fishes.

Inspired by Melissa, I decided today to re-vamp my page. And by "re-vamp" I mean change it from a very plain layout to another very plain layout, because I like things that are easy on the eyes, and to change the name of the site to something much more representative of what goes on in my head. I don't know what was up with that "Dust in the Sunlight" (and other reflections!) stuff. It's not something I would use as a title. Except it obviously is, because I did.

Anyway.

Recently I've seen more and more of Wordpress around and I have to say I like it a lot more than Livejournal. LJ is very clunky, I think. Also, I really don't like the ads. They make the page so crowded. More importantly, I feel that I have more artistic freedom there. I can create my own header and everything, which you can also do on Livejournal (theoretically), but is way too inconvinient. I've never liked using templates very much. It makes me feel pretentious unless it's something I've done myself, which is why I always choose the most basic layouts (also because I like things simple and clean).

So I'm moving.

Everything is already packed up and put away in the new place. That is to say, I imported my whole LJ because I don't like leaving things behind. I'm not starting over, I'm just continuing somewhere else. I'll still be reading everyone I read here, of course. (And I do read you guys, even though I don't comment often). 

See you on the other side,






 

 

There are things I want to remember about the last moments of 2007:

I want to remember making "spag" with our own recipe for the sauce. And garlic bagels that were too crunchy and potato chips that were too soggy and apple pies that were just right (until the next morning, at least). And eating it all in the light of candles propped on empty beer bottles and having our futures told by the ages-8-and-up set of mystical Chinese fortune telling sticks (I am going on a pleasant adventure).

And I want to remember Sara Campbell on New Years Eve, who manages to make everything so damn cool and happy and served us freshly grated cheese during dinner, and her brother who plays music that makes me want to dance around messy kitchens with mummified mice in the corner, and Devin Sparks, whom without we would not have enclosed ourselves in laundry hampers like fish in a weird tank, or remembered that at the very second we were watching the candlelight reflect off our tin foil hats, there was a seal jumping off the edge of an iceberg. And Dan, who kept us all entertained with his elevator music and stories about being a "weird fucking kid." And his friends Kristen and Henry - I want to remember them, too. Henry's fears of a canoe hanging above him and of being tickled and his dreadlocks, and his strange hilarious comments and early morning mathematical discoveries, and Kristen's penny whistle serenading us for a whole ten seconds on the roof and her crazy dancing and her dedication to keeping Henry awake. I don't want to forget the cold air and the colder hot tub or the ho-festival staring us down or that split second when my imagination convinced me Godzilla or some equally terrifying creature with blinking red eyes was prowling the roofs of Boston, or shouting out random numbers, most of which happened to be 22, until midnight arrived and we watched edges of fireworks between chimneys and buildings.

And the first sunrise of the year - I think I want to remember that most of all, or at least I would, if the sun had ever made itself visible to us. The melted shapes of turtles and lemons on the neighbor's roof, the ass-puddles and glassy ice sheets in the shape of Delaware and finally the whole sky illuminated: Pink, orange and blue.

12:00 midnight finds me driving 150 miles through the Everglades where alligators outnumber people and the fog's so thick you just have to pray you don't miss a turn and end up in a swamp.

Creeeeeepy.

6:30am: Arrive in Tampa Int'l Airport. Fly to Boston.

11:30 am: Arive in Boston. Play with Yoshimi. Clean room thoroughly. I used my dorm's vacuum. I had to give the guy at the desk my ID for it even though there are a total of about seven people in the entire building.

4:00pm: Go go go grocery shopping, because I had no food at all.

5:00pm: Return. And invent an AMAZING pasta salad. And eat it. Mmmm.

6:30pm: Leave for the DRESDEN DOLLS concert. See the beauty that is Dolls fans, Meow Meow the  hilarious cabaret singer, The Luminescent Orchestrii, and of course, The Dresden Dolls themselves.

I admit that for awhile, I had begun to doubt my undying love for this music, but after seeing them live again, after singing screaming out loud during their cover of "Fight For Your Right to Paaaaaaarty" and laughing during the cover of "Sweet Dreams" and holding my breath in anticipation during "The Gardener" and nearly crying during the last song - "Boston" - I can't believe I forgot how strong all those emotions were after that last time I saw them, I can't believe that I almost thought that they were a silly whimsy of my fourteen-fifteen-sixteen-seventeen-eighteen year old self.

When I got home, I didn't want it to stop.

Let me tell you. There is no greater freedom than your suitemates being gone, a pair of drumsticks, and loud speakers for your computer that you just happened to bring back from your house that very day. I was pretty loud. And it turns out that one of my suitemates wasn't actually gone...Hah. Oops.

Goodnight, my little crocodiles.
 
 

Trail mix is the edible embodiment of everything I love cherish want to be maybe even am.

For starters, it has variety. And it's healthy, but not too healthy. It can be a social food, but usually isn't. It's a "high energy snack." Most importantly, it's travel size for your convinience. I mean, it's a food INSPIRED by go go going moving doing living. It's not presumptious, it's not a specialty of any place. It's just free. You're meant to go and see the world with it.

You're also meant to eat it. Mmm. Self-discovery is delicious, isn't it?
 

....for your entertainment.

The characters in this story:

KATHY: my thirteen year old sister
KIMMY: my twelve year old sister
KARIELLE: my nine-year-old sister
MY DAD: my dad
KAREN: me

The scene begins in a quiet McDonalds in the middle of nowhere, except it's very obvious you're somewhere in the South, because the McDonalds workers are all white. It all feels very surreal and you wonder if you're hallucinating. You consider that you probably are, because that's what so much time on road can do to you.

KATHY: Kiiiiiii-mmy! (in the classic whiny voice of the eight-year-old she sometimes forgets she's not anymore) DON'T order what I ordered!
KIMMY: I'm nooooot. This is just what I wanted to eat!
KATHY: Nuh uh! You only ordered a snack wrap because I introduced them to you and you saw that I ordered it just now. I'm never introducing anything to you again!
KAREN: Why would you introduce something to her if you don't want her to eat it?
KATHY: Shut up Karen. This is none of your business.
KAREN: (shuts up. because Kathy is bigger than me and quite terrifying when she's angry, and she's usually angry when she's hungry.)
KIMMY: Nuh uh! I wanted a snack wrap!
KATHY: No you didn't! You and Karielle ALWAYS order whatever I order and you ALWAYS listen to the same music that I do, too! You guys are copycats!
KAREN: Geez Kimmy. How dare you threaten Kathy's originality by eating McDonalds and listening to mainstream music!
KARIELLE: Nooo, if you listened to opera, I wouldn't listen to opera-
KATHY: SHUT UP KARIELLE
KARIELLE: (continuing, obviously not knowing what's good for her) Opera is bad...
KAREN: (also continuing, since she's on a roll)...I mean really. Everyone knows that the Snack-wrap was invented for Kathy and she's the only one allowed to order it, and she practically *invented* Soldier Boy-
KATHY: -It's "SOULJA BOY"-
KAREN: Ooh, good job, even more creative
KATHY: SHUT UP KAREN
MY DAD: Kathy, stop telling people to shut up and eat your food.

...A few minutes later, during a discussion about the fact that we arrived in Florida *yesterday* but we still seem to be driving for hours on end.

KATHY: (indignant) How come our family has to live so spread out? Why didn't they just all move to the same city when they moved to Florida??
MY DAD: (after a pause) They didn't want to be copycats.

---------------

Game, set, match. Hahahaha. My dad's so great. The look on her FACE.

(I'd be a terrible parent. I love it way too much when sassy thirteen-year-olds get shut. down.)

(Okay, it wasn't really a holiday story, but whatever.)
 

I've been having dreams that are uncannily related to what went on the day before. Last night I was going to watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I dreamt that I went to see it at a theater with my friend Amy. Two nights ago I was talking to Linda about blue hair, and I dreamt that her sister came to visit MIT and had died her hair blue. Three days ago I was supposed to go to a grad student's office to look over one of my tests, and I dreamt that I went there - I don't really remember what else happened in that one.

At least I haven't started dreaming about finals yet...

I am so terrible at grocery shopping. I know I went yesterday, but somehow, all the food I can find now is sherbet and apple cider.

I wonder what ferret tastes like...

It's 8:08 am. I have arabic homework I should be doing, but I'd rather...not.

There are so many things I want to do - I don't know why I ever waste any time. Why?!?

Someone buy me some time for Christmas. If you do, I'll write in here more. Promise.

I like to picture people in past times and places - it makes walking around campus much more interesting if you imagine that kid carrying the astronomy book living in the 16th century. Would he go along with society's views about planets, or believe the emerging radical scientific ideas?

Imagine that girl in an arranged marraige, never allowed to go to school - imagine that one other kid working out in the field - and that one, he's a blacksmith.

I'm pretty sure I would have liked to be born in another century.

There is a ferret chewing on my shoe, folks.

And I'm wearin' it. (The shoe, not the ferret)

Pictures will come.
 

This week was kind of like walking down the seven layers of hell. It's finally Friday afternoon, but I can still feel my eyes stinging from the scorching flames (or is it from the lack of sleep?)

I stayed up all night last Thursday because of calculus, and then on Friday and Saturday I was on a retreat in New Hampshire and although it was tons of fun, it was also tons of cold and I didn't sleep well at all because I think I was on the edge of hypothermia. On Sunday I hosted a pro-frosh and stayed up late again. And the workload during the week was terrible: I had a make-up calculus exam, a calculus p-set, a French paper on a movie that I had to watch (well, obviously I had to watch it, but I meant to emphasize that I had to watch it outside of class and that it took up time), an arabic exam, a Chinese exam, two important movie screenings (one of them was The Devil Came on Horseback and the other was an advanced screening of the The Kite Runner. Both were okay, but nothing amazing) - and this was all in a four day week!

So normally at a time like this, I'd say "TGIF, mate," because I like saying TGIF like I'm Australian. Except tomorrow I'm volunteering for Habitat for Humanity from 8-5 and I have the second half of my arabic midterm on Monday and I really should blog for MIT (You know, I thought it'd be easier to blog if I was getting paid for it, but it's actually harder because I feel it has to be interesting and coherent, both of which are qualities that I struggle with on public sites) so I can't really relax much on Sunday either-

But right now? Right now it's 3:21pm and the week is over for at least 17 hours and I plan on binging on sleep like I never have before.

Goodnight.
 

Please read this article. If you're too lazy, then read the following shortened version:

America's obesity epidemic and global warming might not seem to have much in common. But public health experts suggest people can attack them both by cutting calories and carbon dioxide at the same time.

How? Get out of your car and walk or bike half an hour a day instead of driving. And while you're at it, eat less red meat. That's how Americans can simultaneously save the planet and their health, say doctors and climate scientists.

The payoffs are huge, although unlikely to happen. One numbers-crunching scientist calculates that if all Americans between 10 and 74 walked just half an hour a day instead of driving, they would cut the annual U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, by 64 million tons.

About 6.5 billion gallons of gasoline would be saved. And Americans would also shed more than 3 billion pounds overall, according to these calculations.

[cut]

"The real bang for the buck in reducing greenhouse gas emissions was from the avoided health expenses of a sedentary lifestyle," said Higgins.

But it's not just getting out of the car that's needed, said Dr. Robert Lawrence of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. A diet shift away from heavy meat consumption would also go far, he said, because it takes much more energy and land to produce meat than fruits, vegetables and grains.

Recent studies support that argument. Last year the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported that the meat sector of the global economy is responsible for 18 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Much of that is indirect, including the fertilizer needed to grow massive amounts of feed for livestock, energy use in the whole growing process, methane released from fertilizer and animal manure, and transportation of the cattle and meat products.

***

I hope this will inspire you to commit to something. Even just one thing. There's so much to be done.