blueblanketblogmy not-so-temporary blog, i guess friday, august 31I am not a good blogger. I do not link to many pages, I don't even link to my friends when I make references to them (sorry Tehshik). On here, I am primarily introspective. But I am not a good web-diarist either. I do not chronicle the minutiae of my daily events, because I believe that analysis takes precedent over happenings. And much of my analysis doesn't get put up here. When I really think about it, I feel like a dinosaur. It's true that I recently started this blog, as a way of dealing with the fact that I won't have stable internet access for awhile. But I'm still, at heart, an old school webber. A homepager, if you will. With the unfolding layers of categories, and the topical essays spread on separate pages, and the picoed or emacsed html. Anyways. When I get stable internet access again, I will take all the longer entries, and separate them all back into individual pages again. Then all will be well in blueblanketworld. .: 12:30 AM .:thursday, august 30the path dependence of relationships Just a reminder to write something about this, though not as a blog entry. .: 11:39 PM .:A quote, from an article on the customizability of online music: "There should be much more to community, after all, than identical interests." Because the net is the only place I've really found much feeling of musical, uh, "cultural belonging," I don't entirely agree with the article's thesis, that "[n]ow, thanks largely to the Net, that underground is disintegrating, creating a thousand tiny subcultures, most of which are too small or diffuse to provide a real sense of solidarity." Though it's basically the music version of Sunstein's thesis in republic.com, which did resonate with me more. Nevertheless, the quote and the article is a good reminder for me, a person who all too often focuses on interests. .: 1:46 AM .:a terrible source for inspiration From a Slate article covering Russell Weston Jr., the 1998 U.S. Capitol gunner: "What juror wouldn't be more sympathetic to Weston if they heard him expound on his theory of 'time washing'? About how the ripening of corn causes time to flow backward?" A terrible source for inspiration, I know, but wow, I would like to hear about his theory of time washing. .: 1:24 AM .:wednesday, august 29I used to call these my litmus tests, except that ended up weeding about everyone out. Now I'm calling them "what I want in someone I'm dating," or even just "characteristics I like." Here's a list, with my frequencies of encountering them (in anyone, not just dating interests). There's no real order, because it's always shifting. * having a general desire to do good: moderately rare There's more, I'll keep adding. .: 9:22 PM .:"The Pentagon And the Professor," from the Washington Post. .: 12:17 PM .:So it's my last week of work, and I'm cleaning out my emailbox. Like many people, I rarely bother to delete my email. But now I have to, just to delete all the irrelevant stuff so that my correspondence will all fit on a disk or two. This year, I am not saving everything, as I have always done in the past. I am just saving the things I need to save. So I need to go through everything. In doing so, I'm getting a weird retrospective of the year. The hallos when I first arrived. A history of my random exchanges with people like Tehshik, Gina, Andy, Dan, Justin, and Ed. All the crazy commentary about events like the election saga and the Cincinnati riots and Jeffords. Goofy project ideas. The ending of certain friendships. The dating dramas of my friends and coworkers. Stuff like that. It's a reminder that, uneventful as this year might've seemed, while going through it, it was nevertheless full. Of thoughts, of ideas, of happenings, of stuff like that. Reminders are good that way. .: 10:16 AM .:My favorite types of dreams are geographical dreams. Dreams in which I am living in a familiar city, but a familiar city in which new things have cropped up, new things that feel, um, old. The other night, for instance, I dreamt I was in Somerville, Massachusetts again, only I knew of more restaurants than I know of now. Like this foofy sushi place with a circular bar in the middle. Or this divey diner up near Powderhouse Square. In my dream, I don't even have to visit these imaginary places. I just know they're there. I love these dreams because I am fascinated with spaces. Not vast spaces, like mountains and forests and rivers (though I do like those too). But people-sized spaces, like houses and streets and train stations and things. In encountering these spaces, I encounter not only physical stuff like design and architecture and urban planning, but people stuff like sociology and history and politics. And by encountering these spaces in my dreams, it just makes the places I love seem all the more detailed and layered. .: 12:31 AM .:tuesday, august 28Whew. I finally got to go on that rant that I needed to go on about the Sucky Thing. It took much less time than I'd expected to get it out of my system. Andy is fabity fabity fab. .: 10:56 PM .:"Suicides Prompt MIT to Ponder New Health Services". .: 6:44 PM .:monday, august 27This girl I think is cute, I am talking to her. She is cute in that energetic but mean way that I (unfortunately) often find cute, and she is purely a product of my dream -- I do not actually know her in real life. But in my dream, I am talking to her and thinking wow, I can't believe I'm talking to her. She, on the other hand, thinks I'm crazy and obsessive. She mocks me, in ways that are far too accurate. This was, needless to say, not a pleasant dream. .: 1:50 AM .:sunday, august 26This article in The New Republic touches upon stuff I'd been working into my story, but gives far more philosophical detail than I ever will. Oh well. Can't have it all. .: 4:13 PM .: |
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