responding to internal stimuli

Mon, 27 Dec 2004

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the wall

I, my friends, have hit the wall.

It, no doubt, has something to do with the fact that in the past 2 months, I've gotten only two weekends off. Both of those, AFAICR, involved doing very exhausting things, and they weren't so much weekends off as they were days trying to catch up with the rest of my life.

Nonetheless, bills remain unpaid, trash lies uncollected, laundry sits unwashed.

Futility isn't exactly what I mean, but it's the best word I can come up with at the moment.

The bright, but possibly disastrous, spot in all of this is that I know that this can't go on forever, for various reasons.

Either I survive, or I don't.

I've gotten to the point where there's no use in worrying about it. Whatever happens, happens.

The ends of years just absolutely kill me.

10:25:42 27 Dec 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

Wed, 01 Dec 2004

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song

the light the rain, the spilt shifting sand and lightning fog like ripe blossoms dessicated by the desert's furnace winds withering breath

we swear upon the souls of our grandmothers our grandfathers all this shit-stained mewling and bloody nothingness destiny makes us all miserable wracked with horror and agony sunk into tiny particles of despair of decay we wonder time and matter and free energy and freedom let it ring! some dream some trick some hoax each second is a four dimensional prison if there was only a way to flow between into the cracks and fissures of reality

we try to draw this out this ichor this poison as if with activated charcoal after downing an entire bottle of pain-killers how to kill the pain is to kill one's self and there is no other way around without resorting to sophistry

we sing like lightning and thunder and the hurricane winds rip roar around us like man eating predators like the lizard kings in the days before the meteor and still like tongues of fire like the roiling sea I cannot cease crafting nonsense words for all the things I will never understand

22:18:12 1 Dec 2004 > /poetry > permalink > 0 comments

Sat, 27 Nov 2004

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post-turkey depression

I now officially hate the holiday season.

I can't really explain this sense of dysphoria churning inside of me right now. I am angry and depressed at the same time, at nothing specific. There is no target of my ire, just this vague feeling of wanting to bash something with a baseball bat.

It's ironic that now that I only live 2 hours away from home, I still can't really come home. Not in a metaphysical sense, at least. There's something missing. It isn't really the fact that my sister is 3,000 miles away, because for years now neither my brother nor my sister have been home very much.

It's just that the last few holiday seasons just make me think of an old VHS tape being played over and over again, each time losing some of its quality, deteriorating from wear and tear.

I don't want to say it, and I don't want to believe it, but nonetheless: I think it's because we are all growing old. Not just older, either. And there aren't any kids in the family. There is no one with a sense of wonderment around, no one to ooh and ahh the pretty lights and the decorations and the special dishes and the turkey and the pumpkin pie and the cambing and the bibingka. It's just the same old, same old each year, and one of these days, someone is simply not going to show up, and not because they have something better to do. Yeah, I'm being morbid.

Speaking of which, I basically spent the weekend killing things. No, not in real life. But, bizarrely, it has become a sort of tradition between me and my brother. We sort of mutually decide on a particular video game and play it for hours and hours on end. This year it was Halo 2.

Maybe it was the fact that we beat it so easily, and the ending was really anticlimactic. (But that's all I'll say about that.)

---

and again, I really get too much time to think as I drive back and forth between S.D. and L.A. I realize that at this stage in time, I don't have a long range plan. I'm sure if you knew me well, you'd think that this wouldn't be surprising, and you'd think it would be ludicrous for me to saying something like this, but it's really odd. If you've ever watched "The Princess Bride," you'll remember Iñigo Montoya's little soliloquy about not knowing what to do now that he has avenged his father, after about a decade and a half of looking for his father's murderer. I guess you could say I feel a little like that, what with finally finishing med school after how many long hard, dark years, many of which were spent in going in circles and in backtracking. And sure, there are a few short-to-medium term goals that I have, but they're merely details.

I've always been a big-picture kind of guy, and right now, there isn't one.

I know, I know. Day by day.

---

Maybe it's because of the dream I had last night. I had a really hard time going to sleep for some reason and I woke up with a horrific headache. But I dreamt about my ex-girlfriend who has recently gotten married. The content of the dream eludes me at this time. All I remember is being frustrated, or maybe jealous. I don't know.

---

And basically, when I come home, it's just backstabbing and shit-talking. I suppose my parents and my aunts and uncles are at that stage in their life where it's all about looking back, and they keep digging up all this old bullshit that just pisses people off in one way or another. There's this phony facade of getting along, but deep down, there are grudges brewing, and venom simmering. And I know it's all pointless, because you can't undo the past without undoing the present.

---

I guess it's just the depressing idea of feeling so alone amidst all these people, my family. Home these days means this squalid, one bedroom apartment that I barely sleep in, much less live in, because I'm always at work. I only feel safe here because there's no one around to do any emotional or mental harm, not because it's really Home™

And that thought sends me tumbling down the tired old discussion of the futility of ever finding someone who'll come along with me down these twisted paths, the paths least taken through life. Someone who wants to come along, not because they're desperate to be with someone, anyone, as long as its a warm body, not because I'm hopelessly in love with them and they can manipulate me like a puppet on a string. Just someone who is going the same way as I am, and someone who'd welcome my companionship on this journey.

I don't know. Who knows what I want. All I know is that the lifestyle I'm leading right now can't be permanent, because one day I'll get completely bored with all my useless free time and quite possible blow my brains out.

(P.S. That wasn't suicidal ideation. I'm just being melodramatic as usual.)

Whatever. As they say, tomorrow is yet another day.

23:13:16 27 Nov 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

Tue, 09 Nov 2004

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getting the hell out

I had long, reasoned talk with the attending physician I work for after the election. She and I are both liberals in a city overrun by conservatives, and we got to talking about leaving the country.

Now I know that we shouldn't bail out quite yet. After all, California is a pretty blue state, and who knows, maybe San Diego could have a liberal mayor yet (Go Donna Frye!) I was actually quite amazed at the number of Kerry/Edwards stickers I've seen here in S.D., and I have a feeling a good number of those are on the cars of people in the military who are sick of the shit that Rumsfeld and W are feeding them.

Various forms of secession have been discussed on the Internet[1][2][3], abetted by the fact that Red State America would be gladdened by getting rid of us. California would probably be all right on its own, although I'm sure water rights to the Colorado River would get nasty, a border war waiting to happen. (I wonder if Las Vegas would join up with us? After all, much of the commerce done there is by Californians, and Clark County voted pretty blue. Then we'd have a bigger claim on the Colorado...)

Barring successful independence from Jesusland, I've tried to figure out a graceful exit plan. There is a chance that tyranny will be overcome, and perhaps we will be a free country again in 2008, when I finish my residency, but I'm not holding my breath. So currently I'm looking for a place to deposit my money where I can hold it in pound sterling in anticipation of the impending massive devaluation of American dollar, once China decides it's done with subsidizing our massive deficit and gets rid of their hoard of dollars. I'm still a little wary of the Euro, although I suspect it will be much more stable than the dollar in the next few years, so we'll see. I still haven't figured out a country to emigrate to, though. One, I have to figure out somewhere where my M.D. would translate into a job. Two, I'd have to find a place where I wouldn't be driven to suicide by seasonal affective disorder. (So despite it's utopian-like society, this kind of X'es out Finland.) Now lest you believe I'll be surrounded by white people, well, I will be, but there are Filipinos everywhere. I've met Pinoys and Pinays from Norway, Denmark, Austria, you name it. Good thing I know a little Tagalog.

But I'm not in a hurry. I'll have to keep my ear to the ground in case there is a civil war, but maybe W will go the way of Nixon and fail to finish his term.

14:26:45 9 Nov 2004 > /unrealcity > permalink > 0 comments

Sat, 02 Oct 2004

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fall of the towers

Just finished Samuel Delany's book "Fall of the Towers." The title caught me for obvious reasons, although the book was written well in the '60's, during the social turmoil of that era. Interestingly, despite being written 40 years ago, it is astoundingly relevant to today. The story is about an Empire that has found that it no longer has any space to expand, causing economic turmoil. The tanking economy is making jobs scarce, and unemployment causes an increase in crime. The society depicted takes to locking up their criminals in mines, but even that isn't enough to stem the tide of discontentment and decay, so they decide to go to war, against an enemy that may not really exist. At least, there is no real "other," the political and financial intrigues in the Empire come together that certain events look like attacks by an outside enemy. When they discover that there really is no enemy, they nonetheless keep up the pretense of war, the people in power refusing to admit to themselves the disaster they have wrought. It still isn't enough to control the malcontent by sending them off to war. And in the end, the made-up war gets out of control, and backfires on the Empire, and eventually, the Empire crumbles.

Through the lens of my completely informal understanding of poli sci and ethnic studies, it seems like an allegory of Marxism. Capitalism will eat itself. But somehow this text makes me come upon this conclusion: Communism isn't the end-stage of economic development. It is the beginning stage. And it still does come after capitalism. But once capitalism destroys itself, we have no choice but to start over again. With the population thinned by the inevitable destructive forces unleashed by the destruction of capitalism, while the land may be wracked and ruined and probably radioactive, most likely, the resource to person ratio will be increased. In a society where everything is abundant except for labor, it doesn't make sense to create a capitalist system. The infrastructure has to be rebuilt first, and every hand will be needed to do that. Since there is no (relative) scarcity in a post-apocalyptic world, it is difficult to accumulate what would be a meaningful amount of wealth. But as the population grows, and resources get scarcer, market forces come into play, and supply and demand inevitably create classes of haves and have-nots.

In history, it makes a lot of sense. When the English colonized the East Coast, their relatively small population was met with an abundance of resources. They had no choice but to band together to build the infrastructure, because without infrastructure you are vulnerable to the environment: starvation, drought, cold, etc. In the early days of the Republic, the economy of the time is often described as a "moral economy," a sort of intermediate phase between communism and capitalism. While wealth could be created, the group's social cohesiveness still keeps market forces in check, and entrepeneurs made sure to trade only things that the colonists could use, and made sure not to gouge them for it. In other words, it was a planned economy, really, although the "moral" part underscores the Calvinistic undertones.

So, contrary to the common Western concept of linear progress, economic systems are cyclic. Everything changes and evolves, and sometimes we are forced to start all over again.

11:40:45 2 Oct 2004 > /books > permalink > 1 comments

Thu, 30 Sep 2004

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fall

It is exquisitely subtle, but there is indeed an autumn in Southern California. Despite the fact that the highs are still in the 70s, the evenings feel pretty chilly. Like sweatshirt or light jacket chilly.

The smell of burning leaves pervades the crisp air, which, I suppose, makes sense since October is fire season. I always wondered what that smell was, but after the holocaust last year, I suppose it's the smell of the natural life cycle of chapparal.

When I was in the Midwest, the fall would always fill me with sadness and dread about the long, painful winter. The waning of daylight would send me into a tailspin of seasonal affective disorder. But, here, because of the eternal blue, cloudless sky and temperatures that rarely drop below the 50s even in the heart of winter, I feel myself more buoyant.

I'm not going to call it hope, though. It's been a long time since I've had that. ("Haven't had a dream in a long time/See the luck I've had would make a good man bad…" Thank you, Steven Morrissey. And Ferris Bueller.) Although maybe I wouldn't recognize it even if it bit me in the ass.

I might just start worshipping the Sun. Ra, Helios, Amaterasu, Mata Hari, Tamit, whatever you want to call him/her/it.

23:45:24 30 Sep 2004 > > permalink > 0 comments

Wed, 29 Sep 2004

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nyc fall 2004

Everytime I go on a trip, I always end up immersing myself in mind-numbing, artless pop music. These are the times I actually watch MTV (er, MTV2 and VH-1, to be precise) and I actually find out what they're playing on the radio these days. (I have saved myself from Clear Channel-style brainwashing by utilizing my iPod. How about that. Apple protects you from Big Brother, no?)

So without further adieu, the shit I heard on the radio, which I cannot get out of my head no matter how much I pray to God, and which I completely infect other people around me with, much to their chagrin:

1. Destiny's Child "Lose My Breath"
2. Avril Lavigne "Happy Ending"
3. Usher and Alicia Keys "My Boo"
4. Kylie Minogue "Fever"
5. Frou Frou "Let Go"
6. Juvenile "Slow Motion"
7. Terror Squad "Lean Back"
8. Black Eyed Peas "Let's Get it Started"
9. N.O.R.E. featuring Nina Sky and Tego Calderon "Oye Mi Canto"

"Happy Ending" was the annoying song that would always get stuck in our heads. "Lose My Breath" played repeatedly and endlessly as we attempted to cross the George Washington Bridge to visit my relatives. It took about an hour to leave the city, and another hour to get to their place. The GWB was a clusterfuck of immense proportions. We probably heard the song about four times before we finally crossed the Hudson. I heard "Fever," which is an old track, playing in one of those jeans stores in SoHo. It was pretty infectious, kind of retro, freestylish, very '80's-like. Then again, Kylie did have a little stint in the '80's. "Lean Back" only stuck in my head because it references (intentionally? or not?) a place name in NYC, namely, Rockaway. "Oye Mi Canto" was playing everywhere. It took me a while to figure out Nina Sky is saying "Borequa morena, Columbiano, Dominicano." Interestingly, when I made it back to the West Coast, they added a few lines: "Borequa morena, Cubano, Mexicano" It's kind of like that song by "Deja Vu (Uptown Baby)" by Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz, where each city inserted it's own place names into the chorus.

There was one song that I rediscovered on my iPod as I headed back downtown after making it all the way to 190th St. in Manhattan. It's kind of neat to be listening to a song in an artist's place of origin. Like listening to 2pac while in L.A., Kanye West while in Chicago.

Mos Def resurrects a freestyle classic "Summertime," originally done by Nocera. It was pretty sweet to be cruising down the West Side while groovin' to Mos. I did actually make it to Brooklyn, however briefly.

21:48:00 29 Sep 2004 > /playlist > permalink > 0 comments

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messy, not dirty

So I like to claim, at least. So today I gave in to my Virgoness and decided to neaten the tangled web of wires running all through my living room. Power cords, 10-base-T ethernet, USB, audio, cable. Like a sea of tangled snakes. I went down to Target and picked up some 3M cord controllers (or whatever you call 'em) and went to town. I don't know what it is (maybe it's just the realization that I spent 3 hours of my life that I'll never get back) but it does seem a lot neater. Of course, the rest of the apartment is a complete shithole at this juncture. I really don't know where to start. Stupid vacation.

Fuck. I have to work tomorrow.

21:25:11 29 Sep 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

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red line to the sea

As I pine for non-asphalt dependent public transit in L.A., the City Council decides to support an expansion of the Red Line [registration required] The Red Line is L.A.'s only existing heavy-rail subway, which currently runs from Downtown L.A. (starting at Union Station) up to North Hollywood (trying to bite off of SoHo in NYC and calling itself NoHo), with a little spur that goes a little ways down Wilshire Blvd. That spur was actually suppose to go all the way to the Westside, but, unfortunately, there were a bunch of explosive methane pockets in the way (undoubtedly inspiring the movie "Volcano") The straw that broke the camel's back was the huge sinkhole that formed in Hollywood, and politics killed any more expansion. The MTA has instead focused on light-rail and improving the bus system.

But traffic down Wilshire Blvd. is horrrrible, and the stupid bus lanes are actually hurting businesses and making the traffic worse for cars, so they are now reconsidering.

The price tag is stupendous: $1 billion. (I feel like laughing evilly and maniacally, and putting my pinky in my mouth.) But if it happens, then L.A. is on its way to becoming a world class city.

21:21:21 29 Sep 2004 > /unrealcity > permalink > 0 comments

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crash

Jesus Fucking Christ. When "crash" just doesn't mean the computer is going down. Remember that 3 hour delay at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) a couple of weeks ago? It was because a Windows server crashed, leaving 800 planes stranded in mid-air, completely out of touch with the air traffic control system, and leading to at least 5 instances of near-collisions.

If you ever fly in and out of LAX, I would suggest writing to the FAA to fucking switch back to using a UNIX system. Those things can run forever without crashing, while a Windows computer is apparently supposed to crash every 49.7 days or so.

08:33:15 29 Sep 2004 > /computers > permalink > 0 comments

Tue, 28 Sep 2004

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gold line

I randomly decided to hop on the MTA Gold Line, which runs from Union Station in Downtown L.A. to the eastern edge of Pasadena. I got on at the Lincoln Heights/Cypress Park stop and headed north to Lake Avenue in Pasadena, where I hoofed it down to Colorado Ave to visit Vroman's Bookstore (for some reason I can't get the actual site to load up, so I linked Google's cache.) I splurged and bought too many books, but, oh well. I have no excuses. On the way back I hopped on at the Memorial Park Station, which is where you would get off if you were interested in visiting Old Town. The bohemian-like enclave that I sighted off of the Mission St Station in South Pasadena intrigued me, and I had a rather late lunch there. I kind of wonder if it has always been there, or if it literally grew around the station. Of course, it was mostly white people. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

It looks like there are going to be massive developments adjacent the Lincoln Heights/Cypress Park station. There were a bunch of bulldozers at a vacant lot right next to the station. Just a block or so down the street is the Los Angeles River Gardens, which was the former site of Lawry's. I didn't really get to tarry too long there, although I may consider stopping there tomorrow before I head home.

While many people think it is completely ludicrous to build rail (whether heavy or light) in the city that built one of the first freeways in the country, it is interesting the patterns of development that subway and light-rail stations create. For better and for worse, nodes of gentrification are developing. You can see this most conspicuously at the Hollywood and Western stop off the Red Line. When I was in high school, this place was teeming with porno shops, and ladies were working the streets bigtime. Now it has given way to miles of non-descript strip malls and new housing developments.

I did have to chuckle a bit as the Gold Line crossed over the parking-lot like Pasadena Freeway. The experts estimate that the average speed of rush hour traffic will drop off to about 17 mph in a few years. Freeway widening will have little relief. (As I read somewhere—unfortunately I can't give proper credit—freeway widening is a little too much like trying to solve your weight problem by merely loosening your pants.)

Ever since I first rode the trains in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, I've dreamt of being able to traverse the City of Angels without ever having to hop in my car. It is unlikely this will ever happen in my lifetime, but at least the MTA is heading in the right direction. They plan to expand the Gold Line to go through East L.A. and some of the more proximal suburbs of the San Gabriel Valley. There is talk of using existing railroad right-of-way for the Expo Line, which would provide access to Mid-Wilshire and West L.A., and maybe even Santa Monica. As the traffic continues to worsen, as gas prices continue to rise, and as the world's oil supply slowly becomes depleted, someday the City of Angels will have to look to the future and build a reasonable transportation infrastructure.

One of the neat things about the Gold Line is the scenic route through the Arroyo Seco. As it heads out from Union Station, you get some of the urban vibe, but it quickly enters the viaduct maze where the L.A. River rounds the bend past the hills where Dodger Stadium and Elysian Park sit. From there on it gets pretty residential, and downright nature like, until it hits Pasadena. It quickly passes through a completely industrial area then ends up in Old Town, which is chock full of commercial fun. From there it finds itself in the median of the Foothill Freeway, where things are a little more nondescript, although Mt. Wilson looms grandly to the North. In the straight-up industrial and residential outskirts of New York and Chicago, I do not think you can get this kind of view. Sure, you get an excellent urban feel, which probably cannot be reduplicated in L.A. (although downtown L.A. does serve as the inspiration for all that noir fiction), but that's about it. In contrast, the Gold Line manages to highlight the natural beauty of the city which has resisted taming by even the most zealous developers. As one of my fellow passengers remarked, "Wow, this ride sure is pretty."

Which brings me to the fact that lots of people use the light-rail. In a city where it is often stated that there are more cars than people, in a city where the combined surface area of all the freeways could probably pave the entire state of Rhode Island over, in a city for which there is a song about how no one walks there, a lot of people overlook the reality that not everyone can afford a car, and the annual reg fees, the insurance premiums, the gasoline. In the trains I rode, most of the seats were occupied. Granted, no one had to stand up, and it wasn't packed the way a rush hour Brooklyn-bound B-train gets packed, but it was still impressive that lots of people were using it.

There was a computer game once upon a time (in the early 1990's) called "Rise of the Dragon" which depicted the city of L.A. with actually useful public transit. Like subways and shit. Since then, it's always been something I fantasize about. Imagine being able to take a train out to the beach on any of those numerous 70 degree days anytime during the year, and not having it take 2 hours to get back home. Imagine being able to hit all the hotspots without having to hop into a car.

Again, unlikely in my lifetime. Ah well.

23:43:27 28 Sep 2004 > /unrealcity > permalink > 0 comments

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k-ci and jo-jo "all my life"

It is interesting how travel to a distance place defines a boundary in time. Less opaquely, my trip to NYC sort of divides things into pre-vacation and post-vacation.

I admit. I am making a mountain out of a molehill.

I feel changed, as usual, by this trip. Which is interesting since I really didn't do much that was different from what I usually do when I'm out there. Walk around what is essentially a gigantic outdoor mall called Soho. Check out Central Park, the museums. Visit friends who I haven't seen for a million years and who try to eke out a few minutes out of their busy schedules just to meet up. Take the subway everywhere.

On one hand, I left with a tinge of sadness. I suppose the end of vacation is always tinged by a little sadness. But my friends and family out there in the city—expatriate Californians, the lot of them—are dear to me, and I miss them. The Internet and cel phones with monstrous amounts of minutes make the barrier of distance more permeable, but nothing beats being face to face and hanging out and just shooting the shit with an old friend.

But, now that I am on the other side, just waiting to go back to work, I realize for truth that I would not have survived easily there.

The illusion of being able to stay in touch is easy to fall for when you're on vacation, but the sad reality is that without extraordinary effort, even if you live across the street from one another, it is hard to not feel isolated. Even here, surrounded by family, the loneliness will sometimes wake me up in the middle of the night, this hole inside me aching, and me not knowing at all how to stop it from doing so.

I am slowly growing used to the notion that, no matter what, at the end of your life, you are alone. Now, I am, statistically speaking, nowhere near the end of my life, but, the point is, I am trying to grow accustomed to the idea that loneliness is an unavoidable aspect of the human condition.

But the reason this particular song struck me as I was letting iTunes meander through my rather incoherent music library is that it makes me think of my second trip to NYC ever, back in 1997.

I was still in college, and it was a family vacation with my parents and my brother and my sister, the first stop in an East Coast cavalcade that would eventually run down to Virginia Beach. We stayed in Midtown, and did all the tourist things. The Empire State Building. The Statue of Liberty. Times Square. Watching a musical on Broadway. The World Trade Center. (Me and my brother have this now eerie picture with the WTC in the background.) Shopping on 5th Ave. St. Patrick's Cathedral.

I think back, and I still remember just who exactly it was I had a crush on at that time. It is interesting to reflect on how I actually had hope back then, however misguided.

I was struck, however, by the fact that despite being surrounded by 15 million people in an area that is probably just on the scale of the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, FL, it is still possible to feel completely alone.

I do not understand why I have allowed the aftermath of that time in my life to continue to haunt me to this day.

It's like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, really. You can figure out the causal chain of events, but you can never really pinpoint what exactly made you become the way you are. It will forever remain a mystery, the complex way that certain events in my life have conspired to lock me in to a particular behavior.

You know you're in trouble when you start entertaining the possibility that you are still right, and all the 6 billion other people in the world are wrong.

But this is all very cryptic, and I don't expect anyone to read this and understand what the hell I'm getting at. I have a feeling that a week from now, I'll read this entry and even I won't understand what the hell I'm talking about.

I was glancing briefly at Chuck Palahniuk's non-fiction work entitled Stranger than Fiction. His prologue brought up the interesting dialectic of the human condition. When we are in a crowd, we long to be in solitude. When we are alone, we start feeling lonely, and long to be in a crowd. I think it is more complex than just the "grass is always greener" syndrome. I think that it borders on pathology, just one hair shy of dissociative disorder. We want these two things simultaneously. We want to be alone, but we want to be around other people.

Or, to personalize it a little, every time I long for a relationship, someone always manages to point out the fact that a lot of times, there is a lot of pain and suffering involved.

Honestly, at this point in my life, though, I don't know what's worse. The aching, hollowing, sinking, sharp, stabbing feeling of heartache, or this dull, drear numbness that I currently wallow in. To feel pain or not to feel at all. That is the question.

I also finished Idlewild on the plane, which is by Nick Sagan (who, incidentally, happens to be Carl Sagan's son.) One of the little tangents he touches on is the question as to whether pain will be implemented in virtual reality. And the fact of the matter is that pain is a product of evolution. Pain serves an adaptive useful function. Without pain, we'd constantly be doing things to ourselves that would be fatal. A nice little cut here, followed by an infection, followed by gangrene, then septicemia, then death. This is one of the side effects of leprosy, by the way. It eats away at your nerves, and you cease being able to feel pain in your hands and feet.

But I suppose there is a difference between physical pain, and psychic pain, the pain that arises purely from the mind, and yet eventually manages to ravage the entire body. This kind of pain is real, but it's an open question as to whether it's really useful. Especially in my life, currently.

There's got to be another alternative besides pain or numbness.

Now the question is how the hell do I figure out what that alternative is?

01:09:56 28 Sep 2004 > /playlist > permalink > 0 comments

Mon, 27 Sep 2004

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spammers must die

I just spent a ridiculous amount of time cleaning up the spoor of some spambots targetting Blosxom blogs. I have enlisted the help of Doug Alcorn's modified writeback plug-in and his spam killing tools. We'll see if I can stop these dirty bastards.

18:04:45 27 Sep 2004 > /computers/www/blosxom > permalink > 0 comments

Sat, 25 Sep 2004

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mountains and the city

I want to write something profound in these last ten minutes before I board the plane, but, as has been the case for a disturbingly long time, the words escape me.

Being out here in NYC, though, I feel like they're within reach again. Somewhere behind the foggy mist of sleep deprivation, caffeine induced madness, and suffering and disease, there is something solid I can touch every once in a while.

This isn't some Matrix-like illusion. I'm pretty sure.

Well. Whatever.

So I watched "The Motorcycle Diaries" last night with my sister and her roommate, and it was a very thought-provoking movie. As they depicted Guevarra's growing awareness of the greed-induced injustice in the world, it struck me painfully how very little has changed in the last 50 years, and, really, in many ways it's a lot worse than then. But that is another tirade entirely.

Three experiences that my apophenic mind took note of: (1) I spent some time in the Natural History Museum on 81st St., and, like my trip to the Met, it disturbed me that there was little-to-nothing regarding the various Filipino indigenous cultures, despite having decent exhibits regarding other Southeast Asian cultures. But I found myself wandering through the section on South and Central America. It is always interesting to wonder what would've happened if the great American empires had been able to resist the invading forces of the Spanish. Not that the Aztecs were exactly great guys, what with their preoccupation with human sacrifice and all. But I have always been fascinated by the Incans. Particularly with the rash of theories that postulate that Proto-Malays—my ancestors—may have actually made it across the Pacific Ocean. That and the fact that they use coca leaf pretty freely over there. Not that I'm a coke fiend or anything. I guess, though, that Machu Picchu has sort of become the South American equivalent of Rome in terms of feeling like you have to go there at least at some point in your life. I also am interested in the experience of living at or around the elevation of 10,000 feet, and wondering how my body will (or won't) adapt. (2) When I brought this up to B, he commented on how tons of his friends have literally just come back from vacations to Peru, and somehow this segued onto our discussion on the unraveling of the Republic of the U.S.A., and our little debate regarding the consequences of globalization. My take is that, somehow, the U.S. has stopped producing anything of real value. Our biggest export is pop trash like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, and the idea of basing our economy on the enforcement of the sketchy concept of intellectual property in an age of worldwide Internet connectivity is dubious at best. Economic disaster looms. (3) Then I watched "Motorcycle Diaries," and a lot of the most thought-provoking scenes were set in Peru.

My sister commented on how the upper reaches of the Andes had a lot in common with the Cordillera in the Philippines.

I find it interesting that the U.S. is now involved in an imperial quagmire similar to the quagmire in the Philippines a 100 years ago.

Well, my plane is boarding, so more later.

13:03:51 25 Sep 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

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scrabble and the meaning of life

There is this Flash animation that tells the story of a woman who believes God talks to her through Scrabble, which entirely reminds me of a particular scene from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilog—or should I say pentology. In that scene, the protagonist of the book, Arthur Dent, who is one of the last living inhabitants of Earth AKA the largest computer in the Universe which was computing the question to the answer of life, the universe, and everything. As is well known, the answer is 42. Unfortunately, the Earth is destroyed right before it figures out the answer, so Arthur decides to see if somehow the answer if encoded in his brain, and he starts blindly picking out Scrabble tiles from a bag. The question that he comes up with is "WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU MULTIPLY SIX BY NINE," leading him to comment that he's always thought that there was something intrinsically wrong with the universe.

06:05:58 25 Sep 2004 > /blog-bites > permalink > 0 comments

Wed, 22 Sep 2004

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music

I don't know if it's just the change in environment, the fact that I have so many good memories attached to this city, the fact that I'm not under the crushing oppression of working 12-30 hour days, 6 days a week, or the fact that I'm no longer deathly ill and sneezing out thick, brown snot, but I feel a lot more alive now. And I'm not really doing anything. I'm actually spending a lot of time on the internet, hunting down random mashups and bootlegs, walking around the tourist areas and doing a lot of window shopping, and checking out the Museums. On Saturday I revisited the Met, which I realize makes my head spin after three hours, and yesterday I headed up to the very northern tip of Manhattan to see Tryon Park and The Cloisters. That was nice, but a little disorienting. It's strange to have religious iconography somewhat decontextualized. I don't know if it's the conscious realization that this is a museum and not a sacred place that does this. The other disturbing thing there are the unicorn tapestries, which depict the hunting down and the killing of a unicorn, which can be seen as an allegory for the crucifixion of Christ.

Maybe it's also because I'm getting lots of sleep and plenty of exercise. I've been averaging about 12 hours, including a late afternoon/early evening nap (I'm still on Pacific Time, so this corresponds well with the mid-day dip). I'm probably walking a couple miles a day or so, including hustling up and down the stairs in the subway stations.

I really miss the city (not just this city, but the archetypal construct of The City), but I guess, doing what I'm doing, I wouldn't get to see the city much anyway, whereever I went, and the weather would make me more miserable than I'd like to be.

My question is, why didn't they build real cities in hospitable climates?

Anyway, trips like these always make me listen to pop music for some reason, and walking into the clothing stores exposes me to all this techno and trance stuff, so I'm just happily searching the Net and the iTunes Music Store for things that pop up. This also happens to be my first trip to New York where I've had my iPod with me. At first I was apprehensive about screwing around with it while on the subway trains. I don't actually think I'm going to get ripped off in the middle of the day with all these tourists milling about, but there's often very little clearance, and sometimes you need both hands to brace yourself against accelerations and decelerations. But then I noticed the practically everyone has an iPod here (by the tell-tale white earbuds.)

It's strange, when I lived in Chicago, I'd go everywhere with my iPod. Wicker Park, the Mag Mile, Lincoln Park, Lakeview, the Blue Line, the Red Line. It was my own personal soundtrack. But here in NYC, there's something soothing about the city noise. Probably it's just because I've gotten used to wandering the streets and the subways without any musical accompaniment.

I realize that it gives you the illusion of isolation, too, revealing my underlying Angeleno roots. This is apparently something other Angelenos prize, being able to live entirely in their cars, being stranded on the 405 with literally hundreds of other people and yet not being able to interact with a single one of them. It kind of makes me sad, but having grown up there, I guess it's an instinctual tendency. Really, no one walks in L.A. There was an article in the L.A. Times about this guy who decided to make it his quest to go up and down all the major city streets in the Southland, and he commented on how there are hardly ever any other people around. Not even homeless people.

If I do follow the path of least resistance (well, least resistance in some ways. Certainly not financially) and end up living in L.A., I will try my damndest to live next to a subway or light-rail station. I'm excited that they're going to build the Gold Line extension to the Eastside. Now all they need if the go ahead for the Expo Line to the Westside, and we're talking about the beginnings of a viable public transportation system.

Sometimes I wonder if I should've just gone into transportation engineering.

Well, that was a random walk through my brain. It's nice to have the time to ramble, these days.

07:29:02 22 Sep 2004 > /soul > permalink > 1 comments

Mon, 20 Sep 2004

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real city - episode I

I am chillin' in NYC, in the royal borough of the Queen, in Astoria, to be precise.

And now I have time to think. Scary.

Within hours of coming back here, I felt life flow back into my veins. I have missed the noise: the screech of subway trains rushing along the rickety tracks, the cabbies honking insensibly at the pedestrians crossing at the "don't walk" sign, the rumble of trucks downshifting as they barrel down the highway.

There are scarce parts of L.A. that actually resemble a real city, scattered haphazardly amidst the hills and valleys. But I don't even live in L.A. these days.

Despite the fact that San Diego is the 7th largest city in the country, it feels way too much like a gigantic, monstrous suburb of L.A., a place that exists only as a reaction to both San Francisco and Los Angeles. Its Old Town pretty much abandoned, its Downtown wholly artificial and manufactured. Abandoned freeways—signs of horrendously poor planning—lie scattered throughout the entire city: Friars Road, Kearny Mesa Road, Nimitz Blvd. The over-capacious highways crisscrossing needlessly across Mission Bay. The overgrowth of needless bridges connecting nowhere to nowhere. The massive off-ramp from the 805 that deposits you right into an Albertson.

You know you're in a post-modern city when the roads are built around freeways—when the interchanges distort the grid of the city. Interestingly, L.A. is not a post-modern city in that sense. You can tell that the city grid existed before they built the Hollywood Freeway. Major city streets flow around the four-level interchange unhampered.

So I've missed the city, although being out in suburbia has made me appreciate wide-open spaces. The one thing that I like about L.A. is that it has a classical city core, but it is surrounded completely by nature. Mountains and rivers, canyons and passes. You can drive five minutes from downtown L.A. and find yourself in a quiet forest, even though it takes about an hour without traffic to get to the city's edge. And the looming mountains remind you how insignificant the monuments of humanity truly are. Can you imagine how less royal the Sears Tower or the Empire State Building would be if they were framed by the San Gabriel Mountains, jutting up to almost 2 miles into the sky?

The only thing really real in San Diego is the natural aspect. The Cuyamaca Mountains off in the horizon, the San Diego River meandering through Mission Valley, the endless blue ocean shimmering for miles in all directions, obliterating any notion of international boundaries. And amidst the attempt of urbanization, or at least suburbanization, are the hidden canyons and vista points.

Central Park is pretty impressive, but despite what they say, you still know you're in the city. If you climb up to Mt. Soledad in S.D., or wander the trails of Griffith Park in L.A., you can forget that you are well within the city limits.

But enough mental masturbation. I need to go outside and wander, in this wounded city between two rivers, where all roads lead, at least for a short while.

06:55:58 20 Sep 2004 > /unrealcity > permalink > 0 comments

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a.f. 632—a brave new world

Another quiz sighted on infiniti's site.

Good thing Freud has been thoroughly discredited. Otherwise I'd probably find myself inside of a loony bin.

05:52:23 20 Sep 2004 > /blog-bites/quizilla > permalink > 0 comments

Thu, 16 Sep 2004

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four humors

A quiz found on infiniti's site:

07:44:55 16 Sep 2004 > /blog-bites/quizilla > permalink > 2 comments

Fri, 10 Sep 2004

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peace on earth

This little quiz that I found on R's blog matches rather synchronously with the book I'm reading entitled Peace on Earth by Stanislaw Lem.

The premise of the story is that a man has been sent to the Moon to spy on the robotic war machines there. He is shot by a ray which cleanly bissects his corpus callosum, the large nerve bundle that connects the right and left hemispheres. This causes his right hemisphere (the creative, intuitive side) to become independent of his left hemisphere (the anal-retentive, type A side) and the right side seems to be unable to stand the left. As they say, hilarity ensues.

Stanislaw Lem is a Polish science fiction writer. The books of his that I've read are really philosophical and, at times, satiric, informed by Cold War sensibilities and perspectives on both the capitalist and communist side of things. He also seems to have predicted a lot of what would happen once the Cold War was over. Some of his other books that I've read include Solaris which was made and re-made into a movie and Chain of Chance

But it turns out that I'm actually pretty right-brained, which explains a lot.

21:45:02 10 Sep 2004 > /blog-bites > permalink > 1 comments

Mon, 06 Sep 2004

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simple machine

So I ended up being on the road for a good four and a half hours yesterday—as long as it takes to drive to Vegas, as long as it takes to get to Santa Nella on the way to the Bay Area. By the time I realized that I had forgotten my pager, I was already in Oceanside. Fuck.

The side effect of which was that I got to listen to my iPod more thoroughly. My iPod has gotten me through two semi-demi-cross-country trips, westward on old route 66, and a good number of journeys up and down I-5 in the Central Valley, but since the drive between L.A. and S.D. is (relatively) shorter, I find that I don't get as immersed into my music.

I remember, somewhat deliriously, lamenting about how it seems that these days, the only emotions I experience are 1. anger 2. fear 3. dull apathy. If I'm not pissed-off or utterly terrified, I don't seem to feel anything at all.

Of course, I suppose this could just be the medication talking.

But I find it kind of sad in a sterile, quarantined, remote sort of way.

Like it's only sad looking at it from a third-person perspective.

Because, like I said, a lot of the time, I just feel kind of numb.

But music seems to be the key. Or the double edged knife, depending on how you look at it. After a while, I started going through some of my cheesy pop ballad music, and I started meditating on my last quasi-romantic relationship which wasn't really a relationship (I am still at least a little dazed and confused about the whole thing, and have adopted a pragmatic stance towards it: if I can't ever figure out the answer, there's no point in thinking about it.) And how much easier it is to accept rejection these days, to accept that this is how things are, and this is how things are going to be.

To accept the notion of letting my genetic patternings decay into nothingness. To forswear the eternal chain of life and go it alone in the utter black darkness of oblivion.

To accept the fact that nothing lasting will come of this moment.

Again, sad in the third-person.

I do find it disquieting, in a rational, detached sort of way, that whenever I see an attractive woman, or talk to someone I really like, the feeling of defeat and futility automatically seizes me. In some ways, I suppose it makes it easier. Knowing that she will never like me the way that I like her, it is easy to tell the truth, to dissect my own heart, and lay it bare, letting it twitch like an anesthesized rat about to get eviscerated.

And then if we do get along (which is not that hard—I suppose I make a much better friend than I do a boyfriend), I automatically think about all the ways that it will probably go wrong, tell myself that there's no point in thinking about it, and just kind of accept the fact that there's no way in hell that I'll find someone that I like who actually reciprocates.

The odds are against me. I think I have a better chance of getting struck by lightning. Twice. In the same day.

I also recognize that I am making all of this a lot harder than it needs to be, which is, unfortunately, my nature. I am complicated. Soy complicado, not Estoy complicado

But I wonder if I will ever let myself fall that hard again. Having done it a few times to absolutely no avail, B.F. Skinner's principles ought to kick in. No more bashing my own head in with a rock or putting my hand in the fire.

But. As they say. Never say never.

I am so fucking doomed, no matter which way you look at it.

14:53:57 6 Sep 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

Thu, 26 Aug 2004

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flesh is weak

Given my current work schedule (11 hour days on average with a few 30 hour days) I have lost all sense of time and place. I wake up not knowing what time it is, whether it is late in the evening or early in the morning before the sun is up, whether it is spring, summer, or fall (in this land of no winter.) I wake up not knowing where exactly I am, since I've only been living here for three months now. I have dreams about the cities I have lived in, the separate lives I have led. Everything feels so remote, both in time and place.

I feel like every part of my mind is drifting apart from each other. Sort of the like the universe expanding, with more and more empty space in between.

To summarize: I may very well be losing my mind.

21:35:24 26 Aug 2004 > /soul > permalink > 1 comments

Mon, 16 Aug 2004

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elusivity of the muse

There are a million things I want to write about, things I need to put down into words simply to give my thoughts form. If I do not fix them down, pin them to cardboard like wriggling entymological specimens, they'll keep pestering me, flitting this way and that.

Some would counsel to leave well enough alone, and that would certainly be the easiest thing to do.

But I worry that my habit of ignoring my emotional reaction to events is leading to the calcification of my soul.

What worries me most is that I have not been able to write. Oh, the desire, the need to write rears it head not infrequently, and, dizzy with need, I will throw down ill-considered lines, as subtle as cinderblocks, and just as heavy and graceless, too.

I cannot make my words float anymore.

And this is where the self-doubt creeps in.

I can't help but wonder if I really ever had the knack for crafting the turn of phrase, of smoothing a thought into a lyric. Maybe it was all just a solipsistic conceit, and it's only now that I'm realizing the hollowness of my work.

Still, I must write, even if it is painful and forced.

I suppose I've always known that inspiration can only get you so far.

---

Saturday night I had this illusory sensation that the world was changing. This is where the words run out, and the closest thing I can turn to is the description of sci-fi motifs.

Like the raster line of a television set, a computer monitor, except three dimensionalized. The raster line of God. Photons, electrons, gravitons, focusing like a beam, refreshing every single bit of matter. Reaffirming its existence, lest it flicker and fade away, like the dying phosphor traces of a television screen turned off.

Say simply, that there was a glitch in the Matrix.

With my current obsession with quantum gravity, I can't help but think of it as an artistic representation of how Schroedinger's wavefunction collapses. As certain probabilities get ruled out, the nature of the world-at-large changes. Some waveforms disappear, and what we commonly call reality "crashes out" like precipitate crashing out from an overladen solution.

I want to say that, at last, I am free. That an episode of my life has finally and irrevocably come to an end. But I've said that before, a thousand times before, and I find myself dragged into loony-toon drama. So I say it with reservation.

I do fear that it will never end. That the repercussions of that deep, hopeless autumn will continue to reverberate and echo throughout all of space-time, and I will never be able to escape its ripples as long as I live.

It's like the surf, the flotsam and the jetsam of the quantum foam.

You ride the waves as best as you can, and sometimes you will wipe out.

Things really would just be easier if I became a monk.

---

So now I sit in the darkness, wakened from an involuntary nap spanning the waning daylight hours. I've sat and contemplated. I realize that, at least lately, I can only really do my deep thinking while I'm barreling down the highway at 80 mph, with my iPod providing the soundtrack for my ruminations. And I've had a lot of time to think. Nothing conclusive really. The only thing that really motivates me as of late is the avoidance of pain. Let sleeping dragons lie.

Maybe dragons really don't exist, but you still walk as if on eggshells.

In this stillness, letting the cool marine breeze waft over me, I ponder my solitude, wonder if this is the best I can achieve. If this is the most fertile state of mind to be in.

I begin to wonder if there is something masochistic about my need to write. How the words only seem to come easily when something inside me gets broken, crushed, or ruptured. In this state of dull, torpid contentment—I hesitate to use that word, but I will do so unapologetically from now on—the words come off my tongue like briars, having to be pulled off one by one, prickly with brambles.

Each word, which I felt I used to be able to freight with gravid meaning, each word, which was as precious as silver, as incisive and crystal clear as a diamond blade, is now nothing than its constituent pieces. It requires horrendous effort simply to string these little bits together, to fashion them with some meaning much less beauty. Little puffs of air is all I've got, and the wind just rips them apart. They dissipate in the void.

Is this just a function of where I'm at on my particular spiritual journey? Wandering forty days and forty nights through the bleak, hopeless desert? Is the promised land really just past that horizon?

Or should I just get used to this ascetic lifestyle of wandering around the desert, forever eschewing the fellowship of humanity, and the hope that the rain will soon come?

Decisions, decisions.

So mostly, I sit here worrying needlessly as to whether the next stage will suddenly creep up on me and possibly eat me, or whether that's all there is and there ain't no mo'. Am I to remain vigilant, waiting perhaps years and decades for something that I am losing faith in? Or do I just give in to the torpor, the ennui of existentialism? That this is all there is, and anything else is illusion and possibly lunacy.

I truly have very little faith these days. That in itself doesn't really bother me, but I kind of wonder if there will be horrific long-term sequelae for getting too used to not caring.

22:41:31 16 Aug 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

Wed, 11 Aug 2004

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eating your relatives

Dude. This is one seriously fucked up family. As if goosing a woman is a worse offense than eating your cousin.

Man stabs cousin and serves cousin to a wedding reception.

18:49:36 11 Aug 2004 > /blog-bites > permalink > 0 comments

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insomnia - episode iii

I have to wake up in four hours.

Not being able to sleep is cruel, lonely torture.

01:03:16 11 Aug 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

Tue, 10 Aug 2004

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leverage and the ipod

John Gruber's essay on Daring Fireball about the mythical Apple vs. Microsoft conflict illuminates the late history of the personal computer. Few probably remember that before the Macintosh and before MS-DOS—in the early history of the personal computer—there were several personal computer vendors such as Commodore, Tandy, Atari, as well as the IBM (with their PC) and Apple (with the Apple II) and they all pretty much had similar market shares. Homogenization was only apparent in the business world, and back in the day, personal computer was more synonymous with home use. From the business perspective, IBM (later supplanted by the combination of Intel and Microsoft) was really just breaking into a market previously dominated by UNIX and CP/M, which, in reality, is a wholly different paradigm compared to what personal computers had been up to that time.

Eventually, UNIX was proclaimed dead (and it may well have been, if not for the Free Software Foundation and the GNU suite of tools, which allowed the various open source BSDs to exist, and which eventually spawned Linux—but that's another tale to tell.) The personal computer (in the avatar of IBM PC-DOS and later Microsoft's MS-DOS) had defeated the mainframes and the minicomputers. The client-server model was obsolete, and the x86 platform reigned. (Oh, the irony, huh?)

In this context, you could interpret the popularity of Windows simply as Intel and Microsoft leveraging their dominance in the business world into dominance in the home.

In this saga, I think Apple's only real direct competitor was Commodore, who came out with the awesome machine known as the Amiga. Interestingly, the Macintosh and the Amiga ran on similar hardware (that is, on Motorola-based processors) Who knows how history would've changed if Commodore had managed to stay alive?

---

John Gruber makes the dichotomy that Apple is idealistic, whereas Microsoft is pragmatic, and uses the way they leverage (or don't leverage) their success to extend their dominance as examples of their philosophy. In betting terms, this is known as the parlay—of taking all your previous winnings and laying it all down on the next wager. Microsoft has succeeded so far with parlaying their OS monopoly on x86-based hardware through various evolutions (from MS-DOS to Windows XP) and using this OS domiance to corner the market on productivity suites—with the behemoth known as MS Office. If you think about it, Microsoft really doesn't do that much more than these two products—the OS and the office suite. Everything else has been icing on the cake, or more frequently, have been horrific blunders and miserable failures.

In contrast, Gruber notes that Apple has seemingly never relied on the parlay to create their products. The Macintosh in reality directly competed with their more popular Apple II series. The Newton was intended to be a desktop computer replacement rather than the adjunct that PDAs are. NeXT Step was a clean break from Mac OS.

Maybe the iPod isn't really that different, but thinking about it makes a different paradigm apparent.

Perhaps because Apple has not been chasing the holy grail known as market share, they have been able to muster a different kind of resource. I do not think it would be exaggeration to say that Apple's greatest resource is its reputation of creating innovative products, backed by actual creative talent to implement their ideas. It has become conventional wisdom that, while Apple products are not cheap or as popular, they are certainly pretty and generally awesome. Again, the Macintosh, the Newton, the Powerbook, and the iBook are cases in point. (As an aside, I would hazard to say that Sony had a similar reputation up until they became beholden to the bottomline and the corporate culture. Hence the failure of their Walkman mp3 player, but that's quite tangential.) I think these are the resources that Apple successfully parlays. And thus the iPod was born.

While the first two generations were completely beholden to Apple hardware, now at the height of its popularity, the iPod isn't really tied to the Macintosh either. But it should be noted that the iPod's marketshare among mp3 players was already significant before they rolled out their cross-platform products. Who knows what would've happened if they had continued to tie the iPod to the Mac?

For once, it appears the Apple is actually being pragmatic.

So the iPod spawned the iTunes Music Store. The convergence of Airport and iTunes (few will remember that Apple was one of the first to embrace the 802.11b and now the 802.11g standard) has led to the Airport Express (which, at $129, is reasonably priced for a USB print server, and is reasonably priced as a wireless access point/wireless network extender, and is reasonably priced as an mp3 streaming device, and the wonderfully awesome thing is that you get all three in a package that is barely larger than a power supply brick.)

Hopefully, the innovations will continue, though, and Apple will continue to be unafraid of breaking from the past. With this in mind, hopefully they will never be dependent upon the parlay.

21:55:57 10 Aug 2004 > /computers/macosx > permalink > 0 comments

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market share is bogus

When you enter certain realsm, such as computers, normal measures of profability are completely unreliable. It makes sense to think of market share if you're selling, let's say, Coca-Cola, but as luxury car manufacturers will tell you, who otherwise really cares? After all, the measure of a successful business has never been market share. (Would you really have considered the U.S. Postal Service—prior to privatization—a successful business despite having a market share of nearly 100%?) Success is and always has been measured by profitability, and if your balance sheet has more black ink than red at the end of the year without having to resort to Enron-like tactics, then that's a pretty good success.

Yet, despite basic business and economic common sense, otherwise intelligent people continue to push the idea of market share as the ultimate measure of dominance.

Daring Fireball deconstructs the myth, using the example of the Macintosh, and how the idea of licensing what later became known as Mac OS doesn't make that much sense.

21:04:08 10 Aug 2004 > /computers/macosx > permalink > 0 comments

Mon, 09 Aug 2004

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who gives a flying fuck?

M reminds me of missed opportunities, of not having enough courage to steal a kiss, and of the eternal recrimination that comes thereof.

I kind of wonder, though, if the reason that I don't give a damn is simply medication-mediated, or if I'm really just losing it.

Whatever the case, it certainly can't be healthy.

Still, I guess I'll ride this feeling of numbness out as long as I can.

At least it beats feeling depressed.

23:19:40 9 Aug 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

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genius and insanity

Found on Gura's blog:

This is synchronistic only because I have been inexplicably enthralled by the search for the theory of quantum gravity. I am also reminded of the very apt observation: "There is a fine line between genius and insanity."

And then there is Bukowski's wonderful quote as well.

19:59:44 9 Aug 2004 > /blog-bites/quizilla > permalink > 0 comments

Sat, 07 Aug 2004

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apologia for laziness

I'm not being lazy. I'm just thinking.

This extract from How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkins narrates the inception of the tyranny of the time clock due to the Industrial Revolution, touches upon biology and human physiology with the notion that not everyone's pineal gland is set in the same time zone, and notes that idle hands are not the playground of the devil as the Puritans would have us believe, but are rather the crucible of revolution and enlightenment, and by extension, are the progenitors of democracy and egalitarianism. Productivity is the true opiate of the masses. He who works need not think, is plugged into the System, and submerged in the Matrix.

Long live the idler!

13:48:53 7 Aug 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

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it all makes sense now

found on eye8infiniti:

What tarot card are you?

I am The Hermit The Hermit often suggests a need for time alone - a period of reflection when distractions are limited. In times of action and high energy, he stands for the still center that must be created for balance. He can also indicate that withdrawal or retreat is advised for the moment. In addition, the Hermit can represent seeking of all kinds, especially for deeper understanding or the truth of a situation. "Seek, and ye shall find," we have been told, and so the Hermit stands for guidance as well. We can receive help from wise teachers, and, in turn, help others as we progress. For a full description of your card and other goodies, please visit LearnTarot.com

What tarot card are you? Enter your birthdate. Month: Day: Year:

I've been using the Page of Pentacles as my significator, but perhaps it's time to choose one more to my character.

To anyone who knows me, the Hermit probably explains a lot.

It is unlikely that I will creep out from under my shell anytime soon.

00:25:39 7 Aug 2004 > /blog-bites > permalink > 0 comments

Tue, 03 Aug 2004

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nine inch nails "closer"

Help me! I've broke apart my insides. Help me! I've got no soul to sell.

22:05:14 3 Aug 2004 > /playlist > permalink > 0 comments

Mon, 02 Aug 2004

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my old friend, fear

I don't know if it is purely psychosomatic, or if there is some quasiobjective reality to my sensation of flux. Like the axis of the earth has shifted ever so slightly, causing the wind to subtly change.

Instead of performing the activities of daily living that I should be performing, I am instead paralyzed by an irrational emotional inertia.

The more I dwell on it, the more I don't want to do it.

So, who knows, maybe this change in my medication is not agreeing with me, and it is somewhat depressing to realize once again that I am truly nothing but a clockwork orange. Better living through chemistry, indeed.

So, once again, the mail remains unopened, the bills remain unpaid. For no good reason. Instead, I am surreptitiously typing away into this ridiculous blog, unreasonably hoping that somehow destiny will look away this hour.

I am so mind-fucked. I would be really hilarious if it wasn't happening to me. (As they say, everything is funny so long as it isn't happening to you.)

Maybe (although I know better than to hope tomorrow when I should be doing today) I'll get my ass in gear after a decent night of sleep.

22:18:09 2 Aug 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

Tue, 27 Jul 2004

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go speed reader, go!

How Many Words-Per-Minute Do You Read?

I've always been known to be a quick reader. (In technical terms, a book snarfer) According to this test, I can read about 400-450 words per minute, which also happens to be the theoretical rate at which the average human being can comprehend speech. Of course, I'm definitely not as good a listener as I am a reader. Maybe my visual cortex has co-opted some of my auditory cortex.

07:22:59 27 Jul 2004 > /blog-bites > permalink > 0 comments

Mon, 26 Jul 2004

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"donnie darko" addendum

My favorite quote:

Every living creature on earth dies alone.

18:43:59 26 Jul 2004 > /movies > permalink > 0 comments

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donnie darko

I think I have a soft spot for this movie mostly because a lot of scene were filmed at my high school. Not to mention the whole time-travel, alternate-reality theme. And the psychotic bunny.

Everything you were afraid to ask about "Donnie Darko" on Salon.com

18:26:48 26 Jul 2004 > /movies > permalink > 0 comments

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loneliness

There is nothing that focuses my mind upon my solitary state than leaving home and driving down the empty Interstate just before midnight.

Call it a sickness, perhaps. An idee fixee.

But I kind of wonder if that's really the problem. Living in this society, I have been brainwashed into thinking that loneliness is a pathological state.

But it isn't.

By logic and reason, I know this is true. But I still can't help but squirm in frustration and impatience.

What will be will be.

A lot of people think that I am giving up with regards to the whole "asking someone out on a date" thing. I've been hitting this emotional brick wall for a long time now, and I think it's just time to hang back and regroup. Get my priorities in order.

I have yet to figure out exactly what it is I want from life, for one thing.

But, yeah. I just can't do this right now, and perhaps not ever, but there certainly isn't anything productive about me beating myself up for being a pathetic chickenshit. This is where I'm at, and I just need to accept it.

Sometimes you stare and stare into the pool from the high dive, knowing that all you have to do is fling yourself into the air, and you know that you'll probably be OK, but you just stand there, staring and staring, and now everybody below is yelling at you because you're holding up the line, and the pressure mounts.

It is easy to tell someone to just jump.

But sometimes, when you can't handle it, even though you look like a big loser in front of everyone, you just have to climb down, shake it off, and do something else.

This isn't the same thing as just saying "Fuck it" or "I don't care." This is accepting the fact that I cannot do this right now, and while I will obsess constantly about it, probably until my dying day, there is just nothing to be done at this moment.

There's really no point of even hoping, because as long as I can't get over this wall, nothing will ever happen, and I'm the kind of person who freaks out even more when I have people behind me yelling for me to get on with it.

So that's where it stands.

I will probably complain about loneliness again sometime soon, probably quite frequently. It's just an unpleasant feeling. And maybe I'll never get used to it. But I know that there's nothing to be done but for me to get over my ridiculousness, and just go for it. And until this happens, nothing else will.

Advice isn't what I need right now. Because, in all honestly, I know precisely what I need to do. I just don't have the will to do it. And that may be the case for the rest of my life.

I did eventually snap out of my depressing reverie. And right now, I can't see what's wrong. This is how it's been for a long time, and this how it's going to be until I change, and I haven't run into anything yet that has the power to force me to change.

I'm like one of those pandas who won't screw to save the species.

There's simply nothing realistic left to do but wait and see.

00:27:22 26 Jul 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

Sat, 24 Jul 2004

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trapped in tetris

You know you've been playing way too much Tetris when you start having nightmares like this. (Found on #!/usr/bin/girl)

What is especially disturbing is that a Tetris sequel was released in which the gameplay is exactly like this Flash animation, except instead of stick figures running around, they were cute little anime characters. (Oh, and the goal wasn't to kill them, but to save them.)

09:01:26 24 Jul 2004 > /blog-bites > permalink > 0 comments

Wed, 21 Jul 2004

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self pity

I am feeling really out of sorts.

Maybe it's the simple fact that it is close to 90°F and I don't have air conditioning.

Maybe it's the chilli dog that I had yesterday, which continues to haunt my GI tract.

Maybe I caught something from a little kid. They're like walking Petri dishes. I'm surprised I haven't broken out in some kind of rash. I do have diffuse muscle pain, though.

I had said that I was going to go to this dinner tonight, but, partly because I didn't RSVP on time, and partly because I feel like ass and really don't want to go anywhere right now, I think I'm just going to hang out at home in my underwear.

I'm afraid that I'm redeveloping my social anxiety disorder.

(Hah. I'm afraid that I'm becoming afraid.)

There is something desperate and sad about all this. I just don't want to admit it to myself. I really should stop peeping voyeuristically at other people's blogs.

It's not so much that I'm actually bored—my world has far too many things for me to do. It's just that I seem to have lost the knack for doing anything that might be even remotely interesting to another person.

In others words: not much to report today. Still traipsing through this vast desert of my life. Water supply still adequate, but no way to replenish it in sight.

I am afraid of what will happen when life decides to squeeze.

17:59:50 21 Jul 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

Tue, 20 Jul 2004

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derangement

Yep. It's 3:15am right now. My sleep cycle is completely out of whack.

I went home for a day this weekend. My sister says that I scream in my sleep. Her dog started whining because of me. I've been trying to figure out a way to record whatever I say while I sleep. Last time, I tried to use my computer to do it, but the program I was using crashed.

The AirPort Express is coming out, I think, today.

I feel a little crazy right now. I think I had too much caffeine yesterday.

03:20:33 20 Jul 2004 > /meta > permalink > 0 comments

Sat, 17 Jul 2004

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ethical philosophy selector

I thought this was a neat test. It tells you how similar your own ethics (limited by multiple choice questions) compares to a few well-known Western philosophers.

1. Aquinas (100%)
2. Kant (99%)
3. Jeremy Bentham (94%)
4. John Stuart Mill (91%)
5. Jean-Paul Sartre (88%)
6. Aristotle (76%)
7. Prescriptivism (72%)
8. Nel Noddings (69%)
9. Spinoza (65%)
10. Ayn Rand (61%)
11. Plato (61%)
12. St. Augustine (61%)
13. Ockham (52%)
14. Epicureans (47%)
15. Stoics (45%)
16. Nietzsche (26%)
17. Thomas Hobbes (15%)
18. Cynics (7%)
19. David Hume (5%)

Obviously, despite my current estrangement from God, those twelve years of Catholic school are still deeply ingrained. 100% agreement with Saint Thomas Aquinas. Hah!

00:04:55 17 Jul 2004 > /blog-bites > permalink > 0 comments

Sun, 11 Jul 2004

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cynical bastard

The appropriate song for this occassion would probably be The Cure's "10:15 on a Saturday Night" [lyrics][iTMS].

So I have pissed away most of my Saturday perusing random blogs. Yes, I know I'm pathetic. No, I don't care.

Outside of work, the internet is basically the only way I get some form of human contact.

Get ready for a florid case of cabin fever, folks.

But I'm not insane yet. I think.

(Which reminds me of a great Bukowski quote I saw in RF's blog: "Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.")

So I'm reading this particular passage (no, I don't know this person):

I still love him. I'm still comforted by the memories of his arms around me. It's been so many years, yet my heart still aches for this loss[sic] love.

I remember feeling like this about eight years ago. I've been brainwashing myself ever since. I am now convinced that I'm better off without these kinds of memories. (The problem is the whole wheat with the chaff thing, though. Bits and pieces of my memories have totally gone through my mental shredder, not to mention those several hundred shots of hard-liquor.)

But what I find amazing is how a person can force himself to believe that what he so desperately needed at one point (and, from a purely physiological standpoint, this may very well be true) is in fact self-destructive and should be avoided at all costs. Sort of like how anorexics successful dieters find that food becomes increasingly disgusting. Not the sort of thing that usually leads to healthy outcomes, but, hey, whatever works, right?

It occurs to me that if I truly accept this label of "cynical bastard," that I am irreversibly doomed. It's so easy to be cynical. It's much easier to disbelieve than it is to believe, the way it's easier to tear something apart than it is to put it together.

The only thing that I am sure of at this moment is that one day, I will die. Everything else is conjecture and (to steal a phrase from Douglas Adams), probably a figment of my imagination.

Yes. I am so mentally fucked.

01:22:42 11 Jul 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

Sat, 10 Jul 2004

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unwieldy

friends say that i spend too much time thinking. you can always catch me staring out the window, oblivious to my surroundings, lost in the arcane, labyrinthine inner working of mind. some might call it an absence seizure, except that it lasts way too long.

at this point in time, while I am still haunted by the concept of "normalcy," vaguely represented by the Horatio Alger myth, AKA the American Dream, I realized that the choices I've made have driven me far down the veritable Path Less Taken. Which is not to say that I can never run back to the fateful fork in the road, only that it would be a considerable effort to do so.

This is all well and good, except for the lamentable fact that I am a lazy bastard, and the bizarre mental and temporal contortions I regularly perform, as complicated as they appear, are really (often failed) attempts at cutting corners. (As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, "Shortcuts make for long delays")

In other words, there is something absurdly perverse in me that believes the shortest distance between two points is completely non-linear, and crooked as hell.

Who'd've ever thunk it?

Of course, I'm really more transparent than I'd like to be.

So. Like I said. Normalcy does haunt me. There is a part of me that is irritated by the fact that more and more people in my life are entering the house-in-the-suburbs/2-car/2.5-children lifestyle. Now, I know that time is non-linear, but it is annoying to be constantly bombarded by stimuli supporting the opposite. And while I'd love to, like Hobbes (the tiger, not the philosopher), ask "Who are we racing?", unfortunately Calvin (the kid, not the cleric) keeps waking me up, reminding me that I'll never win the race by lying around all day.

Of course, what no one ever seems to mention is that the finish line is a little thing they call Death and, frankly, I don't see what the hurry is. (And the sick, sad irony is, because of the way our culture has been perverted by the American Dream, I think more and more people reach this finish line and realize that they are not ready to cross it. I think that Death has wrongly become something to fear. I'm not saying we should all embrace Death like a suicide cult drinking Kool-Aid and wearing Nike crosstrainers, but I think we should stop treating it like some kind of pathology. As the second law of thermodynamics unequivocally states, it is inevitable.)

This verbose realization could be more economically summarized by B's philosophy: "Fuck it."

So. I have this scarcely tested belief that, no matter who deeply connected you are to another person, no matter how many people you surround yourself with, you are ultimately alone. No one (sometimes not even you) can really decipher all your thoughts and feelings, and it is inordinantly difficult to articulate them to someone else. Ultimately, we live in our minds. Everything else is not necessarily reality. (Whatever reality might be, though.)

Of course this is biased by the fact that I haven't been in a long-term relationship for quite a while, and my subsequent attempts to establish one have all met with miserable and sometimes catastrophic failure.

I must say, though, that I haven't been going about this in a very intelligent manner. While I like to rail at Fate, I recognize that in many ways, I have been sabotaging myself.

But, really, what I'm looking for is more basic than that. I realize that my fatal flaw at this point in time is that I cannot trust anyone. I mean, I trust my friends and family to a reasonable degree, but I recognize that I always stop short of trusting anyone completely. Unjustly, I feel that disappointed is inevitable, so why freight friendships with my unnecessary baggage?

Still, yeah, there's something missing. I don't know how to change this in myself. I do think of Henry J. Stimson's quote: "The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him" (which I'm sure applies to the opposite gender as well.) But the risks of trusting someone like that absolutely frightens me.

So. My task is clear. Only time will tell.

09:39:01 10 Jul 2004 > /soul > permalink > 0 comments

Wed, 07 Jul 2004

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forever

Zeno sings of the infinity in small spaces

and small steps recalling Sisyphus' task in an relativistic way

light is eternal embodied in an equation

you imagine forever is a long, long time

still Zeno notwithstanding and even Einstein did not get this right all things change (my soul instinctively recoils, both in horror and with a sick, desperate hope)

with the stirring of the coffee cup and the flutter of a butterfly wing the little packet of light striking the insides of my eye (a little gasp of air slips through my pursed lips I promised to stop chasing unicorns today--)

I drink and breathe light now my illusion of company and soft words spoken into my ear (Without it I thirst and gasp in solitude and silence)

I sing to myself dreaming pretending (watch the light shimmer in her bright hair as she twirls it around her fingers--

very much like the light of the sun I can feel her warmth and marvel at her brightness but can never clasp my arms around her)

Can you walk in loneliness for so long that you imagine that he is your only companion? From this emptiness, wreak infinite creation? From the meanderings of the labyrinth straight, broad paths?

In this ash and dust, somehow was breathed a soul Within meat and blood, enraptured, entrapped

Wisdom cannot be bought enmeshed in dead leaves and twine and still I pore over these textbooks as if life and love would explode forth in utter surprise catastrophically overwhelm me with joy

The pages do not speak except perhaps for the echoed whispers dwelling in my mind

Sometimes I fancy that the mad voices have taken up residence squatters and usurpers laying their arses upon the seat of my soul

I should just put up a sign saying "Abandoned" and give Dante and Virgil my keys

Hope is the currency of the living Like the prodigal son poor only because I have squandered my wealth now knowing where gold lies guarded by walls and steel is enough to turn me into a thief and an oathbreaker besides.

(Unicorn, oh, unicorn!)

19:57:17 7 Jul 2004 > /poetry > permalink > 0 comments

Tue, 06 Jul 2004

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meltdown

thermophilic, i am not dreaming still of sunlight more than heat not the noxious fumes of this gushing geyser this ramble-shamble of chaos and turbulence

obeying messianic instruction i don't know my left hand from my right neither up or down nor black nor white floating upon the quantum foam of ever-dancing pin-prick particles

vertiginous, four walls closing in toilet bowl swirl we are what we eat and used toilet paper is like a mirror a way to look inside out a perverse form of the ancient roman auguries predicting the future with entrails and the runnels and trickles of bright red blood

flung, flail, fists atavistic, balled-up, screaming like a newborn i am bloody, battered, and bruised blind, weak, and hungry

this thrill and harsh murmur, unfulfilled still dancing up the steps of spacetime where sound is frozen in four dimensions i imagine solidity in the evanescent vibrations of air touch and crumble fade, decay

lightning flashes across my eyes and this dull thrumming of the nerves in my fingertips is all I understand of reality at this point everything else, I have no choice but to take on faith.

21:55:01 6 Jul 2004 > /poetry > permalink > 0 comments

Sat, 03 Jul 2004

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beastie boys "hey fuck you"

Hey! This could be Dick Cheney's new theme song! I think it should play every time he appears on screen. Heh.

Anyway, I think the following line is clever. (I know. Me and bathroom humor.)

So put a quarter in your ass cuz you played yourself.

18:32:20 3 Jul 2004 > /playlist > permalink > 0 comments

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bad habits