Headaches can suck my big olive-toned cock.

In other news, not a very good idea.

And from Wyatt, KerryCore

   There was a full moon tonight, and it made me think of some story or another where the moon was personified and described as a goddess or somesuch. That thought made me vaguely sad because it got me thinking that what with scientific advances over the centuries the mystery that celestial objects once held for people is gone; it's not the huntress coursing through the dark anymore, it's a big floating rock. The sun isn't the inexplicable radiance that gives life to and warms the world, it's a natural nuclear furnace made of coalesced gas. I guess the way I'll try to find my own magic will be to find wonder in that these things exist as they are and their scale and so on.
   That all also makes me think of the mysteries that used to be in religion, say in the Catholic Church for example. Their services were once conducted in a language that few understood (and thus had to have explained to them) and with the priests' back to the people, &c. I think when the service was more mysterious it gave people more access to a spiritual sort of register, and perhaps allowed for more (what I think is more valuable) mysticism (re: the register that actually allows people to get deeper into religion without being spoon-fed someone else's thoughts or chanting empty words, like Buddhism/yoga-as-religion in a general sense, Muslim Sufis, and in this vein the old-school Christian mystics that don't seem to be around anymore).

   What if the cats who go running around chasing stuff that isn't there are actually chasing something that we can't sense? I guess I get a bit creeped out when I get that same question in my head when a patient is hallucinating something (the 'famous' example being the 'little girl' that climbed around me and on the ceiling).

The Manchurian Candidate - Okay, if way longer than we expected. The first third had the kind of dream-fear that Mulholland Drive excelled at, but when that atmosphere trailed off I started waiting for the movie to be over so I could see what would happen. Xuemei, Phil, and Steven were leaning towards the original being better, and noted that this one was darker if not as "devious."

photographs by Jacek Pomykalski

Sandy's Prison Hooch

-main ingredient (ie, tomatoes, raisins, pineapples are apparently nice)
-several cups of sugar (aka chugar)
-a lot of yeast
-water
----Stir ingredients in five-gallon buckets, seal, wait four to five days.

*tangentially, if you have to tape Playboy magazines around your belly to keep from getting stabbed, it's worth the sacrifice

   Random thing I realized while practicing Arabic about trying to do direct translation. I don't know if it's that whatever languages I've looked in the past came from our local group, as it were (Germanic or Latinate), or if I just missed it. The words li, for example can be translated as "to" and "for," for example, and bi as "by," "in" and "with," but it's really more like they mean something in between each of those words, and that's the closest we can get to it in trying to translate them, but it's not ever quite the same meaning. I suppose this is one of those things that is pretty obvious, but I hadn't paid enough attention till now.

W00t! New Line Cinema, who does stuff like Lord of the Rings and Donnie Darko, are going to do movies for White Wolf Publishing's new lines. This makes me into an excited school girl. I think I'll just stop there, in lieu of expanding upon that metaphor.

kewl phrases of the day:
"holy obscenity"
"elegantly grotesque"
"harlequin abandon"

"The mind is often compared to a cup of dirty water. When it is shaken, the water is cloudy, but when it is still, the sand settles to the bottom of the cup and the water is clear. The practice of meditation is like letting the cup of water—your mind—be still. " - me likey.

"[Steve McQueen] plays a cowboy at a banquet, confronted with his first lobster. Trying to look unperturbed, he says, "Well, I will say that's the BIGGEST bug I ever ate!" - from now on I shall call lobsters bugs.

"Paradox is a pointer telling you to look beyond it." - Mmm zen. Ironically from an article on chaos theory and Campbell's myth-theory in Dune.

"Polar bears absorb so much vitamin A that their livers contain deadly concentrations, and indigenous people know better than to eat the liver. It killed explorers." - Hm. Not a very fun fact, I suppose.

Yay, I'm not dead! And after being in several very dangerous situations! And with the email of a cute Czech girl who offered the use of her apartment in Prague! Anyway, in lieu of typing about Alaska, I'd be willing to proffer stories for coffee.....

And now, happy fun review time, in a completely random order!

The Bourne Supremacy - I was pretty disappointed in this one, actually. There were the superficial things like the camera which seemed to be manned by a drunkard, and the one fight scene which might have been wonderful if the zoom button didn't exist. But the main thing (emphasizing 'to me') was that for all that I thought the movie would be about Jason Bourne, it seemed to be more about the slew of secondary characters that the movie didn't have room to develop. That is, Damon's character was a primary agent in the story in that he was a reason things happened, the backstory of his character was a key function of the plot, he affected changes in the plot-world, &c, but in that he seemed more like a plot device than a character to me. Ah well.

Frank Herbert, by William Touponce. If one goes by our current theory that everyone who reads Dune is pretty much on one end or the other of the "meh/ugh" --- "whoa/awesome" spectrum, then this book is scrap paper for the former and crystal meth for the latter. Basically, it's a short biography of Dune's author, then a critical reading of each of the Dune novels, then a synopsis of each of his other works. Of course, "critical reading" doesn't sound very exciting, but having a working out of the massively complex series is deliciously revealing, for lack of a better word.

Hearts of Chaos, by Victor Milan - In complete contrast to Frank Herbert, utterly cheeseball. True beer&pretzel skiffy, with characters that aren't quite as humorous as Janet Evanovich characters, but perhaps with a bit more depth. And, oddly, with a random very much depth in some ways, as the plot is based around playing a few different kinds of the moving-between-languages-as-power trope against and with each other. The author is pretty adept at describing martial arts, as well.

Into the Thinking Kingdoms by Alan Dean Foster is somewhere in between a fable and a fantasy novel, with an almost too luxurious playing-with-words style. It really needs the first book of its trilogy to have the value it does as a story, however. Basically a grown-up children's book without pictures.

Tank Girl! I think "irreverant" is the word for this old-school comic book movie. The main characters are utterly adorable (one is somewhere in between retarded and insane, the other is shy and cute), but the kangaroo things are pretty grody. Good for a lazy weekend laugh.

Silk by Caitlin Kiernan is kind of in between Donnie Darko ambiguity-pregnant-with-meaning and a more purely horror story. I think it's definitely on par with that example, in any case. While I really didn't get a lot of the various music references, the set of Jung-based characters is great, and the Lovecraft-ish atmosphere that is developed by the end plays off with energy against the angsty attitude and tone. A pretty intense book, though one might be wary of it if they don't like spiders.

Robot Jox - Oh man. This was just bad. But: Wyatt and I used to watch it a lot when we were younger. And on that basis, it's funny. Probably would be fun to Mystery Science Theater, but when we watched it we all fell asleep from late-nightness.

Nature's Antiseptics, by C.J. Puotinen is a great, practical little book. It concentrates mainly on using tea tree oil and grapefruit seed extract, but gives other recipes and instructions for augmenting or replacing those ingredients. And just so I don't sound like a total hippy oddball, so far we've used tea tree oil successfully for cuts, a gouge out of the side of my toe, sunburns, shaven pubes (not mine, I swear) (really.) (...which is not to imply that I shave mine), pimples, mosquito bites, gum infection, and second degree burns - works pretty damn well.

Two random things...
   Besides the King Arthur stuff, I think I also figured some reasons why the vampires in Buffy were always kind of disappointing. I think they were just too human, if they were main characters, and if not main characters were just plain dippy. If they were thirsty for blood, I wanted to see them get to the point of starving and frenzying for it. If their bodies were taken over by demons and their souls discarded, I wanted the new personality to be more prominent. I mean, they were all right as the lowest baddie in the Buffy hierarchy I suppose, but I guess I was kind of spoiled by the World of Darkness vamps.

   In Sabino Canyon there's a pool that seems stagnant at first glance, but really has algae only lining the bottom. Also in it are a plethora of waterbugs, which are really cool to watch if you get on your belly right by the pool. There's the odd barrier of water tension and the bugs skating just on either side of it, and the colored ones with little flippers that paddle up to the surface for their air, and swarms of mirror-skinned ones that click as they run into each other in panic, and tadpoles coursing through the algae like deep sea monsters, and a worm with legs like cilia that was just plain alien. About three-quarters of the way up to Seven Falls, between some big boulders.

Modern Art Tattooing is near Country Club and Grant, right across from The Shelter nightclub. They have a great piercer, who although looking pretty young, is very knowledgable and smooth, and just plain nice to boot. Belly button goes for $35.

The Guru (recommended by Steph) was hilarious. It's also randomly dirty. Very, very dirty. But dirty in a sexy way, with catchy music, and with a tiny sprinkle of Bamboozled-style metafiction, except Indian-wise.

King Arthur was also very good, and I think I may have finally pinned down why I was kind of disappointed in it despite its...er, goodness. For one, it had the great expansiveness that, say, Jerry Bruckheimer's Pirates did, but also in some way some undefinable lack of something because of that. Also, I read an article that said they cut most of the brutality from the fight scenes, which would explain why I couldn't quite figure out why I was disappointed a little in them, too. Nonetheless, I thought the (although dubious) focus on historical-over-legend made for a nice hero-movie.

A Day Dark As Night - Another thing that started out really shaky, but as the story developed the writing and the plot actually improved. Basically this book is helping to launch White Wolf Publishing's new Exalted line, which I think it would do a better job of (and be a much better novel) if the focuses on when characters are developed and general setting-background were given were switched around. Also, the writing for this particular novel seemed kind of below par for White Wolf, but the Exalted setting is rich in and of itself and the unique ideas and focus on martial arts will hopefully make for better novels in the future. All in all, an okay beer-and-pretzel fantasy read. (and bonus points for cool character names like "Harmonious Jade" and over the top lines like "He dodged the bolt with ophidian grace and celerity...then hurled himself through the air trailing a black, necrotic wake of energy")

Returner - In short, ET directed by John Woo with time travel. An odd mix of horrible and awesome cinematography, cool moves and Engrish. And one of the main characters is played by Taneshi Kaneshiro, which is cool because he's cute and did voice acting for Onimusha 3

Spiderman 2 - I thought it was wonderful. In lieu of going on about it, I'm crushing a little on the skinny blonde chick on the basis that she was adorable and had that sweet crush on Spiderman.

If this is real, kinda freaky and cool

   Eurotrip - I have to say I really wasn't expecting much out of this movie. It really isn't the type I'd even normally rent, but at the insistence of my brother, his friends, and one of the aikido students, there you go. It happily did turn out to be quite hilarious, with rampant nudity, vulgarity, and landmarks. Randomly, there's great acting of facial expressions. Go figure. Also Michelle Trachtenberg is way hotter in this than she was in Buffy, wherein she was ugly.

   And Wyatt pointed out a great connection. High performance fighter jets, the example in particular being the F-16 Falcon, are inherently instable; they would hardly be able to fly for the most part, if not crash outright, if not for advanced flight control systems. The reason for that is that the greater instability lends greater maneuverability. In jujitsu and similar martial arts, one can probably muscle through most throws, if the other person has no clue, but to do a real throw one has to lose balance, and use that loss of balance and stability to take the opponants balance (and thereby often regain their own. unless a bodyslam is in order. natch.).

-plumb forgot about this year's, but there'll be another Free Comic Book Day next year

Here's my spontaneously-developed-while-standing-around-in-the-ICU metaphor for learning.
   In the course of listening to a Spanish family, I realized that as long as they were talking slowly I could understand at least a good three-quarters of what they were saying; there's no way I'd be able to speak Spanish or repeat any of it, but for some reason today it suddenly became sensical. In reading my teach-yourself Arabic script book, I'm starting to realize that each time I learn another bit of the way the protean alphabet works and smatterings of grammar, the tickers on clips of Al-Jazeera on the news are slowly starting to become recognizable
   In any case, my metaphor (spawned by those "clicks") is that learning about a particular topic is like trying to see a magic-eye/3-d picture. I can look at Wyatt's rockets, Scott's electronics, or even Xuemei's wall-filling biochemical pathways chart and just see a big wash of static, as it were. But they can each see thrust vectors and ways to rebuild things and information in a tangle of colored lines; and I can look at a poem or language, or aikido technique or whatever and maybe see something they can't. So as we all learn about each of the topics, they slowly start to take shape in our head till it eventually it gets to the point where we can see every angle of it when it lifts off the page entirely. As it were.

Dubious, but interesting - It's gotta be the hat

Longish, but nice bits of history mixed with linguistics -Hebrew alphabet

"And all the gazer's mind was strewn beneath
Her feet like embers" - from Percy Shelley's "The Triumph of Life"