A long time ago I read an article that described using one's martial art every day. Basically, a student asked his teacher whether he had ever used his martial arts training; the teacher replied that he had only once used it in self-defense, and in that case it was only to restrain a mentally ill person - but he still maintained that he used it everyday. The perplexed student questioned him in this regard, whereupon the teacher responded by saying that he used the principles of his art in every day social situations (the article went on to describe specific examples of conflict management &c). So the reason I thought of this was because in the middle of philosophy today (which can basically be characterized here) I realized the teacher was kind of doing it. I seriously doubt he does any martial arts, but I recognized him blending with what people were saying by repeating their arguments in different words, then turning it around on them. Or, if someone just wasn't getting what he was saying, he flowed from the example he was using smoothly into another.

      Somewhat tangentially, the head instructor at the dojo used an interesting analogy today: the ABC's. When one learns them, one sings them in their specific order, and then learns to put them together to make words, and words to sentences, &c. So kata/forms are kind of like the original song; then you take the component parts out as needed. The words in this case are variously, say, boxing combinations, or karate hand/foot combinations, or counter vs counter in jujitsu. Then, stringing the words together forms conversation, which is another common analogy. Or this could be taken through many threads, that's one right there at any rate.

House of Flying Daggers, aka Ambush from Ten Sides in China, aka Lover in Japan; with Ziyi Zhang, Kaneshiro Takeshi, and Andy Lau. The martial arts were top notch, and even the sleeve thing which vaguely irritated me at first had its own sort of consummation. Kaneshiro was a pleasant surprise, and interestingly his Mandarin was also surprisingly skilled. In that lingual regard, apparently the inherent meaning of this movie wasn't so lost in translation as in Hero, but just some shadings of the flirtations and lovers' proclamations were distorted. The consensus in regards to Ziyi was that she wasn't even so annoying as the normal distractingly irritating; she didn't even flare her nostrils once, but Michelle did note some twitching of the ears. *spoiler* I thought it was interesting that Lau's character was the only male associated with a seemingly all-female society, in that if you took the thready thread of that making him obliquely feminine, what does that say about the feminine in the movie? Though I suppose I should probably stay away from any genderific pondering; I mean, hey, I still like and enjoy Kill Bill ;).

Xuemei's Nice Meal of the Day:
-tofu noodle, chicken, mushroom and cabbage stirfry
-firm tofu and broccoli stirfy
-wonton, mushroom, and cilantro soup

-some useful tips on yoga-style bridging, well at the beginning and end, basically; now I'd love it if someone found something similar for me for a wrassler's bridge

-what a great setting for a skiffy story; tangentially, I hope someone can come up with a simple, non-physics way of explaining to me what happens when a singularity falls into a singularity - there seems something kind of boggling about the idea of that

-cavemen vs dinosaurs: round one! - okay yeah that is entirely misleading but there are mammals involved

-I demand there be more research on sprites and elves (via Wyatt)

-it probably doesn't help that I'm hungry (and they're from Belgium! crazy.)

      So why do they bother teaching people English? People know their own language, right? They know how to read, yes? I'm sure there are many answers of the patently obvious sort to respond to that, but one that I hadn't thought too much about till recently was that the English subject is partly about teaching critical thinking (the sad trick of it being that many English teachers don't seem inclined to teach that, apparently, which is what the new "AIMS-centered" class is ironically set for fixing). So, besides the patently obvious again, why bother with that skill? Because in order to have critical thinking, one needs to recognize one's own perspective as only one upon many perspectives - sometimes simply in different registers, sometimes in a hierarchy - but that's why English also teaches rhetoric and argument. But, the value of that baseline skill of critical thinking is, hopefully, patently obvious.

Battlestar Galactica, (of which I saw my first couple of episodes today) seems to be very mature and promising show. They bill it as an 'adult show with adult themes,' which doesn't mean sex or gore in this case, but complicated characters and a pretty heavy storyline. I was hurting for backstory, however, but the show's website fixed that with a glance. Not bad for a remake of something from the seventies.

Elektra - with Jennifer Garner and Goran Visnjic. I thought it was okay, just really underdeveloped. I was disappointed by the lack of visible martial arts, especially considering how good Garner usually is in a fighting role, but mollified by the fantastic nature of what there was. I was confused a few times in watching Garner, because angst plus her usually equals Alias. I was also a little disappointed by how little some of the secondary villians were used, though I think that having Bob Sapp in any movie is hilarious. So, hey, it was alright - girl power!

-finally, Titan; been waiting for this

-in middle school they had us write letters to random companies to ask for free samples

-old school Old Main; that is amazing, I tell you (via Scott)

(a bit odd because from a scifi novel, but...)
"I know you can learn to read."
"But what if I can't?"
"If it'll make you feel better, you don't have to. You can learn a few key words, a few symbols. Few people choose to read these days. They watch the trid and the flat for news and entertainment. They use icon and voice-based computers to move data around for their employers. Programmers are literate in the comp language, but not much else. The only people who have to worry about reading are the ones that make it all work. They have to know how to read to keep things going, to improve the tech. But it's rare. You can get by without reading if you want. You'll learn a few words, like STOP, and you'll see them just like icons, and that'll be that."
      So basically the author was getting that maybe there isn't a sharp black and white distinction between literatacy and illiteracy. That and more interesting ideas in Changeling, by Chris Kubasik. This novel takes basically all the things other Shadowrun novels take for granted and explores them in-depth, which makes a better straight up skiffy book, but less of a Shadowrun story in some ways. While piecing together some of those ideas for the plot, however, Kubasik strays into something of the pedantic at times. The ending is a little too pat for me, but the heavy/raw feeling at the beginning makes up for that.

Shhhh.... - just like in Deus Ex; does that vaguely creep anyone else out?

McShuarma - on that razor edge between disturbing, sad and funny. An edge can have three sides if I say it can.

-ahh, the "land tank;" I think the redundancy of that lends itself to the article

-great cause, kid, but now I have to fear for my life if this spreads

      Xuemei said an interesting thing - that when learning some things, sometimes it is better to not think, and sometimes it is better to think too much, than to only half, distractedly think about it. She was knitting at the time, but another good example I think is martial arts (natch). Sometimes it is better to not think at all, and just let your body do it (you performing the action, as opposed to your mind telling your body to perform the action). And sometimes to learn you have to have complete focus. But too much thinking can hinder the body from doing its thing. Either way, only half-thinking about it never gets the job done.

The Phantom of the Opera-with Emmy Rossum and Gerard Butler. For the most part, I liked this version better than the original. I definitely liked Rossum over Sarah Brightman, in any case. I wish I was still taking literary theory at the moment, as there are so many things going on in this musical that deal with the uncanny and the abject, not the least of which being the Phantom and Christine's reciprocal identifications (tied in with so many mirror motifs!). Carolyn even noticed a narcissistic catch in the song with 'the point of no return' line in it, in that that might be the point where the Narcissus-figure (practically tripled in this case) realized it can't have itself, as it were. And then there's the whole mask motif, I mean....yes, well, I could go on.

-The Free Fall Research Page - possibly silly, but I like the line, "Mount it and ride, cowboy!"

-Tucson Roller Derby - Rollerskates. Violence. Yes.

-Eric Kellerman Photography

-Varieties of English - probably better with some linguistics knowledge, but still kind of fun

2XS - by Nigel Findley. While there have only been a couple Shadowrun novels I didn't particularly like, I can't decide if this one fits into that category or not. On one level, I really did end up caring about the main characters, and that along with the wealth of description provides a nice depth to the writing. Sometimes, however, the amount of detail just becomes tedious, and while I usually enjoy the darker endings and characters this author creates, they are kind of mood-dependant as to whether they end up depressing the reader, I think.

Xuemei and Magda's Nice Meal of the Day:
-breaded pork chops
-zuchinni and garlic stirfry
-rice
-orangina
--ladyfingers, double fudge ice cream, topped with berry mix
--vanilla cinnamon tea

      The sky was red tonight, from the city light on the clouds. It reminded me of California. Trees were silhouetted black, clearly so, and every light had its own cone of existence. And the plume of steam down the way is towering, rather than enveloping. Interesting night out. There's no horizon, like a foggy sea-no horizon.

Code 46 - with Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton. There's a huge amount going on in this movie, but it's kind of hard to tell without a good deal of attention paid. It seems based around a whole bunch of different SF ideas, but never explicitly defines any of them. A healthy knowledge of Spanish, French, Arabic, and Mandarin might be useful, as they are mixed pretty freely with English throughout. One might say it was a twisty tangent of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Gattaca, with something of a less lurid William Gibson or Peter Watts novel thrown in.

Garden State with Zach Braff and Natalie Portman. A wonderful, quick movie, and not just because I'm that much of a fan of Portman. To me it seemed deceptively simple, that is, without ostentatious acting and complex enough underneath to warrant a repeat viewing, like a novel where you miss things the first time through. I particularly enjoyed how the story repeatedly blossomed in scope from a single, well put sentence.

Moving Towards Stillness, by Dave Lowry. A fomer columnist for Black Belt magazine, Lowry put me off a bit in the first several essays of the collection by being so over the top Japan-o-philic, but as I got further into the book there was less of that and more thoughtful discussions of various concepts. One off the top of my head was just a pointing out that as much as the analogy of bamboo bending to survive where more brittle plants wouldn't is used a great deal, it forgets that the roots of each bamboo plant intertwine to support each other, making a strong foundation where otherwise the tall stems would just tip over. Or, an essay based around a statement by a famous potter, Shoji Hamada: "There are two kinds of people: those who make themselves the center, who live as though their ancestors lived only to create them; and those who make themselves as low as possible, consider themselves nothing in relation to the whole, live in order to protect and cherish what their ancestors lived or and who bear children in order to pass on that idea of protecting and cherishing. Most artists fall into the first classification. Most artisans in the second one."

Filthy, Gorgeous - because drag queens rule. I remember the interesting posit from that arts class I took that a crossdresser can be more masculine/feminine than the sex they're impersonating could be, because in not being that sex, they are able to understand it in a different way.

Kingdom of Heaven - looks to be the movie about the Crusades I've been waiting for; I just hope they show the Muslims in a fair light, that would be nice.

      In the imagination-full Vampire: the Requiem book that I've been savoring, in the section where they define what a vampire is for their purposes they pulled an interesting thing. That is, at the point where a person is made a vampire, they stop growing emotionally or maturing. They might gain immense amounts of knowledge or be that much smarter over years of unlife, as it were, but will never go beyond the emotional maturity at which they died. That, and the emphasis on what suddenly becoming an out-and-out predator might do to the psyche are just a couple of the interesting implications in, as the authors point out at the start, is supposed to be an exploration of one's self as much as the story or characters in question.

my parents' Nice Meal of the Day:
-spicy chicken and green bean stirfry
-rabbit tempura
-rice

-quantum darwinism - very interesting article, kind of reminds me of Mage: the Ascension, Kevin said it made him think of the novel Starfish (via Kevin)

Music to Slay By - fun site for Abigail Whistler fans (via Scott)

-phonetic symbol guide - kind of fun to play around with

-scrambled course catalogs - well, I actually thought it was a real catalog before I read the top (via Kevin)

      When I heard that "consumer electronics" (whatever that might mean) had surpassed books as the most sold item by Amazon I was a little depressed. But without going into that obvious skein any further, the thought that some of that gadgetry might be something like Half-Life 2 is somewhat mollifying. Ish. In any case, the game has turned out to be so engrossing that not only does my family sit around and watch whoever's playing it, but other people (female, even!) come over to watch. Not just for the eye-candy, as that would never be enough for the gather-round-the-fire effect, but really just for the story and characters. It's like a thirty-six hour (the estimated play time) movie, as Wyatt pointed out.

Feed, by M.T. Anderson. One of those books that's hard to describe; I'd say part 1984, part Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and part cyberpunk. It is geared for probably around high school age, but nonetheless is quality writing, and some of the obvious pitfalls the novel could have taken into tacky or cheesy or excessive neologism were adroitly avoided.

Ocean's Twelve - with...too many people to name. Like Blade Trinity, we thought this movie might have done better to have more length and room to flesh itself out, but not as much potential. It was pretty good all in all, but mostly explained by the original idea being set for a John Woo movie and rewritten for the Ocean's Eleven characters. The metafiction was cute, but ended up going a little overboard, at least for me.

Supersize Me - with Morgan Spurlock. Not really much to say, as I wasn't that interested. It was funny at times, and cleverly edited to keep it from getting boring, but it was still basically unpleasant to watch.

      The difference between the words judgement and discernment struck me again as I was reading an article the other day, though I'm still trying to understand it. Judgment places the subject in question in a hierarchy, which could be good, say, if the hierarchy is based within a system of good/bad that works, like the theoretical court system (?). But discernment might be more useful on a personal level, to distinguish differences between subjects and have definition, without placing blame or assigning necessarily positive/negative connotations right off the bat. Or, as the article mentioned, on an even closer level, discernment can help one distinguish one's I from other identities without constantly placing them in a hierarchy, which causes its own issues.

-Idoru by William Gibson. From the guru of cyberpunk (as per Zach's description), it's a subtle, but biting satire/exploration of the nature of celebrity. Chock full of little interesting skiffy ideas, and embellished with humor, Gibson uses his usual back-and-forth play of multiple storylines to keep the tension and interest up. The ending seemed something of a riddle, though, which I'm not sure had an answer within the novel.

-pi10k - makes music out of pi; a few chords turned out to be kind of eeriepretty

Grosse Pointe Blank - with John Cusack and Minnie Driver. As this is one of my favorite movies, not much to say about it, in the interests of avoiding expounding. Sharply funny and sweet at the same time, and with some deeper issues of nostalgia touched on. And one of my all-time favorite fight scenes between Cusack and (the entirely random) Benny Urquidez, a real-life kickboxer/karate champion.

Blade Trinity - with Wesley Snipes, Ryan Reynolds, and Jessica Biel. Like Wyatt said, we didn't see it for the plot, but it was art. It had the trademark Blade style, and the usual healthy mix of martial arts (among others, Biel using wing chun, and Reynolds with some smooth jujitsu). I just wish it had been longer; the characters and villians and plot could have been fleshed out to great effect, in my opinion. Still, it was funny, and great action.

Musa the Warrior - with Woo-sung Jung and Ziyi Zhang. Not sure what to make of this movie; it was interesting, though. Part period piece, part sort-of-realistic war movie, part martial arts movie. I'm intrigued enough to go look up some Korean history now, based on the supposedly historical conflict the story takes place within. There were some subtexts I wished I'd known more about so I didn't have to spend half the movie figuring them out, however, like the relationship between the noble Korean soldiers and the peasant (?) soldiers. And who the hell was Musa? There was no one named Musa in this movie.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - with Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. Incredible, but twisted. This movie was viscerally painful for me for a few reasons to watch, but in the same token, I'll watch it again because of that. It left me feeling like everything around me was uncanny well into the next morning. Jim Carrey's character was very different from his usual, which was quite interesting; Kate Winslet was adorable, but her character (along with some of the others) was like a concentrated form of the people who give me mental baggage at work.

Zatôichi - with Takeshi Kitano and Tadanobu Asano. Everyone I know who's seen it thought it was amazing; but at the same time, everyone I know who's seen it likes that kind of movie. The choreography is done in a unique style (which is nicely explained on the DVD in an interview), and while sedate the movie does move itself along, with a range of emotions being drawn out from sad to hilarious. The ending, however, as Brian at the video store pointed out, "gets...a little hokey." Which isn't to say it's bad. More like, hallucinogenic.

Jersey Girl - with Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler. Kind of fluff, but really cute fluff. It's a family sort of movie, but directed by Kevin Smith, so it's a family sort of movie with a foul mouth on it. Incedentally, the first movie I thought the two main actors were attractive or good in.

Brazilian Jiu-jitsu Basics - by Gene Simco is a solid collection of simple, effective techniques, but I don't have much more to say for it than that. Disregarding my opinions of BJJ, I did learn some little tricks that have born out application, though for a wrestler or grappler this book is best used for review of pinning principles and using the guard. Throws are given a cursory treatment at best, and an almost misleading overview at worst. But hey, BJJ is all about the ground, right? Lastly, it's just not very well written; that is, the techniques are explained adequately enough, but some of the history and other discussion I found distastefully egocentric and written with poor style.

-missed it by a few, but the anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge happened (via Wyatt)

      I've felt a certain kind of feeling before when I've gone to write important papers, but not so much as I have for the last term paper I wrote. Basically, it's like I can feel the structure of it forming in my head, and I can organize the pieces, it just takes time. So I have to sit there for a period of time, then gather more information, then sit, then gather, and eventually it starts to coalesce, until I can start writing. Then I find that as I build up the flow of things, bits and pieces of the information start connecting without me even realizing it at first, but then I just have to go back and make sure they're connecting on the page and not just on my head. I don't know, I'm still working these thoughts out.

-hmm...I'm pretty tempted to eat it, actually

-kind of dippy, but well made; makes me want to go to Bookman's and buy the actual one

-Double Happiness Wedding - short comic

      One phrase my dad sometimes uses is: "There are no stupid people; people just do stupid things." The most common instance that I hear this is when I describe some of the patients I end up with at work. Now, I've been chipping away at this one, because honestly it really does seem to me that some people really are just stupid. But, especially since my dad is the one saying it, I still feel like there's some wisdom I just haven't understood yet in it. One part of me is thinking that it's tip-of-the-mental-tongue thing in the "there are no stupid people" part, and that I just need a better understanding of myself or people to get it. The other part of me is thinking that the import of the phrase is not directed outwards; that is, to assume that someone is stupid would probably lead to acting in a certain way towards them. But to accept that they are who they are, and that for whatever reason they might be doing a stupid thing, at least opens up the possiblity of acting more postively towards them.
      In a slightly similar vein, something clicked in the middle of aikido today. The literary theory professor said at one point that the reason the critics use such esoteric/odd/stilted/figurative language is because oftentimes what they're trying to describe can't really be described for all intents and purposes; it's just sometimes outside of language. So, in effect, the best they can do is point to it with whatever kind of language they have. In the same token, my martial arts teacher (and me on occasion for my unconscious imitation of him when I teach) have been nudged for using an excess of analogies or figurative language to attempt to explain things. It seems to me that there are some things in martial arts that can't really be expressed by using basic, precise language, but that can only be pointed to in a similar way. That, or I just have trouble communicating.

-crazy burpee variation that seems obvious now that I think about it: do it under a pull up bar: starting from a squat, jump up, grab the bar and do a pullup, drop down into a squat and shoot your feet back, do a pushup, and shoot feet back to the start; wash, rinse, and repeat.

-some conditioning articles - haven't gone through all of them, but so far some are interesting, a few are dippy, and some I just plain disagree with

-like Kevin said, it's not even really a caricature

-fun, and relatively assertive...sort of. okay practical.

Think the Unthinkable: Partition Iraq - interesting column; I heard the author interviewed on the radio, he seemed quite intelligent. I'm not sure how viable his ideas are, but there they are nonetheless.

"When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ball point pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion dollars developing a pen that writes in zero gravity upside-down on almost any surface including glass and at below freezing to over 300C.

The Russians used a pencil." (via my dad)

-roller disco is funktacular

-ojingogo - a comic about a girl and a...um...squid...thing

      Well, any work on my term paper was sidetracked by my debilitated right side (which Magda's homeopathy and Michelle's massage mitigated, thankfully), but let's see what kind of minor brainstorming I can do in case I get screwed over by chance and have to present later today. The concept of the double (identical person/reflection) has its roots in the very nature of language, and manifests itself as uncanny (aka creepy) as a response to more primitive/younger self-love; the myth of Narcissus is a useful tool for reading representations of that in texts.
     The pronoun "I" is found in every language, referring to a specific person at a certain instant of discourse.  When "I" is used, it is implicit that there is a "you" in the discourse as well for that "I" to be speaking to. In the give and take of that discourse, however, the "I" becomes the "you" and the converse, in effect blurring the line between them; they are "complementary and reversible." That is not to say that they are necessarily equal, however; on some level one's ego is in a higher register than the "you," rendering it an "other." (Benveniste)
      Before that ego comes to the fore, there is a time in which the double is a representation of possible immortality. This is youthful narcissistic stage that is superseded when the ego becomes capable of self-observation and self-criticism. The double as a ward against the "annihilation of the self" (thank you Scott for the reminder on that phrase) falls by the wayside, and the double as the "uncanny harbinger of death" comes forward. (Freud) Not only can the double embody all the things we might have been (and the bad things we may have done), it also takes on the weird/uncanny properties of a reflection (as can be seen in the myth of Narcissus). If you walk away, your reflection ceases to exist; but in the same token, are you sure you're not the reflection, and you will not cease to exist if the real you walks away? Furthermore, there is an attraction/revulsion towards one's reflection. Attraction because of the desire for an ideal version of one's self, and revulsion because of the fear that the reflection might replace one's self. The trick with the attraction is that there is usually a point where on some level it is realized that one cannot truly love/possess one's reflection, and that is its own kind of psychological death.
      Now, I think I need a bit more theory (Laplanche and Pontiliste for identification with characters and something similar from Doane's Femmes Fatales hopefully) and to just pick one example to dissect or a theme to delineate. The options off the top of my head are solutions to the narcissistic pattern (that normally leads to tragedy), the oddshot of a distortion of that pattern (Alien: Resurrection being the only weak example I can think of), or just showing how that pattern might be explored in terms of solution and replication of it in one movie (more promising examples there, Spiderman 2 and Cat People, maybe Double Indemnity).
-----
      Random new foods have been good to me lately. Xuemei tossed some pickling cucumbers with salt and garlic, which was good snacking. Similarly, chicken and rice with cheese and homemade salsa makes a good, easy burrito. Xuemei's mom made steamed buns with pork and pumpkin filling, which seem to have been pretty much universally reviled, which is good; that means I get all of them. And at UMC they had what were basically Cinna-bons, but with spicy oil instead of cinnamon and a bit of cheese instead of glaze. Unfortunately, it was only a quick break so I didn't get to buy the entire basket they had of them.

-a short of martial arts in Elektra; or, why Jennifer Garner rocks and/or rolls

another end-of-semester revision-

Creosote
-
Before, when we crested the shadowed shoulder of the hill,
the liquid sun glanced back at us
on its way out of the sky.

Our cheeks brushed, and your warmth
was the desert rose and pink copper
of the sunset's last breath.

In the dark, however, it is your whispered
footsteps I follow, without the light.

The honeysuckle pollen of an ocotillo flower
tastes red when your lips touch mine,

and the last caress of your skin
smells like rain.

      Random, disconnected things. I think Halo 2 is quality because you can play it cooperatively, which is not only huge fun in and of itself but also nixes having to deal with overly competitive people, and it has clever characters and a setting that while not originally fleshed out, has become so. Hockey is a very, very, very violent sport; so it's cool, because you can't take little kids to cage fighting. The annual martial arts tournament that KoSho puts on was a success; we had people from several schools, even from Paradise Valley and Surprise, and a Shaolin group. And Anne McCaffrey's Harper Hall trilogy is noticeably kiddy in style, but perfect for one-shift reads in the ER.

-fine, but now I want somebody to cluster balloon across an ocean

-interesting but vaguely scary (via Wyatt)

first revision-

Headache
--
She strokes my face as if she is afraid
it will break.
She asks, would it hurt less,
if you let yourself?

But I've never yelled,
not out loud
never moaned,
never growled

like a dog, startled. All the same,
no silent tossing of my head
can put out the wet fire in my skull.

And yet,
all the same,
the coolness in her fingertip distracts.

It does hurt less, when I close my eyes,
though the dark light that blinds
still presses against the back of sore lids.

It does hurt less, when I make myself breathe,
though my neck does not unbend
from the unreal weight of it.

But the release of a scream,
I slowly explain,
would be too much to bear.

I leave silent
the jaw clenched tightly open
and hands straining to clutch at temples;
the self that screams inside my mind.

She presses the mug into my hands,
and strokes my face.

"We read…a poem to make contact not so much with some objective truth but with a particular mind trying to know what is true for it, a contact more immediate than the kind we are likely to get in fiction and drama." - Carl Dennis
      This is definitely a large reason in why I prefer writing poetry over writing fiction. A teacher once gave me a quick explanation of the difference between fiction and poetry being that a fiction writer wants to know "why," while a poetry writer concentrates more on "how." While I sometimes enjoy exploring the motives of characters, I much prefer to read what someone else has written in that regard. Poetry, whether I'm writing or reading it, appeals more directly to me, especially in how Dennis puts it as trying to express the feeling of "a particular mind trying to know what is true for it."

"Now it appears to me that almost any man may spin from his own inwards his own airy Citadel - the points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her work are few and she fills the air with a beautiful circuiting." - John Keats

-Sabaki Challenge - Ahh, bareknuckle karate. The videos available for download are pretty hardcore; these kind of karate rules are the kind I've always supported, as opposed to the focus-on-clean-technique one point at a time rules present in almost every other tournament. Then again, there's always MMA, but that's an entirely different story I suppose. Tangentially, the local teacher for one of the styles connected to this tournament comes to the Diner, apparently they've got some Enshin karate and Japanese sword classes at one of the local YMCAs.

-The Skinhead Hamlet - "HAMLET: Fuck off to a nunnery! "

-the XM8 - is totally cool

ReMembering Cuba - edited by Andrea Herrera pretty much embodies the word "spectrum" in my opinion. It's a collection of 'testimonials,' essays, and art from Cuban exiles of myriad stripes and 'American-Born Cubans' that shows a huge range of views and aspects and thoughts about cultural issues, exile, politics, family, and I could obviously go on. I'd definitely be interested in a similar collection from Mexican-Americans, or any other ethnicity for that matter; another interesting one in my mind would be the Arabs of various nationalities in Tucson, for example. My mother's experience as a Palestinian is readily apparently different, for example, from the various Syrians, Lebanese, Assyrians, Irani (well, I guess they're Middle Eastern), and Iraqis we've met.

Kisses - by Steve Orlen is a really easy-to-read collection of poetry. Family, personal history, and being a Jew are some of the main aspects; also, it didn't really click till I got to the bio at the end, Orlen is on the faculty at UA.

Ong Bak - besides this looking to be crazyawesome in and of itself, I think it's also interesting that among the Muay Thai techniques even visible in the trailer (and some Krabi Krabong? not sure), there are really traditional techniques that are hard to find even in texts nowadays. They were the moves made illegal in the ring because of the potential for massive injury - kind of like how Japanese jujitsu competitions were done away with altogether in favor of the safer judo, I suppose, now that I think about it.

-pic from Cassini; I'll confess that it took me a little while to figure out what was going on in the photo, but it's cool; I'm still interested in what that probe going down to Titan is going to show, though.... (via Kevin)

-Paper Airplane Designs - haven't really tried any except the Blimp, which was cute, and the Swallow, which I just realized what I should have changed to make it fly better, but there's still many more to fill up procrastination time

      As much as I enjoy a good football game (of either variety) or late-night volleyball or what, there's one big reason I enjoy martial arts more: it makes me think. The other night for example, my brain was definitely using way more calories than my body. We weren't even using our bodies very much - the only thing that was sore afterwards were my deltoids. I got hungry in the same way I do when I'm trying to piece together a term paper, the kind of hungry where I need to eat to maintain my thought process where it needs to be. Furthermore, beyond just wrapping my mind around the concept at hand, I was trying to tell my body to apply it - or rather, to let my body just do it, which takes its own kind of mental effort.
      Tangentially, the almost three hours of workout today was interesting in and of itself. We had a karate/wing chun person, a taekwondo person, a kenpo person, a kickboxing/aikido person (not sure what the hell to label myself striking-wise), and a kickboxing person (who, absolutely tangentially, was totally hot). So with all these people with training in different disciplines, there was a noticeable range of styles, with each person moving entirely differently. It was crazy, I tell you.

Alexander - the Great waste of three hours. I'm not even sure where to start. There was no character development whatsoever (seriously, anything where they have to tell you straight off the bat that he's Great, rather than showing you...). In that vein, none of the other characters were developed much at all, unless you count mascara boy or the psychotic mother. Furthermore, for a movie about Alexander the Great, there were only two battle scenes; while I grinned that they had Alexander use a supercool falcata (yay kukri stylin'!), every military and otherwise (building cities, reform, &c) accomplishment was pretty much a spot on the map and a few seconds worth of narration. I'm not sure whether the nude scene was a rape, the constant dude-dude sexual tension would have probably been a lot less uncomfortable had they actually consummated something, and there were so many Oedipal and Freudian things laid on thick in the beginning of the movie it was like the Xuemei's cake that collapsed from too much frosting. The couple interesting points for me were the visuals of Babylon, the costuming and other aspects of the Persian and Indian armies, and the random Voldo dance. I don't know what the hell was with that.

-as referenced in Red vs Blue, I bring you: the Turducken. (via Wyatt)

      In watching The Incredibles, I was struck by how they integrated really old-school style heroes into a modern context, and I mean really made them a part of it - they had to interact within a system with consequences, &c &c. Yes, it was cartoonish, hell it was a cartoon, but it seemed to me a great deal better than the other old way of doing superheroes, who are practically a context unto themselves. I can't really speak for anything recent, given my self-imposed exile from comic book stores, but I do remember improving trends like Gen13 2.0 practically having its plot initiated by 9-11, and some of the X-Men comics playing more active roles and reacting to governments such as the EU.

      And yeah I think that's cool, and that it's a real upgrade to a nice place (balancing superhero-ness and interaction with context), but all in all I always preferred the ones that I knew of that went entirely over to the context side of things: Aberrant, which led into Aeon Trinity. These were games published by White Wolf that had a somewhat standard premise of mutation leading to supernatural abilities, but went an entirely different route. The only thing resembling superheros in Aberrant were viciously satirized, almost like Marvel's X-Statix but with more than just a focus on the media-angle; eventually, (following the-most-dangerous-thing-that-can-happen-to-a-people-is-a-Hero theme in Dune) the "Aberrants" are almost the cause of an apocalypse and are exiled, inverting a number of the usual themes. From there, the focus on the philisophical questions of being supernatural in Aberrant lead to the practical superceding of context-over-"hero," where even the supernatural soldiers supposedly fighting for the good side are almost certainly anti-heroes, and the only good is a lesser evil with the best chance of surviving. I mean, you can't beat that kind of stuff (in my opinion anyway).

-who's up for foraging with me? I know ocotilla flowers taste like honeysuckle and prickly pear pears taste kind of like cranberries off the top of my head, but what else is there? I bet there's a huge amount. Oh palo verde seeds can be used like pine nuts..hmm...

      Odd idea concerning the nature of the characters in Alias that connects to my thesis - the characters in Frank Herbert's Dune function as heroes because of their supernatural qualities, but at the same time (while a shallow reading of the text makes it seem otherwise) whatever romanticization they have is stripped from them. For every beyond-normal quality they have, the hours of work and pain and discipline are detailed, implying that yes, even you Mr. Joe Reader could hypothetically become like this. While none of the characters in Alias have supernatural qualities, they certainly behave in a beyond-the-norm manner - their actions take on heroic proportions. Even still, Joe Viewer can apply to the CIA, or can take martial arts, or can take a language or acting course. So the characters of each are at the same time epic in nature and just like you and me - we can identify with them and look up to them simultaneously.

-wasn't there something about cell phone bombs on CSI: Miami the other night? (via Wyatt)

-Nuclear Terrorism - being able to center a map of a blast zone on a zip code is cool, but I wish they'd also lay out likely targets in that regard as well so I would know where to avoid on principle (via Kevin)

Xuemei's getting-into-med-school-celebration Meal:
-fried chicken and baked chicken (Italian style)
-Chinese greens with garlic
-West Lake soup (beef, cilantro, green onions, egg (flowered))
-sparkling cider and sparkling cranberry juice
-crack muffins of doom
+
Xuemei's nice meal of the day:
-ribs (Cantonese sauce)
-Chinese greens with garlic
-soup (ribs, straw mushrooms, thick noodles, cabbage)
-rice

-interesting article on fitness in Western history

-I figured out where I was attracted to Marguerite Moreau before the Easy trailer - she was in Queen of the Damned! Ok so I was excited about this at four in the morning.

      Here's the dream I had this morning. I was in a deli with my mom and my aunts and uncles, but everyone except for my mom was acting, well, slightly oddly. Then I heard screams from somewhere in the distance outside of the deli, and got a really bad feeling. As my relatives started arguing in the usual Arab manner, I turned to see shadows and then velociraptors in the shadowy back of the deli. My relatives saw them as well, but just turned and stared at my mom and I, so I grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the building. In the space between the deli and another building, which turned out to be an odd bank, I don't remember much except the running sensation, overcast skies, and it sounding like something in between dead quiet and catastrophe.
      In the bank was a hysterical, skinny employee, wringing his hands at his inability to lock the front door, which oddly was a really loose wooden affair with two doors that could swing in or out. So I set to work with a nail and two pieces of thick wire trying to connect the doors in the middle and hold them together, all the while hearing dull, heavy roars from the distance. I looked up through the window and saw more raptors stalking around outside, so got my mom again and pulled an odd dream thing where it felt like running up and running down stairs simultaneously. The front door smashed open and the teller screamed, and I looked back to see human shaped shadows following us, and heard my relatives' voices, and then one of the shadows paused, and out of its face blossomed a multitude of long tongues, then my cell rang and I woke up. Soo....Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Jurassic Park, and something Lovecraftian going on?

-amazing detailing of a Tokyo underground that manages floodwaters; somewhere in there is an animation of how it works

      The Incredibles was some great fun. As much as I've always been a proponent of leathers over spandex in superhero-style, I think I finally get the appeal of the other side now. Fantastic action and feats are like crack to me, and this movie was chock full of them; which isn't to say that it didn't have several registers of dialogue and characters operating at the same time, as well. It just wouldn't have been the quality it was otherwise, in my opinion.
      Tangentially, I suppose I need to qualify my enjoyment of the implausible doings to avoid being called out for past rants. Ironically, for me they're valid when they're within reason. xXx made me inordinately angry, for example. Besides its other poor qualities, the action based on what was supposedly just an extreme sports star suddenly doing superhuman things, not to mention his ease of transition into his new killing role in life just made for a boring character. I mean, near the beginning his motorcycle spontaneously pops up to the level of a guard tower and I'm dropping that before I get started.
      Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Hero, on the other hand, pulled off the flying and whatnot for me. While the kung fu of the characters can in no way account for some of what they pull off, the films' roots in romanticized stories and as a reference to any story of back-in-the-day kung fu masters negates that.
-------
      In the latest National Geographic, there is an article on the Okavango Delta. Not much to say, except that this delta doesn't end in a body of water...it just trails off into the middle of a desert. I dunno, that just seems rich with meaning; there's more in the article in that regard, on the nature of water within the ecosystem and the integral reliance on flora and fauna for the nature of the delta. Also, cultural detail, like a local poem: "I am the river. My surface gives you life. Below is death."

+ unrelated, trivia-laced tattoo article

      "To say I in English is a normal, nearly imperceptible form of self-expression, a convention of thought and syntax; but in Spanish, the iteration of yo quickly turns into an exercise in narcissism." - There's a lot more to this passage, but I thought it was interesting as an example of inherent differences in languages. It seemed kind of indicative of the "thought doesn't determine language, language determines thought" idea.

      In the same class where I read that passage, it was interesting that almost everyone in the class were immigrants or had parents who were immigrants or some other very close connection in that regard. I had no idea that it would be the very few people who didn't have stories to share rather than the converse; even the cute Natalie Portman-lookalike was half-Lebanese (and that proves so far that half-Arabs are consistently cute...haven't met an unattractive one yet...).

-I now also feel more justified in liking J Lo

(needs revision)

Suicide, attempted.
-
I got there in the afternoon,
but the room was
dark.

He stared at the ceiling, and cried quietly,
soft gasps and sobs, unrestrained;

his skin seemed too weathered to absorb the tears.

I rested my forearms on my elbows, watched the tile floor.

He spoke, I listened.

He hadn't always been a construction worker;
his calluses caressed calluses while he looked at his hands.

He would steal morphine from pharmacies to buy drugs
How?
Through the ceiling.

His father would make him wait while he made it.
Made what?
What he was going to beat me with.

His third wife left him almost thirty years ago
Why?
He was too boring.
I cocked my head to the side.
He said:

I've been sober for twenty-eight years.
I don't remember it, I blacked out.
The detective looked at me through the bars.
I almost killed a little girl and her mother.
The detective said, "Fuck you."

My head tipped back, and I watched the ceiling.

The room was dark.

      In the spirit of getting a Brazilian jujitsu book that finally was on sale down to ten dollars (I know, the sacrilege etc, I need the reference though), I figured hey why not review what I already have. For example, Jiu Jitsu by "Professor" Robert Clark. The cover bills it as 'The Black Belt Syllabus' and 'The Official World Jiu Jitsu Federation Training Manual.' Which I might have cared about if there was any effort at explaining what the hell that means, because it's actually denigrating in my mind without any reference. I mean, he spells the name of the martial art like the Brazilians usually do, but the book is obviously for Japanese jj, not that he ever indicates that he is operating with either. In fact, the terminology he uses for the throws seems to be coming from old school Western wrestling, or somewhere less sensical, and is just confusing if not misleading.
      The technique sequences are stiff and stilted, and the pictures are little aid to the small amount of textual explanation, and as such often require deciphering. There is no explanation of principle whatsoever, and the pins range from esoteric to doesn't-actually-quite-work-like-that. The one somewhat useful section is a short survey of mid-range strikes and a few drills for chaining them together, though even that seems to be taken from a generic karate style.
      For the complete opposite of all that, there are Small-Circle Jujitsu by Wally Jay (the closest school to Ko Sho jj I know of), and, to a lesser extent, Jujitsu: Intermediate Techniques of the Gentle Art by George Kirby. Basically I don't feel like writing the opposite of everything I already wrote.

-fun clock

-Cave Hunter - can't figure out why it's called that, but hey it's kinda fun. The most interesting part, as Wyatt pointed out, is that in some ways it plays with what one might define as "up," especially when you try to figure out what the original "up" was after progressing a a ways (via Wyatt)

      Whenever I come back from trips I usually feel a momentary dislocation; that is, I recognize everything, but as if I had stepped sideways, if anyone out there gets that reference. When I came back from New Jersey, oddly, I didn't really get the feeling from location; I think to me New Jersey is place made up more of people than terrain; the cute copper-skinned girl working the counter at my Aunt Maha's deli is much more vivid than the fog-shrouded walls of trees and dilapidated brick buildings. When I come back from the Mojave or, as per this time, the foothills north of the Catalinas, however, my family's neighborhood and then the university are off kilter. That feeling always makes me suspicious for a while, like I'm looking through someone else's eyes, but they're sitting right next to me.
      Peppersauce Canyon was certainly different than the day to day norm. Its silly name belies the general harshness of the area. At the same time, contrarily, it was gorgeous, if only for moments. Half of the ridges are sunbaked, nothing but grass and cactus, though when the dawn hits them they go from blue to rose to orange and gold. Their shady lee sides are generally generously coated in stunted mesquite and cats-claw ("Ow! Why the OW hell are OW the thoOWrns curved? Don't they OW want to OW keep the herbiOWvores away? Hey look I'm bleeding" - Wyatt). Oh, and also century plants, like the one that thrust the spiny tip of one of its spears in the way of my fingertip (and my bodyweight behind it) as I fell. Sonuvabitch that hurt. And bled, profusely. The ravines between the higher ridges were alternately dense scrub and juniper or what seemed to be a fire-blasted wasteland of the same. The tree-skeletons were elegantly dead in most cases, however, bonewhite on one side and coal black on the other for the most part. From the highest ridges and peaks (did I mention we covered a huge amount of ground?) there's a view of a valley big enough to hold another city in, mirroring Tucson to the north, with a similar northern range of mountains bounding it in the distance. Moonless night and before dawn were also interesting, if only aurally; coyotes were distinctly and periodically present, and the thundery crashing and stamping was revealed to be cattle when the sun came up. There was also the shrieking bark that paralled us for some distance in the darkness (no, it wasn't coyotes, they were barking a different bark at the same time), that was kind of worrisome for a bit.
      One of the last places we found by tracking a group of deer up and down several ravines was a sort of deer-Shangri La (or at least seemed so, judging by the Grand Central Station of tracking marks we found). There was an incredibly dense shadow-ridge perfect for bedding down, but staying high for look-out-age. Opposite that was its equivalent, sun-ridge style, and at the bottom there was a riparian area with a relatively steady spring. The only trick about that ravine was this gargantuan skirling, swirling wind that was funneled through it in the afternoon. We could actually hear it eddying and spiraling long before it got to each of our respective places, and we could track it by sound well enough to brace just before each wave blasted whatever tree we were hunkered down behind. The weather's odd 'behind' the Catalinas, let me tell you.

-mmm come to daddy...

-how to throw cards (also some reviews of unusual knives)

happy fun movie trailer time yay.

Monster-in-Law - So I click on this, thinking it'll be a dumb kid's movie or somesuch, and yeah it did turn out to look kind of dumb, but in the interest of ethical procrastination I clicked 'play.' And then I actually yelled out loud. Lo and behold, it has one of my most favorite actors (Michael Vartan) and one of my...favorite people to look at, to be frank....redundantly Frank, I suppose. I don't care if it looks stupid I'm seeing it damnit. It's the principle of the thing.

Easy - This one also looks good, but actually solidly good. That, and I'm already kind of crushing on Marguerite Moreau. And she has a cool name. Interestingly, IMDB says it was made in 2003, and the one reviewer was somewhat weakly scathing, but based on his lack of coherence, feh.

Closer - Like the first movie, I'm seeing it because I like Clive Owen and I think Natalie Portman is totally cute. But this one, like the second movie, also looks pretty good. And if the trailer music is hopefully any indication, I'm buying the soundtrack. Xuemei, tangentially, has already claimed Jude Law as her boyfriend and will probably be dragged along, if anyone else wants to come for their own random reasons.

Elektra, unfortunately, looks to be about as good as the movie that spawned it. As much as I think Jennifer Garner is great, I'm going to stay wary about this one.

-also, House of Flying Daggers is actually coming stateside apparently, and under its proper name, and not the stupid Japanese release name. This is cool.

      "What is a poet? An unhappy man who in his heart harbors a deep anguish, but whose lips are so fashioned that the moans and cries which pass over them are transformed into ravishing music...And men crowd about the poet and say to him, "Sing for us soon again" - which is as much to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be fashioned as before; for the cries would only distress us, but the music, the music is delightful." And the critics come forward and say, "That is perfectly done - just as it should be, according to the rules of aesthetics." Now, it is understood that a critic resembles a poet to a hair; he only lacks the anguish in heart and the music upon his lips. I tell you, I would rather be a swineherd, understood by the swine, than a poet misunderstood by men."

- haven't finished thinking that one over, but it's pretty, and also:

      '"Do you wish for youth," said Mercury, "or for beauty, or power, or a long life; or do you wish for the most beautiful woman, or any other of the many fine things we have in our treasure trove? Choose, but only one thing!" For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed the gods in this wise: "Most honorable contemporaries, I choose one thing—that I may always have the laughs on my side."'
- Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

The Order of the Stick - I promised myself I wouldn't get stuck reading another slew of webcomic archives. But this one is funny. Okay, to qualify, it's funny if you have any knowledge of D+D; otherwise it's probably nonsensical.

      So Xuemei explained to me that muscle knots come in two types: the small, hard ones you feel when massaging someone are from lactic acid, whereas other knots are from muscle fibers tangling. For some reason this messes with me (I think that I didn't realize muscle cells could almost literally knot up), but I suppose it might be useful information when it comes to yoga'ing out painful points. Though I could also really go for a shoulder rub now.

-mmm vocab (that I've run into in the course of today's thesis research)
   nepenthe - A drug used by the ancients to give relief from pain andsorrow; supposed by some to have been opium or hasheesh; hence, anything soothing and comforting
   aporetic - inclined to doubt, or to raise objections
   pharmakon - can mean both remedy and poison
   sinthome - uh-huh and riiight

-and quotes
   "Unlike Virginia Woolf's precarious somersaults out of the real..."
and also
   "...how I thrust my spear deep into the titanic hairy flank while Oob, impaled on one huge sweeping tusk, writhed screaming, and blood spurted everywhere in crimson torrents, and Boob was crushed to jelly when the mammoth fell on him as I shot my unerring arrow straight through eye to brain"
   vs
   "...how i wrested a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then I scratched my gnat bites, and Ool said something funny, and we went to the creek and got a drink and watched newts for a while, and then I found another patch of oats"

      Hanshi Anderson had his (twice?)yearly seminar today. Crazy 72 year-old badass. I got the dubious honor of being used for a demonstration (the senior teachers are usually used, like the one shaven-headed teacher who's bruises were perfectly visible all over his scalp); held in an armbar, I got double-tapped in the eyeball with an elbow-forearm. Sooo cross-eyed. We also skimmed a Wado-ryu kata, a Korean form (Steven has a super-similar tang soo do form apparently), and a short Chinese form. All of which was very, very confusing to the guy with no training in forms beyond five movements. But: there were also the taiho techniques that they train Air Marshalls with, which are basically jujitsu, which let me redeem myself somewhat from my earlier awkward following-along. By causing other people pain. Like the big jerk with the tattoo'ed arms and tight shoulders. Good times.
----tangent: Hanshi Anderson thinks yoga is great. ha.

-quick procrastination; and it actually flaps

-the sad part is that I don't think I can dance that well

The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera - by J. Joaquin Fraxedas. The style of this has been likened to Hemingway, but for lack of experience I couldn't one way or the other on this. It is emotionally moving and aesthetically pleasing to read, although at some moments depressing, and at one point just disturbing. I'd call it a short epic, detailing the variegated aspects of emigrating from Cuba to the United States.

-Catch Wrestling techniques - this...is an odd set of techniques. Some are variants of what I've learned, or are clever ways of using favorite techniques that I never would have thought of, such as 'armlock2.' Some I remember from back in the day but totally forgot, like 'keylock.' And many of the others seem a bit esoteric, but do-able. I think. Who wants to try?

-Implosion World - seriously, how can anyone resist stuff blowing up

      My poetry teacher told me something that stuck today - that sometimes our greatest strength is our greatest weakness. In my poetry this is apparently my facility with creating tone and revealing emotion; the trick is, I pretty much only do that through figurative language and lyricism or meditative poems. Thus, I need to express the same things through more concrete details, and trust in my strength to carry itself through rather than overemphasizing it.
      As I walked home, I thought about a similarity in my martial arts training. One of my strengths is my control; usually I'm as precise and effecient as I can be in my techniques. The trick is, this often leads me to holding back (controlling my technique so I don't hurt the other person, but to the point where the technique doesn't work), or conversely when I finally do let myself go, the other person is almost inevitably injured or hurt. I think basically I need to find that balance between conscious control and cutting loose.

-article on lifting the arms properly; this immediately helped with poses for putting my clicky shoulder back into place

      As much as I am wary of higher end literary theory and the difficulties in understanding that it implies, I liked the way the teacher explained why the writing is sometimes...odd. She said that the concepts being discussed require a different sort of syntax than just a straight out explanation, involving metaphors and figurative language. Which also reminds me of the philisophy classes I took; the language seemed insane, partly because of translation in a few cases, I think, but also because the things being discussed just couldn't be described in regular, everyday language. Which is doubly weird in my mind, because that might mean that the figurative language needed can apply directly to sciences in some cases, such as Searle's involvement with artificial intelligence.

-Art of Daryl Mandryk

-Preserving Amerind languages

-more crazy origami

      The next new favorite conditioning exercise: I've read about them as 'tiger pushups,' but hadn't really tried them till the new head instructor set us to them, with the backing evidence that supposedly Bruce Lee liked them. On hands and knees, put the soles of your feet flat against a wall. Lift your hips into an approximation of downward-dog pose. Then, keeping your body in that upside-down 'V,' do pushups by touching your nose to the floor. Say hello to an upper-pec workout, along with body awareness conditioning (very easy to get almostvertigo during the bottom of the motion, at least for me).
   Secondarily, there are also regular pushups done facing another person; on each up, reach out and slap hands at face-level, alternating sides.
   Thirdly, I don't remember who came up with it in the class, but get another person across your back for a full-hip throw, and start doing squats (can also be an indicator for the lifted person if abs need to be worked). The Honbu variation is apparently to walk from corner to corner of the mats while in that position. Our variation includes interspersing hops during the squats.

      Also, Scott found a great site for parkour (+ Q of the N); at the bottom of that page there is their description of 'flow.' That immediately clicked in my head - it's also the overriding principle/ideal aspiration of jujitsu and some other martial arts (aikido, perhaps hapkido?) in being able to flow without hesitation between techniques as needed on the fly. Ah, connections.

-So this girl can't feel pain. That's crazy and all, but here's Kevin's doublecrazy question: without pain, can she really appreciate pleasure? Whoa. (via Kevin, natch)

-Tea tree oil and citrus listerine is absolutely vile, but if you take it like a shot and gargle it seems to instantly get rid of sore throat-age.

-Blanc Fonce - art

-sculpting geometry - art for math nuts

So. Um. Cousin Taryn's wedding. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (no, seriously in some regards) + Janet Evanovich + Arabic + crowds and crowds of relatives + rave-like reception. The cousins whom I hadn't seen (or for some, met ever) in ten years ranged from elementary cutie-patooties, to sorority/frat drunks, to cool composition-at-Boston music school, to sports-car-chic-job-Paris-party vs ambitions-centered-on-richest-husband possible, to friendly Jersey girls, and to crazy New Age. And there were also the people trying to set me up with the odd looking Texan. The bride's maids from the groom's side were fat, and danced crazylike, but did a credible dance from 'Thriller.' Uncle Johnny and Aunt Maha were back to their normal selves. Threatening to kill each other. And the intro from 'Misirlou' on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack was accidentally played as they set up for carrying the new couple around on chairs to Arabic chants. And there was a crazy giant circle dance. And my mom pointed out that unlike cousin Kelly's wedding, no drunken Arabs got into brawls. So, all in all, it was kind of scary, but fun.

-mmmmbahaha.

-reminds me of the original GI Joe rocket that almost hit the neighbor (via Wyatt)

Well, off to ye olde Garden State for an Arab/Italian wedding....I foresee chaos...

Time Out of Joint - Western Dominance, Islamic Terror, and the Arab Imagination - I think this is an amazing piece of writing. It made me almost ecstatic to read at some points, partly because of the quality and knowledge gained, but also because of its perspective. To me, this is operating from the opposite perspective from Edward Said's Orientalism, which is really cool because in that it is acknowledging the force that orientalism is, and at the same time offering the perspective that orientalism by its nature supresses. Furthermore, it shows how literature affects the world outside of academia, which is also a nice subject to touch on in my opinion.

-Facezero - this is my new favorite art

-an excerpt from Roland Barthes's A Lover's Discourse - I remember reading from this in literary analysis, I still think it's a fun read

      There was a fun English-major moment this morning - three people coincidentally all used the myth of Narcissus to take apart the movie Cat People in different ways. One guy read it as the main female character (and monster) being similar to Narcissus, attracted to but unable to reach her aggressive and sexual side. I read it as the husband being like Narcissus, the two women in the film's love triangle acting as his reflection. He tries to force the woman/monster into his ideal image of her (his reflection), but is unable to consummate the act (like Narcissus). He solves the tragic ending of the myth, however, in finding another reflection of himself embodied in the other woman, as asexual as he is. The third person actually found her idea in Narcissus' resurrection as the eponymous flower; a 'complete' flower has four parts: male, female, and two neuter. In the movie there is the husband, his wife/monster, the asexual woman, and a psychiatrist who's sexual advances are frustrated. WaBAM. I just thought it was cool that we could use myth in several different ways to take apart and learn from a story that seems entirely different at first glance.

"Vaughn [my favorite Alias character] fights in a slightly militaristic style, but it's more close combat, like jujitsu. He's going to get in, lock up his opponent, take it down to the ground and finish it off." - this makes for a very happy frankie. (from an article on how they choreograph different characters' fighting styles in Alias)

-resonance - my new favorite art

-Girrion - I'm kind of leery about it, but seems interesting

-my first thought was that they were Lilliputians, but I think Kevin was more on the money with Oompaloompas

      Way back when in elementary school, there was this wonderful swath of desert between the classrooms proper and the various kiddy-sized fields. My most recent memory of it was of how small it seemed, but back in the days of glorious recess there were rolling hills and gullies galore to explore. And there were also the forts. I remember asking another person who had gone to Sunrise if they remembered the fort wars we used to have, and was gruffly rebuffed, their existance denied.
      Then I started to wonder if I was just making up memories, just to have something pleasant to associate with elementary school. But unless there was a shared hallucination, Xuemei remembers them too! In all their ludicrous detail, to boot. Forts were usually centered around a large mesquite or palo verde, although I remember a couple at the base of steep slopes or hidden in a copse of desert broom - that last one would take on a weird enigmatic quality, where girls and boys might go in the shadows of the branches when the "snow" was falling from the desert broom. One fort had a tall lookout tree that was easy to climb, while another was a giant among mesquites and actually often contained a couple of forts at a time, each maintaining a close watch on the other. Of course, there were any number of small forts that would shift mercurially with each recess from small palo verde to small palo verde.
      Groups of us would stake out a certain area every recess, brandishing our variegated clubs and setting up traps. We would set cholla segments in precarious positions, ready to silently drop on the unwary intruder who brushed a stray branch, or create elaborate stick and rock traps that would fountain sand when stepped on properly. Apparently, Xuemei was even set to stripping mistletoe of its gooey berries so the sticky mess could be snuck over to other forts and used as a messy medium for the sabotage of sitting-branches or rocks.
      Every once in a rare while, there were even abortive wars. I can actually remember one of the sand-traps improbably working during a rush of girls through a fort I was in; the sudden cloud of dust scattered the girl's charge and left us cheering and coughing as they ran off. Mostly there was peace of sorts, as we plotted out patrols or sent someone to spy on the condition of forts across the desert. We were actually usually occupied setting the boundaries of and fortifying our own areas each recess over again, and exploring what resources we had for traps and prestige (one fort was known for its high ground and shady, be-mistletoe'd tree, while in another there was an unfortunate diaspora of scared kids from an unearthed nest of spiders).
      Once, however, there was a rivalry that actually built up, and forts on one end of the desert actually stayed coherent for a while. As best as I can remember, I think I was in the fort that had the lookout tree at the time, and somehow we got pulled into defending the fort at the top of the steep slope. Several combined forts stood spread along the slope, yelling and waving our sticks at the opposing kids who were loping over the hill before us in a spread-out charge. Ironically, I remember the person who disavowed any knowledge of the forts as the one who exhorted us in a countercharge across the slope as they flanked us from the high-ground/mistletoe fort. As I turned to follow him a plastic baggy full of sand cometed passed my head; luckily, it did not bludgeon me, but its open end dropped a cascade of hot sand into my face and down my shirt. The last thing I remember of the incident was blinking my eyes furiously to clear the dust from them and standing fast midway down the slope, beating aside another kid's slashing cuts with a mesquite branch. I don't really remember whether we won or lost, but you know what?
      Those were good times.

"A storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress." - Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History

      My new favorite conditioning drill conveniently uses Xuemei's big blue balance ball. Which means it has more uses than an extra seat at the dinner table, alliteration, and jokes about blue-balls, apparently. Basically, you kneel on the ball with both knees, and balance while running through striking techniques (forward and down). The idea is that it's like getting a ground-n-pound, but the opponent has the wherewithal to cover and try to reverse your mount. There's the body-sensitivity gained of course, but also a workout of the small muscles in your legs and back that are normally overtaken by the large muscle groups. Of course, if you fall off the ball it's nice because it helps you train to drop into a different pin, like a side-mount or cradle. Or smash your head on the coffee table. You know. Whatever.

-The Katurran Odyssey - seems like an interesting read; pretties in the gallery

-not that "Rapper's Delight" wasn't naturally somewhat incomprehensible

-literary theory is crazy. (via the prof)

-and congrats to Kevin on his brown belt!

White Comanche - Not really much to say about this movie. It's sheer absurdity is going to aid me in the essay I'm writing on it, at least. I think the fact that William Shatner stars as twin half-Comanche brothers pretty much sums it up. Tangentially, Bookman's is the best store ever; where else can you get eight Westerns and Ultimate Knockouts for under fifteen dollars?

-Globalvote 2004 - I don't think anyone I know outside of the country reads this, but what the hell

-insomnia with TrekEarth - Above the Clouds, Fighters, where r u? (via Carolyn), Dream Moment

-I almost want to try to sign on with the Israeli Civilian Special Forces just so I could get a motorcycle (notwithstanding whatever other issues I have, to totally qualify that)

***, ***, ***, *** - really interesting entries that remind me of my mom, what with her love of words and how Old World stuff slips into family life (like today, she ironically shifted to Italian instead of Arabic in the midst of a polemic on how Xuemei and I need to grow balls)

-yet another Bloodlines plug (I'm totally down with someone buying me this)

-Islamic art - my favorite is the one with the angel Gabriel, natch

-Treasure Box - kind of an antiqued and smaller Samarost

      So The Peacekeeper Wars was pretty awesome. They're showing it in its entirety on Sunday, which would be nice to see, if time-consuming (Carolyn reminded me of details from the first part that I had forgotten, as she had taped it to watch today). I think one can see how they crammed a season or two of episodes into four hours, but they did a nice job all in all, with cameos and new concepts and loose ends tied galore. And a bloody happy ending. Bastards. I'll never forgive them for the way they pulled an Alias on the series finale.
      Wyatt also noted the re-occurrence of a certain theme in skiffy (and I'm sure elsewhere as well, just don't feel like looking at it yet) lines. That is, the golden age collapsing and thus setting up the contemporary-to-characters setting. What I thought was especially interesting is the variance in that theme. In Farscape, after the collapse those who maintained the peace attempt to maintain it in the only way they know how - by force, which leads to them being reviled as warmongers. In Battletech, the golden age collapses because of a corrupt government and dictator, and the peacekeeping armies exile themselves - only to return and attempt to impose a whole new peace and culture on what is almost a new golden age. In Warhammer 40,000, the golden age is created by force, and destroyed because of a civil war (of the Lucifer+angels archetype), leaving an endless slow decline into chaos.
      The idea I'm mulling is that these were successful because they use the golden-age-collapse archetype with quality writing, and also because they tend to avoid overt idealism. That is, they don't quite recognize anyone as outright "good," and if they do, those people tend to get screwed over a lot (re: the Caballeros and Grey Death Legion in Battletech, the main characters of Farscape, and everyone and their mother's left nut in 40k). Andromeda attempted to work with a pretty good collapsed-golden-age motif, but didn't go anywhere because of its writing and actors and unremittant idealism. And Firefly? Sorry, people who liked that, but I think it deserved what it got (I really did try to like it, too, I just couldn't). Besides it getting hung up on some of the same things as Andromeda, they started out with a kind of original, kind of old-school Star Wars archetype (failed/failing rebellion), and then mixed that with a limp interpretation of the Western genre. I think some expansion and deepening of their science-fiction setting might have helped, and a closer reading of Westerns and their cynical romanticism (both to avoid or possibly work with ingrained stereotypes and to draw out post-colonial and frontier themes).

-unfortunate name, and interesting looking, but what is it?

-best shirt in the entire world (if you're not one of the two people who might get the reference, feel free to ask and be regaled)

Jon Stewart on Crossfire - this got me pretty riled up, in truth; I also have a whole new respect for Jon Stewart

-on foreigners as insurgents in Iraq (via Wyatt)

-Ark Visual Effects - small gallery of art, video

-random concept - there's just so much potential in this for a great character or even short story built around it...I guess you have to have been a 40k nerd at some point to get the full import, but still...

-tangentially, Dawn of War is a pretty amazing game based on 40k (at least going by the demo Wyatt downloaded). There are a great many oooo's and aaaahhhh's to be had, and some nice "holy shit" 's in there too; it's basically a regular RTS, but with great voice acting, and the feature of zooming in on the (nicely interfaced) combat to see cool finishing moves when it gets to hand-to-hand (even the E3 video doesn't really do it justice).

      A random principle of the zen state as applied to the physical body as enumerated in the car after aikido this morning: when a cherry blossom falls from a tree, the tree does not tell the flower to fall: it just falls. When a person is in a zen state, they do not tell their body to move (on any subconscious or or conscious level), it just does. Aka, a lightbulb appeared above our heads. (We weren't trying to sound pretentious, mind, just working through the classic 'do the technique without thinking' admonition)

-Growing Up Sexually: A World Atlas - pretty dry for the most part, and the sources seem kind of suspect for some reason, but interesting

-'spiro-graph on LSD'

-ah, fun with werds

-smabee art - small gallery

-thought this was cute (from a yoga article):
The Psoas is:
(A) A remote tribe in Papua, New Guinea. (B) A revolutionary computer operating system. (C) The muscle that is the key to your structural stability.

      While Xuemei and I were getting groceries at the Chinese market the other day, something clicked as I made my usual uncomprehending rounds among the various foodstuffs. I was thinking of trips with my mom to the Arab market; to be more specific; at the Arab market, there was always pretty much uniformly Arabs of various stripes, usually Lebanese or Syrian browsing the bins of olives and dates. If there was anyone of any other ethnicity around, they were very obvious just by being an exception. Of course, my brother and I were included in that category, and were probably a little bit extra odd for being attached to our mom and saying thank you in Arabic.
      Aaand back to the Chinese market. There one can find a kind of even mix of Hispanic and Asian customers, and perhaps one grizzled white dude buying his liquor and smokes. I guess after having only been to a Middle Eastern-centered store for so long I must have unconsciously expected there to be another homogenous group of people. Why the disparity, I wonder?

-Asia Food - useful for a trip to the Chinese market

-La Terre vue du Ciel - gorgeous photography of places all over the world from height, France was the best section in my opinion

-this must have taken skill, effort, and raw talent

"It's the storm we all have to endure. We hate it. But it's every raindrop - it's every harsh element that runs down our faces that traces out who we are. Our shape. It reveals the passion, the defiance, the space in the world the rain cannot displace." - if anyone wants the source, ask, otherwise I think it might confuse what might be taken out of the words themselves...which all makes this sound way more self-important than it is, I just thought it was nice

-drunk vs rugby team, and not even in a hooligan-ish manner!

-Bunny - creepyeerie, but cute

-Demons - more interesting in theory than in practice; the most interesting section in my opinion is the Judeo/Christian bit

I feel like this poem needs a good revision or few, so any thoughts appreciated:

Somewhere in my head
I am always screaming -
hands straining to clutch at my temples
jaw clenched tightly open.

Somewhere in my head
a fire begins to burn, wetly.
The coals it ignites make my skull glow with heat -
but I can not flinch my scalp away.

Somewhere in my head
A dark star blooms.
Its black light blinds me from the inside,
inside where I have no eyelids to shut away that violent sun.

Somewhere in my head
I slowly realize there is an intangible weight
Suffocating something that is not breath, and pressing
with a heaviness that no strength of mine can carry.

I can I walk away to find quiet -
and stare at nothing with hooded eyes;

but somewhere, in my head,

I am always screaming.

Sandkings - by George R. R. Martin. Unfortunetaly, this puppy's out of print; it's an anthology written by Martin before he became all famous. I had read this when I was much younger after picking it up already well used from Bookman's, and had been intrigued, but had been overwhelmed at the same time. This time I still felt a bit overwhelmed, but in the same way that Martin's novels have that effect, so in a good way. Kind of the speculative science fiction of Philip K. Dick, but with emotion and character development and sensuality and horror, you know, stuff that might have kept many of Dick's stories from sucking. Pun unintended, there. Sorry, yeah that was kind of tangent.

-"Join Ken Bowers, author of "God Speaks Again: An Introduction to the Bahá'í Faith", Saturday, October 9, on "Faith Under Fire," a new cable television program broadcast on the PAX-TV network..." - ok, not cool. Basically, a fundy Christian evangelist is not-so-subtly going after the Bahá'í religion now, on the basis that apparently tolerance between religions [re: main tenant of B.] is not down with the jebus-thumpers [insert the Bird right here].

-I have no idea what this is, but it's eeriepretty

-ohh, it's awwwnnn...again. (via Wyatt)

-midnite.rain - art in noah-kh's section

-snake info - it would be awesome if my kukri knife was actually named for a kukri snake's fangs, but okay if it's the other way around

-and somebody just drove by playing "Scotty doesn't know" really loud. Aweso.

      As I sat through poetry, desperately trying to not listen to people exclaim how much they hate reading (why are these people English majors, again?), I started thinking about music for some odd reason. My thought was that music might be a kind of poetry for mathematics; if a poem is words arranged in a way that's different from prose or normal speech to make something beautiful or strange or moving, might not music be math arranged in a similar way - the tones assigned to each note being the figurative language?

-zoomquilt - hairs rose on the back of my neck

-tascha - art; and she does commisions...

-it's stealing the yummies!

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents - While the structure of this novel is of the clever sort that would normally make you read it twice, I'm not sure I feel like doing so. Alvarez has a good few (uncannily in some cases) similar motifs going in her work to Judith Cofer's, and the writing is of the same caliber, but I couldn't bring myself to identify with any of the characters. It seemed to me that the heart that's in some other Chicano literature has been candycoated in this novel.

-sonic boom photos - I wonder if the guy who took the picture of the Phantom got knocked over

-Gangus - some gorgeous art in the Workshop section; might have to sift a little, though

-flower clock - read about this in the Wildcat...go organic!

-be a spy: see the world!

      I was thinking about something I noticed when doing yoga, as I haven't actually been able to do much what with overly bruised hands an' all. If I can keep up with doing yoga daily for a while, there are readily apparent benefits: repaired minor injuries from jujitsu, all the standard ones like digestion, relaxation, quieter mind, and augmented physical attributes (ie, higher kicks and deeper pins). The thing is, after a while I hit this wall, where the yoga doesn't seem to do as much, and my progress in deepening the poses just stops or even reverses a little. Right now my thought, which seems to have beared out in practice, is that I have to exercise correspondingly to the yoga to maintain its effectiveness. That is, if I have pain or trouble with a camel pose, I should bridge more; if my shoulders click or are tight, Hindu pushups, &c.

-for some reason, this comic really got to me

-Head of the Ohio - in lieu of having a UA team to cheer for, go Carolyn!

-RayFresh - photography by Shiver

-History of Car Logos - I remember learning about Subaru in 'Appreciating Japanese Pop Culture.' I also learned they use Jennifer Lopez for their ads across the pond.

-Magic Key - adorable cartoon music video (via Phil)