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LiveJournal for Xander.
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| Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 |
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Then: LJ post Only the converse is logically sound. Chinese poetry is absolutely worthwhile reading. Writing papers about cryptic Chinese texts evolving through a thousand years of tradition is difficult. Yes, while most people don't have class tomorrow, I have a paper due, along with additional readings. It's strange that, though there were Chinese love poems before, poetry about love really blossomed only in the middle ages as poets perfected their regulated verse and tonal balancing [rigid or more fluid form?]. I like this uplifting little gem attributed to Xiao Gang (d. 551 AD). Source of Pain IIThe troublesome part of interepreting works that are deeply rooted in a long ass tradition is that Chinese symbols all map to different places than Western symbology. A floppy fish is a sexual symbol; mountains are a sign of purity. One can really get taken up by it all... only a few months left of college =O |
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| Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 |
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Yes, indeed... I'm too lazy to type my own post, but this is funny, and I still haven't devised a better way of keeping this kind of memory...Sir, From www.thechap.net My handlebar moustache is coming along quite nicely. Pictures to come within the next 5 posts, I promise >< -Xander PS somehow,
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| Friday, January 27th, 2006 |
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"Homosexuality is just something you're born with, like red hair, or a dead twin." Wow, drawn together is a truly virtuous show. It's so deliciously insensitive, yet politically accurate... |
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| Friday, September 30th, 2005 |
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Wow, at work... I um... I work in the computer labs, so I get paid to sit around and browse the web. One might wonder why I don't post more often... So today I was playing Orisinal.com games and I got a HIGH SCORE. Something is very very wrong if I managed to get a global high score. Open the page for Cats, click to begin playing, and then lose. It will show you high scores, which will include my very own delightful name. fancy |
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| Thursday, September 29th, 2005 |
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According to Physical Chemistry by Ira Levine (4 ed., p599),"In 1897, J.J. Thomson measured the deflection of cathode rays in simultaneously applied electric and magnetic fields of known strengths... Thomson found that [the charge-to-mass ratio] Q/m was independent of the metal used for the cathode, and his experiments mark the discovery of the electron. G.P. Thomson, who was one of the first people to observe diffraction effects with electrons, was J.J.'s son. It has been said that J.J. Thomson got the Nobel prize for proving the electron to be a particle, and [his son] got the Nobel prize for for proving the electron to be a wave." I want to meet that family. Indeed, I have 2 midterms this week. I switched to an easier physics class (still waves/quantum) on Monday and took the first midterm for it on Wednesday. IT'S NOT EVEN OCTOBER YET! What the hell, professors? Now I have a physical chemistry midterm tomorrow morning. So uh... work. Yes, working. Having accomplished something makes me feel so... accomplished. |
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| Friday, August 19th, 2005 |
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About 10 minutes ago, a man was shot in Manhattan near the intersection of 105th St. and Columbus Ave. Sitting in my apartment at 105th and Columbus, I heard a car backfire 3 times in succession. When I looked out the window, a man was lying in the street. People were looking from across the street. Soon 2 people wearing plain clothes but holding 2-way radios started questioning people. A woman came running and crouched beside him, propping his head up and talking to her cell phone. A crowd formed while 3 police cars, 2 three-wheeled police patrol tricycles, a police van, a police SUV, and an ambulance showed up. A cop is directing traffic, there's caution tape blocking the sidewalk, and they took the guy away in an ambulance. He was moving, so I don't think he's dead yet. A man in a gray suit with a pad of paper was asking questions of cops. A big black guy drove up in a black car with tinted windows. He does not look happy while he's questioning some police officers. There's some blood in the street, which the cops covered with some white powder. |
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| Monday, August 1st, 2005 |
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I'm very interested in city zoning and the way architecture influences the overall character of a city. For this, I love finding "secrets" in urban areas like the sleazy little indoor mall without doors in Chinatown, or the Apple-branded 4-5-6 subway stop at Spring St. in Soho. I found out about an old elevated rail line that used to be used to transport products from the Gansevoort St. meatpacking district to the 30th St. rail yards and thus the rest of the US. The High Line is now overgrown, and some people think it would be cool to make it into a pedestrian walkway/garden/park elevated above street level. Also, for more urban theory, check out Mid-tokyo.com for lots of cool interactive maps and such comparing Tokyo to other cities (like New York City) and analyzing the challenges Tokyo faces. 25% of Manhattan's land area is public park. Less than 10% is commercial towers like those in the Financial District and Midtown. |
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| Friday, July 15th, 2005 |
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My Columbia email died the other day--quota exceeded. I have found my hero.  My mother sent me a link to an op ed at the New York Times website, and the next article in opinion was written by John Deutch. According to NNDB, John Deutch has led quite a life. Born in Belgium in 1938, this old fogie double majored in History and Economics at Amherst, got a BS in Chemical Engineering at MIT, and was awarded a PhD in Physical Chemistry at MIT as well. He served various Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and Presidential Commission positions fron the late seventies through 1999. Notably, he moved in 1995 from deputy secretary of defense to director of the US CIA on a unanimous senate vote (there's a mandate for you, Mr. Bush), where he lost a powerbook containing government secrets. He's on the board of directors of Citigroup and 3 other companies, and he's a member of the Bilderberg group, which "has been accused of fixing the fate of the world behind closed doors." Chemistry, politics, business, CIA director, and international secret powerbroking? This guy's the man! As an additional bonus, he was a brother of the gamma chapter of the Psi Upsilon fraternity! Uh... yea, I joined a fraternity at Columbia: the lambda chapter of ΨΥ. So we have that link, too. Deutch researches physical chemistry stuff, like the way molecules arrange themselves and react in confined systems, at MIT. I guess he really likes it there. He's taken part in the production of such politically-linked scientific studies as the analysis of fuel cell systems in technical, economic, and environmental contexts. He recently co-authored the book Making Technology Work: Applications in Energy and Environment It's decided. My second major is in economics. And I recommend you read his op ed, as linked above--about the pressing need for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq. I will meet John M. Deutch. |
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| Tuesday, July 12th, 2005 |
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I think I've been smoking too much pot. I've been generally tired and easily-fatigued this summer, and when I stand up, I usually get a little dizzy (but sometimes my vision is overrun by what looks like static or crystal growth from the edges towards the center, entirely obstructing vision for about five seconds). I also feel more nauseous and less healthy than I'm used to. Since all attempts at outlining a summer budget providing a reasonable amount of money for luxuries like food have failed, I guess my eating habits have suffered in quality and quantity. The pot isn't something I've ended up paying for, so essentially, my only expenses are a monthly subway/bus pass and the occassional prostitute. But the prostitutes are dirty. Indeed, cleaning oneself after intercourse (unprotected, especially, but condoms themselves can cause urinary tract infections) is important for preventing urinary tract infections (UTIs). But who knew that nausea and vomiting can be symptoms of UTI? And UTIs don't make urine bloody anymore. No, now cloudy urine is in. And for the most fashionable UTIs, even painful urination is SO five-minutes-ago. "What, then" a novice UTI might ask, "is stylish?" Fatigue, and a "feeling of rectal fullness" that indicates a swelling in the prostate gland, meaning that the infection has spread deep into the tissue. So I decided today that I'm not really suffering from some bizarre psychological problem impeding my ability to urinate in public bathrooms (and now private ones, too) and bought some cranberry juice. EIGHT DOLLARS FOR A QUART OF CRANBERRY JUICE? Apparently, it makes the bladder wall slippery, preventing bacteria from latching on. I don't want to take it to a doctor, because they'll shove a tube down my urethra. No more whores, Xander. Seriously, I have no idea where the hell a urinary tract infection came from. I had a nightmare last week where I couldn't resist biting off hunks of my penis throughout the dream, and by the end all I had was a bloody stump, though. -- So that alone makes today spectacular. Oh, but it gets better. I woke up today and opened my laptop, which cheerily greeted me with hideous wounds. Sometime in the night, marauders beat up my poor little iBook and gave it a black eye and some cuts. But iBooks don't heal. The LCD is cracked ALL OVER THE PLACE. There's a giant black blob with starry constellations of single-pixel color stretching from the "history" menu through "bookmarks" and all the way to the end of "window." It's probably an inch by two. Stemming from the right side of the blob (left, if you're the computer, I suppose) is a locus of cracks in the glass. Some point directly into the top of the screen, and others extend all the way to the right, gracefully sloping downwards and sprouting blobs of bleeding black. One crack starts downwards and defiantly loops back around to meet up with the crack that intersects the bottom-right corner. How did that happen? I have absolutely no idea. Literally the last thing I did last night was use the computer. I set it down next to me on the floor (which is free of debris because I cleaned the house over the weekend from top to bottom, which is the most aggravating part) where it was easy to avoid stepping on. Literally the first thing I did when I got up was open my computer to check... something important that doesn't make me a loser. Stocks or something; come on. And the thing grinned. Oh, this masochistic little computer loved every decibel of the horrified scream I released. It's angry at me because its slot-loading CD drive hasn't worked for months due to what I think is a post-it-note lodged in there. (serously, does anybody know how to remove paper from slot-loading CD drives?) -- So my computer is broken and I have an infection that makes lots of my life uncomfortable. I did the logical thing--I tried to take care of a responsibility that needed doing. I bought bleach so I could do laundry, and carried a coupld loads over to the laundromat across the street. One would expect me to be wearing crappy clothes, because everything must be dirty before I will consider doing laundry. Somehow, when I sorted the laundry yesterday, I rescued a cleanish t-shirt and a nice 60-dollar pair of jeans, which I decided to wear until I did some laundry. I like the shirt, and the jeans were both comfortable and stylish. Bad, bad news. Anything that starts out with a description of my nice clothes cannot have a happy ending. With the whites safely in the washing machine ($3.50 for a wash, 25 cents for 7 minutes of dryer time: the definition of exorbitant), I went for the bleach. I pulled at the protective seal on the new jug, but it was difficult to remove, since I was doing this over the tall, commercial washer. Persistence, then, is what earned me bleach in my eyes and all over my hair and clothes, and people yelling and running to protect their laundry from my bleach jug as it bounced to the floor in a fountain of caustic liquid. This cool blue DI shirt is thus retired, and I guess my next fashion innovation is the "splashy bleached jeans" look. I tried to walk in front of a car on the way home, and failed at that, too. Here's hoping I can still see tomorrow. I wish I were home at mommy's house, where I've never even seen cockroaches in the bathroom, where someone else will do the dishes if I leave them there long enough, and where the food is always free. -Xander |
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| Thursday, May 19th, 2005 |
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13346 PHYS C1602 002 3.50 PHYSICS II: THERMO, ELEC A- 81751 MUSI W1514 001 1.00 INTRODUCTION TO PIANO II A- 77898 HUMA C1002 022 4.00 EURPN LIT-PHILOS MASTRPIE UW 27601 ENGL C1010 036 3.00 UNIVERSITY WRITING A 66046 CHEM C3071 001 3.00 INTRO TO INORGANIC CHEMIS D 75509 CHEM C2507 002 3.00 INTENSVE GENERAL CHEMISTR A What? D? Wow. I'm... surprised about these grades. I practiced paino [sic] less than 10 times total, and discussed with my piano teacher that I was taking the class only to guarantee that I have lessons Soph or Junior year. A- in physics is surprising given how little of the material I truly understood. A in UW was deserved. Intensive genchem lab was.. um... I never actually did the lab reports. I still should do those... the TA rocks. And a D. Ha. I thought it'd be an F. I'm in Minneapolis until next Monday evening, when I return to the City. Hopefully, I will be working for Administrative Information Systems, with Prof. of Chemistry Ann McDermott on the side, researching protein structure and function by solid-state NMR. Woot. -Xander |
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| Wednesday, May 11th, 2005 |
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A group of Israeli researchers attained a data transfer rate of 2.27 Mbps over a 100km distance using a new protocol: PEI. Pigeon-enabled internet. Bizam! They're now working on SNAP, SNAil-based data transfer Protocol. They made a cart for a snail!  |
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| Tuesday, May 10th, 2005 |
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It's the night before 2 days of finals left. I walked into the bathroom and pulled up at a urinal just as a guy was finishing up (you know, shaking the extra drips off)... or so I thought. As I released my pent-up electrolytes, he was still trying to squeeze out the last bits of urine... or so it seemed. Then he started breathing heavily and hung his head back a bit, concentrating heavily on his wiener (I just looked up how to spell that), so I left. WTF. A urinal? I feel so violated! I think economists should think up some new specialized vocabulary, because they're wearing out their favorite phrases (bold is mine): That is, entrepreneurs do not have to keep funds in unproductive, liquid forms or worry about having to liquefy investments in case of unexpected expenses. Instead, to cover short-term liquidity needs, investors can either borrow from the banks or save money in accounts that earn interest. My, they've got the runs. Again, studying. Yes, I am quite dead. It's that new strain of malaria they found in Cambodia. The zombifying one. [edit: added cheekiness 12:33a 5/11] |
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Paging through notebook after notebook, I'm recompiling my notes before studying for my last final. I open a purple notebook (it has a cover!). The first page is headed Oresteia. The next is full of decimal numbers and greek symbols (and frustration, but this is not as apparent to the untuned observer). Then comes Rxn's of D-metal complexes. Don Quijote. Blank pages, then in the middle: matrices full of variables, indecipherable symbols, and... words? A page filled entirely with black ink. Ahh, yes. The chaos of an entire semester, compressed for my consumption. As if I planned on reading it again. That is, after I find an apartment in NYC for the summer. And verify that my job will actually be a paid one. And prod my dad into sending in his late financial aid forms--with 2003 tax forms! I'll be around again, soon. -Xander |
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| Monday, May 9th, 2005 |
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Mmm, milk: |
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| Wednesday, February 16th, 2005 |
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"... But for every new fan of the group, there's another diehard hip-hopper eager to suggest the group have exchanged their street credentials for record sales." They admit: "We sold out," says Taboo (Jaime Gomez). "We sold out a lot of arenas all over the world." God, they're witty, too! There's a reason these guys are fucking amazing. |
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| Friday, February 4th, 2005 |
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Apparently, my lungs just got the memo yesterday that there's a significant amount of lung tissue inside my lungs and they're trying their best to rectify the situation. Yes, I'm posilutely hacking up a lung over here. I didn't sleep last night because I had a paper due and it was important that I chat online and read lots of websites on emergence and complexity before I actually start my paper. Thus, I went to bed at 5:30 PM tonight. I'm procrastinating lots of things, and LJ is way down on the list right now. |
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| Friday, January 28th, 2005 |
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If you find yourself in the New York City area tomorrow, make sure you check out the Idiotarod! (yoinked from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} bitpuddle)
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My new hero is David Hahn. In his highschool years in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, Hahn extracted americium bits from smoke detectors, welded the bits together and enclosed them in lead to create an alpha particle emitter. He shot the alpha particles through aluminum foil, which absorbs alpha particles and kicks out neutrons. He used a geiger counter to find several pounds of uranium-containing pitchblende in the lakes and mountains around his house, then, posing as a university researcher, ordered more pitchblende from a Czechoslovakian firm. He manufactured nitric acid from legal precursors and used it to extract the uranium from his ore, but he got it trapped in filters. So Hahn bought hundreds of gas lantern mantles (the wire mesh that conducts the flame) and blowtorched them to make an ash containing thorium-232. He got plenty of lithium from batteries, mixed the ash and lithium, and heated the mixture to de-oxidize the thorium, creating 120x the legal concentration. He then made a better neutron gun from radium he extracted from antique clock faces, replacing the aluminum with beryllium his he asked a radiology unit at a hospital for. He bombarded his thorium and uranium with this high-powered neutron gun before realizing, after an exchange with a friend Erb at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that the neutrons were moving at 17 million miles per hour. He slowed them down with tritium he obtained from glowing gun-sights and proceeded to build a breeder reactor in the shed behind his house. Hahn was caught by police (on a bogus call) with over fifty foil-wrapped cubes of mysterious gray powder, small disks and cylindrical metal objects, lantern mantles, mercury switches, a clock face, ores, fireworks, vacuum tubes, and assorted chemicals and acids in his trunk. The police were especially alarmed by the toolbox, which David warned them was radioactive. Now he's a deck-swabber with the navy. But god, that sounds like an incredible childhood. -Xander |
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| Wednesday, January 26th, 2005 |
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I wrote it, so I'll post it: Nobody seems to mention that nuclear energy is quite nearly a complete waste of time because it can only meet human energy demands for about 10 years before we run out of uranium. The world is estimated (not known!) to have 2 million tons of uranium, according to this lecturer (known uranium deposits are less than estimated total uranium. I'd believe these estimates). The annual need of all nuclear powerplants is 30,000 tons per year, according to the same site. But the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited estimates that nuclear power accounts for 16% of world power. Crunch the numbers: it would take .19 million tons/year for all our current power demands. That gives us just over TEN YEARS at current levels before we're fresh out of uranium. Not to mention that world power demands are growing exponentially because third world countries are rapidly developing their infrastructures. To convert all power generation to nuclear would cost us huge investments, all of which will be worthless once we've switched over. Nuclear is hopeless, let's quit research on it now. Even if we solved everything else, we can't MAKE more uranium. Every element higher than iron comes ONLY from supernovae. We can't endure, let alone produce, a supernova. Worthless. Why is this never mentioned in the news? Nooo, reporting that someone put ricin in baby food, or that 2 students (and an outraged professor of medicine!) complained that a professor at Columbia is pro-arab is obviously more important than reporting along with a nuclear energy story that uranium supplies are so scarce they can only run the world for 10 years. -Xander |
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| Monday, January 24th, 2005 |
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Indeed, what more could one expect from me with four full months to come up with something to say? But time does, indeed, pass. I originally intended to be perfectly honest in every LJ post I make. I didn't want people I knew in person to read the LJ because that would prevent me from being completely honest. First I would lie about things like parties and group outings--it's inappropriate to talk about these things in front of people who weren't invited. But the fact remains that they weren't invited, so isn't it up to the uninvitees to deal with it? Now it's more that I'm afraid of parents and other parties in power judging me for doing things like drugs. But what does that really matter? Finally, I'm going to censor myself a bit when it comes to boring details on living in order to encourage readers. This last bit makes sense. So I'm going to start another LJ in which I detail daily events (with whatever frequency I feel like). That one isn't intended reading material. If you're trying to keep up with me, continue reading this. The attempt will be to keep this entertaining, infrequent, and polished. I suppose, gentle reader, you need contact information. I finally got my first cell phone last October with a New York number: 347 306 1324. Call the cell phone number at any time of day--if I don't want to be woken up, I will turn the ringer off. Please don't call multiple times unless it's really urgent or you specifically want to wake me up--usually, I have a specific reason for not answering the phone (it woke me up and I need to sleep, but I need to keep sound on to use the phone alarm, or I'm roaming, or I'm in class) Text messages can be sent to xstein@vtext.com, and you can call me for free from any Verizon cell phone. I check my columbia email address most frequently, and that should be in my userinfo. I'm not really certain how to summarize a semester of school. I got a 2.58--that's a C in Physics 1 though I took honors physics last year at UMN (because I had a doubtful start and turned in but 1 homework assignment--I attended class 3 times all semester), a C in Frontiers of Science (the newest member of Columbia's Core, unlike Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization [both excellent classes, inspiring for science and humanities majors alike], Frontiers is a disgusting race to the bottom disguised as an attempt to humanize science. Bad deal), B- in math (there were math majors in my class, and I lost my book just before the final), B in English (it was at 9am, so the B is lucky because I missed too many days), P in Squash (shouldn't have been--we're required to miss <7 days and I missed 8 and made up one), and B+ in Piano. You know what I didn't do. What did I do? Later. -Xander |
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| Tuesday, October 19th, 2004 |
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Well, as you know, I am Xander. As you also know, I go to Columbia.... cause I'm soooooooo far more superior intellectually than anyone else I know. Like my grammer? Mel and Crys are here. They are so freaking hot. -Xander ... |
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| Monday, October 4th, 2004 |
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Supposedly published in the July 25, 1994 New Yorker magazine. by Jack Winter It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way. I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it since I was travelling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn't be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do. Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or a sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion. So I decided not to risk it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads or tails of. I was plussed. It was concerting to see that she was communicado, and it nerved me that she was interested in a pareil like me, sight seen. Normally, I had a domitable spirit, but, being corrigible, I felt capacitated--as if this were something I was great shakes at--and forgot that I had succeeded in situations like this only a told number of times. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings. Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. Wanting to make only called-for remarks, I started talking about the hors d'oeuvres, trying to abuse her of the notion that I was sipid, and perhaps even bunk a few myths about myself. She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory character who was up to some good. She told me who she was. "What a perfect nomer," I said, advertently. The conversation became more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it. |
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| Wednesday, August 11th, 2004 |
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Wow, time flies. My flight departs in 2:20. I depart home in :45. My desk is COVERED with shit. My bags are decidedly unpacked. This is the way my life goes, and I rather like it. Going to Oregon today to live with Dad. It should be nice. -Xander |
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| Sunday, August 1st, 2004 |
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Not dead--my internet's down. It's been down for days. I'm apparently the only one left without cable internet since the statewide spotty outage last Wed. So I've been patching things together with dial-up when I get desperate. So just no internet... which is really tantamount to death... I watched lots of movies last night with the blameless nine. That's probably the last time I will see them until next year. I'm leaving in 9 days and I won't come back until January, and all that frightens me. I have a feather comforter with a microfiber duvet, a cheap mattress pad, white sheets, and bright-ass-striped pillowcases. I have 2 bright skwishy pillows, too. My bed is palacine now. I have to go to work. I have one weekend left. |
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| Saturday, July 31st, 2004 |
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The urge to exact revenge is built into humans. Revenge activates the same pleasure centers in the mind as preparing to eat or other pleasureful experiences. I'm inclined to say that I actually don't understand the depth to which revenge goes--when I want revenge, I'm okay with it being open, but the article says that stealthy retribution outnumbers open revenge 100:1. People don't want to appear vindictive, but they want their vindication. I think that's a really terrible flaw in humans--forgiveness is really a lot more important. Or something. I'm going to watch myself when I feel I'm wronged and see what I do to exact revenge. Another thing it talks about is the kinds of offenses that trigger revenge responses. Frequently the bitterest attacks are on previous insecurities. Stuff that you already felt defensive about is the best target for attack. That's why I try to expose flaws instead of hiding them--because exposing them makes me stronger. Like open-source code, or teamwork. I want this on a shirt. The cat says "mu"  -Xander |
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| Friday, July 30th, 2004 |
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In college, we'll be doing lots of group work. Some of these tips on working in groups are instinctual to me now, but certain ones are really great. The first is to respect ego, or something like that. When a group starts, everybody claims they're not interested in it and don't care. Then nothing happens. The problem is twofold: people really are interested, and something needs to happen before time constraints force something to happen. So talk about ego and desires instead of pretending they don't exist. Smart. Apple has mastered the art of cultivating hype. It's humorous. Wow, news is deliberately alarmist. It's really fucking irritating. Ricin was found in baby food when someone put it there (with a note). Fine, report it. But reporting that "dose about the size of the head of a pin could be enough to kill an adult" is simply misleading. When ingested, the fatal dose for a 65KG adult would be 65mg, about 130 times what the article said. The pinhead-dose would only be fatal when injected or inhaled. Does shitty journalism like that bother anybody else? |
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| Thursday, July 29th, 2004 |
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"I will have one heartbeat, then two heartbeats, one again, and finally, I'll have none." I've found that I really dig the music of the Black Eyed Peas. Hey mama, where's the love? Shut up, let's get retarded. And french music rocks. Camping last weekend at Itasca was fun. Went with Tyler and Billy and Katelyn and one Dave who I'd never met before. It wasn't quite as hardcore--we drove around between halfmile trails and camped 10 feet from a van in a tent. But we cooked salmon over an open fire and it was really freakin' good. We saw real live Folkgrass music and stumbled around in the night. I went to the zoo today with Crystal and Melodie and it was great fun. We got lost, and Crystal had her boyfriend and Melodie had her french exchange student Anne who is a little bit crazy and then this girl named Stephanie was there, too. We got horribly lost attempting to find the Como Zoo and then we watched Sparky the Sea Lion visit the doctor. They made me listen to more punk music and some french music. Then I made it to work 9 hours late, at 9:00 PM. This does not bode well, as I need to make money for college. I got my first bill today. It's sort of hardcore. Me and Karen Baker are going to learn to be bartenders at the Minnesota School of Bartending. It will be great fun, and it's only $250 or something and then I'll have a great job in NYC. Excitement. -Xander |
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| Sunday, July 25th, 2004 |
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| Camping again until next Tuesday. I still need to post the chronicles of the last one. | ||
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| Friday, July 23rd, 2004 |
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I'm starting reading a play I got at the library. It's classy.Thomasina: Septimus, what is carnal embrace?and later, after Thomasina talks about a scandal involving Mrs Chater in carnal embrace in the gazebo (and Septimus reminds her that she should be working on proving Fermat's last theorem), Thomasina: Cook hushed him almost as soon as he started. Jellaby did not see that I was being allowed to finish yesterday's upstairs' rabbit pie before I came to my lesson. I think you have not been candid with me, Septimus. A gazebo is not, after all, a meat larder. So funny. -Xander |
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Wildfires continue in Southern California today. The fires were apparently caused when a bird flew into a live power line and was electrocuted; its flaming body fell into dry brush, igniting the fire. A poem: i kiss the girls that speak Marcuse I'm sayin'. |
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| Thursday, July 22nd, 2004 |
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Here's what I did last week. Well, what I'm sure I did--the pictures document the details. Last... week, at some point, I chilled with Sutina, Hans, and Selena. First there was Sutina  Then we went to Selena's house  We played Mortal Kombat  Hans kicked my ass  ( etc ) Then it got obscenely late and I was tired on hans's couch. The color balance is artistic, not off.  Today me and hans and selena baked a chocolate cake with raspberry-cream cheese frosting. We took a video of the pathetic wreckage that was a cake. Much entertaining gesticulation is to be seen. Get it here while it's hot. I'll have you know, gentle reader, that the cake, like a peasant girl, is beautiful on the inside (that is, tasted spectacular) despite all outward appearances. It's really an incredible cake. -Xander |
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There is a formation of five prop-driven warplanes circling over my neighborhood in a V. Isn't that noise pollution. It's a pathetic show of strength--who is that supposed to threaten? Who is that supposed to make feel more secure? And they largely fail to maintain formation around curves. But the sunset was really awesomely beautiful. It included a rainbow. Some guy took pictures here. |
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| Happy birthday Caroline. | ||
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| Monday, July 19th, 2004 |
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Canoed some 33 miles more than I expected. I blackened my face and parts of my arms in the sun, so I went shirtless (blinding my friends) two days in a pathetic effort to tan my back and chest. I am sunburned in many places, and my arms are about one million sore. The tan lines disappeared when I washed myself. I may possibly develop muscle at some point as a result of this trip. Never try to canoe the boundary waters with only pictures of a map on a digital camera for navigation. Everything itches. I'm home -Xander |
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| Wednesday, July 14th, 2004 |
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I remember my stepbrother and stepsister and halfsister and I used to have a private little dogma of "swearing to the holy bible," unbeknownst to our catholic parents. If you lie and you "swear to the holy bible," you're going to hell, regardless of all other circumstances. It lost its power when my halfsister Sarah inadvertently lied while STTHB, and we didn't know how to deal with that. I'm going camping until next Sunday in the Boundary Waters. I hate pooping in the forest. -Xander |
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| Monday, July 12th, 2004 |
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Sometimes my temporal perception becomes scrambled. Driving through the 94 tunnel takes a conversation, but time jumps forward to the point where it's too late to take the 394 exit. Things are flipping like that, at times. Or it will have been 10 minutes sitting in the hot car, unmoving, before I notice that I'm sitting, unmoving, and sweating. It's so hot out, and I love it. |
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| Shocks: the black kid is holding what appears to be a gun. With a really thick handle and batteries in it--oh, it's a black glove. The girl in the car that the other dude's oggling has enough makeup to masquerade a convincing raccoon. The streets of Minneapolis are so sprawling. I couldn't give directions home from 94--pathetic. Riding in a car with a kid who doesn't have a license. But that's his car going 110 and merging without signalling down 94 from Wisconsin in heavy 2-lane traffic. At one point, we went over a bridge into the U-area, and I associated it temporarily with crossing the bridge back the way we came. .But between these two endpoints tesseracted together there was talking and flashes of memory. Memories that make my eyes tingle while the music twists between my ears. My sandals felt like they were gripping my feet, my shirtcollar was strangling me. The wind through the car was as carbonation; drinking juice was drinking wettish sand--water was finely-crushed. Next time, I want to do this with smart people. | ||||||||
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| Friday, July 9th, 2004 |
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Since nobody's ever online (exaggeration), I'm cutting down on AIM usage (lie). Another factor decreasing AIM usage: I have an effective case of The Death, which causes my lungs to create mucus to fill those inconvenient air pockets. It also makes my throat complain loudly as if it has just been invaded with something large at all times. I cough in a pathetic effort to restore air to my lungs, but that causes my side and body muscles to hurt. My joints and head are also painful. And now I have what appears to be pink-eye, manifested as the feeling that my left eye has just been sat upon, and is watering constantly to rectify the situation. Speaking of things that aren't very much fun, I have concluded, after further testing, that making out is, in fact, more fun than waking up in the morning, contrary to what I previously thought (is this sentence actually properly constructed?). I think I never really let myself feel anything other than self-conscious about it. This puts the fun factor for making out somewhere near that of discussing the weather or perhaps even watching a decent sitcom. Does this mean I'm still a passionless bastard? Some things make me passionate, though. Eating milk is distressing because it's opaque enough that I would never know I was scooping a bug or other malaise into my mouth until I tasted it. Further, while pouring it, milk masquerades to contain black objects by conjuring up these fast-moving bubbles. Milk is disturbing in its whiteness, and so are macs. I left my mac in a friend's car because I was using it as an address book and then I forgot it there. This highlights another problem with using an iBook as an address book ("i" does not mean "address!"): once the iBook is lost, so are all of my addresses! That makes me a bum who lacks a license, a car, a cell phone and phone numbers. But I'm not a bum who lacks computers. I will be upgrading my PC's Duron 1ghz to something Athlon 2200something, which I hope will make it suck less. I also may be coming into the possession of over 700MB of RAM to throw in there, too. That the prospect of this happening excites me makes me quite a geek. A geek who likes fruit. I ate a lot of fruit recently. Only fruit for 2 days. -Xander |
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| Thursday, July 8th, 2004 |
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I laugh myself to silent tears with sites like these. I've been having fun. I'm eating only fruit these two days as an experiment. I went to buy fruit with friends at 1am last night and met more friends at Cub. Tonight I went to a Twins game with box seats (oo, classy) with other friends, and then we played jenga and crazy 3-player othello and then climbed on a massive machine that eats road. Then I sat in the car talking with Karen (one of the 3) for far too long. Molly, I want my camera back. |
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| Tuesday, July 6th, 2004 |
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| While eating mixed berry yogurt, I am distressed by the similarities in texture and color between flesh-wrapped berry seeds and small flying insects. This distress has me nearly unable to complete the single-serve chilled-wrapped-impermeable container of deliciousness. Maybe artificial flavors would suit me better? | ||||
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My everything hurts for various reasons. My legs, ass, back, arms, and neck all involve sore muscles from running, playing volleyball, and tubing behind boats. My feet and legs are perforated by tripping on rocks. My lungs are dry and my tummy is a little bit barfy from substance abuse. My elbows were scraped raw by the tube I held onto. My head, lungs, and throat also hurt from a cold/sore throat/flu. My muscles ache from the flue. And it's damn late. But I had a great 4th weekend. Celebrate, indeed. |
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| Sunday, July 4th, 2004 |
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Steve Jobs says: "iPods have 50% market share, as measured by units. Even more as measured by revenues." That means that Apple makes more profits off of your ipod purchase than the average mp3 player company does. That bothers me. -Xander |
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| Saturday, July 3rd, 2004 |
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I like giving my sweatshirt to girls because they always make it smell good. I wonder if I have a smell--girls' smells come from perfume, right? I sometimes wonder if the camera lies so convincingly because I smell bad. What if I didn't notice? Everybody has a certain scent. I sort of like the way I smell, sometimes. I smell nice. I'm not very olfactory... sorta. Perhaps I am. A guy was actually arrested for videotaping Spiderman 2 on opening night. They caught him with nightvision goggles. Wtf. |
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My mac is broken. It's mildly functional, but it was dropped (, BRETT, I HATE YOU FOREVER) off a table and landed on the topright corner of the screen, bending it clockwise at the hinge. That means that the screen and the keyboard-containing part (the body) don't line up when I close it, so it doesn't latch shut and the result is my mac has insomnia and narcolepsy. I think the two go together. I'll make up a lie for Applecare. I think my weekend will waste away, and I know lots of people will have fun this weekend. I think I'm wasting it away by being awake at 4am when I've been exceedingly tired for the past four hours. Why don't I go to bed? Aghhh I watched fireworks Thursday night, but I was unable to enjoy them because I was always worried that I was watching the beginning of the finale. I kept trying to comprehend the reality in which visual and aural stimuli are incongruent. Sometimes, the sound of the shell being launched coincided with the sight of the shell exploding, but I was vaguely aware that such a correlation was constructed. Yet it wasn't intuitive at all. |
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| Wednesday, June 30th, 2004 |
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I don't buy most of the content of the following paragraph (yet the book by Perrine appears to be currently on loan from the UMN library):51% of the United States population have at some time in their lifetimes used marijuana, cocaine, heroin, prescription sedatives, stimulants or hallucinogens. 15% have used one or more of these in the last twelve months. The overall expenditures of U.S. citizens, other than caffeine, as of 1990 are: $50 billion on alcohol, $40-50 billion on cocaine, $35 billion on tobacco, $30 billion on prescription and over the counter psychotropics, $25 billion on marijuana, and $20 billion on the rest, for a total of $200 billion. For comparison, the United States spends $ รป450 billion on medical care, $250 billion for non-drug recreation, and $100 billion for automobiles. In terms of health there are 400,000 deaths from tobacco, 100,000 from alcohol, 5,000 from prescription drugs, and 3,500 for the other remaining drugs except for marijuana, which there are zero, every year (Perrine 1996). Do people like me because I always deliver content? I'm painfully aware of the degree to which I reject presentation for information. I never say words to speak (do I?)--I speak to deliver a message. I had trouble being social until I learned to be in 8th grade because saying "what's up" felt so mindless. Niceties delivered zero content, so I entirely avoided them. |
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"you're kind of the loved toy, you know?" This is being honest: I actually do not understand at all why people seem to like me in spite of my personality. I did this Mentor Connection program which involved a few adult teacher-coordinators linking hundreds of students to mentors and then taking everyotherweekly updates from students and compiling them into grades. I was singlehandedly a massive administrative headache because I never turned a single assignment in on time throughout the year. I got an A and the teachers absolutely loved me when I took the course again the next year. I can talk to people once, saying few words, and they somehow seem to like me. I am entirely incapable of understanding this behavior. I'm really distressed with myself to discover that I harshly judge people who can't spell, punctuate, or use proper grammar. Simultaneously, I'm incredibly irritated by people who feel obligated to correct every spelling error retroactively on AIM. Something about watching it say that they're typing and waiting for the insightful comment and getting nothing but a correction that I had already inferred. I think there's a difference between people who are incapable of spelling/grammating/punctuating and those who choose not to, but I don't think I'm really capable of determining who is who--my judgment (oughtn't be spelled like that) is always colored (I know I know a better word than "colored" here) by other personality observations. I know I make grammatical errors everywhere. People tend to assume that I knew they were there. Why don't they assume that I assume the same for them? I guess I'm tired of people approaching me as something superior. Because I'm not. but few people do. And writing that acknowledges that I think I'm superior, right? Even though I just denied it. Is that paradoxical, to admit through denial? Michelle Branch rocks. Her voice is so clear and clean and simple, and she writes her own music, largely. (but does writing her own music make the music good, necessarily? Any better than it would be if it were written by someone else? Somehow, yes. That I say yes bothers me.) Why am I awake, still? I alienated a friend by fighting with her by being impatient because I'm up too late and frustrated with the time. ih |
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| Tuesday, June 29th, 2004 |
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I think I've recently gained the habit of alienating people by acting full of myself. It's hard to tell when I'm being cocky and when I'm being friendly and talkative. I think some people think I'm a bit full of myself. Maybe it's true, but please don't hate me if it is. Jasper Carrot is awesome. And he has a british accent! "what do you do in the bathroom that takes so long? What, are you growing a new head or something?" "Peppermint foot powder! What the hell do you do with peppermint foot powder?!" logical: I can never tell if it's all in my head. Why does it matter if it's all in your head? If it's all in my head, I can control it. If you can determine inheadness by controllability, why not try controlling it? Because my mind may control it without it being entirely in my head. Then why does it matter if it's in your head--you can control it either way. Because if my feelings are from my head, they have a nameable source. Therefore? They're not sincere. What's to stop a sincere mind from creating sincere feelings? I don't know. "aww, Xander thinks he's in love?" The above doesn't really have a practical application to that kind of feeling. But it's sort of significant, still: I'm too much a chameleon. My musical choices, friend choices, and [intellectual] passions can't be sourceless. Last night consisted of a Fahrenheit 9/11 party in which tasty condoms (previously obtained for free from the Red Door [right?] booth at pride) were applied to bananas and feet. Various pizzas were surrected (resurrected without the "re-"). Cramming into vehicles, getting followed by cops, purchasing ice cream at McDonald's, and stealing a not-so-hollow rock and taking pictures in a phone booth with ice cream inadvertently applied to body parts. I had a conversation about stuff, browsed yearbooks I've got little to do with. There was a shopping cart positively careening about in the back of the minivan. Because the whole damn minivan was careening about. Tyler's behavior is entirely indecipherable. Home at 3:30a This morning involved a girl and the pursuit of happiness. We also talked a bit. -Xander |
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| Monday, June 28th, 2004 |
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| Why are the two prongs on electrical plugs different sizes? Some suggest that this makes sure the polarity is correct, but the polarity changes every sixtieth of a second! What gives? Perhaps it's this notion of "hot" wires. I don't understand. | ||||||||
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I wonder how much of my claim that I live without regrets only seems true because I've repeatedly said it. How convincingly can I lie to myself? I regret hurting a girl once by leading her on. I regret--little else, really. Oh, little things, like many mornings I regret staying up so late the night before. But not really regret--not that much, because I do it again. Or am I just poor at learning? Or poor at lying to myself? I absolutely love typing "convincing." Like galloping. -Xander |
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| Sunday, June 27th, 2004 |
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I like accelerating in cars. I don't drive, but I like being in accelerating vehicles. I don't like braking. I received a letter from what is now my high-school version of an alma mater. Yes, I have graduated from Hopkins High School and I am forever freed from the clutches of mandatory, state-run educational administratia. There is still a shopping cart on my bed. I will be living with one Sergio Barksdale at Columbia this fall. He's from Texas. I googled him because I'm creepy, but I couldn't find much information on him. Part of me can't wait to meet him, and part of me greets this whole "roommate" thing with much trepidation. But Barksdale is such a classy last name--we can name our room Barksdale-Stein Hall. Today I walked around Minneapolis for an hour instead of going to a show (Battle of the Underage Underground) at First Avenue to see Melodious Owl ( melodious_wes) because we saw that M.O wasn't playing until 6:30 (they're like... headlining?) and we had to go before that. So Selena (nasty_naughty) and I almost got ice cream in Block E and then tried to find a store called Vital Vinyl on 15th street, but failed to locate 15th (if you're trying to find 15th on LaSalle and you hit 13th and then GRANT [wtf?], just keep going and 15th comes soon).Some family came to town from Hawai'i and I like them, so I had dinner with them and family. Good, wholesome day. Piano-cello duets went well yesterday. I'm finally getting used to performing, so I don't hyperventilate and lose all control over the way my music sounds. We had to dig a bit deep into our repertoires to avoid repeating the duets three times each, but people said we sounded nice (white liars) and I rather enjoyed myself. It makes me hunger to play truly well. -Xander |
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LiveJournal for Xander.
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