Valentine's Day
"Would that be turning the thurible into a weapon of Mass destruction?" -Jet, 02/11/2007
"It's so much less confusing when lines are drawn like that, when people are either consumers or revolutionaries, enemies or friends hanging on to the fringes of the cogs in the system; it's just about knowing where everyone stands." Hm. Against Me! lyrics. Don't see that every day, but that song was playing, and it caught me.
Also catching me, from the same night as the quote above, Jeremiah 17:9, part of last Sunday's Revised Common Lectionary reading. "The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse. Who can understand it?"
You know, I didn't intend for this to be a Valentine's Day post, but things seem to be leaning that way, so maybe I'll go with the flow. My heart is devious, and maybe it is beyond me to understand it. Maybe only the Lord has the ability to search the hearts and minds of men (oh, man, if I could grep my brain, how sweet would that be?), but that doesn't stop me from stubbornly believing I should and could have full control over everything that [is in my body? I am? I consist of? makes up my person?]. So my heart is devious, but it's younger that I am, and I like to think I could take it down if I wanted to.
So Leah, I've been realising lately, is a pretty violent person. Pacifistic politically, she uses manipulation and force of will to get her way fairly often in her personal life. This may sound like condemnation, but remember that I like Hobbes and I approve of these as legitimate methods, and would not be suprised if it was asserted that I posses these traits in much greater force. Nosce te ipsum, I know, but I don't commit the cognitive resources necessary to monitor all of my output. Perhaps that should be rectified.
In any case, Leah is a violent person. This had been troubling me for some time, until I realised -perhaps 'remembered' is the better word- how attractive that is to me. This was circa Monday. The heart is indeed devious. I looked back at other girls (at some point, I'll need to start referring to them as 'young women') I've been attracted to, dated, flirted with, et cetera, and saw the common thread of violence (along with a few physical traits) running between them.
"Now we see things as in a mirror dimly," sings The Mountain Goats as I type this. More lyrics and more Scripture in the same neat little package. Oh, that crazy fundamental-interconnectedness-of-all-things which may-or-may-not-exist. Bringing us neatly to uncertainty, which I was typing about when I heard the line above, anyway. Heisenburg's principle has a tendency to leak from quantum physics into larger classes of reality, or at least, to seem a good lens (perhaps gel would be the more appropriate analogy, but everyone's comfortable with this analogy) through which to view other sorts of questions. Can I know both where I am and where I'm going to be? Right now, I know where I am; kind of a refreshing change, honestly (Leah has often accused me, as it happens, of not knowing where I am in time and space). I don't really know where I'm going to be. I don't even know where I want to be, but I trust that I'll get there. Read the story of Balaam this morning, and I'm feeling pretty good. I don't know if everything being OK is a continuous function, but I do believe that there exists a time t greater than t0 for which it returns a positive value, and that this is true for any t0.
When I said that "Final Countdown" was the 1812 Overture of Today, Alexis asserted that, due to the "fake gun sounds in the background" -an exact quote- it should be more properly associated with rap. An interesting analysis.
Sunday after Sixth Week
"I can add two vectors; I can multiply a vector by a constant. I can do all the things I like to do." -Bookstein, 01/23/2007
Have I ever mentioned how awesome DragonForce is? I'm sure I must've. So awesome.
So things did look up for me later on Friday; I went to The Animation Show with Sara and a bunch of other people, and then to the Critical Mass art show. The coffeehouse hosting it seemed really cool; I should go back some time and see what it's like when they're not holding an art show. The art show was fun (Lorange had submitted what was probably my favorite piece; other favorites were this big black-sillouettes-on-orange-banner, and a fully knit bicycle. The animation show was also fun. I know some other people disagree with me on this, but I liked "Collision"; "Rabbit" was probably my favorite. I liked most of the pieces, in fact, but I was a little disappointed that Don Hertzfeldt was not there, due to contracting bronchitis a few days before. All in all, a good evening's entertainment.
So, to make it clear, if anyone wants to bookmark or link to the most recent log post, it will always be at http://log.3feetofftheedge.com. I learned a few fun tricks recently with customised 404 pages and redirects. Also, czech out that cute little icon in your address bar. Haven't figured out yet how to attach it to bookmarks, but we'll see. You may also notice, at the other end of your address bar, an RSS feed icon. Subscribing to it will totally let you know when I update. It's a new one, due to the switch, so you may have to resubscribe if you were using the old one. Sorry.
And now I'm gonna clean my room.
So that's what's up with me and what's up with the site. What's up with you all?
Suicide Prevention Day
"Part of the problem is that random events don't look like they're random, which I think is a large part of historical research." -Bookstein, 02/08/2007
Also on the random radar for today is xkcd, which everyone but Leah is probably already reading.
So I actually woke up depressed, pulled myself out of bed and got myself ready to go to class on time. Then there were, like five people on the bus. It still took me a minute to figure out why. This only made me more depressed, somehow. I got off the bus, got inoffensively sexiled for about an hour, and sat down to write this. Leah's taking me out to lunch, though, so I'm starting to cheer up a little. Blah, blah, blah, I'm depressed, what am I doing?
So last week during the Scav meeting, I got like three missed calls from a South Dakota number. As I walked home afterwards, I got another call from the same number. "Is Jesse there?" the voice asked. Obviously, she was not. So I czeched to make sure that the person (a young man of questionable sobriety) knew that he was calling from South Dakota to Chicago, and repeatedly informed him that Jesse was not there. Eventually it came out that "I know she's there," which revealed that he was actully looking for Jessie, who was, nevertheless, also not present. I told him so. He became angry and said "Whatever, man. I know she's there, so.... whatever."
Fun Times.
Thursday
"As far as I know, one of the main reasons we believe vision is possible is because we do it." -Pedro, 09/25/2006
So Brian rolled into town and made me watch Metalocolypse, and I made him play elephant chess. I won at elephant chess, but we'd eaten dinner at the Falcon, and he'd had more than I had. Also, he'd never played before, though he had the advantage of being able to read Chinese. Everyone won with Metalocolypse. I will not watch it on my own.
While getting stamps so I could mail out MOUSE! Brazenly standing in the middle of the room, giving me the eye, until I looked up and noticed him! Grr! We'll get him yet. Interestingly enough, I have no idea why he's here. He doesn't appear to be eating anything; at least, I've seen nothing showing sings of being eaten by a mouse. It's not like we even have any food to be leaving around. But speaking of those upon whom I wage an eternal war, the grumpy guy ot the kosher deli wasn't there last time I went in. Some younger, nice, new guy was there. His hummus was lackluster, but I am confident that he will improve over time. Truly, the other guy's insolence knew no bounds. He would ask me what I wanted before he even toasted my bread, double-check what it was as he toasted the bread, and then give me something else once the bread had finished toasting. Furthermore, he consistantly put only the faintest hint of hummus on my hummus and vegetable sandwich. Not a condiment. No.
But anyway, while getting stamps from my old notebook, I discovered, in addition to the quote above, a conversation snippet from four days later, in the same class. For the record, I'm pretty sure that the That Guy under scrutiny was a grad student.
That Guy: "What do you do if you can't access a paper with no direct links?"
Pedro: "Go to the library."
That Guy: "Do they have special links to papers?"
Pedro: "Books. They have books."
Yeah.
I will not watch it on my own.
Tuesday, Fourth Week
"She's training to be an amputee victim." -Danit, 01/07/2007
So, remember how there was something something about moving out to my own webspace? That move has started. Czech out the sweet new icons (pretty much all of what's done so far). I kind of want to make all the new things xhtml 1.0 strict complient, and for now it'll be on a "when I come to it" kind of transfer proceedure for the move. That is to say, not everything will be switched over at once, but most major stuff will switch over first, like the log, the feed, and the about the site page. But anyway, the domain is -surprise, surprise- 3feetofftheedge.com.
Leah may be making a move soon, too, but for now that's for her to announce. Or rather, she says she's going to work on it tonight, but there's nothing there yet, and I don't want to link prematurely.
Oh, I just remembered. BallOoga is back into proper runnig order, though it's not a lot of variety, really. I totally played it for ten minutes the other day, though.
Sunday
"Ice cream? No, it's a nude!" -Michael Velliquette, 01/17/2007
So I went out to the relatives' place this weekend. It was lots of fun. We played a lot of Labyrinth, I helped Victoria study Africa, and we played Monopoly by the original rules (a very surreal experience, I can tell you. It took only two hours to play a full game. Nobody tackled anybody else. Very striking, overall.)
Coming back on the train, I saw a whole bunch of kids get on with bags and bags of chips, more pop than one person could carry, hundreds of party cups, and a keg. That's right, a keg on the El. That's so, so right. They got off at IIT, hauling all that stuff with them. Crazy kids.
So we saw Bob Saget tonight, and it was good. No Eddie Izzard, but well worth my money and time. Somewhat reminiscent of Brian, actually. I mean that in the most complimentary way, of course. The encore was key.
Well, my roommate is burning his dirty hippie incense, so I suppose it's time to get back to work.
Wednesday, Third Week
"You can assume she's happy to see him, because he's handsome and has nice eyes, or whatever." -Tara, 01/10/2007
Went to a soiree this past weekend. Lots of good finger food I couldn't eat, but excellent beverage options, and good company, though after a while I began to feel a little old. I'm sure Frank, a man who excells beyond me in age as well as many other things, and our hostess's beau, was feeling it even more, but that did not stop him from beating me down hard at Rock Paper Scissors. I learned, from the Hipster Handbook, how to correctly identify many classes of hipsters, most of which came to the party. Jonathan Williams got his animal magnetism on (with scandellous results), and Laura managed to figuratively let her hair down while maintaining her resolve to not physically do so. A good time was had by most. Leah got a blister from her crazy-high heels (the necessity of which she was able to convince me, though I can't remember how), I offered to carry her back as her "designated walker".
Since then, cleaning, homework, redesigning the website, 24, and the second season of Star Trek: the Next Generation, which I got Leah for Christmas. And laundry, during those last two. I washed more laundry at once than I have in a very long time, and it took me two episodes to fold it all. Yow.
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