Things of Note: A Pleasant Weekend -
-wow, yeah stretching can only go so far in not making one so sore after running for the first time in forever...ow
-Rachael Sage: aweso! though that show went on way, way longer than we thought it would, our evening activity was practically an all-night activity
-wet shelties basically take a leaf-blower to dry off
-late night Applebee's can be a fun time what with interacting with people outside the windows
-apparently the IceCats are so badass they check people through the glass
-pot roast sammich...Mimi's Cafe...mustard....the shiznit
-watch out for the stomach flu! it appears it's a-stalking

The Breakfast Club, with Emilio Estevez (I always liked him for some reason), Molly Ringwold, and I swear it's Colin Farrell. But it's not. It totally is, though. I just had this thought that I bet this would make a great play, just on account of looking at the cast list there's really only six or so characters, and a very limited setting. The trouble, as I see it, would just be finding someone that looked like Colin Farrell. But anyway, yeah, it's an 80s movie, but one that's obviously stood the test of time, and is a funny, solid character study.

The Break-Up, with Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston, and some people the Maynard gals recognized that I didn't. Oh, till I remembered Chasing Amy, which Kristin said she had said, but she didn't. I suppose the general consensus was that it was a good movie up until the ending, which was basically completely opposite of the way it should have gone. But I disagree! I thought the humor wasn't enough to make up for just being made as uncomfortable as the secondary characters watching a couple's relationship fall apart, but then bam! The ending was mature, open-ended, and pleasant, and beyond that I suppose there was nice character development over time. Fair enough, movie, fair enough.

On Friday Ms Kim and I went to see a small concert in the courtyard of Old Town Artisans - Rachael Sage (from NYC) was headlining, and two local artists, Amber Norgaard and Joshua Butcher opened for her. The courtyard itself was lovely and Southwest-y, and perfect for that kind of small show, and Norgaard and Butcher were both really good, but my favorite was Sage, hands-down. Her stage-presence lit up the courtyard, and her voice was like a plush velvet, even as she belted out some lines as she stomped on the stage. I bought one of her cd's, though I have to say I think I liked the concert where it was just her singing and playing the piano more than her with an accompanying band as it is on the cd - still good, though.

GI Joe vs Transformers Vol I and II. Interesting. A lot better than I expected, I have to say. I don't really know anything about Transformers at all, but the first volume I'd guess is an amalgamation of the two different series' origin-stories. And has several instances of Snake-Eyes being a badass. The second volume seemed more of an odd one-shot story, with a good dose of somewhat dry humor that was fitted perfectly to the art. And tangent to that, great artists for both - so, not something I'd have gone out of my way to read, but presented with it I liked it much more than I would have thought.

Zamzar - online file conversion, that's bound to be useful at some point or another

Wow...two very different examples of self-immolation; I think both are like cheating in a relationship, yeah there might be the claimed reason for it, but it's indicative of other issues in the person more likely

Random Phrases of the Day:
"partying like a verb," from a random stranger's flickr set
and
"the beginning is near," a sign on the back of a ginormous creepy costume/prop conglomeration in the All Souls Procession

So, prompted by Ms Abby, I'm going to rant about etymology a little. Specifically, involving the words "orgy," "orgasm," and "organism." Orgy made its way to Middle French (and from there I assume through Norman French into English) from Latin, previously by way of Greek, in referring to the 'orgiastic' rites for certain Greek gods. But, the origin for that word for the Greeks is kin to érgon, which in turn is kin to the Indo-European root *werg- which basically has to do with 'work.' Now, 'orgasm' comes through Latin from Greek as well, but is more directly derived from another Greek work, orgân, to swell. What I wonder at this point is whether that's connected to the root of organism, órganon, which means tool or bodily organ, but looks like it's also connected to érgon, so I think they might all connect back to that Indo-European root. Wabam! They are connected, however varied in meaning. I think.

-wow, they referenced not one but two of my favorite Stephen King works:
"Mostly, I just didn’t care about it at all, because c’mon, don’t they have bigger fish biscuits to fry? I realize that he’s young and good looking, she’s young and good looking, they’re lonely, whatever, but I’m just not convinced that taking a break from trying to stay alive in order to get it on makes any kind of realistic sense, unless you’re in a Stephen King short story. ‘Hey, we’re stranded on this raft that’s surrounded by an oil slick that eats people – let’s f---!’ ‘Hey, we’re stranded in this supermarket that’s surrounded by Lovecraftian monstrosities that eat people – let’s f---!’ ‘Hey, we’re stranded in a polar bear cage that’s surrounded by psychos who torture people – let’s f---!’”

-this makes me giggle

-Dian Wei and Sempronius Densus were two badass bodyguards (but not as badass as Ms Kim's brother Jay, who was also a bodyguard)

(corollary to Ms Connie's post) The Prestige, with Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale (otherwise known as the aweso), and Scarlett Johansson's booblies (like whoa). And Piper Perabo, who's cute! And Michael Caine, bwaaaa! And...and...David Bowie was Tesla? David Bowie was Tesla?! That blows my mind. And what was with the varied accents?

Anyway. We enjoyed this movie, especially as it wasn't The Illusionist like we'd previously tricked ourselves into seeing. Of course, in my usual willing-gullible-ness, I enjoyed being pulled through the twists like a white-water, Ms Kim enjoyed it as a puzzle to figure out (figuring most everything out way in advance, as usual), and Ms Abby was kind of in the middle, unconsciously figuring things out. Anyway, yay for complex semantic structures and tightly fitted narratives! That to me makes the 'true' magic of the machine forgivable, as a major theme of the movie is exactly that question of what is really true, anyway? And beyond that, I was always devoted to White Wolf's Mage setting which had the 'nature of truth/reality' trope as its very foundation, and this made me nostalgic for that. So, maybe some of the things were disappointing or obvious, but I thought that since they basically acknowledged that right away ("it's not the secret, but what the secret is used for that's important" or some paraphrasing) I was freed to enjoy the characters and narrative more.

Best Headline Ever: Robot Identifies Human Flesh As Bacon

Election results! (scroll down past the menus) - mostly good for what we wanted!

Leafcutter Ants are crazy. It's like any number of sci-horror movies or Buffy-episodes or whatever come to life, except with ants instead of people. And more seriously, it's amazing how like a single organism they are, which makes me think of more macroscopic (is that the right word?) organisms, like, well, people, which are composed of all different varieties of cells, but not as varied as, say, 'ant' and 'fungus' cells.

Not going to write about it really, but I'll just say that Conway's Game of Life is one of my favoritest things evar.

Today is Arbitrarily Quote Day.

“To me death is not a failure but rather a necessary part of the life cycle of being incarnate. Imagine if plants didn't die, or if the note of a piano didn't fade into oblivion, or if a thought didn't arise and pass. Life would come to a standstill; it would drown in its own accumulation.” – Phillip Moffitt

"Yüeh-shan promised to give his monks a dharma talk. Instead he sat deep in zazen. Afterward, the head monk followed him back to his room and angrily said: 'You promised to give a dharma talk. But you didn't say a word.'

Yüeh-shan said: 'For sutras there are sutra specialists. For commentaries there are commentary specialists. What did you expect from this old monk?'" - zen mondo

"If a person becomes too involved and too preoccupied with the role he is playing, and his ego begins to identify solely with this role, the other sides of his personality will be shoved aside. Such a persona-ridden person becomes alienated from his nature, and lives in a state of tension because of the conflict between his overdeveloped persona and the underdeveloped parts of his personality...the person has an exaggerated sense of self-importance which derives from playing a role so successfully...often he tries to project this role on others and demands that they play the same role...on the other hand, the victim of inflation can also suffer feelings of inferiority and self-reproach when he is incapable of living up to the standards expected of him." - from a primer on Jung; it made me immediately think of a few people I know, but I can't imagine them reading this, so...well, so buttons

And cool word of the day: acrolect, a register of a spoken language that is considered formal and high-style

Things! #of N0te: from, ~(the) Week^end.
-in a theatre of people laughing loudly, we, in the toppest far-left corner, were the loudest: hoorah.
-yes, I was the one who got the girly-drink at the table; and it was good, damnit (though it exacerbated my 'ache into a raspberry margarita headache)
-I have a sudden urge to go run the Cherry Garage's moebius strip of slopes like we used to at one in the morning, after parking there for the first time in forever
-stretching has to be done after that much kicking, I realize - otherwise, my hips feel like they've been attacked by a mob of boyscouts needing needing knot-tying to make rank
-I can't imagine the endurance necessary to play water-polo...I'd give myself half a seven-minute period, and then my speedo-clad tush would be bobbing drownededly
-people sunbathe at the rec center pool? in other news, sometimes their boobs pop out, it seems
-Outback equals steak plus ribs times tumtum filled with meat, divided by Ms Kim getting gift certificates for handling
-thanks for helping me clean, Momma!
-funniest All Souls Procession prop: RIP Pluto, 1930-2006 (a giant Pluto on a stick)
-the stilt people weren't as unsettling as the four-leggers last year, but they put so much effort in, it was cool
-next year: Tia becomes a skele-sheltie
-oddest encounter of the night: ex-girlfriend's parents standing right next to and conversing with people we met at the Fetish Ball; small-big town Tucson, right there

Guest post from Ms Connie, on The Prestige -
I'm not quite sure where I stand on that movie. One of the statements in the very beginning is that the whole point of the magic trick is keeping it a secret, because when you find out the trick behind it, it seems simple and stupid. They gave an example where the magician crushes a birdcage with a bird in it and then makes the bird re-appear. Thing is...they're still crushing the first bird dead. They just have a second bird. Anyway, the movie was a lot like that. You predicted some things easily, some things you didn't predict--but at the end 'reveal' or 'prestige' you weren't sure if you'd predicted them or not because they were so...obvious. I heard reviewers say that as soon as it was over they wanted to see it again to catch all the nuances, but to be honest, I wouldn't have found that necessary. The movie was only subtle for people who are used to movies like Superman Returns. I'm not saying it was bad, but a twister like The Machinist or Memento, it was not. They also got me by making one of the tricks "real magic." They tried to explain it with fantastic new technology, but it wasn't related to real technology. You know, by obeying the laws of the universe and everything. It's a show about magicians...in my mind it could have been as horrifying without the 'magic machine.'

Still, where the movie was brilliant was the character interaction between Jackman and Bale. Their revenge/cross/doublecross story was the meat of the movie. And when you look at the details of the conclusion, it answers a lot of questions about each character and what they'd be willing to do for the better trick.

-also, she made a nice wiki find: floral vocabulary

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, with Sacha Baron Cohen and Ken Davitian. Also known as, two men I really, really didn't need to see naked. I'm kind of torn; on one level, this was just plain stupid. But on another level, it's horribly clever. I'll admit I was laughing the entire time, along with our little corner of the theatre with us being loud-ass laughers (people were looking at us), but I was also kind of uncomfortable, but that's probably a good thing in the end in this context. What context, you ask? The social commentary, which made Cohen's character just funny, and the real people just plain disturbing at times.

The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, by Dan Millman. Again, kind of torn. Reading this was like reading all the yoga articles I've read over the past year, condensed and simplified, and pasted together with a thin veneer of 'warrior' mysticism and fiction. So in that sense I kind of blinked, as what was a paragraph in this book had been a long article in a different context for me. Now, that said, this book would be great for anyone who didn't want to go through and read all those articles and just wanted the condensed or lite version, and as such I would recommend it strongly, as hell, the only reason I read all those articles and actually paid attention was not so much out of mad discipline or enlightenment, but because I was depressed and desperate.

This may possibly me just talking out of my ass. So, really not that different than SOP. I think it would be interesting to see herbs and folk remedies tried out in hospitals. For example, take garlic - it's been cultivated and used as a panacea since before anyone knows when, and they've proven at least some of the claims of its benefits, mainly for its affects on heart health and the immune system. So it would be nice stroll into the cardiac floor at the hospital to see 'garlic' prescribed along with the synthetic whatchahoosits I remember bewildering the poor patients. Or, say, ginger for an upset stomach, instead of pumping them with more chemicals. Or triphala instead of harsh milk of magnesia? Winter cherry to offset withdrawals?

I mean obviously trials and testing and whatnot would be needed, but it would I think be helpful in patient relations if nothing else to hear some familiar, simple food terms along with chemical and medical jargon. Yes, I'm sure some of those things are just psychosomatic, but hey, on the other hand some have been used for centuries for their claimed uses, I think those would at least bear testing for effect.

Interesting image: "A cephalophore is a saint who is generally depicted carrying his head in his hands."

Random dialogue of the day!
“Understanding is the one-dimensional comprehension of the intellect. It leads to knowledge. Realization is three-dimensional – a simultaneous comprehension of head, heart, and instinct. It comes only from direct experience.”
“I’m still not with you.”
“Do you remember when you first learned to drive? Prior to that time, you’d been a passenger; you only understood what it was. But you realized, what it was like when you did it for the first time.”

Guest link from Ms Connie - Friedrich Schiller; lots of awesome lines (no, seriously, this guy is crazy-hardcore-awesome)

Smoke Free Arizona - interesting distinctions between the props? Man, I've really been going through them this year, I didn't realize how much effort it would take to parse all the legalese and point-counterpoints...ugh

(the O.G.) The Omen, with Gregory Peck and a creepy kid. And some rottweilers. And that creepy woman! Ew. It probably didn't help our appreciation of the movie that we were making fun of it the entire time, and that scratches made us skip past two or three scenes. Though, that said, I think as genuinely high-quality as it all was, the slow pacing and sheer length of the long silences and scenes of nothing were a bit too much for me. I thought the "It's all for you!" scene was amazing on some level, however, I have to say, and also I think this movie wins for best decapitation ever.

Random, silly question: where is the universe located, spatially? I mean, if the universe is all there is, where is it located in turn?

Nancy Wake - one completely hardcore badass woman

And completely unrelated and different but interesting to imagine stories of some French women; I don't know, I just think some nice artsy movies could be made out of the various stories within those articles

Happy Hall of the Ween!

Appropriately enough, I had something of a bad dream. It was probably because I was sleeping right on my injured arm, judging by how much it hurt when I got up (Corinne, it needs the fixing!). But damn, it was pretty vivid. It started out with the people I usually hang out with and me setting up for me to teach a martial arts class; unfortunately, I desperately needed a ball for some reason, so had to run home to get one. By the time I got back, it seems everyone had left.

So I started wandering, and came to an odd building that looked like a house from LA, and found some guys from work and a couple friends of my dad's. They were all looking at computers, and somehow I was made to look at one, which had a kind of myspace picture gallery of what was supposedly an ex-girlfriend...but that was where the bad part of the dream was. Certainly not for looking at pictures of this random girl, who I guess resembled by ex-girlfriend, but had straight hair and a narrower face, and piercings in only some of the pictures. But I felt like something mean was being done to me, I'm still not sure what, and there was that...discordance, of being forcibly told the photos of that person were someone else I had once known very well; I think that was disturbing in the same way I've read schizophrenics are disturbed when their brain thinks their friends' faces have slightly changed enough to be creepy.

Ugh, discordant morning.

Anyway, in honor of the day that it is! And ten points to Mr Bryce for dressing as Jason and stalking around the warehouse scaring people, heh. Also, the candy of the land of sushi.

Things of Note: A Weekend in La (for the one or two people I might get that place-name reference)
-hot damn we made good time going both ways to LA, like seven hours or a little under; my right hip is sure stiff, however, and my voice is a bit raw from belting out random songs
-congrats to Ms Kim (and Rooney) for doing well at the dog show, which happened to be set upon a beeyootiful lake, which would be great for camping at
-chalupas sure are tasty when you eat them next to zillion-dollar homes that overlook a huge bay with sparkling city lights and a huge refinery torch
-oats plus molasses equals nauseating smell; horses seem to like it, though
-what are you, Daphne's? A sit down place...a fast-food place? Though we eat your gyros, will we ever know?
-chinchillas are made for slinging, and/or tossing
-Pakistani/Indian food is pretty good, especially as we ordered having no idea what we were ordering
-we somehow caught the first episode ever of Samurai Champloo (wikawika!) and the last episode ever of Cowboy Bepop - an amazing occurrence
-"If I had never smoked marijuana, I would never have learned to play this flute *acid jazz riff*;" alas, Venice Beach actually had little to take pictures of, though it was fun
-Manhattan Beach was also nice, it would be perfect for hill sprints, and is just aesthetically pleasing, generally, as well

Huo Yuan Jia (Fearless), with Jet Li, Collin Chou and Shido Nakamura. As Mr Scott pointed out, it's a complete movie; but I'd say it was kind of a shallow one, nonetheless. Which is fine - it's a martial arts movie (and, since it's with Li, one with hell-good fight scenes)! I think the discordance was that the cinematography was such that I was expecting a more artsy movie, but it was more like a regular martial arts movie with higher production values. I greatly enjoyed seeing the different national styles pitted against each other (I wish they'd do that more, haven't seen much of that since Bloodsport, really) and also especially how they adjusted the editing and cuts in the fight scenes to reflect the main character's state of mind, that was well done and clever.
-and wow, I just thought it was a conceit of the movie: Leitai
-and damn! Why would they cut out scenes with Michelle Yeoh and a Thai fighter?

Midnight Nation, by J. Michael Straczynski and Gary Frank. Hmm...well, it's damn good comic, for true. But it wasn't quite a page-turner like the other comics I've bought lately (Stormwatch: Team Achilles and Clockwork Thugs, Yo, say). I think that was because as much as it was a story about a character developing, there really wasn't that much actual character development that I could see. At the least, it was an interesting take on the archetypical Lucifer-story that I enjoy so much.

Well, I got about half of them right - do they all look the same? (from Ms Xuemei)

It begins. Dun-dun-dunnnnn! (from my dad)

Guest post:
So, it's Friday. Not sure what to say about that. This week's spun itself out pretty fast. All hallows weekend ahead, the summer behind. It's Fall. Or Autumn, or whatever. I never understood why that's the only season that gets two names. All the others have to be content with one. Spring has to be happy with a verb...but I guess "fall" has one of those too, huh? Only seasons described by what they do rather than by what they are. But why Autumn? Was it Autumn first, and then Fall? Or Fall first and then Autumn.

A seasonal stream (or spring) of consciousness, brought to you by Connie.

Song of Susannah, by Stephen King. As usual with a Dark Tower, I won't write too much because I'd really just be going on and on. And anything I'd have to say probably wouldn't make sense to anyone who hadn't gotten this far in the epic, anyway, much like the novel really wouldn't make sense to anyone who had read each of the previous. Well, it would, but there would be none of the massive weight of character development and narrativee behind it, and that would be a sin to read this and not have that. I will at least note that it reads incredibly quickly, and has one of the most interesting instances of metafiction that I've ever come across (ie, I actually kind of liked it, even). Well, really, it's like metafiction turned back upon itself and...hm...contact me otherwise if you want to hear me ramble, heh. And I want to be a gunslinger when I grow up.

Ah-HA

Yes, I realize it's completely out of context and random - but I thought it was interesting, so there!
"The traditional and main naval strategy employed by the Japanese was that of "grapple-and-board", whereby sailors would attempt to board an enemy ship and fall to sword fighting on the decks. This method was mainly used because Japanese soldiers excelled at hand to hand combat. The Japanese Navy's concept of sea battle was therefore one of a fight between crews rather than the vessels themselves. This was the most common naval strategy in the world during this time, and was as common among the Europeans of the day. The Korean Navy, however, utilizing superior warships and firepower to burn and sink the enemy vessels, thus engaged in a more modern type of naval warfare. During Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea, Japan's transport ships were largely destroyed by Admiral Yi-Sun-Shin's leadership with superior firepower and knowledge of strategic points on the home field."
I mean, actually, all of these are pretty interesting - naval battles of the Seven-Year War, I mean

Woo! New Dan Abnett novel approaching.

Random, Out of Context Line of the Day:
"I...I know I'm not a man...do you think you could you bury what's left
of me in the Earth--like a man?"

Fever Pitch, with Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore. Cute, and well-structured; it had its funny moments, and was nice and fluffy. There was one point where I thought Barrymore's character was going to cheat on Fallon's character and I was all, "whoa, surprising drama," but nope they took a different route for injecting a bit of depth into the marshmallow. I thought the ending was a bit silly, but I liked it fine, anyway. The integration of contemporary real-life baseball games into a completely fictional narrative was a vaguely interesting affect as well, I wonder if that's been done with anything besides sports.

I thought this was a fun wiki cluster - I'll note the Swedish entries, offhand...

A History of Yoga - huh...I think I'm still mostly a hatha yogi, but I think I've been kind of drifting towards tantra yoga

I think the idea of the polymath should be brought back as an attainable goal. That's my arbitrary, un-based statement for the day.

This reminds me of Sensei Tony telling us how he's going to bash us over the head with a cane when he's older

Quote of the Day, for Ms Connie (and her 'tude):
"Live so that when you wake up, and your feet hit the floor, the devil says, 'Oh no, she's awake!"

Days Gone Bye, The Walking Dead Vol. 1, by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. Solid stuff. I'm definitely going to get the next TPB in the series - I mean, the first thing the author does is go on about how it's going to be a character-driven story. Oh hell yes. It's kind of in between Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later in setting, and follows their general archetype (even down to the trope of it not really being the zombies that are the scariest thing, but regular humans, when it comes down to it). Black and white, but nicely clearly drawn art, though I think this first volume was really for setting up the characters - I'm quite curious to see how they change after that ending.

Stormwatch: Team Achilles, Vol. 1, by Micah Wright and Whilce Portacio. Intelligent social commentary (in regards to the standard superhero archetype), action-packed, and full of hilarious dry-wit, it's a winning combination. Unfortunately, the research shows that's as far as Team Achilles got before it became too satirical for its own good, so I think I'll stick with just this first volume. Still, having regular humans just using their wits and real-life tactics and equipment subvert the violence-glorifying superheroes-without-consequences is fun for at least this much - my favorite line, after a soldier breaks a superhero's arm:
"You're...using...super...powers..."
"Nope. Just jujitsu."

In other news, I think I have a teensy bit of a mancrush on film critic Phil Villareal from the Arizona Daily Star. His part on the Frank Show on Fridays is awesome. Sorry uber-nasal film critic from KXCI on Thursday afternoons - you're sardonic and interesting, but Villareal's witty.

Stealth Chess, kind of like Pratchett's novels, in which this finds its origin, I'm not sure if it's dippy or awesome

Random Quote of the Day:
"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman." - Anais Nin

Things of Note. End. Week. Whatnot.
-congrats to Ms Kim for kicking ass in Buckeye! Hoorah! And for Wyatt, yes, it's always Buckeye
-no one told us that Southern Fried Murder was theatre with (pretty okay!) food; we were accordingly wide-eyed...also, Kevin had a paunch, and tormented a gay man
-conversations about sex with gay men seem to go in predictable directions
-why are there damn politics in everything?! Damnit! Can't Ieven just go and workout anymore without some kind of awkwardness?
-the horribly overgrown grass in the backyard has a use - a stalking/pouncing playground for dogs! I'll take that as a solid excuse to be lazy.
-now that I finally understand the rules in roller derby, it's a lot more interesting; good times! our favorite was one of the jammers, Fisti the Kidd - not only did she wiggle her tush when she was starting, she was a badass.
-the announcers seemed to be half the fun at the derby, but for the cute girl in the cop outfit, with the incredibly strident voice - she was sure enthusiastic, though, so I didn't mind too much
-new brakes are exorbitant; multiple trips to Walmart and Home Depot are annoying, but, one sees 'interesting' people in the former of those stores

Behemoth: Seppuku, by Peter Watts. Wow. Quite an ending to the Rifters trilogy. As The half-novel prior to it was kind of an extension of the first novel, Starfish in its introspective and relatively quiet tone, Seppuku is more like the second novel, Maelstrom, with its more frenetic and extroverted path. I'm kind of torn, though, as much as I enjoyed the novel; the narrative was rife and rich with semantic nets that would be great to go back and parse with a much closer reading, but I can't help but feel the ending was a little...anticlimactic? But, that said, that's not taking the aforementioned symbolism into account, nor does that opinion accept that perhaps the ending mirrors a Herbert-style ending-that's-not-an-ending wherein it's almost encouraged to have loose-ends and almost start a whole new story.

Phew.

Anyway, a corollary: I just started the next Dark Tower novel, Song of Susannah, and realized something. As much as I like certain authors because I feel like reading their works changes my perception of myself and the world around me, and because I learn things from their narratives (McDonald, Herbert, Watts), I just realized something. And already said that, damn. Anyway, I was comparing in my head Ken Lubin (a Watts character) and Roland Deschain (if you don't know who he is, then you can just go right to hell), and wondering whether Lubin could perhaps be called a sort of dystopian gunslinger. I think in some ways he's comparable, but he really isn't one in the end, but that's besides the point.

The point! Is that it's funny when reading a dystopian post-bioapocalyptic novel with inherently dysfunctional characters that you're really into, you might'nt realize that it might kind of bring your mood down. I didn't notice that till while reading King's novel, I realized my mood was suddenly lifted, and I started to get a "Bring it, world!" feeling back, from my mostly broken-feeling week. Yes, there is something rich and changing that is kind of shared between those narratives - but I didn't realize that they could have such bright or shadowed aspect to them.

In the Peter Watts novels I've been reading, characters occasionally use phrases such as "r-selector" or "K-selector," and I could never figure out quite what the author was trying to say when those phrases were used to describe other characters. But then I ran across this nice little bit:

"Typically, r-selected species produce many offspring, each of which is unlikely to survive to adulthood, while K-selected species invest more heavily in fewer offspring, each of which has a better chance of surviving to adulthood."

So I would take that (along with running off remembered contexts in the narrative) to mean that someone referred to as an r-selector would be of a more promiscuous bent, ie, they might not be looking to actually have a lot of babies, but there behavior of sleeping with a lot of people might seem as such. Whereas a K-selector would be someone of a more monogamous, relationship-focused bent. Or, from a different angle, someone of a particular religious background that encourages mass production of younglings might be considered an r-selector as well.

Either way, it's an interesting way of looking at the people around oneself, all of a sudden from a more...ecological perspective. Kind of a reminder of humans still being animals, as it were. Also, it would be funny to say "r's and K's" instead of "ladies and gentlemen," as it would eliminate gender from that equation and speak to a different level of thought. And be kind of sardonically funny.

For AZ peeps, Save Our Trust

I
hate
stupid
ominous
feeling
bleh
!

A visual poem, by me.

Things of Note, from a Whirlwind Weekend:
-don't get comfort food at a bar, really, please just get burgers - learn from our experiences; little flat-screen tv's at each booth were interesting, though
-scorpions are interesting - not insects, but like little land-crabs...or big, in the case of the one we saw; I wonder whether they'll have have a soft-shell scorpion roll at sushi places, it would make a good Halloween seasonal thing
-I was surprised to learn that pickled red cabbage isn't that bad...except I also can't eat it without getting sick...but I can eat bratwurst covered in spicy mustard and drink Octoberfest beer while watching people do odd jigs to Octoberfest music while we shiver in the cold on Mt Lemmon!
-I think we met the Mayor of Pasadena...well, sort of, it's a kind of a collection of interesting stories...but yay for people rambling into Tucson from LA!
-I'll never, ever look at the glove compartment in Natalie the same way...especially when it starts singing...seriously, it's creepy
-I think if I were to get married in Tucson, I would get married in that place south of Congress that I already forgot the name of - it was really nice for a wedding, though!
-my girlfriend caught the bouquet. ruh-roh.
-Clint was charismatic enough to convince the bartenders who weren't allowed to serve shots to serve shots, get his crotch-grabbed by a cokehead (while dancing with another girl), and also to hear some really scandalous gossip from a complete stranger

Children of the Corn, with Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton. No idea who they are. But what's important is that the movie's based on a story by Stephen King. While it wasn't really scary at all, it was very interesting in several conceptual ways. Like, if nature/religion's usual path and purpose is self-propagation, what does it imply about the children's cult that they do the opposite and basically winnow themselves down over time, in isolation? I think it's a remarkable, subtle characterizing detail about the cult, personally, making it a kind of antimatter of the "natural order," as it were. And there's a whole wealth of things like that, from the uncanny nature of children to the driving force behind the cult, to questions about the expanded setting (especially with King's penchant for such).

Best in Show, with Parker Posey, Will Hamilton, Eugene Levy, and a bunch of other vaguely familiar people (and apparently some famous real-life handlers). Kind of like a really long, deadpan-humor montage-sequence, or a pretty damn funny collection of character studies. It wasn't exactly like the dog show I've been to (inside vs out) but I could see how there could be real-life analogues of those characters. It made me curious to go to more dog shows and start looking for them, actually. And Fred Willard at the announcer was the best. In show.

General Wade, a neighbor of my family's for many years (courtesy of Wyatt)

Mmm, Friday the 13th. A small Thai guy named Jason just threatened to go on a rampage with a machete, a.k.a. a lawnmower blade. The last Friday the 13th that sticks in my memory I got two traffic tickets, then that weekend led directly and inexorably to an execrable weekend from the bowels of something foul. Good times. This time at least I just slept in, was late for work, and then scraped my bumper while trying to fix my poor parking job. The day's not over yet, of course! How exciting!

Except not really, no.

Guest Poem post! Woo!
Morganatic

Sinis tree pruned bare
Bones bleaching under glaring sky
Bud, flower, nut and leaf
Freeze and drop and feel no grief
Branches bare since colored fall
Deaf to dryad's beck and call

Accelleration forward
Force
No mass
Right left
And left
And left

Ahead is a wall, sometimes brick
Rainbow graffiti prose's
"The earth on which we walk is flat
memories flee…a deserting rat.
Half our soul can help, abet
The elephant will, for now, forget"

Speed of light
Of sound
Of silence
Left
And left
And left

A candle wick sits still and calm
As night draws close around it
Fire flares, flame so bright
Day brought forth from stagnant night
Morning comes, none too soon
Muse's candle is the moon.

Sinis tree
Left
Sinis tree
Left
Sinis tree
And right

Completely unrelatedly, Joshua Norton seems to have been an interesting fellow

Behemoth: ß-Max, by Peter Watts. I hesitate to write about this novel just yet, as it's really quite literally only half of a novel, because of publishing snags. Anyway, in short, it's got the character-driven and setting-based feel of the first book in the trilogy, Starfish, with the energy and activity of the second novel, Maelstrom. Not as much hard sci-fi as the latter, though, but the characters and plot generally make up for that. Anyway, more to say when I finish the second half - and then on to SoS, I promise, Connie!

Clockwork Thugs, Yo (Livewires, Vol. 1), by Adam Warren. First, I'll just list the names of the characters: Stemcell, Hollowpoint Ninja, Gothic Lolita, Cornfed, and Social Butterfly. That and the title are kind of an indication of the sassy, self-aware, and ironic humor of the writing (SOP for Warren, one of my favoritest authors). The other thing that's well utilized from his repetoire is the profusion of science-fiction ideas that are spread throughout the story, and that are just plain interesting. It's funny to feel real empathy for characters which are essentially emotionless, which especially ties into the pretty disturbing ending. Good stuff! Though unfortunately the TBP comes in digest form (ie, shrunken), sadly for the trademark Dirty Pair-esque art.

Word of the Dizzay! Haven't done that in forever:
concinnity \kuhn-SIN-uh-tee\, noun:
1. Internal harmony or fitness in the adaptation of parts to a whole or to each other.
2. Studied elegance of design or arrangement -- used chiefly of literary style.
3. An instance of concinnity

Reading about the basis for that movie I'm so excited about, I came across this fun little tidbit: "On the first day of the siege, when Xerxes demanded the Greeks surrender their arms, Leonidas is said to have replied Μολών Λαβέ ('Come and get them')."

Chess Boxing - can't decide whether it's stupid, or interesting

an interesting definition in terms of the idea I'd previously brought up, and that's explored in Peter Watts' novels -
"A psychopath is defined as having no concern for the feelings of others and a complete disregard for any sense of social obligation. They seem egocentric and lack insight and any sense of responsibility or consequence. Their emotions are thought to be superficial and shallow, if they exist at all. They are considered callous, manipulative, and incapable of forming lasting relationships, let alone of any kind of love. It is thought that any emotions which the true psychopath exhibits are the fruits of watching and mimicking other people's emotions. They show poor impulse control and a low tolerance for frustration and aggression. They have no empathy, remorse, anxiety or guilt in relation to their behavior. In short, they truly are devoid of conscience."

Bed of Roses, with Christian Slater and Mary Stuart Masterson. And a cute supporting actress that apparently does the voice of Bobby on King of the Hill? How funny. And ah ha! I was right, Gina Torres from Firefly! Anyway. I think this story could have easily dropped into "trite," but skirted the edge of taking itself too seriously with a few well-placed aware-of-irony lines, and some nice acting. Just a nice romance, quite pleasant.

I don't understand the advertising logic (I thought Li had done his "last movie") but Mr Scott found this amazing little hint of a thing: Jet Li plus Jason Statham equals aweso. I'm almost gibbering, internally, between this and 300.

Things of Note, from the End of the Week:
-wow, Scorsese films are long; not that I didn't already realize that, but it's funny to go into a movie theatre one day, and emerge from it the next day
-for the first time in years, I brought "homework" back upon myself: thank you Mr Jeff, and your kicking drills that are oh so pleasant to do
-there's a Mongolian barbecue on Campbell, now (ie, within walking distance of Adelaide): aweso!
-any band that sings about drinking and Irish girls, and ends with "Turtle Power!" is pretty rocking
-yes, an Aussie can have Matrix-like agility that surpasses a mountain goat, but it doesn't prevent me from wanting to clap hands over my eyes when she bounds playfully along the edge of cliffs that overlook spiky tree-tops
-shelties jumping = cutest thing ever; it's like an old-school Mario Bros game come to life (boing!)
-apparently, slightly upscale sushi places sometimes hire stippers to be their hostess; that, or the poor gal just really, really needed to do her laundry and only had a single clean nightie (and I'll admit, on some levels we really weren't complaining at all)

Aw man, there was a weather alert this morning for a storm system just outside of Tucson, I feel bad for the people who probably woke up into it. I mean, I'm sure "nickel-sized hail" and "continuous cloud-to-ground lightning" are cool and all, but when the emergency alert is telling you to get the hell inside, now, that's a bit ominous.

Emotions in Motion - interesting article on emotions and body-memory

The Departed, with Matt Damon (say it Team America style), that guy from Titanic, one of the Sheen's, Marky Mark, a very eeevil Nicholson, and one of the Baldwin's. I knew this was a re-make of a Hong Kong flick that I'd wanted to see, even before I heard that on the radio! I had just never gotten around to seeing it (aw, man, and it has Andy Lau in it and everything...). Anyway, for as much as it's a re-make, as everyone seems to be saying I'm sure Departed will be in contention for all sorts of awards; it was a bit long and convoluted, but you know what, we only realized that in retrospect, as during the movie we were pretty well focused and attentive. So, definitely worth seeing, in the end. And Marky Mark - you make the bestest asshole ever.

"It's funny because it's true" - from Mr. Phil

For people in Tucson, No on 202

I liked this, especially with the amazing weather Tucson's been having-
"One way to understand the distinction between concentration and meditation is by using rain as an analogy. When rain starts, the moisture of clouds and fog (everyday awareness) coalesces into concentrated moisture and becomes distinct raindrops. These raindrops represent dharana—intermittent moments of focused attention. When the rain falls to earth and creates a river, the merging of the individual raindrops into one stream is like dhyana or meditation. The separate raindrops merge into one continuous flow, just as individual moments of dharana merge into the uninterrupted focus of meditation."

In re-finishing up the amazing novel Maelstrom, by Peter Watts, I ran across an interesting idea contained within basically a sentence. Which is really par for the course with Watts, with huge chunks of story suddenly going from ambiguous to goosebump-inducing clarity with a single phrase or even word.

"Conscience is overrated anyway," Jovellanos said all around them.
"Give it a rest, Alice," Desjardins said, rubbing his wrists.
"I'm serious. Think about it: not everyone even has a conscience, and the people that do are invariably exploited by the ones that don't. Conscience is--irrational, when you get right down to it."

What I’m most interested in is the second posit Alice Jovellanos brings up, that perhaps not everyone has a conscience (and I’m sure that’s not a black and white, conscience or no conscience thing). I guess, just looking back, I remember people I’ve known or know, or met at the hospital, hell, that I’ve been intimate with, that were as honestly baffled by my expression of being troubled by my conscience as I was baffled by their inability to understand the concepts within the family of guilt/remorse/having a conscience.

I guess it just makes me question my assumption of yore that our inability to come to terms on that aspect of self was simply miscommunication – maybe, instead, it really is something like the novel describes on other pages, that they’re just not as physically (in the brain structure/chemistry sense) able to have a conscience. Which brings up the questions, is it rather that it’s rather flipflopped, and having a conscience is more like having a handicap? And if true, would it really be that much of a ‘nature’ thing – how much would ‘nurture’ play into it?

I have to say, I'm already very enamored of 300. One, it's based off an epic graphic novel. That's got me going to it already. Two, it's by Frank Miller, which means stylized in my mind, and if you know me, you know that's what I like. Three, it's about Sparta and Persia, one of my favorite historical periods. Four, it looks awesome.

Randoms.

What a strange, odd night. Besides the initial, somewhat flustering and blink-inducing news, class went fine...except for all of us being physically messed up. Kevin gets props for being hardcore in the final grappling rounds, though his body handed him a nice adrenal dump afterwards. Michael gets props for learning what happens when the aggresion of Western wrestling runs into the yielding of jujitsu, though his shoulder is probably going to be swollen after he set himself up for a beautifully executed pile-drive right onto it. Hugh gets props for climbing nearly every day this week, and pushing himself to the point of killing both his biceps anyway. And I messed up my shoulder, again, pretty much leaving my right arm annoyingly useless, and I'm so ashamedly out of shape I've got sore spots on my torso an knots in my posterior hips (ok seriously this time, who wants to rub my butt?). Then we get home, and Ms Kim shows us how a 65 pound dog went loco at work at pretty much mangled her poor legs; I've not seen such big bruises with so many colors since the hospital. So props to her for still being relatively polite to the client in the middle of all that.

An anti-ode to bullthorns. Note my restraining myself from any sort of profanity or expletives. I'm not sure what they're actually called, but that's what Ms Xuemei called them many years ago, and it's stuck and propagated ever since. These little seeds are basically nature's caltrop, pointy in a blunt way no matter how they're oriented. The plant they spawn from is a weed that sticks completely flat to the ground in a viney form, clinging tenaciously even after herbicide has long killed it. I'm not sure which is worse, the seeds' tendency to stick to footwear, and then ambush bare feet later on in the house, or walking outside with bare feet and planting both soles into the center of a plant (which inevitably has a wide diameter, so stepping back off of it means stepping on even more bullthorns). So here's a big honking middle finger to you, Mr Plant.

Three, I don't know why I thought of this, but some self-exposition on the name I use for the blog, Jinn, in terms of what it's referencing, in different senses. One, djinn from Islamic folklore. Two, the word "jin" in its various definitions in Japanese. And three, that definition of "jin" contrasted with its use as a term in bonsai.

Interesting time-based map

For some odd reason in browsing through articles at lunch I ran across some profiles of serial killers. Oh! It was when I was reading a synopsis of Silence of the Lambs, and then got sidetracked by being intrigued in those other articles for a similar reason - humanity at an extreme of some aspect of itself. Anyway, for one, what those serial killers did was actually a good deal more disturbing and scary than any horror movie synopsis I've read, which I didn't really expect for some reason. But the part I was really interested in was more one step back from the murderers in question - the mothers.

Consistently, each of the killers I happened to read about had a domineering mother that would psychologically and emotionally abuse them, and in a less striking sense, a similarly abused or just plain absent father. So, one thing I would like to understand better is what connection is there between that parent-child relationship and the subsequent actions of the child - say, why would one killer feel an urge to pretend to be his mother (a la Hitchcock's Psycho, but in a much, much more disturbing way)? The thing I'm actually more interested in, though, is to take another step "back," and see what drove the mothers to their particular dysfunctions, as that seems like it's been ignored in conventional thought upon the matter.

Things of note from the weekend! Rocktober edition.
-a Jackson Pollack party! all kinds of fun, and messy; next up - a Jackson Pollack bra-painting party!
-a tasty drink, known colloquially as "the Costa Rican drink," is composed of sugar cane rum, sugar, and limes...it does smell a bit like rubbing alcohol, though
-combining various drugs and alcohol apparently may make one bark at people, and/or play awesome blues/metal guitar
-a new refridgerator = cool (ha, no pun intended); having said frigidaire be a quarter-inch too big = exasperating....thus: break out the power tools
-we can actually see the back porch for the first time in months - thank you, Ms Kim!
-best we can figure, some concrete dust from the new Alvernon bridge thingie must have gotten down into the Rilito; we couldn't explain the abnormally thick and oddly peeling "tiles" that we found in the dessicated parts of the riverbed any other way

Swiri, with a few Korean actors I actually recognized, randomly. I didn't see the end, nor the beginning, but wow the middle was pretty exciting. So, I won't write much about it, except to say there's a moment where even not really knowing what's going on you'll be saying, "Ohhh, no way, that is stone-cold not cool."

Like, whoa.

Update! I didn't beep going through the doors at Target last night! Hoorah!
Damn conspiracy chippy thing.
Though I maintain, I'm willing to take all takers who want to rub my butt and look for something hard.

Silent Hill, with Radha Mitchell and Laurie Holden. Mmm...not really a horror movie. More a conceptually scary movie, but not a particularly disturbing one, either. Interesting, at least. But not interesting in the watching per se - rather, in doing a close reading of the imagery and symbolism, instead. Better than most video game movies; but something is lost in the lack of interacting, that made the game so famous. So. Um. Kind of a neutral opinion in the end, I guess.

A funny thing - that someone I know so well now, and that I've known for years (but only as an acquaintance), might be someone I "met" double those years ago. We both went to the same town in Delaware nigh every summer, to the same boardwalk, to the same amusement park when we were much younger. So I'm sure we must have at least seen each other somewhere, in passing. On top of that, we both have memories of throwing imaginary "grenades" and shooting imaginary guns at people across the ubiquitous viking ship ride, though admittedly I need to check with my cousins and brother, as my memories are less clear and might be manufactured. But still. It's a small world, after all.

Oof...goosebumps. So I'm re-reading Peter Watts' Maelstrom, and ***SPOILER*** (though it won't make any sense if you haven't read it anyway) recalling the interesting thing that happens when the Lenie Clarke meme starts to take on a (semi)sentient existence and at the same time parallels the William Gibson concept of the critical mass of celebrity, and consequently ravages the eponymous Maelstrom. So in this interesting article there's a pretty direct real-life parallel, of something taking on a 'life' of its own on the interwebnet, with an accompanying 'face' along with it and everything! Eerie.

Whoa...honestly, this little bug kind of freaks me out a little. Trickery! I suppose it is a good example of convergent evolution, though.

I've been intrigued by chess and chess-variants of late - Baroque is one I think particularly interesting, especially in its own variants at the bottom of the page (like the very divergent Renaissance, for example)

-for the first time ever on y.t., song lyrics (by Michael Franti, heard 'em this morning, doesn't do the song justice to read it, though...)-

About All The Freaky People Make the Beauty of the World

Starvation is a creation of the devil
a rebel
I\'m bringin\' food to the people like a widow
bringin\' flowers to a grave in the middle
of the city isolation is a riddle
to be surrounded by a million other people
but feel alone like a tree in the desert
dried up like the skin of a lizard
but full of color like the spots of a leopard
drum and bass pull me in like a sheperd
scratch my itch like a needle on a record
full of life like a man gone to Mecca
sky high like an eagle up soaring
I speak low but I\'m like a lion roaring
baritone like a Robeson recordin\'
I\'m giving thanks for bein\' human every morning...

Because the streets are alive with the sound of Boom! Bap!
can I hear it once again!
Boom! Bap! Tell your neighbor tell a friend
every box gotta right to be boomin\'
because the streets are alive with the sound of Boom! Bap!
can I hear it once again!
Boom! Bap! Tell your neighbor tell a friend
every flower got a right to be bloomin\'!
Stay Human!

For a while, every time I've gone into either Target or Walgreens, the damn shoplifting-sensor things beep (and on the way out as well, natch). While that might have been an amusingly easy way to shoplift were I so inclined, as the clerks just invariably pass me through, if they even notice, it was also just plain annoying. I tried not going in with my cell phone, or keys, or whatever - still beeped. So last night the clerk asked me a seemingly random question - "Do you have any sort of chip on you?" I blinked, as I didn't have my cell phone on me, or anything really.

But while I'm getting lunch today, I look in an my wallet on a whim, and find...well, a chip. A one inch square adhesive pink and metallic chip thingie. I have no recollection of that going into my wallet, nor clue as to what it is. Besides being freaked out a little, I'm kind of curious to see whether I beep again next time I peruse one of those stores of convenience. Also to look up those guys from X-Files, I forget what they were called, the ones that helped Mulder all the time.

You know, I never understood nor liked the idea of all those hidden dimensions in string theory, anyway. As much as I liked the violin string vibrating to create a note being analagous to a string vibrating to create matter, that was kind of poetic.

Stanslov Petrov was a quiet kind of hero a little over twenty years ago

I just read about the idea of a 'sound signature.' That is, in any given place one might find oneself, the ambient noise will give it a sort of signature; for example, in this little office there's an air conditioner, the sounds of packing machines outside (and the packers making asses of themselves), an occasional PA call (with the receptionist being cute/dorky occasionally), and Lisa cursing in Mexican. Anyway, what I found interesting about this idea is in realizing how much we unconsciously ignore or just stop hearing of that sound signature on a moment to moment basis - for all that the sounds are a constant, one has to consciously stop and listen for them to actually hear most of them. And that in turn bears on concepts of mindfulness and clarity of perception, which in turn bears on the idea that our thoughts (something completely ephemeral and not-physical) can be so "loud" that it drowns out ambient noise (also ephemeral and intangible, but quite physical). Hmmm.

Din-i-Illahi, or Divine Faith, is something I think would be awesome were it applied to modern Christianity and Islam.

Yet more community integration - I love this stuff!
-tangentially, I'll admit, I'm intrigued...as much as I'm also kind of grossed out...

In other news, it turns out (in retrospect) I missed my chance with a hot thirty-something doctor. But, it worked out much, much better the way it did, I'd say. So, no "alas..." there.

Things of Note! From the weekend!
-having a relative be a manager of a Metro restaurant is pretty awesome (yay kin of Kim!); but beware, the resulting free extra appetizers and beer (Hawai'ian - flowery!) might make it so you can only get a few bites of your actual dinner down
-getting hit on the back of your head (hello mr. occipital lobe) can actually make your vision black out for a split second (not good when driving down the highway), now I really believe those stories about boxers being blinded by rabbit punches
-everyone was injured in some way in kickboxing on Saturday. what the hell.
-chicken with pricklypear nectar and cloves is interesting and spicy and odd
-next to the salsa dancing floor, there was a big, dark man with lots of amulets and pendants on, just sitting their drinking and watching...I had the impression he was some sort of salsa mafia don, or Columbian drug lord, or maybe just some large guy drinking and my imagination got away from me
-be careful when hamming it up on the dance floor; apparently you might get into a dance-off and not even realize it
-somehow, someway, the comic book guy from the Simpsons was in Phoenix this weekend...alas, we did not ask him exactly which state Springfield is in
-why is that a thirteen year old dressed up as a Catholic schoolgirl is unwholesome, while a nubile-in-a-different-sense woman in the same get-up is more acceptable?
-at every chance I get from now on, I'm going to get a sketch from a professional artist...quality, original art, for a relative minimum of money, hell yeah

Brokeback Mountain, with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. The landscapes were sure purdy. Nonetheless, I was sure disappointed in the rest of the movie. While the acting and cinemtography were of course quality, I thought the narrative meandered too much, and I often like meandering movies. I suppose, to me, in a movie I thought should have been based upon character development, I didn't really think there was that much, or it it was there, it was on some wavelength I didn't pick up on. Also, I was kind of disappointed in the lovemaking between the men, for as controversial as I thought it was supposed to be, that was a let-down.

random poem I ran across, by my favorite Sufi poet:
There is a way between voice and presence where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.
- Rumi

Faith & Fire, by James Swallow. Woo! Action-packed. Man, I've been reading too much beer+pretzel scifi lately. But hey, it's fun. Isn't it funny that the word "man" can be used as a very minor epithet like that? But that's a tangent. Anyway, kudos to Swallow for pulling off characters which would generally be shallow zealots have some amount of depth to them. Not quite an Abnett novel (though similar in style at times), but way better than most 40k stories, I'll give it that much. I think the main phrase for the best parts of it is 'over the top' - for example,

"Any bones broken?" ventured Verity. Her face was dim in the gloom. "Are you in pain?"

"Constantly," frowned the Battle Sister. "My trigger finger aches from lack of use."

The L Word, Season 1. Much thanks to Ms. Nicole for the lending! Having seen only most of the third season prior to watching the first, it's interesting to note how well put together the writers' character development is, in details that are subtle and yet sustained across that gulf of time. And though there are the usual first-season foibles and slight awkwardness at times (re: Farscape as an example), I enjoyed watching how the patterns of approacing LGBT, gender, and other issues was established, and for another example of an interesting aspect of the show, how confluences are built up to (re: Dana's cancer versus Moira/Max's transitioning in the third season, versus Jenny's Most Awkward Moment Ever in the first season's finale). But at the moment I kind of loathe Jenny anyway, so there.

In one of my random tangents of wondering, I was reading a bit about what made the Romans so successful as a militant power. Then, having been an English major in a past life, I started making connections, as I am wont to do, in this case to how the principles in question might be applied to my training. So, excising the main point of each section:

“The Romans were able to copy and adapt the weapons and methods of its opponents more effectively.” --- That fits the ‘cross-training’ of mixed martial arts, and one of Bruce Lee’s quintessential axioms to take techniques and principles from any source and ‘make them yours;’ in a broader sense, the shifts back and forth in dominance between strikers and grapplers in MMA over the years as each adopted the others’ tactics

“Roman organization was more flexible than those of many opponents.” --- Here, I’m reminded of one of the focuses of the east-side school, ‘transitional flow,’ which covers everything from transitioning between techniques (say, between different types of the same lock, strike, or pin), to transitioning between ranges (usefulness of the karate, aikido, jujitsu combination).

“Roman discipline, organization and logistical systemization sustained combat effectiveness over a longer period.” --- Conditioning, as my dad drills into us! But not just physical conditioning, but mental and emotional as well, as I’ve learned from the harder contact training we’ve done, which is needed when conscious thought flies out the window, so ingrained muscle memory and the unconscious can take over tactical decisions.

“The Romans were more persistent and more willing to absorb and replace losses over time than their opponents.” --- From the principles and concepts brought back from Thailand of late, and yogic parallels, tenacity – consciously choosing how to respond to pain and fatigue, and compartmentalizing as needed; beyond that, in a more simplistic sense, being able to take hits or give up position for later advantage. The counter to this, however, is that against an equal opponent in this regard (Rome versus Carthage or Parthia, for example), this principle is effectively negated.

“Roman leadership was mixed, but over time it was often effective in securing Roman military success.” --- To me, this (analogously, the Senate overwatch’ing the military, in their prime) would mean integrating of some of the other principles – that is, say, one might train in jujitsu and karate, but if they can’t be integrated to cover each others’ weaknesses, the ‘mixed wires’ will be more hindering than not, and slow down decision making, conscious or unconscious.

Ms. Kim’s Corollary: The Romans were successful because they had really huge mastiffs.

Here's to my mom! She had tossed over a magazine that had been given to her, Travel and Leisure or somesuch, and I asked her if she wanted to travel. She replied, no, and instead of just saying she was fine as is, she looked out the glass sliding door to the backyard, which faces east. She said each morning she goes out with the dog, and it's silent, and described the sunrises in concisely poetic language, which I won't try to repeat so as not to sully it with inaccuracy. And that's how my mom answered that no, not at the moment was she interested in travelling. It seemed a particularly enlightened, understanding-of-contentment response, if I haven't made that clear enough already.

So, turning a bit introspective, I had an odd realization, then tried to turn objective upon it. I think I act as an intermediary a lot. At work I run back and forth between the front office and the warehouse (and its component departments), and am of both, and yet neither, in everything from dress to attitude to job description. In a similar state of things, I'm the only person to regularly go between both dojos of our school, and act as a messenger and conveyer of information, with a similar of both/neither status in some ways. And even in general social situations, I've never been and am not really part of any consistent 'circle of friends' or what, but rather drift in and out of them, and in turn connect them by bringing friends from one to another.

Anyway, maybe I should try to find a job that reflects such. What would that be, diplomacy? No, that's not quite right...hmm....

A very random thought. In one part based on the posit that orgasm is a moment of complete union with the self, that is, analagous in a way to a moment of samadhi, if one is so inclined to look up the Sanskrit. In a second part, based on how one taking anti-depressants might find it difficult to achieve orgasm. So I'm conjecturing that while the anti-depressant medication may treat the symptoms and even the physical cause, perhaps (besides or on top of just hindering it in some physical way) the medication also acts as a handicap to or diversion from the psychological and emotional side of things, and may hinder that 'union' in its own way. Or, looking back at all that, maybe I'm just talking out of my ass.

If you know me, you know I'd get a kick out of this-
"BEIJING (Reuters) -- More than 240 army dental experts from 25 countries are meeting in northern China to brush up on cavities of war and weapons of mass infection at the 2006 World Military Dental Congress." - that, and the headline was "World army dentists build bridges" - ha!

If I ever end up having me a daughter, I'm going to make sure to learn her some history - specifically, about bad-ass women. Now, I have to note, as much as the title of that implies soldiering, many of those were more strong and intelligent in terms of politics or familial matters or just strength of character, which I'm really more concerned with.

So while I'm having fun with neologisms, I might as well extend that into my own personal jargon, and make up the term 'world dream.' That is, every once in a while, under certain circumstances - falling asleep with the lights on in my face, in my jeans, with no AC on, dehydrated, sunburned, and in an odd position, as in last night, as a general example - I'll have a particular kind of dream. I'm calling it a 'world dream' because it has this quality wherein it seems to exist in a setting that is independent of me. I'll wake up and fall asleep several times over the course of a night, and just keep returning to the same, surreal 'world.' Now, in this particular kind of dream, it really does feel like a setting in some story, with its own rules, and culture, and sense of 'place.' Kind of interesting, but mostly unpleasant in the end because of the discomfort of the things that bring up that kind of protracted, multi-falling asleep/waking up kind of dreaming.

Random quote of the day! [I'm italicizing the part I particularly found interesting]
"The contents of the mental stream are not as important as the consciousness that knows them. The mind softens in meditation through the assumption of a particular mental posture called 'bare attention,' in which impartial, nonjudgmental awareness is trained on whatever there is to observe. Problems are not distinguished from solutions; the mind learns how to be with ambiguity."

Guest post from Ms. Connie, in reference to Farscape, for anyone who might appreciate it!
"Rygel's like the saddest character ever. They make him like a cartoon, but he's actually really really sad. I mean, it's the deposed King thing times 20. Because he was both hot and powerful in Hyneria, and he's little and ugly and disgusting on the ship. The crew members treat him kind of like a bad pet...and he responds by acting that way a lot of the time. But it's always ok to insult him, to manhandle him, and to say things to him that they'd never dream of saying to--oh, Chiana--who's like him in nearly every way except her exterior. He's been on the ship the longest, but no one really mentions that. Granted, he's kind of a coward and a wimp, but there's also no one on the ship who would back him up. Everyone else gets love interests, and he doesn't (though granted a muppet love scene would have been odd) Anyway, I feel bad for the little guy. He just wants to be like Zhaan paints him...like a king."

-interesting quote from novel I'm reading:
"She watched the machine-slaves drift to and fro, and observed the way the women edited their servants from their world: they never looked directly at them, never spoke to them. They ignored their very existence, and yet depended entirely upon it."
I think the use of the word 'edit' within that is particularly interesting in regards to the idea of 'stories that we tell ourselves,' as in either the yoga idea of such or in a de Lintian sense (I'm making up a word, damnit, nothing you can do about it!), though I think Ms. Connie could explain the pracitical idea of it best, if you're interested.

-article on intuition/gut instinct

things of note addendum! (it was a dense weekend):
-there are lots of pretty animals at a dog show....and lots of funny looking people, apparently
-always, and I mean always, take the most pictures of your girlfriend's mom's dog, even if he's not being shown...on pain of...uh...well, not hearing the end of it, heh
-a burger made with red wine is okay; I wouldn't say spectacular, or even that different than a regular burger, though
-for the love of whatever gods, when outside for an entire weekend wear sunscreen...no, Scott, not like how our track coach used to say it, thank you...ew
-in Phoenix one can get a sub that is basically a Thanksgiving dinner in sammich-form, though the franchise in question apparently started in Delaware, I hear

woo Zen mondo!
"A monk asked T'ou-tzu: 'All sounds are the sounds of Buddha, right?'
'Right,' said T'ou-tzu.
The monk then said: 'Then master, doesn't your bottom make farting sounds?'
T'ou-tzu hit him. But, undaunted, the monk continued, 'Whether talk is coarse or subtle, all returns to the primary meaning, right or wrong?'
'Right,' T'ou-tzu said.
The monk said: 'Then can I call you a donkey?'
T'ou-tzu hit him again."

things of note on the (dog show) weekend!
-when getting into Prescott late at night, make sure you see the sign...and don't drive all the way to Flagstaff. In other news, Natalie the Eclipse apparently has great highway mileage, Tucson to Flagstaff to Prescott with gas to spare
-funny how a baseball diamond in the middle of nowhere can develop its own little ecosystem, complete with ginormous grasshoppers (I kind of wanted to fry one up) and that same green spider I still don't know a name for
-dogs can come in 'small horse' size - it occured to me that if an Irish wolfhound wanted to casually bite my heart out of my chest, it wouldn't have to jump up, but probably rather bend down
-I didn't really believe it, but yeah I can see sharpei as fighters, what with the wrinkles and the overly pugnacious-bastard 'tudes
-Kim's mom wins for most-violentest-threats-ever - which seem to somehow be augmented by her nice English accent
-where else could you hear, "Work that bitch!" said with a completely straight face, and also have it be completely appropriate?
-vaguely tangentially, I've not seen so much adroitness at going so quickly from polite and even enthusiastic encouragement and sportsmanship to hissed backbiting and trashtalking and back as soon as a person in question is back in earshot
-Prescott to me is an odd combination of Colorado Springs, Fairbanks, and Anchorage

Double Eagle, by Dan Abnett. Well, it's a novel, by Abnett, so I really don't have to say more, but I will. As usual, the 40k setting is used to its fullest - utilizing the shared setting as well as adding plenty of original thought, as well it should be used. I'll note the interesting use of Herbert-style perspective shifts, which only a skilled author can really pull off (ie, even within mid-sentence at times). This is one of his novels, is another thing I should note, wherein it's more of an epic (with multiple, connected plotlines/characters) than one of his more closely focused novels. And his aerial combat scenes are just as cinematic and exciting as his more traditional action. Gush, gush, etc. Beer and pretzel scifi with lovely characters and a fast, engaging plot.

"The hardest part is cleaning the fur out of the damn rotor blades." Huh. Apparently, Phil says it's real.

Eris will be the tenth planet, eh? Hmph. Well, I suppose it'll offer more fun for hard science fiction authors (say, like in Ian McDonald's Terminal Cafe or the latter part of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, or several of David Brin's short stories, or that one semi-famous book Bloom, eh, I could go on), and I suppose its moon does have a pretty cool sounding name.

So, watching how apparent it is that dogs react to body language and tonal things, it gets me thinking. Esoterically, in Frank Herbert's Dune novels (yes, I will keep returning to those, I did my bloody thesis on the first one) there's the idea of 'Voice,' wherein through creating a certain tonal effect in one's voice, one would be able to address another person's subconscious, as opposed to their conscious - so, in effect, insta-hypnosis of sorts. The only way one would be able to confront such a thing would be to have enough introspective knowledge and self-awareness, and the discipline necessary for such, to be comfortable with one's own unconscious - meaning that the average person, who has no care for such a practice, would be horribly susceptible to Voice.

Anyway, so I begin to wonder how much people are affected by body language and tone, without realizing it (and whether being comfortable with or having trained one's unconscious can affect that). The only practical example I can think of was from that women's self-defense workshop we just put on - it really is almost unnerving to realize that if one backs up and just assertively puts their hands up and out, palms forward, it can totally defuse another person's aggresion/dominance (and be a nice offensive position to boot, but that's besides the point). Whereas if one stands their ground and brings fists up, the natural reaction is to think 'ohhh, that's it' and the fight's on.

Or, the standard quintessential aikido principal - yeah, if you slam a strike at someone's face, they're going to react, even if just by flinching. But if you casually drift a hand up, as if you were say going to brush a fly away, nine times out of ten the other person won't react, even when you lay your hand on them. Try it, it's funny!

I don't even remember how I came across it, but this article on the Indo-Greeks actually almost gave me goosebumps. I just had no idea that such a culture existed, or that it could have even existed. I mean it makes sense knowing that Alexander the Great invaded India and such, but who'd have thought something like Greco-Buddhism might have existed? I wonder in turn why this isn't brought up in more historical texts. Hell, if I were in charge it would be, it seems a kind of community integration like I was speaking of before, but on a grand scale.

I don't know why I thought I'd be able to, but I tried to physically outwit an Australian shepherd. My first clue that it wasn't going to go well should have been the fact that she could traverse the width of the dog park like a furry little meteor on speed. But hey, I thought, I can out-juke her, I have a bigger brain, right? Ha, no. Any spin or fake-out or fancy footwork I managed to accomplish left me face to face with her, or her quite literally dancing in circles around me, or ready to trip me at will, to the point where I actually managed to bore her, I think. I'm sure it was quite hilarious from an outside perspective, though, as Ms. Kim can probably attest. I guess if I ever get in a fight with that kind of dog I know not to rely on agility - that would be a reliance-upon-power-and-opposable-thumbs encounter all the way. Just need to grab the bloody animal to keep it from moving, it's not good when you blink and something is suddenly behind you in that space of time.

Well, I haven't actually read it yet (it'd been sitting on my bookshelf since I brought it back from Florida), but Faith and Fire by James Swallow gets a glowing recommendation by my dad. He apparently took it with him while hunting, and was so engrossed that a doe managed to stroll pretty much unnoticed within ten yards of him, which is saying something if you know my dad.

In other news, I just thought I'd reiterate that I'm a big fan of community integration. That is whether on a, say, inter-city level such as The Frank Show being broadcast in both Tucson and Reno - allowing a caller from one city to offer a caller from the other city a job. Or, the head instructor at the east-side dojo's manner of reaching out to the community in the immediate area of the school, such as setting up self-defense workshops at apartment complexes. Or, in a kind of converse of that, the diner wherein the community comes to a center in a kind of forum cum social cum haggling center. Or, in an artistic way, promotion of local music and events through, say, the community radio station. Not really going to go into reasons why, right now, just that it's something I'm into.

-on sci-fi leading characters: "Theirs would be without the standard white guy lead whose name starts with "J" (James T. Kirk, John Crichton, John Sheridan (Babylon 5), Jeffrey Sinclair, Jonathan Archer, Jack O'Neill (Stargate), John Sheppard (Stargate), J. Koenig, J. Robinson, Jean-Luc Picard, Jeremiah (series))."
--I'd never made that connection; I also find it funny that I recognize all but two of those.

things of note! from the weekend! apparently it will be an institution.
-I have officially smacked a cop upside the head; I just hope that, in doing so, I haven't gotten rid of a get-out-of-jail-free card I might have had, if she pulls me over
-who knew a U.S. Marine could do Brittney Spears' 'Toxic' so well? Complete with a stripper dance against a pole and everything, it was hot...and vaguely disturbing
-'Fever' is officially hands down the hottest karaoke song ever, beating out the former 'Smooth Operater' and 'I Touch Myself'
-as much as 'Bye Bye' by Jo Dee Messina gets stuck in my head every time I hear it, I like it, so it's all good
-the hot wings at the Depot will try to kill you, and/or make your mouth the ninth circle of hell...or whichever one is fiery, I forget
-people who look like they're randomly having spasms might actually be talking in sign language; or randomly having spasms, that too
-two-year-olds can have upper body strength that is surprising...and mohawks...and point out exactly where their 'yam sack' is
-mmm, yorkshire pudding. next step: try it will sweetness! perhaps cloudberry jam....
-and I feel kind of bad for the people that live next to the Depot; if they didn't hear the entire (filled) bar singing (yelling) 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' they must have had earplugs in
-you know your town's football team might not be doing to well when the head coach is on commercials making jokes about having to skip town after the season's over

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, with Will Ferrell, and as Ms Kim pointed out, that girl from The Wedding Date. Unlike whatever that soccer movie with Ferrell was, this one was not a disgusting waste of time; it was actually pretty fun. Yes, it was stupid, but we were laughing nigh the entire time. Though I suspect it's one of those movies that might be even more fun to quote than to watch - for instance, the vet clinic at Sunrise and Swan is about to be a very funny place for a while, I expect

another poem rough, once again, the formatting might not carry through...

Impersonal
-
The rear-view mirror is telling me a story,
a window from the miniature world inside my car
to the miniature world inside another.

It's a monotone day
(white overcast and gray)
and the air is flat.

And he slouches, sullen,
listless and dark,
and she stares forward, fixed,
static.

But she raises their hands (fingers entwined)
to her lips; she smiles slow,
and his eyes change.
---
The night is dull, or maybe it's me
feeling like I'm looking through
someone else's eyes.

The intersection is lit green, the color's
a mist I probably would have gone through
anyway, were it red.

I would have killed him.

He's slouching quickly on the crosswalk
as if there's no crimson glowing hand
begging him to stay;
the truck before me swerves and skids-

But he looks up as I pass, eye contact
like barbs; rust dark hurt
catching in my throat.

another interesting quote:
"Any moment of pain is ultimately bearable. What is unbearable is to project the pain into time, to add up how many minutes it has been going on, to wonder how much longer it will last or how much more we can take. To think about time in this way is in itself suffering."

interesting paragraph (the mention of adrenaline seems a bit extreme, but it gets the point across):
"Many people, so used to living in the dramatic world they create, feel uncomfortable when confronted with the prospect of a lifetime of peace and contentment. The drama in their lives serves multiple purposes. Upset causes excitement, prompting the body to manufacture adrenaline, which produces a pleasurable surge of energy. For those seeking affection in the form of sympathy, drama forms the basis of their identity as a victim. And when drama is familial, many people believe they can avoid abandonment by continuing to play a key role in the established family dynamic. The addiction to drama is fed by the intensity of the feelings evoked during bouts of conflict, periods of uncertainty, and upheaval."

Radio news: "A powerful car bomb blew the roof off a car and launched the windshield over forty-foot trees into a swimming pool." - ten points to Tucson for being aweso; not only do we blow up cars, we do it with panache

Here's to Pat! He's basically in charge of getting stuff we're shipping out put on to trucks. I don't know much about him besides that he's a great proponent of beer as a nutritional item, is archetypically ornery and sun-conditioned and tattoo'ed, and is a Vietnam vet, but it's really a 'here's to Pat' on account of his wit. This guy has the fastest, sharpest wit of anyone I've met, no joke; the closest second I can think of is Mr Andrew while he's in the zone, and that is a close second, but still, Pat can be just plain astonishing. He whips stuff out of nowhere, bouncing stuff off the most banal of statements, and even when he's angry he's never mean about it, which I consider his highest accomplishment. Fifty points, Pat!

In other news, I put a deluge of new photos up (and I also wanted to use the word deluge, if somewhat improperly...and apparently make up another word, as well). Twenty points to whoever learns me what kind of spider that greenling is!

Things of Note! upon a labor day weekend.
-apparently sesame shrimp is a very, very bad idea.
-the original Clerks was funny, of course, but not hilarious in the same way Clerks II is, we realized - still need the first to laugh at the second, though.
-if you get up at four in the morning, it's easy to be surprised at around 9:30am as you, thinking it's lunchtime, happily eat a caesar salad...woo disorientation
-a little known fact: dogs can actually powerslide. no joke.
-it's cool to see a really well trained dog do its thang on an agility course, as the handler barely has to move, or even speak, while the dog bolts around like zoom
-sometimes the dog, however, will turn and bark at the person - best anyone can figure out, it sure seems like the dog is getting frustrated that the human isn't keeping up and telling them what to do next - yay interspecies yelling at each other!
-I think it would be cool for if the tunnel obstacles in agility trials were actually underground tunnels in some spots; it would be fun to see the dog disappearing and popping up randomly
-it would also be cool if they used tunnels in human races as well, so we could run up the sides of curved walls and whatnot; hell, I'd watch 'Obstacle Course' in the Olympics, that would be fun
-when it's proved over again that Tucson really is the biggest small town ever, it's not usually to have to listen for rotating-between-people hours worth of self-centered complaints and commentary...usually

Unrelatedly, Owen and Mzee

The Illusionist, with Ed Norton, Paul Giamatti, and Jessica Biel. One, the flipping-the-coin method is to be officially abolished as a method of choosing which movie to watch - don't trust its beguiling, flippy witchcraft! And two, I'm really not sure why this movie seems to be getting the good reviews it's getting. For one thing, I noted that it said, 'based on the short story...' That's short story. Not 'excessively drawn-out movie that goes on way too long.' I mean, I'll admit we were a bit disillusioned, as we thought we were going to see The Prestige, but had gotten the two movies confused, but we thought, hey, this has Ed Norton, it might be good. Yeah no. What might have been solid had it been short and focused maintaining an outside-perspective of that old school Mage: the Ascension-style magick - that is, leaving the story ambiguous as to the supernatural nature of the given act, and even and especially as to the outcome - was instead a banally archetypical story that relied upon being clever, when it wasn't really.

Invincible, with Mark Wahlberg and Greg Kinnear. This movie, on the other hand, was quite solid, even in being a simple, archetypical underdog/sports story - it didn't have any illusions as to what it was or was trying to do, and was more honest and the stronger for that. Sure, everyone can pretty much guess exactly what's going to happen, when the encouraging words are going to be said, etc, etc. But I thought there was a surprising amount of effort put into subtly delving the economic situation concurrent to the story, and how sports played into that; hell, in a few small ways, I was way more concerned with the mental/emotional plight of the city-characters than with the football situation.

Horus Rising, by Dan Abnett. Reason #17 why Abnett is one of my favorite authors: he actually pulled this novel off. I was kind of wary of the idea of taking the origin story of what had been an already admittedly rich and complex setting, and actually trying to make a novel out of it. That is, to story-tell it and give voice to the characters, rather than to read it like a distanced docu-epic, didn't seem a possible thing to do without just turning...disappointing.

But by golly. I mean, it wouldn't make sense to anyone not versed in the setting, but what was a relatively black and white affair before has become a personal, tragic thing in my mind - I mean, this one novel changes the nature of every other story I've read that's based on that setting. Of course, Abnett's incredibly cinematic style and developed, layered characters (especially in a setting where it's incredibly hard not to de-humanize characters) were a great help, and furthermore his interesting tact of adapting the idea of the embedded journalist to the gothic setting. It's not light reading, to emphasize - it's definitely a tragedy...I actually found myself thinking something like, "Oh, no, please no no no...." often, even though I knew the eventual outcome, like Anakin/Darth Vader style. But this is much better.

A nice article on satya, or 'truth' (but not exactly), in a way closely related to one of my favorite things - tact