Laughing at Myself

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.

Opinions

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

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.

Taking a Boat, Train, and Plane: Literally

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.

Falling into a Mud Puddle in Pisa

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.

(Will Not) Fade Away

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Insomniacalicious

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

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

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

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.

Imagination

(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

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

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

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

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?