12/13/2003
Not Gonna Say the Word
Paul thought that a particular part of an IM conversation we had should be posted. This part was inspired by a certain comic at MacHall. Namely this one, this one, and of course, the associated song [oops...damn...song got taken down]. So without further ado:
Awwwwwwwwwwwww Freak-out!
// posted by Me @ 12/13/2003 10:19:00 PM
12/12/2003
Age: Only Good for Wine
Got up at 1PM today and did not feel like butt (I actually feel almost rested). Not a bad start. And then AIM consolidates the multiple logons. Now I can be on the same screen name at multiple locations without needing 2 screen names. Conductor of BSO will now reign supreme. This is perhaps to make up for the advertising kick in the balls. Every once in a while the stupid IM window will scream a movie trailer at me and that is NOT appreciated.
So I guess I'm "older" now, by some arbitrary standard of time, planetary, and solar alignment. No privileges come with this ascension in age though. I gotta wait till 25 until I can be all pimping with the car rentals. So what is this day good for? Who knows. It is truly arbitrary in essence but practicality, you get an excuse to call on your friends and play, to be introspective, to assert your youth (or geriatricity if that's more your dish), to really just do things you want to do and nothing else. It's also a pre-New Year new year where, again arbitrarily, you can ponder about the future, and set goals (how many years do we have? The birthday year, the calendar year, the academic year, the fiscal year...). What are my goals for the next year? Hmmm...surprisingly, I have a good idea (in vague chronological order):
- Play the piano when drunk enough to be dizzy
- Ski/snowboad whenever I get a chance
- Give a talk at SMT West Coast
- Give a talk at AMS Regional
- Submit and get published at least one article in a journal
- Achieve basic proficiency with German and Japanese.
- Don't sit around on my butt all day [Read: Running, Weight Training, Nunchucks]
- Work at Latitude Inc. over the $ummer and earn $ome money.
- Go visit relatives in China during the summer
- Get a convertible (Z3 or Miata or something of the sort)
- Get into a decent apartment for next academic year and squat there for the remaining 4.
- Pimp out (in a non-pimpish sort of way) said apartment
- Get around to surfing or kite boarding
- Give a talk at SMT National (and at AMS national) <--unlikely though
- Have a life <--also not likely
Well there you have it. My life as an ordered list in HTML. I don't think that another year of life under my belt really allows me to do any of these things but it sure does make me approach them differently. So maybe age is good after all, as long as you still act like an immature little brat on the outside but mature on the inside. Kinda like Fat Croc Shiraz. Cheap and funny on the outside, surprisingly good on the inside.
Ah well, time to go be a birthday boy and drag whoever is still here in SB to come play with me whether they like it or not. Project for tonight: HOT POT!!!
// posted by Me @ 12/12/2003 01:57:00 PM
12/11/2003
Bittersweet Completion
DONE!
I can hardly believe it. The page count for this end-of quarter turned out to be 40[Ligeti] + 22[Stravinksy] + 17[Biblio Essay] + 8 [Shostakovich] + 3 [Book Review] + 2[Biblio Handout] and 0[Shostakovich final]. That puts me at a good 92 pages. Oh my god... Of course not all of it is high quality work (have to add more things and clean up both the Ligeti and Stravinsky, the Shostakovich was bad, and Biblio was not comprehensive at all) but except for the Shostakovich paper (which turned out to be a "well-organized and elegant summary"), I stand by what I wrote.
While I'm working on these papers, and especially when I have them all going at once, giving me the illusion that I'm doing something BIG, I have a sense of excitement. I am, after all, doing analyses and putting forth ideas and explanations nobody has ever done before. That's exciting and even more so when your ideas help you understand the music on a deeper level. There is also a sense of STRESS, of course, but you learn to deal with that.
There is a moment of elation the moment you decide to stop working on a paper. There is always more to say and there are always more errors to correct and sentences to tweak but when the compromise between available time, quality, quantity, and health has been reached, you hopefuly feel good about what you've written. That's the moment I like. I can truly say I'm done.
But there's also a sense of emptiness that comes from the sudden lack of creative flow. In the midst of writing more papers, the moment of elation soon turns to slow acknowledgement of more work and eventual submission to that fate. But now, at the real end, there's a bit of loneliness. I don't want to touch these papers for a while but what do I keep my mind occupied with in the meantime? I mean, I could be writing more papers!
In any case, I am DONE (well done, burnt, even) with this, my first quarter as a graduate student at UCSB. One last errand to run (have to priority overnight my paper to the professor tomorrow) and I will be free to do as I wish. Alas, what I wish (some of it) is not something I can do freely...
// posted by Me @ 12/11/2003 03:50:00 AM
12/10/2003
Verbositudeness
I remember how in high school we'd take the minimum page requirement for a paper as the maximum and perform all types of deception to achieve that minimum maximum. Huh? Well for example, if a paper was 5-7 pages, we'd write barely 4 pages, 2.2 space it, use a wide font, and eke the margins in ever so slightly so that we'd get 4.5 pages. But 4.5 pages can not be contained in 4 pages. No. The last .5 goes on to the fifth page an this is key. After all, there's a nunber 5 on the bottom of that page. There you go. 5 pages.
Maybe I'm more verbose now or maybe I have a better understanding of subjects I research, but the page limit problem has magically vanished. Now, for a 7-10 page paper, 8 pages of thoughts flow out painlessly, and that's for a *bad* paper. A good subject/paper just net me 30+[read:40+] pages. There's a 15-20 page paper dude tomorrow that I've been fretting over. I mean, how in the WORLD an I write 15-20 pages? But here I am at page 15 and I still have 2 points to make and a conclusion to write. Even in the last year of college, I remember using 1.35 spacing, a narrow 11pt font, and shrinking the margin to emaciated proportions in order to fit my 4-page thoughts into the two-page limit. I've got the quantity down...now I've got to work on this quality thang...
Speaking of qunatity, back to Stravinsky paper...
// posted by Me @ 12/10/2003 05:02:00 PM
Friends and Fashion
What's with these alliterative titles?...anyway...
So some friends threw me sort of a birthday party today.[1] Since it's the end of the quarter, a lot of people are either gone (physically) or gone (mentally) or gone (physcially and mentally) so it wasn't a riotous occassion or anything. I personally have a 15-20 page paper due Thursday noon of which I have only 8 written so far so it's not like I had time for any sort of celebration. Then again, it's not my birthday today so it all balances out.
God DAMN it. Blogger f*cked up my post again! Why is does it always do that when I have a HOJILLION lines written down. This time, not only does it lose most of it, it replaces it with somebody else's post so I know TWO people are getting some attention on the backside from Blogger. This is unbelievable..I'll try to recover what I had in a more concise fashion...
As I was saying, friends are nice. They're good for whining to, listening to, talking to, getting bizarre stares at when you talk about dominant versus half-diminished sevenths, etc. But more than that they're probably the most accurate indicators of the image you're generating for everyone. They're the magic mirror on the wall that tells you that, no, you're definitely not anywhere being even remotely considered for being the fairest of them all but they'll tolerate you anyway. A million wonderful reasons to have friends and I come up with self-reflection. There's philosophical narcissism for ya...
So anybody who knows me (or knew me) knows I'm not a fashionable guy. That's a litote for you. I do pretty much polos and khakis and my trusty reversible belt all the time. But that's different on the East and West coast. Short of it is, I don't pay attention to how I dress or how the way I dress reflects upon me as a person in the midst of the prevailing fashion trends. I mean, I don't clash primary colors and so I end up being monochromatic or doing matching dark stuff. Not exactly a trend-setter here. I also don't mind doing weird combinations every once in a while (think micro-sueded sports jacket over tight fitted short short sleeve v neck t shirt) which may confuse the hell out of people. Understandably so.
But here on the West coast, I don't know what it is. My image has changed and I'm forced to acknowledge that it has to be because I've changed somehow. It started out as a haircut and going gay (or metrosexual rather) styles every once in a while for fun. The haircut necessitates a geling of my head-fur lest it become a tentacled mass bent on sexually abusing young anime girls. I tend to wear polos and khakis (ironed of course!) to class and am all neat about it so people have the "well dressed" image of me in the "dressed up" sense. But either the image has influenced me or I'm running away with the image, fashion has become inexplicably a bigger part of my life.
To come full circle: some gifts I got from my friends today: clothes. Back East, people wouldn't have gotten me clothes because, frankly, I wasn't the type of guy to really care. Well, Al and Lixi did get me adidas exercise pants once (and a hoodie too) to get me off khakis at least when I'm trying to imitate wushu moves and those turned out to be the most useful pants I've ever gotten. Still, nothing along the fashion lines. Yet here, I get a sweater from Express. I don't think I've even ever truly acknowledged the existence of that store. And to be honest I don't think I've ever really thought that I'd wear anything from that store (especially since I have no idea exactly what their styles look like). But now, the idea of wearing something other than polos and khakis are gaining ground in my mind. I still have not a CLUE what's fashionable and what's not but holy cow I've actually thought about Banana Republic as a store rather than as a country. For better or worse, what a change, however slight. And you know what, I love the gifts. Who (back East) would ever think that I would like clothes as gifts but my friends were right on, Express sweater and all. I guess most of my friends know me better than I know myself in some ways...
Off to a good night's sleep (I hope dearly) and continue work on the Stravinsky paper. Work can be overwhelming and at such times, it can also seem pointless. An endless flow of words from my mind to the page, all to end up as trivia in my field, helping no one specifically, or practically. Having faith in the value of your contributions in a timeless academic and cultural sense is not always easy and when you don't have that faith and nothing else to replace it with, the world gets lonely. Guess I found another reason why friends are good...
[1]Since it's not actually my birthday today. But by the time my birthday comes around, everyone will be gone back home so we decided to do it today in the midst of finals and papers. Whee.
// posted by Me @ 12/10/2003 02:00:00 AM
12/09/2003
Bush, Bakersfield, Big Laughs
Bush on Taiwan
Who knew our president could speak in palidromes. Though he would have had to switch the placement of the "unilateral" part and the "status quo" part. Still, a small technicality. I say we give him full points:
"We oppose any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo," Bush said, "and the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally, to change the status quo, which we oppose."
I swear, I thought this kind of ludicrous-speak only existed in the papers of dumb undergrads who write this kind of paper, as undergrads, with ludicrous-speak in them.
In other news, when I came to California, people would say "I'm from Bakersfield", give a sardonic kind of grin, and then be met with laughter/sympathy/jokes from other califorNYE-AYans. I drove through Bakersefiled (granted only a motel stay there) and didn't notice anything in particular. But I guess Bakersfield is a weird place afterall. Or at least the police there are dumb.
Some people say exaggeration is comedy, some people say irrationality is comedy. I don't know about anything else but here, clearly, stupidity is verily comedic, if although with a regrettable hint of sadness in it as well.
*Addendum* Having been to Shanghai just last year, this is just foolish. NO bicycles on major roads in Shanghai. How are people going to get to work? On already crowded buses? Or in Taxis with the money that they don't yet have? Or are they expected to just circumnavigate around the side roads? I don't understand and I agree with the correspondent: the rule is going to be ignored. Not until there's a suitable alternative (and it's hard to beat the versatility of a bike in a big city, in China especially where the bicycle is like the two-wheeled demigod of transportation whom we collectively worship and fear from our days of infancy) is even curtailing bike traffic even possible...what are they thinking?
// posted by Me @ 12/09/2003 11:46:00 AM
12/08/2003
Oh...look at that, a title
Well, I feel stupid. A title. What could be easier....
// posted by Me @ 12/08/2003 10:17:00 PM
The weird things you come across on blogs...amusing though, and better written than most *things* I see.
// posted by Me @ 12/08/2003 09:49:00 PM
Hahaha..."Bokuno nihongono senseini natte kureru?"
http://home.interlink.or.jp/~syl/indexE.html
The English within these pages is to DIE for. I am not with the kidding make. The Japanese slang dictionary is pretty funny too (possibly even useful?) but the rest is just...well, go read. For the lazy, here's a sample: "Fond of when was previous British innovation and be not translation that I was listening to Reggae and Hip Hop only originally, and the music of England was listening to well. And generally of person sbj so be as, I even like artist of musical backbone sbj anxious about come to, interview article obj looking at be when, most of artist sbj, some sort of form with black music of influence obj receiving be that sbj understood. a the a that. " Naniiiiiiii???????
// posted by Me @ 12/08/2003 05:22:00 PM
Matt put in a vote for Blogger, having used Movable Type and since he seems to know what's goin' on, shall we say, I guess I'll stay with blogger. Thanks Matt! Less work on my part. That and I finally figured out how to put titles on my blogs. May still have to do two different blogs for subject-sorted blogs...we'll see...
// posted by Me @ 12/08/2003 04:52:00 PM
So I succesfully failed my Shostakovich paper, aced the midterm, and probably will get a semi-decent grade on the final...erm...yeah...if I had more time...
Holy mother of Hanoi
Stravinsky to go. FACK!!!!!
Seems like I've sacrificed some things for the Ligeti paper...oh well...there are always casualties in war...just not this many...
// posted by Me @ 12/08/2003 10:46:00 AM
Thoughts about Blogs
// posted by Me @ 12/08/2003 12:27:00 AM
12/07/2003
So Al joins Xanga. Gets me to join Xanga. I then switch to Blogger/Blogspot. But then I switch to my own web space on 1and1.com and encapsulate blogger content as part of my page. Then Al goes and creates a different blog off Xanga using BBlog. So now I'm all like "well he can do customization up the butt and here I can't even put a title to my blogs, nevermind put them under different categories." Well 5H*7, I mean, I've GOT to be able to customize right? So now I'm thinking of going over to Moveable Type. Been checking out some blogs with it and it seems fairly well done and it has a non-technical version to boot. Will have to setup MySQL and Perl but have seen a variety of sites using MT (not Megatokyo, Moveable Type) on 1and1.com so it should be possible, if not a little bit of a hassle. I'll deal with that for customization. Of course, I'll also have to think of a way to redesign my current homepage just a tad bit, but that's alright. Looks like I'm queueueueueing up procrastination items before I'm finishing my old work. And what'll happen to all my old blogs here at blogger? saa...
// posted by Me @ 12/07/2003 03:27:00 PM
