. . . . . entries for 31.1.09 . . . . .
I have this problem with school: when I realize that it is completely constructed, a contrived apparatus through which we are meant to learn but not genuinely contribute, I get discouraged. I hate the thought of being patronized by professors and other elders because I'm a student. I hate the thought of writing or thinking meaningless things. But what else can I do? I am a student, after all, and in need of education before I can make informed contributions myself.
I do not know how I am going to survive the next two years so aware of how young and impotent I am, especially now that I feel transformed in body to a 13-year-old. I can't take myself seriously, not for more than a few seconds. How could I expect anyone else to? How could I expect, furthermore, anyone to want to look at me or be around me? The substance of me hasn't changed much due to these necessary-evil braces, but I didn't like me that much in the first place. They sure as hell don't help. I can hardly believe I have the stupid things. How absolutely absurd. I'm 19. I may be young but I'm not that young.
At the same time, in so many ways, these are supposed to be the best years of my life, of our lives. I am missing things. I fear I'm missing everything. My surroundings only occasionally lift me up, and usually just jerk me around. Are there people, are there things that would change that about this place for me? I don't know. It seems that, the better I know a person, the more critical I am of him or her. If I knew more people, I worry my sort of localized misanthropy would only broaden.
I have no clue if my classes this semester, as a whole, will be any good. I need to believe enough to make my WWS app work, because I honestly think a PSY major would target things just enough off my interests to drive me insane - not to mention the subject's inherent tendency to drive its student insane - and I am dubious about sociology. I want reality, but without the moronic errors I gather most college students make. I don't know if that reality exists. Without a book, I may be reading myself into a fantasy from which I cannot recover.
I won't be a former sorority girl regretting that she didn't take her education more seriously. What if I'm a recluse regretting that I didn't get "just give in, have a drink and shake some hands" - or something, at least, less reclusive, less set up to fail?
Huh. So my dad got me and my roommates these little plastic hearts full of m&ms for Valentine's Day. My heart contains only one red m&m. Curious.
I submitted my EPA app and now feel hopelessly bored and listless, despite the fact that I have plenty of other things to freak out over.
I do not like the celebrity status of the first family.
OMG my bank account hurts and stings. $300 for the semester's books, not counting the microecon book, which isn't in yet, or the last book (by my professor) for my politics class, which won't be published (by Princeton UP) for a month or so, or whatever SOC 319 books exist. Mraaaaah.
. . . . . entries for 30.1.09 . . . . .
Arrrrg. I want to rest on laurels. But I mustn't. I should have written this cover letter days ago. And I still need to finish the funding app, and after that I need to apply for WWS. Grrarg.
Tomorrow I have to make myself write it. I think it is too late today. And I have been a bit productive, at least.
The internship looks pretty in the bag-ish. Huzzah! I still should apply to EPA (and USAID?) though, in case funding doesn't work out. And as to funding, I need to put together a description of the internship based on my conversation with the Executive Director this evening. It will not be super-specific, because that's how nonprofits roll. Weirdly, I'd almost forgotten.
Also, legions of hellfire!!* my next orthodontist appointment is the Friday of midterms week. It's not that I'm worried about it interfering with tests, just that I don't want it (or the pain that ensues) to mess with the prospect of Frank visiting. :( Maybe I'll reschedule it.
*an alternoswear I have only ever heard myself use - I think? Cassie? xD
On a completely unrelated note, the song Yoko Ono by Die Ärtze is a riot.
I saw a hawk on campus today. Do any of you Princeton '11 kids (or the one who reads this, whatev) recall Dean Rapeleye's epically awkward welcome address? This was not like that. I saw the hawk fly up onto the roof of Little and perch there and preen. It was nice.
I am really worried about the main internship I'm pursuing right now. Like really seriously worried. Because I have to arrange everything lightning-fast to get my funding app in by the priority deadline, and I already kind of sort of messed it up (not really, but I'm very nervous about it). And I have to wait for the executive director to have time to contact me again.
Meep.
And I have to write a cover letter for EPA, and another for USAID (due in a couple of weeks instead of the day after tomorrow). But I feel like wasting some time. And possibly napping. (But in sleep, what dreams may come?)
I miss my boy. And I am terribly sick of all the missing, and all of the neurotic nonsense that goes with me and missing.
- also, backtracking to the note on pretension and my writing style: this is ironic, because I am actually painfully, ludicrously, obviously pretentious. Oh well.
Well. I have braces now. I do no think I will be wearing my glasses as much, because the combined effect is overwhelmingly dorky. So here are some sans-glasses pictures.
I don't look very different with my mouth closed, so I may also become one of those non-smiley braces types. :P
But braces make me a little ANGRY
or possibly confused
. . . . . entries for 29.1.09 . . . . .
Whoa I am sore and tired. (And back at school, obviously.) I think I will shower and see if, after that, I am awake enough to get some stuff done. If not, well . . . eh.
Some Wiis are less expensive than others.
Do I write in a less writerly way now just because I am afraid of seeming pretentious? That's . . . awkward.
I am driving back to Princeton today. Tomorrow I get my braces on, bright and early. Either today or tomorrow I am writing a cover letter. And other than that, I have plenty more internship-related flipping out I could be doing. I suppose we'll see what happens.
. . . . . entries for 28.1.09 . . . . .
AND I apparently need to clean out my inbox, for yea verily, I never delete a damned thing.
It is my dad's birthday tomorrow (today) and I have SO MUCH TO DO! Eek. Eek eek eek.
. . . . . entries for 27.1.09 . . . . .
Hee.
Fact: I have nigh-infinite internship stuff to do.
Another fact: I have goofed off too much this break up until now - not that such behavior is novel from me.
Yet another fact: Money is problematic. That is novel to pretty much no one.
Last fact for now: My GPA is more or less unchanged by this semester. D'aw. I was hoping PSY would pan out better. Oh well.
. . . . . entries for 26.1.09 . . . . .
It occurred to me yesterday that I should write a letter to the White House. In it, I would write how I feel, how things look to me, regarding stuff in the Middle East, international aid and relief, and - after a wise woman - how absolutely fucking absurd the agencies governing Federal employees' work and retirement are. What the hell. What the bloody hell.
Follow-up on calc grade: final section grades are in. B+ for Erin. Eh - could be worse.
Blogreaders, I must say it plain. After the morning's dreams, communications, and mullings-over, I have come to one most pivotal conclusion:
You are what you eat.
. . . . . entries for 24.1.09 . . . . .
It looks like I probably got a B+ in calc, possibly an A- if the curve in my section works to my favor. Not too bad.
Arrrrg. So, as these evil little rubber bands separate my back teeth - the point of which is unclear to me - they are squishing my front teeth closer together. It feels like they are creating problems where none existed before, or dramatizing old issues, and SHIT IT HURTS. I was never one for toothaches or headaches - as in, I didn't get them. So this is new and horrible for me. At some point I will interrogate the parents about what kind of painkiller I should be on. (I never take non-prescription drugs, either.)
OW.
. . . . . entries for 23.1.09 . . . . .
I have separators in, or, in other words, I have tiny blue rubber bands wedged between my back teeth. They're fairly harmless. No chewy (e.g. bagel) or sticky (e.g. Starburst) food this week.
So the question now becomes: do I stay or do I go? I suspect I go. Not really in the mood to hang around here, even for the couple hours until dinner/possible Alisa accosting. I always really like the idea of driving home, though the driving is not thrilling.
Maybe I will burn a CD first.
. . . . . entries for 22.1.09 . . . . .
This reminds me of two of my own theories of Life, the Universe, and Everything: one old and somewhat romantic, the other newer and kind of unsettling.
The old one came from, I think, the end of MIIB. If not there, then this image appeared somewhere: zooming way way out of the final scene, out of the universe to witness it as one marble on a table of many. Cosmic hands flicking them about.
The newer one is Matrix-ish, and consists of my occasional feeling that I am actually living inside a video game, a very elaborately created universe that other people play. My consciousness, though it has somehow forgotten, is that of a player in the game. Et cetera. If I look at clouds or misty rain and squint, sometimes I think I see pixels.
Good grief, wouldn't it be absolutely freaking ridiculous if these things had some credence? Score one for intuition, I guess?
If you were my iPod charging station, where would you be?
The Colbert Report online is apparently supported by Foster's Premium Ale. I bring this up because in one of its commercials, a bunch of guys are throwing darts at a Jasper Johns (bull's eye) painting. It makes me cringe and giggle at the same time.
However my calc final grade turns out, I am glad I took it - that test, just as it was. Because, had it been different, it might not have had this question on it:
(PRINCETON STUDENTS WHO FOR WHATEVER REASON HAVEN'T TAKEN THEIR FINAL YET
DON'T LOOK
HONOR CODE)
Franz (K) and Gregor (G) are running on perpendicular paths. Where the paths meet, there is a stationary insect. Franz is running toward the insect at 10 m/s. Gregor is running away from the insect at 3 m/s. At a given moment, Franz is 400 m away from the insect, while Gregor is 300 m away. At this moment, what is the rate of change in the distance between Franz and Gregor?
WHAT COULD BE BETTER THAN A KAFKA REFERENCE ON A CALCULUS EXAM
WHAT!?
I wrote "nice Kafka reference" in the margin next to this. I couldn't not do it. So magnificent. It really cheered me up.
Also, there was a plush tiger looking down from a balcony above the blackboards. Also also, the professor interrupted the test for like 10 minutes near the end to answer a bunch of questions on said blackboards. I was sorely tempted to take a picture, especially of the panel that said "In question 3, numbers may look weird."
And, of course, all the frosh were pretending as though they didn't give a damn.
It was a very absurd final exam.
Well, here goes nothing.
(Gripe: and I have a freakin' orthodontist appointment tomorrow. How lame is that? How anticlimactic? Grr.)
This calc final thing . . . I am not particularly optimistic about it.
- granted: my fault. Should have gone to the review sessions.
. . . . . entries for 21.1.09 . . . . .
"Russian roulette isn't the same without a gun, and baby, when it's love, if it's not rough, it isn't fun."
I really like Lady GaGa. :P Not that I can particularly relate to her lyrics, but damn, they're catchy.
Fact: I blog deeply and voluminously when I have other things to be doing, particularly when those other things are very temporally pressing and important.
Shucks.
I got a facebook ad from the Society of Leadership and Success. What a ridiculous organization name.
"Leadership" and "success" are so abstracted in discourse directed toward modern teens that I honestly have never held any stock by either. It's becoming clear to me that leadership, anyway, is important - if resilience theory has a list o'values, it's certainly right up there - but success remains hokey and commercial-sounding to me, as though it appeared in the titles of a great many self-help books, which I'm sure it does.
It'd be kind of neat if those words meant something.
I got my WWS grade on my big paper back - A-. Not too bad. I suspect my GPA won't budge much this semester, unless I seriously own my calc final, which I seriously doubt will happen. But today is the day to put the nose to the grindstone, so we'll see.
Both professors really liked my last paragraph, which I'll stick here:
"I close on a note of hope. At the pastoralist gathering this past August in Koora, Kajiado District, Kenya, the leadership of Kenya’s new Ministry for the Development of Northern Kenya and Other Arid Lands accompanied pastoralist leaders from across Kenya and Ethiopia to address a policy agenda formulated by the pastoralists themselves (Sullivan, 2008). As government officials and herdsmen converged upon the site of the conference, each prepared to state the concerns of his people, each opening himself to cooperation with the other, the sky opened, and – for the first time in four months – it rained (p. 5). It is the way of our complex world that progress is halting and uneven; at times, it may seem impossible to reach our goals for humanity and the planet. But at other times, past an almost invisible threshold, the clouds roll in and change arrives. Suddenly, the people called “they” become a part of “we.” As the pastoralists and ministry officials gathered at Koora discussed their future, a rainbow lit up the darkened sky."
The WWS professor went so far as to write "more of this, please!" in his comments. But given the genre in which I wrote - essentially scientific journal article - it didn't seem appropriate. I hesitated even to add the sentimental flourish at the end, but if it fits anywhere, it fits there. I think, like a pair of bright orange heels, beautiful images work quite well nestled amongst the unremarkable or technical. What would my professors have said if there had been more flashes, an orange hat or lapel pin or belt tacked onto the prudish black-clad prose? My EEB professor pointed out other high-impact sentences, but I suppose they didn't jump out at the WWS professor. Maybe he needs to turn up the contrast or something.
It makes me wonder about what I should be writing, what I'm good at writing, what I'm good enough at writing, what I believe in enough to write. It seems as though all those categories don't quite line up, although they're still shifting, finding their right places. Maybe something will hit me to shake them down and settle them out in these next few years. I'll at least be looking.
I wonder if I'll remember, looking back, the subtext of what I blog today. I can guess at old subtexts now, but they were not very subtle in many cases. Hm. It may depend upon which leg I fall down in the Trousers of Time, or something.
. . . . . entries for 20.1.09 . . . . .
At this rate, if I don't become a psychiatrist or psychologist, it'll be a terrible waste of clinical experience. And what the hell am I going to write on my WWS app about wanting to pursue that interest, eh? It's not exactly unified with the environmental stuff. Ho hum.
Ho. Hum.
Welcome, President Obama. We're happy to have you, and we'll be watching you and yours closely for these next four years.
(As I wrote that, Only For Now from Avenue Q was playing: "only for now . . . SEX! is only for now . . . YOUR HAIR! is only for now . . . GEORGE BUSH! is only for now!!
WELL NOT ANYMORE.)
Sir, you have one hell of a lot of work to do. And so do we. Don't let us forget.
. . . . . entries for 19.1.09 . . . . .
Un petit time/space waster:
You Are a Fairly Green Driver |
 You driving isn't the greenest, but it's greener than most people. Whether you have a fuel efficient car or try not to speed, you try not to use a lot of gas. You do your best to drive less. However, it's not always possible. You may end up driving more than you'd like, but at least you're doing what you can! |
IN MY CADILLAC
WHAT NOW.
Internship app number one: submitted.
I also want to learn how not to compare my life to the lives of others. I am, after all, not them. There is no objective way to measure the meanings of dreams, accomplishments, happiness.
Ask and ye shall receive! :D A on my huge paper for ecology. I wonder how my WWS professor will treat it . . .
I want grades. And motivation. And a less awkward existence.
This is based on one of the most awkward homophones ever, one that has resulted in my perplexity more than once.
. . . . . entries for 18.1.09 . . . . .
I don't want to ever grow out of being super-excited upon hearing about things like this.
. . . . . entries for 17.1.09 . . . . .
You know you're bored when you're reading random QC strips so much you find contradictions in the dialogue.
I am SO BORED of reading period/finals. So bored. So little structure. So maddening!
There may be relative peace in Gaza and DR Congo on inauguration day.
. . . . . entries for 16.1.09 . . . . .
Hrglbrgl.
One more final - just one more final!
I think PSY 101 went well. I hope to pull out of that class with an A-, although I suspect a B+. I fetched my lab stuff just now, and am thawing out from the walk across campus to do so. My lab grade is pretty much spot on the section average, so I'm guessing I have a B or B- for lab as a whole.
But enough of the grade narrative. It is a bad story, and everyone is sick of it.
We shall probably go to the Princeton diner this weekend, for to let the car breathe and eat delicious breakfasty things very late at night. Mmmm.
And next week: calculus. I expect a fair amount of internship-related angst in the meantime as well, although that will kick in for srs over intersession.
Also braces. Imminently. WTF.
. . . . . entries for 15.1.09 . . . . .
I wonder if there is a way to live in D.C. for the summer that is not financially impossible. The thing Kelsey and I were looking into appears to require payment up front - like, $5000ish up front, give or take $1500 depending on room type. Even if I could pull it off, I feel as though I'd likely be surrounded by pampered, actually not too impassioned sons and daughters of the "upper middle class," a la the Defense, Intelligence, and Diplomacy program. It might drive me insane.
For the moment, though, I do no more than wonder, for I have a psych exam to be studying for! >.o
. . . . . entries for 14.1.09 . . . . .
I believe this occasion calls for the retelling of a rather aged haiku. Is this a haiku? Is the middle line too short?
three in the morning
filled with beautiful thoughts
ruining my health
And in any case, I don't know if I'd call them "beautiful," but with the loopy way my brain is working right now I could certainly write several dissertations on sleep in Shakespeare without getting a wink. Contentment, like sleep - elusive.
. . . . . entries for 13.1.09 . . . . .
How untoward.
This is sort of what I've been writing about. (Sort of.) That document was just put up recently, so I flipped through just now to see if there was anything I should be using other than the gist, and I happened upon . . . well, I don't know. You read it. You tell me what you think would have made me cry in that PDF. Credit where credit is due: I am a sap. It's not like I cry infrequently. But seriously, take a guess.
I can picture my treehugging tendencies, among others, leaving me long before I stop loving Cibo Matto.
Holy Discworld reference Batman! (Foul Ole Ron, in particular.)
. . . . . entries for 12.1.09 . . . . .
Much remains to be done. I've spent as much time as is reasonable trying to relax, and it hasn't really worked. So I guess my mind will just be sparking at the edges until I get the rest of this paper written.
I'm listening to the FFXII soundtrack, which is beautiful, and hopefully will help me fizz productively, anyway.
College is . . . sort of an unhealthy place. For others much more than it is for me, I suspect, but in different ways. I also suspect I am just an unhealthy person in those different ways. Environment has startlingly little effect on perceptions of well-being past a certain threshold.
Further nerdity: the quad re-took the "Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?" test. Kelsey scored as Squall, Mari as Seifer (or Tifa, with one trapped answer changed), Ting as Reno, and I am still Laguna, even when I don't answer "a pen" as my weapon of choice. Last year, the roomies scored as Vivi, Rinoa, and Vivi, respectively. I kind of get a kick out of this stuff, and out of explaining their characters to them.
We also re-took the Sanitest, which is pretty much completely random in the result it spits out but which is nevertheless very entertaining.
Okay. Paper. Seriously.
Funny names for twin girls: Panacea and Anathema. Or, for perkier and nerdier undertones, Panacea and Esuna.
. . . . . entries for 11.1.09 . . . . .
I have to work on my paper tonight AND get out a draft of the PPN cover. OH BOY.
In the spirit of my gradual accumulation of orange things, I kind of want these, or something quite like them.
. . . . . entries for 10.1.09 . . . . .
I need to rethink my outline, but only a little. It'd probably work as is, but it could be a bit better. I have my introduction and my first section written - three and a half pages. Could be worse.
On a completely unrelated note, I need to clean up my language. I don't really know how to go about doing this, but seriously, the amount of cursing I do is not very ladylike.
My computer could be sick, maybe. Facebook has reset my password three or four times in the past 24 hours, though I am very unclear on why, since my account doesn't appear to have done any of the crazy spamming junk that I associate with facebook hacks. I suspect it may have been because of a kind of oddly worded status I had, or possibly my note on Israel and Palestine, or trying to send an e. e. cummings poem in a message. Oh well. Hopefully my virus scan will eventually work and I'll weed out any problems.
Tonight I introduced Kelsey and Yianni to this blog. They discovered "boobis." I am doomed.
. . . . . entries for 9.1.09 . . . . .
To those whose identities give them reason, other than human compassion, to be concerned with the Israel-Palestine conflict:
I will speak no more of current happenings in Gaza, or of their effect on me, beyond this.
There are millions, perhaps billions, of people who follow the death tolls and see the protests and are not Jewish or Muslim or neoconservative or otherwise unusually invested in the outcome of the conflict. I am one of them, and I know my fair share of them, and I believe I speak for the majority of us when I say that it is hard to hold out hope for peace in Gaza. There is no solution in sight for us, no path we could travel to a harmonious holy land. The war confuses and scares and hurts us in the way that unknown night sounds do, in the way that death does: we do not know it, we cannot understand it, but it is a part of our world nonetheless.
I am saying this because, as I take my long silence on the matter, I don't want you to mistake my quiet for evidence of apathy. Call it, instead, impotence. Call it weakness. Call it ignorance and despair and, for me at least, call it guilt most of all, because my people, who did not understand Gaza either, are to blame for this.
Feel the weight of this silence, our silence, and know that as you scream that you are right and the other is wrong, as you scorn those who have become mute in the face of your sound - as you continue to fight, as you believe you must, know that this war is hurting us too.
You are the ones who might be able to end it. It is certainly not in my power. Gaza waits for your thoughts, dreams, and actions; it waits for your peace, and the peace of your people. I hope that it does not wait in vain. Please think of the war's end - not at judgment, not in the next world, but on Earth. It's all some of us quiet folk have.
OMG boots.
(Ludicrously expensive but some rather damn nice boots at that. So transfixed by all the unnecessary, vaguely fantastical straps. Also good ankle boots, which I have decided could be handy, maybe, if I weren't so strongly averse to giving into feminine shoe-acquisitive impulses.)
On a completely unrelated note, I once wrote a column for PPN. Here it is, should you want to read it; I'm fairly sure it didn't get much exposure on campus.
I have an evil Internet reflex. Even in the middle of something perfectly interesting and productive, my fingers will stray to the mouse pad and bring me back to Firefox. I know this sounds euphemistic or something, but seriously - my fingers act without intervention from the conscious executive. I don't know what they want me to do here, so I decided I'd blog about this strange phenomenon.
Have you ever noticed that happening, or related things - like when you only get out of bed once you sort of stop thinking about something and some unconscious impulse moves you, or when you don't really actively choose one route or the other at the end of a train of thought, but - hardly realizing it - act as if you have, and move on?
I feel like my left and right hemispheres need to talk more, or something.
. . . . . entries for 8.1.09 . . . . .
I am citing some works this evening. My calc problem set is essentially done, with the exception of two "wtf how do I calculate these inverse secants" issues. So all that is left - aside from, you know, my two finals, psych in a week and calc two weeks - is the paper (dun dun dunnnnn).
I emailed the outline to my bio professor and she said it looked good, and made a solitary suggestion for which I am very very glad because I had, at some point, intended to do something along those lines, but that train of thought had gotten lost somewhere in the rail switches.
Unfortunately, I highly doubt that I'll get the paper to my WWS professor in any form before the actual due date. I don't particularly want to let him know that all I have right now is an outline, sooo yeah. Maybe by some miracle I'll be able to get a draft out by Saturday or something.
Speaking of the weekend, and somewhat making a liar of myself-in-the-first-paragraph-of-this-blog-entry: the PPN cover needs to be done by Sunday, according to The Publisher. Imagine my glee. Imagine my EBULLIENCE.
. . . . . entries for 5.1.09 . . . . .
I am back at school! I am sleepy! I am going to Starbucks imminently! I am working kind of! I put away my stuff and tidied up! I will sleep well tonight! I will put my nose to the grindstone tonight and tomorrow and all damn week! AAAAAH
. . . . . entries for 4.1.09 . . . . .
Pomegranates are weird, and kind of grotesque, when they are half-eaten. Their colors are too fleshlike and rich, and they have little vein-like lines where their seeds used to be. The stems where the seeds used to hang on look almost like fungus or an anemone. And they taste good, but they also taste weird.
Ha. Hahah. HAHAHAHA.
Okay, so I have to show you this, blogreaders. Sorry. I found it walking my dragon. It is just too much.
. . . . . entries for 3.1.09 . . . . .
Holy cow did I ever just spend all evening working with my dad on my stupid dryer because I accidentally dropped something into the lint trap. -.-
. . . . . entries for 2.1.09 . . . . .
My sister isn't very close with anyone she knew in high school now. She sees some folks on breaks, but mostly she keeps up with college friends. (Sorry if this is too revealing or whatnot, Cas - I bet you will be among the first and few to read it so I can cut it if you'd like.)
I wouldn't have thought any such thing could happen to me, but now I look at some of my high school friendships and think it may, either because we became friends almost incidentally, with little actually in common, or because our suddenly distant locations are tugging our minds and hearts apart as well. Granted, I have friends with whom I disagree - I doubt I agree with any of you on every political issue, and I don't necessarily mean the disagreements lie in the minutiae, either - and to whom I have trouble actually relating, because they think and feel so differently from me. But to watch someone to whom I once felt a kind of kinship become different is . . . different.
Maybe I need to find a relatively homogeneous college crowd to fall into. Maybe then I wouldn't feel this sense of loss, or at least I'd understand more what it is to change that way. But I am bad at this crowd-finding game, because I like my friends individually packaged and complete, and my own personality isn't very compatible with groupthink. In a way, it makes me weak. In another, it makes me strong. I suspect the latter is the reason I am not an atheist: I want to believe that I have some manner of immortal soul, so all of this remaining distinct and true to my own head and heart will not be lost and laughable upon my death.
The psych lecture on groupthink was the most memorable by far, maybe because my professor constantly illustrated his points in terms of the Bush administration. I want to believe it is that dangerous, that people err as they list into the path of their flocks. This, I suspect, makes me holier-than-thou. But I don't know to what snobby lot I belong, especially since I don't do groupthink well. You can tell me, if you have any ideas. Here are some adjectives: white, upper-middle-class, East Coast intellectual, American, sheltered, liberal, agnostic . . .
I guess the short version is that I'm kind of angry and also kind of sad about someone, and obviously failing to edit myself. Block one leak and it begins to seep through another.
But there's plenty else to think about.
Idea: a metaphor for the relationship between people and the rest of Earth's system. Human societies are the software. Their natural resources are the hardware. While, for a time, it may be convenient to focus on either software or hardware, each lays its constraints upon the other, and the astute computer scientist must understand both to make the machine run the way he wants it to.
My WWS professor referred me to Clifford Geertz on local knowledge, because I mentioned it in my paper proposal. So far I am skeptical about, but not negatively predisposed toward, the idea that his conception of local knowledge is relevant to what I'm researching, but I don't even know what to think of his writing style. From the Google book search on him:
"Whatever else anthropology and jurisprudence may have in common - vagrant erudition and a fantastical air - they are alike absorbed with the artisan task of seeing broad principles in parochial facts. 'Wisdom,' as an African proverb has it, 'comes out of an ant heap.'" Geertz, ch. 8, first paragraph, of Local Knowledge.
It's nice, kind of, but a bit much. "Vagrant erudition and a fantastical air?" Maybe I'd appreciate it more in context.
Also: happy new year. Who knows what manner of fun 2009 has in store for us all.
I am almost completely done wasting time with pixel dragons.
come home?
.:people:.
{ting}
she looks like the real thing
{mari}
out and about
[kelsey]
THIS IS AMERICA
{yianni}
stop being depressed
{alisa}
other
[shannon]
close and far
{frank}
islands where no islands should go
[cassie]
eating knowledge
{colin}
my dm
[emily]
shoulder to the wheel
[brian]
nostalgic for fantasy
[nicole]
industry insider
{elle}
angry enviro
[matt]
never heard of miyazaki
[pirate dan]
are you reading this?
[olga]
distracted
[messiah dan]
messiah/believer
{max}
approach focus
[natalie]
wait a minute
[susan]
solitude
{greg}
manbeargreg
.:past:.
April 2002
May 2002
June 2002
July 2002
August 2002
September 2002
October 2002
November 2002
December 2002
January 2003
February 2003
March 2003
April 2003
May 2003
June 2003
July 2003
August 2003
September 2003
October 2003
November 2003
December 2003
January 2004
February 2004
March 2004
April 2004
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June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
February 2009
March 2009
April 2009
May 2009
June 2009
July 2009
August 2009
September 2009
October 2009
November 2009
December 2009
January 2010
February 2010
March 2010
April 2010
May 2010
June 2010
July 2010
August 2010
September 2010
October 2010
November 2010
December 2010
January 2011
February 2011
March 2011
April 2011
May 2011
June 2011
July 2011
August 2011
November 2011
January 2012
February 2012
March 2012
June 2012
April 2013
May 2013
June 2013
.:skin:.
turtles! turtles! by araglas
(heavily modified by yours truly)