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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trebuchet Challenge - kind of Tron crossed with medieval artillery

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

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

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

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

Targete Art - lots of nice paintings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cool! to the nth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bruce Lee statue? - hm. No mention of JKD

the dance at the end is crazy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Is the valley girl's use of the word "like" similar to the role played by the prefix "al" in Arabic? Though "al" is a fixture of that Semitic language and is variable in morphology according to what sound follows it, both "like" and "al" in their respective language/dialects are ubiquitous and somewhat variable in meaning. Or I could, like, being talking a bunch of hot air.

      While oftentimes the issues of Black Belt range from corny to downright misleading, every once in a while there is a real gem. For example, the cover article for this month is a discussion of kali tudo, or kali as applied to mixed martial arts (one of the reasons I particularly like kali is because, as is illustrated so well in the article, it shares a particular kind of angular footwork with the martial arts at the Ko Sho schools). Similarly, there is an article which initially put me off as a jargon-based martial art (that is, one that makes up polysyllabic terms for simple techniques as a marketing gimmick), but the ISR Matrix stuff actually had some decent variations on jujitsu techniques that were immediately useful in class.
      And though I consistently disagree with him, Bill Wallace's column provides some talking points. If anyone happens to read it, I think he left out shin-roundkicks, in terms of his discussion instep roundkicks are more dangerous than ball-of-the-foot roundkicks on the basis that the latter are not done in the same way as the former, as he assumes they are, and I don't think that sidekicks are inherently bad for the body if one turns their hip over enough or with proper conditioning, and I think that they shouldn't ever be done with the blade of the foot.
      And, I liked the fight highlights that mentioned a TKO by spinning back-kick (I thought no one used those effectively except Cung Le) and a judoka who didn't get his ass knocked out and actually "controlled and took his opponent down at will."

Phrase of the Day (from the Swahili): kufa ku-zuri - to die beautifully

"Treat a man as he appears to be and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be." - Goethe. Another one of those one's I might have brushed off as initially idealistic, except for two examples that brought it back to me relatively recently. One: how some of the drunks/gangbangers/manipulators/what-have-you are treated during their in-and-out ER stays makes a big difference; I'm not saying they're made into "what they should be," but different sides of them come out depending on how the staff interacts with them. Assuming they're lucid to some degree, of course, otherwise it's a whole different ball game. Two: at the Air Force Academy, one of their base principles of making the cadets into officers seems to be something like Goethe's assertion.

Feral Cheryl - I think she's way hotter than Barbie

Ketka's world - a bit of art (and it's Russian, which is also cool)

Entrances to Hell - clever-ha ha photography, or no? I think the sheer amount of Angel I've been watching with my dad has biased me enough to wonder a tiny bit

      I recently learned that ballet dancers are often taught to tuck their pelvis when spinning to spin better on a straight axis. While I gather that this is perhaps more directed towards multiple spins, my thought is: can it be applied to spinning techniques in martial arts? I haven't really tested it properly, but I'm going to try running through some capoeira spinning crescents just to see if the principle applies, as I never use those, then some more taekwondo-ish spinning hooks or what, then the techniques I actually regularly use to good effect, spinning elbows and forearms. Then, seeing how a tucked, tilted or neutral pelvis affects throws and grappling - for example, a tucked pelvis I'm thinking will be better for holding some pins (as one tucks their pelvis for a proper crunch), but a tilted pelvis would obvously be better for bridging, as one tilts their pelvis to get full curvature of the back in similar backbends in yoga. I know that all sounds way overboard, but I guess I get excited when somebody points out something that had otherwise been going right by my kinesthetic sense.

Word of the Day: bellwether - one that serves as a leader or as a leading indicator of future trends (interestingly from Middle English, being the lead ram [technically, a castrated ram] with the bell around its neck)

Phrase of the Day: cheeky monkey!

Other Word of the Day: koine - a regional dialect or language that becomes the standard language over a wider area, losing its most extreme local features (I just thought it was an elegant word for what it defines)

War of the Worlds, with Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning. Generally, not so great. [probably spoilers, but not if you read the novel, I suppose] I usually like Fanning okay, but her hysterical and bratty character was way out of line for my taste. As my dad pointed out for Cruise, he pretty much plays one character, over and over and over; which I happen to like to some degree, so that was fine, I suppose. The special effects were the highlight of the movie, in my opinion. The story, as it was pretty much true to the novel from what I remember, unfortunately is not really enough to carry the weight of the actors and special effects; I mean, it makes for a great scifi short story or Outer Limits episode, but a Spielberg epic? Not so much. The aliens were great (always a fan of nonhumanoid), and the way they brought to life the novel's three-legged design was clever (I read that the effects and concept crews took issue with it at first, as it is really just not a very effecient idea).
      The movie did bring up in my mind a few things that kept me from dwelling on Fanning's shrieks. One, that the scenes with the alien walkers were similar to the exciting unscripted interactions with similar large walkers in the latter part of the game Half-Life 2, so if one wants to experience their feelings from the movie again, voila. The plants at the end reminded me of two things, in their sense as a motif. One, Evolution's Shore by Ian MacDonald, in which there are no aliens per se, but only the plant life (or an approximation of plants as such). Two, the Invid Invasion novels and animation, where aliens invade because an alien plant has taken up residence on Earth. It might make for an interesting essay to confer the three and see what comes out of it. I suppose even the plot of Half-Life 2 could possibly enter into it, if one could tie in suppression of the ability to procreate with maybe something symbolic about the plants (ooo, maybe a Narcissus angle).

The Story of Language, by Mario Pei. Great stuff - basically, a book about linguistics that heroically resists the seemingly pervasive tendency of linguistic books to descend into ill-explained jargon. Apparently I like multi-syllable words. Part one delves into what exactly language is, and its history in terms of the human race. Part two is probably a bit slower going generally than the other parts, involving various aspects of grammar and study of pronunciation. Part three picks up again with the social functions of language, then part four was my favorite, running through the different major and minor language groups and discussing their characteristics. There is one more short part beyond that about the problems of developing an international language, both by logic and politics. Throughout there are practically lists of interesting trivia, and the author's style is sharp and witty at times, thought as it was written in the sixties some of the Cold War ideology is out of date.

PowerPuff Girls Doujinshi - while I am currently suffering from a self-induced fast from collecting actual comics, I do try to indulge my happiness from cartoons whenever I can (re: Foster's or Cowboy Bebop). This webcomic is a nice extrapolation if one enjoys kicking back to the Cartoon Network, as the art is quality, the plot is pleasantly simple, and the cameos and stylized versions of the cartoon characters are great fun.

Rocking phrases of the day/phrases that sold us on things:
"Let them fight the good fight. Someone has to fight the war."
and Xuemei's:
"This is the beginning. One book. One Rule. Witness the birth of a legend."

      When I read this: "Every English word is at least in part an ideogram, with the pronunciation offering some clue, but never a complete key, to spelling," one of the first things I thought was spelling bee. That is, I bet that's why spelling bees work so well in English - with rules and roots and quirks from Latin, Greek, Old English, French, German, Spanish, etc etc, it almost makes sense to mess with nervous kids and force them to try to put illogical things together. It wouldn't do to have a spelling bee in a language that is more logically phonetic; it just wouldn't be any fun. Though I can't say I can quite see English words as ideograms, really, even if I kind of like the idea. I suppose one could try to pull something like Arabic calligraphy and stylize some cursive.

Tom Yum Goong x, y - ::glee::

the Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards - congrats to two of my favorites, Scary Go Round and Questionable Content for their awards

"...Philologists, who chase
A panting syllable through time and space,
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark,
To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's Ark."
-Cowper, Retirement

      Thinking point: "The 'moment' has not yesterday or tomorrow. It is not the result of thought and, therefore, has not time." An argument for or possible path to perceptual dilation, that is, a dilated perception of time to be able to react more quickly to what would otherwise be beyond time for thinking, or what other possibilities?

Omniglot - an great website if you're fascinated by language or writing-as-art, with information and examples of all different kinds of scripts; for example, I had no idea that some scripts have been invented purely to write a certain language (like Norwegian or Mandarin), instead of using Roman script, which is interesting if you think about how many accents are needed for some Europaen languages, or the tones in Chinese

Panchok Workshop - art

word of the day: tergiversate - To use evasions or ambiguities; equivocate

Samples from NY gallery show by 'the Creatures in my Head' artist

      Interesting perspective shift (original idea not mine)! In teaching/learning anything, sometimes the method takes priority over any end result, or goal, or what have you. To do a hip throw, you place your feet just so, twist hips across, place arms in any number of variations, or, to do close reading of a text you parse out what's important, maybe bracket off part of the text, maybe go sentence by sentence, etc. Instead, maybe it might be better to shift the end result/goal to the primary position of importance-of-attention - the goal of a hip throw is to bounce the opponent on the floor right in front of you, for example, which leads to questions: fine, how do I go about doing that, and how does it involve my hip? Or, in the the other case the end result might need to be determined to even get started - what do I get out of close reading, or what can I give to other people using it? (cf'ing "The problem is never apart from the answer. The problem is the answer - understanding the problem dissolves the problem")

N8 Van Dyke - art; I like the way some of the titles tie into the pieces

art by alexiuss - and backstory for each!

phrases of the day:
"I had a lot of time to think. I gained some perspective. Some... M.C. Escher perspective."
-
"Bla, bla, poly-syllabic bla."
-
(looking at heart monitor printout)
"Looks kind of like art...I call it, 'Takes more than that to kill me, punk.'"

      In case it's ever shown again for whatever reason, on the National Geographic channel there was a small marathon of the show Taboo for some reason. In lieu of doing the project we were supposed right away, my dad and I sat through some very interesting programs on gender-bending (transgender, inverted stereotypes, and religious festivals), rites of adulthood (alligator-style scarification, whipping and running on the backs of bulls), tattoos (tattoos that possess people, Russian prison art, facial womanhood tattoos) and there were more after that, I gather. I'm not really sure how to describe them, except to say that they were well put together and interesting, though maybe not for the faint of heart/those that can't stand lots of blood.
      Another program on Discovery/Times was about Special Forces operations in Afganistan. Once again, not sure how to describe it except by this (from an entirely different source, which I scoffed at as idealistic, then remembered the soldiers): "We live as though the world were as it should be, to show that it can be."

gah...so rough. but there it is.
-----
Ghostlight

Almost to California, we passed a wildfire.
The full moon did little to dispel the night's desert
of black plains between road and flame; instead,
she only deigned to touch and conjure a genie's cloud
of smoke, lunar blue reflecting on the corpsedust of plants.
In the dark, we passed a funeral pyre.
Life embedded in the sand became dancing citron and ember,
animated in its last throes more than it had been under any sun,
a phoenix held fast at the moment
of rebirth.

      When I was getting my tattoo, the artist somehow got around to talking about how people say the phrase "I'm sorry" a good deal sometimes. His point was that when one says, "I'm sorry," there almost always is an unspoken "but..." afterwards. For example, "I'm sorry, but if you hadn't done that," or, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize..." His suggestion as a counter was to say, "Forgive me," or some equivalent; I'm not sure of the validity of his point, but it seems to have slowly convinced me over time to where I pretty much agree with it, cumbersome as the replacement might seem.

Underground Urban Farm - I think they should have called it Urban Farm Underground, to make it sound more like a trendy nightspot

Art of Aly Fell

"The Basque language contains a tradition of difficulty which the Basques themselves do nothing to dispel. They have even created a legend to the effect that at one time the devil spent seven years trying ot learn their tongue, but finally had to give it up in disgust; but there is another story to the effect that Basque is used by the devil to fight with his mother-in-law."

-as opposed to-

"La inteligenta persono lernas la interlingvon Esperanto rapide kaj facile. Esperanto estas la moderna , kultura lingvo por la internacia mondo. Simpla, fleksebla, praktika solvo de la problemo de universalo interkompreno. Esperanto meritas vian seriozan konsideron. Lernu la interlingvon Esperanto!" - crazy! For some reason some old yarn had got me down on Esperanto for a while, I think something about them suppressing use of other languages at an Esperanto convention, but hey that's pretty readable right there!

-also, but not so easy-
Interglossa, which combines Latin and Greek roots with Chinese syntax
Monling, which only uses one syllable words
Idiom Neutral, which was spawned from Volapük, and is a combination of English and Latin/Romance languages with German grammar rules

-try it, I dare you
"One of the toughest sounds in any language to a person who does not grow up with it is the r with a hook over it, which indicates a blending of the rolled r of Spanish or Italian with the s of 'measure,' pronounced simultaneously." - that sound being in the Czech; of course, the first person I challenge does it right away, naturally

-a point that came up in class the other night
"Balance is the control of one's center of gravity plus the control and utilization of body slants and unstable equilibrium, hence gravity pull, to facilitate movement." - sometimes balance not actually meaning balance and all that, especially when it comes to ju-style throws, though the quote is in reference to ranged fighting

-talking point:
"The problem is never apart from the answer. The problem is the answer - understanding the problem dissolves the problem." -hmmm?

-sleeping, or bleary-eyed snickering? option b.

      New exercise! The dolphin pushup (name from the yoga pose it is adjunct to). Starting from what is basically a somewhat elongated downward-dog position (body bent to about 90 degrees, heels on the floor) but with one's upper body resting on forearms instead of hands, simply move the torso and hips as per rhythm between that start and a plank. It's similar to a dand/Hindu pushup in how it isolates different muscles than a regular pushup and also works on flexibility of the legs and shoulders, but in a much more intense fashion. Yummy.

      Vaguely ok not really tangentially. I was reading about the zen metaphor of the reflection of the moon on running water for being in a ready-state in martial arts - that is, still, but in motion simultaneously (a paradox points beyond itself, right?). Then for some reason I thought of the thought-problem of 'what is one's identity?' that was an oft argued concept in that existential philosophy course from back when - specifically, the part that went, how can one claim to have the same identity over time when one is constantly changing (whether by cells dying or whatever definition of consciousness changing). Then I thought, well, why not apply the zen metaphor to identity? Eeeyup. Mmhmm.

Dark Fury, with voices of Vin Diesel and Kieth David. First thought: how the hell did I end up paying the same for this half hour movie that I did for two two+ hour movies? Luckily, they were all on sale, so I'll take it, especially considering the worth of this short. While I'm not quite particular to some of the stylized faces/bodies, I did end up warming up to them and the wonderful way lifelike and stylized motion was captured in the fight scenes and otherwise. As with apparently any story with the character Riddick, copious badassery abounds, and some of the scifi ideas were neat.

"The Amazon River...was so named by the explorer Orellana after a battle with the natives in which the women fought more bravely than the men."

      In honor of (as apparently the Canadians called it at one point) the Rebel Picnic, I think it is worth noting (as evidenced by the journal entries and letters read during the Revolutionary War marathon on the Military Channel) that many of the most random people around that olden time were all kinds of articulate and eloquent. It was like, man, they were even casually eloquent when needed. Whoa.
      Also, could someone explain to me the almost ten second long fountain of green sparks that spewed out of La Paloma tonight? No way in hell that was a regular firework.

USA 1, Comet 0

It seems they actually managed to finish translating one of Sappho's poems

Word of the Day - splendidophiropherostiphongious - the acme of desireability

"Yucatan, in Mexico, means 'What do you say?' in the langue of the local Indians; this was the answer given by them to inquiries as to the name of the country."

      I didn't particularly enjoy the 'Native Americans in Film and Literature' class I got stuck taking a while back (aside from seeing Dead Man and doing a term paper on White Comanche), but one aspect of it lingers on. That is, the entire class was devoted towards breaking the unconscious urge to accept any image of Amerindians presented to us, which led to a tendency in the class to say, well duh, look how obviously bad those stereotypes are. But after a semester of it, any just-plain-bad image became glaringly obvious, like a mini-paradigm had been shifted, to be cliche. In any case, the point I've been getting to is that I think more classes or efforts in a similar theme would do well to exist; that is, anything that breaks those unconscious assumptions, which I'm sure are innumerable.

Loups-garou is my favorite term for werewolf. In other news, the antidote for previously mentioned.

Filed under aweso: Scott's Sunfire

Word of the Day (as featured) - eschaton: end of the world, end of time, climax of history

Limey's on being clever
also:
"An account of the way an exasperated Cockney tried to spell out the name of the town of Ealing for the benefit of the telephone operator runs as follows: 'E for 'eaven, A for wot 'orses eat, L for where you're going, I for me, N for wot lays eggs, and G for gawd's sake keep your ears open!"

      Back from Colorado! First thought, looking at hooligans in car hooting at pretty girl: those kids ain't got nuthin on my brother. Many and sundry sights were seen. Will probably be written about. Once I get through my giant list, at some point. In other news, Kevin started a bloggie - now it's powm! Rocking hardcore. Talking point: "Just as the universe is created by the participation of consciousness, the prescient human carries that creative faculty to its ultimate extreme." In my periodic Dune reference/connection, there was an interesting article that noted a casino's general distrust of machines for security, and their opinion that the human eyes and mind are far superior. And isn't it interesting that a bird you see flying by your car is going the same speed you are? I hadn't really thought about it. They are speedy.

Episims - I want to see what happens with Ebola...or maybe syphillis...

Bacteria Pull Off Photosynthesis sans Sunlight - you go, little dudes

Word of the Day: paralipsis - to pass over a subject with brief mention in such manner as to emphasize the suggestiveness of what one omits: "If one put her thinking in a nutshell, it would not overflow."

In lieu of Frank's absence, I wanted to add a shout out to Wyatt who was interviewed for this article. Good luck Wyatt! We'll miss you!

Aaaaand somehow I fixed the blog, high-five!

Well, the bloggie seems good and messed up. Hm. Aaaand, off to Colorado!

Dissolution, by Richard Byers. Back in the day, R.A. Salvatore created the character Drizzt Do'Urden (if anyone every figures out how to pronounce that first name, please tell me), who proved to star in a number of very popular novels. But that's not important, nor is the argument as to whether Salvatore is a hack or not; rather the setting in which Drizzt originated and another most definitely skilled author are important. Byers makes the city of Menzoberranzan come alive with a variety of perspectives from his characters whom are easy to like even when they are just plain evil and decadent. Which all of them are.
Also, Byers' experience in fencing serves him in great stead in his writing. Each of the fight scenes is exciting and also absolutely clear. The only slight criticism I might make is that he occasionally described actions with weapons such as hammers with fencing terms, which threw me off a bit. There were also a few things that really interested me - one, as the entire culture that the characters spring from and are based in is completely despicable from a general moral code, at times I struggled with conflicting feelings. That is, I wasn't sure how I felt identifying with a character that I found witty and likeable when he nonchalantly suffocates a prostitute he just screwed over mightily (no pun intended), for a non-gruesome example. Also, as the setting takes place entirely underground, even if the drow are adapted for such living by seeing in the infrared and whatnot, what kind of circadian rhythms do they have going? There is some approximation of day/night cycles in the story, so that seems to imply something. And, with the brutally matriarchal society (figure that one out), I'd be interested to see how some Freudian psychology might apply, because many results of the gender-hierarchy certainly play themselves out in the plot.
Moreover, the novel presented something of an interesting zen exercise, in htat I could read it and practice not judging the drow culture as negative or positive, but just observing it as is. After all, within the story it seemed a viable model for civilization, just running on different underpinnings and assumptions for its rules.

Now, the ridgehand - a strike that utilizes the thumb-side blade of the hand or inside blade of the wrist, as far as I've seen it taught. There are three ways I've seen it used: one, in karate, as a sort of clotheslining augment to sweeps or just a strike in that pattern. Two, as an strike to the side of the neck from straight-on with a very shallow arc, also in karate. And three, as a strike to the ribs or back of head from a grappling position, ie, from within a bearhug or from under a mount in traditional jujitsu. Out of the three, I like the jujitsu method best, though the shallow-arc pattern is also intriguing, but the other kind I've had trouble with, if only because I don't usually fight in a way that puts me in position for it. In any case, does anyone else know of any techniques involving a ridgehand that might be interesting, or have any ideas?

Word of the day: apposite - being of striking appropriateness and pertinence

      From the the Scientific American at the mechanic's place, some interesting thoughts. What kind of explosion was the Big Bang? An explosion of space itself. That means that there was no center to the 'explosion,' and that space itself was/is expanding. The natural question: are we/galaxies/any kind of matter expanding as well? No, apparently coherent objects are not subject to the same effect, and galaxy clusters maintain cohesion by their relative gravitational attraction within, from galaxy to galaxy, and same for any smaller celestial system. Now, my question (not really understanding much of this except by clever metaphor and simile) is what would happen were we to figure out a way to set off a similar 'explosion' of space itself on Earth? Craziness, I bet. Craziness.

Scent of a Woman, with Al Pacino and Chris O'Donnell. Nice movie. The chief reason for seeing I think would be Pacino's wonderful portrayal of his character, though O'Donnell did an able job as well. Nothing remarkable to note, I think, just generally solid all around.

By Heart - I'm with Mr Nunberg, methinks

"Thou who abruptly is a knife
dids't come into my heart..."
(pretty sure that's by Baudelaire)

"At the end of the [noh] performance, Ieyasu asked his companion whether he'd seen any gaps in the actors' concentration. Musenori noted that when one of the actors turned near a pillar, his awareness slipped. 'That's when I would have attacked him,' Musenori said."

-I'd feel bad for Warhol, but I never really liked his art anyway (via Kevin)

and, in the words of the horrible theme song to The OC, "California, HERE I COOOOMMMMEEEE" (for a few days)
*cough*

"From the moment the oracle speaks your future becomes your past." - mmm, thought provoking

Man without Words - As much as I adore language, this article actually kind of made me feel threatened at first in my usual thinking that without language we wouldn't really be able to sentient-ly think. But now that I begin to think that over from the beginning again, things like aphasia really do mess with that, and this mathematics deal - which, all in all, means more fun, in my mind (no oblique pun intended).

Word of the Day: caprine - of, relating to, or characteristic of a goat (I like how it's a pretty word in relation to goat's being the devil's animal and all, what with the creepy pupils)

girlskirtmission - looks like a fun new company (and I like the style)

(just because I like curves and cleverness)

(the other Scent of a Woman monologue)
"Out of order, I show you out of order. You don't know what out of order is, Mr. Trask. I'd show you, but I'm too old, I'm too tired, I'm too fuckin' blind. If I were the man I was five years ago, I'd take a FLAMETHROWER to this place! Out of order? Who the hell do you think you're talkin' to? I've been around, you know? There was a time I could see. And I have seen. Boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there isn't nothin' like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is no prosthetic for that. You think you're merely sending this splendid foot soldier back home to Oregon with his tail between his legs, but I say you are... executin' his soul! And why? Because he's not a Bairdman. Bairdmen. You hurt this boy, you're gonna be Baird bums, the lot of ya. And Harry, Jimmy, Trent, wherever you are out there, FUCK YOU TOO!"

-from Scent of a Woman (which I still haven't finished) - Al Pacino's short monologue (though this in no way captures any of his cadence or intonation):
"Women! What can you say? Who made 'em? God must have been a fuckin' genius. The hair... They say the hair is everything, you know. Have you ever buried your nose in a mountain of curls... just wanted to go to sleep forever? Or lips... and when they touched, yours were like... that first swallow of wine... after you just crossed the desert. Tits. Hoo-hah! Big ones, little ones, nipples staring right out at ya, like secret searchlights. Mmm. Legs. I don't care if they're Greek columns... or secondhand Steinways. What's between 'em... passport to heaven. I need a drink. Yes, Mr Sims, there's only two syllables in this whole wide world worth hearing: pussy. Hah! Are you listenin' to me, son? I'm givin' ya pearls here."
-yes, I know, it's quite vulgar, but I'll get to the cleaner monologue from near the end of the movie later

I appear to be in a sad state, being that I was highly amused by this illusion

Buried Treasure - mmm, dinosaurs

I thought this hypothetical book title sums up the frustration some people have with BJJ nicely:
"Brazilian JiuJitsu Throwing Techniques -- This four-page book is a compendium of useful techniques to get your opponent between your legs."
(ie, they have very little throwing training, and sometimes emphasize the guard to an absurd degree)

Nice cadence and image:
"Face your fears, or they will climb over your back."
and from good ol' Phantom of the Opera
"We never said
our love was evergreen-"
and
"The Angel of Music sings songs in my head"

Batman Begins, with Christian Bale and Liam Neeson. First of all, I was very impressed; it's been pretty much unanimously agreed among the people I know who've seen it that it's the best comic book movie that's been done. As much as I already like movies that are darker than not, this one made me especially happy because in being darker than not it makes all the other Batman movies seem like exactly what they are - satires at best, farces at worst on the original intent of the comic. I also especially enjoyed the style of language used, and I kept wanting to liken it to that used in Kingdom of Heaven, though I'm not sure why. The other parallel between texts that I noticed was between Batman's nature as a superhero and one of Frank Herbert's aims in his Dune novels. Basically, both Bruce Wayne and the characters with extraordinary abilities in the Dune novels did not become as 'supernatural' as they are by virtue of genetics or fate or whatnot, but by discipline, hard work, and will.
      Back to the movie, there were only two things that disappointed me a bit; one, Christian Bale's ability in martial arts (re: Equilibrium) seemed little used, with horrendous amounts of close-ups in the fight scenes - though, I could see an argument that ambiguity in the fighting might accent some of Batman's mysterious nature and at times ambiguous morality - and two, Katie Holmes, with that stubbornly repetitive half-not really-smile. Xuemei suggested that Rachel Weisz might have been better in the role, which I would readily agree to because of my jonesing on said actress, but then my dad pointed out that perhaps Weisz is usually cast in roles that might be considered too 'tough' for that character.

Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag, with Cptn John Stratton. When we went to the National Air and Space Museum near DC, we had the good fortune of catching this IMAX documentary. It's about the AIr Force (and apparently international) equivalent of the more well known Navy's Top Gun program. And on an IMAX, hoo boy is aerial combat exciting. Beyond that, as a documentary Red Flag is quite interesting throughout (trivia! I had no idea the use of flares was so extensive). Tangentially, my parents walked out of the theatre in tears, on account of Wyatt going off to the Academy soon, for whatever that implies about the film.

Revolutionary Omo Plata - this article is a good article in and of itself, but it really caught my eye for this line: "Believe it or not, I first came across Omo Plata as a finishing hold in Indonesian Silat." And here I was thinking that was a uniquely j(i)ujitsu technique; goes to show you, I guess.

-well, I can't quite copy the exquisite formatting and font of the original, and not sure of the author, but I enjoyed it...

                  in the howling waste,
even the darkness has a voice.
      it titters and beckons,
   it begs and cajoles, it slithers
its way into your brain
         like a black, slimy worm - and
if you listen to it you're lost.
             the weaver of the dark'll
            have you, and
         you'll never see
                     the light again.

-other lines I thought had interesting images/cadence:
"The War of the Spider Queen begins here."
-
"...the dark heart beneath..."

China's Great Armada - a great article in the current National Geographic

"The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events."
      I'm not sure whether I could lay claim to any truth in this quote or not, but it does call up memories of me falling asleep in what I thought would be interesting European history in high school, and makes me wonder whether it might have been more interesting...

Submission Grappling vs Classical Jujitsu - this article gets two thumbs up from me; finally, old-school jujitsu gets some non-dippy recognition. I'll note that for whoever's in Tucson, we have an interestingly wide range of options for jujitsu; the Kodenkan schools have something approximating the traditional variant in the article (though I hear that they're also starting an MMA program). The Ko Sho schools (plug!) forgo the preset kata, but maintain most of the traditional techniques through ties to aikido/aikijutsu while mixing in some new. And for Brazilian jiujitsu and MMA there are the Ultima schools and the training group at Rincoln.
      Also, the Ko Sho schools are working on developing the new-school jujitsu competition in Tucson (as opposed to the cage fights in Phoenix and the Kodenkan and Brazilian competitions) . There are two sides to it; the 'dual competition,' which can involve whatever combination of the sexes one wishes, are choreographed ahead of time. The judge chooses an attack, and one partner tries for it, while the other responds with a combination of strikes/throw/pin. Interestingly, from what I've seen excessive flashiness in technique (ie, doing a sacrifice throw by dropping into the splits right after a head-high kick) can actually be a hindrance in gaining points, with functionality taking priority. The other side of the competition starts out at striking range (something like one point for hand strikes, two for kicks I think) but once one person manages a grab of any kind, any strike thereafter is a point-deduction. From that point it becomes like judo, except with throws netting three points and submission equaling a win. Further updates to come...

Two Layers of Stretch - interestingly, I think the first line ("When working a joint, you must decide on whether to work muscle or bone") could very easily apply to martial arts as well

word of the day: versilibrist - a writer of free verse

phrase of the day: lèse-majesté - any slight or insult that wounds someone’s dignity

      Driving past an old-folks home where a family friend is staying sparked a discussion the other day. Basically, the family friend has some pretty bad delirium; she has almost no short term memory, and her long term memory is pretty shot to hell. I suggested that perhaps she has the advantage of constantly living in the moment, and so is in a kind of zen state. The response, in contrast, was that perhaps she is in an opposite state - not living in any moment at all. I'm not sure I've wrapped my head around the implications of that, but it seems interesting in a sad way.

Tian di ying xiong (Warriors of Heaven and Earth), with...I'm not sure actors to list, because none of us recognized any of the names as more prominent than the others. I think I ended up disappointed with this movie because I went into it expecting it to be a kind of period piece showing some of the relations between the Turks and Chinese on the Silk Road. Or at least a pretty good kung fu movie. Unfortunately, the Turks were extras who were at best culturally labeled by turbans, veils, and ululating during fight scenes (and what was with the "Mongols" who looked like Roman Praetorians with masks? and the completely out of nowhere fantasy element?), and the fight scenes were less than exciting. Nonetheless, some of the characters were somewhat memorable, and the landscapes were quite attractive, so it has that going for it.

-just because of all that Mario Party we've been playing

-I'm not sure by what authority this goes by, but it would be interesting to compare it to a similar study on English word use

-I know this article is about Mars, but Venus has no magnetic field? Huh?

Apparently my blog comes up on Google with the description, "Book and movie reviews, linguistics, philosophy, and musings on random events." I wonder who writes those descriptions, because I sure as hell didn't...

Mario Party 6 - I will not say how many hours we have spent playing this lately because it is just sickening. Basically, it's several similar boardgames, with basic-motor-skills minigames between each turn. And apparently something hypnotic. And we aren't even using it as a drinking game, which had been suggested to us.

Chapterhouse Dune, by Frank Herbert. Pretty much the same as what I said for Heretics of Dune, but with an ending that (at least for me) is heart-rending, and at the same time maddeningly frustrating because it is supposed to embody Herbert's disavowal of absolute endings - it's an ending that doesn't really end anything at all. Beyond that, the novel does plod along slowly, but not by virtue of its writing - rather, it's the sheer amount of ideas that Herbert crammed into this last Dune novel, as one critic adroitly pointed out.

"You cannot manipulate a marionette with only one string." - seems simple enough, but it seems like there might be more there, too...

word of the day: sangfroid - coolness and composure under trying circumstances

      On the way to putting Wyatt's balsa wood and tissue paper Spitfire in imminent peril from the top of a stadium staircase, we saw a rabbit reshaping its body in what seemed a horribly unnatural posture to me; then I realized it was stretching. Then it got me thinking, as much as we see other mammals like dogs and cats and....lemurs and the like getting their stretch in ways that we can't help but be sympathetically satisfied by, people don't often actually stretch that much. So: a roundabout yoga plug! Or at least just general stretching; if a rabbit can do it just based on instincts, then people should too!
      In other Southwest wildlife news, I found out at the Natural History Smithsonian that those little black beetles that are like stink beetles but not are called 'darkling beetles.' While I'm a bit abashed at having to go across the continent to find that out, how cool is that?
      In other news, I have an intense desire (one might even say a goal) to create an aquarium for waterbugs. Like, the kind one finds in pools in Sabino Canyon and the like. If the Desert Museum and the Smithsonian can do it, I can, damn it. I love those little guys.

"Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things."
Keats, Lamia

Mr. & Mrs. Smith, with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Much better than I expected, going into it expecting to come out shaking my head. Several things I thought were nice: much to my chagrin at the knowledge, that guy from The OC is in it. "The Girl from Ipanema" has a moment. Jolie is infinitely more attractive in my mind (considering I usually don't like her) when she's acting natural and not hyper-seductive. They did a great job of having Pitt's character use a very distinctly MMA style of fighting. And the jokes were actually quite good, and the corniness, not so corny.

"The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. We feel threatened by such demands. 'I already know the important things!' we say. Then Change comes and throws our old ideas away."

intriguing phrase of the day: "What does a mirror look at?"

"When Commodore Vanderbilt steamed back into New York harbor from his extended European grand tour, there was bad news. He penned the following note to two of his partners: 'Gentlemen: I find that you have been cheating me. I will not sue, because the law is too slow. I will ruin you.'"

word of the day: amphilogism - which means an ambiguity of speech, or an equivocation, brought on by grammatical fault (good vs well)

Questionable Content - Though I don't get any of the indie rock references, the rest of the comic is clever fun (and a Dune reference! ha!)---(and another!)

"You are the One. You are kali. You are the sword, you are the arrow. You are the symbol of victory." - inscription on a Sikh sword at the Smithsonian Natural History museum (I was tempted to scratch something about it being Neo's sword on the sign when no one was looking, except I thought the inscription was too badass to mess with)

      Random points of interest: aren't fountains intriguing? They are like sculptures, but instead of being made of a seemingly permanent medium like stone or metal, they partially or entirely made of a medium that is practically a definition of shifting protean...er...ness.
      There's this line in Heretics of Dune that I thought was nicely finessed. Basically, a city on the hyper-arid planet Dune/Rakis is being described, and right after it is noted that the priests' tower is the tallest building in the city, it's noted that there is a windtrap (a device for collecting water) that is higher. So, in effect, while the priests seem to have their proper place in terms of the apparent power structure (they're actually at the bottom, between the lines, besides the point), the need to gather water by a means identical to that of the peasants' method is placed in a more dominant position - establishing its place in the power structure.

I enjoyed this line:
"And Max took one step forward and became death, the world catching fire at his touch."

      At the Vietnam memorial in DC, a huge quantiy of little trinkets and flags and basically anything are deposited at the base of the wall each day, to be later collected and deposited in an archive. The one thing that especially interested me about these objects was the huge amount of poetry; unfortunately, the only ones of reasonable length that I saw to copy down were:

And when he gets
      to heaven
To Saint Peter he
      will tell:
One more soldier
      reporting
I spent my time in Hell

Yea, though we fly through the valley of the Shadow of Death, We will fear no evil, for We are the toughest Sons of Bitches in the valley. (I'm not sure where the line breaks were in that)

This can only lead to this

The Breast Cancer Site - endorsed by Xuemei

International Trepanation Advocacy Group - definitely not endorsed by Xuemei (and Kevin gets 10 points for the "Hi everybody!" reference that took me a while to get)

      There was this little blurb in the Smithsonian Natural History museum in the ancient sea life (aka my favorite) section about the notion that during the period when the only things that were really around were trilobites and cephalopods, the world might have been totally silent (in terms of life making noise and/or getting jiggy to said noise).
......
......
The question is, was it an uncomfortable silence?
*ba-doom tshhhhh*

Cold Steel, by John Steyers, as found in my Granddad's study. And not the Paladin Press reprint, but the actual one from back in the 1950s. Besides the campy appeal of the 50's hairstyles and writing style, I thought the most interesting aspect of this book was its nature as a forerunner to the modern USMC combat manual (also available from Paladin Press, ironically). The progression from sabre-style knife fighting back in the day to the modern kali-resembling style is especially interesting, and the shift in bayonet technique as well (now that stocks are not shatter-able wood anymore, there's more thought put into using the whole rifle as a weapon; further, the modern manual addresses multiple opponents and Marines). Interestingly, the hand-to-hand combat hasn't shifted that much, perhaps just more refined by the application of martial arts organization to MCMAP, and the modern addition of jujitsu. Conversely, there is a whole section in Cold Steel devoted to.....unorthodox stick fighting, but man is it intriguing (the majority of the techniques iniated from a reverse grip - what the hell is that about? it bears testing....). Conversely again, the modern manual has a section on improvised weapons, such as shovels, tent stakes, etc. But: Cold Steel has a concluding section on knife throwing, with one style I'd never even heard of ('frontier' style or some-such); the funny part is, it doesn't even indicate that section is for combat, but more for children.
-->"Slam your heel or foot down on his instep or kick at his kneecap until he is down. Then stomp and kick the moving parts. The ankle, knee, fingers, wrist, elbow, and of course, the neck are good stomping grounds." - p124
-->"The stick is a versatile weapon and its technique rises far above the common thought of bashing in your opponent's head. And that's a good defense, too." - p160

High Gear in Action - while I'm still trying to figure out whether I approve of Tony Blauer's whole 'flinch' idea, these are some fun videos that demonstrate what appears to be great, but cost-prohibitive, equipment

Inconstant Constants - interesting, though I think I have something of a Baha'i opinion on the drive towards a theory of everything

The Evening Parade at the Marine Barracks at 8th and I in DC was a great way to spend an..er, evening. Before the show itself in the courtyard of the barracks, some of the Marines put on what was practically a comedy show ("No flash photography is allowed during the such-and-such....but that doesn't include now *strikes pose*"). The marching bands are top notch, natch, and the silent drill team is amazing (the only unfortunate part being that there isn't as much of that as in the Sunset Parade). The gals do get a chance to get pictures taken with cute Marines afterward, though.

Heretics of Dune, by Frank Herbert. Of course, I could gush about anything one of my favorite authors writes, etc. I will note a certain fierce pleasure in even understanding the novel, however. I had to read some of the chapter-segments repeatedly, but it was worth it. In Heretics and its sister-novel Chapterhouse Dune have an interesting pattern embedded within them - a plan or intrigue or what-have-you (or several) is set in motion in the beginning of the story. Over the course of the story, clues and even between-the-lines instructions are given, and the astute and persistent reader can solve the various mysteries (I will say with some consternation that it took me to the very last line of Heretics to have any solid revelation, though when I did it combined knowledge of martial arts, religious references, and the kind of quantum mechanics and existentialism from last semester's philosophy).

The Longest Yard, with Adam Sandler and Burt Reynolds. Through some of the jokes seemed forced and the McDonald's thing was just annoying, pretty good, overall. That is, I generally don't like comedies, but this was worth the matinee price, at any rate. And it had what any good football movie should have: awesome slow motion moves. Cousin Freddy cautioned back East that if one had seen the original it wouldn't be a good idea to see this one.

"Irritated one afternoon by a business partner's negativism, I snapped that we had enough problems without him playing the Mercutio in our garden. He was a red-headed Irish-American lawyer, a graduate of Georgetown, no less, where he lost his religion to no comparative effect. He turned beet-red with ire. I thought he would slug me. I still can't figure out what he imagined I was accusing him of, maybe masturbating, but the thrust of my jibe was utterly lost on him."

      So, back from D.C. and Virginia with lots of random stuff. My dad attended the 5th World Bonsai Convention, which apparently had some spectacular trees (having been styled since the early 1800's in some cases) and workshops with various famous senseis. He also got me a supercool knife and some very, very tiny scissors. We also saw a good portion of Rolling Thunder in our various drivings-around; and while this is totally disrespectful to the purpose of it, it provided an opportunity to see the backside of several female firefighters waving from the top of their truck. It also incidentally flooded the D.C. area with lots of really nice people, as bikers are wont to be. I also found out that scalp wounds bleed profusely (and that I really forgot how to catch baseballs). And I'll probably take a week or so to actually post everything from the trip, so yay.

Wyatt's usual hamburger review:
Uno - "10 oz, meat is good but bland, toppings are mediocre, bread is bland, nothing special"

"I can say God, but that is not my God. That is only a noise and no more potent than any other noise."

      "It was a design that Lara had heard about but never seen - an ME.Hess, Multi-Envelope, named after the architect who'd drafted the first, on Earth. The MEs were relatively inexpensive, durable, and because the contact with the ground was limited to a small number of relatively slender stabilizing posts and a single industrial lift, there was little danger of unexpected interaction with the planet's natural inhabitants - an important consideration in unexplored environments.
      'It looks like a bunch of balloons with a couple of ledges tacked on,' Jess said, and Lara smiled, nodding. In essence, that was exactly what they were looking at; the gigantic off-white spheres were filled with bouyant gasses, supporting a series of decks for landing and observation, laboratories, and a decently sized living area. The uninflated 'balloons' were much cheaper to transport than powdered plasticrete." - an interesting scifi concept from War, by S.D. Perry

I *heart* Huckabees, with a lot of good people. Along the lines of Waking Life, but less surreal and aching and more oddball and funny. Lots of points were nailbitingly uncomfortable, but at least they were funny and seemed enlightening somehow. The phrases "hyperactive," "fuckabees," and "how am I not myself?" seem a good summary to me.

The Life Aquatic (with Steve Zissou) - with Bill Murray and Owen Wilson. Wyatt described it as kind of a movie version of the 8-bit Nintendo Jaws game, which is kind of apt and funny. I thought this movie was especially interesting not because it was particulary hilarious in any way, but though it wasn't anywhere near as funny as we expected, we were never bored - it's just laid back and pleasant to watch.

The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield. Mmm. New Age. I'd say not worth reading unless obligated to; there are some vaguely interesting ideas scattered within it, but they really just seem like very simplified psychology. And the plot and writing are atrocious.

midnite.rain - art

SETI@home - I used to have something like this, except for cancer and smallpox research, but I'll take this until I can find something like the former again

Clone Wars, with people doing remarkable impressions of several actors' voices. As far as I understand it, this cartoon was originally shown in five minute segments on the Cartoon Network to fill some of the gap between Episodes II and III, but it fits together in this movie in a little over an hour of awesome. It's pretty much all action, but there are all sorts of remarkably clever moments, and even hilarious moments. It's interesting to see some of the effects they chose to produce in animation that probably wouldn't ever happen in live-action, and to see several secondary characters in extended roles. Well worth the short time it takes to view.

Never Trust an Elf, by Robert Charrette. As per the dippy title, probably one of the dippier novels in the Shadowrun setting. My excuse being that I picked it up for the sake of completeness in collection, nonetheless the shifts in perspective between the two main characters were interesting, though by proportion the one I thought was more intriguing got far less time.

oil computers - not quite as cool as the computer-in-an-aquarium idea, but cool nonetheless

What color eyes would your children have? - if anyone makes one of these for hair, &c, that would be even more fun

      The interesting thing for me about going to bed with and waking up with the same headache for five consecutive days was how intensely aware it made me of my own body. When it got to the point of hypersensitivity and I was getting goosebumps from almost any sensation at all, I was so physically self-aware that I became almost unwillingly focused. It was like a very strange sort of meditation, where any daydream that began or song that started to get stuck in my head or even passing thought quickly disappeared. The trick was, instead of that engendering a feeling of release or anything of the kind, it was as if it was being forced upon me. And that was an unpleasant feeling on par with actual pain of the headache itself.

"ce qui fait / la nuit en nous / peut laisser / en nous les etoiles..."
--
"that which creates / night within us / might also / leave stars..."

Quantum Black Holes - something about this seems like it could lead to 'inherently dangerous' quite quickly (anybody read David Brin's Earth? some of it is exactly like the basis for that novel)

English Sentences without Overt Grammatical Subjects - I'm curious as to whether there was an actual need to use that particular word, or it was just for fun

Tech-Math HQ v5.0 - art

Oldboy, with Choi Min-Sik and Yu Ji-tae. Um. Octopus. No? Yes. No, I don't think it gets any more twisted. I'd say something involving Freud but I suppose that would give too much away. I liked the play on words with yudo later in it, that was cute.

-two movies that coincidentally seemed proponents of some of my core beliefs-
Kingdom of Heaven, with Orlando Bloom, Edward Norton, Eva Green, and a lot more. There could have been more character development of Bloom's character, and the blurring cinematic thingie that was used occasionally seemed kind of tasteless. But beyond that, I thought this was a wonderfully put together movie. While I can already hear people decrying the movie as it 'not being any Gladiator,' no, it's not; it is an epic nonetheless, and I would contend that it has more intelligently put together subtexts, such as one involving masks/veils and mirrors, for example.

What the #$*! Do We Know!? - with Marlee Matlin. It seemed like an extended version of the shows they have on PBS sometimes that make physics all 'hip' and whatnot, but it ws fun. I was leery at first of the story that was parallel to the interviews, but the end of it won me over for the rest. I'd call it a less artsy kind of Waking Life, which fits its concentration of quantum physics over philosophy, I suppose (though the connections made in this movie in that regard are certainly interesting).

      It's interesting how quick people are to pick up people they just knocked down in mosh pits. And the proper technique for crowd surfing is probably something involving rigidity, and not flailing, and/or wearing spikes. Unless one crowd surfer lands on another, which is just bad all around, though funny. And don't wear cleats to a concert, even if you just came from soccer practice, or so says the black and blue on my foot. And security guys are remarkably fast in making their way through a crowd when a fight breaks out. Billy Idol apparently puts on shirts repeatedly just so he can take them off. This seems profound. Jimmy Eat World is the best. Frybread is yummy; so are girls facing the other way and wiggling while said frybread is being eaten, or so says three votes in that favor.

      Xuemei and I seem to have a pattern, concerning the Grand Issue of the day. Whenever I'm upset and proposing absurdities, she tells me to ignore it and get over it. Whenever she's upset, however, I tell her to get over it. This doesn't really seem like a big deal, but it's only obvious after we both clicked upon it after a relatively quick succession of the cycle. So when we reach equilibrium, oh, there's going to be hell to pay. Whatever that phrase means.

"I was dreaming," Mr. Thoth told her, "about my grandfather. A very old man, at least as old as I am now, 91. I thought, when I was a boy, that he had been 91 all his life. Now I feel," laughing, "as if I have been 91 all my life."
-both, totally randomly, from The Crying of Lot 49
"But our beauty lies," explained Metzger, "in this extended capacity for convolution. A lawyer in a courtroom, in front of any jury, becomes an actor, right? Raymond Burr is an actor, impersonating a lawyer, who in front of a jury becomes an actor."

The Mirror & The Monkey - sample of an interesting graphic novel

The Mother Tongue Between Two Slices of Rye - something inexplicable put me off about this at first, but Shteyngart really does spin a good yarn

The Phone - simple puzzles, kind of absurdcreepy

Respect - short by BMW, nice music

Naked Melee Armageddon - I hope they make a sequel where some degree of strategeree can be added

      How I would have/might in the future revise my thesis, based on comments from my adviser. As the gist of the conclusion is that Dune as a postcolonial or third-world text is a national allegory for various countries such as Vietnam and the USA, and for various people such as Frantz Fanon, I would start with that earlier in the paper. Instead of introducing everything with a context and justification for writing about Dune, I would spread that throughout the paper in footnotes. The conclusion would probably then spread out from its previous incarnation, turning the national-allegory-for-USA bit on its head to say that any text written about or within the USA is really a national allegory for the USA in a way that a text from, say, France could never be, as the USA is still in a postcolonial state.

Welcome to the Machine God - wonderful setting by White Wolf Publishing

"purple is black blooming"

Candybar Dolls - guh...too many options, overwhelming

Wyatt's nice quote of the day -
"Al Qaeda's No. 3 man captured, causing No. 1 to take a No. 2"

Klein blue - a patented color?

not sure I like the admittedly oblique association with my name, but-
'The word "Ferengi" is derived from Arabic and Farsi word faranji which meant "Frank" as in French/European traders who made contact with Arabic traders, the word came to mean "Foreigner."'

Panchok Workshop - art

      That other idea I never got around to: probably horribly pretentious or something. But I thought it was interesting, I hope, so here goes. It seems like most of the time we intuitively consider history synchronically, that is, as one whole wherein everything has pretty much equal value and we can pick and choose what to look at. The advantage of this is kind of like when one is writing a paper or creating a painting or sculpture &c, as one can think about it synchronically and put it synthesize it into a coherent piece more effectively. But I think it would do well to put some effort into considering history diachronically as much as possible - like a dialogue or narrative, where the value of each part depends on its context within the other parts. For example, a recent incident inspired the news to remark upon the massacre of Christians by Muslims in Turkey in the not-so-recent past; but not-so-much-further-back than that, the massacre in that area was going the exact opposite way, a context the talking head left out.

'Extinct' Woodpecker Flies Back from the Beyond - you know those have got to be undead woodpeckers

Too Cold for Comfort - my random incredibly-nonsensical idea: running off of "In and near the Milky Way, attraction wins, but beyond a certain distance, repulsion does," if one could get to the area where repulsion wins it would be awesome if it somehow helped travel between galaxies by pushing objects away from the departed region (I also want that little map they have near the top)

Tech-telepathy? - creepy...though it would be interesting to try to tie it into the pseudo-telepathy in Peter Watts' novels

Waking Life, with...I'm not exactly sure, to be honest. Something of a headtrip along the lines of Eternal Sunshine, but in a much more pleasant manner. I would guess that this is one of those movies that one either loves or hates, so if you enjoy creative animation and lots and lots of dialogue jump on this one. I especially enjoyed how the story, such as it was, slowly revealed itself, though what seemed like one or two semesters of philosophy (everything from existential to analytic to dreams and evolution and bohemian rhapsodizing) crammed into a filmspace of time was a bit much to handle in one viewing. So: two+ viewings necessitated!

Kung Fu Hustle, with Stephen Chow. Not quite the pure comedy the trailer makes it out to be, but a lot of fun nonetheless. The martial arts were impeccable, but the violence in a couple small parts might toe the line of putting some people off. Generally a good way to spend matinee money, I would say.

F-22 history - interesting article on the evolution of the design (via Wyatt)

The Truth For Youth - this honestly made me kind of want to cry, it's so disturbing (via Phil)

another edition of Who is qualified to carry the Bad Mothafucka wallet?

      Two thoughts, someone let me know if I'm ass-backwards wrong on them. One: the Prime Directive thingie in Star Trek. I'm kind of thinking this is actually a nice idea on their part, rather than the might-be-dippy plot device I used to think it; rather, it might be a clever play on avoiding this: "Knowledge of the Orient, because generated out of strength, in a sense creates the Orient…the Oriental is containedand represented by dominating frameworks" (Said, Orientalism). Orientalizing being something like marginalizing, creating an image of others that keeps them inferior, or basically dominating another population culturally. Was that a sentence fragment? Screw it. So the Prime Directive seems kind of iffy; in one sense, the Federation is generating its knowledge out of strength, so they wouldn't be able to help but Orientalize a given culture. In another sense, however, it seems that the Prime Directive acts as a nice check, at least, on the Federation exploiting their position of power, as they can't intefere until the pre-warp culture is at least on a more equal standing. On the other hand, as Stephen pointed out, the Federation constantly breaks the Prime Directive, so monkeys.
      Aaand, I'll get to the other thought later, movie time.

Guess-the-google - "surprisingly addictive" is right (via Wyatt)

Lexicon - basically, a game where you make your own encylopedia on a fictional subject, using a kind of Wiki format, which I think could be horribly fun if, say, a bunch of people enjoy the same game or book series...and an example (via Printculture)