Morning meditation:
Today was a big day. Today was the first time I didn't open my eyes sometime during the hour, thinking "surely I set the timer for 3 hours by accident," look at the clock and exclaim inwardly "another half an hour! Holy crap!...I mean...surrendering my impatience, surrendering surrendering surrendering...Okay, all patient now...now how much longer do I have to sit here for Chrissake? Oh yea, half an hour...crap...I mean..."
Well not today. Today I kept my eyes closed the whole time, all thanks to my formidable powers of patience...or was it the duct tape blindfold...holy crap that hurts to take off!
Evening meditation:
For the last three days, sometime between 9:30PM and 12:30AM, I cry like a baby for roughly 30 minutes. No, I'm not mourning the loss of my innocence or making a statement against manly men who don't cry. It's all much more simple: this is Gene's latest instrument of torture, designed to get us to enlightenment ASAP.
The idea is to practice mindfulness (yes, again), and to do it with the view of helping out the lucid dreaming experiment. Apparently mindfulness and lucid dreaming go hand in hand. The latest book in Gene's endless queue suggests picking a simple object (mine is hand-drawn letter A), and staring at it for long periods of time, displacing all thoughts from one's mind - doing nothing but observing that object. The book gives a number of helpful suggestions including: "don't blink." This one, this family has taken seriously. Evening meditation is now a sobfest. Oof, now let me go dump my prune-like eyeballs in some warm water.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
春节快乐 To All Russians
Every family has their little genetic/behavioral advantages and disadvantages. In our family, a popular setback is bad teeth. Gene and Ellen share the gold and silver medals for most unopenable mouths, with me arriving at the finish line in a few more years if everything goes as planned. But now it seems like Michelle is in the running for bronze, with the latest trip to the dentist shortening the distance between us by a factor of 5 or 10.
After I took Michelle to the dentist a couple of days ago, we spent many an hour in a state of open-mouthed shock (disgusting, I know). Our limited savings were quickly headed to Michelle's all-consuming black hole of a dental plan. But something or other thrives in times of adversity, and we (Gene) got to researching preventative measures. Here are some findings:
Finding #1: Genes aren't everything. Cavities mostly occur because of continued presence of sugar in the mouth. No sugar in your mouth, less cavities.
Obvious solution #1: eat and drink through an IV.
Obvious solution #2: get false teeth.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #1: don't eat sweets. Ha! Talk about unrealistic.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #2: brush after every sugar-binge, and by binge I mean anything bigger than a single speck of confectioners' sugar powder.
Finding #2: Xylitol. Yes, this sounds like something you're already giving your kids in pill form, but it isn't. Instead, it's a little miracle. Xylitol inhibits the growth of Streptococcus Mutans bacteria - the biggest threat to our great nation's teeth - the main bacteria associated with cavity formation. It's also magically delicious. And as an added bonus, chewing Xylitol gum when you're pregnant with child prevents transmission of the Streptococcus Mutans bacteria to the infant. Also chew it when you're breastfeeding anyone; xylitol is beneficial out of any orifice.
Obvious solution #1: buy some Xylitol gum and chew it till you're either all better, or it rips out all of your fillings, as gum sometimes does.
Obvious solution #2: avoid being the child of a non-Xylitol-gum-chewing mother, and/or get breastfed by a Xylitol user once you're out of the womb and making demands.
Obvious solution #3: eat only Xylitol-rich food. WARNING: this lifestyle correlates heavily with starvation. Fortunately, as we all know, correlation does not imply causality.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #1: actually research Xylitol and find out if it works. And then when you find out that Xylitol is just a Placebo, laugh at those people for whom it works perfectly, and then go drop $10,000 into your dentist's pocket. Ah, last laughs.
A new song was written today/yesterday, coincidentally by me, called Pei's Chun Jie (Pei's Chinese New Year). Pei agreed (speaking retrospectively from the future) to let people listen to it here. It's an instrumental, so you don't have to be afraid of hearing me or Mario sing.
Hmm, Blogger is being a dick and not letting me upload the MIDI that I specially converted to MP3 and then to video to make it Blogger-edible. No worries, Lablz.com to the rescue! Pei's Chun Jie
After I took Michelle to the dentist a couple of days ago, we spent many an hour in a state of open-mouthed shock (disgusting, I know). Our limited savings were quickly headed to Michelle's all-consuming black hole of a dental plan. But something or other thrives in times of adversity, and we (Gene) got to researching preventative measures. Here are some findings:
Finding #1: Genes aren't everything. Cavities mostly occur because of continued presence of sugar in the mouth. No sugar in your mouth, less cavities.
Obvious solution #1: eat and drink through an IV.
Obvious solution #2: get false teeth.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #1: don't eat sweets. Ha! Talk about unrealistic.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #2: brush after every sugar-binge, and by binge I mean anything bigger than a single speck of confectioners' sugar powder.
Finding #2: Xylitol. Yes, this sounds like something you're already giving your kids in pill form, but it isn't. Instead, it's a little miracle. Xylitol inhibits the growth of Streptococcus Mutans bacteria - the biggest threat to our great nation's teeth - the main bacteria associated with cavity formation. It's also magically delicious. And as an added bonus, chewing Xylitol gum when you're pregnant with child prevents transmission of the Streptococcus Mutans bacteria to the infant. Also chew it when you're breastfeeding anyone; xylitol is beneficial out of any orifice.
Obvious solution #1: buy some Xylitol gum and chew it till you're either all better, or it rips out all of your fillings, as gum sometimes does.
Obvious solution #2: avoid being the child of a non-Xylitol-gum-chewing mother, and/or get breastfed by a Xylitol user once you're out of the womb and making demands.
Obvious solution #3: eat only Xylitol-rich food. WARNING: this lifestyle correlates heavily with starvation. Fortunately, as we all know, correlation does not imply causality.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #1: actually research Xylitol and find out if it works. And then when you find out that Xylitol is just a Placebo, laugh at those people for whom it works perfectly, and then go drop $10,000 into your dentist's pocket. Ah, last laughs.
A new song was written today/yesterday, coincidentally by me, called Pei's Chun Jie (Pei's Chinese New Year). Pei agreed (speaking retrospectively from the future) to let people listen to it here. It's an instrumental, so you don't have to be afraid of hearing me or Mario sing.
Hmm, Blogger is being a dick and not letting me upload the MIDI that I specially converted to MP3 and then to video to make it Blogger-edible. No worries, Lablz.com to the rescue! Pei's Chun Jie
Friday, January 23, 2009
Nostalgia And More Chinese Antics
Had an interesting evening meditation yesterday. I had started reading Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now a couple of days ago, and he emphasized that people live either in the past or in the future but never in the present. He himself is of course a level 6 ninja in this aspect, so I trust him. Anyway, I was doing the surrendering exercise, and I was focusing on some of my nostalgia for a certain girl whose name I will not say explicitly (I will be fair however and give a hint: her name is one of the 24 arrangements of the letters 'c,' 'h,' 'u,' and 'n').
Anyway, I was surrendering this and that, and some of the other, some etc., and also lots of yadda yadda yadda, and I was feeling pretty good about myself, which is of course strictly prohibited by the meditation police. It was going well though, but at the same time it wasn't a relaxing process, it was a bit of a race; I'd surrender one scene, and another would show up with a little sign saying "dwell in me for a bit," and I'd say "good idea...wait! No! I surrender you!" And then I'd sit there waiting for the next ambush.
This game continued for a while, and then I decided to invoke some Tolle magic on myself. Not being a "future" kind of guy, I decided to start with my past, and went ahead and erased it all in one stroke. Of course, I didn't actually give myself amnesia, but I somehow managed to get a feeling of what it might be like to exist in a state of memory loss. I said to myself that I of course have certain feelings about things, but that now it no longer matters how I got to those feelings. Thinking this way, I figured that it would be easier to surrender emotions - they'd have no past to cling to.
I never really got to that second part (surrendering past-less emotions), but I did feel really weird for a while. The state of having no past was odd and interesting, a bit like coming out of the pool into the fresh air. Eh...pretty bad analogy, go ahead and insert your own.
Feeling on a roll, I decided to try one other thing, and inspiration suggested to attempt disappearing myself. I visualized stepping back out of my body, and tried to erase both my body and my mind, dry-eraser-across-blackboard-style. This isn't the first time I've tried this, but it was the first time it gave any sort of result. Usually I just end up waking up from yet another daydreaming sequence where my erasing had seamlessly morphed into fingerpainting, or worse, the dreaded "washing dishes" nightmare.
This time though, I managed to slip into another weird feeling, different from the past-less one, but equally strange. I felt like I was in the background - this is the only way I can think of to describe it. I didn't feel my body at all, and didn't really have a center of mass to my consciousness, just kind of faded. Pretty cool, but very tenuous and hard to hold onto.
Blah. No more.
I woke up today at 7AM and remembered some dream, but then, in a moment of weakness, decided to get some more sleep. And that's the end of that story; dream lost forever. Shame on me. To atone, I took Michelle for a 4 hour vacation to the dentist chair.
MIT finally shut off my webspace a day or two ago, so the previous entry's sound files pointed to nowhere (at the time of its creation). Yesterday I spent a good 5 minutes(!) remedying the situation and throwing my hands up in the air at the various inconveniences involved. For instance, Blogger doesn't allow uploading sound files. Pictures and video are OK, but there's some kind of prohibition on plain old audio. Being, as always, on a tight schedule, I didn't have the time to fight the man on this one, so I just converted my clips to video.
More Chinese learning took place today. I was learning indefinites - things like anywhere, anything, somelobster, nokitten, and I thought the Chinese approach to using these was really funny and simultaneously brilliant. For example, when you ask a Chinese person who's headed nowhere in particular "where are you going, my Chinese brother?" he'll tell you "I'm not going where." Isn't that efficient? Or if he's really not going anywhere at all, he'll say "I'm not going everywhere." This is like something made to order for Abbott and Costello.
Here's a semi-accurate semi-completely-inaccurate Chinese style English conversation for you to see what I'm up against in my quest to learn Mandarin.
Mark: you good.
Authentic Chinaman: you good.
Mark: you are going where?
Authentic Chinaman: I'm not going where.
Mark: not going where?
Authentic Chinaman: yes. not.
Mark: ah...and there is who?
Authentic Chinaman: there isn't who. There isn't everyone.
Mark: and you there will do what?
Authentic Chinaman: there I will not do everything.
Mark: excellent! can I come with you?
Authentic Chinaman: but I'm not going where...
Mark: I'm not going where either. I'm going there.
Authentic Chinaman: I'm not going there. I'm not going where.
Mark: me too. Or was it me neither. Crap. You understand?
Authentic Chinaman: I don't understand everything.
Mark: you everything don't understand? Or you don't understand everything?
Authentic Chinaman: I don't understand everything.
Mark: yea, I'm pretty lost too. Good, I go now. See again.
Authentic Chinaman: see again.
Anyway, I was surrendering this and that, and some of the other, some etc., and also lots of yadda yadda yadda, and I was feeling pretty good about myself, which is of course strictly prohibited by the meditation police. It was going well though, but at the same time it wasn't a relaxing process, it was a bit of a race; I'd surrender one scene, and another would show up with a little sign saying "dwell in me for a bit," and I'd say "good idea...wait! No! I surrender you!" And then I'd sit there waiting for the next ambush.
This game continued for a while, and then I decided to invoke some Tolle magic on myself. Not being a "future" kind of guy, I decided to start with my past, and went ahead and erased it all in one stroke. Of course, I didn't actually give myself amnesia, but I somehow managed to get a feeling of what it might be like to exist in a state of memory loss. I said to myself that I of course have certain feelings about things, but that now it no longer matters how I got to those feelings. Thinking this way, I figured that it would be easier to surrender emotions - they'd have no past to cling to.
I never really got to that second part (surrendering past-less emotions), but I did feel really weird for a while. The state of having no past was odd and interesting, a bit like coming out of the pool into the fresh air. Eh...pretty bad analogy, go ahead and insert your own.
Feeling on a roll, I decided to try one other thing, and inspiration suggested to attempt disappearing myself. I visualized stepping back out of my body, and tried to erase both my body and my mind, dry-eraser-across-blackboard-style. This isn't the first time I've tried this, but it was the first time it gave any sort of result. Usually I just end up waking up from yet another daydreaming sequence where my erasing had seamlessly morphed into fingerpainting, or worse, the dreaded "washing dishes" nightmare.
This time though, I managed to slip into another weird feeling, different from the past-less one, but equally strange. I felt like I was in the background - this is the only way I can think of to describe it. I didn't feel my body at all, and didn't really have a center of mass to my consciousness, just kind of faded. Pretty cool, but very tenuous and hard to hold onto.
Blah. No more.
I woke up today at 7AM and remembered some dream, but then, in a moment of weakness, decided to get some more sleep. And that's the end of that story; dream lost forever. Shame on me. To atone, I took Michelle for a 4 hour vacation to the dentist chair.
MIT finally shut off my webspace a day or two ago, so the previous entry's sound files pointed to nowhere (at the time of its creation). Yesterday I spent a good 5 minutes(!) remedying the situation and throwing my hands up in the air at the various inconveniences involved. For instance, Blogger doesn't allow uploading sound files. Pictures and video are OK, but there's some kind of prohibition on plain old audio. Being, as always, on a tight schedule, I didn't have the time to fight the man on this one, so I just converted my clips to video.
More Chinese learning took place today. I was learning indefinites - things like anywhere, anything, somelobster, nokitten, and I thought the Chinese approach to using these was really funny and simultaneously brilliant. For example, when you ask a Chinese person who's headed nowhere in particular "where are you going, my Chinese brother?" he'll tell you "I'm not going where." Isn't that efficient? Or if he's really not going anywhere at all, he'll say "I'm not going everywhere." This is like something made to order for Abbott and Costello.
Here's a semi-accurate semi-completely-inaccurate Chinese style English conversation for you to see what I'm up against in my quest to learn Mandarin.
Mark: you good.
Authentic Chinaman: you good.
Mark: you are going where?
Authentic Chinaman: I'm not going where.
Mark: not going where?
Authentic Chinaman: yes. not.
Mark: ah...and there is who?
Authentic Chinaman: there isn't who. There isn't everyone.
Mark: and you there will do what?
Authentic Chinaman: there I will not do everything.
Mark: excellent! can I come with you?
Authentic Chinaman: but I'm not going where...
Mark: I'm not going where either. I'm going there.
Authentic Chinaman: I'm not going there. I'm not going where.
Mark: me too. Or was it me neither. Crap. You understand?
Authentic Chinaman: I don't understand everything.
Mark: you everything don't understand? Or you don't understand everything?
Authentic Chinaman: I don't understand everything.
Mark: yea, I'm pretty lost too. Good, I go now. See again.
Authentic Chinaman: see again.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Those Flat Chinese
Morning meditation:
Today was more focused. I think I'm up to 1.2 consecutive milliseconds of consciousness, which sounds low, but feels like an improvement.
Dream:
I'm a sailor on a semi-modern ship. I am looking for a bathroom where I can move my bowels. I find one, but it is completely unacceptable. There are two toilets, facing each other from opposite corners of the room, as if in a duel, and about fifteen people between them, just shooting the breeze (something people only do in bathrooms in dreams). I barely hesitate a second before taking my privacy-sensitive bowels in search of other accomodations. I finally find a private bathroom with a single toilet, lock myself in, and mount the beast.
Lo and behold, this must be a toilet from an amusement park. Sitting on this thing is like sitting in one of those virtual ride machines at Chucke E. Cheese's, except that I don't have a screen in front of me convincing me that I'm on runaway railcar. I try to relax, but it is impossible, my cheeks are gripping the seat with all the static friction they've been storing away for the last 22 years. It's like trying to relax a bear trap. I struggle for a while, but my needs finally give in to the consistency of my failures, and I decide that I guess I don't really need to go. As I leave the bathroom, the next contestant comes in, Brian Voorhis who I haven't seen since middle school. I give him the thumbs up sign.
After this, I teleport to the dock. The ship is leaving, and I need to get on before I'm left behind. I remember what the captain said about the really stupid things sailors sometimes do, and proceed to do one of such caliber that further speeches in this vein are assured for generations to come. Instead of just jumping onto the ship, I wrap my four appendages around some 4 foot diameter column that holds the ship's roof up. Now I'm hopelessly stuck. If I let go, I fall into the water, but there's no way I can maneuver around this thing without help. I can barely move at all. I stick one leg out as much as I can, which is about one inch, and yell for someone to drag me in by my leg. Unfortunately, the other sailors lack the necessary genie powers required to perform such a feat. I realize that my last chance is to get back onto the deck and then try to jump for it. I try and fail, and almost fall off, and then suddenly I'm on the deck in some kind fluke of teleportation. I don't hesitate for instant to thank the Gods, and execute a beautiful running long jump onto the deck. Crisis averted.
End of Dream
I was studying Chinese today, and ran across this sentence: ge1ge1 he1 ka1fei1 he1 de hen3 shao3. Now don't panic! Of course, at first sight this looks like incomprehensible gibberish, unless you're one of the enlightened few (2 billionish). But in reality, it's pretty simple.
Let me give you some brief background: The above is the romanization of the Chinese sentence 哥哥喝咖啡喝地很少. (Romanization = Chinese for Americans). Romanization tells you how to pronounce the words, unlike the authentic Chinese sentence which just hurts your eyes, not to mention your brain. The numbers in the romanization indicate the tone (what to do with your voice) to use with each vowel sound. Tone 3 is for Chinese Jedi Masters, while tone 1 is Ben Stein's permanent residence - flat tone - where your voice doesn't change pitch during the duration of the vowel.
What's special about this sentence is that the first 6 tones are tone 1. Basically this means that you're likely to say the first 6 syllables on one note. When I say it out loud, it sounds absolutely ridiculous.
This reminded me instantly of Galaxy Quest, where the aliens consistently speak in a perfect monotone, with the added benefit of residing on the precise pitch of their voice breaks. Listen to this (Blogger doesn't allow uploading sound files, I had to convert it to video):
Now back to the Chinese phrase. Expect the worst:
I sound even more retarded, but you get the gist.
Madelyn: ur awesome
Mark: wow
Mark: r u learning to notice the obvious too?
Madelyn: yeah, im not good at it
Madelyn: that's how my compliment came to you
Today was more focused. I think I'm up to 1.2 consecutive milliseconds of consciousness, which sounds low, but feels like an improvement.
Dream:
I'm a sailor on a semi-modern ship. I am looking for a bathroom where I can move my bowels. I find one, but it is completely unacceptable. There are two toilets, facing each other from opposite corners of the room, as if in a duel, and about fifteen people between them, just shooting the breeze (something people only do in bathrooms in dreams). I barely hesitate a second before taking my privacy-sensitive bowels in search of other accomodations. I finally find a private bathroom with a single toilet, lock myself in, and mount the beast.
Lo and behold, this must be a toilet from an amusement park. Sitting on this thing is like sitting in one of those virtual ride machines at Chucke E. Cheese's, except that I don't have a screen in front of me convincing me that I'm on runaway railcar. I try to relax, but it is impossible, my cheeks are gripping the seat with all the static friction they've been storing away for the last 22 years. It's like trying to relax a bear trap. I struggle for a while, but my needs finally give in to the consistency of my failures, and I decide that I guess I don't really need to go. As I leave the bathroom, the next contestant comes in, Brian Voorhis who I haven't seen since middle school. I give him the thumbs up sign.
After this, I teleport to the dock. The ship is leaving, and I need to get on before I'm left behind. I remember what the captain said about the really stupid things sailors sometimes do, and proceed to do one of such caliber that further speeches in this vein are assured for generations to come. Instead of just jumping onto the ship, I wrap my four appendages around some 4 foot diameter column that holds the ship's roof up. Now I'm hopelessly stuck. If I let go, I fall into the water, but there's no way I can maneuver around this thing without help. I can barely move at all. I stick one leg out as much as I can, which is about one inch, and yell for someone to drag me in by my leg. Unfortunately, the other sailors lack the necessary genie powers required to perform such a feat. I realize that my last chance is to get back onto the deck and then try to jump for it. I try and fail, and almost fall off, and then suddenly I'm on the deck in some kind fluke of teleportation. I don't hesitate for instant to thank the Gods, and execute a beautiful running long jump onto the deck. Crisis averted.
End of Dream
I was studying Chinese today, and ran across this sentence: ge1ge1 he1 ka1fei1 he1 de hen3 shao3. Now don't panic! Of course, at first sight this looks like incomprehensible gibberish, unless you're one of the enlightened few (2 billionish). But in reality, it's pretty simple.
Let me give you some brief background: The above is the romanization of the Chinese sentence 哥哥喝咖啡喝地很少. (Romanization = Chinese for Americans). Romanization tells you how to pronounce the words, unlike the authentic Chinese sentence which just hurts your eyes, not to mention your brain. The numbers in the romanization indicate the tone (what to do with your voice) to use with each vowel sound. Tone 3 is for Chinese Jedi Masters, while tone 1 is Ben Stein's permanent residence - flat tone - where your voice doesn't change pitch during the duration of the vowel.
What's special about this sentence is that the first 6 tones are tone 1. Basically this means that you're likely to say the first 6 syllables on one note. When I say it out loud, it sounds absolutely ridiculous.
This reminded me instantly of Galaxy Quest, where the aliens consistently speak in a perfect monotone, with the added benefit of residing on the precise pitch of their voice breaks. Listen to this (Blogger doesn't allow uploading sound files, I had to convert it to video):
Now back to the Chinese phrase. Expect the worst:
I sound even more retarded, but you get the gist.
Madelyn: ur awesome
Mark: wow
Mark: r u learning to notice the obvious too?
Madelyn: yeah, im not good at it
Madelyn: that's how my compliment came to you
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Quick, Check If You're Conscious Before It's Too Late
Morning meditation:
Today I was plagued by melodies and lyrics from my own songs. I remember now that this happened on some of the other days, so just go ahead and add it to the general list of distractions. There were a couple of moments when I was thinking to myself - "hey, my mind's pretty quiet, right on, brother!" and then I'd realize that it was because my mind was wrapped so tightly around some catchy scrap of music that other thoughts just didn't stand a chance.
The new 30-day trials are only partially taking. Studying Chinese for half an hour is cake, even an hour is no problem. The lucid dreaming techniques are lagging behind though. I did maybe 20 reality checks today in total, which unfortunately doesn't average out to one every 10 minutes. And there are stretches of hours where I completely forget to do them. But I remembered today that another prerequisite is writing down dreams, so I'm going to start doing that tonight. Surely that'll clinch it.
Gene has also caught the lucid dreaming bug and now has some half-baked get-rich-quick scheme that he insists is exactly the opposite of that (not a get-rich-quick scheme). I haven't decided if I believe him yet, but I'll play along, especially since he reads this blog.
More silly jokes:
People are playing Scattergories:
The Letter: S
Category: Things that grow
Mom: self-awareness. But usually not mine.
Dad: Sri Ramakrishna. You haven't seen "grow" till you've seen my buddy Sri. You don't like it? Fine, then Snigfilunkers. You haven't heard of them? They're silicon-based creatures from the lower East side of the Horsehead Nebula.
Chun: sores. You should really get those checked by the way.
Tina: sadness and self-doubt. Ah, my old friends.
Mark: subscribers. Usually from 3 to 4, but sometimes the other way around.
Mario: sundried tomatoes. What? Why wouldn't that count? Well have you ever kept them on the shelf in high humidity for 6 years? No? Then you're not qualified to judge, are you?
Perry: snotty self-serving scientologists. Those little pricks.
Madelyn: sweet savory strips of seventy percent chocolate. No wait...those disappear.
Pei: single moms. No! Sex drive! Phew, nailed it.
Lucy: sluts. And sexist pigs. HAHAHAHA!
Igor: Rena...hmmm, no, that's 'R'...umm...yea...oh! Suicide statistics! Yay, I'm so happy now!
Question: What would you do with a billion dollars?
Mom: never work another day in my life!
Dad: never see any of you again! God, enough is enough.
Mark: I'd probably take it. Yep, there's at least a 10% chance I'd take it.
Mario: buy some Cheezits. They're on sale now: 10,000,000 boxes for $20,000,000. That's not a deal you miss.
Chun: go to medical school. What? Medical schools are like $30K a year these days!
Igor: buy a really authentic-looking degree. Renata won't suspect a thing!
Tina: oh, what's the point...
Pei: be a single mom. To a really fat spoiled baby.
Madelyn: die of chocolate overdose. And then probably go to work.
Perry: buy out scientology and burn it at the stake!
Frank: invest it. There's no faster way to lose money. Wait, did I say lose or make?
Lucy: ha! Gimme a break.
Question: What do you know?
Mom: lots of things. But please don't ask me to remember them. Gene can tell you which ones.
Dad: plenty, but it's never never never enough!
Mark: hah! You could fill a page with what I know!
Chun: I know exactly what I'm doing. And also how to busy myself every second to eliminate time for doubt.
Mario: that I am the duke of Mario! Or was it earl of Mendiola...wait, was that in the first one or the sequel?
Perry: huh? Let me tell you instead about intelligent design. It's retarded.
Lucy: everything. Name one thing I don't know. I dare you. Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait...except that one.
Igor: I know that if Renata ever...oh Christ, I don't even want to think about that. Brrrghf.
Tina: I know that if you ask me one more question, I'm gonna strangle you.
Pei: not nearly enough. I've already read 600 pages of zodiac today, and I still have no idea.
Frank: money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money. Or in modern jargon: lots of money.
Madelyn: oh, just a little secret. Hehe.
Today I was plagued by melodies and lyrics from my own songs. I remember now that this happened on some of the other days, so just go ahead and add it to the general list of distractions. There were a couple of moments when I was thinking to myself - "hey, my mind's pretty quiet, right on, brother!" and then I'd realize that it was because my mind was wrapped so tightly around some catchy scrap of music that other thoughts just didn't stand a chance.
The new 30-day trials are only partially taking. Studying Chinese for half an hour is cake, even an hour is no problem. The lucid dreaming techniques are lagging behind though. I did maybe 20 reality checks today in total, which unfortunately doesn't average out to one every 10 minutes. And there are stretches of hours where I completely forget to do them. But I remembered today that another prerequisite is writing down dreams, so I'm going to start doing that tonight. Surely that'll clinch it.
Gene has also caught the lucid dreaming bug and now has some half-baked get-rich-quick scheme that he insists is exactly the opposite of that (not a get-rich-quick scheme). I haven't decided if I believe him yet, but I'll play along, especially since he reads this blog.
More silly jokes:
People are playing Scattergories:
The Letter: S
Category: Things that grow
Mom: self-awareness. But usually not mine.
Dad: Sri Ramakrishna. You haven't seen "grow" till you've seen my buddy Sri. You don't like it? Fine, then Snigfilunkers. You haven't heard of them? They're silicon-based creatures from the lower East side of the Horsehead Nebula.
Chun: sores. You should really get those checked by the way.
Tina: sadness and self-doubt. Ah, my old friends.
Mark: subscribers. Usually from 3 to 4, but sometimes the other way around.
Mario: sundried tomatoes. What? Why wouldn't that count? Well have you ever kept them on the shelf in high humidity for 6 years? No? Then you're not qualified to judge, are you?
Perry: snotty self-serving scientologists. Those little pricks.
Madelyn: sweet savory strips of seventy percent chocolate. No wait...those disappear.
Pei: single moms. No! Sex drive! Phew, nailed it.
Lucy: sluts. And sexist pigs. HAHAHAHA!
Igor: Rena...hmmm, no, that's 'R'...umm...yea...oh! Suicide statistics! Yay, I'm so happy now!
Question: What would you do with a billion dollars?
Mom: never work another day in my life!
Dad: never see any of you again! God, enough is enough.
Mark: I'd probably take it. Yep, there's at least a 10% chance I'd take it.
Mario: buy some Cheezits. They're on sale now: 10,000,000 boxes for $20,000,000. That's not a deal you miss.
Chun: go to medical school. What? Medical schools are like $30K a year these days!
Igor: buy a really authentic-looking degree. Renata won't suspect a thing!
Tina: oh, what's the point...
Pei: be a single mom. To a really fat spoiled baby.
Madelyn: die of chocolate overdose. And then probably go to work.
Perry: buy out scientology and burn it at the stake!
Frank: invest it. There's no faster way to lose money. Wait, did I say lose or make?
Lucy: ha! Gimme a break.
Question: What do you know?
Mom: lots of things. But please don't ask me to remember them. Gene can tell you which ones.
Dad: plenty, but it's never never never enough!
Mark: hah! You could fill a page with what I know!
Chun: I know exactly what I'm doing. And also how to busy myself every second to eliminate time for doubt.
Mario: that I am the duke of Mario! Or was it earl of Mendiola...wait, was that in the first one or the sequel?
Perry: huh? Let me tell you instead about intelligent design. It's retarded.
Lucy: everything. Name one thing I don't know. I dare you. Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait...except that one.
Igor: I know that if Renata ever...oh Christ, I don't even want to think about that. Brrrghf.
Tina: I know that if you ask me one more question, I'm gonna strangle you.
Pei: not nearly enough. I've already read 600 pages of zodiac today, and I still have no idea.
Frank: money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money. Or in modern jargon: lots of money.
Madelyn: oh, just a little secret. Hehe.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Breasts, And How To Squeeze Lucid Dreams Out Of Them...Or Was It The Other Way Around?
Morning meditation:
I have the attention span of the Memento guy.
OK, it's time to start more 30-day trials. I came up with two in the 3.7-nanosecond-long conscious section of my meditation.
1. 30 mins or more of studying Chinese per day.
I'm planning on going to China sometime in this or my next life, so it's about time to put some discipline into my studying. Lately I've paid more attention to my love handles than to my Chinese skills (and I pay less attention to my love handles than to my fictional great aunt Propecia. Hmm...I should call her).
2. Start trying to lucid dream again.
Lucid dreaming is a synonym for "stop wasting a third of your life on nonsense, just so you can write it down in the morning for a 30-day writing-down-dreams-in-the-morning trial." It was adopted at the Belgium-based Winslow-Gordon Convention in 1865, when people realized that they have had it up to here(Northern New Jersey, upwards of my head) with saying that long quote twenty times a day.
Normally, you have no control over your dreams. You can lie there right before falling asleep and chant the latest Miss World's name till you're blue in the face, but will she grace your dream with her scantily clad presence? Very doubtful, because she's too busy serving (servicing?) lucid dreamers. Instead, you get assigned the dream where you're filling out your taxes, you're late, all you have left to do is sign, but your pen's stuck up in some tree for some reason and a village of armadillo gophers is willing to lay down their lives making sure you don't get it in time.
Dreaming for the average man (women don't have dreams, it's something to do with their breasts) is like watching an in-flight movie. You have no choice in the content, and chances are the pilot likes The Lizzie McGuire Movie. Or sometimes you don't even get one you haven't seen yet, you get a "recurring" one. What movie did you watch ten times already? Beethoven's 4th? What a coincidence! That's what we're playing today!
Lucid dreamers don't put up with this. They're elite, they're first class passengers, they're "the foot" as the French would say. They take out a couple minutes every day to ensure they don't get trapped in squirrel paradise like the average dreamer. What they do is they do "reality checks." Every ten or fifteen minutes, an aspiring lucid dreamer will examine the world for a second to make sure he's truly awake. For example, look at your hands right now. ...Uhh, I meant look at your hands after the next sentence. If they start swimming in your field of vision/changing shape size or color/vary in their finger content/(insert whatever your particular set doesn't normally do), then you know you're dreaming. In that case, you snap into the reality of the dream, which is much more vivid that ordinary dream-watching, and find yourself in a world where you have almost limitless control over the content. This is what a lucid dream is. You own the dream, you're the master. You can do whatever you want. You can fly around circles, fly around in squares, fly around in triangles...yea, my imagination ends here, but fortunately you're only limited by yours.
Of course, there's a price. In exchange for additional hours of consciousness, during the day you look like an idiot - whipping out your hands every ten minutes, then explaining to the police why you suddenly punched that pregnant woman with both fists. My advice is to take it slowly. Don't rip your pockets off, just calmly withdraw your hands: "calm calm calm...OK, let's see what we have here. Hmm, only one hand, I'm dreaming!...oh, never mind, I lost that one in Nam, nope...not dreaming, OK, see you in ten minutes, hand, done." Do that as often as you can, and you're on your way to lucid dreaming.
In case you're tempted to try it, there are other techniques that can help you achieve a lucid dream, preferably done in combination with "reality checks:"
1. Surpreme confidence - you know you're going to have a lucid dream. "If that idiot blogger can do it, I can do it."
2. Affirmations - unlike Miss World, lucid dreams will materialize if you think about them constantly. Before you go to sleep, turn on a mental mantra - "I will lucid dream tonight, I will lucid dream tonight, I will lucid dream tonight, I will lucid dream tonight," etc.
3. Attach reality checks to everyday things - every time you feel you need to pee, do a reality check. Every time you flip a light switch, do a reality check. Every time you think about breasts, do a reality check. Especially if you do this last one, you're set. Unfortunately, breasts have very little to do with most people's reality.
4. Reading this blog. Twenty to thirty times a day should be enough.
Lastly, performing a "reality check" inside a dream is not the only way to obtain a lucid dream. You can go straight into a lucid dream when you're falling asleep. For that, you need to be a bit of a sniper. You have to lie on your back and wait patiently for that moment when you slip away into dream land. And in that moment, you have a chance to get into the dream, but not lose consciousness. Often, the falling asleep moment will be accompanied by strange bodily sensations, such as heat and full body vibration. These are signs that you're close, but don't get too excited, you'll spook the lucid dream away.
Alright, ready, set, reality checks start...three paragraphs ago! Happy hunting!
I have the attention span of the Memento guy.
OK, it's time to start more 30-day trials. I came up with two in the 3.7-nanosecond-long conscious section of my meditation.
1. 30 mins or more of studying Chinese per day.
I'm planning on going to China sometime in this or my next life, so it's about time to put some discipline into my studying. Lately I've paid more attention to my love handles than to my Chinese skills (and I pay less attention to my love handles than to my fictional great aunt Propecia. Hmm...I should call her).
2. Start trying to lucid dream again.
Lucid dreaming is a synonym for "stop wasting a third of your life on nonsense, just so you can write it down in the morning for a 30-day writing-down-dreams-in-the-morning trial." It was adopted at the Belgium-based Winslow-Gordon Convention in 1865, when people realized that they have had it up to here(Northern New Jersey, upwards of my head) with saying that long quote twenty times a day.
Normally, you have no control over your dreams. You can lie there right before falling asleep and chant the latest Miss World's name till you're blue in the face, but will she grace your dream with her scantily clad presence? Very doubtful, because she's too busy serving (servicing?) lucid dreamers. Instead, you get assigned the dream where you're filling out your taxes, you're late, all you have left to do is sign, but your pen's stuck up in some tree for some reason and a village of armadillo gophers is willing to lay down their lives making sure you don't get it in time.
Dreaming for the average man (women don't have dreams, it's something to do with their breasts) is like watching an in-flight movie. You have no choice in the content, and chances are the pilot likes The Lizzie McGuire Movie. Or sometimes you don't even get one you haven't seen yet, you get a "recurring" one. What movie did you watch ten times already? Beethoven's 4th? What a coincidence! That's what we're playing today!
Lucid dreamers don't put up with this. They're elite, they're first class passengers, they're "the foot" as the French would say. They take out a couple minutes every day to ensure they don't get trapped in squirrel paradise like the average dreamer. What they do is they do "reality checks." Every ten or fifteen minutes, an aspiring lucid dreamer will examine the world for a second to make sure he's truly awake. For example, look at your hands right now. ...Uhh, I meant look at your hands after the next sentence. If they start swimming in your field of vision/changing shape size or color/vary in their finger content/(insert whatever your particular set doesn't normally do), then you know you're dreaming. In that case, you snap into the reality of the dream, which is much more vivid that ordinary dream-watching, and find yourself in a world where you have almost limitless control over the content. This is what a lucid dream is. You own the dream, you're the master. You can do whatever you want. You can fly around circles, fly around in squares, fly around in triangles...yea, my imagination ends here, but fortunately you're only limited by yours.
Of course, there's a price. In exchange for additional hours of consciousness, during the day you look like an idiot - whipping out your hands every ten minutes, then explaining to the police why you suddenly punched that pregnant woman with both fists. My advice is to take it slowly. Don't rip your pockets off, just calmly withdraw your hands: "calm calm calm...OK, let's see what we have here. Hmm, only one hand, I'm dreaming!...oh, never mind, I lost that one in Nam, nope...not dreaming, OK, see you in ten minutes, hand, done." Do that as often as you can, and you're on your way to lucid dreaming.
In case you're tempted to try it, there are other techniques that can help you achieve a lucid dream, preferably done in combination with "reality checks:"
1. Surpreme confidence - you know you're going to have a lucid dream. "If that idiot blogger can do it, I can do it."
2. Affirmations - unlike Miss World, lucid dreams will materialize if you think about them constantly. Before you go to sleep, turn on a mental mantra - "I will lucid dream tonight, I will lucid dream tonight, I will lucid dream tonight, I will lucid dream tonight," etc.
3. Attach reality checks to everyday things - every time you feel you need to pee, do a reality check. Every time you flip a light switch, do a reality check. Every time you think about breasts, do a reality check. Especially if you do this last one, you're set. Unfortunately, breasts have very little to do with most people's reality.
4. Reading this blog. Twenty to thirty times a day should be enough.
Lastly, performing a "reality check" inside a dream is not the only way to obtain a lucid dream. You can go straight into a lucid dream when you're falling asleep. For that, you need to be a bit of a sniper. You have to lie on your back and wait patiently for that moment when you slip away into dream land. And in that moment, you have a chance to get into the dream, but not lose consciousness. Often, the falling asleep moment will be accompanied by strange bodily sensations, such as heat and full body vibration. These are signs that you're close, but don't get too excited, you'll spook the lucid dream away.
Alright, ready, set, reality checks start...three paragraphs ago! Happy hunting!
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Frozen Dogs Swimming In Low Gravity
Morning meditation:
Relaxing, but not much more. Made me a little mellower for the next five minutes.
I think I'm genetically predisposed to things like 30-day trials. It's all to do with that strange quality I have where everything seems easy in retrospect. I meditate for an hour every morning and half an hour every evening, and during the during, I often get impatient, and start cheating - usually I use telekinesis to make the clocks go faster (not as easy as it sounds, it gets really tricky with all the gears in analog clocks, and telefiddling with the digital clocks requires a signal processing background). But then as soon as the meditation is over, I'm thinking "psh, that was cake." And it's pretty much like that with all the others too. Water, crunches, writing, not cursing, not tripping old people. No matter how hard they were to do, at the end of the day I have no doubts that they were easy. Alas, there are exceptions to this rule.
Irrelevant to the previous paragraph (as usual), but it feels like my mind lacks a necessary part for the awareness meditation/Adyashanti's "True Meditation." A background. All my mind has is a foreground. Every thought that drifts by, takes control of my apparently one and only mental process. I'm like a really out of date computer, pre-multiprocessing era. On the other hand, something is watching this foreground, because otherwise I would never snap out of any thought before its conclusion. I would never get to writing this down. The other explanation is that my thoughts are just as ADD as I am and snap in and out of the foreground easily.
I was browsing people's Favorite Books sections on Facebook today to get some recs, and ended up starting Frannie and Zooey by Salinger, the guy who wrote Catcher in the Rye. Salinger is soooo recognizable. Almost instantly so. He's got this style of deep distaste for all characters present. Or maybe not distaste, but he paints his characters very unsympathetically. The protagonist is no hero. And he does it all in a non-humorous breed of sarcasm. Pretty entertaining though. I'm only like 15 pages in so far, so I can't really say anything about the plot.
More silly jokes from writing hour:
Question: Did you know there's no gravity at night?
Mom: Ha. Ha. Ha. You're sooooo clever.
Dad: of course, it's explained by Maxwell's seventh and eighth equations. Michelle, did you guys study that in school yet?
Mark: actually, the causality is in the other direction. It's because we have no gravity at "nightime" that it gets dark. There's just nothing to hold the light down!
Mario: yea, but don't worry, I got enough magnets to last us a while.
Michelle: first tell me, did you stop drinking cognac in the morning?
Chun: wait, really? I can never tell if you're joking or not. Wow, that's so interesting! Wait, you were kidding? Ugh, I almost made it till lunch this time without falling for anything!
Lucy: duh! Everybody knows that.
Perry: yep, Jesus takes it away at night to punish us. Fear the Lord, ye sinners!
Igor: is this recent? Renata! There's no gravity tonight, maybe we should just stay in?
Tina: Mark, grow up.
Manlin: of course I knew. Did you know that I'm the prettiest person in the world?
Zhang Xiao Yi: in China, we never have gravity. Or night. Americans are sad. That's why you guys have so many divorces.
Pei: gravity...nope, haven't seen that one yet. I'll add it to my NetFlix queue.
Question: How many Earths can fit in the Sun?
Michelle: three? I have no idea!
Mom: a thousand? Am I even close?
Dad: a million? That's what it was when I was a kid. Hold up, let me ask Buddha. Actually, soon this question will be completely irrelevant. Both the Sun and the Earth will be all software, no hardware components.
Chun: a billion? Crap, I hope they don't ask this at the med school interview. Maybe I should pre-empt them and write about this in my essay...
Mark: a trillion? Yea, definitely a trillion, plus or minus 9 orders of magnitude.
Mario: a quadrillion? I am so not even close.
Pei: on what day of the year? Today? Let's see, Capricorn's falling, Aquarius is on the rise, Beetlejuice looks a little angry... No, today the Earth definitely won't fit inside the Sun. Not a chance.
Manlin: one over the number of Suns that can fit in the Earth. Ha!
Perry: I don't think. I know. Seventy two million, three hundred and sixteen thousand, four hundred and seven.
Lucy: at least one. HAHAHAHAHA! Wait, you haven't heard that one? It's by Mitch Hedberg. Ah, he's a doll.
Tina: Google Google Google Google Google! Did you say something? Oh, seventy two million, three hundred and sixteen thousand, four hundred and seven, and one third.
Frank: well, it changes because the Sun expands when it gets hot. I know, I have a lot invested in it. And you have to take into account the Fahrenheit/Celcius/Kelvin exchange rates, those are on wild swings these days.
Zhang Xiao Yi: you mean in America's Sun? About ten times less than in China's Sun.
Igor: ...(whispers) psst...psst...PSST! Renata! It's for you!
(Note: I wrote this one pretending I was Pei writing a joke about me)
Mom and Dad are discussing getting rid of Cable TV.
Dad: we don't need it, we never watch it.
Mom: but I want to be able to watch the Academy Awards. And the Golden Globes.
Dad: I'm sure it's all streamed online. I'll find it for you.
Mom: ...but...but...
Dad: it's a waste of money!
(Mark walks in)
Mom: fine, let's get rid of it.
Mark: are you talking about Michelle? I'll go get the knife.
Relaxing, but not much more. Made me a little mellower for the next five minutes.
I think I'm genetically predisposed to things like 30-day trials. It's all to do with that strange quality I have where everything seems easy in retrospect. I meditate for an hour every morning and half an hour every evening, and during the during, I often get impatient, and start cheating - usually I use telekinesis to make the clocks go faster (not as easy as it sounds, it gets really tricky with all the gears in analog clocks, and telefiddling with the digital clocks requires a signal processing background). But then as soon as the meditation is over, I'm thinking "psh, that was cake." And it's pretty much like that with all the others too. Water, crunches, writing, not cursing, not tripping old people. No matter how hard they were to do, at the end of the day I have no doubts that they were easy. Alas, there are exceptions to this rule.
Irrelevant to the previous paragraph (as usual), but it feels like my mind lacks a necessary part for the awareness meditation/Adyashanti's "True Meditation." A background. All my mind has is a foreground. Every thought that drifts by, takes control of my apparently one and only mental process. I'm like a really out of date computer, pre-multiprocessing era. On the other hand, something is watching this foreground, because otherwise I would never snap out of any thought before its conclusion. I would never get to writing this down. The other explanation is that my thoughts are just as ADD as I am and snap in and out of the foreground easily.
I was browsing people's Favorite Books sections on Facebook today to get some recs, and ended up starting Frannie and Zooey by Salinger, the guy who wrote Catcher in the Rye. Salinger is soooo recognizable. Almost instantly so. He's got this style of deep distaste for all characters present. Or maybe not distaste, but he paints his characters very unsympathetically. The protagonist is no hero. And he does it all in a non-humorous breed of sarcasm. Pretty entertaining though. I'm only like 15 pages in so far, so I can't really say anything about the plot.
More silly jokes from writing hour:
Question: Did you know there's no gravity at night?
Mom: Ha. Ha. Ha. You're sooooo clever.
Dad: of course, it's explained by Maxwell's seventh and eighth equations. Michelle, did you guys study that in school yet?
Mark: actually, the causality is in the other direction. It's because we have no gravity at "nightime" that it gets dark. There's just nothing to hold the light down!
Mario: yea, but don't worry, I got enough magnets to last us a while.
Michelle: first tell me, did you stop drinking cognac in the morning?
Chun: wait, really? I can never tell if you're joking or not. Wow, that's so interesting! Wait, you were kidding? Ugh, I almost made it till lunch this time without falling for anything!
Lucy: duh! Everybody knows that.
Perry: yep, Jesus takes it away at night to punish us. Fear the Lord, ye sinners!
Igor: is this recent? Renata! There's no gravity tonight, maybe we should just stay in?
Tina: Mark, grow up.
Manlin: of course I knew. Did you know that I'm the prettiest person in the world?
Zhang Xiao Yi: in China, we never have gravity. Or night. Americans are sad. That's why you guys have so many divorces.
Pei: gravity...nope, haven't seen that one yet. I'll add it to my NetFlix queue.
Question: How many Earths can fit in the Sun?
Michelle: three? I have no idea!
Mom: a thousand? Am I even close?
Dad: a million? That's what it was when I was a kid. Hold up, let me ask Buddha. Actually, soon this question will be completely irrelevant. Both the Sun and the Earth will be all software, no hardware components.
Chun: a billion? Crap, I hope they don't ask this at the med school interview. Maybe I should pre-empt them and write about this in my essay...
Mark: a trillion? Yea, definitely a trillion, plus or minus 9 orders of magnitude.
Mario: a quadrillion? I am so not even close.
Pei: on what day of the year? Today? Let's see, Capricorn's falling, Aquarius is on the rise, Beetlejuice looks a little angry... No, today the Earth definitely won't fit inside the Sun. Not a chance.
Manlin: one over the number of Suns that can fit in the Earth. Ha!
Perry: I don't think. I know. Seventy two million, three hundred and sixteen thousand, four hundred and seven.
Lucy: at least one. HAHAHAHAHA! Wait, you haven't heard that one? It's by Mitch Hedberg. Ah, he's a doll.
Tina: Google Google Google Google Google! Did you say something? Oh, seventy two million, three hundred and sixteen thousand, four hundred and seven, and one third.
Frank: well, it changes because the Sun expands when it gets hot. I know, I have a lot invested in it. And you have to take into account the Fahrenheit/Celcius/Kelvin exchange rates, those are on wild swings these days.
Zhang Xiao Yi: you mean in America's Sun? About ten times less than in China's Sun.
Igor: ...(whispers) psst...psst...PSST! Renata! It's for you!
(Note: I wrote this one pretending I was Pei writing a joke about me)
Mom and Dad are discussing getting rid of Cable TV.
Dad: we don't need it, we never watch it.
Mom: but I want to be able to watch the Academy Awards. And the Golden Globes.
Dad: I'm sure it's all streamed online. I'll find it for you.
Mom: ...but...but...
Dad: it's a waste of money!
(Mark walks in)
Mom: fine, let's get rid of it.
Mark: are you talking about Michelle? I'll go get the knife.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Q & A
Morning meditation:
Oof. Today was one loooong hour-long hour. I was really impatient for some reason, even more than usually. Maybe it's because today I meditated at ~11:30AM instead of the usual 9:00AM, and my brain had already had time to sink into the afternoon mindset, apparently one of ADD. Also, there were lots of distracting sounds today. Planes, trains, automobiles, humming refrigerators, ringing cellphones, garbage pickups, the walls crackling from minute changes in temperature, pretty much everything you could ask for except for the ice cream truck and carolers. And Santa Claus.
I did have a couple of interesting moments when I felt curiously misaligned with my body, as if I had drifted over a couple of inches, but was also simultaneously in the original spot. It was a tricky feeling to hold onto, because the moment I'd notice it, I'd snap right back into place. The day I can hold it I'll probably end up blaming it on excessive calorie intake.
I was thinking yesterday that God is a lot like the Placebo Effect. It doesn't really matter whether he's a sugar pill or an antibiotic or a big jolly bearded guy in a cloud, riding a dinosaur. If you manage to believe in him, even if you're tricked into doing so, you can extract benefit for yourself. Or harm of course. Let's forget about God for a second, and just think about the Placebo Effect. Basically it says that whatever you believe, happens. Like, if you take a sugar pill thinking it's a cancer cure, you have a 99.99% chance of being cured (Note: figures are not to scale). Or if you jump out of an airplane and believe you have a parachute, but you really don't, then you're totally screwed. Actually...ignore that last one. OK, if you believe in Santa, your parents will give you presents addressed from him. If you believe in a wrathful and vengeful God, I will come shoot you in the head. If my physician tells me my lymph nodes are OK, I will believe her, and they'll stop spraying fountains of blood. So you see that the Placebo Effect is very powerful. And now I forget where I was going with this.
A joke my friend Pei wrote about me:
It happened as mark was in primary school...
teacher : mark, how come u r late again!!
mark: I met a lost 3 year-old kid by the railway on the way here.
teacher: come on... pls use a better story next time.
mark: I did send him home.
teacher: where is his home?
mark: ya when I asked him that, he was pointing to the railway. So I put him on the rails.
teacher: .......
(my reaction)
Mark: that's good!
Pei: when I was thinking of u, I thought, mark, he is a baby-killer... here we go...
A joke I wrote about my friend Pei:
Pei: talk dirty to me, I love it when you talk dirty to me.
Mark: mm...your apartment's so dirty, so dirty, I'm going to go clean it right now!
Pei: yea baby! you know what turns me on!
Yea...that may take some background to understand.
And one more about Pei (we're collaborating on a joke book that only the two of us will understand):
Pei is walking down the street. She sees a 5 year old kid and his mother. The kid must have been misbehaving, because the mother is beating the crap out of him, spanking him like there's no tomorrow.
Pei: ah...I wish I had a kid.
(today, in the kitchen)
Mark is peeling a clementine. Michelle walks up and puts her hand out, demanding some. Mark shoves the whole clementine in his mouth.
Michelle: Mom! Mark stole my clementine!
I tried writing some more jokes today, but in a different style. I tried posing a question and then thinking of responses from different people, with the responses caricaturing the answeree. I can't really tell if it's funny, and you'd have to know the people reasonably well to understand what I'm getting at, but it made me crack up when I wrote them:
Question: You have 24 hours to live, what do you do?
Mom: 24 hours...that's 12 movies!
Dad: 24 hours...that's eight 3-hour meditations. No, wait! Twenty-four 1-hour meditations!
Mark: 24 hours...can I at least get an extra half-hour to blog about it after?
Grandma: 24 hours...do you know what happened in Israel in only the last 3 hrs? No? Well let me describe it to you in gory detail for the next 24.
Boris: 24 hou...(snore)
Pei: 24 hours...that's enough time to try 240 new sex positions!
Manlin: 24 hours...how fast do they deliver chocolate?
Zhang Xiao Yi: 24 hours...damn, my parents are going to kill me when I tell them!
Chun: 24 hours...OK, first 5 minutes - call my Mom and Dad to tell them the news. The next 23 hours and 50 minutes - plan out the remaining 5 minutes. Aha! Not a minute gone to waste!
Tina: 24 hours...wow, life sucks.
Mario: 24 hours...that's time enough to learn 3 new Chinese words, forget 5 Russian ones, and start learning three new languages!
Igor: 24 hours...Renata! What am I doing for the next 24 hours!?
Frank: 24 hours...no problem. I have a business plan just for the occasion! It's a franchise. We're going to have 12 stores open within the first 10 hrs and we should be up to McDonald's scale by hour 24.
Serge: 24 hours...that's enough time to build a successful family, right?
Perry: 24 hours...convert as many Christians as I can to antheism. Now that's time well spent.
Lucy: 24 hours...bull. I bet I can live longer than that.
Question: What will you do when your son's begging you for a new toy he doesn't deserve?
Mom: don't give it to him, but then cry myself to sleep at night.
Dad: don't give it to him. Instead, make fun of him till he develops a serious psychological disorder.
Michelle: I have a son? That means I had sex! EWWWW!!!
Grandma: buy him every toy in the store. Oh, wait! Did you say son or grandson?
Mark: my son? Did the condom break? This is a completely unrealistic situation! Fine, I'd probably go get a DNA test then, see if he's really my son. There's no toy in existence that a son of mine wouldn't deserve. Ah, he's already so much like his father.
Chun: tell him he can have the toy in installments. Get him planning his life early on!
Mario: how old is he? 5? Trade him in for five 1-year-olds. No! Half of a ten-year-old!
Pei: give it to him. I love him, so why wouldn't I buy it? Wait, that's not how you raise children?
Zhang Xiao Yi: Chinese children know better than to beg for toys. I knew I shouldn't have married an American. They're inferior!
Manlin: play mind games with him. "You really want that toy? You don't not really want it? You wouldn't want not to not want to want to not have it?" Hehe.
Tina: toys? Yay! Mine mine mine mine! Phew, OK, sad now.
Igor: oh Christ. Renata!
Frank: wait, how did he get out of his cage?
Serge: buy myself a new car. And a new house. And then work harder and earn more money so I can buy the toy. Man, where does the money go!?
Perry: you know those noise-canceling headphones? What did you say? I can't hear you.
Lucy: beat the little devil half to death. Studies show it's optimal for his development.
Question: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Mom: because we're vegetarian.
Dad: it's a reincarnation of a nomadic tribesman, come on dude, ask me something harder.
Mark: I told you ten times already! Don't tell me any news unless it's good news! I've heard this all a million times. People are dying, there's war and povery, blah blah blah.
Michelle: a chicken? Where?!? I'm scared. Wait, are chickens dogs or insects?
Grandma: a chicken? Do you know that ten people were blown up in Israel today?
Igor: Renata, didn't we discuss this the other day? What did we decide?
Chun: aha! All part of my plan for getting into medical school! Check!
Frank: I don't know, but someone grab that chicken! The chicken/turkey exchange rate is climbing faster than my blood pressure!
Paul: hahaha! Someone saw a chicken! That's so crazy, man, that's so crazy!
Mario: I don't know, but I trust it. I'm getting outta here.
Pei: chicken? Who cares about chickens? Ask me about fish.
Tina: crap, I had this at my Google interview...and I remember getting it right...what was it!?...ugh!
Manlin: mmffhhahmm...sorry, was eating chocolate. Umm... (pause) did you get that? My MSN died. No? I said "maybe there's better Internet connection over there?"
Serge: a chicken crossed my road!? Where is it? Give me that chicken, we have some words to say to each other if you know what I mean. Quickly, before I forgive it!
Perry: don't even get me started. And no, chickens were not created by Jesus, they were created by a little thing called evolution, heard of it?
Lucy: did you know that chicken blood is green? I swear. It's true. Fine, look it up nay-sayer. It's not true? No way!
Oof. Today was one loooong hour-long hour. I was really impatient for some reason, even more than usually. Maybe it's because today I meditated at ~11:30AM instead of the usual 9:00AM, and my brain had already had time to sink into the afternoon mindset, apparently one of ADD. Also, there were lots of distracting sounds today. Planes, trains, automobiles, humming refrigerators, ringing cellphones, garbage pickups, the walls crackling from minute changes in temperature, pretty much everything you could ask for except for the ice cream truck and carolers. And Santa Claus.
I did have a couple of interesting moments when I felt curiously misaligned with my body, as if I had drifted over a couple of inches, but was also simultaneously in the original spot. It was a tricky feeling to hold onto, because the moment I'd notice it, I'd snap right back into place. The day I can hold it I'll probably end up blaming it on excessive calorie intake.
I was thinking yesterday that God is a lot like the Placebo Effect. It doesn't really matter whether he's a sugar pill or an antibiotic or a big jolly bearded guy in a cloud, riding a dinosaur. If you manage to believe in him, even if you're tricked into doing so, you can extract benefit for yourself. Or harm of course. Let's forget about God for a second, and just think about the Placebo Effect. Basically it says that whatever you believe, happens. Like, if you take a sugar pill thinking it's a cancer cure, you have a 99.99% chance of being cured (Note: figures are not to scale). Or if you jump out of an airplane and believe you have a parachute, but you really don't, then you're totally screwed. Actually...ignore that last one. OK, if you believe in Santa, your parents will give you presents addressed from him. If you believe in a wrathful and vengeful God, I will come shoot you in the head. If my physician tells me my lymph nodes are OK, I will believe her, and they'll stop spraying fountains of blood. So you see that the Placebo Effect is very powerful. And now I forget where I was going with this.
A joke my friend Pei wrote about me:
It happened as mark was in primary school...
teacher : mark, how come u r late again!!
mark: I met a lost 3 year-old kid by the railway on the way here.
teacher: come on... pls use a better story next time.
mark: I did send him home.
teacher: where is his home?
mark: ya when I asked him that, he was pointing to the railway. So I put him on the rails.
teacher: .......
(my reaction)
Mark: that's good!
Pei: when I was thinking of u, I thought, mark, he is a baby-killer... here we go...
A joke I wrote about my friend Pei:
Pei: talk dirty to me, I love it when you talk dirty to me.
Mark: mm...your apartment's so dirty, so dirty, I'm going to go clean it right now!
Pei: yea baby! you know what turns me on!
Yea...that may take some background to understand.
And one more about Pei (we're collaborating on a joke book that only the two of us will understand):
Pei is walking down the street. She sees a 5 year old kid and his mother. The kid must have been misbehaving, because the mother is beating the crap out of him, spanking him like there's no tomorrow.
Pei: ah...I wish I had a kid.
(today, in the kitchen)
Mark is peeling a clementine. Michelle walks up and puts her hand out, demanding some. Mark shoves the whole clementine in his mouth.
Michelle: Mom! Mark stole my clementine!
I tried writing some more jokes today, but in a different style. I tried posing a question and then thinking of responses from different people, with the responses caricaturing the answeree. I can't really tell if it's funny, and you'd have to know the people reasonably well to understand what I'm getting at, but it made me crack up when I wrote them:
Question: You have 24 hours to live, what do you do?
Mom: 24 hours...that's 12 movies!
Dad: 24 hours...that's eight 3-hour meditations. No, wait! Twenty-four 1-hour meditations!
Mark: 24 hours...can I at least get an extra half-hour to blog about it after?
Grandma: 24 hours...do you know what happened in Israel in only the last 3 hrs? No? Well let me describe it to you in gory detail for the next 24.
Boris: 24 hou...(snore)
Pei: 24 hours...that's enough time to try 240 new sex positions!
Manlin: 24 hours...how fast do they deliver chocolate?
Zhang Xiao Yi: 24 hours...damn, my parents are going to kill me when I tell them!
Chun: 24 hours...OK, first 5 minutes - call my Mom and Dad to tell them the news. The next 23 hours and 50 minutes - plan out the remaining 5 minutes. Aha! Not a minute gone to waste!
Tina: 24 hours...wow, life sucks.
Mario: 24 hours...that's time enough to learn 3 new Chinese words, forget 5 Russian ones, and start learning three new languages!
Igor: 24 hours...Renata! What am I doing for the next 24 hours!?
Frank: 24 hours...no problem. I have a business plan just for the occasion! It's a franchise. We're going to have 12 stores open within the first 10 hrs and we should be up to McDonald's scale by hour 24.
Serge: 24 hours...that's enough time to build a successful family, right?
Perry: 24 hours...convert as many Christians as I can to antheism. Now that's time well spent.
Lucy: 24 hours...bull. I bet I can live longer than that.
Question: What will you do when your son's begging you for a new toy he doesn't deserve?
Mom: don't give it to him, but then cry myself to sleep at night.
Dad: don't give it to him. Instead, make fun of him till he develops a serious psychological disorder.
Michelle: I have a son? That means I had sex! EWWWW!!!
Grandma: buy him every toy in the store. Oh, wait! Did you say son or grandson?
Mark: my son? Did the condom break? This is a completely unrealistic situation! Fine, I'd probably go get a DNA test then, see if he's really my son. There's no toy in existence that a son of mine wouldn't deserve. Ah, he's already so much like his father.
Chun: tell him he can have the toy in installments. Get him planning his life early on!
Mario: how old is he? 5? Trade him in for five 1-year-olds. No! Half of a ten-year-old!
Pei: give it to him. I love him, so why wouldn't I buy it? Wait, that's not how you raise children?
Zhang Xiao Yi: Chinese children know better than to beg for toys. I knew I shouldn't have married an American. They're inferior!
Manlin: play mind games with him. "You really want that toy? You don't not really want it? You wouldn't want not to not want to want to not have it?" Hehe.
Tina: toys? Yay! Mine mine mine mine! Phew, OK, sad now.
Igor: oh Christ. Renata!
Frank: wait, how did he get out of his cage?
Serge: buy myself a new car. And a new house. And then work harder and earn more money so I can buy the toy. Man, where does the money go!?
Perry: you know those noise-canceling headphones? What did you say? I can't hear you.
Lucy: beat the little devil half to death. Studies show it's optimal for his development.
Question: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Mom: because we're vegetarian.
Dad: it's a reincarnation of a nomadic tribesman, come on dude, ask me something harder.
Mark: I told you ten times already! Don't tell me any news unless it's good news! I've heard this all a million times. People are dying, there's war and povery, blah blah blah.
Michelle: a chicken? Where?!? I'm scared. Wait, are chickens dogs or insects?
Grandma: a chicken? Do you know that ten people were blown up in Israel today?
Igor: Renata, didn't we discuss this the other day? What did we decide?
Chun: aha! All part of my plan for getting into medical school! Check!
Frank: I don't know, but someone grab that chicken! The chicken/turkey exchange rate is climbing faster than my blood pressure!
Paul: hahaha! Someone saw a chicken! That's so crazy, man, that's so crazy!
Mario: I don't know, but I trust it. I'm getting outta here.
Pei: chicken? Who cares about chickens? Ask me about fish.
Tina: crap, I had this at my Google interview...and I remember getting it right...what was it!?...ugh!
Manlin: mmffhhahmm...sorry, was eating chocolate. Umm... (pause) did you get that? My MSN died. No? I said "maybe there's better Internet connection over there?"
Serge: a chicken crossed my road!? Where is it? Give me that chicken, we have some words to say to each other if you know what I mean. Quickly, before I forgive it!
Perry: don't even get me started. And no, chickens were not created by Jesus, they were created by a little thing called evolution, heard of it?
Lucy: did you know that chicken blood is green? I swear. It's true. Fine, look it up nay-sayer. It's not true? No way!
Friday, January 16, 2009
Where are my pants?
For writing hour today, I was too lazy to come up with my own ideas, so I went online and looked around for possible first sentences. I found "Where are my pants?" and decided to go with it. How can one pass up such an opportunity? Here's what I have so far. I'd say it's about a 1/4 of a story, and I haven't really gotten to the main idea (which is not grounded in reality of course), so you can think of your own plots for now:
Where are my pants? I know I put them on this morning. I know for sure because I remember suspending them between two chairs and then trying to jump into them, and ending up putting them on the old-fashioned way. I've been trying to learn that trick for the last five days, but I've allotted a month so it's OK. My only fear is that we'll run out of chairs; I've already broken two, and nearly killed myself both times. But that's not important right now. What's important is that I'm sitting on the bus, and I don't have my pants on. This better be a dream. Maybe I should slap myself.
OK, this doesn't seem to be a dream. I now have two very rosy handprints on my cheeks and still no pants on and I'm starting to panic. At least no one's sitting next to me; maybe if I figure things out before we get to school, no one will have to know this ever happened. I duck and look under the seat. Nothing. I duck even lower, with my face practically touching the floor, and look down the row of seats, first towards the front, then towards the back. Still nothing. "Where could they have gone!? Where could they have gone!?" I yell frantically inside my head with poor enunciation.
Lily Thorns leans over from the seat behind me. I quickly get up on my knees on the seat, shove my backpack in front of me and meet her halfway. I'm praying that everything's hidden.
That's when I notice I'm wearing tighty-whities. I blush immediately. I haven't worn tighty-whities since elementary school. It's just a hazard. You might as well send out invitations to all the school bullies. "Hi, I could really use a good thrashing today. Should I wear tighty-whities, or will you cut me some slack and beat me up even if wear boxers?"
"Something wrong?" Lily Thorns asks. She's a pretty girl, nice too, and she doesn't really deserve quite that caliber of a name. "Thorns." Last names like that should be reserved for hot "Ms. Popularity of Jordan High" contestants. Maybe someone with a unisex first name. Like Jessie. Or Addison. Someone hot and cold, if you know what I mean.
"Uhh...no," I stammer unconvincingly. How long have I kept her waiting?
"I heard you shuffling around, I thought you might have lost something."
"Oh! Ha! No...," I say in my best impression of a million awkward movie scenes.
"I mean, I did, but now I got it."
"What was it?" Lily wonders innocently.
"Mmmmy...My homework. For English. I thought I forgot it at home, but nope. Got it. Here it is." I pat my backpack.
Lily smiles and sits back down. I notice that I've been existing on one breath for a while now and draw in another, walking a thin line between choking and sounding like an asthmatic swallowing a cat. I don't want to draw more attention.
I sit back down and look out the window. The bus is waiting at the entrance to the school; it's a left turn. Prayer isn't getting me anywhere today, but I make a quick one for heavy incoming traffic. Nope. The bus pulls in. There are about thirty seconds left before I have to get out. Not having too many options, I spend all thirty worrying.
Everyone gets up from their seats and starts piling out. It's eighth grade, so it's in that transitional period between the elementary school stampede and the lazy off-beat herd of high school students. Lily Thorns is now standing next to me. I'm holding my backpack across my lap, but my two spaghetti legs are still showing from mid-thigh down.
"Coming?" Lily asks. She still seems oblivious to my situation. I don't really have a choice.
"Yea." I get up. The stink of fear is in my nostrils, but only there; I'm a big fan of deodorant. I start wondering where the smell could possibly have come from. I cruelly hope for a second that it's Lily. That would take away some of the attention I'm about to receive. No, Lily smells strongly of that peach perfume that middle school girls abuse so tastelessly these days. Sickly artificial peach, probably with lots of Blue 9 and Red 11.
Something's wrong. I've been up for five seconds now, and there haven't been any tears of joy, not one elated scream from in front or behind. I look around and spy exactly zero pointing fingers and laughing double-chinned Jakes or Billies. Bullies are always named Jake or Billy. Or Brian. And sometimes Tom. Why doesn't anyone notice?
The bus is slowly decongesting. Lily pulls away, and I follow her, still holding my backpack in front of me like an oversized groin protector. I can't help but look everyone in the eye, when it's physically possible. I get weird like that when I'm embarrassed. I'm gauging their reactions, but so far, no one has noticed a thing. I nod and thank the bus driver as I too go down the steps and off, and receive the same lazy "Have a nice day" that I'm used to. Not a hint of surprise or disbelief. Strange...
I'm slowly getting a little braver with all of this consistent failure to cause a ruckus. I'm walking towards the front entrance, and now I'm really in good position for being spotted, but still nothing.
"Hey! Jack!"
My heart goes from 60 to 120 in about half a second, putting the fastest vehicles of our modern age to shame. I look over to where the sound originated from. It's my friend Vinny, he's walking towards me.
"Sup," he says, pulling up to walk next to me.
"Sup," I say, incredulous.
"You alright? You look dazed."
"Dazed?" I echo. "Nothing else stands out?"
Vinny takes a step back like a cameraman to take in my entire frame.
"Uhh...did you get a haircut or something?"
"Yep," I say, even though I hadn't.
"Weird. Looks exactly the same."
"Huh. I must have forgotten to tell the barber to make it look different."
Where are my pants? I know I put them on this morning. I know for sure because I remember suspending them between two chairs and then trying to jump into them, and ending up putting them on the old-fashioned way. I've been trying to learn that trick for the last five days, but I've allotted a month so it's OK. My only fear is that we'll run out of chairs; I've already broken two, and nearly killed myself both times. But that's not important right now. What's important is that I'm sitting on the bus, and I don't have my pants on. This better be a dream. Maybe I should slap myself.
OK, this doesn't seem to be a dream. I now have two very rosy handprints on my cheeks and still no pants on and I'm starting to panic. At least no one's sitting next to me; maybe if I figure things out before we get to school, no one will have to know this ever happened. I duck and look under the seat. Nothing. I duck even lower, with my face practically touching the floor, and look down the row of seats, first towards the front, then towards the back. Still nothing. "Where could they have gone!? Where could they have gone!?" I yell frantically inside my head with poor enunciation.
Lily Thorns leans over from the seat behind me. I quickly get up on my knees on the seat, shove my backpack in front of me and meet her halfway. I'm praying that everything's hidden.
That's when I notice I'm wearing tighty-whities. I blush immediately. I haven't worn tighty-whities since elementary school. It's just a hazard. You might as well send out invitations to all the school bullies. "Hi, I could really use a good thrashing today. Should I wear tighty-whities, or will you cut me some slack and beat me up even if wear boxers?"
"Something wrong?" Lily Thorns asks. She's a pretty girl, nice too, and she doesn't really deserve quite that caliber of a name. "Thorns." Last names like that should be reserved for hot "Ms. Popularity of Jordan High" contestants. Maybe someone with a unisex first name. Like Jessie. Or Addison. Someone hot and cold, if you know what I mean.
"Uhh...no," I stammer unconvincingly. How long have I kept her waiting?
"I heard you shuffling around, I thought you might have lost something."
"Oh! Ha! No...," I say in my best impression of a million awkward movie scenes.
"I mean, I did, but now I got it."
"What was it?" Lily wonders innocently.
"Mmmmy...My homework. For English. I thought I forgot it at home, but nope. Got it. Here it is." I pat my backpack.
Lily smiles and sits back down. I notice that I've been existing on one breath for a while now and draw in another, walking a thin line between choking and sounding like an asthmatic swallowing a cat. I don't want to draw more attention.
I sit back down and look out the window. The bus is waiting at the entrance to the school; it's a left turn. Prayer isn't getting me anywhere today, but I make a quick one for heavy incoming traffic. Nope. The bus pulls in. There are about thirty seconds left before I have to get out. Not having too many options, I spend all thirty worrying.
Everyone gets up from their seats and starts piling out. It's eighth grade, so it's in that transitional period between the elementary school stampede and the lazy off-beat herd of high school students. Lily Thorns is now standing next to me. I'm holding my backpack across my lap, but my two spaghetti legs are still showing from mid-thigh down.
"Coming?" Lily asks. She still seems oblivious to my situation. I don't really have a choice.
"Yea." I get up. The stink of fear is in my nostrils, but only there; I'm a big fan of deodorant. I start wondering where the smell could possibly have come from. I cruelly hope for a second that it's Lily. That would take away some of the attention I'm about to receive. No, Lily smells strongly of that peach perfume that middle school girls abuse so tastelessly these days. Sickly artificial peach, probably with lots of Blue 9 and Red 11.
Something's wrong. I've been up for five seconds now, and there haven't been any tears of joy, not one elated scream from in front or behind. I look around and spy exactly zero pointing fingers and laughing double-chinned Jakes or Billies. Bullies are always named Jake or Billy. Or Brian. And sometimes Tom. Why doesn't anyone notice?
The bus is slowly decongesting. Lily pulls away, and I follow her, still holding my backpack in front of me like an oversized groin protector. I can't help but look everyone in the eye, when it's physically possible. I get weird like that when I'm embarrassed. I'm gauging their reactions, but so far, no one has noticed a thing. I nod and thank the bus driver as I too go down the steps and off, and receive the same lazy "Have a nice day" that I'm used to. Not a hint of surprise or disbelief. Strange...
I'm slowly getting a little braver with all of this consistent failure to cause a ruckus. I'm walking towards the front entrance, and now I'm really in good position for being spotted, but still nothing.
"Hey! Jack!"
My heart goes from 60 to 120 in about half a second, putting the fastest vehicles of our modern age to shame. I look over to where the sound originated from. It's my friend Vinny, he's walking towards me.
"Sup," he says, pulling up to walk next to me.
"Sup," I say, incredulous.
"You alright? You look dazed."
"Dazed?" I echo. "Nothing else stands out?"
Vinny takes a step back like a cameraman to take in my entire frame.
"Uhh...did you get a haircut or something?"
"Yep," I say, even though I hadn't.
"Weird. Looks exactly the same."
"Huh. I must have forgotten to tell the barber to make it look different."
Adventure Relay
Morning meditation:
I did the same meditation this morning as yesterday, so not too many details are available for retrieval from my long-term memory. I do remember having a plate of light attached to my head at some point, which was pretty cool. It was maybe 5 feet wide, looked like a small UFO, and had a boredom-canceling force field. Hmm...I'll try to remember more things tomorrow, this is crap.
Today was a day of small adventures.
First, I went to see my physician. Let me tell about this woman. She is a miracle. You come to her with your problems - flu, AIDS, an amputated leg (what haven't I had?). She invariably tells you to open your mouth and say "ahh." You do so. Then she rolls her eyes, smiles, and tells you to stop pretending, you're as healthy as a...a healthy person (isn't there some expression for this?). And curiously, as soon as she utters those magic words, you feel cured. "Wow," you think, "my leg doesn't feel amputated at all anymore! And maybe I didn't go to that Free Love party and share a needle with that girl who shared it with everyone else first. And my nose is no longer stuffed!" And then you go home and hit your head against every wall, because doing that doesn't hurt anymore either.
Anyway, last time I visited my physician was three years ago, and for the first time, she broke protocol. A few months before that, one of the lymph glands on my neck decided to upgrade its space requirements, and enjoyed the new freedom so much that it never shrunk back down. My physician fondled it and decreed that I should go try some antibiotics, and that if those didn't bring it down, I should go get a biopsy. I did the first part as she said, but the antibiotics changed nothing. Then I decided to wait three years to see what would happen.
Scroll down to today. Since my rebellious lymph node still hadn't subsided, I figured I'd go get that biopsy, but decided to give wonderwoman a chance to redeem herself. And this time she didn't let me down. As soon as I stepped foot in her office, my lymph node became a figment of an overactive imagination, and disappeared. I got sent home immediately, with orders not to be an idiot and get biopsies for imaginary swellings. See? Good things come to those who wait. Either that or metastasis. Can't remember.
On the way back, I stopped at ShopRite to get some groceries. ...Eh, never mind. Short version: someone stole one of the five boxes of Coco Puffs I had in my cart, before it was even my turn at the cashier's. What kind of a lame crime is that? They could have at least waited until I paid it for it.
Then blah happened for a bit...nope, a bit longer than that...
And then I visited Grandma. Oof. Grandma has an even worse opinion of my memory abilities than I do. Every time I visit her - roughly twice a week - she'll tell me one new thing, and also every single thing she told me the week before. Her stories have no expiration date. Today she was feeling especially energetic, so I got to hear about everything I already know at least twice. She wouldn't stop talking even when I made the usual getting-ready-to-leave motions - stand up, put on my coat, get in the car and drive away. I paused for a couple of minutes between each two steps, but she kept on chattering from her rocking chair without so much as taking a breath. I'm pretty sure she knows circular breathing. Anyway, I guess she wasn't completely oblivious; she did increase her volume as I drove farther and farther away from her apartment.
Actually, now I remember that Boris managed to distract her for a moment a couple of times. The whole time I was making my escape, he was trying to nap on the couch while Grandma ran on. And then, when he finally succeeded and emitted a victorious snore, Grandma turned to him like usual and yelled "Boris! Go to your room and sleep!" Boris, taking this in stride, completely ignored her. Five minutes later, I heard his voice coming in to intercept one of Grandma's sentences. It was a "why?" or a "what?" or something...no, definitely a "what?" because Grandma instantly pounced on it with "What what!? Shut up and sleep!" Ah, gotta love mixed signals.
Gene: when I had scarlet fever as a kid, it was still considered a dangerous disease, so I was allowed to do ANYTHING I wanted. It was awesome.
Mark: cause they thought you might die?
Gene: yep. Though of course I had to stay in bed all day. And not move. And sleep 24/7. And I wasn't allowed to have any ice cream.
Mark: wow. Good thing I'm not allowed to do anything I want.
I did the same meditation this morning as yesterday, so not too many details are available for retrieval from my long-term memory. I do remember having a plate of light attached to my head at some point, which was pretty cool. It was maybe 5 feet wide, looked like a small UFO, and had a boredom-canceling force field. Hmm...I'll try to remember more things tomorrow, this is crap.
Today was a day of small adventures.
First, I went to see my physician. Let me tell about this woman. She is a miracle. You come to her with your problems - flu, AIDS, an amputated leg (what haven't I had?). She invariably tells you to open your mouth and say "ahh." You do so. Then she rolls her eyes, smiles, and tells you to stop pretending, you're as healthy as a...a healthy person (isn't there some expression for this?). And curiously, as soon as she utters those magic words, you feel cured. "Wow," you think, "my leg doesn't feel amputated at all anymore! And maybe I didn't go to that Free Love party and share a needle with that girl who shared it with everyone else first. And my nose is no longer stuffed!" And then you go home and hit your head against every wall, because doing that doesn't hurt anymore either.
Anyway, last time I visited my physician was three years ago, and for the first time, she broke protocol. A few months before that, one of the lymph glands on my neck decided to upgrade its space requirements, and enjoyed the new freedom so much that it never shrunk back down. My physician fondled it and decreed that I should go try some antibiotics, and that if those didn't bring it down, I should go get a biopsy. I did the first part as she said, but the antibiotics changed nothing. Then I decided to wait three years to see what would happen.
Scroll down to today. Since my rebellious lymph node still hadn't subsided, I figured I'd go get that biopsy, but decided to give wonderwoman a chance to redeem herself. And this time she didn't let me down. As soon as I stepped foot in her office, my lymph node became a figment of an overactive imagination, and disappeared. I got sent home immediately, with orders not to be an idiot and get biopsies for imaginary swellings. See? Good things come to those who wait. Either that or metastasis. Can't remember.
On the way back, I stopped at ShopRite to get some groceries. ...Eh, never mind. Short version: someone stole one of the five boxes of Coco Puffs I had in my cart, before it was even my turn at the cashier's. What kind of a lame crime is that? They could have at least waited until I paid it for it.
Then blah happened for a bit...nope, a bit longer than that...
And then I visited Grandma. Oof. Grandma has an even worse opinion of my memory abilities than I do. Every time I visit her - roughly twice a week - she'll tell me one new thing, and also every single thing she told me the week before. Her stories have no expiration date. Today she was feeling especially energetic, so I got to hear about everything I already know at least twice. She wouldn't stop talking even when I made the usual getting-ready-to-leave motions - stand up, put on my coat, get in the car and drive away. I paused for a couple of minutes between each two steps, but she kept on chattering from her rocking chair without so much as taking a breath. I'm pretty sure she knows circular breathing. Anyway, I guess she wasn't completely oblivious; she did increase her volume as I drove farther and farther away from her apartment.
Actually, now I remember that Boris managed to distract her for a moment a couple of times. The whole time I was making my escape, he was trying to nap on the couch while Grandma ran on. And then, when he finally succeeded and emitted a victorious snore, Grandma turned to him like usual and yelled "Boris! Go to your room and sleep!" Boris, taking this in stride, completely ignored her. Five minutes later, I heard his voice coming in to intercept one of Grandma's sentences. It was a "why?" or a "what?" or something...no, definitely a "what?" because Grandma instantly pounced on it with "What what!? Shut up and sleep!" Ah, gotta love mixed signals.
Gene: when I had scarlet fever as a kid, it was still considered a dangerous disease, so I was allowed to do ANYTHING I wanted. It was awesome.
Mark: cause they thought you might die?
Gene: yep. Though of course I had to stay in bed all day. And not move. And sleep 24/7. And I wasn't allowed to have any ice cream.
Mark: wow. Good thing I'm not allowed to do anything I want.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Writing Jokes, Another Path I'm Not In Danger Of Pursuing
Morning meditation:
Today I tried a different meditation. I read some of Adyashanti's book and he suggests a different technique from what I've been trying. He of course calls it True Meditation in order to put a nice rosy blush of inferiority on the cheeks of other practitioners.
The idea is simple: you relinquish control to the highest degree possible. Meditation is traditionally about quieting the mind, getting a grip on yourself, meditating for longer than the person next you to show them how incredibly elite you are, etc. Adyashanti suggests to go in the opposite direction: don't control your mind at all, just let go. At the same time, don't let yourself get sucked in by any thoughts. This tastes a bit like mindfulness/awareness meditation, but even more subtle. So subtle, that having developed a healthy admiration for the idea, I have absolutely no clue how to put it in action. How does one watch the mind without either getting sucked into the one thought or saying "shoo, you bugger!" to another? I mean other than by being Adyashanti. Hmm. Well, I tried it anyway.
An unfortunate aspect of this type of meditation is that I have not a single recollection of the experience. No memory other than that it happened. I might as well have played Heroes of Might and Magic (another experience which leaves no traces in long term memory).
I spent writing hour today trying to write some jokes. Oof. I'm never claiming to have a good sense of humor again. Here's a sample, be merciful:
Mario (the Texas variety) picks up his drinking cup, and looks inside.
"Hmm...old coffee, spoiled milk, crusty oatmeal, three flies, four pieces of gum, twelve cigarette butts...disgusting!"
(pours himself some juice)
"Another month and I'll have to clean it."
Buddha's sitting under the bodhi tree, meditating. A man approaches him. Buddha takes out his laser gun and melts the man into a puddle. "What an impertinent little #$%@," he says blissfully.
Buddha's sitting under the bodhi tree, meditating. A man approaches him and says:
"Buddha, I have a problem, I'm very impatient. I can barely stand a two minute meditation. Will you help me?"
Buddha: "I will help you."
Buddha takes out his laser gun and shoots the man in the head, the man reincarnates as a baobab tree.
Another man comes and says:
"Buddha, I have a problem, I can't get rid of my sexual thoughts. Even that tree arouses me. Will you help me?"
Buddha: "I will help you."
Buddha takes out his laser gun and shoots the man in the head, the man reincarnates in a eunuch colony.
A third man comes and sits down next to Buddha.
"Buddha, what are these bodies doing here?"
Buddha: "you ask too many questions. I will help you."
Takes out his laser gun and shoots the man in the head.
Hmm...I think those last two might only be funny to me.
Paris Hilton decides to become a nun. At the entrance exam, Mother Superior asks her: "child, you know this means no more fornication?"
Paris: even on weekends??
Mother Superior: don't be ridiculous! What would there be to confess on Sundays!?
The others were unfortunately even worse, or unprintable.
Today I tried a different meditation. I read some of Adyashanti's book and he suggests a different technique from what I've been trying. He of course calls it True Meditation in order to put a nice rosy blush of inferiority on the cheeks of other practitioners.
The idea is simple: you relinquish control to the highest degree possible. Meditation is traditionally about quieting the mind, getting a grip on yourself, meditating for longer than the person next you to show them how incredibly elite you are, etc. Adyashanti suggests to go in the opposite direction: don't control your mind at all, just let go. At the same time, don't let yourself get sucked in by any thoughts. This tastes a bit like mindfulness/awareness meditation, but even more subtle. So subtle, that having developed a healthy admiration for the idea, I have absolutely no clue how to put it in action. How does one watch the mind without either getting sucked into the one thought or saying "shoo, you bugger!" to another? I mean other than by being Adyashanti. Hmm. Well, I tried it anyway.
An unfortunate aspect of this type of meditation is that I have not a single recollection of the experience. No memory other than that it happened. I might as well have played Heroes of Might and Magic (another experience which leaves no traces in long term memory).
I spent writing hour today trying to write some jokes. Oof. I'm never claiming to have a good sense of humor again. Here's a sample, be merciful:
Mario (the Texas variety) picks up his drinking cup, and looks inside.
"Hmm...old coffee, spoiled milk, crusty oatmeal, three flies, four pieces of gum, twelve cigarette butts...disgusting!"
(pours himself some juice)
"Another month and I'll have to clean it."
Buddha's sitting under the bodhi tree, meditating. A man approaches him. Buddha takes out his laser gun and melts the man into a puddle. "What an impertinent little #$%@," he says blissfully.
Buddha's sitting under the bodhi tree, meditating. A man approaches him and says:
"Buddha, I have a problem, I'm very impatient. I can barely stand a two minute meditation. Will you help me?"
Buddha: "I will help you."
Buddha takes out his laser gun and shoots the man in the head, the man reincarnates as a baobab tree.
Another man comes and says:
"Buddha, I have a problem, I can't get rid of my sexual thoughts. Even that tree arouses me. Will you help me?"
Buddha: "I will help you."
Buddha takes out his laser gun and shoots the man in the head, the man reincarnates in a eunuch colony.
A third man comes and sits down next to Buddha.
"Buddha, what are these bodies doing here?"
Buddha: "you ask too many questions. I will help you."
Takes out his laser gun and shoots the man in the head.
Hmm...I think those last two might only be funny to me.
Paris Hilton decides to become a nun. At the entrance exam, Mother Superior asks her: "child, you know this means no more fornication?"
Paris: even on weekends??
Mother Superior: don't be ridiculous! What would there be to confess on Sundays!?
The others were unfortunately even worse, or unprintable.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Administer to Combat Excessive Happiness
Morning meditation:
I meditated in Michelle's room this morning instead of downstairs. There were three of us: Ellen, me, and Michelle's boombox. The last of the three, though set to CD mode and on Stop, insisted on being a distraction. Every now and then, it would go into vocal fry with random Morse-code-like rhythms, like when you're searching for a radio station. Being a patient and peaceful meditator, I could only curse the gods (mildly, because of the 30-day no cursing trial) and make silent promises to throw the thing in the nearest river after the hour was up. Getting up and turning it off would be admitting weakness, something 30-day trial meditators never do.
After my arsenal of euphemistic insults ran dry, I decided that since in today's meditation I was practicing mindfulness - being aware of the state of my body and mind - that maybe the boombox was trying to help me. A couple of times I would slip into some thoughtstream that I only planned to be aware of but not take part in, and then the boombox's interruption was welcome. A few times I even thought it was being more than naturally prescient. But towards the end of the hour, the novelty wore off. Instead of "be mindful" warnings, the thing got chattery, more like "pay attention to me, pay attention to me!"
Being mindful is easier if there's a specific thing to be mindful of. Just waiting and being mindful is for the gurus. So I tried to monitor my breathing. The inner dialogue went something like this:
"In...out...in...out...in...wow, I could really use a piece of chocolate right now. Mmm, yea...oh yea, out...(cough)...held that one in too long, in...out...has it been an hour yet? No...mustn't check yet, it'll just be embarassing how much time actually went by...OK, surrender my boredom to Buddha...no, first gotta generate some reverence. I'm reverent, I'm reverent, I'm reverent, OK, I'm reverent enough, what was I surrendering? Wait, shouldn't I be monitoring my breathing? OK, here we go again, in...out...in...out..."
And so on. Funny how the mind is jumpy, and how easily it gets bored when it can't jump around.
Weird distracting sentence that flew by at one point:
"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Ms. Odessa has one torn ear."
For writing hour, I wrote a morbid little amateurish poem to help put myself in a morbid mood later on, if I ever need help.
Schizophrenia
Recently I've split into two
One of me's addicted to you
One of me begs to let go
The other can't stand the word no
Ceaselessly they fight for control
One incites, the other consoles
Each demands the seat at the wheel
Neither wants to cease to be real
<1>:
Why are you so keen to forget?
There's still sweeter deeper regret
Pain must be explored to the end
Hide it and it might never mend
Spill bitter tears and enjoy
Doesn't it feel good to destroy?
Blame yourself blame her blame the world
Envy every boy with a girl
<--1>
<2>:
You wake up a quarter to three
Take the reins start pitying me
I hide out until you are done
Take my tired body and run
Sit and clear my mind of all pain
Beg the gods to turn down the gain
Find some peace, dissolve your attack
Quit halfway, I'm gone and you're back
<--2>
<1>:
Me me me, me me me me
I am here, you'll never be free
Go ahead and think you've been cured
You are weak, I can endure
I'll be in each song in each book
Dancing in the words in the looks
You'll run out of things that distract
And when you're alone I'll be back
<--1>
<2>:
Trick myself, donate some time
See a film, find words that rhyme
Tell myself I'm doing fine
Keep busy, stifle my mind
Talk to her, borrow her smile
Feel OK, rest for a while
Slowly heal, slowly make peace
Feel your grip slightly release
<--2>
This is not a battle; a game
These two are cruel, but they're lame
Both are fake, they shrink in the light
Weak, they gum but can't bite
Pity, fear, you cowardly beasts
For months now I suckle your teets
Time's up, I'll show you the door
Love her still, possess her no more
Oof, hope I don't reread that one soon.
I meditated in Michelle's room this morning instead of downstairs. There were three of us: Ellen, me, and Michelle's boombox. The last of the three, though set to CD mode and on Stop, insisted on being a distraction. Every now and then, it would go into vocal fry with random Morse-code-like rhythms, like when you're searching for a radio station. Being a patient and peaceful meditator, I could only curse the gods (mildly, because of the 30-day no cursing trial) and make silent promises to throw the thing in the nearest river after the hour was up. Getting up and turning it off would be admitting weakness, something 30-day trial meditators never do.
After my arsenal of euphemistic insults ran dry, I decided that since in today's meditation I was practicing mindfulness - being aware of the state of my body and mind - that maybe the boombox was trying to help me. A couple of times I would slip into some thoughtstream that I only planned to be aware of but not take part in, and then the boombox's interruption was welcome. A few times I even thought it was being more than naturally prescient. But towards the end of the hour, the novelty wore off. Instead of "be mindful" warnings, the thing got chattery, more like "pay attention to me, pay attention to me!"
Being mindful is easier if there's a specific thing to be mindful of. Just waiting and being mindful is for the gurus. So I tried to monitor my breathing. The inner dialogue went something like this:
"In...out...in...out...in...wow, I could really use a piece of chocolate right now. Mmm, yea...oh yea, out...(cough)...held that one in too long, in...out...has it been an hour yet? No...mustn't check yet, it'll just be embarassing how much time actually went by...OK, surrender my boredom to Buddha...no, first gotta generate some reverence. I'm reverent, I'm reverent, I'm reverent, OK, I'm reverent enough, what was I surrendering? Wait, shouldn't I be monitoring my breathing? OK, here we go again, in...out...in...out..."
And so on. Funny how the mind is jumpy, and how easily it gets bored when it can't jump around.
Weird distracting sentence that flew by at one point:
"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Ms. Odessa has one torn ear."
For writing hour, I wrote a morbid little amateurish poem to help put myself in a morbid mood later on, if I ever need help.
Schizophrenia
Recently I've split into two
One of me's addicted to you
One of me begs to let go
The other can't stand the word no
Ceaselessly they fight for control
One incites, the other consoles
Each demands the seat at the wheel
Neither wants to cease to be real
<1>:
Why are you so keen to forget?
There's still sweeter deeper regret
Pain must be explored to the end
Hide it and it might never mend
Spill bitter tears and enjoy
Doesn't it feel good to destroy?
Blame yourself blame her blame the world
Envy every boy with a girl
<--1>
<2>:
You wake up a quarter to three
Take the reins start pitying me
I hide out until you are done
Take my tired body and run
Sit and clear my mind of all pain
Beg the gods to turn down the gain
Find some peace, dissolve your attack
Quit halfway, I'm gone and you're back
<--2>
<1>:
Me me me, me me me me
I am here, you'll never be free
Go ahead and think you've been cured
You are weak, I can endure
I'll be in each song in each book
Dancing in the words in the looks
You'll run out of things that distract
And when you're alone I'll be back
<--1>
<2>:
Trick myself, donate some time
See a film, find words that rhyme
Tell myself I'm doing fine
Keep busy, stifle my mind
Talk to her, borrow her smile
Feel OK, rest for a while
Slowly heal, slowly make peace
Feel your grip slightly release
<--2>
This is not a battle; a game
These two are cruel, but they're lame
Both are fake, they shrink in the light
Weak, they gum but can't bite
Pity, fear, you cowardly beasts
For months now I suckle your teets
Time's up, I'll show you the door
Love her still, possess her no more
Oof, hope I don't reread that one soon.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Day 1 of Many
Day 1 Morning Meditation:
Day 1 is always interesting, unless it's day 1 of being in a coma. At 7:30AM I was wide-awake, though my alarm was set for 8:45AM. I decided to wait for it to ring, and got another hour of fitful sleep in exchange for the return of drowsiness. I washed up and went downstairs. There, Gene was already running around with an incense stick, muttering like a monk in a movie. Ellen was tucked in under eight blankets on the couch, with a blissfully sleepy expression. We got down to business.
Note: I've meditated before, for an hour at the longest, but never regularly. Nevertheless, I've already tried the exercises/techniques described.
An important idea that I've read about concerning meditating is to avoid judgment calls. Saying things like "this meditation sucked," or "this meditation rocked," or "it was soooo hard," or "that was much easier than usual" works against you. Instead, you describe it factually and without a rating/review. Something like "I meditated." So here's how it went:
Lots of thoughts. Perhaps a total of 15 minutes of the hour was spent in conscious meditation. The rest divided up between several modes of thinking. But first about the 15:
I spent part of the time being humble and reverent to a higher power. Today it was Buddha because he's one of the milder Gods. In reverence, I tried to surrender various parts of myself to his omnivorous diet. Lust, possessiveness, laziness, inertia, pessimism, attachment, self-love, self-doubt, self-image, etc. each with its own personal array of associations. Depending on the level of suffering each one associated with, the difference in feeling after I offered it up to Buddha for chomping was more or less tangible. It's an interesting exercise, especially because it is its own remedy for disbelief. Disbelief emerged every once in a while, and when I caught it early, I tried to surrender it. Sometimes though I fell into disbelief and lounged there for a while. Disbelief sure has some quality couches for lounging.
I also spent some time trying to simply be conscious. Simply in the sense of simply-free-your-mind-Neo-and-jump-off-the-building. I watched my thoughts from a distance, only getting possessed by one every two or three seconds, and for no longer than 5 minutes at a time. I also tried to monitor my breathing. When I count breaths, I get distracted by thoughts a lot less, but I feel like that's cheating. When I don't, I end up remembering 5 minutes later that I haven't been monitoring for the last 5 minutes.
And now the distractions:
1. Narrating - my inner writer literally describes everything in complete sentences out loud in my head. He's pretty much writing a blog entry about the meditation, during the meditation.
2. Getting distracted by swarming thoughts - I may be saying in my meditation: "and now, dearest Buddha, I surrender my love for couch-warming," and suddenly I'll be daydreaming about warming couches somewhere in sunny Northern NJ. I'll wake up from the reverie eventually, but that's precisely it - eventually.
3. Thinking about what I'll write about in my writing hour - getting good ideas for writing is the strongest distraction. I start thinking the plot through, the dialogues, etc., and discipline is floating somewhere very far away, or knocking and waving at me through an opaque sound-proof window of the wrong house.
No grades. Just the facts: 2/3 days down.
We watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona yesterday. In every scene, Gene insisted on unveiling the Woody Allen in every character. Scarlett Johansson would whine about something pseudo-intellectualy sexual and Gene would yell: "That's Woody Allen!" then reach into my computer screen and rip off her mask. People would be sexually frustrated and unhappy and Gene would yell "They're Woody Allens!" and they would instantly all drop pretenses and put on an additional 60 years of whining experience. It was a mess. I don't think I heard a single word said in the movie for all of the yelling and flying masks and pretenses.
More compliments in my direction arrived yesterday:
Madelyn: yeah, you just found i was funny
Madelyn: your good at noticing obvious stuff
Day 1 is always interesting, unless it's day 1 of being in a coma. At 7:30AM I was wide-awake, though my alarm was set for 8:45AM. I decided to wait for it to ring, and got another hour of fitful sleep in exchange for the return of drowsiness. I washed up and went downstairs. There, Gene was already running around with an incense stick, muttering like a monk in a movie. Ellen was tucked in under eight blankets on the couch, with a blissfully sleepy expression. We got down to business.
Note: I've meditated before, for an hour at the longest, but never regularly. Nevertheless, I've already tried the exercises/techniques described.
An important idea that I've read about concerning meditating is to avoid judgment calls. Saying things like "this meditation sucked," or "this meditation rocked," or "it was soooo hard," or "that was much easier than usual" works against you. Instead, you describe it factually and without a rating/review. Something like "I meditated." So here's how it went:
Lots of thoughts. Perhaps a total of 15 minutes of the hour was spent in conscious meditation. The rest divided up between several modes of thinking. But first about the 15:
I spent part of the time being humble and reverent to a higher power. Today it was Buddha because he's one of the milder Gods. In reverence, I tried to surrender various parts of myself to his omnivorous diet. Lust, possessiveness, laziness, inertia, pessimism, attachment, self-love, self-doubt, self-image, etc. each with its own personal array of associations. Depending on the level of suffering each one associated with, the difference in feeling after I offered it up to Buddha for chomping was more or less tangible. It's an interesting exercise, especially because it is its own remedy for disbelief. Disbelief emerged every once in a while, and when I caught it early, I tried to surrender it. Sometimes though I fell into disbelief and lounged there for a while. Disbelief sure has some quality couches for lounging.
I also spent some time trying to simply be conscious. Simply in the sense of simply-free-your-mind-Neo-and-jump-off-the-building. I watched my thoughts from a distance, only getting possessed by one every two or three seconds, and for no longer than 5 minutes at a time. I also tried to monitor my breathing. When I count breaths, I get distracted by thoughts a lot less, but I feel like that's cheating. When I don't, I end up remembering 5 minutes later that I haven't been monitoring for the last 5 minutes.
And now the distractions:
1. Narrating - my inner writer literally describes everything in complete sentences out loud in my head. He's pretty much writing a blog entry about the meditation, during the meditation.
2. Getting distracted by swarming thoughts - I may be saying in my meditation: "and now, dearest Buddha, I surrender my love for couch-warming," and suddenly I'll be daydreaming about warming couches somewhere in sunny Northern NJ. I'll wake up from the reverie eventually, but that's precisely it - eventually.
3. Thinking about what I'll write about in my writing hour - getting good ideas for writing is the strongest distraction. I start thinking the plot through, the dialogues, etc., and discipline is floating somewhere very far away, or knocking and waving at me through an opaque sound-proof window of the wrong house.
No grades. Just the facts: 2/3 days down.
We watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona yesterday. In every scene, Gene insisted on unveiling the Woody Allen in every character. Scarlett Johansson would whine about something pseudo-intellectualy sexual and Gene would yell: "That's Woody Allen!" then reach into my computer screen and rip off her mask. People would be sexually frustrated and unhappy and Gene would yell "They're Woody Allens!" and they would instantly all drop pretenses and put on an additional 60 years of whining experience. It was a mess. I don't think I heard a single word said in the movie for all of the yelling and flying masks and pretenses.
More compliments in my direction arrived yesterday:
Madelyn: yeah, you just found i was funny
Madelyn: your good at noticing obvious stuff
Monday, January 12, 2009
Spicing Up My Life. Quick! Where's The Water Fountain?
Today is one of those scary on-the-cusp days, sweet-taste-of-lazy-freedom before the sweet-taste-of-blood days. Tomorrow I'm starting another two 30-day trials.
The ones I'm doing currently are of course staying; there is as of yet no cancelling feature in my brain. But being on track with those lends a kind of excitement to my life, and also, they're just too easy after a couple of days. Crunches? Psh. No cursing? I'm cleaner than Sunday morning cartoons. Water was the biggest obstacle, but my method of dealing with it is working beautifully. For the first four days (I kept it a secret in case it didn't work), I'd drink water and accompany the action with appreciative moans: "Mmmm...this water...mmm...it's so good...mmm...wish I had more...no...must ration it...mmm...mmm...mmm." And now I think I've managed to convince myself, because water is actually starting to taste better! At least it doesn't taste like plastic anymore. Maybe it's just my tongue slowly being weaned off everything having sugar in it.
But onto tomorrow. Tomorrow, two new trials start, and they are both time-related.
The first is meditation. I will meditate for a total of an hour and a half every day - one hour in the morning, and half an hour in the evening. These will be done sitting with back erect (no snickering, this has been an adult blog for two days now), so as to promote the wakeful state, and will be flexible in theme. However, they will be personal growth meditations, not rated R back-of-the-eyelid movies. I will recap my experiences here, daily.
The second is writing for an hour. This can be fiction, non-fiction, editing already written stuff, putting graffiti on police cars, whatever; no constraints as to the content or form. The point is to get me writing more since I claim to like it so much. The one exception is that writing blog entries will not count as part of that hour.
Ok, so now I've pretty much taken on a part-time job. It's still only two and a half hours a day, but if I continue in this vein, I'll soon have to give up sleep. And all for free! I feel like a volunteer for the first time in my selfish life. Still completely selfish, but volunteering nonetheless.
More excitement - I've roped another friend into the 30-day trial craze. Her first idea was ridiculous - to lose 2/3 of her body weight. Being of completely normal weight, I think the only way she could fulfill the requirement and survive would be to cut off her arms and legs. Make that into a 30-day trial and you'd have to use sandpaper instead of a saw. Bleh. Instead, we agreed that she would increase the content-level of eating time. Now, every time she eats anything at all, she must turn off all other input to her brain: people talking to her, TV's fighting for her attention, her mouth that wants to talk and eat at the same time, her eyes that try to seduce every passerby, and all thoughts that fight for control of her only-human brain. Sounds like fun, I might sign up in a few days.
Other good ideas for 30-day trials that I'm either not brave enough to attempt just yet, or are on the waiting list:
1. Communicating only in languages I'm learning - Chinese, French, Spanish (no Russian or English), except in emergencies - This one is extremely exciting, I think I will try it soon.
2. Give up sleep - This may never make it to 30 days. Maybe I'll do this one as the last 30-day trial of my life.
3. Recording dreams every morning - This is cake, I should really just tag it on right now, but I'll postpone it a bit.
4. Starting a new 30-day trial every day - Brilliant.
The ones I'm doing currently are of course staying; there is as of yet no cancelling feature in my brain. But being on track with those lends a kind of excitement to my life, and also, they're just too easy after a couple of days. Crunches? Psh. No cursing? I'm cleaner than Sunday morning cartoons. Water was the biggest obstacle, but my method of dealing with it is working beautifully. For the first four days (I kept it a secret in case it didn't work), I'd drink water and accompany the action with appreciative moans: "Mmmm...this water...mmm...it's so good...mmm...wish I had more...no...must ration it...mmm...mmm...mmm." And now I think I've managed to convince myself, because water is actually starting to taste better! At least it doesn't taste like plastic anymore. Maybe it's just my tongue slowly being weaned off everything having sugar in it.
But onto tomorrow. Tomorrow, two new trials start, and they are both time-related.
The first is meditation. I will meditate for a total of an hour and a half every day - one hour in the morning, and half an hour in the evening. These will be done sitting with back erect (no snickering, this has been an adult blog for two days now), so as to promote the wakeful state, and will be flexible in theme. However, they will be personal growth meditations, not rated R back-of-the-eyelid movies. I will recap my experiences here, daily.
The second is writing for an hour. This can be fiction, non-fiction, editing already written stuff, putting graffiti on police cars, whatever; no constraints as to the content or form. The point is to get me writing more since I claim to like it so much. The one exception is that writing blog entries will not count as part of that hour.
Ok, so now I've pretty much taken on a part-time job. It's still only two and a half hours a day, but if I continue in this vein, I'll soon have to give up sleep. And all for free! I feel like a volunteer for the first time in my selfish life. Still completely selfish, but volunteering nonetheless.
More excitement - I've roped another friend into the 30-day trial craze. Her first idea was ridiculous - to lose 2/3 of her body weight. Being of completely normal weight, I think the only way she could fulfill the requirement and survive would be to cut off her arms and legs. Make that into a 30-day trial and you'd have to use sandpaper instead of a saw. Bleh. Instead, we agreed that she would increase the content-level of eating time. Now, every time she eats anything at all, she must turn off all other input to her brain: people talking to her, TV's fighting for her attention, her mouth that wants to talk and eat at the same time, her eyes that try to seduce every passerby, and all thoughts that fight for control of her only-human brain. Sounds like fun, I might sign up in a few days.
Other good ideas for 30-day trials that I'm either not brave enough to attempt just yet, or are on the waiting list:
1. Communicating only in languages I'm learning - Chinese, French, Spanish (no Russian or English), except in emergencies - This one is extremely exciting, I think I will try it soon.
2. Give up sleep - This may never make it to 30 days. Maybe I'll do this one as the last 30-day trial of my life.
3. Recording dreams every morning - This is cake, I should really just tag it on right now, but I'll postpone it a bit.
4. Starting a new 30-day trial every day - Brilliant.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Enable Adult Content? What A Terrifying Thought
In order to get this French movie I wanted, I had to download a piece of software called Graboid. It's pretty worthless, much like the short-lived Veoh player, but I've managed to squeeze some drama out of it. When I went to Preferences to see where it was putting the downloaded file, I saw a checkbox that said "Enable Adult Content." It was unchecked. I've been staring at it for two hours now with a consistent 120-bpm heartbeat. Is it just talking about the movie I'm downloading? Or is it talking about my life? Do I dare click it? How do I know I'll be able to unclick it if I find out that I'm actually an immature kid inside? Am I really that sheltered? Eh...I don't know, I'm pretty sure it's just for movies. ...But I wonder if it enables it for any movie... then this software wouldn't be as useless as it so wholeheartedly pretends to be. Then maybe I could even be pursuaded to watch The Visitor again. Deep breath. Click.
The 30-day trials are moving along nicely. Crunches are probably the easiest part of the deal, as they take up very finite periods of time to complete. Drinking water is the hardest, especially when your newfound friend in France has a fridge full of Cokes and is willing to email you one duty-free. Not cursing is not too much of a challenge, being as I don't talk to myself outloud, and I spend most of the day alone. Nevertheless, every now and then I fail, though I usually catch myself in the middle of the first syllable.
On a happy note, someone managed to read my novel! A guy I met through Natasha, whose name I will keep to myself for fear of tainting him with my reputation, read it and gave me some comments and pointers. Very exciting. This motivates me to edit it, and perhaps add. It also reminds me that February Album Writing Month is imminent. In the translated words of Song A Day For A Year Superman, "j'ai peur!"
Tomorrow, it's back to NJ for me. I'm stopping for a couple of hours in Boston to wave my hands, and then home.
On consciousness:
Madelyn: hehe, i didnt think much before that sentence
Madelyn: well, like most
Madelyn: of mine
Mark: yea, most of everyone's
Madelyn: you're too optimistic
...
Mark: did u think before that one?
Madelyn: not really
Mark: ur consistent
The 30-day trials are moving along nicely. Crunches are probably the easiest part of the deal, as they take up very finite periods of time to complete. Drinking water is the hardest, especially when your newfound friend in France has a fridge full of Cokes and is willing to email you one duty-free. Not cursing is not too much of a challenge, being as I don't talk to myself outloud, and I spend most of the day alone. Nevertheless, every now and then I fail, though I usually catch myself in the middle of the first syllable.
On a happy note, someone managed to read my novel! A guy I met through Natasha, whose name I will keep to myself for fear of tainting him with my reputation, read it and gave me some comments and pointers. Very exciting. This motivates me to edit it, and perhaps add. It also reminds me that February Album Writing Month is imminent. In the translated words of Song A Day For A Year Superman, "j'ai peur!"
Tomorrow, it's back to NJ for me. I'm stopping for a couple of hours in Boston to wave my hands, and then home.
On consciousness:
Madelyn: hehe, i didnt think much before that sentence
Madelyn: well, like most
Madelyn: of mine
Mark: yea, most of everyone's
Madelyn: you're too optimistic
...
Mark: did u think before that one?
Madelyn: not really
Mark: ur consistent
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Movies
[Spoilers ahead for movies you'll probably never see]
Yesterday I watched The Visitor. This is one of those movies that lends an example to the idea that just because a movie is decent doesn't mean you should ever watch it or will enjoy it in any way. With my taste, lots of movies fall in this category. Some of these are dramas with a central theme of depression or hopelessness or pain, like Crash or Magnolia and especially The Hours, the last being all but unwatchable. Some of these are movies about political turbulence and/or corruption, such as The Interpreter and The Constant Gardener. (There are a couple of exceptions in this second category that manage to escape being "eh'd" by me by virtue of possessing actors I like, such as All the President's Men with Hoffman and Redford)
Then there are movies that are considered good, but you can break your head open and never figure out the reason why. These are movies like Last Orders, which is like watching grass grow, except they've tricked you and given you a looped 5 second clip, so the grass doesn't have a chance. Gosford Park is another resident in this genre. Men especially should stay away from this movie.
And then there are movies like The Visitor, which have a boring past-his-prime dude reevaluating his life with the help of some semi-unusual circumstances. Think Bill Murray in Lost in Translation or Broken Flowers and take away all of his quirkyness. Or Sideways without Thomas Church's comic relief. Throw in some semi-entertaining supporting characters, but then have the main conflict be something excruciatingly boring, in this case deportation.
Actually, I changed my mind. Not about the dull nature of the movie, it's still a pain, but concerning the theme. The Visitor is about male bonding and complications during past-mid-life rebirth. It's about an old man bonding with a young man, borrowing some youthful vigor to restart his stale life, but then floundering around in a tedious plot instead of being allowed to enjoy his newfound youth. Yuck. Give me more young Tom Cruise blockbusters, young Tom Hanks comedies, and if you want to have an old main character, use Jack Nicholson, whose circus acrobat eyebrows can drag even the most boring mess out of the mud. (Except for Prizzi's Honor, shame on you Jack)
Also yesterday, I finished a movie I'd been massaging for the last 2 weeks - Samsara. This was not because it's boring (though it is slow), but because it requires a certain mood to appreciate. Of course this is true for many movies, but I happened to be willing to wait for this one.
The movie is about a monk, born and raised in the monastery. He's a complete badass; the movie begins with him coming out of a three year three month three day three hour and three femtosecond long meditation. Seems like he's set to graduate to Buddha level 6 at least, but then he sees.......a breast. And suddenly, his whole world turns upside down; years worth of hormones set his brain and body on fire. He becomes restless, he brims with desire to experience the world, he wants to possess the forbidden fruit before renouncing it. He leaves the monastery.
Then, for a while, his life is like the average man's dream life. He finds a beautiful girl, it's mutual true love, they get married despite her being engaged to another man, and he's wholeheartedly accepted into his new community. Seven or eight years fly by and he's knee deep in worldly affairs - raising a child, earning more money, etc., and not averse to it all in the least. But then certain circumstances and certain hints about the world are brought to light, such as other people's breasts and death, and he snaps out of the reverie and reevaluates everything again. And here he experiences and manages to convey such profound pain at having to choose between the two worlds (breasts and monasteries), that I managed to identify with him to the edge of tears. Is there a better compliment for a movie than such, from a miser of emotional display?
Yesterday I watched The Visitor. This is one of those movies that lends an example to the idea that just because a movie is decent doesn't mean you should ever watch it or will enjoy it in any way. With my taste, lots of movies fall in this category. Some of these are dramas with a central theme of depression or hopelessness or pain, like Crash or Magnolia and especially The Hours, the last being all but unwatchable. Some of these are movies about political turbulence and/or corruption, such as The Interpreter and The Constant Gardener. (There are a couple of exceptions in this second category that manage to escape being "eh'd" by me by virtue of possessing actors I like, such as All the President's Men with Hoffman and Redford)
Then there are movies that are considered good, but you can break your head open and never figure out the reason why. These are movies like Last Orders, which is like watching grass grow, except they've tricked you and given you a looped 5 second clip, so the grass doesn't have a chance. Gosford Park is another resident in this genre. Men especially should stay away from this movie.
And then there are movies like The Visitor, which have a boring past-his-prime dude reevaluating his life with the help of some semi-unusual circumstances. Think Bill Murray in Lost in Translation or Broken Flowers and take away all of his quirkyness. Or Sideways without Thomas Church's comic relief. Throw in some semi-entertaining supporting characters, but then have the main conflict be something excruciatingly boring, in this case deportation.
Actually, I changed my mind. Not about the dull nature of the movie, it's still a pain, but concerning the theme. The Visitor is about male bonding and complications during past-mid-life rebirth. It's about an old man bonding with a young man, borrowing some youthful vigor to restart his stale life, but then floundering around in a tedious plot instead of being allowed to enjoy his newfound youth. Yuck. Give me more young Tom Cruise blockbusters, young Tom Hanks comedies, and if you want to have an old main character, use Jack Nicholson, whose circus acrobat eyebrows can drag even the most boring mess out of the mud. (Except for Prizzi's Honor, shame on you Jack)
Also yesterday, I finished a movie I'd been massaging for the last 2 weeks - Samsara. This was not because it's boring (though it is slow), but because it requires a certain mood to appreciate. Of course this is true for many movies, but I happened to be willing to wait for this one.
The movie is about a monk, born and raised in the monastery. He's a complete badass; the movie begins with him coming out of a three year three month three day three hour and three femtosecond long meditation. Seems like he's set to graduate to Buddha level 6 at least, but then he sees.......a breast. And suddenly, his whole world turns upside down; years worth of hormones set his brain and body on fire. He becomes restless, he brims with desire to experience the world, he wants to possess the forbidden fruit before renouncing it. He leaves the monastery.
Then, for a while, his life is like the average man's dream life. He finds a beautiful girl, it's mutual true love, they get married despite her being engaged to another man, and he's wholeheartedly accepted into his new community. Seven or eight years fly by and he's knee deep in worldly affairs - raising a child, earning more money, etc., and not averse to it all in the least. But then certain circumstances and certain hints about the world are brought to light, such as other people's breasts and death, and he snaps out of the reverie and reevaluates everything again. And here he experiences and manages to convey such profound pain at having to choose between the two worlds (breasts and monasteries), that I managed to identify with him to the edge of tears. Is there a better compliment for a movie than such, from a miser of emotional display?
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Frenching
I continued my French studies today, but from a different direction. I found a wonderful site with "French expressions they don't teach you in school." First of all, I have to acknowledge the truth value in their advertisement, I indeed knew none of the expressions. Then again just cause I didn't learn it doesn't mean they didn't teach it, in fact it probably means they taught it every day and I repressed it.
Anyway, like with every language, looking in as an outsider, everything seems funny. I'm sure French people giggle a little every time they say "it's raining cats and dogs." But from my persepective, they're a bunch of goofy little leprechauns based on their idioms.
The best way to learn these and simultaneously appreciate the humor value is to play it like a guessing game. For example, what do you think "C'est le pied!" (It's the foot!) means? When you give up, highlight the next few lines below to see the answer; it's in a white font so your peripheral vision doesn't ruin the fun.
That's great!
Apparently the French people have a very different opinion of what's great. An American might say "that's the tits!" (if he were in the right movie - specifically The Girl Next Door), and imply the same thing. The other options - "the cat's pajamas," "the bee's knees," the "the eel's ankle," "the elephant's
instep," "the snake's hip" make absolutely no sense in true American style.
"À boire ou je tue le chien!" (Bring me a drink or I kill the dog!)
Bring me a drink or I kill the dog!
Yea, that one's a little more obvious.
"Avoir les jetons" (To have the tokens)
To be scared
Go figure, French people must really love EZPass.
"Avoir le cul bordé de nouilles" (To have an ass full of noodles). Think about this one before you look, it's pretty transparent.
To be lucky
If you wake up in the morning and find noodles in your ass, you best praise the Lord they decided on noodles and not forks or refrigerators. I can't think of a situation where you'd feel luckier.
"Ça me fait une belle jambe" (That makes me a nice leg). Just think about having one nice leg and you'll understand.
A fat lot of good that does me!
Indeed, one nice leg and one ugly leg is probably even worse than two ugly ones. Especially if they differ across many parameters - hairiness, height, girth, color, shape, tatoo genre, number of toes, number of kneecaps, and leg personality traits like temperament and coquettishness. An prudish leg and a slutty leg make a dangerous pair.
And let's do an easy one to boost your self-esteem. "Ne pas avoir inventé la poudre" (Not to have invented gunpowder).
To be a little dumb
Well, I accept the compliment on behalf of the Chinese, along with the insult on behalf of the rest of the world. Good thing there's a lot of Chinese people.
Today was the second day of the 30-day trials. Success is of course at my side and seems like my friends are also doing well. Rock on. The hardest so far is drinking only water. Now, this may be cake for some people, but I haven't drank water by itself since 1964, and I was born in 1986 so this should tell you something. I usually drink ~6 cups of tea and ~3 cups of juice per day. The last two days I've been drinking 1-2 cups of water. This does not bode well; if I continue in this vein, I'll probably look like this:
After all, the average human body's around 70% water. Maybe I'll bring that statistic down to 69.99999999999999%...nah, let's save that for next month.
Let's see...what else... Ah yes, results just in. I asked Natasha today whether she would kill a puppy for a million dollars and immediately received an emphatic no and a cataract of tears spawned of well-imagined puppy murder. Doubtful, I offered her a scenario where the strangulation/throwing in river/lethal injection would be performed by a third party in faraway Kenya and all she would have to do is press a button. Suddenly, doubt and introspection were the main components of her constitution. Well, I guess everyone has their price. Except me of course. I wouldn't kill a puppy for the amount of the US National Debt (a hefty 10.6 trillion dollars) if it had previously chewed through my family tree all the way back to Charlemagne.
Anyway, like with every language, looking in as an outsider, everything seems funny. I'm sure French people giggle a little every time they say "it's raining cats and dogs." But from my persepective, they're a bunch of goofy little leprechauns based on their idioms.
The best way to learn these and simultaneously appreciate the humor value is to play it like a guessing game. For example, what do you think "C'est le pied!" (It's the foot!) means? When you give up, highlight the next few lines below to see the answer; it's in a white font so your peripheral vision doesn't ruin the fun.
That's great!
Apparently the French people have a very different opinion of what's great. An American might say "that's the tits!" (if he were in the right movie - specifically The Girl Next Door), and imply the same thing. The other options - "the cat's pajamas," "the bee's knees," the "the eel's ankle," "the elephant's
instep," "the snake's hip" make absolutely no sense in true American style.
"À boire ou je tue le chien!" (Bring me a drink or I kill the dog!)
Bring me a drink or I kill the dog!
Yea, that one's a little more obvious.
"Avoir les jetons" (To have the tokens)
To be scared
Go figure, French people must really love EZPass.
"Avoir le cul bordé de nouilles" (To have an ass full of noodles). Think about this one before you look, it's pretty transparent.
To be lucky
If you wake up in the morning and find noodles in your ass, you best praise the Lord they decided on noodles and not forks or refrigerators. I can't think of a situation where you'd feel luckier.
"Ça me fait une belle jambe" (That makes me a nice leg). Just think about having one nice leg and you'll understand.
A fat lot of good that does me!
Indeed, one nice leg and one ugly leg is probably even worse than two ugly ones. Especially if they differ across many parameters - hairiness, height, girth, color, shape, tatoo genre, number of toes, number of kneecaps, and leg personality traits like temperament and coquettishness. An prudish leg and a slutty leg make a dangerous pair.
And let's do an easy one to boost your self-esteem. "Ne pas avoir inventé la poudre" (Not to have invented gunpowder).
To be a little dumb
Well, I accept the compliment on behalf of the Chinese, along with the insult on behalf of the rest of the world. Good thing there's a lot of Chinese people.
Today was the second day of the 30-day trials. Success is of course at my side and seems like my friends are also doing well. Rock on. The hardest so far is drinking only water. Now, this may be cake for some people, but I haven't drank water by itself since 1964, and I was born in 1986 so this should tell you something. I usually drink ~6 cups of tea and ~3 cups of juice per day. The last two days I've been drinking 1-2 cups of water. This does not bode well; if I continue in this vein, I'll probably look like this:
After all, the average human body's around 70% water. Maybe I'll bring that statistic down to 69.99999999999999%...nah, let's save that for next month.
Let's see...what else... Ah yes, results just in. I asked Natasha today whether she would kill a puppy for a million dollars and immediately received an emphatic no and a cataract of tears spawned of well-imagined puppy murder. Doubtful, I offered her a scenario where the strangulation/throwing in river/lethal injection would be performed by a third party in faraway Kenya and all she would have to do is press a button. Suddenly, doubt and introspection were the main components of her constitution. Well, I guess everyone has their price. Except me of course. I wouldn't kill a puppy for the amount of the US National Debt (a hefty 10.6 trillion dollars) if it had previously chewed through my family tree all the way back to Charlemagne.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
30 Days
Yesterday I made some interesting decisions that of course resulted in interesting consequences today, according to one of the more stringent laws of the universe. The yesterday me decided to take Steve Pavlina's advice and do some interesting 30-day trials. The idea is that you commit to giving up or acquiring some habit just for 30 days. It's interesting because it's actually doable; 30 days is nothing special, and you have a much greater chance for success than when you make more dramatic commitments like "I will never eat Komodo dragon or any other kind of dragon meat for as long as I live" or my little sister's favorite: "I will stop drinking cognac in the morning." These belong in the impossible-to-sustain-so-don't-even-bother-trying category.
Naturally, I couldn't let myself suffer alone, so I dragged every person that had the misfortune of being on my buddy list into this experiment. Luckily I regularly purge my buddy list of stale friends, so I only had to bother a few. Some of them needed extra motivation, so I agreed to do their 30-day trials as well. Currently I am signed up for the following:
No drinks other than water.
No cursing in any of the 18 languages I know or the 57 I'm learning. This is not as easy as it sounds. Innocent words in one language are X-rated in another.
50 situps/crunches a day for one friend.
50 situps/crunches a day for another friend.
Being vegetarian (this is actually part of another experiment, but I might as well take credit for it)
Some of these come with clauses. For example, should I have temporary amnesia and regain consciousness to find myself holding a half-consumed non-100%-water beverage, I must call my partner in crunches "master" for an entire day, and vice versa should she do 0-49 situps/crunches instead of the requisite 50. Initially we decided the punishment was a kick to the head in high-heel shoes, but plane tickets from/to China are back over a dollar these days, rendering such a scheme financially impractical. Humiliation was chosen as a close second.
Other people are signed up for situps/crunches, writing poetry, running in the morning, learning French for half-an-hour a day, writing in their journals for 15 minutes a day, and...I think that's it. Good luck to all of you (suckers)! That'll teach you to be my friends.
Recently I've been reviewing French in an effort to lower my overinflated self-esteem (I have no doubt that I totally rule). Chinese helps in that department, but I figure the more the better. So I've met some French girls from Paris on Palabea - a language learning site, and started reading Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, in French of course. In between, I read vocabulary lists and study verb conjugations.
All this is much more fun that it sounds (and this is only half-meant to trick you into doing it). I realized I forgot how cool the French language is; when I last heard it, it was being so uninspiredly taught that I lost my appetite for it for 5 years. Well now we're back, and without teachers standing in the way of my education, success is inevitable. Vive la France et la langue francaise!
Oh yea, lastly, some excellent poetry inspired by sitting on the edge of a bed all day:
I am sitting with bad posture
now I'm sitting with good posture
I sure am good about my posture
and we're back to crappy posture
Remember what I said about "rhyming a word with itself" being the domain of the incurably brave badasses? K, just thought I'd remind you.
Naturally, I couldn't let myself suffer alone, so I dragged every person that had the misfortune of being on my buddy list into this experiment. Luckily I regularly purge my buddy list of stale friends, so I only had to bother a few. Some of them needed extra motivation, so I agreed to do their 30-day trials as well. Currently I am signed up for the following:
No drinks other than water.
No cursing in any of the 18 languages I know or the 57 I'm learning. This is not as easy as it sounds. Innocent words in one language are X-rated in another.
50 situps/crunches a day for one friend.
50 situps/crunches a day for another friend.
Being vegetarian (this is actually part of another experiment, but I might as well take credit for it)
Some of these come with clauses. For example, should I have temporary amnesia and regain consciousness to find myself holding a half-consumed non-100%-water beverage, I must call my partner in crunches "master" for an entire day, and vice versa should she do 0-49 situps/crunches instead of the requisite 50. Initially we decided the punishment was a kick to the head in high-heel shoes, but plane tickets from/to China are back over a dollar these days, rendering such a scheme financially impractical. Humiliation was chosen as a close second.
Other people are signed up for situps/crunches, writing poetry, running in the morning, learning French for half-an-hour a day, writing in their journals for 15 minutes a day, and...I think that's it. Good luck to all of you (suckers)! That'll teach you to be my friends.
Recently I've been reviewing French in an effort to lower my overinflated self-esteem (I have no doubt that I totally rule). Chinese helps in that department, but I figure the more the better. So I've met some French girls from Paris on Palabea - a language learning site, and started reading Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, in French of course. In between, I read vocabulary lists and study verb conjugations.
All this is much more fun that it sounds (and this is only half-meant to trick you into doing it). I realized I forgot how cool the French language is; when I last heard it, it was being so uninspiredly taught that I lost my appetite for it for 5 years. Well now we're back, and without teachers standing in the way of my education, success is inevitable. Vive la France et la langue francaise!
Oh yea, lastly, some excellent poetry inspired by sitting on the edge of a bed all day:
I am sitting with bad posture
now I'm sitting with good posture
I sure am good about my posture
and we're back to crappy posture
Remember what I said about "rhyming a word with itself" being the domain of the incurably brave badasses? K, just thought I'd remind you.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Web Design Unleashed, and A Day As Natasha's Sidekick
They say that the age of novelty websites is over, but yesterday I found a beautiful counterexample. Observe the 8th wonder of the world:
Elite Web Design In Action
I came upon this diamond in the rough while weighing my lunch options, and instantly knew I was in the presence of greatness when I saw their page title bravely set to "Page Title" (the thing you see up top on the browser bar, like "Gmail - Inbox 6,091,018" is what HTML-freaks call the 'page title'). It takes guts to do that, kind of like rhyming a word with itself in a poem - only authorized badasses do it with impunity.
Now, this is an Asian food restaurant as evidenced by the Big Words on the home page. However, these appear to be Asians of the Latin variety/persuasion as the Aboutus and Contactus menu items indicate. ...Hmm, the joke seems to lose power in retelling, they did it much better... Actually, it's almost proof that they're authentic Asians, as in Chinese and Japanese there are no spaces between words in a sentence. What better advertisement of hole-in-the-wall-Asian-restaurant authenticity than English illiteracy. Anyway, no more needs to be said. Go get some food there, and learn some of the latest tricks in web design.
I walked a couple of hours in Natasha's shoes today. Their lack of duct-tape to seal holes is neatly balanced by a lack of holes, so I wholeheartedly pronounce them wearable. That is until I put them on and had to duct tape them shut. But back to not being side-tracked, the shoes were actually figurative as you so cleverly guessed. I accompanied Natasha to one of her classes, and hung out at her department observing the local wildlife - nerdy graduate students who actually care about what they're studying, a species I long thought to be extinct. The class was up to the boring-class standards at MIT, and though I didn't fall asleep, I was the only one to not do so. MIT 1 - Dartmouth 0.
Then we went to the store and bought some food on the math department budget because today is Natasha's turn to buy food on the math department's budget. The food is intended for public consumption. During checkout, despite Natasha's threats about the Green-Earth Nazis at the bagging station forcing you to use the dreaded handle-less paper bags, after answering "do you prefer paper or plastic?" with "meh," I received a plastic one. I'm sure Natasha holding a semi-automatic Colt M1911 to each of their heads is just an irrelevant coincidence.
When we came back and served the food to the hungry math dorks, I was treated to the rare spectacle of a young woman single-handedly devouring an entire package of hummus in about 23 seconds. And now I must go throw up because I once again hit the replay button on that memory.
Ellen: how r u?
Ellen: warm?
Mark: yes
Ellen: buy yourself a hat
Mark: will do
Moral? She's (whoever she is) going to say it (whatever it is) no matter what, so be flexible in your perception of her flow of logic. And agree with her for Chrissakes, don't you have any self-preservation instinct?
Elite Web Design In Action
I came upon this diamond in the rough while weighing my lunch options, and instantly knew I was in the presence of greatness when I saw their page title bravely set to "Page Title" (the thing you see up top on the browser bar, like "Gmail - Inbox 6,091,018" is what HTML-freaks call the 'page title'). It takes guts to do that, kind of like rhyming a word with itself in a poem - only authorized badasses do it with impunity.
Now, this is an Asian food restaurant as evidenced by the Big Words on the home page. However, these appear to be Asians of the Latin variety/persuasion as the Aboutus and Contactus menu items indicate. ...Hmm, the joke seems to lose power in retelling, they did it much better... Actually, it's almost proof that they're authentic Asians, as in Chinese and Japanese there are no spaces between words in a sentence. What better advertisement of hole-in-the-wall-Asian-restaurant authenticity than English illiteracy. Anyway, no more needs to be said. Go get some food there, and learn some of the latest tricks in web design.
I walked a couple of hours in Natasha's shoes today. Their lack of duct-tape to seal holes is neatly balanced by a lack of holes, so I wholeheartedly pronounce them wearable. That is until I put them on and had to duct tape them shut. But back to not being side-tracked, the shoes were actually figurative as you so cleverly guessed. I accompanied Natasha to one of her classes, and hung out at her department observing the local wildlife - nerdy graduate students who actually care about what they're studying, a species I long thought to be extinct. The class was up to the boring-class standards at MIT, and though I didn't fall asleep, I was the only one to not do so. MIT 1 - Dartmouth 0.
Then we went to the store and bought some food on the math department budget because today is Natasha's turn to buy food on the math department's budget. The food is intended for public consumption. During checkout, despite Natasha's threats about the Green-Earth Nazis at the bagging station forcing you to use the dreaded handle-less paper bags, after answering "do you prefer paper or plastic?" with "meh," I received a plastic one. I'm sure Natasha holding a semi-automatic Colt M1911 to each of their heads is just an irrelevant coincidence.
When we came back and served the food to the hungry math dorks, I was treated to the rare spectacle of a young woman single-handedly devouring an entire package of hummus in about 23 seconds. And now I must go throw up because I once again hit the replay button on that memory.
Ellen: how r u?
Ellen: warm?
Mark: yes
Ellen: buy yourself a hat
Mark: will do
Moral? She's (whoever she is) going to say it (whatever it is) no matter what, so be flexible in your perception of her flow of logic. And agree with her for Chrissakes, don't you have any self-preservation instinct?
Sunday, January 4, 2009
New Hampshire exists! That's 23 confirmed states!
Yesterday Natasha and I drove to Dartmouth, though technically she did all the driving. It took five and a half hours and I received my usual rate of $0/hr for it, totaling roughly $0. We got in around eight, unpacked Natasha's entire house worth of stuff from her car-sized car and by midnight we were sitting in the cozy kitchen devouring her mom's more edible gifts.
Then we watched Leatherheads. Now this is a movie which has absolutely no idea what it's about. Most movies are pretty transparent and straightforward, even the bad ones: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is about proving to you that there are things in the world that make even a well-balanced ridiculously good-looking individual like myself contemplate suicide from boredom, namely watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Last Orders is about British people doing absolutely nothing in realtime. For two hours. 27 Dresses is about the estrogen injection you forgot to take before you watched it. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is about a two-hour long kick in the balls, not my favorite thing to experience even vicariously.
Leatherheads puts these all to shame. After all, why go for one topic, when you can go for all of them? Football, mud wrestling, unrequited love, male bonding, fat people, the Great Depression, the Prohibition, betrayal, lies, Renee Zellwegger's oily face that's so slippery your eyeballs can't hang on, George Clooney's loony O Brother Where Art Thou character, broken telephone and World War I are just some of the broad range of topics which would take almost as long for me to list as for you to just watch the movie yourself. Anyway, each topic from this veritable zoo of plot devices gets about two minutes of play. As a result it feels like you're watching two-minute-long episodes of some show where the characters stay the same, but each new episode has only minor relevance to the previous 17. I give this movie an "eh." (with an audible 'h')
Today we went to have lunch with one of Natasha's friends here at Dartmouth, Seth, whose buoyant gregarious personality belies his terminal case of astronomy/physics dorkiness. We chatted for a while on some innocuous subjects that leave no memory imprint while munching on veggie pseudo-Mexican burritos. After lunch Seth felt sick (I sometimes have that effect), and had to depart in a hurry, looking over his shoulder every so often with that look Sam Neil gives the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. Another good first impression by me.
We attemped a language experiment today. Natasha and I agreed not to speak Russian or English for what ended up being about an hour and a half. We had at our disposal a combined total of a couple of years of Spanish, French, and a semester of Chinese, the last of which unfortunately lying entirely on one side of the conversation. The first couple of minutes were full of inauspicious silence, Hitchcock style. Then awkward first words were breathed, mostly "..." and "uh..." But then, breakthrough, after fifteen minutes or so, we were chatting in a language I would hesitate to call Spanish, but which definitely was neither English nor Russian. A success by any standards, as long as they're really really low.
Lastly, I was thinking about blindfolds earlier today because Natasha was crocheting something that had the potential to become one, and I was wondering, does anyone purposely make a blindfold? Seems like blindfolds are usually items that have an alternate intrinsic purposes, like scarves or shirts or hands. There are precious few people in the world who (when you catch them crocheting) reply to "whatcha makin?" with "oh, it's a blindfold, can't you tell?" Let's just acknowledge that there's a demand for blindfolds and start making them and calling them what they are eh?
Then we watched Leatherheads. Now this is a movie which has absolutely no idea what it's about. Most movies are pretty transparent and straightforward, even the bad ones: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is about proving to you that there are things in the world that make even a well-balanced ridiculously good-looking individual like myself contemplate suicide from boredom, namely watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Last Orders is about British people doing absolutely nothing in realtime. For two hours. 27 Dresses is about the estrogen injection you forgot to take before you watched it. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is about a two-hour long kick in the balls, not my favorite thing to experience even vicariously.
Leatherheads puts these all to shame. After all, why go for one topic, when you can go for all of them? Football, mud wrestling, unrequited love, male bonding, fat people, the Great Depression, the Prohibition, betrayal, lies, Renee Zellwegger's oily face that's so slippery your eyeballs can't hang on, George Clooney's loony O Brother Where Art Thou character, broken telephone and World War I are just some of the broad range of topics which would take almost as long for me to list as for you to just watch the movie yourself. Anyway, each topic from this veritable zoo of plot devices gets about two minutes of play. As a result it feels like you're watching two-minute-long episodes of some show where the characters stay the same, but each new episode has only minor relevance to the previous 17. I give this movie an "eh." (with an audible 'h')
Today we went to have lunch with one of Natasha's friends here at Dartmouth, Seth, whose buoyant gregarious personality belies his terminal case of astronomy/physics dorkiness. We chatted for a while on some innocuous subjects that leave no memory imprint while munching on veggie pseudo-Mexican burritos. After lunch Seth felt sick (I sometimes have that effect), and had to depart in a hurry, looking over his shoulder every so often with that look Sam Neil gives the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. Another good first impression by me.
We attemped a language experiment today. Natasha and I agreed not to speak Russian or English for what ended up being about an hour and a half. We had at our disposal a combined total of a couple of years of Spanish, French, and a semester of Chinese, the last of which unfortunately lying entirely on one side of the conversation. The first couple of minutes were full of inauspicious silence, Hitchcock style. Then awkward first words were breathed, mostly "..." and "uh..." But then, breakthrough, after fifteen minutes or so, we were chatting in a language I would hesitate to call Spanish, but which definitely was neither English nor Russian. A success by any standards, as long as they're really really low.
Lastly, I was thinking about blindfolds earlier today because Natasha was crocheting something that had the potential to become one, and I was wondering, does anyone purposely make a blindfold? Seems like blindfolds are usually items that have an alternate intrinsic purposes, like scarves or shirts or hands. There are precious few people in the world who (when you catch them crocheting) reply to "whatcha makin?" with "oh, it's a blindfold, can't you tell?" Let's just acknowledge that there's a demand for blindfolds and start making them and calling them what they are eh?
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