|
April 29th, 2009
06:57 pm - it was like $4 though
I ordered a used book about situational logic for extremely cheap on Amazon. Today it arrived and I discovered why it was extremely cheap: the first section contains the most dumbass underlining I have ever seen. Whichever previous owner marked it up gave up less than halfway through, which is awesome because that means less to erase. I've never actually had to erase notes in a used book before! But in this case they actually interfere with being able to read. Here is an example from the very beginning of the introduction. The underlined parts are the parts that are underlined, and the (parentheses) indicate words that the person circled.
There are a couple of things that came up in this work that have turned out to be important in the general development of the theory. (One), of course, is the use of (partial structures) and (partial information). (Another) is perspectival relativity.
What the ever-living fuck.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/confused.gif) confused
|
March 1st, 2009
04:27 pm
Usually when people offer me lifestyle advice about coping with my different ability, I punch them in the jeans for being condescending (and usually what they have to say is pretty stupid). But this week it is going to be above freezing for a little while and then cold again, and the packed snow on the sidewalks at school will melt and then freeze into a ripply sheet of ice. I am kind of leaking-from-the-eyes panicking about it, because walking anywhere is going to hurt a lot and there is not really anything I can do about it.
Anyway, advice time! What do you do when you have to do something that sucks? Do you have any smart ideas for things to bribe myself with, or flaky mantras to chant, or strategies for dividing and conquering when even small stuff is overwhelming? 3-2-1 GO please?
|
January 19th, 2009
08:29 pm - 23
Internet! It is my birthday in a couple of hours, and I would dearly love some doggerel, if you want to write me some. The more juvenile the better. What would be best of all is a dirty double dactyl. Or! Could you give me an idea about some thing I should learn how to make or do this year. Or! The name of a book you think I would like.
xo!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/crazy.gif) there once was a man from
|
January 13th, 2009
12:46 am
Internet, I don't have nightmares that often, but lately I am being schoolt by them. Outside of a few catnaps I haven't slept in about three days. The day before yesterday was fine; yesterday was melancholick and sentimental but sharp; today I teetered around and was jumpy and unbalanced and unreasonable (but apparently totally able to explain about Quine in class at tedious length?!); and tonight I feel kind of like a little kid who doesn't ever want it to be bedtime (like when I was little I would ask my mother to stay up later and later in ten-minute intervals). If I don't sleep tonight I will basically be a walking-into-walls zombie tomorrow so I am going to try now, but urgh I am apprehensive about it.
A favour: will you leave me something interesting/pornographic and having to do with Jorma Taccone and Andy Samberg or hot girls such as Katee Sackhoff and Grace Park/hilarious/pretty/entertaining/involving words to stumble back to at a reasonable hour of the morning?
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/worried.gif) fret fret fret
|
November 15th, 2008
11:50 pm - I'm a fast pita eater, got the pedal to the metal
Because I am kind of an absentminded flake, it never occurred to me that I should click on the "confirm email" link in my youtube signup email so I could actually favourite stuff—I've spent a couple of years bookmarking videos in Firefox instead. This video motivated me to fix that! Maybe next I'll make a del.icio.us account and bookmark it there too!
OMG O M G. Am I right, or am I right?
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/bouncy.gif) i'm eating hummus
|
September 13th, 2008
08:57 pm - You are loved
Oh internet, I am actually heartbroken and sniffly about this. My favourite thing he wrote was an essay about eating lobsters (the book it's from is called Consider the Lobster) and my other favourite thing he wrote is this story, from a collection of similarly bleak and brutal stories (Oblivion), and my other favourite thing is "Good Old Neon" from the same collection, which is about suicide. I didn't "get" Infinite Jest, but it had some beautiful bleak and brutal sentences in it.
:( :( :(
I'll reply to livejournal comments soon! There is this backlog because I have been stuck on other things (school, knitting, learning to communicate with fancy photocopiers). It comes in waves.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/sad.gif) sad
|
September 9th, 2008
11:06 pm - Science!
I watched the last couple of episodes of season 4 of House this afternoon, and. Internet, they made me so sad. Internet, I cried. (I also cried during The West Wing when a similar plot arc transpired; I am easily manipulated by CRUELTY.) And I think this year I might actually watch it as it airs on television? Out of curiosity about where ( spoiler, slashity slash )
In other news, do you know what is hilarious? 17th-century science. One of my classes involved a ten-minute digression about it and it made me spend the whole weekend reading tiny articles about putting things in air pumps and watching to see whether they die. Did you know that a duck lasts for longer than a hen? And that Boyle tested frogs and kittens too? ALL OF THEM SWOONED IS SCIENCE AMAZING OR WHAT.
Here are instructions for fucking up a snake:
And here is a chatty, excited little story about when meat becomes luminous with rot:
The long esses make it artful. I also renamed my journal (on top of picking a new username) from the same source: there are a bunch of little experimental histories in the Royal Society journals from back in the dizzay about classes of things, like phenomena relating to the sea and different kinds of heat and cold, questions and observations, and they are all beautiful little lists. ("Of the ſhining of the Sea in the night?") Internet, how about let's all become historians of science together.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/geeky.gif) science!
|
August 23rd, 2008
04:31 pm - If I had sixteen million dollars
I needed a jacket that didn't belong to a suit and a pair of jeans to replace ones that are falling apart, so I went to the mall on a Saturday, which is pretty much always a terrible mistake because it's packed with people who aren't paying attention to the people they're shoving past so crippled girls often end up being knocked over and not even helped to their feet. Not today, though, because I had my elbows out at the ready and was making defiant grumpy eye contact with all comers, like nobody fuck with me, and nobody did!
I got a decent jacket (nicely fitted & wool & light grey & makes me look like a Gap ad) and jeans that are identical to the pair they're replacing except for the falling-apart part, so today was a victory.
I also spent a pocketful of small change on a lottery ticket, followed by three hours of gallivanting around looking at expensive things and playing the if-I-were-a-squillionaire-I-would-buy-this game. It is for frivolous things you would do in between cashing the cheque and finding an accountant and investment banker to help you do smart things with your new fortune.
The list:
- Manolo pumps (leopardy, and I couldn't walk very far in them, but some shoes are meant for gigglingly lounging around in and being admired)
- MOMA boots (these)
- an $80 haircut every six weeks
- a spinning wheel that looks like part of a ship (I did not see one of these in person today, but I certainly thought about it)
- a bespoke suit!
- and other tailored things! I was struck by a desire for some type of cocktail dress today, and tried on some ridiculous ones but didn't find any that fit and also they all cost too much and were very impractical, but if I were a jillionaire I could have one or many just to craft occasions around!
- a silly bright red briefcase
- at this point I ran out of steam and came home.
It is an excellent game to play even if you haven't just bought a lottery ticket, but when you have it's marginally less unlikely that you'll come into some fat stacks of cash sometime soon so the fantasy has a certain urgency to it, am I right? What if you did win and didn't have a list at the ready?
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/happy.gif) bright-eyed and bushy-tailed
|
April 26th, 2008
08:42 pm - [[filtered: not ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) whatifoundthere]]
Note: This is a new filter and I hope you will respect it and my privacy. Thanks.
So, internet! I am visiting whatifoundthere for the weekend. Last time I was here it was totally awesome: she introduced me to Alias, got me hooked on Alias, and sent me away with the conviction that I needed to watch more Alias.
This time she's different and way strange, I have to say. I don't feel comfortable talking about exactly what I mean here (she let me borrow her laptop but I am worried that it maybe has a keylogger or something), so I'll elaborate when I get home, which won't be soon enough. I'm stuck here until Monday -- I don't think she'll let me leave before then. Her front door has the kind of deadbolt without a latch on the inside so you need the key to get out when it's locked (which it is), and only she has it. There is a balcony that I might be able to escape by if gets really bad.
One thing I will say, is that whatifoundthere maybe likes Alias a bit too much? I didn't know that was possible, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's true. I mean, last night she was inventing theories about Sark's religious convictions (according to her, he is Catholic, because he got a blood transfusion immediately after drinking a glass of red wine, which, what?), and for some reason she refers to all the characters by their names except for Sydney, whom she calls "Jennifer Garner" and Jack who is "Jennifer Garner's dad". I think she might be confused about the distinction between actors and the roles that they play, and it's creeping me out.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/anxious.gif) creeped out
Current Music: some weird goth thing, I don't know
|
February 17th, 2008
03:48 pm - Shallow
I don't know how I feel about the opening credits in the fourth season of Alias, you guys.
I mean, they're hypnotising to watch, but Jennifer Garner's facial expression doesn't really change from one shot to the next even though she is sometimes grinning and sometimes glowering. How does she do that. And they're all costumes from seasons 1-3, and she didn't get a good haircut until season 4—it has cute bangs and it also has volume, for the first time in the series, and ohgod ( spoiler ) SO BEAUTIFUL.
She is cutest when she is in her various hot librarian disguises, I think, followed closely by the dominatrix costume and the "punk" outfit with pink hair, though I am partial to the one at the end with the grenade launcher because of the circumstance that led to her dressing up that way. Judge:
Current Mood: Alias
|
February 3rd, 2008
12:12 am - Recommended listening
Do you ever listen to the CBC radio programme Ideas? You should; most of Radio 1 is "life-affirming" garbage about the value of embracing intuition and diversity of opinion or some fucking thing, but Ideas is good. It's been especially good lately because they're talking about Science!
If you can spare an hour, you should at least listen to episode 7, where David Cayley talks to a quantum physicist who has read too much Goethe, of whom I am inappropriately fond. It is beautiful (though it's made me a bit depressed about post-secondary science education) and I have been listening to it a lot lately. The other ones are good, too, if you have raging crushes on Bruno Latour and Ian Hacking as I do. Apparently they'll be talking to Steven Shapin soon, whom I also like (he wrote a neat small accessible book about the scientific revolution that I am due to reread).
I also love David Cayley's voice. I'm a sucker for good voices, I'll drink anyone's kool-aid if they talk a good game. What gets me about Cayley's voice is the lispiness around the edges. It sounds soft and warm.
There are "podcasts" plus a brief note about each interview here (click on "How to Think about Science"). LISTEN, JERKS.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/artistic.gif) Romantic
|
January 19th, 2008
08:33 pm - Yet another idea I stole from whatifoundthere
Hello, internet! Tomorrow is my birthday; will you make me a Livejournal icon to commemorate it?
I have quite a lot of space for more icons, I noticed recently, and most of the ones I have are about either Batman or the Mr. Men series, both of which are excellent but a bit limiting (what if I wanted to write a Livejournal post about a non-Batman superhero?—I couldn't.). My other interests include:
- Alias
- Battlestar Galactica
- especially the cyborg parts!
- cover art from lesbian pulp novels in the '50s and '60s
- kittens
- The X-Files
- knitting
- wallpaper and other things designed by William Morris
- patchwork
- magpies
- early 20th century polar expeditions
- surprises
Also I will love you always if you make me an icon. Not that I wouldn't already, obviously, but. I will love you more ardently than ever.
If I owe you comments or e-mail, I'm sorry; my neck is being fiery angry death for stupid reasons and it's limiting the amount of time I can spend looking at computers, and I've been spending most of that time reading Alias fanfic and looking at pictures of kittens. I will even leave you with one.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/amused.gif) celebratory
|
December 9th, 2007
01:35 am - News bulletin
- I have been alerted to the fact that you can make Facebook profiles for your cats, then be friends with them on the Internet. They can also be friends with other people and their cats. I assembled a small social network for my cats and showed it to them and they were unimpressed.
They are also anthropomorphised to an alarming degree. I was packing a suitcase this morning and one cat kept being underfoot or inside the suitcase or both and I was like, "Dude don't worry I will send you a facebook message tonight," before I realised that that was ridiculous. It's a cat.
Do you want to be Internet friends with my cats?
- Westjet will now serve you a mojito if you ask for one. It costs five dollars and comes in a bottle, but it is both recognisable as a mojito and tasty.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/sick.gif) needs acupuncture badly
|
June 24th, 2007
01:51 pm - whatifoundthere tells me that she is in an anti-Canada phase, so DEFIANTLY I MAKE A POLL
If you were making a shortish reading list for someone who is interested in but unfamiliar with Canadians who wrote fiction or poetry in English, what would you include?
Poll #1009264
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllWhich of these?
View AnswersIrving Layton, a greatest-hits compilation of some kind
   1 (11.1%) Ken Babstock, Airstream Land Yacht
0 (0.0%) Margaret Atwood, Surfacing
4 (44.4%) Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
2 (22.2%) Mordecai Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
1 (11.1%) Anne Michaels, The Weight of Oranges
2 (22.2%) Wayne Johnston, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams
2 (22.2%) Robertson Davies, The Deptford Trilogy
4 (44.4%) Timothy Findley, Headhunter
1 (11.1%) Alice Munro, Who Do You Think You Are?
4 (44.4%) Anne Szumigalski, Voice
0 (0.0%) Ed Riche, Rare Birds
2 (22.2%) WHAT ELSE?
My knowledge of the back catalogue of The Canon is sorely limited, as you can see, and I barely know any poets from before 1990; I am THAT KIND OF PHILISTINE. So the list I have is less a Cancon highlight reel than it is a collection of Interesting Current Things, which is cool but not what I am after, and this is why I need your input, internet. I know there are some people who know this stuff out there; frisbeeseppuku, electricchicken, lend me your brains!
There is a caveat in place that the boringest Canadian things are not worth reading for non-academic reasons and therefore will not make the cut. No Cabbagetown!
In return for this list I may be presented with a similar one that deals with the same stuff only French (in translation, obviously, because I AM ALSO THAT KIND OF PHILISTINE). I'm a bit apprehensive about it because the only French Canadian thing I ever read was The Tin Flute, and it was so whiny as to put me off reading anything at all for weeks.
|
May 25th, 2007
12:39 am - Thank you, whatifoundthere
It is late o'clock and I am awake making highbrow image macros. I present for your pleasure an off-colour lolhölderlin:
MAYBE IT IS ONLY FUNNY TO ME AND HEIDEGGER BUT SHUT UP OK
|
October 13th, 2006
02:59 am - Public service announcement
Opera!Ultros is the best character in any video game, ever.
As you were.
Current Mood: ULTROS
|
October 3rd, 2006
10:57 pm - Disapproval
Despite my tough-as-nails demeanour, I'm a soft touch at heart. I always cry at happy endings, for instance, so I'm an embarassment to accompany to a movie. I also am moved to tears when I read novels sometimes, though it has to be a pretty good novel for that to happen—the thing about movies is pretty cinematography plus swelling cheesy music plus something overwhelming happening to characters overloads my emotional capacity and I turn into a (surreptitious) blubbering idiot. I've been reduced to weeping by the last four novels I've read, all by Wayne Johnston: The Navigator of New York, The Custodian of Paradise, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, and Baltimore's Mansion (which is in fact not a novel but a memoir written after the fashion of a novel).
I'll admit that I'm nauseatingly sentimental about Canadiana, and that my naive fascination with Newfoundland means that I was biased in favour of Wayne Johnston for the Giller Prize to begin with. But even taking that into account and stifling my disappointment accordingly, my first reaction upon reading that The Custodian of Paradise has been eliminated from the running was: did they fucking read it?
I don't know what dimension Johnston is from, but it certainly isn't this one. I can only hope that someday someone will recognise that he probably deserves some accolades.
Maybe he'll win a Governor General's award instead.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/angry.gif) indignant
|
September 29th, 2006
03:14 pm - People from Newfoundland are amusing
Say, internet, I think it's been too long since I last told you how much I like The Great Eastern.
Season 3, episode 1 is my very favourite one, and also my favourite comedic thing in general and also my favourite radio broadcast (beating out the 2000 Olympic men's hockey gold-medal game, which was a magnificent thing to listen to). It is possibly also my favourite piece of writing of any kind.
The host has a voice I've listened to happily for entire days on end, and the in-jokes are hilarious. Said host has a number of strange fetishes, phobias, and predilections that are revealed as the series progresses—covert shoe fetish; a neverending series of relationships that failed for amusing reasons; over-the-top radical political associations during undergraduate studies at MUN, including organising a weight-room coup; claustrophobia acquired during an unfortunate incident in Saskatchewan; addictions to a laundry list of prescription drugs; increasingly awkward-to-listen-to sexual advances made on another character; latent homosexuality disclosed in embarassing ways; et cetera. There was also one episode (don't recall which one) where they namechecked Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Julia Kristeva, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in very rapid succession for a laugh; another episode involves sitting in on an Economologist seance where the spirit of Karl Marx is channelled, then cross-examined: "Was Lukacs right to read Hegelian categories into your later work or did you scrap it all by das Kapital?"
The entire series is a completely bizarre blend of highbrow and filthy, which is why the CBC eventually cancelled it. It's archived in its entirety online here, to my endless delight and hopefully to yours also.
This part in particular never fails to paralyse me with laughter:
Last week, we were privileged to have Newfoundland trivia expert Rock Hiscock aboard answering queries from listeners. Perhaps you remember the one caller who asked whether or not it was true that Ontario Premier Mike Harris had Newfoundland ancestors. We are obliged now to make a correction.
Mr. Harris is not, it turns out, of Newfoundland stock. And as best we know he and Premier Ralph Klein have an entirely professional relationship.
The Dorothy mentioned by Rock is not a real person. Further to that item, there is no association between Hydro Quebec, Freemasonry, and the recent conviction of Mr. Robert Vesco in Havana, Cuba.
(deep breath, shuffling of papers) I want to handle this one properly ...
Nor is there, now, nor has there been at any time, to our knowledge, a conspiracy involving the major Canadian banks, the Liberal Party of Canada, the Disney Corporation, and the construction of a fixed link to Prince Edward Island.
While it is true that Mr. Ernie Coombs was born in the United States, it was not in Roswell, New Mexico.
The pattern of Crosses of the Knights Templar appearing on the facade of the CBC Broadcast Centre in Toronto is, we are told, entirely coincidental.
We at The Great Eastern apologize for these errors and any inconvenience they may have caused.
Well said, sir!
Current Mood: lulz
|
September 24th, 2006
12:34 am - ZGRUPPP!
Google image searching Adam West's Batman this afternoon, I came across this COMPLETELY AWESOME page of all the old live-action Batman fight scene onomatopoeias that I used to have to say out loud upon seeing, IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER, and was compelled to make six new Livejournal icons with my madleet MS Paint abilities. I am fairly certain that these convey the full depth and breadth of emotion that I am capable of experiencing; and I encourage you, internet, to follow suit. (Both in making Batman-related icons and in limiting your emotions to things that have been expressed ONOMATOPOEIATICALLY near ADAM WEST.)
( Zowie! )
Current Mood: CAPSLOCK
|
August 21st, 2006
12:03 am
I wrote a Livejournal post and used a thing on the internet to translate it into English from its original English. The translated form is the better one:
IMMATERIALITY come short of be the cause of news relatively it among quantitative , in return IMMATERIALITY don't uniform be certain method be the cause of to a small extent permanent IMMATERIALITY want be the cause of news in the circumstances soniferous relative IMMATERIALITY am lament. With IMMATERIALITY don't be certain what IMMATERIALITY would to a small extent in the circumstances IMMATERIALITY had someone's care anyway. It is whole substantiality , in return generality who would hear before be certain to the tune of special with is wearying incomplete lawsuit relatively it. IMMATERIALITY don't confute quantitative dissimilar knowledge , with present literally love topic. IMMATERIALITY can't recur existence great relatively special in return IMMATERIALITY don't be certain method not be the cause of exist ; IMMATERIALITY be certain special IMMATERIALITY intend exist disease , in return method desire be in a state IMMATERIALITY intend be in a state special preceding to one's heart's content beginning be the cause of utility.
Current Mood: IMMATERIAL
|
|
|
|
