I'm making a pot-roast. I also wrote a shell script that makes some sense out of sdf's common access log. The script greps the log for lines containing my url, then greps the output of that grep for the absence of my ip address, since I look at my own site so much. Then, it greps the output of *that* grep for html hits, because I only care who's accessing my blog-proper, as opposed to images and cgi's. Finally, the script writes everything (html documents accessed on my domain by anyone other than myself, along with the time, date, bytes transferred, and some other information) to a file named stats.txt in my html directory, as well as prints the same information in my shell for me to read.
I know it's no big whoop, but I'm very pleased with myself for accumulating a degree of unix competence in relatively short order.
Unfortunately, I can't run cron jobs at my current level of system access, so I can't automatically generate access statistics each day, after they are created anew (at midnight UTC). But, it's not really a problem, since I'm always logged in and looking for things to fiddle with.
Did I mention that I was making a pot-roast? It'll be done at 5pm or so.
Here I am. Blogging is incredibly slow this morning, because the sdf servers are to be having problems. Also, cgi is (hopefully temporarily) broken, making my personal breakthroughs in perl more difficult to achieve. There is an all-day marathon of 'Star Trek: the next generation' on today, from 9am to 11pm. Needless to day, the tv is on in the background.
I live among feces.
Research is being done on what makes people skinny, as opposed to what makes them fat. As far as analyses of my own experimental group demonstrate, skinny people are skinny because they are distracted by rubik's cubes during dinner (i have actually seen this happen).
Seriously though, I wonder what makes some people naturally regulate their food intake in the face of plenitude, while others inflate their fatty cells to the point of death. It's the million-dollar question, as they say.
The problem with 'queer eye for the straight guy,' and in general claims of metrosexuality being indicative of a higher level of civilization, is this: it assumes that the subject of criticism does not participate in a certain level of personal grooming, clothing fashion, social conventions of a particular subculture deemed 'cool,' etc, because he (or she) is *unable* to do so, due to a deficient aesthetic.
In fact, the possibility exists that he does not participate because he is *unwilling* to do so.
I know this isn't any great revelation, but I haven't seen it in print yet, and I thought I'd do MANkind a service. It's important to remember that the demands of metrosexuality can and do apply to women as well; in fact, women have historically had their avenues of personal expression ridiculed, controlled and sold to a greater degree.
Of course, I can only speak from my own subjective interpretations of personal experience, but ain't that always how it is. For instance, I feel that buying gucci boots (i don't know...gap bags? Charlton heston belts?) represents less of a personal choice than it does the following of a social mandate that originates, ultimately, from the capitalistic interests of the ruling elite. This sounds grandiose and bombastic, but it's really not. When I hear the cry o'er the hills to be metrosexual and start plucking my eyebrows (which I've recently taken up), what's really happening is that some asshole is dictating what s/he wants me to look like, act like, and *be* like, so I will subscribe to his or her cultural construct and fatten his or her bank account. It's just another form of marketing.
'Queer eye for the straight guy''s proclaiming that I am socially deficient if I fail to pierce my tongue and/or shave my scrotum is no different from mcdonalds's proclaiming that I'm not *truly* american if I don't eat big macs. And the ironic part is that the very people who most blindly subscribe to the mandates of metrosexually defined personal expression are those same 'liberals' who most vociferously eschew mcdonalds hamburgers.
Conservatives are idiots, but to their credit they're aware on some level that they're idiots, unlike their compadres to the left.
Upon seeing the master whip three disciples for stealing cheese from the cheese-house, another disciple asked the master 'why do you whip the disciples? I've seen you, too, steal cheese from the cheese-house.' the master answered, 'my stealing cheese does not impact the wickedness of the disciples' stealing cheese, nor my responsibility as master to punish them for stealing cheese. Also, it's my fucking cheese to begin with.' at that moment, the disciple was enlightened.
Remember: social isolation --› focus only on the self --› egomania --› derision of others --› aggression.
Does the assertion 'cheese is a social construct' imply that cheese doesn't exist independantly of our minds, or that our *idea* of cheese doesn't exist independantly of our minds? The first proposition amounts to solipsism (the belief that the self is the only element to constitute existence; that the universe exists only in the mind), and while perfectly reasonable is by definition irrefutable, and so meaningless to discuss prosaically and/or logically (maybe someone can write a poem about cheese being a social construct). The second proposition is more reasonable, and in fact seems so reasonalbe as to be obvious and trivial -- how can an idea of something be independant of the mind if the mind is the source of all ideas? So, the asserition 'cheese is a social construct' is either unarguable or obviously true, depending on your definitions.
Sorry, still stuck on the sokal hoax. Watch as I solve the philosophical problems of humanity in my blog.
Happy new year's day. The holidays are finally over, unless you count valentine's day as being in the same group. I am still filled with hatred, but less so. I have an urge to devote more time to learning perl today, so I will take advantage of the opportunity of inspiration in order to better myself. Of course, my resume already mannishly asserts that I know perl/cgi, which is true; I can write (and have written) a perl/cgi script. And what perl developer would audaciously claim that s/he knows *all* there is to know about perl? Certainly not me.
Since it's impossible to say one knows *everything* about a computer language, spoken language, software package, etc, saying you have 'knowledge' of something is pretty arbitrary, and requires the resume-writer to make his own personal judgments about how much knowledge constitutes 'knowledge' of something, as indicated on a resume. And since 1) resumes are tools of self-promotion (an inherently dishonest pursuit) 2) bill clinton taught us that it's not lying if you don't get caught, and 3) we've all been influenced by the culture of marketing and advertising, I'd be willing to bet that there are a lot of skills being claimed on resumes that are at best irresponsible exaggerations, and at worst bald-faced lies. But hey, this is america.
Here are some guidelines:
I wonder what would happen to the work-force if there was some kind of spell cast on everyone that required them to be completely honest on their resumes. And not legally, linguistically honest -- personally honest. If one genuinely believes that the information one is conveying is good information, then a statement can be considered 'personally honest.' but since it's impossible to read someone's mind, we have to rely on language standards of truth, and this creates problems. This is also assuming that there is such a thing as 'truth' to begin with.
Employers think to themselves 'if we want the very best workers, we have to solicit the most rigorous of employee standards in our want ad.' seeing these want ads, prospective employees think to themselves, 'in order to compete in the job market, I need to present myself as having these qualities, whether I actually do or not.' capitalism promotes competition, and there's nothing wrong with this in and of itself. But if you find yourself unable to compete, you resort to lies, adversarial tactics or terrorism to attain the advantages that are unavailable to you via the normal courses of legally and morally sanctioned competitive behavior.
American capitalism is about lying and adversary; who can get the other to do what s/he wants by telling the most gratuitous lie.
It's interesting that media consumers are so able to take natural disasters in stride, as exemplified by the way stories about the earthquake in bam are handled. Even though the death toll is expected to reach 30,000, there's a kind of zen surrounding the related news, as if it's all part of the cosmic scheme. This is refreshing, but there's no reason the same zen can't be applied to other stories, in contrast to phenomena like the 24/7, frantic coverage of the area terrorized by malvo and muhammed, even after the 'terror' per se had stopped. It's almost like the media consumer is a glutton for punishment, and wants to keep wringing their hands about things s/he is powerless to do anything about. Another case in point: September 11th.
Media executives make the reasonable claim that the public controls what is broadcasted, and that the lack of a demand for frivolous news stories would smartly cut off the supply. Media consumers make the equally reasonable claim that they consume what is offered because there is no alternative. It seems to me that in cases of circular responsibility in which one party needs to break the cycle, the responsibility falls with the party with greater centralized, organized power.
People seem to fall naturally into sheep-mode, and actually be more content to allow their lives to be controlled. Maybe it's hopeless.
I find that I get more information and spend less time reading google news than I do listening to npr or watching cnn. My plan would be to cut myself off from all media, but I would miss the internet. Maybe I could just do email and chat; no web.
Oh man, I think I went a little crazy. I have a secret addiction: odwalla shakes. I bought 4 of them this evening, spending $12 on shakes in one binge. I drank three of them in the car on the way home -- one orange/carrot juice blend (technically not a shake), and two vanilla-honey-almond soy shakes. I still have a double-dutch chocolate shake waiting the fridge for when some of the fluid seeps lower into my digestive system later tonight. Right now, my stomach is bloated out like a kangaroo's. I admit that my vice is kind of weird, but at least I'm not addicted to cigarettes.
There are four elements to blogging: 1) today's blog. 2) archives. 3) direct links to entries. 4) comments. I am still upset about the fact that my blog is not commentable. I would re-install greymatter and give that another go, but I don't know how I'd get all of my archives moved over to a new system. Greymatter works only in the cgi web-interface, and gets upset, I seem to remember, if one directly edits any files on the server. I looked into blosxom, which is a set of unix-oriented, open-source blogging scripts, but it doesn't allow comments, from what I can tell. Plus, I'm sure I'd have the same set of difficulties with my archives. I'm not sure if I really want comments, though...I'd only be interested in reading them if they were really good observations, or were really mean.
So what should I do about my inner struggle about comments? YOU CAN'T TELL ME BECAUSE I HAVE NO COMMENT SYSTEM SET UP HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. ONE THING I mean one thing I could do would be to read the greymatter forums and maybe post a question there about my archives concern. It's likely that there isn't any way to transport archives over to the new file system, and I'd lose all of these brilliant entries, haha, about such things as 'the taboo of the human bite.' of course, it's unlikely that people read old entries anyway, although with my new format, it's sort of enticing to click various little numbers and see what comes up. I don't know.
The prospect of drastically altering my blog makes me nervous because I'd be afraid that there'd be x number of web-surfers getting 404 messages while I changed things. This isn't normally a problem in web-work, but in this case I'd actually ftp everything to my local machine and start over from scratch, typing $ rm * in my html directory. Then, if greymatter didn't work out, I'd ftp everything back to my server. But this is an unusual situation. More typically, I invariably notice some essential change that needs to be made, or a really glaring spelling/grammar mistake, and find myself frantically editing and ftp'ing after I've sent out a group email telling people to look at my project. But in the case of the potential blog-reformatting, there exists the possibility that people will get 404 errors, and not just have to see a spelling mistake.
It's not so much that they care, per se, but the fact that the web is a public medium. Even if I have no readers at all, it still bothers me that my blog wouldn't be available to read.
This discussion brings me back to the dark days of my website, where I would make a new web-browser project and force everyone to come look at it. The most recent thing I've done is a project in which I posed as a girl on an internet dating service and collected love letters. When I phrase it like that, it doesn't sound so interesting. That's the problem with all of this pompous language I've been entrusted with at umbc -- it's readily available to make a project seem a lot 'deeper' and more interesting than it is. And the sad truth is that all of my artwork over the past 3 years has been comprised of web-pages.
No matter how much work and thought goes into a project, it's still just a web-page, and is treated as such by an audience. I have this recurring fantasy where I take up oil painting.
Happy new years eve! :) :) :) :) I might 'go out,' as they say. But I'd need to do something about my belt-situation. The loop that restrains the floppy end has worn through and fallen off, so the end of my belt now has this very alarming phallic appearance as it juts out into space over my fly, and just isn't socially appropriate. My pants won't stay up around my 'waist' without a belt, because of my unfortunate construction: something like a parsnip \/. Most humans have these strange structures called 'buttocks,' 'hips,' and a 'waist,' which provide an indentation-and-ledge system that causes pants to stay where they are supposed to stay. I, however, am not built this way. Even before I gained x pounds, my pants had no hopes of staying up. So, when I wear pants, I either need to tighten the belt to the point where it cuts painfully into my flesh, or accept the fact that they will fall down. I'm really built more for mumus than pants. I should wear a mumu to a job interview, and then sue them when they refuse to hire me.
So anyway, this is what's making me wonder about 'going out.' I have some sweatpants that solve the problem to some degree by employing an elastic waist-tie, and by being extremely light material that isn't so susceptible to gravity, but I'm not sure those would be any more socially appropriate than the phallic belt.
Stay tuned.
Josh invited me 'out,' but a party at which I'd know no-one and to which I'd have to navigate myself in the dark didn't sound like a good time. But I still can't help feeling the sting of social isolation more than I usually do, just like we feel the sting of age more on our birthdays.
I've made it through 29 years...i can make it through 50 more. Really, a significant chunk is done with; an optimistic estimate might be as high as 40%. But, as I remember my parents' divorce, my suicide attempt, arrest, brain injury, 10-year college career and ensuing unemployability and debt, I can't help thinking to myself, 'the worst is yet to come.' I don't know yet what it will be, but I can't shake the feeling that it's not over yet. What's going to be the next big catastrophe? I might lose a leg in a bus accident, or maybe katie will get run over, or I'll be sued. But I'd best stay prepared, fists clenched and grimacing; it's not over yet.
The monster-god has not yet had its fill of my flesh.
I woke up this morning at 5:30am, after having gone to bed at 9pm last night. I'm still depressed. I'm starting to worry about my mom a little bit, since she has several ailments and is getting too tired to be working as hard as she does. Issues that come up are 1) should I be working to support her, rather than the other way around, since I'm relatively young and strong? If so, how? 2) what if I want to seek a life independent of my parental bonds? 3) what do normal people do if they have a single parent who needs, to some degree, to be taken care of?
I don't want to go to school again; I am in enough debt already.
Ok, asshole, fuck you. I am sick of this blog again, and I might say 'fuck it' and just not write any more. But I have a new theory: that I am, in fact, 'clinically' depressed, but deal with it by employing a combination of two techniques: 1) instead of hating myself, I hate everything else, and instead of blaming myself for everything, I blame everyone else. 2) I assume no responsibilities or stressors. I sit here all day blogging, eating food, and playing with my friends. Being 'character disordered' as opposed to 'neurotic,' I've eliminated the element that causes me grief (the other, as opposed to the self), and simply isolate within the confines of my own mind, thus providing my own treatment plan.
M. Scott peck wrote about the neurotic patient versus the character-disordered patient, and presented this as a kind of fundamental dualism with which one could break down, I think, almost all mental illness. The neurotic was characterized by turning his or her bad feelings inward -- by blaming his or her self for everything, having a low self-esteem, sadness, etc. The character-disordered patient was described as seeing the external world as being responsible for his or her difficulties, and not assuming *any* personal responsibility for his or her mental illness (whereas the neurotic assumes too much), generally resulting in aggression and anger rather than introverted sadness. This is clearly oversimplification, and I think m. Scott peck was a holier-than-thou, power-hungry fascist, but nevertheless his analysis rings somewhat true for me, probably because I actually understand it, haha.
Anyway, neurotic are much easier to treat with therapy than character-disordered patients, simply because they are all-too eager to take on the burden of their own treatment, a responsibility that is essential in psychotherapy. On the other hand, the character-disordered person doesn't think s/he is sick to begin with, because s/he blames the other for his or her inability to function in society.
Since the character-disordered person doesn't see his or her self as being the source of the problem, s/he often doesn't see any problem at all. In fact, it could be argued that someone who is character-disordered doesn't have a problem -- at least not a problem that directly affects his or her self. Someone with a character disorder might be perfectly happy, if s/he has found a situation in which the link that connects him or her to society has been largely severed. Someone with a character disorder says to themselves, 'i don't have a problem. The reason I can't find a job is because society is unwilling to accommodate me,' whereas someone who is neurotic says 'i have a problem. The reason I can't find a job is because I'm not good enough.' in a character-disordered person, anger is directed towards society and the other, whereas the neurotic directs anger towards his or her self. For this reason, treating a character-disordered patient has an element of protecting society from the individual, rather than the other way around.
Of course, even though the character-disordered person might not be aware of harm visited upon his or her self, this category of mental illness can wreak a lot of havoc on the sufferer's relationship with society, and consequently, his or her livelihood and ability to survive, regardless of whether or not s/he is tormented by the inner demons that define the suffering of the neurotic.
I'm pretty sure m. Scott peck would say I have a character disorder. I wish I had some career skills; it's depressing that I don't.
My mom is watching 'the simple life' with paris hilton. Let's talk about things that it is cool not to have, like a television or a cell phone. Inevitably, the people who affectedly refuse to have a cell phone or television make frequent use of their friends' cell phones or televisions. Oh, you should read my new artist's statement -- I crap on dada.
Last night was social. I spent time with gorby, serena, pesh and serena's boyfriend josh whom I had met once before. We sat around talking, and then when serena and josh left, gorby, pesh and I went over to mrs. White's house to sit and talk some more. Then pesh left, and gorby and I hung around talking some more. Gorby spent the night, and this morning we investigated the procedure for getting more RAM into my computer, which is sadly deficient as is. I have many playmates for a little while...soon they will all be gone once more.
I miss ana.
I wonder if anyone ever reads this. I doubt it.
I'm suffering from a kind of depression tonight, brought on by the possibility of attending Maryland for a second degree in computer science. Just the sheer number of forms to fill out is daunting, not to mention accumulating even more debt, making deadlines, doing financial aid right, knowing which forms to fill out in the first place, knowing when to fill them out, knowing where to drop them, the question of how I would get to campus every day, and of course the question of whether or not I would be able to do it, side-stepping cognitive and psychological pitfalls.
So, I've been watching tv. Tv is often a good thing to do when one is depressed, because it kind of turns off your brain, which is the source of the discomfort. Of course, tv makes one more depressed, but it continues to treat the symptoms as it generates them.