Dialogue

Theme: Insults

Scene 1:

Joey: You know what I like about you? No matter how much I insult you, you are unflappable. You're like the ship that sails serenely through the fog.

Angie: Wow, I've never heard that analogy before- I like it! How does it go again?

Joey: Yeah, you're like a ship, see there's this thick fog, you can't see anything, and you just sail like a ship through the fog, completely unfeathered.

Angie: So...I'm the fog.

Joey: Yeah, see, so there's this ship, it's sailing through a thick fog, it's night and you can't see a thing, but you just sail on through it

Angie: So...I'm the night.

Joey: The knight in shining armor. See now, it's raining, and it's foggy, and there's this ship that's sailing on the water, and the knight's armor gets all wet from the rain.

Angie: So...I'm the rain.

Joey: Yeah, except it's strange because you're carrying an umbrella. But it's one of those umbrellas that, when you open it, it rains on the inside, but you only see those in cartoons.

Scene 2:

(At the bookstore. My co-workers and I are standing around at the info-desk being our usual useful, hardworking selves.)

Karen: ...blah blah blah Angie blah blah blah...

Molly: The problem is, it's really hard to insult her because she just doesn't listen.

Me: ...What?

Science Times

This week's Science Times is a gold mine. I sat at the bookstore yesterday and read it cover-to-cover. They had this huge theme, "Desire", which caught my interest, sure, but the article that was supposed to be a main feature was kind of a let-down in my opinion because a lot of the discussed "discoveries" were common sense, trivial, "duh" discoveries that everyone and her mom already knows. I know that that is part of science too- proving the obvious facts through the scientific method, but I hate it when researchers make a big deal when they discover that "oh my god, people tend to like their own personal space," or "sexual arousal is linked with emotional/inner states, not just physical for a high percentage of women." One result they found particularly interesting was that straight men are only attracted to women, whereas straight women, though they say they prefer men, are nonetheless attracted to other women. Well, yeah, that's because a typical woman's body, compared to a man's, is just damn sexier, more beautiful with its curves, not just an angular box like a man's; a typical woman's body is simply more aesthetically pleasing. We'll see how long it takes for that to become a hypothesis.

The other main feature, on the other hand, was definitely not a let-down. Some interesting points I found were:

-all fetuses are female by default! At least until a certain gene on the Y chromosome, if present, diverts the reproductive tissue from the ovarian-forming pathway (Picture a stick figure chromosome man dressed in a clown costume jumping up and down with his arms raised, shouting "hey, over here! Lookit me, lookit me! Follow me, and grow some balls!) into the pathway that makes the fetus man up.

-baby boys whose dicks are accidentally cut off due to a circumcision job gone south (maybe not south enough), who are raised as girls, are still attracted to girls

-based on a study of twins, they found genetics definitely plays a key role in determining sexual orientation, especially in males- not an amazing revelation in itself, but then one has to wonder how homosexuality, if it is genetic, survived in the genes since homosexual males tend to have 1/5 the number of kids as their straight counterparts.

The article discussed the possibility that either

1) it's a byproduct gene (just like how our penchant for believing in a higher being could simply be an evolutionary byproduct of another trait) that just came along for the ride, attached to some other actually beneficial gene. Picture now, Schwarzenegger going for a motorcycle ride with his son sitting next to him in a side-car. (They crashed, but they survived!) I just learned of this incident from my current annotating task.) , or

2) it's explained by the fraternal birth order effect, which says that males with older brothers have a higher chance of being gay. Something about more testosterone being in the womb for the next birth. Each older brother increases the odds by a whopping 33%! Suddenly, while reading about this theory, I couldn't help but marvel at my straight friend Joe from high school, who had 6 or 7 older brothers (and very old parents, I might add); Joe's a walking talking miracle. A bit of a mama's boy, yes. Oh and just so I don't get shot, by "miracle", I mean a statistical miracle.

-a lot of brain-related genes are on the X chromosome. Why? A possible explanation discussed in the article is:

1) Guys only have one X chromosome, so mutations on it have more of an effect, leading to fast selection.

2) Girls prefer smarter guys. (I guess this has been true since the beginning of man, is the assumption.)

Coupling facts 1 & 2 together, any advantageous brain-related mutation on the X chromosome is going to be snatched up quickly, resulting in a lot of brain-related genes on the X chromosome. I grappled with this for a while. For some reason- maybe because I haven't had bio since high school- I had a hard time understanding the connection, but I think it makes sense now. I was like, "Why do they keep saying 'fast selection'? What does that mean?"

Also, an article about the flight pattern of fruit flies, which sounds mundane at first, but they're like fractals! No matter how close or far you watch their flight pattern, it looks the same (fly straight, make a right angle turn, fly straight, make a right angle turn, rinse and repeat). And why would anyone care? Because next time you're searching for a needle in a haystack with some friends in the stix, you'll remember this article and suggest to your friends that maybe the best, most optimal way to search isn't by combing the fields in straight lines, but in a crazy zig-zag pattern! Take a leaf out of nature's book- a lot of times, it turns out to be a pretty good guide, you know?

Here is an interesting quote from an article I found while searching for the fruit flies one:

"NO longer content with dissecting tissues, analyzing proteins and breeding fruit flies, an increasingly diverse group of scientists has decided that the best way to study life is to make some of their own.

They are creating a field called artificial life, [this is where I stopped reading to check the date of the article- September 29, 1987] mixing the impulses of biology with the tools of computation. By looking beyond the usual materials of life - beyond the familiar biochemistry of earthly animals and plants - they hope to capture its spirit: the animated, the energetic, the replicating, the evolved."

Wow, imagine how crazy that must have sounded way back in the eighties.

And last, an article about the discovery of the oldest depiction of a fish. Guess what kind of fish it is- an Atlantic salmon. That's how accurate and detailed the 25,000-year-old depiction was; they could actually make-out the particular type of fish! Speaking of salmon, it's cool how such a simple thing as wearing the same jewelry as the rest of your tribe could have played a part in ensuring the evolution of you and me- modern modern man.

Last Words

"Don't cry, I need all my courage to die at twenty."

~the last words of Evariste Galois

Poop Talk

You know what's a laxative? When you only have one bathroom, and your roommate is using it. Somehow your stomach knows...

Dictators Aren't Below Good Ol' Name-Calling

Okay, so he didn't call him "butthead" or "nincompoop" which would have been AWESOME, but in the past, Venezuelen President Hugo Chavez has called Bush a "donkey," a "drunkard," a "coward," and best of all, "Mr. Danger." Oh wait, it gets better! Now he calls our dear jefe "El Diablo." Hee hee! Well, he does have the cowboy accent and probably the boots to go with.

Also, last year, Chavez showed a keen interest in having a biographical film made starring Oliver Stone as the Venezuelen president. Apparently, Stone passed up the offer (of a lifetime).

And once, he rebutted criticism from Condoleeza Rice by suggesting she had a crush on him.

What a colorful character. Evil, maybe, but colorfully so.

Joey's Trick

Something Joey showed us at work one day:

eyeye

(double vision!)

The Hazards of Dance

I split my pants dancing to Beastie Boys yesterday.

"Kickin lyrics right to your brain, so when you hear that sound you'll be right as rain!"

Help, I need a needle and thread.

Stash the 'Stache

Weird. There's this Arabic looking guy who looks as if he hasn't been in school in quite a few years in the computer lab who is looking through facebook. What business might he have on that site? Maybe it's the moustache that's throwing me way off in my estimate of his age.

I've got a thing against moustaches- they skeeve me out. They look so...child-molester-ish. At the very least they make guys look way older than their actual age, and not in a good way. Older and shadier. The only man who ever looked decent with a moustache was Omar Shariff in Dr. Zhivago, and even then...it was still unsettling.

Also, when will I get "too old" to keep a facebook account? Will my profile be up there forever, forever displaying my activities as "high-tailing it from heaven, burning in hell", like some weird time-capsule or info-age diary or photo album? Oooh, thinking about such a distant future kinda freaks me out. But not as much as moustaches do.

Again With the Drama!

Alias, Heroes, Boston Legal,...and now Sopranos! I've recently gotten into this awesome HBO series. The writing (lots and lots of dialogue) is just terrific. It's comedy, it's very subtly dramatic, there some action, but only because it's a show about the Mob, but it's the writing that makes it a keeper. And also, the characters don't get friggin annoying like they do on 24. 24 is OK, but it's all action, no depth, no wit, no light moments, no funny (yes, it's a noun in my book), and the characters- you just wanna kill them because all their annoying habits and stupid things they choose to do.

I watched the whole second disc (4 episodes, folks!) of the first season of the Sopranos last night after I got home, and that's pretty much what my nights are gonna be like for the next two weeks so that I can take full advantage of my Netflix free 2-week trial...except when I'm in Florida, I guess. Netflix is awesome, folks- get it! I urge you strongly! You've got almost nothing to lose, no tricks, no fine print! And I like their commercials where the family comes home to find all these movie characters in their living room.

(The title of this post is a line from one of the episodes.)

Anthony Jr.: "Is it true that the Chinese invented spaghetti?"

Tony: "Think about it: Why would people who eat with sticks...invent something that you need a fork to eat?"

(Of course, I almost always eat pasta with chopsticks if it's available, with sriracha sauce dribbled all over it. But it's still funny!)

"They're called Hasidim, Paulie."

Paulie: "Hasidim, but I don't believe 'em."

Happy 3.1415926535... Day!

In honor of this special day, a quick poll:

What's everyone's favorite pie?

I love pecan pie- without the pecans.

Caveat

Logical validity doesn't imply truth.

A Link About the Neuro-Law Link

Another great Times magazine article about neuroscience and the law, which taps into my recent surge of interest in the brain.

Divination, presently only a "woolly" and "imprecise" (that would be McGonagall talking) subject taught at Hogwarts, could become a science once we find out more about our brain! In one study, they could predict when the subject was thinking about places vs people by studying the way the brain lit up. That is crazy and cool.

In preparation for the upcoming release of HP 7, I've decided to relate all blog matters to the magical world of Harry Potter. It's like Lent preceding Easter except way more exciting! And I don't have to give up chocolate, which seems to be my latest food obsession.

Yesterday, while I was working at the bookstore, I ate like 7 different kinds of chocolate (cookies, doughnuts, bars, etc.), and was bouncing off the walls. Plus the sun was shining. WowowoWW no one should ever let me eat that much chocolate in one day ever again. I felt like I could fly I was so happy, and also, I felt kind of trapped too because my excess energy and zest for life was bounded by my present surroundings and situation and by not having any wings dammit. Like the only match for my mood would have been flying to the moon on a magic carpet...with an Aladdin. Hmmm this sounds familiar.

It's That 3-Letter Word Again

What does God see when he looks in the mirror?

Dog. Here puppy, puppy!

Unless he is looking into the Mirror of Erised. Hm...what would God see in the Mirror of Erised? What does He desire more than anything else in the whole universe (or multiverse)? Maybe He wants a body. Or world peace. Or a piece of cake.

More importantly, what does Dumbledore see when he looks into the Mirror of Erised? We all know it's not really socks.

Darwin's God

an interesting article from the Times magazine. I especially liked the part where they talk about "spandrel" (page 3), a term coined by some famous evolutionary biologist and his colleague that is used to describe "a trait that has no adaptive value of its own."

Sometimes there is no "why" or "what for"; it just is.

Say No to...What?

I find myself growing more and more averse to mob movements the more I read about them. Consider the following comment made by a partaker of a demonstration following the release of the Mehlis report "implicating high-level Syrian officials in Hariri's death":

"We are protesting against the Mehlis report because it is untrue," said Marwa Jelaylat, 17. "We were very surprised to hear these accusations against our government."

The first thought that popped into my head after reading the word "untrue" was What does she know? She's a 17-year-old Syrian common citizen for crying out loud. Gee, now I sound like one of those baddies on tv that pushes the heroine out of the way saying "get outta the way little girl, you don't know what you're doing, go play with your dolls." But come on. How can she just say that a report presented by the U.N. is untrue, and with such conviction?

What percentage of individuals in a protest crowd really truly understand what they are fighting for or against, I wonder? Maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is to get passionate about some issue or another, even if the stance is chosen mostly out of ignorance or misinformation. At least they care enough to shout themselves hoarse and raise picket signs.

Revelations:

The scariest book in the Bible.

My life is full of epiphanies and revelations. Of course, what's a revelation for one can be mundane fact for another, hardly worth an eyebrow-raise, if you have the ability to raise one eyebrow at a time. I myself can only do it with the left brow.

...On another note: Mandarin and Cantonese are known as Chinese "dialects", but they are completely different languages really. How are they different? Well, if you ask a linguist, you'll get a really convoluted reply about tones, syllable-final sounds, merging, phonological change, and so on.

A much simpler answer would be: Cantonese is ugly, while Mandarin is not. So if you ever hear someone (most likely a guy) say adamantly: "Chinese is hot!" and maybe even furnish you with an example involving that girl in Rush Hour who's in every other hot-Asian-chick role, then most likely, he is talking about Mandarin.

Absolutes

Random internet find #47:

"When your mama says you should never run with a sharp stick, she was probably right. Of course, if you don't, you'll never win the Great Sharp Stick Race!"

Learning from the best

Whatever happened to those educational cartoons of yore? And now, the Warner Bros (and Warner sister!) present: the U.S. presidents!

Note: the astericks indicate the original lyrics
Note: the prophetic nature of the bolded verse

Yakko: Heigh ho, do you know
The names of the U.S. residents
Who then became the presidents
And got a view from the White House loo
Of Pennsylvania Avenue?

Wakko: George Washington was the first, you see
He once chopped down a cherry tree
Dot : President number two would be
John Adams and then number three

* Yakko: George Washington was the first, you see
* He once chopped down a cherry tree
* Dot : President number two would be
* John Adams and then number three

Yakko: Tom Jefferson stayed up to write
The Declaration late at night
So he and his wife had a great big fight
And she made him sleep on the couch all night

* Yakko: Tom Jefferson stayed up to write
* The Constitution late at night
* So he and his wife had a great big fight
* And she made him sleep on the couch all night

Wakko: James Madison never had a son
And he fought the War of 1812
Dot : James Monroe's colossal nose
Was bigger than Pinocchio's

Yakko: John Quincy Adams was number six
And it's Andrew Jackson's butt he kicks
So Jackson learns to play politics
Next time he's the one that the country picks

Dot : Martin Van Buren, number eight
For a one-term shot as Chief of State
Yakko: William Harrison, how do you praise?
That guy was dead in thirty days

Wakko: John Tyler, he liked country folk
Dot : And after him came President Polk
Yakko: Zachary Taylor liked to smoke
His breath killed friends whenever he spoke

Wakko: Eighteen fifty, really nifty
Millard Fillmore's in
Yakko: Young and fierce was Franklin Pierce
The man without a chin

Dot : Follows next a period spannin'
Four long years with James Buchanan
Then the South starts shootin' cannon
And we've got a civil war
YW+D : A war, a war down south in Dixie

Yakko: Up to bat comes old Abe Lincoln
Dot : There's a guy who's really thinkin'
Wakko: Kept the United States from shrinkin'
Saved the ship of state from sinkin'

Dot : Andrew Johnson's next
He had some slight defects
Wakko: Congress each
Would impeach
Dot : And so the country now elects

Yakko: Ulysses Simpson Grant
Who would scream and rave and rant
Wakko: While drinking whiskey
Although risky
'Cause he'd spill it on his pants

Yakko: It's eighteen seventy-seven
And the Democrats would gloat
But they're all amazed when Rutherford Hayes
Wins by just one vote

Dot : James Garfield, someone really hated
'Cause he was assassinated
Wakko: Chester Arthur gets instated
Four years later, he was traded

Dot : For Grover Cleveland, really fat
Elected twice as a Democrat
Then Benjamin Harrison; after that
It's William McKinley up to bat

Yakko: Teddy Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill
Wakko: And President Taft, he got the bill
Yakko: In 1913 Woodrow
YW+D : Wil...
...son takes us into World War One

Yakko: Warren Harding next in line
Dot : It's Calvin Coolidge; he does fine
Wakko: And then in nineteen twenty-nine
The market crashes, and we find

* Yakko: Warren Harding, he does fine
* Dot : It's Calvin Coolidge next in line
* Wakko: And then in nineteen twenty-nine
* The market crashes, and we find

Yakko: It's Herbert Hoover's big debut
He gets the blame and loses to
Dot : Franklin Roosevelt, president who
Helped us win in World War Two

Wakko: Harry Truman, weird little human
Serves two terms and when he's done
Yakko: It's Eisenhower who's got the power
From fifty-three to sixty-one

Dot : John Kennedy had Camelot
Then Lyndon Johnson took his spot
Yakko: Richard Nixon, he gets caught
And Gerald Ford fell down a lot

* Dot : John F. Kennedy, he gets shot
* So Lyndon Johnson takes his spot
* Yakko: Richard Nixon, he gets caught
* And Gerald Ford fell down a lot

Wakko: Jimmy Carter liked campaign trips
Yakko: And Ronald Reagan's speeches' scripts
All came from famous movie clips
And President Bush said "read my lips"

Dot : Now in Washington D.C.
Wakko: There's Democrats and the G.O.P.
Yakko: But the ones in charge are plain to see
Dot : The Clintons, Bill and Hillary

* Dot : Now in Washington D.C.
* Wakko: There's Democrats and the G.O.P.
* Yakko: But the one in charge is plain to see
* Dot : It's Clinton, first name Hillary

Yakko: The next President to lead the way
Well, it just might be yourself one day
Then the press'll distort everything you say
YW+D : So jump in your plane and fly away

How I Ended Up in a 7-11 at 2:30 in the Morning in my snowflake pajama pants and eeyore nightshirt, holding a brownie in one hand and cheetos in the o

ther. (Title space has a limit?) Otherwise titled: Nighttime Wanderings.

I woke up from a nap at around 2 in the morning (so far, nothing out of the ordinary). I picked up the book that I was currently reading, "In the Shadow of the Law" (nothing strange there). I found my place and started losing myself in the story again (great book, by the way). Then, somewhere down the line (line 9, page 347), my mind started wandering.

After some random pit-stops, it wandered to "Meet Joe Black"- possibly the weirdest movie ever made in the history of movie-making. And damn, way to kill the effectiveness of the "dramatic pause" through overuse. Also, I don't think the director realized that if you pause for too long, intensity and level of anticipation and interest actually decrease exponentially, members of the audience actually start to forget why we are pausing in the first place, the link between the pre- and post-pause line lost in the silence. And so, we are left scratching our heads and wondering why the word "Death" has just flown out of the Brad Pitt's lips.

Anyway,...after ambling into Meet Joe Black, my mind then wandered effortlessly to Brad Pitt, who plays Death, and made a smooth connection to peanut butter (in the movie, Death develops a rather obsessive taste for peanut butter). *Gurgle gurgle*. My stomach approved. So, slave that I am to the desires of my tummy, I pulled out the pb and started eating it straight out of the jar with a spoon, just like Brad Pitt does in the movie.

Then, instead of wandering further into the murky depths of undiscovered associations, my mind remained a passenger on the food train, and I began to think how wonderful it would be to have a nice big decadent slice of 7-11 (we say "magic") brownie on a plate in front of me. But it's 2:30 in the morning! protested my voice of reason. He was quickly silenced. Throwing a coat over my pj's, I was out the door in a minute, down the escalator,...and that's how I ended up at 7-11 at 2:30 in the morning in the said get-up, with said comestibles in hand.

But what about the cheetos? That was to balance out the sweet with a little salty. Apparently, my voice of reason was not completely and properly silenced upstairs. That shall be remedied in good time.

Otherwise entitled: Why it takes me so long to read even a good book like "In the Shadow of the Law".

Do the dew, not the doo

Oh man. I dunno whether to laugh or be embarrassed, so I am currently doing both. I was sitting in front of the computer annotating WSJ sentences (OK OK I was surfing the net, reading the Times), when the bottle of mountain dew I had this morning called for a trip to the freezing cold bathroom down the hall. I opened the door, walked in, and exclaimed aloud to no one in particular: "pee-EWWWW!" because man it smelled like the worst case of doodoo in there, and because I thought I was alone. Only I wasn't because the next moment, I saw a pair of feet peeking out from under a stall from the reflection in the mirror. I had the horribly impolite but involuntary urge to giggle, and then thinking how embarrassing it would be to come face to face with the doodoo-doer, I quickly shuffled out of the bathroom. And now, I'm sitting in front of the computer once more, desperately needing to go pee.

Welcome Home

Gee, Philly is supposed to be the hub of violence, but so far, I've witnessed nothing in the city of brotherly love (KNOCK ON WOOD!). Then I come home to Tacoma for a 3 week vacation, and in one day, a fight breaks out at our local mall, right in front of my eyes, where a woman actually gets tasered, then later that night, I come out of a club in Seattle, and there's a guy knocked unconscious on the ground, his body twitching, and blood dripping out of his skull, forming a dark pool around his head. Then a couple weeks later (today), I learn that there was a fatal shooting at my old high school.

What's with that?

Yet, I still had a marvelous time yesterday in the beautiful city of Seattle, where I saw the Dead Sea Scrolls(!!!) which were on tour at the Pacific Science Center, and then had an interesting sushi dinner at U Village, which is all lit up with fairy lights at this time of year. It was interesting because it involved swiping our entrees directly from a giant conveyer belt. As for the scrolls, I've got a keen interest in ancient scripts/paleography, so no doubt it was fascinating and linger-worthy, seeing those arcane scrawlings on scraps of goathide which when deciphered, revealed stories about the genesis of the world and frightening tales of the fiery end of the world. And I even got to carry out a black-ops mission on the side, which involved faking a major coughing fit in order to get past security. OK, the coughing fit was real. The mission? Not so much. But y'all already figured that out...

Cobalt out.