the light

i don’t even know if i know

but the la priest remix, not the original.

omg am i really posting? wtf? well, i have my reasons. i’m sitting in chryssa’s house, waiting for her to finish writing a cover letter, and i have nothing else to do. and that means i finished grad school applications! holy shit, i know, i’m really psyched and still don’t really believe that i’m done. if anyone tells you applying to grad school is 1) easy, 2) convenient, 3) straightforward, or most importantly 4) inexpensive, don’t believe them. her name is renee. if she told you her name is alice, she’s lying. and your name… WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR NAME?!?!?

ok, i just did that because lost highway rules. but anyway, i applied to berkeley, stanford, chicago, irvine, and caltech. i’ll save comments on those school until after i hear back, in case somehow they stumble upon this blog. and now i’m just like, huh?! i had SO MUCH work to do a month ago, but then somehow i managed to finish all my schoolwork, the class i was TAing ended, my applications are done, and i got a root canal. now i can *totally* relax, and i don’t have to worry about tooth pain!

iap is going to be awesome. i’m going to work in slipslab and hopefully finish up my project on quantitative fluorescent imaging of biological zinc. then i can write the paper and be done with that too! also i’m finishing the (IA)PE requirement by doing weight training. as soon as rian gets back from peru, space faces are going to rock out some new material, polish some old stuff, AND do pixies covers. YES! and then when fadika gets back from france we’re going to write the script of our full-length movie. and then the semester is going to start and i’m going to learn more about time dependent quantum mechanics, spectroscopy, and computational methods. and i’m going to be in a james joyce seminar. and fadika and i are going to start filming our movie for the video class we’ll be in. and when spring break comes, we’re off to film in iceland with active volcanos, waterfalls, glaciers, hot springs, horses, and sigur ros. YES YES YES.

space faces have quite a semester planned too. hopefully there will be a show at jacques and/or all asia with carrie okie band et al at the end of january, a show at beta at pub night some time, the swarthmore show president’s day weekend, and then of course steer roast! and a new album at some point, that’s for sure. at who know what the next single will be.

in short, i’m really happy about everything right now. and chryssa is finally ready to leave and we’re going to have lunch at papa ginos because they have the best pizza ever and i haven’t had it since high school.

i don’t even know

i hate how mit has spoiled me. at mit all my friends are a walking distance away. not even that. anywhere i want to go in boston is a walking distance away (the t is never far!!) everything is accessible i can go wherever i want whenever i want. that is fucking awesome.

don’t get me wrong. miami is alright. i mean aside from the rampant political corruption and the vast gap between the rich and poor. c’mon what place isn’t like that these days? my only real problem is that everything is so far from everything else. all my friends live incredibly far from me and to get anywhere by public transportation requires more time than i can sacrifice. also i stay out late, so it would be nearly impossible to make it home.

you could say “get a car you twit!” but cars are terrible terrible creations, popularized by an irresponsible man seduced by the dollar bill y’all. i will curse the day i am forced to get a car. wherever i make my home, i will really need some place where all my essentials are in walking distance and at least 60% of all my other transportation problems can be solved with a t-pass. maybe i’ll have a sparingly used electric car for the rest.

so i really have nothing else to say. i have a big day of work ahead of me tomorrow. then my lovely darling sweetheart peahead kate will finally delight me with her presence on sunday after about a week’s separation.

four in the morning

after being home for a couple of days i’ve once again become a master in the art of staying up late on my computer. i thought i had a lot to say about this art but it turns out i have mostly nothing. basically midnight always seems harmless, two am is an obvious signal that it’s time for bed, and four am is when you realize you are leading an unhealthy life.

yep that’s me! unhealthy life! mit can do terrible things to you. i guess it has always been a bad habit of mine to stay up late and read stuff online. unfortunately the illusion of actually having free time (for instance, during winter break) amplifies that bad habit of mine.

i will be honest and admit that in the past i have let this amplified bad habit of mine practically ruin my vacations. this time is different. it feels different. i don’t feel hopeless like i usually do at home. i haven’t attached myself to anything on my computer (like a programming project or video game). i have just been reading things and doing lots of little things for maslab.

i think the information age is finally having an effect on me. all i’ve been doing on my computer is reading personal blogs, online news sources, and other neat information. in a lot of ways i am starting to finally feel like a person of this decade and i like it. i like it because it feels good to be a part of something, a new generation a culture. yes i know that being a part of something isn’t everything. i also like it because i feel like i’m so bad at reading and sometimes even intimidated by it. i know that sounds silly and it is silly. you might be wondering why i am self-conscious about my reading.

communication is so important to me. reading is allowing someone else to communicate with you. communication is the path to understanding. understanding is the path to peace. i love the idea of being able to communicate with everyone regardless of upbringing, class, or culture.

i guess i am just repeating myself now or probably even just stating the obvious. even raiden from mortal kombat said that knowledge is power. duh. i guess i am rly just too tired to write anymore.

anyway i should just end this with some of the great links i’ve come across on my recent online reading adventures:

• http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/10/10/dougherty.rapper/index.html
• http://www.math.sci.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/~m-mat/MT/emt.html
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S2zkh6ZOGE
• http://www.democracynow.org/2007/12/20/to_impeach_or_not_to_impeach
• http://blog.pavlov.net/2007/11/10/memory-fragmentation/

oh yeah also linking is amazing. i want to link to more friends from my blog. i’ll link to you if you link to me :P

we need so damn many things

one of my favorite musical collaborations is stereolab. in fact, i am a stereolab fanatic. i am fanatical about stereolab. what is it about this group that i love so much? what can it be???

they aren’t stupid. their music isn’t stupid. it isn’t about getting paid, losing their girlfriend, being hot, having fun, how stupid other groups of people are, otherwise stupid shit.

it’s about deception, hatred, love, peace, power, spirituality, freedom, togetherness, war, superficiality, greed, control, democracy, sacrifice, armegeddon, communication, existence, the universe, understanding, society, the future, destiny, contradiction, hypocrisy, insecurity, reality, nature, human nature, god. the list goes on. these are the things i like to listen to. these are the things that catch my interest. not stupid shit. i’m sorry you won’t convince me. stupid shit is stupid. i don’t care how upbeat or fun sounding it is, it does not interest me.

but obviously that reason alone can’t be the reason why i love stereolab. i could read any philosophy book, any activist’s tirade and get the same material. what else is there????

the music, it’s the music. the music sounds good. it is enjoyable to listen to. candy for my ears, heaven for my ears, simplicity for my ears. it doesn’t sound like someone sanding a cat’s ass against a porcupine while someone is banging on some annoying drum in the background. it’s not overly loud to compensate for some lack of depth or effort or some insecurity of the performer. care was put for the listener to enjoy it for what it is, recorded music. there are no apparent delusions of grandeur, they simply aim to produce something that sounds good. in fact i will go as far to say that they have the courage to produce something that sounds good. that’s if you know what i mean.

so that’s it. that’s my stereolab rant. sorry if i may have indirectly offended you. or if i seemed pretentious, i just might be!

omg the girl i love

the girl i love her name is kate she is fantastic!!

because every once in a while i’ll surf the web and unknowingly stumble onto one of her old internet things. like for instance today i stumbled onto her LIVEJOURNAL OMG LOL I’M DEAD FROM LAUGHING AND FALLING IN LOVE AT THE SAME TIME LOL

kate you have such a likable internet personality. so vibrant so full of what they call “tude.” so young and in ur face. also she got a 1600 on her SAT wtf my mom thinks ur smart

anyway we are going to peru in some days it’s going to be so awkward slash fun. haha. i love the internet. i want more things on the internet.

happy commercialmas!

so about two years ago i was really against christmas. there are so many reasons to be. first it really has nothing to do with jesus christ, there is so much evidence for this. if you want to continue to believe in jesus christ then you know that the chances of jesus being born so close to the winter solstice (a real holiday celebrated by the pagan communities in europe) for a combined super holiday are pretty low. if you don’t care about the jesus thing then you probably already know that christianity is just repackaged astrology and it makes perfect sense that we celebrate this holiday near the winter solstice (three kings = orion’s belt, north star = star in the east, etc).

i know i might seem pretty athiest but i’m not really! jesus actually has already come to me, i know he exists, i’ve spoken with him. there is a god, to forgive is divine.

i just think christmas is too commercial. actually i think the original point was to be commercial. santa claus was invented by coca cola, for christ’s sake! in rome men used to have wild drunken orgies on christmas.

then you might wonder “what’s wrong with a commercial holiday?” everything basically. no one celebrates it for any reason other than that there are commercials on tv, walmart is now selling christmas light, and there are crazy sales at all the major department stores. it’s basically a mind control. BUY THINGS FOR DECEMBER 25th BUY THINGSSSS. YOU MUST BUY THINGSSS AND A TREE YOU MUST HAVE A TREE

i guess i wouldn’t have a problem if it was called “commercialmas” because at least then the intentional commercialism of the holiday would be obvious instead of subtle. but the point is that it’s not called commercialmas it’s called christmas.

i propose that we call it commercialmas.

or wiimas. i want a wii :’(

long awaited

the past week has been so um.. what is the word when you feel like you can’t feel things. numb this past week has been so numb. after our space faces show i was completely exhausted. why was i exhausted?

one reason is the compiler derby for 6.035 was on that monday 12/10/07 and my computer graphics project was due on tuesday 12/11/07. also it’s called two consecutive all-nighters. also i don’t think this paragraph really made the sense i wanted it to.

anyway yes it was stressful! omg soo stressful! that weekend was really stressful! also at 7am approximately 3 hours before the compiler derby NOTHING WORKED. we were all freaking out, our compiler was completely broken. then at about 10:50 we find out why (after already admitting defeat and deciding we were sad). anyway we ended up getting 2nd in the derby so that was nice. marti and i post-derby decided that we are going to get parallelization to work eventually.

anyway my computer graphics endeavor went much better. my project was to allow a user to perform color transformations on an image by transforming a 3D space using a cube. as i predicted, the results were very trippy!! i want to port it to windows/mac so you all can use it and enjoy it and love it. i would give you linux users the tarball but the build scripts are terrible. don’t worry i will make it available soon!!

anyway i was really happy when i presented it because when it loaded in front of the class and i started moving the cube around, everyone was like “ooooooo ahhh” which is basically all i wanted so woo interactive applications ftw

so after all my end-of-term bs, we had the space faces show. it went rly well. well okay, we had an emergency. so it snowed mad crazy on that day (thus 12/13) and our equipment got stuck somewhere in the middle of vassar street literally an hour before we had to go on. so what did we do? well we freaked out for about 5 min then we made treks to and from vassar street from kresge, in the snow. it was rly dramatic. dugan can probably blog the story better than i can though.

so yeah, the show went rly well. it went exactly how we practiced and even better! also the johnson/fleder sub-trio was amazing! a modest audience of our friends came to enjoy it all. there are pictures, they are on facebook. dugan can also post those here hahhaha.

was i right? the week before this past week was so sos os stressful for me. so after the space faces show, finally feeling done, i went to bexley to hang out with kate and i didn’t leave until my finals on monday, which also went rly well. six zero four one was a great fun class! thank you professor wyatt! thank you dah-yoh lim! thank you shivani agarwal! thank you danielle hinton!

also my computer graphics final was crazy hardddd i probably didn’t even do that well. the last two problems were completely open ended and not even really based on the subject material of the class. it doesn’t matter, they were eye opening to the power of applying physics energy constraints to the world of computer graphics. thank you jovan popovic!! thank you emily jing whiting! thank you zhunping zhang!

in summary, the week before last week was unfathomably stressful, the past week was unfathomably numb and this week is coming out to be regular which is what i want!! what i want!!

and with that ends this blog post. love you <3

i slept beneath the water

if this was a dream where would you be?

outer space? galaxy surfing? wormhole tubing?

or beneath the ocean? inside a star? photons? neurons? cleptons?

somewhere peaceful. i think sleepy! amanda told me today that i am an artless old fart. it was subtle but i pick up on EVERYTHING. anyway i am getting older but so is everyone around me. i hate the idea of artless old farts. i feel like i’ve seen it happen before, probably i am scared of it happening to me. i am, i am insecure. it’s true!!

i am too happy to care about pointless things like that though. worrying is so pointless. i always think i am happy. i feel it the most now.

i have this theory about happiness. happy people don’t feel caged don’t feel constrained, their lives are in perfect alignment with what they want. depressed people worry about their lives, their lives don’t align with what they want to do, where they want to be. so how can you be happy? i’ve come up with two ways:

lose your wants, want nothing, accept everything, zen it all out.

or you can change your life, have the courage to lose your backup plan, go with your unsure plan, look for your happy life somewhere else. it’s a big risk.

i try the first approach usually. life is too short to want things. being alive and breathing can sometimes be so wonderful.

BUT IMPRACTICAL

i am the happiest, what i want is what i have. that is the reason i was feeling unhappy before. what i had wasn’t what i thought i wanted.

also wanting things is so arbitrary. no one ever knows why they want things. the reasons they do are usually superficial. it always goes back to being comfortable, having lots of money, being spotless, something baseless like that.

maybe another way is to realize what you really want. what life really aligns with who you are. i just like ambient boring music. ambient slow moving images. i like arms around me too. i like my arms around others. sleeping together. i also like lots of laughs. sharing also makes me feel good. i like to share and i like it when ppl share with me.

also ppl are so concerned with being happy. define happiness. is it what’s on tv? what other people have. this may be a hypocritical statement.