mahiwaga

I'm not really all that mysterious

Sep 2006

confusing the sacred with the profane

So maybe all Republicans aren’t religious fundamentalists, but I kind of wonder if there isn’t some sort of congruence between the two mind sets—namely, the kind of ignorance and stupidity that makes you so sure that what you know is absolutely right and anyone that disagrees with you is absolutely wrong.

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simple pleasures revisited

I was lying in bed, warm and comfortable, except somehow I had lost my pillow, and I thought I should just go to sleep and find it when I wasn’t so tired, but then I quickly found it to the side of my bed.

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fearing tomorrow

I don’t know if there was ever a time when I looked forward to the future. Some of this is probably depression clouding my mind, by I remember quite early on in my life that I was afraid of building for the future. As early as elementary school, I was always afraid that Reagan would press the shiny red button and effectively erase history, but somehow, it never happened. Among other things, I am afraid of falling in love, because love can always be lost. I am afraid of bringing a child into this world, because the world is such a fucked up place run by clearly evil human beings. I am afraid of trying to succeed, because there are always fuckwits out there who have nothing better to do than to see you fall on your ass, and point and laugh. And I am afraid of trying to succeed, because, ultimately, human beings tend to be selfish, and however noble my intentions are, they will likely fuck someone else’s life up, and the only rational thing for them to do is oppose me.

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I stopped to think about all the people I know who are married or are in fulfilling romantic relationships, and I realize that I’m jealous, but what are you gonna do. If it’s not going to happen, it’s not going to happen, and I’ll slog on by my lonesome, trying to keep fighting the good fight.

trying to snap out of it

The thing that I’ve been mulling over is the fact that there have been so many Septembers in the past where I’ve been ever hopeful, with the intent of making a change in my life. And while I know it would be hard to convince many of you, there have been times that I’ve actually acted upon this impulse, only to be rebuffed, or even worse, only to be faced with puzzled indifference.

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perpetually courting disaster

The idea was that I was actually going to sleep early today, but somehow that failed to happen. I’m going to try yet again to wake up in time for work, although I’m not all that hopeful.

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no one is useless

If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning. — Catherine Aird

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maybe i’m a mutant

Beast

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last days of summer

There are approximately 3 days, give or take, until I turn 30, and I’ve basically hunkered down and accepted the inevitable. My life will not be visibly different in any way, no major milestones will be reached. It will just be another godforsaken Wednesday that will blow by faster than I can think.

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it’s time to move on

It’s natural to look back, I suppose. We are the stories that we tell, after all. But the beatification and fetishization of this particular day by the media—blogs included—is kind of disgusting.

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the last few moments of this particular age

So here I am, the last hours of my 20s, and there are no answers, really.

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the last days of summer

I can taste autumn in the air. Septembers have always been bittersweet. Since I turned 30, I haven’t really had much of a chance to reflect, although I find that regret frequently colors my reminiscences.

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always crashing

I was happy for about 15 minutes when for some reason the dark clouds of despair overcame me, leaving me a little pissed off, and very bitter.

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reading the paper on a saturday morning

On some Saturdays, I head out to the Mission Cafe in North Park before it gets overly crowded and buy myself an L.A. Times (because, frankly, the San Diego Union-Tribune is not fit to wipe my ass with.) On the front page, I found two rather depressing stories: (1) the beleaguered Charles Drew/Martin Luther King, Jr. Medical Center in South Central L.A. has failed a “make it or break it” federal inspection, thereby losing funding from CMS and (2) this character piece about a guy named Ronnie Wise who has been fighting illiteracy in the Mississippi delta for the past 30 years in the face of institutionalized racism, uncaring politicians, arsonists, and weather, and who has decided to retire early.

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coding, practicing medicine, and a brief word on blogorrhea

I stumbled upon this blog post about how most of the time spent developing code is actually spent rewriting rather than actually writing, which actually fits the aphorism about how most of writing in general is rewriting. But the thing that he discusses is that this is a function of the fact that most developers can’t immediately grok what code is supposed to do just by reading it, and a lot of them end up trying to rewrite what has already been written, which, in my estimation, is a glorious waste of time.

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Summer is officially over (despite the fact that today’s high was 76°F and I went out in shorts and flip-flops) and I can’t help but wonder where all the time went. Of course, I don’t know if it’s an artifact of getting old, but it also seems like it’s about a decade since it was June. (Yeah, I’ve been noticing this strange paradox ever since I started residency. The recent past seems simultaneously like it was just yesterday, and like it was 100 years ago. Go figure.)

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capriciousness of chance

So Mireya¹ actually called me back and like a fool, I said, no, I can’t go out tonight. Stupid.

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It’s 2 a.m. and I can’t sleep. I’m not feeling well, physically speaking.

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starlight (continually redshifted)

gonna buy me a spaceship
powered by dark energy
take me to the outermost reaches
forever chasing infinity

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coastline by moonlight

In this shadowed hour, I find myself contemplating the nuances of timing.

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fascism declared in america

So what has really twisted my mind is the fact that habeas corpus has been suspended and the Authorities can basically disappear people, just like in corrupt developing countries. I really didn’t think I would see the Republic of the United States of America fall within my lifetime, but I guess I was just in denial.

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installing typo 4 on dreamhost

I struggled with this for awhile, abandoning it midway through, but I finally got it to work. Most of the instructions for installing typo 4.0.1 on dreamhost by Aiden Bordner worked for me, except you need to edit db/migrate/051_fix_canonical_server_url.rb as described by Chris H.

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disappointment (not unexpected)

It is funny how much a simple change in someone’s Friendster status can influence my day.

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hopeless (another september come and gone)

I usually know better than to hinge my hopes on someone else being around, and yet I still hoped that I’d get to hang out with [redacted] this weekend. Wishful thinking as usual.

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the problem of living in a vacuum

I’ve been living by myself for two years now, and I think it’s starting to wear on my soul. In the past, I’ve at least had roommates (despite the fact that I have wanted some of them arrested and/or shot by the cops) and this ensured a minimal amount of human contact.

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yin and yang (i heart huckabees)

I was watching “I Heart Huckabees” and dug the simplified dichotomy of relentless interconnection and infinite meaning versus eternal alienation and complete senselessness. The main character rightly discovers that one cannot exist without the other, and that both simultaneously operate. In essence, it was Taoism redux. There is no life without death, no creation without destruction, and all that jazz.

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