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

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

This has been a vitabloggie warning.

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

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

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

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

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

lens culture - interesting photography idea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nadya Lev - photography

How fun!

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

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

Pascal Renoux - photos

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

Defining Moment - article about the history of a sassy dictionary

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

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

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

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

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

and a picpic update

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

Archie! - man, I've been waiting forever for that...but where are the rest of the pictures?

History of the Biohazard Symbol - fun with semiotics! I have to say, though, I think if I was in one of those focus groups I would have at least guessed something like "bad and/or scary"

Kryptos - would it be tacky to try to work this into an Alias episode?

Words of the Day -
catenary - the curve formed by a perfectly flexible, uniformly dense, and inextensible cable suspended from its endpoints. It is identical to the graph of a hyperbolic cosine, or, something having the general shape of this curve (it just seems like an odd, very specific word)

verglas - a thin coating of ice, as on rock (ditto)

SIGHwhatever - a bit creepy, but interesting and clever

-the author of this comic is once again my hero for the day, on the basis of that punchline

phrase-that-was-actually-used-seriously of the day, courtesy of Troy: "melee in the cafeteria"

      So, I was up at around 2 AM the other morning, just...uh, falling asleep in a chair, basically, and Neon Genesis Evangelion: End came on. And though blearily (that better be a word) confused by coming in at some point long after the movie had started, I quickly started paying attention. For one, near the end there is (me agreeing with a reviewer, here) a giant-robot-battle to end all giant-robot-battles. How does one make a giant-robot-battle gratuitously violent, you ask? You add giant-robot-blood-and-organs. Yummy. Actually pretty gross. And horribly violent. From another angle, some of the imagery and plot is quite disturbing - on the shallow side, on a visceral level. On a slightly deeper side, on a conceptual and subconscious level. In the conceptual sense, for example, the whole idea of something 'angelic' is completely up-ended, and (once I got it after a spot of 'research') the exploration of individuality and one's consciousness are interesting (and also explain some of the loud, psychotic screaming, shiver-inducing whisper choruses, and creepy horror-movie little girls at a couple points). What I meant by the subconscious side of things is a heavy dose of sexual imagery, which never really actually presents itself obviously as such, but I could definitely feel a purposeful pattern tugging at the close-reading part of my brain.
      And, there's a crazy 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque psychedelic sequence for those who are into that sort of thing, involving live-action shots of really random things, like people falling asleep in theatres. Yeah, I have no idea what that was supposed to symbolize. Because then they cut back to the continent-sized glowing woman. It seemed interesting that early in the morning, anyway.

      A big issue we ran into when I took existential philosophy was whether or not free will was possible. The main hang up that I can remember basically was the question of whether anything we do can be considered free of the influence of what came before it - prior thoughts, choices, and deeds, and not just of ourselves, but of everything - a kind of exponential butterfly effect, where every last little thing is a consequence of something else. So, not putting much of any thought into this at all (rather, just staying up late and falling asleep on the couch), I wonder whether the concept of nirvana - or, escaping from an cycle of reincarnation - might somehow be applied to escaping a cycle of consequence. Or perhaps, a zen ideal of no-ego might be applied in a similar way...

      Some interesting bits from a customer at the Diner that my dad regularly talks to, who just spent a while travelling all over France. One general thing was that while Bush obviously wasn't particularly popular, at the same time apparently Chirac seemed to be equally unpopular, on the reasoning that his policies were killing tourism.
      Also, at one point this American couple were relaxing on their hotel balcony; they soon saw a small group of students carting effigies of Chirac and Bush and burning differing flags as they moved down the street beneath the balcony. As odd as that duality was, soon after that a much, much larger crowd of students came from both sides of the street and dispersed the first, burning-things group. The couple's main remark upon this was that as they watched the BBC later on, they saw that very first burning-things group, but there was not a single mention of the second, larger group of students. Ah, objective reporting.

      In the (now week-long) continuation of a very diplomatic and tactful argument at the dojo over various martial arts principles, I have to confess that I was holding up my side with very little confidence because of lots of recent disilliusionment (I'm really hoping that's actually a word) - having refined and better understood what we were actually talking about, today it boiled down to explaining previous training from differing disciplines and comparing. But, when the head instructor finally wandered over and his opinion was asked, he pretty much repeated exactly what I had said in almost the same words. I found this fairly odd, as he and I had never discussed the topic before, nor could I remember him expressing those opinions; I'm not sure whether it relieved my feeling disillusioned to be backed up, as it were, but I certainly found it striking that our (the head instructor and me) training from the same teacher carried through so consistently in us.

Serenity, with Jewel Staite as the really attractive woman. And there were other people too. Yay for advance screenings! And friends who win tickets from local alt. rock radio stations! Though, interestingly, we saw an inordinate number of people that we knew. Go figure. I still can't pin a negative or positive opinion down about the movie; I had only ever seen enough Firefly to get a general idea of the setting and who each character was, though that seemed to work fine in terms of understanding the movie, at least. The stilted/altered/embellished language the characters use threw me for a loop at first (I had forgotten it from the television-watching), but I quickly warmed up to it. Though a few lines fell flat, all in all I got a big kick out of it by the end. The martial arts were great quality...at least, I think so, we were sitting on the very end of the second row. I could be mistaken. There was a plot and whatnot as well, but that's mainly the part I can't decide whether I liked or not; maybe I'll go see it again from a better angle and decide then. And also not have one of the lenses of my glasses fall into my eye this time.

      And while clambering through boxes in the warehouse today, I listened to an interesting conversation between two of the receiving guys. Basically, they were talking about science fiction shows, like the kind they show reruns of on Saturday afternoons or late at night. That doesn't sound like much, but I marvelled at the realization that these guys, who I thought were so inescapably macho that they wouldn't go near anything but the basest of Rambo-style action, could take such delight in parsing out the details of setting and character for each of the shows, and if the other guy hadn't seen it, in describing and explaining the same. That all sounds arrogant or pretentious of me to say, I'm sure, but they were like a couple of English majors; of course, they lingered over describing the time the hot actress had to wear a maid's uniform, but honestly, who wouldn't?

      I was reading an article that claimed that the muscles that are most commonly very tight are the hip flexors and the very bottom of the abdominal muscles. And at first, I thought yeah, yeah, yeah. Then a little while later, in a fit of boredom or whatever, I sat there thinking about it. And those muscles certainly felt relaxed. And then just when I was about to shrug and forget it, those muscles actually relaxed. And I gasped. I think half of my palpable relief was from the release of the mental block, and half from the physical. Later, I realized that as I pushed on the gas pedal while driving home, I was flexing my toes as well as my foot. I certainly didn't need to be flexing my toes, and there was a smaller, but still palpable, release there as well. Now, the trick is keeping those muscles relaxed.

Tingo, nakkele, and other wonders - fun article about un-translatable words

Alias - beautiful, but (at least for me) a bit uncannily disturbing

      Quick notes on tonight's Pride Fighting Championship - for one, the general consensus among all of us watching was that while Pride rules allow for a few more brutal movements (stomps to opponents on the ground, for one), nonetheless the UFC is more intense and enjyoable to watch. That's not to say that these fights weren't enjoyable, per se; I particularly enjoyed one of the Japanese fighter's repeated traditional throws (hip throws and harai goshi's), and the suplex's that popped up here and there. There were even some hammerfists when fighters were on the ground, a few odd double-hand techniques, a couple spinning elbows and heels, and even a completely random tornado kick. But we thought that last guy was just being silly because he knew he had lost. So, all in all, good times.

Woogle - well, it doesn't quite turn out right, but maybe that's half the point

Rock, Paper, Scissors to the nth - all of a sudden, a deck of cards might not be needed when stuck in, say, airport layovers or the like; though I suppose people might think you're talking in sign language

Word of the Day: williwaw - a violent gust of cold wind blowing seaward from a mountainous coast (it seems like one of those "the Eskimos have a hundred words for snow" words)

Insurrection, by Thomas Reid. This being the second novel in a shared-setting series, I think, as one reviewer also pointed out, I started reading with the desire to learn more about the unique society and psychology of the drow that the books center around, but I've been caught up by the various characters and (big!) story. Which, in this novel, starts out a bit ambigously but quickly crescendoes in terms of huge amounts of intrigue and excitement. That being said, I'll note that I didn't particularly enjoy the characters and action this time around as much as in the first novel by Richard Lee Byers, but to be honest I'd say that's a hell of a tough act to follow, with fighting being described by a martial artist and the chance to introduce the characters in question.
      In any case, there is some fun writing, with things like the phrase "incendiary alchemy" used seriously, and "My mother always told me not to get involved with bad girls, especially if they had wings."

      Martial arts having been mentioned, I'll just note again that the choreography in Atlantis maintained it's extraordinary quality through the season finale, with fight scenes that both traditional and MMA stylists can appreciate. Now, that being said, the finale for Battlestar Galactica was very, very interesting for a few reasons. Firstly, its usual high-quality cinematography and character-driven storyline. Then, the other bit; for the whole week up till Friday, I'd noticed that they were hyping the Atlantis finale over and over, and barely if ever mentioned the Galactica finale which was to be on the same night (which was decidedly odd, as the latter show was the much bigger draw for ratings). Then, about halfway through the Galactica finale, there was one of those "The follow segment contains scenes of a mature..." messages, which really confused me, as I'd never seen one before in the middle of a show. And the next segment was quite disturbing, almost to the point of making me walk out of the room for a moment (as it was, I ended up just standing up and looking away because I realized how they were going to end the scene); basically, it dealt with a sanctioned rape of a prisoner.
      Which is interesting now that I've had some time to adapt to the memory, in that it was sanctioned by a female officer, who appears to have only males under her command. If anybody with some gender issues experience wants to tackle that one, I'm all ears. I will say that at the least I thought the SciFi channel did the best they could with that episode in terms of advertising it, and in justifying that scene in terms of the story.

Deeper Than Words - art

Welcome to the Thrid Season of the O.C., Bitch! nice...or rather, very not-nice primer...sort of (via Carolyn)

CharacterDesigns.com - art resource

      I'm not even going to talk about Lost. Damn cliffhangers. I also watched Invasion, if only for moral support of the bevy of science fiction shows this year (besides the original series on SciFi, Threshold and Surface, namely). I liked the affable UFO buff, he was pleasant and interesting. The recquisite carefully doled out bits and hints have potential for growth, I suppose. But the relationships between the characters - I mean, who's married to who and who's step-sibling's uncle is related to which of the other characters? Maybe that's supposed to be a reflection of a modern-family-archetype or something, but sheesh, they couldn't have expanded the connections a little bit? Or maybe they'll just add more characters later, I hadn't really thought of that. But still. Incest - but not really.

blanc fonce - art

      After searching and experimenting for a long while, I think I finally found a good aid for meditation. Concentrating on purely on my breathing or stimuli (visual or aural) works well enough for me, and chanting does - but only if I'm really in the right mood - but I've really come to like mudras, or placing my hands in certain positions. I can't say I buy into them actually having some physical or even mental effect simply of their own accord in any way, but I can say that the physical act of contorting my hands a bit and relaxing them in front of my chest focuses my attention without drawing in clouds of connotation-thought better than anything else I've come across. Anyone else have a particular focus they prefer?

Also, I made a Flickr account to play around with the new camera I just bought, so I'll probably link it to the right and add to it as I go

I honestly haven't seen enough Firefly to really get what this guy is arguing (I didn't realize the setting was like that), but it passes the time till Serenity comes out

      An interesting point came up in a conversation with someone I hadn't talked to in a long time (Spoon rocks!). Basically, this gal and I, while dissimilar in passions or interests (except for a strange penchant for dancing at random and inappropriate times) share a similar issue. That is, while we have often been advised to 'do what makes [us] happy' or 'make a living doing what interests [us],' and this is sound advice, at the same time we run into a conundrum. We either do what we love or what interests us, and make the sacrifice of not having very much of a living or being able to support a family comfortably etc etc, or make a living doing something we care little about and do our best to continue our passions and interests on the side.
      Now, the biggest trouble in explaining this thought is not coming off as whining, bitching, complaining; we were really trying to objectively figure out the best course of action. Also, at the same time, we tried to recognize (and think of) basically, things we hadn't thought of - lucky breaks, wise investing, change in life-perspective; maybe something will happen with the lovely lady come January from her time with AmeriCorps. Anyhoo. Thinking.

for lighter fare, comic-find courtesy of Cherubim:
-for the few who'll have any idea what this might represent
-10 points to living in Arizona

The Consolation of Philosophy, by Ancius Boethius, translated by Victor Watts. I don't really recall why I own this book, I think it must have been for a class that didn't end up using it, so I figured I'd read it instead of sellling it on the basis that it was in a recommended reading list in the back of another good book. As much as I probably wouldn't go out of my way to read it again any time soon, I will admit it was enjoyable to work through, especially in its interesting intermixing of prose and poetry. The basis for its being written is especially interesting if true, in that Boethius apparently wrote it while in prison watiing for his violent execution, particularly for its finishing optimism. And especially for a philosophical text, it was astoundingly easy to read and comprehend, though whether that was by Boethius' original writing or Watts' translation I'd be curious to find out. A good bit of late-Roman and Byzantine history is scattered in footnotes and in a handy introduction as a nice extra; and if anyone else ever gets around to reading this I'd be curious to compare opinions as to whether a huge amount of the ideas in this text seem scattered in every-day Western cultural assumptions (that sounds pretentious, but read it and also be like what the hell?).

Art of Philip Straub

Moonstruck, with Cher and Nicholas Cage. Hilarious, and classy; where Old School dealt with cheating and relationships in as tasteless a manner as possible, which wasn't necessarily too bad, just a different kind of funny, this film somehow turned its exploration of infidelity into an intelligent foray that was even warm at times. Just watch out on the volume, there's a lot of screaming.

-nice article on ankle locks

      I had several good ideas in the midst of an endorphin rush on the way home. But I lost them in the crash afterwards, I think; ah well. In any case, recently I'd been feeling somewhat lost in my martial arts training - I was kind of asking myself, 'What the hell am I doing anymore?' Which seems a bit odd in retrospect for the amount of hours per week I've been putting in, which is probably more than ever before. I don't think tonight was a complete turnaround, but at least it might get me out of my slump.
      Basically, we tried to approximate full-contact, no-holds-barred fighting as best we could. We used grappling gloves, makeshift headgear (chanbara helmets), and a slight modicum of restraint. The dynamic of this kind of fighting from the usual sparring of traditional martial arts is a world apart. Range takes on an entirely different meaning, and I found myself having to correct all sorts of bad habits (pulling strikes short of their targets, slowed down pull-backs based on courtesy, giving up grappling position for the sake of training escapes) on the fly. High kicks went from a staple to rarely used strikes based on opportunity or strategy, as I quickly found out that in this context they are horribly easy to catch or lead to having one's 'tree chopped down' with a kick to the supporting leg; I was only able to pull off one clean roundkick to the face after a series of feints and switches (ironically slapping my instep on the hard face-guard of the mask - ow). And strategy in turn played a bigger role than I've been used to - there doesn't seem to be any room for half-way choices. It's just strike, strike to create opportunities for grappling, or clinch and grapple; trying to switch strategies in the middle of things required too mental acrobatics for me to handle at this point in time, at any rate. Regardless, there is a huge amount of self-analysis that's going to be occurring for the next few days, most definitely.
      Random notes: grappling gloves actually aren't as bad of cushions as one would think; they do great job of protecting one's wrist and hand, and while they aren't exactly boxing gloves, they diffuse the bone-hard feeling of a fist at least. Chanbara helmets - hmm. Great cushioning job, which makes sense considering they're for fighting with weapons, though one's neck better be conditioned to check the yanking it'll still take. Having them pop off during grappling, or pretty much cancel out one's vision in a clinch were big hindrances; even ranged fighting suffered the obfuscation of the bars across the face (hands and feet are a lot smaller than the sword and staff-length weapons they're designed for, I guess).
      And now, off to nurse the tennis ball sized bump on my ankle, so I can start running again this weekend to build up my cardio. And possibly so I can get a shoe on tomorrow for work. Damn leg blocks...as a post-script, low shin-roundkicks to the thighs were only slightly less dangerous to use than high kicks.

interesting article on on joints that go snap, crackle, pop

      This is going to be really esoteric, random, and possibly high falootin'. Not like the restaurant, though. I don't think like the restaurant, anway. Anyway. I was reading this book and it had a little about a God-concept from back in the old Platonic days (I'm resisting making a horrendous ancient-Greece-platonic-men joke), where the god-figure is the prime mover, who sets everything in the universe in motion without being moved itself. And a few different angles on that same thing, but it's late and I'm sticking with that. Then I completely randomly thought of some article I read way back about some people viewing aikido as a spiritual practice. Then I thought of the zen idea of something being still and yet in motion at the same time - ye old moon's reflection on water, etc. Then I wondered whether that zen idea might be applied to the prime mover, which led to me wondering whether the idea of the prime mover might be combined with that zen idea to describe an ideal mental state for an aikido practitioner, based on the principles of the discipline. Then I remembered that some zen practices view attempting to achieve an ideal mental state as a way of getting closer to God/unity/nature/etc. And that's how (I think) I now understand maybe why aikido might be viewed as a spiritual practice.
      That breaks things.

Old School, with Will Farrell and Luke Wilson. I always struggle a bit when talking about comedies after I see them, because they generally don't do much for me; I pretty much watch them either when there's people who can Rocky Horror along, or when I'm obligated to - like when a short Mexican hands me a movie that I have to watch to find out why he's been going "Frank the Tank! Frank the Tank!" all day long. So, in light of all that, I still thought this movie was pretty lame. It had its share of skin and funny moments and a slew of generally funny actors. I suppose it was kind of generally funny. I wouldn't call it a total waste of time. Eeyup.

"...the condition of human nature is just this; man towers above the rest of creation so long as he recognizes his own nature, and when he forgets it, he sinks lower than the beasts. For other living things to be ignorant of themselves, is natural; but for man, it is defect." - translated from 5th century Latin - which in my mind begs the question, what is it to recognize one's own nature?
-versus-
Shadowcat: "Science and sorcery... is there any thing you can't do?"
Dr.Doom: "Knit. I find it overly repititious."
- I'm more of a cross-stitching man, myself

...hey suburbia! - Cute drawings, and writing that engenders smiling. And cheap shots at emo people. Heh. (But, all in good fun.) Some musical commentary, not too obscure. Also, a fat hamster (with a cute little purse).
      And would someone send me a Rilo Kiley mp3 if they have one? This is the umpteenth time I've heard good things about them.

IronBrush - art

      After watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon again, I started thinking. One, for all the fantastic elements in the fight scenes, there were at least a couple pretty realistic things that I noticed this time around: a quick close-up of the result of Sanchin conditioning (re: Okinawan martial arts, so I assume it's also in the Chinese somewhere), where Zhiyi's character almost breaks Yeoh's character's wrist with nothing but her belly, and this wonderful sequence where Chow Yun Fat's character just keeps sidestepping ever so slightly on 45's and riposting, all the while lecturing his opponent (focus on the angles there, but the rest made it really cool).
      The second bit are questions I had near the end of the movie; namely, if Chow Yun Fat's character is a Boddhisatva, or someone on the verge of enlightenment who postpones it to help others, he's certainly a complicated one. For one, (bracketed by the context of the story) is he postponing his enlightenment to help the young, morally conflicted noble girl, or because of his unconsummated love for his Yeoh's character? While it seems that in order to share that love his enlightenment is permanently forestalled, is he actually still a Boddhisvata who is remaining behind to help ("I would rather be a ghost wandering at your side..."), or has he renounced his efforts in that regard for love, which might just be a different kind of nirvana?

The Constant Gardener, with Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes. Well, for one this makes me want to see City of God (by the same director) even more. I adored Weisz's acting as usual, even when I was actively disliking her character, and Fiennes performed admirably in acting the character development that I specifically went to the movie to see. The cinematographic details, acting (even in body language, always a plus) and plot (which was pleasantly complicated) all fit together quite nicely, with parallels complete and details returned to in surprising ways.
      I also thought the movie was interesting in that it seems to use a similar story-archetype to my favorite novel, Evolution's Shore, even to the point of similar details (tart, somewhat idealistic UK girl, Kenya, uncovering plots by big political players), but unlike the novel, here the female character development is played out in the background, as it were (in flashbacks) whereas the male character's development (which took place somewhat off-stage in the novel) is primary; I only split it by sexes because of the similarity between the given characters, mind. Where the novel is science fiction and the movie is more realistic is the splitting point I think in terms of how the role of disease is played out, with the former turning it into an creator of potential, and the latter placing it in a more overtly economical role - but, I think there is a parallel there nonetheless, just that it's a complex one that hopefully will bear further meaning for both if I can figure it out.
      And I really wonder whether Evolution's Shore might be used as an elucidating comparison to the real-life work of Wangari Maathai, in how integration with the environment plays such a positive role for Kenya in the novel, or whether Maathai's words and work might be used to pull further meaning from the novel based on her real experience.

      Not to keep going on the same subject too much, but I alo wanted to note the role martial arts have been playing in the two Stargate shows. At the very least, they've come a long, long way from the horrendous, even pathetic choreography of Star Trek back in the day. In Atlantis, the military personnel use wonderfully basic traditional and Brazilian jujitsu (and even make it look good, which seems ironic somehow), whereas one of the more exotic characters does and even trains other characters in Filipino style martial arts. What interests me in these points is the use of distinct styles of martial arts to characterize, and as a sort of body language to convey relationships between characters (in the training scenes).
      The body language bit was applied the same way in SG-1, but what interested me more in that show was the impressive cinematography; I don't know how much experience Ben Browder or the other actor he fought have with scenes choreographed like that, and I honestly still don't think at least Browder has had that much, but damn. The slow-downs, shifting camera distance, and angles made for a fight or few that were genuinely rock solid. I just hope they keep up the good work.
      Those, along with random bits in Battlestar Galactica like characters training or the last season finale where it turned out the Victoria's Secret model had some moves worth noting, and not for her looks, kind of makes me wonder whether martial arts might be coming into a companion role with the science fiction genre. Maybe adding an element of art to violence complements the genre in the same way that it adds art to science. Or, as in the case of the Dune series, for example, perhaps martial arts provide a way of really getting into the speculative possiblities for the human body and mind with their connotations of discipline and mental/physical ability.

Although, in a different line of thought, I must admit I feel like the dude in blue some times...but it's good get a laugh out of oneself, hien? This one made me chuckle, at any rate - and at least one person I know laugh (uproariously, even) when I pointed out the possible connection

I don't even know what forty-nine of the real slogans are

      Sort of random thought-stream, running off of my television intake for the week. Which, besides a few cartoons, consisted of tonight. I'll note first of all that the only other person I know who watches Battlestar Galactica consistently, and whom I also know is quite female, was ironically more attracted to Lucy Lawless (guest starring) than Apollo (and, strangely enough, Lawless' character was enough of a bitch that I was ironically almost more attracted to Jamie Barber). And then there was Katee Sackhoff hitting a heavy bag; that brought me back to the female side of things, luckily.
      Not even tangentially, I hadn't noticed the contrasting parallel in themes dealing with symbiotic relationships in the two Stargate shows. While the parasite in question in SG-1 seems generally to be more truly parasitic, especially in its fullest extent of imposing its will upon its host, the symbiote in Atlantis (at least so far as has been hinted) seems like it could be more insidious - to me, at any rate, it's hard to tell whether they're pushing the their-behavior-is-the-other-DNA's-fault angle, or the more interesting augmented-urges-that-are-really-just-human angle. Time will tell, I suppose.
      I also like those little spots they have between commercials, where two actors from a given show are briefly shown in such a way as to hint at their relationship through gesture and body language. Ten points to the SciFi channel.

And how would one translate this random line out of a poem, say, into French:
"French has no word for home."
Something tells me I should take this to a man named Zuzga.

Just for fun, since I'm re-reading one of my favorite books, excerpts from Jack Gilbert's poetry:
"Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire
for his sins. Love allows us to walk
in the sweet music of our particular heart."
--
"...purple is black blooming"
"gray...a thousand colors from white to silver"
--
"Maybe, he thinks, it is like the Noh: whenever
the script says dances, whatever the actor does next
is a dance. If he stands still, he is dancing."

      Just to add to that last reality bit, an oblique take on the issue might be found in Stephen King's novel The Gunslinger, wherein *SPOILER* one reality is actually contained at a submolecular level in another reality (ironically, this time, the real-life reality). So as that space in which the characters' reality is contained is affected, their reality is in turn affected; in this case, I think that the story begins and takes place almost entirely in a different reality than our own, without any invasion or even mixing but with our reality affecting another, leads to an almost completely romanticized and myth-influenced story, with despair or perhaps stoicism, if anything, replacing survival/panic. Woo! Long sentence.

The River of Time, by David Brin. Wow, Amazon has a really old school cover, there. Anyway. This is an anthology of some of Brin's earlier/earliest work, and in that sense if one has read any of his novels or other short stories it's quite easy to tell the difference in the writing. Nonetheless, the writing actually seemed not so important in the sense that the bulk of these stories are speculative science fiction, and the ideas themselves that were conveyed well enough by the writing to give me chills at the end of nearly every story, as if each one was a particularly good Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, what with their twists. As a sidenote, Brin (as with his other books) adds quite nice elucidating commentary between stories, which is especially helpful with this kind of fiction.

Now, What Might Have Been (Vol. 1) as edited by Martin Greenberg and Gregory Benford, on the other hand, basically faceplanted in terms of how much I enjoyed it. These stories are also speculative, but in the sense of "what if..." ideas in terms of whether certain events might not have happened or people existed, etc. Great idea - and the first story with it's contemporary-time-wise but massively different global culture (based around Saxons, Franks, Persians, and Iberians as the dominant political players) sucked me in. But every story after that would have been eminently more enjoyable as an essay detailing what idea the author was basing their story around. It wasn't that the ideas were bad or boring (well, several of them were), but more that the writing was bad and/or boring. Ah well.

Giant Octopus....Shark...Throwdown! - hmm, sharks having been and evolving to be consummate predators for millions of years, octopus has full-body neural net brain power, and possibly tentacles that are worth expending for that much food....hmmm....

"Sarlacc Pit of Platonic Frustration" - yes.

      I think they should have used this article about 'human's closest living relative, the chimpanzee' as part of that 'last of the human genome has been mapped' or whatever it was tagline in the Doom trailer; but then they would have had to bring in chimpanzees, and that would have complicated things. And made it a lot scarier. You know, monkeys - creepy. That, and the phrase 'shotgun sequencing approach' is fun.
      Tangentially, that whole thread of worlds mixing by mistake or otherwise seems interesting. Let's explore it! In the aforementioned Doom, it's been told that I know of as a science community (operating within a corporation) that opens a portal for monetary gain; through that portal come the aliens/entities that either a) are actually demons or b) the slightly more interesting take the form of demons in order to scare and manipulate world leaders through offers of power. Interesting points: our reality is not itself inherently altered, and the link between the monetary purpose of opening the original portal and the corruption-by-power end result.
      In Stephen King's short story, "The Mist," the mix-of-worlds in question originates in a military base (purpose unknown). First, reality itself is altered - this manifests in the form of a mist, which isn't really a mist but a kind of meta-static that resulfts from the mixing of worlds. Then the creatures from the other reality manifest within the mist, which leads to the horror elements concerning the isolated survivors of the resulting mayhem. The interesting thing about this one to me was that it's the only one off the top of my head I can think of where there is minimal fighting-back, as it were, and more purely panic and base survival - perhaps because it is also the one where reality is inherently altered?
      In the Half-Life games, the mix is the created by a scientific community working under the aegis of the military/shady-government-elements, again, purpose unknown (supposedly scientific). The story begins with survival/panic, but leads into fighting-back, but then (like Doom) repeats the cycle after world domination. Here reality itself is not altered, but for all intents and purposes humanity's social and cultural reality is altered when they reduced to a slave race by the other reality. And there, I think it rises above its parallel, Doom, in interesting complexity, as the obliquely altered reality creates panic/survival elements and at the same time leaves room for the more romantic fighting-back.

Word of the Day that I think would be cool to put into contemporary use: aedile - an elected official of ancient Rome who was responsible for public works and games and who supervised markets, the grain supply, and the water supply

Toba Tek Singh, by Saadat Manto - an interesting bit of (kind of satirical) historical perspective

WhiteBelt.Org - this website has skillfully written reviews and articles on teaching having to do with martial arts, though many of them are universally applicable - labeled as Great Stuff, by me

A Sound of Thunder, with Edward Burns and Ben Kingsley. It wasn't quite the worst movie I've ever seen; I mean, it wasn't atrocious. Horrible might be a better word. The special effects, plot, and much of the writing were painful to experience. I'll note a couple of things; there's a slight bit of metafiction in the repetition of the 'time safari;' and there's this one little bit that's horribly creepy, not because of anything gratuitous, but rather because of the complete lack of any gratuitous effects where one might expect them, so that was mildly interesting.

updates from former Green Beret in N'Orleans

I can't imagine it's real; nonetheless, it reminded me of that similar sub in that old show Seaquest, so that memory was pleasant

Stream of thought!
....
....
....
Ok yeah that was dumb. Anyhoo. I just finished watching Garden State again. There are several reasons why I think that it's a lovely movie, but the one I really noticed again was the attention to meaning-rich detail; whoa. When I drive home for work now, I go right under the path of A-10s landing at DM; it's a bit like a slow version of the ones in the trailer for Jarhead. But not so exciting. They really are amazing machines, though, especially when one turns so slowly on practically a dime right over your head that you cringe a little. I wish I could remember whether I mailed my penpal or not, as it takes us months to communicate, so it will be very hard to tell whether I really did. I think I did. I hope. Departure - yeah that messes with my head a little. Sd&#M*&Em38kjd*. Ah, another bad stream of consciousness joke. Ehh. Hm. I end with Macgyver.

"Ay yo, though I be fallin' to my messy-ass death I shall fear no evils..." - yes.

      While I unfortunately wasn't there to see (or participate) in it, there was an interesting situation at the dojo. Our resident MMA guy, about my size and a quarter (so probably still "little guy" status) versus another guy he'd brought in: "280 and some pounds" (his words) and almost as tall as the 6'7" head instructor. And he wrestled in high school. So while he shot in and could bodyslam and hook left and right, and even pin using the lie-on-top-of-you method till the cows came home (that no bridging or shrimping or wedging could break), an interesting thing happened. Out of twelve times that they went at each other, Mr. Gorgeous (that's for you, Carolyn ;) ) choked out Mr. Wrestler eight times, and even got a funny flying armbar as he was picked all the way up into the air to be slammed. At the end of it, the wrestler apparently seemed interested in coming back for some martial arts - the one time he even deigned to add strikes into the equation, the very first movement he ran his neck into a jab; as much as he won some things by size and rule-limited wrestling technique, he lost every other way.

Word of the Day: persiflage - light teasing; banter

other Word of the Day: vatic - of or characteristic of a prophet; oracular

Worldview Throwdown - I wish I could remember more of the article given to me as a model-example for my thesis, because it was a literary version of almost exactly this; tangentially, I wonder how this plays into the "Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless" angle and whether it applies semiotically outside of photographs (helllloooo Barthes...)

Say Anything..., with John Cusack and John Mahoney. I had wanted to see this because it was listed in something I'd read as one of the most romantic movies of all time, and while I'm not sure I'd quite agree with that description, it did have wonderful writing and acting, and an understated but engaging story. It' always nice to see Cusack siblings acting together, and trivia-wise - like Grosse Pointe Blank - there is a semi-random fight scene with a cameo by a famous kickboxer, this time Don Wilson. One thing that did keep me from overly enjoying this movie was that I just couldn't find the lead actress attractive at all.

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, with voices of Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Though the animation is gorgeous, and the action and adventure was top notch and original in my opinion (a spectacular martial arts sequence in a cartoon?), there were a couple things that held this movie back from doing really well when it came out. One, Pitt's voice - while perfect for his style of acting - doesn't lend itself well to animation. Two, I think in a similar way to the sexuality in The Road to El Dorado the seriousness of the culminating theme of the movie (self-sacrifice) was a bit too much for a really young audience.

The Crow: City of Angels, with Vincent Perez and Mia Kirshner. Well, it's not a very good movie, in truth. But: it does have great music, and almost slides by on sheer style and darkness.

"When you start doing awake-in-the-dark mental math based on a knife crawling towards you to kill you, you basically have a problem on your hands." - yes.

Sassinak, by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon. Old school. I read this when I was much, much younger and remembered it as pretty good; reading it again, I suppose it makes sense that I did, as it seems to be written for a much younger audience - kind of a teenage girl's imaginings of her ideal self in a science fiction setting. In that sense, it does make for quick read, as the plot and writing is pleasantly simple and makes for a decent space opera. The one thing I'll note, however, is that it's been a while since I felt kind of objectified as a male because of the writing as a book (the previous time from a work used for comparison in my thesis research) - I'm not sure that the sexual references would be appropriate for a younger audience in one sense, but in another sense, the female characters in question are certainly assertive and confident and sure of their identities, so more power to them.

immortel, with Linda Hardy and Thomas Kretschmann. An Italian movie based on a French comic book. While that might sum it up right there, there really was quite a lot put into this very, very odd movie. First of all, the cinematography is randomly mixed between CGI and live acting, just as a warning to avoid the distraction of trying to figure out whether a different movie was mixed in during the editing. That being said, there is so much detail in everything from dialogue to backgrounds to physical appearances that it's distracting as well, in just trying to absorb it all; maybe the proper phrase is "rich in detail;" trick is, I think that's one of those things where it either gets one really into it, or puts the viewer off. And while the story seems almost nonsensically weird at first, I really do think there are some interesting issues brought up, notably what does it mean to be defined as human (or not), and what really is a deity.

Aliens Vs. Predator, with Sanaa Lathan and Lance Henriksen. I must note that I thought the Aliens Vs. Predator novels and the one Batman Vs. Predator one-shot comic were great, and well worth finding. The movie, on the other hand....not so much. It was okay. The pacing needed help. I liked the ending, though I thought it was obviously ripped from the previously mentioned other media. The effects were quite nice. The acting...not so much, but the Weyland references were quite amusing. I kind of wonder if the audience already being familiar with both monsters kind of detracts from it, in the sense that it's harder to identify with the characters who are supposed to be surprised.

"Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else. They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains and the sea. They bore through silent nature in every direction with their machines, for fear that the calm world might accuse them of their own emptiness. The urgency of their swift movement seems to ignore the tranquillity of nature by pretending to have a purpose. The loud plane seems for a moment to deny the reality of the clouds and of the sky, by its direction, its noise, and its pretended strength. The silence of the sky remains when the plane has gone. The tranquility of the clouds will remain when the plane has fallen apart. It is the silence of the world that is real. Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all our fatuous statements about our purposes, our business, and our noise: these are the illusion." - Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

-overwrought, and I have no idea if any of it is true, but interesting:
"What we think of as the honeybee is technically the Western honeybee. Apis melifera. They are not native to North America; they were brought here by the Spaniards in the 17th century, by men who called honey 'liquid gold.' But eve the Spanish came late to honey. In a way almost impossible to understand in our over-sugared world, honey was the only sweet flavor most of the ancients knew, and they held it in awe. The Egyptians thought bees grew from the tears of Ra, ruler of the gods; and in India, Vishnu, who holds more or less the same job, was called 'honey born.' In Greece, bees led worthy pilgrims to the oracle at Delphi, and Aristotle believed that honey precipitated from the air when rainbows descended."
...mmm, I should go see if we have any killer bee honey left...

      For some reason, while looking at how the sun was reflectng off one side of a cloud, I thought of painting. Then, I remembered an anecdote I'd read once where the writer, walking with a friend, comes across a puddle with oil slicked into it. The writer continues walking, while the friend, a painter, stops to kneel next to the puddle. While I can't remember the dialogue involved, the writer's point was that an artist (be they painter, photographer, or poet, etc) often sees the world in a way keyed into their skill. In that vein, I'd assume something similar for engineers, teachers, and anything else that one can categorize someone as, of course.
      So my next thought was that maybe that's a good reason to go to an art museum. As much as it's wondered whether we all really see the same things the same way, in a sense an art museum might be a place to get insight as to how a collection of other people see the world.

twelve med students - cute comic from Xuemei

...but is it a candy bar?

I'm not sure I can see it working out, but "re-wilding" would certainly be interesting

General Horace Wade - a neighbor for most of my life, and I barely knew anything about him (via Wyatt)

the periodic Movies that Seem Interesting:

Jarehead, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard. Wyatt pointed this one out to me - I'm quite curious to how it will play out politically, though by the trailer it seems wonderfully put together in acting and cinematography

Thumbsucker, with a bunch of good actors - a bit surreal, and a bunch of a good actors

Aeonflux, with Charlize Theron - for only a couple of reasons: over-the-top scifi violence (though it seems it'll be walking a thin line against corniness), and I'm intrigued how the massive change in story from the orginal animation will play into a movie, as much as the writing in the trailer is painful (I mean, at the end of every episode, the main character would die, right?)

The Constant Gardener, with Rachel Weisz, Ralph Fiennes, and intrigue - done and done

Doom, with what appears to be the Rock and that guy from The Chronicles of Riddick - although the trailer doesn't particularly excite me, I'd see it based on memories of being freaked out by the original game

There was an interesting show on the National Geographic channel that purported to trace humanity's ancestry through the Y chromosome to a common ancestor - a "scientific Adam." That every male might have the same minor mutation apparently indicates that every last dude on the planet could be traced back to one guy. While I'm not totally convinced, it was definitely intrigueing; tangentially, I'm of the opinion that the Garden of Eden story is an allegory of humanity gaining sentience (once sentience was gained, then looking back on a time where there was no worry over mortality and all our other foibles might lead one to consider it paradise). In the show it was suggested that tool use began at almost the same time that the scientific Adam was dated to have existed, and furthermore that language might have similarly arisen concurrently. If it's true, it almost makes me wonder whether some oral history was passed down that told of a common ancestor or leader that generated those old creation yarns.

      For a swordwork seminar about integrating breathing into hip movement and footwork, I sure learned a lot about using my wrists. My issue stemmed from the fact that the person teaching the seminar, a quite senior Japanese gentleman who had apparently been taught by Gichin Funakoshi, was wearing a hakama (or, as it's been not-so-affectionately called, a jicama). So, while I really do realize why hiding one's feet with a hakama would be effective in a fight, now, standing directly behind someone trying to teach you how to move your hips and feet and not being able to see their hips and feet just isn't cool.
      Tangentially, as much as my face is still a bit sore three days after an Army MP facelock and an technique involving a knee and my eye socket, I feel like submission attempts by pain alone just don't cut it. I mean, I certainly wasn't going to tap out from the pain of either of those examples once I spent a second or two collecting myself; ironically, I did tap out to the facelock only because I was caught in a pin I couldn't escape. The same goes for pressure points; if one is going to go for a submission in my mind, there either has to be a complete pin, or some actual danger to the self, as with joint locks or chokes. That being said, a submission by pain will work if applied with such sharp intensity that the opponent has no time to override a reflex to tap, but that's still dependent upon how mentally conditioned they are.

Bones - new show with David Boreanaz, of Angel fame (who also happens to be on the cover of Men's Health), because he is aweso

design cycles - I like the BMW

Save Your Neck - makes a good point about lengthening the muscles - that is, consciously lengthening as opposed to just stretching, or contorting by arching

Asteroid Threesome - that's cool and all, but I want to see something really weird, like three comets, or stars, or probably impossibly three singularities

frog + food = poison - something about focus on how the poison is generated reminds me of Rappaccini's Daughter

365 tomorrows - a bit of science fiction each day, great stuff

The Great Raid, with Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Joseph Fiennes and Connie Nielsen. For some reason, I just couldn't get really into this movie till right near the climax; my best guess is that it was a combination of the pacing and the lack of depth in the characters (not that they didn't have depth, per se, but that it was so spread out amongst the large number of characters). That being said, it was a solidly good movie that certainly had my attention. I think it was almost like a documentary in some strange sense, and that might have been part of my enthusiasm issue - I was expecting more drama and almost missed the low-key quality acting; either way, the actaul footage at the end of the film in conjunction with the story is a wonderful effect.
      I think Franco did a fine job, and it was nice to see Nielsen, Bratt and Fiennes in the same movie, even if not in conjunction. I will note that as much as I was happy about the portrayal of Filipinos, I thought it was kind of curious that there were no subtitles for the bits of Tagalog spoken in the movie (unless I just missed them somehow, and someone correct me then). If I were unnecessarily close reading that, it would seem to say something about the relative positions of the various cultures in the movie by proxy of their languages, but I think it was just an editing choice.

Christopher Walken for President 2008 - he's totally got my vote; I mean, just imagine him giving speeches...or at the debates. Think about it.

odd, mild insult of the day: "You eightball."

New York Changing - I'm not to keen on big cities, but the evolution of one is certainly interesting

/..\ balloon bowl /..\ - I just think it's amazing he doesn't fall down

"...when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." - Nietzsche
      So there's that vaguely ubiquitous quote. And I sat there looking at it. Then I thought of the old 40k setting I hadn't thought of in so long, where excessively Puritanical (for lack of a better word) societies were often pitted against their opposite, in terms of hedonism or sheer grotesque nature. So, a tiny issue I used to have with that setting was that I didn't really understand how some of the characters, coming from the rigidly controlling Puritanical background, could switch over to the morbidly grotesque or sybaritic side of things without some illogical bridge, ie, psychosis or overpowering external influence. Basically, I wasn't satisfied in that I thought relying on a seeming rationalization to consistently explain that switch was a shade too far of an excuse.
      But to return to that quote, it reminded me of that thing I learned from literary theory class that I always come back to, that within one's subconscious there's almost always a tiny part of oneself that is fascinated by or loves whatever we consciously hate or are disgusted by, and vice versa. Hence, the idea of morbid fascination. So, with that principle in mind, voila - my issue seems resolved. It even works nicely in that I remember some of the characters were influenced to turn by a little voice in the back of their head - in the setting, a demon or whatnot, but from an outside perspective, a nicely personified example of that principle of the subconsicous. And yes, I know the quote doesn't exactly fit that, but it made me think of all that, so neener.

Art by Howard Lyon

Art by Karen Petrasko

      An editorial I just read made an interesting point - while one could go to top athletes, musicians, or executives and request training, any opportunity (basketball camp, business seminar, etc) will be exorbitantly expensive. Martial arts seminars given by everyone from the top cagefighters to military to really old traditional teachers range from $50 to $600; a somewhat comparable (in the sense that it's a physical skill) mountaineering seminar, for example, is upwards of $9000. Even in my local Arizona region I could list recent and upcoming seminars fearturing people from Japan, the Philippines, Brazil, a big cagefighter coming from Las Vegas (I mean literally huge) An interview in the same magazine made me think back to that editorial in a different sense, however - the interviewee was of the opinion that martial arts are sustained because the people that teach them enjoy teaching. That's not to say that other kinds of seminars arent's conducting by people that enjoy the same, I guess I'm just thinking off the cuff that it's nice that as the martial arts are generally built around constant learning, it's conducive to relatively easily accessible seminars.

      And I just finally realized that if a spearhand (a strike with the fingertips, with all the fingers aligned and together, and the hand flat) is conditioned properly and is used to hit a soft target, it acts like a thrust from a staff, because of the minimal striking surface (I had previously thought that striking with the fingertips couldn't be anything but uselessly fragile). Wa-hey....dorky epitomes, 101.

The Physical Body - minus the (quite interesting looking) giant implements, the bodywork stuff in the video is where a good deal of the conditioning we use for jujitsu at the east Ko Sho comes from (but seriously, I hope that guy doing the squats is wearing pants)

Samurai 7 - Akira Kurosawa versus the classic of similar name....hello, hello, hello....

Kill Harry - Harry Potter versus Kill Bill (down at the bottom)...strange.

      One interesting thing about a call center is how many accents one might hear in a day. There's the range one would expect - Texan, various degrees of Southern, the odd Brooklynese. Then there's, say, a French accent from Canada, then a New York accent crossed with a Jamaican accent. I mean, whoa - my mom has an Arabic/Jersey accent, but it's so faint as to just accent her speech (no pun intended). But the contortions required for a Jamaican New Yorker...

oilcomputer - I'm still campaigning for one within an aquarium; I suppose I'd settle for a terrarium

scarwars - in one sense, a little bit too far in the yikes side of things; but I love some of those designs, and I'm afraid if I keep looking at it I'll become more intrigued...

Interesting response to the Israeli barrier; of related interest, though the staff at a Kurdish restaurant was happy to attempt a cross-dialect conversation in Arabic with my mom, they were only happy until she said she was Palestinian. Then they walked away; unfortunately, that hasn't been a one-time experience, either. Ah well.

That Which We Call Body - kind of oblique, but maybe a response to the opposing poles of dance and martial arts from before?

Ballet! Also interesting. And quite a workout, I have to say; not so much while I was doing it, but I certainly felt it in muscle fatigue for much later on - I understand much better now why dancers like pilates. As for benefits in cross-training, I'd rank posture, balance and coordination in the main. One thing I really noticed was that whereas the martial arts I usually train in have conditioned me to find the most effecient way to perform a given movement, in dancing it seems almost the complete opposite, with control and the extra energy put forth to generate grace taking precedence. In the same sense, however, that might be stemming from a very basic understanding of the latter, and now that I think about it perhaps when the basic dance movements are more conditioned the grace comes naturally from within the dancer and/or their mindset. Hmm.

      Two more weird dreams I've had relatively recently have involved a similar image between them. Both were disturbing in the same way as the sigils on the girl's back from that third recent dream, but these other two did not seem to be as direct of symbols. In the former, I was able/compelled to split a crack I saw in a friend's face; inside, their head was filled with stuff that I remember clearly, but can't really describe. The closest I can come is clockwork mechanisms of bone and ash, and that's letting top-of-the-head adjectives come. In the latter, another friend had a wasting disease of some sort, and I was compelled to scrape at the lesions and bumps on her forehead in some twisted effort to save her, but it only opened holes into a similar view of a hollow space inside her head, also not really describable, but more organic this time. And if I gain one more vivid image like that that's so hard to shake...ah...well, I'll be putting a lot more effort into figuring out why they're bubbling out of my subconscious.

      First of all, several points to Wyatt for getting to the semi-finals of his squadron in the pugil stick competition at the Air Force Academy. He says it was thanks to all the Ko Sho training of angles and combinations, but he might have just been being flattering or modest in his own skill. Highlights: the angle-to-missing leg-->thrust to face worked nicely, and during one of his last matches he tripped backwards and his opponent charged in to hit him while he was on the ground, but he rolled with his fall and slammed both feet into the guy's belly, knocking him backwards. Ah, the classic up kick. Unfortunately, quite illegal in that context, but nothing to be done for good reflexes.
      In related news, another Ko Sho student did similarly well during his time getting his specialized training as an MP for the Army. That context was a general hand-to-hand fighting competition, however, and as he described it their training is pretty much jujitsu, so with his already-trained stature, he (quote-unquote) kicked ass in the ring. Not quite as modest, but nothing to be done for kicking ass. As it were.

(best told in quiet and dry voice)
"Two men walk into a bar. The first man orders a scotch and soda. The second man remembers something he'd forgotten, and it doubles him over in pain. He falls to the floor shaking. And then through the floor and into the earth. He looks back up at the first man, but doesn't call out to him. They weren't that close."

Pilates! Interesting. I mean, I've had limited experience with the matwork before, but not the pilates machines up till now. I'm still unsure as to what the effect of it is upon my body, thought I'm assured by the three other people that were in the room that it's great for dancers (those three being ballerinas). I do feel something, not sure what, in my core and hips, which is nice because of how hard those are to work usually. I also realized that my left foot (the one formerly known as broken) is still weak years later, though in the same token that I was able to feel that so where I hadn't realized otherwise speaks to a really refined workout. Though the expense is a bit inordinate, the machines really are quite slick, so I'm torn as to whether the cost is worth it.

nowhere girl - imaginary friend and better world - depressing at first, but it builds up to quite interesting
(see also: rockingest page ever)

      The other night, I had a dream where the bulk of it was taken up by chasing this girl (a cute one that I haven't seen forever in real life) through crowds and restaurants, basically part of a cityscape, I suppose. Then, when I finally catch up to her to get the kiss I've been wanting, we both laughingly tumble, and somehow her back is bared to reveal sigils and script and an odd diagram not scarred but somehow bloodlessly cut into her skin. Now, I've read fantasy books where things like that 'that would hurt your eyes to look at them' have been described, but never really understood that what that meant, if even in only a dreamscape. I wonder it all means, though....

      Usually when I see a large, vibrant blob of flaming pixels on the 'radar' part of the local weather, I shrug; I mean, I've tried to walk outside and connect it to clouds I can see, but they're usually out of visual range when I remember to do that. But today, oh no. What I thought was way east of the city just happened to be the entire east side of the city. It was pretty awesome in the awe-some sense to drive towards it, what with the rain being lit up by the setting sun and huge rainbows with lightning arabesques and forboding indigo as background. But the moment the edge of those satin-lit curtains came upon me - quarter of a block visibility, the wind vs the lego car (round 3), sweeping gusts of rain and hail, ambulances and police fighting through traffic slowed to a timid crawl. While the idea of a moat around the dojo as was brought up once people were inside (dripping wet, natch) is interesting and all, it's not cool when one's car suddenly sinks only to slam its wheel into the curb. Okay, maybe it's cool in retrospect.

The Tale of Smith - eerie, interesting

      An article I was reading about possible other forms of life beyond the standard DNA/RNA/what have you based paradigm brought up an interesting point. If, say, something of electromagnetic energy could achieve some level of sentience, what kind of perception of time would it have? Would its perception of time be something that speeds up and slows down even more than our 'time flies when you're having fun' shift in perception? Which leads to other interesting questions - how do really different not-so-hypothetical beings, such as hummingbirds that have much faster metabolism, perceive time? Or, perhaps even more interestingly, do they percieve time the same way we do, and whether it appears fast or slow is purely a mental thing?

Rocket Blasters is a fun show. It's like a really sped up, and in some important ways simpler version of what my brother did in the Mojave and Black Rock for Raytheon, but is especially distinguished as a reality show in my mind because everyone is nice and encouraging to each other, as crazy as that sounds. And they strap rockets to Mini's.

That Ring Is So You - except for the jaw biopsy part, I have to admit I'm intrigued

Singin' in the Rain - kind of like that old Nike commercial with the pretty European breakdancer, except with lower tech, of sorts

Wizard's First Rule, by Terry Goodkind. First of all, for some reason I couldn't help but imagine the main character with anything but a mullet. Secondly, I'm not sure I would have finished it but for the fact I was reading it on the recommendations of my sister and my roommate; I don't think it's necessarily that bad, really, but it's definitely not my cup of tea. The only intrigues were that characters kept things from each other for too long, almost every single character expounds on morality at some point or another (and each in turn seems universally wise, leaving little room for variation), and for such a large book the plot and even the number of plot threads seemed excessively simplified.
      Now, in the same token, after discussing I can see where the people I know who've read it are coming from when that simplicity of character and story is a benefit (say, as refreshing after reading a relatively excessively complex George Martin novel), so maybe it just comes down to whether one prefers coffee or tea, as it were. One thing I did like, in any case, was the use of (as far as I could tell) truly original fantasy ideas for monsters and magic, which while interesting unfortunately seemed to be concentrated only at the beginning and end of the novel.