems to have lost their critical thinking skills....

7.) Which leads to the Shatner vrs. somebody fight. Badly choreographed and involving lots of rolling, I'm never quite sure what the point of these are.

8.) Spock and Kirk figure out the solution and start acting on it, because the show is running out of time and Shatner's shirt has finally ripped open. Then the solution appears out of nowhere, in this case a peaceful creator who was waiting to intervene until the emotional scarring occurred. The explanation is cool, but sort of leaves you going "wait, but what about...". Also, the skimpily clad girls couldn't not show up, so they decided to include them at the end. Everybody is happy and Kirk decides to spend time with a cellular cast of one of his many long-lost loves.

Huh?

Rebel, Rebel

2009-07-25T20:11:00.000-07:00

This makes me wonder if people would have the same reaction here in America. Would we rally and rebel, or would we scream and cry in print while doing nothing at all? America is a huge country, and the state of all of that land in anarchy is a terrifying proposal. Would we storm the capital? Who would we put in charge? One could argue that the 2000 election was a very poor cover-up, as many have, but besides plunging the economy into the worst recession since the great depression and attacking individual, scientific, and women's rights, Bush wasn't that bad. Maybe we should have rioted...but the point is that even Bush in his eight years could not overturn the system of checks and balances besides in the things he kept absolutely secret from the public.
This whole thing kind of makes me want to hug Obama.

Warren Buffet is creating his own cartoon line to teach kids about business. The late and great Carl Sagan will also be in a different comic along the same lines. Whenever I see things like this it always stirs up suspicion in my mind, because why would the most successful financial people really want company? Better to activate the Pavlovian centers with a few tricks that are successful and a whole lot more that creates a "slightly above average average investor" at most. On "Kosmos", while the book is AWESOME and everyone should read it(I have it back if you want to borrow it), the original series failed to keep the attention of a classroom of middle schoolers. Then again, not much does, but Sagan exuded too much sexy 1970's man to keep myself and the couple of other astronomy buff's attention on the screen. The long out-of-style "K" at the beginning makes me doubly suspicious, since Sagan was an eloquent and extremely smart scientist whom everybody should read, not some jazzed-up-for-jaded-youth lame rap afficiando. Don't mess this up, AOL. Of course, this is AOL we're talking about.

Here is a huge collection of vintage television and movies.

This is a video of the Iranian police attacking a car, taken from Mousavi's Twitter feed. It's strange, because their streets look so much like our streets despite 5000 miles and a bunch of freaky armed GIs. The picture was taken from the flickr stream of a protest on the streets. Come on Iranians, I know you can win against this dictator.

Mooning

2009-07-25T15:21:00.000-07:00

These Flickr shots from India, China and Japan of the most recent lunar eclipse are awesome. I found them via the Freak-
anomics blog. This is where today's picture (s)comes from. I can't even begin to post all of my favorites. I love the steam-punk-ishness of the first shot and the fragile humanity of the second.

Shell has been accused by Amnesty International of horrible crimes in the Niger Delta. The report which has been put together is pretty damning. Please click.

Someone please remind me to get my hands on Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald". Apparently it's his fusing of HP Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes. This sounds like it could go horribly wrong, but it most likely it didn't. And I want to see it.

Speaking of Gaiman, a short while back he posted a link to Jamie Kennedy's hilarious bid to take the Newberry award from him.

".. And I, Jamie Kennedy am the Sarah Palin of fiction!"

The third video of three:

If you want to see Gaiman being wrestled to the ground, here is your chance.

I believe that there should be a ban on political ads. In this day and age of the internet the off-hand access to a candidate's information is easy to find, and the horrible excess of money that is wasted while running for office on every level of government is disgusting. Of course, I have no doubt that politicians will then attempt to rig the sites with the most hits for the apposing candidate, even if it is illegal. Can't the public win? In a way, though, website traffic is much more traceable and easier to investigate. If only society didn't insist on drowning us in nonsense information and untrustworthy leaders. You can't only blame the politicians, though. What if we all participated in the primaries and the big name candidates were not the only ones who received grassroots funding?

This makes me think about celebrity and de-humanization. The earliest humans always portray other tribes as evil or less than themselves in some way. Celts are Frost Giants, enemy tribes are motivated by jealous demons, and the other tribes are actually monkies that look like humans. Yet it is extremely rare to encounter a racist child. A judgmental child, though, is not hard to find. We all have "that uncle" or someone who's views are directly the opposite of ours, sometimes for all the reasons we dislike the opposing side, too. Yet would any of us wish them to die or call them the names we call our politicians?

All of these are just snippets of thoughts I'm having.

PS New Mario 2 speed run time: 20-21 minutes, got to the middle of 7-2(the last level)

I kind of like the wacky layout of this particular post.

The Foul Birdo has Been Defeated

2009-07-24T21:47:00.001-07:00

So you've probably noticed a proliferation of news stories and not a whole lot of added content from me in the past few days sans the aquarium and gender issues posts. I'm very tired and busy. I have been thinking about things and my mind is wandering off towards semiotics at the moment, though it has been concentrating on a paper since I got home besides the nap and an episode of Star Trek. Trying to write a blog post on how you had to review improper integrals since you haven't seen them since Calc II is more shameful than entertaining, anyways. Especially since I have been using them but not in the format you're technically supposed to. Though some of you reading may like shame.

In which case, watch this commercial:

Do you know what is happening in this ad? Don't tell me if you do, I'm too busy playing with puppies and kittens. I believe there should be a free "hug an animal" center in every community.

Speaking of games, I beat Super Mario 2 in 48 minutes. And no, I'm not trying to do a speed run like this guy(and I can't do the Bird Level like that).

He also appears to be playing on an original Nintendo, which is a lot more user-friendly than the ROM and Logitech controller that I have here. I just attempted my own speed run, which lasted seventeen-ish minutes and got as far as level 6-3's birdo boss. I only used The Princess, who is in fact the only character I ever use. Maybe I should branch out more, but I play this game to relax and not to compete.

On one hand I am completely in favor of the retro-game trend. Most of these are free to download and fun to play, though I actually have not gotten into any indie/retro gaming besides Knytt Stories and the aforementioned Marios, both of which I barely ever play. Knytt Stories is a really wonderful game introduced to me by Alex. The music is wonderful, soothing, and the gameplay is simple yet subtly challenging. The "plots" are simple yet extremely creative.

On the other I feel as if this part of an 80's nostalgia wave which is coming too soon. My generation has barely reached adulthood and here a lot of us are, reminisceing over our childhood. Perhaps this is telling of the times.

Mom managed to stroke Clingy's back without him running away today. All of the kittens sleep on the rocker, hide under the shed from the heat, sleep on the bench under the bamboo, and play in their "cave". Gaiylee has been missing for over a week at this point. We don't know where she went, which is very upsetting and a sad reality for feral cats.

I was just thinking about how Livejournal is actually a much better site in general than blogspot, with photo galleries, communities, and far more customizablity, yet its popularity with a lot of teenagers ironically caused it to loose many members in the long run. I switched to Blogger because I wanted this journal to be taken more seriously(as seriously as you can take such a journal, of course) and because at the time I thought it had a better interface. Which it does not, and I should really switch to Wordpress. Maybe after Europe I will take the time to do so.

Note: I have reformatted some of my posts for aesthetic reasons.

Good and Bad

2009-07-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

(Note: This is a real nebula)

This couple has an awesome wedding! Source

Somebody decided to "donate" a landmine to Goodwill.

Apparently as many as 2,000 Afghan soldiers were killed and put in a mass grave that was covered up under the Bush administration. I wonder why they hate us? It is so difficult to figure out.

I wonder how many of those people had families with children or babies? Let's kill a bunch of fathers who are also sons. Not only is it morally justifiable, but it won't have any far-reaching repercussions.

Please visit this site.

The Falcon from The Shamptonian Institute on Vimeo.

"The Falcon is a stop-animation/steampunk film that takes place on an old wooden photo album and is entirely composed of macro-photographed hardware pieces from vintage, antique cameras that have been carefully disassembled, for that true analog experience in pure 100% digital Shamptonian definition. The film features music from ESL Music ESL artist Thunderball, with sound design by Bret Johnson. From A.gfa to Z.eiss, and whatever your format, The Falcon has a perspective for everyone."

This..is actually a cool way to go after dying to me for some reason.

I saw my goby today! He seems to be doing well, though he has decided never to leave the cover of the driftwood. I also saw my everglades pygmy sunfish.

I am kind of in love with Regina Spektor's song "Blue Lips".

Every Day Saturday Morning is the blog of an abortion clinic escort. These people tolerate everything from verbal abuse to actual violence in order to protect women in what is usually already a horrible and harrowing time.

Cowgirl

2009-07-22T13:39:00.000-07:00

Source

"First, some people like to suggest that men are programmed by evolution to find a particular body shape attractive. Clearly, if judging women’s bodies requires this much instruction, either (1) nature has left us incompetent or (2) cultural norms defining beauty overwhelm any biological predisposition to be attracted to specific body types.

Second, the chart reveals the level of scrutiny women faced in 1959 (and I’d argue it’s not so different today). It made me think of my years in 4-H. I was a farm kid and I showed steers for several years and also took part in livestock and meat judging competitions. I was good at it, just so you know. Anyway, what the beauty pageant image brought to mind was the handouts we’d look at to learn how to judge livestock."

Source

Baboons demonstrate why you should not take the car friendly route anymore in Knowsley Safari park (source).

The Onion is pretending to be a Chinese publication.

Tales from the Pond (Aquarium)

2009-07-21T17:16:00.000-07:00

Source

Horrible article everyone should read

Yesterday I changed the water in my aquarium and parted the mess of Hornworth which has invaded it while I have been busy. I can't bring myself to throw any out, especially since it has become apparent both filters have not been working for a while. The aquarium is now completely dependent on its plants, which also means that I'm not going to add any other animals to that particular tank. The java moss has also experienced a sudden growth spurt. The inhabitants actually seem to enjoy all of the growth, and the only other plants present are crypts, Windelov, and Anubias, which are doing fine. The nana petite and barterii have both grown plantlets and there are little windelovs and crypts in various places, too. The moss ball has exploded.

I saw my paler Dario Dario at the front, which strangely appeared to be decked out nearly in battle colors and was showing the dominant "eye stripe". I was confused as to what had happened. I finally managed to spot Dopey doping around at the bottom and then Trixie, who proceded to boink her head on one of the filters. Dopey is an H. curp. hybrid in the tradition of irresponsible Petsmart suppliers. Trixie and Little Frog are obviously at least strongly influenced by H. bog., the more succesful subspecies. Dopey reminds me of a little man, an adorable little man who does funny things all the time. They were so cute I had to give them food. Little frog came out, obviously excited. He was bought at Aquatic Warehouse after stowing away in one of their tanks for a while, where I spotted him and decided he would be the final ADF. I proceeded to watch Little Frog figure out where the food was and then miscalcuate and go towards the bottom again. Naturally, Trixie was the first to figure out where it is, and LF joined her again while Dopey spun around the bottom like a dope. Trixie accidentally bit LF a bunch of times. Meanwhile, by the moss ball I see proof that the paler Dario has won his/her fight as she half heartedly chases away the more dominant male, who has a bite in his tail. I love the extra blue ruff on the top of his fins. These guys are so much fun and tiny. They don't really care about the food, as they feed on the multitude of microoganisms in the now very established aquarium.

Last I saw Trixie and LF were feeding, while Dopey..will figure things out one day.

Videos from Jezebel commentor/Jezebel

Robots, Plants, and Dystopias

2009-07-21T13:24:00.000-07:00

I love this simple yet salient article on the Freakanomics blog criticizing the way data is used in today's journalism.

"The lead article is by John Noble Wilford (who’s still going strong, btw), and includes one of the most elegant little uses of data I can recall seeing in a news article:

Although Mr. Armstrong is known as a man of few words, his heartbeats told of his excitement upon leading man’s first landing on the moon.

At the time of the descent rocket ignition, his heartbeat rate registered 110 a minute — 77 is normal for him — and it shot up to 156 at touchdown."

MIT is also tracking trash in an effort to show how far it can reach. I think the criticisms present about the sampling are relevant, though they may be showing how even conscientious people can have far-reaching affects with their disposables.

NASA apparently secretly launched a moon rock into space to celebrate yesterday's anniversary of the moon landing. Why?! We only have so many and I want one, you could have given it to me instead! Also lost opportunities for science, blah blah blah.

You know, after reading a couple accounts of the UK terrorism laws on Boing Boing I'm starting to understand things like V for Vendetta, Quatterman, and Warren Ellis (who is a person not a thing and in San Diego where he can do horrible, horrible things to me). Damn, it makes here look like a a veritable utopia of individual rights in some cases. I'm not going to go into debating the amount of freedom they have versus our amount of freedom because I don't know enough on the subject and am too lazy to do the research. All I will say is that this issue is not black and white.

Lego Microtome

"A microtome is a small machine that biologists use to slice specimens into very thin sections to examine under a microscope. Instructables user lemonie made his own out of Lego! In this video demo, the device cuts garlic in slices just 250 microns thick. That's about twice as thick as a human hair. Seems like the Lego Microtome could be scaled up for slicing paper-thin prosciutto! Lego Microtome (Thanks, Christy Candida!)"

People are thankfully working on shark repellants to save them from fishing lines.

It's amazing how Twix and Burger King cross the line from using women for sexy points to using women. Thanks, I love being objectified and taken for granted! I'm not a person, I'm a walking Barbie doll who's all plastic with no inside.

These paper robots are awesome! That's what that picture is, btw.

How NOT to raise a chimp in your family:
"I collect books by people who have raised apes in their homes. One of the first, The Ape and the Child, was written in by behaviorist W.N. Kellogg, a man with a peculiar brainstorm: that he should raise a chimpanzee as a twin to his own infant son, treating them in exactly the same fashion, and comparing their development......Results? Mixed. The chimp, Gua, took more quickly to her civilizing education than her brother. She appeared smarter, stronger, and more emotionally developed on a number of counts: she was better at using glasses and silverware, walked earlier (chimps generally don't walk upright), responded to verbal commands sooner, and was more cooperative and obedient......For example, though Donald had learned to walk before Gua joined the Kellogg family, he regressed and started crawling more, in tune with Gua. He'd bite people, fetch small objects with his mouth, and chewed up a shoe. More importantly, his language skills were delayed. At 19 months, Donald's vocabulary consisted of three words. Instead of talking he would grunt and make chimp sounds..."

My new plant from Trader Joe's named "Blue Wonder"(pictured) was rootbound, so today I bought another pot for it. When repotting it it looked so happy in the outdoor sun that I decided to leave it there(yes, it is a full sun plant). Now I need an indoor plant and the cycle continues. Maybe I'll get bamboo?

Will Arnett praying for breasts.

MechaBarbie(or Bush) Makes Children Cry(and Other Issues)

2009-07-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

Source
This is what my kids are going to be playing with. Aren't you glad I'm not having any?

So I was walking to Trader Joe's today and suddenly felt angry thinking about how men's bodies don't go out of style. Then I realized that this simply was not true. Henry VIII was considered extremely attractive and we've gone through several versions of the "ideal boy" in recent years, from various bad boys and star jocks in the 80's and 90's to Zak Efron and Edward Cullen. And I realized that I actually know a good number of men who have body issues. It just seems to go un-discussed, most likely because of the macho hetero-normative male now dominating our culture. Body issues are for gay people and girls, God.

One of the many reasons guys need a masculist revolution of their own.

We live in a disposable culture. Everything is thrown away with regularity, from trends to toys to paper towels without us noticing.

I am kind of loving this article on the future of books. But I think what a lot of us are experiencing when we profess our undying love to the smell of a library(which I do) is nostalgia. Please keep in mind that nostalgia is what keeps people from having integrated proms and such. The one thing that disturbs me is that, counter-intuitionally, data is much more fallible than paper. What if some large world war took place? I would like to think that information is distributed too far and wide to be lost in the manner of the Library of Alexandria, but there is so much that is not. Books go out of print and are lost in the halls of The Library of Congress.

Books are personal experiences. They affect our mind and soul in a profound way. Games and movies do not move many of us in the same way. Yet for those who movies do, they are content with a flat disk and pretty cover.

Perhaps we can invent something akin to flipping pages and the "permanence" of paper. I'm sure the person who does will be very rich.

Bioastronautics, a scanned book about some of the things that really go into space flight(like spit).

It would be so easy to engineer a fountain using $3.99 plates from Ross, a pump, and a background. But then my parents could justifiably kill me.

Good news: violent crime is down all around the country, even though nobody is reporting on this. One cynical commentor says that this is because "People can't afford bullets anymore".

Picture from Jezebel

History: The Video(s)

2009-07-19T23:08:00.000-07:00

Image via Boing Boing

In America I am considered tiny, but in Trinidad my weight is normal. This makes evolutionary sense, as people in the blinding heat of the tropics need a fast metabolism and little fat. It also makes sense that people from the colder parts of Europe would evolve to be beautiful and curvy. This is just a theory, as I have no scientific, controlled evidence to support this hypothesis.

While I voice my support against the dreadfully anorexic girls present in modeling today, I also sort of wonder what will happen when people with normal(read: another select segment of the population) weights come back into style. Will people mock my size? Will they tell me that my weight is obviously a product of neglecting myself, as is done to plus-size women today? I want to believe that we can accept the fact that people naturally have more than one body type, but this does not seem to be a concept native to the fashion industry. I do not have whatever BMI is being enforced on some of the European catwalks today. While I still completely support the regulations, it feels sort of strange that some years from now I might "go out of style". It's not fair that this has already been done to Rubenesque women, though. We're people, not ephemeral fashion trends.

Just to clarify, it's more the fear of being actively discriminated against than anything else which wrote these last two paragraphs.

Oh. my. God. It's NABOKOV. I LOVE YOU.
It's crazy how Youtube has in a way democratized history. We can now experience moments from the past like previous generations never had the chance to, all within our personal computers. It's so cool! This was from Boing Boing, btw.

Also from Boing Boing: there is apparently a black market in moon rocks. As in actual rocks from the moon, not LSD. I can completely understand this. If I ever get engaged again I want an extraterrestrial rock for my ring like in the "Bones" episode "The Science in the Physicist".

"PLEASE – do yourself a favour and turn the sound OFF – NOW. I’m almost willing to throw the towel in admit that creationists are right when I hear it. However the video is just brilliant (if you ignore the silly text as well)... Here’s 500 generations every SECOND backed up by actual fossil evidence – shoved in to a computer and animated together. It’s fantastic to watch." Source

I have to watch this video again to take in what changed first, hypothesize why the did, etc.

OH MY GOD IT'S THE MOON LANDING. /hyperventilates. They look like ghosts that are hopping around. Even though his voice is level you can feel the excitement coming through the video. Or maybe it's just me trying to live this vicariously.

Here is Buzz Aldrin punching a conspiracy theorist in the face.

Why you should NOT fly with regional carriers, as written by an experienced pilot.

"Flying from Chicago’s O’Hare to Denver is routine, right? But it wasn’t a few decades ago. We, the pilots, make it routine too. But I challenge you on this. Is your life worth less because you are over the heartland of America in the dark of night rather than climbing into the skies of Rio over the Amazon or headed out across the Pacific? It is worth less if you are on the low-cost regional carrier because you chose to pay less. If you are on the regional carrier headed to Denver and the engine is on fire, I am sure that it is comforting to know that you saved 15 percent by shopping the Internet for the cheapest fare. Isn’t it great to know that you have the newest, least-experienced, exhausted, starving young cockpit crew that this regional airline could find? Good for you!"

PS apparently the Alaskan blob is not Palin after all.

The Past and the Present

2009-07-19T00:07:00.000-07:00

Walter Cronkite was an anchor before I was born. I am struck by his face here, a face which would not be seen on television today despite the sonorous voice which is obviously the basis for many similar ones throughout the era. I'm reminded of a quote of a comment on the Freakanomics blog: "Now that there are so many voices you have to shout louder and harder to be heard", discussing the uprising of the screaming pundit. Cronkite was the antithesis of these red-faced men, a fact I have heard casually mentioned in several sources so far.

In this video I can actually feel the nation's panic. I can feel would it would be like if our respected, loved president was shot, the weight of the announcement. I could feel myself trying to hope, even though I already knew how the story ended.

He had to report on some horrifically sad stories. It has been a long time since I've seen footage of Martin Luther King. His last speech..watching him as an obviously intelligent and angry man showing his roots as a pastor. I've almost never thought of Dr. King as a man, even after reading about his life.

I know Cronkite was reading what was written for him, but hearing "negro" used without any humor behind it sends shivers up my spine. It scares me that my parents were teenagers when this happened. I can't imagine a world without MLK, or at least don't want to. So short ago without him I would have been another "coloured" person.

Warren Ellis linked the first episode of a British series called "Quartermass". I haven't watched all of it, but here is a quote from the professor:

"The union of a corrupt Democracy(America) and a bloated tyranny(Soviet Union)...their diseases are too strong for us small countries. When we catch them we sicken and we die."

I also really agree with this Jezebel article:

"It's a very strange cycle, when one thinks about it: Marilyn Monroe didn't even exist, she was a construct of the studios, a costume worn by Norma Jean Baker in order to navigate the strange waters of celebrity and sex. Every time we hold Marilyn up as an ideal, we're holding up the notion that a woman has to reinvent herself to the point of losing herself completely, hiding under layers of beauty and glitz as a means to hide a very real sense of pain and fear beneath. Though her unabashed sexuality has been celebrated, she was also objectified and used by those around her; she became, and remains, a product used to sell tickets and t-shirts and magazines. She was a victim many times over, but it seems that young actresses choose to latch on to her exterior as opposed to the person below the surface, and where a cautionary tale should be, an idolization is instead.

Perhaps it's time for Lindsay Lohan, and for everyone else, to stop parading around in Marilyn Monroe costumes and acting as if it's glamorous or fun. If Marilyn Monroe taught us anything, it's that there's no real happiness in being someone you're not."

Classmate

2009-07-17T18:57:00.001-07:00

I saw my wormies today. They seem to be doing well, and I bought more so as to keep up with my slightly rising organic output.

There seems to be a consensus that worms are gross which I agree with. Why are they gross, exactly? I guess it's the slimy, segmented bodies.

I wonder how fast objects scale back according to depth perception and eyesight capability?

In an ironic story, Amazon pulled copies of 1984 and Animal Farm off the Kindle, sadly proving again the superiority of regular books. While I love my books, I love forests more. Do something people!

Today my Uncle's brother's daughter came to visit along with my parents after moving across the country away from every single support network she knows. We had fun, as I took them to Downtown La Jolla and Torrey Pines. I kind of wish I could have gotten more work done, but we had fun. I like her.
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When I was in high school one of my classmates a year ahead of me was named Sam Loeb. All I remember was that he had a shaved head, an infectious smile, and knew a lot about comics. He was really charismatic, everyone liked him, and he made people like me feel stupid for complaining all the time, though I'm sure that he never meant to do. I barely knew him, and most of what I knew consisted of knowing that this was a wonderful person to know. Everyone knew he had cancer, but it was never what defined him.

I remember the day that he died. I don't remember how I found out, but I do remember nutrition and lunch passing by as the HGMers wandered around like ghosts. We were all in shock. I remember those close to him throwing their arms around each other and breaking down into tears. It didn't matter that I barely knew him. I wish I had, because someone else would be around to keep more of his memory alive. His life was so short, but he should not be forgotten.

I recall all of this because of something as simple as a status one of my friends posted. He joked towards the end, trying to make light of it all. He wrote a comic in one of Joss Whedon's books.

Whoever reads this can also remember Sam Loeb. Perhaps it's a hollow fantasy, but if you read this you know as much as I do about Sam. Please carry around his memory with care, because that's all any of us have left. I may not have known him, but I miss him.

Yesterday is Today is Yesterday

2009-07-15T19:29:00.000-07:00

Significant Objects is a site dedicated to people buying thrift store items and writing a fictional history for them then selling them on Ebay. Yes, the descriptions are marked as fake. At first I was a little skeeved about this concept but then realized that what's really being marketed is the author's talent as a writer. Fictional history is fun.

Here is an interesting story of a roleplaying game revolving mostly around story and not around
winning.

"To call Slobbovia a Diplomacy variant is, however, misleading; the game purposefully had no victory conditions, and the formal game itself served as little more than a framework for structuring a written roleplaying game. The postal Diplomacy hobby has a tradition of "press," whereby a player may, each turn, include a written statement that is published with the turn's results (e.g., "The Office of the Kaiser today announced..."). In Slobbovia, press was the focus of the game, rather than a minor adjunct."

And here is a game which reminds of what Risk is trying to be.

Will someone browse the freeware on that site?

I really want to enter reburbia but feel as though I am automatically outmatched by architect students and don't have the time to engage in such a project. Also, I think I'm going to enjoy the magazine that's sponsoring the competition, Inhabitant, very much. Here is the newest entry:

"Designer Chiyu Chen has conceived of an ingenious transit system that encourages the use of sustainable transportation by crediting people for renting and riding bicycles. His Hybrid2 system consists of a fleet of rentable bicycles that are capable of generating and storing kinetic energy, which is then used to power the city’s hybrid electric buses. Simply rent a bike, charge it up with kinetic energy from pedal power, and then return it to a kiosk - the station feeds energy into the city’s smart grid, and you receive a credit towards your next bus pass!"

The problem with capitalism is that people speak so glibly of the market punishing and rewarding businesses. What if the business is so large that a lot of other businesses rely on it? What about all of the jobs lost when that company goes out of business?

USAspending.gov makes United States spending open-source for viewing. On one hand, this makes me happy. On the other, don't look, countries with grudges against us!

Apparently visa overcharged some unlucky people to the tune of $23 quadrillion dollars. Nope, not a joke, just a glitch. The author of Freaknomics pointed out that this is a good point against those who favor an all-digital currency. A quote of a comment from the blog:

"It’s a technical glitch. The interesting part of this is not that it happened, but rather, how those involved dealt with it.

People calling their banks to ask about this, got a lot of runaround from folks at those banks who either did not realize there was anything wrong with massive transactions, or who realized they were erroneous but otherwise did not address all the attendant issues (e.g. NSF fees, etc.).

Also, although the problem has been figured out, it’s not because anyone working for a bank or Visa actually disclosed what it had been. It was, instead, “reverse engineered” by geeks who uncovered the cause on their own. Official response has been evasive at best, e.g. in this story:

Bank of America tells WMUR-TV only the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank.

As I said, the assorted dodging, swerving, evasiveness, and foot-dragging are interesting. What makes people so unwilling to deal with what is, in the end, a simple technical glitch?

Very revealing about human nature.

— PsiCop"

I think we've found out what Palin is up to: turning into the black goo of death. Am I mean? Maybe a little.

Also, apparently closing down a few roads is actually beneficial to traffic congestion as a whole, since people cannot selfishly optimize their routes.
Comic courtesy of xkcd

Boom! Boom!

2009-07-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

Source

So I just realized that I sound very cool, calm, and relaxed on my blog.

This is a lie. I am actually dying of stress, but complaining is not going to help that, and I'd rather not talk about it. Instead I will run around my studio like a crazy person and proceed to collapse on the bed, weezing from the fact that I have way too many obligations.

Help?

Via Boing Boing

Part of the reason I think old film is so fascinating is because of how delicate it seems in its shaky and silent monochrome. Even though the picture is factual the world it presents seems to be remote.

Gravy Stress may waste your time if you like looking at random funny images. I am not going to click on it anymore. If your name is Chris or Frosty you may wish to check this website out.

I wonder how ridiculous our commercials look to foreigners?

In any case, here is an awesome quote from BLDBLOG:

"If you'll excuse the rambling nature of this post, meanwhile, my wife and I are actually staying in Potts Point, and we're located basically right across the street from a Saturday morning farmers' market where we got into a conversation early on our first morning here with a man selling gourmet mushrooms that were grown, he said, inside repurposed railroad tunnels south of the city in Mittagong. I would love to visit those tunnels!
Cockatoo Island, in fact, is actually honeycombed with old tunnels dug directly out of the site's bedrock – so perhaps some strange form of subterranean myco-agriculture might pop up in a few student designs over the next two weeks. Mushroom farming in the underworld. Or perhaps even the high-tech cultivation of pharmaceutical biocompounds by UV light in what used to be a submarine-repair facility (the island also houses a former submarine-repair facility!)..."

Geoff's post "The Thirteenth Room" is also rather fun, as is Reburbia. Reburbia falls directly into my sphere of interests. If you like architecture or imagining the things I do, CHECK THESE OUT.

Here is a quote from Mr. Ellis:

"The next movie I write will be Jurassic Park 4: ADAMZOIC, in which a group of committed Creationists sneak onto a dinosaur-infested Island in an attempt to prove that humans and slavering proto-avian carnivores can live in harmony, as in Eden. The film will be 3 hours long; will feature multiple variations on the theme of Cute Naked People being disembowelled while trying to sing hymns; will include at least one incidence of punning, based on the words “pray” and “prey”; and will end when the sole survivor realises the error of her ways, embraces the Power Of Darwin, and spontaneously evolves a set of wings to escape."

Soil bacteria injections make mice happy. This may explain a lot. I've always said that dirt was good, though now and as a kid I refused to eat it.

Here is an interesting article about personal transformation in the internet age. I could comment on it right now, but I don't want to.
Damn, I may have to get this novel:

Short

2009-07-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

Comic courtesy of A Softer World

We still live in a world full of mystery, but the mystery is now not simply created by nature but by man.

I love Jimmy Carter:
"So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when th e convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief - confirmed in the holy scriptures - that we are all equal in the eyes of God."

I feel anti-social today.

Computer Love(and Diva Cups)

2009-07-13T13:29:00.001-07:00

I have a love-hate relationship with my computer. Computers provide access to tons of information, the news, television, movies, and my friends. They used to provide me access to games, but I haven't played one in the longest time. I only interrupted my long dry spell to play Age of Empires I, but I started in the "Nomad" age where the computer glitched and didn't even build a town center. Thus went an hour and a half of my life.

In a tangent, play is an important part of life as it engages the player inside the system, but I dislike how limited computer games can be. In AOE no volcanoes are going to blow up your palaces, mimicking the downfall of the Minoans.

However, for all the reasons listed in the first paragraph, computers can be extremely addictive and provide the illusion of growth. Almost nothing available online gives the exhaustive treatment to a subject that books provide besides e-books, of course. Also, I adore the sun and actually visiting places.

I hate the feeling of being trapped at the computer that I sometimes get.
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Initial reactions to the Diva Cup:
It is painful to put this in right after showering(if you're a woman you can probably guess why without my being overt). Otherwise, it's actually pretty easy to deal with. Beware thumb nails.

After all this time using pads and on rare occasion, tampons, the Diva cup is a vast improvement. I did not realize how psychosomatic some aspects of periods are until using this, which I cannot and you are not supposed to, feel. I feel like a normal, competent, uninhibited person. The feminist side of me is a little enraged to discover how easy the solution is and does feel as though I have been put down all of these years by inferior products. I can do anything with ease and cannot stress how wonderful it is to not worry about accidents.

Plus it is environmentally friendly and actually saves money. So far it seems like my kind of product, though I did put it in after two days, missing the most troublesome of my cycle.

PS, did you know that silicone is used in many hair products, including shampoo and conditioner?

I will keep you updated.

Critique the Poem

2009-07-11T10:15:00.001-07:00

The ocean’s beauty was not meant
to adorn the walls of man.
Is the deadened shell more beautiful
than a living, breathing clam?
Poets adorn the shell with words
forgetting that which lives;
a simple beast, no doubt,
but one that’s meant to give
its life to filtering out the water
and then dissolve to dust
its shell now sand upon the shore
again part of earth’s crust.

Perhaps some would simply argue
a husk displayed inside a set
means glorious remembrance
and fame found after death;
Others feel the pull of beauty
possession sings its siren song
“If it is pretty, I must have it
no matter where it should belong.”

I remember laying in bed last night thinking there were two things I want to talk about on here. One was the fact that crossword puzzles can be used not only to test knowledge but can also sharpen data-acquiring skills using the internet. The other I cannot remember.

I am interested in how we will redistribute the nutrients in our landfills back into the ecosystem and/or our homes.

Poetry has always fascinated me with its blend of symbolic and logical communication. Chelsea's party was lots of fun, as was the Coast meeting. My brother and I went to the beach at his request and I am so tired and have lots of work to do. Peace out?

Progress

2009-07-09T01:28:00.000-07:00

Star Trek predicts the 1990s are a time of bloody world war and our first space travel. We may not be colonizing other planets, but this is because we instead "chose" to make scientific, medical, and engineering progress, this choice, of course, being the result of various social and political pressures. The things science is now accomplishing were a dream in the 1960's and are in many ways simply amazing.

I find that, in a way, Star Trek is more of a scientific fairy tale than science fiction. Scenarios may utilize science at times, but this is far outweighed by the number of unscientific and improbable elements involved in many episodes so far. This is not to say that the scenarios have not been clever and interesting to watch. I find that I am really enjoying the show, and am almost finished with the first season. Since every episode is fifty minutes in length I cannot watch more than one per day, and two is stretching things.

People have treated space as the frontier, but what about the internet? We need more novels like this.

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When a significant other is having a difficult experience it is not right to abandon him or her even if the experience is affecting the relationship. Examples of difficult experiences include finding a job or prolonged illness. It is only if the affected partner makes no effort to recover that perhaps action is necessary. Being critical is in fact counter-productive because in addition to the initial stressor the affected partner has to cope with the disapproval of her significant other while the "support group" affect of partnership is negated. If your partner is going through a difficult time, please attempt to put yourself in his or her shoes.
Yes, there is a story behind this paragraph, but I am not willing to share it. No, the inspiration was not Chris.

I dislike it when individuals claim to constantly be "calling people out" as this generally implies a sense of their being superior to the general population. This method is tends to be ineffective due to the extremely blunt and sometimes condescending way in which it is usually used which makes the actual message get lost in communication. People are not generally receptive to profanities or tones which imply they are being talked down to. Furthermore, the general implication is that people are liars or do not know how to analyze their own feelings or minds.

When someone does deserve to be "called out", most of the time he or she is not going to be receptive to the truth and it is better to trust that life and experience will show it to him rather than attempt to win a fruitless battle of words. There are few cases where this is false.

Listing Between the Lines

2009-07-08T14:05:00.000-07:00

Comic courtesy of A Softer World

I brought up two things while talking to Dylan yesterday that I want to share with everyone here.

1.) If a girl is using abortion as birth control should she really have a child? The level of irresponsibility, and perhaps to a certain degree, callousness, that having the procedure many time would imply suggests that the potential mother, at least at this point in her life, should not be involved in child-rearing. Not to mention that abortion is never free, whereas condoms can be.

2.) I never understand why people are worried about the population in first world countries falling. Not only would a reduction in population be beneficial to the earth and perhaps imply less cost for these countries it has been proven many times in history that a small elite is still very effective at controlling money and power as far as nationalism is a concern.

Other thoughts:

1.)
As gay rights gain further acceptance the gay community will have to face one of the sectors of American society most biased towards heterosexuals: the sports community. I wonder how integration will occur. Will there be gay sports teams? Who would these sports teams play against? Men and women do have biological differences which mean that the elite in sports are competing against different elements. It would not be fair to put lesbians against a male sports team, but it would also not be fair, in a way, to pit them against a woman's sports team. I would not, in the heat of competition with all of the grabbing and touching involved, want to face the possibility that my opponent is sexually attracted to me. However, it would be as unfair to characterize gay people as sexually attracted to the other team as it would be to say that women are attracted to all men. Basically, I see no reason that gay members should not be integrated onto existing teams if the rules in place now are followed during the game. However, I have a disgusting feeling that the sports community will disagree with me.
I wonder how many of its members are already gay?

2.)
I think it would be a great idea to combine the modern three-d graphics and plot lines of RPGs with the elements of games like Mario and Metroid. Imagine somersaulting, dodging, and powering around a 3-D map using different zooms with an actual story element involved. I believe Super Mario Galaxy incorporates some of the elements I am discussing here but cloaked in the Mario universe, which leaves a *few* things unclear. Obviously a fantasy element would be the easiest to incorporate which, for example, would explain why the monsters are trapped within a certain range or you grow after eating the mushroom. There could also be lots of weapons and spells. A certain cartoonish element could also be used. There is lots of possibility here.

3.)
Very tenuous theoretical question: What if we could generate power using atmospheric heat? Heat is entropy, of course, but what if we found a certain metal or bacteria that had a "switch" at a certain temperature and somehow used that to generate electricity?

4.)
"Even though President Obama was in Russia, he couldn't escape questions about Michael Jackson. He said, "You know, this is part of American culture," said Obama. "Michael Jackson, like Elvis, like Sinatra, when somebody whose captivated the imagination of the country for that long passes away, people pay attention. And I assume at some point people will start focusing again on things like nuclear weapons.""Source

I agree with Obama. As much as Micheal Jackson's death matters the Iranian elections, Chinese riots, and North Korean crazy are extremely important and involve millions of living people. Please give them more air time.

This is an interesting article on public health care.

So apparently there are twelve million people in Jakarta and half of them are homeless. My mind is sufficiently boggled.

More awesome Cracked articles:
7 Ways the Zombie apocalypse could actually happen
What happened to Television?
6 Kickass Animals Ruined by Evolution

Fungus

2009-07-07T13:01:00.000-07:00

This has happened to me before.

So I opened my vermicomposting bin today to put in some grapes and was surprised by a soft layer of fungus.
My reaction was naturally "euuurgh!". I wasn't completely caught off guard since peat is a extremely nutrient rich and in a moist environment attracts many members of the animal kingdom. After my initial emotions I realized that fungus and earthworms coexist in naturally in many places around the world and there were earthworm tunnels near the sides of the bin. Besides, even as I watched the fungus faded from being exposed to sunlight.
For those not familiar with creating ecosystems this simply meant there were enough excess resources for some outside source to utilize.
This led me to wonder if there was a fungus relatively harmless to humans which could compost quicker and more efficiently. I realize that most people's reactions to this would also be "euuurgh", but remember what cheese is etc. Just don't breathe too deeply around the thing and you'd be fine.
I actually don't use that much organic material in my house. I generally finish what I eat and haven't used a single paper towel since I bought my Trader Joe's cloths. Cardboard and plastic are recycled as necessary. I'm wary of putting cardboard in the bin before the colony of worms is fully established since there definitely would be excess resources for other kingdoms to use. I'm even going to buy a Diva Cup(women only, it's about PERIODS). I've heard many women state that they are very pleased with theirs, so I'm going to try the product myself.

*--------*

I attempt to desexualize myself because I wish to be viewed for who I am, a person who is fairly androgynous and does not wish to have feminine generalizations applied to her. How many desexualized male icons are there vrs the amout of desexualized female icons? It's not fair, as some of us do not find sexualization empowering or what we wish to be known for. I attempt not to do this since it is silly, but I have sometimes ended up suppressing feminine aspects of my personality in order to disassociate myself.
And really, every time a negative stereotype of behavior is encouraged by a member of the same sex I get angry. Men "are programmed to sow their oats" and grunt and posture at each other; women having an outburst at any time of the month blaming it on PMS.
We all know the saying about one white crow. So don't blame shortcomings or personality traits on gender and accept them for what they are. If you want to start a sentence with "most women are encultured in our society..." that is a different matter. For example, most women in our society are encultured to worry an excessive amount about their bodies.

The Dorkiness is With Me

2009-07-06T12:28:00.000-07:00

I want a Chapman Stick now. What is a Chapman stick?

An interesting article from Wired about scarcity vrs abundance planning.

"This is the power of waste. When scarce resources become abundant, smart people treat them differently, exploiting them rather than conserving them. It feels wrong, but done right it can change the world."

"The way to get from what the mathematicians call a local maximum to the global maximum is to explore a lot of fruitless minima along the way. It's wasteful, in a sense, but it can pay off in the end."

This feels like the correct way to treat waste vrs. what some American consumers has been doing. Of course, this would also require constantly monitoring trends and identifying the correct variables, though in any marketing projections the ability to model is kind of just a little bit central. What about perhaps literally applying these principals to trash?

Boing Boing columnist Cory Doctorow wrote a column.
I find it interesting that he mentions the fact that conspiracy theories are "pure gold for science fiction writers". Both conspiracy theorists and sci fi authors have the task of taking a fictional premise and making it sound convincingly real. The only true difference is the heading both are sold under. In fact, L. Ron Hubbard blurs this line significantly, though his creation is under the more general heading of religion.
The implication of this column is that ideas are the true genius in the world today. I disagree, as I think the fact that people have created so many DIY inventions is a testament to ingenuity on their parts. It's not necessarily some simple thing to create a fictional invention. Quite simply, it just shows that there are a lot of mechanically gifted people out there, but that is no reason to knock the talent.
This also makes me feel like building something, but I have work to do.

When I was a kid, I loved Star Wars. I didn't talk about the movies to my friends or engage in any fan activity besides imagining myself as a Jedi(don't you dare comment), but the concept of a universal "force" and the notion of peace through control were both extremely appealing to me. My dad and I had frank discussions about Buddhism, which I had only known about marginally before, and the rest is history. A lot of discussion can be had comparing East and West literature/theology and the societies that produced them.

But this is not what I am going to talk about.

During this period I suddenly acquired a taste for tunics. A recent article in io9 which I am too lazy to find discussed how fashion has started borrowing from science fiction. Thanks to recent shifts in fashion it is now becoming easier and easier to dress like a Jedi or Cyber Goth without having everyone around you suddenly converge into a mob of beating-the-passerby.
How long before we start actually looking like a mashup of science fiction characters?

I've always wanted to wear a cloak because I read one too many fantasy novels as a kid. The problem with cloaks is that since the invention of the jacket, they are much less functionally useful. That has never stopped fashion, though. Cloaks are awesome. Imagine one with a ton of useless contemporary buckles. Don't add any fake pockets, though, because those enrage me.

Of course, I'll most likely stick to my "uniform" of khaki pants and wifebeaters/tshirts. But still, you should listen to me fashion industry!

Reporting from the Internet

2009-07-05T23:41:00.000-07:00

The NY Times has a column asking whether or not Madoff got more than he deserved. I didn't get through it, but f*** no. Yes, he is a symbol, but he also did a ton of damage and showed a complete lack of ethics on a plethoric scale. One could get into the ethics of jail itself here, but that's irrelevant to the case at hand

Today my parents visited, which was mostly fun.

I also visited a park.

I don't really feel like writing down thoughts today. I'm in a good mood, just not in the mood to write.

I kind of agree with this article.
"To me, it seems social networking takes too much time with too little reward. Time to learn how to use. Time to sit and read. Time to think and interact.

All of this adds up to less time in “real” life."

"The trick is finding an equilibrium between social networking and living. Spending hours text-gossiping about someone’s page seems a little over-the-top. But using social networking sites to connect or reconnect with people to set up real face-to-face get-togethers seems really useful."

Except that I still mock my parents for taking so long to use the internet(Sorry parents, I still love you!). There are ways to use the internet to enhance life, and there are ways to let it take it over.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on "Ten Ways Banks Take Your Money".

"Late fees, loan-origination fees, over-the-limit and overdraft charges helped generate 53% of banking-industry income in 2008, according to R.K. Hammer... The average bounced-check fee is $28.95, up about $1 from last year, says Greg McBride, senior analyst at Bankrate.com. And it's a charge that rises every year.

At $19 billion, credit-card penalties for late payments and over-limit charges were up 80% between 2003 and 2008."

The new credit card reforms make me happy. In the mean time, there is apparently a study by Bankrate.com which states that the best card currently available is from USAA Federal Savings. I've never heard of this site before. If you feel like picking through the study/site, let me know what you find.

Also, if you have or will have student loans you must read this article.

Summer reading list for children that adults may wish to check out.

Like Steampunk? Click to be tortured. Who wants to petition an awesome out-of-work artist to do something like this? Via Boing Boing.

More Cracked articles you should read:
9 Devastating Insults from Around the World
7 Innocent Gestures that Can Get You Killed Overseas
7(Stupid) People Who Sued the Scientific Method
6 Great US Presidents and Their Crimes Against Humanity.

Happy Fourth of July!

2009-07-04T12:13:00.000-07:00

From Cracked

Picture from a Manta Ray feeding frenzy. Source

"Mantas and whale sharks commonly feed together, untroubled by the occasional collision. As many as 200 rays and a half dozen whale sharks have been counted in a period of several hours, British marine biologist Guy Stevens reports."
Source

Apparently there was a massive bank fraud in EVE online. I'm amused and horrified.

There is a new Turkish reality show pitting a Buddhist monk, a Rabbi, an Imam, and a Greek Orthodox priest against each other to see who can convert the most atheists. Missing the point much?

A 19 year old was arrested for tripping on weed and LSD, thinking he was Terminator, and then running around a casino naked. What not to do on your day off.

I love this piece about "5 presidential elections even dumber than this one".

So I was staring at a tree, thinking "I want to climb this tree". I know, I know, I'm an adult and tree-climbing is not for adults. Well, you're wrong; it's not for boring adults. Anyways, I was thinking about climbing it and defending it from trespassers, when I went "Holy crap, that's not an inborn notion".
Or is it? Were the Native Americans taught to squash their inborn urge of possession? I'm not an anthropologist so I couldn't give a comparison of cultures and their native practices or what is generally considered "tribal" vrs "individual" property. Did the Mongols in their migration routes consider the land itself "theirs", or did they consider the land a place to defend and live upon? The most obvious place to look for an answer to the general question would be pre-history.
The notion of individual possession and tribal possession obviously have different limits in different cultures. We are taught at as young an age as possible what is ours and what is not. Children, at first, consider everything to be grabable(and breakable). It is more likely they do not possess the distinction of ownership than that they consider every object a possession. This is probably the most compelling evidence questioning the innateness of this drive. When a child screams "mine" after having a toy taken away it's more likely that the object is simply desired at the moment than that he or she feels he has ownership of it. Obviously, though, these are just hypothesis.
Would artists feel pain at having their creations taken away? Would scientists gall at having a theory used without their names cited? What would happen to the notion of plagiarism? The notion of ownership has very obvious advantages and disadvantages.

It would be awesome if they created a school which utilized children's existing knowledge to discover new knowledge, like a game or exciting job. I also really believe that a school in the manner of Plato would be much more effective than the Socratic schools we have now. People do think knowledge is cool and like finding out how things work.

It's fun to analyze feminism in Star Trek. The show is fairly progressive in many ways, though it still is struggling between the notions of women as powerfully sexual beings, workers just as capable as their male counterparts, and wives. Both Kirk and many of the women on the show are portrayed as extremely attractive; in fact, one of the reoccurring factors of the plot is attractive women and Kirk seducing them with his genuinely deep good-boy ways. Whatever happened to guys like that? Did they ever really exist? Star Trek is more moral than a lot of the show on today.
Btw, the episode "The Conscience of the King" is really good. Also, why is Scotty the only one with an accent?

Here is a short sketch comedy parodying what it would be like if homeopaths ran the emergency room:

Webcited

2009-07-03T23:16:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about moving this blog to either Wordpress or Tumblr. Put simply, Blogger is not as good as Livejournal when I used to use it three years ago. I had a blog for a short span of time on Wordpress and was very happy with the site; I still have to check out Tumblr. My only concern is losing readership, though I don't think it would be difficult to click a link. Tumblr strikes me as more of a Twitter with pictures.

Paul Duffeild wrote an article on how the illustration of comics is done. Every time I see one of these I am amazed and impressed. I am so impatient when it comes to drawing that after a few hours I get tired and leave the piece to sketch out a new one, though things like this inspire me to expand my artistic talents.

It would be awesome if a comic with a plot was done purely with photographs.

The new Disney World President-Bots are too lifelike! It scares me.

Warren Ellis suggested that 3G IPhone users need a sticker saying "IT'S OK: I'M DOING SCIENCE". I think I need a shirt that says that.

He also linked to this song, which if you like electronic music and theramins you need to go listen to right now. I really enjoyed it, though I think the trumpets need more practice. I am having a hard time turning this album off. IT IS SO GOOD. It is rare that I like music so much!

In a way it's strange that the people who create things like this are just normal people with a passion and talent. It almost seems as though it would make more sense if for a moment Orpheus came down and possessed them. I genuinely believe that we all of a place like this locked inside of ourselves, a personal Oprheus waiting to come out and connect us to that higher place of euphoria.
I've never visited the Salton Sea but I want to.

Image Credit

Trader Joe's

2009-07-02T23:58:00.001-07:00

Scientists tour the Creationist Museum

Trader Joe's is one of my favorite places to shop, with its quality products which include many choices for vegetarians and all-around low prices. I can count the number of times I've been disappointed in their food on one hand and have heard first hand that people who work there get better pay and treatment than at comparative grocery stores.
So today I'm going to research this chain to see if perhaps I am missing a dark underbelly.

Freaknomics author Stephen Dubner is my first source after Wikipedia, asking "Do You Know Who Owns Trader Joe's?"

The answer:

"A huge German discount-grocery chain best known in the U.S. for no-glamor stores often located in marginal neighborhoods....The article claims that Aldi is so good at selling cheap goods that WalMart couldn’t compete with it in Germany. How do they do it? Here’s one way: "Store-brand goods generally make up 22 percent of U.S. food sales in terms of unit volume, according to research by Nielsen Co., while in some European markets, they account for about 30 percent. At Aldi, 95 percent of the goods are the retailer’s own brands."”

I pulled up the Wall Street Journal piece he was referencing. Since I'm not a subscriber I can't read the whole article and the tidbit I could offered no new information.

Quotes from a 2004 article in BuisnessWeek:

" TJ's develops or imports many of its own products from sources it has developed over decades and sells more than 80% of them under the Trader Joe's brand or a variant thereof:.."
"After complaints from animal-rights activists about the way ducks are slaughtered, it stopped selling them. Ahi tuna is caught without nets, its dried apricots are unsulfured, its peanut butter is organic -- and has no trans fats to boot."
"One place where TJ's has never stinted is with its employees. Besides above-union wages and generous bonuses (pay for entry-level part-timers starts at $8 to $12 an hour; first-year supervisors average more than $40,000 a year), TJ's contributes an additional 15.4% of each worker's gross pay into a company-funded retirement plan.

The company got its start when Joe Coulombe was trying to figure out how to protect his three Southern California convenience stores, called Pronto Markets, from the onslaught of 7-Elevens in the 1960s. He loaded the stores up with hard-to-find gourmet items and low-priced wines, and cherry-picked food manufacturers' discontinued and overstocked merchandise, which he peddled at steep discounts. Coulombe sold the renamed Trader Joe's in 1979 to the family trust established by Theo Albrecht, and he retired in 1988."

Deciding to get more obscure results, I clicked on page twelve of the search. This led to the site "Responsible Shopper". If this site proves to be legitimate, then I am extremely happy. Even they think that Trader Joe's is pretty ok, besides the fact that child labor may have harvested the shrimp I routinely buy. This report was filed by The ACILS . Great, what's left in the bag I have now is going to taste like guilt. An easier-to-read article summarizes the situation on CNN. Though I just made a joke, what's taking place really is no laughing matter:

"The report makes clear not all shrimp imports into the United States from Thailand and Bangladesh come from problem plants.

The report names some of the most popular retailers in America, including Wal-Mart, Costco and Trader Joe's.

The center's 40-page report found sexual and physical abuse, debt bondage, child labor and unsafe working conditions are common in Thailand and Bangladesh's shrimp processing factories, and that Thai plants often use trafficked workers."

CNN places Trader Joe's fourth in another article about the healthiest places to shop. It only got a lower ranking because it lacked the variety of the other stores.

Two other things that I learned from my search are that many other people are wild about Trader Joe's and that Kroger is a horrible company. I don't know why yet, but I will when I get the energy to investigate.

This was a random and haphazard search using Google. But since so many reputable sources vouch for the company I would consider it to be one of the few legitimately good ones out there. I will look up its parent company and trust fund owner later.

Oh, and I have not looked up Greepeace's allegations about Redlisted fish being sold at their stores. Considering the chain phased out ducks when animal activists complained I have my doubts about their crimes.

Self-Referential

2009-07-02T15:31:00.000-07:00

This happens to me all the time, except that it's usually what I'm thinking and I don't eat giraffes. From xkcd.

Thoughts on Star Trek:
1.)I like that after any of the characters have an outburst, they apologize
2.)Apparently being in space for so long has made the crew and captain susceptible to any pretty female who is not in charge of the ship's communications.
3.)Those are really short skirts. The crew is lucky that gusts of wind don't exist on the ship.

This article on memory strengthens the theory of memory connections I mentioned before. There is probably a more eloquent way to phrase the previous sentence.

This article from Jezebel about the abuses of the fashion industry, where young girls are powerlessly in the hands of much older and more experienced men, and citing the prevalence of rape in our society, is devastating and something I would definitely recommend checking out.

Another article discusses the true perils and motivations for mothers who adopt from Africa vrs celebrities like Madonna. It also elaborates on a sentence that I posted yesterday: "I don't think that all people from third-world countries are broken or something similar". There is a difference between feeling empathy for others and portraying them as simple, lower beings needing our mercy. People were whole, complete beings long before electricity was harnessed; I just don't think it's fair that somebody's relative or child could potentially die of the flu or something similar. I could write a lot on this topic, clarifying and clarifying, even putting in my own personal experiences, but I will leave it here for now.

Muhahaha, my picture is the first, second, and third result for my full name on Google. On one hand I want this blog to be the first result, but on the other I have an unusual enough name that it probably would not be hard to find out a lot of details about me, especially since I have mentioned the general area where I live. Perhaps when I need to be hired I will make the switch, as I know potential employers look for web presence. I have deliberately not promoted this blog up to this time.

It's interesting that the first hits for "SchizotypalVamp" are ones which I barely use. I don't particularly comment on io9 or Jezebel. I haven't used Library Thing since I was fifteen or sixteen. My original idea was that a searchable database for our collection would be ideal so that we could confirm if we had a book or not before buying it, since we did accidentally get a few books twice. One hundred and twenty-two books later I realized that if I continued I would never get a chance to actually read anything since there remained many more still to be listed. I have posted once on Twitter. I haven't visited The Planted Tank/Frank's Aquarium/MFK in forever. I haven't used my Flickr in a long time, either. But it's nice that my pseudonym retains exclusivity in a Google search.

Frosty posted about Vermicomposting in her apartment earlier today. My attempts to create a compost pile at home fizzled, and it's always something I wished I could do. There was the slight issue in my last home that my parents would string me up as a warning to other messy daughters. However, looking at the composting bins in the pictures of this article, I could always get a box and put it outside. Heck, I could even pretend it was a table, a table my mom would never, ever sit at.
Now when I mentioned getting more plants to my mom, her answer summarized to "you better not make it any more difficult to move out", a sucky but valid point. However, I live right by a university. If making a few calls does not help, I can always dump the fertilizer in the random nature park.

"Why did you bring a large plastic bag on the bus?"
"Uh...no reason"

I'll figure it out. Meanwhile, I believe they sell earthworms at Petsmart. I'm off to go get myself in trouble. Also some pizza.

This is SO COOL

2009-07-01T19:02:00.001-07:00

One of the problems with the internet is that there is too much good stuff to keep track of in it. I am not a culture blogger; being a university student with a lot to learn and a voracious appetite for books makes it hard to keep up with all of those who deserve recognition. Not that I am sorry about being a university student with a large appetite for books.

I have to admit that I really like good journalism and entertaining, informative writing to accompany my news stories. I've tried to be an aggregate of raw facts and I simply don't have the time to be one. I'm not quite sure I'm pleased with the situation. Bear with me while I figure it out.

It's incredibly hard for me to look at difficult news stories, which is ironic due to the fact that I have chided others for not doing so. It's just that I have gone through so much pain from my medical disorders and I come from a well-to-do family. What about those people who hurt every day and can't get medical care? What about those people who can barely get water because they've been uprooted from their homes? What the hell must they be feeling, thinking? I've tasted but a drop from the pool that is despair. Maybe I'm weak, but I can't imagine what it's like to wade or swim in it.

I don't think all people from third-world countries are broken or something similar. It's simply the barriers needed to leave that poverty. My intelligence as a peasant girl in India would not have mattered if I had married at nine and had my first child at twelve(though I most likely would have become as close to a monk as I could have been). Wanting to read, write, or learn is simply not enough in that climate.

In other thoughts, our culture has so many dichotomies, one of which being that the religious majority of this country encourages abstinence before marriage, yet culturally male promiscuity is encouraged. It reminds me of a quote from Joseph Campbell's Creative Mythology:

"In Christian Europe, already in the 12th century, beliefs no longer universally held were universally enforced. The result was a dissociation of professed belief from actual existence and the consequent spiritual disaster, which, in the imagery of the Grail legend, is symbolized in the Waste Land theme: a landscape of spiritual death, a world waiting, waiting-"Waiting for Godot!"-for the desired Knight, who would restore its integrity to life and let stream again from infinite depths the lost, forgotten living waters..."

Not only must we actualize ourselves but charge forth in battle against those who would suck us dry.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I started the review of the Trader Joe's cloths today. I used one to clean my oven top and was impressed. It did the work of about 10 paper towels due to various cleaners I implemented to test it. Soap with water, which will destroy several paper towels in one go, was easily dispensed then mopped up. The cloth proved to be durable and porous, and rinsed out very easily. I would definitely recommend this over paper towels while cleaning so far(or if you have fish tanks).
So far I have used the other cloth as a dinner napkin. It requires a little wetting to create the consistency needed to pick grease off the fingers.
I will keep you updated. Note that since a two-pack costs $2.99 this could actually save money as well as breaking down easily in compost piles and reducing paper consumption.

There is a character called Dr Strange who I wish to check out. Also, Ellen Roger's Flickr(Via Warren Ellis) is so, so good. The picture is credited to her. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes I don't understand what it is trying to say. These pictures do not invite you into their worlds but simply taunt you with their beauty, daring you to ponder while shutting the door.

I think I need The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana.

America and The Online Store

2009-07-01T17:28:00.000-07:00

Today I want to discuss the digitalization of stores due to a post by author Warren Ellis. Mr.(Sir? Please don't beat me to death..Sir)Ellis blogged about LongBox, a pioneer in the comic trade which sells individual issues digitally for $.99 and up. People are now afraid for the comic store, which made me think about what the consequences of a mostly-online market would resemble.

The following is after a bit of brainstorming, and is neither a thesis nor outline which I will defend to the death(though of course, it's still mine. Please don't steal!).

Pros:
1.)They are more easily searchable

2.) More environmentally friendly
-People driving less
-MUCH Less urban sprawl

3.) More Mom-and-Pop friendly than renting/buying a storefront, etc

4.) Easier to track trends. Is this an upside or a downside in more general terms? I am unsure,
but it's good for marketing.

5.)People tend to monitor feedback for online sellers and take action against them, which could
inspire greater consumer consciousness.

6.)Online stores simply have a wider market. Goods could potentially circulate across the
country with much more regularity, bringing revenue to less well-off places provided that
creative stores open there.

7.)Takes advantage away from huge megamarts and could potentially keep more money in the
country due to greater circulation of American-made products.

Downsides:
1.)You have to pay shipping, though this is usually offset by the lower costs online

2.) Hackers can get into anything and everything. It would be interesting to see a comparison of
in-store robberies vrs hackers hacking online marketplaces to see if a switch might spark a
rise in crime.

3.)Merchandise cannot be exchanged instantly, or why the storefront will most likely never truly die
unless even faster shipping methods are implemented/discovered(Beam me up, box of
diapers).

4.)People can't spend an afternoon in an online store hanging out together(this does not apply to
me, unless it's a bookstore) and randomly buying merchandise. It would be nice, of course, if
the centers of culture and socialization could be something besides shops, which a switch to
digitalized shops would facilitate.

5.)Would put a LOT of people out of work before it could take place, even more than are out of work at the moment. The switch would create a lot more technical jobs(I
can't find where the cd drive is, but I have this great cupholder). The market would shift but
it would be a stressful time for a lot of people unless it followed a government-sponsored plan
or something, and that's not a guarantee of stability.

6.)There is no way to see the product in person before purchase.

7.) Greater potential for scam artists. The only way to prevent this is a crackdown on the
webmarket, which is not something that anyone wants. Until space travel becomes feasible,
the internet is the last wild west. Perhaps various search engines which certify that a
businessis legitimate could be developed?

Notice that many of these apply to online shopping right now, too, and are simply taken to an extreme.

Imagine a world where the only sprawl involved schools, museums, furniture stores, food shops, businesses and attractions. Perhaps a few overstock/thrift and pet stores are also still scattered around. Suddenly, America would be using a lot less space.

Viscoseity

2009-06-30T16:32:00.001-07:00

Has anyone created a Captain America comic that comments on American policy today?

Remember when I was talking about the SKOY cloth? Apparently Trader Joe's has a product that's basically the same. I'm going to use it and write about my thoughts here. One will be used for cleaning and the other for cleaning up random messes and spills. Here is a quote from the back:

"This cloth is created from 100% Viscose, a miracle fabric.." (Way to make me suspicious, Trader Joe's) that absorbs over 10 times its weight in any liquid."

Let's Google Viscose, shall we?

Wikipedia tells us that "Cellulose from wood or cotton fibres is treated with sodium hydroxide, then mixed with carbon disulfide to form cellulose xanthate, which is dissolved in more sodium hydroxide. The resulting viscose is extruded into an acid bath, either through a slit to make cellophane, or through a spinneret to make rayon. The acid converts the viscose back into cellulose...Viscose currently is becoming less common because of the polluting effects of carbon disulfide and other by-products of the process, forcing some factories to close."

Trading one evil for another. Either we cut down the forests or make the water undrinkable. Everybody wins, and by wins I mean dies.

I have no idea what the credibility of Wisegeek is, but here are some quotes:
"...including some of the products that many people use every day that are made from this substance."
Wiki also mentions this. Apparently viscose is really common, especially in apparel, and is used in Nylon sometimes. The things we learn from random research. Here is a table from Time
(Yes, as in The Times).

"Figures in millions of pounds consumed:

_______Raw Cotton__Wool_____Silk____Rayon
1926—3,215—343—66—61
1929—3,423—368—81—133
1932—2,463—230—71—155
1935—2,755—418—62—259
1938—2,904—285—52—327
1940—3964—41—36—488"

So I have lots of work to do, or I would probably start looking up polymers and other things that are lots of fun. Feel free to do your own research and post it up here.

I finally added a "Household Products" tag but can only remember two entries where I discuss them. I still haven't finished tagging all of the "Random Thoughs" entries, either.

Here is an interesting post on good startup search engines that I will read in full later. Also, I was a little skeptical about Cracked's post about the blind man who learned to echolocate, but now an article on the phenomenon is on Wired and if humans can do this I want to learn. I have officially converted Chris to Cracked(.com)! Go me.

Love and Creation in the Nation

2009-06-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

Comics courtesy of A Softer World.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Stonewall riots! I wonder how to celebrate.

HOLY C***!!! NEIL GAIMAN IS AT UCSD STARTING ON THE 28TH AND PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT ME ARE BEING TAUGHT BY HIM! Ok, I am totally finding a way to see him while he is here. This is happening.

"All love letters are
Ridiculous.
They wouldn't be love letters if they weren't
Ridiculous.

In my time I also wrote love letters
Equally, inevitably
Ridiculous.

Love letters, if there's love,
Must be
Ridiculous

But in fact
Only those who've never written
Love letters
Are
Ridiculous

If only I could go back
To when I wrote letters
Without thinking how
Ridiculous.

But today, really,
my memories of those
letters are the ones
that are truly ridiculous

(All the strange words,
all the strange thoughts,
are naturally ridiculous)"

-Fernando Pessoa

I have never written a love letter. Chris and I were unabashedly sentimental in a way which led to both of our parents making fun of us so it's not as if our emotions were not expressed, but love does not inspire me to write, it inspires me to do. I wrote a couple poems dedicated to my first love after being rejected by him and a dark poem about the emotion itself once. But I completely agree that sincere and eloquent writing dedicated to deep emotion is worth creating even if to some it seems pretentious or overdecked, though I would make a conscious effort to stay out of the realm of complete ridicule.

The latest Star Trek episode parallels Peter Pan and Never-Neverland, which is sort of brilliant, as was the Venus drug episode(though wives are not for cleaning and cooking, of course).

Today I saw a name in my inbox which made me conceive Caronlina Muffet. Caronlina Muffet only exists in words. She is a doll with button eyes that was cobbled together by someone with too much time and imagination. The child that created her lives in a world of canopy beds and bedtime stories. She or he, as I haven't decided on his or her gender, spends most of his or her time in his or her room. Ms. Muffet is made of scraps of muppets and pages from Fairy Tale books in character, but in the reality in which she exists she is only made of scraps. She might have gotten a part in Coraline, had she auditioned, but being a doll she couldn't. Secretly she was deeply disappointed in this, but do not tell the child that made her, because he or she simply wants the doll to be happy.

Carolina Muffet may appear creepy to some, but she is not bad in any way. She was created from a simple love of life and retains this in her stitches.

Untruth in Advertising

2009-06-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

Pictured
is a sugar
glider.
Source

This is
a pet I
really want.
Howev-
er, they
are illegal to
own in
Califor-
nia.

I despise modern advertising. I believe the notion and acceptance that exaggeration and lies are commonplace within marketing becoming mainstream does more of a disservice to our culture than we realize. It is impossible to do research on everything. How many of us have looked up the most environmentally friendly paper towel or dishwashing liquid? Billions are spent every year based almost solely on marketing and sales prices. Human eyes are naturally drawn to more artistic trappings and when fast music is played adrenaline automatically swims through our bodies, perhaps creating the same response when the product is seen in stores. To sever these connections is, in fact, harmful, but we must constantly monitor our unconscious reactions to product placement, jingles, and a thousand other things. Even through all of this I notice my eyes being drawn to more interesting packaging or the words "environmentally friendly!"(which a product may not be) at Ralph's. Also, more sinisterly, though I don't believe this is actually the goal of any company, a well-educated and discerning population is not favorable to sales.

Speaking of environmentally friendly products, I did a search for "environmentally friendly paper towel" and found the Skoy. Here are some quotes from the web page:

"SKOY cloth is a chlorine-free product using water-based colors and inks. After an independent composting test, SKOY cloth broke down completely within 5 weeks."

"The SKOY cloth is a durable product due to the reusability factor and can last months. Using a SKOY cloth is equivalent to using 15 rolls of paper towels in an average home. "

"The SKOY cloth is long-lasting because of the wash ability feature. It dries quickly, so it is not a breeding ground for bacteria. Have you ever used your sponge, then smelled your hand and it reeked of horrible bacteria? That will never happen again if you microwave your SKOY cloth regularly. It is also dishwasher and washer/dryer safe. "

"We are two stay-at-home moms living in Encinitas, California. Our children have begun Elementary school and we have a little extra time. We decided that this would be the perfect time to start our business.

We have been working and researching for almost a year on our product."

"The idea originated when Michelle was living in Europe in the late 90’s. She discovered a product that was similar to the SKOY cloth and it was just amazing. Over time she found the cloth to be indispensible. When she moved back to the US, she realized that the use of a sponge was inadequate and the excessive use of paper towels, wasteful. Michelle searched and searched for a similar cloth and nothing even compared; nothing was of the same caliber. This is when Michelle introduced the cloth to Karen. She immediately fell in love with it and could not imagine cleaning with anything else.’

We then put our heads together and discussed a way to bring this product to the US with the requirement that it meet our high standard. Now we are so excited to be able to offer the SKOY cloth to you—which is everything that we had hoped it would be."

There are two problems I have with this website. One is that it is unclear whether the women are creating the product or importing it from abroad. If they are creating it, neither of their education levels or qualifications are mentioned. Of course, one does not need a degree to be smart or do intensive research, but if they can do it, so can I, though I don't have the one resource they claimed was available- a little bit of extra free time. I wonder if it would be possible to order the product and then do extensive testing on it?
I forgot the second problem. Maybe I will remember later.

Origins

2009-06-26T22:54:00.000-07:00

My family has a fascinating history. My great-grandmother was Middle Eastern; I can't remember what part of India my great-grandfather was from. It was these two who made the trip to Trinidad, then a British colony, following the promise of land and a better life. Why, and their original families, remains lost in history.
My father was born to a then-well-off family in Guyana. I don't know how or when his family ended up in the South American country. His dad never discussed this subject with him and so it remains a mystery to me.
Due to the various migrations and England's love of collecting colonies at the time I ended up with Indian, British, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern elements in my upbringing in addition to my Americanization. For some people, family history defines their identities, but for me it reinforced that the person I could be included a smorgasbord of people. In a way, my background is also painful because it gives a glimpse of how hard it is to truly understand and grasp the intricacies of another culture from outside of it, though I certainly try.
I also ended up with a American, Caribbean, and slight British accent.

Whenever people ask where I am from I feel obligated to give a small summary of these events which seem to pass over many individual's heads and summarize to "she's Indian". I'm not close to my Indian heritage, though I've read many sacred texts of cultures for unrelated reasons and can understand elements of the culture because of how it affected and has been passed on by my family. I don't know how to wrap a sari and neither of my parents are Hindu or Muslim, though being Hindu or Muslim as a religious identity is different from the cultural identity Indian; people seem to mix those up.

Throughout human history there seems to be a period of stratification into a king, nobles, craftsmen and artisans, and peasants in cultures which "advance" into civilization. Does this innately make sense to the human mind or is it simply the result of political pressures and a certain group of migratory humans? In this day and age we could say that Democracy innately makes sense to the human mind, but that would be ignoring the power struggles and history which led to this government gaining a foothold in world history. If other turns of events had taken place communism could be in its stead. Saying that a group of disparate humans developed this form of government would be negating the large influence of the Indo-European migration; much of what happened before that time is lost in prehistory. I, as probably you, can think of several logical reasons why this stratification makes sense, but that could be enculturation more than logic.
This argument is more of a devil's advocate position than anything I have developed into a thesis.

Ouch, Year One is getting panned on RT. So far it has a rating of 18%, extremely disappointing considering Jack Black, Micheal Cera, and David Cross are involved.

Saying Something

2009-06-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Warren Ellis is writing a comic which is free for viewing online.

The latest entry of PLFM features an extremely psychotic man who deserves to have a derisive entry written about him. However, I take offense to this statement:

""I'm just not that into casual sex," he explained. For those women not in the know, that's man-speak for "I can't find anyone who will f*** me." "

That's just untrue, though it may not have been in this man's case.

Speaking of PLFM, Mike/Weasel recently did an interview on another blog. Here is a quote from it:

"And like most writers, I absolutely abhor what I write. I post entries, and I never read them again, because I can’t. I’m my own worst critic. They just seem so fucking awful, so unfunny."

I can completely relate to this. Part of what I try to do while writing this blog is to go back and correct entries a week and a month after they are written in an attempt to improve my writing style. I always get the urge to delete the posts, cobbling together the reasoning that hey, Kafka wanted to burn all of his work, maybe yours is actually good! It seems to be part of the natural torture of being a writer.

One of the reasons that I believe creates the high divorce rate in this country is that people do not know how to communicate with each other. This seems to be a reason that nobody is addressing.

It's kind of saddening that Micheal Jackson's death is the only thing that brought about renewed respect for him. If he was a child molester I don't feel any sympathy for his faith, but he really was never allowed to live a normal life and was damaged in so many ways.

Are you Happy, Are you Feeling Glad? Have You Got Sunshine, in a Bag?

2009-06-25T19:13:00.001-07:00

For the part of last night that I slept I had great dreams and woke up really happy, once I managed to wake up. Something about Band but I could actually stand up straight which meant that I was capable of doing the marches. Janina , Nick, Jessica Wray(?! haven't seen her since elementary school, not that I have seen any of these other people since high school) and others were there, as were many people I didn't know, since I was coming back from college as a tutor(thanks, Dylan!). Jessica wanted me to sit with her and Nick got told off by ..what's his face who's name I can't remember for making faces at me. I dreamt I was getting up at 6:30am while my mom was and garnering complaints from the other band members while my alarm clock in real life was going off at 7:30am. Before that there was a dream involving Pamela Das running away from her abusive parents to my apartment where my entire family lived then things turned into a Bollywood movie where we harnessed the power of the gods through Ilya to get some god to break a curse. Only Ilya got arrested and I had to go and break him out with someone else by following a compass except that the warden wasn't fooled by my story and I was preparing to fight, but then I woke up. Also, stuff happened with Chris. Anyways, it was a really good dream though it may not sound like it, except for the part where Geringher actually was a pedophile...not so good.

So then I woke up at 7:30am, apparently was much earlier than I had to, and got to the lab fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. We had an EH&S presentation today and much joking about drugs ensued. I sort of wonder what would have happened if when the presenter had asked someone to give an example of controlled substances I had started rattling a list of recreational substances off the top of my head, even though I've never tried any myself. It's kind of funny that I don't even drink but can name a long list of illegal drugs, though that is partially due to psychology classes. To most people raised in LA or NY this doesn't seem like much of a deal, but apparently it is? I guess it really comes down to what community within the city you have dealings with, though I never exactly hung out with seedy people. Also, when we heard that Farah Fawcett died of anal cancer we burst out laughing like the twelve year olds we actually are. No, the cancer part is not funny at all, but let's face it, in the face of tragedy sometimes the best solution is to laugh. Also, butts are funny. I totally have not been taken over by a middle schooler.

We talked about infidelity and I mentioned the survey that Anthony had told me about. The governor of South Carolina was discussed, and I agreed that if had not made decisions based on having the moral highground or obligation his affair would not have been a big deal. Some people say that if a man cannot hold his family together he cannot run a state. This is quite simply not true, as there are people who are good at one and horrible at the other. While it would make me dislike the man, as long as his governing was fine I would support him as a governor. Liking a good leader is not necessary, though it certainly helps. The subject came up twice until Phil played a clip from "The Daily Show". Also, the big knife is now known as our emergency backup system thanks to me.

I stayed in the lab most of the day learning Mathlab, then left and saw Peter, which went well. I'm hungry. Feed me?

If you want a cuttlefish, here is information on how to take care of Dwarf Cuttlefish.

Title is a play on the lyrics to Gorillaz-"Clint Eastwood", which don't actually have anything to do with anything, except that I am happy.

Cracked Up

2009-06-24T17:32:00.001-07:00

Another beautiful article from Cracked about terrifying islands:

#6) Snake Island: "You see, Ilha de Queimada Grande is a delightfully exotic sounding island off the coast of Brazil that plays host to a certain breed of exotic sounding snake known as the Golden Lancehead. This snake has one of the worst venoms in the world, which literally causes your flesh to rot off your bones........ Conservative estimates range from the spine tingling one snake per square meter to the "drop dead from...fear" five snakes per square meter. "

5.)"Located in a lagoon in Venice, Italy, this island got its scary start when the Romans, being the kind, gentle souls they were, decided the best thing for society was to round up all the plague victims of the era, and stick them somewhere....When the Bubonic plague tore through Europe, the island was reinstated to its former "glory;"....They also changed their policy of "let the infected die peacefully" to "throw them in a large pit (atop already-dead bodies), and set them on fire,".... in 1922, a mental hospital with a scary fucking bell tower was built on the island ...According to legend, this particular hospital featured a doctor who routinely experimented on his patients with such things as lobotomies (performed with a hammer and chisel)

4.)"Figuring swamp vs. death was an easy decision, the 900 man force entered the swamp...

Five hundred were never heard from again.

You see, Ramree Island, not content with being just the home to malaria-carrying mosquitoes, blowflies and deadly scorpions, also harbored another deadly creature; the saltwater crocodile...."

3.)"Thanks to some nasty volcano-related incidents, the island's air is pumped full of delicious sulfur! The highest concentration of the gas on the entire...planet no less.....For some reason, the island has retained most of its pre-volcano population, and since the volcano never stopped spewing eggy gas, now they live day and night with a gas mask either on their face, or at their side. In the middle of the night, air raid sirens go off because the gas levels are dangerously high and people would start to die....Hey, speaking of nightmarish terror, that island also marks the exact point where 3 massive tectonic plates converge. Last time the pressure got too much, the ensuing earthquake removed Tokyo from the map. Completely...."

2.)"See, every time America or China dumps plastics in the water, it ends up in the ocean, and the currents drag it all to the same place--an area called the North Pacific Gyre. Over time, the garbage added up and now it's basically an island the size of Texas (although there is plastic covering an area the size of America)....Still, on the plus side, at least it's a form of recycling--garbage gets thrown out, fish eat garbage, we eat fish..."

1.)" Twenty (20) dead bodies of men, women and children were brought to Rewa as a present from Tanoa. They were distributed among the people to be cooked and eaten. They were dragged about in the water and on the beach. The children amused themselves by sporting with and mutilating the body of a little girl. A crowd of men and women maltreated the body of a gray-haired old man and that of a young woman. Human entrails were floating down the river in front of the mission premises.""

I have to agree with the author in feeling like vomiting for a while at the moment at the last one. Check out the article, as it gets worse!

Speaking of worse:
" At the Roppongi club, you’ll get to make love to your choice of a chicken, dog, pig, or goat; male or female. At this point, unless you’ve overstepped your bounds, the animal is still alive, and presumably frisky. Once the deed is done, you (and your family? Guests? We’re not really sure what you want to do here) retire to the dining area. In a matter of minutes, you are presented with a delicious meal of roasted whatever-animal-you-just-...."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH scarred for life scarred for life scarred for life /runs into shower

Image credit: Cracked

Short but Sweet

2009-06-23T12:45:00.001-07:00

"I thought, I wrote, I conquered"
-Me, thinking about a slightly pretentious hypothetical situation

Amanda Palmer is at the Troubador on Thursday! Tickets are only $20.

Oh my God, this exists. Is it an actual organization or a home for Stepford Wives? On one hand, the list of recent events

"Many of our projects and special events offer leadership positions and challenging opportunities. Some of our most recent projects include our Blood Drive, our Annual Benefit Dinner, Dances, Christmas on Third Avenue Event, Spring Brunch Card Party, La Cadena Fashion Show, Table Setting Contest, and Tea Parties."

suggests the latter, but Amanda is performing for them, which suggests the former. Will I go to the show? Uh, maybe.

Apparently I have an allergy to something? What I thought was pink eye was diagnosed to be irritation. What do I have an allergy to? I had to go and buy eye drops.

I spent a lot of time reading The Customer is Not Always Right today, thanks to Tedrick. The anecdotes are hilarious! Here is a sample from the first page:

"

Me: “Hello, I’m calling about a bill your [credit card] that you haven’t paid in two months.”

Customer: “I don’t even have this card.”

Me: “Well, is this your address?” *asks address*

Customer: “Yes.”

Me: “And is this your correct phone number?” *asks phone number*

Customer: “Yes.”

Me: “May I verify the last four digits of your social?”

Customer: “Yes, it’s ****.”

Me: “Okay, that’s what we have. Were your last charges at [dentist] and with your phone company on [date]?”

Customer: “Why, yes, I did go there on those dates.”

Me: “So, you used this card.”

Customer: “No, I cut up this card. I don’t have it anymore.”

Me: “Well, the account is still open and you’re still responsible for the money you owe.”

Customer: “No, I cut up the card! I don’t owe anything!”

Me: “You have a balance of $2000 on the card. Even when you cut the card up, you still owe what you spent.”

Customer: “Really?!” "

Image credit: JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images. The girl is a sex worker in South Korea, but the image and women herself are so delicatley lovely and thought-provoking that I had to post them here.

Filming

2009-06-22T12:40:00.000-07:00

"Art does not speak...it is overheard..."
-Foucault

Thoughts about "The Reader":
1.) It reminds me very much of the starkness of German culture that Anthony elaborated to me, though the film reveals the passion and humanity underneath it.
2.) Kate Winslet is an excellent actress. Her eyes, her gestures, her manner are all perfect for her role. I am not surprised she won the Oscar.
3.) I wish people still went on cycling holidays. Though, of course, I don't know how to ride a bike..

There is joy in being loved, but there is also so much joy in loving someone else and seeing it light up their life.

4.)It's interesting how the Nazis have no effect on Micheal's life in the upper class.

5) It's powerful, incredibly powerful. Not as powerful as Slumdog, but it deserved to win some awards. I won't go into the details because that would entail spoilers, but you should watch it.

It's strange that Dora may soon be totally blonde.

You know what play is excellent? The Cherry Orchard by Chekov. I just read one of his (very) short stories, so I am thinking about his work.

I really wish that "Milk" didn't have wife-beater Sean Penn as its main actor because now I'm torn between borrowing it from someone or Blockbuster. The same holds for "The Wrestler".

Thoughts on Frost/Nixon:
1.) It was AMAZING. And I don't know how to say any more than that without spoilers. But seriously, go watch it.

I did a lot of stuff today, but little of it was physics related, which annoys me.

Video killed the Bandwith Star

2009-06-21T16:59:00.001-07:00

I like this article because the physicist featured works at UCSD. Also, it gives me a headache when I think about my future in research.

Scubatube.org is a Youtube-like site dedicated to Scuba videos. Dnatube.com is a Youtube-like site dedicated to scientific videos. I forsee time-wasting in my future. Or would it really be time wasting? Ah, the existential questions.

Tiny Master of Tomorrow have a sound very comparable to Karen O's. And I support them because at 13 and 15 who didn't want to magically learn to play guitar, write about all the schmucking around you and then get complemented by David Bowie? Then again, I didn't know who David Bowie was. Another thanks goes out to the Chrisman for that one.

Mom found my blog and read it a bunch while procrastinating. Thankfully, I'm pretty sure that she doesn't know the URL.

How NOT to campaign for school board:

Love, Money, Art and Science

2009-06-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

Comics are from xkcd

This article analyzes how paper money hurts the economy. It brings up some interesting points that I have never considered before and has three basic keys:

1.) The US government spends a LOT of money minting money
2.) The infrastructure is already in place for a digital switch
3.)Most money is already only in existence electronically

Here is the main problem I have with this article: most of the world does not have the infrastructure to make the switch to digitalized money. I can see how this could be countered by simply doing business deal in other country's money, but one of the powers of the dollar is the fact that it is ubiquitous. Take this away and the value of our currency would drop substantially.
Another trouble is that all money becomes traceable. Here we must thread the line between what is good for our society and the American suspicion of totalitarian governments. I must admit a cultured dislike of taking away that measure of autonomy and the fact that powerful people could destroy a person's savings with a few clicks on a mouse.
To me, the disturbing thing is that, for the most part, this could already happen. We are dependent on trust in a society that encourages our bankers and lawyers to be untrustworthy.

Apparently there is a Youtube stream dedicated to rejected marriage proposals. I watched a couple and really do not understand how they could be considered funny.

I started watching the original Star Trek series because of the movie and after two episodes I am really enjoying the series, cheesy sets and all. It reminds me of The Twilight Zone, except better done and set in space. Not that I've ever seen that much of the Twilight Zone, as the episode I watched did not catch my interest.

This artist uses discarded plastic to make his creations. This makes me feel like making landscapes from sticks, stones, and dead leaves.

I must have this. Seriously, I need more plants and aquariums. I love creating ecosystems! But let's not focus on that when I have to work on math and physics. I will read my ecosystems book later, by which I mean tomorrow.

I feel really good today. I had a visit last night from a dear friend which went really well.

Cute(Edited 6:44 pm)

2009-06-19T19:42:00.000-07:00

From left to right: Spot, The Brave One, Socks, and Dasha

"Mongol" is well worth seeing, though it contained some historical inaccuracies. The style of the editing felt very Mongolian from my little reading of The Secret History, and the movie had a certain poetry to it. The fight scenes are portrayed with adrenaline and brutality; the fighting is exciting but not glorified. The Mongols themselves are portrayed as "uncivilized"(insert long diatribe about civilization and our enculturation here) but living with their own code. I especially like the portrayal of Mongolian women and wish there were a few more American heroines like them. We have few records of The Great Khan's early life, which makes it strange upon speculation that it is not the topic of more imaginings. Also, I would like to mention something that Ilya said a long time ago, which is that Mongolian ponies are short and fat. The horses in this movie are big Hollywood studs.

Snuggles is becoming blinder every day. Also, he was going to pee on the mat when I picked him up and put him in the litter box, getting some on my foot in the process.

Yesterday my mom took me to the mall. Tired from all the shopping this week neither of us lasted long, and I soon escaped to the bookstore. I met a former physics major working as an engineer in the mathematics section.

At home we watched the aforementioned "Mongol" and "Mamma Mia", the latter thanks to my aunt Brenda who had recommended it to my mom. I promised to watch "Mamma Mia" with my mom if she watched "Mongol". The movie turned out to be exactly what I expected: a light, fluffy romantic comedy with lots of singing. The songs were integrated well into the plot. Also, things stopped making sense somewhere towards the end and the tone was slightly unfemenistic. All of a sudden the independent woman realizes that she's needed a man this entire time? Perhaps the best thing that happened was that after seeing Meryl Streep in "Doubt" my parents were very impressed with her acting range and are now fans. They are also starting to borrow good movies instead of sappy Bollywood flicks. My mom bought another Meryl Streep movie and is renting "The Reader". I did too, in fact, so I'll probably be writing about that later today. My parents actually had an argument about the conclusion of "Doubt" in the car.

I keep having dreams where I'm Buffy. Also in last night's dream was Chris, and it was a pleasant dream. I'm not implying something euphemistically there. It was just a nice dream, except for the werewolves and demon slaying.

So I'm going to keep up with summer vow #1, read real news. Stay tuned for more updates.

Edit 6:44pm:

The last entry brings up a point some people have nitpicked on. Do I consider myself beautiful? Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't, because how I look throughout the day can vary considerably. I don't necessarily consider myself beautiful in the way I want to be all the time, either. What I am sure about is that other people can find me attractive.

It's nice to be in La Jolla, since most of the harassment I experienced in LA has stopped. I have heard many a time stories about how beautiful women bemoaned the cat-calls after they were gone, but it's nice to be surrounded by so many other pretty girls. That way if someone takes a special interest in me, it probably has more to do with me than my face.

I fell down the stairs this morning after my mom told me to come quietly. The kittens were curled up on the lawn chair and I took the above picture of them. Clingy was with Gaiylee on the lawn. We bought a bunch of books in the UCSD student store and ate at the Indian place. Now I'm going to clean and watch "The Reader".

Body of Issues

2009-06-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

"Run Fatboy, Run" was good, but did not live up to my expectations. A parody of the romantic comedy genre, it ends up simply being another movie in the genre instead of satirizing the films it sets out to. Part of the problem lies in the Rom-com itself since as the films become more and more ridiculous the greatest exaggerations would not seem out of place in a "serious" film.

One of my issues with makeup is the fact that if anyone complemented my beauty they would be commenting on the illusion I created and not my actual face. Makeup, Spanx, and other such products are supposed to be beneficial to self-esteem, but how can that be if the finished product is not the actual woman? The complement is towards an imaginary creation, not to the real person. Is it healthy to think that someone needs all those products to be beautiful? What about when a significant other realizes who is under them, someone not the person initially presented? I personally prefer to present myself. Pretty or ugly, take me or leave me, at least it's me who is being judged with my acne-scarred face. Speaking of judgment, I'm not passing any who do use those products. I'm just genuinely puzzled. I have some artistic tendencies which sometimes manifest themselves in the way I dress and, sometimes, eyeshadow, which apparently can require an amount of creativity. But for those who feel they have to put on makeup every day, I don't understand the reasoning. I could apply the blanket statements enculutration and low self-esteem, but I don't feel as if that's fair.

"You have such perfect skin", my first boyfriend crooned. I was shocked at the compliment because I really don't, especially from an objective standpoint. My face has acne scarring and the skin on my calves is cracked. I also have a huge scar down the middle of my chest, though he didn't know that. I could go on, but I don't want to; the point is that I'm not perfect myself. An interesting note is that he was not the last to repeat that compliment, and none of these people were trying to get in my pants.

I guessed what this means is that the right partners don't notice our physical imperfections nearly as much as we do.

When someone tells a man he is not pretty, it is a comment on his appearance. If someone tells a woman that she is ugly it is seemingly taken as a comment on her whole being, as though the person is invalidating her. This is dumb, and I refuse to buy into the latter.

Storytime

2009-06-18T14:36:00.000-07:00

I wonder if carbon nanotubes could be used in conjunction with another highly resilient material to create wings that could function while making minute adjustments like those a bird's wings utilize.

I was raised to consider serving people as a part of the environment, like the racks that belong in a department store. Perhaps describing them as serving robots would be more descriptive. In my universe, they existed only to do their job with a smile as part of the background. This was not an overt part of my upbringing, and I don't want to give the impression that my parents are horrible people.

When I was fourteen, I took my first community college class and my world changed. I met the people who served in these tiring, backbreaking jobs, struggling to smile and be polite to their customers who could be horribly and unrealistically demanding. I realized how abhorrent and narrow-minded my previous view had been. I admire people who work sales and service jobs, grueling, demanding, and intellectually deadening as this work is. And while I most likely will never, thank God, have to work in one of them, I try to make sales people's day a little easier if I can.

It really bothers me when people treat sales people with the naive attitude I possessed earlier in my life. I've known plenty of people working their way through college trying to balance school and work at the same time, and the last thing they need is someone snobby enough not to appreciate this. Almost nobody wants to be in these positions, but they work in them because they have to provide for themselves and sometimes their children. Why would this make them any less human?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every time I walk to the video store I remember a story from my childhood. When I was twelve and in seventh grade, my science teacher Mrs. Simons(sp?) assigned us a project to cook a nutritionally balanced meal. I procrastinated until the last day and then informed my mom when she came home that I had to get the ingredients necessicary. Uncharacteristically, as my parents usually would go to great lengths to help me succeed in school, my mom said that she was too tired to deal with this and that she was going to take a nap; when she got up she would decide what she was going to do.

This was not satisfactory to me. So I stole twenty dollars from her purse and set out to buy a Cornish hen.

The distance to Food for Less, which is in the same complex as the video store, was far from the longest distance I had walked at that time. But small and paranoid as I was looking like an out-of-place elementary schooler, the store seemed much further than it actually was. When I got to the store a nice sales person took special care to help me get exactly what I needed, and I went home with a feeling of satisfaction. And yes, I did give my mom the change from the bill.

My mom was angry but strangely proud and told the story to all of her sisters. This reminds me of when the Orange Line was built and I started sneaking off to downtown. After a bit of astonishment and upset, my mom wanted to know if I would take her with me.

Winnetka is now a street which I feel completely safe strolling down, although for some reason somebody always honks at me. I still don't feel comfortable in the dark out there, as the last time I was somebody grabbed my hand. But still, how times have changed.

Tonight we're watching "Run Fatboy, Run". We went on a huge shopping spree thanks to mom, though we also stopped in at the one dollar bookstore. We bought some plays by Moliere(accents are too much trouble) , Neuromancer, a book of short stories including Faulkner and Chekov, To Peking and Beyond by Salisbury(experiment) and a couple other books. I also bought Micheal Crighton's book Twister for Chris, because I couldn't help myself.

Contradictions

2009-06-17T15:52:00.001-07:00

My family and I just finished watching "Doubt". The film's cinematography is gorgeous and made me feel as though we were looking at a moving painting. The editing and camera angles used were also well thought out. The story itself is great, portraying a battle between the stern, unchanging church and the "new" church. The actual answer to the question is left extremely ambiguous. Though I thought the movie was very well done, it was not as good as "Slumdog Millionaire".

As I said before, I'm not generally a fan of writing reviews.

Today I lazed around a lot and then had to go shopping with my mom in Kohl's and Ross. I couldn't finagle my way out of the trip as I had promised her I would go. Things went alright, and I got a new top and dress. I wish there were online discounts as good as the ones in Ross so that I never had to go into that store again. Also, considering all the time that the fashion industry spends marketing to thin women it would make sense to actually create clothing for them, but it can be very difficult to find any.

We spent about half an hour searching for a good handbag for me but got bored and gave up. Who knew that purses were this complicated? In Kohl's I found the perfect one, but it was made of genuine leather and I couldn't simply put my principles aside for a tote. Considering how long we spent searching and the fact that it was originally $115(Half off only today with extra 30% coupon on top), it was sort of a low blow.

My mom also wanted to buy me new shoes, but due to my aversion for heels that turned out to be a failure. In my opinion, heels are the new footbinding.

I spent a lot of time looking at Gaiylee and the kittens, who are becoming braver and bolder by the day. We have named the one my mom secretly wants to keep Dasha. There is the brave one, who is the least afraid of us and the biggest in the litter, the clingy one who is constantly attached to Gaiylee, and Socks who is adorable because between his socks, the little stripe of white on his face, and his huge ears he somehow becomes really cute. The last grey and white kitten has not don anything distinguishing him or herself from the rest of the kittens. How do you describe kittens pouncing, prancing, catching each other and their tails, climbing up the chairs on the patio and voraciously eating while their mother watches intently, only to fall asleep on the lawn? Words don't do justice to the show in our backyard.

I have some ideas bouncing around in my head right now, but I don't particularly feel like writing them down at the moment.

WhenI come home I sometimes re-read my children's and teenager books. They are extremely quick to go through and contain piles of nostalgia. Many generic writers targeting adults try extremely hard and fail while peppering their books with the content that places them in the adult category. The teenage novels are so refreshingly innocent. Anyways, nostalgia and reminding me of things I learned when I first read through the book, some concepts being entirely new at the time, are why I do this. It feels sort of silly to do this as a huge snob, but we read for many different reasons, eh?

I hope you all are having a great night. PS, Sorry about that Alex....

Wired Up

2009-06-16T16:08:00.001-07:00

Today I went to a really interesting, fun place.

Was it Disneyland?
Was it Huntington Gardens?

It was THE DENTIST! I have to have my wisdom teeth pulled out at the end of the summer.

Watching kittens play in the sun while creating a thousand Hallmark moments is extremely relaxing.

I know that I should be calling my friends and telling them that I'm back in town, but I'm honestly having fun vegetating and feel too tired to set anything up. I will have another month to catch up with everyone, so I hope I can be forgiven.

One aspect of why I love working with living things is that there is no predicting exactly how the finished product will look or grow to be. The materials used in a project can be restricted within a certain aesthetic range, but the finished product will never be the exact replica of a mental picture. This is part of what I find so addictive about designing aquariums: even with a previous plan in mind the outcome is unknown.

Apparently, part of the book dedicated to Orpheus survives. I will attempt to find it online.*
*sentence serves as a reminder to me

I am extremely glad for the existence of 911.

Today I bought "Slumdog Millionaire" for my mom and rented "Doubt", which we will probably watch tomorrow. "Volver" was an interestingly portrayed window into the life of the lower class in Spain.

So I made a vow on this blog to re-start following "real" news over the summer quarter. The first news aggregate I'm going to catch up on is Wired. Right now I'm reading its culture section; let's see how long this takes. This article on 5 Toys from the 80's(It..has tons of global significance!) reminds me of all the playthings I wanted but could never have. This was a valuable lesson in consumerism and materialism, as I was perfectly fine without these products in the long run. Still, learning a programming language or playing with electronics is something that I would have loved to do as a kid, though I did learn BASIC as a child and it is BASICally useless. If you love Legoes, you probably want to click on the article and read about Erector sets. PS: maybe I'm still five, but that's a horrible name choice.

Also, this article on Googleconomics is really interesting. It's far too long for me to post all the relevant quotes in it, but it references some interesting ideas, a man who started doing formal mathematics when he was thirteen, and a highly successful business concept. The problem is that this makes me not want to read news and instead go off and do lots of math and physics.

If we were introduced to the concepts earlier I'm sure that most of us could have been doing formal mathematics by the time we were thirteen. So don't get too caught up in that.

This was posted a while ago, but anyone want to share their thoughts on the article entitled The New Socialism? I only started it, but while the premise is something that's been discussed since middle school I have a feeling that the article still sparked a lot of debate. For some reason this reminds me of high school when (world)news posted the day before was considered old happenings. Maybe it's because I was thinking of Jane when I wrote the first sentence in this paragraph.

Also, wetpaint may come in handy.

Friender Gender

2009-06-15T12:53:00.000-07:00

I will wait to see Terminator on DVD as it only got 33% on Rotten Tomatoes.

I saw "Volver" today. It was not what I expected, though fans of Amadovar's previous work will probably recognize his style. I enjoyed it.

Friends of friends are people who 's lives, stories, and histories you constantly hear about. Sometimes when adding someone on Facebook or Blogger these people are present and active on your friend's page and these individuals have a Blog or Facebook of their own.

But, since technically these people are strangers, it is awkward to friend or talk to them. What if the individual hasn't heard about you?

Friending someone on Facebook isn't a big deal and in fact is probably a good way to start at least an acquaintance ship accompanied by a note such as "Hey, I'm so-and-so's friend and I've heard some cool stories about you!(Don't worry, none of it's gossip.) ". Commenting on someone's blog is much more personal since it implies that a stranger is reading that person's thoughts, which is why I also tend to avoid stranger's personal blogs. While that's the risk taken when posting things on the internet it's creepy to have that fear directly confirmed.

While getting to know someone generally is done on a person-by-person basis, what to you do in situations like this? I have let go several potential friendships myself out of a fear of seeming awkward or strange.

In other news, it's sort of interesting how "them" is becoming the third person singular instead of "he or she". I'm a big believer in there being a third gender and in fact identify greatly with the notion. Should I be putting that on the internet? Probably not.

Weekending

2009-06-15T10:55:00.001-07:00

Welcome back, self! I'm so glad to see that you're alright. Where were you all weekend?

This Saturday I woke up when my parents came to my door. After doing a little extra cleaning and sorting a few things out we left San Diego. A small break at home was followed by indulging in my mom's favorite activity: shopping. I actually got a lot of new clothing, even though I was hopelessly bored by the end of the trip. Big Five also did not have a good punching bag for me. I read a little, then drifted off to sleep.

I spent yesterday mostly sitting around looking at kittens and talking with my parents. Chris and I exchanged our previously borrowed belongings. I went to see "Star Trek" with Christopher, which was great but didn't match up to my very high expectations. Also, a sun exploding would destroy a solar system, not a galaxy, and the Beastie Boys are apparently going to be popular for a reallllly long time on Earth? I want to see "Terminator" and "Up" in theatres.

Sexy

2009-06-12T15:40:00.001-07:00

"He lured her downstairs into the Crypts; she led him from altar to altar in the Church of St Nikolai."
-From The Call of the Toad by Gunther Grass

I want to save this quote because I feel that it has high metaphorical value. Did you know that the name Pomeranian originally applied to a group of Slavic tribes?

What are your thoughts on this condom packaging? It's from China, which is why there is no Mao on there. I honestly find it to be twisted but humorous. Please don't think that I find the millions of people these men killed and oppressed to be funny; rather, it honestly feels good to see them ridiculed. Besides George Bush, humor at their expense would most likely have been the ultimate insult for many of them. They wanted people to fear them even after they died. So I think that while remembering and learning from these dictators's regimes (again sans Bush) is of the utmost importance, let's laugh at their images and tear down the legacies they wanted to create.

The Call of the Toad is a good book. I generally don't like to write down full reviews or thoughts about novels I read, and I won't be in this case.

I want that dress really badly.

Memories of England

2009-06-11T22:36:00.000-07:00

Notice: You may note a proliferation of tags in the sidebar. I am attempting to make these more specific, but stopped labeling posts on April 27th's "I in the Me" entry.

I remember going through the British Museum for the first time. I was young, still in elementary school, and I hated the place. I disliked dark and dreary England, and I hated the British Museum. My aunt Roseabelle had been kind enough to let us use her apartment for the duration of our stay, but the cramped quarters with the laundry mat a block away and little food were less than cheery. For one person the house was perfect, but for the three people staying there it was far from. I had a nightmare involving Colombo which terrified me, and my circadian rhythms had been all but destroyed by the time change.

The huge museum scared me. At first I was intrigued by the Egyptian collection, but as we passed by mummy after mummy the reality that these were actually dead bodies sunk in and made me uncomfortable. I felt as though these people and animals should be beneath the ground, not on gratuitous display. The value of the culture and artifacts present around me had not become apparent yet, and I wanted to go back to the natural history museum, which we had already visited twice. Thinking about it even now, I want to go back to that place with its towering fully grown T-Rex and other fossils in its lobby. It was that skeleton which taught me how impressive a T-Rex actually was. The only highlight was seeing the Rosetta stone, which made me quiver with excitement. I couldn't help myself and brushed my finger against it, knowing while I did that if everyone were to do that it would crumble into dust much sooner than it should. Apparently the same thought crossed the curator's mind, and the Stone is now in a glass case. I feel strangely lucky to have done what I did, though also ashamed.

The food in the museum was horrible, which still hasn't changed.

I felt a bit better in the gift shop, where everything was horribly expensive except for a small, black cat that now resides in the teen room. The gift shop is different now, as I surmised from the thirty seconds I spent in there on my last visit before it closed.

I kept throwing up on the plane long after my stomach was empty and when we got back was sick for two weeks. When I finally woke up it was in the middle of the night craving Dorritos, which my dad gave to me.

The second time I went to England I noted all the ways it was better than America; the extremely efficent public transportation throughout London, the proliferation of cheap bookshops and plays, the healthy snacks readily available as an alternative to chips, and the focus on green energy. That sentence is short and simplified in comparison to the cultural imbibation which took place. I got Jane, then several other people, hooked on these smoothies that are only available in Europe and were one of my few good memories from my first time in England. A LOT of things happened and a lot of things were done while we were there, but overall the experience was very positive. Except for that play which gave me nightmares.

The third time I went to England was right in the middle of a xenophobic scare. People were discussing "the Muslim problem". According the the journalists, the fact that the Muslim community preferred to keep themselves separate from mainstream society encouraged radical and anti-British thinking. It seems like half of London is Indian, so this reaction puzzled me. But, of course, much of LA is Latino, and there is rampant racism against them. The things which impressed me were there, but cracks in the image that had formed before showed. And, of course, if you listen to citizens and the newspaper, there is a large amount of discontent there. England always has been a country of freer speech; Mary would not have survived well even if Elizabeth had not been around. So, in part, this simply is the way of the culture, but it also was reflective of the realities in the country at the time. And England is not an intellectual haven. There are plenty of ribald and other such folks there. I also didn't particularly like the fashions at the time, which were very girly.

I still want to at least visit England for a prolonged period of time. I felt and feel more in tune with their culture than the one I grew up in. This isn't a general overview, more my writing about selected memories which are rising in my mind.

PS: This site any good?

Last Night, This Summer

2009-06-11T13:06:00.001-07:00

So last night I was looking at the bags of stuff on the floor when my mind went "Sh*t, Anthony!" .

The last time I had seen Anthony he told me that he was leaving La Jolla on a Thursday, though he didn't say of which week. Since it was Wednesday I called him to inquire about when he was departing, to which he replied "tomorrow". I asked him when we should meet up. He was having lunch with a professor before his flight today, so that was not an option. Then he asked, "How about right now?". I confirmed that that sounded like a good plan, and he said that he was going to walk down from the university to meet me. This was around 9:02pm.

Around twenty minutes later we met in front of Ralph's. Anthony had brought a friend, Liam, with whom he had apparently been drinking. They both had had around four beers each at that point. We sat in front of Starbucks until it closed talking about culture and history, then went into Ralph's. Since we were trying to determine where we should go at this point, I decided to invite them both back to my house. There was a lot of construction going on in the store and we got lost several times trying to find chips, pizza, and in Liam and Anthony's case, beer. They both bought a bottle to take back with them. No, I did not break my no-alcohol-for-Marisa rule. We sat up until 2:00am talking and at some points listening to music. We were all completely exhausted by the end of it and I have dark circles under my eyes today, but it was completely worth it. I'm sad to see Anthony go, though I don't doubt he misses his wife and his cats.

I studied for a little while afterward then fell asleep.

I haven't really slept that much this week. I can't believe that tomorrow finals week is over. I kind of wish I didn't have to go back to LA immediately but I think I'll be back here in around a week or so. There is a feeling of freedom in the air.

My parents are getting me a punching bag, by the way. I am psyched, as I've always wanted one.

I think a lot of victim-blaming takes place in our culture. If someone invites a person they barely met back to his or her apartment he isn't being smart, but having a had a lapse in judgment doesn't mean that he wants to be mugged. Many people victim-blame in cases of rape, citing stereotypical coy female behavior as the true impetus behind the act when the victim is a woman. If someone is being heavily flirtatious while drunk, is he or she being smart? Not necessarily, but that doesn't give anyone the right to rape her. I don't know anyone who writes Santa asking for post-traumatic stress disorder. Making a smaller mistake is no reason for a much larger hurt to be imposed on someone.

In a twist on this, last night when we were talking Liam mentioned how Hitler used to "preemptively strike" countries. I replied that it was the "she was wearing a short skirt" reason for war. Note that I was only replying to Hitler's reasoning here, as other preemptive strikes must be considered on a case-by-case basis.

During the summer I will be more social. I've made various claims on here about what I wish to do, and I intend to stick by them. I'm looking forward to what I hope is going to to be an interesting, fun, and productive time.

Foreign

2009-06-10T13:48:00.000-07:00

I want to scream and jump up and down due to stress and pain. Instead of doing that I'm eating cheese popcorn and watching Colbert, which is actually much more affective due to this conversation:

"I overheard your conversation with General Odinero..."-President Obama(yes, the actual president of the USA)
"Wait, you overheard? Are your spy satellites really that good?"-Colbert
"No, my ears are really that big."- Obama

I came out of this episode with increased respect for everyone.

One thing I noticed was that Colbert got a lot more applause than the general. Poor Colbert is obviously loosing his voice in Tuesday's episode, on which he interviewed an Arab-America
soldier who chose to go into combat after 9-11 because of his hatred of how Osama bin Laden affected the portrayal of Arabs in America.

My physical therapist did an act of kindness for me, which is the main reason I felt better for the rest of the day. I think she knew how much a difference she made.

Did Hugo Chavez mistake Coke Zero for the other kind? Or is he afraid that Coke causes spontaneous support for the US government and culture?

I wonder if people will have nostalgia for this era as a time when people could make a brand out of being an individual. It's a novel concept, yet we have not seen anyone use their fickle power in a constructive manner; it's all about the money, fame, and staying in the spotlight. I wonder if it would even be possible to market yourself as a brand without a certain type of personality? People will forget what truly took place in this era-people celebrated for excessive decadence, and heiresses dancing in clubs.

The guy who shot the guard at the holocaust museum was a WWII veteran and white supremacist? That is horribly disturbing to me. I can't imagine what it's like to feel these people hating and degrading your belief system and heritage for no good reason. This man would have hurt people I know and love, perhaps even hurt me.

I don't think I have ever felt discriminated against, except for the time an old lady shouted to our bus driver "Be careful, there's a terrorist on this bus!" before stepping off. In fact, it's usually the opposite-people tend to believe I'm smarter because I'm Indian or something. It honestly makes me feel very uncomfortable when things along this line come up, and I either launch into a rebuttal or sort of cringe and wait for an opportunity to escape. I've never felt like a minority, except when very flirtatious men call me exotic. Nobody ever treated me any differently in school. In fact, most of the time I get let in through security checkpoints without a second glance. I remember going into the Tower of London after shopping in a market square. I had two bags full of cheap books on my arms, but I don't think they even looked to confirm that was all there was in them. I just waltzed through security while my companion ahead of me was stopped. Also on that trip, one of my classmates, James, who is Korean, was mistaken for my father at the airport. That was priceless.

The only place which I have experience discrimination is Trinidad, but let's not talk about that here.

It makes me scared and hurt for my friends when something like this happens. It doesn't feel like the place I grew up in, even though I really grew up in a time when things were worse(and I'm still growing up). Stay away from my loved ones, hatred-mongers.

Waking up the Girl

2009-06-09T21:25:00.001-07:00

I MUST HAVE THESE. Black Panthers used to be my favorite animal and still hold a competitive place.

I also want to see this film.
"In the film, a man's blow-up sex doll comes to life one day (as Bae Doo-na, the Korean actress, whom genre film fans will recognize from The Host and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.) She steps out, discovers the world, gets a job, and starts dating a video store clerk."

Here is a cool article written by a stay at home dad.

"As we step, or are forced, into the new roles that are presented to us, perhaps we should not lament, or vainly grasp at the responsibilities we feel we should have, but instead sack up and embrace the ones that are right in front of us.

At least that’s what I try to remind myself before I clean the bathroom and change the diaper genie."

In last night's dream I was in a play which turned into "reality". At first I was accused of being Anti-American because I said something criticizing an action of the US government. I remember coming home from rehearsals and talking to my next-door neighbor about how uncomfortable a dog playground our downstairs neighbor had bought made me feel because my window was now easily accessible from the ground for anyone somewhat agile. My neighbor, with whom I am in real life and in the dream on good terms with, snapped back that she thought I was being extremely rude, and I resolved to speak with my downstairs neighbors myself. Anyways, the play involved being in some sort of military project. The officer in charge, who's rank was never stated, despised me even though I was instrumental in the efforts of the troop. What I remember involved my being targeted as the culprit in some acts of vandalism to a brick terrace among other places, but though the rest of the troop objected to my conviction I was resolved to be thrown into disciplinary action and then jail to meet some rebels for unclear reasons. The troop, meanwhile, was captured by some rebels, but then a twist took place which made the officer-in-charge the actual villain. The troop actually sort of reminds me of the infantry in "Starship Troopers", come to think of it.

The next dream I had included my mom, dad, and imaginary relatives, one of whom was a female cousin whom I was excited to see. We went scuba-diving in a huge aquarium which reminded me of Mandalay Bay's exhibit and included a huge mechanical puffer and sting ray. For some reason I kept changing clothes, and I had a really dirty frilly blue undershirt and long, brown peasant skirt on with a knitted blue sweater. One of the imaginary male cousins criticized me for reasons I can't remember, but had something to do with changing clothes. Then the dream switched to a portrayal of an Iron-man type scientist who interacts with an undefined blob and gains the ability to transform into a blob himself. His assistant and best friend fears for his sanity, and finally finds him when he causes some bacteria to photophloresce(not sure if that's a word). I remember doubting the scientific validity of this plot point in the dream. The scientist is known as a brilliant but childish. He could, however, still conquer the city. He eventually accepts his assistant's help, and I end up at UCSD somehow, where there are a lot of parties taking place.

Title is a pun on Garbage-"Breaking up the Girl". Nope, has nothing to do with this entry.

Cacophony

2009-06-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

On Jezebel, some people were discussing how much they hated Avril Lavigne's(sp?) video for her song "Girlfriend". I won't bother embedding it because the song is horrible and nobody here would most likely view the it anyways. I'm talking about it because I watched the video yesterday and it's still bothering me today. Basically, the song begins:

"I don't like your girlfriend
I think you need a new one
I could be your girlfriend..."

Profound, eh? But Avril is so very cruel throughout the entire video to the other girl. We see nothing particularly wrong with the girlfriend besides the fact that she's dressed preppily. She's nice to her boyfriend and has a wardrobe that deliberately makes her less pretty than Avril in the video, who's dressed like an average high school punk. Throughout the video, Avril is dancing against the guy, takes off his jacket, and finally pushes him into a bathroom stall. Avril also knocks his girlfriend on the head with a ball on a miniature golf course, which makes her fall into a pool of water. Seriously, if a guy still likes you after you do that to his girlfriend or almost anyone, he is probably kind of a douche. Also, the fact that he sort of encourages Avril's attentions while still being with his girlfriend? Douche.

Some people have problems with the word "homewrecker". For me, it depends on the circumstances. If a guy or a girl pursues someone who's in a relationship, he or she is one. Seriously, if the guy is a decent guy or the girl is a decent girl he or she would break up with his or her SO before getting together with you. If you're being selfish it may suck more than the alternative, but it's the right thing to do if you're trying to be monogamous. If you don't want to be monogamous, don't be in a monogamous relationship. Sometimes things just happen, though, and the other person turns out to be a much better match. I don't think there is any reason to shame anyone in that case. It kind of sucks for everyone involved.

If either you or your loved ones have to go through the heartbreak of a late abortion or you want to show an acquaintance the stark reality of the procedure or see it for yourself, visit the website "A Heartbreaking Choice". And believe me, the stories will completely break your heart.

I like this song, which is vaguely reminiscent of what would happen if you mixed Bjork and Delerium together and drugged the singer.

This song sounds has the same sort of energy and beat that VNV nation likes to utilize, though it's a bunch of women chanting. I've just come to realize that I have a pretty out-there taste in music. What do these guys and The Rolling Stones have in common?

PS I found out recently I really like The Rolling Stones.

This is in-between Siouxe and the Banshees and Bauhaus. Though the video made me crack up because it's so old school.

I have to check out all of these bands more.

Flight of the Conchords: "Bowie in Space"

"Receiving transmission from Bowie's nipple antennae."

I Miss You

2009-06-09T11:24:00.000-07:00

"I don't think I can live
with this love, anymore.
I don't think I can take
another night.
And I know your beauty will haunt me when you're with
someone else,
but darling there's not enough left of me to divide
and if I swallow hard, I might not come undone
and you might no-ot see the way I feel...."
-The Bangkok Five, "Outlines of Us"

Please be warned before reading on, Chris, that the following entry is devoted completely to, well, you and the us that formerly existed. I won't ask you not to read, since I can stand you knowing how I feel.

The night I called Chris in Iowa, I knew it was the right thing to do. I had rehearsed the phone call in my head almost obsessively, but "I think it's a dealbreaker" still nearly didn't come out. I remember how calm he seemed. At the time it was almost maddening as I wasn't calm at all, but in retrospect it was probably the one of the best ways he could have handled things.

This Friday I give him back my engagement and wedding ring. These are gorgeous pieces of jewelry which I treasured. When we looked at those rings, it was a sign that, at the end of the day, we loved each other and everything was going to be okay. And honestly, it still breaks my heart to give them back, because a part of me really wants to be there for him at the end of the day, even though I was the one who said that I wouldn't be in the first place.

I don't regret what I did. I've reached a point, a point earned through a lot of pain, where passion will never lead me around by the nose again. I am in control, and no matter how much I care for someone I can make a rational decision with regards to him or her. We've both agreed multiple times that we will make better friends than ...engaged people. If we got back together, it would solve nothing. And in the short time we've been apart, I've already felt the positive affects of us breaking up.

I still really like him, because that's the way humans work, I guess? There is a reason we stayed together for three years. I also still think he's damn gorgeous. I know he'll probably think that I am just saying that, but it would make it easier if I didn't think he was. I miss his mischievous nature, our jokes, our references. I miss my cuddlebuddy. If only that was all that it took to make this work.

I don't know how people get divorced. Maybe that's exactly why some unhappy marriages stay together. Would ours have been an unhappy marriage? I don't think so, but it wouldn't have been the right one for either of us.

I'm at a strange point right now, letting go while developing real feelings for someone else. I'm trying not to dwell on them, as I don't know if they're returned, and I have a life to try and live. I can be single and very happy, and that's what I'm holding on to right now-independence.

But I still miss you, every day. I don't think it's romance at this point, I think it's the close friend who I'm not talking to. I'm afraid it could turn back into romance, so that can't be rectified at the moment.

I don't think you would know me anymore. Remember when you didn't see certain things coming? Like that. Or maybe it's just easier to think you don't. Probably it's a combination.

I don't come first anymore, you don't come first anymore, we don't come first anymore. Your opinion is just an opinion now, though I still respect you. And it's hard, but we live on to tell the tale and be there for each other to a lesser extent at a later date.

Deep

2009-06-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

So here in sunny San Diego, I live in a studio.

Today I visited the pool to blow of some oh-God-finals steam. After nearly drowning myself a few times, I went to thaw out in the hot tub with another woman from my complex.

We started talking and she asked me how to go about finding a roommate. She then mentioned she lives in a two bedroom apartment, which was the original arrangement I was supposed to have been in with a roomate. I went to visit the place, which seemed nice enough even though it was no personal studio, and she gave me some cookies. She was a very nice, warm, and relaxed woman.

Bad Marisa really likes my studio, but Good Marisa really likes the notion of her parents retiring in style. So I phoned up my parents to tell them what I had discovered. To which my dad replied that he didn't really care about the money as much as me doing the best that I could. They may still meet the woman, who's name is Beatrice, when they visit here this Saturday. But yeah, don't I have awesome parents? That's basically why I'm telling this story.

Apparently, some people are fighting to keep non-Jewish people off the Brooklyn memorial. Because the lesson we learned from WWII is that discrimination is a good thing. I'm just going to run in the opposite direction from the madness now.

Going back to seriously reading the real news is one of my summer plans.

One of my licorice gouramis died today. This made me sad.

Here is a quote I am thinking about at the moment(I read this a long time ago, but have the book here):

"In order to make simple the great truths of Nature and the abstract principles of natural law, the vital forces of the universe were personified, becoming the gods and goddesses of the ancient mythologies. While the ignorant multitudes brought their offerings to the altars of Priapus and Pan...the wise recognized in these marble statues only symbolic concretions of great abstract truths."
-From The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall

The reasons I wanted to discuss this here are twofold. The first is, of course, the intellectual beauty inherent in the statement, which is not captured here in full. Actually, I could go on all day in regards to this subject, so let's leave this here as less of a discussion and more of an observation.

However, the second reason I want to discuss this quote is less complementary. Chris and I used to have discussions about secret societies, and he stated vehemently that he would never join one. This quote, I think, personifies why, and a lot that is wrong with those that extol this sort of knowledge. Though, of course, going further along this vein, once could state that believing to know the truth is the root of most elitism. The rest of humanity cannot possibly comprehend, which is why they disbelieve.
I do think there are certain beneficial symbolic factors to keeping some things a secret. Though, Isreali Regardie published the teachings of The Golden Dawn, and how many people in the modern day still recognize the teachings of one of the more influential secret societies? No matter what the knowledge or wisdom, it is generally sought or catches attention to be truly absorbed. In this day and age, being published and available does not keep something from being a secret.
Anyways, I think that the mainstream would benefit from the acceptance that this branch of knowledge/wisdom/something actually is very relevant and not simply hokey-pokey nonsense(thanks Protestant and Industrial revolution!) and that humans in general are just a littttttle bit smarter than elitist snobs think.

"The Answer, My Friend.."

2009-06-07T20:24:00.001-07:00

One of the things that I'm really looking forward to about getting rid of my chronic pain is the ability to read my body's signals. I used to be a bit hypocondriacish, which has gotten better. Here is an example of why I was, using the symptoms of a heart attack:

"The most common symptom of heart attack is chest pain or discomfort. Most heart attacks involve discomfort in the center of the chest that lasts for more than a few minutes or goes away and comes back. The discomfort can feel like uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness, or pain. It can be mild or severe. Heart attack pain can sometimes feel like indigestion or heartburn."

I constantly a pressure in my chest that gets better or worse depending on the time of day, how my back is doing, and other myriads of factors.

Other common signs and symptoms that a person can have during a heart attack include:

Upper body discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw, or stomach
Shortness of breath may often occur with or before chest discomfort
Nausea (feeling sick to your stomach), vomiting, lightheadedness or fainting, or breaking out in a cold sweat

Minus the shortness of breath most of the time, we have what an average afternoon used to be like.

I know, I know, I'm whining, but it was hurting a lot yesterday. And honestly, I can't wait! I've been making tons of progress.

Apparently, women can get pregnant on their period.
"While a woman is unlikely to conceive during menstruation, "nothing, when it comes to pregnancy, is impossible," said Aaron Carroll of Indiana University and co-author of "Don't Swallow Your Gum: Myths, Half-truths and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health" (St. Martin's Griffin, 2009).

Once inside a woman, sperm can wait for an egg for up to a week. Ovulation can occur soon after, or even during, the bleeding phase of a woman's menstrual cycle, giving patient sperm the chance to get lucky. The timing method of birth control doesn't work well, Carroll said, agreeing that couples who practice it are often called: parents."

I'm making a vow today to stop fantasizing as much about certain things.

That reminds me of when I was a kid and I created a fantasy world with "evolutionarily sound" animals. It always got to me that fantasy creatures were seemingly based solely off graphic design and would generally not survive in a real world, because I was a weird kid who also loved silly putty, similar-to-silly-putty goop, and collected pens. Pokemon came out about the same time I was creating my this world in the USA, which annoyed me greatly because I was afraid that it would look as if I was ripping things off from them in creating my creatures, even though the two had nothing to do with each other. In middle school I had a fantasy that if I wrote down enough of the details from one of my other fantasy worlds, it would come to life. Heck, I still kind of wish that would happen.
Who am I kidding, I have billion-zillion fantasy worlds that I think I will start visiting more often.

In all honesty, though I never thought I would admit this "out loud", if I came across one of those portals to another world that exist in many a children's book I wouldn't feel that surprised, though my views on the metaphysical have expanded into something much more complex. Also, unless hypothetical fantasy worlds evolve, well, real mythology can be very freaky. You might be seeing some contradictions in my personality here. The short version is that it all works out in my head. Also, science is awesome, did you know?

I've been thinking about how an object is simply an object, separate from patterns that related to other objects and the word that describes it. I've also been thinking about cases where being a part of a pattern is part of an object's being. Maybe the Dhammapada is being absorbed into me by osmosis.

Genetics final tommorow. I have to stop staring at this photo, but it's so evocative and beautiful.

Photocredit:Stockxpert via Livescience via Jezebel

Title quotes Bob Dylan's song "Blowin' in the Wind"

Calm Before the Storm

2009-06-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

This article on Jezebel is horrific.

"Female infanticide in countries like China has widely been considered one of the causes behind the gender discrepancies in population growth. However, Baute points out a study by Siwan Anderson and Debraj Ray that shows that while infanticide is certainly an issue, the majority of "excess female deaths" comes much later in life. As Anderson notes: "Previously, people had thought that they (the missing women) were all at the very early stages of life, prenatal or just after, so before four years old. But what we found is that the majority are actually later." Those "later" deaths can be attributed to a number of factors: poor access to health care for women, high suicide rates, HIV and AIDS, and dowry-related murders (which, Burke notes, are marked as "injuries.") "

Even worse are some of the comments:

"When we go back to visit India, and people meet my father and find out he has three daughters and no sons, they say, "I'm so sorry."

It's really insulting of course, but it is honestly how people think. In a culture like that, how can you not have a dwindling female population?

I have to say, it does affect me when I'm there. It's hard to hear people lament about how unlucky your parents are and not consider yourself devalued. I could see how someone who's lived it their whole lives would turn to suicide."

-momentsofabsurdity

"Is this really all the fault of men? My mom, who grew up in India, doesn't trust any men, since she grew up in an exceeding crappy home, in which her father didn't care for her and her brother was valued above her and her 4 sisters. But she puts a lot of blame on other women for perpetuating this kind of vicious, misogynistic behavior that keeps other women down. After all, it was her own mother and my aunts who taunted her for having 2 daughters and no sons, and for marrying my father, who isn't the best-looking guy ever, but is really forward-thinking, and more importantly was the only one to move his family to the US (all other sisters are living in traditional families in India). In my mom's family, there are also rumors that an aunt murdered her son's young wife (with the rest of the uncles, who were city bigwigs, covering it up) because the wife was poor and the son was a drunkard who couldn't support the family...."

-JeromeCabaret

In a different time and place, I could have been one of these women. In fact, I'm only three generations removed from this world.

My family's story is fascinating and caught up in the politics and threads of the world. My grandparents on my mom's side were indentured servants, and my mom was alive when Trinidad gained independence as a country after being a colony of Britain. World war II is much too close historically when I think about these things. I don't like to think about how recent it was. It's terrifying to reach through the sepia and black and white to bring that horror into the real light of day.

I was thinking about art history last night when lying in bed, about how, really, it shows how history created art. The problem is that studying something like that from books is something of an exercise in futility, because many times it is necessary to see the art in person to fully appreciate it. So much is lost in photographic translation, from the brushstrokes to the size to some sort of magic which I can't explain but makes the experience in person very different when looking at a masterpiece. This is true of sculpture, also-Winged Victory is breathtaking in person. I mean this literally, as remembering it is taking my breath away. That's why I decided to include it in this blog entry.

It's hard in museums, sometimes, to appreciate what is on display, with one masterpiece after another and time as a constraint. Only afterward, when context is created, do I sometimes appreciate what I've seen.

Of course, I believe the futile effort is definitely still worth undertaking.

With Chris gone, I also have to research film and (more) music independently. I'm hesitant to say when I will do this, but I will. Also, I should research photography. So much to learn, so little time.

Tomorrow marks the four week anniversary of Chris and I splitting up. At first I was surprised at how well things were going. Now I really wish they would go faster.

Quantum Physics final tomorrow! So sorry if this seems especially hastily written or edited.

The Skinny

2009-06-06T20:35:00.000-07:00

You know what I've noticed? Usually the people who claim that nerds secretly long to be included in the popular crowd are not nerds. Sure, these wannabe-peoples may exist, but most "nerds" are pretty damn happy the way they are.

Another song by a pop queen that I grudgingly like is Katy Perry's "Hot n' cold", though I only like it when it's paired with the video. I dislike Kathy Perry herself because she sang that song "I Kissed a Girl and I Liked it". Nothing better than slutty faux lesbianism! A lot of actual lesbians dislike the song as it perpetuates the stereotype that lesbians are actually girls you have threesomes with.

Apparently some girls do legitimately PMS. We learn new things....

I slept most of today since my medication backfired on me. Next week is finals week.

Another thing that I want to do over summer vacation is screen or block printing.

As you all know, I read Jezebel. While I do not agree with/am not interested in everything on the site, it can certainly be intelligent and sensitive to cultural issues. I like, for example, that it recognizes that many of the "scientific" tests geared towards proving "all women like muscular men" and similar conclusions generally contain a set of females encultured the same way, meaning that a general theory cannot be formulated from their results. What's strange, though, is what happens when discussions on the site turn to issues involving weight and its portrayal in the media.

I am a size zero. Don't ask me why they named that size the way they did, because I do not know. The reason I am a size zero is predominantly genetics, though I also didn't eat a lot of candy (or really anything) as a child. I certainly didn't give myself my metabolism, though.

Every day I read about how unrealistic my body size is. Now, I am not in favor of marketing size zero as an ideal which everybody should aspire to fit, and in fact agree that this is a dangerous thing to do. I think that there are plenty of different body types and every single one should be represented as long as the individual is healthy, as I've stated before on this blog. I've met girls skinnier than I am who complained about needing to loose weight, which scares me.

But it's also completely unfair to represent small people as unrealistic, because I exist, surprise! I am not a skinny weight-obsessed b*tch who spends her time putting others down. Also, clothing sizes keep getting bigger in an effort to play into people's insecurities with their bodies. The fashion industry markets to skinny people, but does not like to manufacturer clothing which they can actually wear.

We interrupt this rant:
"You make light of algebra now, but when you're all grown up and your friends are making logarithm jokes at cocktail parties, you won't have a clue as to what everybody's laughing at."- Mr. Dewey

This is my life, except I am in on the joke. Oh my. Also, I never watched those shows.

Anyways, it seems like a cultural assumption that I wield some sort of power from being skinny. Yes, I was born in the right place at the right time in terms of fashion, but I didn't create the zeitgeist. So when we talk about the recognition of "real women's bodies", could we include me, instead of banishing my body type to fashion shows, anorexics, bulimics, and freaks?*

Today I had lunch with Anthony and met his friend. Anthony then proceeded to give half his house away to me and the other half to his friend. I am touched by his generosity, and am sad that he's doing this because he's going back to Rio.

*Anorexics and bulimics aren't freaks.

Photocredit JAY DIRECTO/AFP/Getty Images