Your reading assignments.

Here are some things that I suggest you read so that we can have an enriching class discussion some day.

This abstract describes the basic reasons that toast is known to fall butter-side down.

A cogent little page on what the greenhouse effect is not.

Nose art on military aircraft: an index.

Okay. That's it for today. You'll have more later in the week, and I look forward to our discussion on the above.

Au revoir.

The web made this internet a strange place. Communication changed. We have hyperlinked profiles, hyperlinked friends' pages and photos and sweet background images and then some. Where we used to have personality, now we have fashion.

But it helps you recognize a person.

Now twice in the past ~month, I've accidentally hit on the blog of an old, lost friend while playing around online. What to make of that? These are both people who, without this voyeuristic web culture, without the online diary craze, would have been lost to me forever. Odd.

It's like goodbyes hardly exist anymore. You can Google them years later and say hello again.

Look out.

Real life has its way of spiraling ever closer to total enjoyment anihilation. It's a wonder that we don't all take the reigns hanging slack in our hands and tie nooses from the responsibility we never wanted in the first place. This should be a world awash in the juice of sour grapes.

"I didn't ask for this."
"I knew it was a bad idea from the start."
"If I had known it was going to be like this, I never would have agreed."

That's the risk of real life. There are real consequenses, real traps. There are real failures. But what are we failing at and falling into but the makings of other people? The fashions of a civilization hell bent on making it so difficult to live that it's difficult to think. More people should give it more attitude, all things considered.

Diehard deathbed.

People are often surrounded by the reminders of their worst moments.

We walk down the street proverbially trackmarked and smoking, pushing proverbial strollers too young, carrying our parole officer's information in our wallets with the insurance card that cost five times as much since we hit that guy. These things surround us like a halo -- notes from past relationships, that dress we bought before we got fat, the homework crumpled up in the bottom of our backpack -- and it glows until it blinds us. We have bad habits so bright we can't see beyond them.

Mine is here on this couch, literally surrounded by blankets and trash, wishing I could muster the energy to get up. Knowing I have class today. Knowing that there are real people out there who really miss me and wonder where I've been.

But those people don't know me. They don't know my couch, my computer, or my complete inability to see past them. They don't know how wonderful it is for me to stay up all night talking online. They don't know how much actual love is here in this world. They don't know how the comfort wraps itself around me, the waves of binary communication, the friendships and loves swirling all around this couch, these blankets, this moniter, my mind, my heart.

Even if this isn't healthy, I want to keep it.

Sunshine and snowflakes.

Reviving an old tradition, today is happy thoughts day.

Where the baby pandas of a few posts ago left off, the whimsy shall continue today.

These frogs are in a kind of love I think that humans can't even imagine.

Systems of classification always make me happy -- I like seeing order in things I don't quite understand. I like to know that even if I don't understand zoology, I can put animals into categories based on recognizable features. Same for snowflakes. Look and see!

I meant to have more and perhaps will add later, but I got really distracted looking at photos of yarn. It looks so soft. Think about yarn. That's the happiest thought I know.

My favorite night is therapy night.

Pain swells, smarts, sneaks and slaps its way into my life. It’s nothing if it isn’t strong. When something causes pain, be it physical or otherwise, there is a ricochet of pure vitality on its tail. While the pain is sudden, the consequent realization that I am very much alive comes as even more of a surprise.

This action-reaction sequence takes its various forms in much the same way that pain, itself, can be many things. When someone winds up and slugs me in the shoulder or lands a fist on my thigh, the resultant sensation makes me giggle uncontrollably. Through some trick of reflex neurology, my fight or flight response takes the form of laughter.

As for emotional pain, all the phrases I read in books that describe a person’s reaction to gross injustice or offense are completely applicable to my own experience. When someone deeply insults me, I feel as though I’ve been slapped in the face, as though the wind has been knocked out of me, as though my lungs are tightening or as though numbers of other clichéd expressions of inner pain are playing themselves out in my body.

But I laugh when I'm slapped. I giggle when I'm punched. As an emotional corrolary, when the pain comes from within, I'm secretly delighted.

It’s what I do with those clichés which makes me feel like less of a participant in the world of those with normal relationships to pain. I feel that sting in my cheeks, let it flow into my body like a syrup rife with shrapnel and then, then I savor it. I treasure it privately and fuel its licking flames with my own material. I make it worse and deeper and sharper until it is the worst emotional tar pit you can imagine, until so many tears caterwaul between my eyes that I just can’t help but think, “Holy shit, this is fucking amazing."

"Holy, shit. I love this."

Being turned on by physical pain is a common enough racket. Being turned on by humiliation and demoralization isn't much more rare. So why do I feel like there's something so wrong with being exultant by these things. Yes, they hurt. Being kicked hurts. Being insulted hurts. But the more they hurt, the more joyously they demonstrate the limitations of the human body, heart and mind.

Too drunk to fuck.

The problem isn't how tired I am, it's how awake being tired makes me feel. I get a giddy kick of energy in my brain that doesn't match how exhausted I am. I feel drunk -- loopy -- and I hardly remember what year it is. But I'm not sleepy. No, ma'am. No sleep for moi. Not when I can look at pictures of a baby panda and also, I can do research on things I want to learn like cross stitching, though I don't have any of the supplies.

Look at the baby panda. Just look.

I am too exhausted to even lie down.

Comcast Feind Club

Emerson can live his life to its fullest extent again because the cable is turned back on.

For the sake of it.

Recursive loops are the little snags in the otherwise flawless tapestry of logical thought. So many times today I have heard that I need to "do the responsible thing," "act as a responsible citizen," or simply to "be responsible." Why?

Because it's the responsible thing to do.

I know it's childish, but I mean it when I say that this attitude baffles me. This is a child saying "why?" and hearing "because." This is a dog running after ball that someone feinted to throw. This is a game. No one wins.

It seems like that's a shared idea across the board. Those who try their hardest to convince me to vote tell me that I shouldn't think of it as a matter of someone winning, I should think of it as a matter of someone losing. They want Bush to lose, not Kerry to win. They want Keyes to lose, but who doesn't?

Is that the purpose here? We do this dance every four years to try to scare off our enemies, to keep the angry volcano spirit from spitting his wrath on our petty infant nation and all it assures is that it'll keep us running. Would it kill these people to just stop and look about themselves?

The passionate "vote vote vote for the love of all that is holy this is your last day on earth unless you vote vote vote oh my gosh the sky falls and falls and the only way to stop it is to vote vote vote lookit my pretty sticker vote vote vote" crowd seems so ingenuine to me. Their ideals don't match their actions. They want me to vote so badly (someone actually cried at me today -- real tears -- because I had missed my chance to absentee) but they'd just lose their minds if I voted for Bush. They'd die if I voted for LaRouche. They'd kill me if I voted for Buchanan. So what does it matter if I vote vote vote since you're only satisfied when I vote for your guy? Isn't that like you getting two votes?

My kingdom for some democracy.