# 01 Jan 2002, 11:46AM:
Happy New Year!
The fax got sent, and it's a new year, full of hope. I'm drinking
Martinelli's sparkling cider that I was too tired to drink
at midnight.
Let's rock!
# 01 Jan 2002, 11:54AM: Leonard's take on New Year's.
# 01 Jan 2002, 03:54PM GMT+5:30:
I'm still reading Douglas Hofstadter's G�del, Escher, Bach, and I'm in the chapter entitled Typographical Number Theory. (By the way, even though I've seen Hofstadter in person and in pictures, whenever I try to picture him I get this vision of Nathaniel Smith. Bright, cocky, and enviable, that sort of thing.)
Around the middle of the chapter, Hofstadter throws out a few exercises-for-the-reader in translation from English to Typographical Number Theory (in which only the natural numbers exist). He doesn't provide the answers anywhere that I can see, but Leonard agreed with my answers for the first four puzzles, so I thought I was ready for the fifth:
Leonard didn't know how to translate it (that darn inability to represent recursion!), and thought it might have to do with something called the Chinese Remainder Theorem, but sort of gave up and went back to rereading The Lord of the Rings. I kept plugging away, trying to solve it, since I knew that a solution existed.
I tried an approach that reasoned, "b is either equal to 1, or it's a product of 2 and a, where a is some power of 2." But that leads to recursion and I don't know how to represent recursion in TNT.
Then I tried to think about the properties of powers of 2. And powers of 2 are never odd (except for 1), and powers of 2 are not divisible by any odd numbers (except for 1). The first rule there is realy a sub-rule of the second, so: I don't know how to represent the various typographical notations in HTML, but here's a translation of my TNT representation of the above logic:
Am I right? Or am I missing something? I think I am missing something. Probably there's some insidious loophole involving the possibility that c is odd or something. What is the "right" translation?
(By the way, Hofstadter merely describes this problem with: "may be a little tricky.")
(I get the sense that Seth's diary will feel this entry call out to it, deep calling to deep, and put up an answer to my question without Seth even having to write it.)
b is a power of 2.
b is not the product of any odd number (except one) and any other number.
For all a,
For all c,
a equals zero,
or b does not equal (c times (one plus (two times a)))
# 01 Jan 2002, 04:46PM: Today's Papers from a few months back. Object lesson in dramatic irony.
# 01 Jan 2002, 10:36PM:
Writing up my intent-to-terminate-tenancy-in-thirty-days letter. There should be more sample letters on the web like this one.
I also must arrange to have my phone and electricity/gas utilities shut off when I go. How complex will this thing be? I've only moved once in my time away from my family, and that was out of the dorms and into this place, so I didn't have to futz around with so much stuff. Oh, and a forwarding address. Well, at least I'll get less junk mail. Three years after moving here, I still get mail for "Cohav Kimmel" and Melissa somebody.
At least India and Pakistan -- it seems more probable -- will not go to war. I hope.
# 02 Jan 2002, 09:01AM: One of my favorite ways to waste time is to search Leonard's weblog for randomish words. Examples: refreshing, wee-wee.
# 02 Jan 2002, 10:00AM:
I dawdled a lot this morning so I don't have time to wrestle with Pacific Bell and Pacific Gas and Electric before I go have brunch with Steve and his friend at Crepe de Vine at 10:45.
Occupations I've been considering/daydreaming about: teacher, film critic, travel writer, daycare provider, humorist/comedy writer, personal computing tutor, legislative assistant, caseworker, Peace Corps/City Year-type volunteer.
# 02 Jan 2002, 05:35PM GMT+5:30:
Today I had much fun. I met Steve and his friend Michelle at brunch
at Crepe de Vine on Shattuck and we had a fun conversation. Steve gave
me Christmas presents: three "tacky" bookmarks, and four books that
had been on my wishlist:
Thanks, Steve!
As we
were eating, Shweta, Nathaniel, and two of their friends walked in.
After Steve and Michelle left, I continued talking and hanging out
with the new crowd. Nathaniel even helped me out with my Hofstadter
problem of yesterday. One new friend, Dan, is on a Peace Corps term
in the Ukraine, and we conversed a bit in Russian; with the other, Zachary, I conversed at length about software, religion, and other mutual
interests. (He once submitted NetHack nonkitten items to the
robotfindskitten project.)
I wrote all this while on hold with Pac Bell. I am still on hold with
Pac Bell. I called PG&E twenty minutes ago and, in five minutes,
arranged for my electricity and natural gas service to end on 31
January. Pac Bell, on the other hand, twice has tried to get me to
opt-in to talk about other products and services from the SBC
"family."
Okay, I'm not on hold anymore. I'm talking to a person. This is
good.
Done. My phone service here will no longer exist as of sometime in
the morning of 31 January 2002. "Sharon" thanked me for being "such a
wonderful customer." I wonder if they say that to everyone, not just
the ones who pay their bills on time.
# 02 Jan 2002, 05:43PM:
Zachary Weinberg, like Jeff Good, would not like to live in Israel, simply because of the heat, regardless of other facts and circumstances. I've discovered that it's rather ambiguous to say, "I dislike the climate," because English speakers have so abused the metaphor of "climate" to refer to sociologal and political situations.
If I were going to write some treatise on Israel's twin concentrations of technology and surveillance/military intelligence, I would entitle it "Mirabilis and the Mossad." But, since I never will, I place this title in the village common and anyone is free to come and use it.
# 02 Jan 2002, 05:45PM: Party! Sometime this month I will hold a party, a housecooling akin to Seth's a while back. After all, in my new place I'll be living with four others and I'll have fewer opportunities to throw parties. So, it's coming; stay tuned.
# 02 Jan 2002, 10:49PM: Salon is running a Red vs. Blue! Ah, memories.
# 03 Jan 2002, 09:39PM GMT+5:30:
Today I entered a used books store in El Portal and ended up buying The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker, whom my sister and I used to mock back in the late nineties when he showed up on Oprah Winfrey's talk show and the like. Now that I live in a city sans parents, and personal security concerns me every damn day, I'm much less inclined to mock the "security expert" and much more inclined to listen to his advice. Don't try to explain away your intuition that "something is wrong"; trust that you are an expert at predicting other humans' behaviour, as you've been doing it all your life; remember that everybody is pretty much alike and context explains a lot. This is basically The Social Animal, chapter eight (the "tips and tricks" section), only about personal safety rather than love and relationships in general.
de Becker gives a list of almost-universal human characteristics: disliking ridicule and embarrassment, seeking connection with others, seeking a degree of control over one's life, etc. I read it out loud as a checklist (e.g., "Do you suffer from these symptoms?") to Leonard. He asked whether the checklist was intended to test how long someone could go without getting sarcastic. "I crave ridicule and embarrassment!"
# 03 Jan 2002, 10:38PM:
Today a year ago I met Leonard. Today a year ago I was a junior, I
had not yet met Jeana or Steve or Zack or John or Zack, I had been seeing a
counselor at Counseling and Psychological Services about once a week
for a few months, I had barely started my weblog over at kuro5hin,
I had not yet taught Politics in Modern Science Fiction, Clinton
was still President, I saw Dan every day, I had never been to
Bakersfield or Russia, I had no cell phone and no Moxy Früvous
CDs, my hair came down to about my ears, and (it's safe to say) I
spent less than fifteen bucks a week on BART tickets.
I like myself better this year.
# 04 Jan 2002, 06:28AM:
Must leave very soon.
Argh, I thought of something in the shower that I can't remember now.
# 04 Jan 2002, 06:47AM:
This morning on Morning Edition -- gee, it feels like a Saturday except they say it's a Friday -- Bob Edwards was interviewing Kenneth Turan and I never would have known that it was the Los Angeles Ogre except that I woke up in the middle of the interview and Edwards ID'd him again at the end.
You know what was a good movie beginning? Jurassic Park. That movie had a good beginning.
Yesterday I had one of the best ice-cream-eating experiences of my life. Leonard and I shared some mint chocolate chocolate chip at a Double Rainbow franchise and discussed the in-store music (piped-in radio). I made a case for the "yeah, yeah, yeah"s in "What if God Was One of Us?" (which I just realized whould be "What if God Were One of Us?").
The Richmond, CA BART station and the Richmond, CA Amtrak station are in the same building. Terrific, intuitive design. I didn't need directions from anyone or any maps to get from one to the other. And it makes carless travel much easier!
Amtrak.com, on the other hand, I can't wholeheartedly recommend. It won't let me log in; it just keeps returning me to the login page without telling me what went wrong. It forces me to go through too many screens and times out on processes on booking tickets.
During my "vacation," I hope to get some real writing done. Some of those columns I proposed for the Daily Cal before they rejected me, and an attempt at some fiction, perhaps a short story or short play.
# 04 Jan 2002, 06:59AM:
I am responsible for the meeting of Seth and Leonard (at some party of mine a while back), and Seth is responsible for Leonard meeting me.
One day three or so years ago, I watched Dan and Seth play pool in the ground floor lounge in Freeborn Hall, Unit One at Cal. Seth was explaining something about free software or Windows Refund Day. At one point he asked if we ever read Slashdot. And we said, "What's that?" Or probably Dan did, anyway.
And so we started reading Slashdot, and Slashdot begat a link to Segfault, and Segfault had lots of humorous writings by Leonard and begat a link to Leonard's site, and I started reading his stuff long before I ever really had a chance to meet him, but I jumped at the chance when it did come.
Thanks, Seth!
Dan might not feel the same.
# 04 Jan 2002, 07:05AM: Who else wants to go to a sketch comedy festival?
# 04 Jan 2002, 11:06AM GMT+5:30:
Finished The Gift of Fear and will have to talk more about
it later, especially regarding de Becker's pet peeve: local TV news.
de Becker warns us that one indicator that signals danger is a person's
resistance to the word "no." He laments that mass culture trains
women to not reject or to let someone down lightly and trains men
to disregard rejection.
I wish I could tell my mother "no means no!" when she tried to serve
me more food.
# 04 Jan 2002, 02:14PM: A necessarily rhetorical question: Do parents who argue in front of their children realize what they're doing to their kids?
# 04 Jan 2002, 02:17PM: I recently found that, because of my own family-friend commitments and commitments my mother made for me, I have to call or e-mail four different males: Manoj, Ravi, Raffik, and Giri, for purposes of giving praise, giving advice, finding out what's wrong, and probing the possibility of a marital alliance, respectively.
# 04 Jan 2002, 09:31PM: I am getting by with a little help from my friends. Specifically, Jeana, Steve, Zack, Angel, and Leonard have given me precious email, thank you, thank you, thank you.
# 05 Jan 2002, 05:42PM GMT+5:30:
Now I have to update my weblogging software (NewsBruiser). I should be glad that Leonard added functionality. And I am. But upgrades. Grrr.
I have to reply to a lot of email. I will be glad to do it. And tonight I got to catch most of Garrison Keillor's monologue on A Prairie Home Companion. He used the "we're Lutherans" setup three or four times!
I finished Childhood's End and, as after The Songs of Distant Earth, I found myself slightly disoriented that Clarke skips such huge chunks of time. He writes two-hundred-page epics; his grand plots fit in the palm of your hand. I like the fast pace. But his sketches leave out some sheer fiber that I need to feel sated with a story.
I practiced driving today. Not too difficult, considering I hadn't driven in months. I need to set up an appointment to take my license exam, which (I think) has no written portion but (I know) has an eyesight test and a ridealong inspection.
I really dislike malls.
# 05 Jan 2002, 06:04PM:
So I'm going to take the California Basic Educational Skills Test™ (CBEST®) as insurance of a sort against unemployability. Substitute teaching, much like temping, would provide flexible employment and income, but I'd be teaching, which I like, and not just working as a file clerk in some soul-draining corporation. I know schools can be soul-draining, too, but I'd have more interest in the work, and possibly be more effective in making my little part of it more true.
The other job -- why am I so embarrassed to tell you this? -- the other job I'm planning is that of entrepreneur. I am good at teaching, and I'm rather above the mean when it comes to skills with computers in general. So I am going to ... no, that's too strong, right now. Soon, when I've thought it over more, I'll commit to it as a goal. But I am very strongly leaning towards starting a business tutoring people in how to use their desktop computers. I already do this sort of thing all the time for my family and sometimes for friends and acquaintances in computer labs. I'm good enough; why shouldn't I make money at it? I'm friendly, approachable, knowledgable, patient, and polite.
I am going to read up on entrepreneurship in the next few months. This is the job I've fantasized about for a year. I have to allow myself to dream, even as I carefully build that dream into reality, and even as that building takes patience and drudgery and risk.
My mother is behind me. At least I know I can count on her. And I hope you'll support me, too.
I have never felt so nervous writing a journal entry in my life.
# 06 Jan 2002, 10:20AM GMT+5:30:
This morning I was reading Hofstadter and I realized that one thing in this book that annoys me is his wordplay. I mean, as you all know, I am heavily in favor of wordplay in almost every situation, but Hofstadter's endless wordplay leads me to suspect that he makes arguments just so he can play with spelling in punny ways.
This connects to my other peeve I just discovered. de Becker does this and lots of rather unprofessional writers do this. They'll mention a word root or a dictionary definition as though that, in and of itself, is an invincible argument for their position. It's often a conclusion/capstone or an introduction rhetorical trick. Definitions should be used to clarify the premises of arguments, not to make arguments. And word roots are seldom relevant to the discourse.
# 06 Jan 2002, 10:24AM:
The weather is good for driving practice today. And today I'll probably get a haircut. I have been growing my hair out for almost a year, waiting and waiting for my bangs to grow long enough to grab with an elastic band alone. For the last six months I've had to use bobby pins in conjunction with an elastic band to keep my hair back. It gets on my nerves. My function-over-form self rebels. Sure, the draping of lustrous locks over my ears and shoulders creates allure, but I'm sick of having to dry and brush and put up all this keratin. It's coming off.
I started growing my hair long so I'd fit in while in Russia, and on a lark. Well, Russian women are sensible. Many of them have shorter hair than I ever had. And short hair is more...me.
# 06 Jan 2002, 10:28AM: Suzanne R. and I have been corresponding. If you'd told me four years ago that the Sumana of 2002 had been to Russia, didn't have a driver's license, regularly performed stand-up comedy, and could correspond in a polite and even friendly fashion with Suzanne R., that last one is the one that 1998 Sumana wouldn't believe.
# 06 Jan 2002, 10:34AM: "They gave me some money back for not using bags, but it was only six cents, which sucks, because it's the two stupidest coins ever, the penny and the nickel. The nickel just weighs too damn much, and pennies exist only to be laughed at." Steve's weblog.
# 06 Jan 2002, 08:35PM: Leonard: "If you have a big enough lever, the whole world looks like a fulcrum."
# 06 Jan 2002, 08:47PM:
With my current haircut, I resemble the character of Anjali (Kajol) during the first half of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, before she dons Indian garb and gets boring. Tomboy Anjali, critics (Leonard and me) agree, is much cuter.
I wanted to get it even shorter, but the hairdresser and her colleagues barely gave in to cropping as much as they did. "You will look like a boy!" one said.
# 06 Jan 2002, 10:22PM: Dave Barry Does Windows. I met Josh Brockman via alt.fan.dave_barry. And now he goes to Washington University in St. Louis and I have no reason to learn about golf or racing cars and passionately wish I could visit Maine.
# 07 Jan 2002, 08:10AM: In Jalalabad one can get bootlegged LOTR tapes. Dubbed or subtitled? Letterbox or reformatted? Where's the Afghanistan branch of Consumer Reports when you need it?
# 07 Jan 2002, 10:49AM:
Thanks to a very pleasant and helpful DMV employee named "Dan," I have made an appointment to take my driver's license behind-the-wheel exam this Thursday afternoon. Observation: I could have gotten an appointment for the day after tomorrow to get my driver's license. I could not have made an appointment for the day after tomorrow to discuss my health and lifestyle with a doctor.
I passed my permit exam, and the DMV took a photo of me, back in March 2001. My current hair is only slightly shorter than the bob I had back then. A pleasing symmetry.
# 07 Jan 2002, 10:50AM GMT+5:30:
Gavin de Becker can't stand local TV news. In The Gift of Fear, he rails against its sensationalism and fearmongering and faddiness and generally low standard of reporting on about three separate instances in the book. But just as I thought, "wow, he's really peeved at TV news," he started out a new paragraph with "I discuss all this here as much more than a pet peeve."
Likewise, Hofstadter started losing me in his discussion of symbols and thought and the brain and finally said, "Perhaps this seems too abstract..." or some such.
As Leonard has noted, these disclaimers probably came in the editing-by-others stage of the book-writing.
# 07 Jan 2002, 10:51AM GMT+5:30: In the preface or epilogue to paperback editions of best-selling books (e.g., Ender's Game, Iacocca, The Gift of Fear), authors oft say something like, "I never expected that I would get thousands of letters from people who said, 'Your book changed my life.'" You know, it's happened enough times that authors really should expect it by now.
# 07 Jan 2002, 10:51AM:
When I was but a lass, in my senior year of high school, I took Advanced Placement World Literature with Lynda Nahigian, and we had to perform a graduation requirement called the Senior Project. Each of us had to choose some specific topic, write a paper, do a project with a mentor, and make an oral presentation at the end of the whole shebang. Chu Guoy learned to cook her native ethnicity's cuisine, and had a feast to which she invited me and other friends. Micah Roy educated his peers about the plight of Christians in China. Bry'n Campbell directed a performance of a medley of songs from Rent. And I used e-mail and newsgroups to foment a grassroots campaign to get the US to pay its back dues to the United Nations.
Mine didn't turn out so well.
But I learned a lot. I learned, among other things, that conspiracy nuts abound on Usenet, and that it's really tough for one person to change a controversial foreign policy, and that government officials don't pay the most attention to e-mail, and that posting a lot on Usenet will get you a lot of spam.
(I imagine a Google Groups search for brainwane@hotmail.com would turn up those appeals, if you're interested.)
The whole point of the Senior Project was to give an almost-graduate a taste of self-directed success and achievement. But the only self-directed part of the exercise was the project itself; we received plenty of direction and structure for the paper and the presentation. And even with the project, we had to keep a journal and a timesheet and I don't know what-all else. We had dittoes to fill out for everything. Self-direction means not having dittoes.
As for success...even though the Senior Project planners consciously valued process over product, I still feel unsure: did I do what I set out to do? I educated people about the problem of UN arrears, but as to whether I had even a butterfly effect on the eventual result -- it's impossible to tell.
Four years ago I was in the middle of this Senior Project business. And now I'm about to embark on a really self-directed project, viz., making a life for myself, sans dittoes, sans grades, sans safety net. And it'll be even harder to tell whether I'm succeeding.
People keep telling me to have self-confidence. And the Senior Project proposed to give each of us a little taste of success, a track record to give us that confidence in ourselves. But I can only feel proud of my success if I feel as though I did it myself, not as someone else assigned and structured it. I can only feel proud of my success if I feel as though I might have failed.
I will learn to trust myself to make goals and achieve them and make mistakes on the way and recover from them and learn from them. I know I'll learn all that. But it's just scary seeing this blank horizon and having to fill it myself for the first time in my life.
# 07 Jan 2002, 01:18PM:
Leonard alerted me to "Hack On, Jeeves":
I didn't need Sherlock Holmes to explain Jeeves' icy manner. It was the Samsung video monitor I'd
brought home the other day for my computer.
# 08 Jan 2002, 08:10AM:
Jon Carroll, like me, will soon clean up his papers.
I need to save some of the notes from classes long gone just so I'll have something tangible over which to reminisce. Right?
# 08 Jan 2002, 01:05PM: Sometimes it takes a lot to get started on a task, but it's important just to start. It's okay that it's hard. It's not just me. Joel Spolsky reminds me that "We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor."
# 08 Jan 2002, 04:52PM: I have begun to refer to Zachary Weinberg as the Good Zack of the East.
# 08 Jan 2002, 06:27PM:
It just struck me that I'm moving. I was sitting on my futon
in my comfortable living room and I realized that, in a few weeks, this will no longer be my home. I will have to get used to taking a different route every day after school, and having a different phone number and giving people a different address and different directions, and I'll have to adjust to a completely new space as my personal sanctuary.
I already have so very much else to which I must adjust, and I've piled something new on there. How very like me.
# 08 Jan 2002, 06:44PM:
If I may defend myself/state my beliefs more precisely with regards to Hindu-Muslim tensions (cf. Zack's reference):
I must have misstated my views on the roles of the different actors in the Partition. I do know that the British, in dividing India into India and Pakistan, were responding to petitions from the Muslim League, which was an organization of Muslim Indians. I wish the Muslim League had not had the clout that it did have to successfully petition for the Partition, or that the secularist lobby had been able to block it, or that Britain had Just Said No. I know that there have been periods of relative peace and periods of relative conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India; I did not mean to imply that all had been wine and roses for centuries on end.
But I think Hindus and Muslims might have found it easier to get along if, yes, there were no controversial geographic boundary over which to bicker.
Today my mom and I were listening to NPR as we drove somewhere, and we disagreed violently over the current situation. As much as I dislike the unconstitutional way that General Musharraf came to power (a coup), I must admit he's really trying to crack down on militant Islamism and terrorism in Pakistan. What will it take for India to agree to talks?! Surrender of Kashmir? Mass conversions to Hinduism in Islamabad? bin Laden's head on a platter? I really think India is being unreasonable about this.
But my mom backs Vajpayee one hundred percent. She said that "they" attacked the Indian Parliament and therefore must redeem themselves. Now, I tried to point out that, as far as we know, Pakistan's government didn't bomb the parliament, and is trying really hard to track down and punish those responsible. But my mom would have none of it.
I'm beginning to think that India is just jumping on the anti-terrorism bandwagon and is using the current, more permissive atmosphere to get on Musharraf's case for something that he's trying his hardest to control. I predict he'll be killed or ousted himself within the next six or twelve months by hardliners in Pakistan because he's trying so hard to give India what it wants and avoid war. And just when I was beginning to like him.
As you can tell, I'm peeved.
# 08 Jan 2002, 07:06PM: Dinner with the Good Zack of the East and Leonard!
# 09 Jan 2002, 09:42AM GMT+5:30:
Leonard and Zack and I had fun last night conversing on many topics and eating at King Dong (a.k.a. the surprisingly good Chinese restaurant next to the massage parlor at Haste and Shattuck).
Me: It's like that Asimov story.
Zack: I'm sorry, I haven't read Asimov's complete works.
Me: Don't worry, Asimov didn't either.
Leonard: Asimov didn't even write Asimov's complete works! It was--
Me: Bacon.
Leonard: Yes, Francis Bacon, yes.
# 09 Jan 2002, 09:45AM:
Today I clean up and pack a bunch, move some small amount of stuff to my new place, probably watch "Enterprise" and "The West Wing", and possibly practice three-point turns.
I'm going to miss this apartment. My personal space here is the whole apartment. My personal space in the new place is around the size of my bathroom here.
# 09 Jan 2002, 01:52PM:
Within the next hour I start moving stuff from my old/current apartment to my new apartment. I'll start with books and clothes.
I hope the TV in the new place clearly receives the UPN station and the new NBC station (channel 11) so I can watch "Enterprise" and "The West Wing" there tonight.
I had an unexpected and highly enjoyable hanging-out session with Zack just now. I only realized today, as he explained why throwing water on burning molten wax will not put the fire out, that both he and Steve have been chemistry graduate students. Zack isn't anymore, but still. I'm an undergrad in political science, never taken a science here except for Nutritional and Computer intro courses, and I ended up finding friendships with two chem-grad types. The odds, please.
# 09 Jan 2002, 01:58PM: I am giving away or selling a bunch of books, a lamp or two, a wallet, some frisbee-type flying discs, a squirt gun, maybe a bookshelf, packing materials (styrofoam and the like), and a few small shoe shelves. Also possibly on the block: a nice bureau set and a helmet/pads/rollerblade set. I'm sure you can find my e-mail address if you're interested.
# 09 Jan 2002, 05:17PM:
Today I moved a bit of stuff into my new place, and within twenty
minutes, Paulina, my new roommate, arrived. She's great! Bubbly,
articulate, focused. She will accept gifts/loans of some stuff that I
have here that I thought I'd have to sell or give away or put in my
sister's or parents' care, such as a lamp or two. In fact, I should
consult her on all the "sell/give away" stuff. Note to self:
do that.
I think I don't have to winnow any more books from my "take to new
apartment" selections. I'll put my books on the shelves in the living
room.
My new TV gets the new NBC station and the UPN station clearly.
Yay!
Wow, I have a lot yet to do.
# 10 Jan 2002, 10:07AM:
This morning I woke early, as I do on the first day of school and other
life-changing occasions that I anticipate with excitement.
I found myself surprised this morning because I was not worrying
about whether I would pass the test. "Oh, that must be what
confidence feels like," I said to myself.
In a little bit I go downstairs to clean up the inside of the car and do
whatever other errands my mother prescribes me. After that she'll
probably make me eat, and then we'll go practice one last time
in the vicinity of the DMV. I hope that the next time I write
here I'll be a California-certified driver. Or not have taken the
test yet. You know what I'm saying?
# 10 Jan 2002, 05:15PM:
I failed my driving exam. One little critical Dangerous Maneuver. Waah!
But I'll take it again next week.
# 10 Jan 2002, 05:22PM:
I will admit that I am a tiny bit glum (much less than I was!) about
failing my driver's license exam. But my mom cooked sweet
potatoes in the microwave and put salt and pepper on them and gave
some to me. Yummy. And I talked with Nandini and read Smithsonian
magazine. And now I'm mostly over it.
If I were younger than 18, I'd have to wait two weeks before re-taking
the exam. But I can take it again "whenever [I'm] ready." Ah, the
advantages of age.
# 11 Jan 2002, 08:43AM:
I am now, registered to take the CBEST.
I felt odd sleeping in my new apartment Wednesday night. I just
had to watch some TV before I left. Why? Because I didn't have a
radio or Net connection there, and ever since the Sept. 11th terrorist
attacks, I feel a stronger urge to check the news every morning.
# 11 Jan 2002, 08:57AM: David Plotz sounds great in his last few paragraphs of this article about plagiarism.
# 11 Jan 2002, 09:48PM:
Today, after absolutely hating hating hating my parents' constant bickering, I practiced driving and went to Kaiser Permanente to rid the house of old magazines and get some pills and get some bloodwork done. (By the way, I wouldn't be surprised if my mother secretly believes that my refusal to pray before my driving exam caused me to fail.)
Then my mother and I, on a rather spur-of-the-moment decision, saw Gosford Park, an upstairs-downstairs drama set in a country house in 1938 England. I enjoyed my first Altman film; my mother said that it was more like a book than like a film, but that she enjoyed it nonetheless. And Stephen Fry, a.k.a. Jeeves, played a substantial role!
Those of you who have seen Pleasantville probably experienced a suddenly renewed appreciation for color upon exiting the theater. Well, similarly, after Gosford Park I saw servants all around me. I saw the red-vested cinema employees waiting to clean a room and serving refreshments and conversing in between ticket-takings.
I certainly try not to treat service-industry employees as though they're nonpersons, or invisible. But sometimes they surprise me with quiet efficiency that I only notice afterwards. Believe you me, after today I'll endeavor to tip more regularly.
While "Monica" drew my blood, I tried to distract myself with Hofstadter's explanation of the difference between representation and expression of a predicate in a formal system. It didn't help much.
While waiting at the pharmacy, I ran into Shelby from high school. I barely knew her then, and I still can't recall her maiden name, although perhaps it matters little since she's taken her new husband's surname for her own. I kept thinking, "Shelby...Shelby Foote? No, that's wrong, that's that Ken Burns historian."
Oh: today, while sorting magazines, I came across a US News and World Report with a cover headline: CHEATING, WRITING, AND ARITHMETIC. Not quite as funny as the San Joaquin Delta College ad I saw flashed on the cinema screen before the previews before Gosford Park:
I didn't stop laughing for two minutes. Not only has someone else deliberately locked my future (To keep it from me? To keep it from others?), but my future is a lock. It wasn't "Unlock the Door to Your Future." I saw no implication that my future is protecting anything! Some futuresmith has created an access control device, and I will have to work the rest of my life to unlock it, because that's my future, a lock!
I scored 705 in Solitaire.
Work Is The Key.
Unlock Your Future.
# 11 Jan 2002, 09:49PM:
And I got to talk with Angel! Huzzah!
"It's the left-turn lane, not the you've-already-turned-left-and-now-you-merge-into-the-right-lane lane."
# 14 Jan 2002, 12:45PM:
My new roommate, Paulina, loves "My Word!" and her father adores P.G. Wodehouse. Terrific!
My gradual-move-in plan has been abandoned. The only things holding me in my old place now are logistics: I have to move a bunch of stuff, which means I have to ask Zack and possibly Nandini to lend me the use of their cars, and yet I want to have some small amount of seating around for my parties later this month. I'll probably end up with floor seating, I guess.
# 15 Jan 2002, 08:03AM:
Yesterday I had a hanging-out bonanza. Jeana came over and we had tea and discussed gender and folklore. Then Zack and I had dinner and he helped me move a bunch of stuff to Nandini's place and we conversed.
"Ah, yes, we can schedule it in, 'subvert gender boundaries, Tuesday at 3.'"
# 15 Jan 2002, 04:30PM:
I gave in and read Salon's "Masterpiece" on "Seinfeld." The last page especially
reminded me of a high school friend, Karl Neuharth, who was at
Pepperdine last I heard, but who now has completely disappeared
from all traces of civilization (read: Google). What the heck happened?
He enjoyed Seinfeld. Oh, wow, I still remember what he looked like,
kinda.
# 15 Jan 2002, 04:31PM: India Post headline: "Being Fired is a State of Mind." Wait, no.
# 16 Jan 2002, 07:45AM:
Today I try once more to get that fine card, that signifier of
responsibility and adulthood, that ticket into the polluting class,
the driver's license. The test takes place around 11:15, in a few
scant hours. Beep your horn for me.
While asking other people about their driving test experiences, I
did not run into a single licensed driver who passed his or her ride-along exam
the first time through. Even my father failed his first time! Leonard speculated
that the DMV does not allow first-timers to pass, but what purpose would that serve?
Such a policy would only incur more expense for the DMV, with only a
slight uptick in the quality of new drivers. I'd rather believe that
DMV examiners make people nervous, that first-timers are already
nervous, and that practice helps an examinee remember the obscure test items
(e.g., hand signals). To me, that's a model with explanatory power.
And it doesn't require supposing a conspiracy among thousands of constantly disgruntled
government employees.
# 16 Jan 2002, 03:13PM:
Waah! I failed the driver's test again.
This time I had a rather nice male examiner and seemed to be doing okay
all the way till the end. I pulled into the DMV driveway and immediately
had to turn right into the "finished the driver's test" lane and I
went over a bump. The examiner emitted a pained "Oh!" and had to fail me
because striking an object or curb (the latter, in this case) is a
Critical Driving Error.
He encouraged me with his observation that I will certainly pass the
test the next time I take it. But when will I have time? And where
will I get a 25-year-old licensed driver to take me to a DMV, except
if I have a parent nearby, and what weekday could I do this in Stockton?
# 17 Jan 2002, 07:16AM: I know a fella who learned Spanish by reading Neruda in the original, speaking of Pablo. In fact, that fella is John Morearty, of whom I will speak much more in the next few hours.
# 17 Jan 2002, 07:21AM:
Mike Popovic's
daughter, Zoe, responds to "let's roll!"
Lacking
directional control, she attempts to compensate with distance - like some sort of brightly-colored tumbleweed, she
stops only when she meets an immoveable object.
# 17 Jan 2002, 07:23AM: Yee-ha! Jon Carroll uses "Google" as a verb! I very well may get out the barn.
# 17 Jan 2002, 07:29AM:
Steve's Adventures at Strada:
...she didn't have a feel for what radiation is. That one sort of floored me, because radiation is one of my "basis concepts" that I use to explain other things. (Yes, I think of my scientific knowledge as being spanned by a basis set of conceptual eigenvectors. The basis set idea is also one of my "basis concepts". Yes, I also know that I'm weird.)
# 17 Jan 2002, 07:50AM GMT+5:30:
Yesterday I went to a store (The Dollar Tree) to try to buy blank videocassettes, and what happened? Nothing. Not even ice cream. Or, rather, I couldn't find any.
(Have I complained here before about the metaphor of the Dollar Tree? I mean, do the dollars grow on the tree? Is the tree made of dollars? Does it cost a dollar? Would one maybe hang one's dollars on the dollar tree, as on a coat tree? I'll stop before this gets as bad as the "unlock your future" rant.)
I often find myself intrigued at what books pop up in the not-quite-ultimate remainder bin of 98-cent-stores and the like. And I often feel guilty for wanting to buy some of them. But the selection at the Dollar Tree contained several quality items! Examples:
Oh, you know that some authors are so famous that their names show up in much larger type on their book jackets than the actual titles. However, yesterday I saw the converse: a self-help book on whose jacket a price sticker covered up the author's name.
If I were an author who found her books showing up at the Dollar Tree, maybe I'd comfort myself with the hope that my works would reach a larger, less well-to-do audience. But I'd probably still feel awful.
# 17 Jan 2002, 07:54AM:
How did an Aaron Spelling television drama concentrating on the family of a Christian minister get so good? Oh, Seventh Heaven, the show that actually does didacticism relatively well, and one of my mass-media vices.
I watched a bit yesterday and....moral ambiguity? On television? (read to the tune of Berkeley Farms's tagline, "Cows? In Berkeley?")
# 17 Jan 2002, 11:10AM:
Back in Berkeley. FOR NOW.
My mother has blown up at me and she's simmering with anger and I don't know what to do about it. Frustrating and saddening.
On the up side, I'm back in Berkeley. Now to prepare for the parties.
# 17 Jan 2002, 11:16AM:
Josh Brockman introduced me to Ben Folds Five by telling me that he was sad that the group had broken up, and I have enjoyed their music for something like a year.
This morning I listened to the radio a bit and heard a song that I liked. I thought, "Gee, this sounds a lot like Ben Folds Five, but I think I've heard all their songs and this isn't one of them. Perhaps this is a product of Ben Folds's solo career?" And yep, I was right. This episode particularly pleased me because I often believe myself a culturally illiterate nincompoop when it comes to music of any sort. I hope Basic Musicianship this semester will help me out there.
Oh, and I heard the beginning of a fun Smashmouth remake of "Then I Saw Her Face (Now I'm a Believer)" or whatever that song is called. And then my sister told me that this song has been around since Shrek came out. I'm so behind. This is what happens when I limit my listening to old CDs, tapes, and public radio.
# 17 Jan 2002, 03:05PM:
John comforted me with his own driver's test experience:
Driver's tests are scary, but they're pretty slackass about it in
Maryland. I parallel parked beautifully, waited for the guy to fill out some boxes, then went to pull out- and went nowhere. Tried again- went nowhere. Then the guy put the parking brake down for me.
# 17 Jan 2002, 03:10PM: Get this: I'm actually avoiding Slate, Salon, and Slashdot because I didn't really get to read them regularly while I was in Stockton and I'll feel as though I have to catch up. What a dork I can be sometimes.
# 18 Jan 2002, 10:58AM: Time to clean.
# 18 Jan 2002, 12:13PM:
I play with candles far too much. This pyromania has delayed my onset of cleaning for far too long. Can it end here?
I just finished the chocolate Euros I got for Christmas.
# 18 Jan 2002, 12:32PM: The seventh sign of the apocalypse: a good Onion story.
# 18 Jan 2002, 02:17PM:
I need to build momentum to clean. Who am I, Paul Ford?
Anyway, I'm addicted to Brunching Shuttlecocks's ratings.
# 18 Jan 2002, 05:14PM: Of the people I'm expecting to come to my first party, all but one (my new roommate) have web journals.
# 19 Jan 2002, 11:34PM:
I will have to say a whole lot about the fun party that I had between 5:30ish
yesterday night and about a half hour ago. I will post observations
and fun quotes.
In the meantime: I wonder how difficult it would be to hack the
LiveJournal system to
view the entries that people wish me not to see. Financially it
doesn't interest me, but my voyeurism awakens.
# 20 Jan 2002, 02:16AM:
I threw a party last night and I count it as a success. People seemed to enjoy themselves. I don't want to get complacent about my recent high rate of success throwing parties; I especially worry that too many people will come to my next two parties and that I have to clear out more space in my apartment so that people will have room to decompress.
My guests at this party were, in vague order of arrival: Jeana, Zach, Matt, Adam, Paulina, Benoit, Seth, and Nandini. Jeana is my friend and former student; Zach is my friend via Shweta via Nathaniel; Matt is my friend via Sociology 3; Adam is my friend via many different pathways including Jeana and Matt; Paulina and Benoit are two of my new flatmates; Seth is my friend via Freeborn Hall (my freshman dormoritory); Nandini is my sister.
Matt is a geography major and laughed a great deal when he compared the sizes of France and Texas and I noted that each has a Paris.
Matt and Jeana misled me (probably accidentally) to believe that Adam had had a part in the making of a site I love, TripPlanner. Well, he's sort of connected, but not really. Adam is far more connected to Leonard's online heritage, even back to the BBS days, to the point of considering Dada Pokey a major influence on his personal development. I played various Leonard songs for Adam, such as Techno Schmeckno wit DJ Generik. (Techno Schmeckno mp3 file, 777Kb)
At this point I now realize that I am basically writing this entry for Steve, and possibly Benjamin and Leonard and Frances and Susanna and Kris... wow, that's far more than one person who wasn't there and who (I think) regularly reads my journal! Not as few as I'd thought.
Note that, despite my earlier prediction, several people came to the party who had no online journals; yet, for several minutes, the only people in my living room all had online journals. The weblogs connection did not escape us, and did not escape my sister, who mocked me. Fun was made of the fact that I remember lots from other people's journals, e.g., what day of the week Seth wrote an entry that he later unposted because of secrecy concerns. (Tuesday.)
Zachary cooked absolutely terrific lasagna with ricotta cheese and spinach and everyone raved about it. Seth brought Chinese food that people also enjoyed. I supplied a few snacks and we were quite set. With regards to drinks, I had meant to dash out to Berkeley Bowl or the deli around the corner for sodas, but as it turned out, people didn't seem disappointed with orange juice, tea, and water. I pass the savings on to you.
Benoit is from France and Seth is from Massachusetts and Paulina is from Mexico and Adam is from Utah and I'm not really from anyplace and so on. We learned from each other, and we merikens [phonetic] learned a thing or two from our visitors. Example: I pointed Benoit to the old poster that says <<Régardez-vous sur vidéo!>>. (I made it to advertise the movie Dave back in high school French class.)
Oh, and later Seth told me that "video" and "audio" are Latin for "I see" and "I hear," respectively.
Benoit and Paulina went outside to smoke once. That disoriented me a bit, since I don't smoke and don't often hang out with smokers, but I'll get used to it.
People left and people left and finally Seth and I spent a whole bunch of time together and, like wizards, stayed up late. I showed him an essay entitled "The Good, the Bad, and Scarface" that I read back in my senior year of high school. Oh, boy, I have more to tell about that artifact, don't get me started, let me tell you.
Relatedly, I heard a story about his old high school. "A Foreshadowing of Seth!"
He and I talked a great deal about our personal histories and our problems and relationships and literature (that last topic included because any conversation of over an hour with Seth is bound to bring up a reference to Vergil's Aeneid).
It can be much easier to play the game Taboo when the players know each other well. "I went on it this morning..." "The Internet!" or "Leonard's at one of these right now." "A wedding!"
Seth and I didn't actually play. We just went through a great many cards getting each other to guess the Guess Word without using the Taboo Words. At moments we complained that too few words were Taboo; a few Guess Words, however, stumped us for several minutes (example: "dollop").
Many humorous incidents, too many to list, but I can mention some.
Seth observed that I don't talk about myself much in his presence. I find it hard to believe that. I think about myself a lot, and find myself talking with friends about my problems pretty regularly. Perhaps I just talk a lot more one-on-one and much less in public (such as at the party), and try not to whine about my problems in multiparty face-to-face contact. I want to be appreciated, and I want people to pay attention to me, but I don't want to scare them off or bore them by talking too much. And besides, I really admire people like Leonard for being concise and not speaking except to contribute a gem to the general discourse. And my mother often tells me that I should "talk less and listen more." Of course, maybe she doesn't mean to admonish me and tell me that I'm talking too much when she says that phrase. Maybe it's just a phrase that I shouldn't take literally and should interperet as "make sure you listen to people." But people seem to appreciate that I try to listen more and talk less. I don't know; I have no objective measure of whether I've calmed down "enough" when it comes to socializing and giving other people a chance to talk.
Sometimes I'm lonely. Yes, school's about to start, and yesterday I saw a fella I half-know walking on Shattuck, which really comforted me and gave me a spirit of togetherness. (Stockton isn't walkable and I don't know that many people there.) But even though I blathered on about San Francisco's geographic unity and how it fosters community and optimism and feasible mass transit, I still get sad. BART does not erase the melancholy of simply being human. Not completely.
I don't like admitting that I need support and love and appreciation from other people because I don't like being dependent on anyon for anything. Desires and perceived dependencies create sorrow. That's what I learned from Buddhism and Andrew Creighton and Steve Weber. But practically everybody has desires and dependencies, and I neither should nor can obviate all of them. I should admit them and try to ensure that they facilitate my life more than they cripple it.
I suspect fallacy in the life in pursuit of happiness, and fear that I have lived too long in pursuit of ecstasy. (No, not MDMA.) Somewhere I acquired this belief that happiness is something that happens to me when I'm doing a good job on a project, and not an object that I should or could try to get on its own. But sometimes I let myself relax, as I did at some moments Friday night, and I feel something that I could best characterize as a species of happiness. I don't know how to account for all of this.
But I've digressed from Seth's main concern. He basically told me, "you care a lot about other people, and you spend a lot of time and effort learning about them and paying attention to them and trying to help them be comfortable and happy, but it would be okay for you to not do that so much and spend more time caring for yourself and letting other people learn about you and appreciate you." Is my paraphrase right, Seth?
At this point my religious habits kick in and I find myself saying, O God, in my head. I certainly don't want to depend on some imaginary entity for strength and wisdom! How to "unlearn the habits of a lifetime"? There's The Practice of Programming and there is the practice of deprogramming. My mother is very upset with me because I've told her that I doubt the existence of God. She blames it on Leonard. A shy, sweet, clever atheist -- what a wicked influence!
I grieve the death of my God, I grieve that my mother is unhappy with me, I grieve that my behaviour can never completely please both my parents and myself, I grieve for victims of terrorists and war, I grieve for Avi Raina, I grieve for Michael Rogin.
Seth told me that in one Jewish tradition the mourners of a death stay in for seven days. Visitors come by, and bring food, "as though a baby had been born," Seth said. Grief is like a birth. It comes with great pain, and you must take care of it, at first all the time, and then less and less until finally it grows up and moves away.
Seth and I ate at Extreme Pizza and bade each other adieu.
"Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness / And I like the whole truth / But there are nights I only need forgiveness.""It was the kind of party that you hope never ends..."
-- The Party Generation, Dar Williams"You know, I think you remember every part of me."
-- My Friends, Dar Williams
Me: So someone recently told me that the last line doesn't mean--
He at least agreed that, if that line means anything at all, it means "watch yourself on video," and not "You! watch on video."
Benoit: Anything?"I finally think I come from someplace..."
Benoit and I traded anecdotes about the new unified European currency. He told me that someone used the new Euro-like Monopoly money in a store and the storekeeper accepted it and gave him change. I told him the story that Leonard had told me. You see, euro coins, like our US twenty-five-cent pieces, have customized backs according to their place of minting. The apocryphal French baker said, "I'm sorry, monsieur, I cannot accept this, it is a Spanish euro."
-- Road Buddy, Dar Williams"Oni ni kurit, ne zanimayus' sexom... [They don't smoke, they don't have sex...]"
-- Intro to Straight Edge, Naif"But when his drinking and lusting and his hunger for power became known to more and more people, the demands to do something about this outrageous man became louder and louder.
Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey
Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey"
-- Rah Rah Rasputin, Boney M
"And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think / That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink / But oh how I loved everybody else / When I finally got to talk so much about myself..."
I find it hard to believe that I could do certain things. For example, I'm afraid I won't know how to have any marriage other than one like my parents'. And I don't know how to balance altruism and selfishness because all my life people have criticized me for being too much of one or the other.
--What Do You Hear In These Sounds, Dar Williams"I'm sure you know / There's lots to learn / But that's not your fault / That's just your turn."
-- Teenagers, Kick Our Butts, Dar Williams
-- My Friends, Dar Williams
# 20 Jan 2002, 02:38AM: Yee-ha and woo-hoo, I have no more postponed messages left to write. My email client has one fewer thing about which to bother me.
# 20 Jan 2002, 02:51AM: Oi, I still have to tell you how cool John Morearty is. Maybe on Sunday proper.
# 20 Jan 2002, 09:04AM:
I sometimes forget very enjoyable National Public Radio features until I hear them again. Examples: the puzzle and "Voices in the News" from Weekend Edition Sunday. Another example: NPR dreams. I let myself slumber after the alarm has gone off and find the news in my dreams. I think in my dream this morning I met Muhammad Karzai, the new prime minister of Afghanistan.
I was so involved in my conversation with Seth last night that I forgot to listen to A Prairie Home Companion and I can't listen to the repeat today (probably) because I'll be having brunch with my sister, who can't stand PHC. Oh, well.
# 20 Jan 2002, 09:40AM: I never listened to the whole Boney M tape before. I just skipped to "Rah Rah Rasputin" and stopped after that. I was considering giving this tape to my sister, but I actually sort of like it now. Reggae? for Sumana?
# 20 Jan 2002, 09:08PM:
I cried with relief and sadness when my mother, upon questioning, told me that of course she wasn't mad at me anymore, that it had only been a temporary thing, of course, she's my mother.
I had a good day. I had brunch with my sister, paid far too much for books for only two classes but got it over with very quickly, had great conversation and discovery with Steve, and went to an Indian party with my sister and saw my parents there. That party wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, partly because I let myself withdraw and be silent when I didn't feel like mingling, and partly because we left so much earlier than I thought we would. Then my sister and I did an errand or two and now I'm home and safe until Tuesday.
I went to a pharmacy with my sister where an announcement reminded us to pick up our prescription(s) within seven days after ordering them. "On the 7th day, prescription(s) will be returned to stock." Much more informative and relevant than "he rested."
# 20 Jan 2002, 09:13PM: Steve and I discussed his problems with QTest, a closed-source program he uses in his research. He's given the developers so many and such difficult-to-resolve bug reports that they have now given him access to the source code ("Here, you fix it," as Steve noted). I pointed out that this implies that the developers trust Steve not to steal the code and distribute it or repackage it in a new commercial distribution (STest?). Steve enjoyed my suggestion. "Quantum chemistry software for the masses!" he exclaimed.
# 21 Jan 2002, 01:51PM:
Zack had a hella funny dream.
In more Cuisinart-style humor, Steve says, "When the master has no tools, every hammer looks like a screwdriver." Take that, bell hooks!
# 21 Jan 2002, 02:39PM:
Wow, I'm surrounded by good and tender and caring friends. This has been a very, very good weekend. I love feeling loved and wanted! And I've had so much intoxicating intimacy these past few days. What a wonderful feeling.
Wow, I still haven't completely cleaned up from the last party and I'm having another one tomorrow night! Yikes! Oh, but wow, I only have one class tomorrow. Yay! Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays will be full up this semester, but Tuesdays and Thursdays maybe I can get some work done. Maybe?
I need to wash my sheets, and my pillowcases, and other laundry, and sell this bureau set, and agh. Food preparation, cleaning, decluttering, moving more stuff to my new place, packing stuff to go to Stockton this weekend, and so on.
Oh yes! Yesterday I went to the flea market (Sundays at the Ashby BART station parking lot) with my sister. Terrific! I obtained an audiocassette of Electric Light Orchestra songs, a videotape that purports to showcase some Garrison Keillor, and the Stanislaw Lem book A Perfect Vacuum (reviews of nonexistent books). You should go, too, if you can. Great bargains.
You may recall that Leonard once said that Seth has the perfect book collection, because nearly every book in it Leonard would like to read and own. Well, a bookseller at the flea market : me :: Seth : Leonard. I wanted vast proportions of his wares. Lem! Rushdie! Vonnegut! Lawrence (D.H.)! Wodehouse! Cleary! Lahiri! Oh, David Wexler, you siren!
Yesterday I also spent a few minutes at the three-hour memorial service that the university held for Professor Michael Rogin. I was gratified when I saw that hundreds of people had assembled to remember the man's life. How strange it is that I can picture him so clearly and yet he will never be alive again and that picture will never again become fact. And my memories will decay and I will die and in a few hundred years no one will remember him as he was, not one person will remember him answering her question or giving her advice.
He was important to me.
The past tense is such a monstrous thing.
"North Dakota and South Dakota don't really need to be separate states."
"And if we want to keep the fifty states, then we can unify the Dakotas and split California, Northern California and Southern California."
"But what would we call the new states?"
"Northern California and Southern California."
"That's too boring."
"Well, how about.....Siliconia...and...Siliconia."
"Lawrence Lessig was a pimp, gambler, and racketeer who loved his wife and knew when to draw the line."
"The EFF was in many ways as good as it was bad....it lived a life that included just about anything you can think of that could happen to a 401(c)."
# 21 Jan 2002, 02:47PM:
"The U.S. Supreme Court judged the contest, voting Vermont the loudest in a 7-2 decision."
I really don't know what I'll do if The Onion keeps making funny. I'm just not used to it.
Recently I was on the phone with Leonard, a Californian in Texas, while also talking with Steve, a Texan in California. (I do not know of any Americans in Paris.) And I remembered to ask Leonard (as per the ads for "Texas Justice" ("The Judge Rules Mondays")) whether the Judge in fact was ruling. We conjectured that perhaps the Judge only rules First Mondays.
# 21 Jan 2002, 07:00PM:
I'm moving from one room to another, as Swami Ramakrishna said. Of course, he said that in a comforting vision his widow had just after he died. I am merely moving my possessions and residence to another dwelling, not losing all use for them.
I've been looking through my archives saved in cardboard boxes, those faceless coffins and treasure troves. I've written some pretty good stuff! I laughed out loud at a few spots. Example: In my college application essay, I wrote that "My sister calls me 'Banana,' emphasizing my quirkiness and high potassium content."
# 21 Jan 2002, 07:09PM: In case you can't tell, I spent a great deal of time with Steve and Seth this holiday weekend at Albertson's, a.k.a. my apartment. And it was all so fun! Sometimes I underestimate my need for real, soulful connection with others.
# 21 Jan 2002, 07:17PM: My host mother from St. Petersburg, Vera, sent me a postcard! And I understand it, sort of! I need to fully decipher the handwriting and the Russian, but I think she tried to tell me that she received back the package that she'd tried to send me (books) and would try to send them again soon. Neat! I'd almost given up on the box containing the Lawrence and the Fitzgerald and the Russian folktales (yee-ha, Jeana!) and the Tolstoy. I hope I eventually receive it.
# 22 Jan 2002, 07:48AM: Jon Carroll today: "Also, Enron makes that whole Ayn Rand Fountainhead thing look a little silly. Who is John Galt? Ken Lay."
# 22 Jan 2002, 10:13AM:
Yesterday my breakfast was leftover ommelette from Bacheeso's, an excellent breakfast cafe at San Pablo and Dwight in Berkeley. Today my breakfast is leftover sub sandwich from Extreme Pizza. I recommend both of these establishments.
Yesterday I hung out with Nandini, Matt, and Adam. We had dinner together, and then Nandini and Adam helped me move stuff to my new apartment, and then Adam and I talked till the wee hours of the morn. Well, only till 1:30, which is rather early for me these days. And then this morning I conversed with Matt and we commiserated about the tough breakup of Adam and Jeana.
According to Matt, I may be the only friend who's heard the substance of Jeana's story and Adam's story regarding the breakup. And these people have, it seems, very different stories. I feel bad, since I'm friends with both of them and I try not to have loyalties to either party. And they cared about each other, and any time a relationship ends that had potential for good, I feel sad.
But I feel especially sad in this case because of the miscommunications that have taken place. These are both intelligent, language-loving college students. (Adam, a junior, majors in linguistics; sophomore Jeana will major in folklore and history.) Yet, though they talk and they talk, in person and over e-mail and over the phone and in their LiveJournal weblogs, they don't seem to get through to each other. And when doubling and redoubling of effort does not yield success, then one must take a different tack.
My frustration makes me wonder whether Jeana and Adam should not just stop even trying to talk and listen to each other at all, since they seem to speak irreconcilably different languages. I almost always support more attempts at communication rather than fewer, but if people try and it doesn't help, then what's the use? Either a radically different strategy or medium might make a difference, or nothing will.
And they'd probably disagree with each other on that point, too.
# 22 Jan 2002, 10:55AM:
I greatly enjoy every entry that Leonard and Kris post on their
punditry-venting joint effort, Counterpoint/Countercounterpoint. These days they quip around and about the Enron fiasco. Excerpt:
A big campaign donor got access to the White House and input into matters of policy. You may remember this from every single damn administration ever.
# 22 Jan 2002, 09:49PM: No one except Leonard came to my party tonight. Waaah! Well, at least that means that the last party will certainly have many guests!
# 23 Jan 2002, 08:10AM:
So now I have this theory about people's first great loves (in French, the grande passion, I think). The relationships tend to end in quarreling and talking past each other and miscommunication galore because "true love" occurs in a person's own head, not between him and his beloved. He thinks it's happening between him and his beloved, but he's really in love with a perfect entity that he's constructed in his own head and that he's loathe to reconcile with the imperfections of the actual Other. In later relationships, people are more realistic, which is to say they're more willing to modify their mental models/internal representations of their significant others, and to adjust their communications to actually understand each other and try different ways of getting across to each other.
I used the masculine there partly for simplicity. Yes, women do the won't-change-my-understanding-of-you-even-when-it's-patently-wrong thing, too. But recently I've observed more guys doing it than gals. The guys and gals are in love, the gals realize it's not going to work out, they try to stop without telling the guys "I'm not in love with you anymore," it all turns out catastrophical.
# 23 Jan 2002, 09:49AM: The always-crotchety Self-Made Critic tells us, re: the cast of Gosford Park, "...Stephen Fry, Ryan Phillippe, Clive Owen, Kelly Macdonald, Ron Webster and some other people that are equally as important to the film but I'm just plum tired of writing everybody's name. Might be easier to tell you who isn't in it."
# 23 Jan 2002, 07:11PM:
Today a great deal of reality bonked me on the head. I attended the first class sessions of Intro to Logic, Basic Musicianship, and Advanced Russian Conversation. Holy shroud, this semester's full of work. Every single class I'm taking, including Intro to Linguistics, concentrates on skills that one must work nearly every day to learn, and not reading that one can skim. Intro to Logic alone requires four quizzes, a midterm, and a final, and weekly problem sets that students report take ten hours each!
I need to give up something; I'll have to socialize less, limit my net time and set myself upon getting the straight As that I know I can get. And maybe I can take the less demanding option for the Russian Conversation class.
In other news, I may be learning to whistle!
# 24 Jan 2002, 07:49AM: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine could have featured a Cardassian officer named Gul Um. He would have been rather inarticulate and obsessed with power, yet strangely impotent, and a passing Federation ensign (Bill?) could steal his riches in an instant. Poor Gul.
# 24 Jan 2002, 07:53AM:
I hope I can make this a busy day. I will pick up my logic reader and do my homework for that class before Linguistics lecture. I will.
I just realized that I have two Capitol Steps songs on my XMMS playlist: "Like a Suburban Drone" and the 2000 Election version of "Bohemian Rhapsody."
Actually, I just added one that's on the capsteps.com front page right now: "Santa Claus is Coming by Ground." What, no Ogg Vorbis file?
# 24 Jan 2002, 08:12AM:
This is my hundredth entry this month.
I've written some important e-mails and sent them off. Now, to
get ready for the day and buy my reader.
# 24 Jan 2002, 02:44PM:
I returned the Music textbook/CD set that I mistakenly bought and got enough money for the correct Music text and my Russian text/cassette set and then some. Of course, I had to wait for much time in line to do that, and also to obtain my Logic reader.
Logic really does boggle the brain. I have to read 31 pages by tomorrow and it took about 90 minutes to an hour to read and comprehend {a nectar, about twenty}. So I still have to finish that, AND music AND Russian. Argh.
Sometimes wrapping my mind around Logic concepts takes a while. It takes practice to remember/comprehend, for example, that "if p then q" is equivalent to "p only if q," but I have it almost down now. And I thought there was some inconsistency in the text where the author said "this is an inclusive or" and then used "either," which implies an "exclusive or" relationship, but then I went to Professor Warren's office (he's the type who's in his office even when it's not his Office Hours, as I'd hoped) and he explained that I'd hit on something important, and that the
author believes that "either" really just clarifies internal groupings within statements and doesn't denote exclusive-or-ness.
I'm so glad I've been reading Hofstadter. GEB has helped me get a head start on logic, and I hope to finish it in the next week or so. Yeah, right, what with moving, and with helping my mom clean this weekend.
I've been humming do-re-mis all day, too. I've almost mastered do-ti-la-sol-fa-mi-re-do, and can sing do-mi-sol and do-mi-sol-mi-do without too much difficulty.
# 24 Jan 2002, 02:50PM:
Michael Kinsley, as acid as he's ever been:
"In the pervasive culture of spin, it's possible that Ken Lay was describing a reality he wanted without even considering the relation of what he was saying to reality as we actually experience it. If so, his mistake was forgetting that he's not a politician."
# 24 Jan 2002, 02:59PM:
So, I had thought, "I never got a response to my contest entry, and therefore I infer that Slate didn't choose me for its Book Club." But just recently I saw that the "Culturebox" articles (example) contain a reassurance, below the byline, that Slate will announce results soon.
Gosh, it would be kind of cool if I won.
# 24 Jan 2002, 06:00PM:
I thought I'd have much homework tonight. But I've finished my Logic, and I've almost finished my Music. Also, I returned my defective copy of Let's Talk About Life! (the stupidest foreign-language textbook title I've ever seen) and neither Ned's nor Bear Books nor Campus Textbook Exchange had any other copies, so I can't do the Russian work for tomorrow.
So tonight I separate out a great deal of what goes to Stockton from what goes to the new apartment, and Zack helps me move big things from here to Nandini's place and from here to my new place. Wow, logistics.
# 25 Jan 2002, 12:07PM:
The Ten Types of LiveJournal Users doesn't quite categorize all the online journals that I've seen, but enough. I, too, fear I'm a dullard.
The Lost Eleventh type: only posts links, preferably to quizzes and Top Ten lists.
# 25 Jan 2002, 12:18PM: I apologized to someone whom I had done wrong, and it wasn't nearly good enough for him. He replied with an angry letter that I just received. We start from completely different premises that I don't think we can reconcile, so I believe that there's nothing more I can do that will have any effect on how angry he is with me. Which is sad, but I'd get even more frustrated and feel even more guilty if I tried to act otherwise.
# 25 Jan 2002, 12:26PM:
Last night Zack had dinner with me and helped me move a great deal of furniture, and then was so exhausted that he slept over rather than go home at midnight. He singlehandedly disassembled my futon, for example, and we moved my computer table and microwave to my new place and the futon and a small table to my sister's place. (Packing his car took ingenuity, I don't mind telling you.) My roommates jokingly complained, "Look, the phantom roommate!" when I came in. Well, in a few days they'll have no reason to make that complaint.
So now my apartment feels much emptier, and the sight of bare carpet reminds me that not only is my residence here ephemeral, but so is all existence. I wish I didn't feel quite so disoriented; I'm beginning to feel homeless, even more so than usual.
Adam and Zack both noticed the halo around the moon last night. And, sure enough, meteorologists (Expert Folks) told me this morning that rain's a-comin'.
I saw Anirvan and Nandini last night, too. Anirvan said that he's now reading my journal, now that it's not on kuro5hin, because this (NewsBruiser interface makes reading so much easier than does the K5 interface. Thanks, Leonard!
# 25 Jan 2002, 07:05PM:
Madly packing. Taking a short break for sanity's sake.
I just got an email: I'll be in the Monday-Wednesday 9am discussion section for Logic. Fine by me. The smaller, the better when it comes to sections.
# 25 Jan 2002, 07:10PM:
So far the only items of furniture still in my house that will go to other people are the minibureau/table, the futon, the bed, and the white bookcase. (These things are going to such people as my sister and my mom and Leonard.) Tell me if you want any of the following:
I don't have much time and I have no moving equipment, so you'll have to come to me and haul stuff yourself. Or I can arrange to drop off free things on some street corner near my house.
# 26 Jan 2002, 12:02PM:
Saw "R.L. Stine's The Nightmare Room" on TV this morning. Not as bad as X-Men Evolution, or, as I called it, X-Men Awful-ution. And it was a neat moral fable that didn't have a fake happy ending, but a really scary (but not gruesome) ending (at least, on-stage).
I'm not nearly as agitated as I was last night. Just resigned to knowing I have lots of nonappealing work these next few days (as opposed to the homework that I actually want to do).
I fixed my dad's hand-held tape recorder by switching the "pause" switch to "off." I hope most of my tech-support cases will be that easy.
# 26 Jan 2002, 12:04PM: My sister and I have been playing around with the hand-held tape recorder. We really like listening to ourselves. Maybe I do have an ego of substantial proportions after all. In addition, we're much funnier than most drive-time DJs, or so I'd like to believe.
# 26 Jan 2002, 05:39PM:
Aiee, I have to clean my apartment and cook enough for 20 people or so on a day this week.
Gotta go soon. Always demands on me! Always!
Oh, and I realized that I got my martyrdom from my mom and dad, and that I got my constant attitude of "can't trust assumptions, especially about the future, can't plan on anything, the world might end tomorrow" from moving around so much when I was a kid (New Jersey-->Pennsylvania-->Missouri-->California), and also my father's (and, to a lesser extent, my mother's) lack of compunction about interrupting or canceling some activity I do/did or want(ed) to do so that I can/could do something else they want(ed) me to do.
# 26 Jan 2002, 05:42PM: So many emails (espec. replies) I want to write and so little available time!
# 27 Jan 2002, 09:01AM:
From Camworld:
Here's an article about a fuel surcharge that some airlines added to the cost of tickets when jet fuel was more expensive than it is now. Even though the price per gallon has dropped dramatically the airlines have kept the surcharge. Why? Is it pure greed?
I think that "Is it pure greed?" is -- almost always -- a terrific question to ask, Salon-style: "Traffic safety has improved over the past five years. But is it pure greed?"
# 27 Jan 2002, 10:30PM:
Back in Berkeley, finally. Thank you thank you thank you Mom for letting my sister and me go a few hours early. What kept me sane? Some kindness from my mom, my sister's presence, the internet, Garrison Keillor, thoughts of my friends, books, chocolate, some kindly people at my mom's party.
I have class at 9am tomorrow so I'll go to sleep soon. Dammit, I meant to do more homework between now and tomorrow. This is what happens when my pro-education mother decides to get all religious-communal and drag me into it, I guess. Oh well. I'll just try to memorize some of the Russian vocab and the bass and treble clef staff lines and spaces by tomorrow. I don't know how, especially since I'm angry and tired (cf. this goddamn wasted weekend), but I'll try.
I got to talk with my sister on the way home, and I had a nice long conversation with Leonard just now. That was very nice. I also got a bunch of party materials from my mom (food and disposable eating tools), so I won't have to prep quite so much for my next and last party. Also, Adam called and invited me to lunch tomorrow. So maybe I'll be okay.
I just can't stand feeling out of control of such huge chunks of my time.
# 28 Jan 2002, 07:05AM:
As the saying goes, "She's up...she's good!" Although I could imagine
people doubting the latter. Disturbing questions have been
raised...
I woke up around 6:30 or some such because of my expectations of
excitement today, and comedy tonight. I have to clean. I also have
to be in Moses Hall by nine, and somewhere in there I hope to purchase
a functioning copy of Let's Talk About Life! although I doubt
that will happen today.
Enough mundanity. A poem that I wrote a few months ago:
Would I rather have a dummyOval Office
with really smart advisers,
or Thomas Jefferson
and a Cabinet of Budweisers?
# 28 Jan 2002, 07:12AM:
As Seinfeld would say: What's up with all the competent comedy? On Saturday night I watched some of "Mad TV" and "Saturday Night Live" (sketch comedy shows) and each of them had funny stuff! I don't know what to make of it.
If I ever feel ready for a big comedy project, I'm going to write a parody of the Mahabharata, perhaps in the style of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The Seinfeld bit at the beginning of this entry reminded me of Leonard's idea that Andy Rooney and Jerry Seinfeld should face off in some sort of Old Skool v. New Skool Observational Humor Deathmatch. "Didja every notice how neurotic you are, Jerry?"
# 28 Jan 2002, 07:20AM:
KQED (the radio station) has its winter pledge drive going right now. I keep turning on the radio in the mornings, hearing the pledge drive, and turning off the radio. In a way, I don't really have to check the news if KQuodEratDemonstrandum still has its guilt-exhortations on, because I trust that if there occurred a large-scale disaster about which I should know, KQED would cut its fundraising short and switch to live news. As I told Zack, now you know whom I trust: myself, my friends, public radio, and the internet.
I keep typing "KQUED" and having to correct it.
# 28 Jan 2002, 07:21AM:
Another poem! Untitled. Written the same day as "Oval Office."
If only global warming
Would warm everyone's hearts --
If only global warming
Weren't caused by cattle farts.
# 28 Jan 2002, 07:34AM: I wonder what blocking software will block this journal, first because I said "goddamn" a little while back, and now because I link to the anti-censorship site Peacefire. Peacefire is very, very cool.
# 28 Jan 2002, 07:36AM: Adam's handwriting resembles Mike Parsons's handwriting.
# 28 Jan 2002, 08:05AM:
Happy birthday to Alan Alda!
Camille wrote me: hurrah! And she's going to try out some Wodehouse: double hurrah! I'm glad the public TV adaptations are leading people to read the books.
# 28 Jan 2002, 08:14AM:
Why did I never conceive of a reality TV show based on Phil Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment?
Also: "Mortal City" on Mortal City by Dar Williams is very akin to "Albuquerque" on Running With Scissors (I think) by Weird Al Yankovic.
Also: I'm imagining a remake of Lagaan in which Ralph Nader tries to rally Americans against the political establishment and the outcome hinges on a game of jai alai or something.
# 28 Jan 2002, 12:32PM: Moneybox and Whopper of the Week made me laugh.
# 28 Jan 2002, 03:53PM: Leonard's backup site: slow, yet rewarding. Like a turtle!
# 28 Jan 2002, 05:08PM: A scholarship whose amount varies based on the number of aces Venus and Serena Williams make during tennis games.
# 28 Jan 2002, 09:21PM: People seem to be having a good time at my party right now! Woo-hoo! I hope that the presumedly soon arrivals of Kevin Maples and my cousin Vinay won't overcrowd the place.
# 29 Jan 2002, 09:45AM: "For the most part, academic poetry has managed to remain free of the rivalries, violence, and excess that trouble its more flamboyant cousin, gangsta rap."
# 29 Jan 2002, 10:05AM:
I threw a party last night and many people attended and we had fun and now I'm still exhausted! And I kinda want to rest before I head off to Linguistics. But I have to catch up on Russian and Music! Yeah, right, my problems are really huge. Anyway, I'll post a party wrap-up sometime soon.
There'll be a Comedy Night on Tuesday, 5 February at Blake's. Maybe I'll go and do some stand-up at the open-mic. I recommed that you go; the headliner, Brian Malow, is very, very funny.
I need no fanfic; Dahlia Lithwick and Scott Shuger, together at last! Stop me before I start writing Slate slash.
# 29 Jan 2002, 02:31PM: What sort of party would I have that would encourage an attendant to write a multi-recipient email the next day with a subject of "Horny Crip Tales"?
# 29 Jan 2002, 02:38PM: "Nobody's perfect... until you fall in love with them." If they're still perfect to you, WATCH OUT! Make sure you're seeing the flaws! Otherwise the relationship will die and you won't know why!
# 29 Jan 2002, 10:02PM: "There's no use trying to hide it from you, so I'll just come right out and say it: I don't want to be in the A.R. anymore. Or do accounting of any kind. I graduated in December with a double major in political science and Russian history."
# 29 Jan 2002, 10:04PM: Will now go to sleep with only a minimal idea of the music and Russian I should have down for tomorrow. Argh! At least I could sing "do-la-sol-la-do" earlier today, after some practice and false starts.
# 30 Jan 2002, 03:32PM: Evidently, I am both Steve Robertson at Berkeley (as he informed me) and Adam Parrish at Berkeley (as I then suspected). This result requires a new category of Googlewhacking!
# 30 Jan 2002, 03:43PM: From Steve: A preview of my soon-to-arrive, gossipy tell-all opus, The Party I Had Monday Night: A Retrospective.
# 30 Jan 2002, 03:55PM:
The University of California at Berkeley can be a pretty ghetto school, especially in the southside liberal arts buildings that don't get corporate donors fawning all over them (as opposed to Soda Hall (computer science) up north and the Haas School of Business on the east hill). The last two times I've used this physics building computer lab, I've used two different computers, and each time I've had to contend with a sticky mouse. That's the sort of usability problem that peeves me just enough to get my blood ready to simmer. (Serves three.)
I wonder how I would feel if I attended graduate school, say, at some (gasp!) well-funded university. Smooth pavements? Freshly painted walls? Sofas in well-appointed study areas? Everywhere?! At least after Berkeley I'd be grateful for it.
# 30 Jan 2002, 05:04PM: Scott McCloud, meet Modern Humorist. (Use a graphical browser.)
# 30 Jan 2002, 05:16PM: "SF Gate's makeover is coming in just a few minutes. Take a look at the many changes," SFGate told me. What a preciously ephemeral message! "No! No! Don't redesign me! There's nothing wrong with me! I'm fine! I feel like dancing!" [thud]
# 30 Jan 2002, 07:16PM GMT+5:30:
I don't know why this is so damn cool, but it is. I saw this in a sig.
I play it cool and
Dig all jive.
That's the reason
Why I stay alive.
My motto as I live
And learn is:
Dig and be dug in return.
-Langston Hughes
# 31 Jan 2002, 11:55AM:
I need to read this book. This is the next The Good, the Bad, and Scarface and/or The Satanist Agenda of Karl Marx.
Even as a youngster I disliked a particular lyric in The Sound of Music. In "Do-Re-Mi," the nanny says that one assigns "one word to every note." But even as a young'un I knew the difference between a word and a syllable!
I move today. Pac Bell turned off phone service at the old place this morning. Zack, Nandini, Steve, and Laura have offered their help; I've asked some others as well. Leonard's colleague Kevin very kindly dropped by last night in the first step of a byzantine scheme to get my (guess it's not mine anymore!) white bookcase to Leonard's place. Thanks, Kevin! I'm still trying to rid myself of the six-drawer bureau; tough to sell online without a digital picture to give out.
I keep bouncing between sentimentality and pragmatism. I imagine I'll feel more emotional later tonight.
# 31 Jan 2002, 02:25PM:
I ate lunch with Adam the other day and he wondered what had caused me to mark Alan Alda's birthday. I just want to make it clear that I don't ordinarily keep track of celebrity birthdays, nor did I know before the 28th that the 28th is Alan Alda's birthday. I just heard it that morning on NPR Morning Edition at the top-of-the-hour Open, and I've enjoyed his work, so I mentioned it.
That is all.
# 31 Jan 2002, 02:46PM:
I'm really glad someone in my Basic Musicianship class turned me on to the musictheory.net Note Trainer. I may actually be learning! Only problem: I still find myself thinking the mnemonics every time I have to identify a note on the staff. "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" and all that. I hope that as time goes by I'll just know the notes without having to use that intermediate device each time.
Timed quiz on note identification tomorrow! Five seconds per note! Eeek!
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