175. Ultimately one loves one's desires and not that which is desired. -NietzscheIf you could turn off your most troublesome desire, would you miss it?
Friday 05.30.03
This
Basically, light is what art is made of.is the worst writing I've seen in The New York Times in a while. A few sentences later:
Color is light rays bent a certain way.
Art-and-light talk can get out of hand.Gee, thanks for explaining that.
Wednesday 05.28.03
At dinner tonight, a friend of mine drew a distinction between how men and women tend to approach sex after they've had some kind of disagreement or conflict. She said that (generally speaking) women want to settle differences first and then have sex, whereas men want to have sex to make everything better.
Reminds me of a conversation (only peripherally related) that I had about 17 years ago, where someone told me that "every gay man thinks a big dick up his ass is gonna solve all his problems". He himself was gay; you complete the syllogism. (He was in his twenties then. I wonder if he still thinks sex is the panacea it used to be.)
Tuesday 05.27.03
There are two kinds of people:
those who test 9-volt batteries with their tongues,and
those who don't.
I had some tires mounted and wheels balanced today. Although the shop does dynamic balancing, the mechanic tried to tell me that static balancing was adequate. I resisted the urge to tell him that static balancing doesn't ensure that an eigenvector of the wheel's moment of inertia tensor is parallel to the wheel's axis.
Thursday 05.22.03
Middle age is not what I'd expected.
One thing I didn't expect was the difficulty I now experience in cultivating the kinds of friendships I had when I was young. Nowadays, my peers tend to be wrapped up in careers and/or relationships and don't have much time for friendships. I on the other hand am not wrapped up in a relationship, I still value friendships and I'm happy to make time for them.
My response to this situation has been to learn to do well on my own (or re-learn; I did well on my own as a teenager).
I have had some outstanding friendships over the years, I've had friends whose approaches to life were so complementary to mine that just being together was magical. But many of my close friends are now dead.
Spending time alone can be great, but it's not so automatic. Having fun with someone else usually takes less effort.
Monday 05.20.03
Being contrary is one of the simple pleasures in life.
Monday 05.19.03
Happy nineteenth.
Friday 05.16.03
Pleasant e-clipse of the moon last night. Clear skies here.
In a dream an afternoon or two ago, I attended a small informal briefing at the White House, in a room that looked more like an office cafeteria than a room fit for a head of state. But hey, this president tries to cultivate a down-home image. The cool thing about the dream, though, was that one wall of the room was lined with refrigerators decorated with the logos of various petroleum companies.
I had a dream last night where I was evading people who were trying to chase me down. I have these kinds of dreams fairly often, they started after I found out I was HIV+, and I have interpreted the dream attackers as allegories for the virus. It used to disturb me that I was having such dreams, but now I'm fairly accustomed to them. But as I write this (see what I mean about writing being good for you?) it occurs to me that I'd like to turn them into lucid dreams, i.e. dreams where I know I'm dreaming and I take more control of the action. I'll work on making that happen; stay tuned. There was a moment last night where I was somewhat aware that I was dreaming--but I didn't run with the dream as I've been able to do in fully lucid dreams.
Meanwhile, I note that about 11 hours ago, someone in Australia typed "how to curse enemy" into a search engine and found this poem on my web site. I suspect the poem wasn't what he/she was looking for, but maybe it was nonetheless worthwhile.
Who are all of you readers, and what do you think.
Wednesday 05.14.03
Like everyone else in my neighborhood, I've got tons of moths visiting my garage and house this spring. Tons. They hide during the day, the real fun starts after sundown. They're annoying and they leave runny shit on vertical and horizontal surfaces. I've tried several methods of dealing with them, all of which use light as an attraction:
- Fly paper hanging near lamp: works so-so, paper gets used up fast
- 300 watt halogen torchiere: effective, but makes nasty smoke
- desk fan with lamp behind it: works well, but scatters fragments over a wide area
- vacuum cleaner hose near lamp: no mess, but noisier than fan and slower (moths take a while to find a vacuum inlet, whereas they find fan blades right away).
Saturday 05.10.03
|
Do you reckon that when they designed this label, the Levi's people were all too aware of possible double meanings for loose straight ?
Tuesday 05.06.03
unauthorized duplication,[fine print under the copyright notice on an Ani DiFranco CD]
while sometimes necessary,
is never as good as the real thing.
Saturday 05.03.03
I'm in New York this week.
Yesterday I visited with one of my favorite teachers from high school, who--27 years later--is still teaching. We talked about a bunch of stuff; he's interesting, fun, sharp as hell, and has a great memory. I mentioned a few of my web pages about math topics, he asked what my URL was, and when I told him I didn't have my own domain name he was disappointed and told me I should. No other friend of mine has bitched at me for being too lazy to set up my own domain name; how appropriate that a high school teacher would, what with his expertise at encouraging laggards to do things.
People don't like being told what to do, and I especially don't like being told what to do--but at that moment I felt lucky that he kicked me in the ass, and I will set up my own domain name as a result of his remark.
There is of course more to being a good teacher than knowing when and how to prod people. He was a good teacher all around.
I miss some things about New York, but not enough to want to live here again.
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