depth

depth. looks like death. looks like one of those words where you stare too long at it and it becomes something else. words words words, all what we make of them. manifestations of thought, mirrors of our minds.

roller

roller. rollercoasters and steamrollers. rolling as a motion, one of a vast set we are capable of. rolling, lolling, body as form and function, but also as art.

chained

chained. to a stone. like...prometheus? to have his liver torn out over and over again. metal and stone. great textures there - solid and immovable.

president

president. from preside, perhaps? to preside at the head. commander and chief. like many things, it's just a word, with it's own history as a word, but with all of the history behind it, it accrues power that it never had to begin with. such is the power of titles.

detour

detour. first thought: my whole life has been a detour so far. which of course implies a destination. interesting, if life is what happens when you're making other plans, and your plans are the destination, then life is necessarily a detour. it's the unexpected flow of your experience, driving you down blind alleys. no one can fight it.

industry

industry. reigniting the fires of industry. is this a fundamental aspect of human society, that we must be productive? Are we inherently technological people? i suppose it speaks to an innate curiosity and creativity which might be considered flattering, despite the things we've done in its name.

dolls

dolls. the dollhouse. it was a good show, with interesting ideas at least, despite the poor execution. reminds me of ghost in the shell too, where the director held up dolls alongside dogs as two things/entities that we project ourselves onto, yet have very different kinds of life from us. Dolls are imitation life.

bongos

bongos. certainly conjures an air of the foreign, the mysterious, the exotic. maybe something like orientalism, preying on the ignorance of an audience to produce such a feeling of mystery. it matters who the audience is in this case, because all the bongo players in the room are not impressed.

Aw hell, it's 11/9/09

So it's the final rundown to my thesis draft due date. I will be doing little else this week other than maintaining my bodily functions in order to finish the draft on time, which I keep making more difficult by changing the topic. The conclusions I've reached stay much the same, and now I'm basically just changing the questions to fit the answers. I'm hoping that by really nailing the topic, the actual writing of the thing will be easier and faster. We'll see how true that is...

On the party/social front, I'm dealing with the same issues I've been having since at least last year, which is that I don't enjoy a lot of the parties here, yet at the same time I feel like I need to get to know more quality people and bring them into my life. The party I was at last night seemed more like an exercise in making small talk with strangers than anything that could produce real camaraderie. I have therefore decided that I need more video games in my life, to share pursuits with like-minded people. That always seemed to be the way to happiness and friendship before, so I'm not quite sure why I forgot. To this end, I'm thinking seriously about bringing World of Warcraft back into my life - a dangerous idea to be sure. We shall see...

It was actually the music from Blizzard that got me thinking seriously about WoW again. I've put it up in the public folder. Have at it.

Here we stand, on 10/26/09, feet on the ground, facing forward

Hey friends. Looks like I'm gonna have to switch around the daily update thing, since I've already failed to keep up with it. I think I'll try for Sunday - Wednesday, since weekend nights have a habit of leaving me occupied or incapacitated when I would usually be writing these.

Fun events from the weekend:
A friend of Alison's came to visit, and hanging out with him was fun but not without its complications. He also has the strange power, like our friend Zach from back home, of attracting the attention of every female in every room he entered. One can only marvel. And roll their eyes.

On Saturday I went to practice at my Kendo teacher's dojo. For the first hour, my teacher taught myself and a 60 year old gentleman how to do Iaido (居合道, roughly translated it seems to mean "the way of acting in harmony with being"), which put simply is the art of drawing the sword in response to a surprise attack. From what I can tell, Iaido is to Battoujutsu as Kendo is to Kenjutsu - Kendo is derived from fighting forms using an already drawn sword, while Iaido is an art derived from techniques starting and ending with a sheathed sword. Unlike Kendo, Iaido is not competitive and is considered to be an art that is necessarily individual. From what I've read and heard about it, and based on the interpretation of the name, it's supposed to be a very personal exercise, as much about cultivating internal awareness as external technique. For this reason, some people refer to it as "moving Zen". Anyways, it's amazingly cool to watch, and I enjoyed what little I did immensely. Hopefully I can scrape together enough money to buy a sword sometime soon(Iaido is practiced with real, though usually blunt, swords), but in the meantime I plan on going every week with my wooden sword to practice.

After an hour of that came an additional 3 hours of Kendo practice, by the end of which I literally couldn't speak above a whisper from shouting so much. It was a lot of fun, even the part where I had my back to the wall and was getting hit by my teacher faster than I could follow with my eyes. I think the most important implication of this development in my practice of Kendo (and the beginning of my Iaido practice) is that it represents an endeavor that I've excelled at, really enjoy and respect, and can happily incorporate into my identity. I think I generally try to avoid making my identity about anything other than what goes on in my head, but perhaps that's why I feel so adrift so often. Maybe I can take this accomplishment of mine, which I'm really proud of, and hang some weight on it so to speak. Instead of having my identity inform every single thing I do, maybe I can relax a bit and let this pursuit of mine influence my identity a little bit.

Yeah, I'm a swordsman. What of it?

Just the thought makes me feel calm.

Websites:

Iaido

Seven questions that keep physicists up at night:

Music:

Been listening to Laura Veirs, who opened for the Decemberists when Borge and I went to see them last month. Posted a track called "John Henry Lives".

Peace Friends

Look around, it's 10/20/09

Today I resolve to be an unstoppable juggernaut of self-confidence.

I think I have the intellectual capacity to understand, and possibly even excel, at whatever I put my mind to, and therefore the only impediments to achieving everything I can reasonably desire to achieve are time and my own character faults. As to the latter, I intend to identify and eradicate them to the best of my ability. I will identify what I want and then use my reason and intellect as a vantage point both to survey the best way to attain it and circumvent my own weaknesses. I'm gonna win this thing dammit.

I also need to figure out how best to simultaneously and effectively continue my study of music, programming, and astronomy after school. Perhaps I can become one of those brilliant shiny people that's good at everything and seemingly never sleeps...

Site of the day:
http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1792544

Song of the day (up at public folder):
I've wanted to post this one for a while but it's kept slipping my mind. How sad it was that we could not believe...

Hallelujah, by the Helio Sequence

Daily Wave - 10/19

Ok let's play a new game.

In addition to longer entries, which I intent to write soon, every day I'm going to post things I run across or thoughts that I have or things that I'm listening to. It'll be something like this:

Astronomy is becoming a bigger and bigger fascination for me, and this week I've been treated to news stories and pictures regarding planets and moons within our own solar system. In particular, I've read about how Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus both (almost certainly) have vast underground oceans, possibly capable of supporting life (either ours in the long run, or life that might already be there that we don't know about). Anyways, in Saturn news, there's this site:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/saturn_at_equinox.html

which I've shared with most of you already probably. The site is just generally awesome so you all should keep it bookmarked, rssed, whatever.

A thought provoking article about flu vaccinations:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200911/brownlee-h1n1

Been listening to a bunch of random stuff recently, from Bach to Tchaikovsky to Arvo Part to Massive Attack etc., but I think I'll make the song of the day: Small Time Shoot 'em Up by Massive Attack. It'll be up on the public folder.

Thought of the day: How do you beat yourself?

So. Pictures, websites, music of interest, daily.

Let's see how long I keep this up...