saturday, june 17

•••    I just finished reading "ella enchanted," by gail carson levine. (I would link to a book review or something, but everything I read gave away far too much plot!) it took me a while to get into it - maybe that's a silly thing to say since I read it all in one sitting, but I didn't decide I really liked it until the end of the third chapter. anyway, by the end I was completely captivated. it almost made me want to go dancing in castles and fall in love with a prince . . . (not quite, though.)
11:18 PM +

•••    babysitting perks: new books to read (I'm a sucker for good children's book), peace and quiet, and a cable modem connection. whee! :)
10:00 PM +

•••    bugger blogger. maybe the antithesis to non-neg? how strange.
5:55 PM +

•••    potato flash movies! yay!
4:25 PM +

•••    the sky outside just got so dark and cloudy that my spiral mobile started glowing. (it's phosphorescent - not radioactive or anything.)
3:43 PM +

•••    this is a pretty small room, and its single window faces northwest, so it gets pretty hot in the afternoon. it's absolutely miserable without some sort of air circulation. however, there's only one outlet in the room, so it's impossible to plug a fan in without it being near the computer. (it's also impossible for the fan to be more than six feet away from the computer and still be in the room, anyway.) you must know what that means... monitor flicker!

being the physics geek that I am (or maybe because my brain is starting to turn to mush from all the hyponitic waves that are engulfing the internet), I had to figure out what it is that causes the flickering. apparently fans are spewing magnetic fields everywhere! I would love to get a cloud of tiny iron filings in here or something so I could see them. wouldn't that be a trip?
3:18 PM +

•••    there's an article in the new york times magazine about asperger's syndrome, which is a high-functioning form of autism. neurological weirdness runs in my family (both sides, heh), and one of my uncles has something similar to asperger's. it is impossible to have a conversation with him without it turning into a discussion of how communism is taking over the world or a lecture on the mechanics of airplanes. usually both. he can make you feel like a complete idiot just moments before he goes off raving about some new conspiracy theory. still, most people who have only limited contact with him probably think he's just strange and a little rude. think about that. there's more to people than you ever imagine, most of the time. (including me. including you.)
2:50 PM +

•••    it's ninety four degrees - already hotter than today's forecast, whee. I'm going to run stairs. :) four hundred of them!
12:04 PM +

•••    I feel like I've been complaining too much lately. really, life has been pretty good. so I started thinking about happy things . . . there are lots of them. right now, for instance, the sun is shining and the flowers outside my window are blooming. my parrot's tail is fluttering in the breeze. my sansevieria seems really happy; it has two new leaves. my beloved aloe is recovering from its encounters with the cat.

I have some wonderful friends, even though I spend most of my time alone. I live in a really cool city, next to a river. I don't get bored. I get to play with a four year old three times a week.

people are, in general, fairly interesting and rather beautiful. and they're good at sharing happiness. (I like physics happiness, of course.)
11:40 AM +

•••    rap name: pepa dimple poet. yeah.
12:13 AM +

friday, june 16

•••    listen.
11:44 PM +

•••    in about an hour, splashdown is going to be taking the stage at t.t. the bear's place. splashdown is a really cool boston-based band who is finally getting some play in the media this year. I've been a fan since 1996. the show is cheap. I'm over eighteen.

I'm not going to be there. know why? asthma and secondhand smoke don't mix. it's really sad when I have to choose between going to a concert and breathing, isn't it?
10:50 PM +

•••    oddly enough, the best nasa press release I have read in a while has to do with plants. but really, I loved it. all the pods and probes and sensors are so futuristic-sounding... and ooh! "biological activity on planets"... I'm all tingly. ;)
9:45 PM +

•••    I picked up a semi-rare space promo cd today. it has a funny sticker on the front:
"you are extremely lucky to get this unreleased b sides from SPACE
not available anywhere else in the universe
don't ask for more!"
hehe. :)
7:02 PM +

•••    the first letter of my name does not describe who I am. there are two letters here that I think are vaguely accurate. one of them isn't in my name at all, anywhere. ;)
2:50 PM +

•••    acrid smoke from raging wildfires hazardous to those with lung, heart diseases. wow, really? :P
1:12 PM +

•••    my best friend is really cool. I wish we spent more time together. you know?
1:14 AM +

thursday, june 15

•••    the commercial for the x-men movie really bothers me. it starts out by saying how every human has the genetic code for mutation. okay. aside from that being meaningless jargon, there are a few major problems with it.

first of all, we all do have mutations - probably two or three somewhere on those forty six chromosomes. yes, you are a mutant. hahaha. :D

there is not a genetic code for mutation. the method by which our genes are replicated, transcribed, translated, and inherited leaves ample room for the possibility of random mutation. this is a good thing, because without it, evolution would be exactly nowhere. but there is not a code for mutation the way there's a code for five fingers on each hand. a mutation in certain genes can cause polydactyly, but that's just a product of dna functionality.

the worst thing about this commercial is that for some reason I haven't connected it to the x-men yet. so every time it comes on, I think, "no, not this stupid thing again! what is this crap!" and then I see patrick stewart's face and I just want to cry.
4:00 PM +

•••    when I finished high school, my biology teacher from freshman year told me he thought I would be the first woman on mars someday. (why not the first person? I have no idea.) while I find that highly unlikely, since I would never qualify for the astronaut program as it stands now, it still makes me very happy to think that traveling to mars is becoming more feasible. and I expect to see an offworld colony before I die! so get going, spacefreaks. :)
2:32 PM +

•••    so get this: someone wants to pay me to play in the dirt today. hehehe. :) I'm off to plant flowers!
9:06 AM +

•••    archie and his dimwitted friends are, sadly, just as shallow and immature when they're gay as they are when they're straight. they are entertaining, though. at least it's not lesbian betty and veronica, because I think that would make me gag.
2:12 AM +

wednesday, june 14

•••    woo, they made it! that means my fiona withdrawal will soon be cured! yay. :)
wow, tonight just keeps getting better and better. maybe I should skip the part where I go to bed and bring it all to an end.
10:44 PM +

•••    how strange - I just wrote a somewhat lengthy email about aphasia last night. there must be weird vibes traversing the internet.

anyway, the aspect of aphasia that I find really frightening is face agnosia. can you imagine looking in the mirror and not knowing you were seeing yourself? it would be like when you hear a recording of yourself saying something you don't remember ever talking about, or when you can't read your own handwriting, only a hundred thousand times worse.
9:49 PM +

•••    ooh, ooh! alison has discovered comfort music! I'm kind of pathetic in that I have more comfort things than anyone should need, including a stuffed penguin who is squashed lopsided because I always hold him in the same way, but if there's one thing I think I would go nuts without, it's comfort music. (I have a mix tape labeled "security blanket," even though I never had an actual security blanket. maybe that's more than I want to reveal to the internet. heh.)
5:08 PM +

•••    time magazine wants to know: will cybersex be better than real sex?

right.
3:54 PM +

•••    my computer thinks it is in uruguay.
I am not kidding.
11:31 AM +

•••    hey! does this mean indiana jones was really named after his dog? (okay okay, I am completely ignorant - I've never seen an entire indiana jones movie. but isn't indiana a weird name even for a dog?)
10:59 AM +

•••    my little sister is fifteen and has about a quadrillion friends. now, even though it is a school day, they have been calling all morning looking for her. and not once have I gotten a name, a message, a hello or a goodbye. the best conversations go like this:
me: hello?
friend: is zoey there?
me: no, she's out right now --
friend: okay. (click.)
most of the time though, it's worse than pulling teeth trying to get them to tell me that no, I don't need to take a message or have her call back. they just sort of sit there in the middle of the dead telephone air as if there is a script and I obviously have the next line. I suppose this is something I am destined to never understand, since I was far too antisocial in high school to ever call people myself. or maybe there is just a serious lack of telephone etiquette in the world. wow I sound like a snob. :P
10:52 AM +

•••    I've been listening to the virgin suicides score a lot lately (obviously, doctor, you've never been a thirteen-year-old-girl), but only today did I stop and actually pay attention to the narration in the last track.

our parents did not buy used furniture, and they certainly didn't buy furniture tainted by death
they still do not hear us, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time
alone in suicide, which is deeper than death

any moment when you realize your whole life is tainted by death in one way or another is a bit frightening. even if it's something you've realized before. but I don't think suicide is deeper than death. it's just darker.
12:00 AM +

tuesday, june 13

•••    it occurs to me sometimes that I wouldn't really know how to be cutting edge even if I wanted to.
6:43 PM +

•••    there's an article in newsweek this week about teacher-assisted cheating on standardized tests and the like. I don't understand how someone who supposedly is trying to educate kids can even begin to justify teaching them to cheat, in any sense. it's bad enough that curricula are being organized around standardized tests. there are places where kids have no science whatsoever before high school because the state isn't testing them on it. and now, rather than actually learning material, they're being fed the right answers or kept from taking the test if administrators are afraid they are going to do poorly. how can people do this? how can people agree with it?? arrrg.
2:18 PM +

•••    perseus a is a cannibal galaxy! lucky for us it's 320 million light years away, so hopefully it won't be gobbling up the milky way any time soon.
11:47 AM +

monday, june 12

•••    okay, but the thing about mango juice is that you don't want to drink it all the time. it's too sweet and rich and thick. mango juice is a once-a-month treat, for when you're already out somewhere different, maybe eating curry and pan, and you think what the hell, might as well splurge on the mango juice. it's special and off the beaten path because you don't have it every day.

maybe that's just me. but I do know I am one hundred percent happy sitting at home, eating cereal and spinoza bagels every day, drinking glasses of water. it's the same water from the same tap that's gone through the same filter, day after day, but I never get tired of it. it's cool and refreshing and comforting, especially through a straw. and at dinner I have juice, because I do like a little variety. today I had grapefruit juice. it was very tasty.

if wockerjabby was a beverage, though I don't know why it would be, it would be cranberry juice. I could say that's because it's sweet but not too sweet, it mixes well with most other things, it's just a little tangy, and it's colorful but not opaque. really, though, it's because I like cranberry juice.
10:29 PM +

•••    now I have been outside. it was not very exciting. ;)
9:45 PM +

•••    I was going to go running today, because I'm trying to be good about staying in shape, but somehow it got dark and late (and cold). so I decided I would do some exercises with weights instead. I dragged them downstairs to my room, all eighty pounds' worth, spent about five minutes lifting them in various different ways, and now I'm back on the computer. I don't think I've even been outside today! sad.
9:33 PM +

•••    my dad was very profound at dinner tonight: "I think sometimes you have to do things you dread, because it might be a good experience."
hehe.
9:16 PM +

•••    hey! I only have one birthday saint. not even an interesting saint! I would be upset about this if I was a christian.
6:31 PM +

•••    psa for all of the greater boston area: stop complaining about the weather. suck it up and put on a long sleeved shirt.
I think fifty degrees and cloudy is much better than ninety five degrees and humid, which is what it was like on saturday. it made the soles of my sandals melt.
besides, it's monday. what do you expect? :)
5:35 PM +

•••    I already have lots of names, and my middle name is pretty useless, but I had fun with the name game anyway.

soap opera: steele rockingham
axe murderer: steele "belt sander" degaulle
(I told you my middle name was useless.)
burlesque entertainer: julia honeydews
performance artist: parrot twelve
dominatrix: lady rabia, mistress of the circular saw
topless dancer: audie nectarines
cross dresser: the lady andrique lechevrie
(okay, I don't eat it anymore, but I loved goat cheese.)
mafia don: stefani "kidney" whitakeretti

yeah, I left a few out. some of them really didn't work. I'll leave it up to you to figure out why. :)
(link via zal, who has some cool names herself.)
4:40 PM +

•••    I thought a lot about my fray post before I sent it. I didn't exactly answer the question, but I did respond to the story. and I wrote a lot about cars. I think that counts.

I honestly do hate cars. I think they hate me, too, because I've been involved in several different accidents even though I was only inside a car for one of them. that first car accident happened in a snowstorm when I was five; I remember the windshield shattering like a spiderweb and being pulled out of my carseat through the broken window. my dad was unconscious in the driver's seat. I dripped blood all over the linoleum floor in the kitchen that belonged to the woman who had yanked me from the car. there were bruises in the shape of my carseat harness across my chest. I think that might have something to do with why I hate cars.

I also hate them because they're noisy and dirty and not enough people seem to care how much gas they use up or how much pollution they spew. I was bored in chemistry one day a few years ago, and I calculated how much carbon monoxide comes from a gallon of gas. I don't remember exactly how much it was, but I think it was enough to fill up my entire chemistry classroom. that's pretty disgusting, really.
12:54 PM +

•••    whoa . . . soon they might be using adaptive optics technology to give you superhuman vision. what I want to know is, can they turn my eyes into telescopes?
11:50 AM +

sunday, june 11

•••    every time I go radio station surfing, I become more and more convinced that the djs at kiss 108 are smoking something (that's nicer than saying they're idiots, right?). one guy just interrupted himself mid-sentence to let us know that "whoa! it's pouring rain out!" - thank you, mr. weatherman - and another opened his show the other day with "I have three words for you: 'nsync tickets." even if you spell it with that star, I don't think "*n" is a word.

okay, I'm being bitchy and sarcastic. I'll stop. to balance it out, I'll bitch about myself: I ate three chocolate chip ice cream cookie sandwiches today, which is disgusting. (actually, it was tofutti, not ice cream, but that doesn't give as clear a mental picture, does it? and the fact that I eat frozen tofu is not the disgusting part.) I'm brushing my teeth now.
11:51 PM +

•••    I think it's really amusing (in a good way) that a domain name like what does not change has a section that changes daily.
11:22 PM +

•••    at one point during my river run tonight, a woman on rollerblades whizzed past me so fast that her backdraft made my hair flutter. I caught a quick glimpse of the back of her shirt, enough to see that it said "top ten reasons for being a rugger instead of a crewer." of course, being the devoted rugger that I am, I wanted to see the actual list, but she was going really fast and I was already well into my third mile, so I was starting to get tired. still, I picked up my pace and tried to keep up with her on the off chance that she would get stopped at a traffic light. I even skipped my normal bridge-crossing, lengthening my run by a good half mile thanks to the river curvature. it was futile, though. it's hard for feet to compete with wheels.

anyway, now I'm really curious about those top ten reasons. I can think of some myself, such as that ruggers get to tackle people, but I have a feeling the reasons on that shirt were a lot funnier than anything I could ever come up with. ;)
11:03 PM +

•••    veruci fucking ghoti. aickseolunth. (you figure it out.)
5:30 PM +

•••    I just learned a new word: bugbear. isn't that great? I don't know about anyone else, but I get some hilarious mental imagery from "bugbear." :D
4:59 PM +

•••    it's weird how much random stuff goes on in this city that I don't have a clue about.
1:55 PM +

•••    first there was life on earth as we know it . . . then there was email.
I will never, ever finish responding to all my email!
but I will try. because I love email.

I think I'm sleep deprived.
1:26 PM +

•••    in my dream last night there was a person wearing a leisure suit. what's up with that?
11:07 AM +