People like me wouldn't be able to go to college if it weren't for the existence of 'soft' majors like art, english, philosophy, history, etc, that only exist so idiots won't feel as socially stratified as they actually are. I'm not sure why liberal arts majors bother to go to college. I guess I can understand the motivation; at that age, people are idealistic, and college is fun for a liberal arts major -- it's more or less a 4-year party (or in some lucky cases, a 10-year party). I don't know too many liberal arts majors whose college 'careers' weren't fun. But really, if you can't major in something of value to society because you're too stupid, then go to two-week certificate training seminar in networking, or take a correspondence course on medical transcription, but don't waste your parents', your own, and the nation's tax dollars on a four-year masturbation session.
But the fact is that I did work extremely hard in college. That's all I did; I had no social life. I would deliver a few pizzas and then go work on art projects and my website. Was all of this for nothing? I feel like some of this hard work should pay off in some tangible way, but I guess it won't. What a waste of time and money.
I'm depressed about this, and don't know what to do about it. If I could have one wish, I would wish for having what it takes to be a scientist or mathematician. On second thought, if I had one wish, I would wish for the planet to be torn apart once and for all; no more of this pussyfooting around. Actually, the extinction of the human race is a better goal. I wonder how long it would take the earth to completely recover?
I think I can safely make the statement: 'i don't have what it takes.'
I could be a serial killer; that isn't degree-specific, although I think an art degree probably comes as close as any to preparation for serial-killing in that it teaches you to devalue mainstream society as well as fails to help employability. And what is mass-murder if not bad performance art?
New year's resolution: to take even less shit from people than I do already. A new era is beginning; a new paradigm. I wish someone would call so I could hang up on them. Haha.
I wish 1) I could read normally, 2) I had majored in something like engineering, and 3) I had more inspiration and/or motivation.
I observe from inside the white van that is parked in front of your house that you are reading my blog from the city of , . I also see from my van that you may have been redirected to a geobytes website where they try to sell you some kind of idiot 'business solution.' please boycott it.
I'm not sure it's worth it to go to sleep at this point. I don't think I could if I wanted to -- I am physically suffering. Mrs. White told me via email yesterday that she had homemade soup to give away. I stopped by, and she gave me a huge vat of a multi-ingredient, experimental, cajun-style soup/stew containing cabbage, beans, potatoes and corned beef, among other things. I had about five bowls over the course of the evening, and needless to day I'm currently producing acre after acre of gas. It's actually quite painful, maybe to the point of interrupting sleep. Clearly I have no choice but to blog at 4:15am.
YMIR HAS AWAKENED (it's supposed to be 9F on Saturday).
I filled out and mailed in my application for vocational rehabilitative counseling. Acquiring things like jobs or government services requires a kind of humility, at least insofar as one is presenting one's self and saying 'here I am; please help me.' in essence, this is an admission that the applicant depends on society to a degree, and cannot survive on his or her own. I think the fact that admitting this is a psychologically difficult thing to do keeps some fortune-hunters away, as well as keeps the fortune-bearers' costs in assessing candidates down. Maybe I can learn to derive a perverse, geisha-eque pleasure from prostrating myself before the proverbial magistrate and begging for farthings. However, I sort of enjoyed applying for disability support service, just because I didn't have to lie. Maybe that is key to stomaching similar processes.
Wind chill is going to be in the -10's tonight. I'm going to go out as late as I can and go for a walk; I hear it's coldest before dawn. I envision humans huddled in their homes in front of the false-warmth of their televisions as they hide their frail bodies from the icy breath of ymir, and I bestride the frozen earth as his incarnation.
I just volunteered to be the webmaster for the c&o canal association. I can't imagine that it could involve too much work; I tend to do web work very quickly, because I have so much experience maintaining my site all by myself. Maybe I can do a complete site overhaul, and sneak in my link somewhere. Mwa ha ha. No, that'd be wrong (he says while batting his eyelashes). But I think it sounds like a good idea; for one thing, I'll get some more names to use as recommendations, which is unambiguously good. I don't know about experience, however; I know everything already. Hah. But you never can tell; you learn something from every new experience.
Ana and I have weekend plans; I'm going down there on Saturday to pick her up. I'm worried that her mom is going to veto, and then I'll have to drive back another seven hours. Ana assures me that this will not happen, but she didn't visit during thanksgiving because her mom threatened not to let her back in the house when she returned. I'll have to drive all day on Saturday, but I don't mind that so much.
My blog entries had been pretty pedestrian for a while, so I thought I'd compensate with another rant about science studies. But now I need to compensate for that with more what-i-did-today-style blogging. Last night, I went to the mall to get a haircut and repair my belt, to prepare for what awaits me. I got an application for the voc rehab program in the mail, and I will fill it out today. Maybe I'll mail it tomorrow.
I'm excited about ana coming to visit, but I can't help but suspect that some last-minute, mom-related catastrophe will prevent it from happening the way I want it to. We shall see.
I am the king of stratego -- I can consistently beat the computer on the highest level. In other game-related news, I discovered the secret to tic-tac-toe: if x plays first in the middle square, then hopes for x's guaranteed victory rest in o playing on one of the sides. If o plays the game's second move in a corner, then with intelligent play a cat's game will always result.
If x makes a first move in the corner or a side, then with intelligent play a cat's game will always result, regardless of where o moves next -- neither can guarantee a win if the first player plays anywhere but the center. The only way to guarantee a win for player one is if player one plays in the center, and player two next plays on a side. Player two can never guarantee a win.
By 'intelligent play' I mean blocking every opportunity an opponent has to win. The only reason a game tic-tac-toe would result in anything other than a cat's game is a player not understanding the game's structure. That's literally all there is to it; the only case where tic-tac-toe doesn't involve thinking only one move ahead is where player one plays in the middle and player two next plays on a side. Tic-tac-toe is a tiny little discreet system whose complete syntax one can readily grasp, unlike chess. I hate chess; I always lose at it. I think stratego is somewhere between tic-tac-toe and chess.
It's winter; lows are in the teens. ymir will awaken.
Returning once more to my sokal hoax obsession, I'd like to point out three topics in math and science around which humanists (a group in which I place myself) like to try and wrap their weepy, gooey, short-circuiting right brains, because they are readily able to draw all kinds of philosophical, spiritual and even practical metaphors from heavily abstracted, non-technical explanations of these topics. Essentially, humanists are cathecting romaticized 'movie versions' of these ideas, which are the source of the metaphors. Here they are, along with some confused and arguably related rambling:
There is a glaring commonality to all of these three ideas as they are humanistically interpreted: that science is somehow unscientific; that you can't predict, control and order the natural world around, just because things don't work that way. The incompleteness theorem, uncertainty principle and chaos theory are appealing because they seem to imply the undermining of logic. From what I've gathered from my math and science oriented friends, they in fact do not; chaos theory is chaotic in a very orderly way, mathematical systems break down in the same place, and heisenberg-affected phenomena are unobservable in the same ways. These three scientific ideas have a great deal of literary appeal because of what they seem to imply: that scientific rigor is unable to measure, control and predict the splendor of the cosmos.
I think this notion is tempting to humanists because the world appears insanely complicated, and categorizing it with scientific rigor like an impossibility. So, chaos theory, the incompleteness theorem and the uncertainty principle are applied to everything that doesn't immediately make sense. I can readily imagine them tacked on to computer science, sociology, economics, and in fact just about everything, simply because the world isn't a game of pong. There exists in reality a huge number of disparate causal agents, a chain of cause and effect that doesn't have a starting point, and a fundamental interconnectedness to all being.
Maybe 3am isn't the best time to be doing this.
I feel that I should touch briefly on string theory, which frankly makes no sense whatsoever. And I'm not the only one, either; something like ten people deeply understand it. I think someone was smoking reefer in the particle accelerator one day at fermi labs. In a universe modeled on string theory, spacetime is best conceived of as a manifold -- I was told to imagine a big, lumpy carpet with a grid drawn on it. And, bound to this manifold are tiny, tiny strings that vibrate incredibly fast. Also, something about other dimensions, and the path of the vibration being a tube. Yeah. So anyway, I'm semi-sarcastically thinking that the metaphor to be drawn from string theory involves dada or surrealism. In other words, the metaphor is that there is no metaphor; string theory is a representation of reality so completely outside of our bounds of comprehension that it's impossible to draw metaphors from it, which might be a dada metaphor in itself.
Seurrat's pointalism was equated with the then-new theory of the atom -- all of his little dots represented reality similarly to the way the idea of the atom represented reality. If we move away from our fundamental units being points, and instead say they are strings...let's just say I'd need a lot of pompous adjectives for 'art in america.' a DRAWING composed only of LINES; it's never been done before.
Now that I read some more about string theory, I think the problem I'm having with it is not that it's so incomprehensible -- it's actually relatively simple. Instead of point-like particles, reality is comprised of string-like particles, and the universe has either 26 or 11 dimensions. Ok, that's fine. Apparently, the math fits; problems associated with a 4-dimensional, point-comprised universe melt away when a string-related model is used to describe reality.
The problem is that string theory sounds so incredibly weird that I can't conceptualize it; I picture all of these little rubber bands hanging off of a red carpet with a grid drawn on it. I can accept string theory, and trust that the math works, but it's not something around which my intuition fits. I can glean what's known as a shallow understanding of string theory, and simply recite its properties and use its related terminology. But a deeper understanding comes from the underlying math, which apparently solves these huge rifts between quantum theory and relativity. Furthermore, I accept the fact that I will *never* have a deep understanding of string theory. I feel as though a great weight has been lifted.
I don't know why I felt obligated, at 3am, to come downstairs from my bed and blog about surrealism and string theory. I think I need a job.
Ok, esr is at the bottom of my list again. his most recent blog entry equates the reuters news service with terrorists because they are critical of u.s. Policy. I wish esr weren't so militant; it's upsetting that someone who has so much sway with the community of young hackers is using this leverage to push his own neo-conservative politics.
I'm not sure why esr and the like-minded are unable or unwilling to see what the united states does as being harmful to the world community. It's possible that esr and other neo-conservatives/hierarchy-oriented libertarians do, but simply don't care, or else they see the ethics of capitalism as applying ruthlessly to nation states as they compete for global resources. I really don't know; I can't get inside their heads.
Our poor little planet. I guess in the end, it gets held accountable for the spawning of that most malevolent and parasitic of species: the stinking, hairless ape. The earth will pay in blood for its last mistake.
Esr is an entertaining writer, but he's a violent man who is potentially very dangerous.
Odwalla shakes no longer thrill me; I got two of them last night, and was kind of disappointed. Also, I think the sugar in them kept me up until 4am last night/this morning. There are five levels of play in the computer stratego game that I acquired, and I'm currently undefeated on level 3.
I see some blogs like esr's that are filled with thoughtful comments, but on the other hand there exist many commentable blogs that report 'comments: 0' as far on down as you can scroll. There are also a number of blogs on the web that don't have commenting enabled, even though they are published with greymatter, movable type or blogger. Not all websites are cgi-enabled; maybe that's the problem. I imagine that it's pretty embarrassing to see that no one is interested in posting comments for pages and pages of entries, kind of like a web counter that says '0000037' after five years of uptime; maybe bloggers without commentable blogs are trying to avoid shame. The blogger rants and raves alone in utter darkness.
Today might be the day to bike off to the barber and leather-repair shops to prepare myself for an employment marketing blitz. But I'm tired, have the chills, have to pee, am dirty, and it's threatening to be damp outside. Well, the sun is out now, but who knows what it'll do later. Haha. I should go out...
I wonder what happened to pesh and I are going on a field trip to the indian embassy to pick up his dad's passport.
The last three times I've played stratego, I've lost. First to james, then to peter, and the night before last to josh.
This will not stand.
I downloaded a stratego computer game, which is very playable and true-to-form. I win most games against the computer set on the easiest level, but have lost my only game thus far played using a slightly more difficult setting. I haven't won anything in a long time, so it felt really good to beat the computer (i danced around the living room and made aggressive gestures in the mirror), even if it was instructed not to be a very challenging opponent. The main things that prevent stratego victory are failing to remember the identities of my opponent's pieces once they've been revealed, and a general impatience that causes me to haphazardly set up my pieces as well as play too aggressively.
For some reason, I am reminded of the time I entered a story contest published in ranger rick magazine. First prize was something great; I don't remember specifically what. But second prize was a ranger rick hat, and I deduced that since I already owned a hat, the contest administrators would have no choice but to give me first prize. I don't remember what happened; either I never entered, or I mailed my story off and ranger rick never replied.
The collective hobby of the human race, by the way, is ignoring my emails. esr and the homestar runner creators are excepted; they both replied promptly and thoughtfully. But asia carrera and alan sokal didn't. Cunts. I've changed my mind about esr, and I now worship him as a god as opposed to reviling him; esr for president. Others who have ignored me are akercocke, google and dick gaughan. Dick gaughan's silence was especially hurtful, because I put a lot of effort into the email I sent him; I had worked out the chords to one of his songs, and emailed my interpretation along with a request for his blessing. Just goes to show.
I think good first steps in rejoining society would be getting a haircut and repairing my belt. These might make me feel more qualified to wander around the county asking strangers to hire me. Also, asking voc rehab for help would be good, I'm sure. I said I'd call them today. I will do it now, and report back.
Really, I'm just waiting to die. Only 40-60 years to go; I'll try to fill them with computer stratego.
I called voc rehab, and they're going to send me an application.
A midnight trip to the grocery store to purchase odwalla shakes is looming in my future; I hear the cry of the warrior. Actually, I found a good recipe for a similar shake, and as soon as I can guarantee that I'll be able to find the ingredients, I'm going to prepare that in bulk instead of sponsoring odwalla's focus groups on how best to market 'hippy' to yuppies. I'm most concerned about not being able to find the protein powder -- I might end up going to a health food store, which could be the first step on a slippery slope.
There's an anime program on in the background in which the characters are talking about 'raining demon parts.' I guess it's better than paris hilton. Whoops, there they go again: 'pieces of demons.' now I hear some sound effects; I'm almost tempted to turn around.
It's 6:00am on a Sunday, and I just made an .htaccess file that re-directs 404 errors to my index page. I'm not sure why more people don't do this instead of investing time in building custom error pages; it seems to me that redirection is easier to set up and better for traffic.
.htaccess doesn't work on my sitmy site. I'm a little afraid to do anything server-side there because I log in as root, and might literally bring down mark's server with one mistyped line. Things are much safer for sandbox experimentation here at sdf, where I don't have such awesome power.
I'm significantly fatter after the holidays, as I predicted. My father suggested at yesterday's dinner that I contact the Maryland department of vocational rehabilitation, which is a public agency that helps the 'disabled' with chronic unemployability. I went to their office in silver spring shortly after I got out of the hospital in 1997, and I don't remember being too excited about the facilities or services. It stank of bureaucratic apathy: broken fluorescent lights, a bored, parasitic secretary, and an empty waiting room filled with ancient periodicals and a few meager, yellowed job-listings in floppy vinyl binders. Of course, this was years ago, when my picture of harsh social reality was even blurrier than it is now. I vaguely remember talking with a counselor there, and being confused by his proposition that my college studies should in some way be pre-professional.
I'd like to sit around and program the web all day for a living, but many people want this, and those people tend to know more than I do. Although maybe it'd be a good idea to check monster.com again for the currently fashionable set of web-development qualifications; when the economy soured, these requirements became noticeably more stringent, I thought to the point of being unreasonable. But of course, employers are forced to compensate for resume-fibbing with ivory-tower job qualifications. Or, prospective employees compensate for ivory-tower job qualifications with resume-fibbing. Neither causal model can be good for productivity, whatever that means.
The main reason I'm wary of the department of vocational rehabilitation is that I'm afraid they'll send me to wendy's in a uniform. But in truth, I find that a lot of people with useless degrees are marginally employed in the service industry. I don't quite understand why government loans are distributed equally to students of computer engineering and conceptual art.
I'll call voc rehab on Monday. Josh and I played stratego last night, and I won. Blogs are wonderful things, no? I am the shaper of reality.
I'm enjoying my web statistics. I see that someone from cornell university, ana, and someone from los angeles have been visiting today. As far as I can tell. Actually, I think the los angeles hit may have been me, looking at my own blog with lynx while logged into an sdf machine. So, I have this one mysterious cornell university person, even though a traceroute on the ip address stops working short of arrival at the target machine. So really, I can draw no conclusions other than 'ana looked at my blog today.'
In all honesty I'm not sure I'd welcome a slew of strangers peering at my blog; I'd feel not so much that I was on display, but that I was obligated to perform. I don't know if I could write as unconstrainedly if I knew I had an audience of any significant size.
Of course, this all might be reverse-psychology intended to persuade web-surfers, with their oppositional-defiant disorders, to read my blog. Or, maybe it's reverse-reverse psychology intended to keep them at bay. You just don't know; I'm always three steps ahead of the game.