Kak no-pyccku...

'cause last night must never happen again

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:37:38 GMT

"Sing to the LORD, all the earth; proclaim his salvation day after day."

and His name is fans. two, in particular from Ace Hardware, that after 5 years in Minnesota I finally purchased.

you know what they say, 9th time is the charm

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 07:41:33 GMT

my laptop power cord broke. so no internet, no laptop use even. have to resort to coffeeshops.

but that was DAYS ago. maybe two. i get impatient. i daydream about electronics. i examine the power cord, strip off the plastic, and then decide i still can't fix it, even in my daydreams.

then another DAY goes by. then i daydream some more.

then i drink a lot of beer.

then i fix my power cord. i had alternate plans, that involved my old shitty desktop, somehow piping its DC power out to my laptop, bypassing the AC-to-DC box. thank god I didn't do that, i'm sure it would have ended in fire.

in fact, i still consider my telephone-wire-plus-tape solution to have an extremely high chance of catching fire as soon as I walk out of the room. Every two minutes I feel the air around my "solution" for heat buildup. 'cause I don't know anything about electricity. while I was patching my solution together, I had to keep reminding myself "don't touch that!" to things that were connected to electricity. Clearly this is no long-term solution, and this thing will be torn apart as soon as the real thing arrives in the mail.

basically, for this adventure and so many others, I AM LUCKY TO BE ALIVE.

I blame the summer heat. I don't have a fan yet, and it's too early for AC. I've already watched Wolf, X-Men, X-Men 2. I cannot sleep, ergo this was bound to happen.

Also, drinking in the summer night (when you are very hot) basically destroys the effects of alcohol in 8 beers. I am totally sober. Damn. I wasted 8 beers. Time to go try the 9th.

lovely

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:44:28 GMT

man, that was an awesome 4th of July. I went to halkillsdave's place to celebrate, many diff. folks came. We ate, we ate, and then we ate. It was awesome. I was so full of hamburger, bratt, and grilled veggies (for some reason I missed out on the corn, I don't know what I was doing, probably sipping beer on the porch). bakazaru tried but failed to teach me any Japanese. I suck, but that was fun. I got to practice a little German and Spanish with age_well and gable_s_c, tho. Oh, this totally bummed me out, I was trying to translate "la misma cosa" into German, and said "die verschiedene Sache", which i now realize is not only wrong but nigh oppositely wrong. should have said "die gleiche Sache". whoops.

and then the bike ride home as usual was fast, fleet, and awesome. it feels like a downhill in that direction, always takes me less time than going there.

After I cooled my jets for a bit, I decided I was somehow a little hungry. In cleaning out the fridge, I found some discarded food that had been there a while. So I ate it. halfway through I noticed the mold.... .... ... !!!... ... ... ... how does this happen to me? so I threw it away. and fell asleep. and woke up an hour later. and threw up. ...so gross. why?...

anyways, small price to pay for celebration-tastic-ness.

not in my brothers be me, but in he I see

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:26:25 GMT

so i've been reading Anna Karenina for several weeks, and I aim to be finally finished quite soon.

more and more, I'm convinced the character of Levin, near and dear to my heart, is yet another near duplicate of my personality. I have a bit more control over myself than he, but I feel we are kindred, woven from the same fabric. Perhaps I can use this to master myself further, his weaknesses seem pretty blatant and easy to patch up.

Has anyone ever found themselves in a character in some book? What did you think, how did it make you feel?

As a child, I used to think that if I ever met myself (or had a twin who was just like me), I'd probably hate them and not get along smashingly with them, as you'd think when being a lonely child and wishing for a twin.

this is the most productive bit of ~math~ I've done this summer

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 19:28:57 GMT

so.

(a) i've been loving to go on bike rides lately.

(b) But I love not wearing sunscreen.

If you don't wear sunscreen (and you're a pale skinned monstrosity as I am), then you get sunburned.

(if a and b, then c)

(c) Therefore, I love wearing sunburned peeling skin.

I think I gave birth to time travel actually, I've travelled six hours into the future!

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:20:48 GMT

another I-sort-of-poisoned-myself anecdote.

Today I made a glorious lunch. It contained a bit of broccoli, yellow bell pepper, carrot, and potato stir-fried with some vegetable oil, Kikkoman soy sauce, and black pepper. Because I have spicy things, I feel compelled to put them in my cooked food. So, I put some wasabi powder in. It's only the second time I've used it, so I'm still working on the "how much to use" quantity I keep in my mind. And then I cut a habanero pepper in half and threw it in as well. I remember biting into one a few weeks ago, noticing that it was quite hot, and so this seemed like a perfectly good idea for my lunch. Lately I've been in the habit of not making any rice or grain when I stir fry. Why dilute a perfectly good and tasty blend of seasoned vegetables? I'm sure I get plenty of carbs anyway.

So everything worked out, the timing of putting in the vegetables, everything was cooked just so. The wasabi was hot, to be expected, sinuses were cleared, but I felt that it was all perfectly under control and well within the standards that I set myself for being able to enjoy a meal. Two thirds of the way through I tentatively popped one of the halves of the habanero in my mouth. I was hanging out with my roommate and her bf, and suddenly everything got worse. What you'd expect: breaking out in a sweat, increased respiration to the point of panting, drinking all water in the vicinity while spilling it all over myself, holding your breath through the pain, etc. It was HOT. But after like 15 minutes I recovered and finished the meal, my plate clean all but the other half of the habanero. I wasn't stupid, after all.

Except that I was and am incredibly stupid. Like 15 minutes later I popped the remaining half habanero into my mouth. The same suffering deal again, it seemed slightly less bad this time since perhaps I was used to it?

This is where I became instructed on some interesting anatomy stuff that I hadn't known beforehand. Food generally stays in the stomach for an hour or two, depending on the type of food involved. No news there. What I hadn't realized was the lining of the stomach MUST BE thicker than, say, the lining of the intestines. About an hour and a half after I finished my meal, I was biking to a local coffeeshop to enjoy a cold drink while reading Anna Karenina. As soon as I got there I knew this was going to be a tricky visit, if I could pull it off.

First off, I was sweating, and not from the bike ride. Secondly, I could feel my guts churning and burning. You're not supposed to feel your guts, but I felt 'em all right. Before I settled into my routine, I felt it necessary to just go find anywhere to just sit for a few minutes, try to get my guts under control through sheer force of will. After five or ten minutes of just sitting and staring at the table, I realized force of will is shit and I needed a drink to dilute the little droplets of spiciness currently causing me the worst agony I can remember. So I got a bottle of Vitamin water, and it was tasty. I sipped it and several glasses of water, and the pain came and went in quite insistent waves. Like labor pains, yes, these were my contractions. Except I was giving birth to nothing. Imagine such a mother, after all that pregnancy and birthing ordeal, and then just nothing coming out? I'd be pissed. Anyway, I wondered about my delicate innards and if they were being scarred, blistered, or worse, burnt through entirely so that my undigested food would spill into my abdomen, causing toxic shock and soon death. I didn't think this last to be very likely.

After I'd finished my drinks in fifteen minutes, I realized I'd only been able to read for a bit, on and off for what I could concentrate and focus through the pain.

I just need to pause and reflect on how stupid I am, the things I do to myself. I am stupid. I admit this freely.

It was clear I had ruined this coffeeshop visit. I couldn't read. I sat on the toilet but nothing of interest happened, except that I had a private place to reflect on my pain and didn't have to hide it from anyone. My guts were still burning. I didn't feel like buying a drink every 15 minutes to only slightly help diminish the pain. I knew it generally takes two days for food to make its way through the intestines, and two days of burning churning intestinal pain seemed to me like the longest way to die. I'd rather just die in some quicker more painless way, you know?

So I had to leave, I was bummed. There's a small grocery store where I locked my bike. I thought I should buy some junk food. Eating mass quantities of voluminous food might dilute the spicy batch in my belly more than the water had. And the tastiness of junk food would be a slight offset from the churning pain, maybe a good send off if I were to meet my digestive demise.

I biked home. Put on a movie, munched on gross amounts of salty snacks (wheat thins and cream cheese, the food of chubby champions), and then fell asleep for six hours.

I'm fine now, just...sore? that, or the soreness I feel is actually a duller burn further down in my small intestine. I think this is more likely now that I concentrate on what I'm feeling inside. It may be that I diluted it. Or, it may be that the spicy molecules (capsaicin?) reacted sufficiently with enough of my body so as to be mostly used up.

Problem solved. I only lost a half a day this time. Fortunately my time isn't worth anything these days.

Aren't you glad you weren't me today? Thank God!

good for typing, but shit for touching exactly one string

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:31:58 GMT

the bones in my fingers aren't shaped as well as they could be for the proper playing of guitar chords. i think i can fix it, but it's going to take a few applications of a hammer and a kitchen knife. i will keep trying. maybe.

[edit] i've isolated the problem. my ring finger. it doesn't seem to be as flexible as the others. as soon as I remove it and install an upgrade, my education can continue.

if you call me emo, i will call you callous

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 01:12:09 GMT

so two of my good friends have now left for Europe. I've already been feeling occasionally morose since S left two weeks ago for a two month trip. M's six month departure I figure will be infinitely worse for various/I-had-feelings-for-her reasons.

what are the odds that two of my newest close connections both take off on separate trips this summer? Maybe "coolness", which my friends certainly possess in vast quantities, is partnered with the quality of going to Europe this summer.

I'll be right back, just have to go die a little inside.

how to find Natasja, jamaican dead rapper deceased dutch

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 05:46:42 GMT

Enur feat. Natasja - Calabria, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL1hlzLsUaU

woop woop!, also the other one, wipe out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NONnUBKcNZI

tear yourself apart, put yourself back together

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:41:10 GMT

it's possible i've posted something like this before, since i certainly have had this thought before.

mostly i am instincts, a set of reflexes. i'm not very smart, not very witty, don't have a good memory, I'm definitely not very quick.

my successes are all pretty well linked to this, what i feel may be a simplistic description of my nature. my experiences learning languages, math, and dominating in Egyption Ratscrew are mainly the examples i have in mind. By the way, I'm up for a game of ER/ERS anytime anyone wants to play. I'd even cripple myself by drinking a few beers because apparently there are some people who are intimidated by me, whatevs. Seriously, it's a sweet game combining zen, biology, mechanics, and body-mind awareness and modification.

where was I? oh yes, in love with myself. moving on.

even my ethics and morality are instinctive, which is stupid since often I make mistakes by going along with some flow, am forced to go back on something for a good reason (rather than no reason at all) and intentionally and usually painfully make some change and become a better person. this instinctive bit is clearly not advantageous in this area, unlike the previous examples.

just a quick note, as i'm stalling for a movie torrent (Hitman!), and my Nanite Factory (Ogame!).

Ciao.

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:39:35 GMT

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My mood today was as lovely as the weather

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 05:38:10 GMT

Tyrannosaurus Rex, Tyrannosaurus Roy.

I am no King, I sweep the floor.

And you, Roy, have shined so very very bright.

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:25:45 GMT

job hunting again. I'm now newly acquainted with how worthless I am in the eyes of the community of potential employers.

...can I just get paid (and well!) to go on bike rides, do homework and take tests, and just generally enjoy myself?

update

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 07:54:43 GMT

on the plus side, i've excorsized crazy people from my list of friends. on the minus side, my muse is now blended scotch whisky. all in all, a fair trade, as I see it.

update

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Fri, 30 May 2008 02:17:52 GMT

summer freedom is great. i read a lot, a sci-fi anthology currently.

i attempt to gain employment times two.

and most importantly, I spend money on liquor because this is an excellent way to manage what little funds remain. Actually I do scheme over how best to ration the dollars that do go towards liquor, bulk is always better. Currently I'm up to the 700 gallon buckets for whisky, and the 1200 six-pack cases for Fat Tire & Tillburg's. This way I spend only 0.5% of what I'd normally spend, even if I am buying a million times the volume I normally would. A savings it is.

and... no, this is it. life is simpler without school, which creates the need for more responsibility, in doing things properly, and planning the days so one doesn't waste them playing Ogame. Mostly I fail at this, and play Ogame quite a bit. Damn.

I'm off to engage-in/violate The Sacred Rule:
beer before liquor (while watching sci-fi),
never been sicker (makes you want to die?).

done.

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Sat, 17 May 2008 15:59:18 GMT

I AIM TO MISBEHAVE.

2 finals in 3 days, after which I am GOD

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Thu, 15 May 2008 01:33:19 GMT

maybe it's the over-stimulation/coffee talking (iced mocha! has espressoooooo!!!!), but I'm pretty much in love with everything right now.

Wir Sind Helden streaming into my headphones, Daft Punk streaming over the coffeeshop's speakers (dually appreciable actually), studying for my crypto by satisfyingly solving problems and building/memorizing a study sheet, thinking about a lovely friend and trading emails, and furthering my domination of the galaxies in Ogame.

I am everything right now, and it sounds like German, tastes like brie, and feels like fluffy comfy chairs.

want to know the future? the past?

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Tue, 13 May 2008 01:32:12 GMT

reviewing for my cryptology final, my head feels like its infinitely expanding and I can see and understand and remember everything that's ever happened or ever will happen in all the universes.

... i had a coffee. i don't drink coffee regularly anymore. I've had like 4 in 2 months or so. it's entirely possible that I may be a bit over-sensitive to it now.

all while doing loads of laundry, which as far as I'm concerned makes me a multi-tasking king

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:51:36 GMT

every once in a while, i play in the kitchen and pretend that I am a cook. since i'm trapped at home doing laundry, i felt like making lunch special.

so I made curry rice, it's very pretty. then I sauteed some fresh garlic, fresh ginger, and mushrooms, with cut up slices of broccoli stem (i hate wasting that stuff, it's good), seasoned with some cumin. Then I separately sauteed some orange bell pepper and broccoli (surprise), lightly seasoned with black pepper, and cayenne (applied directly to broccoli so that each one is a spicy bite!).

Man, it's tasty. I done my job well.

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Sat, 03 May 2008 04:35:26 GMT

in general, I'm a fan of classical music. these days I've been listening to more, indulging in the soft sad cello stuff, David Darling's Dark Wood to be specific.

So, it's only natural that I share this ridiculous youtube video, of a well-heard if not well-known piece, O Fortuna, and this amazing reinterpretation of the lyrics.

Enjoy. Oh four tuna.

russian avoidance, unnecessary programming, somegreybloke, and a Solar Anus

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:37:28 GMT

i have a russian oral presentation/skit tomorrow that i haven't prepared for yet.

why am I about to play with the final project for a computer science class that I am not even in???... i'm tutoring a girl in the class, and it looks soo fun.... (creating game strategy, competing against your classmates, competing against the random player, the game is a hexagon line-drawing game, more complicated than tic-tac-toe)

just for like an hour or so, maybe. no more... then, memorize russian or whatever.

also, watch these short vids of somegreybloke, 'cause i think they're pretty good.

also2, what do you think of The Solar Anus? It's by Georges Bataille.

but natty ice, as they said, was way worse than the tillburg I was drinking prior to their arrival

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:07:33 GMT

i was all set to have a quiet evening alone by the river, ruminating over my troubles, thinking about my present, and the past, the future.

and then these four drunk freshman girls swooped in. they were noisy. they fell down the trail. they sang songs.

i told them they could have my rock. i was almost done, was drinking my last beer.

they said, you want some of ours??....

thus began the 4 hour affair that just ended with some 2am pizza. pretty fun kids, speaking spanish all around me, aahhhh. there was no exchange of numbers, but a potential meeting at the rock someday in the future, which is best for us all, for we may have regrets in the morning. and proper drinking buddy boundaries are a way to escape said regrets.

fun! thanks kids.

сестра или подруга или ещё?, ...хорошое вопрос. я не знаю

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:21:21 GMT

so. an unexpected thing has occurred. since my last post, a party between myself and my friend M has taken place every night. I feel very very fortunate. it is kind of bizarre now that I see it in its entirety. the consistent drinking doesn't really concern me (see consolidated shit below), though the expenditure of money does, though great liquor store efforts were expended to minimize this. it just feels a little compulsive now, that this party did last as long as it did, assuming an end has happened tonight, since it has.

even as I write this, I was totally ready for another nightly party, and am even guilty of suggesting it not too long ago this night. but now I'm straddling the issue, seeing both sides. Feeling the glee of enjoying a new person's company, and abandoning more mundane concerns such as school or work (though clearly the bare minimal of these things must always be afforded) remain attractive but I can hold them at bay for a bit.

The main reason I give in to these parties, for there are always moments of decision where you can take another route, is that I enjoy this person's company so much. And their inevitable departure isn't something I savour, so these days of supersaturation of company are both a way to make up for a future/eternal drought, and a way to pretend that this future doesn't exist. A second reason I give in to these parties is that I have an inexhaustible supply of personal metabolic energy. Truly inexhaustible.

Generally my shit is still together. I've been academically productive, went to most (coughcough) of my classes in this week, studied very hard for and took a difficult math midterm, organized meetings with professors about research stuff, registered for classes, and just generally did the things I needed to do and then some.

I haven't slept a lot, though. Sometimes two hours a night. Saturday I think I slept 6 hours, and another day may have had 10 hours of sleep. To make up for the accrued deficit, because that's how sleep works you see. But I've felt good, invigorated, and I've done it caffeine free which is essential I'm now thinking.

The time really has been lovely, though. Even today I experienced things that were truly a delight, little bright bits of life injected into my normal routine of experiences. Frequent bike rides feel nice, and this weather even cooperates for a bit now and then. Trips to the river, in the day and the night, are truly astounding. I've missed my connection to nature, and I feel some regret that a few good spots of nature were so close to my home. Places I can go to to be quiet, to listen to the water flowing against rocks, to the squirrels in the woods, to sit on rocks in the sun and moonlight, to stare upstream at the source of it all, to sit near a cave and watch bats fly.

and lengthy conversations. I like the way M sees the world. Also she is sweet.

But all this is at an end. The party is over, "was not meant to last". Sleep must be had. Homework must be done. People must each go to their separate homes and be quiet and be still all by themselves. Thoughts must turn to the things we've let alone for too long, lingering tasks and errands needing our attention. This is the way of things, the healthy way, and I encourage it now that I see it.

But I will always have the memory,
of this delicately beautiful week,
the week that I fell in friend-love.

pre-post-partum

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 22:06:30 GMT

yesterday i learned one of the new friends i've made recently here in Minnesota, M, is moving back to England for 6 months. ein bisschen deprimierend. Whereas another new friend, S, is also going on a two month trip to Spain and Germany this summer, M's trip seems more permanent-ish and threatening in addition to just being plainly longer. S' trip will be good for him, it's all about language acquisition of which I'm a superfan. But M's trip is more along the lines of reconnecting with the crucial friends she made there a few years ago, and the trip itself in addition to being a nice thing to do upon graduation is an extension of her longterm impression that she hasn't found her friend niche since she's lived here.

in the past month or two, i've enjoyed verily the company of M and S. I feel we're a pretty complimentary trio of similar interests and activities, and in my secret heart I see in them surreptitious kindred, hermana y hermano de una otra madre.

i was jolted by the news of her impending departure, and though I mostly was able to cover it up and continue to enjoy the rest of the night, the feeling of imminent loss stayed with me and has resurfaced today.

I had been feeling pretty good about myself, relations with my friends, and life. But this is a setback. my precarious network of friends is a carefully crafted lattice to put energy into and receive energy from. now it has been torn a little, and I feel its mark as a hidden uncertainty in all my movements, leaving residue of fear and self-doubt.

ето очень плохо.

i am starving, but i just ate uh today

howaboutamuffin@yahoo.com — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:12:07 GMT

Linear Feedback Shift Register Sequences. LFSR Sequences. LFSRS's. L's, I call them.

CSCI guys really know how to make big giant long words. I suppose you have to. Thing#3, Thing#987234, Thing#987234part7, etc., type of names gets old after a while. I certainly have way too many "tmp", "tmpthing", etc. programs floating around my hard drive.

anyways, minor update. Things in academia are awesome. Things in meta-academia are existent for the first time in a while and also awesome.

And things are a go for my other classes:
Honors Analysis 1,
Elementary Partial Differential Equations 1
(apparently my school is excellent for PDE theory, it turns out), and
Russian3, plus a
Directed Reading in Cryptology,
that I scared up

makes 15 credits for this fall semester. yippee.

Also, some potential math research with polynomials defined over finite fields with one prof, with some backdoor potential to do a little random matrix theory in matlab with a second prof. all very tenuous, all very uncertain, but inside of all this is some promise. some promise and hope is all I ask for these days. later I will be asking for money, so get me while I'm hot, profs! hot and cheap!, that's my motto.

now, if only a decent-paying job doing something math-related would land in my lap for this summer (so that I can avoid going to a temp agency and dying inside), 'cause who has the time to seek out that kinda thing? not me. nuh uh. gots to study, teach myself more matlab, peruse the Cryptology textbook choices for next semester, and just generally not look for this job / method of supporting myself while I do all these other great things.

Srsly. if you overhear someone say "If only we could find and pay someone to solve these tedious differential/matrix/modular equations. Where oh where could this person be hiding?" ... ...please let me know immediately while also stapling the foot of this person to the floor so that they do not get away in the meantime.

Also, kids, the International Film Festival in Mpls/St.Paul begins today. Look through the movies and go see one! Here's a list of a bunch of the films in the next few weeks. and here's a PDF schedule of them listed with their venues.