irrepressible

Excitement: B. & I are going to compete in a BJJ tournament in June. We're trying to get F. to compete too, but right now he's saying he just wants to come watch us. I'm a little concerned about that - F. isn't the kind of guy to skip a chance to meet & roll with new people just because there's a little pressure on. Why's he so reticent now? We've gotta get that guy's confidence up.

In the way of preparation for this advenure, the three of us have changed the way we do matches. Normally we start from knees and go until somebody gets tapped out, and don't really keep score. (This is partly because it's often just me and B., and it doesn't make sense to put a time limit on your matches when there's only two of you.) Yesterday we switched it up, with five-minute matches starting from standing, and it forced me to play a lot differently. I'm not strong and big, so I often am not very aggressive in matches, but I found I didn't have so much time for that. Also my takedowns really suck. I learned a lot, though, and we're going to do it again today.

I'm so excited about BJJ. Anytime fighting comes up (and sometimes when it doesn't), sirens go off in my brain: "eeeeeee i get to do bjj this is so exciting!"

I think everyone else is tired of it.

post punk

My hair has faded to a minty, silvery blue-green (I've been swimming a lot). Some people say it looks "industrial." Maybe it looks a little verdigris-ish, but I was surprised by that.

Yesterday, a BJJ seminar. I learned a lot of great techniques. Also, the guy (visiting from Phoenix, originally from Brazil) talked hilariously about sex all the time. I liked that he swore a lot, though. It let me forgive a little bit of his interesting opinions about ladies.

plumb tuckered out

I swam for the first time in a month or so yesterday. It took a little of the fire out of my jiujitsu later in the day, but I am trying to swim more frequently so that doesn't happen. To that end, I planned on swimming today, but I couldn't make myself do it. I've got reasons - I didn't get a lot of sleep and wanted to go home and nap, I was hungry, my legs were sore . . . but I think all of those things would have been improved by a little time in the pool. Oh well. I'll work out on land tonight, test the water again tomorrow.

(I wrote my first lecture ever today! I think I should have taken maybe twice as long to give it - I definitely went too fast - but it was very informative anyway.)

Compliments

I was on the quad today, just minding my own business buying a delicious popsicle (paleta, actually), when some guys gave me these:


These days there is no such thing as me minding my own business. I mostly enjoy it - not many people go out of their way to say they disapprove of my [green] hair, but plenty of them tell me they dig it. A few people, perhaps struck dumb by my stylishness, can only manage "Hey! Ayyy, green!" - sometimes I smile and wave, other times I tell them I already knew about that. I think looking unusual makes people more willing to approach me. People on the bus, on the street, in the hallway at work, at jiujitsu class, at the park, and at the grocery store all have an opinion. Everybody on the street normally (when my hair is brown) just avoids eye contact. In some ways, this is a lot better.

I recently had to send in a businesslike picture of myself, and I sent that one . . . after converting it to black and white.

I'm like many other martial artists: I wish women would take up fighting sports more. I am actually a little lonely on the mat. Thing is, if I wasn't already into it I don't think I would want to take up martial arts, because I'm put off by the way people market these arts to women. Every ad you see for women's martial arts classes mentions self defense, and I don't believe that's a good way to get women interested for the long haul. "Self defense" is good for selling a weekend seminar, but for something that takes as much time and effort as real martial arts training it's not good motivation. These ads boil down to "study martial arts or you might get raped."

I still might get raped! I am getting pretty good at this fighting thing, but there's always someone who can defeat you. I'm not learning martial arts for self-defense. I spend as much time on martial arts as I might spend on a part-time job because I'm having a good time, not because some ad obliquely threatened me.

Girls just want to get jobs

Citing a recent study by two psychologists (one of them Martin E. P. Seligman, author of Learned Optimism), Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews called attention to evidence that self-discipline—in particular, a capacity for deferred gratification—may be the best predictor of academic success, better than IQ: Do your homework, and plenty of practicing, before you watch television or sit down to play Xbox. That sounds, I know, like irresistible grist for an argument about whether and why girls might have an innate gift for just that kind of goody-goody, grindlike behavior, but let's not start it. It's a disservice to girls to portray them as destined for diligence, as though conscientious effort were a second-rate recourse for slower or steadier minds, rather than what is really is: a crucial choice that helps ensure long-term success. And it's an even bigger disservice to boys and their college prospects to reinforce the idea that discipline and self-denial are sissy stuff.

This from the end of an article in Slate on the recent ballyhoo about boys not doing their homework. It used to be girls who were too easily distracted to be well-suited for the rigorous academic life. Girls: irrational, emotional, unreliable, college-bound. What goes around comes around, fellas.

dementia pugilistica (in which I talk about fighting)

Recently I've been trying to find girls who want to take up brazilian jiujitsu. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I haven't had much luck. I want some company, and somebody else to help keep the ex-wrestlers in line (they need an ass-kicking periodically or they get uppity). There would be plenty of benefit for the hypothetical girl in question: muscles, fun, confidence, all that.

I just think girls need to get rid of the weakness mindset. I'm proud of my (still baby-size) muscles! They look nice! I'm proud that I could beat some people in a fight. And I'm having a good time. Who cares if it's not ladylike to get all sweaty. At least I'm not prancing around in spandex, stretching and making eyes at men lifting weights. Especially since the gyms I have access to are dominated by college students, that's a pretty common activity around here.

I've noticed that there are two styles of bjj-ers at my school. Especially among the white belts, there are a lot of ex-wrestlers, and they tend to be stronger than average so their matches involve a lot of big motions and powering through techniques. Then there are people who try to operate with a little more finesse - some are ex-wrestlers that got more skilled, but a lot of them are people like me: smaller than average, so they don't have the option of bench-pressing a guy and they have to do everything right. (Not that I do everything right - it's just that if I want to win I have to do everything right. I still lose a lot.) I've recently been avoiding the ex-wrestlers because they're tiring, but I guess that's something I'd better learn to handle.

There are some blogs out there written by women who box that I find encouraging: Brutal Women and Knife Fight are what I've come across so far. What I'm into isn't exactly boxing, but they seem to encounter the same attitudes about women and fighting that I've been thinking about. Truth is, it's a little bit solitary, being a lady fighter. Maybe it would help if I lived in a bigger city.

dumb as a wooden chicken

I have a cold and a new apartment. The apartment is swank and spacious. The cold is highly evolved. If colds were a good thing I would be proud of this one's quality; as it is, I can only say that about the apartment.

I found a webpage where the Chinese swearing in Firefly is translated, and it turns out to actually be swearing. This helps, because the actors' pronunciation is not very good - I wouldn't enjoy looking it up myself. This link is mostly so I can check back when I have time to learn swear words and other impolite things.

everything looks brighter when

Poking around this morning, I came across a review of a book of letters Richard Feynman wrote, collected by his daughter and published recently. It reminds me: I have a lot of books lined up to read. Now I've got to add this to it, as well:

You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself—it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

Best of luck and happiness.

Sincerely,

Richard P. Feynman

I already had his Lectures on Physics on the list. These days I read the first thirds of books and then don't have time to finish them, and that's what happened the last time I tried to read those. Also on the list:

1. Gravity's Rainbow (also afflicted with First Third Disease)
2. Remembrance of Things Past
   
3. Ulysses (this one has First Few Pages Disease)
   
4. Analytical Mechanics, 4th ed. (this one is tangentially related to a project)
5. A book on optics whose name escapes me
6. The Feynman Lectures on Physics (this may have been the original carrier of First Third Disease - an especially virulent strain, since this has three volumes and I read the first third of each)
7. Norwegian Wood (I've been reading Murakami books off and on for a while now)
   

There are others, too, but clearly I've got my work cut out for me.

say it ain't so

My friend D. made some comments a few days ago that have been bouncing around in my head for a while now: "Why are you guys trying to add standing meditation, ground fighting, push hands, [. . .] to ksw when it doesn't actually contain those things? People who saw your demo and signed up knew what they wanted and were getting into. Why try to remake ksw when other things already exist that do what you want?"

Could it be true? Could our students really care more about looking cool than learning how to use their bodies effectively or developing practical fighting skills? Is that why the kind of person who joins the ksw club is not the same as me, T., B., or the kind of person who studies bjj or tj? Is that why we have so much trouble with bad attitudes among them?

I mean, I know what I want to learn. I've started to realize that studying ksw will probably not get me very far with that, so I've picked up other things. But I've been kind of assuming that the students want to learn those things too, so I've been passing on some of what I think helps. Maybe they don't want it, though.

I'm collaborating with this optics professor on an experiment right now while I simultaneously take a class on optics from him, and I'm starting to think I'd like to do more optics-related work. Maybe it's just because I get along with the guy, but there are also some really cool problems in the field.

I've been back here for a month, and I am still spending a lot of time reexamining whether I still want to do what I have been doing all along. Both parts of this post are related to that.

walking back to you is the hardest thing I could do (for you)

KSW has been crazy recently. That's what happens when you gut your old routine and re-make it in a different image. Some of the changes are good - we have this whole team-teaching thing going on, we're planning practices beforehand, and we worked in some practice time for ourselves. Awesome. Things run more smoothly and we get better. Some of the changes had unforeseen consequences, though. We got more relaxed about etiquette, and all of a sudden people were nagging us to promote them or teach them more stuff, getting defensive when we said they needed to work on something, dissing each other, and complaining when we made them drill something more than twice. Not Cool At All. We gotta get these kids some manners.

It makes me miss Boulder. I wasn't responsible for that kind of thing over there. I kept myself to myself, and my job was just to learn shit. Very simple. I did worry that F. and others would think I was uppity for wanting to speed up because I knew a little bit already, but I think everything worked out - I took the beginner class, and if I already knew it it was still something I could stand to drill. Then I went to open practice and people stopped thinking I was so much of a poseur when I said I knew a little. That's one big advantage to bjj. It keeps you honest. If you are not good at it, it will show when you lose to everybody. Of course, I lost to nearly everybody, but that's not so bad for a beginner. Losing is like resurrection - only in losing can you find eternal winning... or at least learn what they did to tap you out.

Oh, I found a bjj club here. Guess what I'm doing all the time now.

maps (my kind's your kind)

I'd been in Boulder for two months before I actually arrived here. Used to wishing I could get out of here, I've been tripped up: just about a week ago I realized there is something I'm going to miss. I even decided to try to come back. It's not for the job or the mountains - I will be sad to leave the jiujitsu school.

For me, and I think for a lot of other people who do a lot of martial arts, there's a specific kind of connection you make to some of the people you train with. To explain it I have to tell a story.

I've been here on this internship, and the way this happened is a little odd and unlikely; I didn't exactly apply in the usual sense. I was going about my grad-schooly business, and I gave a talk at a conference. A guy who works here remembered it, and that is how I got this job. It didn't make sense to me until I realized that seeing me do a talk will tell someone a lot more about me than meeting me at an interview. In 20 minutes they see what I work on, how well I communicate, how I respond to questions, and in general whether I've got a lick of sense or not.

A grappling match contains a lot of information about a person, similarly condensed. If they know a ton more than you, are they the kind to flaunt it and kick your ass in 15 seconds, or do they give you a chance to try some things, maybe point out where you go wrong, and then they win? Do they think it's better to lose a good match than to win a bad one? Are they careful, or are you afraid they'll break your arm? If you don't know a lot, are they too cool to roll with you, or will they take a minute to help you out? This stuff doesn't just tell you what kind of martial artist they are, it tells you a lot about what kind of person they are.

So I feel like I know a lot of great people from bjj here: nearly everyone is respectful, laid back, badass, approachable, and trustworthy. Some schools have a couple of really macho guys that ruin it for everybody else by confusing their training with their egos, but if those guys exist here they're outnumbered and outclassed.

For some reason it took me two months to get around to hanging out with anybody, though. I've been trying to cram all the fun into a single week, and I'm exhausted & flighty because of it. I lost my keys and got locked out of my house twice this week, but it was kind of fun. I'm pretty comfortable just looking somebody up and kickin' it until the roommates come home - what would I do in my apartment anyway?

The problem with all this is, I'm leaving today. Doing what you planned to do is sometimes the hardest thing.

This dj kills fascists

Far in the future, but in the works nonetheless: a Labor Party for Labor Day. What would such a party entail, do you think?

(a dj is not a machine, I know, but ok.)

T-R-A I-N-W R-E-C-K-Y

MCCLELLAN: I’m well aware, like you, of what was previously said. And I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is when the investigation…

QUESTION: (inaudible) when it’s appropriate and when it’s inappropriate?

MCCLELLAN: If you’ll let me finish.

QUESTION: No, you’re not finishing. You’re not saying anything.
You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson’s wife. So don’t you owe the American public a fuller explanation. Was he involved or was he not? Because contrary to what you told the American people, he did indeed talk about his wife, didn’t he?

our skin gets thicker from living out in the snow

I'm homesick. I want to eat neighborhood food, hear my house's noises, walk under all my old trees.

that right ain't shit

The problem with the supreme court is that it stays however you put it pretty much until somebody dies.

In other news, ICSG may not actually leave town after all, and work is intellectually cool and progressing satisfactorily. I still kind of want to go home; things there are cheaper (and for the most part just as good), I have more friends, I don't have to drive so much, etc etc. I am also looking forward to the drive home, during which I insist upon stopping at Saleem's. Matt visited this weekend and that kind of made it worse - it is like how being hungry gets worse if you have a snack, or maybe (though I don't know this firsthand) how keeping a vow of silence is harder if you accidentally say "Oh shit."

what our knowledge amounts to

The story of ICSG continues: we went on a hike, then met her girlfriend and my neighbor for beers in one of Boulder's tiny brewery-things. They will probably leave town for good by the end of the week. It's unlikely that I'll ever see ICSG again, and I only really hung out with her for a total of maybe 4 hours. I'm still kind of down about it, though.

Today I got a ride to & from work with one of the other interns (car in the shop). It was a lonely time; on the way there, the Angry White Boy Nu-Metal station he listens to was talking about "My girlfriend's parents took a 7-year-old kid to the water park on Gay Pride Day. Oops! What a time for young eyes! Not that there's anything wrong with that." On the way home, it was "The Supreme Court says police don't have to enforce restraining orders. This guy who called in says women really just do that when they don't like their boyfriends anymore, anyway. No big deal."

Remember a long time ago, that MIT study about somen in science? Where they found that discrimination isn't "I just don't like women having that kind of jobs" so much as a more passive trend of not taking people seriously as people in one way or another?

Speaking of, a while ago my roommates were watching this show, "Crossing Jordan," maybe? It's about some sort of crime investigating lady. Anyway, the show was unremarkable, except that in nearly every scene some man would grab the leading lady by one or both arms and steer her to one side - usually up against a wall - and give her forceful, unwelcome advice (at best). Maybe with some finger-wagging. Even at her job this happens! I'd never stand for that. Weird how on UPN or whatever men can still literally push women around, even if they do allow them to have exciting crime-investigating jobs.

Also, I had a dream the night before last that N., one of my original martial arts big brothers, was back in CU for some practicing. I actually went back to sleep in order to finish a grappling match.

I used to think about you all the time; now I think about you all the time

I've been in Boulder for three weeks now. It has its ups and downs. Here in the apartment there's a strangely asymmetrical situation where I try to stay out of G.'s way and she is always annoyed with me for being in her way, or having been there in the past, or for letting her notice that I have attempted to get out of it, etc etc. I mostly just go to brazilian jiujitsu - because what is more out of the way than out of the house? Those guys are cool and not weird about girls the way some other martial arts guys are.

I've met a few people here that are nice. One guy from bjj asked me what kind of music I like and his eyes didn't glaze over when I answered - if he is at practice again later I will try to find out what his name is again because I forgot; one girl I met tonight at the ice cream store is leaving Boulder next week but I'm going hiking with her tomorrow night (if she calls me); one guy I work with is unconscionably hot (and also very friendly, but mostly hot).

Ice Cream Store Girl moved to Boulder with her girlfriend, but they don't like it here so they're moving back to parts further east, I guess. ICSG was sitting around by herself while my downstairs neighbors and I talked about the daily show, and I felt silly excluding someone who was so clearly interested. The four of us sat there outside the store until it closed, and then we felt weird hanging around outside a closed ice cream store so we went home to watch the daily show, which is apparently not on again at midnight on fridays, even though it is on every other night. ICSG lives nearby but did not come with us for the daily show. I hope she calls me, though.

I heard from my downstairs neighbors that my roommates say I fight with G. a lot. I am not even going to address the kind of dynamic that that implies. I don't think I do - I feel uncomfortable around her, sure, but I go out of my way to avoid fighting with G. I think this situation is so weird because she clearly doesn't care to go out of her way to avoid fighting with me. Like I said, asymmetrical.

Downstairs Guys are Taiwanese and [from Shanghai-I don't know if there is a special word for that, but we can go with Chinese which is simultaneously true], and they are all right. They say they will practice Chinese with me, but I am very shy and kind of afraid I'll suck. I suppose they expect it though. I'm going to need a dictionary.

So, Boulder: good and bad, but in general better if I am not at home.

pls update yr blog thx

I'm in Boulder now. My roommates are pretty much as I preemptively described them before. They're okay, if quirky. It is likely that they also think I'm quirky.

I drove past the jiujitsu place today. It's gratifyingly close to my house. So are ASIAN DELI, whole foods, and world market. This is one of those weird states where grocery stores don't sell wine - I hope world market still does.

Also, the sun is very very hot all the time, even when the air isn't. I'm going to need some sunscreen.

the infinite connectivity of the center of the sun

Matt and I are in Phoenix now. It's nice, though I have been pretty much constantly thirsty ever since we entered New Mexico. I haven't seen much of Phoenix yet, really, but there have been some other cool things.

1. Nebraksa's katamari is really huge. Actually just Nebraska. We drove all the way across it on I-80, and it took the better part of two days of driving. Also there is oil in Nebraska. I had no idea.
   
2. My new apartment is nice, if a little plain. I hope I can say the same for my roommates (the nice part, not the plain part).
3. Mountains make my ears hurt, and one of them took a while to get back to normal, but I think it's improving now. It will help that we are staying someplace flat for the next few days.
4. There is nothing to do in Albuquerque at 6:30 on a Tuesday. Also, it is hard to find any Mexican food, which was surprising. What we did find sucked.
5. Apparently some hotels set up their TVs so that you can't connect your gamecube or other external AV device to them. Stupid!
   
6. I saw the Very Large Array in New Mexico (this is at National Radio Astronomy Observatory). The VLA is very cool in its own right, but it's also where they filmed "Contact," so I guess non-engineers like it too. It's got a stupid name, though.
   
7. We drove through Pie Town, NM, but we did not stop for pie. I regret that immensely.
8. We finally found some awesome mexican food in Show Low. Ask Matt what he ate sometime when you have an hour to spare. It totally beats Albuquerque in that regard.
9. Because of the VLA, we took US 60 across to Phoenix instead of taking I-40. 60 is one of those two-lane roads that is Main street in all the towns it goes through. In many towns it was the only street.
   
10. Driving through mountains is pretty fun if you have a lot of time on your hands. If you're actually trying to get somewhere it gets old, though. Thankfully, Phoenix and its suburbs are flat.

I'd post pictures, but Matt isn't awake to host them.

a new goddamn era

The first pictures I took were a series of "how to tie your belt" instruction photos for my brother.

the west is dead and it's burning

For the past two weeks, I've had a personal soundtrack entirely composed of songs by the Books. I hope it keeps up; it's nice having songs in my head that I never get tired of listening to.

Our road trip is going to begin in three days. I don't know what to do with myself. Pack, I suppose, since the trip is on the way to my internship, and I'll be pretty unhappy if I don't pack with foresight and judiciousness.

At work I'm also getting ready to leave, but in a strange way. I think my advisor thinks that leaving on Friday will make me superhuman. She wants a first version of this journal paper before I go, and I have stupidly committed myself to completely rewriting the whole analysis section (formerly three chapters) so that it addresses the three cases in parallel rather than one at a time. There's a good reason to do it this way, but right now I'm regretting what I got myself into.

This week marks a lucky confluence of many events: I had enough money to buy the digital camera I've been wanting right before we leave to go on the road trip. So it's just in time. Then I went to get a memory card for it, and there was a strange technology-price inversion where the really huge one was actually cheaper than either of the two capacities of cards I had originally thought it would be reasonable to buy. Finally, at work they are upgrading the network, so I'm working from home on the very same morning that my camera is supposed to arrive by UPS, and I don't even have to feel bad about it. Matt says he'll let me host pictures in his space, so I'll post some when it arrives. Clearly I can't take pictures of the camera itself, but I'll take example pictures or something.

Oh, and just now my biggest little brother B. told me he was standing around wearing his brand new tae kwon do uniform, which fills me with family pride and brotherhood and shit. I taught him how to tie his belt over IM. Aww.

Arch-ery

On Thursday I turned in my thesis, and it was a kind of strange feeling. I'd been editing it & making revisions for a couple of weeks off and on, and then I wandered up to the graduate college, they checked whether my figures were on the pages the list of figures said they were on, and took it. Excepting waiting, the whole thing took ten minutes. (The waiting was more like a half hour or more. That's part of why the in & out bit of it seemed so weird to me.)

Despite the anti-climasticity (when you have a master's degree they let you make up words) of that whole thing, it is lucky that I turned it in when I did. See, the deadline was Friday and not Thursday, but I had to drive to St. Louis on Friday for a kuk sool tournament. Matt & R. & I ate at IHOP in the morning, drove to St. Louis, R and I tested for black belt (1), and we didn't get time for dinner until about 11 at night. We went to this fantastic Lebanese place whose kitchen was about to close. Make sure you eat at Saleem's, y'all. I mean, even if we hadn't been imploding from hunger this would have been awesome food (2).

The next day there was a kuk sool tournament, which is what everyone except me was in town for (I didn't compete, I just tested). They had split up the tournament into kids' and adults' sections, with the kids competing in the morning and the adults in the afternoon. This was awesome, except they put the promotion ceremony/masters' demo in the middle of the day. They promoted me, and when they were ready to start the afternoon competition they were short on judges. They asked all the black belts who weren't actually competing to come down & be a judge. I didn't volunteer at first, because I didn't really think I counted in my hour-old black belt. But then they started threatening to come up in the bleachers and get us, so I figured I had better go. That whole thing was kind of uncomfortable.

(1) There were so many people in such a small room, working out for such a long time, that the floor-to ceiling mirrors and windows all fogged up. I hardly remember the test, I just remember the food.

(2) Matt ordered this great thing, which then was accidentally put in front of me. By the time we figured that out, I had already eaten half of it and I wasn't giving it back. I think it might have been called "mouzat" but the description I've found of that doesn't quite match what I was eating. Whatever, it had an M and a Z and some lamb in it. With rice.

in a second

I think that for the duration of the camping trip I miraculously turned into a badass. I'm not normally as awesome as all that, and now that I'm back the effect has worn off. I'm not a martial arts master, and lack of sleep catches up with me just like any other person. But man, this weekend was different. I kicked ass and took names.

And why is it that all I want to eat this week is rice?

every single molecule is right

That camping trip that I've been setting up all week starts today. This is a relief, as is the end of any period where you have to plan a 48-hour thing for 13 people. Yesterday I pre-chopped all the vegetables and bought a very impressive cooler, and now all that's left is to take some things out of the dryer and hope the teaching goes as well as the camping will.

Another thing that is nearing completion is my thesis. I gave that to the publication department - those people who check for grammar and formatting - yesterday afternoon. Within two weeks I fully expect to turn it in. Holy shit.

I've been trying to understand why I get so worked up about women-politics in particular. It's not like general politics affect me any less. But they don't get me into the kind of towering rage that things like anti-abortion wackos do. I mean, corruption? Gerrymandering? Dismantling social security and nominating assholes? Those things are pretty bad. But mention pharmacists and I fly off the handle.

tomorrow's lunch today

I have noticed that if I eat out less I get skinnier. This is nice, except it means I have to pack a lunch. It used to mean that, anyway. These days I can go to the food co-op (which is a block away from work) and buy cheese, bread, vegetables, whatever. I don't have a knife, though, so I have to eat them all separately, in torn-off chunks. I don't mind.

I am going to finish this edit of my thesis this week, I say. That gives me 2 weeks for formatting-type revisions and everything.

mighty, fallen, etc etc

The Riviera was a lot more impressive in the old version of Ocean's Eleven - where it really was the most sophisticated thing on the street - than it is up close & in person in the present day. Maybe I'm just not all that into the flashing-lights and things-made-of-gold scene. Other hotels have cool gimmicks - they are pyramid-shaped or New York-shaped, or they have Cirque du Soleil shows or rollercoasters. This one has a casino, a bunch of dancing-girl boob shows (3 or 4 simultaneously!), and a pool which is closed because it's not warm enough. It's got all these pamphlets that bill it as "the grown-up option." Yeah right. More like the "everyone who does government technological research is a man" option.

p.s. the time stamp is in Las Vegas time!

he might replace the earth with the moon

(if I had written it that's what it would be.)

Matt's had 154 in the car for the past few days, and up until now I didn't realize what a difference the CD makes. I've heard a lot of these songs before, but they were on tapes or mp3 or a few years ago, and they are different now. I drove a block: "Self, is this Wire?"

I've been meeting with T. and B. a lot to talk about a camp we're setting up for kuk sool - it was originally just a camping trip, but we have all these ideas, and it's turned into an all-day seminar. Exciting. They're talking about how we're going to try to change how ksw practices are run after I promote, and I'm happy about that too. Our old teacher rarely even had a lesson plan, and I don't understand how he could just wing it all the time. We're talking about meeting weekly, having goals for the class... refreshing! I wish we could expect people to at least work out a little on their own, though. I'd love to spend class time on making people better at kuk sool instead of just making them feel less guilty for eating.

Have I mentioned that before? I feel like a lot of people use practices as a time to make up for any pie they had over winter break. I have more than one problem with this:

1. Making up for pie in that fashion points to them having some weird attitudes about themselves, food, and fitness that I don't want to be part of.
   
2. If they were paying attention, martial arts would teach them not to eat too much pie in the first place.
3. They are in kuk sool to get badass, not to get skinny.
4. Workouts take away from practice time, and the curriculum moves way too fast as it is.

That last point is a result of a larger problem - at least, I view it as a problem: people want to have black belts before they graduate. Now, it is possible to get to that level in that amount of time. But people come in as white belts and they specifically want a particular color at a particular time. If they think they can't do that, a lot of them will quit because they "won't have gotten anywhere." So the class has to go at a particular speed because ksw introduced some artificial milestones. I want to make testing more optional - we should discuss students' progress with them and let them know before testing comes around whether they should bother with it or not. Then we can stop promoting people prematurely without so many hard feelings.

I'm going to visit my parents tomorrow. It's too bad they're not into roast leg of lamb, because that would make a great Easter dinner. I'm not so much into the eggs & chocolate event anymore, but I will take any excuse to make an impressive dinner.

np: Matt's mix that has "You Can Make Me Feel Bad" and "As You Do" on it

Iron Chef Urbana

Recently I've been consumed by a fit of cooking (and eating), brought on by my memory of the Clarkston Union's macaroni and cheese and fueled by my recent viewing of Steven Chow's God of Cookery. My weekly half-day of baking hasn't been enough, and I've been having adventures.

First, I dressed up my best chicken recipe for dinner with my brother when he was visiting. I served it with clever artichokes (we had two - there were four people - artichokes look awesome cut in half the long way - clever) and some squishy co-op cheese, and everyone was impressed.

Later on, after a couple of weeks of careful consideration, I determined that the secret ingredient in the aforementioned macaroni (besides the overt but delicious breadcrumb topping and ham chunks) must be parmesan cheese. The sauce was just mysteriously tangy. I was proved right with the aid of a little extra pepper.

Friday I watched God of Cookery with B., P., K., and Matt. Awesome.

Then I went to a wedding, which had good food, and a party that also had good food. But yesterday was the best adventure yet - I made a deliciously seasonal stuffed leg of lamb with all kinds of planty-tasting herbs and vegetables in it. I've never been so impressed by fennel. C. came over and had some, and we gave him some to take home to M. - I hope she liked it.

The combination of my culinary adventures and having seen that movie led B. to suggest a God of Cookery - themed party/potluck, in which everone is flamboyant and chefy. We'd offer a prize or something for Best Dish. But not everyone has seen this movie, and not everyone wants to cook like that. If they hadn't seen it, how would they know what to bring? We couldn't even accomplish that by showing it at the party, because then when would they have time to cook something suitable? But if we could work something out, it'd be the best meal most of us have ever had.

qualified

Is it Tuesday?

I think it is beer Tuesday.

Judgment

Today's the day. I'll let you know.

I am a great fan of triangles

My brother is visiting the university this weekend, since the college of engineering is having an open house. It's kind of like a science fair, and he's staying with me. I'm not sure what to do with him.

See, K. seems content to stay home most of the time. I asked him what he'd do if he lived here, and he told me "Oh, study, do homework, play D&D." Maybe I am out of touch with what he likes. But if he's going to move out of a Detroit suburb (even he admits there is nothing to do there) to a town that reguarly has concerts, plays, events, cool workshops, and all that, I think he ought to take advantage of it. I want him to realize the opportunity he has in going away to school - to try everything out and not just do engineering and sit in the basement. How do I get that across? I want him to treat engineering like his day job, and make sure that he tries out everything he can in his off-time.

One of my friends works at a jewelry counter these days, and I got something for my mom there (making sure I get mother's day under control). But I might go back and get this other thing that I saw, for myself. I'm very impulsive, but only around tax-refund time.

CELEBRATOR DOPPELBOCK

I took the qualifying exam Saturday, and I might have passed it. There were some problems I thought were really bad, but it seemed like everyone else who did those problems agreed. I figure I'm okay, then, because they can't just fail all the electromagnetics students.

Several of my friends (and Matt) went out with me to my local afterward, and I had some very nice new kinds of beer. Particularly noteworthy were Great Divide Wild Raspberry Ale and Celebrator Doppelbock. Also I've been buying indulgent things on ebay.

I can play video games again, and I've got Pikmin (1 followed by 2), Prince of Persia, and Sly 2 for that purpose. Those will probably help me hold on while I pray for the game types to hurry up with Final Fantasy 12 or the new Zelda or something.

"in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude"

I've been following that Larry Summers thing the way other people watch a train wreck. So today I was idly following links, and I found out that in the mid-90s MIT realized it didn't have very many women faculty either. Heavens! What to do? Since doing studies is one of their strengths, they did a study.

Interestingly, it turns out that women don't begin their careers disillusioned, but they slowly become that way:

The Committee discovered that junior women faculty feel well supported within their departments and most do not believe that gender bias will impact their careers. Junior women faculty believe, however, that family-work conflicts may impact their careers differently from those of their male colleagues. In contrast to junior women, many tenured women faculty feel marginalized and excluded from a significant role in their departments. Marginalization increases as women progress through their careers at MIT.

One compelling piece of data was this graph of the percentage of MIT's faculty who were women from 1985-1994:

I saw that and I was speechless for about five minutes.

Apparently, women tended to begin their careers thinking the problem of discrimination had already been solved, and then mistrust the conclusions they drew from their own experiences.


An important finding to emerge from the interviews was that the difference in the perception of junior and senior women faculty about the impact of gender on their careers is a difference that repeats itself over generations. Each generation of young women, including those who are currently senior faculty, began by believing that gender discrimination was "solved" in the previous generation and would not touch them. Gradually however, their eyes were opened to the realization that the playing field is not level after all, and that they had paid a high price both personally and professionally as a result.

From the letter written by the women Science faculty members that started the study:

We believe that discriminatory attitudes operate at the time of hiring junior faculty and influence the experiences of the women who are hired. Most discrimination at MIT, whether practiced by men or women, is largely unconscious. Often it is difficult to establish discrimination as a factor because any one case, no matter how disturbing or aberrant, can usually be ascribed to its special circumstances... Thus, we need to develop safeguards to prevent, detect, and promptly correct the experiences that together constitute gender discrimination...

The article also had some powerful insights about what constitutes discrimination in our times, which they called the "post-Civil-Rights era."


How else might we explain what happened to the senior women faculty in Science? While the reasons for discrimination are complex, a critical part of the explanation lies in our collective ignorance. We must accept that what happened to the tenured women faculty in the School of Science is what discrimination is. It defines discrimination in the period from the 1970s up till today. But we, including for a long time the women faculty themselves, were slow to recognize and understand this for several reasons. First, it did not look like what we thought discrimination looked like. Most of us thought that the Civil Rights laws and Affirmative Action had solved gender "discrimination". But gender discrimination turns out to take many forms and many of these are not simple to recognize. Women faculty who lived the experience came to see the pattern of difference in how their male and female colleagues were treated and gradually they realized that this was discrimination. But when they spoke up, no one heard them, believing that each problem could be explained alternatively by its "special circumstances". Only when the women came together and shared their knowledge, only when the data were looked at through this knowledge and across departments, were the patterns irrefutable.

The tenured women faculty, acting as a group through the Committee, together with the Dean, made a discovery. They identified the forms that gender "discrimination" takes in this post-Civil-Rights era. They found that discrimination consists of a pattern of powerful but unrecognized assumptions and attitudes that work systematically against women faculty even in the light of obvious good will.

I'm impressed that they did the study, and doubly impressed that they took its results seriously and made policy changes in response. And the changes have made a difference - in 1999 the School of Science's faculty was more than 10% women for the first time ever. But even that is depressing: 10% is an improvement? We're starting from so far behind.

This is an important initiative since, even with continued effort of this magnitude, the inclusion of substantial numbers of women on the Science and Engineering faculties of MIT will probably not occur during the professional lives of our current undergraduate students.

Damn. Probably not during the professional lives of current undergrads. Damn.

radio urbana free library

Urbana had a primary yesterday, including one for (democrat) mayor. I voted in it! Urbana's crappy current mayor lost, and a way more progressive person will probably take his place (Urbana isn't going to elect a republican mayor - I don't even know if one will run). Also it'll be our first-ever female mayor. Bonus!

And so at 10:30 yesterday morning I was just walking out of the voting building when my phone rang. I figured it was Matt or my mom or something, but when I answered it turned out to be a phone interview in disguise! Okay, not in disguise. But I didn't know it was coming.

1. See, they emailed me the Wednesday before last, said they'd be doing interviews "shortly," and asked for some times that would be all right to call me. Not sure how long shortly is, I said "Friday or Tuesday during the day, or Wednesday before 3 pm." I assumed they would tell me when they planned to do it.
   
2. Not so! I didn't hear anything from them for a week. Still assuming they'd tell me before they called (so I wasn't, y'know, busy voting or getting a haircut) , I just did whatever I felt like yesterday morning.
3. What to do? I was in the middle of the street trying to get an internship from an antenna engineer. At a loss, I turned around and went back in the voting building. I was sitting in this auxiliary-church-building cafeteria, the place empty except for me and the janitor, talking about phased arrays and how I really liked my radio circuits class.
   

It sounds like a cool job. I don't have a lot of hands-on experience - all my serious work so far has been pretty analytical, and I hope they don't mind that. But I think other than my lack of experience in that regard the interview went all right.

Then I walked the rest of the way to campus and got a haircut, which was basically the best ever. The stylist was this awesome girl who pretty clearly likes bands, and she knew what I meant to describe, haircut-wise, and did all my favorite razory things. It helped that I brought a picture. Everyone should definitely bring a picture when they get a new haircut. And she talks a lot, which is awesome.

I finally put slsk on my computer - I hadn't before because it's a laptop so a lot of the time it's not on or plugged in. But I figured that leaving my computer on at night is a small price to pay for all that awesome. So what should I listen to now?

I'm not so afraid of the qualifying exam anymore. First I wasn't, then I wasted a lot of study-time by studying the same thing for too long. Then I was worried I didn't have enough time left to get ready. But in the past few days I've managed to sufficiently study acoustics in not very much time. So maybe I can pull it off for other things (remote sensing, lasers, semiconductors, DSP) too, in the two weeks I have left.

secretly, between the shadow and the soul

I've recently taken up baking, for the food co-op. I hang out there with one of the taiji guys on Monday mornings, just cooking. And yesterday was a Monday, so I was there (a little late because I missed the usual bus). But it was also Valentine's Day, so we made some of the loaves heart-shaped. At least, we thought we did.

I couldn't stay until the bread came out of the oven - I never can - because I have classes in the afternoon and I feel like I ought to make an appearance at work, at least. So when I came back around 7 to get some bread for myself, imagine my surprise. The hearts had big cracks down the middle. Maybe it was because I'd poked a couple of them to give better definition to the lobes of the heart-shapes. Something happened, anyway, and S. had renamed it "oh go ahead and break my heart" bread.

Apparently the broken hearts sold pretty well - by the time I got there only one was left, and it kind of looked like a butt. I took that one, because my heart isn't broken but everyone likes butts.

np: Arthur Russell - "You Can Make Me Feel Bad"

best use of the same lyric for more than 1 continuous minute

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists : "Little Dawn"

a telephone conversation with my dad and what matt thought I was talking about

Me: You hit a wall?
Matt: Her dad was in a car crash! Oh no!
Me: You broke it?
Matt: He has a broken bone (oh no) but is otherwise okay.
Me: Can you get a new one?
Matt: Oh, actually he broke a piece of the car, then.
Me: Did you win?
Matt: What the hell?
Me: I guess that makes sense. Of course he beat you if you had a broken racquet.
Matt: Does tennis have walls?



Actually he was playing racquetball.

you don't have to go to college

A lot of things have been going on.

1. I am probably going to New Mexico this summer for an internship at Sandia National Lab.

2. I just recently heard about Camp Wellstone and associated projects, and I want to do something related to that.

3. Last night I saw Moolaade, and then I talked about it in mixed (male/female) company. I came out of the film angry - angry that tradition sometimes has more weight than the real harm it does to real people. I was angry that every step on the way to making women count as much as men has been a fight. I generalized this one extreme example of subjugation to the entire struggle. And when I talked about that with this group, some of them commented that I shouldn't judge other cultures, that maybe traditions ought to be respected. But for me, when women's humanity is abridged, negated, ignored, or conveniently forgotten it's personal. I don't have to be there and have it happen to me - I am a woman, and I feel it. Some women don't have that reaction. Like men, they're free to talk about respecting traditions. I can't do that, because when I think about what happens to women in the name of tradition I feel as though I have been attacked and my country is under siege. I'm not ready to hold a reasoned discussion about respecting diverse cultures, I'm ready to bite and scratch like an animal. Maybe that's wrong and we ought to humor people who think women don't deserve to be counted as half of humanity. I don't care.

There are a lot of other things that make this list. People who think women are the property of their husbands, who punish women for the sexual response that men have to them, who keep women under house arrest as a matter of course, who want to limit contraception and abortion in order to remove any control women have over their own bodies - I won't accept that this kind of bigotry deserves a reasoned response.

I had a similar reaction when in November all those states passed anti-gay amendments. I've got a bisexual friend who's practically part of my family, and I spent quite a while with an itchy punching-hand. That's my friend, my household, that they're saying isn't capable of the same kind of love as everyone else. Punch punch punch.

4. Square envelopes require an extra 12 cents of postage.

5. I like giving out presents but I don't like the commercialization of this holiday. But I like its decorations, food, and rituals at the same time as I don't care for the tradition it stands for. I like having something pretty and celebratory to look at and do in the winter, because winter is cold and depressing. Celebrations really need a group of people to agree that there is a substantial reason to celebrate, though, or they flop. I'm one of the people that would contribute to such a flop. I think New Year's is much more worthy of celebration. But everyone celebrates Christmas - if I want to see my family, that's the party I have to go to. I can't just invent my own holiday, because of the celebration-requires-people rule. But I don't feel honest participating in this one, since I was one of those kids for whome the pledge of allegiance went "one nation, under hmmm." I am conflicted about Christmas.

6. Recently I've been tempted to go hang out with Unitarians, except that they seem to require that you think spirituality is important and good for you, and spirituality may or may not mean belief in something that is outside of what science can ever tell us about the world. Seems like a lot of the time they do think there's some sort of driving force to the universe, and we ought to do something like worship about it, and I don't think that. But I like their politics, I like to sing songs, and I like having friends. I like learning about religions, but I certainly don't like learning about them with the assumption that eventually I'll get one, and I'm afraid that Unitarians think I ought to have some Beliefs. I don't want Beliefs, I just want to hang out with a community that maybe sometimes talks about their values (and whose values are kind of similar to mine).

7. Finals week ended. I am going to clean off my desk, finish my thesis, and study for the qual during winter break.

8. What can I do as a volunteer now to get moderate-liberal ideas a foothold in mainstream people? Everyone's talking about 2006, but between now and then we need to convince people that Social Security is not broken, that people deserve old age and unemployment insurance, that the minimum wage should be raised . . . . that the platform we're going to run on in 2006 has merit and they should vote for it. How do I do that? How do I make myself an example, a missionary of progressivism?

9. I like cooking and I like vegetables. What's the best vegetarian cookbook ever?

10. Oh, a while ago we had Thanksgiving at my house. It was nice, there was a lot of food and everybody liked it. Matt's family and mine hung out for a while, and we were all social. This is nicer than traveling to someone else's party.

who knows, who knows (maybe I'll return)

I saw Arun's new band, the Opportunists, play last night. It was apparently their second show ever, and it is going to be cool to have this band in town. At the same show I saw Boy Skout, who are fron San Francisco. I think I want their lead singer's haircut, and besides that they played some good songs. I wrote my email address on a signup thing for the Women's Booking Collective, which I guess does what the Fanclub Collective does in Ithaca except with more focus on girl bands (Boy Skout was all girls), and without guys in the membership (which I don't think I'm in favor of, but that's the j.c thing all over again). Maybe they ought to be more like the League of Women Voters.

I am looking forward to it, but I wonder if I am radical enough to hang with all these rail-thin, wild-haired, ambiguously oriented, painfully hip chicks. When it comes to music I'm not terribly DIY-oriented - I still can't even play one song on a guitar passably and I'm shy when it comes to hanging out with people who can.

I need some cabinet-level advisors, for real

What should I get from Amazon?

what's been up.

Ever lie down for a nap and then wake up a little later with your heart beating extra loudly? That happens to me sometimes - maybe I dream about running, or rollercoasters, or bike crashes. I never remember it, but I can tell Matt does it too.

I've been getting political as a way of procrastinating. I wrote a letter to Dick Durbin on Monday, because he made some remarks about opposing the FMA without actually opposing the substance of the law. Yeah, it's a political election-year distraction and that's disrespectful to the Constitution. But most importantly it's an attempt to write discrimination into the Constitution and permanently limit one group's rights but not another's. Durbin actually implies that, if some court tried to force states to recognize other states' gay marriages, he might support an amendment like this. Not cool.

Also I learned to knit on Tuesday. Made a washcloth/pot-holder with bumpy stripes for practice. Now I'm making another one, which has bumpy squares. It's silly to pick up such a time-consming hobby when I have so little time, I know. But the bumpy squares one looks really cool.

Lastly, I'm reading part of A People's History of the United States, because P. had it and wasn't reading it. I'm only reading part because I started in the middle - I'm mostly curious about the political history of the 20th century.

Adventures in the head of the midwestern chef

Other people may call Iowa the Hawkeye state, but when I was learning US geography it occurred to me that the states in the north-south column that includes Iowa and Minnesota look collectively like a chef. Iowa even has a nose. So that's where I went this weekend. Matt and I entered Iowa just north of the nose and drove across the face to the eye region, where Fred and Melissa live. Then we had adventures!

Ni hao ma?

Since Monday, I've been spending my afternoons in Chinese class. It's awesome. Today I learned how to say "this" and "that", as well as "car", "book", and some other things. I can ask how your older brother is, and whether he is tall. I even have a Chinese name - the TAs made them up for everyone. They're going to be very good at making up names by the time they have kids. Mine is Ke1 kai3xin1 (the numbers mean tones, all y'all who don't know pinyin). The problem is, we haven't really covered the x sound yet, and it's a really hard sound for me to make. So I actually don't know how to say my own name. I do know that xin1 means "heart". So my name is something something heart.

With everything I've learned in the past three days (I can make up my own sentences already), I'm not looking forward to missing Friday through Wednesday. At least they're being nice about me making up what I miss, and they seem to always be having office hours.

science to shape the future of the army

That's a pretty weird logo they've got there. But hey, they give me grants.

Thailand to separatists: "La la la we can't hear you ransacking our stuff"

I think it's funny how this BBC story quotes Thailand's deputy prime minister saying that this group of Muslim separatists are just "trying" to create sectarian conflict with T-land's majority Buddhists.
1. I bet it's hard to get a hardcore Buddhist to fight with you.
2. But if the Muslims are ransacking stuff, haven't they already created sectarian conflict?

written on

I've been through a few involuntary changes this week. For one, I wake up too early, all by myself (note that this is being written at 8am on a Sunday). Also, I suddenly want to read a lot of books again.

That second one is only kind of involuntary. I read the book that instigated it, Written on the Body, under my own power. But I didn't anticipate its effects. First I tried to get Matt to read it, to no avail. He doesn't really read books. To me that's similar to not liking meals. I just don't get it. Now I wonder: is there something like Pitchfork but for books? Does it have a message board? I also like talking about books.

For what it's worth, I've also been thinking a lot about the difference between contentment and happiness, and it's brought me nothing but trouble.

seven with one blow

This morning I spotted an ant on the kitchen floor. I followed it to the corner, where I discovered more than one ant on the floor. This discovery sparked a wave of destruction unprecedented in my interactions with insects.

I swept up the raisin that was the goal of the ant-caravan, which pretty much guaranteed they would eventually disperse, but that wasn't enough to satisfy my need for vengeance against the crunchy little invaders. Matt set up a few traps, and I laid out a perimeter of ground chile peppers. Ants became Palestinians, confined to the corner by a demilitarized zone of delicious barbecue flavor for us, chemical burns for them. (This works reasonably well, by the way. Determined ants will cross it, but they won't make their little caravans across it or anything.) We put on our fightin' shoes and executed surgical strikes against any ants that escaped the border of their new territory. When it seemed like more ants were leaving than were coming in, Matt settled down to play Zelda and I left for work. The whole thing took about an hour.

salon.mom

Salon's "life" section, which is really just thinly disguised "light things for women to read," has recently gone into pregnancy overdrive. (How come I read it in the first place? A girl can only study so much.) But now, every single article is moms this, babies that. Is it suddenly the style for everyone of medium-professional age to plop one out? Have reasonably smart liberal women become just a chorus of biological alarms going off in unison? I feel like my aversion to the floppy, swelling, morning-sick glory of motherhood is 30 years behind the times. It was all right to not want children in the past, but now if you're a feminist you have to have both kids and a career, and when it comes down to it you have to choose your earth-mother roots above your man-impersonating professional life. What am I supposed to do, just skip straight to McSweeney's for the next nine months and hope the moms get over themselves?

you can leave your friends behind

I think part of the reason nobody danced at Friday's party was that we had too many chairs. A successful dancing party requires the right density of people, but there is also a chair threshold. When you have too many chairs, people feel out of place dancing in front of people who are sitting down. That's something that can be corrected, though - and soon, because Matt's going to get a graduation party one of these days.

Pinky's move-out has made me really want to put up some posters. When it was super full in here, it was hard to notice that the walls were bare because everything else was cluttered. Now it looks like the ceilings are really high, just because the walls are empty.

I am about to practice a little guitar, and I think I've begin to understand why it's kind of hard for me - I know how to make chords, and I know how to play a single note, but I can't translate between the two or play notes that fit in a certain key. Oh yeah, and my fingers still get tangled up a lot.

I'm looking forward to getting that gamecube we just bought on ebay. It should come in the mail relatively soon - say in a week or two. Just in time for finals to be over. This summer is going to be awesome, what with having a gamecube and throwing parties and Matt not taking classes and me learning Chinese and doing a lot of kuk sool.

counterproductive

Last night I swam for half an hour before kuk sool practice, because of that thing where you have to work out for more than half an hour in order to actually burn any fat. So going to practice after that was interesting but good, and I think I'll do that again. The bad news is, I had an ice cream cone immediately following practice.

I don't feel like I'm very good at studying.

quick fix

I've noticed that sometimes when I load this page I get a bunch of junk characters where posts ought to be. I'll check that out, but for now you should know that if you reload it everything seems to be fine.

communicative funk

I'm feeling cramped, tired, bored, resentful, and restless. I wish I could go on vacation from being obligated to be polite and responsible. I had a mostly good weekend with a few ambiguous parts - but the ambiguous parts were flattering. I feel guilty because of the nature of my resentments. I'm not going to get into it.

guy who got a headache and accidentally saves the world

I read a notesfile post today from a girl who saw a guy have a seizure on the street. He fell down and apparently got injured pretty badly. She went to an apartment building and called 911, which was good, but her next comments completely floored me: apparently, she is so afraid of strangers that she wouldn't go near one even if he was all bloody from seizing and then hitting his head on the sidewalk. Maybe it's my lifelong first aid training talking, but I just can't understand that reaction. It's not like cracking your head open and getting all bloody is something you can fake in order to do something malicious to your rescuer. Your head's busted! You're no threat to anyone! They will be able to tell if your head isn't really busted! I mean, she apparently doesn't have any training, but there were people there who did and who started taking care of the guy. She could at least go ask if they needed her to go get anything.

I had a taiji breakthrough yesterday. I think I finally got the legs right in standing meditation. It's a lot harder if I do it the right way. But a neat thing happened: my legs' "tired" response somehow got cut off from my brain's "want to stop" response. I got pretty tired, but found that I wanted to keep at it. After a while I quit anyway, which was wise - even the little bit of standing I did totally used up my legs, and I was a big wimp at kuk sool practice. I'm trying to make a habit of doing this more frequently, so maybe that won't happen so much in the future. Taiji is the most expensive thing I do besides school, and I spend the least amount of time on it. Not good.

my DJ

I have this idea that I kind of like, in which I blog as though I am the guy in this McSweeney's story and I have a DJ who follows me around exhorting everyone to get down. On one hand, it'd be fun to have a DJ, even if he's not real. On the other hand, that's kind of copying. Maybe I'll come up with some other kind of cool theme to do.

p.s. As of this posting, that link is actually broken, but hopefully mcswy will fix it.

lower than Lo again

Adventures at the library today: after a couple of months of asking around I found out where UIUC keeps old technical reports, like to the NSA and stuff. In a corner of the basement of the engineering library, I dug up one of two precious (to me, anyway) copies of "On the theory of randomly spaced antenna arrays." It's beat up. It looks almost archaeological. It was written on a typewriter! So I take its yellowed, scribbled-on self upstairs to the desk and they say, "Um, I'd better look up how to check this out to you. Where did you get this, anyway?" I felt kind of like Indiana Jones. I'll post a picture.

np: Rooks - "Down"

Rashofranciscomon

The other day, Matt and I talked about the vacation we're going to go on this summer, and he said some reasonable things that bothered me. But I had trouble explaining what they even were, let alone why they bothered me. Basically, he was planning this road trip from a standpoint that assumed he wouldn't be able to find an out-of-college job before early August, and I had been assuming he would. So we had a funny little tiff in which I scolded Matt for being pessimistic and he at first didn't know what I was talking about, because I'd just latched on to some subtleties of language and not any outright statements. My idea was that if he believes he won't succeed, then he probably won't, so he should treat any non-job plans as backup. He didn't want to count on something that wasn't a sure thing. We were talking about the same plans, just each giving a different one verbal priority. For some reason that really bothered me. But today he had an interview that sounds like it went well. I guess next week we'll find out who won that non-argument.

-- I want to see more Kurosawa movies.
-- My dad has seen Starman and been to the crater. We talked about how it was a dumb movie.
-- I cut myself while washing the dishes yesterday and subsequently freaked out a little bit because it involved a very sharp knife. I did bleed some. Being injured by a knife is, to me, inherently worse than being injured most other ways. I was fine.

jammin'

I stayed home from work yesterday, which led to me getting more work done in one day than ever before. You'd think I would get distracted more easily, but I worked pretty steadily all day, and then I cleaned the bathroom and did laundry. I was a high-energy chick. Today I'm back at work... and posting to my blog. Ha.

Matt and I haven't decided yet whether to go see the Mekons this weekend. On one hand, I like going to concerts. On the other hand, that would be the third weekend in a row we've spent in Chicago, and we already plan to go next weekend for another birthday thing. That's a lot of trips.

Theo's coming over to jam tonight. I hope he isn't too disappointed when he finds out I'm really not any good at guitar. I've been practicing, though, which is good for me even if the improvement isn't all that great yet. If I were a baby, this would be like playing with a kid who knows how to walk when I just learned how to roll over. Maybe we should get some drinks so I'm not so self-conscious.

island of un-misfit toys

I am posting this from my new laptop, which is one of the least unwanted toys I've ever had. Wowie! I had begun to worry that maybe I wouldn't like its touchpad or it wouldn't be big-screened enough or something, but the truth is, this is exactly what I had in mind.

It helps that this has allowed us to rearrange the living room, since my old desktop is out of the way. There's more space, Matt doesn't have to keep his borrowed keyboard on the floor, and the comfy yellow chair is back in the living room where it belongs.

Oh, and I dyed my hair black. My natural hair color used to be darker than it is now, and its new lightness was starting to get to me. Now it's darker than it's ever been (but still a brownish, natural-on-white-people-looking black), and I'm far more at home. I wonder if I'll want to keep this up for a while. Odd how my mental picture of myself somehow diverged that much from what I actually looked like.

eyes peeled

A couple of days ago it snowed again, after the snow had all been melted for a few weeks. Apparently a few weeks is long enough for me to become unused to the sight; that morning, the shock of seeing everything coated in heavy white was as strong as it is in October. It was cottonball-weight snow, on a morning in mid-March following a warm day. Surprising. I think that kind of shock is what makes people like seeing. We've all been looking at things for so long that when something surprises us it's shocking in such a way that we'd like to be shocked again. Surprising visuals are the best thing about getting up in the morning. (I think I see them disproportionately in the morning because I spend the rest of the day at work, where I have already seen everything.) I want to carry a digital camera around to record all the new things I see, and post them here.

In the past, I have seen these things that I can immediately think of, which were new and strange when I saw them:
a man walking backwards with his dog following him, walking forward
a guy who plays a banjo on his porch on summer afternoons
some Korean students learning collectively to ride a bike
the library stacks, when I got lost there

tried so hard to please her

I've been listening to those MP3s that Pitchfork posts periodically, and I don't like any of them. I don't know if that's because I'm just being difficult today, or if it's because none of them are good. Some days I just don't like anything - it's hard to tell.

edit: Matt tells me they're paid advertisements, not stuff the fork likes. That explains why they're mostly dumb.

I laughed, I cried, I beat king koopa

These Mario animations are surprisingly moving.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

may I make an observation

The building I work in was built in 1947, and my floor was added in 1965. Walking around here sometimes reminds me of what they had that we don't. Back then, there were adventures in science. Engineers built an antenna to track Sputnik from the roof of this building. Little kids cared about secret codes and radios. Besides being a "who's better at thinking" fight with Russia, the space race was also a time when it wasn't as dorky to be interested in those things for non-corporate reasons. The architecture of this building reflects that. The walls and doors are solid and plain, but certain details make this environment belong to the science that happens within it and to the attitudes (good and bad) of the time. Door handles and railings are made of copper in a nod to the metal that does it all. Women's bathrooms have obviously been converted from men's, because back when this place was built women didn't do this kind of thing. It's a fallout shelter. This summer we cleaned out a closet and found 50 pounds of "carbohydrate dietary supplement," stockpiled in the 50's by a now-deceased professor, in case the building's fallout-sheltering capability was ever used.

Things are just as dramatic these days, but no one believes anymore that science solves problems. Only money solves problems, and the new buildings on the quad are monuments to money, not to research.

it was fine at the time but the laws have changed

I am angry at everyone who is against gay marriage, and confounded by the subset of those people who are not religious. I've met some, so I know they exist. I'm pretty sure my mom is one. Is it because they think gay sex is gross? I think my mom having sex is also gross, but that doesn't mean she shouldn't be allowed to be married.

My short list of books to read is getting too long to be called a short list. It now includes Gravity's Rainbow, The Virgin Suicides, Written on the Body, Reading Lolita in Teheran, and The Paradox of Choice, plus several others that pop on and off the list depending on my mood. This has already happened to my previously-short list of new music to listen to. I think I've told myself to go out and get at least 10 or 15 new albums, none of which I've actually picked up, or even downloaded. I'm such a slacker.

fly in the works, wrench in the ointment

I am beginning to accept that my linear algebra textbook is irreversibly lost. Just when I started to do the homework again! I really don't want to buy a new one. I'm buying a laptop. Those are expensive. So are books, to a smaller degree. I can only buy so many expensive things.

In better news, Matt and I made a cheesecake yesterday. It's chocolate, with cruhed oreo bits in it. Delicious. Why make a plain cheesecake when you can make something amazing?

no talking, no driving too fast

This bothers me: there are people out there who drive too fast in the snow, crash their cars, and don't admit it was their fault. I met a guy today who spun into a ditch when he tried to pass a truck that was going 45 in bad weather - when the left lane hadn't been plowed! He tried to go 55 in an un-plowed lane! He's lucky he didn't hit the truck. Cause and effect, dude.

This weekend Matt and I went to see "The Triplettes of Belleville." I can't put my finger on what it reminded me of. I've been trying to think of it for days now. When I was a kid, did I watch a lot of cartoons with no talking? Did anyone else ever see one called "The Point," where there are a bunch of cartoons with round heads and one with a pointed head (or maybe the other way around), and the round-heads don't like the pointed-head, and then the conflict is resolved in some sort of heartwarming way? I am pretty sure that had no talking.

np: Things in Herds : "People Trap"

my new linear algebra technique is unstoppable

Today I realized that I can either do the crossword in my math class or skip the homework, but not both. It's a tough decision: I have to be in class every day anyway, bcause there are quizzes on Tuesdays that get handed back on Thursdays. Given just that information, one would think that skipping the homework and sitting through the class is the better option, but it's not. The professor has some of the worst speech mannerisms I've ever heard. He does that thing (common among Indian people) where he says "3 by 4" instead of "3 divided by 4." He lets questions sit in dead air for too long. He has a few favorite questions like, "Isn't it?" that he uses constantly and in totally inappropriate places: "Assume A is an n x n matrix, isn't it?" He opened the semester with a big talk about how "we're taking 300-level math courses now, so he's not going to bother us so much," and now he waves grades over everyone's heads. He laughs at people when they try to move the class along by answering his questions sooner, instead of waiting for him to do it himself. Long story short, I'm keeping the blessed distraction of the crosswords and doing the homework from now on.

announcements

1. The title is "Miss Teen Wordpower," but I am not a teen. Not that anyone thinks I am, but still. Just in case.

2. Matt thinks the previous post was embarrassing because it was about him. Too bad. I like him, so he's going to get talked about in my blog.

3. I got a bowl of lentil soup for $2 and it was my lunch.

There is no remembrance of former things

I have been repeatedly listening to a song by the Books called "Take Time." It makes me think about what it's like to be me and Matt.

That which is now, and that which is to be, has already been.
For the first time in the history of the world, a young girl climbed into a tree one day. She climbed down from the tree next day. God bless her.

Life repeats itself for everyone - everyone dies, everyone is happy sometimes and sad sometimes. Nothing ever happens for the first time in the world. But it could be the first time for the girl in the tree, and it could be the first time for us. We've been together for long enough that not many things are new, but it doesn't matter. Some things can be significant no matter how many times they happen.

Something is happening that is not happening.

When people realize they are in love, they have probably already been in love for some time. Important things often happen that way: when people get married, they're already privately united. When they split up, they've already separated before they say the words. For some things, it's impossible to point out when they happened, but you just have to acknowledge that they did. Other things happen without being acknowledged - when I get out of bed Matt turns around in his sleep to hug where I was.

There is no new thing under the sun.

Happy early Valentine's day, today and every day.

I'm keeping Matt's suit in my office today, because he has an interview at 4:30. He's going to stop by and change before that, because it's melty out, which is bad for looking nice in suits. The interview is for a full-time job in town doing embedded software stuff. I hope it goes well. I want him to be able to stay in town while I finish school without losing ground in his own career.

Remember how I mentioned that I made my first stuffed animal ever and that it was a present, so I couldn't post a picture yet? Well, now I can:



It's a love moogle. This is a pretty dorky present, but they liked it. You can't see the writing on his belly, but it says "Chris + Melanie" (they got married).

I am slowly figuring out which titles and subtitles on this page correspond to h1, h2, etc. in the template. Matt could do this ten times faster and better than me, because he's a computer guy. But really, I care less about what my blog looks like than I do about my ability to change what my blog looks like.

behind the shield of war and terrorism, there are many other little wars going on

Today Salon has a couple of articles about a new movie by Bertolucci and the artistic problems caused by bending over backward for the MPAA. The review of the film and the interview that accompanies it really make me want to see this movie, but they also hit on something that all the movie-rating boards in the history of the US have never understood: that being totally naked is less obscene than hiding behind the corner of a bedsheet. That strategic scrap of cloth constitutes an admission of guilt. It shouts, "What you would see here, if this movie hadn't been required to snag an R rating, is bad!" But just standing, unclothed, can be an expression of just how unashamed and normal that action is.

don't worry I do not seriously want to get married, girls just think about these things

Several people I know are planning weddings (one is this weekend), and it's got me thinking about that whole thing. Back when it was a new thing for everyone to be planning a wedding, I thought that if I had one I'd want to have some large ceremony with the dress and everything, and find some way to make it huge and significant even though I don't have any built-in meaning to the ceremony like religious types do. But now I keep hearing about the stress of planning weddings, and my (unspoken) response is increasingly, "Why not just hold hands in front of a justice of the peace and have done with it?" This is not a new question to ask by any means, but it's the first time I've asked it and not had my inner little girl go, "Aww, but I wanted to dress up in something white and sparkly!" To ask "Why not?" and have this absence of response: that's new. I'd still throw a party afterward, and people could dress up and make toasts and everything, but I'd probably wear red or something.

I learned about push-hands today at taiji, which was fun and interesting. Different people have very different ways of practicing it, especially when they're new at it: men push hard, stiffly, and fast, and some women hardly push at all.

p.s: Casey was wrong in that one comment he posted to Lisa's blog and probably forgot by now: Up with skirts!

confidential to lisa

I know Chinese doctors say it's bad to drink or eat cold things when you're on the rag. Do they also say you shouldn't breathe cold air? I think I chilled my uterus today - I went outside and it took hours to warm up.

I have been to all these states

(maybe also Louisiana)



create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

really super, supergirl

I couldn't be accomplishing any more this week if I was on speed. Last night I sewed my very first stuffed animal ever (after a couple of false starts), and it is cute enough to make a nice present. I'll post a picture after it's been presented. (I wanted to buy a mog plushie, but I couldn't find one, so I sewed one instead. It's very cute.) That whole thing probably took me about 8 hours.

We went and looked at that place that was in my dream - it wasn't at all the same as the dream, but I liked it in a different way. Matt liked it too, but Pinky wasn't as enthusiastic - I think he may have been talked into it yesterday, though. I think he underestimates the amount of space he needs, and I don't think he noticed that all the blinds were closed, so of course it was dark. He's right that the kitchen is a weird shape, but I don't think that will really bother us too much, especially if eating mostly gets done at that little breakfast table, which I think it will. There's still a lot of counter space, which I'm way into. Matt's comment on the place was, "It's got character, and I didn't think landlords like that guy existed." I basically agree with him. I mean, he told us that he could put a floor in the attic for us if we liked. I wonder if he'll let us paint. Or if we could alleviate Pinky's light issues by getting him to put in another window.

Today I came up with a simple way to represent the weird array I've been thinking about, too. And I found out that there's an all you can eat Indian food lunch I can go to. Lots of nan for me today!

How come I keep dreaming about Matt

Boy, am I a power dreamer lately. Last night:

The house that we are going to go look at and maybe rent today turns out to be excellent. It has a huge basement and tons of space, and it's very pretty.

Then I fly my airplane (bear with me here) to go see Spalding Grey (who has recently returned from his disappearance). On the way back a girl wants to ride with me, so I let her. But we start off going the wrong way, so we land, figure out which way is west, and are about to take off again when the girl turns into Matt and takes off without me. He flies the plane around for a while, and the lights on it start to resemble the Space Invader shapes, because he doesn't know how to fly or land a plane and it's getting all busted up. I watch, terrified, as he breaks and crashes my airplane. (I don't know how you can break an airplane while you're in the air still and you haven't run into anything, but this is just a dream.) Then I'm stranded, because I flew my airplane instead of driving, and Matt crashed it. Matt comes out without a scratch, though, and he doesn't get that I'm angry with him.

Now that I think about it, prisons are normally full of people. Maybe Pinky and I were kidnapped and they were just trying to fool us into thinking we were in prison. If that guard was the only person there, we totally could have escaped.

7 fat years, 7 lean years

Last night I had two dreams. In the first one, I was in prison with Pinky, and there was a prison guard. Those were the only people in the dream. The guard wouldn't tell me why I was in prison, he just kept giving me a guilt talk along these lines: "Oh, I think you know why you're here. I bet your family's worried about you. But you can't call them. Because you're in prison. Now you stay in this room full of bunk beds and think about what you've done."

In the second dream, Matt bought a cell phone. He didn't sign up for a plan or anything, he just bought the phone. I was angry because we were supposed to sign up for one of those share-minutes plans and get rebates on the phones, but there he went buying a phone for no good reason, when he can't even use it.

The night before last I had a dream in which I was trying to adopt a kid, but there was also an old lady that wanted to adopt the same kid. So a bus full of people including me and the kid went over to the old lady's house. It turned out she didn't have a house, she lived under a bridge. Then all the people went over to my house, which was some sort of twentysomething condo where I lived with Matt. The kid picked me and we lived happily ever after, and then my mom asked me what happened to that necklace I used to have (which is actually a necklace that doesn't exist in real life).

emphasize naked computing

I should ask Matt how it feels to be on an elite squad.

my red hot car

My parents want to trade cars with me. They've been leasing a Neon for a year, and they want me to buy it and give them my (older) car for my brother to drive. Thing is, what I really want is a Toyota Prius. I won't be able to buy one this year or, unless I get a fellowship, next year, but trading up now means it'll be longer before I can trade up again. My car is 8 years old. It's really a question of whether it will last until I can afford the car I really want. It's probably smarter to get the year-old car now, rather than try to hang on to the old one long enough to replace it with sparkly new technology. It's not as fulfilling, though.

I have a problem: because of the distance between the TV and the couch, looking at the TV for long periods of time isn't comfortable with my glasses on or off. I get headaches. But right now I've already got a headache, and I want to go home and play Final Fantasy until it goes away. The problem is that if I play Final Fantasy, it will never go away.

late bloomer

There's a scene in Middlesex, which I'm reading this week, about how a boy figures out the workings of orgasms, but his sister doesn't. She's used to being close to him and doing everything together, and she feels frustrated and left out because this is one thing they can't share. It takes her another ten years to figure it out.

I've been thinking about this, because sometimes I feel retroactively left out. Apparently some people discover the secrets of masturbating when they're still children. I didn't even know that sex was supposed to feel good (and that was why people did it) until high school, and then it took me another couple of years to put that into practice.

Here's what I think: sex ed tells boys what their penises are for. Sex ed doesn't even tell girls they have clitorises. That's got to be part of it. I'd blame it all on that, except some of the early adopters I've encountered were girls. Chalk it up to me not being the investigative type, I guess.

adventures II

I finally tracked down that wayward check. The office lady who gave it to me was unfriendly - she mumbled in a loud room and then got snippy when I didn't understand what she wanted - but she also told me who would fix my address. Happy ever after.

Now I'm only a month away from owning this. Yow!

Also: everyone on this campus who does office work is a woman. There are no men. I think that's how it is everywhere. Why? Clerical work isn't strenuous, it's full time, it must pay decently. You even get a computer. If I was a dude, I would be all over this. What are all the guys doing?

adventures in officemagicland

This morning I went downstairs and asked our department's payroll office-lady where my paycheck could possibly have got to. I explained that last time direct deposit broke, payroll had mistakenly sent some other materials of mine to my previous job, and I feared that that had been the case this week as well. I knew that direct deposit had failed to work for some graduate students. She asked, "Don't you have direct deposit?" Yes, I do. But it hasn't done its thing. Also there's no check in my mailbox, and could she please look up where they sent it? "Well, it looks like they sent it to the administrative office of the place you used to work." But where is that? They've restructured since then. Also, can she change my payroll information so this stopps happening? I don't have permission in the computer. "I don't know how to do that in the new system." No 'I'll figure it out,' no 'sorry,' just she doesn't know how.

I call Old Job's office, and some of them remember me. They tell me where their paychecks go these days, and I walk over there. An office-lady asks me my name, and says, "You're not on my list." Of course I'm not on your list, I don't work for this department. "What department do you work in? Why don't you go over there?" Because my office address is wrong in the payroll computer, and whenever direct deposit breaks they send my stuff to you. "Have you checked with your bank?" Yes. My bank knows how to use its computers. Finally she understands what I want and asks me my name again. She looks in a box which does not contain my paycheck. "Oh, I must have forwarded it back to the business office. It might not be there yet, though, because of the holiday."

I go back to my desk and call the business office. They do not understand why I am calling, so I explain three more times. Then: "No, it's not here. Have you checked with your department?" It was forwarded to you. It's probably still in campus mail. I'll call back tomorrow. "Oh, then you should probably call back tomorrow."

What bothers me is not so much having to run around doing the administration's job, it's the excuse they repeatedly gave for not knowing what to do: "We have new software. We don't know how to use it. It's the same software that was new three months ago and caused you to get paid a month late and your student loan check misdirected. Yeah, we still don't know how to use it. No, we're not really apologizing for that." For some reason, office ladies don't care if students get paid. P. thinks this is because they think "those kids can pay for college, what do they need a paycheck for?" The truth is, I can't pay for college, and I never could. I had scholarships and loans for undergrad, and now I get free tuition, but this is my only job, and my parents don't pay for me at all anymore. If I don't get paid to do it, that's all there is. They would probably get agitated if their paycheck turned up missing, but it never will - they work in payroll.

It came out magical

I'm listening to "Out From Blown Speakers," and whenever I hear it I feel like I've been let in on a secret.

I'd Help Dean, But He's All the Way Over There

P. just left for a Dean Weekend in Iowa. Now, the truth is: P. wanted company and asked me to come, and I like Dean, but I didn't come along. Why? I just want to stay home. It's nice here. I don't have to sleep in a sleeping bag and eat cold sandwiches when I could be sleeping in a bed and eating hot, delicious rice-and-vegetables. But here's something, Dean: when you need me here in Illinois, I'll be around.

I finished writing my first-ever conference paper today, which pretty much makes me a real live scientist. P. thinks I need to write an article that goes in an actual journal, and the 2004 Proceedings of So-and-So don't cut it. I think that an article will make me more scientific, but the damage has already been done. You be the judge.

I had a clever idea for a salad, of the kind that can be eaten with pita bread. We'll see how it goes.

not playing now, but playing previously: The Delgados - "Accused of Stealing"

Doom House

I am pretty convinced that I'm allergic to something in my house. It's probably mold, and it's probably in the basement. I'm afraid I'm going to get sick repeatedly until mid-March and not be any good for anything. Imagine it: snot lurking around every corner, just waiting for me to let my guard down.

np: Os Mutantes - "A Minha Menina"

bring 'em on

Some of these ads are so good I almost cried.

Hey, what's Festivus?

Merry Christmas and New Year and everything, everybody. This is the second winter vacation in a row we've spent at Matt's house, and I'm starting to miss some of the Michigan-specific things I'm used to. My mom came to Chicago for the weekend, and she had to bring me some nuts & oranges so I wouldn't be lonely. And apparently Matt thinks bubble lights are dumb; if he thinks that then he is definitely not with it.

Matt got a pretty nasty cold and fell asleep around 9 pm on NYE - I ended up skipping one of the parties we'd planned (where I would only know two people) and going to the second one by myself. It was more fun than that last bit makes it sound. We played games until our attention spans got too short, which didn't take too long. Then everyone got all hedonistic. People were there that I haven't seen all year, I drank three different kinds of champagne, and at 5:30 everyone went to sleep (me under the kitchen table). After breakfast some kuk sool friends and I did some grappling. I gave a few people a ride home, picked up Matt, and we had dinner with A. (and a different A. at whose house she was staying). I wasn't back at Matt's house (not counting a short shirt-changing stop) until 9 pm or so. I think he felt a little left out. That's what he gets for hanging out with germs.

You'd think today I'd be tired, but I just want to go out again. I'll see what I can do.

np: The Angels of Light - Kosinski