a ba'b'ian journal

old stuff

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and, 'Do I dare?'
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!')
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffeespoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

an SNL sketch, stevie nick's fahita shack or something. "I took your order and wrote it down".

the world is a great stream, and people and things flowing together. The interactions can be described somewhat easily at the local level, and sometimes the flow is steady, but lot's of turbulent and chaotic effects also occur, making it unpredicatable. And we largely get carried down river like drops.

fixed the clutch. the little rod arm on the shaft connected to the clutch cable was loose. but today, i got some weird power loss at doug's, which went away for no obvious reason, and might come back. i spent some time there trying to get roadrunner up on the linux box, blech

i still don't seem fully recovered from my infection or whatever, and i'm out of antibiotics. i guess i'll just give up on the doctors, and see if it goes away. i'm almost better though.

Is it possible for someone to be too beautiful? I mean, if they are already married, is it fair for them to torture people around them? It's gonna start getting tough with the weather getting warmer and lighter clothes. Spring is always cruel.

i have really been playing my new keyboard a lot. it sits at the foot of my bed, very convenient. I'm trying to relearn my music skills, and it's tough because i was taught so poorly. I should have been taught to read music such that i could here the sounds by looking at the print. Instead i learned the locations of the keys to press to match the print (which had to have been more painful and less useful), and i should have learned to play by ear, which essentially i can't do, so i have to start from almost nothing. my guitar is almost like that. but i think i'm progressing. It's like more than a new language even, like having a new sense, or being able to see things the way painters see (supposedly it's some different way of looking at things).

maybe i will try to learn to draw, finally, too. Surely there is some way to use my huge amount of technology to help. As i think on't, the one thing i could do is to take a digital photo, and print it out with one of those grids, and draw onto gridded paper, the way they studied perspective in the renaissance.

so much to do, and so little time. and yet i still mostly would rather sleep. maybe something about not having anyone to share it with, to make it seem empty

and then there's shannon. I guess it's a good sign that i keep finding women that i really like, though it'd be nice if worked out. And she likes philosophy. She could probably sweep the floor with me in the sorry state that i've gotten too, but shouldn't a man's reach exceed his grasp? The sad thing was that i always thought there'd be time to ask her out, us both working for ph.d.'s and that's a mighty long time. and at this point, i think i'm just bothersome to her, as i can be, so i try to stay out of her hair, i guess. i could have been somebody.

we have a large amount of sensory information, but not that much guiding information about what is good and bad and what we should do with the things around us, so we have to apply as much experience we can to each decision. we don't actually have an excess of information so much as a lack of useful instruction. a good example is worth many man pages.

over the weekend, we took the transmission out twice. It went around the block when eddie was here, but after i tried to tighten the clutch cable, it was out again. it looks like the clutch cable isn't adjusted right.

a lot of what is called intelligence is just cultural knowledge. Our ability to learn and learn from others is critical.

i finally got an electronic music keyboard. a casio cps-7. 6 octaves. no fancy rhythms or anything, and only 5 voices, but the ability to do midi, which is what i wanted it for. maybe soon i will put midi on these pages. for more expressiveness.

the transmission is out of the car and it looks like the clutch wasn't the problem after all. the cv joint on one side was busted. but i still don't have a car

on star trek ds9, they finally revealed something about one of their races, the bolians. one of them got murdred and left behind a co-husband. i add this to all the other bits i know about them. they are blue. the most often seen bolian was mr. mott, the hair-dresser on the enterprise. they keep throwing in little bits. on voyager, bolians had extra trouble when all the waste units went out (not sure what that meant). I think what they have stuck in is a homosexual species. i think there is some other term for it. and it is perfectly possible to have only one sex, the recombination just takes two of the same. a movie, 'enemy mine', had some critters like that. next gen had a show about some one sex critters, but it was about bigotry and nonacceptance and 'curing' deviance.

one woman can easily balance out several guys.

i just realized an important thing about hairstyles for women. they give them opportunities to play with their hair in various ways. preening is very important. and i really like that little motion of pushing hair back behind over her ear.

that was just so weird i'm gonna finally breakdown and write about it. that happens sometimes, when i get out of the habit of writing, and especially when it's a new month, that it takes something pretty striking to get me started again. Well i was feeling really lonely and i wanted to go out to a bar. I even got into the car and drove off but i had to turn back because the fuel light was on, and it was my mom's car and she would notice if i added gas and i didn't want her to know. So then i was even feeling frustrated. I came back and had a bowl of jello. And the weird thing that happened was that after i ate it, i didn't want to go out any more and just felt more like just going to sleep. food had satified my loneliness. Now i had theoretically understood that this happens, and i guess i knew about it, but i don't remember it happening so vividly. food having a cognitive effect of changing what goals i'm going after. as i said, it was pretty freaky.

we replaced the timing belt again last weekend on my car. and then the clutch went out, and we're gonna try to replace it tomorrow. i think edgar is tired of working on my car.

i'm sick. i think i have an inner ear or sinus infection, but there seems to be something going around and i must have that. i thought i got this infection a while back at the q, but maybe it's more recent. i tried to make an appointment with my doctor, but couldn't get one for a week. a pretty horrible week.

an example of how feverish i got. i sent an email to bianca asking her to got with me to some valentine's thing at the zoo. she did reply, saying thanks but she has a boyfriend.

and i finally saw a kidney doctor. she was really onto me about my high blood pressure. much more than the other one even, and it looks like getting it down is the only thing that can be done for me. she seemed really upset that i wasn't exercising enough. the lithium damage is just permanent. and she's really cute, too.

i was skipping around in the bible, and i was struck by how much of it i thought was wrong.

playing lots of galaga and phoenix

i think this lemon of a car may be the extra rock that sinks me.

i had a big homework in pattern recogntion and just didn't finish it. didn't spend enough time. slept more than i should and procrastinated too long. maybe 30%. this looks bad for graduate school. i'm really thinking i need to quit after the semester.