my home

When I was a little girl, I lived in a somewhat little house with my little family which consisted of my mom, my dad, and my sister.  We lived on a little street and we had a little back yard and a little swing set, slide, and gymnastics rings for flipping in circles until we were dizzy.  When I think about my perception of the world at the time, it seems like a little bubble - I lived in a place where most things were the same a lot of the time and I had a very good childhood.  So much so that sometimes I wonder if I even just made it up.  My mom showed me how to make things, and my dad showed me how to explore, and I used to spend entire Saturdays playing hide and seek and trying to get my swing to fly high enough to launch me into the sky.  All of the neighborhood kids kept hiding and seeking and playing tag and hopscotch until the street lamps came on and our moms called us home.

I've just been watching the movie Away We Go and the last scene when Verona and Burt go to Verona's childhood home and decide to make it their own, it kind of makes me wish I could go back to my old house.  The crazy thing is that I have actually driven past there a handful of times since we moved, but it isn't really the same place.  Everything was small because I lived in my bubble, but everything was big because it was all I knew.  Now, the house is just a building that people have changed in ways I hate, and where people have chopped down the pine trees that shaded me in August when the sun was too hot.

as the days keep turning into night

Sometimes I have a lot to say and others I do not.  I suppose the past few weeks would fall under the "mysteriously (or not so mysteriously) quiet" category.

Today I had a great day - I spent some time in Dublin and really enjoyed the hot weather, sunshine, and a delicious steak (all before four o'clock!).  I also made a new friend:

Leatherlips (Doesn't this kind of look like a sphinx, just the head?)

This is Leatherlips, a Wyandot chief who lived in Dublin at the end of his life.  He was put to death by tomahawk - apparently a great deal of animosity came between him and Tenskwatawa (Tecumseh's brother) because he worked with white settlers.  He was called many things, but Leatherlips was for keeping his word.  I like that.

family trees swaying in the wind

I wouldn't like to say that I lack follow-through, but I might say that I become excited about a lot of ideas and attempt to at least look into a variety of projects in life.  For instance, there may come a day when I sit down and actually begin my formal Esperanto lessons.

In the meantime, I have spent a couple of years pondering some sort of family tree / family history project.  I already did something like this on a small scale in middle school, and it was a disaster.  I basically put hours upon hours of work into the thing, complete with pictures and everything.  My teacher took a glance at each project and gave everyone an "A" without much consideration.  I was p***ed and shoved the booklet into the back of my closet and haven't touched it since.

It has been about ten years and I feel ready to move forward from that experience by pursuing a more detailed investigation of my family which I can then make into a kind of book and give to various relatives as a gift.  I knew immediately that mostly everyone would probably be repulsed by this sort of gift, as nearly all of my relatives are in one way or another completely insane.  But whose family isn't plagued by such things?  So I plan to proceed.  I am certain that this report will be done in as humorous a tone as possible, so as to lighten the burden of the past.  I'm also hoping that it will help to mend disagreements between certain clan members.  Because laughter, they say, is the best medicine.  I shall just slip a nice, thin, 500 page document under everyone's door, and they will be able to marvel, as I surely will, at the need for a fun ending.  We are capable of this fun ending.  I feel it.

I started this family tree by hand, but my hand tires easily, so I switched to making an online family tree.  The other benefit is that I don't have to tape a new sheet of 8.5" by 11" to the edge of the tree when I run out of room every five minutes.

There is one thing I have learned about making a family tree, and it is this:  It's difficult.  I can't remember anything!  I seriously had to give myself a good five minutes to recall my own great-grandmother's name.  My own flesh and blood!  I knew the woman.  But I didn't call her Mabel.  I called her Grandma.  And on it goes.  Also, I am familiar with the fact that my great-great-grandmother on my mom's mom's dad's side came from Germany . . . but I had no idea that her name was Roschide.  But was this her first name or her surname? It's impossible to tell with all of these exotic names!  This is quickly becoming a group project in my mind . . . I imagine us crouching around documents spread out on my grandparents' Persian rugs, sipping lemonade.  We trade hilarious stories.  The eight of us who still enjoy remnants of brain activity remember why we, the "normal" ones, have isolated ourselves from the rest of the family and enjoyed a peaceful existence.  We recommit ourselves to enjoy each other's minor eccentricities and, by golly, we pour ourselves another glass of lemonade, rejoicing in the lack of alcoholism in the room!

In the throws of my imagined Reawakening of the Great Family Fun Times, I compose a brief and witty email to the elite eight informing them of my family tree project.  I ask them, humbly, for tidbits of basic information.  I plead my ignorance of the family lore.  I note my plans to be in town early next week.  I even include amusing references to The Borg.

The email sent, I recognize how insanely wrong I was to even consider this project.  First off, I must now actually complete the project, which delays further my plans to learn Esperanto.  Secondly, I expect very little interest in participation.  Third, I am currently experiencing a flashback of this past Thanksgiving, where my sarcasm and overall humor was lost on pretty much everybody.  This isn't a sophistication issue (because let's face it, everyone there was probably much more sophisticated than me), it was probably more of a miscommunication issue.

So now everyone's got an email sitting in their inbox with a 1:00am time stamp from crazy me, asking for confirmation of births, marriages, and deaths, which is pretty typical I suppose.  I guess it just goes to show that my years-old logic continues to prove itself infallible:  Do not think after 10:00pm.  Save all emails as drafts.  Go to bed.

i once was Lost . . .

 . . . you know the rest.

ALERT: Minor spoilers including vague description of the last scene of the series in this post.

I will try to write this without crying too much.  I was finally able to view The End of Lost today, and it was extraordinary.  Not perfect, but how could it be?  Not all of our questions were answered.  I still do not know why "daynjah surrounds this baybee" (he seemed about as dangerous as any baby, really).  But I don't really care, so this means - for me - that The End was quite a success.

I wish that I could share some of my thoughts on Lost in a poetic manner.  I left official commentary (as I never commentate officially on any subject matter anyhow) to the professionals, because to be honest, Lost is an incredibly intelligent show.  And whilst I consider myself a moderately intelligent person, I would rather just leave the show as is and allow every viewer to value his or her own experience for what it is.  Also, it's difficult remembering all of those pesky details sometimes.  I encourage everyone to give the series a shot, but only if done so properly and from the beginning.  No cheating.  No long breaks between episodes.  Pay a respectful amount of attention to the plot, let yourself sink into some Island magic, and you will not regret it.

If you want a terribly well-written and detailed synopsis of any episode of Lost, I highly recommend Doc Jensen's column on the Entertainment Weekly website.  I would like to specifically recommend reading Part One of his recap on the series finale.  His thoughts are pretty much on-par with my own.  Whilst I feared the various cop out endings which played out in my mind galore over the past few weeks, and whilst up until today I seriously doubted a quality ending, I am so happy with the way the writers chose to end Lost.  I wish that it could have been extended for one more season to give some things more thought and attention, but as it is I am satisfied.

We ended the show the way we began, with Jack in the jungle.  The simplicity of him laying down to die and Vincent calmly joining him in the brush, the closing of his eyes . . . it was a poem.  Pure and simple.  This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.

Indeed.  Where are my tissues?

one word:

Strongblackcoffee.
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stories

Today, out of nowhere, I suddenly thought of my ballet teacher of many many moons ago.  Was her name Julia?  Or perhaps Claire?  She had beautiful, long, dark blonde hair wrapped in a loose bun, and she always wore soft colors - lavender, pink, powder blue - with white tights.  She was enchanting and I wanted to be just like her when I grew up.

She was probably around seventeen years old, but that was adult enough to me at the time.  I loved watching the home videos she brought with her sometimes, capturing her in Swan Lake or the Nutcracker, the dreamy and obvious ballets - the antitheses of the vulgar "modern" dance I had discovered in World of Dance, a large book of gorgeous photographs I discovered at Media Play whilst enjoying the classical music they used to play on Saturday mornings before everyone mysteriously started (Or started mysteriously? De rien.) shopping at Barnes & Noble.  I was an old child.

We began every dance class properly, with our routine stretching.  To fill the silence, my teacher usually asked one of us to tell a story.  The other girls in our small group would give short, dull descriptions of a recent trip to the zoo or to Southwyck Mall.  My classmates had already caught on that it was often cooler to be nonchalant about everything than to be overly enthusiastic about something.  I didn't fully appreciate this subtlety for another ten years and I was a strange combination of shy yet obnoxious, so when my teacher asked me for a story, I delivered with gusto.  It came to be that as we all gathered neatly in a circle and stretched our as-yet tiny limbs every week, the girls would ask me for another story, preferring to listen.

After a few years of this with roughly the same group of petites danseuses, our young teacher left us.  I remember one day shortly thereafter sitting on my family's front porch, reading the letter she wrote me.  She (what was her name?) had used pale pink stationary with a scented, hot pink gel pen.  I rarely received mail unless it was my birthday or a holiday, and I kept the letter for a long time.  It had said that she was sad to be moving and would miss all of the girls.  She would also miss the beginning of each class, which she had come to think of as the time for "Olivia's stories."  Without realizing it, I had become obsessed with the idea of telling stories.

I'm not sure why this is.  Maybe it's all the reading.  I think partly, though, it must be the need to understand people and to connect with them on some level.  Telling a story yourself or asking someone to tell you one, you quickly discover whether you have similar (or in some cases, wildly dissenting) senses of humor.

Side note:  Probably the best sources of material for stories, I suddenly realize, are dreams.  Not "I have a dream" dreams, but REM, drool-on-the-pillow dreams, hence my recent post of that description.  I mean, come on . . . that was a great dream.  But I apologize if I bother you with too many dream-tales which I discover (too late) to be almost impossible to recreate outside of my head.

These days I am no longer dancing on Tuesday nights, Southwyck Mall has been torn down, I shop at Barnes & Noble (though if Media Play were still around, I would so be there), and I wear more black than pastels.  But I still, quite obviously, love to trade stories.

travel by night

I haven't watched a lot of television this week and the weather is not wonderful, so I decided to flip on the tube for a bit.  What channel do I immediately seek for my viewing pleasure?  Well, the History Channel, of course!  And has the HC disappointed me?  Of course not.  Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed is currently screening and I am happy to let it wash over me as I relate to you my latest triumph in life.

A few months back I came across some high-brow online literature concerning the lucid dream.  Of course, I began to interview my various friends and acquaintances to compare experiences, because while I have dreamt lucidly a handful of times, I instantly awoke as soon as I became cognizant of my dreaming, unable to return to the Land of Nod.  There exist a variety of cultures which greatly value dreams and believe that they are real, spiritual travel outside the body.  Others use their dreams to help them parse out their waking lives.  I, for one, think that dreams are simply our brains trying to find something to do while we are resting.  This doesn't mean that dreams cannot be interesting or have a great impact on us, however.  I myself have had many memorable and powerful dreams.

Lucid dreaming seems to me to be a very powerful experience, but not something one can necessarily undertake like any other hobby.  Or so I thought!  I discovered a list of techniques one may apply throughout the day to ensure the possibility of dreaming lucidly through the night, as well as advice for what to avoid in your lucid dreaming experience.  I am unwilling to attempt the majority of these suggestions as they seem excessive.  However, I began to simply say to myself every night before bed I will have a lucid dream.  I will dream lucidly.  I will have a lucid dream.  etc, etc, etc about five times.  I only did this for about two weeks until I forgot all about it.

Fast forward a couple of months to this past Sunday night.  I wish I had written about the dream earlier, because I am starting to forget.  What I do remember is that I became aware of flying with a group of people on a mid-sized airplane, possibly a Gulfstream IV business jet.  But seriously.  

We were experiencing some mechanical malfunction, and it was clear that we had no choice but to jump from the plane.  We were first flying over water, and then a vast green landscape.  I was wearing my parachute, and after weighing my fear, decided to jump into the bright blue sky.  As I fell faster and faster toward the ground along with the other passengers, the blue sky turned grey, then deep black and I was able to see the stars.  I landed in the green hills safely, and I was alone.

Suddenly I was in a great white cathedral in the midst of a ceremony, but instead of watching I simply walked among the people who were there, and it seemed like hours that I visited each row, not talking to anyone but recognizing that they were there.  I dropped something on the ground, at which point I knelt down to retrieve it.  The scene changed again and I was looking into, and then came to be inside of, a green and fragrant forest.  The trees were older than any person, large, and knotted into the ground.  It was damp and humid.  I became lucid, and heard someone speaking some phrase over and over again, but I could not tell what it was that was being said.  I wanted to hear her, and I also wanted to try to move through my dream before the scene changed again.  All I could do, though, was continue listening to the voice that sounded more and more like myself.  My mind still in the green forest, my physical hand reached to touch my lips and I found that it was me who was speaking to my own self, through to the dream.  I am dreaming.  I am dreaming.  I am dreaming.  I was aware of being awake in my dream and in my bed at the same time, but after another moment I was completely awake and aware of my physical body.

I was such a strange experience!  It is really difficult to describe the lucid part.  I was in two places for a period of time;  I wasn't able to control the dream, but I was able to have two different sensory experiences at once.  It was like being suspended between two worlds.  I don't know if I will ever have a lucid dream again, but this one was interesting enough to me that I don't care.  Has anyone else ever had a powerful dream?  Is there one dream you've had that stands out in your memory?  Was/is it recurring?  Add to the comments if you are able to share, because I'm genuinely curious.

Enough mumbo jumbo.

it's like . . . a black abyss

I grow increasingly irritated with my new blog template.  I can't view the dashboard at the top of my page, amongst other issues.  I am contemplating just building my own template over a period of weeks and using that.  I realize that this will involve learning more html than I ever wanted to know, but the many hours I spent trying to move my pages bar to underneath the title section yet ultimately failing have given me a substantial leg-up in the learning process.

I have had a bit of free time lately and have thus been enjoying some new books and movies.  My friend Captain Zissou beat me to the punch on reviewing The Royal Tenenbaums, but I would like to offer my two cents in case anyone is looking for a movie recommendation.  The Royal Tenenbaums is a fantastic movie.  It's quirky, witty, funny, and dramatic, but it's very subtle.  The material is kind of heavy as it is about a fairly dysfunctional family, and I was initially hesitant to watch.  The material is quite dark, but Anderson works so lightly with it that we can come away from it without an aftertaste of depression . . . which is all I have experienced lately with Thomas Hardy.  If TRT was a wine, I would label it as a Riesling.  If it were a coffee, it would be the Ethiopia Sidamo.  Basically, it's a great Wes Anderson movie and I am happy to have watched it.  I am a fan of all the main actors in this movie - especially Gene Hackman, Anjelica Hustin, Gwyneth Paltrow, and the Owen brothers (especially pre-AT&T ads).  I think people either love Anderson or they do not, but everyone should give at least one of his movies a shot.  If you aren't sure where to start, I would personally recommend The Darjeeling Limited (2007).  TRT could probably be considered more mainstream, but Darjeeling is so exotic.  Both are equally impressive if you are into cinematography.

If you like Wes Anderson movies, Hemingway, introspection, staying awake late into the night (or all of the above), you must seriously consider also viewing movies by Sofia Coppola.  I am not an expert, as I have not seen all of her movies.  But I can recommend two of them:  Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette.  If we speak, you and I, at least somewhat regularly I have probably already mentioned my appreciation of these movies many times.  But I would like to reiterate that appreciation.  

At first glance, Marie Antoinette in particular seems like a very poor choice, as far as movie-making goes.  I mean, the DVD box / posters  are hot pink and turquoise.  Everything screams "fifteen-year-old girls will love this movie."  And I am sure they do.  The first time I watched MA, I found it difficult to take it seriously.  I had rented it and was watching with a friend of mine who was staying with me for the weekend.  We would both watch solemnly for five minutes, and then laugh in intervals.  In retrospect, I think that the unintended humor comes from the strange and unexpected music / accent / color choices and minor historical issues in the movie.  After my guest left town, I still had a day left on the rental and decided to give it another go.  I liked it much better the second time.  I've watched it many times since and I enjoy it more and more.  Marie Antoinette should not be approached as a costume drama or strict, biographical film.  It does not succeed on either of those counts, nor is it meant to.  The purpose of the movie isn't really to focus on the historical context of the extreme class dichotomy in France in the years leading up to 1789, though I do think that watching everything crash and burn at the end as (unseen) peasants revolt, after watching two hours of the high life at Versailles, is a rather sobering experience.  I don't really think that the goal of the movie is to examine the economic and political wholesale value of aristocratic women (and women in general) in early modern Europe (and the world), either.  

So what is this movie about, you ask?  I think it's just a great movie with great cinematography, beautiful set design, excellent editing, and solid acting.  Yes, I think that Kirsten Dunst was good in this.  I'm not kidding.  MA, in my mind fulfills this role:  It is the opposite of the chic-flick which continues to promote unrealistic female expectations of dating, marriage, men, and our Disney-fed obsession with being royal circa 1655.  What actually happens in MA is that the girl is ill-prepared for marriage, ruling a country, motherhood, and the like, because of these unhealthy expectations and assumptions of what true womanhood, humanity, and effective government really is.  True womanhood isn't about being sold into marriage for the purpose of propagating the clan and letting the men do all the thinking for you.  True humanity isn't the French aristocracy running the country into debt throughout the last hundred of its existence in order to maintain etiquette and f'ed up societal expectations.  We could go on and on about these issues, but I digress . . . basically what we have here is that there is absolutely no reality occurring within Versailles.  And we can examine that through the eyes of a foreign princess who had it rough at the time.  This makes for an interesting movie.  Lesson to be learned from history:  Do not expect people to perform well under pressure when they have been raised primarily to follow near-pointless court etiquette and spend francs rather than to RULE THE COUNTRY ADEQUATELY.  Lesson to be learned from the movie:  Maybe we can find an emo and sympathetic note in Marie Antoinette and other historical figures like her, and maybe it can actually be somewhat interesting at the same time.

Critics of the movie say that it is too sympathetic with regards to Marie and that the historical inaccuracies are unbearable.  Uh, since when has any movie been historically accurate?  I just don't even think that the movie is coming close to attempting this.  It is a poem, a painting, a work of impressionism.  And a powerful, beautiful one at that.  Why does everything have to be so serious for us to enjoy it?  I think that Marie Antoinette's story as portrayed in this movie is rather touching and introspective, and I could say the same for many movies which do not appear to be particularly realistic, yet turn out to be quite relevant to our lives because the characters are relatable.  With regards to the choices in wardrobe:  It works for me.  The color palate of the film is very aesthetically pleasing, if not historically accurate.  Accents:  Weird at first, but who cares?  Marie Antoinette was Austrian, not French.  And do you really want to hear Jason Schwartzman with a French accent?  The same issue occurred with The Man in the Iron Mask, and we all know that movie was classic (not apologizing).  Music:  It's awesome.  Personal.  Bold.  I think it's on par with Wes Anderson's sound-tracking capabilities.  I rest my case in defense of Sofia Coppola's work here.  In the words of the New York Post:  "Coppola works in weird ways, but the real Versailles was so much weirder."

Now for Lost in Translation:  Bill Murray (Bob) is genius.  Scarlett Johansson (Charlotte) is for real.  And the story?  It doesn't really get much better.  It's one of those movies where you think nothing is happening, but everything is happening.  I emphasize:  Everything that is relevant to our lives is occurring within this movie.  It's about relationships between people.  Is marriage too hard?  Who am I?  What am I doing with my life?  Why am I in Tokyo?  And should I have another glass of whiskey?  I ask myself these questions on a daily basis, and so do Bob and Charlotte.  The best part about this movie is that Bob and Char do not force their relationship, as they probably would in real life.  In the words of the inimitable James Blunt, "I don't think that [Bob will] see her again, but [they] shared a moment that will last till the end."  In short, you're beautiful.  I don't think Lost in Translation is as hated-for-no-reason as Marie Antoinette, so I don't really need to defend it further.  Here is what I think you should do, if you are still reading, reader:  You should watch Lost in Translation (preferably with me, because I will bring a bottle of whiskey and my own personal copy) late at night and when the credits roll you should tell me what you think Bob whispers to Charlotte at the end.  Also, the soundtrack is awesome.

If Wes Anderson was a girl, he would probably be Sofia Coppola.

thought

Quick notes:

The word hilariousness should not exist.  I did not think it was real, but it is in Webster's.  I think it must only be there because it has been overused and then confused with real English.  The word we are looking for is hilarity.  There now, doesn't that sound better?

It is definitely, not definately.  Seriously . . . finite is right in the middle of the word.  Think about it.

I will criticize myself now by saying that I absolutely must stop using the word like as a filler.  I sound awful.

my big physics think

I started writing this post in earnest on April the 12th.  It began when I pulled The Universe in a Nutshell from my bookshelf, packed up my laptop, and headed to the Grandview Heights Public Library.  I have spent every day since then at the GHPL for some period of time or another, reading a variety of literature and taking large quantities of notes consisting of eloquent passages, reminders for further inquiry, questions to myself and the universe, and linking all the books I have been reading to each other.  Basically, I have had nothing else to do because my work schedule doesn't pick up until the weekend.

This evening I find myself a bit dazed and melancholic, because I haven't been spending an inordinate amount of time on any particular goal.  But I think it was perhaps this evening's viewing of Doubt which did me in.  Do we trust Father Flynn?  Is Sister Aloysius just tripping, or is she onto something?  Could Sister James be any more irritating?  Would a glass of Jameson on the rocks be of any help?

Alas, I have no overarching point of view to offer, no ideas, really.  I'm not even sure why I'm writing this right now, and I'm certain that The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them by Elif Batuman has something to do with it.  Don't get me wrong, it's quite possibly one of the best books I've ever read - the ending is appropriate and perfect, but it is still one giant sink-whole of emotion.  The last major story she shares before the end is The Black Monk by Chekhov, the tale of an academic who is absorbed by his work to the point of illness and insanity.  As it is a short story, I decided to read it for myself.  Now, I hate to give away the ending, but the protagonist, Kovrin, he dies choking on his own bleeding throat.  Ten minutes before he dies, he resigns himself to the fact that he is a mediocre man with an average life and concludes that every man should just face what he is and accept it.  But Kovrin's ongoing hallucination (á la Paul Bettany in A Beautiful Mind) shows up and admonishes Kovrin for thinking he is mediocre and crazy, and not the genius that he actually is.  This is the point when Kovrin starts bleeding all over himself, but he dies believing again that the monk is right, and that he is, in fact, a genius.  The (imaginary?) monk concludes his role in comforting Kovrin by saying that "he was dying only because his frail human body had lost its balance and could no longer serve as the mortal garb of genius."


Does anyone else think that "Kovrin" sounds an awful lot like "Kevin?"

The Black Monk is, though depressing and freakish, the best way to end The Possessed, because it is directly related to Elif Batuman's life.  Her idea is that instead of taking your favorite book and living your own version of the plot in preparation for writing a modern interpretation of that book, you could instead live your own version of the author's life and then write your book.

What if, instead of going out into your neighborhood pretending to be the hero of Amadis of Gaul, you instead devoted your life to the mystery of its original author, learned Spanish and Portuguese, tracked down all the scholarly experts, figured out where Gaul is [...] - what if you did it all for yourself, instead of inventing a fictional character?  What if you wrote a book and it was all true?

I highly recommend reading The Possessed.  I do not, however, recommend finishing the last chapter of the book after having just watched Doubt; spent several days dabbling in disjointed readings of Hawking, Chekhov short stories, Central Asian poetry, Anglo-Saxon prose, and Hemingway; and encountered strange, chain-smoking women who whisper "they're all dead" over and over at the public library.  It all detracts from the experience, and you end up a little like Kovrin, except you're not a genius, just weird.

Now this post is absolutely nothing like what I wanted it to be on April the 12th, but I'm sure that in about five or six days I will remember what it is exactly that I was looking for in all of these books.

holy s***!

I just killed the most gigantic, terrifying spider ever and I have to share this information with the void in order to begin the healing process. Oh! It was awful. I'm just trying to finish this book before bed and I suddenly saw the black scurrying across the floor which I associate with utter doom. I knew I had to get it before it crawled under (or ONTO!) the futon, so I killed it with some tissues and I felt it crunch under my hand. I am not going to make it in 2012, am I? Ew ew ew ew ew!!!!! It must have come from the air duct near the floor!

Oh God. The scurrying.

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the golden ticket

I would just like to briefly respond to fake criticism of my fake criticism by saying that it's all there, black and white, clear as crystal.  You stole fizzy lifting drinks.

to boldly go

I would just like to go on record, once again, as stating that I enjoy split infinitives and will continue to use them.  English language cultures are obsessed with arbitrary rules!  English is not Latin!  Believe me . . . if it was, I wouldn't have spent so much time trying to understand it last quarter.

Enough personal venting against the wide world, though.  (Not that the English speaking world is wider than any other world.  Though we do have a large personality?)  I've got something serious to talk about.

World, Imma let you finish, but Star Trek is the craziest tv show of all time!

So I'm gonna nerd it up here and just have a short discussion with myself (and any readership's inner thoughts) about how yeah, maybe Star Trek is not the most interesting or entertaining show one hundred percent of the time - I've personally seen fewer than ten or twelve episodes - but that doesn't mean that we can't appreciate it's extreme positive impact on our culture.  We all know the story behind cell phones, right?  I mean, "beam me up Scotty?"  Hello?  GPS?  Radio frequency tracking capabilities?  But it wasn't just the flip phone circa 2003 for which we can thank Star Trek.  Oh no, we can also thank the Original Series for being the most diverse American television program ever at that point in time.  It's the Cold War, and we've got a Russian reading our maps?  A black woman is handling our interstellar messages and is later taking an officer's seat?  An Asian lieutenant?  Et cetera.  I don't know about all of the characters, but that seems to me to be fairly well covered in terms of diversity.  So I came across this book called Star Trek and History: Racing toward a White Future.  Maybe I should ignore it, but I just don't understand Bernardi's thesis and it is irritating.  The whole point of Star Trek was to sort of demonstrate what life can be like when people with even extreme differences can work together.  I don't think it was meant to stifle diversity.  I would like to be clear that I am not really a Star Trek person, nor did I read the entirety of Bernardi's book, so maybe I'm missing something.  But I just think that Gene Roddenberry and the writers who contributed to the Original Series deserve a little more credit.  It was the 1960s, and Star Trek was incredibly modern for its time.  It created a lot of new concepts - it didn't destroy them or seek to homogenize America.  What is a White Future, anyway?  What does that even mean?  What is the historical interpretation?  Is it objective?

Anyway, I think that looking at the impact television and movies have had on us is really interesting, and it's disappointing that such a smart show is so misunderstood.

Also, I wanted to write about something a little less heavy this evening as my next post may require a fair amount of reading and prep work (i.e. thinking and better editing) in addition to taking down my reactions to Ivan and Prelude's latest posts.  Hoping it shall all come to fruition tomorrow afternoon!

i'm all spaced out, you know?

If you are the kind of person who overrides the web blocker at your place of employment so that you can read my blog while your boss isn't watching (typical), then you've probably already investigated my friend Ivan's* blog.  If you are more restrained, then I highly recommend reading today's bits and pieces, on which I now reflect.

Carl Sagan is amazing, and here is why.  If you know me at all, then you probably know that I first became obsessed with Space Topics (as opposed to, but at the same time directly related to Space Opera!) about three years ago, when I was up late and watching a history channel special (I know) on black holes.  I will back up a tiny bit more.  My parents have a lovely, large, and eclectic home library, and one book that I perused a lot as a young girl was called Our Solar System or something like that.  I can't remember what it is but I will try to find it.  Anyway, the book is very comprehensive, but it has a weird chapter on science fiction and thoughts on extra-terrestrial life.  There are terrifying images of fictional space creatures, one of which remains burned in my memory forever: a large, hairy parachute-type alien (yes, parachute) with one giant eye.  I shudder to think of it and I always always always tried to avoid turning to that section of this huge coffee table book.  Sometimes I would forget, though, and the giant eye would stare at me, so I would slam the book shut and run away screaming.

So basically space is a big, scary place.  I felt the same way the time I went swimming in the ocean and I refused to go out to where the shelf drops, because there is just way too much going on down there.  I don't want to even think about it.  I mean, hello?  Have you ever seen Abyss?

Three years ago I was sitting on my couch, Janice, as I watched Dr. Michio Kaku explain to me the fundamentals of black-hole hunting and the ways that black holes can destroy everything I hold near and dear . . . I felt that same dread-of-the-unknown resting it's icy, unmanicured hand upon my shoulder.  But I decided that instead of throwing my television out the window and ignoring the problem, I would read the entire Wikipedia page on black holes.  This is when the madness started.  I eventually wrote my own (amateur, yet completely professional) theory on the size/power of black holes and their possible stealthy presence in our daily lives.  But I digress.

Michio whilst casually swimming...nude?

You are welcome.

As much as I enjoy Dr. Kaku's Hair and its ability to explain string theory, I still sometimes find the universe to be a bit too large and unsettling.  During the moments when I find it difficult to separate myself emotionally . . . I rely on my good friend Carl Sagan and his soothing voice.  He is the chamomile to Dr. Kaku's espresso.  Which is why I am very grateful that Cosmos is presented on Hulu in it's entirety.  Thank you, Ivan, for spreading the word!

A couple of months ago I read something about the possibility of faster-than-lightspeed travel (what is with all of my hyphens?  I feel as though I've been doing this a lot lately), which is insane, obviously.  I didn't investigate it much after my initial discovery, but was reminded of it with all of Ivan's talk of deep space travel.  I want to share this, so I lead you to Stuart who provides further information and better explanation of tunneling than I am capable of.

Now for something completely different, yet at the same time totally related!

Exactly one month ago I became embroiled in a Facebook thread debating some heavy stuff.  Namely, Determinism.  How did this come about amongst a group of 22 year-olds, you ask?  Emo-ness, that's how.  One of my dear friends decided to state that she felt as though she had zero control over her life, and a fellow named Maxwell* (name switch!) posted as a response the Wikipedia page concerning Determinism, as well as several other comments regarding how the Big Bang determined the entire course of the universe, but that quantum theory interferes with this thinking.  Here is where I decided to join the fun.

Basically, if you want to follow what I'm reading at all, you either need to understand quantum theory or you need to go through a preliminary crash course.  Trust me, it will be good for you.  And I know that you can do it, because if my couch Janice can learn quantum mechanics, then so can you.

After reviewing for a few minutes, I decided that if we are familiar with Bohm, we could say that quantum mechanics in fact justifies determinism, as long as you include a constant wave function.  Part of me thinks that this is the case and that the constant wave function is actually God.  If there is, in fact, a pilot wave, and it is guiding the universe, wouldn't it be guiding in a determinate manner?  The only difference between classical determinism and Bohmian mechanics is that we have an infinite number of determined universes occurring at once.  However, I don't really think that God would take choice out of the equation.  I prefer quantum decoherence, or even the alternate histories theory to determinism.  I believe that we have choice in life.  And I also believe that somehow, quantum mechanics and classical mechanics must exist simultaneously (in that basic sense, I agree with Bohm . . . and Carl Sagan!).

The above paragraph were my thoughts last month, but I'd like to revisit and review the various aspects of quantum mechanics.  Does anyone think quantum theory is just a big load of crap?  At Barnes & Noble I was in the Nerd section once (twice . . . ok, a couple dozen times) and happened upon The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin, which I've been meaning to read.  He is a theoretical physicist who (and I am simplifying here) has basically given up on quantum theory.  That's how I feel after spending a few hours thinking about Determinism (every time I use Determinism with a capital D, please hear the word as if uttered by a deep, male, God-like voice) and what I might ultimately think of it.

Though, as we have learned from Lee Smolin, there is always room for revision.

Rebel.

a late night dive?

Ever since this post I have been selecting the Trebuchet font, because I always always always picture the "hurling [of] my words from a large catapult over the ramparts of some huge castle of doom."  It's the simple things.

I will be brief.  I would just like to say that I've officially taken a scuba dive into the land (yes, you can scuba dive into land) of Ivan Zissou.  Everything about this land ensnares my attention, but I am particularly fond of the promise of the trivia challenges.  Which I am determined to win.  I hope Ivan doesn't mind my linkage above, but I think that the three (two? less?) people who actually read my trite posts will probably enjoy his blog.  It is shiny and new, as opposed to jaded and sarcastic.  It is orderly and easy to understand, as opposed to sprinkled with bits of poetry featuring ambiguous rules for capitalization which were completely intentional but in hindsight might appear sycophantic.

That was my obligatory "joke about my writing" section so that I don't leave myself emotional vulnerable to people (mostly imaginary) who read snippets of my life.

I love this stupid blog. 

One final thought:  Certain long-time bloggers have not been keeping up with their duty (literary and comic) to all of us (me).  Please post immediately.  This is a tree house of trust.

Another (truly) final thought:  This was a fake post.  Real posts are not about the process of posting.  Please disregard this entire post save for the information you found relative to yourself.

it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

Tonight the girl is living high

as the sky

before she crashes low

and below the surface

she goes

with her periscope,

her records,

her thousand beaux.

Home I go.

I hear the noise of the morning,

the rushing water

the footsteps

the everyday sonnet

the basso of my continuo

playing through my hands.

I touch the papers on my desk

the clear, rounded glass and

the grass on the ground. then,

the wind in this void of a world

that exists as a single breath, just beyond the

the bounds of my heart.

It’s just now in the moment

that I realize it’s all

my head, my hands.

my hands, my heart.

herein lies my hallelujah.

behold, silence

behold, stillness

falling snow?

i hear it spring, summer, and fall;

carry it in my hands.

therein lies my hallelujah.

recall the thought,

the feeling,

the memory in the mirror.

is it a blur?

this spinning blue earth

in the middle of all space

and of all time holding us close

until there is nothing left to say

but hallelujah.

words i’ve said,

stories i’ve heard.

i will take a breath and whisper

the quiet hallelujah.

ahhh a bug!

A couple of hours ago I was in the basement retrieving some sheets from the dryer, and I thought I saw something small and black scurrying across the floor (specifically, a bug).  I think I see a giant bug several times a day, because I am terrified of bugs and subconsciously I am always on the lookout.  I can't stand them, especially after the (alleged) bed bug experience I had in the fall, which everyone continues to insist I made up in my head.  They are probably right, but I digress.

Anyway, I was about to go back to my original task of checking on my sheets, when I noticed that the black thing was still moving and that it wasn't a piece of lint but an actual bug.  I'm not an expert, so I couldn't tell you what kind of bug, but it was gigantic.  I was terrified.  But I stifled a scream, and I stomped on that bug!  I stomped on it good, because I knew that if I didn't get it the first time, it would probably craftily sneak under the dryer.  I shudder to remember the crunch, because there was indeed a crunch.

I understand that basements are built beneath the ground and that this means bugs and moisture will infiltrate from time to time, but it is still somewhat disconcerting.

Anyway . . . I thought it might be therapeutic for me to write about this before trying to sleep.

roundabouts, unicycles, and pedestrians

I watched a great TED talk yesterday (what else is new?) about roundabouts vs. stop signs.  It's good.  HERE is the link if you want to watch it.

I gave a little thought to different areas that I frequent which could benefit from changes.  One of them is North Star Rd, which from Fifth up to Lane has no sidewalk, except for portions on the West side above Waltham Rd (I think?  I'll check again the next time I drive by) where it is more residential.  Either way, they are putting in all of these businesses and really developing the section of Lane Ave which rests perpendicular to North Star, west to about Northwest Blvd.  I'm not saying I would walk up North Star to Lane Ave everyday, but I've wanted to in the past.  And nearly every time I drive up North Star I see people (usually students) walking in the same direction, presumably up to the bike path which heads further toward campus.  The speed limit has recently been reduced to 25 mph, which few people follow, and a pedestrian crossing sign has been added to the entrance of the bike path.  But I still think that a sidewalk would be really great.  There practically is a sidewalk already do to the amount of foot traffic running through the grass.  This means that it is a muddy mess now.

Anyway, I was pondering how nice it would be for people closer to King or Fifth to be able to walk up North Star safely, and found out that the Upper Arlington Engineering Division raised the topic of placing a roundabout at the intersection of North Star, Waltham, and Kinnear.  See THIS article for details.  While I think that having the lighted intersection works just fine there, perhaps the roundabout would inadvertently encourage drivers who intend to end up travelling north on North Star to slow down?  Just a thought.

The last paragraph about the possibility of some changes to Northwest Blvd intrigues me too, for pretty much the same reasons.  There is really no good way to walk/bike up Northwest Blvd, which his silly because the COTA 84 (a fairly popular line in the morning and at night - when it is dark and pedestrians are also less visible!) and the COTA 3 run up and down that road throughout the day.

One last road that would seriously benefit from a sidewalk?  Kinnear Rd.  The whole thing.

Also, potholes are the bane of my existence.

I'm not complaining, I'm just observing the way Gary told us to.

to spell, or spellian, espeller, spellon, spjalla...

Check this out.  And this, too.

I really just wanted to share the weirdness of the spelling variants of the word dwarf.  I had absolutely no idea that Tolkien had affected the spelling like this - the Merriam-Webster allows for the plural dwarves, whereas after the mid-19thC, most people spelled the word with an f, as in dwarfs (an evolutionary change to the spelling).  They now allow for this variation in their record because Tolkien spelled the word with a v (the older spelling) when referring to the race of dwarves in his literature.  Go figure.  If you asked me five minutes ago to spell the plural of dwarf, I would have spelled it with a v.  I wouldn't have said that spelling it with the f is incorrect, but if prompted to spell, I would have written it as dwarves.  That's a powerful thing.

I just wanted to point out that once again, Tolkien proves that even though he may have spent his spare time inventing languages and writing out complex histories of worlds which don't exist, he was so awesome at it that he actually affected the way that we spell the plural of dwarf.  And that's a pretty big deal.

I would also like to make a final note that my browser is attempting to correct my spelling of dwarves, but it can't even offer a suggestion for it.  TB, Google Chrome.

literature as a portal to truth

Some literature is crap.  But some of it is very good.


I was just having a brief conversation (it is never too late to discuss literature) via text with someone who recommended a book to me, and I was giving my thoughts of the first few chapters I've read thus far.  My friend read this book about a year ago, so it's been many books ago that he read it.  Even so, the author was able to leave a lasting impression.  He achieved a specific affect in us as readers that is rather astonishing.  I'm impressed, but it also makes me wonder how different all of us really are.


Do you ever notice how people who are really successful in life always say (in interviews and such) that they were bullied or picked on?  Well, who wasn't?  You'd have to be the worst kid ever to be not picked on at some point because everyone would fear you your whole life.  I guess my point is - and I'm being brief as I need to go to bed - that as different as we all are, perhaps we are all made of the same glue.  Perhaps we all feel terribly unique and singular - our own island - when really, we are in fact part of a whole after all.

the land of green waves

An adventure awaits me
In the land of waves
Of deep emerald and jade
Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel

in honor of Groundhog Day

First of all, I realize that it is not Groundhog Day any longer.  I lost track of the time.  Secondly, I am not really obsessed with Groundhog Day.  I'm just attempting enthusiasm, and I decided to save sharing these clips until the actual holiday.

So in honor of Groundhog Day, I wanted to give anyone reading this the chance to view 12:10 pm, which I mentioned last posting.  It is split into three parts, and the quality isn't tip top, but from what I understand this film is very old and it's difficult to find on hard copy, so I hope that it is enjoyable nonetheless.  And yes, that is the dad from That '70s Show.

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:

going green and some thoughts on deja vu

One of my favorite authors of all time, thanks to preludetoapparition is John Green.  I received Looking for Alaska as a gift some years ago, and it remains one of my all-time favorites.  That said, it is a mystery as to why I haven't read John Green's other books yet.  I think it has been part forgetfulness (there are a lot of books out there!) and partly distractedness (I am in college).

Anyway, I keep having this weird deja vu lately.  The unfortunate thing is that I can't think of a good example for you - it's kind of like when you wake up from a really freaky dream and you're kind of laying there and wondering what it all means.  Five minutes later you are in the bathroom brushing your teeth and you've forgotten the whole thing, but you know that it was crazy.  That's how it is with my deja vu.  It is usually something like a number.  For instance, before I started writing about Groundhog Day (film, 1993) the other night, I discovered a short film with the same premise as Groundhog Day.  The film is called 12:10pm and I found the film at exactly 12:10am.  This is a tidy coincidence of numbers.

Ah, but here's the rub:  My ultimate deja vu-ey experience of the week was when I happened upon John Green's online network of Nerdfighters.  The concept is too difficult to explain all at once, and my finger hurts so I don't want to type for too long.  Basically, I discovered the network before I realized that it was John Green who made it.  I only realized it when I saw the link to his personal website, which I had visited a couple of years ago.  Weirder still, I decided to join the Nerdfighters network as a means of procrastination, and discovered that I had already created an account???  That's kind of creepy.  It seems that a different network that I joined last year concerning a totally different topic uses the same service as Nerdfighters, and therefore, I have been a Nerdfighter (sort of) for at least a year without really knowing it.

It's just all very overwhelming.

It gets better:  In case you didn't already think me insane with all of this talk of "Nerdfighters," I will add that when I was watching the previously mentioned short film 12:10pm the other night, there was a link to an episode of this show called Merlin that the BBC produced last year or something.  I thought it sounded awful, and it really was awful, but I clicked on the link to the Youtube video just to be sure.  While I was appreciating how incredibly bad Merlin is, I then scrolled through the other videos that the user had uploaded (in addition to every single episode of Merlin ever made).  One of the videos was titled . . . wait for it . . . "Why I am a Nerdfighter."

I was so freaked out.  What is going on with all of these Nerdfighters?  Where are they coming from?  Why is John Green a Nerdfighter?  Are these people fighting off the nerds, or are they embracing nerd-like existence?  And how could there possibly be any connection between Groundhog Day and Nerdfighters?  And Merlin, for that matter?

We report, you decide.

disconnected - from the universe!

I'm watching a documentary on hulu called "Disconnected."  It's about these college students who decided to go three weeks without touching a computer.  I'm kind of jealous and want to perform this experiment as well . . . I was even coming up with preliminary plans and thinking about asking friends to participate.  But then I realized that it is literally impossible to be in school in 2010 and not use a computer.  It is mandatory, and you can't do your work without one.  I don't think this is a bad thing, and I think that the internet makes life way easier.  Judging by the model of cell phone that these students are using, I think it's safe to say that this documentary was filmed around 2005.

Ok, I just checked and it came out in 2008.  Seriously?  They are using Nokias with antennae.  I haven't seen a phone with an antenna in years.

The point is, this thing was made in Minnesota, and people in Columbus use computers, so I can't give up my computer for three weeks.  Furthermore, I would never be caught dead in . . . Minnesota.  Also, thirty two minutes into this documentary, I'm about to turn it off, and my major piece of constructive criticism is that this guy needs to seriously consider putting his shirt back on.  If you are too tired to put your shirt on before you start filming yourself in your bathroom mirror on Saturday morning, maybe you should wait five minutes and come back to that thought, because you look like a tool.

I think that instead of giving up my computer (because let's face it, why would I do that, really?) I will try to keep track of how many times I look things up throughout the day, on average, for a week or so.  Someone called me "google girl" recently, because I almost constantly use a computer or my phone to look up random facts.  You know those moments in conversation when you and the person/people you're with can't remember something, or you want to know something?  In 1995 you would just say, "oh well, I guess we'll never know!"  But today, you can know.  You can know almost anything that would normally require searching through books, and it's usually pretty instantaneous.  So I look it up.

groundhog day

Groundhog Day is coming up, and I hadn't thought about it except the movie Groundhog Day was on Comedy Central this evening.  I just finished watching, and I happened upon this discussion online somewhere regarding how many times Phil Connors must have repeated February 2nd.  It's all very rough estimating, but apparently the director said that in the final cut of the film, the production team assumed that Phil wakes up on Groundhog Day for about 10 years straight.  That's a long time.  Even worse, the original script was based upon the assumption that Phil relives February 2nd for approximately 10,000 years.

Of course, I never thought it was any longer than a month or two, and probably because I first saw it when I was little.  But knowing that Phil Connors could potentially have spent 10,000 years waking up to Sunny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" every single morning, I don't blame him for trying to kill himself multiple times.

I know this post is pretty specific, but bear with me.  Just imagine living the same day over and over and over.  That would be pretty frustrating, because any progress you made with the world surrounding you would be totally erased every day.  I'm surprised that Phil was able to reach a point where he could just be good for the sake of being good; that he could truly love Rita and be fine with her never knowing about the thousands of conversations they had enjoyed by the time Phil had escaped the time loop.

This is the thing that most puzzles me:  It's February 3rd.  At last, Phil wakes up and the first thing he hears is not "Don't forgetchyer booties, cuz it's cooold out there!"  After seemingly endless days when the basic assumption is that his actions will have no consequences, how could Phil ever go back to living a normal life?  And how could he not tell Rita or anyone else what had happened to him?  It's probably February 3rd that sets Phil over the edge, not Goundhog Day.