the message in the bottle is the booze

I am going to be crossposting to Dreamwidth and LiveJournal. If you're doing the same, let me know so I can drop you off my default filter on LiveJournal. I'd like to make this into my primary journal, so if you're active on both I'll follow you here instead.

About "grant access," since we're all probably going to have to get used to that being its own designation now:

I rarely post anything that I would be uncomfortable having strangers read, but sometimes I do lock things because I want to keep them off of search engines or make sure that real life friends, family, and coworkers don't see them.

If I've granted you access, and you don't know me, it's nothing personal and I won't be insulted if you choose not to add me back.

I always feel a small sense of accomplishment when one of my pens runs out of ink.

I should start buying really crappy pens.

Just about a year ago, I noted that this post on Little Details has been getting comments from hapless anons who think it is a forum for discussing what it's like to live with a broken pelvis.

They're still going. The last anonymous comment was made today.

I believe I have previously PMed the owner of the original post to ask if they could friends-lock the entry, but got no response.

And I have a feeling it's only going to get worse. This post is now on the second page of results for "broken pelvis" on Google.

I have this problem with books: I'm really bad at reading things for fun.

That's not to say that I deliberately pick something torturous, but I nearly always pick something that requires careful attention. I have perverse puritan work ethic; I can procrastinate for hours doing something of no value whatsoever, like building elaborate temple complexes in the Sims, but when it comes to reading--if I'm reading, it had better learn me something!

So, about a week ago, I picked up a book that has been sitting on my to-read shelf for about ten years that I'd been put off reading because although I love the author, when I'm reading fiction I usually just don't want to read anything too political.

It was The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin.

It's a really good book, although it can sometimes come across as a little didactic, and I had a hard time believing that political theories and systems in an entirely different solar system would be so similar to our own. (The characters are supposed to be related to humans, but I would have had a hard time buying it even if they were fully human.)

One thing that LeGuin is so good at is drilling down and exposing the shaky bedrock on which her societies are founded, and then not proposing any solutions for fixing it. In the end, I think we find that the protagonist's anarchist society is preferable to the capitalist, highly stratified society that he visits, but it's never portrayed as perfect. He leaves it only to find there's no place else to go.

Yeah, I suck at reading things for fun. That was depressing.

My new favorite meme is "You can't explain that," courtesy of Bill O'Reilly, who tried to prove the existence of God by pointing to those mysterious tides. We don't know why there are tides, so God exists. QED.



And here's one that points out the problem of the God of the Gaps:



Man, sometimes I wish I could just throw everything else out and study how people communicate through internet memes. It would be fascinating and funny at the same time, and it would have implications for modeling language far beyond just mocking Bill O'Reilly.

Look at this ad for Kewpie mayonnaise, sudaki:



Don't you just want to put it on EVERYTHING?

Thank you to the anonymous person(s) who bought me paid accounts on DW and LJ! I'll try to put them to good use by uploading ANNOYING ICONS or something.

Day 09 - A Song That You Can Dance To

I don't dance.

Day 10 - A Song That Makes You Fall Asleep

I don't sleep.

Day 11 - A Song From Your Favorite Band

I don't have a favorite band.

Day 12 - A Song From A Band That You Hate

I'm going to assume I can rag on an artist (and not a band) here.

Yesterday I saw this video ("We R Who We R") by Ke$ha. I'm usually out of the loop when it comes to popular music, since I don't listen to the radio or watch TV. I was shocked. This is a popular artist? It's so awful!

Now, I do enjoy a lot of awful music. I'm not going to sit here and sniff and say that people are only allowed to enjoy music with artistic merit, or something. The thing is, the awful music I like is still, generally, put out by people with talent who are just having fun.

There is no talent here. The lyrics are terrible. The dancing is terrible. The production itself is moderately catchy, but I question how much Ke$ha had to do with that. All she brings to the table is, apparently, an attractive face that can pose painfully for the camera. It's hard not to laugh when she's vamping it up in that glittery blue lipstick. Can we say trying too hard?

She epitomizes everything that makes pop music today so boring. It's so bad - and so carefully calculated for maximum commercial success - that it's not fun.

Things I have to do by the eleventh:

- Revise a ten-page paper on, of all things, the mathematics of Keplerian planetary motion.
- Write a five-page paper on Michif
- Write a six-page paper on, ummm, probably Proto-Mayan
- Create a thankfully short annotated bibliography on, umm, probably creole formation

And the biggest, scariest of all: Write a paper that pulls together the research I've been doing for the past two months. I am in the library right now not working on it. Two months is not enough; hopefully my professor will say, "hey, you have a preliminary paper for the research you'll be doing next semester" rather than "hey, YOU FAIL."

I also have to study for three finals, and I'm sure I'll have a few minor assignments in there as well.

On the plus side, I got invited to take a class in Optimality Theory next semester, which should be interesting. I don't know what I think of Optimality Theory--parts of it simply don't mesh all that well with observed phenomena. But, I don't know enough about it to know what that's a fatal flaw, or just something that needs to be worked on. Regardless of what my opinion turns out to be, I think it's important to have a good understanding of it. So that's kind of exciting, especially the part about being invited to take the class.

So, I should be very busy. Right now. Why am I updating LJ.

I'm skipping a couple of days because I can't decide on a song that fits. And no one cares!

Day 07 - A Song That Reminds You of a Certain Event

The Wind Cries Mary - Jimi Hendrix

After my Grandma's funeral, my mom and I sat in the car and listened to this song. I don't know what the significance of this song is to my mom, but she really wanted to hear it then. So I sat with her and listened to it too while she tried to deal with losing her mom.