Archie! - man, I've been waiting forever for that...but where are the rest of the pictures?

History of the Biohazard Symbol - fun with semiotics! I have to say, though, I think if I was in one of those focus groups I would have at least guessed something like "bad and/or scary"

Kryptos - would it be tacky to try to work this into an Alias episode?

Words of the Day -
catenary - the curve formed by a perfectly flexible, uniformly dense, and inextensible cable suspended from its endpoints. It is identical to the graph of a hyperbolic cosine, or, something having the general shape of this curve (it just seems like an odd, very specific word)

verglas - a thin coating of ice, as on rock (ditto)

SIGHwhatever - a bit creepy, but interesting and clever

-the author of this comic is once again my hero for the day, on the basis of that punchline

phrase-that-was-actually-used-seriously of the day, courtesy of Troy: "melee in the cafeteria"

      So, I was up at around 2 AM the other morning, just...uh, falling asleep in a chair, basically, and Neon Genesis Evangelion: End came on. And though blearily (that better be a word) confused by coming in at some point long after the movie had started, I quickly started paying attention. For one, near the end there is (me agreeing with a reviewer, here) a giant-robot-battle to end all giant-robot-battles. How does one make a giant-robot-battle gratuitously violent, you ask? You add giant-robot-blood-and-organs. Yummy. Actually pretty gross. And horribly violent. From another angle, some of the imagery and plot is quite disturbing - on the shallow side, on a visceral level. On a slightly deeper side, on a conceptual and subconscious level. In the conceptual sense, for example, the whole idea of something 'angelic' is completely up-ended, and (once I got it after a spot of 'research') the exploration of individuality and one's consciousness are interesting (and also explain some of the loud, psychotic screaming, shiver-inducing whisper choruses, and creepy horror-movie little girls at a couple points). What I meant by the subconscious side of things is a heavy dose of sexual imagery, which never really actually presents itself obviously as such, but I could definitely feel a purposeful pattern tugging at the close-reading part of my brain.
      And, there's a crazy 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque psychedelic sequence for those who are into that sort of thing, involving live-action shots of really random things, like people falling asleep in theatres. Yeah, I have no idea what that was supposed to symbolize. Because then they cut back to the continent-sized glowing woman. It seemed interesting that early in the morning, anyway.

      A big issue we ran into when I took existential philosophy was whether or not free will was possible. The main hang up that I can remember basically was the question of whether anything we do can be considered free of the influence of what came before it - prior thoughts, choices, and deeds, and not just of ourselves, but of everything - a kind of exponential butterfly effect, where every last little thing is a consequence of something else. So, not putting much of any thought into this at all (rather, just staying up late and falling asleep on the couch), I wonder whether the concept of nirvana - or, escaping from an cycle of reincarnation - might somehow be applied to escaping a cycle of consequence. Or perhaps, a zen ideal of no-ego might be applied in a similar way...

      Some interesting bits from a customer at the Diner that my dad regularly talks to, who just spent a while travelling all over France. One general thing was that while Bush obviously wasn't particularly popular, at the same time apparently Chirac seemed to be equally unpopular, on the reasoning that his policies were killing tourism.
      Also, at one point this American couple were relaxing on their hotel balcony; they soon saw a small group of students carting effigies of Chirac and Bush and burning differing flags as they moved down the street beneath the balcony. As odd as that duality was, soon after that a much, much larger crowd of students came from both sides of the street and dispersed the first, burning-things group. The couple's main remark upon this was that as they watched the BBC later on, they saw that very first burning-things group, but there was not a single mention of the second, larger group of students. Ah, objective reporting.

      In the (now week-long) continuation of a very diplomatic and tactful argument at the dojo over various martial arts principles, I have to confess that I was holding up my side with very little confidence because of lots of recent disilliusionment (I'm really hoping that's actually a word) - having refined and better understood what we were actually talking about, today it boiled down to explaining previous training from differing disciplines and comparing. But, when the head instructor finally wandered over and his opinion was asked, he pretty much repeated exactly what I had said in almost the same words. I found this fairly odd, as he and I had never discussed the topic before, nor could I remember him expressing those opinions; I'm not sure whether it relieved my feeling disillusioned to be backed up, as it were, but I certainly found it striking that our (the head instructor and me) training from the same teacher carried through so consistently in us.

Serenity, with Jewel Staite as the really attractive woman. And there were other people too. Yay for advance screenings! And friends who win tickets from local alt. rock radio stations! Though, interestingly, we saw an inordinate number of people that we knew. Go figure. I still can't pin a negative or positive opinion down about the movie; I had only ever seen enough Firefly to get a general idea of the setting and who each character was, though that seemed to work fine in terms of understanding the movie, at least. The stilted/altered/embellished language the characters use threw me for a loop at first (I had forgotten it from the television-watching), but I quickly warmed up to it. Though a few lines fell flat, all in all I got a big kick out of it by the end. The martial arts were great quality...at least, I think so, we were sitting on the very end of the second row. I could be mistaken. There was a plot and whatnot as well, but that's mainly the part I can't decide whether I liked or not; maybe I'll go see it again from a better angle and decide then. And also not have one of the lenses of my glasses fall into my eye this time.

      And while clambering through boxes in the warehouse today, I listened to an interesting conversation between two of the receiving guys. Basically, they were talking about science fiction shows, like the kind they show reruns of on Saturday afternoons or late at night. That doesn't sound like much, but I marvelled at the realization that these guys, who I thought were so inescapably macho that they wouldn't go near anything but the basest of Rambo-style action, could take such delight in parsing out the details of setting and character for each of the shows, and if the other guy hadn't seen it, in describing and explaining the same. That all sounds arrogant or pretentious of me to say, I'm sure, but they were like a couple of English majors; of course, they lingered over describing the time the hot actress had to wear a maid's uniform, but honestly, who wouldn't?

      I was reading an article that claimed that the muscles that are most commonly very tight are the hip flexors and the very bottom of the abdominal muscles. And at first, I thought yeah, yeah, yeah. Then a little while later, in a fit of boredom or whatever, I sat there thinking about it. And those muscles certainly felt relaxed. And then just when I was about to shrug and forget it, those muscles actually relaxed. And I gasped. I think half of my palpable relief was from the release of the mental block, and half from the physical. Later, I realized that as I pushed on the gas pedal while driving home, I was flexing my toes as well as my foot. I certainly didn't need to be flexing my toes, and there was a smaller, but still palpable, release there as well. Now, the trick is keeping those muscles relaxed.

Tingo, nakkele, and other wonders - fun article about un-translatable words

Alias - beautiful, but (at least for me) a bit uncannily disturbing

      Quick notes on tonight's Pride Fighting Championship - for one, the general consensus among all of us watching was that while Pride rules allow for a few more brutal movements (stomps to opponents on the ground, for one), nonetheless the UFC is more intense and enjyoable to watch. That's not to say that these fights weren't enjoyable, per se; I particularly enjoyed one of the Japanese fighter's repeated traditional throws (hip throws and harai goshi's), and the suplex's that popped up here and there. There were even some hammerfists when fighters were on the ground, a few odd double-hand techniques, a couple spinning elbows and heels, and even a completely random tornado kick. But we thought that last guy was just being silly because he knew he had lost. So, all in all, good times.

Woogle - well, it doesn't quite turn out right, but maybe that's half the point

Rock, Paper, Scissors to the nth - all of a sudden, a deck of cards might not be needed when stuck in, say, airport layovers or the like; though I suppose people might think you're talking in sign language

Word of the Day: williwaw - a violent gust of cold wind blowing seaward from a mountainous coast (it seems like one of those "the Eskimos have a hundred words for snow" words)

Insurrection, by Thomas Reid. This being the second novel in a shared-setting series, I think, as one reviewer also pointed out, I started reading with the desire to learn more about the unique society and psychology of the drow that the books center around, but I've been caught up by the various characters and (big!) story. Which, in this novel, starts out a bit ambigously but quickly crescendoes in terms of huge amounts of intrigue and excitement. That being said, I'll note that I didn't particularly enjoy the characters and action this time around as much as in the first novel by Richard Lee Byers, but to be honest I'd say that's a hell of a tough act to follow, with fighting being described by a martial artist and the chance to introduce the characters in question.
      In any case, there is some fun writing, with things like the phrase "incendiary alchemy" used seriously, and "My mother always told me not to get involved with bad girls, especially if they had wings."

      Martial arts having been mentioned, I'll just note again that the choreography in Atlantis maintained it's extraordinary quality through the season finale, with fight scenes that both traditional and MMA stylists can appreciate. Now, that being said, the finale for Battlestar Galactica was very, very interesting for a few reasons. Firstly, its usual high-quality cinematography and character-driven storyline. Then, the other bit; for the whole week up till Friday, I'd noticed that they were hyping the Atlantis finale over and over, and barely if ever mentioned the Galactica finale which was to be on the same night (which was decidedly odd, as the latter show was the much bigger draw for ratings). Then, about halfway through the Galactica finale, there was one of those "The follow segment contains scenes of a mature..." messages, which really confused me, as I'd never seen one before in the middle of a show. And the next segment was quite disturbing, almost to the point of making me walk out of the room for a moment (as it was, I ended up just standing up and looking away because I realized how they were going to end the scene); basically, it dealt with a sanctioned rape of a prisoner.
      Which is interesting now that I've had some time to adapt to the memory, in that it was sanctioned by a female officer, who appears to have only males under her command. If anybody with some gender issues experience wants to tackle that one, I'm all ears. I will say that at the least I thought the SciFi channel did the best they could with that episode in terms of advertising it, and in justifying that scene in terms of the story.

Deeper Than Words - art

Welcome to the Thrid Season of the O.C., Bitch! nice...or rather, very not-nice primer...sort of (via Carolyn)

CharacterDesigns.com - art resource

      I'm not even going to talk about Lost. Damn cliffhangers. I also watched Invasion, if only for moral support of the bevy of science fiction shows this year (besides the original series on SciFi, Threshold and Surface, namely). I liked the affable UFO buff, he was pleasant and interesting. The recquisite carefully doled out bits and hints have potential for growth, I suppose. But the relationships between the characters - I mean, who's married to who and who's step-sibling's uncle is related to which of the other characters? Maybe that's supposed to be a reflection of a modern-family-archetype or something, but sheesh, they couldn't have expanded the connections a little bit? Or maybe they'll just add more characters later, I hadn't really thought of that. But still. Incest - but not really.

blanc fonce - art

      After searching and experimenting for a long while, I think I finally found a good aid for meditation. Concentrating on purely on my breathing or stimuli (visual or aural) works well enough for me, and chanting does - but only if I'm really in the right mood - but I've really come to like mudras, or placing my hands in certain positions. I can't say I buy into them actually having some physical or even mental effect simply of their own accord in any way, but I can say that the physical act of contorting my hands a bit and relaxing them in front of my chest focuses my attention without drawing in clouds of connotation-thought better than anything else I've come across. Anyone else have a particular focus they prefer?

Also, I made a Flickr account to play around with the new camera I just bought, so I'll probably link it to the right and add to it as I go

I honestly haven't seen enough Firefly to really get what this guy is arguing (I didn't realize the setting was like that), but it passes the time till Serenity comes out

      An interesting point came up in a conversation with someone I hadn't talked to in a long time (Spoon rocks!). Basically, this gal and I, while dissimilar in passions or interests (except for a strange penchant for dancing at random and inappropriate times) share a similar issue. That is, while we have often been advised to 'do what makes [us] happy' or 'make a living doing what interests [us],' and this is sound advice, at the same time we run into a conundrum. We either do what we love or what interests us, and make the sacrifice of not having very much of a living or being able to support a family comfortably etc etc, or make a living doing something we care little about and do our best to continue our passions and interests on the side.
      Now, the biggest trouble in explaining this thought is not coming off as whining, bitching, complaining; we were really trying to objectively figure out the best course of action. Also, at the same time, we tried to recognize (and think of) basically, things we hadn't thought of - lucky breaks, wise investing, change in life-perspective; maybe something will happen with the lovely lady come January from her time with AmeriCorps. Anyhoo. Thinking.

for lighter fare, comic-find courtesy of Cherubim:
-for the few who'll have any idea what this might represent
-10 points to living in Arizona

The Consolation of Philosophy, by Ancius Boethius, translated by Victor Watts. I don't really recall why I own this book, I think it must have been for a class that didn't end up using it, so I figured I'd read it instead of sellling it on the basis that it was in a recommended reading list in the back of another good book. As much as I probably wouldn't go out of my way to read it again any time soon, I will admit it was enjoyable to work through, especially in its interesting intermixing of prose and poetry. The basis for its being written is especially interesting if true, in that Boethius apparently wrote it while in prison watiing for his violent execution, particularly for its finishing optimism. And especially for a philosophical text, it was astoundingly easy to read and comprehend, though whether that was by Boethius' original writing or Watts' translation I'd be curious to find out. A good bit of late-Roman and Byzantine history is scattered in footnotes and in a handy introduction as a nice extra; and if anyone else ever gets around to reading this I'd be curious to compare opinions as to whether a huge amount of the ideas in this text seem scattered in every-day Western cultural assumptions (that sounds pretentious, but read it and also be like what the hell?).

Art of Philip Straub

Moonstruck, with Cher and Nicholas Cage. Hilarious, and classy; where Old School dealt with cheating and relationships in as tasteless a manner as possible, which wasn't necessarily too bad, just a different kind of funny, this film somehow turned its exploration of infidelity into an intelligent foray that was even warm at times. Just watch out on the volume, there's a lot of screaming.

-nice article on ankle locks

      I had several good ideas in the midst of an endorphin rush on the way home. But I lost them in the crash afterwards, I think; ah well. In any case, recently I'd been feeling somewhat lost in my martial arts training - I was kind of asking myself, 'What the hell am I doing anymore?' Which seems a bit odd in retrospect for the amount of hours per week I've been putting in, which is probably more than ever before. I don't think tonight was a complete turnaround, but at least it might get me out of my slump.
      Basically, we tried to approximate full-contact, no-holds-barred fighting as best we could. We used grappling gloves, makeshift headgear (chanbara helmets), and a slight modicum of restraint. The dynamic of this kind of fighting from the usual sparring of traditional martial arts is a world apart. Range takes on an entirely different meaning, and I found myself having to correct all sorts of bad habits (pulling strikes short of their targets, slowed down pull-backs based on courtesy, giving up grappling position for the sake of training escapes) on the fly. High kicks went from a staple to rarely used strikes based on opportunity or strategy, as I quickly found out that in this context they are horribly easy to catch or lead to having one's 'tree chopped down' with a kick to the supporting leg; I was only able to pull off one clean roundkick to the face after a series of feints and switches (ironically slapping my instep on the hard face-guard of the mask - ow). And strategy in turn played a bigger role than I've been used to - there doesn't seem to be any room for half-way choices. It's just strike, strike to create opportunities for grappling, or clinch and grapple; trying to switch strategies in the middle of things required too mental acrobatics for me to handle at this point in time, at any rate. Regardless, there is a huge amount of self-analysis that's going to be occurring for the next few days, most definitely.
      Random notes: grappling gloves actually aren't as bad of cushions as one would think; they do great job of protecting one's wrist and hand, and while they aren't exactly boxing gloves, they diffuse the bone-hard feeling of a fist at least. Chanbara helmets - hmm. Great cushioning job, which makes sense considering they're for fighting with weapons, though one's neck better be conditioned to check the yanking it'll still take. Having them pop off during grappling, or pretty much cancel out one's vision in a clinch were big hindrances; even ranged fighting suffered the obfuscation of the bars across the face (hands and feet are a lot smaller than the sword and staff-length weapons they're designed for, I guess).
      And now, off to nurse the tennis ball sized bump on my ankle, so I can start running again this weekend to build up my cardio. And possibly so I can get a shoe on tomorrow for work. Damn leg blocks...as a post-script, low shin-roundkicks to the thighs were only slightly less dangerous to use than high kicks.

interesting article on on joints that go snap, crackle, pop

      This is going to be really esoteric, random, and possibly high falootin'. Not like the restaurant, though. I don't think like the restaurant, anway. Anyway. I was reading this book and it had a little about a God-concept from back in the old Platonic days (I'm resisting making a horrendous ancient-Greece-platonic-men joke), where the god-figure is the prime mover, who sets everything in the universe in motion without being moved itself. And a few different angles on that same thing, but it's late and I'm sticking with that. Then I completely randomly thought of some article I read way back about some people viewing aikido as a spiritual practice. Then I thought of the zen idea of something being still and yet in motion at the same time - ye old moon's reflection on water, etc. Then I wondered whether that zen idea might be applied to the prime mover, which led to me wondering whether the idea of the prime mover might be combined with that zen idea to describe an ideal mental state for an aikido practitioner, based on the principles of the discipline. Then I remembered that some zen practices view attempting to achieve an ideal mental state as a way of getting closer to God/unity/nature/etc. And that's how (I think) I now understand maybe why aikido might be viewed as a spiritual practice.
      That breaks things.

Old School, with Will Farrell and Luke Wilson. I always struggle a bit when talking about comedies after I see them, because they generally don't do much for me; I pretty much watch them either when there's people who can Rocky Horror along, or when I'm obligated to - like when a short Mexican hands me a movie that I have to watch to find out why he's been going "Frank the Tank! Frank the Tank!" all day long. So, in light of all that, I still thought this movie was pretty lame. It had its share of skin and funny moments and a slew of generally funny actors. I suppose it was kind of generally funny. I wouldn't call it a total waste of time. Eeyup.

"...the condition of human nature is just this; man towers above the rest of creation so long as he recognizes his own nature, and when he forgets it, he sinks lower than the beasts. For other living things to be ignorant of themselves, is natural; but for man, it is defect." - translated from 5th century Latin - which in my mind begs the question, what is it to recognize one's own nature?
-versus-
Shadowcat: "Science and sorcery... is there any thing you can't do?"
Dr.Doom: "Knit. I find it overly repititious."
- I'm more of a cross-stitching man, myself

...hey suburbia! - Cute drawings, and writing that engenders smiling. And cheap shots at emo people. Heh. (But, all in good fun.) Some musical commentary, not too obscure. Also, a fat hamster (with a cute little purse).
      And would someone send me a Rilo Kiley mp3 if they have one? This is the umpteenth time I've heard good things about them.

IronBrush - art

      After watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon again, I started thinking. One, for all the fantastic elements in the fight scenes, there were at least a couple pretty realistic things that I noticed this time around: a quick close-up of the result of Sanchin conditioning (re: Okinawan martial arts, so I assume it's also in the Chinese somewhere), where Zhiyi's character almost breaks Yeoh's character's wrist with nothing but her belly, and this wonderful sequence where Chow Yun Fat's character just keeps sidestepping ever so slightly on 45's and riposting, all the while lecturing his opponent (focus on the angles there, but the rest made it really cool).
      The second bit are questions I had near the end of the movie; namely, if Chow Yun Fat's character is a Boddhisatva, or someone on the verge of enlightenment who postpones it to help others, he's certainly a complicated one. For one, (bracketed by the context of the story) is he postponing his enlightenment to help the young, morally conflicted noble girl, or because of his unconsummated love for his Yeoh's character? While it seems that in order to share that love his enlightenment is permanently forestalled, is he actually still a Boddhisvata who is remaining behind to help ("I would rather be a ghost wandering at your side..."), or has he renounced his efforts in that regard for love, which might just be a different kind of nirvana?

The Constant Gardener, with Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes. Well, for one this makes me want to see City of God (by the same director) even more. I adored Weisz's acting as usual, even when I was actively disliking her character, and Fiennes performed admirably in acting the character development that I specifically went to the movie to see. The cinematographic details, acting (even in body language, always a plus) and plot (which was pleasantly complicated) all fit together quite nicely, with parallels complete and details returned to in surprising ways.
      I also thought the movie was interesting in that it seems to use a similar story-archetype to my favorite novel, Evolution's Shore, even to the point of similar details (tart, somewhat idealistic UK girl, Kenya, uncovering plots by big political players), but unlike the novel, here the female character development is played out in the background, as it were (in flashbacks) whereas the male character's development (which took place somewhat off-stage in the novel) is primary; I only split it by sexes because of the similarity between the given characters, mind. Where the novel is science fiction and the movie is more realistic is the splitting point I think in terms of how the role of disease is played out, with the former turning it into an creator of potential, and the latter placing it in a more overtly economical role - but, I think there is a parallel there nonetheless, just that it's a complex one that hopefully will bear further meaning for both if I can figure it out.
      And I really wonder whether Evolution's Shore might be used as an elucidating comparison to the real-life work of Wangari Maathai, in how integration with the environment plays such a positive role for Kenya in the novel, or whether Maathai's words and work might be used to pull further meaning from the novel based on her real experience.

      Not to keep going on the same subject too much, but I alo wanted to note the role martial arts have been playing in the two Stargate shows. At the very least, they've come a long, long way from the horrendous, even pathetic choreography of Star Trek back in the day. In Atlantis, the military personnel use wonderfully basic traditional and Brazilian jujitsu (and even make it look good, which seems ironic somehow), whereas one of the more exotic characters does and even trains other characters in Filipino style martial arts. What interests me in these points is the use of distinct styles of martial arts to characterize, and as a sort of body language to convey relationships between characters (in the training scenes).
      The body language bit was applied the same way in SG-1, but what interested me more in that show was the impressive cinematography; I don't know how much experience Ben Browder or the other actor he fought have with scenes choreographed like that, and I honestly still don't think at least Browder has had that much, but damn. The slow-downs, shifting camera distance, and angles made for a fight or few that were genuinely rock solid. I just hope they keep up the good work.
      Those, along with random bits in Battlestar Galactica like characters training or the last season finale where it turned out the Victoria's Secret model had some moves worth noting, and not for her looks, kind of makes me wonder whether martial arts might be coming into a companion role with the science fiction genre. Maybe adding an element of art to violence complements the genre in the same way that it adds art to science. Or, as in the case of the Dune series, for example, perhaps martial arts provide a way of really getting into the speculative possiblities for the human body and mind with their connotations of discipline and mental/physical ability.

Although, in a different line of thought, I must admit I feel like the dude in blue some times...but it's good get a laugh out of oneself, hien? This one made me chuckle, at any rate - and at least one person I know laugh (uproariously, even) when I pointed out the possible connection

I don't even know what forty-nine of the real slogans are

      Sort of random thought-stream, running off of my television intake for the week. Which, besides a few cartoons, consisted of tonight. I'll note first of all that the only other person I know who watches Battlestar Galactica consistently, and whom I also know is quite female, was ironically more attracted to Lucy Lawless (guest starring) than Apollo (and, strangely enough, Lawless' character was enough of a bitch that I was ironically almost more attracted to Jamie Barber). And then there was Katee Sackhoff hitting a heavy bag; that brought me back to the female side of things, luckily.
      Not even tangentially, I hadn't noticed the contrasting parallel in themes dealing with symbiotic relationships in the two Stargate shows. While the parasite in question in SG-1 seems generally to be more truly parasitic, especially in its fullest extent of imposing its will upon its host, the symbiote in Atlantis (at least so far as has been hinted) seems like it could be more insidious - to me, at any rate, it's hard to tell whether they're pushing the their-behavior-is-the-other-DNA's-fault angle, or the more interesting augmented-urges-that-are-really-just-human angle. Time will tell, I suppose.
      I also like those little spots they have between commercials, where two actors from a given show are briefly shown in such a way as to hint at their relationship through gesture and body language. Ten points to the SciFi channel.

And how would one translate this random line out of a poem, say, into French:
"French has no word for home."
Something tells me I should take this to a man named Zuzga.

Just for fun, since I'm re-reading one of my favorite books, excerpts from Jack Gilbert's poetry:
"Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire
for his sins. Love allows us to walk
in the sweet music of our particular heart."
--
"...purple is black blooming"
"gray...a thousand colors from white to silver"
--
"Maybe, he thinks, it is like the Noh: whenever
the script says dances, whatever the actor does next
is a dance. If he stands still, he is dancing."

      Just to add to that last reality bit, an oblique take on the issue might be found in Stephen King's novel The Gunslinger, wherein *SPOILER* one reality is actually contained at a submolecular level in another reality (ironically, this time, the real-life reality). So as that space in which the characters' reality is contained is affected, their reality is in turn affected; in this case, I think that the story begins and takes place almost entirely in a different reality than our own, without any invasion or even mixing but with our reality affecting another, leads to an almost completely romanticized and myth-influenced story, with despair or perhaps stoicism, if anything, replacing survival/panic. Woo! Long sentence.

The River of Time, by David Brin. Wow, Amazon has a really old school cover, there. Anyway. This is an anthology of some of Brin's earlier/earliest work, and in that sense if one has read any of his novels or other short stories it's quite easy to tell the difference in the writing. Nonetheless, the writing actually seemed not so important in the sense that the bulk of these stories are speculative science fiction, and the ideas themselves that were conveyed well enough by the writing to give me chills at the end of nearly every story, as if each one was a particularly good Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, what with their twists. As a sidenote, Brin (as with his other books) adds quite nice elucidating commentary between stories, which is especially helpful with this kind of fiction.

Now, What Might Have Been (Vol. 1) as edited by Martin Greenberg and Gregory Benford, on the other hand, basically faceplanted in terms of how much I enjoyed it. These stories are also speculative, but in the sense of "what if..." ideas in terms of whether certain events might not have happened or people existed, etc. Great idea - and the first story with it's contemporary-time-wise but massively different global culture (based around Saxons, Franks, Persians, and Iberians as the dominant political players) sucked me in. But every story after that would have been eminently more enjoyable as an essay detailing what idea the author was basing their story around. It wasn't that the ideas were bad or boring (well, several of them were), but more that the writing was bad and/or boring. Ah well.

Giant Octopus....Shark...Throwdown! - hmm, sharks having been and evolving to be consummate predators for millions of years, octopus has full-body neural net brain power, and possibly tentacles that are worth expending for that much food....hmmm....

"Sarlacc Pit of Platonic Frustration" - yes.

      I think they should have used this article about 'human's closest living relative, the chimpanzee' as part of that 'last of the human genome has been mapped' or whatever it was tagline in the Doom trailer; but then they would have had to bring in chimpanzees, and that would have complicated things. And made it a lot scarier. You know, monkeys - creepy. That, and the phrase 'shotgun sequencing approach' is fun.
      Tangentially, that whole thread of worlds mixing by mistake or otherwise seems interesting. Let's explore it! In the aforementioned Doom, it's been told that I know of as a science community (operating within a corporation) that opens a portal for monetary gain; through that portal come the aliens/entities that either a) are actually demons or b) the slightly more interesting take the form of demons in order to scare and manipulate world leaders through offers of power. Interesting points: our reality is not itself inherently altered, and the link between the monetary purpose of opening the original portal and the corruption-by-power end result.
      In Stephen King's short story, "The Mist," the mix-of-worlds in question originates in a military base (purpose unknown). First, reality itself is altered - this manifests in the form of a mist, which isn't really a mist but a kind of meta-static that resulfts from the mixing of worlds. Then the creatures from the other reality manifest within the mist, which leads to the horror elements concerning the isolated survivors of the resulting mayhem. The interesting thing about this one to me was that it's the only one off the top of my head I can think of where there is minimal fighting-back, as it were, and more purely panic and base survival - perhaps because it is also the one where reality is inherently altered?
      In the Half-Life games, the mix is the created by a scientific community working under the aegis of the military/shady-government-elements, again, purpose unknown (supposedly scientific). The story begins with survival/panic, but leads into fighting-back, but then (like Doom) repeats the cycle after world domination. Here reality itself is not altered, but for all intents and purposes humanity's social and cultural reality is altered when they reduced to a slave race by the other reality. And there, I think it rises above its parallel, Doom, in interesting complexity, as the obliquely altered reality creates panic/survival elements and at the same time leaves room for the more romantic fighting-back.

Word of the Day that I think would be cool to put into contemporary use: aedile - an elected official of ancient Rome who was responsible for public works and games and who supervised markets, the grain supply, and the water supply

Toba Tek Singh, by Saadat Manto - an interesting bit of (kind of satirical) historical perspective

WhiteBelt.Org - this website has skillfully written reviews and articles on teaching having to do with martial arts, though many of them are universally applicable - labeled as Great Stuff, by me

A Sound of Thunder, with Edward Burns and Ben Kingsley. It wasn't quite the worst movie I've ever seen; I mean, it wasn't atrocious. Horrible might be a better word. The special effects, plot, and much of the writing were painful to experience. I'll note a couple of things; there's a slight bit of metafiction in the repetition of the 'time safari;' and there's this one little bit that's horribly creepy, not because of anything gratuitous, but rather because of the complete lack of any gratuitous effects where one might expect them, so that was mildly interesting.

updates from former Green Beret in N'Orleans

I can't imagine it's real; nonetheless, it reminded me of that similar sub in that old show Seaquest, so that memory was pleasant

Stream of thought!
....
....
....
Ok yeah that was dumb. Anyhoo. I just finished watching Garden State again. There are several reasons why I think that it's a lovely movie, but the one I really noticed again was the attention to meaning-rich detail; whoa. When I drive home for work now, I go right under the path of A-10s landing at DM; it's a bit like a slow version of the ones in the trailer for Jarhead. But not so exciting. They really are amazing machines, though, especially when one turns so slowly on practically a dime right over your head that you cringe a little. I wish I could remember whether I mailed my penpal or not, as it takes us months to communicate, so it will be very hard to tell whether I really did. I think I did. I hope. Departure - yeah that messes with my head a little. Sd&#M*&Em38kjd*. Ah, another bad stream of consciousness joke. Ehh. Hm. I end with Macgyver.

"Ay yo, though I be fallin' to my messy-ass death I shall fear no evils..." - yes.

      While I unfortunately wasn't there to see (or participate) in it, there was an interesting situation at the dojo. Our resident MMA guy, about my size and a quarter (so probably still "little guy" status) versus another guy he'd brought in: "280 and some pounds" (his words) and almost as tall as the 6'7" head instructor. And he wrestled in high school. So while he shot in and could bodyslam and hook left and right, and even pin using the lie-on-top-of-you method till the cows came home (that no bridging or shrimping or wedging could break), an interesting thing happened. Out of twelve times that they went at each other, Mr. Gorgeous (that's for you, Carolyn ;) ) choked out Mr. Wrestler eight times, and even got a funny flying armbar as he was picked all the way up into the air to be slammed. At the end of it, the wrestler apparently seemed interested in coming back for some martial arts - the one time he even deigned to add strikes into the equation, the very first movement he ran his neck into a jab; as much as he won some things by size and rule-limited wrestling technique, he lost every other way.

Word of the Day: persiflage - light teasing; banter

other Word of the Day: vatic - of or characteristic of a prophet; oracular

Worldview Throwdown - I wish I could remember more of the article given to me as a model-example for my thesis, because it was a literary version of almost exactly this; tangentially, I wonder how this plays into the "Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless" angle and whether it applies semiotically outside of photographs (helllloooo Barthes...)

Say Anything..., with John Cusack and John Mahoney. I had wanted to see this because it was listed in something I'd read as one of the most romantic movies of all time, and while I'm not sure I'd quite agree with that description, it did have wonderful writing and acting, and an understated but engaging story. It' always nice to see Cusack siblings acting together, and trivia-wise - like Grosse Pointe Blank - there is a semi-random fight scene with a cameo by a famous kickboxer, this time Don Wilson. One thing that did keep me from overly enjoying this movie was that I just couldn't find the lead actress attractive at all.

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, with voices of Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Though the animation is gorgeous, and the action and adventure was top notch and original in my opinion (a spectacular martial arts sequence in a cartoon?), there were a couple things that held this movie back from doing really well when it came out. One, Pitt's voice - while perfect for his style of acting - doesn't lend itself well to animation. Two, I think in a similar way to the sexuality in The Road to El Dorado the seriousness of the culminating theme of the movie (self-sacrifice) was a bit too much for a really young audience.

The Crow: City of Angels, with Vincent Perez and Mia Kirshner. Well, it's not a very good movie, in truth. But: it does have great music, and almost slides by on sheer style and darkness.

"When you start doing awake-in-the-dark mental math based on a knife crawling towards you to kill you, you basically have a problem on your hands." - yes.

Sassinak, by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon. Old school. I read this when I was much, much younger and remembered it as pretty good; reading it again, I suppose it makes sense that I did, as it seems to be written for a much younger audience - kind of a teenage girl's imaginings of her ideal self in a science fiction setting. In that sense, it does make for quick read, as the plot and writing is pleasantly simple and makes for a decent space opera. The one thing I'll note, however, is that it's been a while since I felt kind of objectified as a male because of the writing as a book (the previous time from a work used for comparison in my thesis research) - I'm not sure that the sexual references would be appropriate for a younger audience in one sense, but in another sense, the female characters in question are certainly assertive and confident and sure of their identities, so more power to them.

immortel, with Linda Hardy and Thomas Kretschmann. An Italian movie based on a French comic book. While that might sum it up right there, there really was quite a lot put into this very, very odd movie. First of all, the cinematography is randomly mixed between CGI and live acting, just as a warning to avoid the distraction of trying to figure out whether a different movie was mixed in during the editing. That being said, there is so much detail in everything from dialogue to backgrounds to physical appearances that it's distracting as well, in just trying to absorb it all; maybe the proper phrase is "rich in detail;" trick is, I think that's one of those things where it either gets one really into it, or puts the viewer off. And while the story seems almost nonsensically weird at first, I really do think there are some interesting issues brought up, notably what does it mean to be defined as human (or not), and what really is a deity.

Aliens Vs. Predator, with Sanaa Lathan and Lance Henriksen. I must note that I thought the Aliens Vs. Predator novels and the one Batman Vs. Predator one-shot comic were great, and well worth finding. The movie, on the other hand....not so much. It was okay. The pacing needed help. I liked the ending, though I thought it was obviously ripped from the previously mentioned other media. The effects were quite nice. The acting...not so much, but the Weyland references were quite amusing. I kind of wonder if the audience already being familiar with both monsters kind of detracts from it, in the sense that it's harder to identify with the characters who are supposed to be surprised.

"Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else. They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains and the sea. They bore through silent nature in every direction with their machines, for fear that the calm world might accuse them of their own emptiness. The urgency of their swift movement seems to ignore the tranquillity of nature by pretending to have a purpose. The loud plane seems for a moment to deny the reality of the clouds and of the sky, by its direction, its noise, and its pretended strength. The silence of the sky remains when the plane has gone. The tranquility of the clouds will remain when the plane has fallen apart. It is the silence of the world that is real. Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all our fatuous statements about our purposes, our business, and our noise: these are the illusion." - Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

-overwrought, and I have no idea if any of it is true, but interesting:
"What we think of as the honeybee is technically the Western honeybee. Apis melifera. They are not native to North America; they were brought here by the Spaniards in the 17th century, by men who called honey 'liquid gold.' But eve the Spanish came late to honey. In a way almost impossible to understand in our over-sugared world, honey was the only sweet flavor most of the ancients knew, and they held it in awe. The Egyptians thought bees grew from the tears of Ra, ruler of the gods; and in India, Vishnu, who holds more or less the same job, was called 'honey born.' In Greece, bees led worthy pilgrims to the oracle at Delphi, and Aristotle believed that honey precipitated from the air when rainbows descended."
...mmm, I should go see if we have any killer bee honey left...

      For some reason, while looking at how the sun was reflectng off one side of a cloud, I thought of painting. Then, I remembered an anecdote I'd read once where the writer, walking with a friend, comes across a puddle with oil slicked into it. The writer continues walking, while the friend, a painter, stops to kneel next to the puddle. While I can't remember the dialogue involved, the writer's point was that an artist (be they painter, photographer, or poet, etc) often sees the world in a way keyed into their skill. In that vein, I'd assume something similar for engineers, teachers, and anything else that one can categorize someone as, of course.
      So my next thought was that maybe that's a good reason to go to an art museum. As much as it's wondered whether we all really see the same things the same way, in a sense an art museum might be a place to get insight as to how a collection of other people see the world.

twelve med students - cute comic from Xuemei

...but is it a candy bar?

I'm not sure I can see it working out, but "re-wilding" would certainly be interesting

General Horace Wade - a neighbor for most of my life, and I barely knew anything about him (via Wyatt)

the periodic Movies that Seem Interesting:

Jarehead, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard. Wyatt pointed this one out to me - I'm quite curious to how it will play out politically, though by the trailer it seems wonderfully put together in acting and cinematography

Thumbsucker, with a bunch of good actors - a bit surreal, and a bunch of a good actors

Aeonflux, with Charlize Theron - for only a couple of reasons: over-the-top scifi violence (though it seems it'll be walking a thin line against corniness), and I'm intrigued how the massive change in story from the orginal animation will play into a movie, as much as the writing in the trailer is painful (I mean, at the end of every episode, the main character would die, right?)

The Constant Gardener, with Rachel Weisz, Ralph Fiennes, and intrigue - done and done

Doom, with what appears to be the Rock and that guy from The Chronicles of Riddick - although the trailer doesn't particularly excite me, I'd see it based on memories of being freaked out by the original game

There was an interesting show on the National Geographic channel that purported to trace humanity's ancestry through the Y chromosome to a common ancestor - a "scientific Adam." That every male might have the same minor mutation apparently indicates that every last dude on the planet could be traced back to one guy. While I'm not totally convinced, it was definitely intrigueing; tangentially, I'm of the opinion that the Garden of Eden story is an allegory of humanity gaining sentience (once sentience was gained, then looking back on a time where there was no worry over mortality and all our other foibles might lead one to consider it paradise). In the show it was suggested that tool use began at almost the same time that the scientific Adam was dated to have existed, and furthermore that language might have similarly arisen concurrently. If it's true, it almost makes me wonder whether some oral history was passed down that told of a common ancestor or leader that generated those old creation yarns.

      For a swordwork seminar about integrating breathing into hip movement and footwork, I sure learned a lot about using my wrists. My issue stemmed from the fact that the person teaching the seminar, a quite senior Japanese gentleman who had apparently been taught by Gichin Funakoshi, was wearing a hakama (or, as it's been not-so-affectionately called, a jicama). So, while I really do realize why hiding one's feet with a hakama would be effective in a fight, now, standing directly behind someone trying to teach you how to move your hips and feet and not being able to see their hips and feet just isn't cool.
      Tangentially, as much as my face is still a bit sore three days after an Army MP facelock and an technique involving a knee and my eye socket, I feel like submission attempts by pain alone just don't cut it. I mean, I certainly wasn't going to tap out from the pain of either of those examples once I spent a second or two collecting myself; ironically, I did tap out to the facelock only because I was caught in a pin I couldn't escape. The same goes for pressure points; if one is going to go for a submission in my mind, there either has to be a complete pin, or some actual danger to the self, as with joint locks or chokes. That being said, a submission by pain will work if applied with such sharp intensity that the opponent has no time to override a reflex to tap, but that's still dependent upon how mentally conditioned they are.

Bones - new show with David Boreanaz, of Angel fame (who also happens to be on the cover of Men's Health), because he is aweso

design cycles - I like the BMW

Save Your Neck - makes a good point about lengthening the muscles - that is, consciously lengthening as opposed to just stretching, or contorting by arching

Asteroid Threesome - that's cool and all, but I want to see something really weird, like three comets, or stars, or probably impossibly three singularities

frog + food = poison - something about focus on how the poison is generated reminds me of Rappaccini's Daughter

365 tomorrows - a bit of science fiction each day, great stuff

The Great Raid, with Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Joseph Fiennes and Connie Nielsen. For some reason, I just couldn't get really into this movie till right near the climax; my best guess is that it was a combination of the pacing and the lack of depth in the characters (not that they didn't have depth, per se, but that it was so spread out amongst the large number of characters). That being said, it was a solidly good movie that certainly had my attention. I think it was almost like a documentary in some strange sense, and that might have been part of my enthusiasm issue - I was expecting more drama and almost missed the low-key quality acting; either way, the actaul footage at the end of the film in conjunction with the story is a wonderful effect.
      I think Franco did a fine job, and it was nice to see Nielsen, Bratt and Fiennes in the same movie, even if not in conjunction. I will note that as much as I was happy about the portrayal of Filipinos, I thought it was kind of curious that there were no subtitles for the bits of Tagalog spoken in the movie (unless I just missed them somehow, and someone correct me then). If I were unnecessarily close reading that, it would seem to say something about the relative positions of the various cultures in the movie by proxy of their languages, but I think it was just an editing choice.

Christopher Walken for President 2008 - he's totally got my vote; I mean, just imagine him giving speeches...or at the debates. Think about it.

odd, mild insult of the day: "You eightball."

New York Changing - I'm not to keen on big cities, but the evolution of one is certainly interesting

/..\ balloon bowl /..\ - I just think it's amazing he doesn't fall down

"...when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." - Nietzsche
      So there's that vaguely ubiquitous quote. And I sat there looking at it. Then I thought of the old 40k setting I hadn't thought of in so long, where excessively Puritanical (for lack of a better word) societies were often pitted against their opposite, in terms of hedonism or sheer grotesque nature. So, a tiny issue I used to have with that setting was that I didn't really understand how some of the characters, coming from the rigidly controlling Puritanical background, could switch over to the morbidly grotesque or sybaritic side of things without some illogical bridge, ie, psychosis or overpowering external influence. Basically, I wasn't satisfied in that I thought relying on a seeming rationalization to consistently explain that switch was a shade too far of an excuse.
      But to return to that quote, it reminded me of that thing I learned from literary theory class that I always come back to, that within one's subconscious there's almost always a tiny part of oneself that is fascinated by or loves whatever we consciously hate or are disgusted by, and vice versa. Hence, the idea of morbid fascination. So, with that principle in mind, voila - my issue seems resolved. It even works nicely in that I remember some of the characters were influenced to turn by a little voice in the back of their head - in the setting, a demon or whatnot, but from an outside perspective, a nicely personified example of that principle of the subconsicous. And yes, I know the quote doesn't exactly fit that, but it made me think of all that, so neener.

Art by Howard Lyon

Art by Karen Petrasko

      An editorial I just read made an interesting point - while one could go to top athletes, musicians, or executives and request training, any opportunity (basketball camp, business seminar, etc) will be exorbitantly expensive. Martial arts seminars given by everyone from the top cagefighters to military to really old traditional teachers range from $50 to $600; a somewhat comparable (in the sense that it's a physical skill) mountaineering seminar, for example, is upwards of $9000. Even in my local Arizona region I could list recent and upcoming seminars fearturing people from Japan, the Philippines, Brazil, a big cagefighter coming from Las Vegas (I mean literally huge) An interview in the same magazine made me think back to that editorial in a different sense, however - the interviewee was of the opinion that martial arts are sustained because the people that teach them enjoy teaching. That's not to say that other kinds of seminars arent's conducting by people that enjoy the same, I guess I'm just thinking off the cuff that it's nice that as the martial arts are generally built around constant learning, it's conducive to relatively easily accessible seminars.

      And I just finally realized that if a spearhand (a strike with the fingertips, with all the fingers aligned and together, and the hand flat) is conditioned properly and is used to hit a soft target, it acts like a thrust from a staff, because of the minimal striking surface (I had previously thought that striking with the fingertips couldn't be anything but uselessly fragile). Wa-hey....dorky epitomes, 101.

The Physical Body - minus the (quite interesting looking) giant implements, the bodywork stuff in the video is where a good deal of the conditioning we use for jujitsu at the east Ko Sho comes from (but seriously, I hope that guy doing the squats is wearing pants)

Samurai 7 - Akira Kurosawa versus the classic of similar name....hello, hello, hello....

Kill Harry - Harry Potter versus Kill Bill (down at the bottom)...strange.

      One interesting thing about a call center is how many accents one might hear in a day. There's the range one would expect - Texan, various degrees of Southern, the odd Brooklynese. Then there's, say, a French accent from Canada, then a New York accent crossed with a Jamaican accent. I mean, whoa - my mom has an Arabic/Jersey accent, but it's so faint as to just accent her speech (no pun intended). But the contortions required for a Jamaican New Yorker...

oilcomputer - I'm still campaigning for one within an aquarium; I suppose I'd settle for a terrarium

scarwars - in one sense, a little bit too far in the yikes side of things; but I love some of those designs, and I'm afraid if I keep looking at it I'll become more intrigued...

Interesting response to the Israeli barrier; of related interest, though the staff at a Kurdish restaurant was happy to attempt a cross-dialect conversation in Arabic with my mom, they were only happy until she said she was Palestinian. Then they walked away; unfortunately, that hasn't been a one-time experience, either. Ah well.

That Which We Call Body - kind of oblique, but maybe a response to the opposing poles of dance and martial arts from before?

Ballet! Also interesting. And quite a workout, I have to say; not so much while I was doing it, but I certainly felt it in muscle fatigue for much later on - I understand much better now why dancers like pilates. As for benefits in cross-training, I'd rank posture, balance and coordination in the main. One thing I really noticed was that whereas the martial arts I usually train in have conditioned me to find the most effecient way to perform a given movement, in dancing it seems almost the complete opposite, with control and the extra energy put forth to generate grace taking precedence. In the same sense, however, that might be stemming from a very basic understanding of the latter, and now that I think about it perhaps when the basic dance movements are more conditioned the grace comes naturally from within the dancer and/or their mindset. Hmm.

      Two more weird dreams I've had relatively recently have involved a similar image between them. Both were disturbing in the same way as the sigils on the girl's back from that third recent dream, but these other two did not seem to be as direct of symbols. In the former, I was able/compelled to split a crack I saw in a friend's face; inside, their head was filled with stuff that I remember clearly, but can't really describe. The closest I can come is clockwork mechanisms of bone and ash, and that's letting top-of-the-head adjectives come. In the latter, another friend had a wasting disease of some sort, and I was compelled to scrape at the lesions and bumps on her forehead in some twisted effort to save her, but it only opened holes into a similar view of a hollow space inside her head, also not really describable, but more organic this time. And if I gain one more vivid image like that that's so hard to shake...ah...well, I'll be putting a lot more effort into figuring out why they're bubbling out of my subconscious.

      First of all, several points to Wyatt for getting to the semi-finals of his squadron in the pugil stick competition at the Air Force Academy. He says it was thanks to all the Ko Sho training of angles and combinations, but he might have just been being flattering or modest in his own skill. Highlights: the angle-to-missing leg-->thrust to face worked nicely, and during one of his last matches he tripped backwards and his opponent charged in to hit him while he was on the ground, but he rolled with his fall and slammed both feet into the guy's belly, knocking him backwards. Ah, the classic up kick. Unfortunately, quite illegal in that context, but nothing to be done for good reflexes.
      In related news, another Ko Sho student did similarly well during his time getting his specialized training as an MP for the Army. That context was a general hand-to-hand fighting competition, however, and as he described it their training is pretty much jujitsu, so with his already-trained stature, he (quote-unquote) kicked ass in the ring. Not quite as modest, but nothing to be done for kicking ass. As it were.

(best told in quiet and dry voice)
"Two men walk into a bar. The first man orders a scotch and soda. The second man remembers something he'd forgotten, and it doubles him over in pain. He falls to the floor shaking. And then through the floor and into the earth. He looks back up at the first man, but doesn't call out to him. They weren't that close."

Pilates! Interesting. I mean, I've had limited experience with the matwork before, but not the pilates machines up till now. I'm still unsure as to what the effect of it is upon my body, thought I'm assured by the three other people that were in the room that it's great for dancers (those three being ballerinas). I do feel something, not sure what, in my core and hips, which is nice because of how hard those are to work usually. I also realized that my left foot (the one formerly known as broken) is still weak years later, though in the same token that I was able to feel that so where I hadn't realized otherwise speaks to a really refined workout. Though the expense is a bit inordinate, the machines really are quite slick, so I'm torn as to whether the cost is worth it.

nowhere girl - imaginary friend and better world - depressing at first, but it builds up to quite interesting
(see also: rockingest page ever)

      The other night, I had a dream where the bulk of it was taken up by chasing this girl (a cute one that I haven't seen forever in real life) through crowds and restaurants, basically part of a cityscape, I suppose. Then, when I finally catch up to her to get the kiss I've been wanting, we both laughingly tumble, and somehow her back is bared to reveal sigils and script and an odd diagram not scarred but somehow bloodlessly cut into her skin. Now, I've read fantasy books where things like that 'that would hurt your eyes to look at them' have been described, but never really understood that what that meant, if even in only a dreamscape. I wonder it all means, though....

      Usually when I see a large, vibrant blob of flaming pixels on the 'radar' part of the local weather, I shrug; I mean, I've tried to walk outside and connect it to clouds I can see, but they're usually out of visual range when I remember to do that. But today, oh no. What I thought was way east of the city just happened to be the entire east side of the city. It was pretty awesome in the awe-some sense to drive towards it, what with the rain being lit up by the setting sun and huge rainbows with lightning arabesques and forboding indigo as background. But the moment the edge of those satin-lit curtains came upon me - quarter of a block visibility, the wind vs the lego car (round 3), sweeping gusts of rain and hail, ambulances and police fighting through traffic slowed to a timid crawl. While the idea of a moat around the dojo as was brought up once people were inside (dripping wet, natch) is interesting and all, it's not cool when one's car suddenly sinks only to slam its wheel into the curb. Okay, maybe it's cool in retrospect.

The Tale of Smith - eerie, interesting

      An article I was reading about possible other forms of life beyond the standard DNA/RNA/what have you based paradigm brought up an interesting point. If, say, something of electromagnetic energy could achieve some level of sentience, what kind of perception of time would it have? Would its perception of time be something that speeds up and slows down even more than our 'time flies when you're having fun' shift in perception? Which leads to other interesting questions - how do really different not-so-hypothetical beings, such as hummingbirds that have much faster metabolism, perceive time? Or, perhaps even more interestingly, do they percieve time the same way we do, and whether it appears fast or slow is purely a mental thing?

Rocket Blasters is a fun show. It's like a really sped up, and in some important ways simpler version of what my brother did in the Mojave and Black Rock for Raytheon, but is especially distinguished as a reality show in my mind because everyone is nice and encouraging to each other, as crazy as that sounds. And they strap rockets to Mini's.

That Ring Is So You - except for the jaw biopsy part, I have to admit I'm intrigued

Singin' in the Rain - kind of like that old Nike commercial with the pretty European breakdancer, except with lower tech, of sorts

Wizard's First Rule, by Terry Goodkind. First of all, for some reason I couldn't help but imagine the main character with anything but a mullet. Secondly, I'm not sure I would have finished it but for the fact I was reading it on the recommendations of my sister and my roommate; I don't think it's necessarily that bad, really, but it's definitely not my cup of tea. The only intrigues were that characters kept things from each other for too long, almost every single character expounds on morality at some point or another (and each in turn seems universally wise, leaving little room for variation), and for such a large book the plot and even the number of plot threads seemed excessively simplified.
      Now, in the same token, after discussing I can see where the people I know who've read it are coming from when that simplicity of character and story is a benefit (say, as refreshing after reading a relatively excessively complex George Martin novel), so maybe it just comes down to whether one prefers coffee or tea, as it were. One thing I did like, in any case, was the use of (as far as I could tell) truly original fantasy ideas for monsters and magic, which while interesting unfortunately seemed to be concentrated only at the beginning and end of the novel.

      The fossa. Madagascar seems intriguing in a similar way to the Galapagos Islands in that it has a quite unique environment; while I'm generally more interested in the plants (they are so weird there!), fossas seem to be no exception to the oddness rule. What really interested me when I initially read about them was that they were described as a predator who's ancestry 'predates canines and felines' and that they had retractable claws like a cat, but flat feet like a bear. I guess I would have described it like a predatory version of a platypus, except agile like a margay.

      And the third ingredient in Trader Joe's strawberry-lemonade is aronia juice. And I was like, huh? Interesting. But I suppose 'aronia' is better than 'chokeberry.'

      And, I happened to be sitting on a rock under a tree earlier, and a sprig of eucalyptus leaves fell down next to me. When I looked over, I realized an ant had come all the way down on the sprig, as there was a line of ants going up the tree, but they were nowhere near where the leaves had landed. I wish I could have gotten an account of the ride from the ant; I bet it was awesome.

      Totally unformed thought: stalactites and stalagmites seem either poetic or symbolic all of a sudden to me. The stalactite - as solid as can be matter being sculpted by gravity and a liquid - in turn forming a stalagmite - out of the same medium, but now as if a progeny of sorts - until they finally merge into a single, rocky being after meeting halfway. Or maybe I'm just bleary, and things seem more profound at the moment.

My mom walked in and her first reaction was "That's like you!"

So many...the thought of it almost brings tears of joy....

March of the Penguins, narrated by Morgan Freeman. I think it's great that a documentary like this is doing is well as it is; I just wish it was a bit more like a real life adventure with Steve Zissou. Alas. One can see penguins slapfighting each other anyway. From a totally different angle, about halfway through the movie I started thinking that penguins might be interesting in that they live in, and are dependent upon, an environment which is a boundary between two distinct environments. They aren't wholly water or land creature, and as such (or so I thought in the theatre) might be conflated with a similar social archetype, with social groups or culture representing environments (say, someone raised in Mexico and the USA equally). The question then becomes, what can be learned from that conflation?
      The other thought I had was a bit more focused on the biological aspect of the movie - what would the penguin be like/what would be required were it to adapt over time to be a wholly aquatic animal? I mean, one line in the movie said they spend their first four to five years at sea (the stretched assumption I'm making being that by 'at sea' they meant purely in the water, but in that false assumption was the seed of my thought, so neeners).

the American Sheik - just plain odd in one sense, but certainly interesting if effective as a cultural bridge, like the long term SpecOps units in Afghanistan

Trebuchet Challenge - kind of Tron crossed with medieval artillery

Zork? - nahhh...couldn't be...maybe?

      For whatever reason, I started thinking today about the different schools of thought concerning fighting with the staff (maybe as a distillation of the different schools of thought on how to fight in general?). The kind I'm most familiar with, from Okinawan styles generally, holds a rigid staff near the middle, splitting it in thirds. For example, in a staff-vs-spear form, one end of the staff hooks away strikes or thrusts as the other end hits, for simultaneous offense and defense; another focus in the same style is on disarming movements. In contrast, almost every Chinese style I've seen holds a semi-flexible staff at one end; in contrast again, I've noted Filipino styles holding a rigid staff in the middle as well, but with training integrated into sinawali/weaving drills. I've also heard many times over of English quarterstaff fighting, but haven't been able to discern much from the few old documents I could find.
      Secondarily, my experience with the short staff has been almost exclusively Japanese, though I know of a few Korean, Filipino, and even Arabian styles. From my own experience, the short staff is either taught as held at one end, mimicking a sword for the most part, but with an emphasis on thrusts and the availability of a staff's two-end no-blade versatility, or held almost at both ends, and used for in-close grappling and throws.
      So, the two points to the rambling: it's just interesting to look at how the same thing can be looked at so many ways, and any thoughts or information or pointers to more information would be much appreciated.

-interesting, if true-
"In South Korea, police officers carry guns but do their best not to take them out because, according to Oh Sok, a police officer who shoots a criminal--regardless of the necessity of it--has to pay the criminal's medical bills (or funeral bills). As a result, many police officers there become damn good at unarmed combat, and from the sounds of it they get plenty of practice."

      Disney's Aladdin takes on a whole different aspect when postcolonial ideas are applied to it; I'm still contradicting myself in my head as to whether its orientalism is insidious or ingenuously clever kid-entertainment. One tangentially interesting little tidbit I noticed was near the end when Jafar says "So long!" in the middle of a song to Aladdin. At first I thought he said "Salaam!" (peace!) which doesn't make any sense, then I realized what he actually said. What made it interesting to me was that I remembered recently reading that the phrase "so long" came to English from Malay (I think, or at least from that lingual-region), wherein "salang" as a variant of "salaam" arrived there by way of Islam. I don't suppose the Disney writers thought of that as a really oblique ironic angle, but hey, what with the supposed hidden sexual references I suppose one never knows. And did they spell the title of the movie the way they did to avoid making it look like "Allah-din"?

Targete Art - lots of nice paintings

      A while ago, I was driving around with my dad and we saw a large hawk's nest at the very top of a long-dead and dried up tree. A moment after passing it, my dad said: "The tree's dead, so..." I'm not sure why, but that statement almost gave me goosebumps; it was almost as if the at-first seemingingly banal nest had been shifted by the words into another kind of existence where it wasn't just a hawk's nest in a dead tree, but something else, if only in my mind. Another kind of existence that gave me the heebie-jeebies.

-kind of seemed like an easy ego-booster, and I'm not sure of its veracity at all, but nonetheless:
"The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize."

Cool dialogue of the day:
"'How many times, dear father,' Richard asked through tears and gritted teeth, 'must I slay your shade?'"
-and something about this line seemed poetic to me:
"Put words to your need, Richard Cypher."

      In the process of moving, I found some old dit da jow (aka "hit wine"). I bought it years and years ago in some horribly foolish conditioning scheme, but it turned out it was well worth it's money in terms of the seemingly magical way it made bruises disappear. Lo and behold, it still works after who knows how long (I thought it would have evaporated) - one of my middle fingers has been painfully jammed for a while now, the joint still being swollen, but a little dit da jow started loosening it right up. Drawbacks to it are that I've never seen any but one brand actually work, and they're not selling anymore, and that it is quite pungent (thought not exactly unpleasant, kind of an herbal kahlua).

      I think I must have been driving along or some such when I conflated these thoughts: the exploration of identity (ie, Lacan's mirror image I think it was, or the uncanny nature of the double) I went into for my term paper in literary theory, and the many variegated identity issues that are addressed as problems in understanding in yoga (ie, one's identity is not one's emotions/I am not anger, I just feel anger, or, I am not pain, as pain comes to the nerves as light comes to the eyes). That's the extent of my thought at the moment, in any rate; I just wonder if one approach could be used to compliment the other approach, like I did for zen and existentialism.

      In other news, I'm 0-2 in recent weird fruit acquisitions. The honeydew nectarine seems about on par with the mango nectarine; less flavor than a regular nectarine, and not that much different flavor at that. In fact, the only differences I could tell were in appearance and a possibly imagined slight melon aroma. I am quite interested in how a melon and a pitted fruit would be crossed, however, unless they never were and this is just an odd and oddly named nectarine variant.

The English Gipsies and Their Language, by Charles Leland. Yes, yes, I know that appears spelled wrong, but its examples of daily "nomadic and vagabond" life seem interesting historically. And, anyone wanna buy a dag?

I OK, You OK: English Pronouns in Malay - it seems the poor Malay speakers sometimes get sick of dealing with an overload of excessively complex native pronouns. Crazy.

Cool! to the nth

tuesday comic - this hasn't been going since forever, but I always thought it was cute and clever

Word of the Day - anagogic - A mystical interpretation of a word, passage, or text, especially scriptural exegesis that detects allusions to heaven or the afterlife

      The monsoon season in Tucson is nice for several reasons, but the one in particular I'm thinking of might be a bit silly, I suppose. Back in some survey class for British literature, I think it was, one of the concepts we covered was the sublime. The sublime is such that whatever one is viewing or experiencing is awe-inspiring, or even terrible (in both senses of the word); it's gigantic beyond words, utterly inscrutable, incomprehensibly beautiful, etc. So, my thought is that nigh everyday for a while now the skies over the valley have been on the order of sublime, with storms bigger than mountain ranges, sprites and fountains of lightning, curtains of moisture and sunshowers, and that's quite enough waxing bad poetical, I suppose. And is there a word like sublemon? There should be.

Free Words - I have to say I'm not exactly sure what the message is, but it reminds of the better parts of the poetry classes I've taken, and it makes me smile

Salamander Dream by Hope Larson just concluded; it's pleasant, and calm, and the end was quite moving
-----in a similar vein, circuity was less sensical, and though I only think I understood what happened, was moving nonetheless

55 words - ironically, I find I have no words for it; great idea and execution

avp - to be quite shallow, I find I also have no words for this, but it also made me quite happy to find

"We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. . . . we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. . . . Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." Rainer Maria Rilke

      With as much as conventional power sources and their byproducts of smoke and waste and runoff figure in scifi art and literature genres like cyberpunk, I wonder if there can be an opposite side to that. That is, would it be a boon to more unconventional power sources (wind, tidal, solar, geothermal) to put some effort into aesthetics? For example, would setting up solar panels in a circular-flower arrangement in a public area boost their image in the public eye more than their practical benefits? Or, failing making the apparatus itself aesthetically pleasing in its form, maybe decoration, like colored or mural'ed windmills?

"It's life size suggests it may well have been used as a sex aid by its Ice Age makers, scientists report." - I'm still not sure how they don't know it was used for something else entirely and just happened to look like a penis; I don't know, whenever I see something like that in archaeology I think of this school exercise from way back when where we had to imagine future archaeologists trying to make sense of our stuff

Bruce Lee statue? - hm. No mention of JKD

the dance at the end is crazy

Runaway Jury, with Rachel Weisz and John Cusack. Though it had three of my favorite actors in it, namely Weisz, Cusack, and Marguerite Moreau, and several other quality actors, I was totally distracted the whole viewing time by a new very masculine hobby. All the same, it looked interesting and engaging even with my mostly vague understanding of the plot. And it had a nice ending. I think. All in all, it was nice just taking in some great actors all put together.

      That, and we caught a bit of Gigli, which seemed quite as horrible as it had been touted. But: it did have this nice scene of Jennifer Lopez doing yoga in spandex and extolling the feminine form, in a monologue in the same vein as Al Pacino's near the beginning of Scent of a Woman. And this wonderful gem presaging a love scene:
(girl): It's turkey time.
(guy): Huh?
(girl): Gobble gobble.

      This instructor from way back in the day just randomly showed up in the middle of class at the dojo today. We knew he'd been having some hard times back before he disappeared, and he had always looked strung out and gaunt. So now he's all nicely dressed, oddly wearing a David Carridine/Kung Fuish hat, a nice haircut instead of perpetually mussed cornrows, and he's found religion. And, apparently, a kind of kung fu I've only heard of - water boxing - of which he might be teaching a class at some point. The funny part was, as much as he seemed to be talking crazy talk (martial arts-wise, what with humming birds and biting praying mantises and bears and trances, and otherwise, I suppose) what he was doing had an elegant and practical flow to it, as best as I could tell. He's like this odd wandering mystic, of sorts. Which would explain the David Carradine hat, now that I think about it.

Google Moon - mark my words, I'm going to use this to plot out my future house

Word of the Day: elan - enthusiastic vigor and liveliness, or, distinctive style or flair, or, the blonde character

      Well, I wasn't particularly impressed by the mango-nectarine. As much as I seem to have developed a reputation with anyone who's gone to a market with me for making a beeline for the exotic fruits section, on my side of things I'm often disappointed with the result of my treasure-hunting (notable exceptions: starfruit, green plums, prickly pear fruit). The mango-nectarines just didn't seem to have much of any flavor at all, and an unremarkable texture; now that I think about it, however, I suppose in that regard they might make for good filler in fruit salads. Meh.

Cassini Zeros in on Saturn's Strange Satellite - for fans of Evolution's Shore (even if it does change shape in the novel, it really might be hollow?!) and alliteration in article titles

Sweet Mother of All Catfish - I mean, in the thumbnail I thought it was a megamouth shark; though, when one of the aikido students at Ko Sho came back from the Ukraine she said there were monster catfish near Chernobyl

The 20 Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die - Yeesh, morbid title; and it would help if they explained why for each. Nonetheless, this being dedicated to Wyatt and his adroitly concise burger reviews, I'll just add the burgers we had in Anchorage....mmm, peach brandy sauce...

Word of the Day: callipygian - having beautifully proportioned buttocks
               "A Brooklyn woman was acquitted of manslaughter due to lack of evidence; she was accused of killing her husband after he mocked her for her lack of callypgian rondure." -- for any Farscape devotees, that sentence almost recreates a hilarious joke between Crichton and Aeryn (I just think the almost-paraphrasing is funny)

      So there I was, standing in the rain, kind of languidly hitting one of the posts of the pullup bar at my parents house, talking with my dad who was adjusting the gutter to fill his barrels of rainwater for the bonsai. Then it hit me (no pun intended): that's why one's hand is turned palm up for an uppercut. I think, anyway. That is, I was tapping the post with vertical and regular (3/4 turn for Shuri Karate) punches, and I noted that the regular punches felt like they could extend a little bit through the post further than the vertical punches. So I was all, "Hmm." Then I turned my hand all the way palm up, and my punch didn't even reach the post.
      So, then I started thinking, and as far as I can figure, it seems to me that since an uppercut is shortened as such, one can get more power out of it within a closer range; if a regular or vertical punch was tried inside trapping range, it would be too hard to generate any impact to be useful. But the uppercut in being foreshortened is perfect for the same, and also because it can adjust to go straight up, as the other two longer ranged punches cannot. Interestingly, I also noted that palm-heels have a more extended range as well, but at the same time can also be adjust for straight up angles. And this is all discounting hooks, as I was bracketing off circular strikes. And the lightning waspretty awesome at that point in time, beyond any of that. Lots of pretty lightning and thunder.

Visiting Patients, with Dictionary in Hand - I've only had occasion to witness this particular kind of occurrence a few times, but I've certainly seen a lot of trouble caused by (both) horribly tactless doctors stuck on stereotypes and patients/families who don't know how to listen

I want one - I especially like how it can be dedicated to different to scripts for different languages. And gaming stuff, that's fun too.

      Crazy wind today, huh? It wasn't quite the skirling, spiraling blast that lives in the canyons behind the Catalinas, in my humble opinion I'd say it was about as much as could be in the valley. It did make for a great combination of city-lit dust and blue lightning over the city, and for this strange liquid-seeming dust that flowed in waves across the roads, with little ripples and everything. The other odd part about the wind where I was for part of the evening was that it didn't stay in any semblance of a consistent direction; just standing in place I almost felt the buffeting was twisting me around two or three different ways at a time (I counted). Crazy.

      In other news, we finally got to see the premieres for SciFi Friday. Stargate SG-1 - the show I could never quite get into - left me with a split opinion. On one side, I adore the acting and rapport of Ben Browder and Claudia Black, and the Farscape jokes and almost Whedon-esque atmosphere (except not witticisms, but more gestural/or dry humor?) had us hooting (literally) with laughter. On the other hand, the characters they seem to have left over (I was hoping for a total overhaul) from the show's previous incarnation just bugged me. Stargate Atlantis left me with the same feeling I had for it in its previous season - great ideas and concepts, nice execution of same, acting....hm. Now, Battlestar Galactica far overarched the other two in terms of writing and acting and effects quality, as usual, but that is to be expected I think in terms how seriously each of the shows takes themselves.

      Unusual technique of the day: the diaphragm choke. As differentiated from blood chokes, air chokes, cervical chokes, and the rare face-numbing brainstem choke. Basically, the only way I know to do it is to just adjust a knee-on-stomach mount (a kind of lazy high variant) such that the weight goes specifically onto the solar plexus. Of course, knowing that pin, the diaphragm choke isn't so much an end-goal as a stunner for transitioning to other techniques. Or hitting things. That too.