we need to talk

all right ann emery. i've put up with your behavior long enough. this is unacceptable. they should have taught you at building school that you have to be yourself, and imitation is not the way to grow as a person thing. that's why i have to inform you that it's been very disappointing to see you trying to be something you're not. the antarctic death trap phase is one that will pass soon enough, just like those jelly shoes people wore back in elementary school, or youthful optimism. you might not be aware of that phase, since you are a building, but it happened. note the past tense. that is in fact a (now rather ironically outdated) phrase people employ to indicate the hip-ness of an object or idea: "happenin" and let me tell you, THIS SHIT is not. it's not even "hap."

let me clarify what THIS SHIT pertains to. while there are organisms, such as sphingomonas echinoides, that thrive at -25 degrees celsius, the three inhabitants of Apt 201 are not such creatures. we are of a higher phylum, order, family, genus, molecular makeup, intelligence, sentience, and surface area. given this, here are some examples of unacceptable behavior:

exhibit a) hank. upon walking into the living room/kitchen (approx 9 ft x 13 ft, which is smaller than the size of your average cadillac escalade), one may notice that the oven, Hank, is open and on. this is because without Hank, said living room/kitchen approaches temperatures commonly seen in deep sea trenches or alternatively, on the surface of the moon. 

exhibit b) electricity bill. way more expensive in the winter than in the summer. why? spaceheaters running. for the sake of argument, let's say that's just one 1500 kw space heater running for a low estimate of 8 hours per day. mg&e's winter pricing is  $.2589. that equals $3.11 per day spent on heating. now let's say that we use this hypothetical space heater a modest 25 days per month. that's $77.75 in fucking space heater payment alone. 

exhibit c) i just calculated how much money we may be spending on our space heater. that is a problem. i do not want to do math. that is an exhibit all in itself. furthermore, i am writing this in my giant puffy winter coat, with slowly numbing fingertips, already numb toes. 

that is just three exhibits. i would write more but the frost is creeping over the screen. farewell fond world. you'll find me in a week, encased in a lump of ice like jack from the shining. on my gravestone please inscribe the words "it's been cool."

ps the resounding bass and drunk langdon streeters are just icing on the cake 

eta pps who the hell has sex at 2:41 am? upstairs neighbor, you must recently have gotten an accommodating finals fuck buddy in which case, power to you but move your bed away from the wall. and lower your elephantine feet more gingerly 

Things

six sugar cookies with reindeer heads
so delicious, will eat until dead
one fluffy cat, jack please give her to us
individuals with nonfuctional MBL alleles susceptible to meningitis 


three dishes at a chinese restaurant
one a ginger fish with its head still on 
a lot of interesting woodman's aisles
god fucking damn mother ass christmas carols


becca's learning unibomber anatomy (HAHAHA)
seven pages of james joyce philosophy
whisky river aka noise violations
three hours of window shelf air conditioner fire escape vibrations


stop this this is self indulgence
nothing like finals to up your procrastination 
blahdittyblahblahblogdittyblah
i found a leprechaun and it was a frog 

WARNING: i'd say it's an essay pt 1

Sometimes it seems like scientific literature of the past seems to exist in a non self-aware manner. Take the population crisis argument of the early 90s for example. Articles from that time period seem to highlight narrow-minded statements like: "second, and vastly more important than continued study of the problem, is strong and unmistakable advocacy of human population control by conservation scientists." Generally, I don't disagree with the population problem theory (more about that later). But would such a statement be acceptable in an article today? It unapologetically draws one conclusion and tells the public You Must Do This. I feel like in these days we now meta-analyze our thinking more, or at least offer more dialogue between opposing viewpoints. We certainly don't come to many straightforward points anymore--even in climate change articles, possible consequences come phrased with "most likely" and "potential" and "I can't publish anything that takes a stance because my funding gets cut." When Erlich published Population Bomb in whatever year that was, people freaked out because it was precisely so straightforward (and apocalyptic). An Inconvenient Truth is probably the only comparable book (in that it reached the general public, since a lot of more dire environmental books get read by the already converted), but that wasn't nearly as straight-talking, and the effects of that have already diffused.


Maybe that's actually a drawback of the more connected and informationally accessible world today--with the sheer amount of stuff out there, including intellectually stimulating stuff as well as the Texts From Bennett stuff, our reactions are dulled to everything. Sort of like the function of FBS in cell culture--the analogy my old lab PI made (my previous lab PI, not my elderly doddering PI) was of taking a drop of chocolate milk and sticking it to someone's face. If you then dunk them in white milk, the desirable chocolate drop milk becomes more difficult to find/take note of. If you make an analogy about science that would never make sense in real life, it becomes 288x easier to remember.


So perhaps a lot of exposure even to topics that can grow your mind across various fields has a negative impact. That's a depressing thought. STOP LEARNING. Also, I wandered away from my original point. Which was a) maybe certain periods of time in the academic/scientific timeline are more...narrow minded? definitive? than others and b) we are potentially more aware of counterarguments now or just more feeble about drawing definitive lines dammit. I think it's fair to say we've dumbed down and thinned crossover messages from the scientific community to the non in an effort to cater to the lumbering political/economic machine.


And what will we look back and say the philosophies of our era were? What ideas will characterize it? Will we see ourselves as blinded, obviously wrong? That speaks to how when we're in the present, we simply cannot step out of it.  But it feels like at this point in time, we're quite a self-aware intelligentsia.

Oh boy. 

I'll post part 2 later so I can save cybertrees. 

bootfall

that was a great football game. intense too, when duckworth caught that ridiculous pass. but the best part was watching with people. and seaWorthy the cargo tanker of course. "thigh arms" indeed. ahhh funny things. sports announcer has gotta be one of the easiest jobs. all you have to do is say things like "adversity...both teams face adversity like they're football teams playing each other" since no one's actually paying attention to you anyway, then when shit gets real, you just scream and yell like everyone else watching and thus still no one's actually paying attention to you. cushy.

it's all in your head

I walked back from lab today along lakeshore. It was crazy beautiful.

I find it really reassuring to look out over the lake, far off into the distance, and know that out there are people whose lives you have not touched or known. There's some generic house in some generic neighborhood and there's a car pulling into the driveway unloading the kids who just got back from middle school where one of them did a project in art today and wants to give it to one parent for a Christmas present and the other one has basketball practice. Or whatever. Something that has all the minute and overlooked details that living really entails. 

But in fact, to you, these people don't really exist--they're just conceptualizations. However there actually is someone out there, living, whose personal universe is as strong and real as the one you necessarily live in. So then, if you can conceptualize other people and other equally real people can conceptualize you, it becomes comforting (at least to me) to know that the view out of our personal universe is really just one out of many and fallible. 

I come back to this concept of personal universes really often. It's like one of the big socks that goes around and around in the dryer of my mind. I think that every person contains within them a universe. The universe, in fact. Not in some mystical ooooooo there's an asteroid in my heart way (sounds like an awful love song from the 90s) , but in the way that everything that physically exists gets represented and conceptualized in people's minds. It's  similar perhaps to how Plato thought there was a world where the true Things/Ideas existed and everything that we experience in this world is just a shadow of it. So we have the real universe (Pluto, bag of cranberries, electrons, squirrel...) extant out there and then these things get translated into people's minds (thought of Pluto, perception of bag of cranberries, imagining electrons, staring at the squirrel). Then, because there are seven billion unique views, if you're looking at something, or conceptualizations, if you're studying something, or whatever it is--then there are seven billion translations of the universe into people's heads. 

Take Pluto for example. However many people you ask about Pluto, the way they believe in it will differ that many times. Of course there will be overlaps, since most people who have education and exposure can say Pluto's a planetorcloseenough in outer space with very cold temperatures, Arnold from the Magic School Bus almost dies on it, and picture a grey cold ball or whatever image from elementary school people think of when they devote brain energy to the subject of Pluto. Anyway, so when/if you converse about Pluto, what you're referring to might look different from the way Pluto looks in the other person's mind and thus there are multiple Plutos. Expand principle. QED. 

Everyone walks around carrying their universes and looking out from them. It's kind of crazy. 

I'm happiest when I walk or sit and look at the earth. Isn't it wonderful when your eyes can see these rich things? I feel like my vision soaks sights up like some sponge cake and becomes saturated, then I marvel at how extravagant nature is, just carelessly tossing around sights like these. And they'll come again. And they'll come again..

one of those moments

some combination of weird sleep hours/itchiness in the brain/dissatisfaction/too many neurons firing has put me into a dangerously adhd state where i am wondering why things can cost so much, like sunglasses, unless they are made from alien leather. "hello we come in---AKCHSDOGIJ SWUQEENOSDJ NOOOOOO." the hidden cost of designer wear. I foresee an expose article in the atlantic. no not really, sunglasses are never made from leather.


i am also engaging in incestuous technological interaction--hypocrite hypocrite hypocrite. if you say that fast enough it just turns into "hkrppkrpppkrpp" given that, i might as well say this here. i've discovered a new and exciting way to get people's attention: belligerently shout their favorite things at them. now i just need to do this in crowded venues.


Person A: in a conversation with someone, perhaps someone important like their professor
Person B: CHEESE! pay attention to me! BACK MASSAGE FROYO!!!
Person A: these are a few of my favorite things


my instructor for environmental studies cancelled class today due to instructor injury. i hope he's okay.


I hereby dub today Wallow Day.

get on it, itunes

"it samples that song superfreak by rick perry"
"rick perry? the man running for president?"
soul/tea party funk