Mar 2004
- Mar 1
- quirkyalone: why fight it?
When this meme came out, I tried to resist it for the longest time. For one thing, I automatically resist things that I perceive (rightly or wrongly) to be trendy. For another thing, I didn't quite want to give up. I wanted to believe that, deep down inside, I was just like other people, I just needed to figure a whole bunch of shit out, I just needed to break out of my shell, get over past betrayals, stop wishing for impossible things. That someday, I too would join the great chain of being, get a decent job, get married, have 2.5 kids, have grandkids, and on-and-on. What a lot of people like to call "normalcy," whatever that's supposed to mean.
· Read more… - Mar 2
- peanuts
More Quizilla madness:
· Read more… - Mar 2
- calvin and hobbes extensive strip search
Awesome. I wonder if Bill Watterson authorized this, though?
· Read more… - Mar 2
- greek gods and the sandman
Sweet! I'm one of the Endless!
· Read more… - Mar 2
- the rain
As a coda to my rant and rave about my love life (or, more accurately, the lack thereof), I have these bits and pieces of lyrics to pop music floating through my head:
· Read more… - Mar 3
- circa 1981
By some bizarre quirk of Fate, iTunes decided to take me to the very early '80's, playing "Super Trooper" by Abba [lyrics][iTMS], "I Won't Hold You Back Down" by Toto [lyrics][iTMS], and "Genius of Love" by Tom Tom Club [lyrics][iTMS] back-to-back-to-back. It's weird how iTunes just goes about picking random songs and all of the sudden my mind picks up some unintended pattern.
· Read more… - Mar 4
- the roots "quills"
I first came across this song as I drove across New Mexico. I had originally ripped
· Read more…Phrenology without having listened to the entire CD, and so had missed this song for more than half a year, but I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the sample of Swing Out Sister's "Breakout" [iTMS ][from the album It's Better to Travel ], so much so that I thought I was hallucinating. - Mar 4
- the road to CHLA
On the way to work in the morning, I've opted to take a street that has four names, maybe five depending on which way you believe it goes. Maybe even six.
· Read more… - Mar 4
- priorities
I wish I wouldn't be so heavy handed, melodramatic, and dead-serious philosophical about all this, but, well, one problem at a time, I suppose….
· Read more… - Mar 5
- driven by fate
· Read more…
Which Member of the Endless Are You? - Mar 6
- aragorn
Viggo Mortensen seems like a pretty cool guy. (link from deconstruct life.) I had only previously known him from films such as "A Perfect Murder" (which was apparently a remake of an Alfred Hitchcock movie—"Dial M for Murder" which is something that I apparently need to watch) and "The Prophecy" (where he plays, of all people, Lucifer and where Christopher Walken plays the angel Gabriel turned evil—the movie was pretty cheesy but watching Christopher Walken was pretty entertaining.)
· Read more… - Mar 6
- chicago fire
Heh, those damned comets. Apparently there is a theory that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was caused by a comet (link from Slashdot), and not Mrs. O'Leary's kick-happy cow. Which incidentally jives very well with the explanation Matt Groening gives in "Simpsons Tall Tales", where Paul Bunyan saves the earth from a meteor, but finds it too hot to hold onto, and ends up throwing the meteor onto Chicago.
· Read more… - Mar 6
- subways
This site compares the extent of the subway networks of various cities. I wonder how L.A.'s MTA light-rail system and the San Francisco BART would compare? Time to do some mailing, I guess.
· Read more… - Mar 7
- rebuilding l.a.'s public transit
Some dreams about what L.A.'s subway and light rail system could look like if most Southern Californians weren't so short-sighted: Concept Expansion Maps.
· Read more… - Mar 7
- the hill
I've been walking around the neighborhood I grew up in lately, now that I have the time, and it's always interesting the things you find when you slow down your pace (i.e., from driving to hoofing it.) For example, I finally figured why the hell Round Top Drive is divided into two, each part flanking the Glendale Freeway just before it intersects the Ventura Fwy. The western segment has houses with addresses beginning with 4500, while the eastern segment has houses with addresses beginning with 4600 and beyond. When glancing at the relationship of the two segments from a distance (from an adjacent hill that is divided between Glendale and L.A.) I realized that before the Glendale Freeway was built (requiring a huge trench dug through the hill), the two segments were actually a continuous street, and once the freeway was built, they had to build a road to allow people to get off the hill. I'm trying to find an old map of L.A. to confirm this.
· Read more… - Mar 8
- fear
Again, I will be completely non-specific. It's this canker upon my soul, this ulcer gnawing away at my mind, the kind of malady that doesn't kill you, just weakens you bit by bit, wasting you away, until one day, you just don't feel like getting out of bed.
· Read more… - Mar 9
- dogs can feel ghosts
Every so often, at a particular time in the evening, all the dogs in the neighborhood bark. I always thought it was just their set time to meet, you know, like they'd hold some grand council remotely, just by barking. Because I can hear my dogs bark, and then wait for some other dog to answer.
· Read more… - Mar 9
- fear continued
How do you dispel fear? By confronting it.
· Read more… - Mar 9
- bludgeoned by an iPod
Holy crap, does this mean that we won't be able to bring iPods onto airplanes anymore? (As if TSA actually worked…)
· Read more… - Mar 9
- rivermaya "a love to share"
This song is absolutely perfect.
· Read more… - Mar 11
- software wants to be free
From the Financial Times:
· Read more… - Mar 12
- not quite right
The problem with me is that I always try to find something wrong.
· Read more… -
- Mar 16
- the beauty of being in between
I think I've too deeply internalized Zeno's Paradox. I am all about trying (and failing) to cover an infinite amount of distance in a finite amount of time—in less arcane terms, I have developed a perverse taste for the feeling of going nowhere fast.
· Read more… - Mar 19
- tossing salad with oprah winfrey
Sorry for the scatalogical post, but I thought this was hilarious: tossing salad and rainbow parties explained to Oprah. But there is a more serious component to it: the fact that the 1st amendment is being abridged.
· Read more… -
- Mar 21
- soul lag
William Gibson mentions it in
· Read more…Pattern Recognition . A metaphysical explanation for why you experience jet lag is because souls can only travel at a finite speed (akin to how light can't travel faster than 186,000 km/hr.) Jet lag is supposedly the sensation of the astral cord (connecting body and soul) being pulled apart, and it doesn't resolve until the soul finally catches up to the body. - Mar 26
- eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
There is something eerily familiar about this movie. Perhaps it's just my weird fascination with the malleability of the mind. Some of the movies I've been enjoying as of late involve anterograde amnesia (e.g., "
· Read more…Memento ","50 First Dates ") And of course, there's the whole field of inserting spurious sensory stimuli into people's brains (e.g., "The Matrix ","Dark City ", or "Vanilla Sky "/"Abre los ojos "—which reminds me, that last one is probably what "Eternal Sunshine" is closest to in many ways.) - Mar 27
- love and misnomers
One of my favorite lines from "
· Read more…Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind " goes something like "Why do I fall in love with every girl who shows me the least bit of attention?" - Mar 27
- hope
Dum spiro, spero
· Read more… - Mar 27
- the panda's thumb
A website "dedicated to explaining the theory of evolution, critiquing the claims of the anti-evolution movement, and defending the integrity of science and science education in America and around the world."
· Read more… - Mar 27
- mt hollywood
God only knows what possessed me to climb Mt. Hollywood today. OK, I'm overstating. I drove up to the Griffith Park Observatory (which is currently closed for renovation) which supposedly has an elevation of 1,135 feet. I then proceeded up the trail to the peak, which I've read has an elevation of 1,640 feet. So I climbed about 500 feet and walked somewhere between 1.25 and 2.5 miles. It had a really good 360° view of Burbank, Glendale, Eagle Rock, Glassell Park, Echo Park, Downtown L.A., Koreatown, Mid-Wilshire, Century City, and Westwood, but unfortunately it was one of those inversion-layer days, and the basin and the valleys weren't all that visible beneath the trademark L.A. smog. If it weren't so smoggy, you could probably see Mt. San Antonio (AKA Mt. Baldy), which is, I think, still snow-capped despite it being 85° in the basin today. I could make out Pasadena, Mt. Wilson, and the hills of Palos Verdes, but I couldn't really see the ocean at all. Hopefully the sky will clear up before I have to go back to Chicago, and I'll try to get better pictures.
· Read more… - Mar 30
- century city and civilization iii
Other than the alliteration, there is really nothing that links these two things, but for some reason they are things I am concomitantly (I had to look that up in the dictionary) obsessed with.
· Read more… - Mar 31
- in memory of kurt cobain
It's been almost 10 years since Kurt Cobain offed himself (or if you wear tin foil hats, 10 years since Kurt Cobain was murdered.) Call it synchronicity or apophenia, but R posted a link to a Quizilla quiz that tells you what rock genre you most exemplify.
· Read more…