Ok so that went well.

Evidently immediately after the last post I completely forgot its existance. Nearly a year later & I finally wander back here—by mistake, actually, headed for LJ & clicked the wrong bookmark—only to discover yet another barely-started-forget-about-completed project.

Special exception to this one, though, as it goes against something fundamental to me yet antiquated to many these days, my need for privacy. I just don't like sharing personal stuff unless I know it serves a purpose. Kinda puts the kibosh on blogging.

Oh well, it serves as a place to put up the methane leak embed.

Tentative Toe-Dips Too

Thinking about things far too complex for twitter, wishing a writing desk app existed so that I could handwrite entries with a calligraphy nib and fresh indigo-violet ink on beautifully smooth heavy paper yet still have them show up here, contemplating the non-fiction book I want to write, knowing something drastic must change or I'll soon be unable to get out of bed at all...for these reasons & more (like wasting entire days on Sims Freeplay), I've got a whim to restart here. I know it's merely whispers into the void, but they do have a long half-life (to cludge ["kludge" looks wrong to me] together nearly random metaphors), in that unless the Blogger site itself disappears or hugely fails, the entries will still be here for me to read years later, even if no one else does. In fact I really don't expect others at all; in the same way I prefer to be alone irl, going solo here makes it easier to write. And as I hunt & peck that out on my iPad (one hand holding the tablet at the correct angle, the other gripping the stylus as my hand cramps up without it), I realize that of course I'd love to debate, discuss, even argue as friends, I just don't want to deal w/ all the other crap relationships demand.  I truly relish these nights awake, watching the Australian Open or PBS & TCM, knitting or gaming, or reading entire books in one sitting. I just don't want the hassles of a regular life.

Too long for Twitter

You know you read too many manlove romances when, while watching "The Human Spark: So Human, So Chimp", you automatically assume both Brian Hare and Danny Povinelli are gay and start imagining what might happen when they meet at conferences.

∞

I really need to change up my reading habits for a while. Perhaps some hard sf and non-fiction, since the questions of what makes us different and are we alone (and what if we are!) have been constantly on my mind for months now.

But that PBS series is fantastic, well worth watching (as most on PBS are, of course).

Also, This:

If the films in this list were arranged in order of ascending awesomeness rather than chronologically, Primer would still occupy the final slot. Made on a budget of $7,000 (seven! thousand!), Primer is one of the few movies I have ever watched twice in a row—and certainly the only movie I’ve ever watched at 8 a.m. after having watched it twice in a row on the evening prior. It’s like a deep-tissue massage for your brain—afterwards you may hurt like hell, but you’ll also feel strangely invigorated.

—Mindfuck Movies by Matthew Baldwin

I finally saw Primer a few months ago, and yes, I watched it thrice. Plus jumped around a bit watching sections, to see if I'd figured it all out completely and where I tripped up, a fourth time. If you haven't seen it yet, go, now, get your hands on a copy. And be prepared to spend the rest of the weekend watching it again and again. The rest of the movies on Baldwin's list are favourites, too. About the only one missing that immediately comes to mind is The Fountain. But of course that may be because I believe (Hugh Jackman + Darren Aronofsky) x Clint Mansell score = WIN!

I know it's disgusting, but I have to share

After a couple of months of dealing with cold/flu/infection, it now seems that when I blow my nose, it also comes out my eye. Yeah, I know, I had to google it to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.

So it's been happening for a couple of weeks, about as long as my right ear has been plugged, but I still keep forgetting. I'll be goofing along, moving trees around on my FarmVille farm, when I'll absently do the pressure-relieving trick you do when flying, holding your nose & blowing, to relieve the pressure on my ear, and SPURT!, snot bubbles out my eye. Very disconcerting.

I See Colours

The FM 100 Hue Test is a quick, clever little thing. I scored 12! A perfect score is 0.
(Hat tip to Dustin Sacks , who scored 82.)

Also, I am currently, shamefully, addicted to 
Farm 51 this week. I have even visited the Strange Planet. That's a lot of sugarcane into sugar.

Sexy SpaceX

This video, Flight 4 of Falcon 1, the world's first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to reach orbit, is incredible.

(h/t Phil Plait, 
Bad Astronomy Blog)

Open Salon FTW

Posts such as this amazing, thrilling one show why the Open Salon project is a good idea.
Can't wait for Homer's book.

(h/t CJR)

Chad Van Gaalen

Beautiful things can come out of a basement in Calgary:

Willow Tree (mp3)

David Foster Wallace Dead

I'm still in shock even now, almost an hour after first hearing about this. A few thoughts that must get out:

As suicidal as I've been over the past six months, I still wish for the chance to talk him out of this act.

This one is very hard to put into words, but I'll attempt it. With all of his writing that I've read, DFW thoughts hummed like a plucked string in my head, resonating whenever I watched tennis or contemplated Quebec politics or visited with the DJs at CJSW or even when I ate a trial-size chocolate bar or diapered a baby, for example. But now that string is broken. And there is no repairing it.

I cannot imagine a world without more DFW to look forward to. It's just WRONG.

Infinite Jest, at 1079 pages, was too short.

If you want to get a sense of his writing without plowing through nearly 1100 pages (although you would do that gladly once you started that book, I promise you), try this piece, Roger Federer as Religious Experience. As always, some of the best stuff is in the footnotes, so do not skip those. Here's the first one, as an example:

(1) There’s a great deal that’s bad about having a body. If this is not so obviously true that no one needs examples, we can just quickly mention pain, sores, odors, nausea, aging, gravity, sepsis, clumsiness, illness, limits — every last schism between our physical wills and our actual capacities. Can anyone doubt we need help being reconciled? Crave it? It’s your body that dies, after all.

There are wonderful things about having a body, too, obviously — it’s just that these things are much harder to feel and appreciate in real time. Rather like certain kinds of rare, peak-type sensuous epiphanies (“I’m so glad I have eyes to see this sunrise!” etc.), great athletes seem to catalyze our awareness of how glorious it is to touch and perceive, move through space, interact with matter. Granted, what great athletes can do with their bodies are things that the rest of us can only dream of. But these dreams are important — they make up for a lot.

Update to add:
More DFW on the web:
·Good People (fiction)
·Host (about talk radio)
·Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage
·Consider the Lobster (pdf of Gourmet magazine article)
·Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address
·list of more at The Howling Fantods

Understanding why this means something:
·Thynk2much's entry expresses that connection one feels when reading his work. (That's also where I learned the news.)
·John Seery knew him.
·Infinite Space: Wallace by David Gates An appreciation.

He had a mind in which I wanted to dive and swim around, luxuriating in the complexity and sincerity.