I think it's interesting that as much as people complain incessantly when the weather is hot around these parts, they rarely ever remark on when it's so autumn-ly perfect. I don't mean that to sound pretentious or to knock anyone, I figure it's more just an example of a common-to-all phenomena. In any case, as I've remarked upon several occasions, the weather is incredibly nice now. As much as I adore the warmth and monsoons of summer, autumn and all its smells and sensations is like a happydrug for my system.

      Random idea proposal! What if poems had a broader role in the media? Might they change how beauty is perceived in teen magazines? Would readings from local artists break up the incessant barrage of visual imagery and cacaphonous soundbytes? Anyway, I could go on....

-Beware! Penguins!

-Def Jam vids - I know I've already endorsed this game, but the Soul Caliber-esque mix of relatively realistic moves (re: jujitsu throws and locks, Thai clinching) and fantastical throws really makes me want to buy an Xbox

-ok, ok, very bad taste, but "Nominations open for most fuckable Arab" (and Queen Noor is gorgeous, and really really intelligent to boot)

      I think women's self-defense classes are a wonderful thing. I also think that if the women heading in that intelligent direction want to further their training, the guard position (on their back, attacker between legs) and the techniques that spring from that are a good way to go - I dunno, it just seems like that kind of situation maybe just might come up. Judo and Japanese jujitsu offer good training in that regard, but (as much as i have ambivalent feelings about the martial art) Brazilian jujitsu probably has the most developed set of techniques. Of course, just like any purely self-defense practice, it would probably be better only to train a few simple and practical sweeps rather than the myriad chokes and armbars, though I would say that training the other side of things a little (breaking and passing the guard) would definitely improve defensive techniques.

-Another example of what I've probably snapped about recently to various people. We don't need divisive and inflammatory stereotyping, or the ignorance of the existence of people who are fighting against those stereotypes from the inside. Those writers and reporters and whoever who can work from the inside of fundamentalist cultures and nations to counteract the general conception of "the clash between civilizations" need all the support they can get, and a mirrored action from the outside of those nations.

-Thing With Feathers - silent and artsy comics

-Red Meat - definitely not silent comics, but very funny (via Kevin)

Resident Evil: Apocalypse - I bet I'll come off as arrogant for saying this after all the praise I've heard, but with Wyatt and Alan backing me up, it wasn't all that great. It wasn't a bad movie per se, but....yeah. We figured it couldn't quite decide what kind of movie it wanted to be; that, and it killed off more characters than a George Martin novel, but without the development, so I just didn't care. The loco Barbie/Tomb Raiderish chick was fun to look at, at least, though they could have zoomed out on the martial arts.

Shogun's Ninja - To quote a guy on IMDB, "This movie is just straight-up weird." Sonny Chiba has amazing physical development in it, however, and he really does have some skillz. I think this might also be the origin of the name Hattori Hanzo, unless it's some historical Japanese thing I'm missing. The one thing I'm liking about some of these old movies that were made in Asia is that they always have some cross-cultural themes between Japan and China; hence, my burdgeoning interest in Warriors of Heaven and Earth.

Rome: Total War - more cross-cultural fun, but more explicitly of the beating kind

One of the techniques of the set called the 17 in Tomiki aikido is especially interesting, because it moves in three different directions at once. It can be turned into a pretty solid strike, which pretty much universally makes observes wince in sympathy, or an odd jujitsu-style dumping throw, but the principle behind it is best seen in the aikido variant. The tension created by pushing their arm above your head, extending through their body horizontally with your elbow, and sinking your weight when done properly manifests itself not as conflict between the different lines of effort, but as something that rather springs from that tension - the only analogy I can immediately think of being a good poem that has tension between narrative and lyrical elements producing something beyond each of those paths.

-Alka-Seltzer + H2O + a severe lack of gravity = cool (via Wyatt)

-to quote someone else, whoever's out there pressing the big red button for hurricanes, you can stop now

-sad and pretty all at once

-check out the gorgeous back of the girl in the middle of the (I think, can't tell w/o motion) S-dobrado

According to an article in the Scientific American I just got, reciting poetry is beneficial to your health. The study in question used epic poetry such as The Iliad with its hexameter lines (which incidentally really only works for this in German or Latin). Basically there are several nice affects such as a probable endorphin boost, slowed and deepened breathing, and a sort of calibrating of breathing and heartbeats. So, um...yay!

-photography by Karim Ramzi

-Nicaraguan Sign Language - the kids have the skillz

-I knew math was evil

-my holy grail-type quest is now to find this pepper for my mom

-mmmm...folklore goodness

Collateral - Interesting, all in all. Of course, I'm still a hold-out Tom Cruise fan (you heard me - bring it!). I was half expecting it to be a shallow regular-guy-becomes-badass-hero movie, which there was maybe an element thereof, but the movie taken as a whole went quite beyond that. I thought it was especially cool that I found my opinion of the antagonist, while naturally bad, having an arc of its own - kind of from curious respect to odium, I think. I also thought the end of the movie had a nice (though relatively blatant, I suppose) symbolic touch.

      On my way up to Phoenix, it was raining really hard. Which was actually nice, besides the wrestling of the Lego-Safari car's thinking it was a kite to be blown away by the incessant wind. In any case, the wide open vistas by I-10, which I normally readily enjoy in the sun anyway, had grand curtains of rain sweeping across them. Lightning staccato'ed the distance (and a couple times the not-so-distant feel-it-in-your-chest), Picacho Peak had cottony shreds swirling around its peak (yes! triple redundancy withing a sentence!), and the dust storms right near Phoenix were positively intimidating in that they were under the mountains at one moment and smothering the road the next.
      But the real kicker was the rain was coming down so fast in some places that the desert didn't have time to soak it up - so there were huge puddles dotted with little shrub-topped islands every once in a while. The most interesting of these was one that's islands were creosote and white crosses, and one larger island with a big American flag. It was actually a bit difficult to see because the sun was silver'ing the water, and there were diagonal yellow rays coming through the clouds above it. Still pretty cool, though.

-Tuesday Comic - this is the comforting chicken soup of comics

-this is like when we used to jump down the stairs in middle school, times 50

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - I'm going to give this one a great big somewhatokay. The hotness that is Jude Law and Angelina Jolie countered the annoying unattractiveness that is Gwyneth Paltrow. The movie was pretty and all, and unique I suppose, but that didn't really save it. As the setting got more and more interesting, the plot seemed to get proportionally more out of no where. So, aesthetically pleasing, interesting setting, Angelina and Jude hot, Gwyneth annoying and ugly.

Lost in Arabic Translation

Book-a-Minute Classics - they really summed up my opinion of Catcher in the Rye

Days of the Week - I suddenly get that whole Baron Samedi thing in voodoo

What the IDF is doing in Nablus

Four Stories - poignant, with woodcuts

The Latin Deli, by Judith Cofer - A mixture of prose and poetry; the first part is fiction based on stories of Puerto Rican immigrants, the second part is memoirs and poetry about the author herself. The poetry is beautiful and easy to read, and some of the stories can give you quite a knock emotionally (re: me on the verge of tears or just putting the book down and staring into space).

the Blue Marble - best landscapes ever

Collected Tears of the Weeping Nivbed - rediscovered oldie

Mess Studio - it's very much worth the slightly odd navigation

Robotech Invasion - basically what appears to be a wonderfully accurate presentation of one of my favorite trilogies (gameplay trailer)

Xuemei's Nice Meal of the Day:
-lemon-pepper soy teriyaki honey-garlic plum orange-sesame sherry chicken
-roasted cubed potatoes
-shiitake mushroom + meatball + spinach soup
-salad + rolls

Steph's noodle soup
-winter melon
-tofu
-fish balls
-Chinese noodles
--with fish sauce and sesame oil (I added chili oil to mine because I like endorphins)

-the actual video for "Mad World" from the Donnie Darko sound track, as opposed to the one on the dvd (via Phil)

-I'm honestly drooling (via Carolyn, ironically)

-Haiku, with fractal and a fractal'ed translation thereof

-Bliss Studios

Well, Wyatt's report from BALLS 2004 was that it went pretty well, all in all. For his team, anyway; pretty much everyone else's rockets exploded - literally. The Precision 1 went to about 27,000 feet based on the initial estimates from the equipment, and we're waiting on the various video viewpoints of it (including the in-rocket cam). And oddly enough, when they finally found the rocket out in the desert using radio transponders, somebody had somehow found it first and drove off as Wyatt's team got there - and stole part of the graphite nose cone, which is just completely random. Also, we still have no idea what BALLS stands for.

-Project Vote Smart - ok yeah some of these people are just wackos

-Not so much of a tongue-twister I guess, as a tone-twister

Random Trivia Day from History of the Middle East

Amr called this place al Fustat, "the tent", because, so the tale went, on returning to his tent there from Alexandria he found a dove nesting among its goat-hair hangings. Amr declared the site sacred and gave orders that the tent not be disturbed. After the dove had raised her brood and was gone, Amr built his mosque on this site (now located in present "Old Cairo"), and around it grew up Misr al-Fustat, " the Settlement of the Tent". The word misr is not only a present-day colloquial name for Cairo but the official Arabic name for Egypt itself as well.

"Iraq," the official name of Faisal's new realm, came from the Arabic word araqa meaning "deep-rooted." Etymologically, "Iraq" came from the Sumerian region of Uruk (Warka) dating to about 3400 BCE. The biblical name for the region was "Erech" (Genesis 10:10).

Among these raiders were the "Philistines" of the Bible who challenged the Israelites' claims to the land, but who also traded with them. The Egyptians, whom they also harassed, called them "Peleset," and from the Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 BCE) came the name, "Palestine." It was the Philistines who introduced iron tool-making into the area. Iron was traded with the Israelites for limestone available only in the hill country which the tribes of Israel controlled. ---(I think it's interesting that a transliteration of the modern Arabic for Palestine is filistine)

+ Warriors of Heaven and Earth - looks to be an interesting flick, if only because it's the only one I've even heard of that involves the period of history and the region that it does

Duel to the Death, or Xian si jue - The first half of the movie is actually kind of funkyinteresting. Ninjas versus Shaolin monks, which is kind of a fun comic book premise. In fact, the whole movie would be a wonderful comic book. Yes, it's old school to the point of Mystery Science Theater'ing itself, and/or not even needing the re-do of a Kung Pow kind of movie. But it has some pretty unique stylistic things going on. That, and as the scenes get closer and closer to the end they get so FUCKING ODD that they leave you watching the credits with your jaw literally hanging open and your hands clapped to your temples. I swear that was the position I was in for the last twenty minutes of that movie.

-It would be awesome if the world was actually like this

Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands and Trumpets from the Islands of their Eviction - both by Martin Espada. Espada's poetry has a palpable passion in it. I found it interesting in that he uses very little figurative language, which I'm not used to, even though my favorite poet (Jack Gilbert) uses even less. In any case, one could learn some Spanish from Rebellion as it has Spanish translations on each facing page, and Latin American history from both.

And the other random thing I was thinking about was the idea that say someone recognizes something about themselves that they hadn't realized before - say, that they are arrogant, or that they react a certain way in certain situations. But it seems that that aspect of themselves might react like a particle that has just been observed, and thus been hit by a photon - it changes a little. So it seems like it comes back to "the moment in which you think you know a thing is the moment in which you must look deeper," and the infinite loop that entails. The tangent to this idea runs off an example of some really screwed up people that I've met at UMC. They know that they're messed up, and it'll probably be the first thing they'll tell you. But in that sense to me it seems like they're not really "observing" it anymore; it has just become an excuse for them to act the way they are comfortable acting, because someone else told them that about themselves and they went with it. But that use of it also conveniently blocks them from getting to know themselves more, and maybe changing to be healthier, but gods forbid that we wouldn't want them to be uncomfortable. Which isn't to say that there aren't the people who have some issues and are genuinely trying to work through them; it's just that they seem quieter about it.

-Now that's just funny

It's really too bad they don't make this shirt

My next goal

Studio : Qube

Savage Sun Arts

Art of Hyung-Tae Kim

   Finally, some attention is being called to an Muslim criticizing Muslims. Without launching into a tirade about Orientalism, which I'm sure I shall at some point, this is what I've been rambling about when I say that labeling a full billion people with one name doesn't make them all the same.

   And on a tangential note, no one who this concerns will probably ever read it, but to all the people at my mom's school, her name is Najwa, pronounced n-capital lowercase e-lowercase zeta-w-schwa. Not a long 'a' or a Southern drawl 'a' or three syllables or with a silent 'j' (where the hell did that one come from?). Two syllables, with the first vowel just like in "bet" or "net." Gods....the closest example I can think of is people drawling out Carolyn's name to a ear-scraping Caroliiiine, but that has less variation.

*   *   *   *   *

"...beneath mountains, effervescing majestic."
"These women ran with destiny beneath their wings..."
"...each man, taken into my mouth like a warm vowel..."

*   *   *   *   *

The Random Frog Children, "a very random comic in many parts"

Vanity Fair - This movie was pleasure to watch aesthetically, and was well enough otherwise, though it probably wouldn't be so pleasant if one were in an impatient mood. It almost seemed like various scenes were taken piecemeal out of a novel, and enough that there was a coherent story, but inessential bits were left out. Or rather, I'd be interested to see if there were many deleted scenes. I went ostensibly to take my mom out, of course, but also to see Jonathan Rhys Meyers in another movie....'cause he's hot, basically. I also found a new interest in Romola Garai, the much-more-attractive-than-the-lead supporting actress; I actually thought she was Rose Byrne till I looked it up, but I guess I just like that type or something. I thought that Reese Witherspoon's character was at least interesting in any case because she was a perfect parallel of Gaby McAslan from Evolution's Shore, but without the redeeming qualities. And on an entirely random note, a comment upon the growing prevalence of martial arts in movies: totally illogical capoeiristas at an India-themed picnic, and an odd spat of grappling that takes place in India.

Shaun of the Dead - the zombies are walking to the music at one point. I need say no more.

Bubbles - kind of random. Wyatt found it; it has cool music, like that obscure speed metal song from Spawn

   Well, this year's neighbors seem a bit better than the previous. Not only are there soda machines outside the house right behind us, but there hasn't been a red tagged house within a block so far (unlike before when every single house was red tagged, and then twice over). So far the only noisiness has been in the middle of the day (which was beautiful today between downpours), and that involved a car stereo and girls in bikinis on lawn chairs in a front yard.

Eden X - art by Jason Chen

LifeGem - while this seemed very wrong at first, I'm still vaguely intrigued, if only morbidly (no pun intended)

Over breakfast at the diner (plug, plug), my dad gave me a pretty good idea based on the training he got at the olympic training center. Basically, there are two ways to go about it ("it," of course, being some breath-training). Either set a watch so it goes off every fifteen minutes or so to remind you to breathe deeply or control your breathing, or at any minorly stressful point (pulling up to an intersection, thinking of an answer, during an awkward conversation) just be conscious of how often you actually end up holding your breath.

The Youngest Doll by Rosario Ferre is a nice collection of short stories. While it's translated from Spanish (the author is Puerto Rican), I thought it still flowed smoothly enough. In fact, some of the more disturbing and deceptive qualities of the stories more than came through. Kind of lyrical fiction with a sprinkle of horror.

-the best part about the new King Kong movie is not Peter Jackson being the director. Oh no. It is that the illustrious Jack Black is going to be in it! Hoorah! (via the lit theory...not sure what the hell to call that class...prof)

loïc peoc'h - photos

In the stairwells in the science/engineering library, if you tap on the banisters in the right way with your fingertips, they become discordant chimes. It doesn't quite make a song, but it's nice.

"[Yogic leg exercises] teach the muscles in your legs to hold your joints in proper alignment" - boo ya. the exact exercises we do before class at the Broadway dojo. and they really work, like when my knee was paining me from walking funny on the thorn in my foot all day.

"We must be systematic, but we should keep our systems open" - A.N. Whitehead, Modes of Thought -- I thought this was nice because it seems to tie into the 'everything is bound by context but context is boundless' notion; just a different kind of application

   I had a random idea the other night, pacing on the phone in our front yard and watching the neighborhood partygoers congregate, and it oddly had to do with zen. Or something. Anyway, it had to do with the principle of being still and yet in motion simultaneously. The common example of this is the reflection of the moon on running water. So my thought was, while someone is sitting still their mind is probably often in motion, thinking and daydreaming and whatnot. But then when people are moving or completing some action, they are often still thinking and keeping the mind working at the same time. So to be in the zone or zen or....some other z word, the mind is still while the body moves. And it just clicked that that's a pretty common notion, so there's my realization thereof, I guess.

Dark Fury - I think I've developed a sort of morbid fascination with the character Riddick - I don't really like him, but I get curious whenever he appears again

Doom Funnel Chasers! - It reminds me of Farscape because of the whole gravity-slingshot effect (yay for obscure nerd references!), and the duct tape ball makes a fun noise when it hits the planets

another poem rough -

Apology

Your words are a clawed whip striking at my face-

the fanged crack of noise taking out my eyes,
leaving me hollow, and the torn sockets
filled with dry tears.

In my new emptiness I float outside myself,
in the bare moment of the echo
of word-pierced air.

In that breathless instant of freefall
my eyes find their voice again
and call back to me what they see:

Her crimson glare is a mask!
We see through the ruby lens of narrowed eyes!
It is not flickering fire, but chilled blue glistening
of sharp-frosted pain in her irises!

In the silence as you withdraw your whip
I find myself drained, on my knees, at your feet;
yet I am filled, again,
no longer with red, tense anger -
only cool violet remorse.

I press my forehead against
the back of your hand, and breathe.

And the balm of quiet soothes our tired eyes.

-Phantom of the Opera now comes in yummy movie format

-The Peacekeeper Wars - a conclusion (?) to the best skiffy show that used to be around (in my opinion)

-all forums should be done this way

-Lovers - two things going for it. Was made by the same people who did Hero. And has hottie Takeshi Kaneshiro starring. --addendum: Xuemei pointed out that the original name for the movie is House of Flying Daggers, and that Zhang Zhiyi is in there as well --addendum.2: the "actual translation" of the name would be Ambush from Ten Sides

-mmm...nice melons

We watched the Exorcist the other night, which was very interesting (though the unedited ending in the special features is nonsensical without it being explicitly explained in a random interview with the director). What the movie really made me think of, in any case, is the legend of the jinn from Islamic folklore. Basically the article in particular that I had in mind was proposing that an evil jinn could influence a person to make them seem possessed, so it was interesting to watch the movie in that line along with the standard demon-possession idea. As for the jinn, to quickly summarize there are many different perspectives but basically they are a parallel form of life to humans (created from smokeless fire, as humans were created from clay and angels from light, but just as humans are no longer clay, they are no longer smokeless fire). They eat, sleep, have a society of sorts and even pets (no I don't know what they would keep as pets), and there are good and bad jinn, just like there are nice people and jerks. Also, the other interesting thing that kind of differentiates jinn from say, Greek gods, is that they are kept on a theological hierarchical level close to humans (ie, Mohammed was not just a prophet to humans, but also to jinn). According to the legends they have their supernatural powers and whatnot, but the idea is that they are held accountable for their use of them, i.e. if they exploit them or use them to help people). And if I got any of that bass-ackwards someone pleeaasse tell me.

Okay, something I think elementary kids should be taught: using a 'stasis point' in an argument ('cause the first place I heard about it was in Engl 306/Rhetoric). Generally for every argument both parties can backtrack to some point that they both agree on, and then in working on from that point, things are generally much more pleasant. Simple as that, no frills. But when people are so focused on what they themselves are saying that they start arguing over something they either actually agree on or just because they totally missed something the other said, not so happy. Finding the stasis point actually requires that they listen to each other, wonder of wonders, and slow down, and start by working towards agreement in some regard, even if they end up agreeing to disagree in the end. Of course, if that were the case I wouldn't have had to spend three hours listening to people bitch and bicker at the dojo meeting (though entirely tangentially there was an interesting mix of Arizonan, Midwestern, British, and New York accents, and even a misunderstanding caused by a touch of Ebonix).

I read a couple interesting things in a Scientific American column: "The reason dualism is intuitive is because the brain does not perceive itself," and "Children and adults alike speak of 'my body' as if 'my' and 'body' are dissimilar." While I think there are a lot of interesting tangents from these statements (zen, physical training, &c), it also made me think of a book I'm reading for my thesis. So the dualism I thought of was between the concepts of East and West (cultural hemispheres, that is). What I'm wondering is that is there a connection between that mind/body point and a perception of the world being split that way because the world entire does not intuitively see itself as a whole?

The other night I had this odd, vivid dream/consuming thought/? come over me, ironically during my devotions. It occurred to me that the ER at UMC doesn't have any windows, just really bright florescent lights. So I imagined what it would be like if there was a sudden power outage; the more I thought about it, the more I couldn't not think about it. I went through the motions in my head of calming a hysterical patient, then thought, 'well, what would i do?' So I dug around in my pack for my cell phone and turned it on. And in the blue light were skeletal, child-sized things crawling between the nurses, over the walls and desk and ceiling, and they all jerked big black eyes towards the light. That's when I opened my eyes, and I had to take several deep breaths and even go through the bowl-of-pebbles meditation (the one that works for headaches) to get the...daydream? out of my head. Interesting times...

Most obvious rip from Robert Jordan ever

Kewl Word: 'animadvert' - to turn the mind or attention to

Def Jam - Fight for New York - I only recognize maybe three or four of the rappers in the game, but the fighting looks as fun as Soul Caliber 2, but with less martial arts and more gutterstomping. That, and the trailer where it displays all the characters in a cutscene reminds me of some details in a David Brin short story where the concept of tribal behavior in a modern context came up.

Amber (aka a really rough poem)

Bittersweet amber
is, I think,
the color of my discontent.

No wound apparent, just
some thing, in your voice –
in your tone;
and the burnt gold blood seeps from my skin.

I feel it,
and wonder at it –
and you.

When I reach to touch your shoulder,
when I reach to turn your face to mine,
it holds me (frosted glass tears,
cooled to stillness at the unspoken language of your body).

Later, alone,
I find a different amber.
Sparkling crystal grains –
the shattered skin of some
beautifully dead insect.

Each time I trail my finger
through the skeleton-skin
the sun shines from each
warm yellow facet.

Later, with you,
when I trail my fingers
across your cheek,
Some thing shines –
and the amber
under our skin
is perhaps not so bitter anymore
----
Xuemei's Nice Meal of the Day:
-wood ears, chicken, and cauliflower with rice; ginger and sweet sauce
(don't be like me and eat the one tiny chunk of ginger in the entire bowl, and thus taste the burning)
----
Steven gets a "wooowwww" for his pictures from Thailand - he gots mad skillz, j0. Things of note included war monkey statues, his cute friend who had the cool name 'Apple', massive temples covered entirely by tiny paintings, floating markets, red light districts (re: a bar named "G-spot", advances by prostitutes), a video of a guy sticking his arm down the gullet of a crocodile, and scary tropical storms. None of us had realized the Indian/Asian mix that Thailand seems to be, which was interesting in and of itself.

On the suggestion of the improbably pleasant produce dude at a ghetto-Fry's, Xuemei and I decided to buy Kelsey and Italian plums. Well, rather, Xuemei threatened me with violence if I bought another weird fruit that didn't bear eating again. But, as it turns out, both are pleasingly...plummy...lack of adjectives here....and the Kelsey plums actually kind of do seem like "big green grapes," as the produce dude put it.

And in other news, (while waiting for the also improbably pleasant beach volleyball) we caught the women's rowing. Besides the excitement of a race that came down to hundredths of a second, that's some hardcore badass shit. Yes, yes, synchronized divers have rippling muscles and are hot and all, but there's not eight of them being synchronized (that was kind of eerie, in truth). And the coxswains-on-the-verge-of-spontaneously-combusting provide comic relief. So, props to Carolyn, Steph, and Steph...KATN.

I have to agree with Scott, the weather yesterday was awesome. Random impressions: driving my mom around, she noted that the color of the sky where we should have seen the sun setting was just like the ocean, our fascetious thought being that there was so much water in between us and the sun that it just made sense. In truth, the weather guy I saw was freaking out over the size of the storm. Running between the two parts of the Honbu dojo, which is like 20-30 yards, got me entirely soaked and dripping. Wyatt's football team saw a freaking funnel cloud, which was unbelievable even to them, till they saw a picture of it confirmed on the news. And as another random femme on the news put it, "It's great! We get riverfront property at least twice a year!"

And on another random note, the deleted scenes section of the Blade II dvd is hilarious with the commentary on. It's basically the Italian director and I think one of the producers cursing at each other and making fun of themselves through a succession of really bad scenes that were edited out for obvious reasons. It also includes such gem quotes as:
"Never underestimate the power of the pussy. One hair from that thing'll drag a freight train up a three mile grade." (+ plus the most perfect reaction by Donnie Yen)
and
"What better way to end a deleted scenes section than with sperm?!"

Okay, this started wandering around in my brain as I stared ruefully at the clock at work. How do humans sense time? It's not exactly one of the five main senses with a straightforward complex of neurons assigned to it. I think I remember something in neurobiology about a larger part of the brain having something to do with it, but that was about as precise as that class went into it. So then in some hypothetical part of the brain is there a logic function operating, like we know this is the present because it happened right after what just happened in the past? And ignoring all the readily apparent faults in that logic, what do we even recognize as the present (one second? an instant? is that based on brain chemistry as well?). Then my other question becomes, do other animals sense time differently than we do? Or do they even sense it all - or rather, is there some threshold of sentience that has to be passed, or is a timesense something that is inherent to all? Any ideas or answers, anyone out there?

   Two random, not really connected thoughts, not really with any purpose behind expressing them. I get headaches. They are either constant, long, and dull, or horribly intense yet very short. I'm usually cool with this, as it is something I can deal with ninety percent of the time to the point where it doesn't affect me much beyond slowing me down a little. But when my discipline is not up to par for whatever reason, I go down, hard, until I can discipline myself again. Yoga and meditation usually help a great deal, but when I really get in a slump, it becomes almost too much to concentrate or focus enough for those to be effective. Exedrin almost always helps me hit the ground running, but I loathe being dependant upon a chemical, or any substance affecting my body.
   And a thought from a book I'm reading, to which I haven't decided whether or not I agree with entirely: the body is something that we tell to do things, while the mind cannot be told to do things; rather, it just is, and we can learn to interact and work with it. Thoughts, opinions?

10 points to guess the book:
I never wanted to be a god, he thought. I wanted only to disappear like a jewel of trace dew caught by the morning. I wanted to escape the angels and the damned - alone...as though by an oversight.

 "I told him that to endure oneself might be the hardest task in the universe."
"That's...that's..."
"A bitter pill."
"Bitter nonsense!"
"The greatest palatinate earl and lowliest stipendiary serf share the same problem. You cannot hire...an intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witnesses to provide answers. No servant - or disciple - can dress the wound. You dress it yourself or continue bleeding for all to see."

"We have eternity, beloved."
"You may have eternity. I have only now."
"But this is eternity."

In high school I took French; since I've been working at UMC I can almost understand slow Spanish just by inundation of it, and lately I randomly started listening to teach-yourself-Italian CDs (thanks Carolyn!). The point I'm getting to is that it's been interesting to compare the three Latinate languages as I review or go over them, and then doubly compare them to Semitic or Asian languages (my mom's Arabic or my roommates' Chinese or Japanese from the dojo). For example, I wonder how the different regions each of them developed in contributed to the differences between them - say, Italian being more close to Latin because of Rome, or the French 'r' as opposed to rolled 'r's in the other languages. Because they're each very similar to the others, but different in specific ways, so I wonder if maybe languages that already existed in those areas influenced how the Latin changed over time? And I wonder what made each of the languages' structures develop as they did, like why are the meanings of Arabic words organized by the consonants in them and why are the short vowels relegated to the role they have, or why does doubling a word or name in Chinese or Japanse have the effect it does? I dunno, I think it's interesting. Thoughts, opinions?

-The Five Types of Blogs - I guess mine is somewhere between a zine and and linking blog, and I would say that I think most WBC bloggers probably think they're writing personal blogs

-natalie dee: drawings to huff by

-when I was really little, I always wanted to climb inside the geodes at the agate shop

So I was watching this old movie a kickboxing instructor gave me with my brother and his friend. And we're alternately falling asleep or Mystery Science Theater-ing it or looking for something to read because the movie is nigh incomprehensible and barely worthy of being labeled a martial arts movie (more like, one horribly confusing, barely visible hundered person brawl after another). In any case, the interesting part was that at totally random moments, the scene would shift to to white guys (playing pool apparently) who weren't being dubbed, and who appeared to be having innocuous if stilted conversations about the benefits of being in the military, or how one should get their insurance checked with the correct officer on base. It was very confusing to us, so if anyone's ever heard of that....(we were figuring movie made in 1969, so Vietnam war?)

I don't know if this would hold true, but it sure seemed to be the rule of thumb in the pool hall tonight that at any given time if you looked around, there would be at least one person (of either sex, whatever) looking at you (probably a function of the number of people in there? it seemed kind of eerie at the time). And very obese women with boobs falling out hitting on skinny Asian guys is funny.

-CNN said "12 dead"

Toonjitsu, gallery by Dave Daniels (not just for the punny name, of course)

-interesting article on the structure of Arabic names, ironically by SCA people

"There is an old Sufi story about philosopher-fool Nasrudin, who was looking for his house keys under a street light. A couple of friends happened by and joined in the search. Finally, in exasperation, one of the friends asked Nasrudin where he thought he had lost the keys. Nasrudin pointed to a spot some distance away where it was extremely dark. But why are we looking here then? he was asked. He replied: Because it is so much easier to see under the light."

The Village left me very...conflicted. Which I guess is interesting in and of itself. In fact, as much as I very much enjoyed the movie, I also left feeling kind of hurt and betrayed. While I can't really think of much to say without giving anything important away (if you're not planning on seeing it then feel free to ask), I think Chris summed it up in the parking lot when he said the nice thing about M. Night Shyamalan's movies is that while they often have that twist that is their trademark and that has people talking (re: The Sixth Sense), the more valuable/important part about them is the relationships between the characters. In this case, Ivy and Lucius, you are so beautiful, to me.

In other random news, General Tommy Franks let out in his autobiography that before the invasion of Iraq, a double-agent was used to make the Iraqis think that all of the coalition was coming from the north. Then the entire coalition came from the south. Heh. Hehehe. The other byte he said was that there was a plan set to flood post-invasion Iraq with funds and resources, but for various and several reasons, the money couldn't be raised in time (aka, there was a plan, it just had to be drawn out).

I, Robot was pretty exciting. Well, in any case, just as Asimov claimed he wasn't a writer of literature so much as a scientist, this (in having little to do with his works) was much more entertaining. All they used that I could tell were the three Laws and some name references; I could be missing some memory or another, but it seemed like the movie dumbed down the loophole/logic themes of Asimov's stories enough to popularize them and at the same time lumped them together nicely. And...robot jujitsu. You can't beat that. Seriously. It was so pretty. And I haven't cheered and slapped my legs like that since the all-aiki/jj scene in Blade II.

Xuemei's Nice Meal of the Week:
-Spicy ground pork with bamboo
-Shiitake mushrooms with bok choy
-Potato and pepper strips

"What are you sniggering about?"
"You. You're discussing philosophy with a cat."
"What could be more natural? Cats are by their very nature very philosophical."
The cat nodded agreement. "When we're not sleeping or killing something."

Headaches can suck my big olive-toned cock.

In other news, not a very good idea.

And from Wyatt, KerryCore

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

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

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

photographs by Jacek Pomykalski

Sandy's Prison Hooch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If this is real, kinda freaky and cool

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(interesting quotes)
"The arrogant are, in part, created by the meek." - Frank Herbert

"I remain a human being - but above us is a group consciousness as far beyond my grasp as my consciouness is beyond one of the muscle cells in my biceps." - Isaac Asimov (well that one's thought provoking anyway)

Weird Food from around the world; haven't looked through all of it, but one of my roommates has definitely eaten fried crickets and tarantula (kind of a nice travel guide as well)

Aktfotók a netrõl - no, I don't have the slightest idea what that means, whatsoever. Cool pictures though...

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story - Yeaahhh....um...hm. Well...yes? No? Not sure. Kind of....but...no...but maybe....hrmm....in any case, the ending for Vince Vaughn's character was randomly sexy. Yup.

Something interesting I read: the Arabic language has almost no etymological dictionaries. The theory is that because the language used in the Qur'an is considered to be a sort of "high" or "perfect" language (ie my mom pointing out that in 'perfect' Arabic the word for 'small' begins with an unvoiced 's,' but in Palestinian Arabic it starts with a voiced 'z') there is little reason to investigate its Semitic origins. I think this is kind of sad, because not only are the links with the ancient "vowel-less" languages not really known (even though it's still apparent in Arabic writing), but the formation of the tree-style word formation is also not as well studied. (that style being that say there is a word with three consonants in it, like k-t-b, all the words with those consonants in that order are similar in meaning, like book-bookshop-writing-writer &c)

Pleasure - photo essay ("Hear Me Roar" is totally hot)

the ending is the trippiest part

An odd-ish thing I've noticed in working at UMC has to do with Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. Basically, it's more a distinction that I've heard the Mexican-Americans make themselves, in that the ones I've met want to distinguish themselves from, say, illegal aliens. I think there's some bitterness involved because either they or their parents worked to get citizenship and thus they consider themselves Americans, but the illegal Mexicans just relatively show up and hang out and have a kind of indeterminate nationality. Interestingly I've also heard some Mexican-Americans decry things such as bilingual language proposals, because for example in their experience it was much better to learn English by immersion (whereas to them the illegal Mexicans not only don't bother to learn English but are almost against it as well).

There was a guy in my fiction writing class who did this, which accented his sardonic comments (Brad Fest for those from CFHS)

Eddie the Artist - if all girls looked this way in real life, I'd explode.

cool lineart

   I've had the same penpal for about five years now. She lives in northern Italy and her name is Cinzia. We don't really know that much about each other, beyond silly stuff about school and tests, and vague bits about each other's love life, some local happenings, &c. But even though I know very little about her, I think in a sense I do know the important things. And facetiously, I get a random picture of an Italian cutie every once in a while and notes like, "I'm a good cook above all cook pasta and sauces; when you'll came here I'll cook for you a big dish of pasta...do you like pasta?!??? Because you'll cannot refuse!." That fucking rules.
*                     *                  *
   In reading articles for my thesis I had a kind of creepy/whoa moment. Without superfluous details, I had been writing a cornball story basically for my own pleasure, with some random ideas thrown in as main foundation points. In reading an article about ecological factors in Dune, there was a discussion about how basically one of the random ideas I had fit right under one of the main ecological trends in recent times. So without reading any of the books that supposedly fit into the trend, in an odd sort of way I felt that not only was I swept up in something without realizing it, but also part of something a bit out of my comprehension because it just seemed like so big of an idea and here I was dicking around and bungling into it with my little schpiel.
*                  *                     *
kewl word of the day - lynxcalm, as in this line from an alt-history story, "Ah, playing the lynxcalm soldier of fortune as usual..."

more art - Philip Straub

poor little cylinder thing 'sploded

In Tomiki Aikido there is a set of techniques called the 'seventeen.' There are few things that are interesting about this set. It is one of the more advanced sets next to the 'koryu' (or as we call it, 'old school') sets. Basically, along with the koryu it forms the real core of the Tomiki style; in the koryu, fighting from kneeling and links between aikido and jujitsu are covered. In the seventeen are the main techniques that deal with dynamic motion and strikes. They are fast, smooth by necessity, and are often easily made into striking combinations themselves. Interestingly, however, is the necessity of ingraining the 'fifteen' (a more basic set) before digging into the seventeen. Without the muscle memory created by repetition of the done-from-static fifteen, the seventeen are unnecessarily difficult to learn and understand. The trouble with this is that the fifteen often seem boring because of their static nature, and their use sometimes incomprehensible compared to the immediately apparent application of the seventeen. But the value of a thorough understanding of those basic principles becomes immediately apparent when the student who paid attention smiles after gracefully clotheslining someone, and the inattentive student throws himself.

Pene Menn - nice concept art

Interesting point about language differences - cooking verbs

The Eclectic Cafe is a nice little restaurant at the corner of Tanque Verde and Sabino Canyon, although it is a bit expensive. All in all, however, the extra cost is mitigated by the large portions . The decor is quiet, warm, and slightly eclectic with art deco lamps mixed with landscape paintings. I had a corned beef sandwich with swiss with a very, very hot mustard, and a green salad which was an unusual mix of sprouts, spinach, mushrooms for the most part. The mustard and corned beef complemented each other perfectly, and the salad was interesting if odd. My date had an avocado, bean, and green chili burro which came with a large mix of lettuce and tomatoes on the side, and salsa in a funky little glass pouring thing. The presentation actually extended inside the burro as when it was cut we found it to be prettily layered. The menu is a mix of Mexican and American meals, with several specialties such as salads and quiches.

"If you read a lot, you're considered well-read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well-viewed."

Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson was an enjoyable read, for the most part. Although Gibson went a little bit overboard in terms of arabesque'd language in the beginning, once he settled down his style was kind of a concise lyricism with some grit added in for effect. The plot style is made up of concurrent threads that progressively connect, which adds a certain mysterious element, but unfortunately in order to tie them all together the ending turns into something like an impressionist painting seen from way too close. Basically, Mona Lisa Overdrive is a noir-ish cyberpunk novel with a writing style that's definitely pleasurable to soak in, though the ending may take some re-reading. As a sidenote, there are a few concepts and even phrases that seriously make me wonder if the writers of The Matrix and Shadowrun had this as a source, especially concerning the apparent popularity of the author at the time he wrote it.

Two things learned at the dojo: one, that the focus of male students of high school age deteriorates significantly upon the arrival of slutty high school girls in sorority girl skirts. Even snapping fingers in front of their faces doesn't help very much. And two, never ever imitate the kickboxing instructor who also happens to be a dancer. Her "squats" are actually grand plies in ballet second position. Ow ow, ow, and ow.

And after working in an old folks home (aka 'assisted living') I've learned that underneath the potpourri-masked demeanor, there is something kind of grotesque at work. I don't know if it was the short-person-turning-to-reveal-twisted-hump, the rheumy eye peering from a cracked doorway until I passed, the wrinkled skin frozen into a teeth-baring rictus, or the wheelchair-pushed-away-from-table-to-reveal-grossly-distended-belly. Unrelatedly, having the exact same conversation repeated over and over is kind of boring in one sense, but I suppose it does provide the opportunity to think of a variety of answers and test reactions. In any case, I think I might welcome going back to drugs and violence at UMC.

tokyo plastic - look for 'drummachine,' get ready to kick it surreal style, and get creeped out a little

Random gadget under development, via Wyatt at the Naval Academy: shoulder-mounted submachineguns. The prototype he saw involved a shoulder rig, helmet, and paintball gun, and basically acts like the turret on an Apache helicopter, ie, look + aim. As a sidenote, in training for beach-taking, robot paintball tanks are used against the undergrads.

Ladino - funny name for a language, but interesting background

Digi-cammies - I dunno, it doesn't look that special, but the Marine at the dojo claims it'll perfectly hide someone not that many yards away

School of Rock got off to a pretty iffy start, but slowly picked up some rockin' steam as the story progressed. I think this is either an alright movie, or a great kid's movie, to be short. Plus, Jack Black and Joan Cusack are in it, which generally makes anything better.

Random Trader Joe's items that have been good to me lately:
Mango Mochi - chewy on the outside, ice cream on the inside. Perfect ::awlp:: material
Marinated Mushrooms - once the snacking is started, hard to stop
Prosciutto/Mozzarella/Basil roll - sandwich in one easy step (with some mustard, natch)
Portabello and/or Roasted Veggie + tofu ravioli - kinda like a snack, kinda like a meal

+-Evil - mostly Image style comic art

+-simplified footwork diagrams

Two observations about living with those of the feminine persuasion-
The odd hair scattered hither and thither is initially charming, but with two or three women in the house at any given time the hairballs can be followed like tumbleweeds in their langorous migration from the living room to the bedrooms and back. And the tub is not supposed to fill up while taking a shower, I mean, come on now people.
But: it is gently pleasant to hear a girl unconsciously sing somewhere in the house.

Cute cartoon, if eerie...

musicplasma - it's so pretty, and amusingly useful

Random kewl thing about Arabic: the young African gentleman who watched me write out the same words over and over for a few hours in the middle of the ER (not really relevant, but a fun place to practice) pointed out that Arabic script is often more like drawing than Romanized lettering. I hadn't thought about it that way, but most Muslim art really is centered around really arabesque'd writing when not geometric designs, and while it isn't image-based like Asian characters, even texts on it suggest certain flairs.

kewl word of the day: aporia, "the 'impasse' of an undecidable oscillation, as when the chicken depends upon the egg but the egg depends upon the chicken"

"And I say: 'Look! I have no hands!' But the people all around me say, 'What are hands?'"

"The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things, but one who gets the people to do the greatest things." - Ronald Reagan

The Hunted was simple, intense movie. The Kali-based fight scenes were exquisite, and even beared watching back and forth in slow motion, and the reliance on body language in the acting was great. I know there was debate over the realism of the final fight, but in the documentary on how they used Kali in the choreography that's pretty well explained.

Okay, so here's why I don't like Vin Diesel. At first I just kind of passed off my aversion to him as jealousy of the machismo variety as fems around me swooned, but something else was bugging me. That is, that the characters that he plays are a) a false sort of anti-hero (ie, a popularized kind that isn't a true anti-hero but only labeled as such because he's a "bad guy doing good things") and b) don't have a real flaw or internal struggle to give them any depth. What I mean by that is the flaw they have is either that (to reiterate) they're "bad guys doing good things" or they're kind of dumb. As a counter-example, the Rock (who is much more charismatic, I might add, and better trained to boot) played a character in The Rundown who carried the weight of some apparently incredibly painful experience with him, which is never explicitly defined, and yet it still managed to play a significant role in the story.

And to weigh in on The Prisoner of Azkaban, it had very shiny special effects. It gets a cookie. Oh, and I think they snuck in a painting of Cthulu during one of the moving stairway shots.

So the patient I had at the hospital randomly gets 10 points - he made the remarkably astute observation that the uber-haze that blanketed the city today was a unique mist-dust made up of well, mist and dust, which we later confirmed by the news on two different channels. In any case, the haze also reminded me of something that I've heard ascribed to Southwest weather but hadn't noticed till now: the eyeblink nature of changes in the sky here. The other week I was with the kickboxing instructors outside the dojo watching the most smolderingly gorgeous sunset complete with an iridescent blue rupture right above the sun, and in the space of us turning to each other to talk and turning back that entire half of the sky which had been consuming itself in light was liquid indigo and red. Today wasn't quite as colorful, but I was still startled when for one moment I couldn't see more than a couple blocks away from the hospital from the bloody seventh floor, finished a couple pages of my book, then looked up again to find mountains looming out of nowhere. Whoa.

The Day After Tomorrow was a pretty fun romp, all told. I mean, it was total fluff, but there was something really fun about seeing big special effects on a big screen. Also, the whole supercell idea was interesting, in that halfway through the movie I remembered that they actually do take place after a fashion underwater (thank you Starfish and Scientific American), so basically I thought the transplanted concept was cool. Moreover, I think the setting at the very end of the movie would be wonderful for totally unrelated stories, novels, games, &c. And tangentially, the main (young) character was basically like my brother, except perhaps less badass, and the chick was cute.

Dragon Skin - I'm still banking on the concept of using the same materials, but in a similar style to old school Roman armor, though - ie, overlapping strips so there would be more mobility, more breathing, and if it was damaged only one or two strips would have to be replaced rather than the whole unit of armor.

Navy Gadgets

"We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins...The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. Why, you're ashamed to buy my book, ashamed to read it: the only thing you're not ashamed of is to judge me for it without having read it..." - George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
----
Bloodlines - finally, a game that might actually use some of the potential of White Wolf Publishing's World of Darkness. They've tried it before, but this is the first that hints that it might use every last aspect of the romantically dark urban fantasy they've created.
---
"That's the devilish side of a woman's fascination: she makes you will your own destruction."

Running off a conversation I had with my dad while fishing, I wandered around the OED for a while. Apparently, a great deal of tree names (oak, elm, aspen, &c) come straight from Old English. Names of gems (emerald, ruby, sapphire), on the other hand, all come from French. But color names were all over the board; it was kind of like they were all similar in all sorts of different languages, and thus relative to the other two groups they seemed to have almost no particular origin. And on a random note, according to the OED the word "crayfish" comes in a roundabout way from the word "crevasse" in an odd sort of bastardization, and they don't have the word "fuschia."

not exactly martial arts - but I think it would be cool if someone founded a 'fist of the west side' style

Well, I've got pretty ambivalent feelings on the movie Troy except for two things: the fight between Achilles and Hector, which was glorious, and I'm kind of crushing on the actress who played Briseis. Tangentially, I want one of those blue vest/sarong outfits.

Not sure of the veracity of this, but according to one of the kickboxing instructors the phrase "Say my name!" came from a boxing match that occurred just after Cassius Clay changed his name to Mohammed Ali. Apparently his opponent was giving him crap and kept calling him by his old name, so the natural response was to intersperse said phrase amongst a total beatdown. Awesome.

EarthStation9 - massive resource pool with easy access (via Wyatt)

Sephilopolis - art

Phil's Smoothie of Death:
-orange juice
-club soda
-mandarin oranges
-peaches
-strawberries
-ice
(as opposed to the Smoothie of Destruction, which contains apple juice)

Chaos is a pretty good French movie; the back of the case describes it as Run Lola Run meets Thelma and Louise, which I thought was pretty apt. The cinematography was kind of unique, in that it seemed to be shot with hand held cameras, if really high quality. And the editing complemented the 'chaotic' theme of the movie, which makes you pay attention, but was a nice accent.
best lines -
"Allez en enfer!" (go to hell!)
"Ce n'est pas le premier fois de quelque chose." (basically, 'it wouldn't be the first time') (though the subtitles for that were 'I've already been there. Now I'm back.')
***
Romanization Tables from the Library of Congress (very useful, if you're trying to learn, say, Arabic...)

One of the aikido students posited a reason for America's rampant obesity: the parents, who when faced with children complaining of being full and not wanting to eat anymore, feel the need to point out the famine in other countries ("There are starving children in China/Africa/possibly France!") and force the excess food upon their younglings.

Nice take on old Japanese Edo period paintings

Funny take on Western paintings

The best is when you nail them in the face. I'm thinking it could be done with some kevlar and target points.

Samarost - takes patience, but do-able.

Enlightening; bit surprised by the Snapple, though.

"We, the most distant dwellers upon the earth, the last of the free, have been shielded...by our remoteness and by the obscurity which has shrouded our name...Beyond us lies no nation, nothing but waves and rocks" -Calgacus, chieftain of the Picts circa Roman campaigns in Britain

At a dinner for a Hindu anniversary ceremony it was great, not only because of the Southwestern Monsoon Wedding type atmosphere, but also because of the people. There were Indian and white families (my mom the gorgeous Arab in Southwestern style clothes), Jews, Sikhs, Latinos, saris, suits, sparklies and flowers. Good times.

Copper - great comics

Interesting conversation, apparently straight from Iraq

The trouble with the world is that the stupid people are cocksure and the intelligent peoople are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell
**
from an article on low-functioning autism in SciAm:

"Years ago in India, a doctor told his parents that the boy could not understand what was happening around him."-->"'I understand very well,' said the spirit in the boy."

"Wanting to talk, Tito once stood before a mirror pleading for his mouth to move. 'All his image did was stare back,' he wrote." (he often refers to himself in third person)

"Schizophrenia involves a detachment from reality and a turning in on the self, with an excessive but loosely systemized production of fantasies: it is as though the 'id,' or unconscious desire, has surged up and flooded the conscious mind with its illogicality, riddling associations and affective rather than conceptual links between ideas. Schizophrenic language has in this sense an interesting resemblance to poetry."

Interesting column, via Wyatt

"TeenQueen - How I went from emulating Molly Ringwald to lusting after Lindsay Lohan"

"Although connective tissue is found in every bone, muscle, and organ, it's most concentrated at the joints. In fact, if you don't use your full range of joint flexibility, the connective tissue will slowly shorten to the minimum length needed to accommodate your activities. If you try to flex your knees or arch your back after years of underuse, you'll discover that your joints have been "shrink-wrapped" by shortened connective tissue. " - another interesting thought

+ Collection of recovered texts on Western martial arts, as it were, in ye olden days

+ and just to show that I don't let my opinions of Brazilian jujitsu override my appreciation for it, a nice survey of techniques

"Yin and yang are relative terms, not absolutes; any phenomenon can only be yin or yang by comparison with something else. We can't point to the moon and say, "The moon is yin." Compared to the sun, the moon is yin: It's cooler and less bright. But compared to the Earth (at least from our perspective), the moon is yang: brighter, higher, and more mobile. In addition to being relative, a yin-yang comparison of any two objects depends on the trait being compared. For example, when considering location, the heart is yin compared to the breastbone because the heart is more hidden. But when considering substance, the heart is yang compared to the breastbone because the heart is softer, more mobile, more elastic." - never thought of it that way before...

"whoa" moment: leaning against a window sill at UMC, talking to an old Senora patient, I happened to unfocus from the window and focus on the metal-beaded cord for opening/closing the blinds, and saw something move. When I looked closer, I realized I was reflected on every little bead - when I tilted my head, twenty tiny reflections tilted their heads, all perfectly clear, if minute. Made me think of the old everything-in-a-grain-of-sand thang (minus the egotistical implications of comparing that to a reflection, I would hope)....

Okaaay, E3 equals....

Republic Commando - gods. awesome.

Mercenaries - looks cheesy but fun

Dead or Alive Ultimate - DoA just got weirder and cooler

Halo 2 - boo'ful scenery, and "the ultimate anti-sonuvabitch stick"

X-men Legends - for the people like me who wish they had the money to spare for expensive comic book addictions

Dawn of War - it's hard to say, but this might be better than a Dan Abnett novel - and that's saying a helluva lot for those who've missed out on that

100 Bullets - crazy fun gunplay

Ghost - now they just need a 3d version of Starcraft and they're set

.....and many more I probably missed...

So in watching my roommates play Knights of the Old Republic, I decided that the game is much more interesting and engaging than the Star Wars movies, on this basis: besides the structure of the game allowing for much more character development and (obviously) interaction, the plot of the game is based more upon twists and mystery than the fairytale/myth archetype which the movies had a foundation in.

Point from a CC newsletter - when you train with weights, you tear your body down to rebuild, which is all well and good; but with bodyweight exercises, you don't have to tear anything down, you only build using motions the body naturally wants to do.

Qene - trippy way of talking from Ethiopia, like Japanese doublespeak, but twisted subtly

On Spanish troops

Nice Seattle skyline effect; reminds me of The Wild Shore for some reason

Beat A. Von Weissenfluh

--ageproject - kind of like hotornot, but seemingly more intelligent for some reason

--like Melt Wizard, random, but clever

"The authoritarian tendencies of conservatism must be corrected by myths of freedom, while a conservative sense of order must temper liberalism's tendencies to social irresponsibility." - summarized theorist's point in a lit. theory book

Well, not exactly Cung Le or Shannon Logan, but you take what you can get

So many options for Kerry...

Rockfish - fun indie CG (I want his truck-thing)

Interesting aspect of the torture issue.

Oh good, we're also fighting slavers now.

"He's not really blind, you know, but he only has eyes for her..."

Not sure how for-real this is, but might be fun to decide the new wonders

Hmm...apparently Kerry, when asked what kind of car he owns, has been saying different things at different places...not particularly significant, but interesting

"Apparently they speak good English."
"They speak English well?"
"No, they speak good English."

So, if Husserl isn't right with his idea of meaning coming before language, or even the qualified version of that with a "private language" unique to each person, here's the place where I'm at right now in understanding the issue. I can speak English to my heart's content, but there are distinct registers that I use in turn with small children, professors, girlfriends, dogs, &c. So in that vein, combined with the posit that language produces meaning rather than the converse, in my head is just a different register of the language I always use, rather than a totally unique language or lack of one.
(aka topics arrived at after spending eight hours talking to someone who is clinically insane)
(no, I wasn't talking to myself, thank you very much)

Hooboy....time waster, right here.

Kind of a less intelligent version of Carolyn's grandmother. (what's also funny is that on the source page there's a really dumb picture of Gene LeBell, for the one or two people who might recognize him)

More news that gods know few people'll ever see...

Facetious, but a bit funny

This is interesting, but I also find interesting that the crazy dictator's train had passed through relatively moments just before that...hmmm...

Labyrinths throught the ages - fun music plays for the solutions

Whoa - maybe a guide to what the hell Brad Pitt is saying in Snatch?

A liiiittle bit overboard, but fun t-shirts (via Scott)

      Bracketing off most issues dealing with religion (unless anyone wants to discuss that in some other medium than this blog; I'd be perfectly happy to talk), I thought The Passion of the Christ was very interesting, even if only as a period piece. I think it would be wonderful to see more historical movies in the actual (or some approximation) languages that were spoken at the time. In that vein, I would also love to see movies about Mohammed, Zoroastros, Baha'u'llah, and say, some updated Robin Hood in Middle English (right langue? not sure) or something about the olden dynasties stretching back to Charlemagne. I mean, the upcoming (in the US anyway) Hero with Jet Li is in what is the Mandarin equivalent of Middle English; we just need more!
      As an aside, I thought the several demons at the beginning of the movie were very interesting, though I think I missed the biblical connection to that. In any case, I heard them say "shedim" in the Aramaic when there was a demon perfectly appropriate to the myth of that kind, and I thought it was quite interesting how they made Satan androgynous (as that fit the whole angelic side of that as well, in my opinion).

sweet