Tripping along the road to enlightenment...

pasties

2006-06-08T02:18:00.000-07:00

my skin is warm and slightly moist. i use ticket stubs as bookmarks - nice little memorandums - bookmarks for my literature and external activities. while i lounge back on my couch, reading and slacking away the evening, i paste the stubs to my chest using the warm suction of my own body. i don't know why, but i get such a kick out of it.

not a vulcan

2006-05-23T13:55:00.000-07:00

i have a bit of a headcold. mostly a stuffy/runny nose, nothing so terrible, but i'm not terribly pleased with it, either. i recently got a memory upgrade for my computer. now, i would like to install it, but at the same time, i'm thinking i had better wait till i feel better. so i don't getting any germs in my computer when i open it up. and i know that sounds absurd, i really do. but i still think it would be best if i held off a while.

like a literary Travis Bickle

2006-05-17T04:04:00.000-07:00

i am so horribly mutable. anything i read strikes through me like a lance and i'm left even thinking in the words of the author. this, more than anything, is why i tend to read so very much meaningless crap - i'm much less susceptible to its mediocre influences. unfortunately, tonight, i picked up lady chatterly's lover, determined, finally, to put a positive dent in it. the mood is all depressed rejection of humanity and wistful lonliness. now, i am a cynic when it comes to people, a coward when it comes to love, and a depressive when it comes to la, but all in small quantities, which are sadly amplified by the malaise of the title character. i feel like sighing and languishing quietly somewhere, or else running out into the night to visit a planter of jasmine - all in full bloom - that i noticed on campus today. (fact: jasmine smells best at night.) best i just go to bed, though, not let it get to me. the pre-dawn songbirds are just beginning to go nuts.

dream men

2006-04-14T21:23:00.000-07:00

i had a dream over christmas break - i was in a satanic cult. i had been accepted into college on a minority scholarship and moved into a special minority dorm with turquoise walls and religious overtones. i didn't really fit in, though, not having been raised in a disadvantaged background, not being black or overtly hispanic. the only friend i made within the first few days was the maid, an older hispanic woman who never went to college, herself, and was very encouraging to the tune of getting good grades and graduating is the only thing. within a few days, i moved out of that dorm and into a satanic coed frat. the head of it was an aleister crowley-type older man with a foreboding air and ambiguously extant evil powers. he lead the little coven. surprisingly, i did have friends among the worshippers. there was a repentant and trapped-feeling ex-christian girl who had given up her faith and a slightly overweight girl who was wicked, but not precisely evil. neither were really into that whole satan-thing, though.

we were sent by the old man to fetch some sacred coins. they fit into a grey stone wall carving in the lower levels of the frathouse. four more (or so) were needed to open the seal and unleash evil. eeeevil. as a new intitiate and a very promising convert, i was sent to collect one of the remaining coins. it was nestled within a bible, atop an ancient bell in an outdoor alcove of...the minority dorm. gasp! so i had to sneak back in, which wasn't too difficult, since i had lived there once upon a time. i got into the strange exposed rectory without any trouble - i was stopped by the housekeeper, who i think was chatty and possibly religious at me, but in a friendly, inspirational way - and i found the bible. i had to lean out of a window, and possibly climb something, as well, to get to it atop a very large, old corroded iron bell. the coins were inside as well as a couple of large bills with a curse to the effect of, "whosoever taketh..." (biblical curses are always written in an archaic and flowery way) "...this stuff...is cursed pretty bad for greed. seriously." death death doom doom. i really don't remember what it said, just that it was very foreboding. i took everything out of the bible, replaced the book and headed out unchallenged.

as i was heading back, i was struck with overwhelming doubts. about damnation and demons and evil magicks. i think, while i still didn't believe in god and the devil, i was afraid that assembling the coins would release something very bad, and i was also not unconcerned with my own fate concerning the curse. but it was too late and i was already in the room with the coven leader when i got to that conclusion. so he took the stuff, and i freaked out and begged him to at least put back the money. he praised my insight - best not to bring a curse down upon us for simple greed when there were greater plans yet to be laid. he took the coin from me.

i was walking back from the dorm and i ran into someone i had known from earlier, my time in the first dorm, i suppose. he was actually the dream image of my overweight christian neighbor from freshman year. in my dream he was a smug, self-satisfied preachy christian i disliked thoroughly. then i was back with the satanists and it was night and we were having an amusing event. the entire frat was shooting things at a christian frat or dorm (the details in this part are really choppy and fuzzed now) using a giant slingshot. it's also possible we were swinging on a giant swingset and jumping off, landing blocks away. whatever. it was fun and team-building.

the next day, i was walking back from class beside an above-ground parking lot and i saw a guy who caught my eye. a very good-lookin' black man. something about him sort of called to me and i approached him and asked to walk along with him. he was goin' my way (his car was parked somewhere on the street toward my frat). we walked together and talked. turns out, and i suspected this more before he said it, he was a dissatisfied christian, like, seething with rage at god, for some reason. we talked as we walked. i thought to get him to join me and the satanists, so he could help me defeat them. as we walked, we ran into my two satanist friends, who were, i'm afraid, vandalizing his car. i had them stop and switch to the car of the obnoxious christian guy i disliked, parked nearby.

just as my companion announced he was renouncing his faith, i threw my arms around him in an impetuous, flirty hug. and i froze. he felt just like home. warm comfort and calm, perfect chemistry. and i'm sure he felt it, as well, as we just stood there frozen for a moment. then i woke up slightly and my arms were circling nothing in my bed. i couldn't get the dream out of my head all day. i was left dazed and wistful and confused.

this afternoon, i took a nap. i had a long, elaborate dream i didn't quite remember upon waking, but the last moments are clear in my mind. i had been in bed on one side of a room, and i got up for some reason. instead of going back to bed in my own bed, i crossed the room and laid down behind the guy sleeping in another bed there. just as i put my arms around him, i forcefully woke up. felt a little bit lost for the next hour. it just made me think of the earlier dream, i don't know. they're awfully sad.

(and i really don't know what my thing is with the devil. i am all weird dreams.)

jam-tastic

2006-04-11T23:55:00.000-07:00

my family has one long-standing, rather charming, loosely-held yearly tradition. very specific category, no? ever year or so, we will all drive down to a little farming town along the central coast and pick berries at a farm that seems to do amazingly good business making tourists pick their own produce. we gather a couple of flats of ollaliberries, or my favorite, blackberries. mm-mm-mmm. i always get very competitive and brag to my father about my greater speed and bucket full of riper fruits. look, it's a wholesome family activity and it's very difficult to sex up that subject any.

anyway, the result of all this farm family fun is jars and jars of momma's lovely homemade jams. and they're not restricted to berry types - she will buy plums and strawberries and peaches and reduce them all into tasty poultices to be spread on toast. i don't eat jams very often, as i infrequently consume toast at home, but i'm an absolute fiend for mother's brilliant concoctions. this first came about when i was quite young and mother got her hands on some plums. oh my god, the plums. she made a delictible plum jam that rocked my tiny, prepubescent world. since then, i'll go through phases in which all i can think about is mother's jam. this will include nights when i'll go to bed with a jar of jam, a box of saltines, and, of course, a knife and i'll kick my legs and giggle.

while home for spring break, my mother raved to me the virtues of jam mixed in with plain yogurt. i tried it. it was tasty. i stole the largest jar of strawberry jam off the counter and shoved it in my carryon. i had plans of yogurt and jam and ice cream and jam and spoonfuls of jam shoved into my mouth and savored. well, long story short, the lam broke somehow on the plane, but i could not bring myself to toss it. such good jam. so, i shoved the jar in the fridge, and waited for my will to break. it did. i bought some plain yogurt and emptied all the jam into a bowl. first couple of times i had jam with things, there were no glass shards in - lucky me. and such tasty jam, i still could not bring myself to dispose of it. i knew it was only a matter of time before my love of jam would cause me bodily harm. so tonight, when i made myself a big bowl of jam and yogurt, i was not surprised when i fished the shard out of my mouth. i was a bit shocked that i hadn't cut myself. good luck. i did the best thing possible under the circumstances of addiction - i asked for help. i admitted i didn't have the power to help myself and i put the situation into somebody else's hands. i asked kat to save me from myself - from my love of jam. she emptied the jar into the disposal, and i was freed of my dangerous addiction. sure, i did get my mother to send me another jar of her pectin love, but this one does not have glass inside, so it's okay.

in light of this, i'm amazed i haven't died from some crazy obsession of another. massive tongue lacerations, perhaps. god, mmm, i just had some jam and yet i crave more. more tasssssty jam.

indistinct mutterings to describe my day

2006-04-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

thursday was a bad day for dietary health. sure, i did have a salad for lunch, but my dinner was: a large stack of pringles, several ginger cookies, a couple handfuls of chocolate covered raisins, a quesadilla, 5 shots of jaeger. (from that list you can probably divine my activities for the evening. fermenting on the couch and then a party?)

after such a productive and healthful day, i decided to go for a walk. to borders many, many blocks away to buy a shakespeare play. after a couple rejections (would you join me? would you join me? no.), i struck out on my own. i ran into daphne (will you join me?) by wilshire, but she had things to do. i got as far as the movie theater a block before the store. it was 5:15, the next showing was 5:20, and i had been wanting to see thank you for smoking. so i bought a ticket and sat down in the nearly empty theater. very pretty interior - very old glam hollywood - completely out of place in new, trashy la. to give you an idea, i think it was situated between a psychic and a bargain vet. the movie was v. good. towards the middle end, it threatened to get sentimental and prosaic, which would have destroyed the entire appeal of the scrupleless lobbyist, but it turned it around in the end. it was slightly anticlimactic, but it ended on a strong joke, so i forgave the movie. many v. funny lines. and the film was a testament to the beauty and glory that is bs. how could i not appreciate that? when the movie let out, it was amazingly still light out. thank you, freaky, unnerving daylight savings time!

went the rest of the way to borders to discover they were out of the play i needed. how can a bookstore run out of a shakespeare play?? alright, sure, i know this wasn't one of the more popular ones, but still. you're a bookstore, have some class. walked back and stopped to buy a mango. last one i got was pretty ripe. actually sweet, soft; not perfect, but it was still a pretty freaking good mango, made all the more tasty by the fact it had been many months since my last tasty man-go. this batch, in comparison to the last, looked pretty pathetic, though. all hard, still mostly green. i grabbed what looked like the best option and was on my way again. (oh, i did pay for it, of course.) with mango in purse, i made the somewhat tedious trek uphill to my apartment.

i was on my way, when some guy, who i had noticed in passing walking antiparallel, crossed over to me. he told me he thought he had seen me on campus several times - in kerchkhoff, right? i replied, yes, i spend some time there. and we struck up a conversation of rather animated, and on his part slightly effeminate, small talk. and then he invited me to dinner. his treat. i tried to resist - i just wanted to get back to the apartment and tear into my high hopes mango - but he would have none of it. he wheedled, and, since he was offering to pay, i finally relented. like, meh, alright, i'll make a new friend. so we dined on, at least for my part, slightly watery undercooked ravioli and a big, plain salad, and made eager conversation which, unfortunately, got less interesting as the meal wore on. he kept praising me for my cool spontenaity. damn straight. and trying to make tentative plans with me to go clubbing, visit santa monica pier, go out to other dinners, go to bars, buy me a particularly tasty lemon drop (martini, duh) somewhere or other, and get coffee some time. gaah! also, it came out he was straight, damn you, faulty gaydar, also, did he not lament guys did not hit on him earlier in conver...what? was that just an inept joke? so, good, guy i have no interest in is making "plans" with me. finally, i was making bored faces, being ever so bad at concealing "emotion," and he graciously decided he was through with his dinner, having only a little salad left, anyway. so we walked back toward the spot where he had accosted me in the first place, and i gave him my phone number, doubtful i would actually keep up the association for much longer, anyway. but i did agree to meet him on campus for coffee on tuesday. i figure, i'll give him another chance to wow me conversationally.

went back to the apartment and finally did get to eat my mango, which turned out to be underripe. great, underripe fruit equals the runs. i finished it all, of course, as it was still almost okay tasting, and also, i'm painfully cheap. then, curled in my blankey and watched tv the rest of the evening (new dr. who is pretty good - i wish i had seen old dr. who), rather amazed at my day. it was mostly good times, and i did have me an adventure. (all my most satisfying adventures seem to happen when i'm all alone.) but, mostly, i feel slightly amazed about my day. like, hunh. hmm. oh.

rat trouble

2006-03-28T01:49:00.000-08:00

as my parents picked me up from the airport, my mother warned me, "at home, don't eat food that has fallen on the floor." which seemed a stragne warning. but she went on to inform me that the house, as well as the houses on either side of us, are infested with rats. last time we had rats, my parents went a little crazy, setting traps all over the kiten and garage, and doing strange dances of glee whenever one of the traps snapped. not my most exciting adventure with rats, however.

two thursdays ago, i was coming out of a rather difficult test - identify various dead and stuffed birds and mammals that have been laid out on tables for me - and found a white rat snuffling around the sidewalk just beside campus. i stopped to stare at it in surprise and it came up to me and sniffed my shoe. so i took it home.

walked from campus to my apartment with the little guy nestled on my chest. it was very sweet and docile. no, it did not bite me. when i got back to my apartment, it climbed up to my shoulder and burrowed into my hair. please, make jokes about my fuzzy hair being a rat's nest. i woke kat up from her nap to warn her i had brought home an animal. practically the first thing she said in her groggy state was, "does it have fleas?" oh. i hadn't thought about that. i worked the thing out of the tangle that was my ponytail and put it in a bag with some lettuce and a carrot. then i went and scrubbed every inch of exposed skin and resolved to shower. great, paranoia. when kat wakes up and makes disbelieving noises at me. suggests i move the rat somewhere bigger. we empty the drawer in our "media cabinet" and line it with newspaper (finally a use for the piles of newspaper we've been accumulating for months) and place the rat in it's temprary enclosure. we both camp out in the living room for the evening, every so often our eyes sliding to the rat box. i obsessed over my rash deed all evening, in the process bitching to just about everyone online. fortunately, gloria knew someone with an empty cage. she gave me his number and moments laater, i was out on the street walking past clusters of partygoers to procure a place to put my new critter. i had to walk back to my apartment carrying the large neon cage through the revellers, as well. i hoped desperately i wouldn't run into anyone i knew, it was one thing that my friends abstractly knew the story, quite another for someone to see me carrying that thing - don't wanna put a visual to that sort of insanity. the cage was a crazy thing that used to hold mice. had two levels and the entire thing turned like a running wheel. we put the rat on top with the food dish and water bottle, but it was too timid to use the tiny tunnel. kat tried to make the rat more comfortable by disassembling the cage and reconstructing it in various, roomier configurations. the wheel on it's side atop a pad of newspaper. the wheel, open and in a larger box. the platform in the box with a homemade bed of cardboard and cloth. finally, she gave up and put the rat back in the reconstructed cage. it slept hunched on the platform inside the food dish.

the next morning i woke up with a rat in my apartment and a sense of dread obligation. every morning it was in my apartment was a day i began stressed out. she thought i ought to release it, let it live a free and ratty life, no matter how short, but i couldn't consciounably do it. it was a snow white rat, bred in captivity, probably raised in a lab, and there are hawks on campus - i've seen them. it's basically the least cryptic animal ever. i half-hid the cage in the big box and put it on the balcony during the day and let it inside at night, with the large box upended over the cage to block the light from our late night revelries. the third day, i put the rat in the bottom half of the cage that she could get some exercise, and she finally learned to use the tiny, narrow tunnel. we got some amusement watching the critter awkwardly crawl through the tiny passage.

that sunday, kat drove me and the rat to an animal shelter. two, actually, as we discovered the first did not service our particular district of westwood. in both places after i had put the box containing the animal on the counter, the attendant asked me whether the rat was dead. i found that a bit peculiar. do i look like someone particularly prone to dropping off dead rats at shelters? or perhaps it's simply policy to ascertain vivacity when the animal is not in plain view. at the second place, the woman asked me to place the box containing the rat on the ground after she discovered it held a rat (ewwwwww!). unreasonably prejudiced broad. not too hard to believe. during its visit, kat was too cautious to touch the rat directly for fear of disease. i was as well, but mostly out of paranoia, as i was certain, irrationally certain the rat was perfectly healthy. still am. good thing the apartment came with a box of latex gloves. i have to say, kat was great about it, though. we left the rat with the shelter. that night, i cleaned and returned the cage. not to its owner, but his neighbor, who was home. so now, there is a good-sized contingent of people out there - the friends i've told, the strangers who have heard, and the people kat complained about her wacky roommate to - who think i'm irrational and strange. great, i'm the weird chick with the rat. but, i just have a soft spot in my heart for things that scurry. so think me strange and crazy, but at least i chocked up a great big hunk'a karma.

snow snub

2006-03-21T23:06:00.000-08:00

i was unvited to go skiing tonight. through my roommate, no less. she was asked to go skiing with some mutual friends and their friends a few days ago. i hadn't minded the lack of invite at all. these mutual friends are more hers than mine, and our relationship can pretty much be characterized as awkward. so i didn't mind not being invited, seemed about right. but being invited less than a week before the event and through a proxy seemed less like a genuine invitation so much as an insult to my intelligence. or something like that. not sure what it was actually an insult to, all i know is i am full of vague indignation. i can be that, you know, it comes from having two x chromosomes. i didn't care when i wasn't invited, but invited just for apprearances, and in such a way i was all but encouraged not to accept...view my bubbling ire.

i just wanted to yell about that in a medium that won't get back to them, so i can be civil later. what is so offensive about an unvitation? i would just prefer the blatant snub.

a very bad call

2006-03-18T23:33:00.000-08:00

greg complains when i don't update regularly enough, so in the meantime while i get my next masterwork in order, a brief tale from the annals of my stint as a shopgirl. this has been transcribed as faithfully as possible.

"hi, we're not home right now, but if you leave your name and number, we'll get back to you as soon as we can."

*BEEP*

"hi, this is -me- from -store-. this message is for carrie. um, we have the lafayette spoons you ordered in. um, it looks like you ordered them a long time ago, so i don't know if you still, um, need them. or if we've already called you and told you they came in. heh, we're actually sort of disorganized here, what with marking whether we've, uh, called special order...uh...customers. or not. so, if you're already been called and actually gotten your spoons, uuh, yoooou can ignore this message. but if you do need the spoons...or, erm, if you are not in fact...uh...carrie, because the number is slightly illegible - lewis has pretty bad handwriting. um, i'm sorry this is a really bad message. anyway...sorry. uh. -store- has lafayette spoons if you do need them. thanks."

at this point my co-worker is staring at me because normally i'm the most erudite person in the shop, and she had just witnessed me puke nosence into the phone.

this post is dedicated to anyone who has ever wondered why i claim to be a bad phone person.

end of it all

2006-02-17T14:39:00.000-08:00

i'm exhausted and the words "heat death of the universe" have become fixed in my brain. except, i keep turning it slightly so that the words, "sleep death of the universe" continually trundle around up there. i get very self-absorbed when i need a nap.

city trek

2006-02-16T18:54:00.000-08:00

i didn't blog for so long because i had nothing of interest really to say. well now i have a story. i had an adventure!

last saturday, i was supposed to go on a class field trip to the la brea tar pits, aka. page museum. whee. and i slept through it, i slept through it hard. so to make up for it, i had to go alone. thursday my schedule is nice and open, so perfect time to go, no? the museum is a couple miles down wilshire and thursday is kat's busy day, so i thought, why not make jim drive? haven't hung out with him in ages and he has a car. called him weds and he told me he was free thursday afternoon, so plan was set! got out of class at 1 and called. called. walked back to my apartment and called. ate lunch and called. watched an episode of west wing and called. then walked to the bus stop. i had forgotten to bring quarters, so i changed a dollar at the gas station ande bought some gum. he called me back when i was almost at wilshire, and by then i was seething with the rage of the blown-off. but apparently he had only then gotten out of class. i said screw it, i'd take the bus. this is where it got interesting.

i had written on the three big fingers on my left hand the streets before, at, and past my bus stop. i watched the clock and willed the bus faster as it got stuck in mild downtown traffic. i thought the museum closed at 4 - pit 19 closed at 4, the museum closed at 5. oops, hehe. i sat in the very front and watched the banner intently waiting for wilshire & __ or really any of my finger streets. finally, finally the last of my streets danced across the banner and i bounded out of my seat, on what was now a very crowded bus. a small, elderly lady shuffled into my spot, to my immense, spry chagrin. i bounded off the bus and headed back the way the bus had come a block or so and it didn't look right, so i headed forward about twice that distance. i did not see a museum, but i saw a coffee bean/tea leaf in the distance and headed for that. now, our lovable pothead apartment manager had lost the key to our apartment some days ago, and only told kat yesterday when she went in to complain they hadn't fulfilled a work order a week since it was placed, son in full laptop paranoia, i've been carrying around my baby all day. i bought a chai latte and $3.85 worth of internet and promptly googled mapped my location, using the address of a tire shop accross the street. i found i wasn't too far from the museum, namely 1.1 miles west. i asked the man next to me what direction was east (forward) and headed off with my brimming spicy drink. i speed walked and precision sipped several city blocks all the way to museum. on my way, i saw window washers cleaning a shiny, modern, black office building, and a huge statue of many bulls, and a white suv with the lisence plate "iketrnr" (like ike & tina, which brings up many questions: is tina's husband's surname actually turner? did he take la tina's last name when they wed? did she marry him before being famous? am i thinking of the wrong people? do i care enough to answer these? hah, no!), and various men who smiled or waved, and my sexy, sexy relfection. it's weird that i only ever feel sexy when i'm essentially alone. i finally got to the museum with half an hour to spare. half price admission! the tar pit looked a lot like a muddy pit. the bones were pretty cool, i liked the big, scary, skeletal birds - very gothy. but the museum wasn't particularly informatinve and i had to collar a docent 5 in before closing to answer my questions. basically, i held up my homework and he went through each point, laughing. i stopped on a grassy hill outside above a sculpture of two prehistoric lions posing so pretty and copied down what i remembered of his answers and billowing in the breeze.

as i went back, i contemplated hanging out at lacma for a bit, but it was late and i needed to stop at ralph's. took a rapid bus back that trundled down the street at high speeds, jolting as if it were running repeatedly over the curb. and small tanks. got back and went to ralph's, filled kat's shopping list. on the way back down to street level, my headphones caught in the elevator door and an earbud was torn completely off. so of course, i took the elevator back up and bought replacements at best buy. trudged back to the apartment and called jim, aplogising for being pissy on the phone when he called me back. i figured, i had had a lovely trip without him, and likely more fun wandering the streets alone. and i couldn't really blame him when i hadn't said what time i had wanted to go.

after all of that, i got back home and collapsed. tiring day.

she dreams in digital

2006-02-13T04:14:00.000-08:00

me: i had this really great dream last night.
me: well, afternoon
mat: do tell
me: it's kind of hard to explain
me: i mean, the narration can't quite capture how awesome it was
mat: k
mat: fair enouigh
me: i'll try, though, for your viewing pleasure
mat: do your best
me: okay, i'll start with the villain
mat: does it involve you, naked? cuz you know, that certainly ups the viewing pleasure
me: haha, mental projectionist's reel?
mat: mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm hmmmm
me: no nudity, i'm afraid, but if you'd like to picture me naked while i recount my story, you're welcome to
me: now no heckling, i'm about to begin
mat: yes, sweetie
mat: is it ok if a drool while i imagi...listen to you?
me: haha. shush
me: alright. i'm beginning with the villain
me: a brilliant programmer
me: he has created a extremely lifelike virtual world - the best virtual reality to date. think the matrix. it's exactly like the real world - sensations and amazingly high res
me: but it has its limitations, too
me: like in a video game, you can only go into the parts of it that have been mapped out, everything else is just sort of scenery. surfaces that may look real, but that you are unable to interact with
me: it's sort of a stub-world
me: and the programmer has maybe 100 people or so trapped in his creation.
me: think the matrix, again, if you must. their brains are trapped in it, and they cannot break free, because there are no physical confines to break out of
me: we're all trapped in a room. it looks like a small room, but we can all stand there without being crowded
me: and opening to my left is a set of french doors and a narrow balcony that juts far out over a deep, deep chasm
me: outside, several leagues below the room is, what can only be described as a large canyon floor - large enough that no walls can be seen, but there was the impression that we were very solidly situated atop a cliff
me: a dark pine forest covers the canyon floor as far out as i looked
mat: several leagues? hah
me: the scene was vaguely reminiscent of those japanese scroll paintings...but i go on
mat: sorry, continue
me: we weren't happy, to be trapped, obviously, and as soon as we got through yelling at the programmer that he couldn't do that &c. and he vanished in thin air, i promptly launched myself onto the balcony and into the air in a glorious free-fall
mat: (naked)
me: (only if you have the cheat code)
mat: oh, i do
me: (a warm room, alcohol, and a sinatra mix tape?)
me: rather than this being a suicidal move, i suspected that the scenery below was merely in place as a sort of psychological deterrent for people trying to exit that way, and that the programmer had in fact not created any boundaries in that part of the world
me: i dove straight through the image and came to an unmemorable stop somewhere below the gif
me: i was in an off-white room resembling a classroom (empty walls, a floor that gave the impression of mismatched vinyl tiles), dimly lit with fluorescents
me: and huddled in the room were all sorts of brightly colored cartoonish creatures, like escapees from a fantastical zoo
me: they told me they were refugees in the program, hiding from the programmer in that sub-routine to escape being put in the room with the other prisoners. they though they had a better chance of escaping from where they were, you see
me: they looked
me: i guess i must have left that room and wandered around a bit, because the next thing i knew, i had been caught again and was with the other prisoners in the balcony room. i had no idea what had happened to the toons, i suppose they were caught
me: as soon as the programmer left (by then he had developed the typically villainous attitude toward me as the amusing creature who foolishly, futilely, and a bit obnoxiously was determined to thwart his plans), i launched myself back off the balcony
me: i assumed he had done some reprogramming to prevent me from going the way i had before, but it was still my best chance of escape
me: (to go back a moment, i forgot to mention the others - my friends - who were among those trapped in the room. there was a single mother with one or two young boys also trapped and the programmer's wife, who was not pleased with him. both were very scared, and hugged me in relief when i was returned)
me: so, when i leap, this time, instead of not really landing, i faceplant hard and a little painfully on a tiled porch
mat: haha
me: i get up slowly, but not injured and the programmer is lounging back in a wooden reclining patio chair, at a table with similar chairs all around
me: he has one hand resting on the table with a drink
me: he leans forward with some interest and begins asking me, did i really think he would let me go, what did i expect would happen the second time and other slightly mocking things, making him sound like a bond villain
me: somehow, and this part is blurry, i break free of the program. maybe i run, maybe i attack him image, but somehow i make it back into the real world
me: i think then i must go and try and free the others. i guess he had most of them physically in a central location, hooked up to his vr
me: when i get, there, however, the people are being let free
me: my friends are rushing away from there like bats out of hell, but they stop and talk to me
me: they're both terribly glad to be let free
me: apparently, the programmer hadn't taken my escape attempts seriously, thinking no one could possibly want to be free of his computer realm
me: when i succeeded in breaking out, it had sort of burst his bubble. he realized that no one wanted to be a part of his new utopia and became despondent
mat: aww poor nerd
me: realizing the people did not in fact view him as the hero he envisioned himself, he opened the borders of his realm. now anyone could reach it and come and go as they pleased, and the women were rushing out of there as quickly as they could
me: i tried to stop them and tell them that since it was opened, they could live in the program freely, but they wanted no part of it after that and left me behind rather preoccupied
me: i, on the other hand, jacked back into the world
me: i met someone in there, a man who was the programmer's sort of agent within the program, a deputy if you will
me: he worked for the programmer, and since the programmer was off, pouting, most like, he fancied himself in charge and was a controlling sort
me: also, kind of a smooth operator manly sort
me: he was in a tight room, resembling a kitchen with dark cabinets and counters, but without kitchen fixtures
me: people were crammed in, trying to set up residence in the world through this man
me: i went in and joined him behind the counter
me: he knew who i was and we got into a row about whether i was allowed to stay, being the reason that the first settlement collapsed and the reason the programmer was now in a funk
me: i declared that i would ask the programmer and he would surely let me remain
mat: naughty carla
mat: mmm yes....naughty...
me: he said that i would never even be allowed to see the programmer
me: so i turned away from him and clapped my hands twice very commandingly
me: and then sort of waited, hoping it would work and i wouldn't look like an idiot
me: and sure enough, the programmer appeared in front of me on the other side of the counter, looking very resigned and sort of sad
me: he looked at me not quite with reproach and asked me to please never summon him that way again
mat: you can be demanding
me: i wasn't really sure what had given me the power to summon him that way, but i had been nearly sure when i did, as i was then, that he liked me and would come when i called. not liked me on a personal level, but had a thing for me, so he couldn't quite help himself.
me: i apologised and told him i wouldn't unless it was urgent and asked if i might stay
me: he got petulant then, and asked why i wanted to stay, when i had just got through escaping
me: i responded that i was free now to come and go as i pleased, so given a choice, how could i choose not to live in the computer-generated world, where everything was much more amazing
me: the programmer seemed sort of pleased at that and didn't quite acquiesce that i could stay, but it was obvious that i would be allowed to
me: the lackey was upset and left in sort of a huff
me: behind the counter with me were shelves crammed with worn paperbacks
me: i asked the programmer, who joined me back there, if there weren't any more books in his world,
me: he said there weren't as if they weren't very important, at which i insisted that he get more as they were very important
me: he turned away from me, and said he'd see if he could work them into the budget and made some writing gestures in the air
me: then he disappeared and i was left there, now sort of a default librarian assuming charge of the books
me: then the dream cut, and i was walking through an arch into a dark, arcade-like room
me: there were parents and children around me with balloons and cotton candy and the like. it was a fair or an amusement park, and it was also the opening to the virtual world
me: beyond the room with the games and flashing lights, i went into a large, round room. a lobby of some sort.
me: a friend of mine, a woman with mid-length curly black hair was showing a video to a group of children on a dais to one side and teaching them about something or other
me: and i walked through
me: up to the next level where there was my small library
me: and above that were there were classrooms
me: in several of the classrooms, my friend downstairs was teaching also, and some other teachers were duplicated, as well
me: i went up to the next floor, a sort of lounge, and met a family
me: there was a staunch-looking father, a rather tight-lipped mother, and a bright-looking young boy with them
me: the father wanted to send his son to school there and he wanted to make sure he was taught properly. he was rich and no-nonsense and wanted his son to have the best education, so long as it turned him into a serious, heterosexual, man with no imagination - he didn't want his son learning any silly, absurd things or sissy stuff
me: and i listened to him and assured him his son would have a proper, moral upbringing and be well-prepared for life, and secretly thought that once the parents were out of the way, as it was a boarding school, in a sense, the child would be free to ask questions and free his imagination and be silly and all the other things a kid ought to do and really, if he were taught here, he would have a much better chance of being a good person than if left to his parents to raise
me: so, i was showing the family the grounds, and we went down a floor and i intended to show him the classes, but we ended up in a giant, circular library (because remember, the entire building is circular) and it is huge, going around all the sides of the room, and open in the middle, with stairs going down to the next floor which is also a library floor, and there are shelves full of books and desks to study at and plush chairs
me: and all of this is my library
me: so i sit the parents down and tell them more about the place
me: and i'm thinking that the programmer must have changed the code to add the library when i was elsewhere
me: and that he had really done all of that for me
me: and it was thenabouts that i was woken up by a call on my cell phone
me: THE END. now respond

(i want to mention that the programmer was in a sense, satan, and also to apologise for any inconsistencies in spelling, grammar, narrative, or intelligence, i wrote this at 4 am and am not know to be my best at that hour.)

ramblin' man

2006-02-08T16:12:00.000-08:00

when greg called me yesterday, he noted it's been a while since my last post, which is a malady i've been aware of since my last post. somehow, i've cooled on the whole blog thing. though i still want a record of my college experience, i seem to lack the motivation to write, or any compelling topic. or rather, any topic that remains compelling for more than 5 minutes at a atime, until my attention span shifts and i become consumed with some other minute issue of my life. that and i'm busy. busy, and for once, finally getting down to work. that is, when i'm not obsessively watching the west wing. i've downloaded the first four seasons since the beginning of the quarter and i'm nearly done with the fourth. it is a show that makes me giggle and bounce giddily in my chair. and it has made me jealous of conversation. i find that more and more i spend my time sitting in silence, watching television, reading, or otherwise silently occupied. i am craving banter. but at least i'm feeling intelligent. i go through strange oscillations of self-image in which i may be bored and inert, or sparked wih some creative force that pervades my thinking. i do wish it were not so unpredictable. i can't quite be sure what to attribut this new change to, perhaps my new workload. i am completely swamped. between memorizing the genus and species of several score of organisms across several genera, researching a paper on sexual traits of monkeys (i spend my evenings typing "primate penis phylogeny" and "primate female orgasm" and "primate infanticide" into google), and just trying to stay afloat in physics and calculus, i'm covered in a faint film of dread whever i go. at the same time, i think the stress my be good for me, preventing me from sinking back into stale oblivion. through it all, i'm still wondering exactly what i will do with myself "when i grow up." more and more i am becoming convinced that biology is not the field for me - i genuinely enjoy the science, but learning about it is a distasteful process bereft of any sort of critical dialogue. if i would like to inject my studies with problem-solving, i would best begin research of some kind, but with research comes a battery of dull, repetitive experiments and exacting requirements for time-management and fiscal responsibility. i think i still might like medicine, but the studies required would be worse, even, than general biology, extremely heavy in memorization. then there are writing and law, both fields i had hardly considered till a year ago, but both incredibly competitive, though in different ways. i'm not sure i could stand either lifestyle of intense molar-grinding competition, or probable starvation. and so, nothing really seems interesting or novel enough to write about. i wish i had more freedom to explore more diverse subjects. already, i doubt i will be able to graduate at the end of my fourth year. at any rate, i am feeling very insufficently competitive to enter any professional school. i may have to go another route and take time off between tiers of education. africa still appeals to me. i think i'm in desperate need of a vacation in which i neither sit around slothfully nor work, as i do whever i go home. i'm going to try and do something a little more diverting during spring break, but my inspiration is short. so please, do contact me with suggestions. othwise i will just spend my time on couches and in bed, unrefreshed and unhappy. cheers, and till i write again...

predictions?

2006-01-01T14:09:00.000-08:00

evidence indicates i will spend '06 sandwiched between two friends and laughing. maybe i'll have bite marks, maybe i'll be kissed by sadaf, maybe it will be all dimwits on tv all the time. (why were ryan seacrest and carson daily involved in new york ball drop, anyway? ring in the new year with 2 of the biggest tool on tv?) so far, i have to say, i'm enamored of the new year. i've got the day off of work, the wind is blustering madly outside, and i'm warm warm warm. now, i'm going to go use up all the hot water in the shower and consume lots of hot cocoa.

jolli-holi-day

2005-12-26T00:43:00.000-08:00

happiness. i have secret little habits that are born of my own joy. good food makes do a seated little happy bouncing wiggle. when i'm reading in bed, all warm and content, i mutter in my own language of contentment "uh-duh-vuh" as i shift around. and while gazing at my so pretty tiny new digital camera, i coo and whisper dotingly. because it is the prettiest little camera ever, with the small and the shiny. and looking at my little christmas tree, a bedecked, besparkled palm, i just giggle. because 'tis the season to be jolly (falalalala). of course, for my entire life, mom has been singing, "'tis the season to be marrrrried, falalalala-lala-la-la." it was a good christmas. apart from the party incident. tried to convice mom and dad to leave the house tomorrow so i could have some friends by for drinking and fun. mom thought it was a great idea, dad took great exception at the suggestion that he would have to leave his home. he's like a dog pissing on stumps to mark his territory.i can't decide now whether i should still try to throw a aprty with my friends here or no. it would be vaguely weird, but at the same time horribly disruptive and spiteful. buahaha. wait, i mean "ho ho ho." also, i discovered i have pent-up rage from the hurtful words spoken over the tattoo incident. mm, the holidays are the perfect time to explore sublimated family resentment, ne pas? ooh! like resent ment over 2 years ago when dad made me cry by berating me for buying him too many presents (which i had put a lot of thought and effort into getting him). mostly, though, christmas this year has been good. i'm not so completely disfuntionally broken than i can't enjoy it with my family, it's just the last 3 hours of christmas that i'm too dysfunctional to enjoy. tomorrow mumsey takes me to get a memory card for my lovely new cam, which i might name hrothgar, to go with my laptop, which has been dubbed beowulf, and little flash card, grendel.and now what can be said after that, but merry holiday to you!

finale

2005-12-15T00:37:00.000-08:00

another finals season rolls around, and once again i fail to participate in the traditional (rah rah) college activities: yelling agonized obscenities out my window every midnight to blow off stresses, running up and down the streets of westwood in my underwear, and entrenching myself in newly-discovered motivation to study. at least my hygiene remains good. my last wikpedia search was for "dilithim crystals," i keep giggling and saying "boobies" (as in blue-footed or masked), i've been gorging myself on m&m's and i have a rising sense of panic with regular periodicity. 'tis the season. soon, the sleep-deprivation will set in. i've already begun to lie awake torturing myself with thoughts of programming, and i already finished that test. nothing but to plow through and live vicariously through kat's video gamming. i'm not too bitter that she's done.

the shat man cometh

2005-12-10T17:08:00.000-08:00

it's been a while since my last post, and i had a birthday and a trip home since then, but i don't want to write about those. both were very good and in both cases, my friends were wonerful to me. that's really all that needs to be said. what i really want to write about is william shatner. oooh, billy, the shat-man. i just downloaded two of his albums (his two albums?) the transformed man and has-been. and i've been listening to them while trying to study for my programminf final. to ambivalent success. oooh! such good things, i'm horribly distracted. the funny thing is, for all my love of the shatner, i haven't even seen all that much old star trek. i've seen some - but not enough to truely justify this little obsession. it's cult of personality, i think. just too cool to not adore.

woke up today after a dream about having a ghost for a lover. literally. started listening to my shatner albums, knowing i was just procrastinating. went to shower, and disloged a large spider when i pulled my towel off the rack, so i spent some time trying to shoo it out onto the balcony. dressed myself in only outerwear and poured myself a glass of water. put shatner on in over the living room speakers and settled in the easy chair with a blanket and pillow for a good read. felt all clean and fragrant as i laughed at the music. the little things that cropped up that might make me unhappy today haven't. and for that i thank william shatner. and his brilliant rendition of tamborine man.

hollywood stars

2005-11-14T20:02:00.000-08:00

i noticed something about living in la today walking back from campus late. living here, you come to expect to not be able to see the stars at night, so you stop looking up. there was one spot of light that shone clear and bright well above the horizon that caught my eye. far brighter than a normal star or even a planet, so perhaps it was something man-made. a satellite, most likely, beaming brightly the the middle of some strange constellation to faint to make out. so i stopped a moment and squinted at the other points of light in the sky, which slowly resolved themselves in front of my eyes. and the more i looked, the more i could make out, across the entire sky. many more then i ever expected to see. hell, living where i did freshman year, the entire sky was taken up by a sickly green haze of light, bounced off the tennis courts. the night sky from home isn't terribly distinct, either, but in certain neighborhoods nearby you can see an abundance of stars in a pitch sky. it's even better out in the hills. getting a little taste of the natural world, paltry as it was, i now want badly to go out into green space. maybe enjoy the pacific coast highway, get out of the city. it's a bit tough without a car, though. but it would be really neat. oh well.

my name is a killing word

2005-11-06T03:15:00.000-08:00

oh my god. dune is on tv right now and i can't go to bed. i can't. stargateis on the channel just below, so during commercials i get to switch to other sci-fi staple. though, seriously, it doesn't hold a candle to the 4-hour glory that is dune. there are the scenes that are in the tv movie version of dune that are missing from the dvd movie version and they're some of the best scenes in the damn thing! like every scene with shadout mapes. what's that about? and the supercool fremin fight. i already own the movies, but i'm completely desperate for the extended version to become available. anyone trying to think of a birthday present for me, think no farther! yee-hee-hee! kat only watched a little bit with me because she has work, which is sort of depressing, because i so love getting to watch this with others, but i never get to see it all. but before she left she made a brilliant comment.

Mentat Piter (to Jessica): Desire for you clouds my judgment. That is not good; it is bad.
Katherine: I'm a math geek and I'm not getting any!

sadaf, who hasn't even seen star wars wishes to learn the ways of teh sci-fi geek. i think she would benefit greatly from sitting in on one of our conversations. we can sometimes hear the guys across the hall having conversations, or mostly yell at football. we yell at sci-fi. "oh my god! it's wormtongue!!" "i can totally see it!" this movie is great for the famous cameos. we have "al" from quantum leap, and captain picard, and "trey" from sex and the city, of course, "wormtongue" from lord of the rings and the dr. from alien:resurrection, and sting. sting! it's a veritable buffet of references. but i will introduce sadaf to star wars first. it only seems fitting. and shit, it's shorter. i think next weekend, i get to introduce her to proper dorkdom. she's already a programmer, this must be done. anyone interested in helping is welcome to join.

i'm going to continue to watch now and try to think up drinking games based on the movie. it would be too easy to do an "every time they say 'spice'" thing - wouldn't last halfway into the movie, and the thing is damn long. maybe every time they say "thumper." every time baron harkkonen makes you queasy. any time someone mentions "the prophesy." hmm, damn, this is actually really easy.

don't forget to dance

2005-11-02T01:03:00.000-08:00

today, rather than study for my evolution midterm, i'm going to give you, the audience, a crash course in natural selection.

now, there are 3 conditions necessary for natural selection to exist. let us explore them.

1) there must be variation in a population. let us perform a scientific observation to demonstrate this fact. go outside. do not turn on the tv. (tv people are a special sub-species homo sapien coificus and are grossly inbred. needless to say, variation has been reduced in that population.) go outside. see the pretty people? see the ugly people? see the asians? see the jews? that is variation, baby. let us put a big check next to that box.

2) this variation must be, at least in part, heritable. find a photograph of your folks. stare at it for a while. then start yelling at the picture, "i am not like you, daddy! i will never be like you! i am my own person! i am an adult with my own mind to make up about things and i will not marry my mother i will not turn into you, daddy, i will not be like you!!" and sob for a bit. then realize you are exactly like you parents, and pour yourself a big scotch. QED.

3) this variation must confer variable success at survival or reproduction. go to a middle school dance. stand in a corner and watch the kiddies for a bit. maybe request a slow song or two. that should give you a pretty clear picture of things.

that is how natural selection works. the things that make us different also make us better or worse than one another, in pretty much the same way our parents were better or worse than other people. the best people will get all the tail. and possibly go on to become television personalities.

FADE OUT, CUE MUSIC

You look out of your window,
Into the night.
Could be rain, could be snow,
But it can't feel as cold as what you're feeling inside.

And all of you friends are either married, vanished,
Or just left alone.
But that's no reason to just stop living.
That's no excuse to just give in to a sad and lonely heart.

Don't forget to dance, no, no, no,
Don't forget to smile.
Don't forget to dance, no, no, no,
Forget it for a while.

MUSIC FADES

improbable joy

2005-11-01T03:06:00.000-08:00

i have an important midterm bright and early tomorrow morning, i just finished going through all the info for the first time, and it is 3 am. yet i am happy. here's why:

i created a giant poster-sized printout of an excel document with all the relevant data on 3 classes of blood parasite and it's beautiful. and it's hanging above my bed.

i got a new bed the other day. now i have a bed. i no longer sleep quite so near ground leveland i can tuck my sheets nicely in.

i got to justifiably cuss at people. it was past midnight, i was in the lobby of my apartment building waiting for the elevator. button was lit, no elevator. push button repeatedly in ire. wait. no elevator. wait. then i start to hear voices drifting down through the elevator shaft. a couple is arguing. the might be holding up the elevator, i think. but no, who's that stupid? i wait. ire. voices continue. i kick the elevator door a little to relieve frustration. impatient ire. i consider going on a search of the stairs that i know have to be somewhere in the building. finally, i yell, "stop arguing in the fucking elevator and send it down!" i half think that they're not even in the elevator and i'm just yelling at doors. there is silence. pause. elevator noises. guy steps out of elevator, glances at me and rushes out of the building. i get to go up to my apartment feeling all self-righteous. hah!

i am listening to what, with my horrid language skills, i can only assume is a direct translation of that aqua song "barbie girl" into dutch...or german. it is the most spectacular thing i ever heard.it makes me wanna hug a guy in leiderhosen and maybe give him a stuffed pony or a shiny apple for a present.

am happy, so i say, "choose life!"

(that's not so much a pollitical statement, as an endorsement of george michael. pretty sure)

scientific semantics

2005-10-18T00:13:00.000-07:00

my evolution class is giving me problems. the first two weeks of lecture were spent describing fossil formation and geologic forces, which, frankly, bore me. somehow interspersed with that, though, were intriguing examples of speciation - complelling proofs of evolution that i wished we would study more in depth, but was unsure whether i should be taking notes on. conscequently, most of my time spent in that class has been in one way or another mostly unconscious of what is being said by the lecturer, re. sleep or complete absorbtion in a book. the other aspect of the class, a discussion section that meets once a week is also mildly consternating. we read two articles before the discussion and are expected to have thought-provoking questions about them that we will all socratically discuss. i have no objection to discussion, frankly, i am one of the more voluble people in the room, but i can't say i am terribly patient with others' opinions, when, to me they seem uninformed. and in preparation for my next discussion, tomorrow, as it may be, i am reading two articles on adaptive theories. what irritates me is not so much what the authors are saying, but how much of their arguments seem to be based on semantics. or rather, the words we use to describe phenomena perhaps hindering our understanding of such phenomena.

i will, for example, take one of richard lewonton's points in the paper adaptation and turn it to my own purposes. the word "niche" is defined as an organism's interactions with both it's organic and inorganic surroundings. it is colloquially defined as an organism's environmental "role," however. this second and more lingering definition in a way poisions our impression of the character of niches. we begin to speak of niches as occuring independantly of the organisms that fill them. such as "the niche was opportunistically filled by the xxx, which found it vacant." as if niches were rather like apartments, occupied and vacated by various species, being created or becoming extinct at intervals, and occasionally being sublet. this view is erroneous, however, as it implies that the niches are static and well-defined. but by adding new, random parameters, a creative or perverse enough mind could name dozens of unfilled niches and wonder why no organism has evolved to fill them. organisms would over the years evolve to better fit their niches, though by evolving inherently change their behavior and traits. it is pointless, then, to define a niche as an entity separate from the organism itself, or as the organism's "role," as this leads to consternating circular reasoning. describing a niche as an organism's "role" has the doubly upsetting consequence of inviting the use of a whole new set of language to adaption. organisms "evolve to fill a niche" (a phrase often encountered, unfortunately) and suddenly have self-determined fates. natural selection is suddenly given the awkward trait of sentience, as if it had an endgame in mind, suiting the species to fit in its square or round peg.

since both articles i'm reading for tomorrow introduce the potential for that sort of ambiguity of language, i'm pretty sure i'll be grinding my teeth at some point. that, and there is one girl who, in both (?) of the previous discussions, has irritated me in some way by making an irritatingly narrow-minded point. the kind of thing that makes some people go, "hmmm, yes, i wonder..." and me go, "but that's completely irrelevant to everything as it exists now!" i try very hard not to be contentious, but sometimes, that is difficult. so, my class seems like it will be full of fascinating information, that i must sift through detritus and crap to get to. but at least i sort of enjoy arguing.

in-between times

2005-10-14T01:12:00.000-07:00

i've been somewhere between content and full of malaise the past few days.

some things have made me very happy, like seeing a man dressed as wolverine on the street. or watching lots and lots of arrested development. or finishing my programming project with kick-ass competance. boo-yah!

other things have made me dive into gloomfest. mostly, boring lectures. also, the fine white anthers that fall like intermittant snow from the eucalyptus trees outside of boelter and lodge into the seam between the case and screen of my laptop.

and some things have left me feeling oddly conflicted. like making conversation with one of the gardeners on campus and having a nice talk in spanish no less, but then being asked for my phone number and suddenly realizing that it's possible that i was unwittingly being flirted with. hrrrm.

and plenty of things have thrown me into little rages. like the asian couple who sit in the back row of the lecture hall during evolution and mutter quietly to one another and cuddle over the armrest. and the horrible smile that he gave her the other day, like contented condescending sexual posession. it's a smile i've only ever seen in men. and the girl in my parasitology class who leaves her giant purse sitting in the chair next to her, even though she sits right by the aisle and people have to sit on the stairs because they come in late. the fact that my biogeochemistry professor gave us homework problems with several values all with different units that needed to be converted and all in blatantly obnoxious non-scientific notation.

and then there are the little contented moments, like just after i finished snow crash. and three days later, after i finished life of pi. or when i went to bed knowing that i could sleep late because i was skipping my programming discussion section. or when i hug my stuffed hippo. or when i introduced myself to the guy in my parasitology class because it was silly that we were walking down all the same streets almost side-by-side. or when i take my laptop to class and it sits all sleek and warm inside my backpack, waiting to emerge and be just terribly useful.

and one mustn't forget the small annoyances. getting my clothes out of the dryer to discover that they smelled like man-detergent, and thus a little bit like blaize (whose detergent it was). the fact that i still can't seem to sit quietly and just go through my parasitology online lectures like a good, studious girl without serious attention disorders.

and there's the sleepy, woozy headrush feeling after just waking up, or standing up, or not thinking too hard, or when i have to make sense of immunological facts.

and between all those other feelings, has been a sort of shiftless, bored, funk, where the back of my mind seems to be caught in a haze, like a thick fog lingering just at the edge of sight. and it's as if i'm just waiting for something to come along and stimulate me out of that apathy and into some real thoughts. such are the cycles of my brain.

another day

2005-10-08T02:22:00.000-07:00

nice day, today. warm, though not perfect. had classes, which shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. i turned in one c++ program and began another one, which was more complex than i was strictly prepared for, but i think i have it well done. the programming left me all keen and high (have weird love of programming), which was a nice change as i spent most of my morning fantasizing about sexually mauling someone in the halls of the engineering building. actually spent rather more time than is healthy glazed over deep in deep thoughts such as that. got back to the apartment and was startled to see blake on the couch, as apparently he's graduated and living in the bay area, but he was down for job interviews and stopped by to see kat. i kamikazied an overlarge bowl of cereal while watching them make small talk and then lounged on the couch for a bit. read the second third or so of snow crash (in the grand cyberpunk tradition), which actually had kept me glazed for most of thursday's lectures, as i had it out on my lap while i was taking notes. the internet was out at the apartment all afternoon, as was the normal cable television, so i was left to amuse myself in other ways. ended up watching 10 or so episodes of arrested development and knitting a couple of lines on my scarf before dinner. i put my hair into braided pigtails, then kat and i finally went to see serenity. pretty good movie, didn't stray too drastically from the expected, so i wasn't horribly disappointed nor terribly pleased. i probably had a stronger reaction to the season premiere of veronica mars (echoed cries of "that's so fucked up!"), though i can't believe whedon killed off...!!! no, seriously, you killed off, like, my favorite character, you bastard. back to the apartment and down the hall a loud party was being thrown, which i'm pretty sure was in huge breach of rental contract, but, like, whatever, hurrah. read a bit more, fucked around online, and then, bed, and i'm still thinking about my nether bits. tomorrow i have some chemical oceanography homework to look at, a molecular parasitology lecture to read through, and another short program to code. it actually sounds sort of fun, though part of me still really wants to get drunk and then slobber on someone. or at least watch wrath of khan. that's been coming up too many times lately.

a simple summary

2005-10-02T03:55:00.000-07:00

things have happened to me, but i'm afraid i havne't had a terribly compelling way to tell the stories. i moved down to la for school, of course, classes have started. my apartment is very nice this year, and i'm eager to live in a place what doesn't have indoor flooding. father and i were still rather rageful when he joined mom and me in la. after driving down from san fransisco without any traffic violations or overly reckless moments, i drove through a stop sign to get away from him and his whinging, unfortunately, he was in the back seat. i was sad we couldn't sit through a civil dinner, and for such a petty reason, at least on his part, but we parted with tender words of familial concern and i felt sort of bad about the fights. been hemmoraging money in la, but i excuse the expenses as normal new-apartment costs, and anyways kat and i, mostly due to managerial fuck-ups, are paid up through november. we attended a party shortly after coming here. party with booze, but i couldn't get drunk due to upset tum. sober as a mormon, i was hit on by three guy in decreasing unappeal. the first tried to nuzzle my phone number from my neck on the dance floor. the second tried the time-honored technique of dull conversation...on the dance floor. amusingly, he had been trying to catch my eye over the first gentleman's shoulder. i ran into the third on my way out the door, where he lurked with his friends, playing up the cute, ecclectic foreigner bit and wins on the points of originality and humor. i've seen most of my friends in town to mixed receptions - mostly very warm and cuddly, though some distressingly indifferent. i've been spending my time slothing around the apartment and watching episodes of firefly, a shockingly good series. i've also begun a pen and ink portrait, utilizing skills i had feared atrophied with almost a year's disuse. i'm happy to report, though, that my abilites appear to have remained intact and the piece is progressing nicely. it is an activity i greatly missed, however, and i feel as if i have regained something i did not realize i lacked. every so often, i remember a silly thing my mother does and i miss her teribly. mostly, when i'm watching one of the many spanish language channels or the food network, one of her silly chestnuts will pop into my head and i'll grow sad. beyond that, i find that at around 1 each night, i grow terribly anxious and must stretch my limbs, go outside, walk around. as one who has never had much use for jogging, it's peculiar that i am actually fighting the urge to go out into the night and run. and i must find someone with whom i may have the epic sort of conversations i so love. i would rather they be in person than over the phone, but i sit down with so few people here to actually have one of those lovely, long talks. i think that was the simplest thing to relate everything that's been going on in my life during my period of relative radio silence. at least the main points. oh, but i could use your input on a few things that have been on my mind:

1) what is the difference between corinthian and ionic columns (possibly misspelled, possibly just plain wrong) and there's a third type, isn't there?
2) if bizzaro world were really opposite to ours, what exactly would the landscape look like?

thanks, and goodnight. ;)