Hoo boy, messed myself up something fierce lately. Inadvertantly pretty much fasting for two days, running on little or no sleep, giving myself way too much time to brood (unfortunately, I probably don't pull it off as well as David Boreanaz), and then sitting in an office being microwaved by the upstairs heat treatment center, while the soft rock station playing on the radio in the woman's desk in front of me played every love or lost-love song one could think of, all day long. I mean, I'd hear another song come on, and be like damn, I am not listening to that station again if I can help it. Well, as a famous judoka once said, get knocked down seven times, get up eight. Or maybe that was more of a Chumba Wumba thing. To go even further down cliche road, time to climb back up on the horse and get my confidence back.

Unleashed, with Jet Li and Morgan Freeman. I watched this last Friday, and while when I watched it I was in a particularly sensitive state, I'd venture to say that several different points in that movie would have had me close to tears regardless of what state I was in. To maybe clarify that a little, one thing that always gets to me are literacy issues. For example, in Jackie Brown I think it was, Samuel Jackson's character moves his lips while he reads, which began to strike a chord in me, but then another character makes fun of him for it, and that went straight to an almost physical reaction within me. To be cut off from or limited in a kind of communication which the majority of the rest of one's social world has complete and unconscious access to....in my empathic reaction it feels like something that would make one feel permanently left out, or even almost make one feel less-than-human, going by the idea having access to communication as a basis for having the quality of 'humanity.'

      Part of the reason I wanted to be an English teacher for so long was to help kids be able to express themselves and communicate, especially during that teenage time in their lives when everything is awkward and confusing and it's so easy to just withdraw from the world. When I see it's hard for someone to even use the language they were born with to be able to get across one's meaning to another without it coming out wrong or saying something that wasn't even intended, which I know it certainly was for me at that point in time and still is in some ways, it really gets to me. In the past my impulse was to help them, which probably meant I was quite pushy about it, in retrospect; I think maybe that was part of my hesitancy to become a teacher, my nacent and now fully growing secondary impulse to nurture and provide a comfortable environment rather than push or try to do it for the person, and that conflict between the former and now primary latter impulse, however late I unfortunately realized it, was destabilizing enough to be part of pushing me away from becoming a teacher.

      To circle around to the movie - to explain the literacy thing, Li's character (Danny) has a book with the alphabet and pictures for each letter - L for love, K for kiss, P for piano and so on. But beyond that, Li's character is also forced into a less-than-human status, not because of his trouble with literacy, mind, that's ancillary, but by restricting his ability to communicate - as Freeman's character points out, Danny doesn't even have access to his own emotions, much less is able to express them to others. How does he find his humanity again, the question becomes in my mind. Through a few different ways, which interweave, and I'm not sure of their importance: through music, a different form of communication that's certainly connected with emotion; through a safe and comfortable environment with access to be able to learn at one's own pace to communicate; and maybe this was most important in my mind, and something I wish I'd learned a while back, an environment where questions aren't constantly asked, but only when they are part of a real need - the answers, and Danny's final acquiring of really knowing himself, come in their own time, nurtured by those prior mentioned things. I found these things profound, and am sure there's more depth I don't know yet that could be drawn out with a closer reading.

      And just to speak to the martial arts, the fight scenes are great. As much as they are mostly formless, I was looking for some hung gar I'd read was in used in the choreography, and it comes up more and more the more Danny begins to gain possession of himself - a fine example of using martial arts within a narrative, in my opinion, in that one can see the physical expression of Danny's internal change as his fighting style becomes more effecient and graceful. That being said, it's also always nice to see movements that are practiced in the dojo in a movie, so that was nice as well.

addendum, later -
      A couple more things; I thought it was interesting that this movie made me realize, in its hardcore violence (and yet with some form at the end), that when one practices forms, they are representative of that level of violence. Also, I thought the maxim repeated in the movie that "Family sticks together" was also important in Danny's awakening, as the family provides the final impetus for it, even after he left it.

Hm...breaking my own work-rules, using something besides email. But: slowest day ever. I find myself in a situation similar in some ways to one I found myself in about four years ago; the trick is, I'm on the opposite side of that situation than I was in the past. Besides the circumstantial differences between the two situations, there's been massive change in me. And that's kind of a problem for me - I definitely feel more mature, self-aware, and in control of myself than I did those years ago. But I don't want to be! It's the oddest thing, I want to be young and immature again, I want to be able to confront unknowns with argument and selling myself and pleading that just comes out as I feel it, rather than restraining and containing within myself and having self-checks and a desire to be mature. As much as I keep wanting to ask just one more question, I stop myself because, of course, I'm afraid of what the answer might be, and how I'd handle it. I have everything going for me in my life, but I haven't been able to shake being caught in a mode where I'm living from moment to painful moment - I don't want to think about the future or the past, and so I feel caught in strange parody of a zen state.

Everyone's gone through it and all that jazz, I know, my response to that being that this time for me it's a matter of degree, and believe me, I'm trying my hardest to get myself back in order, as much as it might seem like I'm wallowing in negativity! Maybe that's what this writing is part of, I don't know.

Wow. So my mom says, "...and that's why I became a realist." I thought I had been a true, hardcore realist for so long. And the big secret I was keeping from myself, I realize, and now that I look back I'm sure I knew it on some level, was that there...is, was, i'm not sure of the tense, pure idealism at my core. I don't really know what I'm writing at the moment, maybe it's kind of free verse in that sense, maybe I'll just go and delete it later.

unfortunately, it seems I would be fated to end up at the bottom of the Indian ocean...

I wish they had audio of it, but here's a nice bit of breaking down an obscure language

kinda creepy, kinda cool: machine elves

emo.

      Somewhat recently I went from several years of working through literature to spending my day staring at numbers, codes, prices and dates in spreadsheets and variations thereof. So I began to find little escapes, like printed out poetry half-hidden behind my monitor (though Baudelaire might have been a bit lewd for work), scribbling notes for story ideas admidst purchase order reminders, and bringing books for my breaks. But, after a while, regardless of whatever was going on in the rest of my mind, staring at the black and white grids and starkly apparent meaning of numeric symbols began to wear on my mind. Then I started adding colors to my various spreadsheets. Bright red to get me moving on ASAP tasks, and dark red for lesser priorities; bright blue to show me something is approved to send, and darker blue to say it's ok, but might bear waiting. Reddish-brown to call my eye to something that needs to be watched, and purples for longer-term reminders and their degrees of importance; and slight shifts off of black, deep green or gray, to catch my subconscious as a I scan along. So, not only do my spreadsheets seem like different degrees of rainbows now, but I'm having fun creating my own semantic system, going by whatever meaning my (sub)conscious applies to each color and shade.

      So in the course of totally messing myself and a lot of stuff up lately, I was taking a lot of vitamins. Which seemed like a good idea, in theory, and probably was. I'll admit I didn't have much care for the brand of vitamins, despite my cousin's (who works at a bio-research firm) admonition that the only brand that apparently actually absorbs into one's system is Thermi...labs, or something. But the brand wasn't really the issue. What was the issue was that I had been taking a set of several vitamins everyday, and then every once in a while trying out this energy/recovery drink mix ("Emergen-C") on account of working out plus being fatigued, which is based on having lots and lots of vitamins in it. So: I'm obviously not exactly doing good empirical research here (except for article-ness, if one can count the interwebnet), but I'm pretty damn sure at least one of the times I got really, really sick lately (this past Saturday, after an Emergen-C after almost four hours of working out) was probably the result of a vitamin overload. Not so much the vitamins themselves (like an overdose), but that there were so many vitamins in various forms with relatively little food (me being mr. no-appetite lately) in my system.

This has been a vitabloggie warning.

      Regardless of my feelings about the dojo at the moment, I have to say that as much as they're often derided in the general martial arts community, seeing forms done by two people who've been doing them for upside of thirty years and have fought bare knuckle/full contact raises my opinion of them, at least. That said, I think they're often actually worth of derision the way they are commonly taught, but if one can find someone who has put effort into making their forms their muscle-memory library of practical bad-ass-ery, then they're worth it. Tangentially, an interesting analogy - that forms are just a folder where one stores collections of related, functional drills, and learning and maintaining forms acts as an analogical filing system.

Location Earth Dog Tags - raise your hand if you're also tempted

Darwin's Radio, by Greg Bear. When this was recommended to me at the end of the summer, it was with the caveat that it had a very slow beginning. Which it did; actually, more like a very slow first third or half. I think that's mostly a consequence of the author not delving into the 'front lines,' as he puts it (the more personal, character driven area of the plot), and rather focusing mostly on the broadly sweeping lines of scientific discourse and global events.
      Now, the trick is, all that dry, more academic stuff is probably quite necessary to setting up the best parts of the novel; and that's not to say that it's not interesting, it was just dry and slow for my tastes. The ideas the book are based on range from unnerving to seemingly profound, and to risk a cliche are nothing if not thought-provoking. Aside from the questions raised which would be infinitely better addressed by someone who is more interested in sociology or anthropology than me, one thing I noted was the parallel between something a favorite literature professor randomly lectured on once (use and comprehension of language as a marker of 'humanity;' tangentially that marks babies as not-quite-human) and in this novel augmented verbal and nonverbal communication as markers of evolution, or evolved humanity. Which really makes for a quite lovely end result of the scientific side of the story, though the rest of the story makes for a quite worrying ending (which is interestingly set in Tucson).
      If this could have been condensed, it would have made for an amazing Outer Limits episode, with guaranteed shivers and goosebumps. And to return to the 'front lines' or not issue in terms of where a good story might be located, I generally enjoy 'front lines' stories where the scientific and global plot are secondary to the characters' development and own stories (a horribly over-used reference being Evolution's Shore), so if one is more interested in the conceptual idea being primary (say, Philip K. Dick fans, perhaps), Bear's style might be more interesting as well.

      Also, between two Hitchcock movies (Notorious, which I haven't seen but the ending I caught seemed good, and Rebecca, which I have seen but don't really remember unfortunately because it was at four or five in the morning, though I've listened about the corresponding novel) on the boobtoob there was an old preview where Hitchcock himself goes on and on in this incredibly deadpan but also incredibly subtly hilarious way about birds, which suddenly somehow turns creepy at the end, and culminates as an advertisement for The Birds. I used to be kind of iffy about wanting to see his movies, but this little preview-thingie caught my attention - it was brilliant.

      And, Bloodsport III is a very, very bad movie, but its fightscenes are way ahead of the time, even for now, including all sorts of quite realistic grappling and throws and inventive combinations. So, basically, just watch the last twenty minutes or so like I caught and you're golden.

lens culture - interesting photography idea

The Full Moon Atlas - I recently had a great conversation about amateur astronomy, but unfortunately don't have the Seattle guy's contact info to give this to him...

I'm thinking this would have been good for a Jurassic Park movie

This may turn out melodramatic. I don't care, really.
      Lately, I have been pretending most everything's all right when it really hasn't been. I've been exhausted most of the time, sick the rest of the time, and spread way too thin all of the time. As a consequence, I became more and more sullen, depressed, and apathetic, and probably worst of all, passive-aggressive, running from work to physical work to too little sleep; I'm not sure that the scale will say I've been losing weight, but shirts I recently filled out are hanging off me. I've had a few feeble, abortive attempts at rectifying all of that, but nothing of any consequence. I've had my happy moments lately, when I wasn't being so serious or was distracted, I don't know. But I need to face up to the truth of things. In one night, the one thing I had been founding everything I wanted and dreamed and hoped for.......I'm not even sure what, at this point. But it's a pain so shining fierce I think it has woken me up to the point where I'm going to change my life in major ways; I might be really messed up at the moment, but at least I feel more awake, I guess. Like my dad always said,
      Welcome to the real world.
It's time for me to grow up.

Doom, with Karl Urban and the Rock. My dad thought were going to see another version of Dune until the title appeared in the opening credits, so that was kind of funny. For much of the movie, I was wondering where it was going; and then I was kind of disappointed, because I wanted to see flying skulls and flaming phlegm balls and bull-headed cyber demons and the whole nine yards. But: after a bit of thought, I'm quite satisfied with what they chose to do. There isn't really any fantasy in this version of Doom, which is ok, because they (relatively) cleanly pulled together a very neat science fiction plot instead. Also, the Rock played a quite different role from his usual, and I'm starting to really like Urban as an action star.
(now, spoilers, but I found this curious)
      An integral part of the plot of this version of Doom's story is the reference to the unknown purpose of a portion of human DNA. In the movie they refer to it (nonscientifically) as a possible 'blueprint for the soul,' and imply that it might code for predisposition to be good or evil. Now, I am currently reading Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear, wherein he uses that same 'junk DNA' as a plot device, except the topic of that story is instead leaps in evolution inspired by integrated retroviruses within that portion of the DNA. I'm not sure where I was going with this except to note that oblique parallel, and wonder whether that same thing may come up in more science fiction stories in the future.

      I'm reading through the fight-sports section in the back of Black Belt magazine, and noticing a common thread through the three events that are described (K1, UFC, and Pride Fighting). That is, spinning kicks. Which completely boggles my mind. I mean, in the events in question (kickboxing, MMA and MMA), for someone to deviate from the standard of boxing strikes, muay thai kicks, and BJJ on the ground is a rare thing, if ever - which makes sense, usually, as the standard mix of techniques is simple, practical, and well-proven many times over. But, to throw in spinning back kicks and hook kicks? Those are more technically difficult than the norm, and while powerful also vulnerable to countering, and thus have been shunned in the past as just flash, ineffective, or vulnerable. And yet, here I read about knockdowns and even a knockout by a back kick to the torso, and - get this - "Rua's attack had a capoeira-influenced flair as he leapt, stompt, and swept his helpless foe," and all that after beginning the match with a "spectacular series of spinning kicks." The word capoeira has officially been used seriously in a fight sports column. And - check this out - he ended the match by leaving the mount and then "dive-bombed [his opponent] with a hammerfist." Who, in the normal state of things, would ever leave the mount willingly? Much less to drop a crazy big hammerfist? Boggling, I tell you.
      But, also, awesome. There's room for bringing in some out-there or traditional techniques, and kicking butt doing it! In the same Pride tournament, an Olympic judo gold medalist dominated his match, for example, and I definitely remember seeing some traditional JJ throws and hammerfists in the last Pride tournament I watched. I can't wait till they get a kali fighter in the ring, like the Dog Brothers have been talking about. Once again, awesome.

      I think soy and rice milk are great. And not just because I have recently completely spontaneously become lactose intolerant. For one, they are generally cheaper than regular milk. Two, that argument in Snatch I think it was that humans just aren't meant to drink the baby-food of another species (excluding processed forms like cheese and ice cream, I rationalize). Third, my dad actually likes flavored soy milk - crazy. Fourth, I think plain rice milk tastes the best, but soy is probably more nutritious, and tastes okay, but is better flavored. And fifth, mango soy ice cream - ah yeah. Good stuff.

"What must chickens think of the Easter bunny?"
"A cross between the Predator and King Herod."
Scary Go Round

More on little people! I say they're oompaloompas.

interesting-
"A cougar's vertebrae are joined by muscle, rather than ligaments, allowing the cat to cover up to 45 feet in one bound, leap 15 feet high, and reach 40 miles per hour in just 50 feet. But its skeletal structure prevents it from maintaining such speed over distance. When chased by dogs, a cougar will climb a tree rather than outrun them."

History and Legends of Hot Dogs - to be a total nerd and quote SG Atlantis, "This is big...the wheel, the light bulb...the hot dog..."

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with Mos Def and Martin Freeman. I wasn't exactly disappointed, per se, but it didn't exactly hold my interest very well, either. I think the special effects and cast did justice to the novel, as well as the tone of the whole thing, but in the same token I think imagination might be better suited to really bringing out the humor and images of Adams' novel, in the end.

      A while ago, I read an article (that I probably rambled about here) that was written by an Arab author, detaling his opinion that in some senses Middle Eastern culture was stuck in a sort of a limbo (I'm obviously horribly simplifying a very long and involved text). That is, having had an expansive golden age in recent centuries, and then (even and especially) more recently having been under the crush of orientalism and colonialism, there was a lingering feeling that a continuation of that golden age was stolen, or on the other hand, is deserved. The author of this article added to that thought by asserting that any progression that a feeling like that might have inspired is rather stifled by the stgnation of religious influence - ie, that of the Koran, for example, which has preserved the (Koranic) Arabic nigh unchanged for centuries - an influence that effectively works towards stagnation.
      Fine, all well and good and open to vigorous debate and all that. So then, I spend a good portion of this past weekend listening to Hebrew with various English politi-religious assertions mixed in; and this sudden thought springs into my head, that if Arab culture is supposedly too stuck in its past, and negative effects on culture occur and reactive elements erupt, I wonder whether the same could ironically be said for Hebrew/Israeli culture, given the existence of the 'promised land' of Israel and coming out from that extremist settlers and displaced Palestinians.

Nadya Lev - photography

How fun!

Marguerite Moreau had a cameo on Lost. It probably didn't even last a minute. But, as I have a bit of a crush on her, I don't care. Awesome. Also, as much as I don't like the show, I got sucked into watching Invasion; I can't help but think that they're trying to put forth some analogy between deep sea fish being attracted to pretty lights, and the humans in the show - of course, I'm going to interpret that (theoretical) analogy as a remark upon people's intelligence.
And on that note - yay! Most intelligent post ever.

      Having an endorphin rush and a headache from vascular constriction at the same time is crazy. I don't need drugs, I've got my blood vessels. On an entirely different note, judo throws are funny to me, at this moment in my training. In one sense, they are technically very interesting, especially in their requiring of higher-order skills in taking balance and using momentum; also, they are myriad. The things is, a huge many of them definitely require some sort of uniform to provide easy grips. When you're just down to, say, shorts and tank top, or less, most of the judo throws are impossible without major changes, and then they often just aren't anywhere near as effective (a sweaty arm or torso most definitely does provide the handholds some nice, thick fabric does). Furthermore, when strikes (as atemi or for power shots) are mixed in, the dynamic entirely changes - by-the-moment tactics take precedence over balance-taking longer strategy. I start to see the reason for the difference between traditional jujitsu and judo, where jujitsu uses strikes and hooking (using a conditioned grip to gouge or otherwise cause pain, for example), and judo uses yanks and more movement. In the same token, that makes it that much cooler to see a judo stylist throw someone around in an MMA fight - they really, really have to know their stuff.

Pascal Renoux - photos

The results of my completely listlessly watching television, while often doing other things, till I fell asleep on the couch until I was woken around dawn:
Teen Titans continues to have great animated martial arts mixed with some lush fantastic elements - it seems like the animators really know their stuff when putting together the action scenes. Naruto has the same, and a wonderful setting based upon a culture entirely built around ninjas, but sitting through almost every other moment of the show is positively excruciating. FLCL...um...I had this show described to me once, and kind of scoffed at the (completely insane and psychedelic) idea of it. In a certain sense, like Tank Girl with an extra dose of mushrooms, and somewhat similar music. Roy Jones Jr was just plain disappointing in the fight they showed the other night (that was recorded on Oct 1). At first I was thinking he was pulling some sort of drunken boxing thing, but yeah no. He basically got beaten around without fighting back at all. And to think, he used to knock people out starting with his hands behind his back. Wrath of the Dragon God was in one sense surprisingly good, even and especially for being a Saturday night SciFi movie, but at the same time a bit disappointing, in the book-is-always-better-than-the-movie sense. I will note the quirky Adult Swim-style commercials for DnD that actually made me chuckle out loud, and the surprising number of herpes medication commercials. And what do kids think when they see parents-should-talk-to-kids-about-drugs commericals on the Cartoon Network? Also, To Have and Have Not, based on a novel by Hemingway and with a screenplay by Faulkner, with Bogart and Bacall starring, is well, well worth watching.

Defining Moment - article about the history of a sassy dictionary

Grim Tales from Down Below - yet more wonderfully drawn shenanigans involving everyone's favorite cartoon and claymation characters!

      Werewolves and vampires seem a funny thing to me, in a certain sense. That is, once someone becomes, or is to cursed to be, such a monster, they are no longer human. Which is all well and good, but at the same time, both monsters can be very human at times - say, the werewolf when the moon isn't all a'shine, and the vampire with the fangs retracted. So - what keeps them from being labeled as a human that's been stricken with a curse; why the default inhuman label? Would it be too much to say that a human has the potential within their humanity to become a monster? Is it easier to just say they are a monster and strip them of any (good or bad) humanity - couldn't a normal human become just as animalistic or depraved without any external (internal?) influence (a la the end of 28 Days Later, for example)?
      Also, from another side of things, what about the Amerindian idea of a shapeshifter? That, I know very little about, unfortunately, but would anyone be able to tell me whether they are considered primarily human or inhuman?

The languages of Guernsey - a lovely article on linguistic history and some islands that apparently exist between France and England - I had no idea they were even there, to be honest

Quarter Shrinking - one of those someday-I-will-try-this things

Rilo Kiley - though I have yet to actually have any mp3's of such, their website plays the fun muzack - I would settle for an mp3 of Korn's 'Twisted Transistor,' though...

and a picpic update

      In working with the warehouse manager, who turned out to be quite a nice guy (he just seemed frustrated before because in truth is he has a huge number of very lazy and seemingly willfully stupid jerks working for him), I got to hear an interesting little lecture (sorry, I'm not really up to trans-scripting a thick Vietnamese accent): he said it was his opinion that many people who spurn education or are willfully ignorant think they know everything; people who really enjoy being educated and learning, on the other hand, realize that they are only a little speck in terms of how much knowledge and even common-sense wisdom there is in the world. So, maybe not a lecture, but it seems like a lecture's worth of information could be contained within that bit of opinion.

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...