livingtech

I’ve decided I really want to read Against Love — A Polemic, by Laura Kipnis. It’s all opposed to marriage and stuff. Plus, anybody who uses the word polemic has to be cool. (It means “A controversial argument, especially one refuting or attacking a specific opinion or doctrine.” –dictionary.com, baby.)

Speaking of polemics, I also ran into a quote today from No Contest: The Case Against Competition, by Alfie Kohn. Man… that one looks good too. Only argument I have with the page I’ve linked–who knows if the book would address this point–is that those kids playing chess in groups against one another are still playing chess… which is of course a competitive act. And how do you foster an innovative spirit without competition? Basically, what motivation is there for cooperation without competition? The page does address the way Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” concept is misinterpreted to mean more personally competitive than socially competitive, but even social competition is still competition. There is obviously some amount of competition inherent in nature… and I would argue even in our nature. But I’d still like to be a less competitive person, when I think about it, I guess.

In non-polemic news: My friend Jason is getting all kinds of sneak preview tickets… tomorrow I get to go see Duplex, (with Ben Stiller) and next week… (I can’t wait for this one) I’m going to see The School of Rock. I just watched the preview for that one yesterday… Jack Black is a comic genius.

Wow… like twin grenades in the middle of my otherwise peaceful day, I received two brain twisting emails that shook the foundations of my subjective reality. How can we see things like this and subsequently trust and believe everything we experience!?!

The first was an email forward from a friend. The kind I hate, but printed here in its entirety:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer
in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist
and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can
sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed
ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

The second was this gif (163 KB) that moves, despite being a static gif file.

My english-as-a-second-language friend Alex was the origin of that particular optical illusion, and for some reason, he didn’t find the other email as explosive as I did. (some quotes are: “STOP IT!” and “it hurts.”) When I asked him if he could read it, he said barely. But I read the whole thing first time through without even a slight pause.

Some searching revealed this interesting blog post on the topic: http://www.bisso.com/ujg_archives/000227.html. You can bet Uncle Jazzbeau is getting bookmarked. Meanwhile, “Don’t believe everything that you breathe, you get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve.” (Beck)

update: Is it just an interesting coincidence that Jazzbeau was slashdotted only two days ago for his post that talks about this topic? Is this particular piece of text floating through the inter-aether at a more dramatic rate than usual?

Maybe this is old news, but the new version of the google toolbar includes a “blog this” button. This is the first tangible result that I’ve noticed of google’s acquisition of Blogger from way-back-when. Nothing too impressive. But the toolbar does also block popups, so I’ll probably install it on my barely-used version of IE at home.

Today has been emotionally challenging. Lets just say I’m not terribly excited about upcoming projects here at work.

I wanted to write some poetry, but nothing has really stepped forward from my subconscious. I think my poetry has a way of drying up when nothing is happening. When there is a lack of powerful emotional and/or romantic entanglement.

Things are really not very tangled right now, which I have to say is a bit… not disappointing really, just plain. Too normal. Then again, who has time for tangles? Not me. Tangles are time consuming. And I have no time to consume!

Maybe I’m just trying to convince myself that no tangles are good tangles. I never thought I was one of those people who thrives on chaos. At least when it comes to work, I’m exactly the opposite. Actually, now that I think about it clearly, it’s not the tangles I want, really. Not really at all.

well, getting back into the swing of things. The blog of things. Would you like to swing on a blog… (Hmmm. That almost sounds like a fun name for that polyamory blog irish-girl wanted me to start.)

The weekend started and stopped… lots of events. Friday night I went to see my friend Dave’s performance art piece entitled Paper Mover, which both Laura and I agreed was quite excellent. I don’t remember if I linked to the show before… I really should have helped him promote it. I did email some people I thought might be interested…

Anyway, we got out of that and had multiple messages from a friend whose girlfriend may have dumped him. (He was drunk, and forthcoming details have been pretty sketchy, so we’re not quite sure what all happened.) He and I played Soul Caliber 2 into the wee hours…

The next morning we did a TCUC parade, then went to this Wheels of Italy thing that a guy at work co-produced. It was way better than I’d expected… although I’m not quite sure what I did expect, having never been to a car show before. I guess I thought it might be like the tractor shows my grandpa used to take me to when I was a kid… except that (this still holds true today) all tractors look pretty much the same to me, and that was definitely not true of these Italian sports cars. I got to see both a Lamborghini Countach, and two Ferrari Testarosas. I’d never seen either before in my life, and I have to admit they’re pretty f’n cool.

After WOI, I took off for a LAN party at my friend Derik’s place. We played Battlefield 1942 for about six hours. That time passed in what felt like an eyeblink.

I carted my tower back home, and then headed out to fest for a few hours of partying before sleeping in a tent. Sunday fest. Sunday night, concert Laura and I missed because we thought there would be plenty of time. (I won tickets and everything!)

I’m cutting things short now because I have to run home. juggling tonight starts at seven, and Laura is at home waiting for me!

So… The last four days I have been in java training, learning the intricacies (well, generalities) of object oriented programming.

Monday and tuesday, I spent the requisite 8 hours there, and then another 2 or 3 hours (3 monday, 2 tuesday) at work, finishing up projects that took longer than expected. Believe me, this sucked ass.

But more than feeling really busy, another thing kept me from blogging these past few days–lack of internet access. The training lab didn’t have networking. In fact, in this entire high-tech training facility, the only machine we had access to that was hooked up to the internet was the front desk machine. So if you wanted to check your email or something on lunch break, you had to a) wait till nobody else was already doing so, and b) sit behind this little counter as if you were answering phones or something.

Point is, I felt incredibly cut off from the internet. Today I was jonsing. Our instructor was this really interesting guy, and constantly bringing up topics that I would have loved to do some “further reading” on while I was sitting in lecture. It didn’t help any that I felt fairly advanced in the course, and would have liked the pace of the class to be about twice or three times what it was. It was hard to keep my eyes open at times. We spent almost the entire day with the digital projector, and thus in dim lighting–the instructor’s voice was also quite droning.

I’ve had about fifty ideas for blog entries in the last few days. For now, at least, this will have to do.

Well, thanks to Derik’s genius birthday gift of Symantec AntiVirus, my computer appears to have completely reverted to a splendiferous state of happiness. Nate will be so pleased (he refers to it as his computer). AntiVirus found 5 viruses, including a trojan horse, all of which were eradicated (two by hand, however). I am, of course, also quite pleased. I thought I was going to have to rebuild the OS from scratch.

Finding a heretofore undiscovered Toad the Wet Sprocket CD (their hits album, released posthumously) on a co-worker’s desk was enough to get “Walk on the Ocean” stuck in my head, and I’m sitting here trying not to hum it while I work.

Today is a fat-track. I’m just riding the waves to couchtown. Tinsel haircut, I’m razzing my dazzling.

I heard one of the IT people chastise a co-worker for having IM software on her computer. Until there’s an official memo or something, I’m keeping mine open, and screw the man. Frankly, the man can suck my fatty.

I am mildly tempted to play the Big Urban Game. Link courtesy of Yami who linked to these weird knowledge maps that are also a product of the UofMN’s design institute. (How do these guys get money anyway?!? Oh, a $1mil grant from Target? Of course!) I’m sure that appears in some way humanitarian, but I can think of about a hundred better ways to spend a million dollars.

A call from my sister informed me that her Choir teacher is my age. That makes me old, apparently.

I’m off to enjoy a lovely family dinner. Maybe I can choke on a fork or something and put this lame old dog down.

it’s it. today is it.

I am notoriously depressed on my b-day. I haven’t yet slept, so it’s not quite “real” yet, but I think today will be not so much depression as introspection. (that’s how the depression starts, really.)

I have celebrated by reading my other birthday blog entry. I don’t quite know how that’s celebration, but go with me here.

poems are floating emotion
“flailing emotive words”
a mutually destructive relationship
between sentence and semantics

I purchased soul caliber II tonight. It’s suppose to be a present from Nate, but I know he doesn’t have any money till friday, so I bought it for myself so I had something to do before Laura got home tonight. But she got home early, and watched me play it for far too long.

The dream that is life wakes in death.
An aspiration to eternity
tucked into the back pocket of god —
life a cigarette sucked through your asshole.