Person

Oh, right! I still exist...?

The past... almost year, at this point, has been /extremely/ confusing. I spent a lot of time out of school, basically doing nothing except being involved in way too much drama (both peer-drama and institution-drama), which was far more frustrating than it could have been. But! I am about to start school again, which I am rather excited about.

I don't really know what else to say. I started a webcomic over the summer? (Listen! comics) ...but I will probably be updating with less regularity than I did over the summer. I still adore reading, and actually had a chance to do a decent amount of it? I learned Perl, and am now trying to apply it to cryptology / "hack the world!!"?

Yeh. I have a room in Palo Alto. It's nice. And hopefully I will graduate by next December... unghhh. I guess that's the weirdest part of all. It's like, I really want another shot at college, because I really feel I only got an actual year or so of the college experience. But I already feel too old for college, so I want to get out soon, y'know? Move on with my life. ...well, to grad school in all likelihood :P. But y'know.

Anyhoo... <3!

Warning / disclaimer: this post harbors some anti-Christian sentiment; this is very much exclusively aimed at the very conservative Catholicism that I was raised with. But apologies in advance if I offend anyone (I seem good at doing that no matter how careful I try to be, when talking about things that are deeply important or upsetting to me.)

--

I love the "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The first two were among my favorite books for the longest time, I eagerly awaited the third. They have a beautiful world set-up; things are tied together nicely, etc.

The ending of Amber Spyglass upset me greatly. It was just a sort of "boohoo that sucks so hard" though, and I tend to pride myself on enjoying bitter endings as well as sweet ones, because well, they're more true usually. So I thought it was probably right, didn't know why it unsettled me so greatly, though, on whatever level...

Anyway. I'm not just rambling for the sake of doing so :). I stumbled on a barenaked ladies music video a couple weeks ago, "falling for the first time," and I really like the song, but again, there's this particular line in it that I immediately connected to Amber Spyglass' ending: what if our love is the cost.

That's what upsets me about Pullman's work. Ostensibly, he's rather anti-Christian in his books, hence the whole 'let's destroy God's deathcamp thingy" and shit, and he has a terrible representation of the Church, in the first world, at least.

But in the end, his books uphold one of the elements of Christianity that disgusts me the most: the idea that love isn't actually the most important thing across the worlds ("blind unthinking faith in what we tell you will save you in the next world... hellfire if you dont! It doesn't matter how shitty your life is now, in fact, it's probably good that your life's shitty, god likes those people more... so make sure everyone knows just how miserable you are!"), isn't the reason for living and breathing and... not just being so many more animals. Love is what saves us. Not sex. That is animalian, if that's all that you have -- and I hate that about the church. Wah wah wah we're going to go on and on about how bad sex is -- the original sin, after all! Why the hell else do you think Eve is so evil? Procreation without sex, yes! We'll obsess over the tale that it was a virgin who give birth to our saviour to help reinforce the doctrine that sex = evil!

You dumbasses. That's more animalian than ... anything. Animals do have sex just to procreate. Ehr, a lot of them, there are some species that are more social with it. Bonobos, for example :D. As soon as you run around condemning all sex, and holding people as 'better' than everyone else because they 'renounce' sexuality (which clearly is contained entirely within marriage) (so if they're fucking with little boys behind closed doors... uh, that's just an accident, because they're just human, after all, even if they are aspiring better than the rest of you to be God's Hands On Earth)... jeez. No wonder all of Europe just sat around all depressed for a millennium.

Love your neighbor as yourself. It's funny how you can have all the answers so clearly there... everybody, every society knows the Golden Rule in some translation or form.

Don't regulate love. Don't insist that every love is the same, that every person is identical, should be loved in the exact same way.

Of course things get fucked up if you automatically assume love means sex, or "omg I want to make his babies!!" Don't fuck up sex by insisting that it should only be for some reason or another, either. Be careful with both. But don't equate them, either. When they coincide, yes, you get amazing things.

But if you're so desperately desperately seeking, well, of course you're going to get some pretty fucking rotten things too, because you picked up the first stone that you saw that looked pretty and glittery and that meant it must be what you were looking for.

Mmm, back to the Pullman stuff. Well, another foundational problem: the idea that cutting through between the worlds will lead to their destruction. That's just stupid. The worlds should be able to interact in some way, even if there is a price or something each time. But not like, 'omg if you open anything you unleash all these specters and so everyone's souls get eaten. DON'T DO IT DON'T BE CURIOUS DON'T EVER TRY TO GO ANYWHERE ELSE BE HAPPY WITH THE EXACT SPOT YOU STARTED IN.

Ok, so those couple things are what lead to the terrible ending: the girl and the guy are all 'omg I love you so much, oh shit, well, we're stuck in different worlds because if we stay in the wrong ones we die, and we can't go back and forth... ok, well, let's pat our daemons into shape so we're always all sad and angsty and reminded of each other, and let's sit on this particular bench for once a year, umm, ok, bye! Yea, this sucks, but we've gotta do it to heal the worlds.'

No.

If the foundation of the worlds is that you're stuck where you start, and there are no bridges, and your deepest loves are cut off from you forever?

Those worlds deserve to collapse in on themselves. Because everybody's basically dead in them anyway; if the entire point of life is to set things up 'right,' to drive away chaos in the name of having some straight, pretty walls... that's shitty life. That's not really life. That's... well, hell. For all of the realms, not just the one that you've designated "God's boot camp for dead people" or whatever it was that you called that particular world.

So,

basically,

Phillip Pullman, I hate you, for putting together such a beautiful fantasy story that so many love, so many believe, listen to... that just ruins everything.

It's that idea that you should just settle for something vaguely good enough, some person so that you aren't living alone, some job because you need to feed yourself, some place that you don't feel particularly comfortable in, just because that's how life is, right? Things can't all be perfect, right? So you should just be happy with something? That's stagnation, that's rot, that's killing everything worth living for.

If your job makes you feel dead for eight hours a day, take a damn risk and get a new job. If you don't like the place you're in, explore. And if something is wrong with the people around you, figure out what isn't working, and if it can be changed, change it, and if not, move on.

Fucking dumbasses. No wonder there's so much depression in the united states. Everybody expects happiness to just fall out of the sky on them, because they think they're just entitled to it. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, retards. That means you have to try, you have to reach for it. Yes, some people are luckier than others, for some people things are easier to find. Ummm, but you were born in the U.S. in the first place, that automatically gives you a huge cushion of wealth / etc to make so so much easier for you, everything.

Yes, I hate the United States, but it's because the entire damn place has fallen prey to such a ridiculous philosophy. I do recognize that there are an incredible amount of resources at my fingertips as a result of having been born in them. But... I dunno. Historically, the upper classes in any society, the women in them are among the most shittily treated people in the entire society. They have many fewer rights than women throughout the other rungs of the society. Because, you know, poorer families can't afford to just lock their daughters in their rooms or bind their feet or keep them from learning how to cook and do productive things, keep them from going outside so their skin is always palest white... whatever.

Put your girl up on a pedestal, and wait for her to fall.

It's really starting to seem like the entirety of the U.S. has managed to lock itself in its room and refuse to touch pots and pans or go outside, in order to increase our 'value.'

Um. I think I'm done. :P

Maybe it's just the semi-constant reminders. "An Air Traffic Controller's Tale: I was in control of United Flight 83 that day. But then I lost control," U.S.A. Today screamed at me from the newspaper stands as I waited for my train. Was that maybe, a bit, all of us? I have to wonder sarcastically. At the same time, I do have every vivid detail of that morning, like few others, burned into my memory.

There was Ryan, first, running through the hallways of third period break, shouting at us. "A plane crashed into the World Trade Centers in New York!" We just laughed. He was a bit of a jokester, sometimes. But then fourth period, debate with Mrs. Hamilton. Haley sitting behind me, asking if she could call family. Her father was in New York.

Everything becomes a blur after that point. Members of my family started joking that we should just not bother waking up for October 11 -- our house had burned down on August 11. What could the next magnitude of disaster possibly be?

I am the first to admit that I did not immediately pay too much thought to the national tragedy. Perhaps, you know, because I was still trying to figure out where I would sleep next or how I was supposed to get to school. Or how to get notebook paper and a backpack. Or rushing to get a tetanus shot in the midst of what was a national tetanus shot vaccine shortage. You know, the kinds of things many people around the world have to struggle with every day. Many while having to avoid bombs and mines and angry mountain men. Fortunately, my family had many friends from a developed country, and some vague monster in the background called insurance in the background that demanded strange things from my family - which mostly meant my mother - but in return dispensed wonderful presents like houses and cars. So my situation today is something approaching glorious.

I can't help but wonder how we as a country can possibly, having lived through such a profound tragedy as the events of September 11, 2001 ourselves, still wander around like a big angry adolescent? Like we're trying to cause as many more new tragedies as we can? An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. And at this point we're at how many eyes for each eye? Are we not done yet?

Yes, every detail of those hours transitioning between milenniums is burned into my memory. Yes, every detail of many Labor Days and birthdays and Georgia thanksgivings are burned into my memory. Every lonely memory of my first day and night after moving to California -- hauling two giant suitcases from SFO to Stanford campus by bus ain't pretty, I'll tell ya, but the guy who discovered the lamp with the Free sign sitting on the street was pretty awesome (a sign that God was granting him light, he proudly told the whole bus. Many times... It was an interesting, very San Francisco, greeting, I think.) -- is burned into my memory. I have many other great events in my life that I hold in common with many other Americans. Why can't we focus on making more of these good memories in the lives of the people of our nation and of our global community, instead of making more of the tragic kind?

Can we turn our attention back to building instead of destroying? Please?

-----

I will also take this moment to plug public transit. :P I wrote most of that while I was sitting on the train and bus. An hour commute that I can have mostly to myself is much more pleasant than a forty-five minute commute spent staring at a road and dodging around other car-dwellers. :)

Blah.

So, I agree that there are a lot of really fucked up things with our prison system. (Or the idea of prisons in general, but that's a different rant.)

But. I think a large part of that is because we try to make prisons into things they really just shouldn't be. We call them 'correction facilities' - but in the case of serial killers, murderers, some of the more coldblooded / serial rapists, that sort of thing... I don't want those people sent to prison so they can be 'fixed' or 'tamed' or whatever and then brought like good little pets back out into the world. I want them there to be punished. I don't care how terrible their childhood was, or whatever the excuse is. They've ruined the lives of countless other people consciously. You can't just tell them 'you've been bad'. Nobody goes, 'oops, I guess I didn't realize killing somebody was so bad! Teehee, ok, I'm sorry.'

Where things get fucked up, I think, is where we don't distinguish properly between different types of crimes. Gee, you class someone addicted to heroin in with the murderers ("they're all criminals"), are you really surprised if people then steal/attack/whatever for drugs? You send addicts to rehabilitation if you're going to be messing around in their life anyway (although I also tend to be of the view that if they aren't hurting anyone other than his/herself, leave 'em to their own choices...), not prison. Their addiction is currently a far worse punishment than anything you could devise for them, and telling them the only people they are now allowed to associate with are people who have repeatedly proven that they don't give a shit about the harm they do to other people... well, of course nobody's going to get much effective 'correction' done.

Ugh. People who tout their own 'public service' piss me off sometimes. You know what? Maybe I think running around Africa spraying DDT and filling in marshy areas isn't the best way to drop $5,000, even if it does marginally lower malaria rates. Gee.

[/rant]

As many other things I start, I realized that the 'book philosophy' thing just doesn't make sense. What does make sense? I don't know. Life usually doesn't, so it would follow that most things in life rarely make sense, right?

So, at the moment, I'm sitting down and thinking about where I want my life to go, what I want to do with my life. It's a rather weird thing to grapple with, really. I'm beginning to get the impression that it's not something most people do. But, at the same time, that it's not something terrifically unusual to struggle with, either.

I don't know. At the moment, I'm digging out old short stories and trying to rework them to make them remotely suitable to submit to magazines. Alongside getting extremely excited about finally returning to school in (less than!) a month. =]

I'm also doped up on caffeine, and am not entirely sure why, other than I suddenly felt like rewriting two stories starting at midnight. I think my brain just likes laughing at me whenever I try to put some semblance of a normal schedule together.

Ah, well.

Until next time.

Well, so much for that. I completed the book. I am not inspired, I am not enthralled: I am despondent. And not because such hopelessness still occupies the world, not shame for some cause or another, no heartstrings tugged by this bleak landscape, nothing. Just depression: how can people who love literature and history so much be so terrifically cruel? Abject reminders: people in power will be assholes, because power corrupts. Nowhere in the world is there actual equality, but some places the differences are greater, the situations more hopeless. And tradition -- even constructed traditions, which are easy to entrench with enough power -- is rarely a friend of harmony.

And, of course, my heart bleeds for women everywhere.

I am somewhat inclined to simply reject this book. It is too blunt, too two-dimensional, too... so what? It simply tells me that there are parts of this world that really, really suck, and that trying to change the situation just makes it hurt worse, so you might as well not bother, just close your heart.

Meh.

I had decided to give last night to myself as a "treat." Seems the universe decided to, too. It was one of those nights that ended up just seeming lucky. Most notably, I was aimlessly wandering around in a town between where I work and where I live that I don't know particularly well, just to walk around and enjoy, and I happened to stumble onto their Borders.

So I told myself (on a number of occasions, but more recently at the start of this summer) that I want to make this a place to record my sort of philosophical, humorous, whatever, reflections on experiences. Well, clearly that happened about twice before I stopped getting 'inspired' and I returned to being silent. So, last night I had an idea: what if I start using this as a place to record my reflections on books I read? That feels much less teen-angsty than reflections on particular days or personal emotional occurrences, and provides something regular that also feeds back as a motivation to read more. Most of my reflections on books currently just get mixed in with my personal journal, which means that not only do I not end up suggesting books to others, not passing on that information, I also personally never end up taking most thoughts that result beyond just the timeframe of the book, because I so rarely dig back through all those pages.

Anyway, book reflections. Of course that means my mind springs to action, starting to mull over things. Plan how this will work. Do I want to pick a theme? No, for the time being I should just keep reading what I want to and thus writing and thinking about what I want to -- it's like I'm trying to make yourself into an internet whore already. Should I apply to make it a column in the school paper? Perhaps, but I have some time to think about that, see if this actually works out. I have to keep reminding myself to do before fantasizing about what I might 'eventually' do, see if I actually follow through on this at all. It's amusing how much my mind will jump ahead, once I get even just the slightest conception for a 'project.' To the point where sometimes the 'goal-setting' daydreaming gets in the way of actually doing anything.

So, anyway, I'm going to go pick up my next book and get started -- The Bookseller of Kabul.

Thinking about how one goes about choosing books to read is also interesting. This summer I've found myself picking up a couple books just to realize halfway through that I'm actually not enjoying the experience at all, which forced me to think about why I started reading the book in the first place, and why I just kept reading. And thus to think about what kind of books I do want to read. I think part of what college did to me was teach me that books need to be actively 'teaching' me to be worth my time, so I was picking up things like The Colossal Book of Mathematics -- yes, that's actually the book title -- and while I would be excited for a couple days about the reading ('ooh! Puzzles to solve!'), it took much longer than it should have for me to realize that the reason I was getting through the book so slowly was that I was actually recoiling from the idea of reading it, and thus mostly just avoiding it.

Which doesn't make any sense at all, because I can go into a library or bookstore and find twelve books that I'm absolutely excited about reading within half an hour. And, just because I'm not cramming mathematics knowledge down my throat (I'll leave that to my remaining math classes) doesn't mean I'm not getting something valuable out of the experience of reading the book.

What led me to The Bookseller of Kabul was in part another book I read several years ago, Reading Lolita in Tehran. It was among my favorite books, so I was considering picking it up and giving it another read. I decided I would rather go for something new instead, though, and my eye quickly caught on The Bookseller -- it was one of those books that I've vaguely heard of as being good, and vaguely caught my mind as something I would like to read, but kept getting overlooked for one reason or another.

We'll see how it turns out :).

I decided I don't like the definition of urbane as "refined, polite, sophisticated." If we look at the latin it came from ("urbanus"), that's not what it means... and in modern english, "urban" certainly doesn't always mean refined, polite, sophisticated. I want a word that means in love with the city. Sophisticated, sure, but cities aren't always polite and refined. There's a lot of grit. There's pollution. There's people of all classes crushed together in something with a radius of just a couple miles. If you're too busy worrying about keeping your clothes pressed and clean, you are going to miss some of the most interesting things that happen in your city. You aren't urbane. You live in the city, perhaps. But you don't live the city.

English has too many words already for polished, prim, glamorous, elegant, refined, chic, whatever. Give us urbane.

Urbane, adj. Of or pertaining to denizens of urban areas.

I want to take it and then make it into one that specifies the groups that tend to cluster together in urban areas, and give it part of its personality -- drug-abusing professionals, artists and artist wannabes and hangers-on, homeless folk who could argue philosophy and literature. People who even as they help define the city depend on the city for their identity in a variety of ways, whether consciously through love of the place, or simply because their lifestyle is not possible elsewhere.

So here we have it. A year later, and I'm maybe, just maybe, back alive enough to update this thing more regularly.

Today's topic: the relevance of various fields of academia to human interactions. Scientific fields through the lens of pop sociology, you might say. A topic that's fascinated me of late, as I've thought up models that describe various ways that people affect one another and how they might be applied to other fields of inquiry, and as such, possibly where those models are already well-described and could just be nabbed and applied, basically. So like earlier today, I was pondering how various things that we've been taught about How to do Relationships affects our outcomes -- for example, I have trouble with a lot of guys around here of the more "California Stud" type, because they're used to just playing super-smooth and it only lasting for a bit. I fall for Smooth and consequently brand myself as Awkward and Stumbly because I don't feel like I match up to them, fall behind on that measurement. So I try to hasten my steps there, my smoothness of operation there, and thus instead find myself instead driving away guys that actually want the slower (yes, this is all written for the straight orientation because again, this is what I've been taught, so that's how my models make the most sense at the moment. When thinking beyond those, it's a matter of expansion; the expanded version is not what immediately comes to mind... lack of training in further systems makes those come less naturally to me, no matter how much I intellectually reach out for them). It's kind of ironic, I guess? I'm never quite sure whether I'm using that word properly or not after English class in high school, sheesh.

Anyway, yea, so in mulling these over, I then stumble over an xkcd comic referencing Karnaugh maps, and am like, "hey this sounds like an interesting mathematical concept," so I search up some information on it, discover that it's actually an electrical engineering concept, and that hey, what are these things called race conditions? And then reading up on race conditions and finding out that they actually make a lot of sense with regards to relationships... things like whether you have sex on the first or fourth hookup does end up mattering, and if you call "sex" one program and "hook up" one program, you want to make sure hookup loops the right number of times before sex starts running. Because if the distinction in start times for you is too different than the distinction in start times for your partner, that's going to throw the whole interaction off.

And such might apply to friendships, too. If you call somebody on the phone and you've known them for months, for some people it doesn't matter whether you got their number off facebook or if they'd given it to you at an earlier point. But for some people, such might actually be a fairly important indicator of how well they think they know you. It's the little "oh, let's hang out this weekend," as distinct from "let's hang out this weekend, here's my number" that matters. The former could either mean a vague 'if we run into each other,' or it could mean a reliance on the facebook network (or other school directory-type networks and such) that must carefully be navigated and trusted. If you're accepted to be within some sort of network (your husband knows my number, get it from him) that contains the number, then it's an acknowledgement of that already-existing bond. Giving the number is something of an acknowledgement that there is no preexisting connection, bond, but an openness to begin sharing information, identity, network position. Making the former, shorter statement means that which interpretation is meant is thought to be clear to the one making the statement. However, the fact that such a statement actually does have possible interpretations is a subject of many misunderstandings in the drama of human-human communication.

It becomes creepy if someone's a bit more forward and looks up your number if you hadn't understood it as something already given. But it's something of a rejection if you don't look up the number, and it was a person who did expect to put some effort into meeting. Of course, that means that that person could call you if they don't get a call, put in their own effort, right? But sometimes the person is shy enough that even just making that shorter statement was something of an effort. They interpret it as a full step. And so then also calling that weekend makes them think they are being over-forward, pushy even. That's generally where I falter. I am overafraid of being thought of as pushy, demanding. But so if the other person makes a gesture like, "yea, what should we do? Friday afternoon?" or something right there so the field isn't left open, there isn't a need to worry about phone numbers or additional points requiring initiating of communications, is often what kicks things forward here with minimal fretting. But that's also somewhat unfair, because it leaves no time for thought of what is desired at the future meeting. (Do you actually want coffee, or do you just want to hang out at a group gathering that was already going to be occurring, they're cool, just introduce more people to one another, see how your friends get along, how that might help you get to know them better?)

I think I'm going to stop now. This is getting kind of ridiculous.

This summer is going to rock.

And! I dyed the bottom ~4" of my hair blue.

Also, I love y'all.

I feel so unreal when I'm in classes, or doing most things related to classes for that matter, anymore. Which is kind of sad... even if I never particularly enjoyed classes, at least I was fascinated by a lot of the stuff I could learn. Blah. At the moment, the only class of mine I'm really fascinated by is Traditional Chinese Medicine, which is a total of an hour a week. Out of my sixteen hours of classes. Yeh.

It's at the same time that I'm realizing that I just love doing stuff that feels "real," though. I'm helping organize this huge bake-a-thon and party [for my house's Beltane/"May Day" celebration], and it's like... I'm doing something, not just filling in the blanks on some assignment that the answers are predetermined for. And working with people, and ... somethingsomething. I don't know how to describe it.

Heh. :P

I hate him for every moment he says "forever."

Random facts about me that have come out in the past couple days, that have amazed people:
- my house burned down just before I started 9th grade.
- I was in a band. I protested that it barely lasted one summer, and we never actually did anything other than a couple practices that were fairly ad hoc, but it still floored Catherine, and she now thinks I'm some kind of music goddess (o_O she's minoring in music, and plays amazing piano). Ehrm, yes, I write music, and "can" play guitar and flute and piano, but I'm not actually good at any of them, which renders it all kind of useless. Bah.
- I "speak" German.
- I've written two novels, and have had a short story published.
- I was really into Yoga for a longish time. (I'm currently trying to get back into it.)

Damnit. No wonder I never talk to people about myself. I sound so much more impressive than I actually am.

GAACK!

SO MANY PROFESSORS INSISTING THAT I CALL THEM BY FIRST NAMES!!

(raised... too conservatively... for this... and not even like, full first names - like, familiar nicknames; "Val," "Penny," "Liz" x.o ... I suppose that's one sign I'm not in the hard sciences anymore...)

GAACK!

*dies*

I flew once.

That was a long time ago, though. I don't really expect to do that again, much as I might like to.

I hung my wings up with a sigh, today.

Beautiful ebony wings; I was on fire, I brought the rain. I chased dreams.

I died once.

That was a long time ago, though. I remember falling out of paradise. I don't expect to get back there, much as I might like to.

I banished the memories with a sigh, today.

Beautiful siren; I was perfection, I brought joy. I lived dreams.

I loved once.

That was a long time ago, though.



What am I now? A grounded, banished monstrosity... bound for nothing and nowhere and notime...

Haha... soo, I used to be fairly strongly INTP; as late as senior year of high school, I think, we took Myers-Briggs and that was what I got, and that was what I'd gotten every time in the three-ish times I took it in middle and high school.

So, I just took it earlier this month, and it turns out I'm now fairly strongly INFP. Hmmmmm.

Oh, well. I'm still an introvert, regardless XP that's all that matters, because obviously introverts will never make it in the "modern world." Where all anybody does is sit in a cubicle and then go home and stare at the TV. Grrrr. I don't get what's wrong with being an introvert in those circumstances. I can't stand anything that isolates me that much, though. I love wandering around campus and living in a big house with bunches of lovely people. I don't think I'll ever be able to live alone; I'd go insane. I just don't like interacting with tons of people I barely know; I prefer interacting with a few I know well, and occasionally meeting a few new 'uns at a time, especially while with people I already know. And I think that's why I get classified as an "introvert." It's not that I'm scared of people. (/rant)

From The Man Nobody Knows by Bruce Barton:

There are two seas in Palestine. One is fresh, and fish are in it. Splashes of green adorn its banks. Trees spread their branches over it and stretch out their thirsty roots to sip of its healing waters.

...The River Jordan makes this sea with sparkling water from the hills. So it laughs in the sunshine. And men build their houses near to it, and birds their nests; and every kind of life is happier because it is there.

The River Jordan flows on south into another sea.

Here is no splash of fish, no fluttering leaf, no song of birds, no children's laughter. Travelers choose another route, unless on urgent business. The air hangs heavy above its water, and neither man nor beast nor fowl will drink.

What makes this mighty difference in these neighbor seas? Not the River Jordan. It empties the same good water into both. Not the soil in which they lie; not in the country round about.

Here is the difference. The Sea of Galilee receives but does not keep the Jordan. For every drop that flows into it another drop flows out. The giving and receiving go on in equal measure.

The other sea is shrewder, hoarding its income jealously. It will not be tempted into any generous impulse. Every drop it gets, it keeps.

The Sea of Galilee gives and lives. This other sea gives nothing. It is named the Dead.

There are two kinds of people in this world. There are two seas in Palestine.

Ohhhhhjeeeez.

Talk about a writing orgy. I've already written 6,500 words today (11 pages typed single-space). And there's going to be at least another page and a half on this story.

On the other hand, I think I can say with very little hesitation that this is probably my best story yet. Woo!

If you want to read it, I'll email it to you [but apparently if you publish stuff online you can't then sell first publication rights, which is what just about everything wants, because it's "already been published." Feh]. It's got les-love in it! And lots and lots of bitterness. Hmm. My stories always seem to have a lot of that. Oh, well.

I wish I had excuses to just spend whole days writing other times. Le sigh~

I'M DONE WITH FINALS!!! WHEEEEEEE~!!!!

Do you have any idea how nice it feels to sit down to a final, know that you've studied as much as you possibly can [and that was actually quite a bit >_> silly skipping at least a quarter's worth of Chinese], and then at the end, feel you've done as much as you could, had plenty of time. Wowww. That was a nice feeling. Unfortunately I probably won't get to repeat it often. Silly having to take respectable number of classes. ...and that whole "want to take eight million more classes than I possibly can anyway." Yeh.

Oh, right:

ATTN: NC FOLKEN! tAng arrives in NC Friday morning! This means something needs to be done in the 3.5 weeks that I'm around! I expect to see all of you! ...yes, I know most of you don't really read LJ anymore. Poo. I suppose I'll have to actually actively contact you :P

I'm going to have kids.

I'm going to raise them in a commune, and they're not going to *see* a goddamn computer or any form of screen [except possibly the kind that goes in a window... but I don't really like those either] until they're at least 8.

Yea hippies. And reality.