This site now exists. The main item of interest so far is
the log of my progress on the Lightning Technique, a variation of
the so-called Uberman sleep schedule. Check it out on the projects page.
Soon to come: lots of pictures.

Finally I've returned from my period of computer isolation
and huge hassle which was so ridiculous that I'll inappropriately describe it all here. It started when I stupidly
deleted my linux partition, without bothering to remove the bootloader GRUB (which I've now learned is a pain to
remove no matter what. So when I tried to boot the computer, GRUB would come up, not no what to do, and give me
a prompt I had no idea what to do with. To get the computer to boot I used a boot disk I had created to be able
to use the CD-ROM drive, and installed windows 95 on the old linux hard drive (which was the goal in the first place
so that I could play some old games that don't work in windows XP). My DVD-ROM drive had just broken so I had to
borrow a drive out of a roommate's computer and load its driver onto the boot disk. I got win95 up and played games
for a couple days and didn't have much to do with the outside world, but still had the problem of all my important
files sitting on the winXP drive and no way to get them since XP uses NTFS. I could install win2k, but I didn't want
to delete my games and/or not be able to play them anymore because they don't work in 2k either. So the best solution
would be if I could repair the winXP installation somehow. The message board solution to removing GRUB was to type
"fdisk /mbr" at a DOS prompt and format the master boot record. I loaded up with the boot disk so I could get a prompt
that would give me access to the drive, but unfortunately neither DOS nor fdisk understand NTFS so that didn't work.
The other solution was to use the WinXP recovery console and type "fixmbr" to fix the master boot record. For some
reason I've been completely unable to boot from a CD for a while, and this was necessary to load the recovery
console, so I had to get and load up the setup diskettes you can use to start an XP installation. Unfortunately
I apparently set an administrator password for XP and forgot about it because the recovery console wouldn't let me
in. So the only solution was to install win2k on the drive that had 95, copy over all my files, then wipe the XP drive
clean and reinstall that. Fortunately it turned out to my surprise that I could upgrade from 95 to 2k and NTFS
without deleting my files so I still have the games although not all of them will work. That was about the only break
I caught in this whole affair. The last thorn came when during the XP reinstallation a hard drive's power
cable somehow popped out spontaneously while I was in the other room and froze the installation, but to its credit
the installer was able to pick up close to where it left off.

That was fun wasn't it? I know it was for me. So as for site news, I'm update to update the
Uberman logs, and then start scanning pictures.

The Fotomat is now up and running with about 110 pictures. In fact that's almost all I have
at the moment that I personally have taken, however I will soon be adding a wave of pictures from my traveling
compatriots that will fill out the photographic experience of Europe 2001-2002. I will also be taking some more
pictures around here, so it will be good.

Phase 2 of the Lightning Technique experiment has begun, along with the daylogs for it.
Satisfy your info-craving.

I've made the first of a series of upgrades to the Fotomat. I added a selection of Al's pictures from Europe,
including two new areas that only he took pictures of. Coming soon are new and better panoramas. I'm also finally going to write a
piece for the reading room, and probably put up an old favorite as well.

If in need of an unhealthy dose of quotidian doom, I highly suggest you check out the brand new
Extreme Sloth

I've uploaded the new, much-improved panoramic photos to the Fotomat, and two completely new ones. Later
today I'm going to add the first two pieces to the Reading Room. That means all but one section of this site will have real content!
Consider yourself updated.

Reading Room is now contentful. I also added a nice little touch to the Fotomat, in the form of a pictorial Panorama button. Not
really sure what to do next, but I'll think of something.

Here's something. I went to see Jad Fair play tonight. My reaction alternated between youthful enthusiasm for the innocent, and feeling
like everyone in the room was having a joke played on them. It was Jad and someone named Rob, and Rob would make drum sounds with his mouth
and Jad would shout and talk lyrics and strange noises with no semblance of melody. The only instruments were one guitar and a megaphone.
They used a lot of cool effects on the vocals and did live sampling and layering of it, so musically that was pretty impressive. Song-wise, though,
it was unabashedly thrown together, and a little too far on the "lo-fi" end of the spectrum for my tastes. I do admire Mr. Fair for doing things
completely his own way.

Added another little upgrade to the Fotomat--scans of patches we got in most of the European cities now grace the lists
of pictures. Had an insane dream last night that will be added to the dream logs when I get back from work tonight. The next stuff to be added
will be a comments (from you the viewer) page.

The new thing should be apparent. Look at that beautiful submission form over there. Give it a shot, it's easy. It
actually works too, so that's a plus. You don't have to enter an email address if you don't want, you coward. The form is on all the other
pages that seem comment-worthy so far.

Check out this insane dream. It's not that bizarre in terms of ideas,
but it made me crazy at the time. Why not contribute your own dreams to the reading room? It's a dream party and I'm fascinated.

Saw Ben Folds play completely solo last night, it was surprisingly good. He played lots of old BF5 songs, even some
very old ones that float around the net as early demos, "Kalamazoo" and "Silver Street." Underground, Philosophy, Last Polka, Where's
Summer B, One angry dwarf, Evaporated, only a couple off Reinhold Messner, and most of his new album that I haven't bought. He somehow managed
to break a piano string that looked to be about .5" thick. The singer of Divine Comedy opened, also playing solo, and was very good.

I've decided I should devote my attention only to music for a week or so, to make sure I don't waste the summer without
doing anything. I'll keep updating the site but probably hold off on major new things, except putting songs up.

Finally saw star wars tonight. No one is likely to benefit from knowing my opinion of it so I'll keep it to myself.

My job is mind-numbing, but since it involves working with my hands and looking at what I'm doing, and usually being able
to hear what's going on around me, the only thing to safely occupy is my mind. Therefore before work I take a look at some logic problems from a
book I picked up called "Forever Undecided" by Raymond Smullyan. If you ever see one of this guy's books, buy it and send it to me immediately.
Most of his stuff is out of print and it's all great fun and challenging to your mind. Lately I've almost been getting too good at the puzzles
I have to keep looking at the book every 15 minutes or so. There is one puzzle not from the book that occupied me for a couple of days solid. It
was told to me about a year ago, which is a little embarassing, but here it is (with some trivial details invented by myself):

There is a society of creatures called Leepop who live on an island, that has been invaded by a powerful and cruel man. He decides to kill at least some of them,
in a way that is entertaining to him. The way it will work is this: 100 Leepop from the society are rounded up. They are each wearing a hat that
is either red or black--some are red and some are black, the distribution is random. These Leepop will be lined up in a single file line such
that the Leepop in the back of the line can see all 99 Leepop in front of him, while the Leepop in the front of the line cannot see anyone. Each
Leepop will either say "red" or "black" and if they correctly name the color of their hat, they are set free and taken away. If they do not guess
correctly, a less fortunate fate awaits them, for they are killed instantly. The Leepop are allowed to go in any order and to discuss any
strategy they like before they are lined up, as long as each person simply says "red" or black" once it starts. The question is, how many Leepop
can have their survival ensured, and with what strategy?

Feel free to put questions or solutions in the guestbook.

Went to see Kronos Quartet tonight. It was very cool. They played "Svefn-G-Englar" by Sigur Ros as an encore which was
amazing. They informed the audience that Sigur Ros will be composing one or more pieces for the two groups to play together. Be excited, Be-Be
excited.

If you somehow still had an ounce of confidence in our government, check out the reaction
to the ruling against the Pledge of Allegiance. You really should read that, it's incredibly disturbing.

I've always been fascinated by the variety of names given to the function on remote controls that takes you to the previous
channel. I've seen "Prev Ch," "LC," "Recall," "Last," and most recently "Quick View." Also, only one remote I remember having, had the feature of
ignoring channel up/channel down movements when determing the previous channel. This makes good sense; why would I ever need to press the last channel
button to go up or down one channel? This way I can switch from say 4 to 20, explore a few channels around 20 (since specific interest channels are
often grouped together) then go back to 4 from whichever channel in the 20 neighborhood looked most promising. But only that one company had bothered
to implement this. They don't make anything like they used to.

I stare into the abyss and it stares back at me. Haven't left the house in almost two days, but I'm about to be forced
out by my job. I'm going to take my MD recorder so I can sample some of the machines there and have some metal machine music of my own.

Two new stories in the Reading Room, contributed by associates.

I've just realized the ridiculous nature of the past few years of my life. I'm paying lots of money I don't have for the
privilege of being able to get a well-paying job, so that I can pay back all that money. Sure I took some interesting courses, but not much I
couldn't have learned on my own given the proper motivation. So with this revelation, will I drop out and start living life for real? No, because
that would be hard, and I'd rather take the easy way out. In fact, saying so gives me a feeling of relief, like I'm reassuring myself that I'm not
going to try anything really crazy. Can't think of anything else to say.

Two new things in the reading room. Don't hate me for it.
Last night watched "Crumb" the documentary about the artist R. Crumb. Very inspiring. The most inspiring parts were those showing his two brothers, who are both very eccentric. One is a complete recluse who stays in his room at home and reads book after book. He is highly intelligent and well-spoken, even good-natured about his condition. He has no meaningful connection to the outside world or any other people. The other brother is an epileptic who meditates by sitting on a bed of nails and passing a string of several feet in length through his entire body. Also very well spoken and interesting. The whole family has a way of speaking that makes you want to listen. Anyway, the lesson for me was that for every well-known person who is very interesting, there are two even more interesting people who you'll probably never hear about. The sheer unusuality of these people was inspiring in a society with such powerful normalizing forces.

I think lyrically I'm going to try two new styles--Charles Bukowski (his poetry primarily) and "Finnegan's Wake." Just to have something to try and not have to worry about saying anything interesting.

Last night the roommate and I took a 1:30am Taco bell run. We probably went about 8 miles and saw no less than 10 police cars in various stages of pulling people over. The miracle of this is that when almost at Taco bell, after seeing a police car that had pulled over a yellow car in the middle of the road, we realized our headlights were off. All around us people are getting tickets for having yellow cars and we get away with that. On the way home one police car was sitting on the side of the street facing the wrong way! There must be an explanation, maybe
they need to get ahead on their ticket quotas before they take 4th of july vacations.

Today's electronics lesson: if you're playing guitar through an amp which isn't grounded, and you have headphones on, don't
touch your guitar strings and the metal part of the headphone plug that sticks out of the jack at the same time.

This started when I changed the location where my amp (which is from 1960 and therefore does not have a third prong) was
plugged in, from a good quality surge protector to a wall outlet. I did this just to get the cord out of the way and didn't think anything of it.
Then last night I was doing some recording which involved playing the guitar and using a microphone. I have an I/O unit in a front panel of my
computer that I plug headphones and microphones into.

At one point I thought I was shivering, but then realized I was getting strong electric
shocks when touching various things like the headphone plug, the microphone's 'on' switch, and the microphone preamp. This got more painful each
time, so I developed the test of touching the end of one of my guitar's strings to the object. If it was going to shock me, this produced sparks.
Trying to isolate the source, I unplugged various things from the microphone preamp. Eventually it was only connected to the computer and it still
sparked. So it's my computer. But after some more testing I got these results: when my headphones were plugged in, the other jacks on the I/O
unit sparked. When they were not plugged in, no sparks from those. When the headphones were plugged into my CD-ROM drive, that sparked too. But
the headphones still worked fine, curiously. I thought about this for a while and then went back to testing and listening to music. Now the
headphones didn't work. Very upsetting. Also, when I plug other headphones into the jack, they don't work, so the jack's busted too. Fantastic.
I sulk about this last night.

Then today I try some tests again, and the headphone plug still sparks. But now the headphones work again! So the answer appears to be that I was
touching the headphone plug and the guitar strings at the same time without realizing it, and thereby completing the same circuit as when I touched
the stuff with the guitar string directly. So the guitar string was drawing current from the ground portion of the headphone plug, because the
amp isn't grounded. Somehow this was prevented by having it plugged into the surge protector even though no third prong was involved. So the other
lesson is, use good surge protectors, especially for vintage audio equipment!

Trying to do a series of "1 (or 2) day songs". The idea is to get more songs done than I have been, and for the songs to
be more spontaneous and fun, without being throwaways. I tried to do the first one yesterday but only got the drums done and they were quite
elaborate. Hopefully the rest will get done tonight. It's based around the sound of me going down the stairwell in this building. Maybe one day
fans will flock to this building to recreate the sound. Or maybe they'll flock to their own stairwells for a very similar sound. Well it's nice to
dream.

Have had a few ideas for projects. Might try putting levels in the apartment, as Kramer once talked about but never did.
The pros are that we would be using that space near the ceiling that right now is empty, and then we could use the space under the level
construction as storage. Then we could do the reverse in the other room and have little platforms hanging from the ceiling that we could store
things on! The cons are that, unlike real furniture we couldn't rearrange the levels. Unless...

Thoughts last night most: maybe one day I'll do something good.

The creative process has spun out of control. Tonight: spent a couple of hours trying to come up with some words for a song, then turned the page
and poured out a page full of wordplay gibberish, then decided the song shouldn't have words, on the Zen basis that they only cloud the view of
reality. So I'll either be taking the Sigur Ros route or coming up with words as I record the vocals.

I've made a mini-project out of watching all the Woody Allen movies this summer that I haven't yet seen. This is made much easier by the ability
to rent movies from a local shoppe without paying. Watched so far: Love and Death, Manhattan, others... Yesterday and today were "Stardust Memories" and "Everything you ever wanted to know about sex*
*but were afraid to ask." On the schedule: Interiors, Husbands and Wives, Sleeper, other stuff. I'll keep a scoreboard of some kind going.

The mystery of the electric shocks was finally solved by some good common sense from A. My amplifier was made not only
before the time of three prongs, but before the time of making one side of the plug bigger than the other so that you could only insert the right
way. Therefore I was easily inserting it the wrong way, and hence the shocks.

More prolific of late with the songs, that's the reason for the lack of updates. I've been going at a rate of about 4 songs
written and recorded per week. At some point next week I'm going to stop and mix them all, and make some CDs, and hopefully put mp3s up here.

Happy Bastille Day. I went to a party last night and saw someone from my sophomoric days. When "The Good Life" by weezer
came on the stereo she screamed at the stereo "you fucking bitch!" Disillusionment. We were out on the porch and the stereo was inside so maybe
someone changed it; the previous song had been Elliott Smith so maybe she wanted to hear more of that. Even so, it's weezer, her actions are hardly
justifiable. Those two songs were the only non-typical party music played while we were there.

After consultation with Mr. M, it looks like we are going ahead with plans to put levels in the living room. Exciting times
are ahead.

It's like when you hear a song for the first time, and you know you like it, but then you don't hear it for a long time, but
you still sing it in your head trying to reconstruct that time you heard it. Gradually you make up some words to fill in the ones you don't know,
and you add in this little fill that you think you heard and really liked, and soon you have a mixture of what you liked about the actual song and
some personal things that you have added to it. Then when you hear the song again there's this surprise, what happened to that cool fill? What are
these weird words? Now it's not your song anymore.

New project in the projects room. Not very exciting but it's something to do.

Some seti-at-home numbers. I have currently completed 816 work units in 10322 hours of CPU time. I am a member of the team
College of Honest Ben Jonson in which I am ranked 2nd behind DJ Screwy Louie. I am ranked 2,214 among the 5,895 people who joined the project
on May 18, 1999. In that group a user named "jayster" is ranked 2,228 and a user named "mrklein" is ranked 2,103. As an individual I am in
143,475th place out of 3,847,944 users, which puts me in the 96.267th percentile. Soon these numbers will be going up! Except the rankings, they
will go down.

I'm involved in a Risk match that started yesterday and was adjourned, and will continue tomorrow night or the next day.
I'm nervous, as always, but I don't want to say too much since this is a website after all and someone might actually look at it. Everyone sees
the same board then again, or do they? No, they don't. They see the same board with their eyes but they don't see the same board with
their mind. Another thought added in: why do we think of an idea at one time and think it's great, but then come back to it and think it's not
so great? Sometimes we don't see all the angles, the implications the first time around. Other times, maybe we actually get to the thought a
different way, different neurons fired to get us to a similar place. Interesting implications perhaps for the nature of thought which I am
currently exploring in "Godel, Escher, Bach."

My current musical project needs a new name, we were thinking of being "Interpol" but a band by that name has the lead
review on Pitchfork Media today and apparently they're good. Suggestions are welcome.

Related note, I'm starting to mix down the songs I've done recently. This is the time when it's bad to have the thought
creep into your mind, "wait a minute, who the hell is ever going to hear this?" and those who do hear it probably won't like it. Then you look
around and think, all this equipment, all this stuff I've acquired, what does it mean? nothing. It's what I have decided at some point is necessary
to properly express myself. It's more boxes in the world that take up your life.

Tonight I was thinking of starting a section for this site called "parts of my job that could be used as effective torture."
The problem is, a phrase like "making copies" doesn't sound torturous. It's the harder to explain parts. The leaning over repeatedly for several
hours that can't be healthy for the back. The endless repetition of these menial tasks, with the knowledge that the greater lengths you have to go
to, to get it done (usually due to unreliable machines and such), the greater chance you're screwing something up and it will have to be done over
again. Sometimes a huge effort just for one page, which will not even make the customer actively happy, but merely prevent them from being
disappointed. The hard and fast demands of the job are those of the world as well. This is why I agree with Sartre that hell exists as the
judgments of other people that you receive in your mortal lifetime: it so often seems that one is being punished for something.

People with careers continue to steal titles from me. First it's Hayden with his album "skyscraper national park" which I was planning for years to
use as a song title after stealing it from Kurt Vonnegut's name for a post-apocalyptic Manhattan. Then it's weezer with "mansion of cardboard,"
clearly parroting my recently-recorded "empire of cardboard boxes." Now I hear about a Kris Kristofferson song being covered by Grandaddy on a new
tribute album called "Best of all possible worlds," a song name that the few who saw me play freshman year may remember. Nah, no one will remember, but I wrote it damnit, even if he wrote it first and I stole that one from Candide anyway.

The Abyss may have noticed my 12-day absence, the result of a trip back home. Now a bunch of comments on that.

Saturday, went to the second annual Siren Music Festival at Coney Island. Trains were fux0red worse than I've ever had to deal with and it took 2.5
hours or so to get there. We only caught Liars, Mooney Suzuki and Sleater-Kinney. Sunday woken up by the phone for the first time out of about 50
during the whole trip. This time it was a couple of old sports getting me up for a trip to Philly and the Mutter Museum. Why do museums not let
you take pictures damnit? Spread the knowledge, don't keep it hidden. And it's not like these are national treasure paintings that will
disintegrate if too many photons hit them. After the museum had fantastic cheesesteak. On the ride home listened to My Bloody Valentine's
"Loveless" about 8 times in a row because we were all too damn tired or lazy or crazy or asleep to hit eject.

Rest of the time mostly walked around the city buying stuff with A. and seeing 4 concerts in a row. Patty Griffin, Weezer, Sloan, Mum. Mum are
spectacular. Made me think I shouldn't give up on performing my recent compositions live. They had guitar, bass, keyboards of some kind,
accordion, two laptops, three melodicas, a moog, a Wurlitzer, a cello, 5 people including a drummer who sounded like a computer, and it all worked
perfectly. At one point the drummer lowered a pan into a bucket of water as he hit it with a mallet, for a rising sound. That's what I like, doing
a lot with a little. If Mum are everything that can be right with 'electronic' music, the opening act Kippi Kaninus was everything wrong. This
fool stood up there with a minidisc, a mixer and some other devices and basically hit play. I kept desperately watching to see him make a movement
that produced a specific sound, but no, all he seemed to do was turn knobs on the mixer. The music was alright, but why even bother being onstage?

Sloan were good, but I felt guilty being right in front without knowing the words to most of their songs. Strange, we got there about the same
times relative to show starting time for Sloan and Mum, and for Sloan, a band that's been around a long time and I thought had a pretty good 'cult'
following, the place was completely empty. With Mum, touring for their second long-player, the hipsters were already crowded in and drooling.

Saw a Gauguin exhibit at the Met. Still not sure whether this "art" stuff is a fraud or not. Then again, I could say that about most things I'm
not actively interested in, and a lot of other people understandable say it about indie music, so, grain of salt.

That's about enough boring catching-up. I know I had more, and more interesting things, to say but they're gone now. Now back to your regularly
scheduled absurd chaos.

Sweet heavens, it's August already. I need to get going on all those things...that I want...to do. I thought tonight about how I have no chance of
getting a good CS job because many of my classmates (as related by them during an introductions session in my first CS class) had already had
programming jobs in their sophomore year, and I still haven't ever had one when I'm about to start applying for jobs. I can teach myself things,
but do they care about that? Probably not.

Just watched a cool movie with dubious title "Bongwater." It opened with "Sunday" by Sonic Youth and closed with "Sink to the Bottom" by Fountains
of Wayne, so that alone makes it an enjoyable experience. Luke Wilson plays a drug dealer and Jack Black has a hilarious small role as an
uber-hippie drug guy in the pacific northwest wilderness. It had some weird things and some weak things, but altogether a good movie to watch in
the middle of the night.

Let's see, something interesting. Oh yeah. At the Mutter museum we saw a couple of fetal examples of hydrocephaly/anencephaly, which as the card
stated matter-of-factly is "characterized by the lack of a brain." That was crazy enough, but then I read in a UK trashy mag called "Bizarre" that
some people have actually lived normal lives before it was discovered that they had a tiny amount of brain, and the rest of their skull is filled
with cerebro-spinal fluid, hence the hydro- prefix. These people are rare cases of an already rare condition, but even so it's quite amazing that
they can interact with others and appear very intelligent. The only symptom is sometimes that their heads are slightly enlarged. Needless to say
most hydrocephalytics die pretty quickly after birth. If you weren't already convinced that the brain is about the most incredible thing in the
universe...

Internet still down right now this will go up several hours after I wrote it. Now grammar screwed up sleep time coke fix work damnit.

Thought the internet was still out today, but it turned out I simply had to switch the router off and back on. Maybe the summer is starting to make
me dumb. Need to get back to doing smart things. My list of things to do in the rest of summer: fix my ann arbor organ and try to sell it; learn
how to write a program for windows; learn Python language (maybe); practise with band and recruit members so that we could have a decent live act;
install levels in the apartment (maybe); fix my amp and try to sell that; start wandering the hallways of this building each day and scavenge things
that people are throwing away while they move out; declare as a CS major.

My greatest workplace story ever: Recently my workplace hired a new manager guy. He never seemed to do much or say anything to me except when he was
telling everyone what they were doing wrong. This past monday he had us all sign agreements saying we wouldn't eat or drink on the job, talk on
cell phones, etc., and essentially that we could get fired for making mistakes. Everyone, at least around my level of the workplace hierarchy,
despised him. Then yesterday I got word that he was gone, fired. I figured this was because of his behavior as mentioned above, but then I saw
several coworkers gathered around stacks of paper, talking and laughing. There were 700-1000 sheets of paper, all screen shots from web usage by the
manager guy. And a lot of it was porn. Not only that, he was apparently heavily into bondage. He had also been exchanging emails with females a
good deal younger than himself. This was all on other people's computers during work time. Not only is this bastard gone from our lives, we're all
standing around laughing at what a freak he is. Now that's good christian fun. I can only hope he learns his lesson and keeps the bondage at home
where it belongs from now on.

Another hiatus is at an end. Several days ago I fixed my DVD drive and 10 minutes later my 60 gig hard drive crashed the computer and completely
destroyed itself. I lost the master track files for all the songs I did this summer, a couple of months worth of emails, and some other stuff.
This loss seems to have stifled my creativity; I hope I can get some more done before school starts. The coursepack rush is in full swing at work and
I'm now working almost 40 hours a week with 4 days of work. Not as much time for myself, but since I haven't been doing anything with that time
anyway, what the hell. Sadly I haven't done any of the things on my list of things to do as seen below. Trying in vain to recover stuff from the
hard drive took up a few days, and then my friend M. came to visit so I've been hanging out with him. I should go this week and get a book from the
library on windows programming. I have opened up my organ but I'm without the equipment to test the parts inside, and I still know very little about
what to do. That's enough for now, at least I'm back into the swing of blogging.

This week I continue to realize a goal that I have been mildly pursuing for some time; to work a true night shift. So far this summer I have been
working 4pm-midnight, but this week while we make lots of coursepacks for the bourgeoisie students it will be 11pm-7am. This gives me a chance to
make another comment I've had in my head for a while; for some reason the males at my workplace have all the most common names: Dan, Dave, Mike, Mike,
Matt, Patrick, Scott, Sean, Todd, Andrew, Kevin, Don, Alan, probably another Mike. I think another Dave was just hired. Well according to
this we have 6 names out of the top 25, and everyone is in the top 94 except myself
and a fellow named Wes.

I've been fulfilling another goal virtually, that of becoming a "cleaner," by playing the PC game Hitman: Codename 47. Its inherent coolness makes it
playable and usually enjoyable, but some of its frustrations, mostly the inability to save my progress within a level, would push me away from a
lesser game. 7am, bedtime now.

Inventory of items obtained from the hallway of this bulding yesterday while lots of people moved out:
2 floor lamps, one halogen, one standard bulb
3 textbooks, Psychology, Physical Chemistry, Calculus
20 plastic hangers, including one with multiple bars for pairs of pants
4 modular crate shelf units
4 frying pans and pots
1 cookie sheet
6 plates and bowls, 4 ceramic, 2 plastic
2 draining bowls
1 dish drying apparatus
3 towels, 1 bath, 2 hand/dish
1 combination stepping stool/toolbox
1 computer monitor, appears to be 14" or 15"
1 vacuum cleaner, not operational
12 cans, Miller Lite beer
1 broom
1 mop
3 glass jars with wood tops, various sizes
3 garbage cans
1 roll duct tape
1 bottle, glass plus cleaning fluid
1 bottle, dishwashing liquid
1 1.5 gal container, ERA detergent
1 bulletin board with about 20 push pins and a New York pin

This adds to our previous scores of a TV/VCR cart and a microwave oven that looks like an iMac.

Starting today I am without a television. Starting tomorrow I hope to remember to cancel the cable so I don't pay for another month of it. I am
hoping for a new era of productivity, and today has been a good start. I went into the other room to watch an hour of Simpsons, saw the TV was gone,
so I went back to the real stuff I was doing.

Worked almost a 12 hour shift today. I felt like I might get trapped there because I was still there as the day shifters started to arrive. Once it
gets to 7am or so I start to go on adrenaline I guess, and when someone walks by or says something to me I get this smile that, moments later, I can't
remove and start to realize it probably looks quite psychotic. I also start to occasionally think I see things in the corner of my eye that turn out
not to be there. And this isn't even the Uberman schedule anymore.

Perhaps all this working is dulling my mind, I'm not very mad or sad about anything at the moment. I know the bad things that other people talk about
are true, but I'm not actively thinking about it so I can't write about it. Maybe my mind is adjusting to the new non-TV environment and waking back
up to the real world, or as much of it as I ever see.

An empty apartment with no television. Similar feelings as when I took my long walk and I could hear all the sounds that people rushing by in their
cars missed. Now I can hear the crickets outside, and the television next door. My new roommate doesn't move in for a week. Until then I will be
reading, learning programming languages, and recording music if I can come up with anything.

I was recently re-awakened to the fact that the gears of capitalism are oiled with my blood. This got me thinking, grasping for reasons that my job
is different. It's a fairly typical business, but a small one. The first thing I think of is that by printing the coursepacks for several
universities around here, we are filling a need, and mostly we do it well. This distinguishes us from entities like investment bankers that profit
indirectly by causing people other than their clients to lose money. Then again one of my least favorite corporations, Nike, also fills a need, so
how are we different from them? In at least two ways: one, we don't engage in unethical practises such as employing sweatshop labour. Two, we don't
encourage conspicuous consumption the way Nike does by producing "better" shoes that people are willing to pay lots of money for because they
ostensibly do so much more for you than protect your feet. Now the commercial jobs we do are a different matter that I cannot defend so easily,
because we are working for entities like Domino's Pizza, Princeton Review and Servant Publications (a Christian publisher of evangelism books) that I
really don't approve of. But the coursepacks, I believe, are pure.

It will be important to ask myself how ethically vigilant I will be when I look for a real world job to sustain myself after
I graduate. Software companies aren't the worst of them, except the worst of the software companies that produce spyware and such. Recording
studios are ok, and they fulfill a need. A really nice job to get would be at an audio software company. I'll have to look into what sort of
qualifications apply to that.

Don't trust anyone, especially the news media. This town must have a particular smell to it in late august when it's really
humid because the past few days I've noted scents that reminded me of moving in here in previous years. I just took a walk and saw Michael Moore on
the street, and then picked up the first edition, fifth printing of the 1957 book "Why I am not a Christian" and other essays by Bertrand Russell.
It previously or originally belonged to a Connecticut architect named Primo Castrillo.

There were two hot dog vendors on the street no more than
10 feet away from each other. I saw the $1.00 hot dog sign on the one and went for it without even seeing the other stand, so he evidently has the
better location. Upon further inspection the two vendors seemed to be very nearly glaring at one another. Mmm, hungry for capitalism.

My task for today is to wait for the cable guy. I have an incredibly customer service oriented appointment of 8am-8pm.
Hopefully I won't be asleep when he or she arrives, but it doesn't look good. These days I'm on a sleep schedule of about noon to 9pm, thus ruining
the goal of spending some time outside in the sun while working near full time. Oh well, not much to do out there anyway.

Until now that is. My shortwave radio is now operational, but it doesn't work too well in this steel-framed building. At a
nearby house it fared much better, picking up Radio Moscow and other unidentified stations broadcasting in German, Arabic and others. Nothing in
English yet but that's alright. I may try connecting the radio's antenna to various large metal things around me such as the radiators or the
latticework holding the ceiling tiles to improve reception in here. More reports to come.

I recently found out that I have coworkers named Christopher and Jason. This gives us 8 names out of the top 25. Since
there are three Michaels and two David's, that's 11 people with names in the top 25 out of about 20 people. It's only a matter of time before I'm
pushed out in favor of the "commoners."

This is excellent. It modernizes a long lost hobby of mine. To give you the flavor of it before you
risk wasting a precious click, here's a thorough translation of the sentence: "On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I've now realized for the first time in my life
the vital importance of being earnest:"

In the opposite, hour I took unemployment to traverse before returns to aunt of August in my duration of the value, that is remarkable to be
serious.

Ten hours of sleep today, after a ten hour work shift, for a total of four hours awake and not at work. Tonight, however,
will be my last on the graveyard shift. I then spend the weekend shifting back to a normal schedule so that I can begin classes on wednesday.

Been trying to learn radio and antenna science the past couple of days. After reading several documents purported to be basic,
oversimplified introductions that in fact assumed a lot of knowledge about dipole Yagi take-off angles, I have gained a basic understanding of what
I need to do to improve my Shortwave reception in this apartment from nothing to something. I may start a new Project on the Projects page for the
antenna(e) that I buy or build.

I saw a "Jim" on a time card at work. That's the number one spot! I think there's also a Marty, surprisingly down at 85.
His days are numbered. Observation: There are 17 names in the top 100 that begin with J, one of the least common letters in the English language.

This year on the first day of classes, I find myself more hostile than ever to the crowds of students and being one of them. I hate feeling like an extra in the first scenes of a teen college movie, with pop-punk in the background and fresh-faced idiots greeting one another endlessly. Also I want to start investigating the economics of textbooks. How does a small paperback book suddenly sell for more than $30 when it is used for a course? Of course I've never seen these changes happen, only the results of them, but I feel there must be some sinister forces at work here. I paid $19 used for a 100 page book "Project Management and Teamwork" by Karl A. Smith which looks to be aimed at complete fools. In other words, future managers, I suppose.

TV is certainly one of these things that you "can't live with, can't live without" in the sense that when one has it, it seems too entertaining to give up, but when one doesn't have it, it is all but forgotten and a whole new life of possibilities rises into view. I won't say that there is nothing good on TV because that is not true and reactionary. It's just that the few good things are outweighed by the sea of vapid dreck that one is almost inevitably drawn to. Better to be in a situation where you can get to a TV if there is something important, and the rest of the time you can use your mind.

My game theory class is shaping up as excellent. We ended the first meeting by playing a game in which the professor auctions off a $10 bill. Everyone bids a certain amount, and if you bid the most you get the $10, but no matter what you have to pay your bid. If two people tie they split it. So if you bid $10 and win you break even, or if you bid that and tie with one person you lose $5. The professor reins in the suckers by saying "if no one thinks they'll win [and they all bid 0] except one person who bids 25 cents, he wins $9.75" Now there's about 60 people in the class, as my reasoning went, there has to be at least one guy in here who's dumb or sinister enough to bid a lot. What happened? One guy bid $10 and broke even, and the professor made good money from people bidding $2 or $3. I bid 0.

Sitting in technical communications class, I had something of a sick feeling listening to the instructor. He was showing us statistics about the relative importance of various skills among employed engineers and cEO's. They shockingly reveal that communicating is the most important thing, while triviliaties such as Thermodynamics lag behind. According to this list I don't even need to know how to program! How much time this will save me! But the instructor failed to see the real implications of this. Let's say I and another fellow are working on a project together, and I am a hard worker and reasonably intelligent, and he has passable skills but good "communication," and a strong sense of self-preservation. We've hit a snag on the project because of a genuinely difficult problem, and our supervisor talks to both of us. I explain the snag and say we're working through it, which we are. My coworker says we're doing great, but he's worried about me, I seem to be having some trouble understanding what we're doing. Now what does the supervisor think? It seems clear to me that he would think my coworker is an exemplary employee who has a good grasp of the strengths and weaknesses of the people he's working with, while I am indeed having trouble.

So what is the message here? To thrive, you need to be good at BSing, which is something I really don't like to do. But this isn't only a problem in technical or programming jobs, it's a problem everywhere, because human nature is everywhere. What is to be done. Either go live in a box and leave the world behind, or be a focus of attention like a writer or musician and hire someone to do your BSing for you.

Everything was going fine until yesterday at work about 8pm. I was 200 pages into scanning a "book" coursepack, where the professor simply gives us 20 books and we have to manually put them on the scanning glass and turn the pages. The computer, which was running NT 4, erased my work so far by crashing in a most bizarre manner. The entire screen went gray, and then by clicking randomly I was able to bring some parts of the display back briefly, but never enough to save. Sometimes the taskbar buttons would appear at the top of the screen, or the time display would be in the upper left corner. I was able to hit ctrl-alt-del a couple of times but the task manager never came up, and then soon after it stopped responding to input entirely. I was calm and decided to get dinner and then start over. The cost of my meal came to $6.66. The evil continued as, after staying until 2:15am to finish scanning the coursepack, I stepped onto the slippery slope of oversleeping, missing my game theory class. Part of the blame for this rests with WCBN and their "Jazz 'till Noon" programming, which was some ambient stuff that probably sent me deeper into sleep rather than wake me up. From now on I'll be using the "buzzer" feature of the alarm on my shortwave radio.

A Meta-post. Some thoughts about blogging: I realized soon after I started this site that no one was going to look at it. No one listens to my music and I put a lot more effort into that, so it's not such a big deal. I concluded that even though I may want other people to read this and care about my life and there is an inherent narcissism, it can also function like a regular journal, something to organize my thoughts with and remind me at a later date what was going on now. But since I do want other people to read it, and I don't want to look back on it later and see what a self-centered cad I was, I can try to make it interesting and write about things other than my own life.

My job search has begun in earnest. The engineering career fair is coming on monday and tuesday, with 150 or so companies represented. After thoroughly sorting through these, I have a list of 20 which I might possibly want to work for and which might possibly want to hire me. This sorting process showed me once again that the corporate world is about two things: money and lies. Company after company gives descriptions of themselves on their websites that go something like "So what exactly do we do? We are a leading provider of global solutions and technology, with resources and solutions and power and global and power and money..." Almost no one actually wants to say what they do. Why? Because they do things like mining oil, charging exorbitant fees for consulting (why on earth do we need so many consulting companies? Is every other company totally ignorant of how to do business?), making planes and guns for our government to kill people with, and other things that don't sound very "buzzworthy." I suspect that most of my classmates don't really care what the companies they work for do, otherwise these career fairs would be a lot less crowded. They're good capitalists, that's why they're in computer science in the first place and why many of them will go on to business school. So what should I do? It's not that I don't want to work for any company that is trying to make a profit. I simply don't want to work for a company that is so big that no point of view can be considered other than doing whatever is necessary to make that extra .1 billion. What will I do, remains to be seen. My goal for job interviews is to be a straight talker, like the guy in Office Space. It may be difficult to follow through on that.

Saw Super Furry Animals on Wednesday. They continue to be one of the best bands out there. Complaints linger about the way live shows are done in general. Why should those who are standing in the front be forced to strain to hear vocals coming out of speakers that are 20 feet away on either side? Particularly the angelic vocals of the super furries. There were other problems that I now forget.

Today was the big day, the engineering career fair. I suited up in business casual (including the requisite not-quite-comfortable shoes) and walked up and down the booths until I got up enough courage to talk to the representative from Dassault Systemes of America. They make 3D design software that the guy correctly described as "vast." I probably sounded a bit nervous and they may not hire me, but it's a start. The rep had a piece of food in his beard so compared to him I did ok. Tomorrow I will try to talk to at least Cybernet and MIT Lincoln Laboratory. While walking around I was about as averse to the whole affair as I have been in past years. I'm coming to accept that having no job experience, my first programming job may be crappy, I can do that for a couple years and then look for something better. It's not like computer science is unique in this respect; it's difficult like all engineering. Look at architects, as Malkmus comments, "never build a building till you're 50 what kinda life is that?" That said, it would be even better for my first real job to be good. I still feel superior to the soulless lot who don't mind making accounting software (zzzz) let alone doing accounting, as long as it brings home the bacon. This was a mediocre post, but oh well, too much else to do.

I don't care that today is the 27th, I'm writing the 24th's entry today. Then I'll see if I can write today's entry. So "today" was the second day of the career fair and I refined my list of companies to talk to, to only Cybernet, after discovering that MIT Lincoln Laboratory is working on missile defense. It turns out Cybernet is also working with DoD, but it hardly matters, I'm underqualified anyway ("Do you know OpenGL?" "No" "how about MFC" "mm...I might learn that soon"). My conclusion after all this is screw these companies, I'm sure I can find a good job that doesn't involve indirectly killing people.

A couple days ago we had a presentation in a CS class from a corporation whose name starts with a Lockheed and ends with a Martin. It was about business ethics, i.e. what to do in situations of alleged harassment or discrimination. I was a bit surprised at some of the sentiments expressed by my classmates, such as that a little supposed harassment isn't such a big deal that you should risk losing a client. One guy even said if he were a client, he probably would back out of dealing with a company that talked to him about harassment he had committed, because he wouldn't want to work with a company that's so sensitive. WTF? At the end of the presentation my spirits were lifted when another classmate raised the question, "Your company is the number 1 military contractor in the world, in other words the number 1 maker of machines that kill people. How do you reconcile that with the fact that you're standing here teaching us about ethics?" The LM guy said they were also machines that kept him free. Oh yeah, you can't have democracy and freedom without F-16s. If he believes that Al Qaeda et al. "hate our freedoms" I have a bridge to sell him. No no, there must be something better than that, to sell to a stupid person. I have a...religion to sell him? No, religions make huge amounts of money. I know, how about, I have a distant planet to sell him. Sounds rather geeky, but it works.

I now have three methods for generating pseudo-random lyrics. The first one is that Babelfish autotranslator site I linked to somewhere back in time. Now I have two more. The first is a program I wrote for class that generates random sentences from a predefined grammar. If you try to construct it as an English grammar (with a very limited vocabulary), what you'll find is that it occasionally generates good sentences, but mostly it makes complete nonsense. The lesson is that English grammar is very very complex, or some might say nonexistent. But fortunately, I like nonsense. The world doesn't make sense so why should I?

My other method is the speech recognition feature I recently discovered as part of Office XP. I did a bit of training with it but it's still pretty bad. Amanda and I invented a game in which you say something, the SR will write down something completely different, you say that, it writes down another completely different phrase, you say that, and so on. This results in some very entertaining nonsense.

Of course most pseudorandom lyrics generated with these methods are going to be pretty clunky and stupid if I try to sing them. But that's what all songwriting is, looking for the diamonds in the rough. One of the hardest things in songwriting is to have meaningful lyrics that fit so well into the song's rhythm that they become almost naturally hidden in it. Songs like that become continuous (to a point) processes of discovery as the listener gradually becomes aware of more and more lyrics. One underappreciated and now deceased band that is great at this is Ruth Ruth. Another one is Super Furry Animals, though their lyrics aren't always revelatory.

My pseudorandom lyrics thing is also mainly a coverup for not having anything to sing about that I care strongly about, and not wanting to fake care and sound cheesy (what an unpleasant word). The best songs of the style I'm trying to work in now are ones in which each line or couplet is a subtle nugget of wisdom, though each one happens to have nothing at all to do with the others. Anthemic choruses are vital to tie these songs together. For another time: the constant battle in my mind between maximum rock-out and slow and majestic

Before this weekend I was humming along pretty well, school and a bit of music and that's it. Now I have enough projects in mind to keep me going for a lifetime. First I am determined to become a collector and seller of books. I shall start on that road with some trips to thrift stores and the library sale this weekend. Second, I am learning to use old and obsolete words. Here I begin by compiling a list of useful ones from the Oxford English Dictionary, and then gradually integrate them into my writings. Oh, also in the vein of collecting, I want to start collecting maps. Joe inspired this by turning our living room into the "War Room" with 9 large maps up on the walls. I am now in the process of gathering more. If things go well, by the end of this year this apartment will be nothing but books and maps. I'll use the profits from books that I'm not very interested in to buy more books, and maps.

I have sorted through 2600 search results out of 27,425 for obsolete and archaic words to incorporate into my vocabulary. I
have chosen about 115 words so far. This is going to take a bit, but it's important, and it's fun. If it's not fun (or takes away more fun than it
will eventually give) why do it?

Tonight the duo formerly known as Hostile Harry performed in an event called Wide Open Floor, an open mic night sort of thing
with no mics. The tune played was written by them yesterday and today, in a creative process that can only be described as akin to chiropteric navigation.
According to a little shill we had in the audience the reception was very good, and so we are pleased. In fact the gentleman who went after us,
reading poetry, asked if we could play the song again while he read, and we gladly obliged, to nice effect. On the way home we saw a friendly but
oblivious little lagomorph.

Adventures in bibilography: the Ann Arbor Public Library Book Sale, day 1. Some good finds, including an arithmetic instruction
book from 1883 and a book of stories by Tolstoy from 1935 (dust jacket intact!). Can't complain about the prices. I'm headed back for more tomorrow.

Damn, it's been way too long. Adventures in bibliography are going nicely, as I now have way too many books and a few auctions going. Soon there
will be a button to a list of them, to go along with this nice extremesloth button. So, some rants or theories...I'm rediscovering the joys of
programming. The essence windows programming seems to be that there are 10 ways to do everything, down to the smallest detail, and knowing how they
interconnect is vital, but extremely difficult. Sometimes one way is so much simpler than another, that you wonder why they both exist, until you
realize that something else you're doing forces you to do it the hard way.

Finally saw Vanilla Sky last night, I don't care what everyone says, I had to satisfy my curiosity. Okay so it is pretty bad, and even though the
soundtrack is great, it sometimes felt like just a bunch of good songs, not a bunch of good songs that fit well. Especially with the hackneyed
dialogue that kept mentioning them. "What do you want to hear? Radiohead? Jeff Buckley?" People who are that rich and good-looking don't say things
like that. They don't even know what music they're listening to most of the time, as long as it's loud and has way too much bass it must be good.

Well this has been a mediocre entry, I need to get back into a rhythm here.

This morning a car was parked a couple of streets away in a position such that a ray of sunlight bounced off part of it, into
our window and onto the wall directly above the doorway. This allowed me to see every detail of the surface off of which it reflected. What are the
chances, everyone likes to say. It doesn't matter because it happened. An infinite number of extremely unlikely things happens at every moment,
which rather perverts the concept of unlikelihood. It is these unlikely events which tend to cause very likely events, for example, the car
being parked in that very position while the sun was in its own unlikely position and the clouds (or lack thereof) in theirs, and myself being
up and about, combined to make it quite likely that I would notice this and several hours later embark upon this very rant. So in a sense all the
likely and inevitable events of quotidium are ruled by the unlikely ones that cause them.

This, I believe, relates strongly to Daryl Zero's principal of looking for things: If you're looking for one specific thing,
then your chances of finding it are very bad, because there are a whole lot of things in the world, and you're just looking for one of them. If
you are looking for anything at all, you're chances of finding it are very good, because of all the things in the world, you're sure to find some of
them.

By the same reasoning, although unlikely things are constantly happening, when you depend on one of them to happen you are
taking a risk. By merely noticing the things that do happen and never considering the ones that don't, satisfaction is...very likely.

all-nighters, linux, ugly weather, linux, stupid people, and now it's been way too long again. Several things seem to be
happening to me in pairs. First I received two out-of-the-blue visits from people I thought were far away, in the same day. Then today two big
guys separately rambled to me about my German army jacket. Both times I was heading home from the same area in the same direction. The first guy
started more of a real conversation, remarking about how the coat was warm and the German people are nice, and how he was there for 10 years. The
second guy was totally out of his mind, he jumped from Germany to black people in business schools to Africa being scary and having lions and tigers,
to several other things in about 2 minutes. At that point he proclaimed "I love America" and walked off. I felt pretty lucky to escape both
encounters quickly, because it was obvious they could have gone on for hours. And both of them looked a bit similar, and started it by simply
starting to talk when they were 10 feet or so away from me. Yet I swear they were different people.

During a couple of consecutive all-nighters studying for a midterm, writing a paper and recovering my computer, I experienced
what I think are called "microsleeps." It's sort of like nodding off but it's just a quick event, probably not more than a few seconds, and it feels
like one has simply skipped ahead a bit in time. Sometimes there are microdreams within them, which fade from memory as quickly as the microsleep
ends. I became rather nervous when I started having the microsleeps sitting and waiting for my exam to start. Although I didn't experience the
microdreams this time, I did have a feeling in which a thought that is in my head suddenly takes a wild, almost randomized turn that makes no
logical sense. This is something I've also experienced lately while falling asleep more conventionally. I am still conscious, or so I think,
but suddenly I connect my current thought with something completely different. Then I realize how silly that is, but in my attempts to get back to
the right thought, my explanations to myself of what went wrong become distorted themselves. From what I know this random connection of mind nodes
may be just what happens in dreams, and it is very entertaining.

Worlds collide, and now everything is fucked.

So what infinitesimal things are happening. My declaration as a computer science major has been erased from history in a move typical to this
university. This morning my boss said I could not go in to work, but instead I had a dream about being at work and being nervous that he would
ask me why I had come in. First other people were happening in pairs and now I am: today a girl got on the bus and sat right next to me wearing
a German army jacket just like mine. She was an art school punk girl. She didn't say anything. Of course I didn't either.

Business ethics is a goddamned sham. With a lot of companies you are proving yourself to be unethical just by working for them, even if you don't
think of it that way. And business schools apparently believe that by teaching students ethics, they will be more likely to be ethical. Um, no.
Or more likely they don't believe that at all, they just have to do something to make it seem like they're doing something. Which in itself is
quite unethical, but that's what everybody does, so what the hell does it matter. I read Paul Krugman's article in the Times Magazine about the
exponentially expanding gap between rich and poor in this country and more than ever, even though I love New York and I'd like to stay there, I
feel as though I'd be better off in Europe somewhere they aren't insanely greedy and stupid.

Adventures in bibliography have hit some bumpy terrain, the people, they don't want the books so much. Must raise my
standards and explore further territory not dominated by the professional hounds.

It seems I've been invited to a fireside chat with the University's new president. Should be interesting, I suppose
I should think of some things to say. It seems like it seems like a bad thing.

Last night I half dreamt/half thought that I was tangled up in linux programs and the wires connecting them. I
thought to myself, this is ridiculous, where do linux users sleep? The programs kept disturbing me and misfiring. Linux installed in your bed.
Had another dream that escapes me now. Had other stuff to say that escapes me now. Creativity needed.

Catching up on Adam Kempa's blog has revitalized my faith in the form. Although I only read a few people's sites and they're all pretty interesting,
it comes to my attention that there are a whole lot of people out there writing boring diaries about grocery shopping and their friends. This is
inevitable. As a writer said at a science fiction conference, "95 percent of science fiction is crap [audience gasps]. Then again, 95 percent of
everything is crap." But blog's don't have to suck. They can be very funny, as Mr. Kempa's is (to me anyway, I suppose we share some sense of
humor/insanity). They can be thought-provoking such as Mr. XS's. Altogether they can be a valid contribution to one's real-time memoirs. So I
resolve to keep this interesting and include as little purely personal stuff as possible. Starting now, when I finish...this...sentennnnnnce....nnnnnnnnnnnnow.

so. you like...stuff? damn, that sucked.

Gotta love the non-breaking space. How else use six characters to get one blank character? If you're confused go to
view -> source.

The ODE project, as I'm now calling my dictionary of obscure, archaic and otherwise fun words, has slowed almost to a halt.
When one realizes that one has one month left for a project that is massively difficult, it's hard for one to divert attention away from it and to
something that has no monetary or academic reward associated with it. However it will move forward and soon I may start posting one letter of the
dictionary at a time. That is one set of words starting with the letter, not literally one letter of the text at a time, which would require rather
an extroardinary amount of patience.

A tiny dissertation on ethics: a lot of people don't like moral relativism, which states that morals only apply within each
culture, and you can't criticize other cultures because it's not your place to. People say this is like ethics by majority rule, and that's clearly
the wrong way to do things. Also you can end up with a culture of one person, and they can do whatever they want. Instead of this, they say, there
should be standards that cross cultures, like human rights. We should be able to criticize anyone. Now what are you doing when you declare
something done by people in another culture to be unethical? Are you the objective moral authority? No, despite what you believe. Everything you
say is grounded in your own culture and what your parents taught you. Everyone in the world may agree with you except this one culture that's
perpetrating this wrong. What is that? Ethics by majority rule.

I'm not saying that everyone should be able to do what they want; I am saying that everyone does do what they want. That's
what ethics is. You can punish them, but that will most likely not change their beliefs, it will only change what they think is good for them, which
happens to be an integral part of most people's ethic. Utilitarianism in practise is nothing more than moral relativism with an asterisk, because
everyone has their own idea of the greatest benefit, and no one's perceptions are more valid than anyone else's. People may band together who agree
on one issue, and apply it to others by force, but that makes their opinion no more truthful. This world is one of moral relativism with everyone a
culture of one.

Linguistic observation: you can take care (with or of something), but you can also give it (as in being a caregiver) and
do the same thing. You're not taking the care from anything though, unless everyone is supposed to have a finite reserve of care that they can
take from themselves and give to others.

New interpretation of Zero Effect that now seems obvious: of course the guy is a mess when he gets off work. He spends his
work time being various other people and being supremely detached, so when he goes home he needs to release and be completely himself. Most people
balance the two, not showing very much of their true selves around others, and trying to discipline themselves and be normal even when out of the
prying eyes of Sartre's hell.

Tonight was Sigur Ros at the State theatre. Their live act is top-notch and the experience was actually enhanced by my
occasional nod off, in much the same way I imagine drugs do it for a lot of people. I'm sitting there, paying attention and thinking about how
nice the music sounds, and then suddenly as I fall asleep my thoughts veer off in a totally unpredicted direction, an instantaneous dream, and then
a second later I'm brought back down, and am left to wonder what the hell an expanding mailbox has to do with anything. Wait, that second sentence
was supposed to have a but: but, Pitchfork Media nailed a big problem with their new album: the singer only uses a few different syllables in his
nonsense-lyrics throughout the record. At least half of the lines sound like "you." I guess they could say it's supposed to unify the album,
but doesn't the lyrics being nonsense unify it enough? This just makes the songs sound too similar. Let's get some interesting sounds in there,
some lateral fricatives. Also a lot of the melodies just aren't as strong as those of Agaetis Byrjun.

On a related note, (yes, yes) have decided to take a break from writing one complete song at a time and focus on crafting
melodies. I use the word 'crafting' to make it sound better. Going to spend a few hours at some point making up as many little melodies as
possible, hopefully good ones. They can find their way into songs, or be used as loops for Crisis Wolverine, the PC game I'm contributing to.

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while enter

, what saying,: then should the frozen food for the Israeli frozen food for the his Riley brought to light of his Enrile he brought a line out
and hang around Lyle why now until this thing around Lyle lino unfolded the now line and all day than outlined an hour game and how line in hour
game and how 9019 and hannam one man can handle one man that was then and then what the hell is then handle one man now is an what pat dry land
and he and one man now has an white pants and hit him in line and that gave in this is in the E. E. Lee and I

Adventures in Bibliography takes on a new form this week as Mr. XS and I roll around the county in search of cool books. We
hit Ypsilanti today and found mostly duds, which inspires me to start a new Project Page reviewing these thrift stores and libraries. Tomorrow and
Thursday are suburbs of Detroit and quick jaunt to Canada days, and on the 15th we journey to the moon with a couple of stops at more libraries along
the way.

Really, is there anything good about MIDI, other than small files and learning your favorite pop songs? Perhaps I'm biased
because I just tried to get it working here to make some video game music and it didn't work. Perhaps I'm also biased because the sound is
crappy and artificial. Now that storage is so cheap can't we just have waves in our games?

a thought: why are stores open from 9-5, when most of their customers are at work? Restaurants serving lunch I can
understand, places expecting students or non-9-5ers okay, but really, for a lot of businesses it shouldn't make sense. I'd like to see a future
where stores are open from 4pm-midnight or something, that way your day doesn't have to be over when work is over, and you can have a life. Then
again I can always go back to new york, where most people seem to understand this already. There is the counterargument that people have to work
in those stores and then they can't do anything when they get out, the solution to that is either some stores open 9-5 and some 4-12, or simply
have two shifts and stay open from 9am-midnight. Lives are important. Let's get it together.

Assorted thoughts from the weekend in Minnesota.

On the way home my transporter blacked out at the wheel several times, once resulting in some scary swerving. I don't
criticise him for this, and I know (well, I hope) he wanted to avoid dying as much as I did. The effect this had on me is to reaffirm my opinion
that people simply have too much power in their hands with a car. When you're driving 70 miles an hour on the highway and it's nice and quiet and
smooth or you have a catchy tune playing, it's impossible to be truly aware of how easily you could die. All it takes is one mistake, one second of
inattention, but this simply doesn't appear to be the case most of the time, and that's why it is possible to fall asleep. And if Mr. XS can fall
asleep, there is no doubt that I can, and that is one of many reasons I have no immediate plans to drive or obtain a license. Next in the reasons
people and cars don't mix, there is the macho bullshit that causes people to drive dangerously on purpose to show how powerful they are. Perhaps
macho is the wrong word because women do it too, either way it's ridiculous. But in particular I've become acutely aware of the amazing lengths
that guys will go to in a group setting to prove that they are men. At heart, it's nothing but insecurity.

This leads a scenario I thought of earlier in the weekend, and that I now hope will be realized. With the sensors now being
built into cars and experimented with, and the GPS stuff, it's only a matter of time before cars can drive themselves and know where to go. This
means the driver is optional and people can otherwise occupy themselves while in the car, and not worry about the "asshole" who just passed them or
the "woman" who just did something only a woman driver would do. This could have a number of consequences, besides completely changing the way the
interiors of cars are designed (you could watch TV without killing yourself). Mr. XS commented at the time that it would lead to traffic because
everyone would be out on the road all the time. I disagree: people currently don't decide not to go to work, just because there will be traffic.
And they don't decide to take a vacation just because traffic might be light. Besides, the new cars could receive traffic reports and plan their
routes accordingly, and they wouldn't do human things that sometimes cause jams like slowing down in front of an accident. But there is another
possible negative effect: your pointy-haired boss would likely expect you to start working as soon as you get in the car in the morning, without
paying you anymore. This isn't that drastic of a change from the current situation, because the time driving to and from work is now effectively
time devoted to work, since you can't do anything personal. Still, it would suck.

One thing I will complain a bit about: there's something wrong with Mr. XS's car which causes riding in the passenger seat
to feel like riding with your feet outside Flintstones-style. It's cold (these days). This caused my feet to be frozen most of the 1300-mile way,
until I figured out what was going on and pushed my backpack against the footrest as a shield. This changed the effect to one of an extremely cold
breeze on my leg, which was a little better but I still feel it right now somehow. Again, lest this by some chance get back to Mr. XS, I'm not
blaming the transporter, only the transport.

We saw Fountains of Wayne, one of the white whales of my concert career, in Minneapolis. So far I had missed them twice
because of visiting Michigan for a weekend. This time I caught them as a result of leaving Michigan for a weekend. The opening band, OKGO,
appeared to be using SUCK machines as amplifiers, or perhaps they are sufferers of SUCK's syndrome. To begin they took two hours to get on stage,
offering no explanation, and for a finale they carried all of their equipment through the crowd to the back of the venue. OKGO, you suck.

At that point I was about ready to fall asleep standing up, but fortunately FoW rejuvenated me. They played a good set with
plenty of first album songs and, just a lot of songs that I had forgotten how much they meant to me. The only ones that...the only ones.

If anyone asks me what I did or where I was on my 21st birthday, I can say I was sort of all around, in 5 different states
actually. A state-by-state summary: Michigan - gentlemen's clubs. Indiana: gentlemen's clubs and fireworks. Illinois: same. Wisconsin: fireworks
and cheese. Minnesota: Mississippi river and Sexworld.

Had an idea or two that I think might really take off. They're not ready for public release yet, but I'm moving toward
an all-around open source person, so I won't be too secretive. I'll say for now that Crazy Eric has been an inspiration.

The sky was low and gray like a Japanese table...
The Silver Jews quote above is doubly relevant today. Firstly, the sky is indeed low and gray, as it has been for a while
and will continue to be for another several months. It can't help but keep you down. Secondly, I've decided to apply for the JET Programme, to
teach English in Japan. I've done a ridiculous amount of reading up on it and most of the complaints seem
like things I wouldn't mind, while most of the good things seem pretty great. After all how easy is it to explore Asia for a year once one gets
into the rut of CS jobs, especially if one has invested time and money in an apartment or house? This will be the year abroad I never had..if I
get accepted that is. At the very least it will make for great entries and photographs on this site.

I decided to stay in the fortress of solitude today rather than accept any invitations to family dinners. For some reason
it seemed like the thing to do. Since I got up at 4:30pm I don't think I ever saw the sun. Now enough about me.

She says I'm caught up in triviality
All I really wanna know is what she thinks of me
I think my love for her makes me miss the point

Underwhelmed is really one of the great rock songs. Perhaps this makes me a musical simpleton, but the songs that have affected me most have done
so primarily because of their lyrics, not their music, although the music is important as well. It's a sentimental thing but, when did
sentimentality become so bad?

My apologies to the abyss for my long period of slacking. I suppose that's what happens when one is really busy and doesn't
have time for extra thoughts, but it's annoying when everyone's standing around talking about how busy they are, so I won't indulge in that. News:
the CS department is once again giving me a good rogering simply because I'm attempting to take their classes and graduate from their program. This
time they've approved an independent study after earlier in the same day telling me it's all but impossible for such a thing to happen. Also I'll
find out if another class is going to help me graduate, on the first day of class. "Have a backup plan" I am told. Fantastic. Other news: I have
way, way too many books, and most of them are really cool looking. I plan to read in as many of them as possible over the holiday, when I am not
acquainting myself with the Japanese language or perhaps reviving the old Yahoo Literati tradition. Other news...I have not been making nearly
enough music. It's a bit depressing. But at least none of my time this semester was spent watching TV, and I learned a lot of good stuff.

Recently found out that the CS professors tend to think self-controlled project experience is not as valuable for
undergraduates as normal classroom-assignment experience. This is crap. Sure, some people are going to try and skate by without doing much in their
projects. Those people are always there and sometimes they will find a way through. But for the rest of us who are at least somewhat self-motivated,
the projects are so much better. I can't say theory is unimportant, but it remains that I learned more job-related skills this semester than any
other, and those skills don't have to be purely vocational. After all one does hear of the "perl philosophy." Perhaps not the MFC philosophy, but
damn if I even knew what event-driven programming was before this semester. Maybe there's just too much stuff to cover and they should encourage
CS people to stay 4.5 or 5 years. I actually wouldn't mind that, if the costs weren't so high. It would give me the time to get requirements done
without sweating bullets and take a decent number of classes I actually want to take.

Another word about requirements and then I'll end this. Say a university, not naming names, wants everyone to get at least a
little math education while they're there, so they make a "quantitative reasoning" requirement. But for some reason they also decide that courses for
one's major can't count for that requirement. The result of this is that I can take 4 math classes and not fulfill the requirement. The classes I
took which did fill the requirement for me are ones in which I did very little math, and none of any real difficulty. The reason they counted is that
the university is very sympathetic to people who don't like math, whereas they are not so sympathetic to people who have 60 credits of major
requirements and don't have time for lots of social science and humanities classes. Fuckin' social studies.

frustration with nearly everything coming to a head. Human irrationality at every instant of the day, and I am not innocent
of it, but the way it rules life is excruciating.

Was thinking today about current workplace as opposed to that of ITOCHU international summer 2001. At current workplace,
whatever employee you are talking to, everyone else who works there is an asshole. Everyone socializes while mostly hating each other, or at best
being indifferent. One of the owners enjoys killing some of the world's most beautiful and intelligent animals for fun, but that's another matter.
At ITOCHU no one really talked to one another, and no one seemed to mind, myself included. When the computer system I used broke, I even engaged in
more behavior that could be stereotyped as Japanese, going in every day and pretending to work though I couldn't do anything. My work was irrelevant
enough that its not getting done didn't matter at all. I think I like the Japanese way better, though I wouldn't describe it that way to the JET
program people and it may have caused their current economic troubles.

I've slept about 22 hours in the last two days. Mostly during the day so I haven't seen the sun in that time. Call it an
end of semester crash, unfortunately occurring before my two final exams. Ah well. No need to hurry and worry so much.

A question on my game theory exam has inspired me to write a collection of essays on the game theoretical aspects of some
episodes of Seinfeld. If all goes as planned I will start and finish this on Thursday. It will go up in the Reading Room. Speaking of added
content, I did a project this semester that was a perl program enabling the user to make natural language queries to a certain very popular internet
movie base of data. I will try to get a script going to run the program off the site and encourage the abyss to try it out and make bug reports so
that I can improve the program. When it gets to be in good shape I hope to let the people at the base of data know and convince them to add it as a
feature.

Enough of that, do I have anything real to say? No, it appears I don't. Oh yeah, this
place seems ideal for me. Most of the ideas are not very good or serious, but that's to be expected, after all 95% of everything is crap.

This week was a lot "more crazier" than I expected. That "more [adj]er" construction is getting very popular, as DJ Pasty
Pete frequently pointed out back at Stuyvesant, and it gets quite annoying. Anyway, 3 final exams and 26 hours of work, most of it between 11pm and
7am, make for some bleary eyes. But enough whining, or 'whinging' as either Brits or Aussies seem to prefer.

I finally got a real haircut today and here is some idle chatter about that. I have a lot of trouble communicating with
haircutters, I suppose I don't speak the right language. What do I want? Um, it ought to look good, and be shorter than it is now... I usually
end up mumbling something like that, and letting the scheremeister say in their language what they think I mean. In past experience my level of
confidence in their plan has little correlation with the end result, so apparently not only do I not speak the language, I don't understand it
either. Today's adventure was successful in the end: at first she snipped for about two minutes and then said "how's that?" My overly accommodating
ways might have made this a complete waste but I managed to tell her (politely) it would need to actually be shorter than when I came in. Fortunately
despite a good deal of self-consciousness I'm not very discriminating about 'style,' whatever I end up with I'll get used to, and my primary goal is
simply to avoid going back into a hair place for another six months.

Another problem I've been having is with tip-giving. Back in the NYC I did tip the hair cutters, although I have some
objections to the tip system, especially when applied to roles like a cashier or an ice cream scooper. Also it's funny to call it a 'gratuity' when
'gratuit' means free. Same for 'complementary,' why does that mean free? I suppose it 'complements' the stuff you're paying for in some way, but
sometimes the 'comped' item (like a concert ticket) is the only thing you're getting, so it ceases to make sense. Or is it 'complimentary?' I
didn't think so but now I'm not so sure. Moving on... I never know whether to tip the hair cutter here. It's awkward because at the place I frequent
the cutter assumes the role of cashier when it's time to pay, so it would be like, here's my money, I'm getting my change, and oh, here's some more
money. It just doesn't wash (whatever that means). But I found out later that I am almost certainly supposed to tip them, so from now on I shall do
that.

The couch in my apartment is a great place for sleeping. It doesn't look it; the seat is on an angle, with three cushions
that are rather rigid at their borders and bare wooden armrests. But as Mr. XS/QD said after discovering its advantages while visiting here, once
you figure out how to sleep on it, it's just great. For me the proper position is usually on my stomach with my feet through the gap between armrest
and cushion. Today I realized, lying on the couch of serendipity, that its slightly troughlike structure makes it feel as though I have just been
purchased from a vending machine, and am awaiting retrieval by the customer. Customer...one who customs? Another strange word.

The past couple of days have been a bit of a whirlwind. First there was the drive home, which Mr. Fan executed masterfully
despite my inconsiderate napping. We ate at Big Boy and it was good food, good people. Other than that not much happened along the way, that I
was awake for anyway. We came in on a mostly empty GW Bridge with "Is This It?" going.

A dentist appointment didn't go as badly as I feared, but as I also feared it did lead to another appointment while I'm
here. I was planning to write a whole entry about dentistry and the right way to deal with people, and how much I hate my dentist, but the rage
fueling such an entry has dissipated. Basically the way she scolds me for things that are supposedly my fault makes me so angry that rather than
try to improve my hygiene, I become intensely angry and eat candy purely out of spite. Not the right way to deal with people.

After that I had the opportunity to have lunch with a New York State judge. It's nice to be able to see a court room and a
judge's chambers without some extremely bad situation as the context. This particular justice dispenser is a very quick person, as I imagine is
required. Very decisive and efficient. We ate at a somewhat hidden Malaysian restaurant and the whole meal moved so quickly I didn't even have time
to express distaste for tofu or be too cautious. That resulted in some tasty new experiences. Also for the first time I appreciated tea as perhaps
not good for a solo beverage, but a great complement to somewhat spicy food. The judge showed me the natural language search they can now use to
search for past cases. Everyone within a one-block radius of his office called him "judge", which was pretty cool. I had to endure a humiliation
on the way out:

On the way in I had put my coat on an x-ray and then walked through a metal detector like at an airport. The x-ray found a
swiss army knife that I had forgotten was in my pocket, so I had to give it to a guy to get back later. Then we had to go back out of that building
to go back in through the judge's entrance to get to the guy's chambers. So after the lunch I had to go back in to get my knife and go back out.
This time for some reason they wanted me to wear the coat instead of putting it through the x-ray. This was a bit of a problem. I was carrying in
my pockets several pounds of items such as change, an AC adaptor, a toy foam cellular phone, candy wrappers, napkins and papers, pens, containers
of ketchup, peanut butter and mustard which may have been leaking a little, packages of crackers and skittles, floppy disks, buttons, a small rock,
and mouthwash from the dentist. For a few minutes the cop with the wand detector would go over my pockets, go off, I would take more stuff out,
and so on. The cops became quite amused as I removed more and more strange things from my coat. When I took out my toy foam cell phone, which I
use to pretend I'm important, the cop thought it was real and said "well that's definitely setting it off," then I squeezed it and he said "oh."
Finally I took everything out and got through, and retrieved my knife. After that I seriously considered cleaning out those pockets.

This morning I went to see a surgeon, once again not because of some bad situation, but merely to get a tour of his lab.
He's also an inventor and has come up with quite a good invention that I probably shouldn't mention specifically in this forum. He ended up
pretty much offering me a job, to help him write a grant application and then if he gets the grant (perhaps even if he doesn't) to join the project
adding AI to it. Pretty exciting since this is what I was hoping for in CS work, a small team, being creative, making a difference, learning
multiple disciplines...ok enough about that. Enough about everything.

My job prospect with "the surgeon" is becoming quite fascinating. Learning stuff like machine learning, fuzzy logic,
neural nets, situational awareness, all sorts of fun AI buzzwords that can go on my resume when I'm looking for a job that probably won't be as
good, but hopefully that's a ways off. That fuzzy logic sure is cool, and fun to talk about too. We need good fuzzification and defuzzification.
In fuzzy logic things aren't true or false, they're somewhere in between, sort of like it is for humans. Therefore fuzzy logic is like human
reasoning.

Christmas for me consisted primarily of Raymond Smullyan and Douglas Hofstadter books, a quilt cover and some clothing.
In some ways modest but in others excellent. My intention was to stop getting expensive gifts out of certain relatives just because they can afford
them, and in that I succeeded, though not quite intentionally. In the end I think the books I got will provide much more enjoyment than many of the
expensive gadgets and toys I've received in the past. I may still have to get myself a CD/MP3 player to replace my dearly departed discman.

Raymond Smullyan, I've said it before and will say it again, is the master of the universe. His dialogues and monologues
in "This book needs no title" tend toward personal relations, are instantly familiar and accurate, philosophically interesting, and very funny.
Funny, not 'droll.' Droll is without question the least funny word for funny. Smullyan and Hofstadter share a liking for self-referential writing,
and I can't say it bothers me. Hofstadter, in his analyses of the creative process and thought, writes of a typo he made in which his fingers
typed 'bloom' instead of 'blue moon.' Smullyan has a great bit in which he says "I may come back to this later" and has a footnote saying "In
actual fact, I don't!"

A couple of things I missed in the last post. I tried to engage the judge on such topics as the DMCA and the affirmative
action supreme court case, but he didn't seem to concern himself much with lofty things like that. Also afterward I walked uptown, and stopping
in at Other Music I spotted Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo. I seriously considered saying something to him, but I really didn't have anything
constructive to say, so I joined the clerks in quiet awe and perhaps a bit of imagined comradery.

This evening witnessed a remarkable reunion with some chaps I've known since 1st and 2nd grade. One of them I still see
all the time, the others I hadn't seen in a year or more, but for us all to get together was really something. We did what is undoubtedly some
of the longest-term reminiscing I've ever done, talking about stuff that happened 13, 14 years ago. Good stuff.

A word on pricing: why do companies give prices sometimes as "$x and up?" This tells me that it's unlikely I'll be
paying exactly $x unless I'm really getting the bare minimum product or service, and that I certainly won't be paying less than that, therefore I
most likely will be paying some indefinite amount that is more than x. How is that a good advertising technique? This is even worse than
companies that give no prices at all (in catalogs, or on shelves, things like that). What that tells me is, they think if they tell me the price
before I'm talking to a salesman who can talk me into things, it will scare me away. Knowing that, I am very unlikely to make any inquiries. I
just want to know the price and decide whether it's worthwhile for me. This probably reveals the fact that bargaining is an entirely foreign and
somewhat objectionable idea to me. There is something about arguing with a complete stranger, one which I have been thrust into having a business
transaction with, that doesn't seem right. Not morally right, but right in the way of comfortable.

By the way, I've found that Mozilla, unlike IE, automatically puts my copyright notice after the table that is the white
box in which you're now indirectly reading my thoughts. Therefore, this page is now best viewed in Mozilla.

"Adaptation" was great, much as expected. It's odd to remember that some see self-reference as tacky, when in fact it
is in a way the key to the universe. Some of the most important statements in math and logic (namely those that prove a formal system cannot
be complete and consistent) are based on it. And it's just such a devilish little thing. Or perhaps just devilishly funny. Then again, what's
so funny about the devil? Which brings me to the next point. I've heard two words for 'like hell,' 'hellish' and, one time, 'hella(t|c)ious.'
The latter I suspect was made up by its speaker, and was used in the context of describing a 'hella(t|c)iously long line.' What does that mean
exactly? Since the only characteristics of hell that can refer to length are infinite, I suppose it means infinitely long. Or did the speaker
simply want to say that the line was painfully long, suffering being the other defining characteristic? Or is it the combination, an infinitely
painfully long line? Who knows.

Since inquiring minds would so much like to know, I have been voraciously taking to my new collection of Raymond
Smullyan and Douglas Hofstadter books, while designing an entire AI system and its sequence prediction component for this project I'm helping
with, and helping to write a grant application for said project. This has left me no time for the study of Japanese, the history of the Five
Points, or any of the coursepacks or other books I brought home, which is disappointing, but at least they are not going anywhere.

Am beginning to fear the extent to which I may become an ascetic or a hermit in the future. Found myself with a lot of
shame in the act of buying new shoes, though my previous shoes have lasted 3 or 4 years now. The way the two salesmen hovered over me in the
empty store did not help. No sooner had I fulfilled my parents' multi-year request than they both talked of buying another pair, because this
one will not 'breathe' enough. But no, I've already spent enough that I should have two pairs, and that will not be repeated. Besides, my
previous shoes are still perfectly good (well, except when walking in snow or rain, in which case I must accept my left foot becomes quite
soaked). It continuously surprised and dismayed me that my parents desired for me to get new shoes even though I desired to keep my current
ones. Eventually it seemed more like they wanted me to want new shoes, and that I could not do. I consider it a victory over the evil of
corporations to make their goods last long, because of course they will only design them to last long enough that the customer will forget that
they are shoddy and buy them again. That's how it works after all, you wear your shoes for a little while and then you buy new ones. You brush
your teeth for a few months and then uh-oh, it doesn't have the blue strip anymore, obviously it's not going to work! People never even know what
hits them, and it has hit all of us, to different extents. Don't trust anyone, especially people who tell you to trust them.

Flew back to AA yesterday. Had to wait on four lines now, including the new one where they put everyone's checked bags
into a gigantic x-ray machine. The funny thing is you can leave once you get to the front of the line, as long as you're OK with them searching
your bag without you there (and even those who do have qualms are delayed so much by this slow-moving line that scruples are likely overcome by
the need to get on the plane when one finally reaches the front). So instead of simply putting your bags on the conveyor belt behind the desk
like usual and simply adding the x-ray step along there, they make you wait on this new line, apparently just so they can have bags handed to
them rather than taking them off a conveyor belt or a pile. Other observation: apparently it's not only illegal to carry bombs or weapons, it's
also illegal to talk about them in an airport. Actual enforcement of this could have some amusing consequences: "Sir, we found an unmentionable
in this bag!" "Hey! Don't mention unmentionables! Wait, Damn! [issues demerit to self]" This of course assumes that the law is against referring
to these things, and not only mentioning them by name, which is a distinction not at all made clear by the sign I saw. It said "it is illegal
to talk about... " and I think that phrase can refer to indirect referral as well as direct naming.

I've reached the 50-page limit in my four new Douglas Hofstadter books, which Mr. XS postulates as the best point at
which to stop and start new books. Including my Raymond Smullyan and Speed Levitch and other new books I'm currently reading close to 10, and
trying to start a few more. The Hofstadter books are simply amazing. I've been tempted to include passages from them here, but then I got lazy.
So much great stuff about self-reference, self-annihilation, self-replication and so on. Since it's so interesting to me I'm tempted to use it
in music, but then I come to the question of whether mathematically interesting music is musically interesting music. It is nearly certain that
good music is mathematically interesting, but it may not go the other way. Again it's the question of pop vs. experimental, sort of. By the
way, everything I'm saying is wrong, including this sentence. Write this sentence. This.

Hoping to soon start a game of Nomic with Mr. XS and anyone else wishing membership in the game. One plays this game by
changing the rules of the game. Anyone who wishes to play should let me know, and be willing to take it seriously, meaning they really want to
participate no matter how much the mind gets bent around by it.

For once, a commercial I can appreciate. It advertised a new TV show by saying "It's everything we promise."

Mike sucks.

The morning I left to come back here I was rudely awakened after about 3 hours of sleep and encouraged to take a shower.
As faithful readers may know I have a tendency to flights of fancy when I'm taking a shower and very tired. In this case I began to believe
that I had been assigned to make the Lord of the Rings new movie, Two Towers. I considered this a pretty monstrous task and immediately set to
work in my mind, shepherding around the hundreds of extras. Sometimes my father would come by and yell at me (in reality) for being in the
shower for so long, but I would brush him off for trying to rush creativity, especially something like making this movie which will take months.
If I had tried to vocalize these complaints I likely would have realized their detachment from reality, but I never did. I just stood there and
made my movie in my mind. It was a pretty long shower.

My CS 482 professor said yesterday that according to every study that has ever been done, the least effective learning
method by far is sitting in lectures, followed by reading a textbook. Then why, pray tell, are those methods the primary ones being used for
this class (and most others)? How can people be so unable to take their own advice? This is how stupid things are perpetuated.

An interesting phenomenon: When I picture the faces of people I haven't seen since they were young, I don't picture them
as having young-looking or baby-ish faces. Yet when I see a picture of them from that period, I say wow, they did look quite young, just like I
did. Somehow the memory ages them subconsciously. Does this mean my memory becomes, if not a prediction, a "distant judgment in real-time" which
we don't seem to have a word for, about how the person looks now? It seems to work pretty well that way, apart from decisions the person makes
about their own appearance, such as facial hair.

Speaking of decisions, Mr. XS has commented on the question of free will, and I confess this is one that has been tying me
in knots for a little while now. I don't see it as a contradiction that a doctor can produce responses by poking the brain; this can simply be seen
as bypassing the free will portion and going directly to the response mechanism, but it doesn't mean the free will portion of the operation doesn't
exist. Drugs, sugar, hormones are the same, only indirect and less powerful. But going beyond that, what can go into a decision we make in a way
that could be described as 'free?' If it's caused by random quantum fluctuations, that doesn't seem free. If it's a result of past experiences and
genes combining for judgment in a way that could be modeled, that's not quite free either, because a computer could be made to make the same sort of
judgments about the best decisions. But can it be modeled? And is there any decision-making process more 'free' than that?

After about a four-day stint, the broken-glass-after-I-knocked-over-a-speaker-while-sleeping on our floor has been cleaned
up, for the most part anyway. As many people as I can think of are non-plussed.

I today completed and presented my first composition for my music course. Making songs for classes is very hard and
different from pure creative writing for myself, or for a general audience, or whatever you want to call what I usually do. Usually when I'm writing
a song I have to think about my motivation, what I'm trying to get across, and that shapes the lyrics, melody, and stuff. If I find the song is
about nothing, either I simply stop writing it, or carry on anyway and hope no one realizes that. The latter has been my habit lately, because of a
strange lack of worthy song motivation. But with a class assignment, that is the motivation, and that can be bad for the results. I'll be writing
something, and it's interesting from the music theory point of view of stuff we've been learning about, but then I stop at some point and say to
myself, wait a minute, would anyone ever actually want to listen to this? Does it matter? I think this is a problem many composition students face,
and I hear it in the pieces in the "[student] composer's forum" concerts I make dubs of at work. If something is going to be presented to
people, it must be accepted that one is trying to please them, and the music must have something to offer them, in most cases even if they are not
well-versed in music theory.

Was thinking a while ago about something I saw a long time ago. It was a funniest home video or something and a family had
a pet pig they were talking about and they said "he thinks he's a dog." This struck me as ridiculous. How can a pig know what it means to think it
is a dog? I'll agree that some animals may have some measure of self-awareness, but thinking one is a different kind of animal combines a much
higher level of consciousness with some serious psychological problems. Bringing it up again recently I realized the people probably meant it saw
dogs and acted like them (though I remember clearly the family did not have a dog to imitate, or at least they made no mention of one). This makes
it more interesting. Is the pig acting like the dog because it thinks it is the same kind of thing as the dog, therefore it should behave the same
way, or is it simpler than that? Perhaps the way it naturally acts is just close to a dog, or it's simply interacting with a dog and developing
similar behaviors through that. I don't know, this probably isn't worth so much discussion, those people were probably just idiots, but it is
interesting to think about how animals think.

Looks I'll be doing either some Bluetooth or 802.11b programming this semester, for our Pocket PC game, titled Pocket
Equations. Either way it'll be something that hasn't been done much or at all so far, which is exciting.

For my natural language generation class I need to think up a big project to do, which will be essentially the only thing I'm
graded on for the class. I'm thinking perhaps a poetry generator. Mostly it would just be amusing, I can't imagine there being any more commercial
applications than there are for real poetry, but it could be cool. As inspiration I will make use of "Le Ton Beau de Marot" and "Fluid Concepts and
Creative Analogies" by Douglas Hofstadter. He researches (for one thing) models of human creativity and thinking, which would be the most
academically interesting part of such a project, and could be very interesting indeed.

My music is now unofficially endorsed by George P-Funk Clinton's grandson, who pronounced on hearing my latest creation "I
would pay money for that." To hear it that is, not for the rights like Michael Jackson with the Beatles. Anyway, Huzzah!

A week ago I started up my study of Japanese. I will be teaching myself, with the occasional assistance of a friend or two
who have a good command of the language. In the first week I managed to get a pretty good handle, at least in terms of reading and recognition, of
Hiragana and Katakana. In the second week (which started Tuesday) I've started on some grammar and vocabulary, working through the textbook I
borrowed from one of said friends. Wow are those Kanji complicated, just to write them, to say nothing of understanding them. I'm pleasantly
surprised however, by the simplicity of the grammar. Very little use of pronouns, or person (as in 1st 2nd 3rd) at all. The only conjugation of
verbs is in the two tenses (past and non-past) and formal/informal. The only pronoun commonly used (AFAIK) is I, otherwise you say the person's
name or the referent is understood from context. It's actually rude to say 'you,' it's like a police officer saying "You! over here boy..." or
something. I continue to believe that techniques from linguistics could benefit language study greatly, especially morphology. I observe that most
words for fields of study end in 'gaku' and student is 'gakusee' and professor is 'sensee', so evidently 'gaku' glosses to 'study' and 'see' to
person, or maybe something more specific. That kind of thing is useful if I came upon an unknown word ending in 'gaku,' so why am I left to see it
myself, why doesn't the text say so? A deep flaw, methinks.

Yesterday was a crazy day in the adventures in bibliography. I've been scaling back acquisitions lately because I'll have to
put everything I own here in a car in a few months and it's going to be a real challenge. Going to the library sale every 2-3 weeks works well,
more things I really want tend to pop up. But I got there yesterday and they were having a bag sale--fill a shopping bag for $4 with any books or
records. I assume this was going on on saturday as well, so by the time I got there, the place was pretty bare compared to how it usually looks. But
I made some decent finds anyway, and for $4, how can it not be worthwhile? Got some old Doonesbury books, the entire Sniglets series, six Japanese
comic books (perhaps better described as small graphic novels, because they are the size of a small book), a book of "Present Day Italian," the
present day being 1940, some Sartre and Gunter Grass books in German, Flatland in French, a couple of poetry books that may be useful for my NLG
project, and an English-Hindi dictionary. Okay, a lot of that may not seem useful, but I'm starting to really be interested in language.

The other day, had what I thought was a good discussion about humbleness, which was quite related to some of the ideas in
Raymond Smullyan's "This Book Needs No Title." The subject was humbleness, and the realization that a very humble person cannot state their own
humbleness, unless they believe that humbleness is not a quality that should be bragged about (and therefore it would be self-deprecating to
acknowledge it). But even if they deny humbleness, a person can become quite un-humble if they stubbornly maintain their correctness about not being
humble while everyone around them tries to tell them how humble they are, so such a person might have to acquiesce and admit some degree of
humbleness. It's a thorny situation. Perhaps this person can simply profess not knowing much of things like humbleness, though such a statement
would have trouble seeming genuine.

Still in the process of convincing my professor that a computer poet is a good idea that can be done in a semester. And for
any that were bothered by the suggestion of such a thing, may I say that this is not intended to replace human poets. In fact anything I can
produce in a semester is probably going to suck pretty badly in any kind of comparison. The point is to explore models of human creativity, and see
if things like puns or metaphors can be produced by a computer. Of course it will still be me doing the programming, so emergent behavior aside, it
will be hard to say the computer itself is creative in its production of such things. But hopefully I can do it in such a way that I'm telling the
computer only what a metaphor is, and it is using databases of words and relations between them (hopefully something extant) to come up with
individual ideas.

I've been creating some tilesets to make maps for a PC game I'm working on called
Crisis Wolverine (yes, the site needs some help). These are 16x16 pixel
icons that represent a square of terrain or an object that would be on that terrain; in the case of our game, which takes place on this campus, this
means things like sidewalks, street lamps, garbage cans, and drunk people. I'm finding that working on such a limited scale is a lot like
impressionism, I have to adjust the colors of individual pixels in order to give the general impression of the object. I'm also limited to adjusting
between 256 colors. It's quite difficult, especially for a non-artist with an utter non-mastery of color and perspective. Fun though.

Linux has decided it's time to stop working. More precisely it's Xwindows, which cannot deal with my new video card, but
most of the usefulness of linux has been taken away for my GUI-loving ass. This puts my NLG and Operating Systems projects on hold for a reinstall
or a fix, the latter looking quite unlikely. These days even the couple of hours I've just wasted, or the couple more it'll take to reinstall, are disheartening, because there's so much I want and need to do with every moment.

Today was another good day in the adventures of bibliography. I discovered that the University's own graduate library has a
daily book sale with low low prices. The selection is small but of high quality. I got four books, all about linguistics. For the first time I
also thought to look up Raymond Smullyan in the library catalogs. Turns out they have a pretty complete collection, so I took out all the ones I
don't already have. All the funny ones that is, I have yet to read any of his 'serious' books like "First Order Logic" or "Diagonalization and
Self-Reference."

The other book I obtained today is one that takes a decent approach to the learning of Kanji. My Japanese study has
been advancing steadily but I'm becoming decreasingly satisfied with the pair of books I am borrowing (one with lessons, the other with drills).
Trying to memorize two Kanji that mean one English word, with each one requiring 8 or 12 strokes to draw, and bearing striking resemblances to many
others one has seen, is very difficult when one isn't told that each Kanji has its own meaning, and that in fact many parts of Kanji have meanings
too. The books I have take this 'conversational' approach where they just want to teach you to say useful things, which is fine for a phrasebook
for tourists, but this is supposed to be for people who really want to know the language. For that you've got to know the things that native
speakers know unconciously, about structures and formation rules.

I'm getting into the final planning stages of my NLG Computer Poet project, which really needs a catchy name. In fact I'll
be submitting my proposal for it on Monday. Why should you care? Because I have an assignment for you. I'll be sending an email out to this effect
to everyone I know, that I know has written poetry before, and perhaps a few who haven't. But I can use as much as I can get, and anyone not
caught in my email net who sees this is welcome to submit. The assignment is this: write a poem and write down all of the creative thought processes
that went into it. This can be done as it is written or immediately afterward. The kinds of questions that I'm looking for answers to are these:
How did I come up with the idea for the poem? What form did that idea take? How did that idea affect more specific decisions, like what to put on
each line or in each stanza? Did I change the idea after I started writing, if so why? What affected my decisions about structural issues like
metre and rhyme? When did I come up with the title, and how? Did ideas for specific lines produce ideas for other ones, and how? What sort of
'links' in the mind were activated, if that can be said? When I came up with an idea for a line, did I already know how I was going to write it, or
did I come up with the idea and then try to work it into the rhyme/meter/etc structure? Did it occur that an idea for a line proved impossible to
fit into the poetic form? How did I resolve this?

This list is by no means exhaustive, and of course I don't want a list of answers to those questions, but a roughly
chronological sequence of everything that went on in your mind during the writing process, that you are aware of. Depending on how literally you
take that, it could be quite long, but don't feel daunted; anything is good, the more the better. My hope is that you'll find this a fascinating
process of examining your own processes, and that it won't feel like boring work. Also, don't think the poem needs to have a rhyme or metre or other
structures--if you like dadaism, do it dadaist, and tell me about that. Variety is good, although I'd like to get at least some responses that talk
about fitting lines into rhyme/metre structures.

I'm aware of a challenge in completing this task. It is the uncertainty principle. Examining the process
will change the process itself. My advice for that is, maybe don't worry about consciously examining yourself at every moment. Let a creative
decision happen the way it usually does, then write down what happened before you forget about it.

The reason I'm asking for this is that I intend to model these creative processes for my project, a program to write poetry.
The emphasis won't be so much on the actual coming up with ideas, because that's something really mysterious that draws on all the memories and
connections in our mind and all that, and it's not really modelable at this point. The focus is on how ideas contribute to, and trigger, and
annihilate one another, and how they go from ideas to lines in a poem. The only rewards I can offer are a place in the creation of a program that I
think will be fairly innovative, and the (usually) positive effects that inevitably spring from intense introspection. You can get my email
address from some creative human parsing of a string that's somewhere down the right side of this page.

I just realized it would also be interesting to examine how people read poems, and what they see as being vital to any
one poem, what makes it that poem. This is an issue for translation that is covered somewhat in "Le Ton Beau de Marot." I wonder if anyone's still
reading this. I know I had more to say but the process of writing entries always distracts me from the multiple subjects I intended to address. My
coming up with ideas for entries is far outpacing my writing of them, and this is a problem. Oh well.

For the few to none of you who read this, talk to me, and care, it may be confusing sometimes when I refer to things I'm involved in, using different
acronyms that you don't know. I then have to explain the subject all over again until something jogs your memory. It's often worse when I have to
explain something for the first time to a new person, but there's not much remedy for that except being famous and having people already know
everything about me. For the rest of us, here's a handy instantiation of the variables generally occurring in my discourse:
Pocket PC Project = (Pocket) Equations = Bluetooth Project = CS 499 = Independent Study;
Computer Poetry Project = NLG project = project where I modify FUF;
Operating Systems class (or project) = CS 482 (project);
Crisis Wolverine = WolverineSoft project;
RST = project for the Surgeon = robotic nurse project;
JET Program = Japan teaching thing;

That ought to about do it. Speaking of several simultaneous projects, I've noticed that although I generally feel my time
must be used very efficiently these days, I don't like to work very quickly at any one task. In fact usually I'm not able to do that. For example
I don't code very quickly. Most people might see my position as a bit silly, and I sometimes regret it, but perhaps it isn't. I find it very
stressful to hurry, and stressful even to watch other people hurrying. Most of the projects I'm involved with are enjoyable to me, and although it's
important to get them done, it seems foolish to make them unenjoyable by hurrying. I don't have a good conclusion for this paragraph.

"This book needs no title" has quickly become my favoured Raymond Smullyan book. The puzzle books are great, but very
difficult to get through, especially if one tries to do all the puzzles. It's frustrating to spend a few hours on two pages, even if it's a great
thought exercise. "This book..." is pure dispensing of wisdom. The comments on taoism are just great. Reading this book does a body good.

Soon I will find out if I have an interview for the [ahem] Program. I will probably find this out a week beforehand and then
have to get a super-expensive plane ticket to NYC, and miss the three days of class right before Spring break, when the interviews are being held
(or so I hear by rumors, because of course the people who run the program don't bother with letting you know these things). All of this is because
the program is run by people who are friends with the people who like to say "of course it isn't fair, life isn't fair." That may be, but if the
people running it have the power to make it fair, why don't they do that?! It seems to me it would do them good to give people sufficient notice,
because that way good candidates will not be tempted to drop out of the running because of the cost of transportation or the evident disorganization
of the program. The problem with the "life isn't fair" line is that it only works when no one in particular is being held responsible. What if I
punch you in the nose for no good reason, and say "you see, life isn't fair!" Would that be acceptable? There's also the line Calvin gave a while
back: "sure, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?"

Kudos to Jordan for attracting actual readers he doesn't know, who interact with
him. I've often thought of putting something on here to monitor traffic, but resisted for fear I would become obsessed with it, and adjust my
content too much to try to attract visitors. The futile exercise of attempting to please an audience is already a huge problem for me in my music.
But this will have to happen when I graduate and need to get real hosting going, so eh. I may do a redesign soon, but I make no promises (to the
Abyss).

Forgetting entry topics is becoming a real problem. My twofold solution is to start writing them down when I think of them,
and to write entries more often. What do you think, abyss? Don't just sit there staring back at me.

I have several topics to address today, and there's even a chance I'll remember all of them. First is Christianity, which
Smullyan briefly comments on in "This Book Needs No Title." He talks about Adam eating from the Tree of Knowledge and being thrown out of the Garden
of Eden. When I was reminded of this, I wondered, if the Bible is something to live by, why would it tell us that trying to gain knowledge is a
terrible thing that will get you kicked out of paradise? I know what an anti-Christian might say to this, that it's quite characteristic of the
Church's history to discourage questioning and learning. But I'd like to know what a Christian would say. How can this be justified?

One answer is it doesn't matter that it was the tree of knowledge, God said not to eat from it. But this doesn't satisfy me;
if it's going to be the tree of something, why knowledge? Why not the tree of evil? Obviously it's supposed to be meaningful. Also, I know this
sort of jumps out of the system of the story, but if I had just been created, and basically didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground when it came
to religion, or the world, how would I know whether to trust a voice from the sky or a serpent? I wouldn't know that serpents are supposed to be
bad and a voice from the sky knows what's good for me. I might have similar problems if I were a schizophrenic.

Another answer suggested to me is that the point is, ignorance is bliss and the price of knowledge is suffering. Some people
do think this, but it really doesn't make sense. Firstly, as Smullyan points out, if Adam had just known a little better he wouldn't have
eaten it. Secondly, it's equally contradictory in every other respect. For a Christian the Bible is knowledge, so will reading it cause suffering?

Another problem I have with the whole story is that, for me, paradise would not be a place where serpents hang around and
you get kicked out if you eat from the trees. And of course there's the problem, which the second paragraph is sort of connected to. God
knows everything, therefore he knew Adam would eat from the tree the moment he created him, and even though it's possible Adam still made this
decision freely, it was also God's decision to throw him out for it. How can this be right? It's more like something you'd tell to children and
conclude with "you see, life isn't fair."

So I started thinking about other stuff in "This Book Needs No Title," about Zen and how rationalism and logic are not necessarily the best tools to
use when thinking about it, or when trying to achieve enlightenment. The whole reason for the apparent paradox of koans is to help you jump out of
your usual system of reasoning and begin to directly perceive ultimate, irrational reality. Maybe Christianity, with these apparent contradictions,
has more in common with Zen than is usually acknowledged! For another example of it, notice that by questioning the sinful nature of gaining
knowledge, I am committing that very sin. Of course a Christian would not likely admit that contradictions permeate the religion, but maybe those
contradictions aren't such a bad thing. Also, Zen shares Christianity's aversion to knowledge, claiming that it often interferes with wisdom, the
latter being far more desirable. So maybe these two should have a merger!

The second topic is also connected to Smullyan. He has a lot of dialogs which do a superb job of illustrating a point and
are frequently very funny. I think writing dialogs, the process of putting oneself into two minds at once (neither of which maybe your own) is a
very special skill, and one that I've never seemed to possess. Usually my dialogs go straight from meeting to resolution and one or both of the
characters sound like me. I'm trying to improve this in my work on Crisis Wolverine. There are tons of little dialogues in the game, some humorous,
others for plot advancement. It's a lot easier writing them than writing a movie script, but it's still hard to make them good. If anyone has
some good jokes for me or things to make fun of, let me know.

Next Wednesday I'll be heading to New York for my interview for the JET Program, and staying for a slightly extended "spring"
break. I look forward to Hot Wings and carousing with Mr. XS, some work with the surgeon, and plenty of reading.

One last thing. At 7:30pm today the mail was still being delivered here. Come on now, the day's practically over! I'm sure
the letter carrier wasn't happy to be there either, but at some level, someone is responsible.

After reading Mr. XS's most recent entry on politics and foreign policy, I
feel compelled to comment on the subject, which I haven't often done here. I hate Bush just like everyone else I know, and yet somehow a lot of the country still seems to be pretty much behind him. On the off chance someone who likes him reads this, there's probably little I could say to bring
him or her over to my side. But here's something I'm not getting: sure, these axis-of-evil, and other countries do some bad things, but that's been
the case for a long time. Why is it suddenly just a question of which one we should obliterate first? There are two practical answers: because 9/11
happened, and as XS says, because we can. If any of these countries were a superpower, things would of course be quite different, but as it stands
we can basically blow them up. One might bring China into this as an example, but I'll only mention something I found very funny--China produces an
annual report of human rights abuses in the US.

But (at least) N. Korea doesn't really fit any justification because they obviously aren't connected to Qaeda and they
haven't done much harm to us personally--They're just assholes with nukes. Honestly, what kind of country sweeps up on another country's beach and
abducts random people?? But the only problem we have with them is that they pose a military threat to us. Now here's the problem with that policy,
which was pointed out by a game theory guy...John Kenneth Galbraith I think.

What if everyone used this policy, as they may very well do? Do we pose a threat to N. Korea and Iraq? Of course we do!
Therefore by our own logic, they are justified in calling us evil, or attacking us, or whatever. But we would disagree with this, on the basis that
we are the "chosen people." Not only do you pose a threat to us, but we're also "right." Needless to say I find all this to be utterly faulty;
they don't 'hate our freedoms' as some would have you believe, they think they're right!

And of course the real idea behind all of it is "Pax Americana," which several members of the current administration all
planned out before assuming their current positions. As you can tell from the name, this is not that far from where we are today. If someone poses
threat to us, and/or has natural resources or money that we want, we beat them into submission, and everyone is happy. Sorry for all the quoting.

This past weekend was interesting, though my entry on it is rather late. I got to see the Count Basie orchestra play,
using some extremely expensive microphones, some of which were apparently brand new and on temporary loan from Neumann. There were two German
guys from Neumann visiting for this. One of them was taller than everyone else there, and the other one, seemingly higher up the chain, was short
and wolf-like. When they talked I was able to pick out some words, but not much meaning. At one point the wolf guy gave the tall guy the finger
with both hands at once. The Count Basie guys were pretty cool, I was around them backstage after the concert a bit--especially the drummer, Butch
Miles. With a name like that, you have to be cool. On Sunday I woke up to the building's fire alarm, which always seems to go off as a result of
a fire's opposite, a flood. I ignored it as usual, and later found out a pipe had burst on the 17th floor, and the water had seeped nearly all the
way down the building. Upon going outside (almost always a mistake) I saw that water was actually raining down the side of the building, freezing
on windows and forming a large slush on the ground. Don't see that every day! I also saw a wet spot in the hallway carpet on the 3rd floor,
fortunately on the other side of the building. I share Amanda's hope that a watery fate does not befall us.

Monday through Wednesday was incredibly hectic, but not in ways that are very interesting, so I'll skip that. The trip
to NYC where I currently exist was really very smooth, from the ride to the airport (only had one other passenger in the van and he wasn't chatty)
to the flight (no delays and an empty seat next to me) to the ride home (the cab driver liked to go fast). I then spent a few hours nervously
preparing for this morning's JET Program interview. I had heard rumors of scary questions quizzing applicants on details of Japanese or American
culture. It turned out the questions I received were all general and very much expected, though I don't regret my preparation as a way of
lessening (maybe) my nervousness. My answers were, I think, satisfactory if not very creative.

Project Bluetooth Equations is underway. My mission is to do as much of the Bluetooth programming for our game as possible,
while I am here. Tonight was a relaxed start, but I remain confident. Also I read some crazy shit on the message boards at Raymond Kurzweil's
site, where posters debate with each other about who among them is a real person and who is a chatbot. There are also a lot of crackpots, but it's
fun reading all the same. I suppose this warrants a link, so here you are.

Just some New York notes. It's nice having cable again, briefly--I've been able to watch some Japanese soap operas, news,
and cartoons, and actually understand some dialog on the soap opera. Some parts of the dialog were funny to me in that Japanese way, but then
later watched Seinfeld and, in imagining that I didn't understand the language, realized someone could think the same thing about it.

Tonight I went to "Oh' Nuts" for various gummy items. I really like these gourmet candy stores--they could be great for
dumpster diving. Then I went to Barzini's, where they had some Italian mints called "Mental." I guess the Italians are trying to steal the
Japanese' thunder with amusing misuses of English.

I'm finding that Smullyan's "Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes" contains some of the most clever puzzles I've ever come
across. The amazing part is that so far I've been largely unable to solve the puzzles myself, and yet constructing them must be even more
complex. It is possible that it's easier (in some types of puzzles, certainly that is the case), but I doubt it in the case of retrograde
analysis in chess.

On Monday I went thrifting with Jo--Mr. XS and Nick on the island, picking up one book and a kitschy board game which
involves trying to outwit the IRS with tax shelters. Tuesday dentist, Wednesday robot, Thursday dentist again and robot again, Friday sleep
after working on projects until 7am. Going to the dentist was as horrible as usual; I really don't think a cleaning is supposed to produce
that much pain, and I don't think the pain is a result of the substandard hygiene I'm accused of. But the dentist has a sure hand and doesn't
apologize for it, so something is strange in the neighborhood. Getting a couple of fillings two days later was in fact considerably less
unpleasant. I managed in three days to produce a sequence learning and prediction program for the robot--one day of writing and two days of
nasty, nasty debugging.

Breakthroughs have been made in the addition of Bluetooth networking to Pocket EQUATIONS. It looks like this stuff
might actually work. I still find it hard to say whether or not I enjoy programming. There are definitely very frustrating periods, and
definitely greatly satisfying feelings when accomplishments are made. But I can't say how the good and bad come out--whether it's more good,
more bad, or about even. The fact that I continue to do it doesn't provide much evidence, because I do a lot of things I don't really enjoy,
thinking that I just have to do them. Perhaps there is some intuition I have that the capability to program gives one power to do anything, that
even though what I'm building is sort of 'virtual' it still can be very useful and enjoyable, and I can take it from idea to fruition. I'm
especially curious about whether or not I enjoy game programming, since I haven't done much of it yet.

Tonight I spent a little while looking up every game programming book I could find, and finding the lowest price for each.
This sort of fantasy budgeting, I enjoy. I'm a bit concerned that perhaps I enjoy having books more than actually reading them, that there is
something nice about having this information nearby in book form, even though I may never use it. Then again, what's wrong with that? I have
been reading some of my books.

Earlier in the evening I sought out a cup of hot chocolate at the establishment known as @SQC, drinking it in honor of
Mr. Ho Ying, who is stuck on the moon. As promised by the Times, it was insanely rich, consisting
basically of melted dark chocolate, with only a bit of whipped cream. The heat was distinctive, not radiating or steaming as hot drinks tend to
do, but only hitting... eh, I can't be arsed to finish this thought.

Later at Barnes & Noble, I saw a book called "WAR is a force that gives us meaning." The cover had a picture of a bunch
of flag-bearing Americans holding hands. My only response is...sigh. They had an excellent selection of super-expensive game programming books
there (this prompted my price checking later on), but no Smullyan books. Speaking of which, I'm now most of the way through "The Chess Mysteries
of Sherlock Holmes," and I'm now able to solve most of the problems on my own or with a little boost from Holmes. It's extremely brilliant stuff.

And that pretty much brings us up to date. No opinions or ideas in this one, I haven't had many lately. Was thinking
a bit about the importance that seems to surround the lives of my forebears. My Aunt and Uncle have done all these great things, mom
played by Jamie Lee Curtis in a movie about her life, Stepdad made into a character in a recent book, Dad sold drugs to the Beatles while they
were making Sargeant Pepper's. Apologies if this sounds like bragging, which of course it is. I can't yet see how my life will fit in, but I
hope it somehow will, though I know celebrity is bullshit.

A smooth trip back to Ann Arbor was marred by the failure of the student government's airport bus service to show up,
after I had waited outside for it in excess of 1.5 hours. The temperature since then has dropped steadily. Today was a day that looked very
nice and sunny, and could probably pass for summer if not for the snow and coats. At times the warmth of sun even created moments of
pleasantry. But at every street corner a wicked wind from the north would blast me, causing me to curse loudly until I reached the shelter
of the next block of buildings. Even so I got to the library for the book sale. My selections these days are growing more and more obscure
as the pickings seem to get slimmer. Today I picked up a two-volume Hungarian-English dictionary (a collection of language dictionaries has
become a goal), a Cyclopedia of America in Japanese (a good beginning read I figure, and potentially humorous), and "The Tin Drum" by Gunter
Grass. The latter is one of the only works of fiction I've purchased recently, I don't know why.

Later I went to "Saigon Garden" with Amanda and her roommate. It was a good time, but I must register my complaint
with Ann Arbor restaurants that are more expensive than their New York counterparts, which are of higher quality and must pay much more rent.
Ah well, I'm not much of a restaurant person, tending to go for cheap places with basic cuisine. I feel much more at home in these places,
and I get full and almost always enjoy it. From the talk I hear this makes me a good upper west sider.

I think if I'm to finish all my work for this semester I may have to disengage completely from current events and the
world around me. Seeing movies like "Crumb" about crazy geniuses who create their own little world is part of my inspiration. Keeping up
with worldly events is all well and good, but I don't think it can do me much harm to take a break and then catch up later. I may go so far
as to take my large sound absorption blanket, so far unused, and drape it around my chair and computer as a big blinder to everything that
usually seems to matter. Of course my computer itself can be a huge distraction, so I'll have to do something about that. Perhaps the 'links'
page of this site, which I usually use as home base for my daily webbing, will have to have some entries temporarily removed.

Have been on a kick with these personal entries, and I promise myself to stop them soon. Being in New York seems to
produce events of everyday life that are more worth writing about, and that's over now.

Darn, I was going to make a special note on 03.03.03, but that's long gone. Haven't implemented my isolation plan yet,
largely because I haven't obtained the necessary butterfly clips from work. But the mind has been very strained lately as I get deeper and
deeper into this semester's programming projects. Did pretty badly on my Operating Systems midterm, but found myself unable to care. I have
to face the fact that exams are just bullshit. And if it affects my GPA, so what, I haven't gotten a job yet that depended on my GPA. The
best jobs I've had I didn't even need a resume to get.

Been thinking lately about music. Wondering about whether or not I'm really going to do it for the rest of my life,
and in what capacity. And on a smaller scale, what kind of music I want to make. A lot of this is fueled by having to produce compositions
every week for a music class, with little or no restriction on the content. Basically it's always a battle between stuff that is more
experimental, complex, musically interesting, and stuff that is more simple, catchy, and nice-sounding. My ideal, that I don't think is
impossible, is to have both. With experimental stuff, I usually feel better about it, but other people don't necessarily want to listen to it
repeatedly, and often the interesting stuff has to be explained to anyone who's not a music theory wonk, and that makes it sort of pointless.
The argument for simple catchy stuff is that, well it sounds nice, isn't that what music is supposed to do? And often I'm listening to bands
I like and say to myself, these songs are simpler than mine, if I could just keep it simple, I'd have success. Of course it never quite works
out that way, because there's a difference between 'simple' and 'good.' Then again there are many reasons that I don't have 'success.'
It becomes pretty clear after obsessing over this for a long time that I want to have the best of both worlds, and that the best way to do
things is to write what I like writing and not think about who's going to like it.

Just as this has been on my mind, I heard from an old friend whose whereabouts I've also been wondering about. He
offered the potential of joining a band he's in. This could be a lot of fun because it's a real band that practises a whole lot, and plays
shows on a regular basis, and is going to go on tour, unlike every band I've been in (no offense of course to the members of those bands,
for they were great, but playing lots of shows is something I'd still like to do). This would also be a change, because I wouldn't be much of
a creative force in the band, also unlike all my previous bands. But this could be a good thing, because when in the creative position, I've
had a lot of band members quit over issues of me being an asshole control freak, which has been extremely depressing. This could be the chance
to sit back, have fun, play the music and not worry about the creative stuff. But can I do that? --dramatic cliffhanger music--

P.S. a few more self-absorbed words about making music. When it comes to people giving you feedback on your music,
actions speak loudly and words don't really speak at all. This is why the 'auteur' may seem apathetic when told that the stuff is good. In
the case of music, there's a big difference between that and someone taking your music home and listening to it repeatedly, as we all do with
music we like. The latter has almost never happened for me, and that's one of the most depressing parts of my music experience. Of course
it's not the audience's fault, it's mine for not making better music. But accepting that I am part of the 95% of everything that sucks is
difficult.

The time for Crisis Wolverine to be released draws ever nearer, and when the subject of credits came up I started
thinking about whether or not I should list this site in my credit. A lot of people could see it, maybe a few hundred or more, but is that
good or bad? A recent Pitchfork review of the new New Folk Implosion album noted something I've always felt, that artists tend to do their
best work when they think no one is watching, and they are just doing it for themselves. I have no illusions about my own vulnerability to
this effect, and I think it goes a long way toward explaining the downfall of many bands when they get famous. Of course I'm not as concerned
about the quality of this blog as about my music, but there could be other negative results too. Of course there could be positive ones too,
like me finally putting some mp3s up and someone liking them, but that's unlikely.

Sometimes lately I just stop working on all my projects and think, what am I doing? Why do I keep doing this, am I
going to really have something at the end? How did I get interested in these obscure topics like retrograde analysis and natural language
generation and whatnot? This is kind of scary, but so are the projects themselves. For the next month I really need to just put my head
down and burrow forward, and I'm sure at the end at least something will seem like it was worthwhile.

I think if I knew a lot of people were seeing this I might feel pressure to write more commentary-type stuff and less
personal stuff. Not that the personal stuff is that personal, or anything I wouldn't tell anyone, but do I really want all these people
who are walking down the street around me every day to see it, and do they really care? See it's already happening, I should stop this.

This could become a time of hiatus when I hardly write anything here until graduation, but I don't want that to
happen, not more than it already has. It's stupid when people talk about how busy they are and how crazy life is, because if they were really
that busy they wouldn't be taking the time to talk about it. But lately I feel compelled to engage in this behavior when I do have a pause,
if only to remind myself of all the tasks and projects I'm trying to keep in my mind, and try to assure myself that it can all be done in the
time left. Also I think most of the things making me busy are very cool and interesting, and that others ought to want to hear about them.

The other day my Operating Systems professor made a repeat performance of a rare kind. Back in fall of junior year,
he was my professor for my data structures and algorithms class, and I had his class the morning of 9/11. The TVs in the lecture hall had been
turned on to the news, but all I could see from my usual vantage point in the rear was a lot of smoke (on the screen), and I still didn't know
what had happened. He came in and, about as dismissively as possible, said "I'm sure you all know about this so I won't read the press release
statement that they asked me to read," turned off the TVs, and taught the lecture on hash tables or whatever the hell it was. At the time I was
just mildly annoyed that whatever had happened, he wasn't telling us about it, and everyone else was just muttering. But since then I've found
it rather stupid and offensive of him.

Flashing forward to this past Thursday, he completely ignored the start of the war and taught his lesson again. Of
course this is very different, it was no shock, not some immediate tragedy, or thing like that. But come on man, pick your head up out of the
fucking sand every once in a while and realize there's more to life than operating systems, and it's worth mentioning even without any relevance
to the course. He might not really have any new information or insight to bring to us, but still, just remind us that we're living in the world
here, we're not mindless programming drones, ourselves programmed not to think about bothersome, tragic or irrational things. Also he's got this
smirk that really makes me angry.

Today we worked for 14 hours straight on Crisis Wolverine, in preparation for the release in about 1.5-2 weeks. We seem
to be on track to finish on time, although the schedule doesn't have much room for error or maneuvering. I can't wait to see how the marketing
campaign I have masterminded turns out. I also have to accept that this is probably going to be the best time, the time leading up to the game
when we're all just pouring our passion and creativity into it, making it the best it can be. Soon enough our posters will be on the ground,
and people won't be talking about it anymore, and that will be disappointing. But it has still been great, and we can only hope that it reaches
the number of people we're aiming for. It certainly deserves to, because it's a lot of fun and does what nothing else out there does, by
catering to such a specific audience with inside jokes and maps of the neighborhood.

I keep thinking I'm about to crash after a period of sleeping only a few hours a night most nights, and then getting a
decent amount of sleep every 3rd night or so. This has been going for about 1-1.5 weeks now. But I keep going, and often I'm a little tired
and/or achey, but never very much, and I haven't taken many naps at all. I think the enjoyment of making this game is keeping me going. I've
gotten into a mode where the game simply has to succeed, and will no matter what I have to do to ensure it. The happiness that I think I
could derive from lots of people enjoying and appreciating something I did seems like a far greater reward than a good grade in a class. Don't
want to let my classes slip though, that would be bad.

Look at these lovely buttons I finally have more than one of. Yeah it would be nice if they went all the way across,
but we can't have everything, and I can't think of other deserving buttons at the moment. And the Places page receives a small but vital change--
take that Wolverine Soft, you're out of my affiliations, out! In your place goes the far more deserving CW:IG.

Hostility levels have been growing at an alarming rate. I suspect this is the price for the incredible lack of sleep
lately. For a while it seemed like the less I slept, the better I felt, like I was keeping the ol' body on its toes. But right now, it's
not so good. Muscles weak and sore, fatigue intense, urge to kill rising, strange thoughts making sense. But I simply must carry on--too much,
far too much is going to happen in the next couple weeks for me to sleep through it. And it's not graduation, I barely even think about that.
It's an afterthought...much more important is its implication that I just won't be here anymore, all that's going on now will be over. Some
important people will be further away, other ones will be closer. Ok enough of that.

My final music project promises to either be a big great thing or a horrible failure. It requires getting a lot of
people to perform with me and have a good time with it, and that is something I have always failed horribly at in the past. But maybe this time
it will work. Maybe I'll act like Wayne Coyne and jump around triumphantly shaking my fists at the heavens, in ultimate idealism. People will
say I said more in this one song than I did to them in class all semester. Maybe it actually won't suck, but I really don't know yet.

Well, so much for not having a hiatus. But I won't dwell on the events between then and now, because I don't remember
the interesting details and I'm not good at making them up, so it would likely be boring. I graduated, had to leave a town and some people I
cared about, and others I didn't much care about, and I've spent the last week trying to incorporate all my new possessions into my room while
maintaining some sense of order. All the cleaning and organizing is a bit of a farce--all these neat little arrangements I make will either
remain due to neglect, and gather copious amounts of dust, or fall apart as soon as I start actually doing stuff. I admire those who can keep
a neat environment while not spending, or feeling like they spend, all their time maintaining it. It has been fun though, arranging all my
books and admiring them in their new homes, actual shelves rather than crates. Now I begin an endless process of picking ones out to read or
flip through, or refer to.

That brings us up to date then, sort of. Today I went to the bank with 2 years worth of change and dumped it into the
"Penny Arcade," a nice machine that counts them out, and doesn't even take a cut like the old "coin star" one they had in a supermarket. It
seems very well designed, as it appeared to perform perfectly on acceptance and rejection. Despite the dust, residue and who knows what else
on my coins, it didn't reject any good ones, and it gave back the few Euro Cents I had left in there. At one point the machine's bag filled up
and an employee replaced it. The total: $66.06. I collect a lot of change. I thought of buying something special with the money, rather than
letting it trickle out of my pocket on quotidian things, but what would I really be rewarding? All I did was drop my coins in a container for
2 years and let them sit there, extracting quarters when I needed to do laundry. That money would've done me more good earning interest in the
bank, but admittedly a trivial amount. So I can't really justify a purchase with this money by saying I'm rewarding myself. I suppose it's
reasonable to say I can point to something and say "I bought that with 2 years of small change," whereas spending it on food and transport, one
hardly even notices it. But it would be foolish to spend it on something I don't really need, just for the pointing ability. Perhaps I can
get some books with it. Not quite as flashy for pointing as electronics products, but probably more useful in the end. Anyway I haven't spent
it yet, but tomorrow will be the test as I fill up a metrocard and prepare for the first time to pay $2 for a subway ride. Will I dig in to
the proceeds, or put them away and go to the bank? We shall see...

In a week and a half or so I depart for Grenada to visit Al. If at some point I'm not served a tasty tropical drink
while lying on a beach, I'll be disappointed. I rarely take trips like this because I tend to value material goods over experiences when
spending money. But for some reason, when I found out Al was there it just seemed like the thing to do. The trip will begin the day after
playing my first show with my new band, or rather the band that I'm newly a member of. I hesitate to call it my band because I'm not a creative
element, at least not yet. Strange to be in that position, but it should be alllll right.

Went into Pop's Pizza tonight. Another customer walked in and said one word to the staff: "slice." That's the way it
ought to be, I thought. The word I most object to in a pizza order is "cheese" (except when preceded by 'extra'). If it didn't have cheese it
wouldn't be pizza. If all it has is cheese and sauce, it's not necessary to call it a cheese slice, it's just a slice. That was the one flaw
at Bella Napoli in Ann Arbor, when I asked for a slice they would say "cheese slice?" Ah well. I was slightly disappointed to note that the
standard price for a slice is now $2.00, but so it is for a subway ride, so I guess I'll have to accept it. Maybe they should start making $2
bills again.

Lately the news, about the world, the country and this city, seems to be so negative that although I don't mind reading
it, I don't much like talking about it anymore. I'd rather just put my head down and keep going, hoping it doesn't affect me too much. I'm
speaking mostly of financial news, things like bad job markets and increasing costs of living and such. It all sucks a whole lot, but then
again, things have been (and/or seemed) worse before, and a lot of people still managed to keep Cruising.

People say "you can't take it with you" when you die, to suggest that you shouldn't expend so much time and energy
trying to acquire material goods. I was thinking it's kind of faulty. I guess the assumption is, you can "take" experiences "with you" because
in the afterlife you'll still have the (un)pleasant memory of them. But hey, maybe people that like having lots of money can remember what they
did with the money, or even the act of getting the money is a pleasant thought to them. I guess some people have high paying jobs that are very
stressful, so it becomes less fun, but hey, there's always a choice. Also, who needs those pleasant memories in heaven? Surely any earthly
memories pale in comparison with paradise. And if earthly memories are what appeals to you, God could always plant some in your mind, Total
Recall-style. On the other hand, if Satan found out you were using memories of your past life to lessen your suffering in Hell, I'm sure he
would immediately wipe them out.

Then I started thinking, what if you could take it with you? Or more interestingly, what if the afterlife were more
like this life than religion tells us? What if it were just kind of, another life, in a different place but still with the memory of your past
life. And because of that, people would tend to do better in the afterlife, and it would be a better place in general because the lessons
learned on earth could be applied here. People who really screwed up the first time around would effectively be given another chance. Systems
that don't work on earth are improved upon in this place. Opinion is probably bitterly divided between the afterlife being the last one, and
there being an infinite number of them (but all in different places, unlike normal reincarnation theories). People who only believe in one
afterlife probably think, "well now I'm on my last life, I'd better make the most of it." The other side thinks "this is great, I can do
whatever I want, and I'll keep starting over!" If people really took these philosophies seriously and behaved according to them, it might even
divide the whole society in two. It's late right now but I'm going to think more about this, because the philosophies could get a lot more
complicated than that, as they do in this life.

Saw "X2" tonight and it was excellent. Special effects and action sequences are getting so fast-paced these days that
it's almost getting hard to see what's happening. It's like you get the idea that the guy spun this way or stabbed someone that way, but you're
not sure if you really saw it. This is certainly a more realistic approach though, and I prefer it to a lot of slow motion, which now that I
think about it, this movie seemed completely devoid of.

Brooke Burke is like a cultural ambassador for a certain element in the world. It's not the real world of course, but
the rich world, where life has become so meaningless that all there is to do is drink. Maybe rich isn't fair, rather middle class-and-up with
soul-sucking jobs. There's an overwhelming sameness in the places she visits--the decor or the favored local beverage might change, and hey the
natural beauty is great sometimes, but it seems that all that matters to these people is drinking and "dancing." Is there even a point to being
in an exotic locale if you're just going to clubs? I guess there must be. The cultural output of these places has become devices to make
drinking easier: on the Spanish Riviera, it was a glass in a sling worn around the neck, with "traditional" beads and such, for a constant supply
of alcohol all day with the minimum effort. All so they don't have to face life for a while.

I'm worried I'll discover a related sameness when I tour around the country with my new band later in the summer. The
idea of driving all around the country has a certain cool to it, but I'm afraid what I'll realize is that apart from a few spots of natural beauty
and cities, the country really isn't that interesting, especially from a fast-moving car. It's almost painful to think about how much nondescript
suburbia there is. And the expanses of highway in the middle of nowhere, although there's nothing intrinsically bad about it and I'm glad the
road is there...it isn't going to be too interesting. But perhaps I'll be proven wrong and we'll run into lots of interesting places and people.
Just in case I'm bringing plenty of reading material.

I just realized it's slightly ironic that I write that second paragraph a day before I go on my little trip to Grenada.
Well...I'm going for the natural beauty. And of course to visit my good friend Al.

It'll be another mini-hiatus as I go to Grenada from now until Tuesday. If anyone's in the neighborhood feel free to
stop by, otherwise I'll report back on being served drinks while I lounge on the beach...maybe.

Day 1 in Grenada. The flight landed at about 7:30 and I was surprised to find it totally dark there. In fact the
landing was a bit scary, because I couldn't see a damn thing out of my window until we were about 10 feet from the ground. I later found out
that due to latitude, sunrise is at 6am, sunset at 6pm. I found Al and we got a cab to the campus, which was a short but harrowing ride.
Each time an oncoming car appeared, the driver would head straight toward it, then casually swerve around it at the last moment, with no sign
of any concern. I eventually got used to this driving style, as it was universal there. The cabbie drove around the entire campus honking his
horn before letting us off, apparently to advertise his services. Honking of horns was another universal part of the Grenada transportation
experience.

Al showed me around the campus that night. I met several of his fellow students, who were in various degrees of
shellshock due to final exams having ended that day. They were very nice people of widely varying nationalities--the first two I met were
Lebanese and Nigerian. The campus was quite beautiful even by night. Like much of Grenada, it was on a hill, so a big view is only a short
yet arduous walk away. It's also on the ocean, and has a black sand beach on one side. We sat on a rocky peninsula and watched the ocean,
illuminated by a brilliant moon. I was introduced to some of the various cats that live on the campus. Most of them are small, skinny and pitch
black, and scare easily. I also discovered one of the coolest things about Grenada, almost all the soda comes in glass bottles, even out of
vending machines. The usual price was about 75 cents US for a .5 liter bottle. It seems the companies have stopped making them, but they're
able to keep it going by reusing the bottles.

This night was also my introduction to some of the subject matter of Al's courses, with which I would become remarkably
familiar over the next few days, considering my non-student status. The end of exams was not able to stop the students from bringing medical
terminology into normal conversation, and using it for some extremely nerdy humor. Al attempted to show me the cadavers he had been dissecting
for his anatomy class, but we only managed to catch a glimpse through a window, and they were wrapped up in their body bags. He showed me
pictures later, and most of them weren't too unpleasant, because they had been thoroughly dissected and looked more like meat than a person.
However the descriptions of some of his assignments, such as extracting the spine or cutting the face in half...I don't think I could ever do
that.

And now that I've given you all nightmares, I'll turn in and end the story of Day 1.

The next several entries will talk about my trip to Grenada, but first there are some other things to talk about. One,
I just got a new Raymond Smullyan book, in fact the most recent one he wrote, published at the beginning of this year. It's called "Who Knows:
A Study of Religious Consciousness." It talks about lots of the usual philosophical problems in this area, what might God be like, does the
doctrine of Hell make sense, and such, but after a few pages I can tell it's going to be great. Rather than get really intellectual and
analytic about things, Smullyan is more imaginative. I think he does have some new ideas to bring to the table, but he doesn't focus on that
like some academic paper. I wonder sometimes how many other people know about him. My stepbrother, a philosophy professor, introduced me to
him, and Douglas Hofstadter clearly admires him, and that seems to be about it. I just about never see his books in stores. I know he has a
following though, otherwise his books wouldn't sell on eBay for occasionally exorbitant prices. I'm getting sidetracked though.

Though I've been busy, lately I've had a lot more time to do philosophical thinking. If there's any field I make a
real contribution to, well music or computer science would be nice, but philosophy would be really cool. Like Smullyan I don't want to get
bogged down in academics and obscure theories--what I'd like to do is imagine worlds and write dialogues, as thought experiments. So look for
my first attempts here.

Finally, I was thinking about puzzles. A while ago I wrote about Smullyan's book the Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes,
and how, difficult as the puzzles were to solve, they must have been much more difficult to construct. Today I thought about that again, and
about how there are some puzzles that are easier to make than to solve, for example, word searches, and some that are harder to make, such as
crosswords. I guess most good puzzles tend to fall into the latter category, but it is interesting that the two exist, and that often the
construction of puzzles becomes a real art in itself. The retrograde analysis chess problems in Smullyan's book were a great example of this,
they were really things of beauty. In each one, at first glance the position looks normal or only slightly unusual, and the problem, ranging
from "who moved last and what was the last move?" to "have any pieces been promoted in this game?" seems absolutely insurmountable. It could
be anything! But gradually you realize that it couldn't be anything, but only one thing, and that every piece on the board is part of the
delicate balance that narrows down the possibilities.

On the 2nd day, after a goodly sleep, Al and I set out on a free university bus into the "town" near the campus, which
is the town of Grand Anse beach, the biggest beach on the island and somehow connected to the college. We ate at Rick's, an interesting
place where you sort of do some of the work for them, in that you get two slips of paper along with your receipt, you have to take one across the
cafe and give it to the cooks to tell them what food to make for you, and the other one down the counter to the drink station, to get that. The
food slip says at the bottom "You are so nice!" and something else. Al remarked he had always wanted to keep one for the Engrish-like quality,
but that would mean paying for food and never getting it.

We then decided to walk on the road to St. George's, the capital city, and see
if somewhere we could get access to the beach. We never did , but along the way, we saw lots of very ramshackle houses with animals
like goats, roosters, dogs, and such hanging around, and a Catholic School. We also got honked at by every commercial vehicle that passed us,
offering us their services. We ended up walking all the way to St. George's, which wasn't all that far but seemed like it. When we got there the
place seemed pretty dead to me--there was only one street with commerce on it, and that was the street next to the water. I wanted to sit in a cafe
and watch the cricket match that much of Grenada seemed glued to their TVs for. I picked about the worst one--no game on, no beverages, it looked
like food had never been served there. Al got an orange juice, which like all the other orange juice in Grenada, tasted like grapefruit juice to
me.

That night we went to a party for the students celebrating the end of the school year. It was $10 US to get in, and then
all you can drink, the drink selection consisting of vodka, rum, pepsi, beer, and the Jamaican grapefruit soda called Ting (and any mixture
thereof). It was fairly typical of parties, but kind of better--most of the people were a lot calmer than at the bar or college party scene that
I am familiar with in an extremely limited way. I met several more of Al's friends, and had some decent conversations. The location was a
cafe/bar that's basically on the beach, so Al and I decided to go out onto the beach area. There we met THE MOST ENTHUSIASTIC TCBY EMPLOYEE IN
THE WORLD. He grabbed Al and started talking to him about the TCBY where we works, which other than KFC seems to be the only American food chain
to have made it there. It's also the "hangout" for a lot of the med students, which they laugh at themselves a bit for. This guy was so
enthusiastic about the economics of TCBY, how great it is, plans for expansion, that it was hard to believe he was just a cashier/server guy.
People at that leve here are generally so apathetic, and not without reason. He was shocked that I had never been to TCBY until I explained my
very recent arrival. A conversation about drinks ensued, culminating with his friend producing a drink seemingly out of nowhere. Now generally
it's ill-advised to take a drink under those circumstances, but in this case, date rape didn't seem too likely. They explained that it was Vodka
and Ting, and as soon as I started drinking it they were talking me out of it--"Don't drink it if you don't want to man, it's a fucked up drink."
I could understand why, because I really couldn't taste the alcohol, and people say that about a lot of drinks but I rarely find it that way
myself. Also I later remembered grapefruit can amplify the effects of things like alcohol. But this didn't do anything too bad to me.

Once the student bartenders were so drunk it was hard to get their attention, we took the bus back to the campus, and with
the combination of a bumpy ride, and some passengers looking really unhealthy, I felt sure there would be some vomiting, which would be really
unpleasant for at least a few people, since they pack the buses so tight. But somehow it didn't happen. As we started walking to the dorm I saw a
girl about our age pick up what appeared to be a dead rat off the road, and throw it into the grass. Now that is something you don't see every day.
"Vet students," Al's friend remarked--see the Medical students, they don't respect the Veterinary students too much. No regard. No esteem
either.

Before I talk about the next day of the trip, I want to say something about measurements. This occurred to me first
in thinking about measuring the circumference (if that can be used for non-circles) of island nations. It seems like this measurement could
be quite variable depending on the detail at which it is taken. If you're looking at a map that covers a large area, and you tried to measure
it from that, you'd be on the low end, because there are all sorts of little irregularities in there that aren't on the map. The same is true
to a smaller degree on a larger map just of that island, it includes a lot more of the smaller inlets and protrusions. What if you went further,
down to the level of tiny little protrusions, rocky areas or beach areas that are just big enough to add maybe 100 or 200 feet to the perimeter.
At this level the measurement will go up again, but by a larger or smaller amount than the first transition from smaller map to bigger map?
Probably smaller, but then again, it's kind of hard to say. Then we could go even further, to irregularities of just a few feet--now we're
not adding much to the measurement, but then again there are a whole lot of these little things. Then even further down, to tiny little areas,
and further, down to the perimeter going around the shape of a few grains of sand, to one grain of sand, going down the shape of each molecule,
and down to each atom. Of course it gets a bit silly down at that scale, since you've got tides going in and out, but still, it's fun to imagine
a measurement getting that crazy. I guess the increase in the measurement as the detail increases, would slow down and look like an asymptotic
function, but not truly asymptotic, because there's no one number that it could never reach.

Lastly, I have finally started up again my project for a dictionary of obscure, rare and arcane words. I have to finish
it before july, which is when I think I'll lose my access the online OED. Tonight I was able to make pretty good progress and finish the letter
F. I've gone through 9000 of the 27,425 words in the search query that I'm using, and selected about 600 of them for inclusion in my dictionary.
I think if I keep going at a steady pace now, I should be able to finish it.

On this day we took it easy, because we got up pretty late due to the party. We went to Grand Anse beach and pretended to
swim. We saw a lot of sand crabs. They were never far from their holes in the beach--as soon as I saw one, my next step would send him down into
the hole in a flash. I tried to look further ahead of where I was so I could get better looks, but this didn't work all that well. Their
camouflage was pretty good. The beach didn't have many good shells, or any sizable waves for that matter, which I suppose can be attributed to its
position on the west side of the island, not getting anything directly from the Atlantic. I got a picture of the sunset, which was the first
picture I had taken since just about 12 hours earlier, of the sunrise. That night we ate at the Sugar Shack, walked around some more, and watched
more episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force that we had been downloading. By this point I knew the theme song lyrics pretty well.

This day is a lot more interesting. We had a mission: to climb Mt. Qua Qua, in Grand Etang National Park. The main
obstacle, other than the climb, was getting there with Grenada's very ad hoc transportation system. Al, Faisal and I set out reasonably early,
taking a University bus into Grand Anse, and then a reggae bus to downtown St. George's. Now we realized why the city had looked so dead two days
ago: we had never gone through the Sendall Tunnel into the real city! This was a real city. The challenge before us was to find a reggae bus to
take us to Grand Etang. We feared not a lot of locals would be going there. Of course in Grenada you don't find the bus, the bus finds you. In
this case, a guy who was just standing against a building suddenly asked us where we wanted to go. When we told him, he said, "that's gonna be a
problem. The road that goes there, it's blocked off [or something], so you gotta... [something] Vendome, and you walk, a long way, uphill. Or
maybe you could find a cab to take you, for about $50 EC [$18 US]." Paranoia kicked in, but he wasn't trying to sell us a cab, he just kept saying
"go to the market" and "Vendome." So we went to the market, but we didn't know what the hell Vendome was, so we told a bus guy our destination,
and he said "Oh boy." and then pretty much said what the other guy had said, and to get into the bus which, coincidentally, he was about to get in
and be the conductor for.

That bus took us to what turned out to be the town of Vendome, closest to Grand Etang. The conductor pointed us to the road
we then had to walk. It didn't look blocked off to us, but then again it was somewhat understandable why they wouldn't want to take us a long way,
all uphill, for our lousy $3 EC (75 cents US, a deal I still can't believe). We stopped at the general store for some sustenance snacks--amazingly,
though this looked like a pretty small town, the food was still mostly American junk food sorts of items. I got some cookies that ended up being
about as tasty as Cookie Crisp cereal (i.e., not tasty).

The guy in St. George's was not kidding about the walk to Grand Etang, it was arduous as fuck. The road was paved and that
made the walking easy, but it was the steepest road I've ever seen. We got about 2/3 of the way up (though we didn't know that at the time) before
a car finally made an appearance, and the driver told us to get in and drove us the rest of the way. He asked $10 EC of each of us, and this was
almost the only time I felt ripped off in Grenada, but considering how nice it was not to have walked the rest of the way, I really didn't care.
He told us we had to pay an entry fee at a booth, but typically, there was no one there. As we walked to the trail head, we saw some locals eating
lunch, and they said "hey guys!" and gave a big thumbs up, while apparently snickering to themselves. This was understandable, as I was wearing
khakis and Faisal had on all black including Jnco jeans, but still, we'd show them.

I found the climb very pleasant. It mainly went along ridges, so the views were fantastic most of the way. The trail was
often narrow, with very steep drops on boths sides, but with a rainforest canopy of plant life rising out of it. The plant life turned out to be
almost more interesting than the animals--bamboo trees, gigantic leaves, actual tarzan-like vines. The only animals we really saw were hummingbirds
and little lizards, the rest were too fast and clever to be seen by the likes of us, though we sometimes heard their scurrying. The trail got
pretty steep and muddy (red clay-like mud) at some points, and this created some problems for Faisal, but we all made it up, and were rewarded with
more views, and the experience of watching clouds blow up the side of the mountain and right through us. On the way down Faisal ended up sliding a
lot, so he was pretty much covered with mud at the end of it. Not wanting to pay our driver any more, we walked down the long steep road to
Vendome. Faisal had been exhausted by the 3.5 hour climb, and walked like the living dead down that road.

Al and I got to the town about 15 minutes before him, so we sat down in the 'town square' with sodas. We must have looked
pretty funny sitting in a town with no tourist draw, with mud on our pants and shoes, because the locals were giving us some weird looks. When
Faisal got there, covered in mud and stumbling, an old man sitting on some steps said "the war is over boy, the war is over!" All the locals
walking through the square erupted in laughter, causing the man to repeat his comment several more times. Al and I couldn't help but join in. Once
that settled down (the old man was still laughing), we waited for the bus, slightly worried their concern for mud-free upholstery would strand us.
But they didn't notice, and we got home for some showers and rest. That night we went for some TCBY, and I recognized one employee from the party
(not the most enthusiastic employee in the world) but he didn't recognize me. When Faisal ordered a banana split one of them surreptitiously ran
out and bought some bananas. Good guys.

I continue with the Grenada story, but now another story must be told. I call this tale "Night Societies and Number Riots:
The Case of the Incredibly Long Wait for Radiohead Tickets which Ended in Failure Due to Problems of Group Dynamics." I'm not keeping anyone in
suspense about the failure part, because that would just make it more depressing. But I shall finish the Grenada story first, because I'm not sure
about the story capacity of my brain, and while this story is fresh, the Grenada story is fading.

I'm not sure quite how to describe what just happened to me...
I was standing next to my bed and leaned over to pick up the glass of milk that was on the bedside table, using my other arm on my bed to support
the lean. But things didn't go as planned, and my whole arm buckled, sending me onto the bed. Meanwhile my other hand managed to pick up the
glass of milk in the middle of that, wave it around a bit and spill some of it on the table, and then bring it to rest on the switch of the table
lamp, turning it on.

Ever since an uncomfortable nap on the plane back from Grenada, the pinky of my right hand, and the hand area below it, going
from the palm around to the back, have been 'asleep' or something like it. This ought to make the damage permanent.

Today we wrap up the Grenada story with Day 5, which wasn't that interesting, as it was a lot like Day 3, but it will include
what was technically Day 6, the trip home, which is sort of interesting.

Sometimes it's really crazy how many topics Douglas Hofstadter and I are both interested in. My latest reading is
"Metamagical Themas," a collection of columns he wrote in Scientific American from 1981-1983. The topics are so varied, and sometimes quite
unscientific, and the writing so freewheeling yet thoughtful, that it's hard to believe these really appeared in that magazine, and harder to believe
you'd see anything like it today, in any magazine. One column that struck my fancy was about the nature of nonsense, and the history of nonsense
writing. He didn't mention Finnegans Wake, because he feels there's a lot of meaning there, but he did cite a lot of other writing, including a few
really obscure things that I'm going to have to check out.

It got me thinking about what's easy and hard for people and computers. It's hard to
give computers all the creativity and common sense that we take for granted, so what might be hard for people and easy for computers, other
than the obvious, pure computation? I think nonsense might be another thing like this. It's very hard or maybe impossible for people to think truly
randomly. We always think in patterns, there are always connections between thoughts. Nonsense writers might be able to fool the reader by going
through many connections before writing down the next idea, thereby disguising the trail, but it's really quite hard to disguise it completely, and
not create another trail with all the disguising attempts.

I'm reminded of an exercise in the cryptology class I took, in which we were asked to write a sequence of 40 1's and 0's,
and try to make it as random as possible. We then ran algorithms that measured randomness, and of course found that most of our compositions were
obviously not random, because of our tendency to have thoughts like "hmm, that's a lot of 0's in a row, better get back to 1's" or vice versa.

This may not be very novel, because the whole disguising process, like the algorithms computers use to produce "random"
numbers, is perhaps just a lot more computation! But it's certainly a different kind of computation, because we have to sort of try not to think
too much, to avoid the patterns.

On the last full day of the trip we decided to again take it easy, because we were pretty tired and sore from the previous
day's hike. Actually we didn't take it that easy, but relatively, yes. We wanted to check out the vibrant city of St. George's that we had passed
through the previous day on the way to Grand Etang. So we took the bus through the tunnel and started walking around. It was a bit of a challenge
to find good things to bring back that weren't trashy at all. In fact a lot of the merchandise for sale in the street market and the stores there
consisted of food, spices, bootleg CD's, and clothing that I would never wear. Like everywhere else in Grenada, the city is on a hill, so we walked
to the top and found more amazing views. On the way back down we saw the Parliament house. There were roosters walking around outside it, and some
officials managing to sound very dignified while speaking in the Caribbean accent. Then we walked to the other side of the city, which is the fort,
a very old one. It's also the site where the prime minister and several others were executed after the coup in 1983. One of the names of the other
executees was Unison Whiteman, which I thought was pretty cool, at least the Unison part.

After that we went back to Grand Anse beach. Al couldn't find peace on the sand because of all the crabs. I rented snorkling
gear and swam around some. The only wildlife I spotted were the little spiky things that I believe are called sea anemones, a few little tropical
fish, and a starfish. The fish were fun to watch because of the way they would let themselves be thrown around a bit by the waves, and then
eventually decide to swim on their own.

That night a lot of students were getting leaving, as they had been the whole time I was there. Almost all the flights were
at 6am or 8am, and no one seemed to mind staying up the whole night for it. That was a cool thing about the campus, you could walk around at any
hour of the day or night, and at least a few other people would be casually walking around. But not because they were out partying, they were just
up, used to studying all night I guess. I found it very enjoyable to be in a whole community of insomniacs. We walked around and said goodbye to
people, and watched the clouds speed across the sky illuminated by the moon. The cats were out skulking around as usual.

I had procrastinated about calling for a cab to the airport, since it had proved to be about the most expensive one thing in
Grenada at $9 US. As usual the path of least resistance prevailed, and I shared a cab with another leaving student. The airport was closed when
we got there and we had to sit outside it for about a half hour. When they did open it, one of the automatic doors wasn't being very automatic, and
had to be held open. The line was excruciatingly slow as they inspected the contents of every checked bag. A lot of the students were getting
royally screwed by a rule stating that all checked bags could only weigh 70 pounds together, because when they came here it was 70 pounds per bag,
and naturally they had acquired a lot of heavy books there. So they frantically ran to the scales to test their bags, and transfer things to their
carry-on bags if necessary. One obnoxious guy in a Scholes jersey, whose bags were obviously too heavy, talked loudly of trying to "bribe this guy."

I managed to stay awake long enough to snap an aerial picture of the campus right after we took off; after that everything
is a blur. I remember thinking to myself "Stay awake, take a picture" and then instantly blacking out, awake, more little thoughts, "should stay
awake, get food," then out again. When we got to San Juan I was so tired I couldn't think straight, and my plans of taking my 4 hour layover to
explore outside the airport quickly evaporated. Instead I collapsed in a seat at my departure gate and slept, occasionally waking up to see more
people sitting around me, and wondering what my face must have looked like after being pressed against my hand and jacket. My seatmate on the flight
back to New York was nice enough to wake me for lunch. For the little time I was awake on both flights, I was totally amazed and inspired by the
appearance of the clouds from above. The variety of shape and texture, and the light patterns, and the hugeness, is really something. The whole
time really I was just drifting anyway.

The past few days have seen a flurry of transportation related problems that have left me slightly exasperated, but mostly
nonplussed (Oxford English Dictionary: "Brought to a nonplus or standstill; at a nonplus; perplexed; embarrassed" just to clear things up). First
was Saturday, when Ho Ying's driver side windshield wiper malfunctioned in the middle of the endless rainstorm, resulting in a harrowing drive
back to Queens. Given, it was a lot more harrowing for him, and the day was later redeemed, but it fits the pattern nonetheless. Sunday, on the
train back from band practise in New Jersey, a train ahead of us malfunctioned and somehow caused the rails to lose power. We were stuck in the
tunnel, somewhere under Weehawken, for nearly 3 hours. At one point near the end of it, the lights and air conditioning suddenly came back on to
exuberant applause. We continued to sit still though, and the conductor announced that we were still awaiting further instructions. "Just fucking
go!" someone shouted. Then everything went back off. Eventually we backed out of the tunnel we were in, and went in another tunnel to get to Penn
Station. The experience was certainly made more unpleasant by the loud snoring of the man across from me during the entire ordeal, and by the
periodic vomiting of a 20-something passenger in the bathroom right behind Snoring Man. A good thing happened during this time though, I started
writing lyrics again, decent ones that mean something.

Today was more of a trio of small mishaps. First, I missed my intended train back from band practise and had to wait an
extra 50 minutes. Next, I fell asleep on the train with a Coke in my hand, and spilled it all over my jacket, shirt, and pants. Yes, all my
clothing got its fair dosage. Last, the train inexplicably repeated the actions of the previous night, only without the 3 hour wait. It entered
the tunnel, stopped and sat for several minutes, and then backed out a long way and went in another entrance. I would follow the bass player's
lead and boycott them, but oh yes, I don't have a choice.

Of course by writing this entry now I'm sort of assuming that nothing else will happen, and therefore this was the best
time to write it. So if something else does happen, the misfortune will be compounded by the ruining of my neat and tidy complaint entry. But I
have a solution, if something bad happens I simply won't write about it.

P.S. I just noticed there was another pattern in these three days, of something good happening as well (the first day it was
a great meal at Checkers and some great fun blowing things up with firecrackers). Except there wasn't really anything for today. The best thing
about today was some good Chicken fingers from a place called Ta-Ta's Pizza, where the bags are from Miami Subs and the napkins are from Nathan's.
So, oh well.

Words I use too much:
just
actually
really
hopefully
unfortunately
that's all I can think of right now, I'm sure there are others.

wordmonger - one who deals in words, especially in strange or pedantic words, or in empty words without sense or substance (originally contemptuous).

Also, I'd like to say that I am getting back into the game of putting things in my AIM profile or away messages. Music has started to really do
things to me again. I think I might have another record in me soon. Hopefully the timing will happen. These days are doing numbers on me.

Uh, one more thing. Why do I never refer to people by their names when talking to them? I never do it, unless I need to get their attention, and
even then I tend more to a shoulder tap or a "hey" or "yo" or something. Something about names is embarrassing.

It was way too quiet at the Princeton train station tonight, returning from band practise. Not even car sounds. Then there
are these amtrak trains that go by at incredible speeds, clearing the station in a few seconds. I leaned against the railing and looked down at the
plants below for a while, thinking 'would this make a good photograph? could a flash be used?' After a few minutes I got back up to look for the
train, and when I turned around saw a spider crawling along the railing toward where I had been. Holy crap, if I hadn't gotten up that spider
probably would have crawled onto me. Who knows how long it might have been before I noticed it, or in what frightening circumstances?

I've long had my most interesting thoughts in moments of dozing off and waking up again--microsleeps as they are sometimes
called. Not really very different from normal dreams, but often more connected to the situation you're in, and more interesting because you can
almost feel the memory of it fading from your mind as you wake up and redistribute your mental energy to understanding what's actually going on.
I had one on the train tonight. I had the four fingers of my right hand holding the book I was reading, and I tapped the book with the nail of
my ring finger, and at the same time thought of our band's singer's mother saying to me, "we tried to hear your signal, but we were only checking
the index finger" so they hadn't been able to find me. Damn I thought, why did I use the ring finger?

The sky was brown this morning and now it's brown again. Much darker, but somehow the same brown. What is this? Amazingly
it was sunny in New Jersey, in the afternoon. It really ought to be the other way around.

Today I saw a hot dog stand with a sign that said $1 hot dogs. I was very tempted to get one, but there are appeared to be
no one operating the stand. I considered simply taking a hot dog, but rejected that, and then thought of the much more Kramer-esque implications of
trying to run the stand myself for a little while. But I decided against it for my usual reasons. One of these days I'll have to get myself into
a state where I can have adventures like this. It would certainly make for more interesting blog entries.

Been thinking a lot lately about what makes music good, and about whether I should think about it so much. Have also seen a
couple of utterly amazing performances. It gets hard, when your confidence is broken repeatedly into smaller and smaller pieces, to think you can
ever have the power over an audience that these people had over me. Eventually there is no audience and it doesn't matter anymore, which is part of
a larger thing I'll have to write. But I'm trying not to think about that stuff. Whatever way the wind blows, whichever way
the world goes, is perfectly alright with me.

Perhaps I'm using the word odyssey too loosely, but that's what these weekends feel like. I went out to new jersey saturday
thinking we were going to play an outdoor show in Princeton. When I got there I was told it was cancelled for rain and we'd be practising instead.
Brilliant. The show might be Sunday, but probably not, because as I was told many times, God hates our band, and besides, rain in the northeast on
a weekend in the past few months is a matter of near certainty.

That night we celebrated Scott the singer's birthday with some bar-hopping, which I still don't understand the appeal of.
Scott was very wary of running into people he knew, like hipsters or jocks or pretty much anyone else our age. Hanging out with Scott and his friends
was one of these times where they keep talking about people they know, and to me it's just meaningless names, although often interesting ones. "Jen
Shine. Wow." "Laura Levy." "Dan Cava, man, Dan Cava." Indeed. After several hours of work on my obscure word dictionary while the others slept,
I made camp on their coffee table, with a phone book and two oven mitts as a pillow.

It's been occasionally fashionable, ever since the Ramones, to refer to members of local bands by their first name + the name
of their band. This would make make me Jay Attitude, which perhaps could be shortened to Jattitude. Jaytitude. Or Jadedtude.

Sunday came and amazingly, despite consistent drizzling and misting, we played the show and there were plenty of people there.
Mike Attitude addressed the Princeton audience with a rousing "Hello rich people!" Ben Attitude kept complaining that his drums were creeping, so
we got a punk kid to sit in front of the bass drum for the rest of the set. We all thank him for sacrificing his ability to hear. All in all I think
we sounded excellent, with only one noticeable fuckup in 10 or 11 songs. Somewhere in the middle, my index and middle fingers opened up their fury,
and sprayed blood all over the pickups and pickguard of Scott's guitar, and my hand and arm, continuing to do so for the rest of the set. This has
happened at most of the full band rock shows I've played since freshman year of college, and I find it really nice. It's actually quite a cool
sensation on the hand, and somehow 'purifying.' Also, I have no evidence for this as yet, but I think girls really think it's cool, so I usually
walk around with it for a while refusing to wash it off.

We're going on tour in a couple of weeks but it feels like I've been on tour for the past few weeks. It's a hellish tour
where we keep going back and forth and playing new jersey over and over again!

On the way back from work, I enjoy looking down off the elevated 1/9 platform at the businesses below. The one directly
below where I usually stand is a tiny lot of used cars for sale between two buildings. This fits the neighborhood, in which you are apparently only
allowed to run one of six types of business: car lot, car repair, car sound, carwash, gas station, bodega. This lot seems to have fairly rapid
turnover and there is always some activity there. This usually takes the form of heated discussions between the proprietors and unknown parties,
with a lot of handshaking and hugging, emphatic hand waving, driving of cars around on the sidewalk, and so on. I like to think by looking directly
down on them I have an insider's view into any shady business dealings they might have. They never think to look up at me.

It seems the good weather has brought New Yorkers right back up to their old selves. Today I went to J&R for a new
electronics gadget. They have an odd system where you give a salesman the merchandise, then go pay for it, then pick it up in another area on your
way out. I went to the pickup area with my receipt and the guy seemed to be kind of ignoring me. I got a bit irritated when a woman walked up and
he immediately took her receipt and delivered her purchases, thinking, typical screwover. Then he suddenly says "oh I'm sorry, I didn't see you had
it" and takes mine. I say "it's okay" and he says "no, it's not okay" and gives me the gadget. I walk out thinking I guess he's not so typical,
although he needn't get down on himself. Then I hear someone calling out down the street, and after the third round I turn and see it's the pickup
guy, calling to me. I think oh great, they want to check my bag again to make sure I didn't steal anything, right? Instead he stuffs a t-shirt into
my bag and says "this is for the grave injustice." A bit melodramatic, but what a guy! The t-shirt is for the J&R Summerfest, and features the
statue of liberty wearing sunglasses and playing the trumpet.

I then got a hot dog, I'm not sure why I'm mentioning that, but there was something very earnest about the hot dog guy, and
the dog was only $1. But as I was walking through City Hall Park I passed an old guy saying to someone next to him on the bench, "it's good to be
able to enjoy life." So, it was a very nice span of a few minutes there.

With that out of the way, how about the past several days. On Saturday I had a box social, and it was almost a disaster
which I was very late for, but turned out pretty well in the end. Getting Gray's Papaya at 4:30 in the morning is happiness. On Sunday I had a great
time walking around with Al, who decided on a whim to take the bus here from Michigan. We made a huge zigzag around downtown, going up from the
Trade Center site, across Canal, back across Houston, back across 4th St., up to the Strand, and then home where he helped me create some more sound
effects.

On Monday and Tuesday I took what I believe to be my first ever business trip, to report to the army on our progress with
the robot. It was quite intense, with a panel made up of Colonels, MDs and PhDs, who were quite harsh on some of the projects, but loved ours. By
the by, this might be a good time to present another summary of the projects I'm involved in, and the various ways in which I refer to them:
Robot = the surgeon = Dr. Treat = Robotic Surgical Tech
Band = tour = A+ Attitude = emo
Dark Alloy = Game Boy Advance (GBA) Game = Ed = sound effects/music
Dictionary = Obscure and Archaic Word Dictionary = OED Project

That is all.

Last night was a good last night in NYC for a while. I picked up my new addiction, fresh mozzarella from zabar's, along
with some chicken salad and a baguette. Later I got sushi alone across the street, which was a very calming and pleasant experience. When the chefs
get bored they make little things and hand them out to people sitting at the bar--I got Toro with special sauce, which was very tasty. Before I left
they also made me an orange that was sliced up in a really cool way. Since then I've spent the night getting ready for what is to be my main
occupation for the next 5 weeks or so, a tour around the country with my new band. A spectrum of things
could happen to this site in that time. I could update it every now and then from the journal I'll be keeping in my shiny pure white iBook. I could
not have the chance to update it, and this entry will sit here for a long time keeping you company. Or either of those things could happen, and the
site could then go down because I lose my umich web space. So, we shall see what happens.

After staying up all night packing and readying, I wait for Scott to pick me up, watching the Blind Swordsman on IFC. It turns out he overslept, and we
may well not make it to Ypsilanti in time for our first show, at the Elbow Room. On Riverside Dr. we are behind a taxi attached to a big truck with a film
crew and cameras on it; we decide it may be for Spiderman 2.

The van has been very nicely equipped by Mike with two LCD screens mounted behind the front seats, attached to a VCR and a DVD player. We
later discover that one of the LCDs vibrates rather vigorously when the van is at speed. I sleep a lot on the trip, sometimes suddenly in the middle of a
conversation.

A planned lunch in Pittsburgh, prepared by Mike�s mother, turns into a quick handoff at a gas station and a meal on the road because of our lateness. It is
delicious nonetheless.

A quirk of the van that I quickly discover is that the front passenger seat is by far the least desirable. It has very little legroom and lacks the LCD screens
that the back seats now have. It may improve however, when we get a car adaptor for the CD player, and this seat provides control over music in the
van.

We stop to take a Polaroid of an overpass that bears the name "Fangboner Rd." This is to be the first in a collection of photos of humorous road and
place names. Unfortunately the Polaroid camera has an incredibly wide field of view, and I was unable to get close enough to capture the sign in detail
without endangering my life.

Somehow we get to the Elbow Room in time to play, but we have been unable to coerce any of our friends into showing up. The audience is small but
friendly, and we play decently, then get out of there and come to ann arbor. Thankfully we are not victims of the lighted "LAST SONG" sign that hangs
on a wall next to the stage.

In Ann Arbor I hook up with the Dark Alloy team at their HQ in my former apartment, hard at work and deprived of sleep, just as they are ready to take a
break and see Terminator 3. After all the work I�ve been doing on sound effects, I find myself paying a lot of attention to the sound, which is excellent. I
cannot tell you how much I enjoy sleeping on the old couch in the apartment.

It is strange to be back in Ann Arbor at this point. It hasn�t been long enough for real nostalgia or reminiscence, but it is long enough that it�s not normal to
be here. It�s also strange to be in my apartment now that it isn�t my apartment, and without the people that used to hang around it. We don�t play a
show today, instead we get various things done and I attend a Dark Alloy meeting.

Tonight, settling onto the couch and watching the lightning for a bit, I have a dream experience that is unique in my memory, rather unpleasant, and at the
time, seemingly profound. As I am falling asleep, I see someone come up and start tapping me, trying to wake me up. I try to say "okay, I�m awake" or
"what is it?" but find myself unable to speak, or make any sound at all. Becoming panicky, I try desperately to communicate something to this person.
The only thing I can do is tap my index finger on my collarbone, where the hand is resting. I do this repeatedly while continuing to try to speak, but the
person does not seem to notice. Finally I awake with something of a jolt, and I think I say "okay I�m awake" as I had been trying to do for so long. I
realize now that I was dreaming at least to some extent, because although the environment of the dream was very similar to my real environment at the
time, I was in the other room of the apartment in the dream, and on the floor, and there is no person there. I have willed myself awake with the panicking.

The reason I consider this a profound experience is that I believe I really was tapping my finger on my shoulder when I did it in the dream. When we
sleep, and dream, of course our physical movements are somehow disabled, so that when we talk in a dream we don�t really talk, but we think we are
talking. Of course sometimes we really do talk, or make other movements. In this case it seems the inverse happened: I didn�t really talk, and was also
aware that I was not talking, rather than thinking I was talking in the dream. And I was really tapping my finger, and was aware of that. Now it�s quite
possible that this was simply a dream in which I was unable to speak, and maybe I wasn�t really tapping my finger at all. But it�s also possible that I was
somehow in an in-between state, in the processes of shutting down my physical movements and convincing me that I was really doing things like talking
in dreams. My mouth had been shut down, but I still perceived correctly whether I was talking, and the same was true for the rest of my body, except
my finger, which was still moving in the real world. When I think about it now this scenario seems less likely than it did when I first woke up from the
dream, but it�s still a tantalizing thought.

Today we drive to Chicago, but our show there fell through, so we are merely tourists. I�ve decided by now that ignorance is bliss for me on this
tour--the less I know about where we're going, where we're playing, and where we�re staying, the better. Que sera, sera. If I overhear something, it's
alright, but I�m not going to actively pursue any information. Perhaps this is a result of reading Smullyan's "The Tao is Silent."

After reaching our hotel we take a shuttle to O'Hare and then the train into the downtown area. Once on the subway/el, my instincts kick in and I fall asleep.
Chicago's system shares an annoying feature with Boston's: the maps in the cars don�t show any geographical features, and aren�t spatially accurate at all,
they just look like a bunch of colored lines going in 90 and 45 degree angles on a white background. I�m sure this is fine for residents, but it doesn't help
out-of-towners much. At some point we simply decide to get off, having no idea whatsoever where we are (which is fine by me of course). We are in
downtown alright, but it's pretty desolate, like a lot of downtowns other than New York's. A lot of skyscrapers, but few people, and all the stores and
eateries are closed. Eventually we find a restaurant where the others can get deep dish pizza; I abstain.

Walking around some more, we find some cooler stuff. Apparently it's a law in Chicago that every office building have a piece of corporate art in front of
it. The Sears tower does not look very impressive, I must say. It isn't majestic and the TV/radio towers at the top are providing a lot of its height. But
getting to the cool stuff, we find a park where an amphitheatre is under construction that can only have been designed by Frank Gehry or a rabid imitator.
This is quite fortuitous, as I have just mentioned how much I�d like to see some Gehry buildings on the tour. Seeing one in the middle of construction is
equally interesting, and I can tell you now this is going to be some amphitheatre. Seen from afar it reminds me of the alien travel machine from "Contact,"
on a smaller scale.

Back at the hotel we discover some pita bread left by previous occupants behind the dresser. Everyone is disgusted and no one does anything about
it. It doesn�t bother me all that much.

We leave Chicago to drive through Wisconsin to Minneapolis. In Wisconsin we stop twice buy cheese. I make the mistake of buying Colby in a wax
cylinder shell and then realizing I did forget my swiss army knife. But the other cheese is very tasty.

The show tonight is in the basement of a Taco restaurant, a place rather reminiscent of the Halfass. I never figure out what arrangement allows them to
have shows here. The proprietor of the taco establishment is concerned about the time the show ends, but other than that is very nice. The food isn't
bad.

The PA is pretty sorry here, but the clientele seems alright. A lot of emo/hip people, but some of them are girls, and they all seem pretty harmless and
interested in the music. The sound guy has a policy I can appreciate: a 20 minute set, because if you�re playing here, the audience is probably hearing
you for the first time, and they don�t need 10 songs to decide if they like you. The audience seems to enjoy our music, but they don�t talk to us much
afterward, at least not to me. The other bands are pretty good, although they do more screaming than I think necessary.

The bass player from one of the other bands is kind enough to let us stay in the living room of his very nice apartment. Once we all go to bed the place
turns into some kind of sound chamber--none of us can make a move without causing some loud noise. I take my shoes off and one smacks into a glass
table...The armchair where Mike reclines un-reclines itself explosively...I open the door and the loose knob knocks against its fitting...other unidentified
crashes and booms sound with no apparent provocation at all. But eventually we find sleep.

Driving down the middle of Minnesota, we enter Iowa, stopping for a late lunch in its capital, Des Moines. It seems we are culinarily cursed, because
while everything in Chicago closed at 5pm, before we had arrived, everything here opens at 5pm, in more than an hour. This includes "Judge Roy
Bean�s Eatin� and Drinkin� Emporium," to our great disappointment.

Our show today is at RNS Skateboard Shop in Omaha, Nebraska. We already found out this morning that a band dropped out, leaving one other band
playing. When we get there we are told by two approximately 12 year-old employees that the show is cancelled. Eventually an adult appears and
explains that the show�s organizer is a flaky kid with good intentions who has been scheduling lots of shows that were never meant to happen. As
compensation for our trouble he offers us beverages. We make a brief attempt to get on a show at a bowling alley where we originally meant to play,
but find a whole lot of Goth kids hanging out in front, and some MTV beach house denizens playing volleyball in the back. Neither group is likely to
enjoy watching us.

A show ruled out, we try to make the best of our night in Omaha. I suggest that it is a perfect opportunity for some dumpster diving, but no one else is
up for it. I really need several different circles of friends to accommodate all my interests.

We leave Omaha and drive across Missouri to St. Louis. Our show isn�t until tomorrow, so we go to our hotel, where the only other guests we see are
the members of a junior baseball team called the Cobras. They seem to be traveling with a rather large entourage of adults, and having a big pizza
party in the lobby and hallways. Their rooms are marked with their names like college dorm rooms, and the coach�s room is directly across from ours.
When we settle into our room I decide to do a bit of peep-hole spying on the coach�s room, and I see a woman going in and out of it. Then it looks like
the room has some kind of haze in it, but I think it must be an illusion. Then I hear a beeping noise... Mike opens the door and sure enough, smoke is
billowing out of the coach�s room. I suspect a fire but it turns out one of the team moms burnt a muffin in the room�s microwave. The smell is quite
offensive for a mere muffin. The scene is chaotic as kids from the team run around the room and hallway waving pillows in the air to scatter the smoke,
and another team mom holds a pillow over the smoke alarm.

After things settle down we go out for dinner, and then into downtown Seattle. The only obvious point of interest is the Arch, which looks amazing, and
actually casts a shadow on the clouds from the lights on the ground illuminating it. But the interior is closed and it�s too dark for photos, so we resolve to
come back tomorrow to go to the top.

Again I request some dumpster diving, and though the others think this would probably be a good place for it, they aren�t up for it tonight, promising we
will do it on the morrow.

Today is our show in St. Louis. We head back to the Arch, but it ends up being too late for our trip to the top, because we will be late for the show. So
we resolve to return tomorrrow morning, for the third time in as many days.
The show is at the "Lemp Arts Center," which sounds like an arena or something, but it�s actually closer to a large living room, with lots of comfy old
armchairs and couches, and no real PA. As the show approaches it looks like not many people are going to show up, and Scott and Mike start talking
about how embarrassed they are, and how Scott�s relatives are going to be quickly disabused of the notion that he�s a rock star, and even murmur about
cancelling a large portion of the rest of the tour, I have no idea why. Me, I don�t really care how many people there are. Maybe it�s that I�m not as
emotionally invested in the band as they are. Maybe it�s my perspective as a former booking person, when I hated hearing bands whine about the
venue or lack of audience. I don�t think a band in our position, playing in a city where no one has ever heard of us, needs to be embarrassed about a
small audience. But I do think Scott and Mike are learning not to trust other bands when we ask if they�re going to draw people to the show. What are
they going to say, no? It�s kind of a rude question anyway. But that�s enough out of me.
So we stick it out and play the show, and it goes very well, people seem to really like us. My right hand bleeds for the first time on the tour, the only
indicator I need. The band after us is called Catatomic, and we all have a feeling they are going to be really good. It turns out the hunch is accurate, they
really are awesome. The best comparison I can make is Built to Spill, with some great unconventional chord progressions, cool piano, and very
excellent vocals from their singer, Sebastian Bach.

After the show we want to hang out with the Catatomic guys and their friends, and they suggest the Courtesy Diner. It�s a 24 hour diner that has existed
since 1935, and looks like real 50s, with prices almost as low. We all goof around for a while and have some good diner food, then we hang out outside
and discuss whether or not St. Louis is part of the Bible Belt. A woman exiting the diner enters the discussion briefly, saying it is a very sinful city,
because of the "titty bars" across the river in East St. Louis.
Several minutes later some clean-cut young diner patrons start staring and pointing at us, and then two of them come outside. I cannot possibly
exaggerate their behavior--think David Spade�s character in PCU, only moreso. They tell us that the restaurant employees don�t like us being here, then
move onto careers. They ask some of us where we work, we reply that we are musicians, they snicker (too bad they didn�t ask me). One of them
proudly says he works at A.G. Edwards, but is rebuffed when Mike honestly asks "what�s that?" He says "you know the movie Wall Street? it�s like
that." They also talk about high schools, saying "see you�re not from around here. Usually we judge people by what high school they went to here. If
they went to private school, ok, if not, [brushing aside motion]." When Mike asks one of their names he says, "Greg Christian, and don�t you fuckin� forget
it." We decide this resolves the Bible Belt question.
Eventually it becomes clear that the guy thought we had made a lewd remark at his girlfriend and that he�d like to have it out with Mike, but we make it
clear that we didn�t, and he backs down. Before they go inside, Mr. A.G. Edwards seriously pulls the fake handshake--hand through hair maneuver.
Wow, these guys really define the word 'prick.'

When we get near home we realize we didn�t leave a tip for the waitress in the diner, and get into a debate about whether or not we should go back now
and give her something. We get into a lot of debates. Three of us want to go back, so we do, and she is very appreciative.

Today we start the drive from St. Louis to Lawrence, Kansas, but our show isn�t until tomorrow, so we can take it easy and just get to Kansas City,
directly across Missouri on the western border. But first, we go back to the Arch and, after some more debates, go to the top. It�s a nice view,
blah blah blah. Then we go to lunch with Scott�s uncle, who was nice enough to get our hotel room in town for these two days. Curiously though, the
other two band members had packages sent by their families to him so they could receive them here, and it appears he opened both of them, and watched
some of the videotape that was included in one. Apparently he's not big on 'boundaries.'

It�s nice driving and looking for a motel because they put their prices and features on billboards, so you can comparison shop. The only problem is
remembering it all and then finding the motel. We settle on one that purports to offer internet access. It turns out this consists of a data port in
the room�s phone, and oddly, some wireless access points in the hallway. Guess I should�ve gotten an airport. But in the circumstances, the best we
can do is pull the cable going into the access point out of the ceiling and put it into my computer. This means using the computer in the hallway,
where there are security cameras, but no one bothers us.

In the morning we catch a showing of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which is so absurd, even I cannot sufficiently suspend my disbelief. On
the way out, the car doesn�t start. It seems like a dead battery. Mike is a gold AAA member, so we call them, and a mechanic arrives very quickly to
give us a jump. We�re all a bit unsettled by this, but are assured that if we leave the motor running for a few hours, the battery should be okay.

We get to Lawrence, Kansas without further ado, and well, the venue is a park. It�s a nice park, and there�s a piece of paper saying we have the area
reserved for the day, which is kind of cool: we drove to Kansas and there�s a piece of paper with our name on it. There aren�t a lot of people
though, so that again is a concern.

Things again go pretty well anyway. The local band that is headlining draws a lot of kids, and several of them buy our CD. Outdoor shows are always
a little weird, but considering this is very much a DIY operation, it�s pretty good, although I fuck up a lot because my hand is cramped up and
bloody.

Tonight we go out to a bar with the bass player of the headlining band and some of his friends. This is the first time we�ve really done this and
it�s a good time. His friends are college students, and they�re very intelligent and progressive people, which I guess defies my stereotype of
Kansas. We talk for a while and they get rather drunk, then we go to another bar where the bartender does cool tricks like throwing the bottles
and breathing fire. They tell us many details of their personal lives--Scott reports that the guy of the guy-girl pair is obviously in the closet,
despite having a girlfriend, and resorts to fondling Scott�s chest at one point. Later we make an attempt at going dumpster diving, but Barnes and
Noble locks up their magazines (which there are a LOT of), and right after we go there, our two new friends seem very intent on going home. So we go
back to Tim the bass player of the headlining band�s house, where he is cat-sitting for five cats. The cats are very cute and act very funny, but I
am horribly allergic to them, so I sleep outside on a couch on the porch. I�m definitely sleeping in some interesting places on this trip--no beds
yet, mind you.

I am awakened on this sunny and scorchingly hot Bastille Day by the irritating song of a Blue Jay who flits about several feet away. Going back into
the house for two minutes, I manage to pick up more cat-stuff and am terribly congested and dehydrated for the first two hours after we set out. The
others have been talking about how they think there might still be something wrong with the van, but being a non-driver, I don�t have much to say on
the issue. To my delight, we stop in Manhattan... Manhattan, Kansas that is. Apparently people don�t eat a lot in Manhattan because we can only find
two restaurants, but it is a nice little town. Nice to pass through that is.

After another hour or so of travel, Mike suddenly reports that he is unable to accelerate. We slow down, Mike reports the steering is going as well,
and we stop. The car is unable to move. We get out to try to figure out where the fuck we might be. There is absolutely nothing in sight except
fields and one overpassing road. We set off to find a milemarker; the road is unlabeled; Mike calls AAA. As we walk around, we begin to appreciate
how truly hot it is. It�s really really hot (We later find out it�s about 101, with a heat index of 115). We start to think about how much water we
have and how long it might take for help to arrive. The water is extremely warm.

Fortunately, it doesn�t take long. A towtruck was already out our way picking up a small SUV which is on the bed of his truck. He hooks us up to the
back and we are on our way. He lets Scott and me ride in the SUV with our seats all the way down which is quite an experience, kind of like flying.
At the auto place, it becomes apparent that everyone is going home for the day and we�ll have to spend the night in Salina, Kansas, which we later
find out is exactly equidistant between New York City and Los Angeles.

After a long buffet dinner, we finally do some real dumpster diving. There are several promising retail establishments, but either the garbage just
got picked up, or they never do anything but take lunch breaks, because all they have is food. One appliance store has a large TV and several
refrigerators. We decide the best thing to be done is to smashy smashy, but for now we move on. Amazingly, the best finds in town are at the
goodwill thrift store, which has a large dumpster that looks like the entire contents of the store were thrown into it. The best item is a small
portable TV, but there are also a lot of funny Christian books, some caution tape-like stuff, a bizarre exercise device that could be good for
smashing with, and a �Paymaster� stamping machine that originally cost $134 and is way heavier than it should be. Overall, I�d have to rate it my
most successful mission yet, and certainly an educational one.

The car is reportedly fixed and we head out of Salina with the hope of reaching Denver. Scott wants to name the van Salina, which as we found out from the mechanic, is pronounced like "saliva." We make good time, going across a lot of the flattest land I've ever seen, and finally seeing the mountains.

On the way to a restaurant where they cut off your tie if you walk in with one on, Mike announces that either we have run out of gas, or something
else is causing the van to once again cease to move. We come to a stop at a rather dangerous spot on the highway. Mike for some reason decides she
might still have some life in her, starts her again, and goes another 25 feet or so, slowly. The van is now sitting on a triangular patch of pavement
between a busy highway and a busy onramp: 'certain fucking death' as I call it, so we get out and AAA receives yet another call. But after a few
minutes we flag down a passing tow truck, and he agrees to put us on his truck's bed and take us to a gas station. One thing we've been learning is
that mechanics are crazy but fun drivers. After putting us in the van on top of the truck and saying "hold on", this guy brazenly pulls onto the
highway, goes a few hundred feet, then turns around on a spot of dirt in the ditch between the halves of the highway, and gets going the other way.
This may not sound very crazy, but it is, and we're going to have some photos to prove it. A refueling gets us on our way again.

Dinner is a less adventurous affair, and by and by we find our way to the venue. It's a bar and by far the most professional venue of the tour so
far. We missed the first band, but they and their fans seem to have stuck around. While we play, they dance, and they dance as if there were country
or 50s pop music playing. It's very bizarre. At one point they even form a large conga line. I find it hard not to view this as some giant
sarcastic gesture, but it isn't one, which some prove by purchasing our CD.

We stay at the night at the Boulder, CO home of Renzo, boyfriend of Scott's sister. He's a sculptor/architect, and his home is littered with cool,
curvaceous sculptures, which we dreadfully fear knocking over as we make camp on the floor.

In the morning we take the van to a mechanic to take care of the problems it still seems to be having: veering to the left when the brakes are
depressed, air conditioning turning on and off sporadically, etc. Meanwhile, we have found out that our next show, in Salt Lake City, has been
cancelled. This, along with other factors, causes Ben the drummer to announce that he is strongly considering quitting the tour and going home. This
is discussed for a while, and we come up with a contingency plan: we previously dropped off our acoustic guitars in Pittsburgh so we could retrieve
them to play the last show in Washington DC acoustically. These will be shipped to Scott�s parents in Seatlle, and we will play the rest of the shows
on the tour acoustically.

That done for now, we take the bus into downtown Denver for the evening. We walk up and down the 16th street mall, a very nice strip with a lot of
panhandlers who don�t look particularly like panhandlers. Later we find the Denver mint, and after walking its perimeter have an interesting chat
with a US Mint Police officer. He tells us that the coins are transported to federal reserve banks in normal 18-wheel trucks, because no criminal
could get very far with a truckload of coins--an unusually rational stance. Much more valuable is the gold kept here, 25% of the government�s
holdings. Presumably because of that, ever since 9-11 one needs a request to a congressman and a background check before a tour of the premises is
allowed. When Mike asks if we are being watched he reveals that �several people mentioned you were walking around, that�s why I came out to talk to
you.� But we seem pretty safe, he says, since we don�t have accents. This comment figures later tonight in a protracted debate about profiling in
airport security.

The van is reportedly repaired, and so we are to head in the general direction of Idaho Falls, ID, where our next show now lies. Unfortunately, Ben
has more or less decided now to go home, and becomes more certain when we find out the Seattle show has been cancelled, or to be more precise, we
have been eliminated from it. The question is whether or not he will play the Idaho show, because we will not have acoustic guitars and therefore
cannot play it without him; he eventually agrees. After some discussion we decide to head to Salt Lake City today, then see Yellowstone National Park
tomorrow, then go to our show. Today�s route will take us north into Wyoming, then west to Utah.

Except that an hour into the drive, our van stops, for the fourth time. This time we fear almost the worst: the transmission. As Mike calls AAA once
again, I walk into Wyoming. So close and yet so far. Right across the border there are some snacks to last us the couple of hours it takes the
mechanic to get to us. Mike and I ride all the way back into Boulder in the van on top of the truck bed, a bumpy ride indeed. I�m getting used to it
though.

We eat dinner on the Pearl street mall, which is vibrant and very much a college town, though I don�t know why the college kids are here right now.
Our new lodging is with another friend of Scott�s sister. We wait for a bus there across the street from a liquor store and meet some interesting
characters. Two burnt-out metalheads come talk to us. One talks and laughs exactly like Sean Penn in �Fast Times at Ridgemont High,� and keeps
growling about how �hell has arrived.� The other is younger, an army brat who seems pretty intelligent. Later a woman comes up and tells us about
how she is from Long Island, was severely abused by her husband, has 7 children, and went from a 5-bedroom house to a drainage ditch in the past year.
Earlier today she wanted to kill herself. �I want to go so bad...� but she won�t because of her kids.

After about an hour we realize the bus isn�t coming and we take a cab.

In the morning we get the bad news that our transmission is completely blown and the earliest it can be fixed is at a Chevy dealership by Monday or
Tuesday. Ben decides that there is no way he is going to get to Seattle for the flight on the 20th that he already booked, so he flies home from
Denver. The band is now a 3-piece.

A decision still must be made about the next two shows, Idaho and Portland. Mike is determined to somehow still play them. After much debate and
research, I cast the deciding vote in favor of renting a car, driving it to Idaho and then to Seattle and then to Portland, then renting another car
and driving it straight back to Boulder to retrieve our van, and driving the van on to our next show in San Diego. We will play the Idaho show with
electric guitars and bass, get our acoustic guitars in Seattle, and play the Portland show (and the rest of the tour) acoustically. Scott is opposed
and has a bad feeling about it, but accepts the decision.

After hopping the fence at the Chevy dealership to get our guitars out of the van, we set off once again north to Wyoming and across it west. This
time it�s late at night, and we are in a Mercury Sable, considerably faster and more fuel efficient than the van. We come to appreciate that Wyoming
is one dark place at night....really really dark. Often there is really nothing, no light source outside the road, despite miles of visibility.

At one point Mike realizes we are getting quite low on gas. Running out again would be quite bad, seeing as how we�re in the middle of nowhere in the
middle of the night. We see a sign for gas in 1 mile--phew. But when we try to go in, we end up back on the on-ramp, and we see that the gas station
is closed anyway. The next services are in 24 miles. 24 miles and we�re millimeters above the line for �E.� We are all reminded of the Seinfeld
episode in which Kramer goes below the slash on a test-drive. But we don�t want this to turn out quite like that did. Nothing we can do but go for
it. We count down the mile markers. We are on the slash. The �need gas� icon has lit up. We all listen for the sound of the car giving out. But
somehow, it doesn�t happen. We roll into station with the gas gauge probably as low as it can go, at the bottom of the slash. It has never felt so
good to fill up the tank.

We stop for the night at �the INN� at Rock Springs, Wyoming. While Mike gets the room, a dog walks up to the car where Scott and I are waiting. Just
a dog in Wyoming at 4 in the morning. Tomorrow, we complete the drive and play in Idaho Falls, ID.

Dream Journal (last night):
I am sitting in a bar with some high school friends on the eve of my 22nd birthday. I�m drinking because I need to kill myself tonight. A while ago
I had a talk with Ho Ying during which we decided that the best of our lives was going to be over by the time we turn 22, so we might as well kill
ourselves. Ho Ying isn�t here tonight though, and I haven�t talked to him about it recently. I�m having a hard time drinking enough to be able to
kill myself, and as time goes on I think about how much Ho Ying really meant what he said, and what he�s doing right now. When my friends suggest
going over to a concert, I agree, thinking perhaps I should wait and see on the whole suicide thing.
The concert is Blink 182, never one of my favourite bands. But they seem quite different tonight, they�re kind of old men and their music is really
good, kind of like Built to Spill or Broken Social Scene. The concert is being held in a library or bookstore with very high shelves. The last thing
I remember is climbing up on one of the ladders and looking at some books high on a shelf.

We drive a spectacular mountainous route to Salt Lake City without much ado, get lunch and check out the Mormon scene, and then head to our show in
Idaho Falls, which is for some reason now in Pocatello, about 40 miles south. The venue seems pretty cool, it�s got plenty of room, a big stage, an
almost ridiculous array of lighting, and a sizable staff working on the sound and such.

A security guy tells us that the Kottonmouth Kings played here a few days ago, and it got pretty out of hand--there was underage drinking, sex, and a
fight. This sort of thing doesn�t fly in Mormon country, which we are apparently still in, so the town�s parents are not letting their kids come back
to this place.

One other band is here, they are from Seattle and just starting their own tour. A third band is MIA, and so is the guy who set up the show for us.
As it gets closer to door time and starting time, we come to that terrible realization, that no one is coming. But this isn�t no one like it�s been
at a couple of other shows--this is NO ONE. The other band are good sports and play a full set, actually quite a long set, to an audience of...us.
We decide this just isn�t worthwhile, and set off for Seattle at about 9:30pm.

On the drive Mike and I listen to the Coast to Coast AM radio show, which I can heartily recommend. The route is again quite mountainous, and has a
very spooky feeling so late at night. We�re actually pretty tired and start to get a bit loopy toward the end, but finally make it to Pendleton,
Oregon, where we settle for the night. Pendleton is an odd place, in that almost every hotel room in town is booked. Also, when we pull into a place
that has a room, several girls and boys scurry in front of our car drenched and in their underwear while we sit in the parking lot. Yes, it is a
strange place.

Out of Pendleton and across Oregon and Washington to Seattle. The drive is once again amazing, going by green mountains and deep blue lakes, with
glimpses of Mt. St. Helens. The rental car is serving us well, especially its stereo system, which is of amazing quality compared to the one in our
van--finally we can hear the music!

We arrive in Seattle where Scott�s parents are temporarily living in an apartment until their new house is ready. Seattle is actually just as hilly
in some parts as San Francisco. The apartment has a great view of Puget Sound and Mount Rainier. We walk around and drive to the seattle center,
home of the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project. The needle is unimpressively short, but the EMP is unbelievable. After more walking
around, we all agree that Seattle is a real cool place. We also agree that since our van likely won�t be ready for a long time, (now next Monday or
Tuesday) we should drive to San Francisco tomorrow after our Portland show, and hang out there for a while. We will probably have to cancel our show
in San Diego, but we will be able to check out LA and Las Vegas.

In the morning I go back to the EMP for more photography. I abstain from paying admission since it is $20, but I am able to get into the
store/restaurant/entry area. This only enhances my appreciation of the building, because I can see that it is not simply a square frame with a crazy
shell on it--the shell has the shape too. The interior design is not much less impressive than the exterior. There is also a little multimedia thing
about Gehry and his design and fabrication techniques.

In the afternoon we go down Washington and Oregon, past Mt. St. Helens again, and to Portland. The venue is a modest operation but a cool place,
although oddly it seems to also function as a christian community center, which no one seems to know anything about. Several unusual scriptural
pamphlets are available, such as �What Jesus said about the Revolution� and �What Jesus said about World Finance� (or something). We play
acoustically, with a bizarre mixture of scott�s acoustic guitar through an amp, mike�s electric bass through an amp, and my acoustic guitar miked
utterly inadequately. I can hear pretty much everything except my own playing, which sounds to me like a pick hitting muted strings. But the
audience is again very enthusiastic, so much so that I again assume sarcasm at first. After our set two audience members, without much prodding from
us, call our drummer and leave him hysterical voice mail saying he�s a bastard and that we�re better off without him. Two local bands play after us
and both are very entertaining. �I hate you man, I�ve never met you but I hate you, you�re horrible.� Oh yes, the venue is around the corner from
the Oregon Artificial Limb Company.

After the show we start our drive to San Francisco, but we are all very tired, so we only make it a couple of hours before stopping at a motel. On
the way we listen to Coast to Coast radio again, and tonight it is totally fascinating. The guest is a guy who claims a host of interesting things
about himself: he worked at Los Alamos during WWII and knew John Von Neumann there; he was kicked out right before the Roswell crash; he later worked
for the government in Montauk where crazy stuff was going on, and was sent forward in time to 1983; he had his memory wiped and his body age-regressed
back to infancy, and then re-aged as a different person, who he is now; he managed to regain his memory of who he used to be, and visited Montauk in
1983 where he had to be careful not to run into his younger self; at some point he traveled forward in time to the 28th century where he met the
�Windmakers�; he was interrogated by aliens for days on end, and so on. It was a very complicated story that he told in a calm, fascinating, yet
insane way. I think it would make for a good movie.

Last night the TV remote fell on my head while I was sleeping and in the middle of a dream, an experience which I can liken to running into a brick
wall: reality stops so suddenly, and starts again differently, and then there�s pain.

Anyway, today we go down the rest of Oregon, which takes a good long while, and then down California to San Francisco. On the way we spot the exit
for Sleater-Kinney road. Somehow, in between northern California and San Francisco, the temperature drops about 40 degrees, and the altitude of
clouds drops about 25,000 feet. It�s really cold in San Francisco, and the clouds are...they�re right here, at our level.

We get dinner at the House of Nanking in Chinatown, which is very good, and then meet up with some friends of Mike�s. We spend a fun few hours with
them making a bonfire on the beach at midnight, and there is a symbolic victory about having come all the way to the Pacific Ocean. We also have a
small cake party. Mike�s friend smears cake on his face, and he is at a complete loss for a way to wash it off.

These two days are spent walking and driving around San Francisco a whole lot, and hanging out with Scott�s sister, with whom we are staying. We get
soup in a bread bowl on the Fisherman�s Wharf. We go with Scott�s sister to someone�s birthday party at Blowfish Sushi, a very trendy restaurant with
a soundtrack featuring Peaches, anime porn animation cels on the wall, and very good food. After that we hit the Beauty Bar, which is probably the
hippest and most popular bar I�ve ever been in. Funny how, in an incredibly crowded room, some people (like me) get jostled constantly and have
trouble moving anywhere, while others manage to dance.

The next day we drive down the crookedest street in the world 4 times with 4 different reasons (scott driving, mike driving, looking for me, and
actually trying to get somewhere). We visit Haight street and I pick up a couple of cheap CDs at Amoeba Music, an amazing place. We pay a visit to
the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate park, the most impressive part of which is undoubtedly the aquarium. I never understood how huge a
giant sea bass was--it looks like a goldfish magnified by 30 times or so. The rest of the �academy� is a pale imitation of Natural History in NYC.

In the evening we walk around the Castro district, home to such establishments as �The Sausage Factory,� �The Pendulum,� and �Faerie Queene
Chocolates.� Scott�s sister and I watch Grosse Pointe Blank, and then it�s time to pick up our new rental car and start the drive to Los Angeles. We
will spend two days there and then head to Las Vegas.

In case it isn�t obvious and I omitted any previous explanation, we admit by now that this has become as much a pure vacation as a tour. We still
have more shows to play on the way back to the east coast, but right now we�re trying to make the best of a broken van and a departed drummer. Rather
than be stuck in Boulder for a week and a half, we reasoned that we might as well see the whole west coast, since we have good people to stay with in
Seattle and San Fran, and a free hotel room in Las Vegas thanks to the gambling habits of Mike�s parents. Once our van is fixed, hopefully for the
last time, we�ll go back to Boulder and then to Dallas for the next show.

We awake to the sight of watermelons being picked from the huge field that surrounds our motel, and then head to Los Angeles for the next two days.

After a walk on Hollywood Boulevard, the walk of fame and Grauman�s Chinese Theater (apparently it�s Grauman�s, not Mann�s, although some things
around there do say Mann�s... ), we get dinner at Roscoe�s House of Chicken �n Waffles, a fine establishment. We then meet up with Andy, Scott�s
friend with whom we are staying. He is of course a film student. He takes us up Mulholland Drive, where after a couple of coyotes cross the road, we
sit down on a steep hill with a nice view of the city. After a few minutes another car pulls over and its passengers join us. One of its passengers
throws his cigar at a rapidly passing Ferrari and within a minute they are being arrested, and that is our cue to leave. We find a parking ticket on
our car which we will not be paying.

Saturday our first stop is the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the next and probably last stop on my personal tour of Frank Gehry buildings. This one cuts
a striking shape in the skyline, and its entrance is palatial and brilliant, but the perimeter and rear are troublingly square. Walking around it the
beautiful shapes are hidden from view by a brick wall. I think when the building is open (some construction is still going on right now) this may not
be a problem, but it still seems unnecessary.

We then go to Venice Beach, stomping ground for lots of good-looking people. Someone spots Jessica Biel and yells her name, but I am only fast enough
to see her back as she rollerblades away into temporary anonymity. We hang out for a while at a huge drum circle whose members have some creative
differences, and then go back. Some shopping at Amoeba Music LA passes the next hour, and then we decide to see Pirates of the Caribbean at the El
Capitan Theater. The theater is owned by Disney so they have all sorts of props and costumes and special stuff, and it�s old-tymie with an organist
and about 20 layers of curtains. The movie is pretty awful, which in retrospect seems like it should have been obvious, but ah well, we can�t very
well leave Hollywood without seeing a movie.

Overall, LA is fun to visit, but it�s safe to say I�d never want to live here. There�s a lot of good-looking people, all of whom are trying to be
actors, and the cars are about 30% BMW�s, 20% Porches, 30% Mercedes, 10% nicer than that, and 10% not as nice. The town itself is not very nice at
all, though it has some interesting ethnic neighborhoods other places lack, such as Little Armenia and Koreatown. Tomorrow we go to Six Flags Magic
Mountain and ride some roller coasters, and then go to Las Vegas.

After the obligatory debate and donuts, we go to Six Flags, and spend a lot of time in various stages of entry: parking, ticket purchase, metal
detector, and park entry. Scott and I purchase FastLane passes, which allow you to get on rides almost instantly, 4 times. It would be nice if they
provided them with admission, but since we only have 4 hours, $15 seems worthwhile. We go on the 5 biggest roller coasters that are in operation, and
they are amazing. On �Goliath� Scott and I both feel ourselves almost black out from the G�s in the corkscrew. �Scream� is uh, a foot-dangling good
time. We go on �X� last, and it is undoubtedly the most amazing ride ever. The seats rotate during the ride, so that one twists in ways never before
possible, and one flips over without the need for a loop in the track. A particularly tasty feature is the first drop, straight down, which the rider
goes through lying face down. Yeah, the names of the coasters need some work though.

California really has the best place names of anywhere we�ve been so far. I won�t name the big cities, but there�s the Chocolate mountains, the Soda
mountains, Earlimart. We also pass Zzyzx Road.

At 10pm we reach Las Vegas, which Mike celebrates by saying �Vegas baby, Vegas!� over and over again. His parents have been kind enough to give us
two of the many complementary hotel rooms they receive for gambling a lot, so we are staying at Harrah�s. The lights on the strip and the sheer
number of huge casinos is pretty impressive on first sight. None of us are planning on trying our luck much, but it�s fun watching blackjack, poker
and craps. The slot machine scene is pretty sad. People have casino credit cards that they put into the machine, and the card is connected to them
by a squiggly cord, an image figuratively reminiscent of the Matrix.

Assorted thoughts on Las Vegas, that are probably obvious to everyone else:

-Trying to walk here is absurd, because the entire strip is constructed so as to make every walking route (other than straight to a slot machine) as
long as possible. A lot of the streets are so close to being highways that they don�t let pedestrians cross them; instead they construct big elevated
walkways. Often the walkways are connected to casinos, so you have to enter 1 or 2 casinos just to cross the street. Needless to say the casinos
also hide their exits well, so after a day of walking up and down the strip and going in and out of many casinos, the legs get extremely sore.

-It appears as though the casinos would be perfectly happy to have nothing but slot machines, as they make up about 80% of the space at most places.
This is understandable, since they require no paid personnel, except for maintenance, and they�re quite profitable. But it just wouldn�t be right
without blackjack and poker, and those are what high rollers play.

-The actual games at each casino are exactly the same, down to the slot machines. Not that they can change the rules of blackjack, but I think they
could benefit from some more distinction in this area.

-You might walk for miles inside one casino but you�ll never go up or down a level and still be in the gaming area. I just realized this is probably
because they need the level above for all the watchers and video equipment and such. I enjoyed wondering what the watchers might be saying about me, wandering around observing the various games and dealers, makng fidgety movements that could be signals for a player.

-I was surprised to find that War, possibly the silliest card game in existence, is played at a couple of places. I suppose it�s no sillier to bet on
than slots, but for some reason I would think that when someone plays a card game at a casino, they�re looking to employ some degree of strategy.

There are all sorts of interesting psychological and behavioral things to be observed in these casinos, some simple and obvious but others more
subtle. Admittedly what�s going on at slot machines is less interesting than at high limit card game tables, where I�m unfortunately not allowed to
loiter. But it all makes me realize that I have a long way to go toward being a great observer, and casinos are good training grounds.

So from now on (actually from LA on), we are heading generally east.

Today we pick up our third rental car of the trip and head back to Boulder to pick up the van, but not before I do a bit of obligatory gambling,
pissing away 50 cents or so on video poker. It�s easy to see it becoming addictive, but no moreso than the typical video game that doesn�t involve
money, so I don�t think I�d go back just for that sort of thing. If I became good at poker or blackjack, and had the money to lose on it, that could
be a lure.

So we go through a corner chip of Arizona and all the the way across southern Utah. The drive is possibly the most scenic yet, with surrounding
mountains going from pure rock of various colours, to dry weeds, to little trees for their coverings. Occasionally the view opens into ridiculous
canyons, not the Grand one, but grand nonetheless. Each time I see a mountain I get a little urge to leap out of the car and run straight up it,
thinking about how hard it would be and how I�d negotiate the steepest portions.

At night we reach the outskirts of Boulder.

Waking up early, we pick up our van, rebuilt from the inside out and looking good, i.e. moving. Then we pick up our bags from the friend�s house
where we left them many days ago. Finally I can change my clothes. The friend left his backdoor open, requiring us to go through the backyard where
his two dogs stand guard. Fortunately this is an extreme case of bark-worse-than-biteism. Although one of the dogs is extremely large, and sounds
furious, both dogs quiet down and meander around pointlessly as soon as we enter, as if to say �Oh, I didn�t have a plan to actually do anything about
this.�

After some backtracking to get the laptop that I left in the motel room, we are ready for another long day of driving. Today we go east through the
rest of Colorado and back to Salina, Kansas, the van�s namesake where we first got really stuck, and then south through Oklahoma toward Dallas.
Thankfully, the van runs without any problems, and we make it to Oklahoma City. We�ve now gone through 2 time zones in as many days, which produces
not quite jetlag, but a slightly odd feeling.

The remaining distance to Dallas isn�t very much, so we get there quite early and kill time with a meal and some ice cream. I get a chocolate malt
for what might be the first time ever. Every time I�ve meant to get one before, either they don�t have them or they�ve run out of the ingredients, or
I decide at the last minute to get a shake instead. It is very tasty.

The venue is a big bar with two stages, one indoor and one outdoor. We spend a lot of time waiting for other bands to show up, and wondering if any
people will come. Eventually we start to strongly consider not playing, and driving to Austin or Houston, where we play next. But finally one member
of one of the other bands shows up ready to play solo acoustic, and about 7 of his friends arrive as well. We learn that the headlining band couldn�t
play because their drummer is a jerk (a pattern perhaps), another band broke up, and this one guy�s band couldn�t find the venue and then decided not
to play. With this kind of thing happening over and over, we can�t help but wonder if any bands ever play shows that they are supposed to play, or if
we have been unlucky.

In any case the sound guy sets up the PA on the outdoor stage and convinces us to play. This time we go with electric guitars instead of acoustic,
although Scott switches between electric and acoustic between almost every song. The tiny crowd likes us a lot, and the solo acoustic guy plays after
us and is actually really good. His lyrics are original and honest, his songs simple but effective, and his voice quite strong. Very impressive for
a 16 year-old.

I only caught a few hours of sleep last night, because Mike was using the internet at the house where we stayed until quite late, and then I went on
and finally finished the first pass of my obscure word dictionary, which took until 7am. So I sleep most of the way to Houston, and wake up with a
sore neck.

Again we arrive quite early, and the venue, a small bar, is not yet open. We kill some time driving around to interesting spots from Scott�s youth
(he grew up here), and then go back to waiting around. Two staffers arrive after not too long and open up the place. They are definitely indie
types--if I couldn�t tell from their clothes (which I could), I could from the Elliott Smith, Spoon, and Hot Hot Heat being played on the stereo, and
the discussions of the merits of each. It�s alright with me, in fact I kind of miss that environment.

Tonight, amazingly, all three other bands show up, although the one playing first arrives quite late. Again it looks like there will be very few
audience members, but as it gets later, about 15 to 20 people show up. Very few of them look like the typical clientele for a show like this, and
some are cowboy or trucker types, but everyone apears to enjoy themselves. Although we are certainly the least rocking band of the night, with our
lack of drummer, the audience responds very well to us, maybe even better than any of the other bands. Scott�s finger starts bleeding the way mine
usually does and he immediately announces it to the audience--not exactly my style, but eh.

We stay the night with Alan, singer of Backhand and a Louisianian. He resides in Sulphur, LA and has also booked our next show, tomorrow in Baton
Rouge. The word is that no one knows where the venue is. I like the sound of that.

At about 3am last night Alan�s roommate came in and asked aloud �Who the fuck are these people?� Not having an eloquent answer in mind, I pretended
to sleep. Repeating �who the fuck are y�all?� he woke up Mike and Scott, who responded �what�s up dude.� Eventually he seemed to realize who we were
and went off to bed.

In the morning (well technically the afternoon) we hang out with Alan and his pregnant girlfriend. He�s 19 soon to be 20, the same age I was when I
met my first girlfriend. They seem like a good couple, and he seems quite responsible. At one point, discussing trading in a car over lunch, I�m
pretty sure his girlfriend says �They always jew you pretty bad on that.� Yep, Louisiana! They�re not religious though, so that kinda cancels it
out, stereotype-wise.

We head to Baton Rouge for the show, driving Alan there while his bandmates come from New Orleans. The information we have is that it�s at a place
called the Drive In, in the Kenilworth Mall. Sounds interesting. We get to the Kenilworth Mall and there�s no place called the Drive In. Then we
get word it�s actually at Matherne�s�-well, that�s the supermarket in this mall. Hmm... when the other members of Backhand arrive it becomes clear
that either this show, or the venue itself, was moved, but none of us were told about it, and then the show got cancelled. Oh well.

That means last night was the last show of the tour, because none of our Florida or east coast shows ever made it to fruition. Scott and Mike make an
interesting remark of reflection--that in the end, this tour was a disaster, and not worth our time or our money--but that we wouldn�t give it back
for anything. So I guess it was worth...never mind.

We end up deciding to drive down to New Orleans, check out the goings-on there, and then start the lengthy drive to Hilton Head SC, our final
destination before heading home up the east coast. Mike�s parents have offered us a place to stay there, and we can hang out on the beach.

In New Orleans we walk up and down Bourbon St., which appears to have (d)evolved into a perpetual Mardi Gras, albeit a scaled down one. Lots of
people wield beads from the balconies above, but their standards for throwing them seem to be pretty low. Only in one spot are girls actually
disrobing. It is on a large pedestal with a large crowd of guys around it. There is a steadily repeated ceremony going on: girl steps up, lifts
shirt for several seconds, and one of the guys solemnly anoints her with a huge collection of beads. But the crowd in general doesn�t seem that
excited when it happens, and it�s understandable why--it�s really not that exciting, even the first few times. I guess half of them are probably
there to take pictures and put them on the net anyway.

Overall I�d have to say Bourbon is still the craziest red light district I have seen anywhere, crazier than Vegas or Paris or old Times Square.
Everyone is drinking �hand grenades� and �jesters� in huge containers on the street, there are strip clubs with action visible from outside, and of
course there�s the public nudity, with no apparent attempts at regulation.

After a cajun meal with Scott eating a vegetarian Po� Boy, we have had enough, and depart for Hilton Head around midnight. Our root will take us
across the southern chips of Mississippi and Alabama, and across the entire Florida panhandle, before going north through Georgia to Hilton Head,
right on the southern corner of South Carolina. Somewhere around 2am Mike declares that he has tons of energy and thinks we should keep going all
night. That is where I leave this entry.

The next few hours are pretty blurry, as I attempt to sleep by leaning over into the area between the two back seats. Somewhere in the 6th morning
hour, as I sway semi-conscious, there is a loud thump at the windshield and Scott and Mike begin shouting. Something big has become lodged under our
windshield wiper and Mike wants to know what it is before we try to get rid of it. A bird? A frog? Maybe not a living thing at all, just a piece of
debris. Then something shifts and it suddenly becomes clear: it�s a bat. A fucking bat has landed on our windshield. By this time, almost a minute
later, we are all more than ready to turn on the wipers and get it off. I do not know its fate, and I doubt it was a happy one, but it�s skin was not
broken by the impact.

We arrive at Hilton Head around noon, with some driving assistance from Scott. This is one of the few times on the tour I have felt truly worn out,
but I�m glad we did it. This is a real posh place, where the three of us don�t fit in at all, but oh well. We rendezvous with Mike�s parents and
brother and hang out on the beach, reflecting proudly on how recently we were staring out at the Pacific Ocean. I spot a flying fish leaping several
feet out of the waves in front of us.

Mike is leaving the tour here to hang out with his family for a week, and after some discussion and a case of badly planned identity theft at a Super
8 Motel, Scott and I decide it�s in our best interest to take off for home now (about 3pm), so we can make the rest of our drive at our leisure
tomorrow.

On the way Scott and I start seeing billboards for a place that appears to be called �Pedro�s South of the Border.� The first one advertises that
it�s about 63 miles away. From that point on, we see a billboard at least every mile, counting them down, and all feature a different joke, and
appear to advertise a different business. A fireworks store, an amusement park, a mini-golf course, what the hell is this place? After about 80
billboards (sometimes there�s one on each side of the road), we have to find out.

It turns out it�s a combination of all the things advertised, as well as an ice cream store, and actually 2 fireworks stores, and a �beach� store
featuring something advertised as a �great white shark!� It�s a hilarious place, but actually, kind of run down and depressing. I am saddened by the
selection of fireworks; it turns out the powerful stuff like M-80s has been banned for a long time, and now everything�s pretty much the same, and
quite weak. Also, the bathrooms are easily the most disgusting I�ve ever seen. About half of the stalls have notes on the door saying �PLEASE NEVER
OPEN THIS DOOR.� Judging by the stench, I think I�ll take that advice. So yes, Pedro�s South of the Border! Quite a place.

I torture Scott a bit on the drive because I�m suddenly intent on making contact with Jonah, former member of the zero effect who is now an intern at
the Pentagon. I have no phone number or address for him, only a name and a dim recollection of a satellite photo of his home, across the street from
the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court. So we make several stops unsuccessfully trying to find internet access on a Sunday night in
medium-sized towns of South and North Carolina. �I�m looking for a Kinko�s, is there one around here?� �Umm, is that a clothing store?� At one of
the stops I eat at a Checkers, which not only has good food but extremely friendly employees. We stop for the night outside Richmond, VA, still
planning to attempt to meet Jonah for lunch or something. Tomorrow, we go home.

So anyway, today we start home, stopping in downtown Richmond first to try to contact Jonah. The state library is closed due to budget cuts (scary),
but the city library has available computers with net connections. Peoplesearch reveals a few phone numbers, including one for his parents in
Michigan, and a Pennsylvania one. I call his mother, and have an extremely awkward and stilted conversation thanks to the poor performance of the
cell phone that ends prematurely. A follow-up ends again just as she gives me Jonah�s cell phone number, but I get enough digits to realize it�s the
Pennsylvania one I had before. I decide there�s really no point in calling again.

Unfortunately our efforts are for nought, as Jonah says it would be too hard for him to leave the building early and too hard for us to find our way
out of that sick, twisted place called DC. But at least we were able to try, and he promises to come visit in NYC instead. Scott seems relieved, he
is anxious to get home and I can hardly blame him.

The rest of the drive home is fairly uneventful, which is fine by us. We stop at Scott�s house for an hour and a half or so to avoid rush hour
traffic into the city, a strange purgatory for me. But soon enough I am home.

Now that I'm done talking about the tour there is much else to talk about that I missed in the intervening period. Walking tours with Speed, Nihongo,
observing in the OR, and maybe a show called FLCL that I am decreasingly able to get out of my head with each passing day. But this I am calling a
night.

The folks at AMC are really good at making ads for the movies they show. They're like modern trailers, very fast-paced with disconnected dialog, and
they make movies that are certainly tame by today's action standards look really exciting. Usually the movies are good anyway, so it's not deception,
just giving them the treatment they deserve.

Tonight while watching a documentary on papparazzi on said channel, someone from the adjacent building shone a laser pointer at me through the
window. I took evasive maneuvers, killing the lights and shutting the shades without stepping in front of the windows again. Before closing the last
one I tried to get a look at the perpetrator through the leaves of a plant, but no such luck. Funny timing though. Also funny that I reciprocated
this act several years ago during a birthday party, so I suppose it could be seen as karmic.

My study of Japanese has become increasingly intense, especially since I received (from Japan out of necessity) my chosen textbook, Genki. I think
it's very good. But that book is only the center of a solar system of resources I am making use of, from a linguistics book about Japanese phonology,
to Kanji web sites, to Japanese comic books, a book of loanwords from English to Japanese, and a book of Japanese street slang. I think this is a
good method, since no one source will ever give you the whole picture, and it helps memory to see the same information portrayed in two different
ways, especially when translations slightly disagree. I don't know why this is suddenly all I'm interested in, but it is, other than AI stuff for
work. So I'm merely trying to take advantage of the momentum in case I lose it. Meanwhile, parents are becoming worried at my increased
reclusiveness, but eh, sometimes things just get serious.

Today I am finally the owner of a Columbia University ID card. Flashback to May, when I started working for RST. Every day, I went into the hospital
and, because I had no ID, got a visitor's pass from the security guard. These passes are useless, except that they remind you where you're
going, in case you've never been there before. But no one will ever ask for you to show it once you're in. This got to be a bit annoying, because
often the security guard would be having some long chat with a visitor about where they should go. I couldn't interrupt, but once I had stopped in
front of the desk, there was no way I could nonchalantly walk by. When I say 'he' I really mean one of the 25 or so different people that work at
this desk, although the building isn't very large and this is the only security desk of its kind. This made it unlikely that any of them would see
the pattern in my entry and start letting me through without another piece of paper to add to my growing pile.

I occasionally made mention of this to the good Dr., but he said there was some kind of ID transition going on and there was too much paperwork, etc.
There was such thing as a temporary ID, but that apparently was also no good, for some reason. Since it wasn't a huge bother I didn't press it. But
then, when I came back from the tour, something odd started to happen: the one guard who had previously started to recognize me and let me through,
became angry at me for not having an ID. She said (erroneously) "it's been a year now, when are you going to get one?" I told her I would try to get
one soon, and she said "soon isn't good enough!" I didn't really know what to say to that.

When I relayed this to my boss, he was willing to try to get the process in motion so that I didn't have to fear coming in. Eventually I was sent
down to the main hospital and got two letters, one for each type of ID card (hospital and university), saying that I should get one. The hospital
ID place was closed. At the other one, they pointed out to me that one of my letters was actually for a different person, and that as a casual
employee I'm only supposed to get a university ID anyway. Ah. Also, the computer that controls the ID making is down with a virus. Right.

On Monday I went back and walked into the university ID office. The woman at the card-making computer was talking to two other women and "ok, and
we'll...uh oh." The card printer malfunctioned. After waiting around another 10 minutes or so, it was announced that it would be down indefinitely.
Sometimes in these situations I think of jumping in like a doctor would for a sick person and saying "I know computers, I'll handle this!" But then
I think, eh, best not to get involved.

So yes, today I finally got the ID, without a hitch. The angry security guard was genuinely pleased. Did this story have a point? you decide.

Sigh, today was spent primarily watching Japanese TV on the international channel, and studying Japanese. Why am I doing this so obsessively? I
don't know, but it's good. Anyway, first I caught the news, which I got very little out of, other than the name Koizumi (duh), some numbers, and
a vague feel for sentence structures, with mostly past tense verbs. It also was depressing because the backdrop of the show was an aerial image
of a metropolitan area with a bunch of skyscrapers at night, and it gave me an image of Japan as nothing but a sea of skyscraper glaciers with no
signs of life, all black building automatons and no daylight. So, next was a political discussion show, which was also fairly impenetrable, but which
featured a turtle in a plastic pen which would be shown when things got dull. Meet the Press should definitely get an animal. The animal can be
called upon to decide whether or not the guest has contradicted himself. Next up was Dr. Coto's clinic, a soap opera that I didn't watch much of.

But after that...after that! After that was "Hey!Hey!Hey! Music Champ", a fantastic show where they interview pop musicians and then they perform.
When they're doing the interviews, things that they are saying are constantly popping up on the screen in stylish Japanese text, which is helpful.
During the performances they also have Japanese subtitles of the lyrics, which I guess is good for fans who want to sing along, and also good for me.
The songs had some English lyrics in the choruses, mostly things like "baby yeah, you and me, our love is forever" only less coherent. The amusing
part of that was that they didn't sing them with the right stress patterns at all, so it sounded rather strange. One performer was a pretty cool
girl who looked like a schoolgirl from Whites Stripes Elementary, with glasses, a red tie and white shirt, and requisite skirt. Her song was called
"Greatful Days."

I am sorry for the deception, but it was necessary (to protect myself). Parenthetical remarks. Self-referential-tarts. Recursion smarts. Yes yes--
that will be fine. Inventing words is the only way to get anywhere. When you run out of words, that's when you know you really have something.
An embarrassment.

Certain pieces of expression begin to have a devastating effect. This can be a signal of an unusually creative period approaching, a time for a
gathering.

I have finally scanned my pictures from Grenada, directly from the negatives for quality assurance purposes. Their appearance will, for convenience's
sake, likely coincide with the relaunch of this site at its new home, which will happen as soon as I can...think of a name for it.

Back on the horse, or... off the horse? of the OED. A new search for words that are rare rather than obsolete has revealed a whole other universe,
a query with as many results as my original one, with amazingly little overlap and an incredible density of great words. So, this ought to keep me
occupied for another few months, unless I lose my access.

Battling a bit of mental exhaustion as I wrestle with Sphinx on the Mac, it's not Sphinx's fault though, Sphinx is a good thing. It appears to be
Mac's fault.

Awakened from a groggy after-work nap by what sounds approximately like the world ending. Looking outside, it appears that Central Park is exploding.
Or perhaps just the finale of a fireworks display, but at an ungodly sound level that sets off half the car alarms on the street below. Then someone
in the adjacent building yells "get back in yo' window!" I do so. The Upper West Side needs its own drudge report so I can figure out what the hell
is going on. We need drudge reports at all levels of community. And we will get them.

Later, out for a walk to clear my head, I synchronize my singing to the oscillation of the posterior of a girl walking 30 feet in front of me. (I
also do this with the heart monitor when in the operating room, but this is difficult when the patient gets nervous and the tempo changes a lot.) A
few blocks later, someone yells something resembling "giant!" at me from a cab as I stand on the Broadway island. I think to myself, if I were
famous, I would probably always interpret events like this as being recognized. But no, sometimes people just like to yell things.

At Chicken Fair, where I obtain late dinner, a man and woman come out of the bathroom together with mischievous looks on faces. The employees chatter
suspiciously in Spanish. One of a pair of young women asks lightly on the way out, "does that happen normally?" getting a smile from the manager.

* * *

Two nights ago I did the closest thing currently possible to spending a night in Japan. Watched an episode of FLCL, then went over to a friend's
place and drank sake while playing video games, then saw "Lost In Translation," then went to a very cool and seemingly authentic Japanese restaurant,
then talked to Amanda-sensei on the phone for a while. At the restaurant I spotted Michael Maronna of the Adventures of Pete & Pete, one of the
great television shows of our time and, one might say, a distant cousin of FLCL in its treatment of the infinite possibilities of youth. I didn't
say anything to him because, I don't really have anything interesting to say, and for all I know maybe he's now embarrassed about P&P, though he
really shouldn't be. But I did note he has a good grasp of basic Japanese, perhaps about the same level or higher as I currently do.

A funny time, the first September in memory that I haven't been in school. Friends all around are starting to decide what to do with themselves, or
as the case may be, not deciding. The idea of making a lifelong decision on the matter at this point, or at any point for that matter, has always
been loathe to me. Why would I want to devote all my attentions to one thing? If I end up doing that, and enjoy it, then that's fine, but trying
to predict even at this ripe age the one thing I would regretlessly enjoy seems foolish. I prefer to keep a set of things to touch on, and do my best
to stumble into each of them at some point without forcing it.

Apparently not enough happens in Japan in a week for a whole 20 minute news program, because the international channel reran the same one on
Sunday from the previous week. I wouldn't mind so much, except that it contributed to a recently lessened ability to tell one day from the next.

There are a lot of businesses around my residence that I've never patronized, and likely never will. Many of them have been around a long time,
becoming so much a part of my environment that I no longer see them as commercial entities. Contributing to this in some cases is never seeing
anyone go in or out their doors. A few are actually in this building--a hardware store, a plumbing company and a furniture and fabric store. I
remember going into the hardware store once, and it being very disheveled in appearance. When I asked for a copy of a key the proprietor belched,
"you got money?" It must be a real problem, people asking for keys to be made and then not being able to pay for them.

Across the street there's the law offices of something Lewis, which could certainly be abandoned, except that in this area it couldn't possibly stay
that way very long. I suppose law offices aren't much of a window shopping business, but this place's one window is always shuttered and protected
by big iron bars. Even lawyers need a little sunlight now and then, don't they? Maybe not.

On the few blocks of Amsterdam atween my parents' residences, there are a slew of restaurants that I almost never go to, some of them not so old and
not shabby at all. Somehow I just don't consider them, as if the momentum I have when leaving the building must propel me to Broadway or Columbus
before I can safely stop. The pizzeria right across the street has been an occasional exception.

I advertised to this after a Seinfeld episode in which Jerry George are riding on a bus, and the background shots being shown in the windows were
of the aforementioned stretch of Amsterdam. I saw several storefronts that are now long gone, such as "HATREXCO," what the hell was that place
anyway? Something to do with hats and kings, perhaps.

Tonight Mr. X and I attended a great lecture by Slavoj Zizek, academic rockstar, obscenely prolific writer, philosopher, and former candidate for the
presidency of Slovenia. An assistant prof. introduced him, speaking for 30 minutes or so without an understandable word, except Zizek's name, which
he said about 100 times. He used lots of air quotes, and said not only that Zizek was an idiot, but the world's village idiot. After that I was
ready for a nap just like my school days, but Zizek was surprisingly clear and entertaining. I understood about 1/2 to 2/3 of what he said, although
it would have helped a lot if I were more familiar with deconstructionism, or with the work of Lacan, Deleuze, or about 20 other thinkers whom he
constantly cited.

I'll take a bit to relate some of his memorable thoughts. First, there was talk of how the 'virtual' can be more real than reality. For example,
pain produced by directly stimulating the pain center of the brain, we might call virtual because nothing physical is causing the pain in the usual
sense. But (so Zizek says) our senses are really a level of indirection that makes physical pain less real, and brain-stimulated pain, is in a sense
more pure, therefore more real.

The other big thing I remember was about all the contradictions in our society. An important one is, we tend to think of ancient or primitive people
as really believing in the crazy things in their culture, like the Greek gods, or animal spirits. But if you look more closely, you find that those
people really didn't necessarily believe in it, or they might all say they don't really believe it, but their parents and grandparents do. And it's
in fact today that people are really believing in these crazy religions. Another example from my own experience is the paradox of consumerism here,
where we are always being told to indulge ourselves, yet we must somehow remain slim. So we get coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, etc.
Zizek crystallized it with the example of the chocolate laxative, its own counteragent.

Finally, he had a great bit about the phrase "if God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted." In fact, he claims, it's quite the opposite!
(Sentences to this effect permeated the lecture.) If God (and the afterlife) exists, then you can do anything and say it's in his name, and no matter
what you do here, as long as you meet the criteria, you can look forward to eternal life in heaven. If God doesn't exist, then you must make the most
of your life, because it's short and all you have, and you are solely responsible for your actions.

The common criticisms of philosophy could apply. Apart from the dense language, he's basically stirring things up by providing seemingly outlandish
and perverse interpretations of life and society that tend not to mean much from a practical perspective. But Zizek's strength is that he does
provide real life examples, even from current events and popular culture. You really have to do that unless you only care about being understood by
professional philosophers, which is kind of pointless unless you're just testing the ideas out. For my part I don't mind it, because even if it
doesn't change the way you walk down the street, it's interesting now and then to look at things from a very different perspective, and wonder why it
should be seen as perverse or dangerous, rather than simply another way.

It appears the day of reckoning has finally come. On October 8th, or thereabouts, I will lose my umich email, web space, and so on, which means
migration for this site. So as soon as I can decide on a domain name, which is no easy task for me, the process will begin. I envision a new design,
new organization, more content, and lots of fun. What will actually materialize, remains to be seen. But there will certainly be something.

Part of what I'll be losing is web access to the OED, which for the past 8 months has allowed me to work on my dictionary of obsolete, rare, archaic,
and otherwise interesting words. So I've kicked production of the second pass into high gear, although I have almost no chance of finishing.
Fortunately I am able to get at the OED at work, thanks to Columbia, but since it is work, I'd rather not have to do much on it there.

It's always a bit awkward when I'm making a purchase, and decide to use some of the copious coinage usually present in my pocket, such that the change
is only one or two cents. I can't bring myself to simply walk away while the cashier is getting it ready--it seems like a violation of the procedure,
and might catch them by surprise, or worse cause them to call after me, so that I'm going to even more effort than I otherwise would to get my
pittance. There's also sometimes the matter of the receipt, although in most of these transactions (the greatest portion being when I'm buying candy)
that's even less important to me than the pennies. But I also don't want to look like I really care about the change. So I tend to try to look busy
or nonchalant (an ability I lack entirely), or even take a step toward the exit, and then simply put my hand out for the cashier's offered fist, as if
I don't even know what I'm getting. But who am I fooling: I already used some coins to pay, so I know exactly what's coming. For those thinking I
should just say "keep the change," forget it, way too condescending coming out of my mouth.

Ah, excruciating minutiae.

As I begin to think about my own apartment in New York, I'm getting an uneasy feeling. Part of it is that this is the first time I'm moving for an indefinite period, so the stakes seem much higher, even if it's not necessarily permanent. The other part is wondering whether I ever belonged in Manhattan, if having grown up here somehow entitles me to keep living here whatever the ridiculous price. Sometimes I feel as though I'm hanging off Manhattan, only here in limbo, waiting to be cast off into another world (which is about what the other boroughs are to me). After that I'll never be here for just a casual walk, but only when I have enough of a destination to cross a river to get here. The fact that I work in the nothernmost building on the island only contributes to this impression.

I reassure myself by thinking I will get so wrapped up in my various projects that it will hardly matter where I am, as long as I have enough space, can play music reasonably loud, and my commute isn't terrible. Along with this has come the realization that a conventionally "nice" apartment really isn't for me at this point--in fact, hardwood floors and plaster tend to produce awful acoustics.

I've also been working on some ideas for getting the most out of my space. The most important one is, do I really need both a couch and a bed? Definitely not, if I have the right couch. The second one is, hanging little storage spaces from the ceiling. Particularly if my ceilings are high enough that this doesn't make navigation difficult, it could be really cool.

That's about all I have right now. I'm currently looking to get back into electronics, and for ideas about projects that could make for a cool "pad" in the parlance of our times.

When I first got going with my new bank account here, they seemed to send me a new statement rougly every two days. There were even separate ones for savings and checking. Of course it was quite unnecessary, as my transactions were all simple, and the balance information was a couple of days out of date anyway. A similar thing was happening with my student loans: they sent me letter after letter laying out how much I owed, almost as if to rub in that it wasn't changing, at least not yet.

A little while ago I started up direct deposit for my paychecks, and direct debiting for my student loans. A nice financial revolving door, all I have to do is sit back and watch the balance rise excruciatingly slowly. Now this makes the bank and loan statements kind of important, so I can make sure the money's going where it's supposed to and everybody's reasonably happy. What happened? I've completely stopped getting bank statements and letters from the loan people. At first I was upset about this, but hey, if they don't want to bother me, so be it. But seriously, what the hell? Did they figure since I have direct withdrawal and deposit I must also have direct extrasensory knowledge of my balance and transactions? Do us all a favor, huge companies, and don't try to be smart about customer interaction, just try to be predictable.

The moral is, don't complain about an extreme situation, because despite appearances and logic, the only alternative is the other extreme, which is probably as bad or worse.

It occurred to me that in every political campaign I've ever seen, the colour scheme (as apparent in speech backdrops, stickers, and candidates' neckties, for example) is red white and blue, for obvious reasons. When one campaign feels the need to distinguish itself in this respect, it uses something like a deeper blue. Bush and Cheney did this, and it was probably my favourite aspect of their campaign.

So I think a candidate could win my admiration by having the blind, stupid courage to use a different colour scheme. Bonus points for loud or otherwise especially iconoclastic colours.

On another topic, card-carrying philosopher relative's review of Slavoj Zizek: a weirdo and wrong. I have not yet pressed him on how exactly he is wrong; no need for debate on the weirdo part.

to the makers of the "Singer Smart Scissors" commercial:

You show your smart scissors cutting through what appears to be a pair of jeans like hot butter, and say it goes through "tough denim" with ease. But even though what they are cutting through looks generally like jeans, it is clear if you look at the seam where they have been cut after the smart scissors go through, that the material is extremely thin. So either these are a fairly convincing fake job, or the cheapest jeans in the world. I'm not saying your product is bad, although it's pretty unnecessary, but please, jeans are just not that thin.

to the makers of the Quizno's "Raised By Wolves" commercial:

This commercial was nothing great to start with. It had a certain nonsensical appeal, and it beats the average Subway ad (which isn't saying much), but the image of the guy suckling a wolf is not something I want to associate with eating a sandwich. But then you pulled the common maneuver of making a shorter version by cutting it down. This version is just a complete hack job that shows a clear lack of foresight that it would have to be made from the original. It takes out the explanatory shot of the longer one and leaves us with nothing of meaning, serving only to remind me of the unpleasantness of the original. Also, I saw the original, but some people might not have. The shorter one really should be able to stand on its own to some extent, and this one collapses like a house of popsicle sticks without Elmer's.

Finally, let's turn to the slogan of ifilm, which we hear surrounding each film shown on the Independent Film Channel. It is "the only place to see every film on the net," and it is wonderfully ambiguous, although since it is supposed to explain what they offer, it's not really that wonderful. The first time I heard it I thought it meant it was the only website of its kind, and its kind was a website that archives every film ever made. Once I went there I realized how ridiculous that was, although eventually something like that may come along. Now I lean toward the meaning, 'the only single site to see every film which is available somewhere on the net.' But it could also be, 'the only site to see any film that is available on the net,' i.e. there are no films anywhere on the net except there. Or 'the only site to do all of your film viewing on the net,' which doesn't really say much about their selection, just that it is compatible with your viewing desires. Now of course these aren't as likely, I'm just offering them to show the multitude of possible interpretations that make it such a crazy slogan. A whole new area of meanings is opened up if you question the meaning of the 'see' part. Does this necessarily mean seeing every frame of the movie in succession, with sound accompanying? Or could it simply mean seeing some aspect of it, even just a page that describes the movie, like IMDb has? The funny part is that of all these interpretations, none are actually all that plausible, especially if you consider movies that are traded on file-sharing services to be 'on the net.'

David Brooks's latest piece in the Times is a fine example of the Times hiring an idiot to be their new columnist, and that person showing himself to be an idiot by writing a moronic column.

The link I provide is sure not to last very long, so I'll provide some choice quotes.

"the Northeast is no longer a particularly important region of the country � we haven't sent a person to the White House in 43 years"

This is the measure of the "importance" of a region? Maybe that's because we're too big for the presidency, just like the Pope is "too big" for the Nobel Peace Prize, according to your last column. Yes, obviously Arkansas and Texas are the most important states in the country, since the last two presidents were born there. All that matters in a presidential campaign is where the president was born, of course!

"If a Martian came down and landed in the stands of a Yankees-Red Sox game, he would get the impression that human beings are 90 percent men and 10 percent women in tight T-shirts, and that we reproduce by loathing in groups."

This could be the most ridiculous statement in the column. If you take any social situation in isolation (except perhaps a New York City street), you'll get a bizarre representation of human demographics. And if you take any scene other than reproduction itself, you'll get a pretty odd picture of how we reproduce. That is, assuming you are a Martian who takes any situation to be an act of reproduction. This is an attempt at humour, but with nothing to back it up, it's just plain stupid.

"We know that our region is not the future. Every year, people move out of the Northeast to Scottsdale and other places where it is considered fashionable to coordinate your toenail polish with the color scheme of your Lexus."

What a utopia! How I have longed for a society with such priorities as these! Taken purely literally this statement is probably true, but that's about all. Suburban sprawl may be extant, but I'd wager there are still plenty more people who would like to move to the urban Northeast than would like to move away.

"during the game [the fans] experience long periods of contempt interrupted by short bursts of vindication."

Ah, of course. Everything that can be considered enjoyable consists only of mindless smiles. What you are seeing here is called caring, and being nervous about the outcome of the game. I'm not a big baseball fan but even I can tell you this is what it's all about, and even with teams that lose a lot, even the possibility of a change of fortune is enough to keep a hardcore fan going.

I'm so glad, Mr. Brooks, that you were able to survive the unbelievable boorishness of a baseball game to tell about it. How selfless of you to step down into this bog of society and report back to the rest of the elite so we know we're not missing anything. We northeasterners should really get with the times and start fighting wars, burning Dixie Chicks CDs and color-matching all of our beautiful belongings. And I do realize I'm to some degree confirming your argument, and sure, I do anger easily, at fools like you. Perhaps now that you are on the op-ed page of the New York Times, you should consider the concept of relevance when you choose a topic for your pieces. That's another thing we tend to like.

David Brooks, you suck.

Hearing that the Supreme Court is going to take up the case of the "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, I started thinking about this again. Usually when you hear people talk about this, all they say is it's ridiculous, outrageous, etc., to take the words out. One sentence in a Times article or so will bother to explain why it's ridiculous. The argument given is that the words have lost their meaning through rote repetition, much like "In God We Trust" on currency or "God save this court" in the Supreme Court itself.

Since my own anger at this subsided a bit, I've really been trying to understand how this argument could possibly be seen as legitimate in a court of law. First, one must grant that it's possible for a word to lose it's meaning in one context, but not another: after all, surely the word God itself hasn't lost its meaning, and if someone says something like "in God I trust," that statement itself also isn't meaningless. So it must be the rote repetition part that does it. But does that mean every other phrase in our pledge of allegiance, national anthem, legal proceedings, and so on, is also meaningless? Probably no one would make this claim.

So clearly there is no scientific method by which one can say that these phrases in particular have lost their meaning. The only other way to be sure about it would be if everyone agreed that saying them meant nothing, but obviously that is not the case, or this would not be a bitterly contested issue about to be decided by the Supreme Court! The mere fact of this situation is perhaps the strongest argument that the words have not lost their meaning, rather ironically. So it is purely subjective, we are simply being told that we should not worry about saying these words because they mean nothing, by the people who are fighting vehemently to keep them in.

It is important however to distinguish between the pledge of allegiance and the other governmental God statements, because some people say we should not take the words out of the pledge for fear that our currency would be next. I think a much better common sense argument could be made that the phrases on currency and in the national anthem have lost their meaning; I don't think an atheist would be as likely to object to their presence, or a religious person to their being taken away. Of course no one ever sings the fourth verse of the national anthem anyway. But there's something about the pledge, the fact that children are being made to recite it daily in plain speech, that seems objectionable. Let me say that things like swearing on the bible in a court fall into the same category as the pledge for me.

In a time when our president considers faith a very important part of policy, and a general makes statements about God being on our side in Iraq and such, and ten years or so after a president said he didn't know if atheists should be considered citizens, I cannot agree that issues of separation of church and state are no longer so relevant. Atheists may not be the most persecuted group in history going by total numbers, but adjusted for the total amount of people in each group, they probably are. And after a more careful consideration, I still find the "lost meaning" argument to be about the most nonsensical legal argument I've ever heard. So I will be very interested to read the Court's resulting writeup.

For the last few weeks I've been on what a coworker has dubbed the "six-day week" sleep schedule. It started when I had to reconcile leaving for work at 7am on Mondays to observe operations, with watching Adult Swim Sunday nights from 11pm-2am. First I tried some unusual approaches like going to sleep very early and taping it, then getting up at 5am and watching it. But then with the amount of work I've been putting into this site and my various studies, I just wasn't getting enough time in my weekends with such arrangements. Also I had to carefully arrange the rest of the weekend so that I'd be able to go to sleep so early on Sunday.

So here's the new approach: I go to sleep fairly late on Friday nights, 4-6am or so, and sleep pretty late, until maybe 2pm. Then Saturday night I pretty much stay up as late as I can, generally about 8am, and again sleep pretty late. If I don't get to sleep as much as I want, or if I'm otherwise tired at all, I sometimes take an extra nap for a few hours on Sunday afternoon or evening. Then I don't sleep Sunday night.

So far this has probably been one of my more successful sleep experiments. I'm always surprised by how quickly Sunday night goes by when I only have until 7am. And mostly I've been able to go to sleep at a pretty normal time on Monday nights, or a bit earlier than normal, which is fine since I often have to go in very early on Tuesdays as well.

Of course, I haven't mastered it yet, and I can't say I don't get tired during those Mondays. On a couple of occasions I have fallen asleep standing up in the room where they do things that start with "oper" and end with "ations," if you catch my drift. And I have reached levels of fatigue that cause me to question why I am still alive. This morning, while doing some programming, I had the thought that my code had been made vulnerable to bugs by a little girl while her father was giving her a bath. Yes yes, the bath, why hadn't I considered that before! Then again, on another recent morning when I got up very early after a decent night's sleep, I thought I was 'correcting' the lyrics on the CD that I woke up to, as it played. So as Jack Black might say, what's the diff.

Yesterday I tried to craigslist a 19" monitor for $25 to replace my recently deceased one, and some "simplified Chinese character books" at someone's apartment sale. I went there at the scheduled time and announced to the intercom that I was there for the apartment sale. The conversation that followed can be approximated thus:

intercom: "#@ON HO@$#W"
me: "I'm sorry?" (wrong house maybe? definitely the right address though)
intercom: "$#@OU @$@*"
me: "...apartment sale"
intercom: "SO?"
me: "is it going on right now?"
intercom: "&^%OU I@#$ FA@%$#"
me: "I'm sorry, I can't understand you"
intercom: (over-enunciating) "$#@OU IH%@ OO FA@#$@"
me: (I'm in too far? That hardly seems possible, I'm not even inside) "...oh, okay"

At that point I gave up and walked away. Whoever was on the other side of that intercom was obviously getting more exasperated than I was, but not enough to simply let me in or come downstairs to explain. In these situations I always try to come up with an "at least," but about the best I can do in this case is, at least I didn't have to carry home a 19 inch monitor. I suppose it would have been wise to call ahead, but really, I can't be arsed.

Assuming my usual place a few years behind the cutting edge of technology, I've finally obtained a digital camera. It likes to chirp at me. Since it has an ungodly number of modern options with cryptic icons and abbreviations, I actually read the manual. Some peculiar excerpts:

On the list of places to avoid using the camera:
"-places subject to direct sunlight"

No nature photography then, I suppose. They also recommend not exposing the IR Remote receptor, which is located on the front of the camera, to bright light. Right.

"The LCD monitor sometimes displays bright, dark, or colored spots at all times. This is not a malfunction. These spots do not appear in the photographed image."

Clearly the definition of 'malfunction' is quickly evolving. I especially like the "at all times" part.

Well I thought there would be more, but that's about it. There is some mild Engrish, the manufacturer being Toshiba, but nothing great. The printing is aligned extremely close to the spine, but that's much more annoying than amusing. It's actually a pretty good manual overall though. So let's talk about something else.

One of the surgeons at my workplace today asked my boss a question that I first thought was foolish, but later considered more carefully. They were talking about how reflection, absorption and transparency work at the molecular level, and the surgeon said "by the way, why when you look in a mirror is the left-right polarity of your body's reflection reversed, but not up-down?" My reflex thought was, there's nothing special about a mirror, it's just the same as if another person is facing you or if you turn around 180 degrees, that your left and right sides are in the opposite places (from someone else's point of view). But then later I thought, well if a person standing and facing you is reversed that way, why don't they also appear flipped vertically (essentially restating the doctor's question)? Then I realized that it's just as simple, because while they are turned 180 degrees horizontally from your orientation, they are not actualy flipped vertically.

My boss's answer to the question was simply that it's a result of the geometry of our eyes. I recalled that since our eyes receive information vertically flipped, with light from above hitting the bottom of the back of the eye, our brains flip the images back at some subconscious level. But with spherical eyes, shouldn't the images be flipped horizontally too? I can't see why not. So then the brain must flip the raw eye images both ways--in other words, rotate them 180 degrees. But in my memory of biology or whatever class this was taught in, only the vertical flipping was mentioned. And in the experiments in which image-flipping glasses were worn and the eyes adjusted after a couple of weeks, I seem to remember that only glasses which flipped images vertically were used. What would happen with horizontally flipping glasses? Probably a lot of car accidents.

It was a busy weekend with the tireless Harald that left me tired enough to sleep for 12 hours. I had a lot of interesting dreams, and when I woke up, the front panel of the CD tray on my stereo had been ripped off.

After seeing Kill Bill Vol. 1 as the final element of a day full of media that as well as movies included museums and live music, I of course immediately wanted to be a deadly viper assassin and master the Japanese steel. I'm very susceptible to these feelings and they usually fade within a day or so, but I realized this time that movies like this can be useful for a more general inspiration. Whether or not the film shows it, becoming as skilled and versatile as someone like the Bride or pretty much every other character in Kill Bill requires a huge amount of disciplined training. A lot of my interests require similar discipline, like the rare word dictionary or my own study of Japanese, and some other ones. Now 'discipline' has gotten some negative connotations of submitting to the man and all that, so perhaps I should find a different word, because this is not motivated by a desire to please superiors or measure up to the masses, the whole challenge is that I must motivate myself so that, perhaps in the distant future, I'll be prepared for whatever comes up. In other words, as my boss likes to say, I'll be dangerous.

For me certain movies are very inspiring toward this end; even if they don't explicitly show the preparation the characters have gone through, they do a good job of showing it implicitly. Some other movies have the opposite effect, showing that spending so much of life in preparation for something that may never come isn't worthwhile, and instead one should just have fun and let things happen, and one might even be better off unprepared in some cases, having an open mind going into it. I agree with this side of it to some extent, in that I'm not going to spend my whole life focusing on just one area, or even on one profession, I don't think. But since I generally enjoy my projects, I don't think I'm sacrificing much. Since I don't know how to have fun the way most people do anyway, the alternative for me would likely be doing nothing much at all (which some might argue has its own virtues, but I think I would tire of).

Going through my currently pitiable DVD and VHS collections, some of the movies that inspire focus in me are: "Ronin", "Grosse Pointe Blank", "Rushmore" and "Zero Effect." Curiously, I just realized that all four of these also contain the theme of love overcoming focus and objectivity in the end. Some movies that are more detrimental are "The Big Lebowski," "The Matrix" (who needs discipline when you can instantaneously beam knowledge into your brain, and it's all about destiny?), "Pi" (showing it only leads to madness), and "The Cruise." So I think I'll from now on watch the inspiring movies more frequently (something which itself doesn't require much discipline, since I enjoy them so much), and acquire more DVDs on this pretense.

***

It appears even when the first episode of the season is in November, the writers of the Simpsons can no longer do any better than to steal ideas from "Family Guy." The first third of this year's Halloween episode was a pretty good double of episode 13 of Family Guy, in which Death (hilariously voiced by Norm McDonald) gets injured while trying to take Peter, and after showng the world that no one can die and causing chaos, Peter has to fill in for Death. The ending differed, but that's about it. Since the rest of the Halloween show was somewhat amusing, I suppose I can forgive, but be aware Simpsons makers, there are actually other animated shows!

So is Disney's "The Haunted Mansion" actually a movie, or just a pretense for a theme park ride? The commercial somehow doesn't make it look much like a real movie. It even calls it "a thrill ride." I think it already is a ride, or it's already something. Looking into it a bit more, it hasn't actually come out yet. Imagine that, a likely ill-conceived movie about a haunted mansion coming out a month after Halloween. Brilliant!

Jonah brought to my attention an interesting translation issue. It seems in a UN discussion, a Japanese representative called North Korea..."North Korea," angering the North Koreans because they like to be called the 'People's Democratic Republic of Korea.' In retaliation, a Korean representative "repeatedly, and in English" referred to the Japanese as "Japs," befuddling the Japanese delegates who tried to explain that their statement was a simple matter of geography. It sounds from the way the incident was reported as though "Japs" wasn't the only English word being used, that the Korean delegate was speaking entirely in English at this time. The question then, is why? Surely there are suitable words in his native tongue that would have produced the desired effect, and it's a bit surprising that a Korean person would think to use "Japs" at all. Either there's something stronger about using English, or he wanted to offend a broader audience than the delegates present who have interpreters in their earpieces anyway. Speaking of which, one wonders what all the interpreters would do with this, whether they would leave "Japs" alone as a universally known slur, or try to find something equivalent in their language.

While discussing this I was reminded of a scene in "Kill Bill" in which Lucy Liu, making a proclamation to a group of criminal kingpins that she has just fiercely backed up by forcing one of them into 'early retirement,' says "To show you how serious I am, I'm going to say this in English." I thought this was strange at the time, particularly since an interpreter then translated her statement right back into Japanese for the people being spoken to. But perhaps there's something to this, though I can't think of any American analogue. We tend to keep our foreign-language utterances to words and short phrases, of which we may or may not know the literal meaning.

***

Ah, the six day week technique is a harsh mistress. One of the most annoying things about staying up is having to keep eating, or else suffering awful hunger pains. This gets especially dire at work and in the OR; for some reason they don't allow snacking in there. No Junior Mints for me.

A couple of days ago a book called "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" was glowingly reviewed on Slashdot. It was described as the definitive work on making effective charts and graphs, from a rather more enlightened perspective than your typical modern-day guide to expressing every piece of information in the world using Excel. I thought it might be a good purchase for my workplace, since we are in the process of making many complex measurements to be put into reports to the military and National Science Foundation. I was shocked upon visiting bn.com to see that the book's overall sales rank was 95. It seemed like a cool book, but surely the visual presentation of data is not something that interests that many people. Then I remembered the Slashdot effect, and added one to the book's sales.

Yesterday at work I was in the elevator and thought about how great it was that due to B&N's super-quick Manhattan shipping we would probably have the book that day. Then I glanced up at the other elevator passenger and noticed he was carrying a box. Inexplicably curious, I looked a bit closer and saw that it was bound for our office. When we got out the guy was understandably confused about where to go, and I thought about directing him myself, but didn't want to freak him out. Instead I walked quickly back to the office and said to my coworkers that I had a hunch we'd be getting that book soon, a prediction that was briskly vindicated.

It is truly a wonderful book, and deserves a high sales rank (it now stands at 371). Its subject may sound dull, but the author brings a skill for storytelling and a dry wit to it, and of course plenty of illustrations, including many beautiful hand-drawn ones. An interesting aspect of his manifesto is that these are not things which should necessarily be immediately appreciable without thinking. They should be easier to understand than the array of numbers they represent, revealing patterns among the details, but he accuses most mainstream newspapers, especially American ones, of underestimating the intelligence of their readers when they design charts. Another fun note, the Japanese are extremely enthusiastic about statistics and graphs thereof, so much so that they have national chartmaking competitions for children. The book itself is also quite a work of art, and naturally exemplifies the many principles set out within. So we should have some very interesting Chartsengrafs coming out of RST soon.

When Art Bell came back on the air recently for the weekend editions of Coast to Coast AM, my interest was rekindled. He's very refreshing--he actually acknowledges that some of the things said by his guests are hard to believe, and sometimes even has real scientists on. Weekday host George Noory seems to believe just about anything that anyone says with neither questions nor a hint of incredulity, or he pretends to for the benefit of the show. And certainly there is a balance to be struck, so as not to alienate the guest or the audience. Additionally there isn't much that results from expressing doubt other than to let people like me know we're not alone in it, since during the show there's really no proving or providing of evidence to be done (often the theories of the guests seem almost carefully designed that way).

The best thing about Coast to Coast are the incredible stories woven by the guests, unbelievable as they are. Not many talk show guests can talk for 3 or 4 hours, but these people never run out of material, even when their beliefs are confined to one domain. The worst thing is when they bring bastardized science into the equation, sneakily making their story sound much more believable to the layman. There were several examples of this in the most recent show, whose guest was a crop circles guy. He held the unusual belief that the most complex ones are all created by humans, but that some of the simpler ones are created by 'some mysterious force.' I was disappointed that Mr. Bell didn't at least discuss these a bit more:

Guest: When I've walked through and near crop circles, I have seen balls of plasma flying around them at very high speeds, seeming to be attracted to the circles, and definitely looking like they are being mechanically controlled by something.

Reality: This sounds a lot like relatively rare, unexplained, but normal ball lightning. It's not too surprising he would witness it being out in fields in the middle of the night a lot. The appearance of being mechanically controlled is one of those things you just can't argue with.

Guest: I heard a story of someone who was with a group walking in a crop circle. He went to get something from their car, and to get there he went through the middle of the circle. But he couldn't find the car, instead in the woods he came upon a group of men around a campfire who were dressed rather primitively and were speaking an ancient-sounding language that he couldn't understand. He went back to the group, and though he felt he had been gone for about 3 hours, they said it had only been 5 minutes. (The implication is that he travelled back in time in the middle of the circle), and this agrees with the Theory of Relativity and time dilation!

Reality: Time dilation (the gravitational variety) is a phenomenon in which time passes more slowly (from an outside observer's point of view) when gravity is increased. On Earth, this is just barely measurable with atomic clocks, one on the ground and one in an airplane. If you took a spaceship out and flew it near a black hole and then came back to Earth, you would probably notice that quite a huge amount of time had passed on Earth while you were away (time had passed more slowly for you). So this could be called traveling forward in time. But this would never allow you travel back in time and then forward again, and even so, it would be rather noticeable if a circle in a field of wheat were exhibiting the gravitational properties of a black hole.

Guest: It's been observed in experiments that if a person kills a plant in one room, and then goes into another room where there are plants, those plants will respond, by turning away or drooping a little or something. This agrees with quantum entanglement.

Reality: Quantum entanglement, as one might expect, applies on the quantum scale. Entangled particles, when spatially separated, seem to influence one another instantaneously. A measurement of one appears to cause the other one to acquire the same measurement. This is crazy enough on its own, seeming to imply faster-than-light communication (although it doesn't for reasons I don't understand), but applying it to entire plants is...yeah. Again, one can't really argue with the guest's cited "experiments" while maintaining an interesting radio show.

Guest: If you arrange particles of certain materials on a surface, and project a sound on the surface, the particles form intricate and beautiful patterns. There's some mysterious energy within these particles making it happen.

Reality: We all saw this perfectly normal but interesting phenomenon in high school physics. He completely misrepresents it by saying it's the particles that matter, when of course it's the resonance properties of the surface material, and the sound, that create the patterns.

I don't want to be too much of a curmudgeon, of course part of the attraction of Coast to Coast is the ridiculousness. But things like this contribute to the sad state of science, and science education in particular, in this country. People clearly have some innate desire for the supernatural; no matter how strange reality is, if (somewhat) mainstream scientists are saying it, it's boring.

Later in the show, Art spontaneously called a British guy who disagreed strongly with the guest. The accent and vocabulary he used to trash the guest was hilarious. Unfortunately he ended up sounding like the asshole, an arrogant architecture professor who refused to believe that the charlatan circle-makers the guest said he had met were able to produce such beautiful patterns. Of course he didn't have any more evidence than the guest for his arguments, so it came down to bickering. He was hardly a voice of reason, since he thinks all the circles are being made by aliens. Of the crop circle that the guest said he had seen being made by normal people, he said: "I went and saw that circle. It's crap!"

After years of heartache and struggle, I'm the proud owner of a Suzuki Omnichord System 2. This is a musical instrument from the 80s, an electronic thing which I believe is meant to most closely match the Autoharp on the acoustic side. There is a keypad with 36 chord buttons, one for each key in major, minor and 7th. When you press multiple buttons at once in the same key you get major 7th, minor 7th, augmented and diminished. Then there's the key to it all, what they call a "SonicStrings Strumplate," a magical strip that you can touch in different places and activate the notes of the chord you're pressing over 4 octaves. The cool part is you don't have to apply much pressure because it works on conductivity. So you can lightly run your finger along it for very nice arpeggios. The target market of this was non-musicians who want to play music without knowing anything. It has automatic bass and drums accompaniment for that purpose, the type one finds on old family organs. I don't know how many people actually bought and used it for that purpose. It's such a wonderfully quirky instrument, and has a pretty cool sound. It's the omnichord, it chords all.

***

In high school, there were strange circumstances surrounding our sports team names. It seems that most teams, understandably, were not satisfied calling themselves "Peglegs," but there was no common alternative, so everyone chose their own name and we had a bewildering array of them. There were the (baseball) Hitmen, the (male swimming) Pirates, the (female swimming) Penguins, the (female soccer) Tempest, the (male volleyball) "Men of Steele," the (ultimate frisbee) Untouchables...of course I was blissfully unaware of most, well, all of these while I was there. But that's not the point...there is a point here. On the way home tonight, I saw a family walking, and the father was carrying a couple of sports-team-cheering posters. They said "GO STUY VIXENS."

***

This weekend's guest on Coast to Coast made rather a fool of himself. He was a surveillance expert and kind of boring overall, but the problem came when he veered over to computer territory. He talked of a laptop he purchased used, and how he put everything he didn't need that was on the hard drive "in the trash." "Now," he said, "I know most of your listeners probably think that when you put something in the trash, it's gone, right? Well let me tell you something unbelievable. Believe it or not, at a security and surveillance conference, someone demonstrated to me how they could obtain 800,000 files off the computer that I thought were gone, and believe it or not, there was PORNOGRAPHY on the computer. EXCESSIVE AMOUNTS OF PORNOGRAPHY. Let me give you a moment to absorb the shock."

One of the best things about having control over one's own site is being able to see all the things people Googled to find it. I hesitate to comment on these findings too much, because it will affect future searches in a sort of artificial way. But one that I found recently turned out to be enlightening, so I'll make an exception.

A relatively long time ago I had an entry about acquiring a book that had previously belonged to an architect named Primo Castrillo. The primary reason for mentioning this, I think, was simply that it's such a cool name. But it turns out this is a person of some note, as I discovered after someone found that entry by Googling for his name (I'm the #1 result, probably because I titled the entry after him). According to this he was a poet in addition to being an architect, and had a film made about his very last days. None of the 20 books he apparently published are available at BN.com, one is listed but out of print at Amazon, but plenty can be found at Abebooks. Actually many of the books found there are possessed by Dawn Treader Book Shop, where I obtained the copy of "Why I am Not a Christian" that bore his personal sticker. It seems they got a piece of his collection when he died. One of the books they have is signed from Anais Nin to Primo. I wonder if Castrillo shared Bertrand Russell's sentiments about religion.

Sometimes I'm so entertained by the Engrish in Japanese advertising that I risk forgetting how ridiculous American advertising can be. Also that uh, it has funny typos sometimes. Lately I've been considering a purchase to replace my long broken computer speakers with some nice monitors suited for recording. As such I've had occasion to once again flip through the endless supply of catalogs I receive from the likes of Sam Ash and Musician's Friend (or as I prefer to call them, Musician's Fiend, or Musician's Foe), and ponder their stupidities.
I'll present the first one Conan O'Brien funny ad skit style (except not made up---because seriously, you cannot make this stuff up). Here I was browsing the site of "Zzounds," which I am unable to say without cringing, and I took a look at these Event Monitors.



Pretty normal, right? But take a closer look at the section where they have the pricing and shipping information:



Apparently the marketing geniuses at ZZOUNDS! have decided that it's not enough for the consumer to think they are saving money on shipping. It's much more satisfying to know the company is losing tremendous amounts of money as a result! Really though, I can't say they're completely off; I have no great liking for this company, in fact one could say I hate them a little, for adding another stupid name to the list of homogenized music equipment sellers that always have the same price for just about everything, and at any given time are having about 5 separate BIGGEST SALES EVER! depending on what page you're looking at. But to come out and say this only adds to my aversion; it's like receiving a gift from someone who then proudly declares "I really went out of my way to get this, it was horribly inconvenient, and BOY did I spend a lot of money on it."

Next we have the other end of this specialized spectrum, the case of the misplaced savings. Here's an ad for the classic cheapo, in my experience surprisingly decent, Boss DS-1 distortion pedal:



Fair enough. But if you look closely at the pricing info (you'll have to squint this time, no zoomed-in picture), you see the pedal has been reduced to $59 from...$39. Ah, I see. It's a $20 savings, they simply neglected to specify that the company gets to save $20, not you. Typos are funny, see?!

The Blue Microphone company has been making oddly shaped, quite expensive mics for a little while now (this is the cheapest one yet). They've had the Blue Bottle, the Blue Mouse the Blueberry, and now...uh, yes.



Make that just "The Ball."

Finally, an example of the lengths and heights these places go to, to accommodate ridiculous musicians who love equipment more than music. The Coffin Case, now not just for goth-looking Warlock guitars, but for drum hardware:



It's very Goth, and functional too! Because lord knows, it's always a compromise for the gothically inclined musician. Should one go for the rectangular case that just doesn't express one's personal style, or the pentagram-shaped case completely covered with spikes that can be used for sacred rituals, but only holds one drumstick and hurts like hell to carry? Now, there's another option. I especially like that "Goth" comes before "functional", because really, anyone can make a functional case.

While I'm on this subject, I don't have a picture of this, but I saw a TV ad for Lowe's hardware store that featured Christmas trees that come with lights (and possibly other adornments) already on them. "You mean it comes like this, with the lights and everything already on?" the customer inquired, eager and hopeful. "With the lights and everything," the sales associate reassured him with a smile.

Thank heaven, and Lowe's its retail form, we are spared from the toil and trouble of applying Christmas lights to the tree! How often I have spent time with my family putting the lights on and thinking "Couldn't someone do this for me? Just give me the goddamned presents already." Why stop there? Couldn't we genetically engineer our Douglas Firs to grow their own lights, melded with their needles? Then we could have whole forests of Christmas trees. Well, it appears I've gone full-circle in my sarcasm back to sincerity; that would actually be pretty cool.

I've won half the battle of building guitar effect pedals--constructing the circuit and making it work. The other half is putting it in a box that looks good and will withstand stomping on a regular basis. This will have to wait until I receive my order from Small Bear Electronics, which has an...interesting...e-commerce setup. The pedal I made is a Ring Modulator (of sorts) and it sounds like one serious motherfucker. One can see easily why it isn't used so much, or at all, in pop music. It pretty much creates instant atonal music. But I'm very happy with it. I've been considering rock-attitude names to put on its eventual box; possibilities include "Dead Ringer," "Ring of Power", or simply "The Ring." Other suggestions are welcome. Bonus points for working in "Phase-Locked Loop," which is the main chip used in the circuit and a more accurate name for this pedal.

Digging a bit deeper into the world of DIY effects has given me more of an appreciation for the incredibly complex things people are adventurous enough to construct, and how puny my effort is by comparison. For example, I've been considering obtaining an Octave pedal, either by buying one or making one, but making one would certainly be cool. Then I ran across a schematic for the Boss OC-2, and Holy Sweet Goddamn.



Yeah, I think I'll just buy one.

I also saw one project by this fellow (Warning: numerous incredibly annoying Tripod popups unless you have a cool browser) called the Interlarding Fuzz, which is fairly simple and I kind of want to make it just so I can incorporate that word into conversations. For those that haven't read my entire rare word dictionary, interlarding is a process in which strips of lard are inserted in the middle of pieces of meat before cooking, for enhanced flavor (the above linked site has a more general definition). Some of the instructions further down that page are pretty amusing, and make it seem like not so simple a project after all.

Perhaps I should calm down a bit on the pedal-making and just get into circuit bending.

* * *

Tonight I finally satisfied my curiosity and watched a used DVD of "Panic Room." I had read about it, sort of, on Adam Kempa's site. To be more precise, I saw that he was talking about some theory and being obsessed with it, and immediately skipped the section because I still wanted to see it, mildly, even though I'd heard only ambivalent things about it elsewhere. I found it amply entertaining on the surface and less Hollywood than I expected; as for subtext, it's not hard to imagine that something was intended, since the surface story was so straightforward and plain, and David Fincher is pretty cool. But there's something not quite right about the theory espoused in Kempa's June 25, 2002 entry (get ready to do a lot of scrolling, or reading, it's all good stuff, and don't bother trying to resize the browser window), because usually movies with the element described either explicitly reveal it (Fight Club, Mulholland Drive) or are so artsy and abstract throughout that you'll believe anything about it. It's hard to think that a movie that seems so straightforward and Hollywood is actually the subtlest and sneakiest thing around. But, you may be right.

Coming up next, a core dump of the incredible overthinking of music I've unintentionally undertaken recently. In the meantime, consider agathism or nosism. But first, as the fancy strikes you, look over to the total word count at right. EVIL.

Having stopped observing operations very early in the morning at work, I'm now staying on the six-day-week sleep schedule mostly by choice. This is the schedule in which I (to use this weekend's timings) sleep from around 6am-3pm on Saturday, from 9am-5:30pm on Sunday, stay up all Sunday night and go to work Monday, and usually crash as soon as I get home from work, in this case waking up at about 3am on Tuesday, which brings us up to date (the idea being that I cycle back to sleeping at night as the week progresses and experience a week of 6 longer days).

Craving a burger, I headed over to the 24 hour City Diner. Unfortunately I was unable to avoid waking up my building's doorman on the way out, the door squeaking unpleasantly as I opened it. This doorman is quite friendly and has inquired before about the odd times of my comings and goings; this time he was utterly baffled. "You're going out now?" Just a meal at 4:30am, my good man, what's the trouble?

The burger was good, but the experience was marred slightly by the smell of cleaning fluids from the diligent mopping of the floors that was under way. The streets were among the emptiest I've seen here, and I was able to cross Broadway without interference.

Apart from the extra time to get things done, which sometimes seems huge but at other times negligible, my primary reason for staying on this schedule is that it makes things more interesting. When I'm on a normal schedule, it's a pretty regular rhythm, and besides it getting a bit boring, the rhythm is usually one of being unable to go to sleep at a reasonable time, then feeling bad about going into work at 11 or 12 or 1, and still having to leave in time for dinner. On this schedule who knows what's going to happen, but at least some of the time I end up getting to work at 7am or so, and feeling good about that, even if I'm reading the OED for the first hour.

Then there are the effects on my mind. Lately the incredible levels of fatigue I often endure on Mondays have produced some interesting effects. There are little time-warps, like the other day when I was going down to the cafeteria for lunch, and thought about how I didn't really want to take the stairs down the three floors today, but to be lazy and take the elevator. Then I realized that I was already downstairs, and had taken the stairs.

The other common manifestation of the fatigue is decreasing control over my own thoughts. Picture a nice little train of thought about the machine vision algorithms for the robot, chugging along nicely, "could use this measurement, as long as the images are consistent enough, etc..." And then another train comes barreling into it, sending everything into a new chaotic trajectory, "UNICORN PARKING RIP YOUR FACE OFF." What? What the hell did I just think? These occurrences are usually only mildly disruptive and a bit amusing as long as I don't verbalize them, which hasn't happened yet. I use all caps for the crazy thought because often it feels as though it is being shouted in my head. I experience a similar sensation sometimes when I try to understand what's happening around me having just woken up.

I used to like saying (to paraphrase as modern parody) that anti-sleep is my drug. But I was thinking on the way back from my 4:30am dinner that if that's my reason for staying up, to make life weird and therefore more interesting, maybe that's just as stupid as using drugs for the same purpose. It's less directly artificial, but it's still changing my mind instead of reality.

* * *
Getting back to my apartment after the night meal was interesting. When I got to the elevator it was on the 8th floor, and proceeded to make every stop until the 15th, whereupon it came straight down to the first, empty, and then took me to the basement, where no one was waiting. This reminded me of the artificially intelligent, speech-capable, and extremely depressed elevators in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy books, who absolutely loathed going up and argued with their passengers about the virtues of going down. Most of them simply sat in the basement and never moved.

This morning I incorporated a radio interview with Bloomberg about what happens when it snows into my dreams. I think lately, the radio has more frequently woken me up by turning off after 2 hours, than when it turns on.

Today I got together with old pal Mr. Mottel for some music playing. He requested we set up the old drum kit, which a few months ago was drawn and quartered, its limbs sent to opposite corners of my room. I was a bit nervous about doing this, recalling the veiled threats and fuming anger from neighbours when I used to play, but thought hey, um...screw them. To ease the burden for our fellow dwellers of the inside 'U' of the building, I draped a sleeping bag over one window, and a sound absorption blanket over the other (the first time I've actually used it). For a while Mottel played drums and I abused the guitar, with mostly incidental correspondence. Then we switched it up, still no problems. Then the bedroom door opened. That's odd, I thought, considering there's no one else here. It was a neighbour from the 16th floor; I had left the door unlocked and he had become desperate enough to simply walk in here to tell us "the walls are shaking." He was relatively calm about it, though obviously distraught under the surface, so I agreed to stop. Strangely enough, I don't think I've ever seen this neighbour before, and I wouldn't have any problem with never seeing him again.

I've been noticing for a while that the economics of the cafeteria at my workplace are a bit strange, but yesterday it bumped itself right up to entry-deserving territory.

Like George Costanza, you might say the cafeteria is very...careful...with money. They have signs detailing their prices near the cash register, but most of the actual food items available are not listed. Instead, these signs indicate the cost for things like "hot water," "ice water in a cup," "napkins," "forks", "ketchup packets" and "empty plate." All the sorts of things you might think would come along with the meal. You can tell they're not wasting any money on the signs, they're plain printed paper taped up, with sloppily handwritten additions every so often. To be fair, I don't think they've ever charged me for my plastic fork, although I usually grab it after I've paid just in case they were thinking about it. I'm guessing the idea is to discourage some of the more economically disadvantaged patients from taking the opportunity to hoard all their dinnerware from the place, but can't they deal with that when it happens? Besides it's not like security's tight, in fact I sometimes stand at the cash register for a few minutes before an employee even shows themselves, so if someone really wants some plates, they'll get the plates.

The ironic part (you knew it was coming) is that although I get the same thing most days, a croissant and an orange Slice, and a banana if they're not too green, the price seems to fluctuate quite a bit. I haven't written down any specific figures, since that would kind of take away from the wonder of it all, but I'm pretty sure I've been charged amounts ranging from $2.15 to over $3. I rather doubt the price of croissants that come in plastic wrap is seasonal, so I chalk it up to employees forming their own opinions over time about what things cost, and possibly sometimes mistaking my soda for a coffee (it all goes in styrofoam cups with opaque lids).

Oh right, the yesterday part. Yesterday I was there bright and early when they have breakfast selections, which on average are even more unappetizing than the lunch ones. The color of the ham (at least I assume it's ham) they put on top of the eggs is nearest that of a pink highlighter. The woman in front of me was getting some bacon, and out of curiosity asked how she was being charged for it. "By the piece." By the piece of bacon....what a world.

Things like this make me think, that sometimes when we see how ridiculous things are in other countries, we fail to realize that equally silly things can be found in our own. Certainly there is an extent to which the collective philosophy stereotype of a people influences the way they handle everyday, universal things, but it's tempting to exaggerate it. Very tempting.... I can't help myself...

***

This bit is too self-promoting to get its own entry, but I can't remain silent. Today a photographer for the New York Times came to our lab and took about 3 rolls of pictures of us and the robot. She had a digital SLR but confessed she only uses it as a substitute for a Polaroid. Apparently a reporter already conducted an interview over the phone with my boss, and it's pretty likely they'll run a story, timing unknown but assumedly within the next few weeks. If I were a New York Times reporter, working on a story that was happening in New York, I think I would go to the trouble of actually taking a subway ride up and seeing the damn robot, but we're not complaining, and probably it won't be a very big story. We hope this doesn't preclude them running another story once we're further along in the project, like having a robot testing in an OR, because that will probably be even more valuable on the business side of things. But it would certainly be extremely valuable now in many ways, and needless to say exciting.

Later today we all went to the surgery department's Christmas party. There's nothing quite like a roomful of slightly drunk surgeons releasing colossal amounts of stress. One of them suggested we go socialize with the physical therapists; we ended up getting dragged into conversation with a guy who vehemently insisted we change our project to be robots that have sex (with each other or with humans, I don't know which) in an operating room, which he proudly called "ROBOT SEX 2005!!!" Later he kept walking by us and whispering "robot sex 2005..." The others told us they barely knew him.

Disorienting: waking up and thinking about the things I have to do, then falling back asleep and dreaming that I am doing those things, then waking up and falling back asleep and dreaming the same thing again, in a very realistic and convincing way, then waking up and starting to do the things I have to do, but not quite trusting that I am actually awake, and therefore losing some of the motivation to do anything, since I might still have to do it again when I really wake up. But that time I was really awake.

More site traffic studies: Last week the site traffic reports showed two odd patterns. One, I had hits from many colleges, but only a few from each; the entire Ivy League seemed to be represented, and the most were from Berkeley. Two, I had a lot of hits from google searches for "horrible failure," which appropriately enough I am the number one result for. The connection? A campaign, probably mostly among college kids, to make the president's official biographical sketch on the white house site the number one result for "terrible failure," which was successful a few days ago but now seems to have been 'fixed.' So, a simple miscommunication among a few idiots at each college, and voici.

Aggravating: Losing this entry after typing it the first time (excluding this paragraph) when a stupid blog crashed the browser. The author of this blog mentions how the body of a homeless person was found in a Japanese train station after lying there for 5 or 6 weeks. He uses it as an example of how cold and insensitive the Japanese are, that they probably walked by and just ignored it for so long. Dude, it's not the Japanese, it's people in a big city. If I walked by a blanket that seemed to have a person under it, especially if there were a foul odor, I would ignore it too.

What is odd is the seeming propensity for limbs of the Japanese to detach from their bodies. It seems like every other day there's a report of the arm or leg of a missing person turning up, with no sign of the rest of them. Perhaps they simply don't report on it here.

***

The other day there was a fire in a building about 8 blocks from my workplace that we could see from our window. The smoke looked lighter and more steam-ish than one expects from a fire, but there was definitely too much of it. Then I stood up in front of the window and noticed there was a fire truck parked directly below it. Then I checked the NY1 news site and saw that a firefighter had died battling that fire. The article didn't exist yet but the headline was already there. He was probably pronounced dead 2 floors down. It all seemed to happen very quickly. I felt nothing.

(an example of a Japanese personal ad)

Could we start a band together?

After finally seeing them on the eve of the new year, I have proof that multiple people besides me like the Mates of State.

I may be the only one who will appreciate this, but this was taken during one of the triumphant "ye-yeah-eah" moments in the song "Proofs," hence the comical pose of the drummer's arm. I took several other pictures at the show, including some of the excellent band Versus, and some in the 'rock-and-roll' blurred style, which I am forcing myself to put up as a gallery by saying in this entry that I will do so.

Later that night I attended a party that could have served as a poorly attended high school reunion. I don't think any of the people I didn't already know recognized me. That's probably the way I prefer it.

* * *

I'm not going to make any resolutions, but I am redoubling my efforts in studying Japanese. In my end-of-year push I made my 'first pass' up to the 400th Kanji, and ensured that I 'know' the first 300. I intend to know the first 1000 by the June-July period, also known as Summer. That is the number that Japanese sixth-graders are supposed to know. Meanwhile I've acquired several wonderful books to aid my quest, and here's where it becomes interesting to the casual reader who for some reason is reading this. I'm also forcing myself by saying so to put up extremely thorough reviews of all the books I've used.

Today I made a return to watching the Japanese TV that the International Channel shows on Sundays. In place of the utterly incomprehensible and boring political talk show "Hodo 2001" they had one whose banner I translated as "love story, then the birth," that doesn't really fit any category we have here. Several people in their 20s and early 30s sat with the hosts, and watched a filmed dramatization of how their parents fell in love and gave birth to them. Sometimes you would see the person the story was about in a corner of the screen, for their reactions. After each film the person would discuss the story with the hosts for about 15 seconds, then they would move on.

I was rather puzzled when the first film seemed to depict an alcoholic and abusive father, and the true-life child's reaction was to laugh hysterically. From there on it was more predictable, with the women getting teary-eyed and such. I was expecting that at the end they might have some sort of contest of which story was most interesting, or at least something involving horrible pointless torture of the guests, but no, the show just ended.

Later was the classic "Hey! Hey! Hey! Music Champ," which featured the talents of male Japanese pop star Gackt. I couldn't help but wonder how they came up with a name like that.

I've just returned from a business trip to Dallas, TX, where my boss and I presented a completed grant project to the National Science Foundation. We did something similar in Maryland last year, but at one day in duration, this was the true business trip.

The first thing to notice about Dallas is that it was a lot colder than it should have been, in the 30s just like New York. The second thing was that the locals were not dealing with it very well. The woman who helped us get a taxi from the airport was bundled up like a Muslim. The taxi driver had the heat up so high in the taxi that even I was uncomfortable, which is to say it was comparable to the car being on fire.

The hotel was huge and pretty fancy; it had a nice art collection, and one of only three five-star restaurants in Dallas, the rather poorly named 'Nana.' Instead we chose the Mexican restaurant for dinner, and it was extremely good. The place had a strange internet setup: there was wireless but only in the public and meeting areas, and you had a buy a day of usage at the front desk. Every room had a DSL modem/router attached to the bottom of the desk, with a little connector coming out onto the desk that they wanted us to use. We couldn't imagine what this tiny thing did, but it was clearly meant to look like something other than just a connector; in fact though it didn't work at all, so instead we bypassed it by plugging the cable directly into the router. To do so we had to get around a piece of plastic attached specifically to prevent this possibility. Then we still had to pay for it.

Before bed we explored the hotel a little. There were a couple of other events, one of which was something called a "Lifetouch" seminar. There were also a large number of high school graduation pictures put up. These were incredibly involved pictures, obviously taken by professionals with plenty of soft glow. Some of them had whole sets that had been built to illustrate who this kid is; sometimes the kids were in elaborate costumes. Many of the males were holding guitars or in athletic regalia. The pictures had often embarrassing titles like "football dreams" or "lookin' hot." Ah, but a gem in this rough--one girl used the title "Oh, Inverted World." A Shins fan in Dallas!

The next morning was the conference. It felt a bit strange being the 'guy in town for the conference,' but I had plenty of company: over 500 projects were being presented here. Presented is perhaps not the best word: this was something called a poster session, in which everyone brings posters showing their project, and stands by them, and everyone circulates and chats about their projects. Since everyone is not there at the same time, it was not too crowded, but the sheer number of projects with posters was still overwhelming. Walking among them was a quick education in visual design principles: many of the posters provided a real chore in even finding the name of the project. Several were square grids of 8.5x11 printouts of Powerpoint slides. Not the way to go for at least two reasons: the grid effect is enhanced by having the same template for all the slides, and hides the information in them; and after starting on the top left slide, one doesn't know whether to go right or down! Our posters were not perfect, being so large that we could only fit two of our five into our strictly allotted space. But I can safely say that unless one has no idea what a scrub nurse or a robot is, one could look at our posters and understand the project very quickly, which is something you could say for perhaps 2% of the posters.

My boss made a sociological observation that I recognized as very accurate: if the goal is for people to pay attention to our poster, the best approach is to be nowhere near it. This is because when standing by one's poster, it is impossible not to look desperate for attention and watch people to see if they are looking at your poster. The passerby really doesn't want to get roped into a conversation, or have the representative say anything at all to them, unless they are truly interested in the project, which they know is very unlikely. The safest thing is to simply skip over the posters that have representatives by them. I did this many times.

My favorite poster was undoubtedly for a project called "Advanced Question Answering," that appeared to have no further explanation of the technical nature of the project, if there was any. Since the representative was standing in front of it, I couldn't linger on it, but noticed their list of technical objectives. "Answering specific questions" was checked off. "Response time < 1 second" was labeled "in progress."

We cut out after lunch. On the flight back, I was served a British can of coke. The measurements in Kilojoules caught my eye, then I noticed the rather vague ingredients list, including "sugar" and "flavourings." I tried to detect a difference in taste between this can and American ones, like there is between the American one (using corn syrup as a sweetener) and those from Montreal (using cane sugar). As far as I could tell, the British one was actually further along the spectrum than the American one, in terms of 'realness of sweetness' (the Montreal version being the most real). But this impression may have been affected by the slightly warm temperature of the can. I'll have to do some more research into this.

Today on a crowded subway train, I was standing and a woman in front of me was sitting, with one person in the seat directly on her left, another person on her right, and another two seats to her right. The person directly to her left was pretty skinny, and was sitting forward with most of his body not over the seat.

Then the person to her right got up. The person two seats to her right was a bit large, and taking up some of the now empty seat directly to the woman's right. The woman then quickly slid over to this newly empty but partly taken up seat, from the perfectly good one she had next to someone not even taking up their entire seat.

Two forces are at work here: one, giving her the right to slide around like that. Sitting is not good enough for people anymore. They have to be sitting in the best possible seat that's accessible by sliding from their current seat, as if they're in a one-dimensional version of those sliding board puzzles with one empty square. But why does she have the right to do this? Because there are two classes: the sitting, and the standing. As she is already sitting, she has first rights to any seat that becomes available (as long as she can get to it quickly enough). As a current stander, I only have the right to the seats that no sitter wants. Fortunately the social climb from stander to sitter is a quick one, even though it actually involves a physical descent.

Then there's two: given the right, why did she choose to move to a seemingly suboptimal seat? The most common slide is to a seat at the end of a row, so that one only has a neighbor on one side. But the seat she slid to was one away from that seat. It's possible that she want to be as close to the end as possible, in case she later got the opportunity to slide further. But on an express train heading into midtown during the morning rush hour, I find this much foresight unlikely. I think it's a case of grass-is-always-greener. People are getting so anxious to be in the optimal seat that they're taking any slide that becomes possible, like the desperate solver of those board puzzles who no longer trusts their own judgment, and simply moves the pieces around as much as possible in the hopes of stumbling toward a resolution.

When the woman made this seemingly bizarre move, the person she had been next to gave her a bit of a look, like 'what, do I smell bad?' He understood.

The intelligence of people using the elevator at work seems to drop on a daily basis. First, although work happens to be inside a hospital, I assure you these people are not sick, at least they don't appear so. And yet they are confounded by the workings of our elevators.

The first problem is pushing the button. The buttons are arranged in, I admit, a possibly confusing way. Each button has a circular metal piece next to it that has the floor number as a numeral and in braille, embossed in metal, and does look enough like a button that I would not immediately hate someone who pushed it first. But when one sees the other circle light up, because I have just pushed it on the other button panel, I think that should be enough of a clue. Nonetheless, people continue to stare and try to press the non-button. Apparently they sometimes try pretty hard, because some of the non-buttons have actually been pushed into the panel. On one occasion, after seeing that I had been successful in requesting a floor, a woman decided that perhaps the button panel she had been trying was not good enough, and came over to the one I had used instead.

Once one has gotten past pushing the button, there is the difficult task of getting off at the right floor. It's a common occurrence to try to get off prematurely, because every floor looks very similar, without clear labels in the elevator bank. But a few days ago one woman went way beyond this. We had gotten on in the basement, and I had pushed 3, she 1. The door opened at 1 and she made no movement. Then to 2 where someone else got off. On the way to 3 she looked back at me and said "Ahm..." I didn't want to get involved so I managed a good blank stare, and walked quickly off at 3. I think by that point she was beginning to get the picture.

Considering that 3 of the elevators in the building traverse a total of 3 floors, and the other 5 cover 4 including the basement, I think those not infirm but unable to handle the intricacies of elevator travel should simply take the stairs. I do sometimes, but I'm unable to go down stairs without going extremely fast and 2 at a time, and in the morning when I haven't reached full agility this seems dangerous.

The arrangement of the 1/9 trains in upper manhattan and the bronx is an odd one. Since there are only two tracks, there can't be a true local/express arrangement, in which one train would have to be able to pass another. Instead, during rush hours only, each train only stops at every other stop, with the 1 having one set of stations, and the 9 having the other set. This way all the trains are going faster, the idea being that, particularly during rush hours, there is much much more ridership in mid and lower manhattan than upper (several times I've been alone in a car for a few stops, which is a fun time to sing loudly), so it's better if there are more trains in that area while the ones in upper manhattan zip around without inconveniencing too many people. The problem (and it is more one of my own anger level than of the system functioning) is that for reasons unknown, the MTA seems unable to create trains that are clearly defined as 1 or 9. There are indicators of the train's designation on its front, back, and once or twice on the side of each car, and very often these contradict each other. Alright, I think, perhaps I should trust the one on the front, since that's where the conductor is and therefore it's conveniently updated if the train has to switch designations. Nope, turns out I can't trust that. Alright, the front can be overridden if all the ones on the side are the other number. Nah, that doesn't seem to hold either. In fact it seems to be almost random whether or not the train stops. Usually there is a fairly steady alternation of 1's and 9's, but sometimes this breaks down as well. This isn't 'Nam damn it, there are rules!

* * *

Coming home on the train today, I was joined by a mother and daughter. The mother was white and the daughter was about 10 years old and appeared to be Japanese. Then they started conversing, and the girl spoke perfect English in a British accent. I can't say exactly why, but I found this person utterly fascinating. The things she was saying weren't terribly sophisticated, mostly revolving around which streets the stops were on and such, and yet the way she talked made her seem so precocious and worldly. Every time I went back to my studies, I found my ears disagreeing with my mind, and had to look back to make sure someone that looked like this really sounded like this. A few times I entertained the notion that she was really American, and was performing a childishly extended impersonation. But I hope I don't mean purely her accent and her race, though it is a rare combination; I think truly there was something special about both her voice and her face, something mature, sincere and peaceful.

* * *

Progress report: I didn't exactly plan it, but the intensity of my Japanese studies has continued to increase. This has correlated with an increase in the regimented nature of my day, which feels unnatural but necessary. I now make a first pass of learning on 4-7 Kanji per day, read the textbook on the train at the rate of about a chapter per week to week and a half, do auxiliary reading before bed (currently the excellent "Using Japanese" by William McClure), and review Kanji flashcards of my own making at any other moment of the day when I cannot open a book and my attention is not otherwise fully occupied. I just discovered that the obscure WMBC shows an assortment of Japanese television shows from 10pm-11pm every day except Sunday, so I have added this to the routine, which for a while has included 1-3 hours of viewing on Sunday, on the international channel. At work I read the Mainichi Shimbun and the Japanese Slashdot site during breaks.

I've got 500 Kanji down fairly solidly, and have made the first pass on numbers 501-545. I've made it most of the way through my textbook. The more important part is what I can do with that. In reading, I feel I am getting closer and closer to the top of a slope, tumbling off of which represents true understanding without the use of reading aids to decode the Kanji words. Occasionally I experience the satisfaction of being able to read a whole (short) sentence of a newspaper article. The tv-watching experience is odd; I often find that I understand a lot more when I look away from the screen. Partly this is because they like to show subtitles, in Japanese, either for emphasis or to alleviate the problem of too many homophones and mumbled or fast speech. So of course I have the urge to try to read them, and of course I get through about one word before they're yanked off the screen. Meanwhile the syllables are whizzing by my ears. Yet the second I look down I understand lots of words, although I rarely get a long enough string of them to get any larger meaning. Speaking remains the larger question, though I am feeling out the more deserted sushi restaurants for one where I might be brave enough to sit at the bar and strike up a dialogue with the itamae-san.

* * *

A few days ago I got a check for $13.86 from the CD MAP Antritrust Litigation. Hooray! And no, RIAA, I'm afraid I don't forgive you.

Tonight as I was walking home, I heard a voice behind me say "say excuse me." At first thought someone giving an etiquette lecture, but then I realized it had been "say, excuse me." A guy was trying to get my attention, using a rather outdated phrasing. He was in his mid to late thirties, white, reasonably well dressed, with no discernable accent. I turned and he continued "I'm not trying to bother you.." and proceeded to explain that he had just been drinking at a bar and someone had walked off with his laptop bag, which contained his money, credit/bank cards and car keys as well as his laptop. He had already filled out a police report and everything. He pointed to his car right across the street, "the black one," saying he was from New Jersey and needed to get back there to get his spare set of car keys, to retrieve his car.

In the midst of this the man told me several biographical details, to make sure I understood what an upstanding fellow he was. An MBA from Wharton, works at Oppenheimer Fund. He said "I'm a really ethical guy" at one point. He asked me where I was from. I said "right around here" and he replied "right on." The skin of his hands was somewhat rough.

By this point it was pretty probable that I would try to give him whatever he needed, because I don't think too well in these situations, and I'd rather simply give it to him even if I get screwed than try to come up with some explanation for why I don't want to, and feel guilty afterward. So I said "what do you need?" meaning how much, but he interpreted it more generally and said "just some help..." I was so surprised to hear that as a euphemism for money from an (apparent) non-panhandler that for a moment I thought he actually wanted me to do something for him, but then he continued "about $8 for a train, a bus, to get back to Fort Lee..." I reached into my pocket and had a twenty and two singles. Damn, $8 I really wouldn't have cared much about but losing $20 kind of sucks. But I gave it to him, along with my name and phone number, and he assured me that he would call me in about 45 minutes when he got home so we could arrange a time and place to meet so he could return it to me. He used the word "usurious" to describe the amount he would be willing to give me back. Then he looked at my name and asked if I was Jewish and I said "well, sort of...not really practicing, you know." He said he was too, but also not practicing, he thanked me profusely, and with that we parted.

So, either he's honest, he's a panhandler or otherwise poor guy and pathological liar who uses this to get a quick buck and has polished his performance, or he's a more sophisticated con man who doesn't really need the money but doesn't mind getting it anyway. I'm inclined to discout the last possibility, because in the grand scheme of things it was such a small sum. I also doubt that any con man worth his salt would say something like "I'm a really ethical guy," or indeed use such a blunt game as this. The second possibility is...a possibility, and doesn't necessarily conflict with the intelligence that his speech pattern seemed to indicate.

After about four hours there had been no phone call, so out of curiosity I went to see if the car he pointed out was still there. If it was, of course, that didn't give me any real indication, as it could never have been his in the first place. But if it was gone, I could at least stop waiting for the phone to ring. The car was indeed still there. It had a New York license plate, which doesn't bother me too much: it's plausible, and unless he was really desperate and amateur, there was no good reason for him not to check that out beforehand. Then again, he might have decided that unless I was rude and checked it out before giving him anything, he could probably have gotten away by the time I could check it out.

Other than the absence of a phone call, honesty doesn't seem too out of the question. It's understandable that would have chosen me to ask, not because I look like a sucker necessarily, but because I look like a peer. His manner was fitting for someone who has just had a lot stolen, but is more frustrated than truly damaged by it, and is still thinking rationally. Also, the 'drinking at a bar' part of the story is one that a grifter trying to appear as virtuous as possible would probably not think to include. It's still plausible that it took a lot longer than planned to get home, and that he thought it would be too late for me to meet tonight. But I won't hold my breath. I probably will, however, check for the car tomorrow morning, because being on an avenue, if it isn't retrieved it's liable to be ticketed or towed.

In retrospect I probably should have at least asked for his phone number, although again it wouldn't have been too hard for him to make one up.

On tonight's syndicated episode of Futurama, Fry and Leela were walking down the street and a ragged man jumped out of an alley and said, "Please help me! Someone stole all my money and I need to get back to Jersey City where uh, my mother is dying...so I'm mugging you!"

On Saturday PG and I braved the frustrating logic of the weather, that if it isn't cold it must at least be raining and windy, to explore the upper reaches of this island in search of housing options. Walking from the 90's to the 160's we zigzagged from Riverside to St. Nicholas. I was at once struck by the differences from the neighborhoods I more commonly frequent, and by the relative sameness exhibited by most of the neighborhoods we passed through. Certainly there is nothing pretentious about these places, and there is a welcome drop in the price of daily necessities. But while there are the countless bodegas and spanish restaurants just like my neighborhood has, it's more that that is all there is. PG observed at one point that we hadn't actually seen a supermarket for about a mile and a half. Niceties such as bookstores and cafes are most certainly to be forgotten. We also picked up on an evidently universal unwillingness on the part of dog owners to clean up after their pets. But in the end, the presence of such rents as are seen here, on the island of Manhattan, compensates for all these little complaints.

At the end of our walk we dined at a Spanish restaurant that, for its looks, had a surprisingly ambitious and expensive menu. We were just looking for lunch but it was hard to find a dish for less than $10. There were also mostly unique sets of about 15 specials for every day of the week. About 10 minutes after making up our minds, during which several other parties arrived and seemed to receive their food almost instantly, a waitress finally acknowledged us. It turned out the menu was perhaps overambitious; they did not have the ingredients for "shredded beef," so we both got the classic, Pollo Al Carbon, with rice and beans and an order of fried plantains. After consulting with a cook who told her in Spanish that it would be 15 minutes for the Pollo, she advised us it would be 10. All this apparently shoddy treatment, combined with a strange pricing structure that gave ranges for each dish and seemed to charge less for more food, made me feel as though we had arrived in some foreign country. Certainly we were outsiders, but it turned out my impressions were happily wrong, for the Pollo arrived in 10 minutes or less, everything was delicious, and somehow the entire meal cost $12.

* * *

Near the end of the workday today, someone had a very convenient accident, by crashing their car right in front of the hospital's driveway. A fire department ambulance arrived and loaded in an injured passenger, then proceeded to sit there, directly in front of the driveway, for at least the 15 minutes until I went home.

In "Cracking Up" I have a thing that's rare these days: a new TV show that might actually be good. TV is so bad that even when there is a good show, I fail to appreciate it in its time, so reluctant am I to get drawn into a crapfest. But that's what syndication is for. This show is written by Mike White, who did the brilliant "Chuck and Buck" and the better-than-it-should-have-been "School of Rock," and it stars Jason Schwartzman, whom a Times article seemed to imply is just now discovering the music of Sebadoh (not that there's anything wrong with that).

The first thing I was struck by in the first episode last night was the surprise of being reminded of "Rushmore" by the music (the first song was a near-clone of Sloan's "Penpals," and later there were many shades of Mark Mothersbaugh's scores), the academic setting (quickly to evaporate), and the unmistakable deadpan dialogue. The last one of these I'm willing to accept was simply something that Schwartzman brought to Rushmore, and that happened to be a perfect fit for Wes Anderson, perhaps even that he took with him to Tenenbaums. But when the DVD arrives I will have to go back and watch "Bottle Rocket" to see if he had this going on pre-Rushmore.

The first episode had a very frenetic pace, which perhaps was due to a desire to get enough of the exposition done to draw the viewer in. This helped keep the humor afloat as it often does, and distracted a bit from the show's adherence to the usual sitcom cliches, such as Schwartzman's character threatening to eliminate the show's premise by leaving the family he's going to live with, then changing his mind after no more than 10 seconds of screen time. This method of hewing close enough to the mainstream to be seen by a wide audience, while not sucking, seems to be a developing trademark of Mike White.

It's slightly odd to see Schwartzman playing the straight man to the crazy family when he made such a delightful eccentric in Rushmore and certainly doesn't have the grown-up and dignified look that one expects for that kind of role. Meanwhile the family, while showing no signs at all of being a family other than living in the same house (until the last 5 seconds when we all learn a valuable lesson...), remains authentic. Most families with that much money really are fucking insane.

Well this was going to be called "First and second impressions..." because they showed the second episode tonight, but then I fell asleep at 8:30pm, thus missing it and probably ruining the healthy and regular sleep schedule that I have kept going for three weeks. Damnit.

I was considering several possible topics for the first entry in more than a week, but was having trouble thinking of any of them as truly worthy or inspiring. There was the movie "Haiku Tunnel" that I caught a few nights ago (It had very little to do with either. Discuss.), bizarre sets of Japanese verbs that sound the same and mean very similar things, but are written with different Kanji, more stupid elevator people stories. But then these were all made to seem quite boring and irrelevant while I was riding the elevator down to the basement at work today. It stopped at the second floor, and out there in the elevator bank was a woman, skipping across the floor, completely naked. There seemed to be something slightly wrong with her skin. She was saying repeatedly in a raspy voice, "they keep beating on me..." As the door closed I saw the hand of her pursuer reaching out. One of the nurses who was in the elevator said, "I have never seen that before."

Add a new sleep schedule to the catalogue of those I've tried: the every-other-night nap-from-evening-to-middle-of-night. This one has the dubious distinction that I followed it rather consistently this week, completely unintentionally. Every other night I fell asleep quite involuntarily, sometimes with my legs half hanging off the side of my bed, most recently with a guitar lying across my stomach, from 8 or 9pm until some time between 12:30 and 4:30am. Almost every time this happened I think I was working on music at the time. Tonight I had just come up with a great start to a song, with music and a couple of verses worth of lyrics. I was trying to fill out the second verse but started to feel myself fading away and thought that I should try to write down what I have so I don't forget it. But I couldn't bring myself to sit back up and do it, so I'll have to see if I can remember it now. I've long tried to exploit the heightened states of creativity that exist in times of extreme fatigue and even during sleep, the same way others have made use of what drugs do to them. But it is a delicate area that can lead to unplanned naps when proper caution is not taken. After falling asleep with the guitar on my stomach tonight, I rolled over in my sleep and woke up with it resting heavily on my back, and for a while thought I must have planned it that way to make it harder for myself to get up.

As I've been looking to get an apartment, I've started reading the Times' Real Estate section now and then. But I'm frequently frustrated by their focus on people who are clearly in the top 1% or less of wealth in this country, and on "trends" that only those people could possibly be part of. There was a recent article about one such "trend," toward making one's residence look like a hotel. This is already stupid enough. They talked about one guy who hired the architect of a Las Vegas hotel that he liked, to design his living room. Who the fuck can afford to do that? A while back there was another "trend" article about parents who, rather than housing their children in college dormitories, simply buy houses for them. What?! I have enough trouble comprehending how people are able to buy one house in a lifetime and actually pay for it. Is any of this really newsworthy? I would be far more impressed by an amateur being resourceful and using what they had to create an unconventional place to live. Another recent story raised my ire with its content, rather than with the presence of the article at all. It was about a planned building by Santiago Calatrava, the guy behind some pretty cool things such as the new PATH Terminal for the WTC site. His new project is a building with 12 stacked staggered cubes, each of which houses 1-2 families and has 10,000-12,000 square feet of space, on the lower east side. In other words, a huge building with ludicrously large apartments for a few very, very rich people. Is this really what we need? In general I've finally realized that in my current environs, most of the people around me are rich and perhaps that's why everything seems expensive. I think once I move I will really be in a place that is more suited to me.

(More soon--I'm trying to provide more frequent entries by not packing several ideas into each one)

Some notes on the culture:

I think a while ago I criticized Quizno's for their "Raised By Wolves" advertisements. Well, they have redeemed themselves with the (relatively) new "Horrible Singing Mouse Creature" ads. These feature two crudely animated things, with the bodies of rodents and human ears and mouths (which are just rows of teeth), and crazy mismatched eyes, that look like horrible mutations of nature. They yell about the current deals at Quizno's in awful abrasive voices that are just about halfway between singing and screaming. I have to admire any reasonably large company willing to take the risk of using horrible mouse creatures with abrasive voices to sell sandwiches. Whether or not it increases my desire to eat there is another story. In fact it really doesn't, because I can't stop picturing the creatures running around in the kitchen of the Quizno's. The jingles they sing are catchy though.

On the downside: When Kyocera needs an idea, they just rip off Wes Anderson! Recently in a movie theater I saw an ad for their new phone that might be titled "The Uncool Kid," about a private school overachiever who gets picked on by the tough kids. He first appears sitting in a posh academic office in a blazer with his legs crossed, as he describes his predicament. Then there is a montage showing all the extracurricular activities he participates in. Then he gets this wonderful new phone and, blah blah. Some of the details are kinda hazy because I put off writing this for so long after I saw it. But it was a total Rushmore ripoff, up until the phone stuff.

Yesterday on the train home a guy sitting next to me tried to evangelize me. He was a young Chinese guy, got on at the Columbia stop so it's probable he's part of the Campus Crusade or whatever it may be. He first asked me if I was a Christian, I said no, and that was about the last word I got in. He launched into the usual monologue that presumes I know nothing whatsoever about the religion, and yet at the same time presumes quite a bit, because it is so rambling and disjointed that if I were truly ignorant I would undoubtedly be completely lost. Because you just have to open yourself to the lord...you see he created us in his image...of course we don't have to try to sin, we sin all the time... there's really no attempt to establish the basics. With only a few stops before I got off, I was not particularly interested in a debate, and it was obvious that he was not interested in dialogue of any kind. I also can never bring myself to grow hostile and tell him what a jerk he is to interrupt my Japanese study by presuming that he's going to completely change my beliefs in the course of my commute. So instead I just zoned out and listened to the sound of his voice. He had a sort of interesting accent, a mix of softened consonants and some vaguely British vowels. At one point he tried to pretend there was some good reason for him picking me out by pointing to my Nihongo textbook as he said "that's why we may do so many things, learn many languages, and yet still we are not satisfied" (you can guess the solution). Oh, now it all makes sense! He could see that my language study was really a cry for help.

I think the tendency of people like this guy to ramble about this and that aspect of their religion with seemingly no thought of his own behind what he is saying, obviously just reciting what he has been told again and again since his youth, contributes to the impression of being 'brainwashed.' Once he knew I was an eligible target he appeared to have no real interest in whether or not I understood or agreed with anything he was saying. Perhaps he was just trying to feel good about himself for performing his duty, even if the attempt was half-hearted.

There's jumping the shark, and then there's jumping the round (number). This is the name I'm giving to when forces of inflation are actually felt by the consumer, and something that has cost a nice round number for a long time, practically becoming a tradition, finally goes up in price. For my generation, it's things like twenty ounce bottles of Coke for a dollar, slices of pizza and subway rides for a dollar fifty, the New York Times for 25 cents (and then 50 cents), and various monthly services, such as AOL, for twenty dollars a month. For our parents and grandparents it's a lot of things like that for a nickel (in fact it does seem to really proceed in fits and starts--there were 5 and 10 cent stores, now there are 99 cent stores, but were there ever 50 cent stores?). Things like movie tickets seem to rise so rapidly that they never really rested on a nice price. But whatever it is, it always hurts, especially when it requires you to come up with an inconvenient odd number of coins to pay with exact change. Others have probably named this before, and probably better, and as usual I'm leaving that research as an exercise to the reader.

Now Netflix is going from $20 to $22. Obviously the change thing doesn't apply, but somehow the loss of that nice number still feels terribly inconvenient, a disruption of the proper order. Of course it makes one wonder again if one should be indulging in such a luxury service. Netflix surely knows all this and would not have done it if they were not losing money by the boatload. I do pity them this, since it's such a great service and idea. It amazes me how difficult it is for most businesses to make money even when they appear so successful. It probably has a lot to do with the problems of growth, with too many people getting hired into useless jobs and the company engaging in too many expensive activities that don't really help anything.

My real problem is not with Netflix lately, but with the postal service. The inconsistency with which my discs get back to Netflix, despite dropping them all in the same mail drop at the same time, is quite dramatic. Well, so far it's 1 day to 3 days. But 3 days is pretty dramatic for a trip that takes an hour and fifteen minutes on the subway. Perhaps this is an opening for another business, mail for within big cities that can be much more efficient than a system built for the whole country. Then this business will lose millions every quarter and raise its prices.

often I will wake up and the memory of a dream will begin to fade, but then something I see in my morning routine brings it all back. Some nights I sleep for so long and I have so many dreams, that after waking up, just about everything I see reminds me of another one of them. It seems I've dreamed about everything there was to dream about, every idea that was in my mind was explored. These nights are fun.

* * *

I've decided to get back into listening to music, as opposed to listening to the same album or two for months on end, then giving up and listening to conservative radio because it's on the same station as Coast to Coast and I can't be arsed to ever change it. I've noticed the conservative talk radio guys, or at least the one that's usually on when I'm going to bed, have a funny habit in which they repeatedly say the names of their liberal targets very emphatically to express their disdain. They also make very generous use of the dramatic pause. Sometimes these two techniques spiral out of control together to the point where the guy seems to be simply saying the person's name again and again, with ridiculous emphasis.

Recently the guy was talking about David Brock, who just started this site to monitor factual errors in conservative media. "David BROCK... .... has started this site. DAVID BROCK. is going to monitor this 'conservative media'... DAVID ... BROCK ... Oh no! We're shaking in our boots, DAAAVID BURRRROKKK!!!" Or something like that.

David Brock and David Brooks should really get together and fight to the death.

Oh right, I was talking about listening to music. I finally decided to give Soulseek a try. It has one key feature that Kazaa lacks, in that it actually works. I never could understand the enormous difficulty of going from finding out that someone out there had a file, to obtaining it from them, rather than it sitting on "Remotely Queued" for a goddamn month. For a while I attributed it to everyone else being an asshole and clamping down on their uploads, and this is always plausible, but now I'm leaning toward massive flaws in the Kazaa system as the culprit. Either way, I'm happy with Soulseek.

Before Kill Bill Vol. 2, the trailer was shown for the new remake of the original "Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman" movie. I've been gradually collecting all 13 of the original movies that are available on DVD, out of a total of 25 or so. These are really cool, and supposedly one of Tarantino's inspirations. Oddly, I'm pretty sure this remake is already available on DVD as well. Even more oddly, the Netflix info screen for the Zatoichi DVD series says "Shintaro Katsu only made one film in his life...but what a film it is!" It would be a challenge for this to be more wrong.

Vol. 2 was largely fulfilling, but there were one or two spots where I couldn't help but take issue with a lack of realism. Obviously realism is not the point of the movie, but when a storyteller sets up a situation in which the viewer asks, "how can this possibly be resolved?", and then the question is basically answered, "it just is, despite the laws of physics, which also necessitate a B-movie-esque depiction of it that is entirely unconvincing," that is frustrating.

Speaking of the New York Times, or not, I found ironic the recent article that appeared lamenting the death of suspense in entertainment thanks to the inevitable internet leaks of plot twists ahead of time. I can't remember when it started, if recently, but for years now I've avoided reading the Times review of any plot-driven movie I know I'm going to see, because they always reveal so much of the plot. I'm sure they have a policy about it, and the policy is wrong! They don't go so far as to reveal a surprise ending, but sometimes merely saying that there is a surprise ending is enough. In other cases, they simply reveal more of the plot than I want to know, pretty much everything except the ending, sometimes going on for paragraphs that say nothing at all about the quality of the movie. With Kill Bill Vol. 2 (which I read after seeing it), Elvis Mitchell outdid himself.

[I'm going to do some spoiling of my own here, so consider that your warning, although since the movie is weeks old I feel pretty safe. And if you're in some other country that hasn't gotten it yet, do you really count?]

So Elvis revealed not only that the Bride's real name is revealed in the movie, but what exactly it is, and how it was significant in relation to other scenes! Now, sure it doesn't matter whether the name is one name or another, but does spelling it out really belong in a review? In this particular piece it seemed like all the plot details and such were just needed to fill out the extra-long review. But not having enough things to say about a movie like this is hardly justifiable.

To come full circle, my only other complaint about the movie is one that I've had about some others, like the Matrix. A lot of the martial arts action is actually incredibly slow. It's always throw a punch, it's blocked, other person throws a punch, parried, and so on. Pretending fighting is that neat and tidy is one thing, and necessary, but slowing it down is just ridiculous. I once watched a video of two Jeet Kune Do [Bruce Lee's streetfighting martial art] experts sparring, and they moved so fast it was literally a blur of arms. Of course Uma's no expert, but with all the training these actors are supposed to go through, and doing so many takes ... and so on.

After a rather large lapse in current entries, I thought I would put a slight spin on the catching-up process by going in reverse, starting with yesterday and ending with obtaining my (then) new apartment.

So yesterday I saw "The Twilight Samurai," a movie that as of this writing has 24 out of 24 positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. I think it's close to being Kill Bill's diametric opposite in tone and depiction of the lifestyle. It made me want to be a samurai in probably much healthier ways than KB. The protagonist is a low-ranking samurai (it turns out there is such a thing, they are not all maverick maniacs), modest only until he is forced not to be, and very slow to draw a sword. There is great attention paid to the customs and rituals of clan life. The authenticity I found very rewarding.

It's interesting, one would think that movies like KB and lesser ones in the same vein would exceed those like "Twilight Samurai" in their combat scenes at least, because they are essentially throwing all their resources at that. And yet, the combat in "Twilight" was so cool and authentic and satisfying. The movements and techniques made perfect sense. The fighters actually tire. As I imagine it is in reality, it's not easy at all to tell when a hit has been made, until the blood starts flowing.

I know that style and homage was supposedly the point of Kill Bill, and that I really shouldn't compare it to this, but such comparison brought up many interesting questions. Is it better for a samurai to have no feeling about murder, or even to enjoy it as The Bride admits under duress, or should one be reluctant to do so? The latter certainly sounds more honorable, but even the protagonist of "Twilight" says his demeanor is not suited for his lifestyle. Should one always be modest and hide one's talents, so as not to give away the game? The two films might agree on an affirmative answer there. I'm keen to apply that lesson to my own life, because I think I've become far too eager to announce my own knowledge and accomplishments even when they are not truly anything great at all.

On a final note, the film itself is more modest about its nature than one might think. The original Japanese title translates to "Twilight Seibei," that being the main character's name. The "Samurai" was put in for America, probably by someone more concerned with business than art.

Along with laundromats, our neighborhood is completely overrun with barber shops and beauty parlors. When there are only two on a side of a block it starts to look like a market niche waiting to be exploited. Maybe one of these places could balance things about a bit and trade places with one of the five Washington Mutual banks on each block of the upper west side so I could get some money out of an ATM without traveling half the length of Manhattan.

This is all a preface to the irrationally stressful process of getting a haircut. This was the first one for me in at least a year. The multitude of choices seemed a bit intimidating, but it also meant that should I be dissatisfied, I wouldn't run out of more places to try for a long, long time. Eventually I settled on a nearby place that advertised its "Hairmatic $10.00 Designer Cut System." The idea of a system seemed to reduce the chance of some extreme result. Then again, it's also totally ridiculous.

I've written before about having trouble communicating with haircutters, as nominal as my requests tend to be, but it's quite another matter when they speak no english whatsoever. An english-speaking guy at the counter took care of the initial consultations, and was slightly incredulous that I didn't want to give it "any style at all"? After that I was mostly on my own.

So apparently to this haircutter, the word "trim" meant to cut as little as physically possible. After no more than a few minutes, she was brushing off my neck and I sensed it was time to speak up if I didn't want this to be a complete waste of money. "Uh, could you cut a little more?" She called over the interpreter. "Un poco mas?" I tried to say "Si," but "Oui" came out instead. After this process repeated two or three times I was feeling a bit like Oliver Twist, and I think she started to complain to the adjacent employee. I figured it was good enough.

Since third grade I've avoided any formal learning of Spanish, because it's so ubiquitous here that it just doesn't seem exotic or interesting. I've also never particularly liked the sound of it. But living and working in an area where it may as well be the official language, I'm starting to think it would be nice to be a bit more confident with it. I always found it odd when, at several points in my youth, those around me suddenly found it immensely entertaining to curse at each other in Spanish. I guess cursing itself can become so humdrum that a new way to do it is always exciting.

At about noon last Wednesday I boarded a train to Kofu with the intention of getting to Tokyo and spending the day and most or all of the night there. I wanted to see the famous Tsukiji fish market during its prime time of 4-6am. I still didn't know exactly how I would get there. My plans did not include a stay at any hotel, except possibly a capsule hotel.

On the train to Kofu a man came on and asked if he could sit across from me in the 4-seat booth. I said sure. He seemed very out of sorts, fidgeting about and looking for something, and glancing at me several times as if he wanted to talk to me. Eventually he did, and we had a nice conversation. He was a teacher of Chinese and an avid hiker, and spoke quite good English. I spoke Japanese to him as much as I could--it seems odd in these situations for us both to be speaking second languages, but it really does work well. He said some very kind things, like how "there are two kinds of Americans, gentle, and [makes body builder pose]", implying I guess that I'm in the first category, and that he hoped I stayed in Japan for a long time. I thought the latter went against the stereotype I had heard, but I later was told his was a common sentiment toward westerners but that the opposite was still felt toward non-Japanese Asians. At Kofu I asked him if there were buses to Tokyo, and he said yes, that he took them often because it was cheaper than the train, and agreed to help me get a ticket. This turned out to be fortunate, because although I probably could have gotten the ticket on my own, I might not have done it in time for the bus that was sitting outside and leaving in two minutes. I thanked him and such and was off, feeling buoyed and excited.

The bus arrived at Shinjuku station. The size of the stations here is ridiculous, and Shinjuku is the biggest; I had to walk for 15 minutes or so before I stopped seeing entrances to it. I explored the area a bit, stopping in at the used Mac shop, where the prices didn't seem all that great. I found out the Tokyo Metropolitan Government office was nearby and decided to pay a visit, remembering the Tokyo Damage Report entry that described it as a great (free) view of the city. It was great indeed, if a bit intimidating, because I truly could not see the end of this city, except in one direction where the bay was barely visible, and in the dim outline of Fuji. When I had had enough I descended and walked back to Shinjuku station to take the Yamanote line to Shibuya.

At this point I should mention that Tokyo has some of my favorite place names in the world, and Shibuya is at the top of that list. Also up there are Harajuku, Ginza, and Akihabara.

It didn't take long in Shibuya to find the spot where Scarlett Johansson stood with her umbrella and watched a Brontosaurus walk across a building facade in "Lost in Translation." I spotted some other gaijin who seemed to recognize it as well. The number of people who cross the street in this spot, and the way they do it, really is amazing, although I was unable to capture it very well in a picture. After wandering the area for a while I stopped in at a conveyor belt-sushi place, a nice deal at about a dollar a plate. I was a bit disappointed at the lack of variety, and almost complete lack of maki, and too shy to call out a special order as the salaryman next to me was doing. My ability to blend in reached a new low when I got confused by the tea machine above my seat and received a stream of scalding water on my hand instead of in my cup.

As it started to get dark I walked around Shibuya some more. I saw a group of teenage girls in a line that had no apparent purpose. I took some discreet photos of Engrish-y t-shirts in stores. I saw Tower Records and decided to check on the inventory of my two favorite Japanese artists, Tommy February6 and The Pillows. They were well-stocked with both, but at a little under $30 a disc, I was hardly going to buy up the catalogues. But I was able to finally confirm the title of a Tommy February6 song that I've heard variously called "Futari no shisatodo," "...no seaside," and "...no suicide". Turns out it's the second (it means 'our seaside'). The Pillows had a large and strange catalog. They seemed to have a whole lot of singles, and every one would have 10-15 other songs on it. The overlap of songs from one disc to another was substantial and had no apparent structure. The result was that I couldn't even tell the albums from the singles, and I wasn't going to buy any of it without spending an album's price. Eventually I settled on "Fool on the Planet," which had 16 songs including all of my favorites from FLCL. By the way, I still haven't talked to a Japanese person who has heard of either of these bands.

It was now about 9:30 and time to plot my next move. I consulted my map and saw that Roppongi was reasonably nearby. Lonely Planet had raved about its "nightlife," and it was night, so I decided to give it a try. I headed northeast on Aoyama-dori, planning to cut southwest at an opportune time. After a few blocks I came to a pleasant looking university campus and thought I would walk through, going in my intended direction. I also thought I might partake of a bathroom. The first building I tried was open, but down the hall was a sign specifically informing me in Japanese that there were no bathrooms in this building, and to please go to building 12 instead. Wow, who said speaking is less important than reading?

Properly relieved, I contined through, but the first exit I came to had a locked gate. As I approached another one, a guard-looking fellow in the distance turned around and seemed to be eyeing me suspiciously. I turned around myself, and at that moment another guard came out of the nearest building and also didn't look too pleased. At that point I realized I'd have to go all the way back to where I had come in and walk around this damn campus. Such a significant waste of time and walking was not welcome, as I was beginning to feel some fatigue. But after the college was where my troubles truly began.

My goal was to get from Aoyama-dori to Roppongi-dori. They formed a triangle that took them further apart as one went East, but did not look very distant overall. But there was a distinct lack of landmarks between them, and only the main streets in Japan have any names. Between these two streets I probably looked at my map about 10 times, and none of those times was I able to exactly determine my current location. I had to question nearly all of my assumptions about where I was. I walked through a cemetery and later wondered which of two cemeteries it had been, before later realizing I had probably walked through it in the opposite direction from what I had thought. The neighborhoods of Aoyama and Akasaka that I could not seem to get out of, were like Greenwhich Village with huge blocks, so that after deciding what direction I should head in and then running into a dead end, I would often have to go a quarter of a mile or so before being able to go in some direction resembling the one I had intended to go in. This is all among residential areas with no street signs whatsoever. Having to do this several times has a way of causing one to lose one's sense of direction very quickly. Several times I cursed myself for not bringing a compass, which I had thought of doing but dismissed as too much effort for being in a big city.

During this period I also became increasingly frustrated with the Tokyo map that I had with me. Tensions came to a head when I passed the Cambodian embassy and, remembering that the map had diplomatic landmarks, tried to look it up and for once find out exactly where I was. Sure enough, there was Cambodia in the index, apparently in C5. But on the map...where was it? It had to be there...but it wasn't. Once again I only know my approximate location.

After 1.5 to 2 hours of wandering, I came to a street that looked like it had to be some change of neighborhood. But it wasn't Roppongi-dori, it was the street that formed the other side of the triangle between that and Aoyama-dori. Aside from probably getting completely turned around 5 other times, I had ended up turned around 90 degrees. Well, at least I could follow this one to Roppongi-dori, it would be difficult to screw that up.

When I got to Roppongi, of course, it turned out to be totally crappy, thus invalidating all my wandering. I could see that there were a few bars and clubs, with too-drunk people sitting on their steps, what fun. But at least I had gotten there.

It was now about 12am, and there were two goals: to get some rest, and to get to Tsukiji between 3 and 4am. I had been told by a girl named Yuki that I could sleep on the Yamanote line that runs in a loop around the city. I figured the way to do this was to buy a ticket for the station I wanted eventually to get off at, then ride around however many times I want and finally get off there. In my case, this was Ebisu, a few stops away, where I could transfer to the Hibiya line that stopped near Tsukiji. Consulting my map, I realized the rather humiliating fact that the closest subway station was still Shibuya, and that Roppongi-dori ran right into it. I could easily have gotten here if I had kept things simpler and not gone over to Aoyama-dori. But that didn't matter now.

My plan seemed to be going smoothly, and there were other passengers who seemed to be doing the same. Then at Shinagawa, about 5 or 6 stops after Shibuya, they said it was the last stop for that train. That was okay, Yuki had said that would happen sometimes. Just have to wait for the next one. A train came going the other way, so I thought why not, and hopped on. It went back one stop, to Otsuki, before also stopping. Now this was getting annoying. Signs on both sides of the platform were now saying "Out of Service." Why? Because of the crucial last piece of information that Yuki had given me, and I had forgotten: the last train is at 1am. I was now stuck in Otsuki, considerably farther from anywhere I wanted to be, and I realized that if the Yamanote line was not running, the Hibiya line was not either. So a taxi was the only way, other than on foot, that I was going to get to Tsukiji on time. But after walking this much, a taxi would certainly be admitting defeat.

So I planned to walk in the general direction of Tsukiji, and rest for a while if I found a suitable place along the way. Being in an even more remote and residential area now, there was no way I could trust my map, so I followed the train tracks along which I had just ridden. But even that has its troubles. At one point, predictably, a big building rose up against the tracks that I would have to go around. So I did, and returned to the tracks as soon as I could. I saw a footbridge and decided to cross it, thinking there might be fewer obstructions on the other side. But as I walked up to the crossing point, something was very wrong. There were no tracks down there, there was water. I don't have to tell you what kind of thoughts passed through my mind at this point. But I regained my composure and searched for the tracks, finding them after not too long. I found a point where I could cross the real tracks by walking right across them; I crouched on the tracks and took a picture with a nice long exposure, trying to hold the camera as steadily as I could with my muscles beginning to give out.

Walking through the streets looking for a place to sleep, I began to appreciate how well a city is designed to deprive people of just that. Everywhere there was a ledge, it would be entirely covered with plants. Everything is either too public or not public enough. When might the people who live or work here return and find me?

Finally, around an office building complex, I found a place that seemed reasonable. Along a brick walkway above the street there was a ledge perhaps 10 inches wide, with a hedge adjacent but not overhanging. Semicircular turrets that house more plants would provide back support and some cover. I had already made it past two or three train stops and felt more confident about making it to Tsukiji on my own. At about 1:30am I settled down to rest.

Smartass programmer: if you do a product search at Staples.com, one of the fields shown in the resulting URL is called "cromulent." This word means "fine, acceptable"--having lost habitual OED access I can't tell you any more. The Chambers Dictionary is silent on the subject. Unfortunately the field never seems to have any value.

DJ Pasty Pete reports that a neighborhood grocery store is advertising a sale on Philadelphia Cream Juice.

Lately I have thrown myself at FINDing things with renewed enthusiasm. For a while I picked up just about every piece of paper I saw. Dave of FOUND magazine says that on average 1 out of 5 objects you pick up will be interesting. When I encountered a far lower ratio I got a bit frustrated. I seemed to be finding a large number of extremely mundane pieces with directions or phone numbers written on them. There were also totally blank pieces of looseleaf paper, that material being by far the most promising, and things thoroughly ripped up for no apparent reason, like a printed out email advertising a sale at a clothing store. I grew to hate napkins that from a standing position didn't look like napkins. Finally I did start to find some interesting things, although still many of them were only barely interesting, only if you stretched your curiosity about the mundanity of strangers' lives, or reached for interpretations of small details. Nothing at all heartbreaking or hilarious, like the things I've gotten so used to seeing in FOUND. I've started thinking that the magazine spoiled me by showing me only the best of the best from everywhere. But I was inspired by a co-worker's find, after relatively little effort, of pieces of several versions of a hysterically hostile note written to someone's sister. It was easily of the level of something in the magazine. Since then I've tried to take it easier, and have been much more pleased when I find something good, having a lot more of the feelings I have when reading the magazine. I will try to find a good way to share some of these; if nothing else they're probably more interesting than anything I have to say. Check out this thing I've been talking about here and hop on the bandwagon: FOUND

Lately I've been keeping a notebook by my bedside and trying to write down my interesting dreams right when I wake up. Everyone knows this is a fun thing to do. When you do it right after waking, you still partly believe in the dream's logic, so what you write sounds much more dreamlike than accounts written later on. And of course my subconscious is far more imaginative than my conscious mind, so many good ideas are surely lurking there. But whether it's trying to wake up early, study, or write down dreams, my mind always has a way to defeat itself--in this case, several ways. Sometimes I start to wake up and think about writing down a dream, then I fall back asleep and dream that I'm writing down my dream. Should I then wake up and include that dream in my writeup? Other times I think about whether or not the dream was interesting enough to record, or whether I can remember it well enough, and I keep going back and forth on it until I can't even remember what the dream was really about. Or I start thinking too much about the best way to write it, and then I know that the writeup isn't going to be good in the dreamy way it should be, because I've already overthought it. I have won out a few times though and gotten some prize writeups, and some ideas that could make good lyrics or Michel Gondry videos. One time I woke up not with a whole dream but just with several 'ideas:'

want to map the make chain
(it's no secret that I)
spiderman sequels in term of
a nationwide directive
K-Maths

The second line applied to the first one, the 'make chain' being a term I had in mind for the creative process. K-Maths is like K-Mart, only with maths! No idea what the other lines meant, I don't think they were supposed to be connected.

Took the terrible 8pm-midnight nap tonight. Dreamt that I was part of what I would call a vigilante HVAC squad; you see we go in and secretly fix up the systems when the building management doesn't want it done the easy way. We were planning to go into the Pentagon, which was controlled or at least guarded by John Edwards, and implement some badly needed enhancements to the ventilation system. I think it ended with me running into a startled Edwards' office with some kind of crossbow in hand, and shooting it in a perfect path through the entire building.

5am or so, gave up on my initial attempts at more sleep and finished off the box wine--excuse me, "cask" wine. According to the blurb from the maker, rectangular prisms made of corrugated cardboard are now called casks.

A day and a half or so later, continued writing this entry. Yesterday H. and I caught "Donnie Darko: Director's Cut." Before the feature they showed a trailer for "Open Water" which was somewhat different and improved from the one we saw before "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" (the most frustrating movie ever), which was the worst trailer ever [was that confusing enough?]. It was like the worst of both worlds, with lo-fi footage of people treading water and saying "OH MY GOD!" and then the hi-fi deep voiceover saying "THE MOST TERRIFYING MOVIE OF THE YEAR", coming off completely like a parody. Just picture how bad this could be and that's exactly how it was. That pattern was repeated about 6 times, along with some footage of fish and sharks swimming. Evidently the filmmakers realized how bad it was and got a new, shorter one made. Back to "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead": this movie was extreme subtlety, and in some ways that was very satisfying, although part of me is sad that I've become enough of a grownup to be able to appreciate that. But good god Mr. Hodges, you can only take it so far, before you're spending an hour and a half building up to something and then only half finishing it. Back to Donnie Darko. This was certainly an education in director's cuts; you go in with high hopes because it's like a movie you already know is good has been made and released anew by the person most likely to understand what made it good in the first place, and therefore able to improve on it. But knowing that it's the director's cut, one can't help but notice when a scene could easily have been left out without affecting the plot. Some of the additions were pretty nice for explanation and making the foreshadowing clearer, another common DC effect, but some of them were just not necessary. These DC's are sometimes accompanied by stories of battles with the studio over what would originally get released, but if there was such a fight with this one, I can't see why. Enjoyable nonetheless.

After reading The New Yorker for a while, Tape Op is like a children's book. The former takes several protracted sessions, usually over slightly more than a week, if I'm going to read all the big nonfiction articles, which I try hard to do; the latter I'm now stretching to make it take more than a couple days' worth of dull moments. In the current issue they recommend four old little keyboards that supposedly have really cool sounds or abilities and are available really cheap. Of course it being in Tape Op means the prices of these keyboards will now rise significantly. It always gets depressing when I'm forced to realize that my interests, while they might seem obscure to some, are still shared by a large number of people, way more than enough to crowd an auction.

When I first obtained Belle and Sebastian's "Dear Catastrophe Waitress" I listened to it once and then put it aside. A lot of the songs didn't sound at all the way I had expected them to from their titles, and titles are important to me. I also find their unbelievable technical precision in playing their instruments, along with the highly produced sound they now employ in recordings, to be almost off-putting. But I gave it another chance recently, perhaps needing some happy music to balance my Daniel Johnston listening, and I've found plenty to like. My most joyous moment came when after falling for the song "I'm a Cuckoo," I suddenly understood the last line of the refrain, "I'd rather be in Tokyo/I'd rather listen to Thin Lizzie-oh/and watch the Sunday gang in Harajuku." This caused me to laugh like a madman, surely in part because I had just woken up and was a bit delirious. Okay, so the gathering of goth teenagers in crazy costumes every Sunday at some locus in that Tokyo neighborhood is not exactly a secret; I'm pretty sure it was in the Lonely Planet that I skimmed before deciding it was useless. But he did a fine job of constructing the lyric to make it sound like a pastime rather than a curiosity. Plus, as I've said, Harajuku is among my favorite place-names in the world, and hearing Stuart Murdoch pronounce anything makes it even better.

If you google for "++ =" (yes, in quotes), you'll find that not only does it not return any results, it doesn't return anything at all, not even the "Web" bar that tells you you're looking at that type of results. I was looking for this because of some weirdo statements in some C code that I was working with, that it turned out were somehow incrementing a double pointer and then assigning the single pointer part of it a value within the same statement. I figured the cause was something to do with the Google calculator that lets you type in basic equations, trying to solve an equation that would be mysterious indeed. Plenty of other stuff works too, like + = not in quotes, or ^ %, #, $, ~, (), everything else above the numbers but not *, or &. Hard to understand why this would be. It felt a little odd then doing google searches for strange google results, and that came up empty anyway.

It was movie night again with "Gozu," (cow-head) the new one from Takashi Miike. I had agreed with Amanda's assessment of "Audition" as a gratuitous appeal to sadism, with characterization meant to produce conflicting emotions, but too obvious to truly do so. Thom and I were befuddled by the Gozu poster outside, which contained excerpts from four reviews that sounded like they were for completely different movies. One said "Riotously Funny!," another called it "a surreal descent into madness," and I think another one used the word "horrifying." Thom said he half expected another one to call it the feel-good movie of the year.

It turns out the variety of classifications is pretty appropriate. I would not call this horror, but another review said "Now [Takashi Miike] has made a screwball comedy" and it had many of those kind of moments. The surrealism was certainly in full effect. But of course there are many levels of absurdity, and it's just as hard to make a good surreal movie as it is to make a.. real one. With Gozu I think Miike has made a great surreal movie. He actually maintains a cohesive storyline (depending on your definition of cohesive, perhaps) for the whole movie, so I disagree with the Times calling it a compendium of sketches and vignettes, although most of the surrealist ideas in it did come up once and then vanish. Overall the balance of the mundane and the bizarre was maintained impressively.

There were a lot of great little characters in the movie, mostly they would be employees at businesses who would behave in the funniest ways. The protagonist also did a fine job reacting "like a child" as Miike said to the strange things happening around him, without it becoming repetitive.

The music and sound were another high point, with excellent use of vocal distortions at a few points. My only nitpick is the use of extra sounds to accentuate some gross-out humor, which I always find hackneyed.

A surprisingly large part of my enjoyment of the movie came from seeing it in a theater, with probably the largest assemblage I expect to ever see for a Miike film outside of a festival, that being about 60 people. The laughter of the audience was that of utter disbelief at the proceedings.

I was quite surprised to find out in some perusing that Miike has made over 60 films, 5 already since Gozu, which was made last year. IMDb confirms it, but apparently a lot of them have been straight-to-video or made-for-tv.

On a related topic, I've decided that for most movies with infamously confusing plots, the explanation comes down to a deviation from reality at some key point, depicting instead the hallucinations or dreams of a character, followed by a return to it at another key point, with the location neither of those points made obvious. Usual Suspects, Mulholland Dr., Fight Club, Donnie Darko. They're not all perfect fits, and some appease the masses by making the big issue clear in the end and merely leaving the details foggy. But I think it's a fairly strong pattern. I have no idea if Gozu is one of these, but it's certainly possible. Other examples/counterexamples?

We seem to have a confused sneeze protocol at work now. When it was just the four of us, there was an unspoken understanding that nothing really needed to be said, and that was just fine by me. Now some more people have been taken on, and everything's gone haywire. We've inevitably got some people who like to bless the sneezer, and some other people, when they are the sneezer, like to say 'excuse me' or even 'I'm sorry.' I'm much more afraid to sneeze now than I was before; who knows what kind of brouhaha it might stir up?

The other night I finally saw more than a couple minutes of the Olympics (my previous viewing was on the TV at Keenan's) and some mysteries popped up. Firstly, what countries are PNG and SCG? No point in leaving it a mystery since if you're looking at this you can easily google it: the former is Papua New Guinea, which makes me feel mildly stupid, and the latter is Serbia and Montenegro, which is just strange. No C in there. Looking at the whole list I also found there are separate abbreviations for the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The other mystery is that even in the abbreviations that are on the athletes' uniforms and equipment (as opposed to only the ones superimposed for American TV coverage), the country names being used are always the English names, as opposed to the ones in the native language. This seems like one of the worst instances of acknowledging English's dominance, considering the whole international spirit thing. Of course, there's also the question of languages with other alphabets, and of which is more dominant, English or the Roman alphabet. A friend suggested that they should, for example, just put China in Chinese characters, as that would look plenty distinctive even to our eyes rather than CHN, and is not even much less pronounceable. The larger question seems to be whether the spirit is true internationalism, or just trying to make foreign countries seem less foreign to Americans. Actually I'm really not sure if the latter is a good or a bad thing.

But enough topicality. I've recently returned to work on my rare word dictionary, trying to complete the second pass. I've also decided that after delaying for several months, I should finally implement my plan to incorporate these words into my vocabulary by taking a small random sample each day, and attempting to use them in conversation or blog entries. Of course it will be a challenge in the process not to overween. But to the reader I interpel, lay subjicible to the obscurities of this ridiculous language. [Boy am I glad no one can find me and beat me up on the web for talking like this]

My new favorite idiom: "as cool as the other side of the pillow."

It's a rite of passage in apartment life to deal with direct views into other people's windows, and their views into yours. I've mostly bypassed this so far, being on the inside bottom of the 'U' in my dad's building, and on the outside of the 'U' in college, with no other buildings nearby. But now I'm directly opposite a small 'U' in the adjacent building, giving me an excellent view at about 25 feet into the kitchens of 4 different apartments, as it happens. The resident of one of these apartments seems to do the same thing every evening from approximately 9pm-2am. He sits in his kitchen, and looks in my general direction. His window is half a story above mine so usually I can just see his head. It's quite strange; he doesn't appear to be staring at me, and yet he clearly isn't putting in any special effort not to do so. Unless he has a TV right next to his window, I can't figure out what he might be doing. Occasionally he is seen to talk on the phone, but otherwise he mostly just sits there. He is an enigma, a study in modern boredom. Sometimes his apparent unwavering stare makes me rather uncomfortable, in a Sartrian way. He is always watching, always judging. When I was constructing my studio (yes, I will get around to writing about that some time) I delighted in imagining my neighbors wondering why I was hanging from my ceiling with a dust mask on my face and a drill in my hand for half the night. But now he can see the relatively dull routine I've returned to.

The other day I was practicing loudly and perhaps ludibriously for a performance when I saw him come to his window, presumably to see what the racket was about. I immediately stopped playing and cowered in the small part of the room not visible to him, and then after waiting a bit, furtively closed the big panel that slides over my window to seal it. Perish the thought of him (be)rating me, then resuming the stare. Times like that, I am glad for my big heavy panel that shuts out the world.

Today I saw a man on my street (in my working-class Spanish-speaking neighborhood of NYC) putting up flyers that said:

"I AM A DEMOCRAT
but one does not change horses crossing stream"

He provided English and Spanish versions.

I found this note on 207th Street Sunday night, and reassembled it. Click for full-size images.

One of the worst lapses in this site's history. There are reasons. Poor ones, mostly.

Last week I saw one of the most impressive subway performance acts I've ever seen. Four or five young people looking like dancers came into the car on the A train and set up a small boom box playing music. At first I didn't look up from my New Yorker. Then after several seconds I saw out of the corner of my eye one of them jogging up near me and then kneeling down. After that another member of the troupe did the same, kneeling beside the first one, with their heads down. Okay, this was intriguing. A third member joined them. Then a very fit young man came running down the aisle and did a front flip over his three friends, his feet coming down thunderously right in front of a pole, which he used to reduce his considerable forward momentum. This, remember, all on a subway traveling at full speed and shaking back and forth quite a bit.

The next day I saw one of the least impressive acts ever. It was just a guy in a pretty nice Spider-Man costume, standing around and waving stiffly at no one in particular. I thought to myself that begging for attention in a subway station has to be the furthest thing in the world from what the real Spider-Man would be doing.

***

A little more than a year after I first attended a lecture of his, Slavoj Zizek has worked his way back into my life. Thanks to loans from Ethel I've had the chance to read some of his books and essays, and I've been amazed at the congruence of his speaking and writing styles, even though his speech seemed reasonably extemporaneous, and necessarily moreso when he answered questions. It's quite easy when reading his prose to imagine him speaking these dense, twisting, foreign word-laden sentences, and doing so makes the reading more fun.

After working my way through a significant portion of "The Plague of Fantasies," I've decided that reading Zizek is for me a lot like reading poetry. Much of the time I simply appreciate the flow of words and ideas, and then every few pages I actually get some insight out of it. More recently I came to realize that part of the reason I sometimes got so little out of it was that Zizek was using a lot of Lacanian philosophy/psychoanalysis terms that happen to also be common words, without always explaining that he was using them in their terminological sense. Unfortunately when I attempted to look up these terms, I often found that the definitions were just as cryptic as their uses. For example, this (excerpt from a) definition of "the (big) Other" from Words of Art:

"Lacan himself distinguished between the objet petit a, a simple object of desire, as in the case of a one individual desiring another [okay, pretty simple so far], and what he called the grand Autre (sometimes translated "the capital Other"), which he defined as the place of speech and therefore of desire operating within the symbolic." [wait, what?? Damnit!]

Another interesting bit of word choice. As you might guess Zizek talks a whole lot about fantasies in this book. But when he wants an adjective to describe something as of or pertaining to a fantasy, he uses 'phantasmic.' Apparently 'fantastic' has been too overwhelmed by its other connotations to be usable for this case.

First order of business. Peter today pointed out some additions to the English lexicon that I've been meaning to mention for a while. It is a set of at least three of them, perhaps more. The three I have in mind might be written pointizz, thingizz and factizz. You can hear them in sentences such as "You know the thingizz is that you fight over the batter, and you know, the sugar shock afterwards" (Tom Cruise on baking cookies). Of course Language Log and others have beaten me to this by miles and even managed to get into debates about analyses of it, so I won't go on any longer.

Second order of business. I have in my possession a Timberland gift card worth $100, that I have no earthly use for. It can be used at any Timberland store in the United States or Puerto Rico. I'm willing to give it up for as little as $85. That's like Free Money! If you're interested but are not near a Timberland store I could even acquire some goods for you from the one here, and send them. But I think for that service I'd have to waive the discount.

Third order of business. A week or so ago I walked through Isham Park on the way to work and spotted a juvenile raptor of some sort, probably a hawk. It was eagerly hunting the squirrels and crows there, though without much success. It wasn't quite fast enough to swoop down on the squirrels without them zigging or zagging away. It didn't do a great job of hiding its intentions for them either. A few times it went for the crows, flying right into them as they went between trees. The crows seemed at most annoyed by this.

The other day the view from the lab window at work reminded me of Magritte's "The Empire of Light." The apparent cause was a mostly cloudy sky with a sizable gap around where the sun was setting.

A while ago now, friends Haru and Yoshi came over and helped me make sushi. I took advantage of a holiday to run around the city gathering ingredients and equipment. At Kam Man Food Products in Chinatown I got a carbon steel sashimi knife--not left handed unfortunately, but I figure it'll be like playing guitar. At Katagiri on east 59th Street, I got just about everything else, including tuna, salmon, and tobiko.

Here are the pictures Haru took, with his own captions.

Jay slices salmon cleverly even though he is the first time.
hajimetenanoni Jay san wa kiyouni salmon wo kiru.

His teacher, Yoshi is very severe!
kareno sensei, Yoshi wa totemo kibishii!

Haru is not on this photo because he shoots it
Haru ga satueishitanode kare wa kokoniwa inai.

and here's a closeup of the good stuff, including a fancy cucumber cut I learned from a book, indicated by the arrow:

and here's Haru:

Yesterday a reporter for Channel 1 Russian TV News came to my workplace and interviewed us about the robot. The resulting article and video from the news broadcast were on their site today.

Here's the article in Russian

Here's a direct link to the video (Windows Media)

And here's the article text in English, as interpreted by Babel Fish:

In the hospitals of New York the nurse- robots appear

Southern Bronks - not most suitable to the form place for the laboratory of high technologies. Doctor trit, who arrives here each day on his motorcycle, also is not plotted in the stereotype of the professor of researcher. Meanwhile precisely it, precisely, here devised Penelopu.

This nurse- robot knows how to give and to assume surgical tools. Penelopa must replace in the operating room one of the nurses, whose responsibility - to issue to surgeon clamps, scalpels and tongs in the course of operation.

Doctor trit as the practicing surgeon is well familiar with the problem of the shortage of nurses. In THE USA because of this planned operations now and then even abolish.

Maykl trit, surgeon, the doctor of the medical and physical sciences: "we do not attempt to replace man, this is impossible. We want so that the robot would fulfill for the sister simple monotonic functions. But nurse with its long-standing period and formation can at this time pay attention to patient or render more complex and aid to surgeon ".

Doctor trit says that automatic hand - to surgeon, this as dishwasher machine - to cook. Penelopu developed three years. Now robot knows how to distinguish 12 tools, their number can be increased to 20- TI. Penelopa will recognize the commands, which the surgeon will give by voice, and the operating table and the tray of tools it follows with the aid of the electronic camera.

Mayk of Brady, the engineer-programmer: "the uniqueness Of penelopy in the fact that it - the first robot, capable of following the fact, as its environment changes and directly contacts with the people, but not with other machines".

For this very reason Penelopu they learned even and to the rules of a good tone.

- Thanks, Penelopa.

- if you please, doctor.

For control Of penelopoy it is sufficient processor as in the computer of noutbuk, and the average power of storage battery. For the first time robot they test on the man under the comfortable conditions of New York clinic already in the middle of March.

A minor gripe about the otherwise fine service Netflix provides. At some point a few months ago, I started noticing a new type of message in the web interface. If I look at my queue at a time when a movie has been received but the next one to be shipped has not yet been determined, one of my disc slots is empty, and in it is the message:

"We expect to ship your next available movie today." or
"We expect to ship your next available movie by [dayoftheweek]day." where dayoftheweek is always the current day.

It's a little strange to have those two different messages that are identical in meaning, but that I probably wouldn't notice on any site not as tightly implemented as Netflix's. The bigger problem by far is that every single time I've seen this message, probably 25 times at least, the movie has ended up shipping the next day instead. The message is always wrong, or rather its expectation is always let down. When I don't see this message (the next movie is already in the slot the first time I check), I get about 35% same-day shipping, 65% next-day lately.

There are two possible explanations for this. One is that they do have some algorithm generating expectations, and it just happens that it has always come up expecting the same thing for me, and always been wrong. The other (more likely) is that the expectation is always the same for everyone, and is based on the company's general policy of 'trying' to ship out the next movie the same day they receive the previous one. Either way, it's a terrible interface decision; I've become almost superstitious about seeing the message, since it seems to guarantee its own contradiction. It supports my strengthening belief that cute interface messages just don't get you very far, because even a naive user realizes when the machine says the same thing every time and learns to ignore what it says, and react to what actually happens when that message appears.

***

A feature suggestion for Netflix. I've heard at places like the Hacking Netflix blog that when they don't ship your next movie the same day they receive, it's because that disc is not at your closest shipping center. Although they could ship it from another location where it is available, they know that could easily take more than an extra day to get to you, and there's a chance (calculated by some algorithm) that the disc will appear at your local shipping center by the next day. So they make a bet and wait until the next day. If it comes into your local shipping center, they ship it from there, otherwise they give up and ship it from the further location.

Netflix also says they 'try' to ship the top available movie in your queue, but they may choose another one if their algorithms tell them to.

Personally I don't care that much about getting the top movie in my queue. I'll get them all sooner or later and pretty much any one would be fine with me (except in the case of series discs of linear tv shows, which they have a special algorithm to detect and not ruin). But it seems that Netflix is doing much better at shipping the top movie than shipping the same day they receive. Getting a movie other than my top one (except when the top one has a wait on it) has only happened to me once or twice in a little over a year. My user experience would be much improved if I could switch off, or even fuzzily adjust, the importance of having my top movie shipped, and thereby improve my chances of getting a movie shipped the same day.

And yes, I'm aware that this post is going to sound like so much gibberish to about a third of my already infinitesimal audience. Just be glad that I don't try to blog about programming.

I'm curious to know if anyone has some different experiences to add to this account, or can correct any misconceptions that I might have acquired about NF's internal workings.

I've got to be more careful what I wish for. Today in my Netflix queue I did see a message "We expect to ship your next movie Wednesday" (Wednesday being tomorrow). But the process by which it appeared had the unfortunate side effect of disappearing a movie from my queue.

First I had two empty slots with the "expect to ship your next movie today" message. Then two movies appeared shipping tomorrow, as usual, except one of them merely had the vague label "Shipping." Then it disappeared and was replaced by the Wednesday message.

Update: I think this is the first time I've ever put an update in an entry. It feels so right. Some time this evening the missing movie reappeared, shipping tomorrow. My faith is restored, as a disappearing-movie bug in Netflix's software would certainly be a more serious (or at least easily soluble) problem than the shipping slowdowns.

Here I come with a Kempa-style search for a memory from my youth. I'm writing this before I make an attempt to research it, assuming that I'll find the answer without too much difficulty.

When I was in elementary school I sometimes had small boxes of Newman's Own Lemonade packed in with my lunch. There was some tomfoolery regarding the "virgin" nature of the beverage. At some point I noticed a paragraph of text on the back of the box, a totally bizarre narrative about running a marathon in Africa and having one's energy replenished by you-know-what. It was somewhat surreal and had many odd little details, and a rhythm to it, that combined in causing me to recite it in my head an unhealthy number of times. I remember a few things from it: the phrase "filched the nectar," and "Lemonade? No, Lemon Aid!" I could not figure out why this crazy piece of text was put on this product or where it came from. And that's what I want to know now.

* * *

Okay, that wasn't so bad. Here's the whole text:

The marathon in Africa � I'm halfway out and barely chugging. Mountain coming! Liquid needed! What's around? Water's bitter! Beer's flat! Gator, Blah Blah! � Fading fast. Then a vision � sweet Joanna! � tempting me with pale gold nectar � lemon is it? By golly! Lemonade? No, Lemon Aid! � Power added! Asphalt churning � Cruising home to victory! Hail Joanna! Filched the nectar (shameless hustler!) � In the market � Newman's Own!

It still has it for me--a unique insanity, the story so densely packed and yet so disjointed, so many strange images. It actually does remind me of the condensed thoughts one has when exerting oneself, as if a thought that requires more syllables also takes more energy even to think or speak internally. "Must...go...on..."

I always wondered if this were part of some series of stories by people inspired by this product, but I never saw any other ones. It turns out they were written by Newman and there were other ones on other products. You can find the rest of them here [warning: annoying and needless prevention of direct use of the 'back' button]. Apparently they also exist on the company's website, but I can't be arsed to go through a corporate site right now. Anyone else have memories of this?

When you start waking up to your roommate singing, loudly and off-key, random selections from the catalogues of The Rentals, Nada Surf and the New Pornographers, it's a good sign that either he has lost his mind, or he has recently gotten an iPod shuffle, or both.

Thursday last it took someone else to push me into finally ordering omakase (the chef's choice) at a sushi restaurant. We ordered it for four, and were brought an approximately three-foot diameter plate with huge chunks of salmon, tuna and yellowtail sashimi, many smaller slices of white tuna and sea bass, various nigiri, large christmas roll and tempura roll, smaller salmon roll, and eel hand rolls. Hot sake accompanied. My roommate's later comment was quite true, that one can enjoy this food more when not having to worry about savoring each piece sufficiently.

Two days later I attended a friend's wedding party for the first time ever, at his house in Scarsdale. It was an "ex post facto" affair, as the coworking couple married on their lunch break five months ago without telling almost anyone, and were only now bringing their families together. We were given a tour of his father's recreation room, which houses a collection of DVD's that he estimates at three thousand, as well as some tapes and laserdiscs. A motorized screen and projector display them. He proudly showed me box sets, twenty-one Laurel and Hardy movies, another involving the name "Camillo" that I'd never heard of. Semi-bootleg editions of lesser known Akira Kurosawa films. It was an offbeat assortment, perhaps because he already had more essential titles on earlier formats. The three-disc Criterion edition of "Brazil" was still in shrink-wrap. I'd been thinking of adjourning my collection at around 500, but how can I now, with what I've seen?

After reading about the Unicorn Tapestries in the New Yorker, I went to see them at the Cloisters. They are pretty incredible in many ways. Seeing their threads up close it was easier to understand the trouble one might get into trying to photograph them in smaller sections. But I do wish the NY could have thrown us some kind of technical-detail-bone as to what sort of equations would be used to iron out the discrepancies. Were they physically modeling the movements of the threads, or examining the colors of the threads to see which ones should line up? Instead we get silly lines like "There were at least a hundred billion numbers in the shopping bags." How many atoms were there? That's probably a crazy big number too! Also, I wonder if anyone else has commented on how much the Chudnovsky brothers sound like the inspiration for the movie "Pi:" they built a supercomputer in their apartment from mail order parts with a frame of plastic pipe and closet racks, and used it to compute two billion digits of Pi with the hope of finding a pattern, and they're a bit weird (one of them has debilitating allergies and they think of themselves as one mathematician inhabiting two bodies).

My roommate Peter comes in often with stories about the wildlife found in our neighborhood. Today he saw a snake fighting a bird, right in the middle of a path in Inwood Hill Park. He also reported that there seems to be a pack of wild dogs living there. We live in Manhattan for christ's sake.

* * *

The 99-cent stores around here are amazing. Yesterday at work I decided I needed a reasonably sharp knife to keep there, so I could cut tomatoes for the sandwiches I've been making since the best deli closed down. I went across Broadway to 99-Cent USA wondering if they'd have anything. They had a "tomato knife" that has the word TOMATO cut out of the blade in stencil letters. For 99 cents. They also have tortilla chips marked as factory 2nds.

In other news from work, I spent much of my day today photoshopping a hypothetical invention (not the robot but something else) into a picture of a nurse. So you can get paid for that, and I'm not even terribly good at it.

* * *

After watching DiG! and End of the Century: The Ramones, I've learned that rock stars really do wear sunglasses all the damn time, even while on airplanes and in other odd places. I actually preferred DiG!, which was quite wonderful and exceeded my expectations. For me the Ramones one had a bit too much talking about being wild and crazy, while DiG! actually showed the craziness happening. At times the Ramones doc made them seem like (I know this is perverse) the Strokes with a better live act, in that they found a sound and an image, and stubbornly stuck with it. As one interviewee said, seeing them later on felt like stepping into a time machine and going back to when they first came out, because they always looked and sounded just the same as always. DiG! convinced me that the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre are much better bands than I had thought before. Beyond that it's an amazing movie for a person with musical ambitions, because it shows brilliantly everything about being in a full-time band, from the recording process to playing shows and touring to deciding when to sign on with the man. I couldn't help but giddily think at several points, 'this is what I should be doing.' Those were not the points when the band members beat the crap out of each other and the audience, or when they poured dishwashing liquid down their pants, or when they got caught with drugs on the road. Lastly, Anton Newcombe had a DreaMachine! (As the BJM band members say on the commentary, "the nightmare machine, as it turned out").

I'm doing the Flickr thing now. You can see my photos here:

mihalis's photos

and the ones from Paris are here.

I'm going to add a 'badge' soon.

Here is the requested story of our recent company trip to Washington. Kudos to anyone who understands it--every time I told someone about it, I seemed to see their eyes glaze over halfway through in the maze of agencies, acronyms, TV shows and horribly deformed fetuses. Perhaps it will be more digestible in written form.

So the National Museum of Health and Medicine (previously known as the War Museum), which is part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (the best place in the world to send tissue what got somethin' wrong with it for analysis), on the campus of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center (where they send most or all of the amputees and other wounded from Iraq), wanted our robot in their museum. We were supposed to have already done the first real procedure and then bring the robot down for a victory lap, its historical significance and museum-worthiness at least partly established. But it had been delayed, and so instead this was a strange blip in the process of getting ready for the procedure.

Getting down there the transportation arrangements were strange in the extreme. Six of us were going. The robot had to be brought down, and for that we rented a cargo van which had only two seats. The boss wanted to ride his motorcycle down. P. was driving her Porsche Boxster, which could uncomfortably fit one more person of normal size. That left me to take the train. I was glad I had done so when P. and S. arrived with awful sunburns from riding with the top down the whole way.

I find the Museum to be a fascinating place. Others had different words for it, such as "I...I don't want to see any of this." Being attached to the AFIP, there's a lot of pathology on view. One of the biggest draws are several items associated with Lincoln's assassination: some fragments of his skull, the doctor's sleeve with Lincoln's blood on it, a lock of his hair, the bullet that killled him, and the probe used to locate it. A favorite of one of the curators are the leg bones of Daniel Sickles, a Major General in the Civil War who had his leg sent to the then-recently established museum after it was shattered by a cannonball, and in later years often went to visit it in the museum, though he was disappointed that they had disposed of his foot (the rest of his life is equally amusing and can be found here). Then there's a preserved elephantiasis-afflicted leg, the world's largest hairball which took on the shape of the stomach in which it was lodged, a preserved brain with spinal cord still attached, and several fetuses with horrible ailments such as anencephaly (no brain). They also have lots of really nice microscopes! The museum director's name is Dr. Noe, which is really pronounced No-eeh, but she refuses to correct anyone who calls her Dr. No.

The black-tie affair that we were there for was the AFIP's annual Ash Lecture, coinciding with the opening of a new collection for the museum, of which ours and one other device were the first items. This year the lecture was being given by two people: David McCallum, an actor who used to play Russian agent Illya Kuryakin on the 60s spy TV show "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.", and who now plays a medical examiner on the show NCIS, a pseudo-CSI offshoot about the Naval Criminal Investigative Service...(pause for breath) and a real medical examiner named Craig Mallak. The lecture consisted of watching clips of NCIS followed by comments from Dr. Mallak about the show's realism. The lecture hall filled up so we sat in the overflow auditorium and watched other people watch it on a video feed. This left the question of whether we should stand up when the people in the main room were asked to, for example when a military brass band played some songs. No one would know if we didn't. But it was a classy crowd and it was silently decided that we should.

The first NCIS clip showed the scene after someone had died aboard Air Force One. There was the classic squabbling between agencies, until the NCIS agents and a Secret Service agent somehow locked out the FBI and 'hijacked' the plane to take the body back to where they could analyze it. I had some trouble myself with the realism of this scene, but Dr. Mallak didn't comment on what I thought was most obvious. There was also the typical lionizing and mythologizing of the agency concerned, with some official solemnly saying "I'll do what I can...but I can't control NCIS." I think in the real world the dialogue might have been more like "Who the @#$! is NCIS?" In later scenes we saw his punky, attractive young assistant, and heard many more lines of stupefyingly obvious dialogue that is presumably meant to sound clever. "What is this?" "It's a flash memory card sir, for a digital camera." "Why the devil did he swallow that?" "He was trying to tell you something!"

Some of Dr. Mallak's portions of the lecture were enlightening for me, such as a short flm about AFDIL, the department that keeps DNA samples of every single person in the armed forces, and that is consulted when remains need to be identified (the film itself really wasn't necessary, it's pretty much a whole lot of shelves and little envelopes). Also the facility that the bodies from Iraq come through, where they can only keep them for 24 hours before sending them to the families, so they do extremely detailed 3D body scans which they can later use to assess the performance of the body armor and such. But this couldn't help but be overshadowed by the Doctor's extremely nervous and nerdy demeanor. His uniform pants were way too short, and he spoke awkwardly, quite the opposite of the charming and comfortable McCallum. Compounding the problem was a very strange glitch in the PA system which sounded like a buzzer going off at random intervals. This seemed to only occur while Mallak was talking, and each time it caused him to nearly jump out of his seat. We were glad to be able to laugh at him relatively freely in our unsupervised overflow auditorium.

Other stuff...after tweaking it for several hours straight the robot suddenly stopped working 20 minutes before the black-tie people were to arrive, and some gears had to be lubricated with motor oil from the boss's bike, which worked like a charm. The affair was catered, but being in a museum, there was pretty much nowhere to put down your plate or glass, and so several people tried to put theirs down on a table which was symbolically set with a POW/MIA flag. Not getting much of a chance to eat ourselves, we went afterward to Ruby Tuesday (there aren't many options in Silver Spring, MD after hours), where after 45 minutes we were told our check had been lost on its way to the kitchen, and we'd get the food for half price with free dessert. The boss and I took them up on some cheesecake.

Okay, time to get things going around here.

First off, a few weeks ago I saw The Baxter, the new movie by Michael Showalter, at the free 'Drive-in Movies' event at Rockefeller Center. The setup was pretty neat, with seats in the Promenade area looking at a screen across the ice rink. The contrast on the picture wasn't great, but what can you expect. The sound was better than average for outdoors, with small speakers placed throughout the seating area.

Before the movie started, Showalter, David Wain, and Michael Ian Black came up on a stage to do a little performance. They also called up fellow The State alumni Joe Lo Truglio and Ken Marino, and Wet Hot American Summer guy A.D. Miles. The performance was basically banter about the movie and Stella, followed by a Q&A that just left me embarrassed for most of the questioners. Someone asked what we all really wanted to know, when The State DVD is coming out, and the answer: they just don't know.

As for the movie, I'd hate to be overly critical of the work of someone who really deserves all their success and more, but to me it was lacking in one thing that makes much of The State, Wet Hot, and Stella funny: mocking our banal, affected interactions by introducing the absurd into them. Before seeing it I'd read in a Gothamist interview about how it was very different from all the other stuff, an old-fashioned kind of movie with no profanity or gross-out humor. That seemed fine, and the premise, about the guy who is always the wrong guy for a girl and gets dumped for the more exciting guy who can sweep her off her feet, seemed very promising. But I think they needed to go further with the old-fashioned theme to get any comedic value out of it, for example by using Mr. Burns-esque antiquated phrases for modern things. And the premise was not quite what I thought it was: instead of being the nice guy who gets dumped for a dashing jerk, Showalter's character is just a truly boring guy who doesn't seem desirable, or very sympathetic, at all.

Despite its being an indie production, the movie seemed to suffer from some of the same faults as so many Hollywood romantic comedies. All the emotions and characters were pretty shallow. Plot points were whisked along with hardly any explanation. (Showalter's main girl decides to date him and then to marry him in the space of a scene in which they meet, and then a brief montage. She freaks out and leaves him because he doesn't take seriously a form about what kind of music and food they want at their wedding. When he next sees her at a hotel she has checked into, that conflict seems to have been instantly resolved.) There were bizarre and unnecessary holes in the script, as when an employee shows up for a stint of temp work in Showalter's office, and then after a three-minute conversation announces that she has to go because she's leaving town. I guess that's the nature of temp work.

The only thing I could think of to explain such deficiencies in a movie by someone who obviously isn't in a position to be tossing out a clearly crappy project just for money, is that perhaps the whole thing is a parody of all the bad things about generic romantic comedies. When I read the descriptions in the above paragraph it starts to sound that way. But the movie really didn't seem to be playing it that way--if it was the intention, it was done way too generally to produce any specific moments at which you could laugh at that. More likely it seems like a slightly desperate bid for wider success by dumbing down for the masses. I didn't really want to ask that question when walking by him afterward ("So...this was all a big joke right? You can't be serious...right?"). Then again while walking to the subway I did overhear someone say "Yeah, I liked that way more than Wet Hot American Summer," so maybe the strategy will work!

One final comment, there was a musical motif in the movie that I could swear was very very similar to one in another recent movie. It was a melancholy, repetitive little melody, with an organ-like instrument playing a three-note sequence at three different starting positions, and a more bell-like instrument doing a 4-note descending line at the end of each phrase. I think the movie I'm remembering it from was either Adaptation or Eternal Sunshine, but I'll have to rewatch them to see. If anyone else sees this movie and has a similar thought please let me know.

On a better note, I'm pleasantly surprised by the one episode I've seen so far of the Stella TV show. The transition from the incredibly vulgar shorts on the DVD I have to the relative cleanliness of Comedy Central, as well as the more cohesive plots within a half-hour episode, was made more gracefully than I would have thought possible, and it was very funny.

Now the Times says Stella is so bad "I watched that thing as if my face was palsied." Well, the Times didn't much care for Aqua Teens either. Considering the well-established fact that as soon as the Times writes about any trend, it's over, I think if they pan something (movies not included) there's a case to be made that it's not over. Granted, the Stella style of humor does take some getting used to, and I was already prepared for it having watched the DVD shorts. I hope the viewing public will still give it a chance.

Today we took a company field trip to the Apple Store in Soho to get a Mac Mini for a project. We examined the display with the list of the different grades available. I noticed that the $499 entry-level model only had 256MB of RAM--not the 512MB that I thought I'd seen on the Apple website, a preferable amount. Not wanting any of the other upgrades that came with the higher grades, we decided to ask about getting only the memory upgraded.

There was a veritable swarm of greeters and salespeople in bright green shirts that said "Student Union" with a picture of a Powerbook. I initially took them to be college students getting a special chance to sell computers, but later realized they were the regular employees, just in green shirts. There were at least 15 of them working on the ground floor alone.

We went up to one of them to ask for our Mini. He proceeded to read out the contents of the display card that we had just familiarized ourselves with. We let him finish and then asked about the memory. An extra $150. Also, since there's only one slot for the memory, they have to put in a single 512 piece, and then you get to keep your superfluous 256 piece. We said no thanks, just the entry-level model please.

He went away for a bit, then came back and asked if we wanted to do the install ourselves, because they were real busy today, and it might take them 2 hours to do it. I said we'll do it ourselves, assuming he meant the operating system, although I didn't remember that being an issue in previous purchases. Mike said "wait, which install do you mean?" Salesman said, "the memory." Mike reminds him that we decided not to get the memory. He says "oh, okay, I'll be right back."

He comes back and hands us his business card with "Mac Mini $499, 512" written on it, and says "okay, one Mac Mini con el 512" and walks away. Well, let's just take it to the cashier and tell them we don't want the memory, I suggest.

We go to the cashier and she tells us that we have to tell the salesperson about it. A commission thing, we later learn. We take it to him, remind him one more time, and he indulges us by officially crossing out the "512" on the business card. We pay our $499 and leave.

Back at work I set up the computer, and just out of curiosity checked the "About This Mac" window. Below the line about the processor: "512 MB SDRAM".

On the Greyhound to Ithaca I looked over another passenger's shoulder. She was reading "True to the Game: A Teri Woods Fable." I saw a bit of dialogue that went like this:

"And guess who the fuck just got pregnant by Rik?"
"Who?"
"Veronica."
"That slut. He went up in her ass raw? And by the way, doesn't he fuck with some girl named Lita?"
"You know, I think he does."

I'm amazed at the way subway passengers will not only try hard to get a seat, but once they have one, will keep moving every time a 'better' seat nearby opens up ('better' meaning as far from other people as possible). Sometimes this is justified, as when there's a big passenger who really takes up a seat and a half, and it gets a bit uncomfortable. But I see it more and more when there's no such circumstance. In these cases I guess people are just really antisocial, or perhaps they're trying to assert their primacy over the people getting on at the next stop, since they usually have a better shot at the newly available seats.

The other night we were on the A train and there were no seats when we got on, but things started to clear up as we headed uptown. At one stop, a bank of three seats next to a door was emptied. On the other side of that door, a man was sitting in the seat nearest the door, with no one next to him, and an inoffensive-looking person two seats away in the third seat. We started to move toward the empty bank. This guy apparently could not stand having someone two seats away from him, so he quickly got up and darted over to sit in the other bank, again nearest the door. We got there after him, but I think if he had looked around he would have seen us heading for those seats. We still sat down, so now thanks to his over-optimization, he had two people right next to him, worse off than before. Boy, he must've felt pretty dumb right about then! Yes...

Later in the ride, the pair of forward-facing seats next to our bank of three opened up. Normally I would've considered taking this opportunity for optimization, because for some reason I really like those seats. But this time I decided to stay put, just to teach him a lesson. Jerk.

* * *

The next morning I had a much more pleasant transportation experience. An old guy with white hair, a straw hat, a checkered shirt and a banjo got on the bus at the same stop I did. He noticed a pair of little girls looking at it inquisitively, and asked if they knew what it was. A minute later he was leading a little singalong. Another child joined in a few stops later. He played and sang softly, and no one seemed disturbed by it. The bus driver took no notice. They got off at 231 ST, and he said maybe he'd see them again the next day.

Two big Japanese film events in New York this fall, as I found out from the Criterion Collection's news page. First at Lincoln Center there's Shochiku at 110, at which I'm most looking forward to The Loyal 47 Ronin (Chushingura), three and a half hours long and the closest thing to Japan's national movie, I'm told; Ozu's Late Spring; and perhaps Kinji Fukasaku's Fall Guy, about a washed up samurai film star trying to preserve his image. I'm mostly aiming for directors I'm familiar with, and films of theirs that aren't available on DVD. There are so many other films playing, but it's hard to know what's going to be good based mostly on skeletal plot outlines. I am curious about "The Lights of Asakusa," partly because I think it's really cool to get to see what a neighborhood of Tokyo was like in 1937, and partly because, for maybe the first time ever, I can't find this movie on IMDb. They have 22 movies by the director, including one made in the same year, but nothing resembling the English title or the Japanese, Asakusa no hi.

Sometimes I have to step back and wonder if I'm disappearing down a rabbit-hole in trying to find and appreciate increasingly obscure Japanese movies. First I got into Kurosawa, then Yasujiro Ozu, Seijun Suzuki, Nagisa Oshima, Shohei Imamura. Takashi Miike probably belongs in a separate list. "The Loyal 47 Ronin" would be the first I've seen by Kenji Mizoguchi. I have a tendency to put a lot of stock in the words of respected film lovers and critics, and let my opinions be almost pre-formed for me before I even see the movies. Surely there's an end to the supply of lost masterpieces and gems, and eventually I'm just watching movies that were forgotten for a reason, but that someone loves because of some context or memory that I just don't have. I do want to make sure that I'm still enjoying the movies and not just appreciating them.

I also think a lot about how older movies and oeuvres would be perceived if they were made today. For example, in Donald Richie's Japan Journals, I read that all of Ozu's films are about the destruction of the family. I figured he was talking about deep themes and interpretations that I would never get on my own. But now that I've seen a few of his films, I realize they really are, on the surface, all about families subtly falling apart. There are variations--in "Good Morning" it's a new generation that only cares about television, and in "Tokyo Story" it's the older generation that is no longer welcome. But it's pretty remarkable how similar they are. It's usually the same group of actors, often playing characters with the same names. Setsuko Hara often plays "Noriko", later on "Akiko." In what I've seen so far her character usually rebels against her parents by not wanting to get married despite being of an appropriate age. Then there are the titles: "Late Spring," "Early Summer," "Early Spring," "Early Autumn" (aka The End of Summer). He did direct 54 movies, including "Tokyo Story" and "Good Morning" and "A Story of Floating Weeds" (twice), and I've only seen a few of them, but still it's a rather fugue-like body of work. It makes me think of Wes Anderson and the common criticism that he's too insular and absorbed in his own quirky style. This never held much weight for me--he's making his contribution to cinema, in his voice, and that's a separate issue from the quality of each movie.

The other event coming up is at MoMA, and titled, appropriately enough, Early Autumn: Masterworks of Japanese Cinema. The only one from their list that I'm sure about seeing so far is the titular film, Early Autumn. But several others look intriguing: "Shonen" by Nagisa Oshima, Kurosawa's directorial debut "Judo Saga," Mizoguchi's "Sisters of the Gion", and "Monday Girl" by Ko Nakahira, whose "Crazed Fruit" was just released by Criterion. There's also one called "Attack of the Mushroom People" by the director of the original Godzilla, Ishiro Honda. But, eh.

You're killin' me, CMJ. I really wanted to see at least a couple of shows. Brian Jonestown Massacre, and the Polyvinyl showcase with Saturday Looks Good To Me and Of Montreal. And hey, Aloha as well, not my favorite but they used to play at the Halfass back in college.

But then, aw crap...Jonestown is playing at 1am. And I'm going to feel guilty that I became a fan of their music only after seeing DiG!. And there's 4 other bands playing before them, probably all psychedelic bands with long drawn-out songs that will melt my brain before Jonestown even gets onstage. And...oh, great. Aloha at 7pm, SLGTM at 10pm, and Of Montreal at 1am. Could you spread that out a little more? I want to spend as many hours at this show as I do at work just beforehand. Thanks a lot CMJ...just forget it. At least I got to see Arcade Fire at the Mercury Lounge last year.

* * *

I have to say, I'm really excited about this. Every issue of the New Yorker ever, from February 1925 to February 2005, in scanned page form, on a set of 8 DVD's. To me the New Yorker is like a continuously created encyclopaedia, only it's written far more interestingly than any encyclopaedia, because of the way it tells the stories behind people, places, and events. My only complaints about this are two disadvantages that seem to arise from the decision to put this great reference on DVD rather than online: one, there most likely won't be any seamless update for recent issues, and two, full text search is not possible. But then again, I'd be much less likely to pay an online subscription fee for this than I am to pay a one-time ownership fee. It's $63 at Amazon.

Speaking of the New Yorker, I have a word of the day that came from a recent issue: synecdoche, pronounced sin-EK-duh-kee. It's a literary term meaning a type of metaphor that refers to a thing by a part, or to a part by a whole (or to something by the kind of thing it is, or what it is made of). My favorite examples from the wikipedia entry are: referring to "one's wheels" to mean one's car (first type), or referring to "plastic" to mean a credit card (last type). I love this word because until now I didn't even realize I was using these metaphors every day, let alone that they were a specific type of metaphor that had a name. I did however learn in a college class that we use metaphors much more than we are aware, and that they probably inform our very thinking as much as they appear in our writing or speech. This book lays it all out.

To go along with Movie Nights, I have another new excuse to drag my associates to the northern climes of Inwood. Several months ago there was an article in the New York Times Magazine about a man who might be called a cocktail archeologist, who likes to make cocktails that were commonly consumed in decades past, going back to about the Civil War era, when I think you could say the modern cocktail came to prominence. As a necessary part of this job he also collects old booze bottles, because many of the ingredients for these cocktails are not common anymore. This might come as a surprise to my friends, among whom I am known for how unenthusiastically I submit to drinking and going to bars, but in describing some of the drinks he likes, such as the "Corpse Reviver" and "Milk Punch," the article made them sound utterly delicious and I really wanted to try some of them. The article also mentioned that he catalogued the recipes of these cocktails on a website called cocktaildb.com. I promptly forgot about it, and 5 months later I was on the case.

CocktailDB is pretty cool and you can find the recipes for the two drinks I mentioned there and many more. As a database it's a lot more prescriptivist than the multitude of other cocktail sites like webtender.com; you won't find 5 different recipes for the Mudslide. In fact you won't find any at all. I realized pretty quickly when digging into the work of Ted Haigh, a.k.a. Dr. Cocktail, that as in just about any field, the cocktail connoisseurs don't so much go for the newfangled stuff, in this case drinks that will get you drunk by having as much alcohol content as possible, but at the same time disguise its taste so that the drink is still palatable. So the move from drinks based on juniper-flavored Gin to almost flavorless Vodka is not well thought of. Overly sweet drinks are also the subject of much indignation. Anyway, the problem with CocktailDB is that it doesn't tell you anything about the history of the drinks. There's no way to tell the truly olde-fashioned drinks from the "Old Fashioned" itself. This was much of my interest in the subject. I found out to get the full story I'd have to buy this book, in which Dr. Cocktail discusses 80 drinks that have pretty much died out, and that he thinks really deserve to come back the way the Mojito has.

I'm generally loathe to pay for content that has been intentionally withheld from the internet by an internet guy, but in this case I made an exception. I wasn't disappointed; the book has what I was looking for, a lot of interesting information on both cocktails and ingredients. There are some drinks about which it doesn't say much, and some cases in which Haigh has altered the traditional recipe to suit his tastes, but overall it's pretty damn cool. I made up my mind to gather the necessary ingredients for about 10 of the drinks in the book, try them out and tweak my choices based on a desire for a good variety, and then have a gathering at which anyone can "order" from my "menu" of drinks. I figure as with some of my other endeavors that even knowing next to nothing about mixology, I should be able to follow the recipes carefully and produce a tasty result.

Thus commenced a period of going to liquor stores a lot and making a lot of odd selections that prompted confused looks from the cashiers as they examined dusty bottles I had found somewhere in the back. Again, it might surprise those who know me as someone who goes to great lengths to avoid paying full retail price for a can or 20oz bottle of Coke, that I would spend as much as $30 on bottles of booze just to be able to make one drink that I've never even tried before. But I was already going against my nature in so many ways for this project, one more time couldn't do much harm. The local store, PJ Liquor Warehouse, had a pretty impressive amount of the stuff I needed, but I had to make one special trip to Sherry Lehman on the East Side, where I got Applejack, Parfait Amour, and Maraschino Liqueur. At present I've obtained about 16 bottles, apart from the basic stuff, for a repertoire of 8 cocktails, with a couple more awaiting some hard-to-find ingredients. I've tried 5 of them and made one other for a friend, who despite being a martini drinker, shared my impression that these drinks tend to be shockingly strong, but enjoyable nonetheless for the complex flavors.

This turned out to be a fortuitous time for this project. Mr. Haigh is pretty serious about trying to revive these drinks, and it may actually happen. A bar just opened on Houston Street called the Pegu Club, named for one of the drinks in the book, which itself was named for a British Officer's club in Rangoon circa 1920s, where it was invented. The bar serves its namesake and many other forgotten cocktails like the Corpse Reviver and the Aviation, and more familiar fare. Here is an eGullet thread about the bar, in which the owner/manager/head bartender Audrey Saunders responds quickly to a post commenting mildly about some bad vibes from a server by asking for details and saying she would address it with the staff immediately. I haven't yet gone to the bar to try these drinks as made by the experts and see how mine compare, and at $12 a cocktail it's not for the faint of wallet, though I'm told that's a bargain for the quality one gets.

For those interested in the subject, I'd highly recommend checking out the Drinkboy Message Boards and the Fine Spirits and Cocktails section of the eGullet Forums. Several of the biggest names in the field, including Dr. Cocktail, post at each.

I think it's safe to say that no one could have foreseen, when we got into this, that we'd still be there now, disgruntled and discouraged, with the costs soaring ever higher, and no end in sight. I'm speaking of course of the New Yorker cartoon caption contest. At first it seemed like a nice enough diversion: instead of the usual back page content, each week a cartoon in need of a caption, and the finalists from the previous week, and the winner from the week before that. But it's been going on for months now. The captions sometimes reach the comic level of the normal cartoons, but as a whole it's nothing compared to the soothing satisfaction of a Roz Chast piece letting you know you have completed another issue. In my layman's opinion the page layout is about the most cluttered and jarring that you'll see on any New Yorker page. Please, let it end.

* * *

In the October 24 issue of the New Yorker, one of the "Briefly Noted" book reviews used one of my all-time favorite words, one included in my rare word dictionary: interlarded. Here's the relevant passage, from a review of "A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599."

"The approach proves illuminating for the overtly political plays. Lines in "Henry V" allude to a rebellion in Ireland that Elizabeth I had recently sent the Earl of Essex to suppress. Chapters on "As You Like It" and "Hamlet" revert to more conventional textual analysis, interlarded with biographical speculations and digressions; for instance, Rosalind's journey to Arden may derive from Shakespeare's annual trip to Stratford to see his wife and daughters, and the "limbs with travel tired" of the twenty-seventh sonnet perhaps reflect the poor condition of English highways."

The definition that I had in my dictionary was a cooking process whereby meat is prepared with alternating layers of fat packed into it. Apparently it can also mean, generally, a construction process with alternating types of elements stacked or layered. In fact this is the more common usage today. I'm glad to know that since it makes it a much more useful word in general conversation. Interlarded was a Dictionary.com Word of the Day back in 2001.

* * *

Much as I love it, the New Yorker has been absolutely ruinous to my general reading habits lately. At this point I read everything but the Fiction pieces, and sometimes the Dance and Theater reviews. I'm too much of an obsessive completist to skip any but the most boring articles that couldn't possibly have any information of interest to me, and those are few and far between. The only times I get to read are during my relatively short commute and other transportation time, and at night before I go to sleep. I can rarely finish an issue in less than 6 days, and the seemingly increasingly common extra-thick issues take about 8. Ever since I had to take three trips in quick succession in August I've been about a week behind, starting an issue just as the next one arrives. This isn't so bad, since it means I'm never left with nothing to read, though it does mean that I always find out about events I've just missed whenever I read "Goings On About Town." But I do have at least 5 books that I really want to read right now and there's just no room for them in the schedule. I may therefore do the unthinkable and let my subscription lapse in the next month or two when it comes up for renewal, giving me a little window for other reading while allowing me to hold out for a better renewal price.

I'd been to the Brooklyn Heights promenade several times at night recently, and looked down curiously at this area, but not until I was finally there during the day did I realize this is supposed to be a memorial garden for 9/11. I'm sure the intentions were good, but have you ever seen a more miserable garden? It's right under a highway. It's surrounded by industrial waterfront, with an ugly perimeter fence. The only indication of its purpose, other than the shape of the towers, is a rather tacky real estate-style billboard. And I'm no botanist, but it appears to my untrained eye to be largely filled with weeds (though I suppose it's to the gardener's credit they got different weeds to grow inside the tower shapes). You could say that any garden, or any memorial garden, is better than nothing, or better than the gravel and debris that might otherwise be here. But I think this constitutes a pretty strong counterargument.

PS here's a photo of what it looked like in November 2002. Better, to be sure, but still not what I would readily call a garden, except perhaps in the Zen sense.

I've been seeing ads for an upcoming TV Movie on A&E called Knights of the South Bronx, starring Ted Danson. It's about a guy named David MacEnulty who was the coach of my junior high school chess team for a time. The movie is about how a business man was inspired to teach chess to 'inner city kids' in the titular neighborhood and give them a chance at some sort of greater success. Our school was on 107th Street in Manhattan, and while there were underprivileged kids there, none of them were on the chess team. We were in a gifted and talented program that was essentially its own school within the larger one. So I doubt the movie is about us.

The thing I remember most about MacEnulty was a day when, to make some point, he sat us all down around one side of a chess board with him on the other side. He asked us all to "suggest a move" for our side. Quickly seeing the absurdity of playing chess by committee, we started making the wackiest first moves imaginable, none of which are all that wacky--I'm sure some Grand Master has played each of them at least once for the hell of it. He asked us to stop being silly and I guess we pushed it too far and he just walked out of the room and didn't come back that day. When our parents found out they made us apologize to him, and he returned to being our coach, but I don't think he taught us for any more than a year, if that long.

Our team was a scrappy bunch. We were proud of holding our own in state and national tournaments against schools like Hunter and Dalton, about which we heard tales of recruiting programs, as if elementary school chess were college football. In retrospect I don't know if the results we got justified our attitude, but we certainly had some triumphs.

When we started we were at P.S. 9, and our team name was the Knights of Nine. When most of us went on to I.S. 54, we often joked that we'd have to become the Knights of Nine Times Six. I don't know if anyone outside the team ever would've gotten that, but surely it was better than what we ended up with: "Equites," Latin for 'knights.' When we printed our team T-shirts the name was in a Roman-style font like the one used on the Museum of Natural History facade, meaning that "EQUITES" looked a lot like "EQVITES." Whenever we had those shirts on at tournaments we had to endure the question "What's ekveits?"

This will be one of those entries where you realize how incredibly out of touch I am with the mainstream. For a while I've seen subway ads for "Trimspa," the diet product endorsed by Anna Nicole Smith. Apart from the fact that she's wearing a full wetsuit in the 'after' photos, I always noticed the ads boasting: "#1 in Hoodia Gordonii." I puzzled over how many meanings this could have. Was Hoodia Gordonii a place? A category of diet products or a contest between them? Another kind of category, like an extreme sports league? The silliness of the name contributed significantly to my fascination, because it didn't really sound like it could be any of those things without my having previously known about it. Then I passed a nutrition store yesterday and realized the answer was one I hadn't thought of: an ingredient.

* * *

A new project has occupied my researches of late. I'd like to be able to document my surroundings with photographs. The faces of the people passing by on the street, and sitting across from me on the subway, items for sale in stores, little fleeting scenes that pop up in front of me. Anything really, but most importantly things that disappear too fast to capture with my regular camera, because it takes several seconds to start up, or too sensitive for the bulky regular camera, like people.

Some photographers are skilled at capturing people candidly. They have some combination of these qualities: quickness, sneakiness, a long zoom lens, or just being very personable and therefore innocuous, not drawing attention to themselves. I seem to be the personified antithesis of these necessary qualities. Every time I merely take out my regular camera, just taking pictures of scenery, people start giving me suspicious looks. When I was in Paris and tried to get more adventurous, I pissed off a couple of people, but fortunately neither were in a position to come after me (but that's a story for another day). So I shall have to make up for my shortcomings with special equipment.

The requirements are these, in roughly descending order of importance. The camera must be concealable on my person. I must be able to aim it to some degree, in an innocuous way. It must be able to stay on for a significant period of time, without turning off automatically as many cameras do, and without killing the batteries too quickly. It must be able to operate silently (but if not, I can probably go in and rip the internal speaker out) and without any bright lights flashing (see previous). I must be able to in some way (hacking the electronics if need be) connect a remote trigger so that, for example, I can take a picture while keeping my hand in my pocket even if the camera is elsewhere on my person.

I think that's most of the must-haves. It would also be great if the camera can adapt to interior lighting (such as on the subway), if it turns on quickly and has little shutter lag, if it can have a zoom capability (that would also have to be triggered remotely), and of course the more resolution the better. But these things are tall orders for tiny cameras.

Next time I'll talk about some of the cameras I've chosen to start with and the different technical approaches one could take to various aspects of this problem.

JV recently pointed me to two great resources:

Videos of the British Prime Minister's Question Time. Never could seem to catch this on C-SPAN and now I know why, it airs at 7am on Wednesdays, when I'd never be awake, and at 9pm on Sundays, when there are 10 other good shows on. JV also helped out with this primer on the policies of the three main parties.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes. So far I've gotten through "A Study in Scarlet." I may regret it later in life when my eyes melt from endless scrolling, but I actually like reading on the web, even long pieces. Without as many page breaks it goes faster for me, and I tend to do more of it, because I'm already in front of the computer most of the day.

Like most sites that feature user reviews for products, Netflix filters out the riffraff by showing the "reviews voted most helpful" on the main page for the product. The result in this case is that usually at least one of the three featured reviews (not including the three most recent reviews shown below them) tells you what people who like the movie like about it, or offers some historical perspective, and is therefore very helpful in deciding whether or not I should rent it.

But something seems to be going haywire today. On several movie pages I've looked at today, the featured reviews seem to be among the least helpful. The first time this happened it was really quite annoying, because the first review gave away the ending of the movie! And the review had no business being on that page, because it had received 2 votes of "helpful" to 109 "not helpful"s. So to give you fair warning, if you haven't seen the movie Layer Cake, and you're at all interested in it, don't read the user reviews! I have to imagine a lot of people are going to have the movie ruined, because an article just appeared in the Times about the movie's phenomenal success on DVD, which is outpacing its theater earnings ninefold.

At first I couldn't find a similar problem on the pages for other movies, but after some more browsing it seems to be spreading, and the results have been more amusing than in that first case. I'd always been impressed with how cogent and knowledgeable the user reviews seemed to be, and now I'm getting to see the other half. The stupid half. Examples:

Another featured review of Layer Cake:

"I could not sit through this movie. My Boyfriend watched it and said it made not sense."
0 out of 22 people found this review helpful.

A featured review of Funny Games:

"Movie not in english!! ruined my weekend...couldn't watch..who wants to have to read the movie???i got a headache after 5 minutes & took it out!"
2 out of 59 people found this review helpful.
(Note: the reviewer rated the movie 5 stars out of 5.)

From a featured review of Requiem for a Dream:

"Don't be decieved by the good acting and film score by Kronos."

From a featured review of Manhattan:

"This Movie is entirely in Black and White. I wish I knew this before I watched it. I had just finished Schindler's List and was not in the mood for another B&W movie. Probably the main reason I gave it such a low rating."

A featured review of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid:

"I really like seeing these 2 together, but there was something missing in this movie. I can't really put my finger on it, but something was missing."

Well, in the middle of collecting these, I just started seeing "Netflix Site Error" when trying to access any page on the site. Guess they found this.

Today we say goodbye to a blog that has been by turns edifying, profane, funny, pornographic, punk, metal, hip-hop, drunken, and even poignant. Mr. Schultz is getting deported from Japan, having overstayed his visa, and so it seems that Tokyo Damage Report (latest post is NSFW) will soon reach its end. For at least a couple years and a half I've been reading his reviews of punk shows, reports from all the bizarre design/fashion/industrial food technology conventions they hold over there, rants about the opposite sex, freestyle rap lyrics about political figures, and analyses of innumerable other cultural phenomena that certainly seem like they could only exist in Japan. Let's not forget his occasional epic struggles with HTML--he's one of the few bloggers, especially popular ones, to not have made the move to a Content Management System, though I must admit his archive (scroll down some) has been pretty impressively well-maintained for a while now.

Schultz is a tireless journalist of the Japan experience. It's probably true that Tokyo is the easiest place to find crazy stuff of the kind he writes about, but it's still not that easy. When I was there it mostly seemed like another big city, one that I was ill-prepared for, and even when I found stuff that seemed interesting, like an all-vinyl record store or an all-night internet cafe, it was often intimidating (the common problem of trying to transcend being a tourist when I can in no way deny being one). His writing style is intense and direct, often hilarious, and in a way disguises its quality with its lack of pretension (a quality I'm in no danger of sharing, I admit).

I should also mention that Schultz has a band. They've managed to play a few shows in Tokyo, which I would love to have seen, since he is a connoisseur of live shows. Recently he made an album (by himself, as far as I can tell) and made it available for download. I've listened to a couple of the songs, and so far it's pretty rad punk-metal stuff, quite well-produced. The lyrics are all in Japanese.

First KindOfCrap goes, now this. Here's hoping this entry ends up in error and TDR somehow finds a way to continue. Otherwise, can anyone point me in the direction of a Japan (or anywhere, really) blog remotely as interesting?

Can anyone tell me what's going on in the solid-colored areas in these photographs? I took the aerial from a plane close to landing at San Francisco airport, and the satellite image shows the same area highlighted in the upper left corner. Though you can't really see it in the images, the surface of these areas was clearly water--I could see waves on it. I'm assuming they must be farms of some kind, but the only thing I know of that's commonly grown this way in the US is cranberries, and I doubt that's what's being grown in all of these areas. I'm also confused by the fact that they're adjacent to the bay, but bounded off from it by some sort of wall. So it's not bay water inside there, yet they're connected to the bay, and the walls didn't seem that high. And what's grown in salt water? Fish I guess, but would fish or their feed turn the water such colors?

By the way, has anyone else noticed deteriorating performance from Google Maps? Lately I see a lot of tiles failing to update after a change in the query or the zoom level, sometimes leaving me with a confusing if not unusable mishmash of tiles from different locations or zooms.

Update: Turns out they're salt evaporation ponds, and the colors are caused by different forms of algae that grow in different salinity conditions--the red ponds are the saltiest.

Recently I puzzled over these posters that appeared in the vicinity of my workplace (these two were taped to one another around a lamppost, and there were at least a few more). Why would someone go to such an effort to reclaim their pet two years after it went missing? I don't have an answer I can back up with facts, but being halfway through the complete Sherlock Holmes, I endeavoured to reason it out. First, some observations:

• The posters went up, I believe, in mid to late April. They're now in pretty bad shape and no attempt has been made to replace or fix them.
• Judging by the handwriting in the vital stats area, not to mention all the other differences, it seems safe to say that these two posters were made by more than one person.
• The text that has been blacked out on both posters said essentially that the dog could also be brought to a specified police precinct, which I believe was the closest one for our neighborhood of Mott Haven.
• A peculiar feature is the perfect white background and poses in the pictures of the dog. These would have to be either lucky shots or the result of Photoshopping, both unlikely to appear on posters like this. This leads me to think they were either taken off the web or copied from a book. I'm inclined toward a book because I don't see any of the pixelation that would be likely when printing web images at this size. Cursory Googling didn't turn them up.
• Googling did turn up this listing at PetLocator. The presence of the pictures points away from my book hypothesis, as its unlikely someone would go the trouble of scanning them in as opposed to just taking them off the web. It doesn't show when it was posted, but the Internet Archive has the page showing up on Feb. 18, 2005. Also, seeing the pictures on there makes me rethink the likelihood that the owner might have used Photoshop to erase the background in them.

And some possible explanations:

• The impending Mother's Day anniversary of the loss inspired a renewed sadness in one of the pet's owners, and either that person, or others close to them, made the posters more in an attempt to feel less sad and guilty than out of any sincere hope of finding the pet.
• The owners got a tip that the pet might have been seen recently, renewing their hope.
• This is part of a larger, consistent campaign to recover the pet that I haven't been otherwise aware of. This supported by the PetLocator page, but contraindicated by the poster stating that the dog was lost on Lincoln Ave., that being where the posters were put up. It's unlikely they've been fanning out their poster distributions from where it was lost for 2 years.

That's about as far as I can take it. Anyone?

A while ago I found in the subway a movie script that appeared to have previously belonged to an agent or someone like that. It included a cover sheet with several interesting details. The project is for "Phil Acting", he is being offered the role of 'Nick,' and the offer is $1 million tops. Other attachments include Ryan Reynolds, Johnny Knoxville, and Thomas Haden Church. Production is scheduled to start in NYC no later than September 2005. There is a section for Notes, which is cut off but has a few, including "5/2/05-PSH had a great meeting with Frank Oz this past Friday, and is interested in pursuing further." Then, "5/20/05-Fargo has let Stern know that this is unlikely for PSH."

I pulled it out again tonight and figured out that it's in IMDb and is supposedly in pre-production. The title is "Horrible Bosses" and Frank Oz (who played Yoda, was the voice of Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear, and directed "Bowfinger" and the Stepford Wives remake) is listed as the director on the script, though the IMDb page indicates nothing about the people attached other than Ryan Reynolds and the writer. Perusing the message boards for the movie (a tremendous addition to the site for gossip, the stories behind a movie, or interpretations of enigmatic plots), I realized that PSH stood for Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Phil Acting referred to this being an acting project for him. The IMDb page also gives the plot outline: "Three best friends join forces and agree to kill their horrible bosses."

My first thought was, what a horrible title, and I assumed the movie would be pretty bad too. But after reading the first few pages, the script at least is actually pretty funny. There are a lot of phrases and word choices that communicate visual ideas very efficiently, which is probably par for the course in a screenplay, but I've never read one before. The dialogue is pretty humorous as well. It's probably not the kind of movie I would go see in a theater, but if they stick close to the screenplay it could be decent.

My roommate is moving out and Maya is moving in, meaning that the music studio can now be just a studio and not a bedroom studio. Among other things, this has meant embarking on a cleaning journey of a scale unlike any I have previously undertaken. Usually when I clean, I have one task in mind, and though I might discover in the process another level of cleaning that needs to be done, I'll stick with the original plan and put the other task off for another time. But this time, if it can be cleaned, and needs to be, it must be. It is a huge job. What happens to an apartment in two years with two lazy bastards living in it is no joke. We make ourselves blind to it most of the time because we want to just get on with our lives. A while ago I wrote an entry explaining my philosophical objections to spending too much time cleaning and having to be too nice to my possessions. Much as I hate to admit it, I can feel my tendencies changing on that front. My mind can still adapt to the buildup of filth on a stove over the course of a few months, and therefore not experience any unpleasant feelings each time I go into the kitchen and see it. But the shock of it going swiftly from filthy to spotless can be quite pleasant. Of course I can never appreciate that effect while I'm cleaning, because all I see then are the few spots that remain. It's only later when I've partially forgotten the hard work that went into it, and stopped looking at it up too close.

I've also been buying a whole lot of household stuff that either belonged to my roommate or was just really old and crappy. This is fun because I have the chance to overthink each item, asking if it's the best design, the right material, the right size, though I know that even if it weren't, I would easily get used to it and never think about it again, as I've been doing with many of the suboptimal things I had before. Many of these are items I've never had to buy myself before. It's making me feel very bourgeois to be shopping for them, rather than picking them up off the street or dragging them from place to place after years of usage. That's what happens I guess.

On the Bx15 bus across 125th St., a woman [hereafter 'Borrower'] stepped on and asked if anyone had change for her $2. After a few moments another woman ['Lender'] sitting near the front of the bus held up a TransitChek metrocard, then stepped up and put it in the machine. The Borrower started thanking her profusely, and the Lender said no problem, it's unlimited. After the Lender sat back down the Borrower attempted to give her the $2, but the Lender refused to accept it. As she kept on thanking her the Borrower attempted to thrust the money at her, but the Lender parried and it fell to the floor. The Borrower was unfazed and moved on to find a seat. The Lender picked up the money and forcefully stuffed it into one of the Borrower's bags before sitting back down again. The Borrower continued to thank, saying "no really, I just appreciate it so much, so helpful of you." At this point other passengers seemed to join the chorus, saying "that was so nice of you, so very nice." The Lender looked like she just wanted to be left alone.

I really need to get a good introductory book on mathematical topology. Ideally one for laymen like "A Brief History of Time" did for physics, but I don't know if such a thing exists. Every time there's a story in the news about an advance in this field, it makes no sense at all to me. For example, the recent stories about the proof of the Poincare conjecture, and the subsequent refusal of the Fields Medal. From the first Times article about it:

To a topologist, a sphere, a cigar and a rabbit�s head are all the same because they can be deformed into one another. Likewise, a coffee mug and a doughnut are also the same because each has one hole, but they are not equivalent to a sphere.

Okay, certainly a strange way of looking at things, but so far I'm with you.

In effect, what Poincaré suggested was that anything without holes has to be a sphere. The one qualification was that this "anything" had to be what mathematicians call compact, or closed, meaning that it has a finite extent.

Alright...

In the case of two dimensions, like the surface of a sphere or a doughnut, it is easy to see what Poincaré was talking about: imagine a rubber band stretched around an apple or a doughnut; on the apple, the rubber band can be shrunk without limit, but on the doughnut it is stopped by the hole.

When did we start talking about being able to shrink things without limit? And how do spheres and doughnuts exist in two dimensions? Or is it just the rubber band that's in two dimensions?

With three dimensions, it is harder to discern the overall shape of something; we cannot see where the holes might be.

What? Now I'm picturing a mathematician bent over an apple or a sponge, turning it over and over in his hands, shouting "Damn this conjecture! Where are the holes?" But evidently since we were talking about an apple as being two dimensional before, we're now really talking about four-dimensional objects:

...when we envision the surface of a sphere or an apple, we are really seeing a two-dimensional object embedded in three dimensions.

And at this point I've pretty much checked out. Now I admit this may be an issue of the mainstream press's understanding and reporting of science as much as anything else. It's probable that a topologist would pick this account apart the way the guys at Language Log do any article that contains a single sentence or more that appears to make a claim related to linguistics. But I wouldn't have any chance at understanding the primary sources, the academic papers, so this is pretty much what I'm stuck with, unless anyone can show me a topology version of Language Log.

For quite a while I periodically puzzled over the Four Color Map problem, which stated (as I had heard it) that you never need more than four colors to have a map with no adjacent territories having the same color. I couldn't understand whether this referred to maps of the real world, or abstract maps with any conceivable layout of territories. Of course it would be odd for mathematicians to be concerned with the real world, but I couldn't see how it could be true in the abstract, because I assumed the real-world rule held that territories can be non-contiguous (imagine how many colors you would need on a world map that shaded embassies as part of the countries they represent). Finally a coworker informed me that they have to be contiguous, and that they have to share a side, not just a point. I then spent much of a day drawing shapes, trying unsuccessfully to find a counterexample, then being amazed when I realized it was true.

The New Yorker has an article on the web about the Perelman affair, and it includes in the 13th paragraph a similar but much better explanation of basic topology concepts than the Times article I criticized in the previous entry. In fact the similarity of the description, using the same examples of bagels or donuts and coffee cups and rubber bands, makes me think that both came from the same source, perhaps a textbook, or a sheet that's passed around by journalists who have to write about difficult topics, and the author of the Times article tried to compress it a bit too much, or just not very well. The New Yorker sometimes makes unintentionally humorous statements about technology, such as the sentence "There were at least a hundred billion numbers in the shopping bags" referring to bags full of CDs in the Unicorn Tapestries article. But often they do a very impressive job with technical descriptions that are clear to technically oriented readers without alienating the non-technical ones.

On the L train last week there was a young woman who had earrings with a name spelled out in metal across a circle. When I looked at them for a few seconds I was quite surprised at the name's spelling: Regecca. Immediately I wondered if that was really her name, or if it was a mistake and her name was Rebecca. But if it was a mistake, why would she wear them? And if it wasn't a mistake, how the hell did she get earrings with that name on them? They looked like very typical, fake golden, stamped out, mass-produced earrings.

Googling produces 1,290 results, many of which are random lists of words or obvious misspellings like Regecca Romijn. One result is in the backstory of a character on a Dungeons & Dragons website. In the first 40 results there are 6 that appeared to be names of real people. There's also this doll named Regecca, which perhaps indicates that it was slightly less rare in Victorian Britain (now that I've repeated it to myself enough times it is starting to sound rather aristocratic). I wasn't able to find it in any national name databases; the ones I checked only include the 1000 most popular names.

So the most likely explanations I can see, in descending order of likelihood, are that a) the earrings were custom-made, despite not looking it... Well, that's really the only explanation I can imagine. The chance that they were either mass-produced on purpose or as a mistake but then still sold somewhere, and that this woman then obtained them either because they matched her name or despite the fact they didn't, seems vanishingly small. Any other possibilities?

I'm in California on a business trip, and unusually I've had a weekend-long lull with no car and little to do but appreciate the surroundings.

The work is in Menlo Park, but I'm staying two towns to the north, in Redwood City. In both towns, there seems to have been an abundance of time, money and effort to spend on urban design. Curbs, intersections, dividers and roundabouts all appear to have been exquisitely planned. And yet there are very few pedestrians anywhere, and it's clear that the designers were in some ways very aware of pedestrian issues, and in other ways utterly clueless. The buttons that one is supposed to press to cross the street not only work, but issue audio signals and speech for the blind ("The walk sign is on for crossing Alma Street.") And yet, at many four-way intersections only three sides are crosswalks, meaning that you are supposed to cross the street three times instead of once if you happen to want to cross a certain way.

The taxis in this town are total amateurs. Having to call ahead I expect. But though the driver had a CB radio receiver, he kept getting calls from the dispatcher on his cell phone, and seemed unpleasantly surprised every time it rang. While on the calls he said things like "I don't want to do that, I'm tired" and "I don't want to deal with traffic."

I know that Cold Stone Creamery doesn't serve the best ice cream. But there's something about the name that just draws me in. Creamery. Cold Stone. It's a great name.

Just now I was riding back to my hotel on a public bus. When I got on, a homeless man behind me asked for change, and I couldn't very well say no with a big cup of Cold Stone Creamery in my hand. He got off at the same stop as me, and walked behind me toward my hotel. When he called out to me, I tried to balance my fear with respect for the homeless, which I had seen advertised on TV earlier in the day ("Whether you say yes or no, look them in the eye when you do it"). I decided to see what he had to say. As he approached he counted out change, and then handed back to me an amount that appeared at least close to what I had given him, saying "I just needed some change." Confused, I said "so...you don't want it?" He said "Nah." Judging by the sounds I heard as I headed to my room, he then went over to use the ice machine.

We've all seen the ads in the subway saying so cleverly "If someone tries to sell you a swipe, don't buy it. It's illegal any way you swipe it." This is targeted at the enterprising people who stand in front of turnstiles with unlimited cards, or hacked ones that give them free rides, and sell entry to the system to passersby. Supposedly they sometimes jam the Metrocard vending machines in the area to force people who needed to refill their cards to use their service. But what about the legality or permissibility of the 'Good Samaritan Swipe,' in which on one's way out, one swipes one's unlimited card for someone going in?

At the 4 train stop in the Bronx where I get off on my way to work, there is often someone milling about requesting a Good Samaritan Swipe. So far I've always declined for a mix of reasons including uncertainty about legality and just wanting to get out of there. But I always feel a little guilty afterward, as I think about how easy it would have been to just swipe on my way out, and how expensive a $2 ride probably is to that person. One day a man asked someone exiting right in front of me to swipe him in, and he said "Man, there's a cop right there!" The first man said emphatically "I know!", not explaining how that bore on the situation in his view. I decided at that point that it probably wasn't worth the risk, unless I found out definitively that it is allowed. Today, for the first time at this stop, I saw someone grant the swipe. There didn't seem to be a cop present, and the token booth clerk looked on in his usual daze.

I can understand the MTA objecting to the Samaritan Swipe for the same principle as they would to selling swipes--that you are depriving them of the income they would have gotten if the person paid for their own card. One can't expect the MTA to have sympathy for these people that might otherwise spend hours panhandling for the $2. But certainly in practice the Samaritan Swipe is not the threat to revenue or public safety that the swipe salesmen are. I can't help but think the wording of the ads acknowledges that sale of rides is the much bigger problem and will be dealt with much more strictly. And yet the official rules of conduct have this to say:

Section 1050.4 c

Except for employees of the Authority acting within the scope of their employment or other expressly authorized agents of the Authority, no person shall sell, provide, copy, reproduce or produce, or create any version of any fare media or otherwise authorize access to or use of the facilities, conveyances or services of the Authority without the written permission of a representative of the Authority duly authorized by the Authority to grant such right to others.

and after all, the MTA is not exactly known for its proportionate response to such civilization-rending offenses as taking up more than one seat on a mostly empty train. So I think for now I have to continue denying the Samaritan Swipe, much as I'd like to offer it.

The MTA has some interesting new ideas for letting customers know about service changes. On several recent mornings over the last few months, I have gone to the downtown platform on the 4 train at Fordham Road on the Bronx and waited patiently with about 20 to 50 other people, watching trains go by in the other direction, until a train came going my way, but on the middle utility set of tracks. The conductor was leaning out the window as it went by, and I could see him shouting something at us, but since he didn't shout when he was right in front of me, I couldn't hear him at all above the train's noise. But by following the crowd I gathered that we were being told to go to the uptown platform, take it 3 or 4 stops, and get a downtown train there. No signs or anything, no warning from the token booth clerks, just an apparently spontaneous decision to do some track work or something.

Visible from my window at work in the south bronx, the new 145th Street Bridge on the Harlem river was delivered at the beginning of the month (gothamist) and is awaiting installation at about 129th street. There are several other bridges of its type along the river, which will have to spin out of the way to let this one through. Presumably some also had to spin for it to get its current spot, but none of us saw it happen.

While getting this photo (the view from my window was more confusing so I went down to a bit of wasteland and train tracks by the river) I learned a new word: putrescible. It literally means subject to putrefaction, and is usually used (as it was in this case) in reference to putrescible waste:

Solid waste that contains organic matter capable of being decomposed by microorganisms and of such a character and proportion as to cause obnoxious odors and to be capable of attracting or providing food for birds or animals.

The construction yard next to our building, just FYI, does not accept putrescible waste, though judging by the lovely aromas that frequently waft in through our windows, the nearby WM (Waste Management) facility does. The word has a nice ring for something so unpleasant.

When you visit the Apple store, for example by entering 'store.apple.com' in your browser, you are forwarded to this address:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa

I find it strange that Apple, of all companies, would see fit to arbitrarily encode a phone number into their URL. Is there that much demand to know the number, and/or are they so eager to have us call it? I can't imagine ordering from them using the phone as an experience could improve upon their website or their brick-and-mortar stores. Tech support is another story, but it doesn't go any further toward explaining the need to have it in the URL. Perhaps it's a jab at other companies like Amazon that are notoriously secretive with their customer service phone number. Are there any other directories under 'store.apple.com' than the phone number, if indeed it is a real directory in some sense? Not that I've discovered.

Every so often, the New York Times really pisses me off by seeming to cater to the idle rich and pretend that they are the middle class. It happens a lot in the Real Estate section, with the stories of everyday people looking to spend millions on apartments. This time they've really gone overboard in the Home & Garden section with an article about searching for unique gifts that will truly surprise their recipient. I can't deny that they accomplished that mission, but in the process they selected some 33 items that have an average price of roughly $501, and several of which I would be befuddled or horrified to receive. I'm not going to be spending anywhere near that kind of money on any one gift, and I don't think my income is below the national average, though my generosity might be. And if I were going to spend that much, it would be on something I was quite sure the recipient wanted, not an oddball surprise gift.

The Times has written about the ever-growing gap between rich and poor in America, and yet they seem to embrace the rich minority as their clientèle. Another recent article described how the abundantly rich are growing further and further apart as a group from the merely rich. The article seemed to have genuine pity for the 'merely rich.'

But I would be truly remiss if I did not mention some of the lovely gift ideas they picked out. Who would not be delighted to unwrap a $4,100 life-sized lamp in the shape of a horse? This one would be less hilarious if the lamp element were not just a boring old conical lampshade above the horse's head. But seriously, I have an empty half a room in my apartment that totally needs this. Or a ceramic umbrella stand in the shape of a Roman gladiator's foot for $625, with umbrellas for $95-$175 (try to not to leave them on the subway). Or a bowl of golden fruit, $280.

As I look through the list some more, many of the items would be quite nice, if they cost about 1/100th of what they do. Maybe I'm just a member of the Wal-Mart/Ikea generation that expects everything to come cheap, but a glass vase for $3,150? A red leather album with "This Is Your Life" on the cover for $290? A 16-inch painted porcelain platter for $1,980? A set of six notepads with the names of the rooms in your house printed on them for $150? We're talking about pieces of paper here. They also have a set of 14 for $350. I guess if you have a Guest Cottage, a Library, a Butler's Pantry, a Pool House, a Sun Room, and a Private Jet, you expect to pay $350 for some stacks of paper.

Near the end of 2003, after hearing from my friends about all these great stories in the New Yorker and whining that I really should get around to subscribing, a friend took pity on me and gave me a subscription for my birthday. I was amazed at the sheer amount of text in each issue. At first I didn't read articles that did not address subjects I already knew I was interested in. But eventually I realized that even the articles on topics that I had avoided in the past were usually fascinating. And articles about current events, which I sometimes get tired of keeping up with, would often give me a far better understanding of events in a part of the world than 10 New York Times articles had. Soon I was reading every word. I got to be a faster reader than I'd ever been before, and even then I often stayed up reading later than I should have to keep up with the rapid influx of issues. I renewed my subscription in 2004. But by the end of 2005, I had a large backlog of books I wanted to read, and despite the incredible value that the magazine represented to me I begrudged paying $46 for another year, because I had heard that if I let my subscription lapse for a little while, I would be offered a year at cheaper and cheaper rates. Since then I've enjoyed reading the following books, in rough chronological order (no affiliate stuff going on here, I don't get anything if you buy the books through these links):

• Crime and Punishment
• A Hundred Years of Japanese Film
• Paris To The Moon
• Kafka on the Shore
• Emotions Revealed
• The People's Guide to Mexico
• A People's History of the United States
• Spoken Here (travels among threatened languages)
• Haunted Weather (travelogue and meditations on experimental music)
• Kitchen Science

I've also gotten through about 90% of the complete Sherlock Holmes. That's been my bedside reading, since the book weighs about 10 pounds. Recently I've been studying Spanish. I never did receive those cheaper offers from the New Yorker, perhaps because I wasn't a subscriber for as long as the people from whom I heard the reports of them. This past November, someone again took pity and got me a subscription as a gift for my birthday. A few days ago, I finally got the offer from the New Yorker for a year's subscription at the 'Professional Rate' of $29.95. It didn't specify what profession I am part of that entitles me to the rate; cheap bastard, perhaps?

The two doormats in use in my building. I like the contrast in tone: cheery sarcasm vs. flat-out hostility.

Recently I've had occasion to catch a few episodes of "House, M.D." At first I enjoyed the show as being analogous to the Sherlock Holmes stories: a central character with plenty of eccentricities, but with abilities that tower over all those around him, and we get to watch his deductive thought process. But after seeing a couple of episodes to completion, I was puzzled at the formula's conclusion. In Sherlock Holmes, the moment that we are made aware of the solution, the reader is instantly transported back to the clues and odd happenings that are so cleanly explained by it, the importance of the clues having been masterfully hidden from the reader's attention when they were introduced. We therefore experience our own incredibly satisfying 'aha' moment.

In a typical episode of House, the doctors go through a series of brainstorming sessions about what malady might be affecting the patient, interrupted by tests and procedures that confirm or deny hypotheses and provide another data point. Usually the picture seems to grow cloudier with each test, and the doctors knit their brows a little more in trying to come up with a new explanation that fits all the data. Finally they have some epiphany and the problem is solved. But for me, without any medical knowledge, there is no analog to the Sherlock Holmes moment--I have no idea why the solution is correct, or why they couldn't have thought of it before.

Can it be that the primary audience of this show is doctors, who might have a chance to experience the show the way I experience Holmes? Doubtful--doctors with the appropriate knowledge of infectious diseases would make a tiny audience in TV terms, and it seems unlikely that House is the first medical drama ever to be rigorously correct in its portrayal of medicine. It mystifies me that a show that is both popular and respected would have what I perceive to be such a central flaw in its premise. I suppose the explanation is that for most people, the characters on the show and their human drama are the main draw.

I recently posed my quandary to my old friend Al, now a fourth-year medical student. He was able, with his knowledge, to put the problem in a different light. Everything on the show is done backwards, he said. The doctors order thousand-dollar scans only to find out the problem is something that in reality they should have found during the basic physical exam as soon as the patient was brought in. Al said the only medical show he finds bearable is "Scrubs."

As many engineers do, I sometimes help out computer novices of varying degree with questions or problems. The last couple of times I did this I noticed a point of confusion that is rarely discussed. I saw the people I was helping repeatedly click the wrong number of times on a GUI element. Sometimes the desired effect was still achieved, and the person didn't seem to know that they were doing anything wrong. Other times it did cause a problem, but it wasn't necessarily clear to the person that the number of clicks was the cause. Sometimes the person did ask me afterward about how many times they need to click, and I would answer. Whenever a question like that comes up I try to provide an overarching answer in the spirit of teaching someone to fish rather than giving them a fish. But after thinking for a few seconds I couldn't quickly come up with a consistent rule about when to click and when to double-click, to say nothing of more obscure maneuvers. It also suddenly struck me how little attention this question gets as compared to, say, the debate over the number of buttons that should be on a mouse.

As an exercise, then, I'll now try to mentally go through all the types of clicking I do on a daily basis, and write out which types require a double-click, since one would think that should be the less common action.

• In Finder or Windows Explorer, or on the Desktop, double-click an icon to open the file, folder or application.
• In a browser's location bar, and in Microsoft Word, double-click to select a word, triple-click to select the whole line.
• In email applications, click a message once to display it in a panel, double-click it to open it in its own separate window.

Those are the first few that come to mind--clearly it gets more complicated as you get further into the land of third-party software and its interfaces. The explanations above also rely on some concepts that many people don't understand. I'm realizing that there are probably a lot of people out there who use computers daily for email, web browsing and other tasks, and who don't know what Windows Explorer is, or how to find a file on the hard drive. A lot of the clicking errors I've seen were double-clicking on links in web pages or on "OK" buttons when one click would suffice. Sometimes this causes problems when the user ends up clicking once on a GUI element that was displayed or revealed after the first click. This practice probably develops in the user after frustrating experiences with clicking and seeing nothing happen.

From a designer's perspective, it makes sense to use double-clicking only when we need two different response behaviors that are both based on clicking on something. When we do so, it's good to think about how the user will know, other than by trial and error, which number of clicks will produce which response. We can usually learn keyboard shortcuts by exploring an application's menus, where the key combination is displayed next to the description. But there's no analogous visual indication of what mouse clicks will do¹, and instead we (as users now) must employ the unconscious knowledge that some, but not all of us have about the 'rules' of computing and graphical interfaces.

[1]: In this way, right-click menus are better, and allow for any number of actions to be associated with clicking. They do require more effort than a single or double click, but the double-click action could be listed in the context menu along with the right-click actions.

I find this story very gratifying. The condo board for a building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan is suing the Subway franchise on the ground floor for the "fresh bread" odors that permeate the apartments above. For years I've been nauseated every time I walk by a Subway by the smell that I could only assume was their "fresh" "bread", and wondered how they could ever think it would attract customers. I feel bad for the tenants in this building; the thought of my clothes smelling like that is pretty scary.

Pieces of a monologue by a fellow passenger on the Bx15 bus this morning, crossing 125th Street in Manhattan.

"I'm seventy-four years old. People look at me and they don't believe that, but I was born in '34. Now my legs just gave up."

"Back then they had el trains, here on 2nd Avenue, on 8th Avenue. People don't believe that! Horse-drawn carriages in the street!"

"Buildings were heated with coal. They were just bringing gas over. You had to put a quarter in the meter to cook! People don't know that now."

"There was no such thing as ball point pens then. They weren't invented for another 20 years! And now they leak everywhere."

"And there was no such thing as buses. ... ...Oh yes there was, yes there was."

"You don't even know how old you are... do you. Think about that!" [silence from man being addressed, who is sitting behind me] "You know what someone else told you. And you take their word for it. Because they treat you well."

"...Now even homeless people have phones! Everyone's got a phone. And they're not good for you either. Do you know how they work? No you don't. They have rays that go through your body. You know, like gamma rays, or x-rays?"

"There weren't no vegetable stores back then. Vegetables were sold off the land. And you could steal the vegetables!"

"Everything's changed now, in schools. Arithmetic became mathematics. Everything's changed!"

"And you know how the kids dress in school today, with their whole ass hanging out, and tattoos on their behinds. There's no reason, no respect."

"Aw man."

The slightly infamous Mr. Crack van in the South Bronx. The van appears to have lost an apparatus from its roof and the American flags on the sides since it was photographed parked in Harlem last July. I had the same thought on seeing it as one blog commenter: that this would be the perfect vehicle for a drug dealer or smuggler.

Some of the slogans that may be hard to read in the picture:

"Kids tell your parents, no drugs today"

"You use any drug, you support terrorists"

"You smoke crack you will be homeless"

"To our leaders of tomorrow... Every person in America should read this book"

"Kids, please don't use drugs, or you will become a slave"

When I took this picture the van had just pulled away from a McDonalds. Visit the official site linked above for some more 'raw truth' or to buy the book.

Twice recently I've been pushed, by unnecessary limitations of the technology I pay for, into the arms of unauthorized copies or downloading of media. In the first case, Maya and I had been watching the Showtime series "Dexter" on demand. We took our time watching it, sometimes watching more than one episode per week and sometimes less. One day I noticed that all the episodes we had watched so far were gone from the selection of available episodes. Chastened, I realized I had not been checking when the episodes would "end", and when I later checked on the rest of episodes, I realized they all ended in a few days, "on 1/23." So we would have to have something of a marathon to watch the rest of it in time, about two episodes each day. The thought did occur to me at the time that "on 1/23" is a bit ambiguous; it could mean either the end of the 23rd or the beginning. But I repressed it, because I thought it would be poor interface design to make it the beginning of the day, and I didn't see how we could watch the episodes any faster anyway.

On the 23rd, sure enough, all the episodes were already gone, and we were thrust into a desperate situation. At that point, having watched four episodes in the last couple of days, we were very involved in the escalating plot, and really wanted to find out what was going to happen. We couldn't possibly wait for the DVD. And there simply wasn't any other way to see these episodes. So I turned to alternative channels, and found downloadable versions that looked almost as good as a DVD. By hooking up my laptop to the TV and the stereo, I was able to recreate the immersive viewing experience that we had become quite accustomed to.

Why did I have to do that? Why did they have to cut off the on-demand availability of the episodes on that particular day, long before a DVD release? Either there is some technical limitation to the amount of on-demand content that Time Warner can host at one time, or they just don't think what I pay for on-demand entitles me to a service quite that good.

Two days ago the Academy Awards aired, and thanks to a party planner lacking foresight, we had to spend most of the evening out. We DVR-ed the program before leaving, but didn't think at that time to program extra recording time because the show usually exceeds the nominal schedule. We got back before the end and started watching. When the scheduled time ended and recording stopped, we were switched from watching the recording to live TV, instantly ruining one award for us by showing the winner giving the speech, but also showing us that we would need to program more recording, which we did before going back to watching the playback. We only made it about halfway through before we had to go to bed.

Yesterday I had the unusual situation of having to try not to find out who won the big awards. My coworkers are not likely to talk about it, so that wasn't a problem, but my Google personalized homepage and all but a couple of the web sites I usually visit daily were off-limits. This was a wake-up call to how 'plugged in' I've become and how much harder it is not to find out the latest news, than to find it out.

When we watched the rest of the recording last night we gradually became aware of impending doom: the show had gone more than 35 minutes over. Again, this possibility had occurred to me the previous night, but I had banished it, remembering that they had been trying to rein in the overruns in recent years. The recording ended during the acceptance speech for Best Actor. I knew it would be impossible to go looking for videos of the last two award presentations without finding out who won, so I sacrificed my own surprise for Maya's. After scouring a few sites the best I could find was on YouTube--a pretty good video for Best Director, and one with Spanish voiceovers for Best Picture. Something of a Pyrrhic victory.

Why couldn't the official Oscars site host videos of the awards being presented? They had lots of videos from the "Thank You Cam" and "Ellen's Video Diary." I'm sure we were not the only ones who encountered this problem as a result of the Academy's inability to schedule adequate time for its show.

I've been meaning for a while to write an entry adding to the chorus of supplication for sane DVD releases of Mythbusters and Anthony Bourdain's television work. I never saw A Cook's Tour, and I've only seen a few episodes of No Reservations, mostly because I didn't have cable until last fall. Mythbusters is an incredibly informative and entertaining show for anyone with a scientific mind. I've found that I hardly care or ever remember whether the 'myth' was true or false (and often 'myth' does not seem like an appropriate term for the proposition being tested); what I treasure is the process of discovery. The hosts are both creative and thorough in their approaches, and have enviable skills in building the machines to test their hypotheses.

Happily there's now a perfectly good release of No Reservations Season One. On the Mythbusters front, so far the selection has been puzzling. Several single episodes are available as discs for $20. Who's going to pay that? The only explanation I can think of is that they're looking to the educational market, and have judged them all to be a bunch of suckers. This past Tuesday, another one of these came out, "Mega Movie Myths," and it's the first one to ever be available on Netflix. Fortunately, Amazon holds greater promise for the future: Mythbusters: Collection 1, a 4-disc set just like in the normal world, will be available May 22 for $22.49.

While I'm on the subject, there are some TV shows that seem forever to be tragically stuck in DVD purgatory, at least in part due to music licensing issues. I won't say much about the Wonder Years, because some things are just too painful to discuss. There is more hope for The State, the brilliant sketch comedy show from MTV. For years the troupe has dutifully updated its website even though there was never anything substantive to report about the status of DVDs of the show. And it's still tough to tell whether it's purely a music licensing issue, or one of perceived lack of demand (their comments on the site imply some of the latter). But now the show's first season is available for download on iTunes, which is at least something. Unfortunately all the copyrighted music has been replaced with generic versions, which according to many viewers does great violence to memories of the show and, in some cases, the comic timing.

It is really a tough issue. The fact is these works of television are tied in with this music in the mind of the viewer, and some of the credit for that belongs to the creators of that music. And yet it seems wrong that important works can be imprisoned by the connection. I keep trying to think of analogies to other forms of art or ways of business to show how ridiculous it is, but it's not really the fault of one side or another. The best solution I can think of, which many advocate for other purposes, is that copyrights should expire or be reduced in some way after shorter terms, not longer as the trends have been going. This would give the copyright holders some incentive to work out a deal while they still can, and both parties should already have incentive to release the DVD while there is still a market for it.

Today Jason Kottke linked to an article in Reason Magazine advocating a reduction or elimination of the federal minimum drinking age. He pulled this quote from it:

The age at highest risk for an alcohol-related auto fatality is 21, followed by 22 and 23, an indication that delaying first exposure to alcohol until young adults are away from home may not be the best way to introduce them to drink.

Is it just me, or is this an extremely odd argument? I read it over, trying to figure out how even the author intended it to be interpreted. Finally I guessed that they meant this statistic indicates that after being prohibited from it for too long, people turning 21 binge irresponsibly for three years. But much of the rest of the essay complains that people under 21 drink more irresponsibly because it's illegal, drinking "furtively and dangerously" rather than in social settings. In any case, to me the far more obvious reading of the statistic is that people of these ages cannot handle drinking and driving, that is, without doing them at the same time.

Now I am hardly advocating that the drinking age be increased to 24. But imagine if it were reduced to 18, and then you heard this statistic with the most deadly ages being 18, 19, and 20. Would you take it as a sign that the age should be further reduced to 15?

Every time I order something from Amazon.com lately, I groan at the estimate of 5-9 business days for Free Super Saver Shipping and 3-5 days for Standard Shipping (which costs about $4.00 for a single book). Compounding this, on most of my recent orders, the order hasn't even shipped until a few days after I placed it, even though none of the items were backordered or anything.

The other two sites I order from most frequently are probably Newegg.com and Staples. My most recent Newegg order was placed on Wednesday evening and I got it this (Friday) morning. One business day, but one does pay for shipping per item at Newegg. Staples has similar performance, although they are using their own trucks to deliver the items, and not any other shipping service. A rather inadequate sample set, I admit, but when I use UPS or Fedex for any non-e-commerce shipment, there's never anything like 5-9 Business days for an estimate. Why would they bother to set up a special incredibly slow shipping program for Amazon? I realize the quick shipping from Newegg is because they have a warehouse in New Jersey, but why can't Amazon do that?

I can't help but notice that this has come while Amazon is heavily promoting it's Amazon Prime service, by which you can get free two-day shipping on "many" items for a year for an $80 flat fee. Could they have intentionally slowed down their normal shipping (or merely their estimates) to drive customers into the arms of Amazon Prime?

* * *

While I'm getting in my digs, can I complain about the ridiculous amount of features on a typical product page at Amazon? Some of them are useful, or would be if they were used, ironically enough (Amapedia, anyone?). Others are just crap. But with "Better Together," "Accessories," "Customers who bought this item also bought," "Help others find this item," "Customers viewing this page may be interested in these Sponsored Links", "Tag this product," Tags customers associate with this product", "Customers who viewed this item also viewed", and "Rate this item to improve your recommendations," I have to hit "Page Down" 5 times, or do a lot of scrolling, to get to the customer reviews, which for me are the greatest value of Amazon, for this food processor. The elements on the page for this book are a bit different, but it still takes 5 page-downs to get to the reviews. Looking at it another way, it's nothing short of amazing that these pages, relying on so many services to produce their data, can load so quickly. But man, how about a little simplicity?

A few years ago, while on a trip to California, my coworkers and I visited the offices of one of the few other companies in the medical robotics field. The company makes a telepresence robot--a doctor operates it with a joystick and a webcam, and the robot moves while showing an image of the doctor's face on its screen, with a camera on its head that shows the doctor what the robot is seeing. The executives of the company were incredibly generous and friendly with us. They came out in the evening to show us their shop and give us great business advice.

At one point I realized that I had no idea what their product was called, and asked them. They said that internally they call it the RP6, for Remote Presence version 6, but that they try not to emphasize that with customers, because they want customers to name their own robots. They also talked about an alternate scheme that they had either thought about or used in the past, in which the product's name became either a first name or a last name, with the customer supplying the other piece. This had advantages for things like repairs or communicating over a network with multiple robots--it's easier for humans to deal with than a serial number.

I thought this approach was clever and bold. I also thought about the potential dangers of it. It's a given that sometimes, people outside the company will have to talk about the product, and not a particular physical instance of the product. What will they call it? Well, in one case, the robot was featured on a news show. They featured a particular robot in use at a hospital in New Jersey, and used the nickname the staff had given it, "Mr. Rounder", referring to the doctor's use of it to do their rounds without leaving the office. How many people now think that's the name of the product? Probably not that many, because it was not a national newscast. But my coworkers and I have since referred to it that way in conversation, simply because it was suddenly the easiest thing to do.

Another dimension of this is that the robot is channeling the presence of a person. It's a pass-through device. So how much personality should the robot itself really have? Obviously it still has some, more than a mere immobile LCD screen used for video-conferencing would have. Yet you wouldn't say you talked to Mr. Rounder today, you would say, perhaps, that you talked to the doctor on Mr. Rounder.

I finally got around to writing this because of this article in the Washington Post, about the emotional relationships soldiers develop with the robots being used on the battlefield. It's interesting to note that this happens even with machines that are really just remote-controlled devices, some of them not dissimilar to the RP6, except that they get blown up routinely (the article glosses over that fact to some degree in trying to make everything sound super high-tech). As frequently occurs in stressful circumstances, superstition is a part of it: "We always wanted him as our main robot. Every time he was working, nothing bad ever happened." It reminds me that allowing users to ascribe a personality to a machine with their imagination, whether it's a toy, a tool or a weapon, is almost always a more powerful technique than trying to build your own idea of the personality into its design.

I read with interest the Times's recent article digging further into Google's search algorithms and their search quality team. I was most suprised at the number (about 200) and specificity of tweaking factors they use in finding and ordering search results. For example, targeting searches for 'french revolution' to behave more like searches for the specific phrase than for the two words, to avoid too many results about the recent French elections who favored the word 'revolution' and not enough about the 1789 event. I would think with a system of this magnitude, the difficulty of making changes while avoiding unintended consequences would be staggering. I'm also amazed that they can keep adding algorithms and tweaking factors while continuing to serve results in fractions of a second.

It's common knowledge that the heart of Google's technology (or at least, the part of it that they are willing to publish white papers about) is making it easy and reliable to massively parallelize computation of searches and storage of its index of the web. But I would think there's a lower bound to the types of operations that can benefit from being spread across hundreds of computers. It makes sense to use parallel computing to reduce an operation from taking years to taking hours. But if you're using it to go from seconds to microseconds, or smaller, eventually the benefits are going to be swallowed by overhead such as network communication between servers. Some of the factors the article mentions are probably exempt from this limitation. For example the 'freshness' of a web page sounds like something to be stored in the index and computed when the index is recomputed, and therefore not during the 0.25 seconds during which a user is waiting for results. But others, like whether a search term is a brand name like 'Apple' or a non-famous person's name, definitely have to be done in those 0.25 seconds. I wonder how much of the search quality team's efforts are devoted not only to coming up with meaningful tweak factors, but clever ways of computing them with great efficiency.

After reading this article I'm definitely going to pay more attention to my Googling results and how they might reflect the methods discussed in this article.

When I started working at my current job and was given a Mac laptop, I quickly started feeling its gravitational pull. I gradually spent less time on my PC and used it for fewer tasks. As a development environment the unix-based Mac was far superior. For lots of smaller tasks, things like FTP or media format conversion, there always seemed to be one or two really nice Mac applications, either freeware or trialware, where for Windows there would always be an endless array of crappy, undifferentiated stuff on download.com that would track its mud all over my disk and menus during installation and never completely go away. My email still lived on my PC, but then Gmail came along. Eventually the primary uses of my PC became burning DVDs (should've gotten that Superdrive!), email still on my older account, large-scale Photoshop work for which I needed my 2 monitors, and music production.

Recently, I had a dreadful fright when I realized the pendulum had swung back a bit. I had in mind a web research project that I knew was going to require a fair number of Firefox tabs and back-and-forth comparison, and I found myself wanting to do it on my PC. Why? Because my Powerbook has, sadly, been growing less and less pleasant to use. More precisely, applications seem to be getting more sluggish and less responsive, along with other minor symptoms. Of course it's a bit out of date now, at three years old, but circuits don't get slower over time, do they? And it's not a result of the kind of software or OS buildup usually associated with Windows over that kind of time period, because the hard drive crashed and was replaced about a year ago, the second major malfunction in the computer's life. So what is going on? I've been devoting an unfortunate amount of thought lately to that question, and here are my possibilities:

1. I have become more impatient, and the slowness is only in my perception. Or conversely, I've become more of a power user, running more resource-hungry applications at once. This may well be part of the problem, but there's not much I can do about it. I'm already displeased at the amount of time I spend policing open applications and tabs to try to keep things running reasonably smoothly.

2. Insufficient hard drive space. One of the things that frustrates me most about Mac laptops is the small hard drives. Aggravating this is the fact that every time Software Update runs, there's about 250MB of updates available for the OS and various iLife applications. I always wonder if the 50MB update for iTunes is in addition to the previous size, or replacing old content. If the former, some of these applications are getting pretty bloated! Anyway, I recently cleared out some stuff to get to approximately 16GB free space out of 60GB, and it doesn't seem to have helped.

3. Insufficient memory. This is my current favorite theory, largely because it's the one thing I can easily remedy. One of the symptoms is prolonged waits (accompanied by the beach ball/pinwheel of death) while switching applications, and this is usually caused by 'thrashing', or moving all the applications' data back and forth between memory and virtual memory on disk. I currently have 512MB of memory, up from the laughable 256 when I got the computer, and I'm hoping for a company upgrade to 2GB soon.

4. Increased demands of operating system. When I got the computer it had the 10.3.something version of OS X, and now we're up to 10.4.10. It seems beyond doubt that the OS has only increased its usage of system resources in that time, particularly with features like Spotlight and Dashboard, on the justifiable assumption that most people are using it on newer and more powerful computers. I would try to disable Dashboard, but I actually find the darn thing pretty useful. So there's not much I can do about this that I know of.

I'm really hoping the memory upgrade improves the situation, because everything else about my Mac is still great, but this problem is making it increasingly painful to use.

For all its life, that I know of, Firefox has been subject to criticism about memory usage. For a long time I took it for granted that it had a "memory leak," and only gradually did I start to wonder why the developers would fail for so long to fix a problem so basic in an application used so widely. Then a while ago I read a Slashdot discussion on the topic and realized that, to the developers, what many consider a memory leak is really a feature: namely, the aggressive caching of recently visited pages so that "Back" button usage can display the page instantly without having to fetch it again.

I had long thought that the most conclusive evidence of a memory problem was that, when I tried to close a bunch of tabs to free up system memory, there would be no decline at all in FF's memory usage. Others apparently share this experience. But I learned from this discussion that this is because a static number of recently visited pages are cached regardless of which tabs or windows they were in. This enables the sometimes nice feature of being able to get back recently closed tabs through the History menu. It just went against my perhaps outdated expectation that once a tab was closed it was gone, and should be gone from memory too.

To me, it would be a nice option for Firefox if it could only cache the n most recently closed tabs, where n could be 0 or 1 (or any other number of course). However, there are some vague indications that the software's architecture might make this rather difficult. I've considered trying to add it myself, as they say one should do when one has a complaint about open source software. But in my limited experience looking at the code of open source software, I've been extremely confused and unable to make any logical connection between the code and the application that I see when I use it.

Another thought: one Slashdot commenter said that with the Restore Session feature, his problem was alleviated slightly, because he could restart Firefox periodically without losing his tabs, and regain free memory. If we can do this by restarting, why can't we do it with a button on the GUI, or automatically? According to some commenters, it's because of differing memory management methodologies between C++ and garbage-collected environments like Java. The discussion shows that this is a controversial issue and I make no claims to having all the answers. It does also get quite abstruse and technical, but to me it's an important issue at a time when I know some users for whom their browser may as well be their computer.

I've been using the tragically named iGoogle service for a while now, though I had never used a personalized home page service before it. Those clever bastards have a way of getting you to use their new services by insinuating them into ones you already use, and making it easier to use them than not to (See also putting Google Chat into the Gmail interface).

I've found Google services to usually be remarkably free of bugs, and they can of course make changes and bug-fixes whenever they want to without me having to do anything or even know about it. But there are two bugs in iGoogle that have been there for so long now (at least 6 months I think) that I'm starting to wonder if they're anything that Google could fix; maybe they're in Firefox, or in the RSS feeds of other sites, or disruptions in the fabric of the universe.

Number one: for each feed on the page, you have the title and link to the site itself that the feed comes from, and then the list of articles. Often if several of the articles in the feed look interesting, I just click on the title and go to the page itself to read them there. But sometimes this doesn't work. Sometimes what happens is this: when I click the title, the browser's scroll bar momentarily gets shorter, as if content has been added to the bottom of the page, and then goes back normal. I've never been able to see what is happening down there. This will keep happening and the fix is usually to reload the page, though sometimes I have to do this more than once. I haven't been able to find any difference in the HTML between when it is working and when it isn't.

Number two: When I click on an individual article on the iGoogle page, there seems to be a random choice made between the article opening in the same tab or in a new tab. Now maybe this is somehow being determined by the sites providing the feeds--I don't know enough about RSS to say whether that's a feature--but if so that would be a pretty weird thing for them to do. Especially if one site couldn't make up its mind: I have one iGoogle tab (not browser tab) devoted to different New York Times sections, and different sections behave differently with regard to new tabs.

These are minor but annoying bugs. What's going on?

Washington Mutual ATMs (and I'm sure those of other banks are similar), when sitting unused, have a sort of screen saver mode with a slideshow of advertisements for the bank. When you start using it, it shifts to showing screens that accept your input. But when you trigger an action that takes more than a moment to complete, such as delivering cash to you or preparing to accept your deposit envelope, the screen goes back to its screen saver mode until this preparation is complete.

I find this behavior pretty unappealing from a user interface perspective. I want to feel like the machine is paying attention to me for the duration of my usage, not going back to twiddling its thumbs whenever it stops interacting with me for more than a second. But more importantly, it sometimes seems that this interface is designed to make people forget to take their bank cards with them when they leave. This is because one of the actions that triggers the screen saver mode is when the ATM has been told that you don't want anything else from it, and is preparing to give you back your card and (optionally) your receipt. Thus the situation in which you're about to get your card back is momentarily indistinguishable from the situation that the ATM is totally done serving you. I've witnessed several people forget their cards, and done it myself once, as a result of this terrible interface design.

This would of course be moot if the ATM hardware allowed you to 'dip' your card rather than surrendering it to the machine for the duration of the transaction.

A few weeks ago I was talking with a coworker about a piece on Daring Fireball explaining why there is no clipboard and text selection on the iPhone (in short, the click-and-drag action anywhere on the screen had to be devoted to scrolling). It made me think of a pretty science-fictiony way to fix this. A few days later, I saw a Slashdot article that made my idea seem slightly closer to reality. The article is about an LCD screen developed by Sharp that has optical sensors embedded in it, so that you could scan a piece of paper simply by putting it on the screen, or even perform fingerprint authentication.

Now, granted, it would probably have to be the best fingerprint scanning software ever made in order for this to work, but here was my idea. How cool would it be if the iPhone could tell which finger you were clicking the screen with? Then you could have one scrolling finger and one selection finger. Maybe another finger for Googling or looking up the word you're clicking on in a dictionary. Yes, it might be awkward at first, but if people can get used to thumb typing I'm sure they could get used to this. It seems like a natural extension of having different functions for the buttons on a mouse, each of which we click with a different finger for the most part.

This is to inform all those I haven't yet, which is probably most or all of the people who read this blog, that as of the beginning of September, I have left Robotic Systems & Technologies and joined Blackrock as a software developer. I don't need to tell anyone who knows me that RST was about the best first job out of college that I could have hoped for, and I learned a tremendous amount there. It's tough to leave a team with whom I've spent so many hours and shared so many experiences. But, a few weeks in, I'm learning a great deal in a new area and Blackrock seems to be a great place to work. Call or email me and I can tell you a lot more.

New York Magazine's article about Wes Anderson features a photo of him at Deyrolle, a taxidermy store in Paris that I visited and photographed in 2005. I like how they call it his 'favorite taxidermy' shop, as if there are so many. Deyrolle certainly does have a Wes Anderson vibe to it though, now that I think about it. It is a great store, a destination I would recommend to anyone visiting Paris. You can see in my photos that the management has a good sense of humor in placing their animals all the time, not only when Wes is there.

I've been noticing during my new commute that train operators often announce my stop as "47th-50th, Rockefeller Center, Top of the Rock". This is the observation deck on the 70-story GE building, open to the public since November of 2005. A visit requires a reservation and costs about $17. The web site, once you skip the intro, asks you to choose your favorite color, time of day, and style of music, and then presents you with a choice to "Enter", "Skip", or "Buy" (it also, just for a moment when you first load it, has a title of "WEBSITE TITLE HERE"). The attraction has been heavily promoted since it opened. Given these facts, I think it's pretty obvious that Top of the Rock is paying the MTA to announce the stop like this. It's evidently been going on for a while: Gothamist commented on it in October 2006, and the Subway Blogger in March 2007. A man named Will Hines wrote about it just a few days ago. Apparently the MTA denies payment for it, but it's hard to believe the volume of people getting off at that stop to visit the deck justifies the announcement, especially when Rockefeller Center is already being announced.

No one who remarks on this can help thinking: what's next? How crazy could subway announcements get? "42nd Street, Times Square, M&M World." It may sound heinous and far-fetched, but you can always look at it this way: M&M World, or fare hike?

John Gruber at Daring Fireball writes about why people get angry in situations like Apple disabling the SIM unlocking and third-party application hacks for the iPhone with a software update. It is a 'misguided mindset', he says, to 'to expect support after taking unsupported actions.' But he has come to understand that this mindset is due to the subtleties and motivations of software limitations as opposed to hardware. The article is quite well written, as usual, and I recommend that you read it rather than only my attempt at a summary. But I think he misses a key aspect of this phenomenon. He says:

"But when you do these things [take unsupported actions], you are assuming responsibility for any adverse effects caused by them, now or in the future."

"Now or in the future." It's not just about hardware vs. software. It's that with the advent of software and networked devices, the product you buy is not necessarily the product you will always have. Particularly with devices like the iPhone that are designed to be more software- than hardware-driven, the product's nature can change to a great extent after you buy it, through software updates. Of course the updates are usually for the better, and you can almost always opt out of them, but in my experience, you can only hold out for so long, and it's quite often a mixed bag of improvements and degradations.

You can't blame Apple for disabling the hacks with the software update, and you can't even necessarily blame them for completely breaking some people's phones in the process. There might be a legitimate reason that wasn't their fault. But you have to understand that people are going to be suspicious, and have emotional reactions, when they take an unsupported action like this and it works fine, and then a software update comes along and breaks their product. It seems to violate an unspoken tenet of traditional ownership. And it's that much worse when the company has a business incentive not only to disable such unsupported actions, but to discourage people from even trying to find new ways to enable them. (In the case of third-party applications, you could argue that it would be quite short-sighted of Apple to discourage it, because all the rumors point to them enabling it in the not-too-distant future. But this enabling will still be controlled and on their terms in some way that might otherwise encourage hacking.)

Gruber writes about the risk one takes when "replacing the current version of a kernel extension or other system component with an older version from a previous release of Mac OS X because you read on MacFixIt that it works." Of course there is risk involved there. But quite often it does work, and in some cases it's necessary for the user. And when you have to consider not only the current risk but the risk that at some point in the future, the company that made your product will decide it doesn't like what you're doing and break your product with a software update, I think it will have a chilling effect on a type of experimentation that can be very beneficial to users.

I'm glad to see the discussion on the Times's City Room blog about the new official TLC Taxi logo and paint job. The change took me by surprise and no one seemed to be saying much about it for the first couple of weeks. I had much the same reaction as some of the commenters--it didn't seem like it could be real, that something so fundamental to the everyday experience of New York City could change without a word.

The Times asked several graphic designers to comment on the redesign and they are mostly restrained, probably out of professional courtesy and karmic concern. In the comments it's pretty much a merciless trashing, over and over. They also have a narrative explaining how the process was a clear case of design by committee. The blocky, blobby, nearly illegible "NYC" in the logo is apparently a general logo for the city from New York & Company; if we're going to be seeing a lot more of that, I can only say god help us (though it's actually hard to imagine a more ubiquitous usage of it than on taxis). Many have commented on the circled T as reminiscent of Boston's public transit symbol, and possibly headed for future confusion with the 2nd Avenue subway line, also of the name name.

The feature of the redesign getting the most praise, if you can call it that, is the reorganized description of the fare structure. But some have also said that it is too small. Personally, I have been trying to see what it says for the past week, and only today did I finally get close enough to a cab that was still enough to be able to read it for a couple of seconds!

It's hard to know whether such a reaction, uniformly negative yet limited to a few websites, can be hoped to have any effect. It's not like there are going to be rallies and riots about a redesign, though I wouldn't mind living in a place where there were. This is probably just one of those things, like the redesigned dollar bills, that seems terrible and shocking at first, and then we get used to it surprisingly quickly.

Last friday I followed a link from Daring Fireball about one of its weekly sponsors, Bruji, makers of software called DVDPedia, BookPedia, GamePedia, and CDPedia, for keeping track of your collections of those things. I was immediately drawn to DVDPedia. I have a somewhat large collection of DVDs and so far I've only kept track of them with an Excel spreadsheet. For some reason I never bothered checking out the other software available for this purpose, such as DVD Profiler or Delicious Library. DVDPedia has some features that are familiar to Delicious Library users, such as scanning a barcode using your iSight camera to import a product without having to type in anything, and a tiled cover view that emulates browsing the shelves at a rental store. The look and feel is pretty consistent with apps like iTunes--you've got collections, smart collections, and so forth, stacked up on the left side of the screen. You can label a DVD as being borrowed by a particular friend, and send them an email from the program when it's time to return it. You can semi-automatically download all sorts of lovely metadata for your movies from several sources, though the ones I use most are IMDb and Amazon.

I'm not always the greatest person when it comes to paying for software. I think software developers large and small all do great work and deserve to be rewarded for it. I just so often find, after considering a purchase, that there is a free alternative, or a better one, or both, and I'm willing to tolerate an almost limitless amount of nagging for registration from a program as long as I can still use it. I'm not proud of this tendency.

That said, with DVDPedia I was sold almost immediately, and having been using it at nearly every spare moment since my purchase. For me, the 'killer app' within the app is when I'm choosing a movie to watch. Sometimes Maya and I spend so much time trying to choose that we end up not having enough time to watch a movie at all! And the search tools that are standard with something like this can be incredibly helpful: we want something less than 120 minutes, say, in a particular genre or from a particular country, that we haven't already seen.

I did have a few hiccups in getting my library into shape, but I was able to resolve all of them with a trip to Bruji's forums. The couple behind the company is doing a truly amazing job there of responding to everyone's questions, bug reports, and feature requests. This is especially impressive because this is the type of software that immediately suggests a hundred features to anyone with an imagination. It's also the type that everyone will use in a slightly different way depending on what they want out of it, so each user has different priorities for improvement.

I've been noticing that a lot of the best and most popular software that has come out lately is for organizing collections of one thing or another, whether it's files (Google Desktop), photos (Picasa, Lightroom, iPhoto), music (iTunes), books, CDs, DVDs, Games...I'm sure there are many more niche products that I'm unaware of. With some of these products, there's no upper bound to the amount of time you can spend organizing. I really want to add keyword tags to my Lightroom library, and the "Develop" tools are fantastic, but with 4,400 photos, growing all the time, one of my prime concerns is that all that work not be tied to a particular piece of software or operating system. Good export options, like XML, can alleviate some of the concern, but with Lightroom or photo apps in particular, I've been wishing for a system in which I could have my library be accessible on both my (Mac) laptop and my PC. I tend to spend more time on my laptop lately, but my PC has a much bigger and better screen for serious editing work. One requirement is of course that the software run on both platforms, and Lightroom provides this, while Picasa as yet does not. The second part is the data. Either I must synchronize the directory structure and the metadata between the machines, or keep both on a central server that can be accessed with good speed and reliability by both machines. The latter would be a large and slightly ridiculous upgrade to my current home network setup, and might never work as well as I'd like, so I'm leaning toward the former. Keeping everything on an external Firewire drive is one idea, but it would be a bit annoying to lug it back and forth, and I don't know if one drive can be used by both a mac and PC. The third requirement is that the metadata database format be transferable between the Mac and PC, not caring about the different operating systems and everything, as long as the directory structure and file names are the same. This, if it's at all possible, might require serious hacking, effort that could always be undone with a new release.

A quick update: I got the memory upgrade from 512MB to 2GB for my powerbook, and it has helped performance hugely. Meanwhile, Maya's MacBook had become similarly unusable in much the same ways as mine--a lot of quality beachball time--despite her using it for nothing other than web browsing and word processing the vast majority of the time. So I got her the same upgrade. Fortunately the memory was pretty cheap. But this is a bit ridiculous. I'm not sure who to blame: Apple, Firefox, or people who make websites. Should a MacBook out of the box be insufficient for web browsing?

Two sites that could really benefit from massive Google Maps mashups are TripAdvisor and MenuPages.

Menupages is a pretty great site for finding a restaurant. You can tell a lot from the restaurant's menu (no more having to deal with vague notions of $$ and $$$) and customer reviews (though it does entail some wading through shills and people who seem to dine with the aim of picking a fight). The one real problem I have is that its neighborhood divisions are far too coarse. Most of the time I have a specific place that I'm already going to be in, for a movie or whatever, and I need something within pretty close proximity, say 3 or 4 blocks. I choose "Upper West Side" and I get everything from 59th to 115th street, from CPW to the River. Hundreds of restaurants. What I desperately need is to be able to sort the list by proximity to my given address. And if they could do that, it would probably be trivial to have a Google Map of everything.

Google does have their own local business finder which can be used for restaurants, and it shows you a pretty good smattering of reviews at a glance, but their system has its own annoying quirk. It also refuses to show you the closest restaurants to the address you provide. Instead, the first page of 10 results will have maybe one or two that are quite close, then the rest will be scattered around up to 10 blocks away. Go to the next page and it's a similar distribution. The last time I used it, it seemed to choose the most expensive restaurants first, but I can't say for sure if it always behaves this way. Perhaps they chose this to avoid maps with too many little pointers cluttered together, but I don't think it's the right compromise.

* * *

Tripadvisor has become as indispensable in my travel plans as MenuPages has for my dinner plans. But I end up in the same routine--read about the place, and if I like it, check it out on Google Maps for proximity to public transportation and places of interest. In this case I sometimes have to massage the address to deal with language and local street naming conventions. I'm sure for both of these sites it would be a large and tedious project to check all their addresses and ensure proper placement on the maps. Existing agreements could pose a problem as well; I see that MenuPages at least has Mapquest links. There may also be limitations to how many locations can be placed on a Google Map. But if it's technically feasible I think the benefit to usability would far outweigh the costs.

PS I'm amazed how many sites still used maps from Mapquest, Microsoft Mappoint, and others even when Google maps had blown them all out of the water--did they all get roped into onerous ten year agreements, signed in blood? I admit the others have caught up a bit now, but they're still not as good.

At A List Apart, the article Graceful E-Mail Obfuscation makes me think about a funny aspect of the spam war. There's a neverending march of articles with the latest and greatest method for defeating spam in its many pernicious forms. Individuals have long used their own favorite method of obfuscating their addresses when posting them in public places (although it seems more common today to simply hide them entirely and use safer methods of communication, such as private messages on message boards). Spam and email address harvesting are volume businesses, so it's true that even if your address is easily parsed by a human, a harvester (the person) would never bother with manually searching it out, and they probably won't bother trying to make their harvesting programs smart enough to parse every possible obfuscation. But if a particular method, such as replacing @ with (a), becomes popular enough, it might become worthwhile for the harvester to gain a competitive advantage by enabling their program to parse it. The same is true for many other cases, such as spam filters in email programs.

So in a sense, the best way to ensure the defeat of an anti-spam method is to popularize it. The only way to win the war is for everyone to have their own custom anti-spam measures, such that there's no efficient way for a spammer to outwit all of them. On some level people already do this--they obfuscate their email addresses in their own funny little way, and lots of people who run web sites come up with their own little system or clever CAPTCHA. In other cases, such as email filtering, it's far less practical for individuals to take the time to do this. This is a problem that resists the incredible efficiency of distributing software--people writing programs or plugins or writing articles with some html code are doomed to be defeated by their own success, while anyone creative, self-motivating, and perhaps selfish enough can win.

Today I happened upon Damien Hirst's new work in the lobby of Lever House, across the street from my office today. I later found out that the gala opening was on Saturday night, but I'm glad it caught me by surprise. The effect was pretty dramatic.

Comments overheard at the exhibit:

"Those definitely weren't chirping yesterday" (in reference to two live birds in a cage)

"I'd like to meet this guy in a dark alley and smack him around."

Herald Tribune story here.

There's an odd design quirk on the New York Times web site that's been bugging me for a while now. When you open a slide show on the site (this gift guide, for example) you immediately see a count of images in the slideshow: 1 of 9. When you get to slide 8 of 9, you can reasonably expect to see 1 more slide. But you don't. When you advance, all you get is a semitransparent panel that pops up with a link back to the beginning, and links to email, save and share. I find this very disappointing when I'm enjoying the slideshow and expecting more content.

I can sort of see the motivation for this. The slideshow does not advance automatically, but they want you to click forward after the last slide so they can show you the information mentioned above. If you knew you were on the last slide, you'd have no reason to click again. But this is pretty clearly a solution that creates a much worse problem for the user experience. Why does the link back to the beginning have to go on top of the slide? Why can't it be off to the right with the "More Slide Shows" gallery, and show up when you get to the last slide?

To make matters worse, there is no link back to the article (at least in this case--I feel like maybe sometimes there is one). I almost always want to go back to the article, and almost never back to the beginning of the slide show. This forces me to use the 'deep' back button on my browser to go back 9 pages to the article.

* * *

Bonus rant: Flickr slideshows embedded in web pages. They advance automatically, and every time they do so, it's considered a new page load by the browser. So I'm reading Gothamist or whatever, and after 5 minutes I get to the part of the page with a slideshow on it. Then I finish reading, and click Back to go back to my home page. Nothing happens. I click on the deep Back button and OH DEAR GOD NO. Apparently I've loaded the page 100 times without realizing it. Maybe this is some kind of scam to get advertising dollars, maybe I'm more paranoid about my browser's movements than most, but in my opinion it's got to stop.

Today I'm going to write about my favorite supermarket in New York. The story begins in early 2005, when RST moved to 233rd Street and Broadway, in Kingsbridge. Across Broadway was a supermarket where we sometimes got sandwiches, and I also went there to stock up on provisions to keep at work. The place seemed to be having an identity crisis; judging by its verbose awning, it was called something like 'Eastside Fruit Plaza,' but the receipts said "Villa's Market." The name that became most widely understood around the office was "across the street."

Over several trips, I gradually realized that Villa's Market, as I preferred to call it, had a lot of products that you didn't see much in these parts, and yet it rose above the level of a specialty market, because of its supermarket size and because these products did not seem to be tied to a particular country, though there was perhaps a region of emphasis. They had lots of Greek, Spanish and Dutch cheeses; Russian soda; crackers and cookies and chocolate from all over Eastern Europe; and dozens of types of salami. The cheeses and salamis were often available for sampling, which was always fun. They also had amazingly low prices on many of the products that I was used to only finding at Zabar's and Fairway, such as Fage Greek yogurt and Rao's pasta sauce. For a long time they had a rotisserie and sold whole roasted chickens for $3.99. I started shopping there for home groceries whenever I could.

The other magical thing about Villa's was that almost every time I went there, they had either added a new section, installed a brand new shelf of coolers, replaced the checkout equipment, or made some other huge change. It was in constant flux, though I hardly ever saw the work in progress. They have at this point expanded into two or three former neighboring businesses, including one Italian salumeria the loss of which we mourned at work, but I don't think their closing was Villa's doing.

My all-time favorite product sold at Villa's has to be these gigantic pails of Bulgarian sheep's milk cheese. Each one weighs nearly nine pounds and sells for thirty-eight dollars. It looks like something intended to feed an army, and yet I have actually seen people buy them. Closeup here.

Today, Villa's appears to be nearing the completion of its massive renovation, and has resolved its identity crisis by replacing the facade seen above with a new one that reads "Garden Gourmet Market" in large red letters. The name is used consistently on the receipts, the bags and the uniforms of the staff. Apart from the great product selection and prices, Villa's (it will always be Villa's to me) has a personal touch that I find lacking at Zabar's and Fairway, where my queries about unusual products are usually met with blank stares or even sneers. And that's why this is my favorite supermarket.

Evan Williams' post is the second defense of the Kindle that I've read recently. The first was at 37 Signals' blog Signal vs. Noise, and it did them no favors in my mind given that Jeff Bezos is an investor in the company and that it is one of the most ill considered posts I've ever seen on the blog.

Their main point is that too many people had knee-jerk reactions to the device without ever having used it. They praise its good points, such as not being tethered to a computer and saving trees. They conspicuously ignore the fact that you don't have to use the device to comment on features that are known quantities, such as the very ones they discuss, as well as the pricing model, the DRM, and the way it looks (assuming the photographs are not completely deceptive).

Evan Williams focuses on the much-maligned feature of paying for subscriptions to blogs on the Kindle. He claims to rebut an argument that it is immoral to price them this way:

"Look, blogs aren't free anyway. You paid for your computer, and you're paying for your Internet access (or someone is)....You get blogs with the package."

But there is a clear difference between paying for a computer and internet access, with the money going to hardware makers and sellers and the ISP, and this pricing model, in which after paying for your Kindle (but not for its internet access), you then pay Amazon and the producers of the blogs for each one that you want to read. It's a confusing situation with many possible analogies, but I think you could argue that blogs are normally free because you don't have to pay the author for the specific act of reading them. If anyone is interested in it I would be glad to take up this debate in its own entry.

In any case, I think the 'immorality' of the pricing model is something of a straw man. Of course blog authors and Amazon are free to offer any service they want. Some blogs are definitively not free; until recently no less a blog than Daring Fireball had a system rather analogous to this one, in which you could pay for a certain convenient delivery format, in this case an RSS feed rather than a portable device. This was canceled primarily for technical reasons.

I think what Williams is really getting at is why people are reacting more strongly to this than they would to any old product that they don't find compelling. The reason for this is that Amazon presented it as a revolutionary product, and it seems like it could have been one, and yet as this column so eloquently stated, they seem to have chosen to cripple it for no good reason. "The Kindle is almost certainly the first bona-fide Internet appliance." Blogs and the entire web could have come "with the package", even if it meant paying a monthly connection fee instead. That is clearly the preferred model, as Williams acknowledges. If anything is immoral here, it's pointlessly bad product design, where that term includes aspects such as the pricing model.

"Frankly, this applies to them charging money for your personal documents (I think its $0.99), as well. Do you not pay for paper and ink if you print them?"

Just because the screen technology is called e-ink doesn't mean it's ink and not simply a better screen. The only resource being used up with each document is electricity, and the user pays for that. A better analogy is paying for each document you open in Word. No, it's not immoral, it's just ridiculous.

Gothamist used one of my photos in their story about the 'penny harvest field' at Rockefeller Center. It's more a matter of having been in the right place at the right time than anything else, but it's satisfying nonetheless.

I was very happy to receive the Complete New Yorker as a gift when it came out. But now I'm miffed. The complete DVD set is going for an absolute steal of forty dollars, while the replacement first DVD, updating for the last year or two depending on when you bought the set, is twenty. Half as much for one DVD, and I guess the software, as for eight DVDs and the package and printed book. It seems natural that many users will want access to recent articles if they remember one they read but can't find, or threw out, the physical copy they had. This is like the razors and razor blades business model, and it's got me feeling like a sucker. Heck, I'd be better off buying the whole set again and giving the outdated version to someone I don't like very much.

The MTA is giving free rides on the 'Nostalgia Train' every Sunday in December. It's running on the V line between 2nd Ave and Queens Plaza from 10am-5pm. I saw the train in 2004 on an elevated track on the 1 line and was totally bewildered by it. You can see some photos of it here.

On her way to work today, Maya saw someone catching pigeons. This reminded us of this New York Times story about pigeon kidnapping that has apparently been going on for many years. The catcher she witnessed, though, didn't seem to have the same M.O. as those described in the article. It was one man, on foot, who caught two individual pigeons in a net, rather than men with a van catching many at once by luring them with seeds. She said after scooping them up he used some device in the net to cinch them at the bottom, very tightly. She described it as a very disturbing sight. This was on 207th Street and Sherman or so.

Today I stumbled on the blog of the software engineer who makes the Audio Damage plugins, and he posted about an origami polyhedron that he made out of 60 identical units. I was immediately fascinated by this. I've heard of mathematically based origami before, but this variety, apparently known as modular or unit origami, seems especially elegant. The individual units don't look like they'd be hard to make at all, though assembling them into the whole might be another matter.

The authority on this type of origami is Tomoko Fuse; she has many books of patterns. I wanted so badly to try this out that I thought about where I could get one of the books today. The best shot seemed to be Kinokuniya, the Japanese bookstore in Rockefeller Center. I went over there after work and they were having a closeout sale, with all books 50% off, in preparation for a move to a new space across from Bryant Park. Sadly, it was pretty much the dregs remaining. There were a couple of books in Japanese that looked like Fuse's, but I have enough trouble following origami instructions in English. It will have to be Amazon. I look forward to seeing the new Kinokuniya.

Flickr's new 3.0 version of Uploadr is very timely. I was just about to tear my hair out and/or write an entry complaining about the previous versions. First, the Windows and Mac versions were as different as I've ever seen. Second, on the Mac version you could drag a photo into a certain spot in the sequence being uploaded, but once it was there it could not be moved. You'd have to remove all the photos from that one on and start over. If you were uploading a large number of photos and cared about the ordering, this was a nightmare. Third, yesterday I uploaded about 80MB worth of photos. Afterward, Uploadr was using 535MB of memory. When did it become acceptable for applications to use as much as memory as they can get their grubby paws on?

Update: not looking great for the new version so far. On the upside, it looks consistent between Mac and Windows. On the downside, I just tried to drag in 86 photos at once, and I've had nothing but 86 pairs of red and blue dots orbiting each other for the past 20 minutes. Restarting the software has no effect; the photos, in blank dot form, remain.

Update: still no luck with the Mac. I uploaded my photos from my PC, but with a bit more perspective, this new version leaves much to be desired. Namely: you have two choices for sorting the photos, by the date the picture was taken, or your own custom order. But the former can only be done with the newest photos first. You can't reverse the sort! This is such a basic feature that it boggles the mind that they didn't include it. Reversing a list is a task that was made for an algorithm. If you want the photos in forward chronological order, you have to first put in two of them, then change the order so it goes into custom sort mode and won't automatically sort them the wrong way, then drag in the rest one by one. I'm sure this has already been discussed thoroughly on the Flickr's own forums, I just needed to vent. Also: once you've added tags to a batch of photos, you can't delete them by batch. If you made a typo, you have to fix them one by one. Or you could simply remove them all and then add them again--one by one. I guess the Flickr guys just don't specialize in installable software. Do they really not have the resources to make this a decent program?

This morning, as soon as I got on the A train to go to work, a New York Times reporter came on and asked to interview me. I was happy to comply, though I didn't feel I had anything fascinating to say--I'm happy just to be lucid at that hour. She explained that it was for a web series about commuting. As promised the story appeared later in the day. Here's my paragraph:

Looking more Williamsburg than extreme Upper West Side, Jay Klein, 26, moved here three years ago because his office was in the area. “It’s about the only place in Manhattan I can afford to live,” he said. “I grew up on the Upper West Side, so I guess psychologically it was important to me to stay in Manhattan.” His job has since moved to Midtown, but Mr. Klein is staying put.

Via Foreign Policy magazine's Passport blog, a fascinating and sad episode of This American Life about the Republic of Nauru, one of the tiniest and most remote nations on the planet. It's an island in the Pacific with an area of 8.1 square miles. Nauru's size and location have apparently caused it to become involved in several bizarre incidents, some comical and some tragic, and mostly of an income-generating nature. They strip-mined the island of its only resource, phosphate. They tried to aid the US in accepting defections from North Korea by establishing a fake embassy in China. They became a money laundering center so attractive that it sucked up a sizable portion of the Russian economy.

In high school we laughed about this place after finding it in an encyclopaedia, and I had an intermittent fascination with it for a few years after that, but I don't think I ever knew most of these stories.

Interesting how the country's tribulations and exploits echo those of Tuvalu, which is in danger of sinking entirely into the ocean, and which raised money by selling it's top level domain name .tv for use by television-related web sites.

Via Slashdot, an article in the Seattle PI reports that TSA officers at Sea-Tac airport are being trained to examine facial expressions of passengers as part of selection for secondary screenings. This sets off all sorts of dubious and emotional arguments about the effectiveness and fairness of such a practice. It caught my attention because the term 'microfacial expressions' used in the article makes it clear they are using the techniques of Paul Ekman, which I wrote about in 2006.

At that time I was frustrated by the lack of any available video to show what microexpressions looked like in reality, and therefore any proof that they really existed. There is now on Youtube a video of Ekman from British TV talking about Kato Kaelin and a research subject. The Kato Kaelin video is quite helpful, that of the research subject somewhat less so. But then, showing that microexpressions exist is not at all the same as proving that they are connected to emotions in the way that Ekman claims. Some real evidence for this would probably do a lot for Ekman's reputation.

The "Micro Expression Training Tool", which I purchased on CD years ago and which now has a new version in development on the web, was pretty much a travesty in its earlier incarnation, for reasons well expressed by the only user review on Amazon. It consisted of a test with still pictures of expressions being flashed for a fraction of a second between pictures of neutral faces, which is quite different from observing facial expressions in their natural environment. Instruction about the links between expressions and emotions followed, and then a repetition of the test. The new site says that previous users of it include government agencies. If this is the only training that the TSA is getting, and forms the entire basis of the claim that people can learn to recognize microexpressions with a bit of instruction, then I highly doubt we will be catching any more bad guys than if the TSA officers were simply told to look out for subtle behaviors and expressions, which I'm sure they already were. The only thing that version 1 of the METT showed, sadly, is that if you answer a set of questions, then receive instruction related to those questions, and then answer those same questions again, you will probably do better the second time around.

Update: The New York Times looks at the body language of Roger Clemens in his recent appearances denying the steroid allegations. They don't discuss microexpressions at all, but these types of appearances seem likely to provoke them if they do exist, and I've been wondering if anyone would discuss Clemens in this context, but I've missed all the appearances myself, and I'm dubious that the quality of Youtube is sufficient to reveal them.

Via the Fireball that is Daring, Heather Powazek Champ of Flickr offers her technique for reading the New Yorker. She skips around a lot; I'm a straight-through cover-to-cover type myself. Lately I've had to force myself to start skipping some articles so I have time to read books. I also still skip the fiction, unless the author is one of a certain few, and usually the Dance critic. The most idiosyncratic part of my technique is that I don't read any of the cartoons on a pair of facing pages until I am just about to turn the page. This is a form of my slightly obsessive tendency to 'save the best for last.' It's a bit odd though, because I don't enjoy most of the cartoons that much at all, especially compared to the articles. Maybe it's not so much that they are the 'best,' but that they are cognitively restful, or a visual break from the dense language.

Last week's article about the UN mission in Iraq was one of the most heartbreaking articles I've read about the conflict.

Lastly, I've been noticing ever since this year's Fashion issue that the magazine has gotten a lot more liberal with illustrations and photos accompanying articles. It's now not at all uncommon for an article to have more than one, and a political article from a few months back, for the first time that I've seen, had a map of the country and the locations discussed.

Am I the only one confused by the current state of the writers' strike? The late-night network talk shows, and now the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, have returned to the air. According to what I've read, only Letterman made a deal that allowed his writers to come back to work. And here is where I get lost:

• I originally thought from the news articles on the topic that the other shows had also made some kind of deals with the guild, only not ones that allowed them to use writers. It now seems that they must have sought to make deals without success.
• The shows have been picketed.
• "But in both cases, the protesters took pains to emphasize that their quarrel was with NBC and its parent company, General Electric, and not the hosts themselves." (The New York Times)
• The hosts all emphasize their solidarity with the writers.
• For the most part, the hosts offer no explanation for why their shows should be allowed to return, to their own advantage and weakening the writers. John Stewart says the interim agreements can "put pressure on the big guys," which I guess must mean that the interim agreements are giving the writers what they want.
• The writers are angry at Leno for writing his own jokes, but not at Conan (or Stewart or Colbert, as far as I know). I find it hard to draw a such a well-defined line between 'writing' and, I suppose, improvising. No doubt Conan, Stewart, and Colbert are gifted at improvisation. But how could people whose whole life is thinking of funny things to say stop thinking about what to say on their shows before the camera is rolling? How much thinking and memorizing are they allowed to do? Drawing the line at the physical act of writing seems impossibly arbitrary.
• If they're having trouble booking guests because the guests are seen as "crossing the picket line," even when they are not writers, then how are the hosts not doing the same? And if that's the case, what does it matter whether they are writing their own jokes? Isn't crossing the picket line the basic offense worthy of punishment?

Please enlighten me.

I always wish I could read the articles about The Wire, but I'm only gradually catching up with the show on DVD, and spoilers are not my friends. I'm currently up to the middle of Season 3. When I do catch up I'll want to go back and read everything that's been written, but how will I keep track of it? That's why we have the kottke.org page of all posts tagged with 'thewire'.

Several days ago Language Log picked up on talk of "Yo" as a gender-neutral third-person pronoun in Baltimore. This is interesting, because certain parties have been pushing for a long time for the creation of such a gender-neutral pronoun, to 'demasculinize' our language. Alternatively there are such existing techniques as s/he, singular they (a frequent topic at Language Log), or simply using she as the default, sort of like grammatical affirmative action. A single gender-neutral pronoun would undoubtedly be the most graceful solution, but no proposal has ever taken off. Now, the creativity of Baltimore schoolchildren to the rescue! My favorite usage examples from the paper, as observed by the researchers:

• Yo been runnin' the halls.


• Yo look like a sack ass gump.


• Yo is a clown.


• Yo sucks at magic tricks.


• Yo needs to pull his pants down.


• Yo goin to put that chicken in his mouth.


• Yo, looka that dude pants. Yo is a clown.

They were probably talking about me in the cases of the chicken, the magic tricks, and the pants.

Whatever its flaws as a movie, "Cloverfield" seems to make an instructive case study in marketing. Not that I know anything about the subject. But as a consumer it was interesting to observe how I and others reacted to its presentation, from the first teaser trailer to the theater at the film's end.

The trailer was unconventional, especially for an action movie. Instead of a quick and flashy montage, it was the first chapter of the movie condensed. We saw the testimonials being given at the party, then the unearthly sound and brownout, going up to the roof, huge explosion, running down to the street, and then the big moment when the Statue of Liberty's head comes flying off a building and crashing onto the street. All the blogs linked to it and said things like "Now that's a trailer." The J.J. Abrams name and lack of a title added to the excitement.

Then there were the viral marketing websites, most of which turned out not to even have anything to do with the film, and the emergence of the title. The people behind the film originally denied that "Cloverfield" was the title, saying it was only a codename, but of course it did turn out to be the title, and people were surprisingly angry about this. The Wikipedia page says that they kept changing the title during this time.

From this point until the opening, I personally became rather tired of seeing more and more posters and ads featuring the decapitated Statue of Liberty. The shock of the image wore off pretty quickly and it had lost all impact for me.

I was pleasantly surprised when the movie opened and got pretty decent reviews. I didn't read any of them, but only looked at the rotten tomatoes score. I saw it on opening weekend because I didn't want to be tortured by the desire to read the reviews and commentary or accidentally hear about it from friends.

I'll skip over any commentary on the movie itself for the benefit of those who haven't seen it. At the end in the theater there was a curious mixture of applause and shouts of "WHAT?!" I think this reaction, along with everything else that happened before, showed the fundamental problem of this movie: all the hype and mystery made people expect a big reveal, a big idea behind the curtain. The teaser forced the question, What could do that? But whenever I thought about it, I realized that no answer could really live up to the expectations that had been built. Any attempt would either have to be a beloved franchise, like Voltron as some speculated, or be so outlandish that it would likely become the butt of a year's worth of jokes on Best Week Ever (though it probably will anyway).

A lot of art house films, and some recent mystery flicks, have made me accustomed to a complete lack of explanation for what happens in a story. But I'm sure a lot of people in the audience were expecting the part where at least something is explained and sorted out. Not that this is the only complaint they could have had. I think the movie had more things simultaneously wrong with it and good things going for it than any I've seen in a while.

After nearly four years, the power adapter on my Powerbook has finally given out. For quite a while I've had to twist it around to get it to light up. And now it lights up no more. I should feel lucky, as a lot of people have experienced failures much sooner and more often. But it still sucks to not be able to use my laptop even if there's nothing at all wrong with the laptop itself.

That isn't quite true though. Another recent development was that the laptop would no longer stay closed by itself. Something must have happened to the little hook that comes down, but I couldn't even see what it might be, let alone try to fix it. So instead I have to put a weight on top of it to get the computer to remain closed and asleep. There's something terribly undignified about it, very reminiscent of old age in humans.

On Friday's commute I shared the subway car with the pastor of the Narrow Path Church. From 125th Street to the terminus at 207th, he delivered a sermon that was by turns pedantic, hateful, and paranoid. What set him apart from your typical raving maniac is that he was a well-dressed man who, if not for the words coming out of his mouth, would have seemed entirely normal and middle-class. He started out with the usual Jesus talk, and peppered everything with scriptural references, but often veered into what I will call 'generalized raging asshole' territory. Some highlights of his sermon:

• "Everyone listens to their iPods these days. You wear the headphones so other people can't hear you. But you've got it so loud that they can hear you even if you're standing on the other side of the subway car! And what is that doing to your ears?"
• "You put your food in microwave ovens, and what does it do? It changes your food at the molecular and atomic levels, so instead of being nutritious, it becomes toxic! But you don't want to do the research.
• "Oh, I got another one." [Obligatory statement that the WTC was brought down by "implosion devices placed strategically throughout the buildings."] "You would know that if you did the research!"
• Several minutes of anti-gay material, culminating in the impersonation of a stereotypical gay man's walk while saying "When a man walks like this, it's not right! A man's hips were not meant to do this!"
• Recitation of various Biblical story fragments, followed by the rhetorical question, "Is that too deep for you? Am I getting too deep?"
• "People think Christmas is celebrating the birth of Christ, but how can that be when Jesus wasn't even born in the winter? How can Easter be celebrating the resurrection when bunnies and chocolate have no...correlation...with the way...that we celebrate Easter? Last year Easter was before Passover. Jesus died during Passover. How can he be resurrected before he died?!"
• "People might tell me to shut up, they might call me an idiot. But how can they do that when they don't even know that the word 'idiot' comes from the Greek idios, meaning 'for yourself'?"

The reason I was able to identify him is that he at one point gave us the URL of his website: NarrowPathChurch.com. There you can order his books and DVDs, and gain insights such as how he grew up "in a CULT CHURCH and how he got DELIVERED from this CULT known as the United House of Prayer for All People."

It's interesting how he sprinkles grains of truth and obscure facts into his messages, a time-honored tactic to be sure. There's also a very long tradition of church movements that seek to steer us back to morality, assailing us for our sinful ways. But I really have to wonder about the size of this guy's congregation when he keeps telling everyone what idiots they are. Oh, sorry--guess I shouldn't use a word if I don't know what it meant two thousand years ago.

I bided my time in capturing this image of a sushi robot at Yummy Sushi in Rockefeller Center. A security guard is usually posted nearby, and they and cameras don't mix. But I walk by every morning and evening--their secret could not remain safe for long. The robot is the oddly shaped metal box left of center. I've never seen it in use. I'm guessing the process involves loading of a stack of nori in a slot, and dumping rice in the top. The robot spreads the rice in an appropriate layer, the operator puts the other ingredients in the middle, and possibly the robot then rolls it up, but that functionality might be reserved for fancier models. Apparently these are more common in Japan, and very common at conveyor-belt sushi restaurants.

Linkage: Images of a sushi robot catalog. The inside story of making the sushi robot. Sushi Robots for sale at Korin, with prices ranging from $3,500 to $15,000. Get ready for 2,800 rice balls per hour.

When I plan a trip these days, I like to watch the plane fares for a good while before buying, since the fluctuations in price can be so big and unpredictable. In the past I would just refresh a search on Expedia or Travelocity as often as I could. This time I used Kayak.com, which searches a whole bunch of sites, mostly specific airlines, and offers a nicer interface and daily email alerts.

In this case I was looking for flights to Paris with departure on March 15th and return on the 22nd. The day after I started getting alerts, the lowest fare dropped from $590 to $533 on Air India, with the next lowest being $590 on Swiss Air. I've heard not such great things about Air India, and I was expecting it to drop further, so I watched and waited. Last weekend, it was a month before the trip and nothing had changed, so I decided to buy. I clicked on the link to airindia.in and was told that no economy seats were available; only "executive" class, for five times as much. Okay, no big deal, I thought. I went back to Kayak and clicked on the Orbitz link, which had a price of $544. The price was there in the search results, so I clicked "Select." Then I got this message:

Because flight availability can change rapidly based on traveler demand, the flight you selected is no longer available. Please make another selection. (Message 100)

and a revised set of search results with the $590 Swiss Air at the top. That's annoying, I thought. I tried the link to cheaptickets.com. I got the same exact message, even the same code of 100. At this point a panic started to set in. The Swiss Air flights had annoying departure times and layovers in Amsterdam or Frankfurt or something. But they would have to do; I figured the Air India flight had just filled up so I had to move fast. I went back to Orbitz and selected a Swiss Air flight. The same thing happened. Crap.

Long story short, we ended up paying $716 for an American flight with a brief stopover in London. Not at all what I was hoping for, and nearly twice what I paid for a direct flight on Air France three years ago. I can only assume this is due to the exchange rate, fuel costs, and whatever else is crappy right now. But a week later, the $533 Air India fare is still showing up on Kayak.com! What the hell?! I suppose I can't blame Kayak, because it also shows up on Orbitz with the same error message. So whether intentionally or not, Orbitz and some other sites are not doing a great job with data integrity, and my advice is not to trust search results until you're convinced you could buy the fare right then.

I just noticed now that Farecast has added predictions of fares to Europe, which is fantastic. Unfortunately, they too are infected by the bad Air India fare.

Just in time for me to have just gotten back from a trip to Europe, the open-skies agreement is about to make getting there easier and cheaper. The article focuses on likely new direct flights to London from places other than New York, but I hope other destinations benefit too. The worst thing about our recent trip to Paris was the layover in London that, combined with two flights delayed and two not as delayed, resulted in two sprints through Heathrow and our luggage being lost in both directions.

Also, why do they make you go back through security for a connecting flight? Are we meant to have picked up something dangerous in the grim warren of hallways we're inevitable shuffled through? Ah, security theater.

I just stepped outside and saw a truck on Broadway carrying an entire, brand new subway car, mechanically complete but lacking decals. The one time I don't have my camera with me.

For a while I wondered why NYTimes.com shows a list of the "most e-mailed" articles as its measure of Most Popular, rather than simply most viewed. It does seem to work pretty well, but surely leaves out the voices of a large number of readers who never e-mail articles.

The other day the answer occurred to me: the "most viewed" list would probably read like the tabloid version of the Times. After all, look at the stories featured on Buzzfeed, which aims to identify the most popular trends and measures their popularity (outwardly at least) by number of clicks. It's pretty much a collection of the trashiest, dumbest stuff on the internet. Well...this is the internet, that's probably an exaggeration. But it's certainly toward that end of the spectrum. Jason Kottke serves as their design advisor, and the feed of four stories on the front page of kottke.org is, to me, an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise great site. There's a fine line between the wisdom of crowds and the mob mentality.

I thought something was odd on Flickr when I noticed that my sets and photostream were now referred to as containing so many items rather than photos. And it certainly seemed like something was up when a group page said the group accepted "photos and videos." Now it turns out they've added video to the site.

It must have been a bit painful design-wise to change every instance of "photo" on the site to "photo and video" or "item" ("photostream" at least has not become "itemstream"). But I must say the way they are handling it, with a 90-second limit in duration, really seems right to me. The types of videos I've been taking with my camera are just what they have in mind: in some cases, scenes for which motion or sound is intrinsic to capturing the idea. In others, as they put it, slices of life. I already have some in my mind that I will definitely be uploading.

Nice use of the word "frangible" in this otherwise disturbing Times article about deadly equestrian accidents:

The current debate over safety comes nine years after another rash of deaths shook the eventing community. In 1999, five British riders died in a matter of months and calls flooded in to make cross-country courses safer.

In response, British organizers developed frangible pins that can be inserted into certain fences to allow the rail to drop when a horse hits it. Although the pins have been available since 2001 and have been shown to be effective in helping to prevent rotational falls, they are used in only 4 percent of obstacles in Britain, where they are mandatory on certain fences. They are even scarcer in the United States.

Frangible means that when deformed it breaks into fragments--sort of the opposite of shatterproof. I never knew this word before but I like it a lot. It's as if they took fragile and tangible and mashed them up.

But I wonder if the article is leaving out some detail. I have a vague memory of watching an equestrian event on television and seeing rails easily knocked away when the horse didn't clear the jump. It seems like it would be terribly dangerous if they were firmly anchored to the fence. The simplest solution seems like having the rails rest in grooves cut into the sides of the fence. But perhaps that is the commonplace and the frangible pins are a further improvement. Going further, why not make the whole rail out of some cheap, flimsy and fragile material, so that it just gets obliterated when hit? I don't know what material would be optimal, but there must be something.

Bonus question: how do they make the "breakaway" bottles used for slapstick?

According to the Times's article on Googlegängers,

In studies involving Internet telephone directories, Social Security death index records and clinical experiments, Brett Pelham, a social psychologist, and colleagues have found in the past six years that Johnsons are more likely to wed Johnsons, women named Virginia are more likely to live in (and move to) Virginia, and people whose surname is Lane tend to have addresses that include the word “lane,” not “street.”

How about that? No wonder I always find myself wandering drunk along Jay St. at 3am, with no idea how I got there. I assume they shy away from occupational examples given that surnames used to come from occupations, but I was still amused at this sentence in a story today about pilots:

Thus, Mr. [Jason] Captain, who looks forward to being called Captain Captain, turned down a job at American Eagle Airlines, the regional division of American Airlines.

The main thrust of the article is about the habit of using Google to keep track of people with your name who have a web presence, and competing with them for search engine rankings. I've been doing quite poorly at the latter; the first results for my name that actually refer to me are on page 6. A developer of educational software and an art director take up many of the results ahead of me. Then again, I've done little on the web that emphasizes my own name, rather than a username or a band name, and I continue to belong to zero social networking sites.

I generally avoid the political here, but a recent Times article (what can I say, they're giving me a log of blog fuel lately) about the Olympic protests is too rich with irony and questionable reasoning.

The [Olympic] committee members who gathered at a hotel in central Beijing offered harsh words for demonstrators who used the relay to publicize issues ranging from Tibetan religious freedom to environmental concerns. Gunilla Lindberg, a vice president of the committee, likened some of the more aggressive protesters to terrorists and said they had emboldened committee members to keep the relay going.

“We will never give into violence,” Ms. Lindberg said. “These are not the friendly demonstrators for a free Tibet, but professional demonstrators, the ones who show up at G-8 conferences to be seen and fight.”

Gotta love the choice of the word embolden there (on the reporter's part). Secondly, "We will never give into violence"--unless it's happening in China, and they don't even let any journalists into the region where it's happening, in which case we will essentially give in by ignoring it. Thirdly, "professional demonstrators." Who's paying them, the Big Tibet lobby? Fourthly, they "show up...to be seen and fight." How dare they! Okay, I need to stop now.

Denis Oswald, a committee member from Switzerland...added that those who disrupt the relay “do not respect the freedom of people who want to enjoy it.”

Whoa, way to turn it around on them Denis! Except that I think the point is that the protesters see the Olympics and the relay as implicitly condoning China's oppressive regime. The argument is about whether or not that is the case, not whether it's okay to protest anything that some might find enjoyable (the event wouldn't be happening if no one supported it). It is, maybe, a difficult question how exactly to treat undemocratic countries these days, but these people are hardly advancing the discourse.

The story of the Austrian woman kept prisoner for 24 years, along with the children she had as a result of rape by her father, has the makings of a Michael Haneke film. Hard to believe that the man's wife remained ignorant for all that time while living right upstairs.

Kraft reformulates Oreo, scores in China:

In China, Kraft began a grassroots marketing campaign to educate Chinese consumers about the American tradition of pairing milk with cookies. The company created an Oreo apprentice program at 30 Chinese universities that drew 6,000 student applications.

Three hundred of the applicants were trained to become Oreo brand ambassadors. Some of the students rode around Beijing on bicycles outfitted with wheel covers resembling Oreos and handed out cookies to more than 300,000 consumers. Others held Oreo-themed basketball games to reinforce the idea of dunking cookies in milk.

This past weekend I rented a car for the first time. I was surprised and chagrined at the degree of truth in this scene from Seinfeld:

Jerry: Seinfeld. I made a reservation for a mid-size.

Agent: Okay, let's see here.

Agent: I'm sorry, we have no mid-size available at the moment.

Jerry: I don't understand, I made a reservation, do you have my reservation?

Agent: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.

Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.

Agent: I know why we have reservations.

Jerry: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation and that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.

I had made a reservation using the Avis website, in which I told them the exact period during which I wanted the car (five hours), the type of car, my name and phone number. When I went to Avis to get the car, there was no evidence whatsoever that they had any knowledge or connection to my 'reservation.' They swiped my credit card, which gave them my name. They asked for my phone number, and how long I wanted the car (twenty four hours seemed to be the actual minimum). The agent asked what kind of car I wanted. Me: "Well, we made a reservation." Her: "I know. What kind of car do you want?" Me: "...mid-size." Her: "Do you want an SUV? Because I can get you an SUV right away, if you want a mid-size we have to go look for it. I'm authorized to give you a discount because of that so it will only be ten dollars more." Ah, the upsell. I of course behaved like a complete sucker because, with a long line out the door, I wanted nothing more than to get out of there. Where were they planning to 'go look' for a sedan, anyway?

I can understand to some extent why they wouldn't put much faith in reservations, as there is no cost to make them and then not show up--no credit card number is required. But why then have the website give the illusion that it matters? I guess the answer is to lure in suckers like me. But now that I know the real deal, I would certainly be willing to have to pay at the time of my reservation, or pay a cancellation fee, if it meant that I could actually get the car I wanted at the time I wanted.

An eventful day in Midtown today, at least within a two-block radius of my office. Pillsbury was giving out free cake and brownies for some incomprehensible PR campaign. Then Kate Hudson was leaving the set after a shoot for her movie "Bride Wars." I didn't recognize her at all in her fashionably gigantic sunglasses, but then a guy walking by said nonchalantly "Kate Hudson?" and one of the dozen or so paparazzi present said "Yup."

Nice headline from Bloomberg: Airlines May Start Treating Passengers `Like Freight'. They're having to get very creative in dealing with fuel costs, and many ideas are mentioned in the article, although no one actually admits to considering charging passengers by their own weight.

Meanwhile, a great first sentence in a Times article: Opponents of teaching evolution, in a natural selection of sorts, have gradually shed those strategies that have not survived the courts.

As I ate lunch in an office building's subterranean food court today, the house piano player, a distinguished man in a suit, riffed on the melody of Peter, Bjorn and John's Young Folks.

My uncle Clay died this morning. The obituary makes me wish I had been around to see more of his career. But I guess one advantage of being a journalist is that there will be plenty of friends who can write eloquently and prominently about you.

Maya's brother Bert made it into the local news Friday when, near the end of a kayaking trip in the East River, his kayak capsized near one of Olafur Eliasson's waterfalls and he and another man had to be rescued by the police. Here's the Daily News' take.

Meanwhile, the New York Times appears to have written their piece based entirely on the account of the leader of the trip, who claims that the accident was due to "horsing around" and trying to take pictures of the waterfalls. Bert says they were not taking pictures and that he didn't even have a camera. My parents, who are experienced kayakers, say they never should have taken beginners out on the East River. According to the News "The 4-knot current prevented the [police] boat from getting close to Spector." That sounds like pretty serious conditions.

By the way, the guide who gave his story to the Times is a "freelance writer [who] occasionally contributes articles to The New York Times." Way to get all sides of the story, Anahad O'Connor. Maybe you should get some lessons in journalism from the Daily News.

Update: I sent an email to O'Connor, the author of the story. I may have to wait a while for a response given the Times's bizarro-world reader email policy: "Please note that messages are delivered once per day, at 8 a.m. (EST)."

Several interesting elements in this Times article (they're not all bad) about the decline of Buddhism in Japan.

The Japanese have long taken an easygoing, buffetlike approach to religion, ringing out the old year at Buddhist temples and welcoming the new year, several hours later, at Shinto shrines. Weddings hew to Shinto rituals or, just as easily, to Christian ones.

This suddenly makes sense to me in a way that plain old statistics about percentages of the population devoted to each religion never did.

Mr. Mori, the priest here, said that after the war there was a desire for increasingly lavish funerals with prestigious Buddhist names. These names — with the highest ranks traditionally given to those who have led honorable lives — are routinely purchased now, regardless of a dead person’s conduct in life.

...

Mr. Hayashi argued that instead of divorcing Japanese Buddhism further from its spiritual roots, his business attracted more people with its lower prices. The highest-ranking posthumous name went for about $1,500, a rock-bottom price.

“I know that, originally, that’s not what Buddhism was about,” Mr. Hayashi said of the top name. “But it’s a brand that our customers choose. Some really want it, so that means there’s a strong desire there, and we have to respond to it.”

This Slate piece is kind of making me want to be a stock photographer, though I know it's becoming increasingly difficult to make a living at it.

It's about how Getty Images, the dominant company in the industry, has to anticipate what kinds of images will be in demand in the near future, including ones that convey abstract ideas such as people being isolated from one another by technology. As a photographer I think I would enjoy trying to stay on top of the zeitgeist in this way, while at the same time contributing to it, and putting my own spin on it to stand out from the crowd. These people must look at the ubiquitous imagery in advertising and publishing in a very different way, trying to gauge the characteristics for which it was chosen.

In principle I guess this isn't much different from the role of a musician who creates music for licensing, which I've never been drawn to. I've always wanted to make music that couldn't have been made by anyone but me, while with photography I am content to document what's around me, albeit in a creative way. But others probably see it the opposite way, or with other art forms.

Several years ago I had an argument with my bandmate Milkshake, and the rest of A+ Attitude, about profiling in airport security. Many people had been complaining about random airport security procedures that resulted in old ladies and Senators being searched. As I recall Milkshake sided with those who said this was a waste of time because no old ladies were going to be terrorists. Someone brought up the point that extremists' beliefs about women would probably prevent them from being given such a role.

My argument was that, in a world of imperfect security, random selection was the best policy, because any pattern is vulnerable to subversion. Many TSA rules are "secret" for this reason (and that produces a lot of complaints) but they would not be able to keep "never search women above a certain age" a secret. One way or another, any terrorist would jump at the chance to increase their chances of getting through by exploiting security procedures. They might send women, or they might dress up as women, but in any case such a policy would be a mistake.

Sadly, although I discussed this argument with many people since then, it appears that I did not write it down anywhere on this site. My pitiful blogging skills led me to make only an oblique reference to it in our tour journal. So this "I-told-you-so" moment carries less weight than it might. But nonetheless:

William Saletan reports at Slate that female suicide bombers are striking frequently in Iraq, taking advantage of the checkpoint guards' unwillingness to search beneath their flowing black garments.

Slate again with a piece about the environmental efficiency of revolving doors. Turns out they are pretty good at not letting too much air-conditioned air out, or too much cold air in during the winter.

Revolving doors are so popular in midtown that I walk through them at least eight times a day. But I'm always a bit annoyed by the resistance built into them to keep them from picking up too much speed. Why not make them even better for the environment by harnessing that energy and making a human turbine?

This Times piece on archers interests on a few levels:

• An amazing number of archers are at one time or another plagued by "target panic," a condition in which they can't help releasing the arrow as soon as they see the bullseye, or they are unable to release at all.
• The condition seems similar to the 'yips' in golf.
• The affliction is so feared, and its causes so nebulous, that almost no archers will admit to having it, and in archery households they dare not even speak its name.

Suggested solutions range from changing stance or grip to shooting at blank targets for weeks at a time. This situation brings up a lot of questions for me, such as: With certain tasks, can practicing too much make you worse? Have we become so competitive that to avoid being broken by it we have to trick ourselves into forgetting that we are attempting anything?

From the article: '“Do not focus on results,” he said. “When you focus on results, it builds anxiety. And anxiety is the kiss of death.”'

As I read this I remembered feeling similar things while shooting archery and pitching softball when I was younger, but I'm sure these were much more amateur versions if related at all. I wonder if the vulnerability to it has to do with certain types of muscular movements. In archery for example, you build up and maintain great tension as you draw the string, then twitch your fingers to release.

Also, I would really like to find a way to get back into archery.

There was a story in the news a few weeks ago about a Chinese racewalker who was banned for doping. My first reaction was, racewalking? What? And someone is doping to be better at that?

Amazingly, Racewalking has been an Olympic event of its own since 1906, almost the beginning of the modern games. Here are videos of people racewalking. As the Seattle PI notes, it looks a lot like people rushing to go to the bathroom.

How do they make sure people walk and don't run? They have to keep one foot on the ground at all times, and they have several judges to monitor the walkers. If they commit three violations, they're out. Also, the main events in competition include a 31-mile walk.

Whenever the Olympics come around, I wonder, how do people get into these events and decide to devote so much to them? It's one thing to be a swimmer or a skier and at least compete in a couple of events, but how versatile is a...luge-ist? Can they cross over to the bobsled?

Over two years later, via my man Kottke, I finally get an answer to my question about flooded fields in San Francisco bay that I saw from an airplane.

Turns out they're salt evaporation ponds, and the colors are caused by different forms of algae that grow in different salinity conditions--the red ponds are the saltiest.

I also just got a great song title/travel idea from that article: Useless Loop, Western Australia.

Twice now, a raccoon has poked its head into our open living room window from the fire escape of our fourth floor apartment.

We were sitting around talking with our friends Mike and Eve when Mike, seemingly responding to a comment, instead shouted "OH MY GOD THERE'S A RACCOON!" I jumped up from the couch and looked out to see its tail as it trudged back down the stairs.

The first half of this article about Corsica in the Times, and the photos showing its ridiculous natural beauty, had me pretty tempted to go there. The second half, about the nightclubs, DJs and billionaires who hang out there? Not so much. But at least there are some reasonably priced hotels.

1. "That's his equity shot" (referring to a player's backhand)

2. "Which one would you buy futures stock in?" (referring to two up-and-coming players)

3. "That's a high beta shot" (a player's forehand, which had produced many winners and many unforced errors as well)

In the Times, a piece about the Pumpkin House, which juts out over cliffs above the Hudson at 186th Street. I've sometimes wondered at it while walking along the river. The nickname is an imaginative one considering its oblong shape; it looks as if it were built expecting to be abutted by a row of such houses that never materialized.

Kudos to the Times for going to what must have been considerable effort getting photos of the building at all the angles seen in the article and the slide show.

So I see that there's a show with the National and Grizzly Bear, and hosted by the guys from Stella: not a bad lineup. Perhaps I will purchase tickets, I say to myself. I click over to a page at New York Magazine's site, and try to select 2 tickets, but I can only select either 0 or 1. What the? Oh, there's some fine print:

Limit: One ticket per person. Why? Because, each transaction includes a one-year (46-issues) subscription to New York magazine, a $9.97 value.

The truth slowly dawns on me. Oh dear god. I have no choice but to go through the whole purchase process twice, filling in the same information, so that Maya and I can receive two copies of New York until we get around to canceling the subscriptions. And it could be even worse; imagine if we already subscribed.

This is transparent enough as a desperate ploy by New York to slightly boost their circulation numbers, and kind of sad really. But kudos to them for coming up with a creative new way to force me to ask myself if I really want to go to this show that badly.

Also, a $9.97 value?

An Engineer Imagines is the autobiography of Peter Rice, one of the preeminent structural engineers of the 20th century. He worked on the Sydney Opera House, the Pompidou Centre, I.M. Pei's pyramids at the Louvre, and the Lloyd's of London building, to name a few. According to the reviews, it's a fairly inspiring look at the creative design process. I've been particularly interested over the past year in the intersection of structural engineering and architecture, and how innovative forms become physical realities.

Unfortunately, whatever knowledge is in this book is a casualty of modern intellectual property, and, for all but the most determined scholar, lost to the world.

It was last reprinted in 1998, but only three copies are available on the web: one at Amazon for $1,752.80, and two at AbeBooks for $900 and $2,818.60. Mind you, the book is not bound in solid gold with diamond dots on the i's; it's a simple paperback.

Google Books has only the dreaded snippet view and points me to WorldCat, which shows that there are copies at several libraries in the region. Sadly, the Mid-Manhattan's copy, the only one at a public library, has status "Lost." So I'm left trying to gain access to Columbia's library, which requires me to first go to the public library and convince them of the situation so they can give me a special permission card.

So to sum up, because someone might at some point decide to try selling this book again, no one can read it without unreasonable effort or expenditure until that does happen or several decades pass and the copyright expires.

Yet there is hope. Google's recent settlement of the lawsuit filed against them by publishers includes measures designed to solve precisely this problem by enabling the electronic purchase of out-of-print but in-copyright books. It will be a happy day if this pans out.

Every time I read BibliOdyssey, I think, this is what I want on my walls. The author, known as peacay, finds beautiful and strange images from antique books and documents, collects them by theme, and tells the story of their significance. He finds many of his images in online library sites and archives, and does a lot of fighting with web interfaces gone bad--stitching together screenshots and removing watermarks--to bring us pristine high res versions which he posts on Flickr.

Some favorite recent posts: Panorama Handbills (they should definitely bring back the panorama as an attraction), Clippings (featuring an awesome 1751 map of Sri Lanka with plans of forts around the edge), and River Deep Mountain High, with maps that compare the tallest mountains with the longest rivers. To quote someone on Flickr, is it possible to Fave every picture in a set at once?

I recently found a similar blog called Old Book Art, which offers posters and every other conceivable type of merchandise on Zazzle. One can of course do the same for the BibliOdyssey images by uploading them. The challenge, a common one these days, is whittling down the overwhelming selection.

Had a nice birthday dinner at Sushi Yasuda. This was the first time for me eating at a three-star restaurant. We ordered omakase, something I've always wanted to do, and got toro, hiramasa yellow tail, sea trout, white king salmon, Tazmanian trout, Spanish mackerel, orange clam, anago, and a toro roll. Then we asked for a few more pieces and got some different varieties, including a freshwater eel called shirayaki that was really delicious.

For me the interesting question was, how would this differ from the ubiquitous new york sushi restaurant? For one, there is the greater variety of fish. It's not so much that there are crazy creatures you've never heard of (or maybe those are left off the menu), just more types of the species you already know, such as five different types of salmon, five of yellow tail, blue fin or big eye tuna, and five types of eel. Secondly, the rice is wonderfully soft, fluffy and seasoned, justifying the quote from Yasuda that in nigiri sushi, the fish is just a garnish for the rice. Thirdly, where lesser establishments sometimes produce unpleasantly tough cuts of some fish, at Yasuda it's always very thin and soft, never an overwhelming amount.

Probably a more knowledgeable person could go on, but this is what I thought most apparent.

* * *

Maya gave me two recently released cookbooks as gifts, both of which I had requested, but only after looking at them side by side did I realize how diametrically opposed they were. One is Alinea by Grant Achatz, and the other is Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin. Both authors are well-known characters that have been profiled by The New Yorker, and both books contain essays as well as recipes. At least at first glance, the similarities end there. Alinea is a six-pound behemoth containing recipes, ingredients and techniques so abstruse and complex that I doubt I will ever be able to make even one of them as written (but please don't dare me to try). It contains a lot of closeup, backlit "food porn" style photographs of gelees, spheres and emulsions. Eat Me contains a lot of creative comfort food, and Shopsin espouses a philosophy of being happy with whatever you have around you. The photos are very straightforward and unembellished, with bright construction paper backgrounds. He is known for kicking at least one party a day out of his restaurant for breaking his rules and endangering the atmosphere he wants to maintain, something I doubt happens much at Alinea. Also, the introduction contains a photo of Shopsin's naked rear end.

But after reading a bit of each, I think there are actually some similarities lingering under the surface. Despite what he says, Shopsin is not innocent of special techniques, ingredients, or equipment. It's not his fault, it's just that any restaurant cook finds ways of getting efficient and predictable results that are not always readily translatable to the home kitchen. Furthermore, Shopsin believes you can make the most workaday dishes into something special by taking the trouble to elevate them just a bit. He orders Lefses, Norwegian potato crepes, from a guy in North Dakota. When making a cheese steak, he slices the meat semi-frozen on a deli slicer to get it as thin as possible. He has modified his griddle to get ridiculously hot, and says not having that will pose a challenge to making good pancakes. But both books have chosen to present the recipes verbatim so that the reader can at least make informed decisions about compromises and substitutions.

Both of these books also display a lot of creativity and innovation. It's perhaps more obvious at Alinea, where they combine flavors in unpredictable ways, manipulate the textures of common foods, and try to evoke memories with scents. But in the first half of Eat Me Shopsin has already dispensed some serious thought about a dozen different topics. A big one is his approach to soup: he completely rejects the near-universal method of slow-cooking all the ingredients together because he doesn't think each piece should taste the same no matter what it is. Instead he cooks the broth separately from the other ingredients, and adds them just before serving, so they retain their own taste and identity. The casual style of the book allows Shopsin to really get across these ideas, rather than relying on the reader to figure them out from the recipes alone.

If you need any more convincing, Shopsin actually describes his method as 'deconstruction.' He takes a dish that he's curious about and makes it a whole bunch of times until he starts noticing what it's really made of. Then he takes it apart and finds ways it might be made better or more efficient. He has a lot to say about burgers, eggs and other stuff in this regard (and he's not a fan of Shake Shack's burgers, although he did perhaps take some insight from their example).

I suspect that in the end I will use these books in similar ways, as jumping off points to try new things, and as a reference for techniques to achieve certain desirable effects.

NIKON COOLPIX S610 ($197). Small, light and inexpensive, nice brushed-metal case. 4x zoom. Active Child mode in this camera supposedly tracks your children even if they move briefly out of the frame.

From the Times' camera roundup.

If I were a Times reporter I would write an entire article just to get in a paragraph like this:

Since its inception, the [federal Railroad Retirement] board has been so riven with conflicts that it took a half century to update what were supposed to be temporary disability standards, leaving in place until 1998 archaic diagnostic terms like “cretinism,” “imbecility” and "middle-class moronism.” Simply having a “repugnant” scar could qualify someone as disabled.

The Times Magazine discusses the debate over Value at Risk, or VaR, a popular across-the-board measure of risk on Wall Street, and the area in which I currently work. I haven't read "The Black Swan", but Taleb certainly comes across as kind of an ass in the article. It's perfectly plausible to say that "improbable" adverse events are a lot more frequent than most people realize. It's another thing to claim that VaR is useless, or that risk managers are being foolish.

The article mentions that Taleb has his own hedge fund, the ominously named Black Swan Protection Protocol, and has made "a killing" in each of the last three crises, achieving returns of 65% to 115%. But how much has he made in between? One assumes that he either goes short the market, or buys safe assets like treasuries, or some mix (I think there would have to be some of the former, or significant leverage, to achieve those returns). The S&P 500 is currently up about 260% since 1987, when he made his first killing.

There are a lot of perma-bull analysts, and fewer perma-bears. The historical returns of the market explain the population gap. And when there is a crisis, the perma-bears are trotted out on CNBC and the bookshelves as Cassandras, because they take the generally less popular viewpoint. But it's truly rare to find someone who was a bull at the right time and a bear at the right time, even for one of each cycle.

So Taleb doesn't seem to be improving on any current models simply by being bearish. As the article says, assuming that a disaster is always right around the corner would prevent you from making any investment. Obviously many risk managers made fatal mistakes in the current crisis, and there are plenty of places to assign blame. But it may well be that the optimal strategy is to assume that tomorrow will be more or less like today, even if you know that sometimes you will be wrong.

Update: my colleague Victor tells me that Taleb's strategy is most likely implemented using long-dated, deep out-of-the-money put options. Or in layman's terms, insurance policies that his theories indicate are cheaply priced (due to the chronic tendency to underestimate the likelihood of crises), and which pay off handsomely when crises occur. Until that happens, he would lose money little by little.

This pattern of returns probably takes a strong investing temperament, but it does seem compelling, and might catch on as a way to allocate some of one's money. Of course if it does, the supposed mispricings that he is advantage of could disappear.

This New Yorker-sized piece on Zimbabwe by Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani in the London Review of Books aims to give a different perspective on Robert Mugabe than we normally get in the Western press. He goes in depth on the factional struggles after independence in 1980, and the circumstances leading to the takeovers of white-owned farmland. It's hard to accept anyone going easy on Mugabe at first, but it's a good exercise to question our assumptions about widely demonized figures.

Meanwhile, the country has just introduced a $50 billion note, and FP Passport worries that this and other factors are constricting the flow of information about just what's going on there.

I highly recommend watching Disneyland Dream, the home movie/documentary made by Robbins Barstow in 1956, and recently admitted to the National Film Registry. It documents his family winning a trip to the newly opened park, and is chock full of 1950s goodness, besides being just a well made and entertaining movie. The family all wear monogrammed Davy Crockett jackets hand made by Meg, the matriarch, and board a "Super Constellation" plane, looking tiny by modern standards, which has to stop in St. Louis to refuel and change crews. The narration fits perfectly, despite having been recorded forty years later, in 1995.

If that's not tempting enough, it turns out that a child handing out guides in one shot is none other than an eleven year old Steve Martin, as reported by the family's home town paper, the Hartford Courant.

One last thing: I never knew that 3M, the sponsors of the contest, stood for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing company.

Over at Subtraction, Khoi Vinh and his merry band of commenters run down all the annoying details in Apple's dropping of Digital Rights Management from the iTunes store. To wit:

1. You must pay a fee of 30 cents per song to upgrade your existing library to freedom.


2. This despite the fact that many of the same songs will now be available DRM-free for only 69 cents.


3. You must upgrade your entire library or none of it, with the total fee coming to $100 or more for many people.


4. The fee will include any songs you may have bought and then deleted in the past!

Talk about a bitter pill. I have to say I'm glad I never bought anything from the store, but at the same time I never expected they would pull something quite like this.

I made a pleasant discovery yesterday while looking up the word salmagundi ("A dish composed of chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, onions with oil and condiments", and by analogy any assorted mixture). The full archives of the magazine, while accessible only to subscribers, can be searched by full content on Google. This is a great leap over the DVD-based Complete New Yorker, which only had keyword search, and the New Yorker site itself, which only allows you to search within the current issue.

Try it by adding "site:archives.newyorker.com" to any query. For example, salmagundi. You can see from the snippets that the scanning job isn't perfect, but still, pretty great.

Via WFMU's Beware of the Blog I've discovered the writings of Francis E. Dec, a fine practitioner of the art of insane rants that fill every square centimeter of a page, sent randomly to thousands of people and businesses. He was probably schizophrenic, but as the site devoted to him says, he also had a way with words.

In weaving his surreal worldview Dec likes to string descriptive words together: "laser beam knife robot arms" and "proliferated degenerating parroting puppet con artist..." (that one goes on for quite a while). And then there is his central concept, the Worldwide Mad Deadly Communist Gangster Computer God. The style viscerally conveys his panic and paranoia. It reminds me of Radiohead or Flaming Lips lyrics, and inspires me to write some of my own. The illustrations that have been made to go along with the writings at the above-linked site also had me laughing pretty hard at work.

Had a bit of a shock while watching the President's first press conference tonight. I heard him call on "Sam Stein, from the Huffington Post" and immediately thought of the Sam Stein with whom I attended summer camp for a few years back in the late nineties. And then, there he was, asking Obama his question! Way to go Sam.

Foreign Policy Passport looks at the possible end of tax havens and recalls an argument in favor or preserving them. I've been turning this issue over in my mind ever since and finally posted a comment on the story.

Daniel Mitchell claims that tax havens are a good thing because they force governments in places like the U.S. and Germany to lower their tax rates, as if they don't capital will simply flee to a better place, like Monaco, Andorra, or the Cayman Islands. In other words, it creates competition. He cites the figure of $12 trillion of foreign investment in the United States as a result of this.

When I initially read this, it made me a little angry, but I was having trouble articulating just why. I made a goal of thinking through my opinion, and I'm open to alternative viewpoints.

It's obvious that this competition in tax rates is not really a fair one. The places that have become tax havens can afford to do so because they are small and their populations are rich, so there's little demand for government services. Can you blame Germany for wanting to base its tax policy on its own needs, rather than those of tiny European duchies?

On the other hand, what does it really mean when a business takes advantage of a tax haven? Are they really 'investing' in that country, or are they just paying it a nice fee to file their paperwork and keep their mouths shut? I don't really know the full answer to this question--it probably depends on how one is using the tax haven. But a hedge fund incorporated in the Caymans still takes full advantage of the infrastructure of the cities and states where it actually does most of its business, so again, I understand the anger toward the havens.

For me what all this comes down to is that Mitchell's real argument is that any way you can force tax rates down, no matter how illegitimate, is fine, because he'd rather have no taxes at all. Plenty of people do feel that way, but Mitchell doesn't really admit that this is his reasoning.

A bunch of links I've been meaning to post for too long:

FX Cuisine documents the well-funded culinary adventures of a French-speaking Swiss man. While I envy his photographic setup and his travel budget, I have to give him credit for being much more of a journalist than most travel or food bloggers. Check out in particular his photo essay on Japanese bladesmiths, but they're all pretty good.

I'm fascinated by the story of what happened to Hannah Upp, who apparently suffered from dissociative fugue. I find the mix of symptoms of this awesomely-named disorder to be amazing: 1. Forgetting your identity 2. Wandering and making no attempt to figure out who you are, even actively avoiding being reminded 3. Somehow mostly managing to survive, i.e. eating, while brazen enough to jump into the Hudson river 4. 'Waking up' with your whole identity coming back to you, but with no memory of your time in the fugue state.

If it had a different final explanation this would make a great Sherlock Holmes story. It also reminds me of difficult software bugs where the cause is simple (i.e. some rewiring in the brain) but the outward effects are complex.

These two via Kottke

The Handbook of Indigenous Fermented Foods. So awesome that this exists, and a good thing it's on Google Books, as a hard copy costs $280. Via gothamist's preview of the new Fatty Crab restaurant.

How politics works. We can't let drug users out of prison! Then the prison guards upstate would lose their jobs!