I cannot wait to go back to my home where I will rejoin the ranks of the gens invisibles.

PS. Sorry, commonreader . I broke down and capped off my Two-Minute Hate today by reading Roissy. I need to have high tea with strawberry jam in a park full of flowers where wee kittens frolic in teacups to make up for my hate.

*Should not apply to gentlemen of long-standing acquaintance, so don't start firing up your complaining engines yet.

(From jazzfish : Comment "WORDS" to this entry and I will comment back with five words I associate with you. Then you post this in your journal elaborating.)

AI: Simply put, I want to build better than myself. I enjoy cognitive sciences, philosophy of mind, and exploring related ethical issues . Also, the topic is an inexhaustible well of problems. (It's hard for me to decide on which specific subfield I like the most.) I believe in augmentation, but I am not a transhumanist.

And if you meant the other AI, I liked that too.

Stephenson: I read Diamond Age at around the same age as the protagonist Nell, and it left a deep impression on me. At the time, the only lessons I took from it were the ones that focused on self-control, responsibility, intelligence, initiative, and courage under fire. These weren't bad lessons to take in alone. As I get older, I see the other lesson of the book -- I wasn't as alone as I had thought. This book travels with me wherever I go.

Eliot: Oh man, where do I start? I still remember the first time I read T.S. Eliot and I just felt it, as if someone had put his finger on my neck and wrote down the murmurs of my pulse: the yearning for God, the relentless self-consciousness. For a long, long, time, this book travelled with me also. It's currently on loan to desfido  (along with some Utena DVDs) because I made a conscious decision last year to stop carrying it with me because I started to realize that my weaknesses* (which Eliot's finger documented long before I was born) are too dangerous to nourish with constant reading.

Catholicism: This says that you graduated before I went to TJ. :]  I've always been a doubter -- due to the issue of theodicy that always troubled me.  I had what is generally called a conversion experience on Easter 1999. I don't really like to talk about it, because I still don't understand it, and that sets up an unbearable itch under my skin. People tend to ascribe other religions to me than Catholicism, namely Buddhism (detachment) or Calvinism (the work ethic and the conviction that I am a reprobate). But I've learned a lot over the years about a world of goodness: kind friends, sunny days, ordinate loves, and the promise of something beyond the limits of my sight. I still am daily afflicted by grave faults and doubts (I suspect it is just in the matrix of my mind), but I can say "Lord I believe, help thou my disbelief."


+++
*This classicism got conservative-political and ecclesiastical aspects-in the form of monarchism and Roman-Catholicism-and was marked by one central notion: that of original sin-that 'inner voice' of 'vanity and fear and lust'-and realization which flows forth from there regarding the importance of 'austere discipline' and the longing to surrender oneself to 'something outside oneself'. A non-human object for the expression of his feelings was the only way to heal a personality which threatened to fall apart. A dogmatic belief--wrote Eliot in 1930 (three years after his conversion)-was for those who had descended into 'the abyss' a way to train and discipline emotions.
http://www.burkestichting.nl/nl/stichting/isioxford.html

The language of mysticism-the language he borrowed from such Christian mystics as Julian of Norwich, who used it to describe the point where irrational faith gave way to supra-rational knowledge-Eliot uses to describe instead the point where his rational knowledge would give way to irrational faith. He has confused the experience of faith with the experience of God-or at least he has confused his own waiting for faith with the faithful's waiting for God.
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9508/articles/bottum.html

The group took the interns out to a sports bar today, so that we could play various games and hobnob with the head nabobs.

I played air hockey with my fellow interns and won. One of them said "Wow, you really put a lot of power when you play! A lot!*"

Playing hard is not a bad way to play. It also helps when you watch and see that they have a side where their arm is less flexible and you send the air puck that way at LUDICROUS speed using crazy geometry.

Mind you, I am still awful at pool. D: But I was at least awful in good company and free gyoza.

*Translation: Unladylike

The gods play games with mortal hearts
As the carousel goes 'round
As I looked on,
I saw the crowds who gathered walk away

One of the recurring problems in my life is the fact that I end up having interactions with people where I let myself feel my great enthusiasms (philia) and they respond by having great enthusiasms of their own (eros). This means that all such enjoyments end when the mismatch in interests is discovered. This always ends with me sulking at the world for awhile, and listening to VNV Nation in the hopes of that better future world coming about.

The greatest words would still fail me now
These emotions I cannot describe
I want to be where I don't need to hide myself
And remain there until the end of time

I tend to mute down anything that resembles interest or kindness around men, due to being a woman in highly skewed populations. But I can forget myself sometimes, and the results are always depressingly the same.

Cheerful comments appreciated.

Wax Cylinder: "Where there is light" -- VNV

My recruiter took our college group went down to the local Wingdome yesterday.

At the end of the evening, they had people do the 7-alarm challenge, which is when they give you a drumstick that has been coated in sulfur and brimstone, and if you successfully eat it, they post your picture on the wall.

None of us Marylanders had volunteered, so the recruiter was mouthing off and said "So, no one from Maryland is going to step up?" Which, coincidentally enough, is the exact catchphrase that brings out a Marty McFly moment for me. (I never volunteer first, but I always carry the last.)

So I pulled up my chair to the challenge. The wing was pretty tasteless, but the experience was comparable to being teargassed in bootcamp.

Intern #1: Oh my God, you looked like you were eating breakfast or something. YOU ATE IT LIKE IT WAS CHEERIOS.
Intern #2: Seriously, you brought your game face! It's on video!
Me: Well, talking smack is wasting time after all. :applies lipgloss:

So if you're in town, look for my pretty face on the Wall of Flame in Kirkland. Between this and skydiving, I feel like the summer will probably end with me striding into Mordor, Bear-Grylls-style.

Environs: workworkworkwork
Disposition: too hot for handling
Wax Cylinder: "Where There Is Light" -- VNV Nation

My inhaler reports that it is "CFC-Free."

I wish I hadn't left my spacer at home, because the new inhaler is not puffing out as strongly as before. Let's not forget the sticker shock -- $40 for an inhaler is ridiculous!

Maybe the codeine pill will kick in and help alleviate my disgruntled nature.

(I forgot to mention that someone saw my inhaler today and joked that I would probably be turning in a zillion bugs. I see he's familiar with that twitchy, high-speed feeling.)

1. I tandem skydived on Saturday, and it was so awesome that I bled from my ears. \m/ (Well, those passages connecting my ears and nose -- I learned a lesson about skydiving while sick.) I've been trying to figure out how to put the video on, but Youtube killed the audio since the skydiving school laid some DRM-problematic rock tracks over it.

The video shows me being ridiculously zen while falling from 13,000 feet up. I don't remember being sick with fear at any point of preparing for the jump: only sliding out to the open plane door, sticking my heels under the plane body, crossing my arms, and throwing out my arms while jumping out. There's no sickening rollercoaster swoop, only ridiculously strong pressure against my chest, and having to remember to consciously breathe through my teeth. I also remember my clogged sinuses suddely and forcefully relocating to my ears, which dampened the roar of freefall. I spent my freefall time quietly admiring the surrounding mountains, which were white-capped and pink-tinged and gold-foiled with the afternoon sun, and thinking of Gerald Manley Hopkins. My instructor eventually pulled the ripcord and we suddely bobbed to a quiet and serene stop. The quiet that followed permeated into me after the freefall rush of sound, and the train-model vista below was so fascinatingly green. At that point, my instructor figured out that I wasn't so much a petrified person as a quiet sort of person, so he suggested we do a few parachute tricks which I loved.

I'd love to do it again. If my friends have it their way, we will. Only 499 more jumps in the next three years to be an instructor. Which means getting to experience such things as panicky people grabbing your bottom or dislocating your arm on the way down. (True stories all.) Good times!

2.I went tonight to see VNV Nation at the Showbox! This makes it my third time seeing them, though the Showbox is the smallest venue I've seen them at. I know that some people are too cool for them, and I have to admit that the audience tonight strikes me as starting to verge on the older demographic (I guess all the youths are Abney Park goths steampunkers nowadays, what?), but VNV has a more salutary effect on me than most SSRIs and is cheaper to boot. Every time I see them live, I feel like I could stand head to head with disaster and never blink.

I can report a few things:

• Mr. Euro dressed up like VNV was a trance group and eventually pulled a terrified face when he realized he was surrounded by a bajillion goths. I pulled a quick change by showing how my business casual argyle cardigan two-piece actually was built on a foundation of "Judgment Day" concert tee. SO PROFESSIONALLY STEALTHY... LIKE A NINJA
• Sweaty Seattle goths smell like either fish sticks or chimichangas. ;_;
• The new songs from "Of Faith, Power, and Glory" are good!
• The merch dude gave me a patch! This is the first free thing I ever got in my life! Am I some sort of vixen here in Seattle?!
• Ronan is still hilarious on stage, and was calling people out left and right.
• A bunch of Seagoths grabbed me and moved me closer to the stage because I was small. What sort of world are we coming to, with surly eyeliner-wearing goths coming to my aid?
• And last but not least... because I was so close to the stage, Ronan put on my linen flat cap. He went about on the stage and asked if it looked good. My reaction being: Irish dudes in flat caps == all is right with the world! 

3. On the bus, I met a little old lady dressed nattily in a blue hat/coat/dress ensemble. We had a nice discussion about fashion and she told me to wear more skirts (for those of you who know Mikey, I pretty much looked like him at that point) and told me how to make ginger tea and to drink it three times a day. I love old people.

And I'm off to sleep the sleep of Nyquil. Good night!

I've been watching documentaries about the secret symbols found in DC. I am experiencing raging homesickness right now. Even if you are hot and muggy and full of muggers and interns, I miss you DC! You are infinitely more cultured and historically quirky* and the site of all my yesterdays.

I want nothing more than to buy two Italian sandwiches, look at some inspiringly virile statements** from Teddy, and picnic out in the sun by the Potomac with jduffy1535.

*From a conversation the other day:
Me: Oh, I did both of the Seattle Underground Tours.
Friend: The family one and the adult one? I only did the family one. What's the difference?
Me: More whores.
Friend: Oh, we got that too. Except he just called them "seamstresses" and winked a lot.

**Don't you just feel like you could knock one out of the park just reading that?

Did you see the recent articles/videos on 52 Blocks? Looks interesting. There's also the previously discussed Whiskey Stick Dance which is similarly apocryphal/familial. Nothing like martial arts to bring out the necessity of disbelief.

Nontheless, I want to believe in people's capacity to be awesome.

Lately, I've been pretty enamored at how cheerfully dynamic canne de combat can be. "Maybe not effective, but certainly beautiful!"

and I still end up helping someone at work with an obscure country code*. I RULE. Well, except for the cold that is starting to feel feverish. :(

I simultaneously do and don't want to work tomorrow. Luckily, work gave me a plushy blankie to curl up with on the couch and sleep to the dulcet tones of Food Network.

*Friend: How the hell did you find that?!
Me: :wheeze: My... Google-fu... is strong. :cough, hack: