hollow invective

Alias

2012-01-24T17:30:00.000-08:00

Today I googled myself (a doubtlessly vain pastime but one that I haven't indulged before) and I was interested to see that my screen name has been adopted by multiple people in three countries! I suppose it's somewhat inevitable. My Russian counterpart seems particularly amusing. Also, someone once asked if I was "littlebutt101" or something like that and now I know why! There is even another biologist(?) using that name.

Also a person who has been bothering me for a year (and whom I'm too polite to block all of the time) has been logging his conversations with my screen name, editing them quite boldly, or occasionally fabricating them entirely. I'm not even sure who this guy is but I definitely don't know him (if I did I imagine I would file a restraining order). I've even had multiple strangers contact me claiming the guy assaulted their girlfriend and warning me to "watch out for that schizophrenic creep". So that's heartening.

I just figured I'd put this up in case you happen across something by "lilbutt" and think I've changed hobbies.

Dakken

2011-06-18T11:34:00.000-07:00

When I was starting high school, one winters day I was in a neighboring town and I happened to see a cat that looked unfortunate and lean. I followed it in to an alley behind a strip mall and I noticed that some of the local business owners had set out food and water for it. At the time, I was working 5PM-12AM most days at a veterinary clinic and I had just established the first catch-and-release program in Illinois, with the generosity of the clinic and the willingness of one Dr. Wheeler to work with feral cats. The intention was to empty out a nearby field that was packed with tunnel systems of feral cats and kittens, and was scheduled to be bulldozed and built-upon the following autumn. I had an active trap in that area and I was wondering whether a similar population existed behind this strip mall. I told my family about the experience, and a few weeks later my father said that one of the business owners over there had mentioned that the cat had been run over by a car. Since I had been told she had kittens, my siblings and I were distressed to hear that in the coldest month of winter those kittens may be sitting out there alone, with no mother and no source of food. We convinced our parents to let us go to the alley after church the next day and search for them.

There was two feet of snow on the ground and just as we were finally giving up and heading back to the car, my sister managed to find the kittens stashed away in the trunk of an old tree. There were 5 of them, a rare all-male litter of oriental shorthairs, and they were just weaned with eyes opened. There were two tabbies (one bold and one timid), a charismatic grey, a black one and the runt of the litter who was feisty and yelping at us even as we packed them in to a flat crate to take home. We were each told that we could pick one to keep as our own. My brother took the black, clumsy one. My sister selected the black and white runt. I wasn't sure who I wanted, though I knew that either of the alphas - the bold tabby or the grey - were likely to be the best fit. In the end however it wasn't up to me. The timid tabby chose me. He could recognize me at a glance and would follow me from place to place, even as a small barely-mobile thing. He would crawl over to the door I had disappeared through and wait until I returned, then try to keep up as I walked to the next door and wait until I returned again. He would spend all of his time when I was in the room with me, sometimes even at the expense of food.

I named this kitten Dakken and he grew up to be a favorite among many people besides myself. When I left for college, I was told that Dakken was upset and would sit by the window for most of the day. He became excited when he could hear my voice on the phone. When I left the dorm and moved in to a tiny studio apartment during my second year, Dakken joined me. He lived with us in 3 apartments in California, in Virginia and now in Connecticut. Dakken was affectionate towards total strangers, trusting and friendly. Besides being charismatic he was also intelligent, quickly solving problems or tricking people in to having his way. He converted many a dog-person. For a time in college we toyed with the idea of making "Dakken Fan Club" buttons and shirts. Everywhere we lived the vets and friends who would come over loved him best, and remembered him when he returned, and inquired about him when he was away.

On January 30th of this year Dakken was diagnosed with genetic heart disease, after he had lost some weight and seemed to be having trouble breathing. He went on a strict schedule of medication and resented me for administering it, but never faltered in his affection. Over his entire life, even when he felt that he had been wronged, or when it seemed like I had harmed him (if I accidentally smacked him with something while carrying things, for example) Dakken never held it against me. He passed away this morning, in my arms as I tried to administer CPR. He had yowled and I found him laying limp in another room, still alive but his heart had stopped. The doctors say the he threw a blood clot, which was the likely consequence of his heart disease in spite of the medication. Sanura tried to help him, but there was nothing that she could do.

Dakken was with me as I studied for my SATs, my finals in college, my qualifying exam here most recently. Guests would often comment that Dakken would sit and watch me when we were in a room together (though he always pretended not to if I looked at him) and I couldn't help but notice that the moment I felt something negative he would often be there. There is little doubt that I will never in my life be so cared for again. He never failed to make me feel better even when he wasn't feeling so well himself.

Multiple times when Dakken knew that he was going to be taken to the vet (he was very clever at sensing human intentions) he would hide in the basement, both here and in Illinois. Each time, if I sincerely asked him to come out he would do so, even though he was scared. Dakken had so much confidence in me that if something was about to fall on him and he knew that I saw it, he wouldn't bother to move, because he assumed that I would catch it. Dakken was a true friend to me, and I dare say a better one than I ever managed to be to him. I will always remember him, not only for his kinship and intelligence, but also for his adventurous spirit, his boundary-pushing, earnest goodwill and open affection towards all people he met, as well as his unflagging sense of optimism.

I used to put my fingertip between the pads of his paw and he would squeeze it. It was one of the many little things that we did. I take some comfort in the fact that Dakken understood a lot of what I said to him. He died trying to purr.

He is already profoundly missed.

Jack & Rusk

2010-09-04T18:37:00.000-07:00

Recently I was in a pile-up on the Mass Pike and the disposable camera that I always keep in my car was finally used to document the damage. Before I took the pictures in to be exposed I had to finish the roll, so I took some pics of the dogs playing in the back yard.

This is Jack. He's a chihuahua mix that we're caring for right now. He's 8+ years old. He's very happy to be with us even though that means going to the vet a lot and learning some new tricks.

This is Rusk. We adopted him in California in 2006. I'm not sure what I did to deserve such a good dog. He's a shepherd/pit mix and he's quite a hound for some reason. If you show him something he can find anything else around with the same scent. He can identify and bring basic tools on command. We've had a lot of offers on him, but I think we'll keep him. He's proven himself as a fine guard dog and he's a great hiking companion. Wolves make him nervous and he hates water, though he'll be a good sport in a canoe.

I'm so excited that autumn is almost upon us! I could really use some pomegranates, apple picking, hiking and pumpkin carving parties with the neighborhood kids. I'll put up pics of my new car when I get them. I hope that you're all well.

Potent Tools in the Fight Against Depression

2010-06-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

Every now and then it's hard not to be a bit down, but this has been a particularly hard year for me. I've found myself unable to do much besides stare in to space more often than I would like to admit. It simply can't be helped. However, I have found through some experimentation that staring at particular things tends to improve my status. On the off-chance they're helpful to anyone else, here are a few of them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_I9ld-oDTs&feature=player_embedded

http://poetv.com/video.php?vid=79614

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=22324

http://sisinmaru.blog17.fc2.com/

http://cuteoverload.com/

http://epicute.com/

http://www.cakewrecks.com/

http://thebloggess.com/

http://pictureisunrelated.com/

http://thereifixedit.com/

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/all/

Get It Off

2009-10-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to share.

The only substance that I have ever found effective in removing almost all of the nasty stuff I get myself into chemically is Origins' Skin Diver© body wash.

Weeks worth of cruddy-nastiness from trekking through deserts in the same pair of clothes? Yes. Redoxic salt marsh/swamp sludge with associated odor? Check. Unavoidable bar smoke/offensive cologne? Finally. Sewage? Amazing. Offal? Yep. The weird grittiness from pomegranates that binds to your skin? Affirmative. Everything else you never, ever intended to get involved with but it's your job since no one else will do it? So far.

Every time you feel the need to scrub yourself with activated charcoal as quickly as possible, Skin Diver is there. That baking soda/vinegar/lemon stuff just doesn't work. Aquarium filters cost too much.

That's just my contribution. I wish I'd found it a long time ago.

I believe in rehabilitation.

2009-07-07T18:14:00.000-07:00

I wish to dwell in a society that does too.

In other news...

My mother received a letter from her college roommate today. She showed up at Trinity back in the day with her Miss Texas sash and wore it to parties, insisted that they make drapes for the room, dragged my mother into a social life and had two serious boyfriends simultaneously. They were worlds apart in so many ways but got on famously. They haven't spoken in twenty years. In her letter she mentioned that she 1.) Just received her PhD, 2.) is a lesbian and 3.) teaches at a Catholic school. That certainly piques my fancy.

Also I learned Bonzai from a professional full-time Bonzai artist and I decided that it's a horrible practice that I refuse to participate in.

Also the girl that tried to drown me when I was a child was stricken with a crippling physical malady when she hit college and her prognosis is not good.

Also I've discovered a massive internet community network of vigilantes that spend a great deal of personal time and money to stalk pedophiles and report them when they've built a case.

Also I seem to be stuck on British sketch comedy.

That is all that immediately comes to mind.

Catch Up

2008-07-28T08:36:00.001-07:00

The last year has been hellishly busy. I have had to construct a secondary blog for daily thoughts while in transit as is only limited to a very select number. I shall post excerpts from the last year here as a means of an official update. Try to ignore the [...], as they have been edited down quite a bit.

2007.11.19 16.06 brr
[...]Life is getting better though I need to focus more on grad schools soon. I've been frustrated about the food thing anew. Unsure why[...]These posts will most always be a collection of thoughts while on the way to or from the metro[...]At lunch I sat with some moth guys. No one seems to know much about phenology' even in their own field[...]Geez but it's cold.

2007.11.21 10.19 Inertia
My life is moving at a jaunty pace[...]I wish I could savor my time at the Smith, instead of pushing forward to grad school. Still I am constantly in positive motion and ever the happier for it[...]There really is a timer on this thing.

2007.11.29 10.33 6th Floor
The day before Thanksgiving I got lost in the Aves dept. It was actually more disturbing than its counterpart in the connector - physical anthro. For whatever reason turning corners to find human remains all over the place isn't as disruptive to my mental state as being lost in the byzantine halls of the bird dept. It isn't the fact that, for whatever reason, people have tried to curate birds with every potentially toxic, carcinogenic or endocrine upsetting solution known to man and that it's an open air archive. It wasn't that no one was there, seemingly, or the increasingly familiar horror movie set decor. It had more to do, I think, with this gnawing House of Leaves -esque feeling that the measurements of the hall itself did not make sense. And the fact that places where I swear I saw voids from the other aisle showed no such passage leaving me lost, in the dark, and unwilling to back track in an unconvincingly small space. It isn't a belief in anything supernatural or being surrounded by the dead. It's more the concern that someone is there. You wouldn't believe that people could sneak up on you in the silence with the reflective flooring but they do[...]Off the metro now time to go.

2007.12.02 22.54 The Pain
[...]I didn't believe them, not any of them, when they said it could happen. I am growing.

2007.12.07 09.57 I am Science?
My boss has been referring to the desire to take my picture, rather cryptically. I agreed on Wednesday. Yesterday he told me how to dress and when to be there. I finally figured out what's going on. The fossil lab (large clear diorama of real scientists doing real work, supposedly) is represented by an old photo from the 70s of an older female paleontologist picking over a bone carefully while perfectly framed children watch in wonder. Apparently the new committee doesn't like this depiction of fossil lab, enduring as it has been. They want a cleaner workspace, a bigger dino bone and a young female scientist. So today I'm going to spend a lot of time cleaning large dino bones for the public apparently. I wonder how long the new picture will be in circulation?

2007.12.18 22.34 Nothing more exciting than ordovician sponges.
So today I rode on a dumbwaiter. That is the entire purpose of this post in a nutshell. It has been a lifelong dream of mine to ride on a dumbwaiter. I don't know why. All of my other dreams (in so much as I can pin them down) are much more lofty, but this one has merit in its permanence. I hope to live a life full of dumbwaiters. Also I toured one of the exhibit shops (and the electron microscopy lab when I got locked in the storage area of said shop accidentally). I got my picture taken incidentally behind the giant shark jaws they're installing in the new Hall of Oceans(?) Also the tiiiiny padded elevator back there has a rotary phone in it that still works! You can dial into the VOIP system. Also while we were poking around they found a bunch of equipment and stored stuff that had "vanished" a long time ago, as things tend to do. That building is truly an organism, and like all true, tremendous and slow moving golgothas, I have the utmost respect for it. There is no doubt in my mind that there are many places that my body could be most conveniently tucked away in that vault and that I am just the type to wander in to that trouble on my own. Everyone else left for the holidays today. It seems I'll be alone for the most part this week, in the lab.

2008.01.07 11.42 Approaching Hell
So this nutritionist saw me last week probono. She told me what I knew anyone would tell me - that I needed to go on another exclusion diet. But she also actually expected me to, y'know, do it. So now not only am I off gluten, I'm also liberated from nightshade vegetables, corn, eggs, dairy and legumes like soy. This doesn't mean much to anyone who hasn't been on a restricted diet before because it takes a while for it to truly sink in that soy, corn and wheat are in everything. In the absence of these things what I'm left with us essentially rice, fresh fruit and veg I prepare myself and a couple of grains I can't do much with. I'm also off of refined sugars.

Right now I'm down to one meal a day since I can't afford all that much fruit. I am also constantly tired, dizzy, nauseated, and in general pain from muscle fatigue and severe headaches. The really fun part is the anticipation of what I won't be able to bring back in the end.

The one advantage, if there is one I suppose, is that I've realized that I am still sick. I am better than I was by a factor of ten or more. But I am still sick from something. Aside from the headaches and tiredness and all the rest, there are still things that don't fit. At least now I'm reminded why I'm doing this.

2008.01.24 15.45 Were you looking for a job? Here, take two.
Yes[...]Then he introduces me to the gang and I'm told to memorize a map. Deuces. I'll be starting by FebRuary. Drug test tomorrow.

Also, in an attempt to put the last nail in the coffin of my physical anthro forensics career I finally met[...]the Walt Disney of phys anthro. Entire universes of inquiry are born and die by his word. I was surprised that he met with me at all[...] So I've been told. I listened to a couple of phone conversations while sitting at his desk and staring at skulls. I actually ended up answering more questions than he did and he offered me some rather interesting and ground breaking work with him, tentatively.

I've begun to see the technology I use as antiquated and slow, though it is the best available in this time. I have the sense that the world will soon be moving perilously fast.

2008.01.29 10.05 Trance
So a couple of nights ago Pip took Rusk for a walk, went around the normal corner into the darkness and before his eyes could adjust a huge black dog lunged at him and cowered between his legs. Her name is Trance. We know this because as of today we've found the owners, thanks to some detective skill (not really). But for a time we had another dog. She was black with strange white highlights, full of attitude and incredibly well trained. She put Rusk to shame and embarrassed him where he lives. Her owners apparently taught her to open doors. I guess we now know that's a bad idea. She is home now, and preg(as we found her), but I was glad to share some of my life with her.

My favorite cat of all time died yesterday.

I'm driving to Chicago on Wednesday for interviews at UC.

2008.02.01 04.53 Damnit
I've been feeling too paranoid of late. I've been chiding myself for being so mustrusting. Today I spent the daylight hours in one long interview. I had to negotiate for a bathroom break they had me so booked. Tomorrow (well today I guess) I'm supposed to go back to meet more people. I'm not sure that's going to happen. When they insisted I do meals I explained why that might not be a good idea and they insisted that it wasn't a problem. They told me what to eat and though I felt uncomfortable, in the spirit of not making things difficult, since all eyes were on me, I just trusted them that they checked as they said they had. I also got to wake up in the middle of the night with the most excruciating pain and logistical problems that I hope none of you ever have to deal with. It was like old times, except the worst ones, with the hot and cold flashes and the shock among other more unsavory things. I'm typing this laying on the bathroom floor. I would give anything for a decent distraction.

2008.02.06 10.13 Hyeh?
[...]I need to figure out whether I should go into the field this summer. At current I'm back in grant money so that's good. I haven't heard from over half of the schools that I applied to. I'm not sure what to think of that.

2008.02.18 17.55 Butterflies
[...]They just set up a new pollinators exhibit in the museum with live butterflies. It's like one of those massive outdoor habitats they put in zoos or gardens, except inside. I plan to sneak in to it at some point after hours. The point is that it just opened and people seem to be excited about it. I had a dream that the butterflies escaped through some broken plaster and found their way into my office. So I unlocked my office one morning and it was brimming with butterflies. This might sound pleasant but in fact it was quite irritating, owing to the fact that they were (of course) all endangered butterflies and I had to attempt to maneuver around them to call security, etc.

Life is moving quite quickly these days. My first week as a 911 operator is complete, and I've put in my weekend hours so that I can be in New Haven for the end of this week. I have another ride along tomorrow. This time:[...]

It's hard to be tired, even with the 10-12 hour days and no weekends, when it's this beautiful outside. We found a stray cat last night and took it to be chip-read this morning and when I stepped outside I could barely believe it being 69 degrees[...]We had high vaulted blue skies, a blinding warm sun, light showers and gentle winds. Everything today came in ardent blues and greens with deep reds and oranges to complement the purple skyline. There was a strange calm today, as probably comes with working on a national holiday in DC.

You'd have to be blind from all sides not to see trouble stirring on this horizon, and I know that this place doesn't like me yet, but on days like this I remember when all of my smiles were involuntary[...]

2008.02.27 09.53 So Very Many Bodies
I've seen more dead and dessicated bodies in the last week than ever before in any single period of my life. Between police ride alongs (they've somewhat jokingly banned me - they seem to think that certain people attract DOAs and I'm one of 'em[...]I got to see all of them and help process the scenes but that's a whole set of stories unto itself)my foray into phys-anthro and my recent tour of the[...]I'm pretty much set on the dead for now. It might interest some to know[...]and an assortment of other disturbing stuff is all in the triple buffered climate controlled tomb[...]but now I'm just ranting[...]

Also I visited Yale for their open house this past weekend. I was there for the better of four days and immediately returned for a double shift at APD. I have another shift tonight. I didn't think that I'd like Yale but now it's my top choice. The facilities and minds at work are top notch. This has nothing to do with the tremendous monetary incentive, free gear, or clean-rooms that look like cathedrals. It's more about what feels like home. They narrowed the pool to 28 and invited all of us out for an all expenses paid jaunt around New Haven. They'll choose 8 of us to return, tops. It will be interesting to see who makes the cut. Frankly I was surprised to be a finalist at all. Too much talk. Trains here.

2008.03.03 10.19 Clinton vs Obama (is short sighted)
Seriously.
How the Democratic Party manages to be so indefatiguably frustrating is beyond me. It's like PETA. They're in the right, it shouldn't be possible to muck things up this badly.

But so here we are again, after failing to act for 8 years, and what are we doing? We're focusing on the Obama and Clinton race. We have finally reached an apex where there is an almost universal dislike of the current administration, where it seemed a Dem was sure to win, so we put forth two highly polarizing candidates. The Cons counter with McCain, the Santa Claus of our time and their only shot. Even I feel as though I know McCain better than these other two. Faced with drowning odds again (a seemingly impossible scenario) we turn to focus on who we like better.

It doesn't matter! You fools. Everyone is better. We've established this. But if we don't want to continue with the puppetry and we don't want to go into Iran we ought to maybe focus on who might win, as opposed to who we like minusculy better. It's not important who you like better. You voted for the last guy too. It matters who they like better. I don't care how nice and upright and not-linked-to-Monsanto Obama is. If he's going to lose us everything South of the Mason-Dix then he's not worth anything, and that's all that you should care about.

2008.03.14 18.44 Tired Time
Working two full time jobs is getting to me. That makes sense.

I'm on a train to NYC to see an old friend for the weekend. Major delays. At least I got a little sleep first. This seat reeks of beer and came with a complimentary DVD - Clerks 2?

I received the official Yale admittance letter today. It feels nice to have some general direction. I am going to grad school next year. I am accepted somewhere. That is both reassuring and somehow haunting. UCSB is still leaning on me to come out. Things are in motion. It looks like I'll be in Italy for part of the summer. Maybe Peru also. I need to hire a chemistry tutor. I need to read the primary works of all of my advisors. I need to finish Scott's maps by June. I need to sleep.

I think that's why I made time for this. Stephen has always been a refuge. I'm beginning to give myself jaw pain again. I'm beginning to run again. I can't focus anymore. So I'm on a train, going to the center of the world, to the city that never sleeps, so that with luck I finally can.

2008.03.26 10.47 Boring Rambling
[...]I have two months to finish the mapping project and I'm getting concerned. I need to find a way to leave the 911 job amicably for the summer. I think that's underway already. I spoke to the Lieutenant. I actually truly like a number of the people there but what can be done? I can try to come back and pick up shifts later. I'm nearly certified on the phones.

Tourists are horrible. I knew this even as a young child when I was one. But here they clog the infrastructure. Don't get me wrong, its built around them, but during spring break it gets out of control. Some of them are so entitled. They run in front of traffic to take pictures and block me from entry to the museum because they've been waiting. I work there, mind you. Anyone else would be rebuked at trying to enter an exit. Also there was the woman pushing a wheelchair who refused to slow down when I crossed in front of her, actually speeding up to ram the old woman into me. Mass psychosis. It's an excellent setting for the current administration. At least the weather is gorgeous.

I'm stressing out about securing housing in New Haven, finding a way to pay for Italy (which is turning into a family vacation somehow) and finishing all of the projects that need to get done. I'm not sleeping more than 6 hours a night between my two jobs and that's wearing me down[...]

2008.04.23 22.06 Honors
I just got in to Phi Beta Kappa. Retroactively. Having graduated last year and already gotten in to grad school. What am I supposed to do with it?

2008.05.01 10.02 Waiting
[...]After this I have to reroute all of todays panel interview candidates to another building and run criminal backround checks after they sign the release and before they manage to walk two blocks. They didn't give me a criteria for dismissal. They just said to call about anything that seems suspicious before they get there. They'll just get upset if I don't intuit what matters and what doesn't. I love this job. Really. It's fascinating. Someone in my group went to the Lieutenant and pleaded to keep me in the Center so now I'm working afternoon CSI half the time and midnight communications the other half (and did I mention I work days for the Smithsonian?). It's touching but exhausting. I will miss them all when I'm gone though. I hope I get pulled over before I leave, just to give the officers a hard time. When else am I going to get the opportunity? I'm fretting about moving on. I have no time to look at housing and no real idea as to how other variables will factor in my budget. I am looking forward to spending July in bucolic Rennaissance Italy. I think that's what I need and in some ways I hope the course isn't too taxing[...]

2008.05.15 17.09 The things that bring me stress
[...]What a mess[...]

2008.05.27 01.35 A Very Dangerous Man
[...]Or should I play the game I usually do and take no risks where any harm may be concerned? I turn to you because I am, myself, lost.

2008.06.06 18.25 Trying to Breathe
[...]Leaving the police job will be difficult. First because they laughed at me when I tried to give them notice (and still haven't really accepted it) and second because one can really get used to being plugged in. On my off-time I itch at not knowing what's going on in the city, where people are going code and why. I want a radio and a mobile comp just to keep up to date. It's like being pulled out of VR and realizing that your real life isn't very fun. I'm not sure that's an apt analogy, but its what I have for right now.

Of course working as an ECT has its disadvantages. Like how in a fire you are not allowed to evacuate until certain conditions are met[...]The confounding thing was that we couldn't source it. Something in the ceiling was smoldering through wires and other, filling Property, Records and the halls and offices of the second floor with a dense chemical smoke. It started to get into our Dispatch section. The Fire Dept came out a few times. People started to get sick. All kinds of measures were taken and in the end its hard to tell whether it went out or whether the area was merely better ventilated but we were left to filter it with our lungs for the remaining 8 hours after Fire took off. We weren't cleared for evac even though alarms went off all over the building[...]I take some solace in the fact that the new building will have a self contained ventilation system as a safeguard against biological attacks[...]With luck I'll find rest there waiting for me when I need it.

2008.06.16 17.16 The Rain
I've hit a strange calm recently. With so much stress (and plenty of good reason, as the field season begins in 8 days and everything must be done, and as my relations grow strained and all-consuming) I find myself almost alarmingly without concern. I am like a smooth stone that has been thrown violently at the water and skipped, airborne instead, still all at once and free, leaving a rippled slipstream through the space as I arch back towards the inevitable noise, turbulence and oppressive closeness that lies in raucous wait. It does not perturb me in the least, knowing that maw is waiting, frenzied.

Today it has been raining in earnest, though the sky is vaulted and blue and clear enough to see for miles. I hope for thunderstorms tonight. I wait for them stone-faced but like a child for Christmas. It isn't the noise or the light or any transferred excitation from some deeply wrought animal fear. They are energy to me[...]I am drenched now, heading back to the train early since I cannot work without electricity and in that freezer any longer. People have been looking at me strangely.

I never thought I'd say this but I may need my stress back. I'm not sure what this calm's origins are but my productivity is suffering, and it won't all be alright.

2008.07.28 13.19 USSP
I am here: http://www.uniurb.it/ussp/
I have been here for a month or so.
I have finally found a keyboard with the symbol that is in my password (symbol mapping would have been too much effort).
I am alive.
Stress unabated, but much more liquor.
Wish me rest.
(and no more lectures on cyclostratigraphy)

There you have it. Eight months of my life, highly distilled. Without two full-time jobs, I may find myself better at keeping you all updated. Maybe.

The Interminable

2008-04-27T14:57:00.001-07:00

And so it came to be that I was granted a position at the Institution, which loathes a vacuum and took to me as it will take to others after I am gone and then returned. And through the colorful mosaics of my daily life in Old Town Alexandria, New York, New Haven and the District, and an unsettling (though somehow fitting) cast of characters, a plot emerged and a single thread tightened and bound me to a path that was at once my will and a great burden. And endless nights and brief days of static twilight have brought me at last, through the passage of quick unending months, to my preparation. As I begin to frame the terms of my leaving with the same steady-handed ebullience and as things that seem impossible are made manifest I can't help but reflect on the sheer volume of work that has been accomplished - and the enormity and immensity of that which lies ahead and just beneath the surface.

Wow

2008-01-10T17:35:00.000-08:00

As Meg said, "Ben Stein, what hath you wrought?"

http://expelledthemovie.com/

I am so sorry, America.

Exclusion Diet - Redux

2008-01-06T11:56:00.000-08:00

Absolutely NO:

gluten (clearly)
soy/legumes
dairy
eggs
corn
nightshade vegetables
derived sugars

I can eat nothing but self-prepared fruit, veg and meat. Also some rice. Cassava and buckwheat flours may be okay. I've already screwed up and eaten peanut butter and something with corn syrup in it.

Welcome to nine weeks of hell (again).

Growing(?!)

2007-12-02T18:12:00.000-08:00

Remember when you were a very young child and every so often, occasionally, out of nowhere, it felt like someone was taking an axe to your chest? Or your finger would cause a wracking pain, for no reason? A lot of people don't seem to remember these things. I remember them because they were so acute and inexplicable. I remember them particularly well now that I'm experiencing them again. I don't remember when they gave me the bad news that I wasn't going to get much bigger (it was bad news at the time because it came on the heels of something like "So how much more am I going to grow?") but I know it seemed pretty final at the time. I like 5'2"/62" and there's nothing in the contract about finally fusing my bones and returning to my growth cycle. But damn. This might be interesting.

Foam Everywhere

2007-09-19T20:06:00.001-07:00

In other news my new apartment is still intact and awesome but somehow I managed to flood my kitchen last night. Not with water perse but mostly with foam. I think I may have added a tad too much of the new dishwashing detergent. I was alerted to the fact by Dakken, who would be much better at sounding alarms if he didn't practice every night or so.

I'm still trying to figure out where to throw away garbage and get my mail (this complex is so intricate and bizarre...). The pets are happy, though walking is absolutely sensory overload for Rusk with all of the buildings and cars and people and other dogs around. The museum is crazy, just the way I remember it. I was getting sick eating quesadillas and polenta so I switched to making stir-fry every night with my one pan and one knife. I also picked up some scallops, the origin of which I'm embarrassed to say I don't know, though they taste alright. They seem like giant adductor muscles as opposed to having organs and such but I can't imagine sustainably harvesting something that big. I hope I didn't contribute to something like that. Welcome to my inner monologue. This is when I decide that I should probably just look it up.

Also I had a dream wherein the guy who plays Dr. Wilson on House was a professor of mine. When we were all short money due to student account deactivations at random or a blackout or something, he bought myself and a bunch of other students sushi for lunch in return for us helping him to finish some work the dept was behind on. All of the others flaked out so I got stuck helping him to catalog all of these weird new animal specimens he'd bring to me for the taxa guys, including some flying gerbil snakes and rat/dogs with accordian style heads whose true size you could only see face-on. It was all very strange. More insects than I'd have preferred, also. Giant ones.

Anyway, here's hoping for more sleep and another cool part time job to finish the round. I'm getting the opportunity to reconnect with old friends who've moved out here. Go figure.

DC

2007-09-17T15:29:00.001-07:00

I've covered a lot of ground in this time and I've little patience for all of it again. With my liberation at hand, I'll simply say:

Salt Lake City, over.
Indiana Retrieval Mission, complete.
Initial DC visit, done.
Visit to Hanna in Michigan, past.
Final laborious moving arrangements, made.

12 hours of driving with three animals later, here I am in a huge, empty, strange-ceilinged, neat new apartment - sans furniture of course. Today I achieved internet access and this week I begin my job(s), like as not. Everything is white, cool and quiet. I have space and my own kitchen and furthermore a really interesting apartment and complex where my chip fob opens doors as I walk by. I have a sleeping bag and some toiletries and I bought a pan and some cutlery. That is all. I've been surviving on Orangina, polenta, cheese, salsa, hummus and tortillas. I'm nearly out all of them. The metra is across the street and Whole Foods is down the block, followed by Old Town Alexandria. What more could I want? The Patent and Trademark Office illuminates the neighborhood from across the river (as in I could throw a rock...not the Potomoc). I have a huge bathtub, a perpetually-empty state of the art gym, myriad closets, a loft and a balcony and did I mention my own kitchen? New everything, everything clean. So I'm happy. Or I should be. I am happy. The tragedy in all this is that I fell in love with Chicago while I was busy trying to get out of it. It started, like last time, with Mark. He dragged me downtown at night and suddenly I'm finding excuses to go downtown. In finding excuses, I ended up meeting a few people I'd rather be around than not. The sort of people you make plans for. In my life it's hard enough to find one, less more. All of my neighbors here are busy young professionals who think highly of themselves. I'm sure that returning to solitude will be good for me. Who knows, maybe I'll run into some interesting folk. For now I'm pleased to upkeep the standards of minimalism in all respects.

Askance

2007-06-09T10:35:00.000-07:00

I know nothing of brand loyalty, save when it comes to footwear. My clothing, hygiene products, office supplies, foods and technologies all enjoy preferences but even items as critically important to my connectivity and interface with daily life as my phone and computer are subject to bouts of caprice. However, no sandal has ever compared to the Mephisto. It takes me about a year to wear a pair through to the breaking point, less depending on how many times I've gotten them wet and strained the leather by running. I enjoy others more for their low-impact eco-friendly manufacture and competitive pricing. But there is a jubilance to be had upon arriving at a new pair of Mephistos, having gone without for up to a month. This is one of those things that frightens me a bit - the knowledge that some intricately-assembled leather and cork can chemically influence my brain.

Graduation is over and done with, leaving marks upon my memory of moments I'm not sure how to interpret retrospectively. It was all bitter-sweet and non-committal, as I'm told they always are. Though it lacked any sense of finality the alums who were suddenly there gave me closure. They knew me as I really was in a sense, before all of this madness and stupidity. Moreover, they knew a Johnston that wasn't horribly broken in too many ways. They are real people, with spirit and character, willing to make mistakes and this sadly separates them from most of the Johnston students I know now. I have serious concern for some of the good people that I've left behind, at least one of which is already so disenchanted as to be banished for a time. But they seem to be sorting out their own strategies for sanity so I imagine they'll get out alright. I truly wish that I hadn't been as consumed by all of the personal bullshit that Johnston threw, and had taken more time to be a better role model to new community members. Looking back on all of this though I'm just so glad it is done. I was ready to move on a year ago and I know those who've managed to curry so much favor through deceit will be known for what they are in the real world, eventually. Still, it feels like limbo, being stuck here for an extra month after even the young community members have left. I go walking with the dog at night through the empty campus and hear voices over by Johnston, upon closer inspection it's no one I know. The entire city changes as it descends into summer, and though I've been here before I'm usually so addled and decently far from the city itself that I don't notice. much. It's intensely irritating that some part of me might actually miss this place, just a minuscule amount. That thought is like a chigger in a sleeping bag to me. I've spent so long loathing this place and all of the crazy fucked-up people in it. I was on State St. yesterday allowing this thought that had been needling into my consciousness actually claim my attention for a moment, when I was informed that my favorite little bistro - the only non-fast food place in town where I can eat anything, the place with clouds on the ceiling, a strange kitchen and chess boards, the only place that has good drinks in town and where I tend to meet professors for lunch - is being shut down because Martha Greene found them to be too competitive with her business over the weekends and had a friend find a loophole in their lease and get them evicted within 2 weeks. Martha Greene is the "sweet little Martha Steward of the Inland Empire". My hickory chicken salad with mozzarella and mustard vinegar is being replaced by about as much starch, sugars and fats as you can bear to put into your mouth.

So I'm still around in the interest of waiting for my lease to run out and then dealing with the literally insane nazi landlady. In my time Ed and I are bringing the study I did over the past year to a point of publishability. I've been applying to jobs and sending out CV's like mad. It's only the 9th but already I'm stressing about where I'm going to be living and working, where to go if I don't know by the end of the month. I have applications in to places as local as Santa Monica and as far off as New Zealand so I really have absolutely no idea where I'll be. Phil will be staying back here, in California, to start his business. I think we've finally narrowed his living space down to either Marina Del Rey or Long Beach. He wants to live in Venice but that entire area is too expensive. He wants to be near that damn rope on muscle beach. I hope that the company starts out well. He's going to have a decent amount of competition. So my days are mostly spent either glued to the computer monitor or traipsing around the coast with Pip. Last night we wandered around Santa Monica for a time, I found my new Mephistos and Phil tried to find a restaurant where he'd be willing to both eat and use the restroom. He had a strict "no seafood, no sushi, no fusion" directive and being that I couldn't hit a pizza place or any of the pubs, in Santa Monica that left us with a lot of frozen yogurt places. The best FroYo place ever was found. It's called " Yo Green " and all of the chairs inside are little Ideo green horses and cubes you can sit on. They have two flavors, plain and blueberry, and you get three topings. I got blueberry (which to my ultimate surprise actually tasted like what you'd expect if you were good at crushing real raw blueberries into frozon yogurt) with coconut, mochi and kiwi. It was fantastic. I've added it to my mental quest map for future visits.

It's not a bad life right now but a combination of the living stress and job stress and holdover stress from the graduating isn't helping. Once we have Phil settled I'll feel better I think, although taking a year apart will be difficult. To compound issues I'm spending June 14th-21st helping my father in Salt Lake City with his aerial photography booths at a Rotary International Convention. I'm lucky enough to have Erin and Thor coming and a semi-functional laptop but it will be a long trip nonetheless. In a way I'm going to be glad to get away from this place, but the new job/new place/leaving Pip/exclusion diet combo may be too much to bear. I guess we'll see.

Arbonne Int'l

2007-05-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

A few links for some of you:

http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/company.php?comp_id=1737&refurl=%2Fwordsearch.php%3Fquery%3Darbonne%26

http://www.pyramidschemealert.org/PSAMain/news/MythofMLMIncome.doc.pdf
(please read at least up to page 19)

http://www.arbonneanonymous.typepad.com/

http://www.mlmsurvivor.com/fitzpatrick.htm

http://www.pyramidschemealert.org/PSAMain/resources/12tests1.pdf

Good products? It seems so, though more questionable given the context.
Good company? Probably not a worthwhile endeavor.

Survival May

2007-04-27T17:52:00.000-07:00

My Survival May Term course is getting underway, slowly. I'm a bit intimidated by my own design of the course, as it's going to require a lot of work on my end, but I hope all goes well. I've fashioned an introductory quiz, just to see where the baseline of knowledge falls on different topics. Feel free to take it yourself and see how you do. Drop me a link if you want it. Also, check out what I found on Aerospace web, about the decompression tests NASA did in the '60s:

"Members of PETA may want to stop reading now, because most of the experimentation to determine these findings was conducted on animals. Chimpanzees and dogs were particularly common subjects used during decompression and recompression tests. Several of these studies determined that a subject experiencing a rapid decompression to a vacuum will retain some level of consciousness for between nine and twelve seconds. Unconsciousness only occurs once the supply of oxygen in the blood is depleted. Furthermore, a human will have no more than five to ten seconds to take any action in response to the decompression. Shortly after losing consciousness, the body will experience paralysis followed by convulsions and finally paralysis again. Water vapor also begins forming in soft tissue causing the body to swell, perhaps to as much as twice its normal volume if not constrained by a suit. Over the next 30 to 60 seconds, heart rate slows, blood pressure drops, and blood circulation stops. Gases and water vapor rapidly escape through the mouth and nose causing these parts of the body to drop to near freezing temperatures. The rest of the body cools more slowly.

Although some animal subjects perished due to fibrillation of the heart within the first minute of exposure, these cases proved the exception and an air-breathing creature will almost always recover if recompression occurs within 90 seconds. Breathing usually begins spontaneously without any need for outside resuscitation. However, resuscitation becomes impossible after heart activity has stopped regardless of recompression time."

"Researchers concluded that although a subject's condition may appear grave after vacuum exposure, recompression to even as little as 0.25 atmospheres within 60 to 90 seconds will usually allow survival and a complete recovery within a short period of time."

"One of the worst things a person can do, however, is to try holding his breath. The difference in pressure this creates will cause the lungs to rupture. This type of injury is almost always fatal."

Fascinating, no? You have maybe 10 seconds to react and 90 seconds to reverse. Worth knowing? I think so.

Confluere

2007-03-31T12:47:00.000-07:00

Everything is coming together.

Not in a good way. Not in an edifying way that enables me to rationalize all of the bullshit that has occurred over the past few years. Not in any way that allows for a deeper understanding of the consequences of daily interactions or a more refined philosophy of life. No. Nothing systemic or methodical. Everything is coming together in a rabble, a murder, a mob. It's fucking pouring.

All of the small academic slights have come to bare full force and simultaneously. I have to deal with everybody's attitude at once. I have the pleasure of meeting everyone's reactionary well-worn drama with my own clenched patience. Everyone else has needs they can't ignore that require my immediate attention and whose requisite work is the subject of endless critique. Never mind the disproportionate duress. Half of them have the gall to judge my facade while they're at it. Amazing. But our failure, as a culture, to self examine is another topic altogether. Everything is breaking down. All of my electronics, for one, are inching toward the door whenever I leave the room. All of the animals that aren't degrading are enacting vengeance on my other possessions. We'll leave my health at the allusion. My relationships are showing their hands a tad too much and my current responsibilities are largely unwieldy and undefined, recognizable only by the ghosts they carry, the diligent, shadowy repercussions of possible failure. I would hate to see them materialize. I am being reminded that I am a player in all of this and none of it was for my benefit so much as for the benefit of others.

Strangely, I find myself taking solace in consumerism. The only peace I find during the day is in my phone (now destroyed) and when I try to imagine what finishing this is worth I find myself dreaming of a small apartment in Chicago, dark and cold outside but white with exposed floorboards and warm shadows from flame on the inside. My own kitchen, private and exposed, with bread baking and no one else's clutter or cleanliness or toxins to worry about. I find myself folding the perfect sail-white featherbed in my mind, touching it, remembering its acquisition as an addition and not a replacement. Imagining well paid-for minimalism. Anyone who knows me well would worry that this is happiness for me now.

What A Mess

2007-03-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

Just the regular rigmaroll. Trying to keep up with my obligations and trying to forgive those with greater power who aren't bothering to keep up with their own and expect me not to notice. Watching people make decidedly bad decisions and keeping my mouth shut because, after all, it is their will. I hope to be done with all of this soon. I hope to move off and work well and live alone in a small but private apartment with my animals and my dignity and to just...be quiet for a time. Then I will rebound with noise and force but for now, I have put in my 16 years and I am deserving of peace. Meantime these plans are halted by a churlish insensitive bureaucracy. As if the forwarding of an email takes at least a week. I am trying to pretend that I am not more humorless and the more tired than ever I have been before. I am aggrevated by strangers' selfishness nearly constantly. It's just not the time for joyous endings and I think we all know that I would have been out of here earlier had it not been for my illness. My new doctor is trying to put me through a horrific set of exams in order to teach me not to be afraid of horrific exams, as he thinks I have some anxiety about them. He has admitted that they're entirely arbitrary and that he knows the results will be negative already. Meanwhile people harp loudly about matters of little import and ignore the elephants. To think that as a child I thought I saw some reason to this place. It's hard to motivate people to stay on their shit when a failure to do so only negatively impacts you. We'll see if I can salvage my academic record yet. For now this situation feels dreadfully like being trapped in a painful dark comedy. At least I found some tapioca pudding.

Missing

2007-02-09T15:44:00.000-08:00

A popular database engineer went sailing last Sunday afternoon around San Francisco and hasn't been seen or heard from since. His friends and colleagues have launched a satellite feed and are recruiting anyone with a spare moment to take a look at images with the hope of spotting him. They aren't as high res as one might hope but it's worth a shot. If you have a moment, lend an eye here:
http://skydev.pha.jhu.edu/szalay/tenacious/tiles/

Body! Part skin before exuding glass!

2007-01-16T23:32:00.000-08:00

Dear Body,

As we've started a new year I thought it would be a good time to connect with you once again. I realize that we haven't always been very close, and in fact that usually I don't speak to you at all unless I need something from you. But the New Year brings new beginnings and I hoped that by extending this first olive branch of peace (with all associated trite imagery) that we might reach some uneasy accord.
I recognize that you may be somewhat resentful of incidents past. You certainly have every reason to be. I just hope that you keep in mind how many of those incidents were caused by others or the indirect consequence of your own actions. Still, I know that I have been the source of a great deal of pain for you and I take responsibility for my actions. I am sorry; mea culpa. Not least among them, looming large in your mind I'm sure is the incidental forced poisoning that I have - completely accidentally, I swear to you - been nonetheless perpetrating on you for the past 20-or-so years. You may also still be upset about the mono incident. And the sliding-glass-door thing. The point that I'm getting to is that we're stuck with each other, so we may as well make an effort to forgive and move on before this whole thing gets ridiculous.
This brings me to my point. Recently, when a pretty nasty turn of events found a shard of glass lodged in your heel, you handled it so well. You didn't make a big fuss, swell much, turn red or even give in to infection. I was actually thinking that you were beginning to mature. When the situation became worse and you were faced with the prospect of dealing with the glass and a change in walking style for the foreseeable future, you dutifully and expediently moved the intruder to the surface. Now, having almost expelled the interloper you've become petty. Why? All you need to do is slough the skin off and it'll be BAU. But instead you've seen fit to teach me a lesson by forcing the glass out through the healed wound. What are you hoping to accomplish? I don't doubt your capacity; I know sloughing is one of your favorite tricks. I can't help but think you begrudge me for putting it there in the first place. But you know as well as I do that I did nothing of the sort and I've taken every measurable step to prevent its recurrence. When are you going to cut me a break?
Please consider this a gesture of good faith on my part and make an effort to consider my words in earnest. This path that we're on is mutually destructive and I think you know that. Imagine what we could do for each other if we only tried to work together! My point is, stop being a pain and get it done already. This torture bullshit is childish, at best. I mean seriously. So in conclusion, stop being such a bitch.
Sincerely, your dear friend,

Cat

Snow

2007-01-12T09:32:00.000-08:00

Last night I made the brownies I've been looking forward to all week and was glutened by...something. The vanilla? This is misery. But I did wake up to shouts of "snow!" and a snowball in the bed. Los Angeles hasn't had snow in 40 years. I wonder how long it's been since this valley noticed any. The last time I remember seeing it, it was ash from the fires three years ago. Academic schedule is getting ironed out. Meanwhile I'm slowly getting work done. It's 37 degrees. Time to bake something, I guess. It's strange to suddenly find myself alone for so much of each day.

Brr, damnit.

2006-12-31T23:48:00.000-08:00

And so it was that Pip and Cat flew to Cat's parents' house for the holidays and there was...actually a pretty good time to be had by all. It wasn't snowy, or snowing, at all (disappointing) but it was plenty cold, though not so much compared to how it usually is. All the formalities taken care of we had a great Christmas, did a one-shot with Meg, went to Second City, the Institute and Uncle Julio's, saw Pan's Labyrinth (a Spanish flick) at the Evanston Cinearts and enjoyed all of the mildly awkward perks that come with being a couple staying in one partners home and being visited by their friends. It was actually quite a nice time and I was surprised by a sincere attempt to accomodate my dietary needs, both by my parents (stockpiling food), sibs (making complicated and tasty recipes from stockpiled food) and friends (teaching me to make sushi and Korean dishes to avoid having to use said food). I did end up glutening myself a couple of times near the end of the trip, though to my credit we had a really ditzy waitress at one time. Sure enough I was sick by the time I left.

My New Year's resolution was going to be cleaning the apartment but having returned to an eerily spotless one (and I just can't stress how impossible this level of clean would have seemed a week ago, even yesterday...I'm a bit worried that Erin may have pawned all of my belongings, although she picked us up from John Wayne and left us here to our ecstatic dog while she went off to a party, and called when it struck her that I may notice my pennies missing from a little dish we keep them in. So she went about explaining why she had used the pennies just in case I was to notice and sit here fuming about my missing pennies. I mention all this in case anyone actually thought that I suspected my room mate of selling my things.

So my new New Year's Resolution (I've never seen the point in them before, and I can't say I do now, more as symbolic currency) is to reassess the entire diet and set up an elimination for soy and legumes as well. Since I've now been provided with a rather avid depiction of the way in which my immune system and gut interact. I expect this to be a headache. Everything is closed today and my bags are still lost so I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrow.

I hope you've survived your holidays and that your new year fadges better than the last.

Remove Glass

2006-12-18T16:04:00.000-08:00

It seems so simple.

Remove glass. Pip demonstrated the gesture required many times at lunch. You'd think, given modern medical technology, the stringency of medical school and a wealthy capitalist state brimming with medical culture and all the resources a practicianer could want, that the task wouldn't be so complicated. We deal with complex neurological disorders, organs as fragile as the eye and the lung, we can change people on a genetic level and yet...when it comes to splinter of glass accidentally lodged in my heel, all bets are off. Instead I waited for hours to see some yahoo who thought that jabbing a biopsy needle into the wound and pushing the glass further into my tender flesh was clearly the parsimoniest course of action. When I informed him of the fallacy in his plan (by unintentionally leaping over the examination table to get away from the pain) he recommended pain killers and another try with the needle. Suffice it to say, I still have glass in my foot. I'll be waiting 2 weeks to a month for my body to remove it by its own means. But I did get a tetnus shot out of the deal and for that I'm grateful.

What burns me most about this, aside from the fact that I got said splinter when waltzing back from my last final of the semester, giddy as could be, was that I was really looking forward to spending a holiday season healthy for once. With my parents treating this Celiac diet as just another extension of my general malaise and sickliness, I was excited at the prospect of showing them how much more energetic and alive and, well, downright healthy I've become, finally. I'm not clinging to some "fad diet" or unlikely recent diagnosis and continuing to "pretend to be sick", I've actually had a profound change. But now, after the growing excitment of getting better day by day, all they'll see will be my limp as I hop around, trying not to put pressure on my left heel, obviously a sympathy bid. Talk about frustrating. But this is merely the most recent installment in a very long story indeed. So I'll move on.

I've gained an understanding for the hatred people harbor for those who break bottles in the street. I've also learned my lesson about wearing sandals in dirty areas, [insert chuckling of every person reading this who ever pointed out how hypocritical my sandal-wearing was] yes, I know, thank you, you win. In the meantime, I guess I'm toe-walking for a while. Maybe quite a while. Although given my body's penchant for rejection, I doubt it'll be that long. At least it wasn't metal. That'd make my airport time so much more interesting.

Turgor

2006-12-14T10:48:00.000-08:00

I haven't been sleeping well. It's a combination of things but I always wake up with my jaw clenched and my muscles fatigued. I have a lot to work out over this upcoming break.
Pip and I are headed back to Chicago for a week or so and we'll return before New Years. Once I get all of these tests over with I'll be the better for it, I think. I've one a day through Saturday yet to do. Saturday is spelled kind of strangely, isn't it?
Days and nights are long and tired. I still have evals and self-evals left to do.

One of my profs lost all of his equipment to theft over two nights. It's strange. Someone knew that he had something worth stealing (the rest of the rooms in the building are more readily accessible and have high end projectors, computers and such) and which of his rooms it was in. Further, based on the signs I've seen, it seems as though the person who took the stuff had a key. I wonder if Public Safety will eventually head my way, as I was one of maybe three non-staff members to have a key to that room. Very disturbing. Moreso because it nixes his future class plans and a lot of his equipment was his own. The department can't just shuffle funds around. It's a shame. I hope they find the person. I have a bad feeling it may be someone I know.

There's a lot up in the air: my May term class, my role within the community, a couple of my grades, even. Yikes. What a hellish semester. The next will be good though, I can feel it. Christmas is somewhat daunting. Maybe I'll hang with my Jewish friends instead, get some take-out.

My body is very, very disappointed in me.

I hope this "vacation" goes better than most. Else I think I'll be reduced to that sharp, bitter, stygian shadow who speaks only in Laconic pentameter. I kind of miss her, to be honest.

Thanksgiving Break

2006-11-24T20:29:00.000-08:00

Grand Junction. Football with cousins. Good food, some of which I can eat. Weird dreams. Crap hotel. Ah, how it always was.
Semester is waning, with the greater part of my workload ahead of me. Gabriel came to visit. Thursday night mean good food and research is picking up. Erin and Thor seem better and have vibrant new hair color. Erin is drawing a comic of the apartment through the eyes of Kisa, her FelV+ cross-eyed princess. It's quite funny and I'll link it when I can.

The sign one sees upon exiting the elevator says "Clean Air Floor, No Smoking" but this floor and room are so full of smoke you can practically see it draped through the air. It's annoying, and in conjunction with the uncomfortable and very small, shared bed, makes my time here perilously irritating. It is enormously frustrating to spend time with people who used to harshly punish you for the smallest of infractions that today they perpetrate flagrantly. The amount of sexism alone that's played out at these events is enough to make me neglect my invitation next year. Though I feel that way every year. Sometimes I'm happy to see these people and sometimes I wish they'd choke on their own spit. I've been through so many trials of patience in the last year that I start to worry for my timbre.

I'm convinced there is a way to determine and predict the way in which lateral branches splice from a tree throughout development. This may bear some research.

Gluten Hell

2006-10-21T12:56:00.000-07:00

So after three months of teeth-gritting trauma the case is closed and incontestable: I am allergic to gluten. Which makes Rusk's name somewhat ironic, although not entirely unfitting. I'm looking forward to actually making myself dramatically change my diet to wholesome, fresh, home-made, well prepared food. Still looking.

The Fall semester is half over and my academics are alright, though the Graduate school admissions are a consistent source of tremendous stress. I took a lovely jaunt up the coast to see Jackie with Pip and Liz Ricks. We stopped in Carmel and others and it was quite a nice drive. We also went to San Diego for some good sea food, the Birch Aquarium and a night on Old Town.

The status quo (if ever there is) is being maintained. We need to work a little harder to create an ecological harmony between the cats, other small animals, dog and..everything else. The dog needs to leave the inanimates alone. But other than that it's my favorite season and so far we're waving, not drowning.

We'll see how things progress. For right now, it's autumn and I'm scouting for pumpkins and sense.

Myeh.

2006-09-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

The sound of being crushed from above.

I am now three weeks into the semester. I'm overloading to 20 credits and it's irrationally hot, still. I've very little time.

I still owe you the other two-thirds of the Estonia trip (in pictures) and a half-interesting diatribe on Ethiopia. The air quality here is atrocious. I can feel it more every month. So many students already have athsma, it's amazing I've 'scaped it. The few people I find I want to spend time with are as busy as I am. We'll see how all this pans.

For now I've got three more assignments to do. For those who want to keep up with what goes on in the apartment, www.thoranderin.blogspot.com might have the skinny. Senator Tumson is visiting.

On Returning

2006-08-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

A month or so in Ethiopia. A week in Britain. Another in Glenview. Finally in some time I may be allowed to return home.

The cicadas are deafening and all of the outdoors is so green and luminous and poised to lure me back into believing that I like this place. I would like to be free of it but it is seductive and quietly persistent. I become a sensualist when I return here from abroad. It is as though I've finally been unsheathed. Textures are new and being able to brush my teeth is sex to me now. I am glad to be free of the influences that have pervaded my life for the last year. I feel as though I have recovered some part of my mind. It is cold slate on a humid summer day. Still and reassuring and painful. It makes me strange like this.

I have met a surprising array of interesting people in the past month. Some scholars and philosophers and naturalists and some hardened bastards. But (and this is crucial) I think I have regained my place. I spent part of a day in Chicago with a man I barely knew and tasted the city at night for a time. My senses are quickening, day by day. Soon I know speed will upon me again. But for now being able to experience is a luxury and a necessity.

I saw something today. It was in the sky. Logically I know what it was. My primitive brain could not conceive of such a thing. It lacked effect. It was inexplicable. I need to sleep to dream.

Oh Hell No

2006-06-29T09:48:00.000-07:00

Rusk

2006-06-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

New addition. Pound pup. A week and two days in. Maybe five months old. Maybe.

In other news, 10 days remain.

Pedantic Rambling

2006-06-07T16:01:00.000-07:00

So. The end of the year was a headache and a mess but it is over. I've been rather spare on here of late in part due to my new addiction. It probably wont be broken until after Africa. School has ended. I had hoped to be exercising by now but the past week has been ozone/pollution warning days and some of the hottest on record 'round here. I actually kind of doubt that but it's what they tell me. You know I always listen to what they tell me. People have been dropping from heat dysphasia left and right and all the ACs stop working around 10 AM, including in the restaurants and such. Poor Pip has been working at Phoe the last few nights, making his work day well over 12 hours. There's a 20 degree difference between the seating area and the area behind the counter. The apartment is a mess and I've been waking up exhausted after 11 hours of sleep so I'm not sure what's going to come of any of it.

I took the cats to the vet. Now they hate me. The past week has been a sort of "catch up" week to make up for all the shit I didn't finish before school ended. So I got the cats their shots, I got my shots from Cedars Sinai travel clinic and I may need four more (in which case I'll find a nurse with better aim), I've done the mailing and caught up with evals. I need to finish three textbooks on Biomechanics before July so that I can finalize my thesis with Ed before I leave. I need to...do a lot more that really doesn't bear listing here.

Phil and I are moving apartments a day before I leave for Ethiope, what fun. In earnest I didn't want to go anywhere. I like where we live on the 2nd floor with the gated community and the magnolias and the lizards and the butterflies. I really appreciate living alone with him, the privacy and the convenience. But when we were helping Erin and Thor find an apartment it turned out to be a lot cheaper to live with them in a two bedroom and split. Phil was all over it so I grudgingly gave in. I guess of year of privacy and comfort wont cost me that much. For that matter I probably owe Erin and Thor more credit. It wont be just living with randomly selected unhygienic people, like dorm life. On that note Phil refers to me as "the little dictator" when talking to them about semantics. We'll be living in an apartment near the University that didn't have openings when we tried to move in there before. We'll see how this shalt fadge.

My family is leaving for Prague soon. I'm hoping (though not anticipating) scoring a Blackberry since it may be the only device that will allow me to communicate with the outside world once I hit Addis. Zack was supposed to meet me for lunch yesterday and didn't. Bob was supposed to come visit last month and didn't. I think I'm about done keeping other peoples schedules, and at the ripe old age of 21 I'm not sure how far that's going to get me.

I still owe you the pics from the other 2/3rds of the Eastern Europe trip and I'll post them just as soon as I find a way to get my other computer online. It has all the pictures and stuff after all. In the mean time I'll leave you with one of the few I have here.

Swimmingly.

2006-05-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

Hokay. So.

Back, obviously. I got back a week and a half ago. I've been busy, sorta. This is the calm before the storm. By next weekend I will hate this place because it will be hot and everyone will be cranky or still drunk and moving out. Lazy as May term is, I'll be happy to be done with this year. It will be a little bit like a bad dream. Next year looks good, frankly. If I don't die in Ethiopia next year will rock the rucksack. Speaking of which, there were bombings in Addis Ababa the other day and my father is still dragging his feet on the tix.

BAU here. I've been really tired recently, which I take as a good sign. I've been coming in every day around noon. I deposited a bunch of money today in order to finally pay of my credit card bill. Bonds mature. I always forget this, so it's a lovely surprised when I find I'm holding more money than I know. I have another grad review in about an hour.

I don't really feel like telling all the stories from Eastern Europe so I'll put random pictures up here and maybe toss a two-word explanation for each in after. I don't want any bitching about it. Shutterfly accidentally deleted about 2.5 hours worth of work the other day so I'm about done with it.

Here goes. I'll just do Vienna today.

This is the Hotel Deutschmeister. We stayed here in Vienna. The staff were flippant.

This...is a cathedral I don't know the name of. It was just a block from our hotel. We thought it was St. Stephensdome and kept trying to navigate our way around the city using it as a landmark. We became distressed when things made no sense. Then we took a tour down the Danube that left us at St. Stephensdome. As we walked around we kept remarking on how we'd never seen that side of the roof before and where did that park go? Turns out the maps didn't make sense for a reason. This one, in spite of its enormosity (yeah) was barely on the map at all.

This is mostly what Vienna looks like. Long, high-walled streets. It's lovely. I wouldn't mind living there for a time. I love the cafe culture. Here, yet more architecture and street shots.

Mom leaned into this one. Btw if you go to Vienna, don't bother looking for all those gardens on the map. "Garten" apparently means "park" to them. My poor mother went in search of so many gartens.

HUNTERT-WASSER HAUS!

So this is the entryway, this entire complex is low-income housing the Austrian government commissioned a local artist to design. As you can see the walkways undulate.

The lines demark each individual apartment. They're all different colors with varying siding. The skylights are ellipses and the floors are uneven and water runs in strange ways and everything about the interiors are innovative and amazing. I could go on for hours about this place but I'll save that rant for another time.

There are trees growing out of the roof.

People live in them so you can't enter but if I ever build a house I'm fashioning the interiors after this place.

Yup. Stuff. This whole thing has been pretty random, in case you didn't notice.

This is the inside of St. Stephensdome. Here's a better look:

All three of the major cathedrals in Austria have embalmed parts of the Hapsburgs. The crypts of this one has all of their internal organs in copper kettles. It's really very strange. That area was recently renovated but below that area, in the dank and bitter cold, are the true crypts...

This was actually the only picture that came out. A few centuries ago a plague hit the city and was presumed to be coming from the dead. So they dug up the graveyards and reinterred the bones in crypts beneath St. Stephensdome. They forced the prisoners to stack the bodies, hundreds of thousands of them, in careful rows and then sealed them off room by room. When they ran short on prisoners they started filling mass-grave pits. Walking through you can look down and see piles of bones many meters high. I wish I'd gotten a shot of the stacks of bones, 40 people high. There were a lot of interesting forays like this but alas I'm out of time. I have to run to a grad review now but feel free to check out the rest of the pics on www.sinenox.shutterfly.com, I'll organize them eventually.

If you're interested in forming a new addiction (listening to NPR is a plus) check out www.gather.org.

Black Sea Post

2006-04-28T11:49:00.000-07:00

So call me unoriginal. I'm about a block away so it made sense at the time. Btw, it is not black.

Too many stories to tell here, but an update:
I am in Bulgaria.
I finished our three days in Vienna and shall be returning on the 6th en route back to California (7th) via Heathrow and O'Hare.
I am wandering around Varna daily (at night I'm confused for a prostitute so I avoid the recurrence) as my mother and her fellows meet for the Connectional Table at a Methodist church, the only church in the country that managed to meet throughout Communist rule, in spite of the killing and jailing of the clergy.
Interesting stories.
In two days I depart for Estonia and an undoubtedly yet more interesting set of circumstances.
If anyone wants postcards, clothing, trinkets, small valuables or CHOCOLATES I am taking orders. I have highlighted the most important and sought after items for your convenience.
I have a double sinus infection due to the smoking in Vienna (fun on planes) which is being treated thanks to Dr. Higgins in Glenview who handed me antibiotics for fun before I left. Kudos.
I will be returning (as mentioned) on the 7th, so I'll be around by the 8th.
Try to contain yourselves.

So yeah, I could bore you with endless detail about every miniscule thing I notice or with clever anecdotes or descriptions of the St. Stephensdome Platz crypts, Wasser Haus or Roman Bathe Ruins and I would love to but my time here is finite. I actually wrote my Self Evaluations in the quaint euro-shower of our room in the Deutschmeister Hotel in Vienna, Austria at 3 AM. I ought to have mentioned it to the profs I sent them to.

It's 9 PM here, noon CPM. Hope nothing has imploded in my absence. I hate cleaning after a set of seven hour flights.

Summer Plans

2006-04-07T20:56:00.000-07:00

We have these little magnetic animals that cling to our metal door here at the apartment. Sanura loves chasing them around and Phil's favorite game it to move them higher and higher out of reach to see how far he can get her to jump vertically in order to retrieve them. He claims he can turn her into the "Shaq of Cats" and start a little cat NBA. In moving them out of my way this morning I inadvertently discovered that she can jump 6 feet from a standing position on the ground. This is a small cat; she's still practically a kitten.
This discovery has unnerved me a bit. After all, I'm only 5'2", my face would be well within reach, even in a standing position. She still has daggers for claws.
I'm making sure I feed her on time.

So! Summer plans as promised:
I was putting together a lot of things for the summer, none of which were particularly sold or set in stone. However as of last week I have determined with a great degree of certainty what I'll be spending my time doing for the majority of the summer months. My favorite Biology professor went on sabbatical last year when he was elected to head up a conservancy for the most reversibly-endangered species on the planet, in Ethiopia. He mentioned that there might be some work I could help with but never officially invited me to accompany him. When he didn't respond to a letter I sent him earlier this year I felt that venture was essentially hopeless. However the poor Brit had lost his reply in the Drafts box and when he didn't hear from me he sent me a two line e-mail inviting me to live with him and his family for the summer and work at the Conservancy.
For those of you who don't know what Dr. Malcolm is working on, here's a rather strong hint: www.ethiopianwolf.org

Recently National Geographic went to their lab up in the mountains to interview one of the post-doc's working there. Here are some pictures they got whilst there: www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0603/feature6/

Saddened as I am that some of my other plans will not be happening soon, this was an opportunity I simply couldn't pass up.

For those of you who might be interested in keeping contact with me over the summer (and want some kickass photos) I'd highly recommend this. I've already foisted this upon some of you and anyone will tell you I can't be made to write otherwise.

On the topic of Squid...

2006-03-25T19:31:00.000-08:00

Still sick. At least I can evaluate myself now based on the recognition of three distinct problems. Special thanks to all those Johnstonites who got a bunch of diseases just so I could figure out how to differentiate them. Now I have the mono (dwindling, so long as I'm careful), the bronchial...stuff and the eye problems. Excellent. I had to get up at 7 AM yesterday and be up through 2 AM this morning (very bad) so I've been sleeping and I plan to continue such until I feel much better.

Sanura has been unusually affectionate. I mean, given her nature, really disturbingly affectionate. At first we thought maybe she was in heat but I'm no longer convinced of that. She's all over everyone, all the time, except Dakken. She chases us around and makes endless chirping noises and rolls around until we pay her mind. She has even been reduced to retracting her claws. She keeps trying to climb people without using her claws or she waits for the right moment and then flings herself up against a persons torso before falling back to the ground, scaring herself and running away. When she couldn't get Pip's attention yesterday no matter how much she chirped and rolled she took to suddenly biting his ear and running away.

I have these two bettas I rescued from Petco although in retrospect I more likely contributed to the continued abuse of their race. In any case I didn't realize they could jump so one afternoon I removed their top, since the water level was below it a couple levels, just until I had a chance to clean it. I came back to find that Red had jumped over into Blue's side and they were both pretty torn up. I feel terrible but they both lived and are thriving in their beshredded way. I'll put a picture of them up later.

Someone shaved their poor dog in honor of the new Mozilla Firefox release:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23558147@N00/110129102/
And here are some real ones:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/redpanda/pool/

When I am awake I am persistently badgered by my friend here, cats aside.

"Look up 'tired blood' on WedMD" (he's not feeling well and that is the only 'symptom' he claims he can describe)

"I signed you up for dancing lessons."
"No..."
"Really, I found this place just off Redlands Boulevard, it'll be fun"
"Well I hope you enjoy them because I'm not going."
"No - you'll like it, it's..Larry Flint's School of Dancing for Adults.."
< Cat tries to remember who that is. >
"They teach all kinds of dancing. The money is paid and you're going. Besides, they pay you while you learn and we need the money."

Also, according to BoingBoing the largest squidsicle in history is on display for a few more days only in Australia. Best get there.

Action Squid

2006-03-17T16:54:00.000-08:00

So I have mono (again) as well as a number of other ineffable maladies. This is not particularly pleasant given that my mono is actually worse than it was last year. I imagine myself as a sort of sad migrant water balloon in a sandpaper world. I'll spare you the details.

So, surprise calamari in my biology lab Friday. That is to say, we ate what we dissected. Pleasantly not the very same animals themselves. We arrived, all six of us, to the hebdomadal Invertebrate Zoology lab in full regalia and effervescent at the prospect of a three-hour mollusk dessication. After a short period of riveting barnacle observation we were ushered (equipment in tow) into the conference room at which time we set about haphazardly decontrusting hapless loligos. At this time our professor (the gregarious Ed Pearson) began frying up with intermittent instruction the remainder of the box of squid along with minced garlic, oil, white wine and a spicy Chinese black bean sauce served with roma tomatoes and French bread. As some of you know I avoid calamari as well as most seafood particularly when inland and consequently this was my first time trying it. I must admit there is a perversity to eating something whose anatomy you are intimately acquainted with. I am, as most, accustomed to disassociating the cold slabs of unidentifiable food product with their living peers. However the day was grey and cold as we and we were hungry.

Yes, that is my dissection guide underneath.

So. Yesterday we had a get together here at the apartment, the fallout from which I still haven't seen fit to clean up. It was a good time. Photos (mostly of the cats) can be found in Larry's facebook album. Around midnight my throat started to hurt indicating that I had "pushed it" as my friends and fam have warned. This morning I woke up with new and different symptoms as well as a profound need to sleep most of the day, as I have done.

Basically this is just me bitching about being sick. Sick, sick, sick. As a child I was both lucky and immune to illness so I'm entertaining the idea that I'm merely catching up for all missed opportunities to fortify my immune system.

Maybe I should have been one of those kids who goes out in public and licks the floor.

Herstory Month Indeed

2006-03-08T14:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday South Dakota passed an act (against its majority) to ban abortion. The Act will probably not be vetoed by the governor. When finally challenged it will appear in the Supreme Court as a revision on Roe v. Wade.
The document may be found here:
http://legis.state.sd.us/sessions/2006/bills/HB1215enr.htm

In response, a rather interesting phenomenon has erupted at this website:
http://mollysavestheday.blogspot.com/2006/02/for-women-of-south-dakota-abortion.html
I found the commentary to be fascinating. As such I'll reserve my own thoughts on the matter for a later date.

Also, this:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5241170

Oh, and apparently the Christian majority of Missouri need their rights protected.
http://www.house.mo.gov/bills061/biltxt/intro/HCR0013I.htm

Charming.

Never did I know that the freedoms I felt haltered by in my youth would be restricted, not challenged on the broader basis of their limited scope and revised to act as a more...What is the word, just? guideline. These days keep getting darker.

No Time Now

2006-03-03T21:18:00.000-08:00

Vegas is dirty and haunting like a CRT in the dark. I always hold my breath when I enter this city. I spend every moment, waking and asleep, as though I'm waiting to begin breathing again. This place is a zombie movie waiting to happen. I take some small solace, malicious as it may seem to those who don't know me, in the knowledge that if apocalypse comes none of these people will make it out. They seem to exult in that fact, flagrantly hurling light and water into the far-reaching desert as though they weren't the most precious commodities here. This city is so popular, I think, because it glints of some true human filament. Something inside everyone resonates in this place, whether they want it to or not.

Pip hates this city even more than I do, which is the only reason I am here. It seemed cruel to leave him lonely here for even longer than need be. It may be good for me to be running higher on anxiety than usual. Who knows.

I do know that if this recent crisis reaches its apogee I assure you I shalnt ever need be taught this lesson again.

V-Day Cards

2006-03-01T14:46:00.000-08:00

This is the Valentines Day card I gave out. Those celebrating Singles Awareness Day seemed particularly appreciative.

Gravity

2006-02-21T14:01:00.000-08:00

I started to feel a little better, a bit ago.
It had something to do with the cyclical nature of my ruminations when it comes to academics. I reach a complacent plateau, for a time.
It had something to do with knowing that the hormone therapy I've been subjected to not completely against my will shall shortly end and I will fail to renew it. It changes my stature and my voice and insidiously fucks with my emotions and most desperately clouds my mind. Every time I miss a dose I enter a better world. It is a shroud I will shed most amenably.
It had something to do with the finality that could only be reached just recently. I have been assured that I wont be in this position next year, a state which I had most hoped for and been practically assured given the ministry and for which I am silently grateful. Thus the foremost bane (that has not been the job itself, which I enjoy and suit well but surprisingly all of the bureaucratic bullshit leading up to it - a spotless academic record sabotaged for sake of an ego trip and awkwardly upheld by Student Life by self-same, among other things) has been relieved; I am no longer constrained in what I say or seem.
Additionally my compatriots, whom I don't count a friend among, are no longer a source of continuous back-handed deception and pain. While the politicians here believe they have crippled my ability to challenge their rule they have in fact merely freed me of it. I am no longer bound by ephemeral or non-existent relational bonds that dictate my conduct. The community's atavistic tendencies are more likely to be addressed, now that I am unfettered and given that I am in a unique position to see the truly precarious nature of our current position.

The strange filament to all of this lies in the fact that I am better. So little has occurred that seems of any significance and yet of all the ailments that wracked my form simultaneously not one remains. I found myself, last week, in a place where I felt I might have to soon fly back to Illinois to the hospital again and now I find myself strangely quiet and untouchably calm. These impurities vanish one by one as my encumbersome accountabilities are lifted. I know I count among the most stubborn of animals and that next time this occurs I will not correlate my ailments to the stressors in my life, yet again. It is a runaway defensive mechanism of massive proportions. But that is something to be dealt with this summer.

Now, enough of the boring asinine narrative that amounts to my only way of addressing ten months worth of "feelings". Instead let's rant gregariously for a few minutes and then tail off with no recognizable conclusion.

Next week begins break, which I endeavor to spend in a hotel room in Las Vegas, sleeping, watching cable and playing on my laptop. Pip has some kind of silly job training thing there and he wants me to come along so he doesn't get lonely and spend all of his perdiem drinking and playing arcade games. Although, they hired him early and he didn't have anything to do except creep around and listen to others' conversations so they trained him in all of his duties already, so I imagine he's going to spend the time zoning and drawing comics like he did in his FEMA course at San Manuel. I might, however, end up at home a lot if we can't find anyone to watch the cats (although D.Knox loves them so much he wont even let me pay him to take care of them) and if my crazy Invertebrate Zoology professor is serious about doing some trips to tide-pools during the break. We both fucking hate Sin City.

We've decided that it's too expensive to get another car but we need another vehicle. One with a motor. Thus soon Pip and I will be taking motorcycle lessons and getting our learners permits. I've always wanted a Kawasaki Ninja. Sweet. Daniel's helping me compare them. I am so glad I never gave my parents this link. They can never know.

This also means Pip needs to finally get his vision prescription updated and get contacts. His new super-sweet health insurance even covers Lasik, which he is finally considering. This is a step in the right direction as I recently realized that the reason I always drive at night is that he literally can't. It's pretty shaking to discover how much he can't see, at any given time. He claims he's waiting for the cyborg eyes to come out, or at least for a new and better eye surgery such that he is content that the other is safe. I'm not sure how that logic functions when applied to the world we live in. Living with this man is kind of one continuity error after another. It's frustrating because I know he does it on purpose.

I'm on duty tonight. We've had two emergency community meetings in two weeks but that's another rant entirely. My floor is finally blooming, everyone is opening their doors, talking to eachother, trusting me and having fun. The rest of the year is going to be a blast, as far as this is concerned. Our Friday night activities are ridic.

Phil is working at Phoenicia way too much. Poor boy doesn't have a weekend, because he literally spends every day off working at Phoe. I go in and sit in the back and do homework and get free soup. The owner has taken to giving me free meals since I bring him so much new business.

I went to visit Gabe and his friends in San Diego last weekend. It was the one day I really, really needed off. I had a harder time getting out of bed then I did through most of High School. But in spite of that we had a really good time. Hopefully they'll come and visit before they head off on the rest of their trip.

And now, a picture of a very sweet dog that passed away last week. He put up a helluva fight for what it's worth. This is the biggest hunting cocker you'll ever see. Goodnight, Jazz. You'll be missed.

Year of the Mange

2006-01-29T23:11:00.002-08:00

I had a dream this morning that the Social Security administration was indirectly responsible for my mother being placed on a list to be shot into space and used as a proto-chemical/genetic test-dummy. Her memory was going to be erased a few times a day (this being the part that bothered me) so my brother and I donned a van as disguise among futuristic cars and went about trying to save her naive and good natured self from said fate. The entire city was built around the Sonic-esque launch pad. The future was dirty.

On an entirely different note, yesterday I received some experimental cereal. I've included a picture below. It arrived in a box in a box with a questionnaire. Upon reflection I now vaguely remember being contacted by some kind of market research group but the cereal was almost wholly unanticipated. It seems benign enough but the ingredients list contains all kinds of questionable things (chocolate, caramel, toffee and malt among them) - not exactly my Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds. As you can see I am in test group "C".

My contemplation of when to assay said cereal has been interrupted by my current illness (read: unwillingness to ingest anything, bar none, much less something made with anything more complex than grain staples, let alone products complicated in extraction, compilation and maintenance (emusifiers) at which thought my stomach contracts violently in concurrence). Phil was sick last Thursday, in a kind of "every organ/discrete segment of my body is trying to die simultaneously" way. He was throwing up every 20 minutes or so for hours, wearing four layers with the heat up above 100 degrees in the room, shivering and trying to still his soft tissue contractions. It was quite sad to see and in spite of my inherent flight response when it comes to stomach illness I managed to care for his sorry state as best I could. Having survived the ensuant sleepless night, GYST Emergency Meeting and weekend and having had mild illness throughout, I presumed I was in the clear. Oh but no. 'Twas not to be. So now here I am, compounding my ailments with stress and guilt at having missed classes yet again due to illness and knowing full well I'll be gone the better part of next week.

The upsides to this: I managed to convince myself to avoid classes today while awake and anxiously feverish last night so I didn't end up vomiting in class or making myself worse as I have been. Also I managed to finish Book of Days which I'd never gotten the chance to see to the end and Moby Dick, from my freshman class, which I had clandestinely left hanging at the last two chapters and failed to reach the end of due to overexertion, merely faking reflective awe and somber post-Melville ruement during the discussion (amazing to me that these English Lit discussions can be argued without actually ever spoiling the unread chapter for you).

Phil is gainfully employed and making a surprising amount of money with far better benefits than his last job offered. He is also working part time (weekends mostly) at Phoenicia due in part to his interest in the food preparation and the opportunity to expand some of their business prospects and in part to their inability to read English and obvious need of aid in the tax-filing and overall management department. For now he's content to explore their complex produce-barter system and try to pick up some Greek.

Per the title: If you ever find yourself feeling secure in your knowledge of your neighborhood and surrounding area, its people and customs and resources, you might consider the friendly wake up call offered by Oriental Markets everywhere. I happily took some friends there, excited about the exploration (as I always am) then walked around uncomfortably, trying to navigate the foreign display structure and avoid the inscrutable gazes of every other person in the store, being the only (and obvious) non-Asian there. While my friends converse about various delicacies and shipments and ware I peruse the shelves and freezers, in my class-taught open minded way thinking things like "Ah! Note fish milk sacks. I might like those if I were to try them.", "I've never seen so many old, dead fish hanging in the open air" or "I wonder if the squid things go with the blob-sauce or the spiky fruit, or if their combination is distasteful or expressly taboo". Naturally these thoughts take me down the road of cultural considerations and musings on what my palette would fancy had I been raised in somewhere more coastal. I fleetingly consider the prospect of purchasing something that looks as though it might conform to FDA standards before realizing I have no idea how to prepare it. My friends find their New Year-related gear and we go. This becomes an almost-yearly tradition for me.
Unable to avoid the small generational voice of my peers that flies, cock-eyed, into the side of my inner-cranium in a repetitive and ornery bid for pity sometimes, I yielded and secured some Pocky.

This has been the long and rambling discourse of a heat-addled and infirm mind. Please discard at your convenience.

Vet Pic

2006-01-16T20:57:00.000-08:00

A very unhappy Dakken and Sanura at their latest vet appointment.

Extrata

2006-01-16T14:41:00.000-08:00

I was gifted today with the ability to discern the exact taxa of my density. It lasted but a moment before flitting into a nearby tree as all bright things do but I saw it, and no one can prove otherwise.

I may not be a special kind of dense. While I am not dense in the many ways that most commonly jump to mind and wave their hands distractingly (the ironic self-denial dense, the left-the-oven-on dense, the tactless malsocialized why-can't-you-make-our-lives-a-little-easier-by-practicing-your-narcissistic-absent-minded-mayhem-somewhere-else dense, the dear god why dense or the humble elder dense, the run-of-the-mill born-this-way vanilla dense..) etc. I am certainly in the absent-minded-professor-sans-pants category somewhere. I am the kind of dense that thoroughly enjoys the NPR programming about Martin Luther King all the way through my 30 minute drive to UCR only to realize in the parking lot that my school is the only one that doesn't recognize national holidays.
(As a side note I do feel the need to mention that I continued enjoying the programming most of the way back as well.)
This would have been a boon had I recognized the situation before pulling myself back out of bed into negative temperatures and stressing about the time all the way there.

My cats are sick and sneezing nasty all over my homework, in turns. My room mate is about to become a cop (wont that make our neighbors feel secure) and I'm already behind on my work, dehydrated, exhausted and confusing my calendar. I just rushed back the my dorm room to the realization that I had the wrong day and time. Today would have been relaxing had I not thought it tomorrow.

I had a revelation today that I simply must share. Most creatures that metabolize proteins are left with nitrogenous waste in the form of ammonia. Ammonia is quite caustic and soluble making it dangerous for more complex creatures to keep around so most of us convert it to urea or uric acid. Many marine creatures also encounter the problem of having a lower overall body salinity than the surrounding fluid, said condition being otherwise known as hypotonic. This creates an environment in which it is difficult to conserve water. Long story short sharks in particular deal with this combination of problems by storing their nitrogenous waste in their tissues. Meaning, if you eat shark meat, you're also eating shark urine. I've been told that soaking the meat in strips for 4-8 hours in salt water and then another 4 hours in milk will mollify the taste but the scent will remain. This is just one of the many (retroactively reaching) reasons I do not consume sea food with the exception of chowder (though even that is a stretch for me).

Aside from my continuity errors things seem to be progressing at a jaunty pace. Phil still continues to make me nervous by walking down the hall and making statements like "Well behaved women rarely make me dinner!" in response to motivational door stickers, exampla gratia. I've rediscovered Skype and am waiting for someone other than handsomly-voiced British pranksters to call. I'm wondering how I'll be procuring food tonight but that's just another exciting element in the fun-filled action-packed adventure that is my life. I realized today that all of my frustration about not having time to exercise really boils down to nothing when I'm hacking up little bits of detritus in the morning. Sometimes we need reminding. Anyway, enough with the ranting. I was going to share with you a touching and heartwarming story about an FBI agent the government encouraged to participate in a Klan killing of a woman during the Montgomery march but I decided we're all broken enough for today.

I shall conclude by posting some pictures my mother's friend took while they were in Switzerland, which I found noteworthy.

Carry on.

Or...the pictures will be inaccessible so I will post one of my mate squishing my cat. Whatever.

A Vegas Halloween

2006-01-04T19:35:00.000-08:00

I was able to speak to Erin last night, which was nice, because I thought she'd be in Jordan by now, trying to figure out why everyone kept trying to sell her mish-mish. She related a rather gruesome medical tale (and all of her medical experiences are gruesome as far as I can tell, she's living in a Lovecraftian wet dream) about one of the many cats that have fallen ill recently.
I derive a sick and perverse pleasure from hearing Erin tell these kinds of stories, even though this one happened to be particularly un-funny, because I can read her expression even online. Her expressions when it came to this story fell into the category of particularly traumatized and reminded me of the time we stayed in what had to be the third-most-shady-hotel-in-Vegas (which, for Vegas, is saying something) when I managed to inadvertently traumatize the entirety of my company when I recounted what I considered to be an amusing childhood story.
The story itself is about my family's run in with Satanists on a trip to upstate New York. Though the growing expressions of disbelief and horror on my companions faces assured me that the story was not, as I had previously considered, funny, per se, Erin's expressions were. There were a few times I had to stop and laugh and then reassure everyone that I was in fact relating a true story, as corroborated by my parents, and not laughing at them so much as at their reactions. In any case, that experience has given me cause to put the facts of the story down here, such that if anyone might find it interesting or for whatever reason care to refer to it, it would be available. What follows is completely and verifiably true in so much as anything can be.

When I was 5 years of age we took a road trip (as was common in our family) up to Upstate New York to see my grandmother on my fathers side, as well as to tour around the countryside a bit. On one day there we were in the extremus of upstate, away from the region in which my grandmother actually lives and were planning on staying in a bed and breakfast my father had booked ahead of time. It had been an unexpectedly long drive due to weather complications and when we found the bed and breakfast in question we were all quite tired. We went up to the door to check in and a woman missing her two front teeth on both jaws answered. She invited us in but warned us that they didn't have any room for the night, they were booked solid. My father protested that he had made the arrangements in advance but she said she knew another hotel that had vacancy and she would give them a call. But first, she insisted on showing my parents around as her husband was an artist and she wanted to show them his studio. We were all invited but after seeing the first few pieces of women, missing their front teeth, being tortured in various ways, my parents opted to leave the kids outside with grandma. Apparently most of the rooms were full to the ceiling with similarly foreboding images of dead or dying people with the occasional sculpture of menacing animals. We all waited out back while the woman called her friend, beside a pit containing what could have been nothing other than an alter, covered with pentagrams. My mother mentioned that it seemed strange that not only had they not met the husband who was supposedly there somewhere, having toured the entire house, but that there hadn't been a single sign of life or piece of luggage suggesting that anyone else was actually staying in any of the guest bedrooms in this supposedly inundated hotel.

A side note that's probably not worth mentioning but that I found strange when my mother brought it up when telling me the story later (as I was five at the time, a lot of this story has been narrated to me after the fact by different people who were involved on some level) was that we stopped by a park to stretch our legs at some point before proceeding to the next hotel. We were all quite tired and the storm was closing in on us and my parents wanted to be sure we had zero energy upon arrival. While in this park my mother claims that one of us found and brought to her a small necklace with an amulet on it. The amulet itself was a pentagram on one side, with a Third Reich symbol on the other. My mother took it away and put it in her purse. The part of this that piqued my interest when related to me later was that she could never find it later. The likelihood of it simply falling out of the purse pocket she had placed it in was, as she put it, "quite unlikely".

We arrived at the next bed and breakfast to be greeted by a different woman, also conspicuously missing her two front teeth on both sides. It was about this time that my grandmother mentioned that she had read a lot of articles recently about tourists being killed by some cult of satanists or somesuch in this area. Great. Well the storm was now upon us, we were all exhausted and there was no where else to stay that we could find anywhere near here. My dad decided we would make due with whatever they had to offer here. What they had to offer was a slightly-renovated barn. During this time the woman kept inviting my brother (3) and I into the house saying she had some sweets and wouldn't we like to meet her kitties? She made it clear however that my parents were not welcome into the house. We were herded away into the barn and told not to talk to the lady. Once inside my father, who was by this time a bit creeped out, went about checking the beds and securing the one room barn unit. The windows had no coverings whatsoever and the doors had no locks. We placed pillows from the couches in the window frames and my dad grabbed a dresser against one wall to block the door. When he went to move the dresser he discovered it was on wheels, which were completely silent. He also noticed that the wall behind it moved a little when he shifted the dresser. When he scrutinized the wall he found a seam. He pushed on the wall and it gave way, two invisible doors opening outwards into the night and just outside was a dark colored van which had been backed up to the opening. Livid, my dad went about rearranging all the furniture in the room, stacking the heaviest against the outward swinging doors and moving the mobile dresser with various loud objects behind it against the main door. When we'd completed this and were all starting to settle down, the woman brought us fresh baked blueberry muffins. Now as I mentioned before I don't remember much of this trip, but this is one element I have a vivid recollection of. With the inclement weather and the rush to find a place to stay, complimented by the lack of restaurants (nigh anything) in the area, we hadn't had what one might consider a proper meal. When you're five, dinner is very important. The muffins were fresh baked and smelled heavenly. I wanted one more than I wanted anything else in life. However, presuming (probably correctly) that they were poisoned, my mother absolutely forbid us from even going near them. I was so angry. I went to bed hungry and was convinced I would never forgive my mother for her cruel denial of nourishment. Only two things happened that night, that I can recall. My parents slept very lightly, when at all, as you might imagine. My sister woke us all with a blood curdling scream around 1 AM for reasons unknown, as she was usually a very quiet baby. When my parents got up and milled for about an hour my mother became very still at one point, then called me father over and had a long, whispered conversation. What I would later learn was that the picture hanging to one side of the door that during the daylight seemed to be logs in a recently extinguished fire pit and a tranquil forest scene was by night unmistakably burning corpses with a hooded smoky figure looming over the forest and the lake. We woke up the next morning, packed up early and waited for the lady to get up so we could pay and leave. While my parents were packing the bags the woman gave both my brother and I small wooden cats carved into the form of napkin holders, each a different color, that she had written little notes on. As my father was paying my mother loaded us into the car and began kicking the gravel around on the drive absent mindedly. The woman came over to say goodbye and wave to us with her gapped grin and my mother noticed that she was trying to discreetly recover the tiles that were covered by the gravel. Before driving off my mother uncovered one of the tiles and she claims it was the same pentagram with Third Reich symbol within it that she had seen a similar version of in the park, prompting her to notice, as we drove away, that it had been removed from her purse.

People listening to this story seemed appalled at the fact that I still have that little wooden cat in my room back in Illinois. Someone asked if I had purified it with sage or...some such thing. I don't know anything about mysticism but I can tell you it still sits on a shelf as a token to remind me of the weird lady with the cats, or as I know the story nowadays, my near death experience involving Satanists in Upstate New York.

Radix

2006-01-03T22:05:00.000-08:00

So.

Let us for the moment ignore the fact that whereas I hate this weblog/livejournal nonsense I have been convinced to partake if only for the sake of those I know as friends. While I may have a more realistic journal (detailing nothing noteworthy nor conducive to blackmail I assure you) in another location, the presence of this one is straightforward. It will be kept strictly for the mundane exchange of common information and to assuage my fear of missing out on the recent fad experience of vomiting all over a new and exciting commons - the internet. Here (should you end up here and I'm not sure why one would) you might find some beguiling resources on occasion, a story or two, a few inscrutible pictures and not a few reasons why life is not worth living.

But Cat, you say in earnest solicitude, how can you possibly begin chronicling your witty daily banter now after all these years of profound and comical effusion? Well now I understand your concern but I'll gently remind you that is not what this is for. Aside from being a burdensome distraction this blog-thingy will conveniently serve as a means to move files around and display images to people I don't really want plowing through my personal albums. Additionally, it's a helluva lot easier than typing the same information numerous time to multiple people. Anyway, I'll curtail my attempted disclaimers at that.

I decided to cave one night this past October when I was both mistaken for a transsexual hooker and given a cat that thinks it's a bird.

This is very much like drowning in cotton.