everything is connected, really

on monday, i saw the imax movie at the lincoln square (lincoln center?) loews with ariel and his brother michael. it was called aliens of the deep, and it talked about life in the deep ocean, as well as how that might relate to life outside of our planet. one of the coolest parts was when they visited the areas of volcanic activity, where the superheated water forms chimneys of minerals and out of the chimneys shoots black smoke of very hot temperatures. the most amazing part is that life thrives around these vents of ridiculously hot water, and that creatures swim from the extremely cold water in and out of the extremely hot water.

christopher in the dog incident novel watches one of his educational tapes that talks about the very same thing. connected.

zoe

zoe sent me a birthday e-card on my birthday! only it was to my columbia account, and i never set up account forwarding, and i still need to download the secure program to log in, so i haven't checked it in months. i'll get around to it eventually.

thanks zoe :)

everything is connected

i have a lot of things i've been saving in the back of my mind to blog. this is going to ramble like a sumbitch.

this is the first good blog title i've come up with in a while. i think i'm going to pick up i heart huckabees from best buy before saturday. it's on sale there for $16.

what was on sale there for $16 before i left for new york is donnie darko - the director's cut. i wanted, but i waited. now it's up to $20. dang. i told stoops about it and he had actually seen it in a theater in new york a few months ago. i didn't even know of the existence of a director's cut until i saw it at best buy. i hear it clears up a lot of questions about time travel, but the soundtrack is not good. that is straight out of the horse's mouth (the horse being stoops).

in case that second paragraph, if one can call it a paragraph, didn't make sense from a flow sense, i suppose that's the theme of the movie. is everything connected, or is everything meaningless? which one is more comforting?

i have to grade quizzes. i was at school until 3:30 or so, i think, the friday that vacation started, before i realized vacation had fucking started and i was grading shit. so a fair amount is done. and i have prep first block on monday, followed by _all_ five classes, but i should get that out of the way.

why is everything connected? i went to barnes and noble with susan two weeks ago, maybe three, and the novel "the curious incident with the dog in the night-time" was in one of those display boxes at the cashier counter. i might have mixed up some prepositions and articles in the title. she said it was an interesting book, but was not especially effusive in her praise. i don't remember how, but i was talking to catherine either that night or the next and she brought up the same book. i don't think i mentioned it first. and while i was in new york, tao brought up an article (was it an article) and was talking about how this autistic person described math. the guy visualized colors and shapes, and how two numbers (with two different colors), would somehow meld and become a new color when he multiplied them. or something like that.

the book was really good. i read the whole thing in one night. ah, how wondrous is a night without a bedtime. it's written from the point of view of an autistic child trying to solve the mystery of the murder of his neighbor's dog. it's sweet, and i think poignant, although i don't know what poignant means. i just know this book is poignant.

i bought arrested development season 1 on dvd. i watched the first five episodes with rohrbach tonight. it is incredible. i laughed so loudly (and obnoxiously, probably) the whole way through. in one episode, this guy, steve lot or something, kept saying his name and raising his arms up. this led to o'doyle rules of billy madison, and then to adam sandler, so i described the awesome-o episode of south park to jon. then tonight i was talking to catherine about how great the dog incident book is, and i mentioned arrested development, and she said she liked it now, because i had been bugging her to watch it forever, and then i asked her about 50 first dates, because i had also been bugging her to see that as well. and she asked me if i had ever seen the awesome-o episode of south park. although this connection is made through adam sandler both times, it's funny that adam sandler automatically leads to awesome-o.

new york was good. eating at carmine's was great. or more precisely, in steiner's apt over carmine's. what a great location. i also got takeout from saigon grill, which did not require crossing a single street. watching ong-bak twice was great. eating the kara-age from saji's was great. and bringing a pastrami melt and pesto grilled chicken from m2m back to longmeadow was also great.

playing in the winter league game was fun. boy am i out of shape. the team i joined lost, sadly. i didn't play that much. i did catch a goal though. and i would have had an assist if tricia hadn't dropped it.

observing the winter league party was strange. fun still, but i felt so different from everybody the entire time. too tired or too old or too teacher to drink. past 11am i felt like crashing, and i snuck out to the lounge twice to go lie down in a chair. i enjoyed watching people dance and being silly and so on, but i couldn't participate. i finally left around 3am when steiner came over and declared, "it's over."

what else did i do? i got to hang out with phil for a few hours, which was sweet. and i saw an imax movie and got dim sum with ariel and his brother. i went to lion's head, thanks corey for pushing back your poker game, although everyone else was tame that night when i was ready to have a couple beers. playing mini in bare feet is brutal.

i won gabi's experiment. don't let anyone tell you otherwise, especially gabi.

just before i started blogging, i signed off world of warcraft. markoh and corpselust, mark and carl, had just left the guild to join EKLIPZ. god that is an awful clan name. i've never met the two, but i still felt sad. i think it was sadness. there was an actual tightness in my stomach that i think means sadness. how weird is that. i don't know what to do in/about/with that game anymore.

i can't keep up with all of these blogs. everyone is blogging again, or else they never stopped and i forgot to check them for a long time. casey gabi stoops are all blogging. tao has one at yet another url, that shit. even catherine started blogging again. i'm positive that blogging activity is directly proportional to unhappiness or stress or something along those lines. which means i feel better in general when people don't blog. i assume if i don't hear from a person, he or she is doing well. actually, i know that for a fact, especially with shes. that happens all the time with girl friends. funny how it's a good thing when they stop calling.

i have left stuff out. i know it. oh well.

oh yeah

and how could i forget? happy valentine's, everybody. somehow, i don't feel the least bit lonely. cool.

anyways, i am now 23 years old

feb 11. in case anyone missed it, don't feel bad. my mom missed it and i haven't told her yet. my brother never remembers because he is a shit. to those who did remember, let's see... casey was first, thank you. raj i didn't check my gmail account until today, and i haven't responded yet. possibly you were first, although i'm not sure. gabi expressed her birthday wishes as a comment on my blog, so it is possible she was actually first, although i don't remember the time on the comment. and thank you jaydip. and thank you ani for changing the message of the day in wow.

that's kind of funny, on my birthday i received happy birthdays via IM, email, blog commenting, and world of warcraft messages. actually, that's really funny. nothing by phone, and nothing in person! how odd.

i've been letting it all sink in for a while, how i feel about teaching and all. i had planned different ways of writing all about it in here. but it's such a monumental task that i'm going to leave off (of course).

the prospect of a steady paycheck has burst the dam on my consumerism. since i have come back i bought a leather task chair (which has turned out to be perfect in every way so far) for $40, a floor lamp from target for $8.50 (the shade is far too flimsy though and the lamp is a tad too bright. possibly i can replace the light bulb with a lower wattage one), a hutch from target for $15 (i was led to believe that it was the desk and hutch combination for $40, which would have led to the problem of removing my old desk from my room, but as it turns out it was only the top half of the combination, hence it ringing up as only $15 at the register), and yet _another_ dvd shelf for my room, most assuredly the last bookshelf i will ever possibly cram into this increasingly tiny space. that brings the total number of bookshelves and media shelves (if there is such a thing) to eight. wow. no more wallspace. i've also got two sets of those plastic drawers, if they count for anything, and actually three, since one set is in fact one stacked on top of another. also, i can't remember the last time i actually paid for something in cash. hooray for credit and credit cards. hmm, i have to pay my visa bill. it's due tomorrow, i think.

ok, from my computer, the floor lamp is entirely too bright. it won't stop jabbing into the corner of my eye. when i am lying in bed reading (my favorite reading position) there will be problems. curse you, oh damnably cheap target floor lamp.

between all the old clothes i no longer wear but can't throw away, all the books (including the ones i read as a child and will never read again but can't throw away), all the old magazines that i will never touch but can't throw away, all the gaming systems, and all the video games (including the NES and SNES games that, you know, i won't play again but can't throw away), my room is like some sort of museum. about myself. with me still in it. it's a strange feeling.

that newest shelf only solved the problem of relocating my dvds to make space for the horrendous amount of new video games i purchased while at jillian's. i don't know what i can do about the books i acquired, as well.

oh, books. i've read a couple since the last time i blogged. a wizard of earthsea. good. read it in one night. out of the silent planet. amazing considering how long it took me to get past the first 4 pages or 20 or so. the beginning is so mundane that it's hard to get past. but wow, once i did. goodness. i got out of the silent planet, and that hideous strength (that title alone is reason enough to start c. s. lewis' space trilogy. what an incredible title. i own something wicked this way comes for the same reason, and i haven't opened it yet, but i am in no way dissatisfied with that purchase) from sidewalk stands in new york. i had to shell out 12 or 14 dollars for the pretty edition of perelandra, the 2nd book in the trilogy. i just started it now but i'm saving it, in a way. i think i'll go to barnes and noble and read the rest of earthsea there, since each book costs 8 dollars for the small edition or 14 for the nicer one, and that's a bit much. especially considering the books themselves are rather short.

does anyone have the earthsea sci-fi television event on their computer in some format? can i get it from that anyone?

i reread raise high the roofbeam, carpenters, and i'm working my way through seymour: an introduction yet again. i bring it with me to school to read during duty periods and the like. i still have no idea what it's about, if it can be about anything at all. am i seeking god by reading a book about someone seeking god? is that what franny was trying to accomplish? is that what seymour was able to do? yeah, over my head.

world of warcraft is hard to keep up with. stoops has stopped playing, as has mike and jon. tao barely plays anymore since he hit 60. i feel bad for mark and carl, as the guild is not doing much to catch up. i wouldn't hold it against them if they left for a bigger guild with more lvl 60s to raid with. i myself am falling way behind with my main character, kaziganthi. all his gear is antiquated and noob. eh, what can you do. raid more, is the answer, but i honestly don't have the time or inclination anymore. i've still got banger, lvl 46, and kakarot, lvl 34, but what would i do with them once they hit the instance raiding levels? i'd probably stop playing them just like i did with kaz.

fox = noob

i need to pack. i drive back to massachusetts on saturday.

since reading love in the time of cholera, i've also read 100 years of solitude. i like the latter more. it's very confusing, and there's a bit more incest than i'd like, but good stuff.

i ordered firefly for jillian, since she is a fan of buffy and she needs to watch this show. it arrived monday evening. i've watched through the entire series again as of tonight, and i watched the commentary for the last episode by joss.

fox execs. my god. what are they doing. who are they. the critic. the family guy. futurama. arrested development, almost, before the SEVEN FUCKING EMMY NOMINATIONS slapped them in their collective face. and this series, this incredible series, shown out of order and with 3 (i think) never aired episodes.

there are so many moments in the show that tear the heart. it's amazing. joss whedon is a cruel cruel man. he loves - i'm not sure how to describe it - but it's like if life at a certain moment could go two ways, the happy and the awful, and it's really just a coin flip, 50/50, heads or tails, joss picks the awful every time (is that tails?). and it is that much worse for having been that arbitrary, for being that close to happy. he did it in buffy too. bastard.

the moments that really stay with me.
inara sobbing by herself in "heart of gold." wow, she is somehow beautiful, especially beautiful, while bawling. _any_ moment with saffron. when malcolm asks niska if he wants to meet the real him. the entire last episode - "little man loved fire."

this is more heart tearing than favorite moment, i guess.
the fact that - wow, i can't remember his name, the doctor - sean maher - i remember everyone else's name, but not his. how is that possible? simon! simon tam. i can't remember anyone ever referring to him as anything but brother or doctor. i had to think of jubal addressing him; i guess because that's more fresh in my memory. anyways, the fact that simon and kaylee almost kiss, but book comes in right at that moment. bastard. and they never will, because the show is cancelled.

like i meant to do with equilibrium but never did, i should buy multiple copies. of this show. many many copies. i like it more than buying only one set really conveys. if fox gave me a concrete number, for how many times i, myself, would have to see the movie to guarantee a sequel, i would go that many times, plus 1 or 2 to be safe. apparently one of the agreements for making the movie was that the show could not be restarted for some period of years after the movie airs. how shithouse is that. fox is lower in my shithouse than blizzard, and that is saying a _lot_.

nope

i wrote this post the day after my previous one, but i'd unplugged the lan and connecting the wireless is a pain because something is funky with the card. look at my first sentence! how sad.

gonna try to keep that stone rolling. no moss.

Jillian has some good books. and they're real too, in that they're not fantasy or science fiction. although they are most certainly fiction. i read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera a few months back, and liked it.

this is from Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Fermina asks her spinster aunt, who has been a mother to her for almost all of her life, what to say in response to Florentino's marriage proposal. they have only communicated through letters, for two years now, because her father would never allow it, and she's still under 18. any more information and this would be too long.

"Tell him yes. Even if you are dying of fear, even if you are sorry later, because whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life if you say no."

does that sound right? is that incredibly wise or incredibly foolish?

later, she realizes her love for Florentino was not that at all but an illusion. the second time they see each other face to face, she says, "No, please. Forget it." and forgets him with a wave of her hand.

she then agrees to marry a man (perfect in almost every way but that is beside the point), not for love, or any reason similar to love, "rather, she was stunned by the fear of an opportunity slipping away, and by the imminence of her twenty-first birthday, which was her private time limit for surrendering to her fate."

it seems like Florentino's love was doomed by bad timing. that sucks.