Initialize Me

I'm having a hard time describing/believing/responding to just how much this song has been affecting me when placed on single repeat. Calm, collected, and focusing on all the wrong things I shouldn't be focusing on right now (LIKE STUDYING).

This is pretty much everything in my mind. With the WARP/KAIBA BRAND OF AWESOME.

Code code code

I am seriously in need of a program that would generate random canvas sizes. Nothing can possibly suck more than WANTING TO DRAW BUT GETTING STUMPED ON WHAT TO INPUT FOR CANVAS DIMENSIONS FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

(Even if somewhere deeper down, I know I'll likely hammer-flatten the weirder dimensions anyway. Or that I'd just go with default screen ratios sometimes. Or that some other times I'd just take a square. Whatever the case is, I'm still quite bothered.)


EDIT: Meh.

Just started rewatching and realized almost immediately that it's not as perfect as I believed it to be. Still fucking amazing, but my anticipation for Neiro and the interest and curiosity about her actual relationship with Warp was totally...over the top? Any reality/recall kind of just ruined it. THE HINTS AND IMAGERY WERE MUCH MORE AWESOME THAN THE ACTUAL THING. T_T

EDIT EDIT: Actually, after rewatching a second time, I hit the realization that it's not so much anticlimactic than just...simply rushed and underdeveloped. They've been together for way longer than the seemingly five seconds that the tenth episode shows. >___> Also this thing definitely needs to be rewatched, a lot like how WoT definitely needs to be reread.

AND IT'S STILL KILLING ME THAT I CAN'T FIND THE OST OTHER THAN ON YOUTUBE. WHAT THE POOP

Kaiba (2008)

Whee, handwriting self love. Maybe sort of relatedly, song is found here.

It's such a pity that Kaiba (unrelated to the guy who screws the rules because he has money) gets almost no love. Mind-blowing beauty is what it is. Speechless beauty is what it is. I don't know how to put it. It's intuitive. It's the single piece of animation/film/ART that has moved me like nothing else ever has before. I have never been this much fascinated.

AND IT KILLS ME THAT I CAN'T FIND ITS OST WRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY


-


Corollary (or is it negation?) to what I previously said about knowledge: it's not deterministic. What we do influences what we know almost every bit as much as the other way around.

All actions are twice-behaved; we aren't capable of doing anything we haven't done OR haven't imagined could be done before.

KITTEN MITTEN OF DOOM

5000 HOURS IN 3-D PRINTING

LEFT GLOVE SOMEWHERE ON ITS WAY

lulwat

18. On Identity in absolute vs. Identity as perceived

I come from a faction that believes knowledge, like any other material commodity, is elitist in nature. This includes intrinsic knowledge (intuition), factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge (understanding), and arguments on both sides of any debatable issue. In other words, I am not speaking of or even touching upon the concept of "education;" just the arbitrary collection of all possible forms of "knowledge." That said, one either knows or doesn't know, just as one either has or doesn't have money. By the same token, how and when we apply knowledge/make decisions based on what we know is as diverse (and possibly nonsensical) as how and when we choose to spend our money. Factual knowledge comes and goes like money in the ideal checking account; conceptual understanding stays (and gains interest) over time like money in the ideal savings account. People who flaunt their knowledge are about as despised as those who flaunt their monetary possessions. Further corny parallels aside, here's my tl;dr point on why knowledge is relevant in this post:

Knowledge, especially in the form of conceptual understanding, is deterministic*.

* So far, in nearly every context I have ever come across the idea of determinism, it is mostly always a wrong or refuted idea by scholars in their respective fields (eg. technological determinism; environmental determinism), and it makes sense. In short, [blank] determinism is the (99.9999% likely wrongful/poorly supported) belief that whatever goes in [blank] is the sole factor/driver of change in the world as we know. (eg. technological determinism = NEW TECHNOLOGY DRIVES CHANGE IN HUMANS; environmental determinism = HUMAN NATURE AND HISTORY ARE ENTIRELY SHAPED BY THE LANDSCAPE/ENVIRONMENT) The common fault of both ideologies is that they ignore all social factors of change that humans are so very capable of. If interested in more details, contact me for term-paper-level rants.

I feel comfortable saying this because 1) no possible social/fluid influence counterexamples are possible on the individual level I deal with here (please correct me if you disagree), and 2) any possible such counter elements, such as morals and/or irrational belief, are included in my definition of "knowledge."

The above statement in bold largely means: Our decisions are shaped by what we know. A decision we made, or a moral standpoint we once had in life, are all prone to change as new knowledge is introduced into our life database. Taking this back to the money parallel, here's another example: While all permutations of what we choose to buy with $20 may not change when we gain another $20 and now have a total of $40 in our hands, the mere fact that we now have an extra $20 introduces a whole new set of permutations on possible buys, which, compared to the original given amount of money, is a whole new and different set of permutations. That new and different set of possible choices/decisions we make, with the gain of new knowledge, is what makes knowledge deterministic.

I don't know how many readers I just lost with the above jargon (which, for my faith in humankind, I swear really was not jargon, and in other words hopefully no one was lost), but let's try to move on to my real point now that I've laid out some background assumptions. On to the perception of the self:

What is identity? Are we just a collection of personal memories, and the aforementioned knowledge, with all capability to do/decide based on that collective knowledge deterministically? Separate from our physical bodies? For the purposes of my position on this post, I'm tempted to say yes.

So, if so, what do others see in us? What causes others to look at the Jing now and say, "Holy heck, she's changed so much since Stuy" just because, most noticeably, I wear different clothes now? Even if I feel like the same entity inside, not a bit "changed," there are those who would say I'm a completely different "person." Of course, there is no blame; human perception of each other is ~60% how we look, ~30% how we sound, and only ~10% what we actually have to say...unless we're on the internet. And even then, people are still likely looking more at the images of this post rather than at my actual words, especially upon first glance.

Then, what then, about those people who know me perhaps a bit more, and realize that some deeper opinions and general philosophies I once held (concerning appearance, at least in this instance) have changed? To that, I say Knowledge is deterministic; I simply know more now, and have adjusted myself accordingly to a certain new permutation I deem most logical and personally acceptable, based on/in accordance with my identity by memory and self-perception. In no way do I feel like an alien being because I retain what I know, what I remember.

Lastly, there are those who argue that identity is performative (*cough* Jarek), that it is what we do (and have done) instead of what we think but don't act upon in our heads. To that, I say Screw you. Things like gender, or other elements of who we are/how we define ourselves are performative, undoubtedly, but there is no way that the self, in its (our) entirety, is all performative. (The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, yadda yadda.) To say we can be judged/identified by our outputs only is to reduce us to the same level as functional machines: all product and no process. If this were so, no knowledge in life would be relevant beyond factual data; no conceptual understanding would be relevant or needed. However, to others, who don't have Majical Machines of Mystical Majickness that can see our every private thought/epiphany, our outward expression of identity is all they have to work with. In which case...I'll have to refer back to my last paragraph.

Sigh. And here's an awesome song for those who stuck around and read everything.

Cold sweat

Woke up forcefully from one of those dreams for the first time last night. It was odd, because my first physical reaction was...alarm...that I was sick. I felt my legs covered in sweat swimming between the sheets, but was shivering and felt chilled to the bone at the same time. I even did a quick temperature check and was honestly surprised that I wasn't fevering.

The saddest part is probably that it wasn't even a nightmare. (Not to mention I've never had a textbook nightmare ever, period.) Just some very sickly emotional situation (that isn't even technically bad; it's always what I wanted deep deeply down, right?) that I hope to never face, yet, now, nevertheless, can't help but wonder.

I'm supposed to be way over this, but I guess my subconscious has yet to catch up...as per usual.

HEART OF SWORD

Facebook Graffiti lagging like FUCK and glitching like SHIT but HEART OF SWORD ON MOTHERFUCKING REPEAT YO.

WHAT AN ODD TIME TO BE SUDDEN-STRUCK BY FANATICISM BUT FUCK YEAH KENSHIIIIIIIIIINNNNNN

I NEVER DRAW FANART. RIGHT? RIGHT? RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT?

CORRECT ME IF YOU'RE WRONG

17. On the age-based change in gender dynamics sobre that tender issue of the strange, the new, and the complex interlacings of attraction

Something something about a pair of eyes...once upon a time.

And a certain anticipation, anxious expectation, imagined course and trajectory for a story molded completely from my one-sided mind.

I was under the impression that they'd be gone with age, fade as false conjectures, dissipate as we are continuously pushed out of the school's toothpaste tube, down the societal assembly line.

Somewhere is a spring of youth that always counteracts what I thought I had learned.

An especially well-placed pair of eyes (and their use) was all it took.

-

More, more more.

I squirm in my seat as I feel the weight of inner dissatisfaction pinning me down by far outshadowing gravity's weight and pull and bottom-heavy center of downward keeling pressing coming-to becoming horizontal frontal dorsal contact with max surface area on the floor. Kissing dust, breathing through carpet loop and hole and fiber intermittent dust and mite and insect leftover with free-floating cleaning solvent residue.

Why me? Why now? I declared formal goodbye on that stage in life, where minimalistic contacts and exchanges of microscopic information magnified through my eyes that miss nothing see beyond plain views interpret to the degree of conjuring up nonexistent facts; out-of-proportion, out of proper theatrical cue as I simmer up the perfect myriad of melodramatic primordial soup fit for any three early teen budding bubbling ceremoniously ignored, ignored, ignored -- What is to follow? What do I feel comfortable and free to share, even now? Especially now? Twiddling thumbs, mangling fingertips tripping over letter and key, space and shift, rolling rounding blurring over thought like words unguided nanoscopic water treading down pinhaired repellent undistinguishable leaf and lawn.

Perhaps a name was a trigger. Perhaps it is like that other overflow causing such unnecessary concerns and piqued curiosities and tragedies and nervous breakdowns in disbelief in negativity. But this counterpart, if it counts as a counterpart in this fresh but related and not-so-different case, is older, has seen more, is based on some solid and justified (and I suppose positive by induced charge) ground.

And perhaps I'm making a way bigger deal out of this, again, as per the usual of then.

Depraved indifference

Quick doodle by mouse with all messiness covertly disguised to look like they're intended. All one layer on PaintBBS, 1 hour exact, see animation.

I stand by all previous statements re: mouse vs. tablet. Mouse can and should be able to achieve similar levels of work as any tablet, only at a slower rate. The only limitation lies in drawing freehand lines in one stroke, but even a tablet doesn't always get that down as smoothly as one can on paper, so that's a moot point. Also because of the time/patience issue with mouse, less effort tends to be exerted (especially post-exposure to tablet use)...and laziness is forever a human element that shouldn't be blamed on the tools.

GUILTY NONCHALANCE

Speaking of Steampunk,

FFFFFFFFFF LOVING HERMES x 10 ^ 6 RIGHT NOW. WHO KNEW HE HAD GOOD THINGS BESIDES FANCY SCARVES??









See full collection here. Yes yes it's more equestrian than steampunk, but SHHH I CAN'T HEAR YOUUU LALALALALALA LA LA LA

Random moment of relevancy in learning is random.

(9:37:21 PM) Jarek: "What is truth?"
(9:37:23 PM) Jarek: XD
(9:37:50 PM) yuuzora: Since no one is omnipotent, no one knows for sure.
(9:37:56 PM) yuuzora: There is only perceived truth.
(9:38:03 PM) yuuzora: Empirical truth.
(9:38:07 PM) yuuzora: Scientific truth.
(9:38:10 PM) yuuzora: But no absolute truth.
(9:38:30 PM) Jarek: "If entropy will eventually destroy the universe, what's the point of achieving anything during life"
(9:38:35 PM) Jarek: watch everyone come in the next day
(9:38:37 PM) Jarek: wearing black
(9:38:40 PM) Jarek: and black lipstik
(9:38:43 PM) Jarek: and listening to bad music
(9:38:47 PM) yuuzora: *facepalm*
(9:39:06 PM) yuuzora: Jarek, if physics were ALL MIGHTY AND POWERFUL, there would be no universe, no existence, no anything.
(9:39:10 PM) yuuzora: Remember matter and antimatter?
(9:39:18 PM) yuuzora: Everything is supposed to cancel out evenly.
(9:40:23 PM) yuuzora: But the Swiss found that when matter converts between antimatter, some sort of minuscule, almost negligible, acceleration causes the difference for matter to exist just slightly longer than antimatter.
(9:40:40 PM) yuuzora: That is enough to make the difference in allowing existence to happen.
(9:41:33 PM) yuuzora: That explains the existence of non-organic material.
(9:42:13 PM) yuuzora: The existence of life, that life should also exist at all, is a result of just-as-small coincidences that go against all assumptions of otherwise.
(9:44:00 PM) yuuzora: That the first organic compounds existed, that CARBON existed at all, and chanced to make the first amino acid, the first nucleotide, the first system that doesn't even qualify to be called an organism yet starting to collect other molecules to be converted into other molecules from which it can extract energy to convert even more molecules?
(9:44:07 PM) yuuzora: It's all against entropy.
(9:44:12 PM) yuuzora: Yet, chemistry happens.
(9:44:21 PM) yuuzora: Organic chemistry happens.
(9:44:33 PM) yuuzora: Van der Waals forces, or London forces, remember them?
(9:44:43 PM) yuuzora: They happen because electrons just don't happen to be stable.
(9:45:05 PM) yuuzora: That they just don't happen to have solid orbits, that they simply happen to occur in clouds and their exact positions never known.
(9:46:19 PM) yuuzora: That even in non-polar and neutral molecules, they have random moments of polarity.
(9:46:24 PM) yuuzora: Allowing for reactions, when they just happen to bump into each other, at those random moments when they just happen to be polar.
(9:46:44 PM) yuuzora: Allowing for things that would eventually lead to life.



(9:47:23 PM) yuuzora: It's just random moments where all the crazy shit you were required to learn suddenly come together...
(9:47:37 PM) yuuzora: Where as you've always assumed they were useless before.
(9:47:38 PM) yuuzora: =/
(9:47:44 PM) yuuzora: And even then, science is so very limited.
(9:47:44 PM) Jarek: hey~
(9:47:48 PM) Jarek: dont say that about a me
(9:47:56 PM) Jarek: you've never learned about electronics D=
(9:48:17 PM) yuuzora: We don't know the answers to these things. The existence of everything is because of, particularly, EXCEPTIONS to what we think is true from science.
(9:48:32 PM) yuuzora: I tends to use second person loosely.
(9:48:49 PM) yuuzora: Don't feel comfortable using "I" sometimes.
(9:48:49 PM) Jarek: you and your imaginary points of views XD





Unrelatedly, steampunk is officially now the rule of cool. I can't believe how many years post-Keith-Thompson this took me to realize.

Mood Exercise

With the theme of dream scapes. First was a frustrated 40-ish minutes in Chibi Paint @ fearsome that left me pretty pissed because it was going nowhere. Second two were done successively in SAI, each coming faster and easier and more relaxing than the last. AND IT FELT LIKE I COULD KEEP GOING FOREVAR, YOU KNOW, EXCEPT IT'S NOW BEDTIME.

I LOVE YOU PAINT TOOL SAIII AS IF ANY MORE CONFIRMATION WAS NEEDED <333 br="">


===



EDIT: ...And apparently these are the side effects of a midnight stress-free color-throwing bonanza promoting the full outflow of information rather than that traditional bottling-it-all-up-and-forget-about-it approach:

- Waking up (without an alarm) at 6:30 AM feeling fully rested/awake/unable to go back to sleep
- Blasting this and this at full volume on repeat to wake neighbors up
- Chugging gummy worms/bears until mouth/throat feels like a fucking desert (takes around half a pound)
- TOTALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO SPS WHOOOO

PAINT TOOL SAI

IS MADE OF MAJOR WIN AND SHITS ANTICONSTIPATIONS AND GIGGLES, GUYS. I MIGHT EVEN HAVE REGULAR DIARRHEA FROM NOW ON, SRSLY. JUST LOOK AT THIS SHIT:

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD DID YOU SEE THAT? DID YOU FUCKING SEE THAT?? THERE'S A FUCKING COLOR BLENDING PALETTE OPTION THAT YOU CAN LITERALLY PAINT IN TO MIX COLORS. WITH DIFFERENT BRUSH SETTINGS AND SIZES. INDEPENDENT OF YOUR ACTUAL DRAWINGGGGG (!!!!!!!!!!!!1!! x 10^6).

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO KNOW, 99% OF JING'S SUPPOSED LONG-TERM BLOCK CAUSED BY MOST ALL DIGITAL MEDIA ACTUALLY STEMS FROM THE INCONVENIENCE OF COLOR MIXING. REGARDLESS OF WHETHER IT'S A SLIDER, WHEEL, OR GRADIENT, I HAVE NEVER BEEN COMFORTABLE FINDING COLORS LIKE THIS BEFORE. NEVER. AND WITHOUT BEING COMFORTABLE DOING SOMETHING AS BASIC AS THAT, IS IT ANY WONDER THAT I FIND DRAWING A MORE AND MORE DREADED AND TIME-CONSUMING BUSINESS TO BE PROCRASTINATED FOREVAARS?

THAT ALL ENDS HERE NOW, GUYS. IT ENDS.

PICTAR UNRELATED OH WHO AM I KIDDING IT'S TOTALLY HOW I FEEL RIGHT NOW MAN. RIGHT DOWN TO THE EXPRESSION. HELL YEAHHH

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFff

The concept of home

is/has been traditionally associated with a withdrawal and zipping of words/ideas/self expression of any form. Certain changes do accompany aging (in their eyes), but so much is still unacceptable.

One (more) day.

...MAY ACTUALLY BE PUMPING SHIT OUT AGAIN

after I got this nifty little sketchbook from B&N this past weekend. Standard white 5" x 8" paper ordeal, but apparently...carrying it around 24/7 does help. This is so great I FEEL LESS ARTISTICALLY CONSTIPATED ALREADY, GOOD TIMES.

This guy's still half uncooked, and I'm unfortunately too busy currently admiring the raw scanning results to decide whether I want him medium rare or fully cooked. (i.e., Just a linesy The Mother look, or paint this fucker up so much you can't even tell it started out as a pencil sketch?) I drew this with the intention of the former, but since the scan turned out so insanely fair (for the first time EVER)...hm.

Also: Yes, sort-of-new signature. I've gotten myself in heat all over Keith Thompson's hot bodies again recently, and noticing his sig/stamp nonchalantly led me to finally decide that the one I've been using, since before 8th grade, was incredibly bulky and attention-grabbing in all the wrong ways. =/ I first signed things using this monogram H/cursive Jh/butterfly thing on stuff for drafting, 5-tech (Anyone even remember what those were?), and acrylic painting in Stuy, and I think it's about time I pick it up...officially, so to speak. Simplicity is key there.

(Unrelatedly, HOLY CRAP @ hair in that thing I drew in '05. Subconscious self-fulfilling prophecy much??)

Also also: While I was shuffling Teitum around in my Traditional folder, I dug up some more things I completely forgot about, like this lady here:

Raw from last autumn that I shoved so far back into the freezer, I can only hang my head in shame. I almost forgot I had once been so ambitious as to start a character illustration effort for Robert Jordan's the Wheel of Time... T__T

Mr. Sketchbook, I promise you plenty of food to come. This I do solemnly swear.

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Update 4/6/11: Cleaned up some dirt. =]

===

EDIT: It then occurred to me that I never actually explained what I'm doing here. Or, in Nelson's words: Since when did Jing become a girl?

It's not so much I'm any "girlier" inside, but rather that a glum acceptance happened over the shape and state of my body. These B cups and butt I now sport are not even close to "curvy" by general female standards, but I can most definitely no longer get away with dressing like a dude OR wearing whatever the heck like back in high school and still maintain at least a decent scrape of the self's bodily respect. Of course, the whole experience of packing on 45 pounds and losing almost 40 so far had a big role in Jing noticing/taking more proper care of my body in the first place, too. From when I first started buying clothes to hide my fatness to now buying clothes suitable for a smaller body, and (of course) taking that prereq class for fashion design, and keeping in mind childhoodflames's Camille, I slowly came to realize what I want for my own wardrobe. See partial log with Rez below:

yuuzora (12:02:30 AM): I think I've mentioned it to you before, but I've begun to strive for a fully functional closet, a la Camille.
yuuzora (12:03:33 AM): Maybe not as minimalistic as her wardrobe, but I definitely want to own something in which every piece I have I'd gladly wear EVERY DAY if it were possible/acceptable.
yuuzora (12:04:17 AM): And it wouldn't matter if I have to pay a little bit more for a particular piece, if I know it's something I'd want to wear everyday, in addition to having other pieces to match it that I'd ALSO want to wear every day.
yuuzora (12:04:48 AM): By the end of this process I want a fully functional wardrobe I'm so happy with that I can keep for years without the need to add new things or owning anything extra.
yuuzora (12:04:53 AM): Something I've never had before, but the efficiency of which is extremely attractive to me.

yuuzora (12:28:57 AM): At the beginning, I've tried on a lot of things, liked what I saw, and done my decent share of impulse-buying.
yuuzora (12:29:32 AM): But once I go home, the realization hits that I have nothing else in my closet that goes with what I just bought, so the thing just sits in a corner and remains forever untouched.
yuuzora (12:30:22 AM): Through weeding out items like that in my current wardrobe, I'm actually learning which pieces suit or flatter me the best, and that is what my "style" ultimately boils down to: not necessarily what is "hottest" right now, but definitely which looks flatter or complement my particular body.
yuuzora (12:31:29 AM): I now am better at recognizing some piece of clothing as "not Jing" just through the simple exercise of seeing in my mind whether I have other things in my closet to go with it.
yuuzora (12:32:27 AM): Re: my huge pile of clothes, I actually divide them in two halves. I have one that I'll try to sell, and another that I'll donate or sell to people who don't care for style.
yuuzora (12:32:58 AM): The "fashionable" pile is full of stuff I thought was "cool" and "must-have" when I first bought them, but ended up never wearing because they ultimately weren't "me."
yuuzora (12:33:06 AM): The other pile is stuff that's truly outdated.
yuuzora (12:33:46 AM): For example, a pair of good-quality but basic jeans in a bigger size that no longer fit me, but a buyback store would probably not take it because it's so basic.

yuuzora (12:39:41 AM): I don't follow blogs so much...
yuuzora (12:39:59 AM): Just Camille (very occasionally), and mostly that Stockholm street style page.
yuuzora (12:41:56 AM): Once you've seen one or two...they're all the same. >_>
yuuzora (12:42:40 AM): And I don't have a need to see exactly what specific pieces people are owning.
yuuzora (12:42:58 AM): Rather, I'm just there to get an overall impression.
yuuzora (12:43:17 AM): It's stupid when people wear only a single expensive "statement" piece and nothing else and make a blog post of that, because to me, that is NOT style.
yuuzora (12:43:29 AM): That is the person showing off what they have money to buy.
yuuzora (12:43:52 AM): I'm more about how pieces should be worn together to create style.
yuuzora (12:44:07 AM): And definitely, definitely, fluidity and interchangeability.
yuuzora (12:44:35 AM): How one piece in my future functional closet must be able to be worn with almost anything else in my closet, yet still each combination is unique and have a different flavor.


This is largely why my previous posts sobre this entire topic have been titled, On the ridiculousness of. There is a fine line and big difference between "fashion" for materialism and "style" for effective personal packaging.

16. On the staying power of Deg

If I could do a live dissection of my own brain and see exactly how this happens, I would. What, in the voice of this one little man, caused Jing to push all male singers thereafter out of her ears in rejection, unable to ever consistently enjoy another lyrical voice regardless of sex in all the years since? There is mysterious chemistry at work here.

Too little is known on how a voice is picked up amongst background noises of all sorts and singularly focused upon. Too little is known on how a voice makes such an impression that its mere presence, when detected, is felt and processed as a physiological massage. Too little is known on how a voice can have such an impact on one person and yet totally fail to cause attention in another. There is too little that psychology or speech and hearing science can offer us, too much that remains (or, rather, is left behind) unanswered. Pitch and frequency provide us not enough tools to even correlate a unique person to voice, let along to further uncover what effects the perception of one incurs in another.

All we seem to know is that, consistent with Jing's 'character,' it apparently makes sense that I would like the 'first' thing I contact, and resist all future exposures at all costs like a fertilized egg concretely walling off all sperm past the first. Maybe I'm stubborn; maybe I'm close-minded. Maybe I just have that much loyal faith, or maybe that is my expression of resistance to change, holding on to the last remnant of my first expression and realization of self at thirteen. All that is fine and dandy speculation, but none can explain why, irrevocably, Kyo and only Kyo's voice has the effect it does on my ears, in my brain, in my resonating gut and pulse and sharp tender rasping diaphragm.


Today, Itoshisa was the it. After one play from random shuffle, it got stuck on single repeat like so many other Deg songs have, at one point or another. As always, the lyrics or even the story are moot; all that stings/pricks/carves out into me is his, his voice. There is tender exposed raw meat, there, that I feel I can eternally feed off. Stuff I would dearly miss if deprived.

For some reason I suspect most people (if any at all) have not experienced anything even remotely comparable to what I try to describe here, even once.

I play my zither amongst a cattle herd.

On the ridiculousness of 'fashion,' part II

Painting from the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907 AD), not shoop'd. We only THINK we've come so far in women's purses.

-

Also holy crap, I found a way easier way to take semi-full-body pictures ZOMG. Limited by crappy resolution and wireless mouse detection range, though. =|

I'm finally at a stage where it's fully necessary to give my entire wardrobe a revamp, because 1) I had no idea how to shop efficiently three (or even one) years ago, and a large portion of what I saved are...erm, unwearable, and kept only for comparative fitting purposes. I also have a shit-ton of clothes I compulsively bought but then never would actually wear.

2) I have a decent reserve of hueg clothes (mostly bottoms that could slip off my ass even as I stand still) that are too wasteful to simply chuck in the garbage. =/ I could probably take one of these pictures for fun and that's about all the use they still have.

The result = that mountain of junk on the back of my couch there, even after picking out the more precious ones I want to get tailored. I'm pretty perplexed over what to do with them. Since most of them are in remarkably good condition, I can probably try to sell them...except I don't want weird people attracted from, say, Craigslist, to randomly know where I live. I also refuse to carry that amount of clothes (we're talking about suitcase-full here) with me to a public meeting spot to show them off to strangers, because...I mean, come on. I could probably donate to Goodwill and be done with them that way. I could also get a sewing machine *gasp* and play around with them myself, except I know that won't happen just like how I know I won't draw or knit and come up with anything fruitful in the near future. Or, I can find a friend who wants a mountain of fabric for maybe 20-30 bucks. 8D

What say you guys?

Illustrations for Science

At Rezu's sort of request, here are some pictars of Jing's FABLED SUPER SECRET SPECIAL RECIPE MAGIC WEIGHT-LOSS NOODLE SOUP111

Not. -_- This is pretty much just the same stuff I've eaten every single day for the past year or so out of sheer lazydom, no exaggerations. Not enough people believe me when I say I honestly don't care about the taste/variety of what I eat (as opposed to the actual act of eating, which I've always found most satisfying in itself). I used to bother with the whole rice cooker thing with various stir-fried dishes, but I seriously can't remember the last time I've done that other than to cook for parents/siblings at home. (The half bag of 20-lb rice currently sitting in my kitchen was bought maybe as long as an entire year ago for all I know, srsly.) I've reduced to just boiling half a pot of water and throwing items of daily essential nutrition into it at intervals and simmering the entire thing for under 10 minutes - everyday. That is seriously what all this is. On the off-chance that someone actually wants more details than that, here's a list of stuff I dunk in that pot, in order:

1. Water, brought to a boil.

2. Two kinds of pasta: (usually thin) spaghetti and bowties/elbows or some other non-filamentous type. Reduce flame.

3. Meat, if any. (I'm pretty sure I mentioned this somewhere or other earlier: I don't try to be a vegetarian on purpose, but I simply don't fancy meat very much. I don't hate it either, but if any part of my diet has to be cut out, I'd gladly choose meat. It's the most non-consequential for me.) For the past 5-ish months it's been pretty consistently 6 thin slices of skinless kielbasa.

4. Add condiments. Nothing fancy, just a tiny bit of salt/pepper, and a generous dash of Sriracha. I'm too cheap to buy nicer sources of spicy. =/

5. EGG. Regardless of what I actually cook, noodle soup or not, this is something I absolutely must have, and my fridge is NEVER out of eggs. Usually I break the yolk up just a little so it cooks a lot faster - see yellow blob near the two slices of kielbasa.

6. Non-leafy veggies. Highly dependent on what's on sale at Kroghetto. This can be broccoli/cauliflower/asparagus (preferred), sometimes with tomato to boot (like today). If Campbell's or Progresso soups were on sale, sometimes I'd add a tablespoon or two of that to give a slightly alternative taste. Not for today.

7. Leafy veggies. Since I'm a cheapo and haven't bothered to go to a Chink store in ages, this is usually 1/3 of a romaine lettuce in one of those bags that comes with three. This is added at the very end, and flame is turned off as I'm adding. Overcooked lettuce is bleh.

As I eat nowadays, the above amount fills three of my flowery bowls. Two are breakfast, and the last is saved for lunch. Dinner is usually a banana or two. Back in January, though... not only did I make larger portions (so it comes out to more like 4 bowls), I ate an entire pot for a single meal, 2-3 times a day. This was my appetite throughout Stuy and the subsequent years after quitting track. This was more than what Jarek (6' 5", 230+ lb) could eat. I didn't think of it as a problem for the longest time and just kind of wondered why my clothes kept getting smaller since college. >__>

But yeah. I hope this is enough to illustrate that maybe dropping a pound a day from simply eating normally perhaps isn't all THAT surprising. Anyway, today:

weight - 139.4 (morning)
armpits - 34 1/4
boobs - 35 3/4
under boobs - 30 1/4
waist - 28
flab - 33
hips - 36 3/4
calves - 14 1/2, 14 5/8

Whee, broke 140. As expected, I began to plateau. 1) I'm not as strict about dinner around half the time, so on those days, weight stays the same. 2) Even on 'good' days when I'd used to lose an entire pound before, now it's more likely a 0.8 lb drop. I think that initial 130-135 goal range I gave myself was quite accurate, in that case. I'll stop either when I break 130 or when I completely plateau, whichever happens first.

15. Trees and flying insects

...have the most breathtakingly beautiful anatomies nature has graced any organism. The latter, with the exception of Nikki, I'll have to satiate my eyes with Google images and diagrams. The former, howerver...

I Vinushka-swear I will one day take pictures of every tree on campus I feel attracted to, and do what I have so often not done in the past for beauties that moved me so very, very deeply down.


Did you know? All I ever wanted was to draw you, to own you in a way only artists can, to hold a shadow of a split second of you suspended still in infinite time. I wanted to possess that close knowledge of your exact shape and form to be saved and savored for all of eternity, to have that connection no photographer can ever know or experience with you. I wanted my eyes and hand to be the organic camera that never touched but yet knew you more intimately than mirrors ever could. I wanted to learn it, safekeep it, come back to it until I could see you and trace you and mold you out of thin air with my eyes closed.

I had never felt beauty as an emotion before you. I missed the chance to know; I would never now know.

You have probably forgotten by now. Four years ago. That seems to be when my permanent block more or less settled in, when I submitted to a fate of never hardly having the ability to draw comfortably again despite the occasional inspiration and frustration.

I am left with this insane paranoia (and this I swear) of never letting another beauty, no matter how common or insignificant, to ever escape me again. Even if I have to resort to cameras. Even if I lose coherence over language every time I try to think or to phrase this out loud. I still suffer periods of relapse where I feel I can tear my hair out by the fistful, by the incredulous disbelief of how I could have messed up that one chance of the only time we ever talked. Do you remember?

My right brain was yours the first time my eyes ever beheld you. Why did I not realize this then, even to myself?

Is it coincidence?
Is it coincidence? Is two months really the average of how often that gets checked? ...

I become so inarticulate over you, still. It shames me.

Daylight

we cut the legs off of our pants
threw our shoes into the ocean
sit back and wave through the daylight
sit back and wave through the daylight

slip and slide on subway grates
these shoes are poor man's ice skates
fall through like change in the daylight
fall through like change in the daylight

i miss yellow lines in my roads
some color on monochrome
maybe i’ll paint them in myself
maybe i’ll paint them in myself

these sidewalks liquid then stone
building walls and an old pay phone
it rings like all through the daylight
it rings like all through the daylight

chorus
and in the daylight we can hitchhike to maine
i hope that someday i’ll see without these frames
and in the daylight i don’t pick up my phone
cause in the daylight anywhere feels like home

I have five clocks in my life
and only one has the time right
i’ll just unplug it for today
i'll just unplug it for today

open hydrant rolled down windows
this car might make a good old boat
and float down grand street in daylight
and float down grand street in daylight

and with just half of a sunburn
new yellow lines that i earned
step back and here comes the night time
step back and here comes the night time

chorus
and in the daylight we can hitchhike to maine
i hope that someday i’ll see without these frames
and in the daylight i don’t pick up my phone
cause in the daylight anywhere feels like home

-

I think what yesterday's entry is officially called is a post-adrenaline-rush low. Here's an awesome song for today (which I've been playing on loop like I haven't done for any other song in quite a while now).

And I will now proceed to knit something extremely hippie.

14. All memories are created equal.

...Unlike what we'd like to say or believe of humans, or of any other members of a uniform species.


Halfway through today that giant hole/feeling of emptiness finally caught up with me, and, as I was dozing off on the bus to work, I mulled over some qualities of the nature of long-term remembrance.

[The end of last night was so sudden, so chilling, and so rather reminiscent of certain other fresh wounds and clean breaks from once upon a time. If this were a bone it would have been a greenstick fracture; the jagged edges and sharp projections screamed hurt, pain, and lonesome abrupt premature demise. The parents of my look had run off, and awaiting me on that then-empty second floor corner room on Neil was only one or two leftover hands who didn't go at all, who remained only to clean up. It was desolation at its very best; it was the untreasured postclimax. It was the cold stink of aftermath as I wrapped myself inside the detached train of my skirt.]

There is no discrimination between memory of just one second ago and memory of fifteen, eight, or four years back. On that bus, I attested to this. Regardless of its linearity or circularity in the grander scheme, time remains cruelly unidirectional for us objects traversing space. What is memory?

The best I can pinpoint is a class of dual-action that occurs simultaneously: a vision of things as I saw them then behind what my eyes currently input, and a feeling, a contraction, a reaction of some kind from that familiar place at the diaphragm pushing into and lifting from my stomach. There, regardless of age, quality, or quantity, the playback system tells me it is fair and just, as I see them all clear as clear can be. The brain is capable of playing tricks on the cache, but the system for retrieval is undeniably cleanly functional. There, on that bus, the quality of image with which I remember my studio takes on a same texture as I do that townhouse in Forest Hills. As I stare at passerby whirling back, one with the land, they, too, become memory irrevocably. The moment is permanently lost no matter how much I strain to hold their snapshot imagery in that frozen stance against my occipital. It joins the library of all others in a selectively limitless base. From hence on, all flavor of reality it once held is lost; all texture that remains is one artificial, web-like scale series that feels identical to all the rest. The chair on which I sit and type now is entirely different from the chair in my mind as I unnecessarily unfeelingly reminisced on a moving bus. I am returned to it, unlike I have never returned to so many other moments in space and time, and already, even so, it is a different chair. This hasn't even anything to do with all of our nanoscopic erosions and sheddings and denaturations. This is no termite pseudergate.

Because time only propagates one way for us, and brains can only do so much.

13. On how I am apparently not Chinese

So in a recent class discussion on why we think Tao Qian's hidden utopia at the end of a peach blossom spring (世外桃源) wouldn't work from a modern perspective, the first thing that obviously came to my mind was: a tiny-ass, bottle-necked gene pool that would result in some serious inbreeding (that will get pretty gross REALLY FAST), and a terribly low resilience to random natural disaster, that all lead to the sheer impossibility of such a community of that size to survive in a cave for 600+ years. The class kind of all smiled knowingly when I mentioned those points, because all the other people who volunteered came up with things along the lines of technological isolation/retardation and an extreme lack of commerce because everyone in the community is a self-sufficient primary producer.

I swear I'm the only person who's taken biology in any form beyond high school in that class, because everyone else apparently speaks Chinese to each other before/after class, half can't seem to understand the professor, and most likely all of them are majors in business, economics, or actuarial 'science.' Not to mention this class would be like cheating for them, because they most likely learned all these texts, in Chinese, A YEAR OR TWO AGO IN CHINA (Oh wait, except they still don't know English and this stuff is taught in English, FUCK). Most of them give me sideways glances just because I speak without an accent, and don't apparently wear layers of sunscreen/BB cream/cakey makeup/brand names that only Chinks care about; because by their standards, I only have a 3rd grade education past which the only area I excel in more than them, is my English; that they are simply better than me in every other learned field like MATH and STYLE and how to CATCH MEN; because I'm too tall, my frame too large and "white," my style STANDS OUT as opposed to fitting in like everyone else's (Korean fashion, as that's what's HAWT right now all over Asia); that I'm not at all feminine and womanly and proper and cute and giggly and sighy and looking like the wind would blow me over and need a small yellow gentleman to flatter my frailness; because I actually stay awake listening to the professor drone on without snoring DESPITE sitting in the first row, that I actually have manners and don't slam the door on the person behind me on purpose; that I most likely never had the joy of having an older yellow gentleman buy me expensive gifts like real Tiffany diamonds or collections of real Chanel/LV/Gucci bags or a luxury suite just for me in exchange for being his mistress -- Christ, this list can go on forever.

Bottom line is as title says. Despite my inner philosophies based on how I was raised (and how, in a lot of ways, I retain that style of thinking), despite the fact that my parents and I are actually more traditional than them, we are the outdated, old China of (only?) 11-12 years ago.

But really, I don't mind or even care about all that. All that is further reinforced here is the exact extent to which the culture here sucks ass: close-minded know-it-all conservative mid-westerners on one end, animu otaku weaboo newfag /b/tards somewhere in the middle, those sneering-down-their-nose-at-any-other-Asian fresh-off-the-plane Chinks massively congregating in their little hole, and finally, ignorant liberals - bless me for finding out that they can even exist.

It really seems the same wherever we've been. I can hardly approve more of this wanting to resettle near the city.

12. On 'rolling' and momentum

As a rare antithesis to procrastination, I started on a project due in a week and found myself not able to stop to even make a post.

This is new. More on this later.

11. On the ridiculousness of 'fashion'

Update 4/6/11: More cleanup.
-

(a.k.a. boredom, part II)

weight - 143.8 (morning)
armpits - 35
boobs - 37
under boobs - 30 1/2
waist - 28 1/2
flab - 33 3/4
hips - 37 1/4
calves - 14 5/8, 14 7/8


P.S. - Stuffing myself on bagels for dinner (we're talking about around 3 here) apparently translates to my weight staying the same next morning. Note well taken.

10. Boredom, rain, and bagels

Yesterday was a ridiculously unbusy day at SPS. Extreme boredom on our part, perhaps, but for the locals, an unbusy day for us meant a good day for them. (You'd think rainy weather would make people more depressed than usual. The answer is no.)

I ended up reading ~80% of the book depicted to the right, and Duane (my shift partner, a med 1 student) claimed to be studying on his laptop at first, but after the first three or so call-less hours, it sounded like he was playing Minesweeper from the amount of mouse clicks he generated. Most unfortunate of all was Mike (also a med 1), who was 4 hours early for his shift after ours and who ended up snoring on the futon half an hour in. Poor kid. He claims he only has a bed and no study space at home, and from the looks of it, he probably makes very little use of that bed, to boot.

At least it happened to be a training day, meaning instead of guarding a ghost building, we had Mary and Rick and 10 other group leaders and 40-ish new volunteers-to-be occupying a large room on the opposite side of the floor. Bored group leaders on break would occasionally come in to say hi/offer free food and drinks, and yesterday, it happened to be leftover breakfast for the trainees: a good dozen Panera bagels with at least five different cream cheeses, a half box of yogurt, and a half box of Granola bars. Some anonymous group leader would always bring a surplus of free food, and if it's not eaten, some other hungry group leader would end up bringing it home. This Saturday, it so happened that Evan (an undergrad a year above me) had the fortune of being in the latter position. Unfortunately, he traveled by bike. This all formulated into a Jing and Duane and Mike becoming extremely overstuffed on bagels for the rest of that pleasant afternoon and early eve.

I don't think I want to see another bagel for at least a month, as good as the experience was.

-

I took a 2-hour stroll around the prettiest green places on campus today. The best kind of rain is the recent kind of scattered showers: slow and occasional enough to not pick up so much dirt and debris to turn the river yellow, but just enough to turn waters the same green as the neighboring woodlands. Plus the alternating cracks of sun between dark shifting clouds is breathtakingly beautiful.

It's good to slow down once in a while. Too often we pass these places by with another destination in mind, becoming oblivious by habituation to just how much alternative charm nature parades us.

I'm reminded of the same sad pity I used to feel for Central Park every time I ran.