LiveJournal Project: H1 2006

I am kinda jumping ahead here, since there are still several months of 2005 left to go through, but as I look at the number of entries in 2006-2008, some months only have one, and others don't have any, which means that I'm closer to wrapping this up than I'd thought. Anyway, here is January - June 2006.

Date: 2006-01-08 03:16
Subject: into the mind of the blackbird
i've been trying to write this entry for two weeks now, but every time i get around to thinking about it, either i can't seem to summon up the motivation to actually do it or i can't get my thoughts to coalesce into something that actually makes enough sense to merit recording. whether or not this time will be any different, i don't know.

i said in a previous entry that i thought that the lesson that 2005 was trying to teach me was about my own mortality - but i've been thinking about that a little more, and i think perhaps i got it wrong. 2005 was not the year in which i sat down for a nice cup of tea with Death (particularly obvious, given that i don't drink tea in the first place) and discussed the weather - it was the year in which Fear and i played a game of chicken -- and i lost.

i haven't been the same since, i don't know how to fix it, and i really hate screwing up - not so much because i care what anyone else is going to say (people will always have their opinions), but because i expect better from myself. it's bad enough that most people in the world don't live up to my expectations, but when i can't even keep my own shit in order, that's just not cool. yes, that's right, kids, even the almighty blackbird has chinks in his armor. probably more than y'all think - i'm just good at spot welding.

i suppose what makes it all worse is that i know exactly how i got where i am (problems in my life are rarely questions of "how the hell did i get here?" but more along the line of "how the hell did i allow this to happen?!") but neither cold hard logic nor knowledge of the road travelled are sufficient to effect a solution. hmm, that's not good. unfortunately, i am without a plan B, unless we count "don't do anything to make it worse, just wait it out and see what happens" as a plan B. i don't really like that option, but given the circumstances, it may just have to suffice.

i remember reading in someone's LJ a few weeks ago something about a turkish proverb (i think) that says something to the effect of "no matter how far you've gone down the wrong path, it's never too late to turn around." i think there's a certain hopeful truth to that, but i also think that sometimes we get so entrenched into our patterns of thought and behavior that even though we're aware that other options exist and might even want to try some of them out, we're so inertially bound to the course we're on that doing anything even the slightest bit different strikes us as so foreign that we fall back into being unable to even imagine doing it.

some people die from the outside in - their bodies fail them, they get old, they become overrun with disease, or whatever - but all the while, everyone around them can tell what's happening. they can see the distress and the decay. i think, though, many more of us are dying from the inside out. everything looks ok on the surface, maybe even a few layers below the surface, but the core is inert and hollow. i'm reminded of that cheeseball science fiction movie - "The Core" - where the earth's core has stopped rotating because man has really fucked up the planet and they have to send in the standard save-the-world team of mismatched scientists and military personnel to detonate some nukes and then pull off some kind of Scotty-meets-MacGuyver technical wizardry to fix their damaged vehicle and escape the danger zone just in the nick of time so that they, too, can enjoy the same continued existence that they put their butts on the line to secure for the rest of the ungrateful world. (can you tell i didn't really like that movie?)

freedom and desolation are more synonymous than you think.

from the taoist perspective, light and dark are merely two aspects of the same whole -- and one interpretation of that thinking is that life is inherently a zero-sum game. in order for some to thrive, others must suffer, and that's the way it's always going to be. or, to think of it in a literary context, there must be both "good guys" and "bad guys" -- how do we know which we are? i don't know of too many people that would willingly say that in the story of life, they're the "bad guys." but we can't all be riding on the white horses for the armies of light, can we? i suppose one answer is to say that we're all one shade or another of grey, but even the most gandalfian among us is still likely to have leanings toward one end of the spectrum or another.

and now, to break up this entry a bit, ravyn's 2005-in-review-list.

• Best thing that happened in 2005: going to japan.
• Worst thing that happened in 2005: August 17th, October 2nd, and December 22nd
• Asshole of the year: djskott.
• Best accomplishment of the year: losing 30lbs, keeping 20-25 of them off.
• Biggest failure of the year: breakdown in mental control and stability. See #2a,b.

plans for 2006 (note, these are not resolutions - they're merely plans)

• try to be better about returning phone calls and getting my ass out of the house more often.
• revenge of the chicken diet - the goal is still 200lbs.
• get the fuck out of ASU, pieces of paper in hand.
• decide whether or not a graduate education is in my future.
• not have knee surgery (see #2)
• do something artistic once in awhile.
• whatever it takes to avoid a repeat of #5 above.

2006 will be better. and if it isn't, then i'll fuck it in the ass with a donkey dick.
Music: The Melovskys - Psychedelic Cowboy
Mood: indescribable

Date: 2006-01-10 09:28
Subject: stocks
ravyn's prediction: UARM (under armour) will hit $40 by the end of the olympics. did i buy some before today's big spike? you bet your ass i did.

01-06-2006 : buy to open UWGDH (under armour april '06 $40 call) - @ $2.50.
01-10-2006: last trade at: $4.40

can we say 76% profit in 4 days? can we say "shoulda bought more" ? well, we can say that first one, but we try not to say that second one, even when we're thinking it.

you know there's a bull market in the works when even CSCO is going up. =/

Date: 2006-01-31 20:26
Subject: state of the what?
dubya's speech was bad enough, but who the hell is this assmonkey that the democrats slapped on the screen to give the opposition response? we're all screwed. i'm moving to japan.

Date: 2006-02-11 05:10
Subject: because i don't have anything better to say.
Quiz: What does your candy heart say?
Result: Get Real
Meaning: You're a bit of a cynic when it comes to love.
You don't lose your head, and hardly anyone penetrates your heart.
Your ideal Valentine's Day date: is all about the person you're seeing (with no mentions of v-day!)
Your flirting style: honest and even slightly sarcastic
What turns you off: romantic expectations and "greeting card" holidays
Why you're hot: you don't just play hard to get - you are hard to get.

Date: 2006-02-25 21:16
Subject: photo radar can kiss my ass - and other ramblings.
as i'm sure all of you living in AZ know by now, snottsdale has decided to put photo radar devices along a stretch of the 101 in what they claim is an attempt to improve traffic safety even though we all know that really they're just trying to get an extra buck out of people without having to foot the bill for additional DPS officers. so as i'm driving down the 101 today, coming home from a north scottsdale shoe-buying trip (can't help it, that's where the new balance store is), i find myself driving past one of these shitball contraptions, and hey, what do you know, the flash went off. i looked down at my speedometer, only to see that i'm doing somewhere between 64 and 66 (couldn't see exactly where the needle was). i looked around me and saw that there was only one other car that's close to me, going about the same speed.

what the fuck is this shit?! did i just get nailed by photo radar for going 1 mph above the limit?? obviously, i won't know whether or not i actually did get photo-fucked unless something comes in the mail, but if we assume the worst and i do get the scottsdale nastygram, then what the hell am i supposed to do? the AZ republic says that you have to be doing at least 76mph to get snapped by scottsdale's freeway cameras, and i know for a fact that the fastest i could have possibly been going was 70, and that would be a stretch -- if for no other reason than that it's only been a year since my last speeding ticket and i'm not eligible to go to traffic school again until next august. in other words, i'm not stupid, i know where the fucking cameras are. so if it comes, how do i fight it? i can't exactly go into traffic court and ask to cross-examine the machine. i can't even request a hearing and hope the cop doesn't show up - because there is no bloody cop - it's my word against the machine's data, and we all know that computers never lie, especially when they put 2-year-olds on no-fly lists.

so the next question that i can't help but wonder is whether or not scottsdale is being so assholish about their photo radar that they're nailing people who are going 1mph over and they're just not bothering to be honest about it. if i were a money-grubbing city official, that's what i'd do. better yet, i'd probably have it set to randomly fuck people like that - most of the time it would operate as advertised, but then every so often it would switch to ultra-fascist gestapo mode and zing people who were doing the speed limit -- because the poor bastards would probably just end up paying the ticket anyway. more money for the city, more money for the camera manufacturer who would then issue me a kickback, and hey, everybody wins. everybody except joe six-pack, that is, but he doesn't matter anyway, right?

they say that it's excessive speed that causes accidents and that's why they do this photo radar business, but let me tell you, it's not people driving too fast that cause accidents, it's FUCKERS THAT DON'T KNOW HOW TO DRIVE. especially old people. maybe 10 miles down the road after my little encounter with officer cameraman, i almost got sideswiped by some old geezer that felt the need to come into my lane. he didn't have to change lanes - it wasn't one of those little merge lanes that ends too quickly - he just decided to move it on over. yo, gramps, i don't drive a fucking miata, how could you not see my car?! i dodged him and extended the finger, and as i looked in my rear view mirror i swear i saw hans moleman from the simpsons. ah, but it gets better. not one minute later, some other asshole in a BMW almost does the same thing. and you know what? both of these assclowns are going 65! fuck this speed-enforcement shit, where's shit-for-brains-driver photo radar?

on a completely different note... i was thinking about comparative religion while on my way to fry's electronics for a couple of case fans. no, the subject matter of my thought has no connection at all to my intended purchase. but anyway... people study comparative religion, and they take christianity and put it up against islam or judaism or even zoroastrianism, and then they look for archetypal patterns in these myths and in polytheistic religions and so on, and when they find these sorts of patterns (think the flood myth, for instance, which tends to be a pretty common cross-cultural pattern), they sometimes hold them up as inklings of universal truth. but should it really surprise anyone that humans tend to think of the same things whether they're in one part of the world or another? we're all made of the same shit, same DNA, same number of chromosomes and the like, and our brains all work the same way, to a first approximation. some might say that the development of similar ideas in different parts of the world exemplifies some sort of collective unconscious or racial memory - but maybe things unfold the way they do because that's just how our brains are. even with a quadrillion neurons, there's still only a finite number of possible combinations. anyway, back to comparative religion... it's a field that makes no sense. the only way for it to really have meaning, i think, would be for us to come into contact with some extraterrestrial civilization that also had some sort of spiritual leaning - because then we'd be able to look for commonalities and differences in a faith that would indeed be completely alien. of course, if we ever have such an encounter it very well might blow most earthly religions into untenable piles of absolute shit, too. and that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Date: 2006-04-11 07:44
Subject: if only it were an april fools' entry.
in yesterday's mail, i got a card addressed to me in big black lettering with my last name spelled wrong from none other than dj "i-knocked-up-my-girlfriend-and-now-i-have-to-marry-her" skott. i open it up and what's in there but a wedding invitation, a small cut-out piece of paper with their bed & bath registry number, and another small cut-out piece of paper with a phone number of the person i need to call if i want to RSVP. why is this funny? because i can't really figure out why in hell i got a wedding invitation from someone that earned himself a permanent place on my shitlist months ago. i mean, really... maybe this is his way of saying that he wants to be friends again --and if so, it's lame-- but to me it smells more like a half-ass attempt to get a wedding gift.

in other news, it looks like i'm going back to the land of the "real" job - i start monday as the senior network ninja (yes, i'm going to make them put that on my business cards) for the same place that i used to work at back during the last period when i had a "real" job. they're offering me a decent amount of cash, and i like most of the people that work there, but really my motivation for accepting the offer is that i think it will do me good to get out of the house more often and interact with people on a regular basis. whether or not the culture shock of having a set schedule five days a week becomes too much for me remains to be seen - it's been 6 years since the last time i had to be anywhere on a daily basis for more than a couple hours at a time. i have a review for a salary increase after 90 days, so at that point i'll assess the impact that having a real job is having on my sanity.

and as i expected, my attempt to graduate from ASU in may has met with bureaucratic ineptitude. i received a nastygram from the graduation office a couple weeks back telling me that i hadn't met all of my degree requirements. excuse me?! so i call them up, and they tell me that my political science degree is incomplete - i'm missing POS401 - political statistics. that class is only required for people getting a BS in polisci - i'm in the BA program. oh, wait, no, i'm not - apparently someone changed my major. how this happened is a complete mystery to me -- i've never been in the polisci BS program -- but the woman on the phone told me that all i had to do was submit a change of major form and it would all get straightened out. that's wonderful - someone else fucks up and i'm the one that has to jump through hoops in order to fix it. so i go to the POS department and the advisor tells me that it's impossible for my major to have been changed without my signature. yeah, right, and man will never land on the moon, either. idiots. it was probably some donut-eating lard-ass whose sausagesque fingers were too fat to distinguish between the "A" key and the "S" key that borked my paperwork. just give me my fucking degrees and let me out! so i've submitted the requisite TPS reports, and now i have to pray to the almighty crow (not the blackbird) that they don't fuck anything else up.

Date: 2006-04-02 13:52
Subject: the former physics student in me can't help but be excited.
neutrinos have mass!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4862112.stm

Date: 2006-04-06 20:28
Subject: illegal immigration
according to the news today, it looks like congress (or at least the senate) has passed a new immigration bill which seems to set up ways for some of the people who are here illegally to obtain legal status. it goes a little like this: people who have been here for less than 2 years are SOL - they need to go back and get in line like everyone else. people that have been here between 2 and 5 years have to go back to their home countries and get a temporary work visa, and those that have been here 5 years or longer can stick around, provided that they jump through a few hoops (learn english, pay fines and back taxes and clear a background check) with the chance to become full citizens after an additional 6 years.

i'm still trying to determine what i think of all of that, both from an ideological perspective as well as a practical one, but you know a few questions come to mind right away -- if some poor bastard has been living in the US illegally for the last 10 years, getting paid under the table or whatever, how is he going to conclusively prove that he's been here that long? or, more importantly, what's going to stop all of the people that haven't been here long enough to obtain legal status from faking it, and how is our esteemed government going to figure out who's telling the truth and who's full of shit? what makes anyone believe that those who have been here for less than two years are really going to just pack up and go home?

the bill also calls for a virtual fence (cameras and surveillance gear) to monitor the border between the US and Mexico. who the fuck are they kidding? maybe that will keep some of the illegals out, maybe it won't, but i thought the goal was to actually secure the border -- and, um, i don't see anyone talking about doing anything with the US-Canadian border. maybe Canadians aren't running south in droves, but if we're actually trying to "secure" the border, that implies keeping osama and his buddies out, too -- which means paying attention to the entire border, not just the one with Mexico.

people sometimes speak of the immigration issue as a human rights issue - but you know, i just don't buy into that logic - if your country is a poor shithole and you want to move somewhere else, your right to do so is inextricably tied to the immigration laws of the country you want to move to. period. rights are an illusion - they can be granted and revoked at any time at the whim of the powers that be. maybe that isn't the way the world should work, but it's the way it always has been and it's the way it's likely to be for the forseeable future as long as we have societies and governments.

one more thing... someone explain to me why ethnic pride is perfectly acceptable when you're not white, but when you are, saying something like "i'm happy to be a white person" is likely to get you branded a racist. maybe it's because the concept of ethnic pride is flawed to begin with. i don't really understand people, who, on one hand, criticize the "us vs. them" mentality while on the other espousing the acceptability of ethnic pride. factionalism is still factionalism no matter what euphemism you attach to it.

people of the world, i would like to not give a rat's ass whether you're black, white, brown, or blue, so why do you feel the need to remind me of how you're not like me on a daily basis?

Date: 2006-04-23 19:56
Subject: developments in life
0. started a full-time job again, working for the same company that i used to work for the last time i had a "real" job. i am the senior network ninja (and yes, my business cards do say that). the work isn't terribly challenging, but the pay is decent and it's nice to interact with people on a daily basis. so far it's been three weeks and i don't hate it, so that's a good sign.

1. i finally got shit straightened out with ASU, and i'm really graduating in a couple weeks with both degrees as they should be. yay. or something. it's certainly taken me long enough.

2. i received my acceptance letter today from ICU - so it looks like i'll be going to tokyo for 6 weeks starting in july for a summer language program. sadly, my friend that also applied did not get in, so i guess i'm goi ng to be the only representative from ASU in the program. i'll be curious to see how the job reacts to this - basically it's going to be either they give me a 6-week leave of absence or i quit at the end of june. i have a feeling that they'll work with me, but in the event that they don't, oh well, shit happens.

3. went to the doctor and got a physical. everything looks good, but my cholesterol is too high. guess i'm going to need to watch the pizza intake. at least my 6-month post-op period with my shoulder is almost over (last follow-up appointment is next week, actually) so i can start lifting full-on again.

4. i'm (well, not me, per se, but my company) being audited by the IRS. the tax lady is coming to my house next month to go through all kinds of records and shit. oh, i'm so excited! (dripping sarcasm there, in case you missed it.)

that's all for now.

Date: 2006-05-13 17:11
Subject: it's over!!!
congratulations to aoi_hana, ailetoile, and even a little bit to yours truly for surviving the pit of shit that is arizona state university and graduating this semester.

we're freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
.... well, at least until grad school.

Date: 2006-06-10 02:23
Subject: (no subject)
so it's been almost a month since i've had anything to say, and i guess this entry isn't going to be all that exciting either. there's a lot going on in the land of the blackbird, but it's all pretty mundane, and usually when i have some abstract idea running through my head that i think i might like to record in LJ i just never get around to it and it slips away into the neural fog. i work, i sleep, i go to the gym, and i play ultimate frisbee now and then. my shoulder is healed but i fucked up my elbow and i'm headed back to the doctor on monday. somehow i've managed to lose 10 pounds in the last week without even really trying. we got a new kitten, but priss and shiznit don't like her. the job is going well, but i miss academia. and, of course, the big one: i leave for japan in a little over 3 weeks, at which point i'm going to find out just how little japanese i really remember.

that's about it. if you weren't sleepy before you read this entry, you probably will be now.
Mood: insomniac