Psuke Bariah

Good news, everyone!

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:08:14 GMT

I am apparently in excellent physical shape! If my resting heart rate were any lower, I'd be dead! And I have the blood pressure to match! I'm much more flexible than most other people who take this test (i.e. ones who feel they need to be assessed), and fabulously flexible in general. I also (this surprised me) have excellent upper body strength...I guess the dance arm undulations (painful as they are) and push-ups (when I remember to do them) have paid off!

My only trouble area is my body fat. Now, while I generally think they set the bar way to low (percentage-wise), in this case I agree. I'm carrying more belly fat than I feel comfortable with. But, now that I've been assessed, I can talk to a trainer and get help getting rid of it! Yay!

This place does have some excellent benefits...

Fire Sale! Low, low pricing!

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:21:15 GMT

EPA is slashing the value of human life! Get it while it's hot!

What I did today

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 23:43:14 GMT

I now desperately need a shower...

Some part of me wishes I could do this everyday, or at least every weekend. There's something deeply satisfying about beating the everliving fuck out of the ground with a pickaxe.

Review!

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:26:09 GMT

The latest Bound Up With Books is up, reviewing Harry Stephen Keeler's Riddle of the Traveling Skull.

I find this story of Confucious and Lao-Tzu fascinating

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:25:09 GMT

Confucius visited Lao-Tzu and lectured him regarding the virtues of charity and duty to one’s neighbors. Lao-Tzu listened patiently, but then had this to say:

“The chaff kicked up from winnowing grain will blind a person’s eyes so that he cannot see whether he is coming or going, much less the points of the compass. Mosquitoes will keep a person awake all night long with their incessant biting. And just in the same way all this talk of charity and duty to one’s neighbors drives me insane! Please sir! Let’s try to keep the world’s affairs in their original state of simplicity. Let us try to maintain our natural modesty. Just like the wind blowing where it will, let virtue establish itself. Why do you feel the need to force these issues so? It’s like you’re trying to hunt down an escaped convict while all the while beating a loud drum.

“The snow-goose is white without having to bleach itself. The raven is black without having to apply any dye. The original simplicity of black and white are not something you can argue about. The fabricated worlds of fame and reputation are not worthy of expansion. When the pool in your courtyard dries up, and the fishes you have supposedly cared for so lovingly are left on dry ground, moistening them with your spitty kisses will provide pitifully little consolation to them. Better that you had left them in their native waters in the first place.”

When Confucius left Lao-Tzu that day he would not speak for another three. He returned to his disciples and they grew concerned: “Master, so how did it go? Did you set that old codger Lao-Tzu straight?”

“I saw a rainbow-colored creature,” replied Confucius, “soaring amid the clouds as naturally as he lingered upon the meadows and threaded through the trees. Wavering hues danced upon his hide as he lead us to a sparkling stream, both lit by the same dance of sunlight. He fed on earth and sky, the formed, and the unformed, the visible, and the invisible. How could my mouth not fall agape? I struggled to close it. How then would you suggest that I should set Lao-Tzu straight?”

from alterati

You know it's a good day when...

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:19:26 GMT

Stuff like this flits through your brain:

Can we all just die now? Cos the anticipation is killing me...

descending

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:33:24 GMT

This is a very interesting story by Tom Disch (who recently committed suicide). The tone and structure of it reminds me quite a lot of Kafka, and Stanislas Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub.

I highly recommend reading it.

This is a collective reply

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:51:24 GMT

I'm not voting for Obama. The lesser of two evils is no longer acceptable, especially when it comes to the tearing up of the Bill of Rights. "But those are the choices we have!" you say. "A third party candidate will never win!"

Not if you won't vote for them, no they won't. But that's an old argument...and something I'm not really going to debate. The whole thing makes me livid. The point is this: Obama doesn't get to do whatever the hell he wants because my vote is hostage to McCain's possible election. I'm not fucking playing that game. He voted for warranteless wiretapping and telecom immunity. We've not had a terrorist attack, or anything close to it since 9/11 nearly seven years ago. It's bullshit, and he lost my vote. Period-end-of-fucking-sentence.

I've got ginger!

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:52:49 GMT

It's growing quite nicely in the shade of my HEEE-OOGE tomato plants. I'd actually pulled one of the ginger plants up thinking it was a weed - I mean, I'd planted it so long ago and nothing seemed to happen I'd just totally forgotten - but the root didn't look like the root of a weed. So I stared it, and washed it off, broke it in half and sniffed it. Ginger!

I stuck part of the root back in the soil...hopefully it will keep growing. I've got another one plant, too. I'm so excited!

So sad...

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:29:45 GMT

i wonder how long it will be before Irr explodes. It used to be interesting and fun, and now it's drama central...

*sigh*

That was my whole day...

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 02:32:18 GMT

10 hours to take a 3.5 hour test. Good gods, the public transport sucks ass on the weekend.

On the plus side, I bought a decent pair of pants to replace one of the many pairs getting holes. I think I can survive the summer with only one more pair...I just hate shopping so much.

Well, I did want to wash the floor...

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:36:55 GMT

but that wasn't quite how I wanted to do it.

It started when I started filling the sink. I turn around, and the critter has come in with a trophy. It's a bird. It's a live bird.

"Oh, no," I tell him. "You can bring me dead birds, but you are not killing a bird in my house."

I manage to grab the poor thing before the critter can snatch it and mangle it, and take it downstairs, while kitty makes pissy noises from the landing. People fuss and we wonder whether or not the little thing (it's a tiny bird) is going to make it. Finally I come upstairs to get a shoebox for the bird to rest and recuperate in. There's a funny noise in the kitchen...

Holy fuck, I left the water on in the sink! It's overflowing like mad! There's a lake on my kitchen floor! And it's hot!

I manage to turn the water off, and unstop the sink, which, of course, does nothing for the lake on the floor. Thank heavens for neighbors - one of my apartment neighbors had a shop vac. Otherwise I'd sill be trying to mop that shit up with a towel. I mean, it still took ten minutes to get up all that water even with the shop vac.

Never a dull moment, I tell ya.

Where do you go when the moon disappears?

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:36:03 GMT

This is a very simplistic version of a painting I want to do, if I ever...you know, get talent or skill. It's based on a comment made in someone's journal. Like the comment itself, the image would simply not let me go until I did something with it.

It's not all that close to what I want to do with the painting, but there's only so much I can do with the box of colored pencils.

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:03:37 GMT

The lastest Bound Up with Books is up. This time I review Child of a Rainless Year.

Oops!

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:28:02 GMT

So as of 2:30 this afternoon (about 3/4 through my workday) I was standing in the bathroom at work and noticed something didn't look right. I stared a little harder at my reflection and realied that the top I was wearing is translucent.

It isn't immediately apparent - I didn't see it when I put the shirt on, nor did I see it when I look down - but once I noticed it became totally obvious. Especially in the glare of the bathroom lights.

Luckily it was chilly this morning, so I'd brought a jacket with me. Still, how embarrassing!

?

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:34:44 GMT

There is a part of me that wonders if this is a show - proof that the copyright system is broken, broken, broken:

Author sues bookstores selling his book.

Yet another reason not to fly

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:00:48 GMT

TSA bans ID-less flying. Gods how I hate irrelevant 'security' measures. It's crap like this that makes me want to get a private pilot license.

Read a book, read a book...

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:16:20 GMT

Read a motherfucking book!

(via agent_139)

An interesting video...

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:41:55 GMT

on the evolution of the web and teaching/becoming the machine

Sometimes I really love P.J. O'Rourke

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:10:36 GMT

America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.

and this one:

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

(found here)

This had to be shared

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:02:41 GMT

(image via Technocult.com)

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 03:06:44 GMT

Anti-sex and genderism, all in one (ugly) pant, from K-Mart. Sometimes I really loathe my species.

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 05:42:17 GMT

Thinking more on the Susan Blackmore TED Talk I posted - I wonder what it is about consciousness that scares some scientists to such an extent that they continually attempt to 'kill' it. They try to prove that consciousness isn't reallyconsciousness, it's something else that just looks like consciousness to the untrained eye.

How do you get a trained eye without consciousness, is my question.

And did you (if you watched it) get where she said that meme replication is what seperates the human from the animal? However, if meme replication is merely the repitition of observed behavior (and what else could it be if my mind is just a breeding ground for information blindly replicating itself?) - then that's sheer unadulterated bullocks. As any naturalist, or person who's worked with chimps or training animals will tell you. Parrots mimic speech. Racoons can figure out how to work doorknobs 'n' shit. What is that if not observing and repeating behavior? How is that different from how we do it? Oh, yeah - they don't really understand what they're doing.

Then again, neither do you, if you follow this model to its natural conclusion. Smart people can be awfully blind sometimes, it seems to me.

Missed...

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:55:32 GMT

This is a very funny page on the Fight Club/Calvin and Hobbes Connection. It's quite clever.

It misses one thing, though (possibly on purpose) - the reason for the non-naming of the narrator of Fight Club. Well, what I see as the reason...the (deliberate?) blurring of which one of them is "real". Tyler Durden, the psychopathic macho man? Or Tyler Durden, the man who infiltrates support groups for human contact? Which one was there first? Remember - Marla (Helena Bonham Carter's character) knows the narrator as Tyler Durden - meaning he'd been using that name for longer than he'd known the 'other' Tyler.

It's always amused me to think the 'rational/even-tempered' Tyler was the alternate personality...

I think Susan Blackmore is a little crazy

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:56:31 GMT

One of the things I like best (for a given definition of 'like') is the concept - an old concept that comes in many guises - that we are neither responsible for, nor in control of, our actions. It's all down to 'genes' and 'memes', contaminants, pollutants and hormones.

Mind you - I ain't saying it's not true. WTF do I know? What I find amusing about that stance is that it renders itself irrelevant. Blackmore's talk about 'temes' possibly destroying us...how is it useful or relevant? If we are merely a battleground of parasites and viruses?

The other thing I find interesting about this talk, is that it is a perfect example of someone taking an interesting model and hypostatizing it. I think folks do the same with the Singularity, and apparently Warren Ellis agrees with me.